José Pablo Feinmann on Sarmiento and the menaces of and to "civilization"

This is Chapter 6 of the third season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T3 CAP 6. Sarmiento en Chile" Encuentro n/d YouTube 02/07/2013.

The topic of this talk by Feinmann is Domingo Faustino Sarmiento (1811-1888), one of the most important historical figures of 19th century Argentine history. He was a partisan of the Unitarians, the centralists, and served as President of Argentina 1868–74. The Federalist ruler of Argentina, Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877), exiled Sarmiento to Chile in 1840, where he wrote a series of articles collected in a book published in 1845 known as the Facundo for short. It's full title in English is Life in the Argentine Republic in the Days of the Tyrants; or, Civilization and Barbarism.

In the conservative, "Mitrist" history that became dominant in Argentina for decades, Sarmiento tends to appear as a hero of "civilization," which for him and the conservatives was represented by the urban, centralist perspective of the Unitarians. For Sarmiento, Rosas was a representative of Federalist barbarism, the perspective of the uncivilized gauchos and poor farmers of the country.

On the 24th of May this year as part of the week of celebration of national independence, a key ceremony was President Cristina Fernández' presentation of the sword of "the Liberator" José de San Martín (1778-1850) to the Museo Histórico Nacional, saying in her presentation that this “la espada que liberó a medio continente” ("the sword that freed half a continent"). (Alejandra Dandan, La espada que simboliza la soberanía y la independencia Página/12 25.05.2015)

Juan Manuel de Rosas

In her address on May 25 in the Plaza de Mayo, Cristina said:

... pero ayer, cuando difundíamos en las redes y difundía la Televisión Pública, mientras el sable corvo de San Martín recorría la ciudad para ir a su destino, donde había querido que estuviera, en el Museo Histórico, ahí millones de argentinos recién se enteraron que el libertador de medio continente había legado su sable en cláusula de testamento al brigadier Juan Manuel de Rosas, miren lo que nos falta argentinos todavía en materia de educación y cultura.

¿Y saben por qué? Porque la historiografía liberal, la que le contaban a los chicos en los colegios decía que Rosas era un tirano, y si Rosas era un tirano entonces cómo un hombre como San Martín le iba a legar su sable. ¿Y saben por qué se lo legó? Porque nos defendió en la Vuelta de Obligado frente a la invasión extranjera, con valor y coraje que pocos hombres han tenido.

[... but yesterday, when we broadcast on the networks and it was broadcast on Public Television, while the curved saber of San Martín returned to the city to go to its destination, where he would have wanted it to be, in the Museo Histórico, there millions of Argentines recently learned that the Liberator of half a continent had left his saber in a clause of his will to Brigadier Juan Manuel de Rosas, look at what we Argentines are still missing in the material of education and culture.

And do you know why? Because liberal {Mitrist} historiography, the one that is told to children in the schools, says that Rosas was a tyrant, and if Rosas was a tyrant, then why would a man like San Martín have come to give him his saber{?} And do you know why he gave it to him? Because he {Rosas} defended us in the Vuelta de Obligado against the foreign invasion, with bravery and courage that few men have had.]

The Vuelta de Obligado was a battle in November 1845 against a joint Anglo-French invasion attempt.

Another reminder that "civilization" is also defined by politics, class and national perspectives.

20-peso Argentine note commemorating the Vuelta de Obligado

José María Rosa wrote of that battle (Rosas, nuestro contemporáneo; 1974):

El gran talento político de Rosas se revela en esta segunda guerra contra el imperialismo europeo: su labor de estadista y diplomático fue llamada genial por sus enemigos extranjeros... (...) Aunque resistir una agresión de la escuadra anglo-francesa ... parecía una locura, Rosas lo hizo. No pretendía con su fuerza diminuta ... imponerse a la fuerza grande, sino presentar una resistencia para que “no se la llevasen de arriba los gringos”. Artilló la Vuelta de Obligado, y allí les dio a los anglo-franceses una bella lección de coraje criollo el 20 de noviembre de 1845. No ganó, ni pretendió ganar, ni le era posible. Simplemente enseñó – como diría San Martín - que “los argentinos no somos empanadas que sólo se comen con abrir la boca”, al comentar, precisamente, la acción de Obligado.

[The great political talent of Rosas revealed itself in this second war against European imperialism: his work as a statesman and diplomat was called brilliant by his foreign enemies ... Although resisting an aggression of the Anglo-French squadron ... seemed crazy, Rosas did it. He didn't expect his diminutive force ... to impose itself on the large {Anglo-French} force, but rather to present a resistance so that "we don't concede to the gringos." The Vuelta de Obligado tookk place, and there they gave the Anglo-French a beautiful lesson in Creole courage on November 20, 1845. He didn't win, he didn't expect to win, nor was it possible. He simply showed - as San Martín would say - that "the Argentines are not empanadas that someone can just open their mouths and eat," commenting precisely on the action of Obligado.]

Feinmann in this lecture says the following of Rosas. The Argentine word negros here doesn't mean precisely what the English cognate "Negroes" means. Dark skin color is part of it, but it refers more broadly to people considered lower-class by those using the word and to dark skin generally, not only specifically to African ancestry. He refers to a novel of that period, Amalia (1851/1855) by José Mármol (1817-1871):

Amalia es una novela que muestra el enfrentamiento entre las clases altas y la persecución a que Rosas somete a estas clases privilegiadas. ¿Cómo los somete Rosas?

Los somete por medio de darles importancia a clases como los gauchos, los negros e incluso los indios –pese a que Rosas hizo una excursión punitiva contra los indios–. Pero lo que no toleran las clases altas es la importancia que los negros cobran dentro del esquema político rosista. Y los negros eran los sirvientes, sirvientes, así sin vueltas, los sirvientes que estaban en las casas de las familias adineradas. Y estos sirvientes eran delatores, eran delatores. Entonces las clases adineradas, las clases altas, les tenían miedo a estos negros porque eran los negros del Restaurador de las Leyes y fácilmente delataban a las familias bien, a las familias de alcurnia, a las familias patricias, a las familias que representaban el avance de la civilización en la Argentina.

Pero Rosas, Rosas para esta gente era un populista, un populista. Ustedes saben que las clases altas odian a los populistas. Porque, claro, odian al pueblo y lo que hacen los populistas es mezclarse con el pueblo.

[Amalia is a novel that shows the confrontation among the upper classes and the persecution to which Rosas submitted these privileged classes.

He submitted them to it to give importance to classes like the gauchos, the negros and including the Indians even though Rosas made a punitive expedition against the Indians. But what the upper classes don't tolerate is the importance that the negros achieve within the rosista political scheme. And the negros were the servants, servants, that is without recourse, the servants who were in the houses of the wealthy families. And these servants were informers, were informers. So the wealthy classes, the upper classes, were afraid of these negros because they were negros of the Restorer of the Laws {Rosas} and easily informed on the good families, the families of good breeding, the patrician families, the families who represented the advance of civilization in Argentina.

But Rosas, Rosas for these people was a populist, a populist. You know that the upper classes hate populists. Because, obviously, they hate the people and what populists do is mix with the people.]

José Pablo Feinmann on Esteban Echeverría and the tyrant Juan Manuel de Rosas (Updated)

This is Chapter 5 of the third season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T3 CAP 5. Esteban Echeverria: 'El matadero'," Encuentro n/d YouTube 02/07/2013.

Feinmann here discusses the political activist and Romantic author José Esteban Antonio Echeverría (1805–1851) in particular for his criticism of the tyrannical rule of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877). Rosas was head of the Federalist Party. And while the Federalist position is arguably the more important carrier of the democratic tradition in 19th-century Argentine than their centralist Unitarian opponents, Rosas' rule of the Province of Buenos Aires beginning in 1929 and later extended to the Argentine Confederation was one of the ugliest episodes of brutality and state-terrorist rule in Argentine history.

Echeverría was a partisan of the Unitarians and, as Feinmann describes him, an especially bitter critic of the despicable Rosas.

(Update 05/31/2015: In re-reading this, I realize that the version of Rosas that I sketched here is far too oversimplified. Feinmann here in this is describing the work of Esteban Echeverria, a contemporary who took a decidedly unfriendly view toward Rosas, but whose view on Rosas isn't the last word in historical judgment.

The long-standing mainstream view of Rosas as a villain is part of the conservative historical view identified with Bartholomé Mitre [1821–1906]. A non-Mitrist view of Rosas that enjoys support among Peronistas views him in a more nuanced light. Among them Argentine President Cristina Fernández.)

José Pablo Feinmann on Juan Galo Lavalle, Argentina's first coup leader

This is Chapter 4 of the third season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T3 CAP 4.Cartas a Lavalle," Encuentro n/d YouTube 02/07/2013.

In this installment, he discusses Juan Galo Lavalle (1797–1841), to whom belongs the dubious distinction of being the leader of the first coup in Argentina. In doing so, he executed Manuel Dorrego (1787–1828), the elected governor of Buenos Aires Province.

Dorrego represented the federalist trend in 19th century Argentina. Lavalle represented the centralist "Unitarian" trend, not to be confused with the Unitarian Christian denomination.

Feinmann contrasts Lavalle's behavior in staging a coup and executing the elected government with that of José de San Martín (1778–1850), the great Argentine hero of South American independence from Spain, who "hizo la guerra contra los españoles y nunca intervino con el Ejército Libertador en las luchas intestinas entre federales y unitarios." ("made war against the Spanish and never intervened with the Army of Liberation in the internal struggles between Federalists and Unitarians.")

José Pablo Feinmann on Juan Bautista Alberdi

This is Chapter 3 of the third season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T3 CAP 3. Alberdi y la Revolucion de mayo," Encuentro n/d YouTube 02/07/2013.

Here he discusses the great Argentine historian, diplomat and political theorist Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810–1884)

The Encuentro summary notes, "Las ideas de Alberdi representan las bases del primer liberalismo argentino." ("Alberdi's ideas represent the basis of the first Argentine liberalism.")

In the lecture, Feinmann notes, "Alberdi mira a la Revolución de Mayo desde el punto de vista es el de las provincias." ("Alberdi sees the Revolución de Mayo from the point of view which is that of the provinces.") The contrast between federalism, which Alberdi defended, and centralism representing the domination of Buenos Aires over the other provinces is a major theme in 19th century Argentine history.

"Alberdi representa a la línea del liberalismo integracionista," says Feinmann. ("Alberdi represents the line of integrationist liberalism.") Integrationist liberalism is Feinmann's term for Alberdi's federalist perspective, as contrasted with the centralist "liberalismo excluyente" (exclusionary liberalism).


Alberdi also did important work on the laws of war and war crimes.

José Pablo Feinmann on Mariano Moreno and the Revolución de Mayo of Argentina

This is Chapter 2 of the third season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T3 CAP 2. El Plan de Operaciones," Encuentro n/d YouTube 02/07/2013, which continues with his discussion of the Revolucion de Mayo of 1810 and its chief leader Mariano Moreno.

The Plan of Operations (Plan revolucionario de operaciones) was a document by Moreno, laying out a plan for constructing an indepedent Argentina, heavily influenced by French Jacobin theorists Robespierre and Saint-Just.

Feinmann argues that Moreno's Plan didn't have a people, a public, that was large enough and so constituted that it could act as a genuine revolutionary subject in the sense that the French Revolution had experienced.

Not to put to fine a point on it, Buenos Aires, where Moreno and his fellow revolutionary leaders Cornelio de Saavedra and Manuel Belgrano, was a small city in a backwater section of the Spanish Empire.

What we now know as Argentina was the largest part of the Virreinato [Viceroyalty] del Río de la Plata, established by Spain in 1776. This graphic from Wikimedia Commons shows the territory it included:

The Revolución de Mayo ended the rule of the last Viceroy of Spain, Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros, though Francisco Javier de Elío formerly held the title 1810-12, though he had no effective control in most of his nominal territory. The Revolución de Mayo established the independence of Buenos Aires.

The Virreinato del Río de la Plata was formerly abolished in the Congress of Tucumán of 1816, which declared the independence of the Provincias Unidas [United Provinces] del Río de la Plata

Feinmann here groups participants in a revolution into three groups: enthusiasts, enemies and spectators and discusses Moreno's approach to each.

José Pablo Feinmann on the Enlightenment and the Argentinian Revolution of Independence

This is Chapter 1 of the third season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T3 CAP 1. Iluminismo y Revolucion de Mayo"; Encuentro n/d YouTube 02/07/2013

href="http://www.encuentro.gov.ar/sitios/encuentro/programas/ver?rec_id=50216">Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/05/2013:

French Revolution made by the masses led by the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class. Liberty, eqaulity, fraternity.

As Feinmann explains, the Revolucion de Mayo was not made by the masses in anything like the same sense. Not a "popular revolution". It was a revolution made by a small group who took advantage of the strange situation presented by the unusual conditions of the French control of Spain under Napoleon.

He stresses the extent to which Enlightenment thought shaped that of Mariano Moreno. Moreno was a Jacobin in his philosophical orientation, but without the sanguinary implications that label carries in its French context.

José Pablo Feinmann on why he rejects postmodernism

José Pablo Feinmann explains his own reckoning with postmodern philosophy in Vattimo, dialectos y transparencias Página/12 22.03.2015. He does so in the context of commenting on the thought of Gianni Vattimo, a postmodern philosopher who was recently visiting Argentina.

Feinmann quotes Vattimo to give a description of the aspect of postmodernism on which he focuses in this brief but dense essay. The development of the media of communication, in this postmodern model, allows for the abolition of the Cartesian ego and of the unity of opposites in the Hegelian philosophy, which latter Feinmann references here as the One:

El mundo de la comunicación permite el desarraigo de la dictadura de lo Uno y la liberación de las diferencias. A esto le debemos llamar, dice, el dialecto. Ya no hay una razón. Hay racionalidades locales, dialectos. “Minorías étnicas, sexuales, religiosas, culturales o estéticas, como los punk, por ejemplo” (Ibid, p. 17). Esto no es una manifestación irracional de la espontaneidad. Las diferencias se manifiestan, se emancipan de la dictadura de lo Uno.

[The world of communication permits the uprooting of the dictatorship of the One and the liberatio of differences. This we can call, say, the dialectic. But there is no Reason. There are local rationalities, dialectics. "Ethnic, sexual, religious, cultural or aesthetic minorities, like the punks, for example." {Vattimo} This is not an irrational manifestation of spontaneity. The differences manifest themselves, they emancipate themselves from the dictatorship of the One.]

Feinmann responds with a contemporary Hegelian argument, one based in actual history. He looks at the end of the Cold War circa 1989 and the subsequent enormous expansion of neoliberal "globalization" and argues against what he views as a conservative tendency in postmodernist philosophy:

Voy a decirlo de una vez por todas: los intentos posmodernos han fracasado estrepitosamente. El sujeto cartesiano y el sujeto hegeliano están, hoy, más centrados que nunca. Nadie descentró al sujeto. Nadie lo adelgazó. Nadie lo deconstruyó. El sujeto absoluto es hoy el Sujeto del Poder Bélico Comunicacional. (Así: con mayúsculas fascistas, porque es de derecha y colonialista.) Este sujeto está globalizado y coloniza día tras día las subjetividades de los ciudadanos de este mundo. Su constitución ha sido reciente. Ni Sartre ni Foucault lo vieron. Y los posmodernos, que presenciaron su surgimiento y consolidación, lo interpretaron idílicamente, como el fruto maduro de una democracia comunicacional por cuyo medio se expresarían las distintas, mútiples voces de la libertad, sobre todo una vez caído el coloso comunista. ¿Error, ingenuidad o colaboracionismo? No son – arriesguemos – filósofos del “neoliberalismo”. Pero son –sin la menor duda– filósofos de la caída del comunismo, expresada en el colapso de la Unión Soviética. La distancia entre una cosa y la otra es demasiado estrecha.

[I'm going to say once and for all: the postmodern intentions have failed ostentatiously. The Cartesian subject and the Hegelian subject are today more central than ever. No one removed the subject from its central place. Nobody slimmed it down. Nobody deconstructed it. The Absolute subject is today the Subject of the Communicational Power of War. (Thus: with fascist capital letters, because it is rightwing and colonialist.) This Subject is globalized and day after day colonizes the subjectivities of the citizens of this world. Its construction has been recent. Neither Sartre nor Foucault saw it. And the postmodernists, who were present at its upsurge and consolidation, interpreted it idyllically as the mature fruit of a communicational democracy by whose medium the multiple voices of liberty express themselves, above all when the Communist colossus fell. Error, naivety or collaborationism? There are no - we'll take a risk to say - philosophers of "neoliberalism." But there are - without any doubt - philosophers of the fall of Communism, expressed in the collapse of the Soviet Union. The distance between one thing and the other is too narrow.]

There's a nice word play there in the sentence, "Nadie descentró al sujeto." I translated it above as, "No one removed the Subject from its central place." It could also be translated, "No one put the subject off its game."

In my reading - to use the polite postmodern expression! - Feinmann is arguing that postmodernism as derived from Heidegger and Foucault has a tendency to remove any intellectual basis for challenging the established order because it effectively gives up the concepts of Reason and objective truth. It does rule out efforts to change. But it puts the claims of the powerful on the same level normative as those of the weak, the claims of the tyrants on the same normative level as the claims of their subjects demanding freedom.

Feinmann isn't willing to give up the Hegelian historical subject, nor the Enlightenment standard of Reason, nor the Humeian/Hegelian goal of perceiving objectively material reality accurately.

Feinmann here is on the side of the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Gary Aylesworth in his 2015 entry on Postmodernism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes the criticism that "second generation" Frankfurt theorist Jürgen Habermas makes of postmodernism:

Habermas argues that postmodernism contradicts itself through self-reference, and notes that postmodernists presuppose concepts they otherwise seek to undermine, e.g., freedom, subjectivity, or creativity. He sees in this a rhetorical application of strategies employed by the artistic avant-garde of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an avant-garde that is possible only because modernity separates artistic values from science and politics in the first place. On his view, postmodernism is an illicit aestheticization of knowledge and public discourse. Against this, Habermas seeks to rehabilitate modern reason as a system of procedural rules for achieving consensus and agreement among communicating subjects. Insofar as postmodernism introduces aesthetic playfulness and subversion into science and politics, he resists it in the name of a modernity moving toward completion rather than self-transformation. [my emphasis]

Habermas and other Frankfurt School theorists are not only very much aware of the "nightmares of reason." They have been leaders in pointing them out. But they haven't abandoned Reason and the necessity of understanding empirical reality in doing so.

Feinmann also makes his own reckoning with Hegel's unifying concept of the One in the context of Islam's role in world history in El estruendo de los fanáticos Página/12 22.03.2015.

There are also Spanish-language lectures of his on YouTube from a Canal Encuentro series on Michel Foucault (1926–1984).

T2 CAP 11: Foucault [1]:

T2 CAP 12: Foucault II:

Also one on postmodernism more generally, T2 CAP 13: Los posmodernos:

José Pablo Feinmann on Nietzsche's continuing influence, Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-13) (Spanish-language video)

This is Chapter 13 and the final installment of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T1 CAP 13: Derivaciones de Nietzsche” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/05/2013:

In this installment, Feinmann further discusses the continuing influence of the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). Including Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), Freud, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, in particular that of Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973).

José Pablo Feinmann on Nietzsche and the death of God, Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-12) (Spanish-language video)

This is Chapter 12 of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T1 CAP 12: Nietzsche: 'Dios ha muerto'” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/05/2013:

In this installment, Feinmann further discusses the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), particularly his famous concept of the death of God.

Feinmann explains that he takes the concept of the will to power being the "central concept" of Nietzsche's philosophy. As he explains it, Nietzsche's notion of life is that life seeks to conserve itself by expanding its own life force. Because if it merely conserves its life energy, it will die.

He expresses his agreement with Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) on this point about the centrality of the will to power in Nietzsche's thought. He goes on to say that he views Nietzsche as a proto-National Socialist philosopher, and Heidegger as a straight-up Nazi philosopher.

But the genius of both philosophers makes this question very difficult, as he says. Because they are both extremely important in the recent history of philosophy, however they may have contributed to Nazi ideology.

I wouldn't express it the way Feinmann does. I don't think it's meaningful to describe Nietzsche as a proto-Nazi philosopher. The explicit anti-Semitic boosters of the so-called "Aryan race" were around in Nietzsche's time. And he was a bitter critic of them. His friendship with the composer Richard Wagner broke up primarily over Wagner's outspoken anti-Semitism.

There is plenty in Nietzsche's work that could be easily taken out of context and used as support of aspects of Nazi propaganda: his analyses of both Judaism and Christianity; his oblique references to the "blond beast"; his praise for notions of strength and war; his polemics against democracy and socialism. There's no question that in politics, Nietzsche ideas were reactionary. But there is little to argue that Nietzsche's actual philosophy contributed in a meaningful way to what passed for Nazi philosophy. Which, in any case, mostly amounted to ideas promoting the "Aryan race" by promoting hatred against Jews.

Heidegger's allegiance to National Socialism and membership in the Nazi Party until the end of the war is well-documented. Jürgen Habermas, Karl Löwith and Herbert Marcuse all believed that there were aspects of Heidegger's philosophy that contributed to his support for the Nazis. Feinmann himself has written a philosophical novel about Heidegger that deals in a substantive way with these issues, La sombra de Heidegger (2005).

Feinmann also explains the "death of God" idea. Very oversimplified, it has to do with Nietzsche's idea that Christianity and other contemporary religions have been historically superceded. But Nietzsche did have a sort of religious idea that a superior spiritual value could be found in ancient Greek thought. Nietzsche's famous Zarathustra persona appears to have been modeled in significant part on the 6th-century BCE pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus.

This affection for the pre-Socratics is one point of commonality between Nietzsche and Heidegger.

Feinmann also brings Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007), Michel Foucault (1926–1984), Hegel (1770–1831) and Karl Marx (1818–1883) into the discussion in this episode.

José Pablo Feinmann on Nietzsche, Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-11) (Spanish-language video)

This is Chapter 11 of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T1 CAP 11: Nietzsche, vida y voluntad de poder” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/05/2013:

In this installment, Feinmann describes the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900).

José Pablo Feinmann on capital and "Capital", Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-10) (Spanish-language video)

This is Chapter 10 of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T1 CAP 10: El Capital” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/05/2013:

Here Feinmann discusses Karl Marx's economic theories as elaborated in his famous work, Capital.

José Pablo Feinmann on modernity out of control, Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-9)

This is Chapter 9 of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T1 CAP 9. La modernidad desbocada” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/05/2013:

Here Feinmann discusses the major challenge to capitalist modernity, Marxism and the workers' movements associat3ed with it.

José Pablo Feinmann on philosophy and practice, Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-8)

This is Chapter 8 of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "Filosofía y praxis” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/05/2013:

In this episode, Feinmann looks at the relationship of philosophy to practice, practical application. He discusses in this context the work of Karl Marx (1818–1883), Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and one famous Argentine who was not a philosopher but a man of action, Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928–1967).

José Pablo Feinmann on Hegel and the Master-Servant Dialectic, Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-7)

This is Chapter 7 of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, "T1 CAP 7. Hegel, Dialéctica del amo y el esclavo” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/05/2013:

In this installment, Feinmann deals with Hegel's famous analysis of the master-slave relationship in the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), one of the best-known and most influential in Hegel's work. Feinmann calls it "one of the highest moments of philosophy."

He brings several twentieth-century philosophers into the discussion here: Alexandre Kojève (1902—1968); Jacques Lacan (1901-1981); Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961); Raymond Queneau (1903-1976); Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980)

José Pablo Feinmann on Hegel and the Absolute Subject, Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-6) (Spanish-language video)

This is Chapter 6 of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, “T1 CAP 6. Hegel, el sujeto absoluto y la consolidación de la burguesía europea” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/05/2013:

He he plunges into the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Or, as his friends call him, Hegel.

He warns his listeners, "Yo les había dicho que Kant era difícil. Bueno, Hegel es más defícil. Es mucho más defícil." ("I told you that Kant was difficult. Well, Hegel is more difficult. Is much more difficult.")

He begins his approach by describing how Hegel conceived of dialectics as "historical process." Hegel saw history as a permanently developing process, "and that this development is a dialectial development." It proceeds by affirmations, negations and the overcoming of negations, explains Feinmann. He clarifies in a second formulation, "once again the negation that negates the established and the conciliation of the third dialectical moment that contains the antagonisms." And in this way, "history advances by means of negation."

Hegel saw history prceeding in a linear continuity, explains Feinmann. And the dialectical stages in which he invisioned it occuring each "constitutes itself as a totality." And he notes that "the concept of totality is the one that will come to be most questioned in Hegel, for these thoughts that are very close to the fall of the Berlin Wall, to the crisis of the Soviet Union, and the crisis of Marxist thought. When one critiques Hegel, one is criticizing Marx in these cases."
The most appealing of Feinamann's formulations in this segment is when he says:

... Hegel es el primer filósofo que dice: "La historia es mi materia, la historia es lo que yo tengo que pensar."

[... Hegel is the first philosopher who says: "History is my material, history is that of which I have to think."]

Feinmann does a great job here of failing at what is an impossible task for anyone: providing a good introduction to Hegel in a 30-minute presentation for a general audience.

He does it by continuing his practice in this series of understanding the philosopher he's discussing in the context of his own time and tying his thought to more recent historical events. That's especially appropriate for Hegel, who, as Feinmann says, not only constructed a philosophy of history but took human history as the material for his philosophising.

He had influences for this, of course. Not the least of them was Jewish and Christian apocalyptic thought in the Christian Bible. As even a Hegelian-Marxist scholar like Herbert Marcuse was careful to note, Hegel was very much a Christian philosopher.

Hegel's contemporary Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803), for instance, elaborated a philosophy of history. But it was Hegel's comprehensive version that was to have such a huge influence, not least on Marxist thought. Karl Löwith even argued that every later theory of history as a progressive process of development wound up being influenced by Hegel's.

Feinmann emphasizes the importance of Hegel's influence by describing various thinkers who have grappled in some way with Hegel's thought:

Louis Althusser (1918–1990)

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007)

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995)

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)

Michel Foucault (1926–1984)

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998)

Gianni Vattimo (1936− )

He also mentions Walter Benjamin's (1892–1940) notion of history as catastrophe.

José Pablo Feinmann on Kant and David Hume, Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-5) (Spanish-language video)

This is Chapter 5 of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, “T1 CAP 5. Kant, la experiencia posible y la experiencia imposible” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/05/20134:

Here Feinmann deals with Kant's basic theory of cognition. The core of it is that the ego, the individual Subject, receives perceptions through the senses. But the Subject cannot assume those perceptions constitute knowledge of the Object perceived. They are the Subject's impressions of the Object and the Subject can work with those perceptions. But the Subject can never assume that these perceptions provide knowledge of the Object as it is, i.e., the thing-in-itself in Kant's terms.

Kant argued that two categories of perception were attributes of the Subject, the human ego: Space and Time. And these qualities are imposed upon the perceptions of the external world.

Feinmann says that for Kant, "El sujeto constituye la realidad" ("The Subject constructs reality"). And, "El sujeto le da forma a las cosas" ("The Subject gives form to things").

Feinmann stresses that Kant was building on the work of the English empiricist and political economist David Hume. While this may seem strange for a core philosophy of the trend known as German Idealism. But it's true. Kant was trying to understand and describe how the individual consciousness organizes the information it receives from the empirical world. William Edward Morris and Charlotte Brown in their 2014 entry on Hume for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy note, "Kant reported that Hume's work woke him from his 'dogmatic slumbers.'"

But as Feinmann says, Kant's view of the ego puts him in close realtion to Descartes. One could say that Kant's theory of cognition was an attempt to solve the problem that Hume raised for Descartes' philosophy, in which Descartes had to depart from the cogito ergo sum methodology in order to explain the reality of the external world. Descartes deduced the existence of God from the self-awareness of the ego. But he had to invoke God in a deus ex machina argument to explain the existence of empirical reality outside the ego.

Kant based the reality of the external world, the res extensa, on the constituitive function of the ego. As Feinmann puts it, "El mundo que el sujeto conoce es el mundo que el sujeta construye" ("The world that the Subject knows is the world that the Subject constructs").

He jumps to the 20th century to mention Sigmund Freud's theory of the Unconscious and Jacques Lacan's (1901-1981) theory of reality as a world of symbols distinguished from the real, which is the world we don't see or know. Both of these have implications for Kant's theory and our understanding of it today.

Feinmann explains at this point (18:30ff) that his jumping around int time in his discription of philosopy is a way of incorporating the non-linearity of the subject matter. Around 23:40, he gives a definition of philosophical idealism:

Entonces, esto es el idealismo filosófico ... que entroniza al sujeto y, de algún modo, en realidad, subalterna a la materia porque la materia deviene objeto cuando el sujeto le da forma. En este sentido, van a ser muy distintas las filosofías materialistas.

[So, this is philosophical idealism ... that enthrones the Subject and, in some way, in reality, subordinates the material {empirical reality} because the material becomes an Object when the Subject gives it form. In this sense, the materialist philosophies will be very different.]

José Pablo Feinmann on thinking Louis XVI's head off, Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-4) (Spanish-language video)

This is Chapter 4 of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, “T1 CAP 4. La filosofía corta la cabeza de Luis XVI” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/05/2013:

The first segment of this installment deals with defining idealist philosophy. The dichotomy that is often drawn between the categories of Idealist and Materialist philosophies dates back in its current usage to Friedrich Albert Lange's (1828-1875) highly influential Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart (1866). But even Lange cautions his readers about assuming too casually a general and neat history of idealism vs. materialism (Book 1/Chapter 1 of Geschichte des Materialismus):

Da Aristoteles und Plato unter den griechischen Philosophen, deren Werke uns erhalten sind, an Einfluss und Bedeutung weit hervorragen, so ergiebt sich leicht die Neigung, sie in einen stark en Gegensatz zu bringen, als hatte man in ihnen die Vertreter zweier Hauptrichtungen der Philosophie: der aprioristischen Speculation und der rationellen Empirie.

[Because Aristotle and Plato stand out in influence and significance among the Greek philosophers whose works we retain, the tendency to bring them into a strong opposition can easily emerge, as though one had in them the representatives of two main directions of philosophy: a priori speculation and rational empiricism.]

Kant and Hegel are generally regarded as the two greatest figures of German Idealism. But Kant's philosophy was heavily influenced by the arch-empiricist David Hume. And Hegel criticized Kant's philosophy for being insufficiently empiricist.

Feinmann defines the idealist tradition as starting with Descartes, as that tradition that proceeds from the I, the ego, in its approach, as Descartes did with his cogito ergo sum. And he further defines idealist philosophers as "those who divide the subject in its work of knowing reality." ("Son los que parten del sujeto en su tarea de conomcimiento de la realidad.")

Here, Feinmann proceeds to Immanuel Kant, who he warns is listeners "is not an easy philosopher."

What does all this have to do with the lost head of Louis XVI? As earlier, Feinmann uses the French Revolution as a major signpost in the development of the historical period during which about about which the modern philosophers philosophized. He states the conventional (and correct) historical assumption, "Inf effect, with the taking of the Bastille and the decapitation of Loius XVI, the bourgeois capitalist class seized power" from the aristocracy and the nobles and the monarchy that ruled that established order. And in Feinmann's view, the philosophy of the time in Europe spoke to that broader historical development. "If the bourgeoisie is seizing power, Kant has a different relationship with external reality" than earlier thinkers like Descartes.

I tend to avoid terms like bourgeois and bourgeoisie, because they are French terms taken into English. But in American English, no one seems to know exactly what they mean. Even people who understand them in their general historical usage have to take account that other people use the terms in other ways. Both German and Spanish have their own equivalents of the French bourgeois: bürgerlich and burgues, respectively. And their usage is not so problematic as it is in American English.

Kant, he explains was part of the Enlightenment, a movement which breaks up Reason like a prism breaks up light, producing "the lights of reason." Feinmann says, "For a follower of the Enlightenment, Reason is that power that is capable of organizing all of reality." He presents this as analogous to the active spirit of capitalism that was shaping Nature and society in its own interests at a previously unprecedented pace. Enlightenment philosophy with its idea that people can form social reality according to the dictates of Reason, not just according to dogmas of the Church and monarchical traditions, proved to be a revolutionary one.

I suppose it's fair to say that such a presentation is reductionist, if only because covering centuries of complex ideas in a popular form in half-hour segments requires a certain amount of simplification. But he's not arguing in a larger reductionist way; he's not trying to present philosophical ideas as empty reflections of social or economic processes. Instead, he's talking about the ways ideas are formed by the human history in which they emerge and how they in turn help to form that larger historical reality. And the Enlightenment thinkers wanted humanity to make history in the name of the Rights of Man. (And, yes, they pretty much meant Man at the time.)

He refers here to two key leaders in Argentina of the early 19th century, Mariano Moreno (1778-1811) and Juan José Castelli (1764-1812).

Moreno was the most important leader in the early national independence movement. He was an admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's political philosophy and a radical-democratic Jacobin in his outlook. Moreno translated Rousseau's The Social Contract into Spanish. Argentina's current President Cristina Fernández has named Moreno as one of the historical figures she most admires. Silvana Corozzi deals with Moreno's political philosophy in a recent study, Las filosofías de la revolución. Mariano Moreno y los jacobinos rioplatenses en la prensa de Mayo: 1810-1815 (2011).

Juan José Castelli was an early advocate for the rights of indigenous peoples in Argentina and leader of a political movement to defend those rights.

Mariano Moreno (1778-1811)

Here Feinmann brings up the great Enlightenment philosophers D'Alambert, Diderot and Voltaire. And he defines a person of the Enlightenment as "someone who is so sure of that which his reason tells him is needed [that he] fells justified in imposing his reason by deeds and in modeling (forming) reality in accord with what his reason tells him."

His explanation here is a good one, referring to the image of the Goddess of Reason invoked by the French Enlightenment thinkers: "The Goddess of Reason" - who advocates the Rights of Man [sic] - "is that which creates reality because she rises up again reality, that is, Reason is revolutionary, Reason doesn't believe in reality. When reality is not in accord with Reason, Reason revolutionizes reality to the point where this reality stands in relation to her like a mirror." In words, Reason rejects a reality that does not conform to the dictates of Reason and therefore acts to bring it into conformity with Reason.

Feinmann assures his listeners that if one understands this key notion of the Enlightenment, "it won't be so hard for you to understand Kant."

He also explains Enlightenment ideas with reference to Voltaire's literary character Doctor Pangloss from Candide. Pangloss was an advocate of an idea advanced by Leibniz, that we live in the best of all possible worlds. But from Voltaire's perspective Pangloss' idea made him into a reflexive supporter of existing social and political conditions. "Pangloss was a very miserable person," in Feinmann's reading, "destined to justify the unjustifiable."

Feinmann expands this into the observation that when a person in misery first fully understands their misery and says, "This can't be!", this represents a rupture in which the person is revolutionizing their particular situation be beginning to try changing it.

And Feinmann emphasizes that it was only ideas that made the French Revolution. "The French Revolution is not only the taking of the Bastille. It is also the Terror, it is Robespierre, it is Saint-Just, the guillotine." The role of the Enlightenment intellectuals in setting it off, he says, was to help people to see their disgrace under existing conditions in a new way, to look at it with a new consciousness, with a personal, subjective awareness that this needs to change and should change. "This has to change," was the sentiment that drove the French Revolution.

José Pablo Feinmann on Descartes and Coumbus, Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-3) (Spanish-language video)

This is Chapter 3 of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, “T1 CAP 3. Colón descubre América; Descartes, la subjetividad” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/05/2013:

Feinmann returns in this installment to discussing Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of America in tandem with Rene Descartes cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"), which Feinmann considers here as the discovery of subjectivity. The point he makes in pairing the non-philosophical Portuguese discoverer with the innovative French philosopher is that they played important and highly symbolic roles in the early stages of the rise of capitalist modernity to a dominant position.

As Feinmann puts it, Columbus didn't discover America for the first time in human history, he discovered it for the rising, new, dynamic system of capitalism. Descartes' reflections on subjectivity and the centrality of the individual in his theory were an expression on the emerging European modern worldview which at the same time helped to shape that reality. He uses the Columbus-Descartes pairing to stress that philosophers are just spinning ideas in the their heads, they are immersed in a historical process within which they work. Feinmann's sees Descartes' individual's subjectivity as that the "capitalist subject of history."

Feinmann opens this episode with a discussion of humanism, which he takes to be the kind of philosophy that takes humanity rather than God as the starting point for philosophy, as he argues that Descartes does. He defines humanism as "a conception that makes man (el hombre) the fundamental epistemological point of departure." Humanism is broadly associated with the Renaissance, which also placed a new emphasis on the work of Greek and Roman classical philosophers. Classical studies thrived in the Islamic world during the European Middle Ages. And it was from Al-Andalus, Muslim Spain, that much of the knowledge of the early classical sources of Western learning were re-introduced into Europe, though the European Catholic monasteries had also preserved a great deal of the source material.

Descartes, Feinmann argues, departed from his basic subjective method in explaining how the individual ego can know that the perceived external world (res extensa) is really there, an empirical reality. Descartes established this by arguing that if the external world wasn't real, then God was running a gigantic deception on humanity. And since God is infinitely good, He would do that. Therefore, the res extensa must be real. In making this argument, Descartes was relying on a philosophical deus ex machina, arguing dogmatically from the existence of God rather than developing the argument out of the cogito ergo sum.

Feinmann makes an interesting "move" here (as the academics say) and talks about his own memories and experiences of the repression against the universities that came with the coup of 1966 and subsequent military dictatorship first lead by Juan Carlos Onganía, who held the leadership position until he was ousted by the generals and replaced by Gen. Roberto Livingston in 1970. He uses this as a way to describe the common-sense materialist understanding of empirical reality. On his university campus, he says, he and other philosophy students had discovered that reality exists, and it was a fascist one. (He's making a joke, not a political theory point about the nature of the Onganía regime.)

But he's not doing so to belittle the question of the relation of the individual ego to the external world. On the contrary, the subject-object question continues to be an important theme in philosophy until this day. While materialism generally dominates in philosophy today, the kinds of issues raised by the various forms of idealist philosophy continue to be raised and grappled with.

Feinmann makes a point to explain that Descartes, who lived in the Netherlands, wrote in French, not in the Latin more common for his type of scholarly work in that time and place. He wrote in French, Feinmann says, because he wanted to be understood.

Juan Carlos Organía,  José Pablo Feinmann's deux ex machina to explain empirical reality's existence

He deals in this lecture with the "transparent subject." And in doing so, he jumps to the more recent thinker, Sigmund Freud, who established in a new way that the conscious ego of Descartes theory of subjectivity, is actually driven by unconscious physical drives and psychological features. Feinmann frames this as Freud saying to Descartes that the mind is not a transparent as Descartes believed, that in fact major aspects of the mind of typically hidden from consciousness. "Don Sigmund," he says, presents Descartes with a wound to the narcissism of the Cartesian cogito ("I think").

Feinmann thinks that the most "genuinely Cartesian" point that Descartes made came in his ontological proof of the existence of God. Descartes argued that because we have in us the idea of perfection, even though we are not perfect, someone must have put that idea into us, and that must have been someone perfect, i.e., God. Unlike Descartes' argument for the real existence of the res externa, his argument for the existence of God is developed out of the human ego's subjectivity.

A question that Descartes' philosophy raised that hasn't gone away is whether the dualism between subject (the human ego) and the Object (external reality) is a dualism that cannot be overcome. That very question would later be at the heart of Kant's transcendental idealism and the theories that followed it from Fichte and Hegel, to mention two of his more prominent successors. He starts off explaining this question by talking about Jean-Paul Sartre concepts that the consciousness if necessarily continually engaged with the external world, it doesn't exist in some completely separate realm, it's part of what the mind perceives as external reality. Consciousness, in this way of viewing it, is always a consciousness of the world. Sartre saw consciousness as intentional, as directed toward the world outside itself.

And he works phenomenological philosophy into the discussion here, which he considers to be the strand of thought that see consciousness as in being in "a pact of pure intentionality" directed toward the outer world. And he ropes in the two 20th-century philosophers Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt to illustrate the importance of the view of the philosopher as someone deeply connected to his/her world and involved in transforming it. Arendt described Heidegger's active engagement for the Nazi doctrine and Hitler's regime as resulting from having his eyes on the stars and not on what was right in front of him. Feinmann - who has written quite an interesting philosophical novel about Heidegger - doesn't buy it. As he says Heidegger was very conscious of what he was doing in his engagement for the Nazis.

This circles back to his pairing of Columbus and Descartes to emphasize that philosophy and philosophers are very much a part of the real history which they not only observe passively but have an active role in making.

José Pablo Feinmann on how Descartes decapitated Louis XVI, Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-2) (Spanish-language video)

This is Chapter 2 of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's public TV series Filosofía aquí y ahora, “T1 CAP 2. Sacar la filosofía a la calle” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/04/2013:

"The gods don't make philosophy," he says, because they don't have to worry about dying. But mortals make philosophy because they do have to understand our mortality.

He cites Jorge Luis Borges' (1899-1986) story "El Inmortal," with an aside that not everything about the (notoriously conservative) Borges is good, but the part he cites is. Which has to do with the idea that immortals don't need to say goodbye, because they know they are likely to see each other again. But with mortals, we know that any parting might be our last. Thus, Feinmann concludes, that every moment in a human life is important and precious, while no moment in the life of an immortal has particular significance because they will be endlessly repeated.

He cites Heidegger for the idea that people live in a "state of interpretation." (Blogging must be kind of a concentrated form of that!) And he reflects on aspect of authenticity, a key concept for Heidegger.

Philosophy, Feinmann argues, "is a system of formulating questions." (Which is why, I would add, that studying philosophy is one good kind of preparation for studying law.) One of those famous questions with which philosophy - and theology - wrestle is, "If history is in the hands of God, what do humans do?" He uses that as the title for the second section of this presentation.

In discussing what he sees as the stranglehold Christian theology and the Catholic Church had on European thought during the Middle Ages, Feinmann cites Michel Foucault's (1926–1984) idea of "pastoral power" as one of the most dictatorial owers known to humanity. Foucault talked about ways in which modern institutions like psychotherapy and prisons have inherited the power in the modern world that once belonged to the priest in confession. Feinmann uses this as a way of encouraging his listeners to think about the breaks, transformations and continuities between the way Western philosophy has regarded about truth and power, thereby stressing the long connecting links between philosophy old and new and the sometimes surprising relevance of old ideas.

In the first Chapter, Feinmann talked about how his perspective would be an Argentine one. In this segment, he begins a segment on what was the nature of the rupture that Rene Descartes made with medieval Christianity by talking about Christopher Columbus' (1451—1506) "discovery" of America and the resulting massacres of native peoples.

Beginning in 1637, he explains, Rene Descartes put the human individual in the center of thought rather than God. And he says, "From 1637 to 1789 was a very short time. When Descartes is writing the Discourse on the Method [1637], he was cutting of the head of Louis XVI [1754-1793]." And he teases future segments by talking about the progression from Descartes to Immanuel Kant, G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831), who called Descartes a "hero of thought," and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900). He throws in Copernicus (1473–1543), Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) and Galileo (1564–1642) into the mix with Descartes and the Renaissance as beginning to establish the notion that humanity is the Subject of history, the Subject that makes history. And the French Revolution was a key moment in which people started acting in a more collective and conscious way as the Subject(s) of history.

Feinmann discusses how Descartes thought was "subversive" by challenging the authority of medieval theology, the Catholic Church and the Inquisition, the latter a topic that looms larger in the history of Latin America than in that of the United States.

And he uses the situation of Descartes, who worked in the more liberal environment of the Netherlands, to talk about the importance of freedom of thought and how "totalitarian" governments suppress it. This segment stresses the interaction of thought and changes in society during the period leading from Descartes to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. He even works in Marie-Antoinette (1755-1793) and her statement upon being informed that people were starving because they didn't have bread, "Let them eat cake!" ("Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!")

José Pablo Feinmann, Philosophy Here and Now (Temporada 1-1) (Spanish-language video)

This is Chapter 1 of the first season of Argentine philosopher José Pablo Feinmann's Filosofía aquí y ahora, “T1 CAP 1: ¿Por qué hay algo y no más bien nada?” Encuentro n/d Filosofía y Praxis YouTube 02/04/2013:

This is program on a public Argenine channel whose purpose is to provide an overview of philosophy for the general public.

He begins the series and the season looking at the question, "Why is there something and not nothing?"

He poses the question as that of existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). And, like Heidegger, he puts the question in the context of the human fear of death. As he puts it, if death means that we become nothing, then we will "be nothing for a long, long time." And he draws an existentialist conclusion that "every minute is absolutely precious" and that Now has an "ontological density," a moment of Being "in which we have to participate."

He also quotes Albert Einstein's famous saying that God doesn't play dice with the universe.

And he talks about how philosophy and the great life questions it addresses also concerns itself with pre-death issues like hunger and physical want and economic inequality, perhaps most famously in that of Karl Marx (1818–1883.

But he also talks about the founding moment of modern Western philosophy with Rene Descartes' (1596–1650) famous cogito ergo sum: "I think, therefore I am." This was a starting position of radical doubt, which as Feinmann points out was a drastic departure from medieval Christian theology.

Then he brings another 20th-century existential philosopher into the picture, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980).