Ideas in Finisterre

Abstract

What does it mean, in philosophy, to be at the end of the world? It is clearly not a question of geographic location. Even if boundaries are essentially variable, in constant becoming, the issue is not one of empirical cartography. What is it then? First of all, at the end of the philosophical world we work and think in a location where the access to journals, books, courses, lectures and conferences that take place in the supposed center of the world is scarce, problematic and expensive. Secondly, we speak a minor philosophical language (Spanish) and are only strangers in the supposed lingua franca of our discipline (English); we speak it precariously, and we fail to express our ideas with the rigor that we are used to in our native tongue. In the third place, most of the authors that we study (in our undergraduate studies, our thesis, our senior research) do not belong in our land, but in Europe (with rare exceptions). It does not mean that there are no great philosophers in Argentina, or Latin America in general. There are. But, once again, many of them sink their thought deeply in European authors, intertwining with them as roots; their work is often based on those thinkers and cannot be followed without some knowledge of their production. And the farthest they move away from the shores of the mainland, the less they would be recognized as “philosophers” (philosophy being defined mostly by attachment to the canon).