Ideas in Finisterre

Abstract

In Roman times, Finisterre was considered the place where the world ended (in Latin, it means literally “the end of the world”). It is actually a cape on the west coast of Galicia, Spain, and no one would nowadays believe it to be the end of anything. We might now believe that Argentina, in the southern extreme of America, is the current location of Finisterre. The six essays that compose this special issue of Continental and Comparative Philosophy, all conceived and produced in Argentina, would thus be a sample of the philosophy of Finisterre. But what does this mean? 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 are scarce, problematic, and expensive. Secondly, we speak a minor philosophical language (Spanish) and are 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, for 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 farther they move away from the shores of the mainland, the less they will be recognized as “philosophers” (philosophy being defined mostly by attachment to the canon). These three facts (conditions of production, minor use of the English language, and research mainly focused on European authors) are true for the nine authors that share the pages of this special issue of Continental and Comparative Philosophy Journal, as well as for me as guest editor. We all share a formation that has focused notably on the Greek, German, and French traditions. We have written our doctoral dissertations and carry on our research in close relation to German Idealism, Phenomenology, or Post-structuralism. We believe, however, that there is an Argentinian philosophy (as a part of a Latin American character), which is both a fact and a task, and that our work must belong to that tradition. We have no certainty or agreement about how