Notes on Italian , peer-reviews and “la corruttela”*

Annalisa Coliva

University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and Cogito Research Centre in Philosophy

In his “A minor philosophy. The of the art of philosophical scholarship in ” Roberto

Farneti examines the production of contemporary Italian philosophers and discerns three main attitudes towards philosophy: denial, the “evil-queen syndrome,” and compliance. On Farneti’s view, philosophers in a state of denial appear to be oblivious to the fact that Italian philosophy doesn’t have much of a recognition in international forums. In contrast, the “evil-queen syndrome”, according to Farneti, consists in assembling “surveys of past , focusing on traditions of which one considers oneself the privileged inheritor” (p. xx). Finally, compliance refers to the increasing number of scholars who publish for the most part in Anglo-American peer-refereed journals. However, Farneti, who commends publication in international peer-reviewed journals, is critical also of philosophers falling in this last category, because they are found guilty of, ultimately,

“a subservient intellectual attitude” (p xx). Farneti contends that Italian philosophers ought to supply new and original ideas to the international philosophical scene through contributions to peer- refereed journals and should do so by drawing on a rather unspecified repository of ideas and wisdom that possess, or can have access to, thanks to their educational system “that nourishes classical studies” (p. xx).

In what follows, after some brief remarks on the rhetorical structure of his piece, I take issue with a lot of what Farneti says, in hope to make out a much more nuanced account of Italian philosophy’s state of the art than his and to put forward some proposals about how to improve things, in Italy and elsewhere.

* I would like to thank Elisabetta Lalumera, Sebastiano Moruzzi, Marco Panza and Eva Picardi for their comments on previous versions of this paper. 1 1. The rhetoric

Despite the interest of Farneti’s paper, I think a reader may find the rhetorical makeup of his article slightly unusual for a contribution to a scholarly journal at least for the following reasons. First, because of the rhetorical device of picking out sentences from books and papers to make their authors appear silly. This is a well-known rhetorical tool in other communicative contexts. But quotations in scholarly contexts usually display taking one’s adversaries seriously, thereby showing some kind of engagement with their ideas. By contrast, scholarly irrelevance is testified by ignoring what one deems only alleged contributions to a given field. More heated accusations are, as a rule, reserved for reviews and critical notices. But Farneti’s paper doesn’t clearly belong to these latter genres. Reference to a recently published book,1 in fact, seems more to be a pretext for launching a complex attack on present-day Italian philosophy than an occasion to provide the reader with an in- depth study of that volume.

Secondly, a reader may find it weird that so much prominence be given, the impressive bibliography notwithstanding, either to the opinions of newspapers’ columnists or to the interviews or articles of Italian philosophers published on national newspapers. For the scholarly status of a discipline isn’t usually fathomed by this kind of evidence. Furthermore, even the deepest of philosophers would presumably oversimplify his ideas to make them suitable to a large audience, had he to address it. But, perhaps, Farneti finds reproachable the typically Italian vanity of pursuing visibility on the media, which, alas, makes no exception in the case of many academic philosophers.

I personally would share such a criticism, but, then, I would make it a point to discuss only a philosopher’s academic work and do so in a scholarly traditional way.

So I wonder whether Farneti’s paper would, in effect, have been more effective if it had been written differently. This worry notwithstanding, I will now turn to a discussion of some of his main

1 Benso, S. and Schroeder, B. (eds.) 2007 Contemporary Italian Philosophy: Crossing the Borders of , Politics, and Religion, New York, SUNY press. claims.

2. Who needs an Italian philosophy?

Let me indulge in a little biographical sketch. I am an analytic philosopher for the best part educated in the UK and the US. No wonder that, once back in my home country, I have kept the conversation going with those who have been either my teachers there, or those whom I have happened to meet along the way while abroad; but, I should hasten to add, also with those Italians whose ideas seemed to me to deserve scrutiny, given my philosophical interests. Whether this makes me—or anyone else with a similar background and philosophical interests—intellectually “subservient” is something that it will be for others to decide.

However, it is not clear to me that Italy qua Italy could or for that matter ought to be able to produce an entirely original—that Farneti seems to consider synonymous with “national”—view on topics which concern human nature, such as personal identity and the possibility and features of self-, or, just to stay close to my fields of interest, our knowledge of an external world. It seems to me enough of a contribution to Italian reputation worldwide that Italian philosophers could

“make claims over the status of their philosophical propositions that nobody within the scholarly community could casually ignore” (p. xx), no matter how much of an Italian pedigree these claims may have.

I am flattered to see that Farneti ranks me among such contributors together with others he mentions and others he nonchalantly ignores. But, I should insist, the idea of an Italian philosophy is, for the best part a myth, often put at the service of a nationalistic ideology which there is every reason to reject.2 Nor do I think that the watered-down heir to that view—namely that there should be

2 This myth started with Gianbattista Vico’s De antiquissima Italorum sapientia (1710-1713). It was then developed along different lines by Vincenzo Cuoco in his Platone in Italia (1806) and greatly exploited during Fascism. For a discussion of this idea, see Albarani, G. 2008 Il mito del primato italiano nella storiografia risorgimentale, Milano,

Unicopli. 3 something like a recognizably Italian school in whatever area of philosophy that might be—is, as such, commendable.

Indeed the idea of a “national” philosophy or school is a very ethnocentric and therefore parochial one which sits badly with Farneti’s injunction that Italian scholars should regain visibility in international forums. It seems to me that the only way in which that can happen is if philosophers based in Italy worked on themes that engage with the interests of the international philosophical community.

3. Are international forums oblivious to the Italian philosophers Farneti attacks?

Given my intellectual upbringing, it is weird for me to embark in a defense of those whom Farneti more strongly attacks. But, definitely, it is hard to deny that for instance and his

“weak thought” have had and still have international resonance. Surely, he hasn’t been admitted in the club of professional analytic philosophers, nor has another internationally renowned Italian—

Umberto Eco. But he is widely read and discussed abroad—in the large sense of the term, including continental Europe and the US, even if not in the Departments of in America and the UK (and so of course is Eco, but Farneti doesn’t talk of him in his paper, so I won’t either).

Somewhat similar considerations, I take it, would hold at least for , and Antonio

Negri3 and perhaps others criticized by Farneti. Elsewhere,4 I have already briefly expressed some sketchy considerations as to why mainstream analytic philosophy does not take these Italian voices into account. So I won’t take up this issue here.

Rather, what I would like to consider in the following is, first of all, the connection Farneti makes between such an alleged oblivion and the fact that many renowned Italian philosophers don’t send

3 A volume of The library of living philosophers in honor of Negri is scheduled to appear shortly http://www.opencourtbooks.com/forthcoming_body_n.htm

4 See my Preface to the Italian edition of P. Boghossian 2006 Fear of Knowledge, Oxford, Oxford University Press;

Italian transl. Paura di conoscere. Saggio contro il relativismo e il costruttivismo, Roma, Carocci, 2006. their papers to international, peer-reviewed journals. Secondly, I will discuss whether the practice of peer-reviewing makes an important to the quality of a paper and, moreover, ensures that only the best papers be published. Thirdly, I will consider one—perhaps the only philosophical— strand in Farneti’s paper where he considers what may be taken the philosophical rationale for the refusal to oblige to the practice of sending one’s papers to peer-reviewed journals. Finally, I will point out what kind of value that practice can have for the Italian academic community at large.

What will emerge is, I hope, a much more nuanced account than Farneti’s and some recommendations to the philosophical community, both national and international, and to the Italian

Government.

4. Peer-reviews and international recognition

Let us therefore ask whether for instance Gianni Vattimo5 would be an internationally better-known philosopher if he (had) sent his papers to The Journal of Philosophy or, for that matter, to the

European Journal of Philosophy, whose mission is to be a forum of discussion for European philosophy irrespective of whether it is analytically or more continentally oriented. A moment reflection suffices to return an agnostic answer. Perhaps he may have reached a readership that for both conceptual and stylistic reasons is very far from his ideas and does not have a strictly professional motivation to consider his work.6 However, several of his books are available in translation, particularly in English. Hence, there is nothing which prevents him from read and considered by that community, save the conceptual and stylistic differences already alluded to. Is this enough of a motivation? I don’t think so and perhaps here we analytic philosophers world-wide

5 In fact I don’t wish to discuss anyone in particular. I take Vattimo as an example of an Italian philosopher whose work is available in different languages and yet may not be considered in certain circles.

6 Basically, Vattimo’s preoccupations about the captivating power of are not, at least at present, part of the agenda of mainstream analytic philosophy. 5 should simply confess our particular form of “provincialism”.7 Yet, nobody is perfect.8

This, however, is not the point: the point, rather, is that sending papers to peer-reviewed international journals (and having them accepted) is just one possible means to get one’s work known and appreciated in international forums along with other possible ones. Furthermore, it is a means which is particularly well-suited if one’s intended readership is by and large coincident with the analytic community. But there are, obviously, other means: having one’s work translated in other languages, participating in international collected volumes, giving talks and seminars in international contexts, and so forth.9 It seems to me that a lot of those Italian philosophers Farneti is so keen on criticizing do well in these latter respects, although in contexts which are culturally very distant from mainstream analytic philosophy. Is this enough to make them ipso facto bad philosophers? I don’t think so, while Farneti may appear to be of a different persuasion.

5. Peer-reviews, impact factor and philosophical quality

Let us thus turn to the question of whether by sending papers to peer-reviewed international journals one would thereby become a better philosopher. Well, again, I am not that sure. I can vouch from first-person that any paper I submitted to such a process in the end got published and got improved along the way, albeit mostly in style and systematicity. That is to say,

7 So I don’t entirely agree with Farneti’s judgment that “the global forum is curious of new intellectual perspectives and eager to cultivate comparative practices in which one can confront the work of others across major linguistic and cultural boundaries”.

8 And understandably so, at least for the following two reasons: partly because one can’t converse with all possible interlocutors and to chose one’s own is a legitimate option. Partly because very rarely do members of non analytic philosophical traditions seriously engage with it, often preferring scornfully to mock at it.

9 All factors which are deeply valued by the European Research Council, for instance. the clarity of my eventually published papers was improved and perhaps I was urged to consider objections that I had ignored in the first instance, but which, clearly, weren’t fatal to the view. So, the process obviously ensures some kind of improvement. Yet, it seems to me, it does not really have an influence on the (alleged) originality and depth of a paper. Those—it seems to me—are that are like courage for Alessandro Manzoni:10 either a paper has them or peer-reviews can’t bestow them on it.11

Furthermore, again from first person experience, either as a referee or as an author, I can say that reviewers often prefer simply written, if not simplistic papers, just because, given the limited amount of time and energy they can devote to refereeing, they make for easier reads. But, clearly, especially ground-breaking papers can often be less clear and simple to follow than articles which go over a well-known territory and make just minor points.

Does this entail that complying with the practice of sending papers to peer-reviewed journals isn’t a commendable practice? Not at all. I do think that it is one important means to build one’s own intellectual credibility, and to make one’s ideas known in internationally recognized scholarly forums, given the present sociology of the discipline, especially for philosophers whose intended readership is the analytic community. But if the same or equally noble ends are obtained (or obtainable) through different means, why complain? Simply in order emphatically to emphasize the sociological aspect of the practice, consider that Descartes didn’t send his Meditations to any publisher adopting a policy of peer-review, nor did any of the great mighty dead—at least to the best of my knowledge. All the same, their contribution to philosophy was greater than any present- day analytic philosopher could sensibly claim. Hence, I agree with Farneti that peer-reviewing policies have a point, but I find them by no means the solution to all problems, in particular when it comes to the issue of securing that (only or mostly) original and deep papers (or books) be

10 Author of I promessi sposi (1823/1842) in which he famously wrote that courage is something that either one has or nobody else could bestow it on one.

11 As should be clear, I am not claiming them for my papers. This is obviously for others to decide. 7 published and discussed in public forums.

Moreover, having some familiarity with the process of peer-reviewing, either as a referee or as an author, I can honestly say that it isn’t without problems. Sometimes reviewers don’t take seriously the fact that nowadays—with the new technologies at our disposal and the speed at which information circulates—it is fundamental not to let papers linger in the drawer for too long; and at times, they seem to apply standards that are more the reflection of their personal theoretical tastes, rather than an objective evaluation of the intrinsic merits of a paper. Moreover, there is—I think—a standing danger of diminishing the scientific value of the practice because a lot of professional journals are now ever more frequently adopting the policy of rejecting papers without any feedback.

So, as I have already said, I think that peer-reviews are commendable yet their shortcomings should be publicly and collectively addressed, if what we ultimately care about are scientific ideals.12

With respect to the impact factor, I honestly think that, again, it may have shortcomings, as well as merits. For instance, it may well be affected by some kind of “ethnocentrism”. It may happen, for instance, that members of the analytic tradition would more easily quote some of their British and

American colleagues, even if similar points have been made—before and/or better—by other philosophers of the same tradition and published in the same or comparable venues, who simply happened not to be their British or American fellows. There may be several causes behind such an attitude and I won’t try to go over them here. But, clearly, if the impact factor is—almost analytically—the evidence of the readership a philosopher has in those communities, then Italians, other continental Europeans, let alone scholars from other parts of the world, will comparatively have much less resonance and recognition.

12 I will here pass over one important—I would think, fatal—shortcoming that the Sokal affaire helped bring to the forefront of global attention. Namely that at least in certain areas of the Humanities publication in peer-reviewed journals isn’t a guarantee of scientific quality whatsoever. I will not consider this issue here because Sokal made a case against journals in cultural studies and not in philosophy and because this would take us to the problem of whether postmodernist ideas are any good. I will discuss some of the philosophical bases of postmodernism in section 6. Yet again, I make these points more to invite a cautious and nuanced attitude towards means that are used to measure the scientific quality and recognition of a philosophical contribution, than to suggest that they are to be rejected. On the contrary, I do think some shared criteria to evaluate scientific merit are indeed necessary. Precisely for this reason, we should collectively try continuously to improve them. If this means inviting people to avoid parochialism and to familiarize themselves a little bit more with the cultural world outside their own national boundaries, let be it. It won’t do them any damage. Indeed, it may well comply with the new deal that so many think the Obama era will set for American (and British (?)) international relationships.

6. The philosophical rationale behind the refusal to comply

Let me now turn to what seems to me the most interesting—from a philosophical, as opposed to a merely sociological point of view—claim in Farneti’s paper. He seems to suggest that especially those Italian philosophers who would recognize themselves in some postmodernist tradition13 may be tempted to refuse to comply with the practice of sending their papers to peer-reviewed journals on the following grounds. Largely simplifying things, although, I hope, without distorting them too much, they take themselves to have shown that reason—they usually prefer to call it “logos”—is a bad thing. For it distances from us the deepest aspects of life and thought that belong to our nature and that characterize human experience.

Now, what kind of effect would Farneti’s exposure of such a motivation or his reiterated recommendation of sending papers to peer-reviewed journals have on these thinkers? Well, I would think, none whatever. For reflect: they think they are well within their intellectual rights to refuse to oblige to such a practice. Any standard or rule—let alone those standards of clarity and argumentative rigor that are usually promoted by the analytic community—are an expression of reason, hence must be avoided. Clarity and argumentative rigor, moreover, are, arguably, the side-

13 I think it really is a tradition which has its forefathers in several philosophers who belong to since its origins—Protagoras, Montaigne, Nietzsche, just to mention some prominent examples. 9 effects of that exercise of reason which more and more alienates ourselves from our true essence and from being. A form of irrationalism, which has always been present within Western thought, though cast in different forms, is the usual outcome of those philosophical positions which rightly— to my mind—question the power and scope of reason—let it be skepticism or .

Translated into practice, these views would probably lead either to a mystical silence or to the idea of getting anything out there in print or in any other publicly accessible medium. It will then be the audience and only the audience to decide whether it is interesting and worth-discussing, by either taking it into consideration or ignoring it. Clearly, in this latter case, the publisher or the journal will no longer be guarantees of the quality of the work and this, in turn, would threaten their very raison d’être. Hence, any public forum would be on the same footing as all others, and only the readership will be the ultimate judge of the quality (?) and interest of a contribution. Taking this idea in the abstract it may even seem passable. One may wonder, moreover, whether the web isn’t slowly achieving this end, or will do so in the long run. Yet, clearly, a moment reflection suffices to show that it would lead to total deregulation, if not to anarchy. Hence, it is not serviceable—indeed it would be dangerous—when it comes to determining evaluations which should have a bearing on academic positions and funding distribution.14

If this is the motivation behind the attitude of refusing to send papers to peer-reviewed journals, then merely countering that philosophers of such a persuasion ought to in the name of—what?— quality—by whose standards?—, international recognition—why bother?—, or whatever else, won’t do. Only more philosophy would do. In particular, only more philosophy will show that their

14 But aren’t we—Italians and continental Europeans at least—familiar with a certain gauche which keeps repeating that scientific merit is just the voice of capitalist power and that when it comes to research funding and positions, they too should be equally distributed? That is to say, on their view, distributed on the basis of no scientific criteria whatever, or, as we Italians say, “a pioggia” (which can be translated with “randomly” although with some loss of the original meaning or pragmatic resonance of the Italian expression, which is “distributed to all power-groups no matter what”). philosophical motivations are, ultimately, defective, though it may be instructive to consider them.15

Since, together with many others, I think that reason can find responses to the challenges raised by such philosophical traditions, I would like to see what they have to say in response, apart from an unphilosophical turning of their backs. But this is the way to fight them—that is to say, to take seriously the challenges they raise against reason and devise ways of responding to them, if indeed there are any. Merely commending a certain policy won’t do anything to silence them for they will be left within their rights to think that argumentative rigor, clarity of expression and the very idea of publicly recognized standards and rules, are nothing but products of that very reason that they think

—reasonably?—should be opposed.

When pressed this way, if they bother to respond at all, they usually appeal to the following argument. First, they say that since all these ideas have come up now and again throughout the history of Western thought, that means that no successful response to them has ever been found.

Secondly, that also the very response under consideration has inductively high chances of being rebutted. From these premises they conclude that their position is (or at least has good chances of being) right.

Now, apart from the fact that I am not so conversant with the whole of the Western tradition to be sure that never before in the history of philosophy these positions have been rebutted, nor, I suspect, are they; I am pretty sure that they systematically ignore any extant response to the challenges they raise against reason. Moreover, since endorsing falsificationism doesn’t mean to show that a given position is actually false (just as it doesn’t follow that it is false that the Earth goes around the Sun, simply from the fact that it may be false), the second premise of their argument is particularly weak.

15 Boghossian, op. cit., is such a recent attempt, as well as Diego Marconi’s Per la verità. Relativismo e filosofia,

Torino, Einaudi, 2007. For a differently-oriented one, see Coliva, A. 2009 I modi del relativismo, Roma, Laterza. But see also my “Was Wittgenstein an epistemic relativist?”, Philosophical Investigations, forthcoming and “Liberals and conservatives. Is there a (Wittgensteinian) third way?”, in A. Coliva (ed.) Meaning, Knowledge and Mind. Themes from the Philosophy of Crispin Wright, Oxford, Oxford University Press, forthcoming. 11 If, in contrast, they take a given response into account and show by rational means that it is not a good one, they will court paradox—because they would have used reason to defend irrationalism.

Of course many of them would like to be in such a predicament and, from the edge of paradox, demand to be left alone to contemplate what lies on the other side of it, or, less graciously, to preach the masses about the dangers of reason. I have some sympathy—I must confess—for the former request and considerably less for the latter. Indeed, if they want to contemplate instincts, God,

Being, Beauty, Nothingness, or whatever have you, while abandoning philosophy (as well as their academic jobs and salaries) to devote themselves to other equally or even more noble activities, such as poetry, religion, arts, or even politics,16 I think we should oblige to their request. But it must be stressed that, even if they somehow happened to be right in thinking that no solution to their challenge has yet been found, by parity of reasoning, there is no reason to think that a response to it can’t in the future be found. I would thus recommend that professional philosophers should engage in trying to find it, rather than abandon the discipline in fact for a lack of intellectual stamina and strength.17

7. Peer reviews and “la corruttela”

16 It is perhaps not by chance that some of the philosophers mentioned by Farneti have in fact turned to politics and, to my mind, have done well while engaging in it. Nor is it by chance, I think, that Richard Rorty abandoned philosophy and turned to literary criticism. Nor, again, is it by chance that many famous Italian philosophers among the ones criticized by Farneti, have more recognition, within the English-speaking academic community, in Departments of

(cross-) cultural and literary studies.

17 A good example of the complex attitude I am recommending is in fact Wittgenstein. Contrary to the Neopositivist mockery of his ideas on the mystical in the Tractatus, he actually thought that the most important things in life where those untouched by philosophy, and in fact unsayable. Yet, he never stopped doing philosophy, by classical standards— that is, by exercising reason—, while also later criticizing the deeply metaphysical conception of that philosophers tend to put forward. However, to rank his later philosophy together with certain postmodernist claims is, arguably, a gross misunderstanding of his views. Cf. Coliva, A. “Was Wittgenstein an epistemic relativist?”, op. cit. So much for an attempt philosophically to counter those who may advance philosophical arguments against the validity of subjecting one’s work to public evaluative criteria. Let me now turn to what I take the final task on my agenda. That is to say, to show what value internationalization and submitting one’s papers or books to peer-reviewed journals and publishers could have for the Italian academic community at large and, a fortiori, for the philosophical one.

Undeniably, one of Italy’s worst diseases—already denounced by Francesco Guicciardini in the

Renaissance18—is “la corruttela” (“corruption”).19 The Italian academia, alas, is no exception. Such a corruption—as Farneti clearly explains—takes the form of according privilege to the “interni”

(“insiders”), or even to one’s family members, over people who have nothing on their side but their

“genius” to put it so emphatically that only Oscar Wilde could have put it this way without sounding ridiculous. Now, I agree with Farneti that to introduce explicit reference to the number of publications in peer-reviewed international journals and books among the criteria to be used in assigning jobs and funding could help cure this disease. But I think it would less because I have an uncritical faith in the fact that only good—that is, deep and original—work will appear in print, if it has undergone that procedure, than because I think that such a criterion would necessarily introduce an element, within the evaluation, which would escape the direct control of the academic barony.

Compliance, in Farneti’s sense of the term, can therefore have an extremely subversive and, in this particular case, moralizing effect.

Alas, a moment reflection is enough to show that such a criterion would, by itself, still be powerless to produce a real change. For if those who could rely on their internationally recognized publications were somehow prevented from taking part in a competition, as it often happens in

18 Francesco Guicciardini (1483-1540) was a historian and political philosopher who stressed this aspect of Italian political life in several of his works.

19 I suspect that the fact that we have almost always been aware of it makes it even worse that we never tried collectively to eradicate it. But, I must stress, it also bears testimony to the fact that Italians—perhaps contrary to other people—are not in denial with respect to it. 13 Italy, simply to introduce this element within the criteria of evaluation would do nothing to change the of the Italian academia. Thus, what else is needed? I recommend making it a law that no one with less than a suitable number of international publications in peer-reviewed international journals or books could get a permanent position or proceed in their academic careers in Italy (as well as in France, Spain, Germany, and—as surprising as it may seem20—also in the UK and the US, or in any other civilized part of the world).21 Hence, if one happened to be the only candidate but with no publications that satisfy this criterion, one could not be given the job (or the grant).

This is also a recommendation to the Italian Government: without passing unpopular and indiscriminate cuts to University funding, by enforcing more stringent criteria, it would immediately diminish the number of those who could actually aspire to become academics or to have a career within the academia and would secure that also those who can count only on their talent and hard-working attitude could have a chance, no matter who the examiners are going to be.

So, to sum up: I agree with Farneti’s suggestion of making it a habit—I have recommended a law— that only people with international publications in peer-reviewed journals and books should have a place (at least) in the Italian academia or be allowed to progress within it and have access to public funding. For this would depower those who now play the role of examiners and who may be tempted to do so in a corrupt way. Yet, strictly speaking, none of this has anything to do with the interest and relevance of Italian .

20 It can often be witnessed that both in the UK and specially in the US one’s academic pedigree—that is the institution attended and the letters of reference—are deemed more important than one’s publications (in international peer- reviewed journals and books).

21 I personally think that it should also be passed the bill that no one could have their first job in the same institution from which they received their first and doctoral degrees. Moreover, I think there should be regular assessments of

Departments (as opposed to Universities) and that funding distributions should reflect the outcome of that evaluation.

Finally, I think any effort should be made in order for funding so distributed to be used to attract young and promising researchers, also from abroad, if they were ostensibly better than Italian candidates. 8. Conclusions

As should be apparent, I am not as critical as Farneti about the content, the interest and international readership of Italian philosophy as a whole—that is to say, of the philosophy which is practiced in this country with its many voices and styles—even when it is in fact very distant from what I do. I have—I must confess it—a penchant for “biological diversity”. Nor do I think that its best prospects of success lie in merging different traditions. Eclectism is not by itself a nor is it obvious that it would attract the international attention onto its products. Moreover, the idea that there should be something distinctively Italian, other than the fact of being produced by people working in this country, for our philosophy to be original, seems to me a nationalistic left-over of the past.

Furthermore, it may well play against the chances for Italian philosophers to gain more and more recognition in international forums. I should hope that Italian philosophers—that is philosophers working in Italy—would have that kind of recognition simply because of the interest and strength of their ideas. If, to such an end, it may prove useful, as Farneti recommends, to found research centers where people work side by side and can thus more easily have the opportunity to make their ideas known in international forums, by both getting them published and by participating in virtuous international circles, let them flourish.22 If, however, the aim of those centers were to develop something like an “Italian” school, I would, for the reasons just stated, feel very distant from it. I agree, however, with one strand of Farneti’s paper that the Italian academia needs to abandon, once and for all, its often corrupt habits. To give more prominence, within evaluative procedures which may lead to permanent positions, as well as to funding distributions, to international publications in peer-reviewed journals and books may help achieve this end. This, to my mind, is the greatest virtue of such a practice, which makes it highly commendable its defects notwithstanding. Yet, the latter should also be addressed if, as I said, what we ultimately care about are purely scientific ideals. But what else should we all be concerned with?

22 Indeed this is the mission of the newly-created research center in philosophy COGITO, founded by Paolo Leonardi,

Elisabetta Lalumera, Sebastiano Moruzzi and myself in . 15