Philosophy and Society

An Interview with Iván Carvajal

Abstract

This article presents a critical exploration of the history of Western philosophy and its contemporary institutional crisis in Ecuador, structured around a dialogue with the philosopher Iván Carvajal. The first section examines the evolution of reflective thought from its Socratic and Aristotelian origins in the Greek polis to the reconfigurations of Kantian modernity and the 20th century, where wonder and curiosity function as epistemic drivers in the face of the technological shifts and challenges posed by artificial intelligence. The analysis moves from classical ontology toward a critical engagement with the present, emphasizing that knowledge is not an isolated accumulation but a public, collective, and necessarily historical process that seeks to understand the place of the human species in the cosmos.

In the second part, the focus shifts to an assessment of the country’s intellectual landscape, characterized by profound institutional decay, the weakening of Ecuadorian universities and, with it, humanities programs, as well as the subjugation of academia to bureaucratic and publishing market logics that prioritize quantitative indexing over argumentative rigor.

Against this backdrop—further complicated by the contributions of social movements such as feminism, the rise of the indigenous movement, and migratory processes—Carvajal argues for the urgent need to invent and recreate democratic communities of debate. The text concludes with a call to build transnational networks of dialogue that challenge administrative structures and revive public debate and philosophical inquiry.