Interview: David Alvargonzález, philosopher

Interview with David Alvargonzález, author of A Philosophical Map of the World

David Alvargonzález (1960) is a professor at the University of Oviedo, where he teaches Philosophy of Religion, History of Science, and Philosophy of the Human Sciences. His latest book, A Philosophical Map of the World (Tirant Editorial), has just been released in bookstores. 

Professor Alvargonzález, you have been teaching philosophy at the University of Oviedo for forty years. What led you to write this book now?

The aim of this book is to make available to ordinary citizens a map that helps them orient themselves in the contemporary world—a map constructed using the methods of academic philosophy. It is the map I am capable of producing at this moment, and it is written so that anyone who speaks Spanish can understand it. By confronting some maps with others, we are better able to orient ourselves.

Has your way of teaching changed much over these four decades? Have students changed as well?

The world has changed a great deal over these forty years, but the methods of academic philosophy are the same ones used by Plato and Aristotle more than two millennia ago. Students’ interests have changed too: when I began teaching, the fall of the Soviet Union had not yet taken place and we were in the first government of President González.

Tell us, what sparked your interest in philosophy in your youth?

It was that same interest in orienting oneself in the world that lies behind the project of this book. The map of the world I received from my family and my school was that of Christianity—a map shared by two and a half billion people. In my youth, I gradually realized that some of the contents of that map were not plausible.

Your book is neither an introduction to philosophy nor a self-help book. So what is it?

It is not an introduction to philosophy explaining a bit of Plato and a bit of Descartes. Nor is it a self-help book offering advice on how to live a healthy, fulfilled, or happy life. It aims to present a map of everything that exists so that the readers can orient themselves. They then decide where they want to go, but to go anywhere one first has to be oriented.

You propose a map to help us orient ourselves in the world we live in, but at what scale is this map drawn?A map of the Earth is drawn at the scale of the largest significant parts relative to the whole—in this case, the continents. The philosophical map of the world adopts the scale of the largest parts that can be identified in reality, which are what are called categories. Some categories operate independently of human beings (for example, the physical category), while others depend on humans (for example, political categories).

You divide the map into two supercontinents: one full of orderly republics (ananthropic) and another more unpredictable and turbulent (anthropic). This distinction has a long philosophical tradition, but what does it mean to you?

They are not supercontinents. Reality can be organized into categories; it is a rhapsody of categories: scientific, technical, technological, ethical, political, and so on. These categories are the maximum ontological genera and may be of two different orders depending on whether or not they depend on human (and animal) subjects. The independent categories are the strict natural sciences; the dependent ones are the categories of human action—the practical categories.

These are what you call “categories of being” and “categories of doing,” right? So if human beings were to disappear, the categories of doing would disappear as well, but not those of being. Has this been misinterpreted by some of your colleagues?

This is a highly debated issue within academic philosophy, though it matters little to those outside that world. The process of human knowledge is necessarily constructive and requires transforming what is known, but that does not mean that only what passes through that machinery of knowledge (those epistemological mechanisms) exists, because most existing things operate independently of whether humans know them or not.

The cartographer of this map declares himself a “philosophical materialist.” What does that mean?

I am a disciple of Gustavo Bueno, and the philosophical materialism I practice belongs to that lineage, although it cannot be said that Bueno made this map. Philosophical materialism can be characterized briefly through negations: the negation of spiritualism, formalism, idealism, vulgar materialism, scientism, skepticism…

Philosophical materialism also recognizes mental processes and ideas as “material.” Isn’t this a rather peculiar kind of matter? Is the term “materialism” somewhat misleading?

The term “materialism” is purely polemical: it means “not idealism,” “not mentalism,” “not spiritualism,” “not formalism,” “not monism.” It is a label that is useful because of what it denies.

It is often said that thinking means thinking against someone, but it is forgotten that it is also done together with others. You do it “on the shoulders of giants,” don’t you?

\The giants with whom any system of academic philosophy debates are Plato and Aristotle—that is well known. In my book no author is cited, because I imposed on myself the discipline of speaking only about ideas and not about authors, but the shadow of those two giants hovers over every page.

One gets the impression that we live surrounded by mythological ideas that are sometimes left deliberately vague because they can be used to justify almost anything. Can you give an example?

Nature, Culture, Humanity, Identity, Science, Reason, Progress, Democracy, People, Spirit, Immortality, Freedom, Peace. The list could go on.

Is there any in particular that bothers you especially?

Underlying many of these ideas is a monistic conception: Mother Nature, universal culture, a unified human race, the unified science of neopositivist fundamentalism, the global progress of Humanity, perpetual peace…

In your book you mention “the fundamentalism of tolerance.” It is a very interesting idea—what is it about?

It is a lazy idea according to which one must always be tolerant, but it is a false idea because in all societies some things are tolerated and others are not; otherwise, there would be no norms.

Plato said that Socrates was like a gadfly to Athenian society. The philosopher is sometimes an unpopular figure, always “patrolling” established rationality and denouncing myths. I imagine that you too sometimes avoid certain discussions out of practical prudence.

As in the tale by the Infante Don Juan Manuel entitled “What Happened to a King with the Swindlers Who Made the Cloth,” from El Conde Lucanor, the philosopher is the child who says out loud that the king is naked. The courtiers who flatter the king do not want to hear this because, unwittingly, it exposes their imposture. Thus the philosopher ends up being condemned. In our societies, the sentence is not physical death but civil death, which is silence.

I mention this in part because in recent years there has been a notable change in how Spain’s historical legacy is perceived. The idea of the Spanish “Black Legend” has been challenged, which was necessary, but it seems to have been replaced by another myth. You have kept somewhat on the sidelines, though I imagine it is not for lack of interest.

Universal history cannot be understood without Spain, just as it cannot be understood without Greece or Rome. In any case, we must not lose sight of the fact that when Spain was the world’s leading empire, none of us were there.

Do you think we will ever overcome the murky distinction between “left” and “right”, or is there really no interest in doing so? Social media seem to profit greatly from the controversies they generate.

The distinction between right and left interests those who live off politics, because these are labels for identification and propaganda used by organizations competing for control of the state.

It seems that social media fuel dissent, insult, and confrontation but, since nothing is purely black or white, social media have also generated very positive things. They have made it easier for voices like yours to be heard, or for us to witness philosophical debates of great interest almost in real time.

All techniques and technologies have positive and negative aspects; they can be put at the service of good or evil. For me to be able to buy this computer at the price I paid, hundreds of millions of people must be using computers for other, perverse purposes: exploiting, swindling, defaming, controlling, lying, objectifying, extorting…

One of the claims you make in the book is that the world has no unity, yet in public debate this unity is constantly taken for granted when people talk about climate change, human rights, world peace, freedom, the destiny of humanity, and so on.

The world referred to in this book is not just the planet Earth, but rather something closer to what we call the universe. The universe does not care in the least about what happens on a tiny planet orbiting one of the three hundred billion stars that make up one of its two trillion galaxies. Now, if we refer to the order of the categories of praxis, that is where the idea of Humanity appears. Humanity has no unity because there is no universal culture or language, nor does it have unity of action, because there is no government of Humanity.

Another major confusion concerns ethics, morality, and politics. Many people seem to want to do politics using ethics alone, without realizing it.

Ethics and politics pursue different ends: the proper functioning of a particular individual, and the proper functioning of a particular political state. These two objectives cannot always be harmonized, as happens in wars in which the state disposes of the lives of its subjects.

Having that distinction clear would help explain the current geopolitical situation. It is not a matter of justifying it, but at least of understanding it.

To understand the geopolitical situation of the present, it is very important to admit, as a matter of fact, that empires exist. A philosophical map of the world without the idea of empire is a mistaken map.

In your book you also distinguish between a type of art in the service of a power (whether religious, military, or political) and “substantive art” (free from that subjection). However, isn’t all art dependent on something? Isn’t “art for art’s sake” another myth?

Art for art’s sake is a myth. Art as a non-systematic exploration and analysis of certain regions of reality is not a myth: it is something “as rare as it is sublime,” but sometimes someone is capable of doing it, and then it has great value because it is like a local and profound incision of knowledge.

Finally, philosophy books also make good gifts, don’t they?

This book is written so that anyone can read it. We all have a certain worldview. It is interesting to confront our map of the world with those of others, because that is how we refine it. This book is a provocation inviting the reader to review his own map of the world and, in the process, to criticize mine.