«Tomb for sore throat
and a remedy to avoid ruining the world"
Mar Pujol,For each one
It's pouring rain, just when you think it's over again, the never-ending story—first as tragedy, then as farce—and we're back at the top of the heap. Or to put it another way: Sisyphus in the race after the stone that goes up and down and never stops rolling, but in this case only down and never up. I say this because Catalonia has been the country with the least emphasis on philosophy in the educational curriculum for a long time, blow after blow. And if we've been here for so long, it means we've been in a worse place for years. From the school of freedom, it's always urgent to think—against those who only want us to be subjects, consumers, spectators, and users—and rethink everything. Because if today, for example, is April 25th—with Valencian roots, a Portuguese soul, and an Italian partisan spirit—we will have to consider why we have the Valencian Country we have, what has become of the democratic revolution of the carnations fifty years later, and how the hell we ended up in the sinister state of Liberation with Meloni governing Italy. It makes us think—not so much. Because they have also been inviting, inciting, and clumsily modulating us to stop doing so for too long.
But since we're coming from the book festival, I'll pause to consider what Jaume Asens just wrote: The Unrecoverable Years. That is, the years that will never return and the weight in today of what could not be transformed yesterday. The title serves me almost as an introduction, also because Asens borrowed it from Stefan Zweig, recovering the original title that was to bear The world of yesterdayThe title and the book by Jaume are relevant to me because, just in the first few pages, he reminds us that one of the earliest movements he was involved in was one that raised its voice and its words against the loss of weight and presence of the humanities. Small change.
The point—given that we're coming from the day of culture, thought, and literature—is that Catalonia, at this moment and right now, is the region with the fewest academic hours in philosophy at the baccalaureate level. It's the only one that doesn't even reach three hours per week: in 2008, it was reduced to two. And then we'll complain about the lack of critical perspective, vital autonomy, and rational discernment. Or about the hijacking of attention by so many screens. And yet, what's happening (to us) isn't new, nor is it an accident: these are repeated political decisions, one after another. Thirty years ago, I remember, as if it were today, a memorable banner that opened a student demonstration through the streets of Tarragona, which, using the Spanish proverb, read: "Knowledge takes up no space (in the State budget)Philosophy, as a fundamental knowledge and a basic tool for living together, is apparently not either. And yet this year the Honorary Prize for Catalan Literature has been so deservedly awarded to the philosopher and theologian Pere Lluís Font. And yet the awarding body, Òmnium Cultural, is chaired. And yet even the academic training of the current president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, is in philosophy. And yet, above all, we have essential philosophers on duty: from Marina Garcés to Joan-Carles Mèlich, from Fina Birulés to Josep Maria Esquirol, from Ingrid Guardiola to Lluís Duch; periodically in these pages—fromJosep Ramoneda andFerran Sáezuntil Santiago Alba Rico– and that they help us think, disagree, understand, and understand each other. And all this and all that, yes: but meanwhile, we're at the philosophical tail end of the bull's hide, while we're always overcome by the mania of wanting to appear to be first in everything.
Done and undone, this educational resignation, at once a pedagogical regression, a humanistic retreat, and a philosophical dismissal, is as evident as it is constant, and there's nothing new about it. It's old. The marginalization has been planned, and the newspaper archives are filled in vain with the old assault on the humanities, which are of no interest to any market. Seven years ago, for example, a manifesto was presented vainly demanding the presence of philosophy "in all its dignity and expression" in the Catalan teaching curriculum. But I'm not bringing the issue up to date by looking only at the past, but at today. A month and a half ago, against the backdrop of the revision of the high school curriculum, which has also mobilized language and science teachers, 400 philosophy teachers, like Sisyphus trying to climb the mountain, raised their voices in a collective manifesto, which is open to any individual or collective support—no need to be a member. the first– We can't be the last in philosophy. Of these years non-recoverable, in which the edge It has sunk, I realized again because of how I learned about this new manifesto. Joan, the son of a lifelong friend, called me. A friend with whom, 30 years ago, we opened, along with many others, an athenaeum in Vila de Gràcia, to provide a popular space for meeting, dialogue, and resistance. Juan surprised me to the point of leaving me speechless when he told me he was now a philosophy professor and when he gave me all the details of the campaign they were promoting. Three decades later, what we were demanding, some young people who are now parents are being taken up again, with so many reasons, by their children. Once again, what's old becomes new. And of course, when I hung up the call, all I could do was reflect on the unease—and not unravel the plot, see the clear water, or find any other red-hot iron other than the call from my friend's son.
Reality does the rest when the question is no longer rhetorical: if we now speak of so much dehumanization, so much indifference, and so much induced violence, isn't it due to the weight of the disappearance of the humanities? Isn't it merely the loss of philosophies that announces the implosion of nihilism? Doesn't it link cause with effect? The classic quote says, first live, then philosophize. I'm no longer so sure. It would be better to alternate between the two. Because when we go from seeing Adolescence on screen to living it in reality –just yesterday in France, with the murder of a young woman by a classmate– everything collapses and the words of a philosopher friend resound like never before: "We have handed over childhood to Walt Disney, healthcare to Bayer, food to Monsanto, the Bank to the Bank to the Bank to the Holy Bank to the Holy Bando. We want our children to be reasonable, supportive, tolerant, responsible "citizens" and not purely biological "subjects". The capitalist market treats us like stones, mice and pumpkins and then we ask teachers and professors to turn us into "civilized" humans." What could go wrong?
Amidst so many doubts—until when, for whom, against what—and knocking down the corner of Sant Jordi, a few words laden with lucidity from the indomitable Mireia Calafell opened the way, because only from doubt is freedom born. And yet these words are only part of the prologue to the blessed collection of poems. We, who, where he only announces what he will later poem. There, Mireia, as if in his ear, whispers: "Who are we, who. Who are you and I and who are those, who is the owner, the authority, who are the authors on the hardcover spine and who is the ink that doesn't sign, the one that will fill our grave with mushrooms. Who are we, say who we are. [...] Urge the water. Who controls the entrance and who wants to enter. Where is it that wants to enter. Without philosophy—we, who—it will be impossible to know. That's why it's also in the crosshairs of the global reactionary wave. But not only and not either. It would be too easy, and completely irresponsible and false, to say it like that. Because everything that has happened in the last 30 years is not the work of Trump, Meloni, Milei, or Orbán. Which makes us think even more about everything.
