Examen crítico de la enseñanza superior de la filosofía en América. Col. “La Filosofía y la Universidad,” # 4 by Diego Dominguez Caballero (review)

498 BOOK REVIEWS Examen critico de la enseiianza superior de la filosoffa en America. Col. "La Filosofia y la Universidad," # 4. By DIEGO DoMINGUEZ CABALLERO. Washington D. C.: Union Panamericana. Secretaria General, Organizaci6n de los Estados Americanos, 1969. Pp. 53. The collection to which this volume belongs attempts to examine and appraise the present situation with regard to the teaching of philosophy in the universities of the Americas. This work makes a comparison with three preceding publications in the same series devoted to the three sections of American culture: the Anglo-, Spanish-, and Portuguese-American. The author is a Panamanian teacher. The first section is an analysis of what the previous studies state about the history of philosophy in the different regions of North and South America. It consists mostly of quotations from the above-mentioned essays. The over-all impression is that the author had much to say and that he somehow did not manage to say all he wanted. The author notes the emphasis on the existence of originality in American thought related in the previous essays, which feel certain of the quality of the philosophical productions and confident about the future. The author quotes Prof. Jose Echeverria as saying that the teaching of philosophy has so improved that today in many university centers it is possible to study philosophy in a very rigorous way and within an atmosphere of academic responsibility. However, as far as Latin America is concerned, in most cases philosophy teachers almost to the present have merely adopted European systems without developing their own thinking. The reason seems to be that Spain, during the colonial period, followed an educational approach based on authority and dogmatism, attitudes totally opposed to philosophy. The positivistic tendencies of the 19th century did not produce philosophers, either. Only after 1916 with Ortega y Gasset a new philosophical climate begins to predominate in Spanish-speaking countries, when a group of philosophers begins to develop a more original thought, and their work can be rightly considered as strictly philosophical and highly valuable. In North America philosophers have been more free and more willing to produce original thought. The second section is a detailed consideration of the relationship between university and philosophy. Though the need for a " theory of the university " is pointed out, the fact is that throughout the whole section " university " is taken in so broad a sense and so ideal a fashion that many relationships between university and philosophy as here proposed give the impression of being artificial and unrealistic. Perhaps too much responsibility is placed on the shoulders of an institution which has begun to show its limitations everywhere in a pathetic way. It might be that the way to achieve the same goals should be more varied. To identify philosophy BOOK REVIEWS 499 with what is done in the departments of philosophy of the universities is another mistake. Unless such a connection is understood in a rather loose sense, we would again face a concept of university quite remote from reality. In a section devoted to the departments of philosophy, however, some very sensible considerations are made concerning the relation between science and philosophy. A large part of this section is devoted to the problems of the organization of university studies. In a section devoted to the teaching of philosophy the author quotes the conclusions arrived at in the previous studies he is analyzing; such conclusions are not very encouraging. He finds that philosophy has not received the importance it should have in university life, that it usually is not studied in an adequate fashion, and that there is a lack of communication between the teachers of philosophy of different universities. The last section takes up again the problem of teaching philosophy. A strong emphasis is put on the distinction between the philosopher as such and the instructor in philosophy, a distinction which in practice is often forgotten. One of the main problems the author is concerned with is the possible effect that the lack of a notion of philosophy could have on the teaching of the discipline. Do we need to know what philosophy is before attempting to teach it? The fact is that in three...