Ciencia y Filosofía ISSN: 2594-2204

132 years after the publication of Kant's Conflict or Contest of the Faculties, the two fundamental questions that the Königsberg philosopher once posed remain unresolved: 1. What is the role of philosophy in a university setting? And 2. What is the function of philosophy in society?
The enlightened philosopher's answer, based on the paradigm of the Quadrivium (higher disciplines and lower disciplines), was that the function of philosophy is to become an examiner and vindicator of the critical role in the transcendental sense (conditions that make possible the existence of knowledge), that is, to analyze whether the other disciplines and lower faculties are constructing valid knowledge. In other words, Kant assigns philosophy the role of Judge, examining arguments and deciding the validity and invalidity of knowledge. The problem with this response is that the role of judge, of what other sciences and everyday life are doing, says Quine, refers to a critique, placing philosophy on a stratospheric level, which renders the philosopher incapable of being conversant in scientific practices. However, this critique does not obscure the postulate defended by Kant, which consists of advancing humanity toward a cosmopolitan society, consistent with moral or civilizational progress, where there is no sovereignty of nations, but rather a single science under the rule of eternal reason.
In the second paradigm that emerged in the 19th and part of the 20th century, of positivist origin, based on the division of labor between hard and soft sciences, Quine's critique continues to appear in this sense: what justifies philosophy being considered a practice that filters knowledge?
In this regard, it can be noted that philosophy's position within each paradigm of knowledge depends on its position in defining itself vis-à-vis the rest of the disciplines, without realizing the paradox of hubris (or excessive arrogance) that Kant had already raised and Giorgio Colli reiterated. This paradox is that all knowledge produces power, but when the power of knowledge becomes autonomous, power tends to parasitize the places of knowledge, erasing the social functions of philosophy.
In the third contemporary paradigm of complexity, where the possibility of inter-, multi-, and transdisciplinarity exists, the phenomena of professional hubris are located in behavioral attitudes represented by the myth of the sharing of the sacrifice between Prometheus and Zeus.
It is in this new distribution of functions of knowledge that philosophical currents prevail. They are not content with gnawing criticism as a judge of other knowledge, as suggested by Kantianism and Hegelianism, but rather seek to delve into the depths of power to seize it.
This volume contains works that question the loss of the authority of knowledge and the evanescence of philosophy in relation to other disciplines.
In accordance with the paradigm of the hard sciences, the current social function of philosophy in the face of transdisciplinarity, as well as the phenomena of hubris in teaching, the levels of technological hierarchy, and the obstacles to innovation and connection with other knowledge.
This is an exogenous and endogenous reflection of the Enlightenment legacy, where reason promises the domestication of primitivities through the discovery of a supposed structure of reality accessible to reason in terms of its need for training at the literacy level and its importance in the generation of knowledge, which is no longer vertical as in the times of Kant or Rousseau.