What is to be done with philosophy today?

Round table with Ana Carrasco-Conde, Ernesto Castro and Simón Royo Hernández, moderated by Roberto Valencia.

Philosophical activity opens up a way between rereading tradition, contemporary tensions and a rational impulse that, rather than going along with convention, bubbles with the search for new ways of thinking. Is this movement still possible today? Haven’t thinkers of all shapes and sizes already spent too many centuries concept-crunching? Hasn’t the well of thought dried up by now? At this table we have brought together three Spanish thinkers, each of whom works on the basis of their own philosophical ecosystem. For Simón Royo Hernández, thinking must start out from the end of metaphysics. From there, from a serene, meditative attitude to life that listens to what is said, or from a belligerent, tense attitude that acts before new possibilities, he poses the essential question: what to do with philosophy today.  Or, to put it another way, what are the possibilities and margins within which the practical subject can set themselves up as a thinker today? For her part, Ana Carrasco-Conde considers that the fundamental attitude of the philosopher continues to be astonishment. More specifically, she considers that the question to ask oneself first of all is what astonishes us today, whether today we think on the basis of other emotions, whether it is possible to point to the states of mind that animate current thought. And Ernesto Castro, critical with the state of Spanish philosophy, sets out from the conviction that in this country there is no tradition but philosophical translation. That most research has pushed into the background the crisis in new thought committed to the present rather than to eternally going over the hackneyed concepts of philosophies of the past.