Abstract

The traditional enemies of Philosophy are religious dogmatism, political demagogy, poetic-literary relativism, theoretical syncretism and scientific reductionism. The tension between Philosophy and other forms of knowledge —real or pretended— is not new, but Philosophy today faces new "endogenous" threats. Contemporary philosophy has the task of thinking about the issues that deeply concern the men and women of our time: what should we do about climate change? How should we deal with the technological mechanisms of social control? What conception of humanity should we have in a world where cloning and genetic editing exist? How should we deal with the global weakening of the notion of Truth, both in the political world and in the mass media? This conference characterizes both the external challenges facing Philosophy and the internal vices that corrode it from within.