The international congresses and the transnational shaping of philosophy (1900-1948): Spaces – Struggles – Identity – Knowledge

Project Information

INTERPHIL

Grant agreement ID: 101023745

DOI

10.3030/101023745

Project closed

EC signature date 2 April 2021

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 December 2025

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 255 768,00

EU contribution

€ 255 768,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - INTERPHIL (The international congresses and the transnational shaping of philosophy (1900-1948): Spaces – Struggles – Identity – Knowledge)

Reporting period: 2025-01-01 to 2025-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The project addressed a simple but neglected question: how did philosophy become a modern academic discipline with a recognised identity, institutional boundaries, and international authority? To answer it, the research used the first ten International Congresses of Philosophy (1900–1948) as a privileged observatory, treating them as moments where philosophers negotiated what counted as “philosophy,” who could legitimately represent it, and how national traditions interacted within a shared European arena.
This matters beyond the history of ideas because disciplines shape education, public debate, and the production of knowledge. The project shows how aspirations to international cooperation coexisted with competition, stereotypes, and political constraints, and how the conditions for intellectual exchange can be strengthened or undermined by wider historical forces.
The action pursued four overall objectives: reconstructing the international networks connected to the congresses; analysing struggles and collaborations (including the diplomatic uses of philosophy); studying disputes over philosophy’s boundaries in relation to neighbouring disciplines; and identifying the topics, concepts, and authors that achieved international legitimacy.
The main conclusion is that the congresses functioned at once as arenas of dialogue and as arenas of rivalry. Philosophy’s disciplinary identity did not emerge only from abstract debates: it relied on long-term institutional reforms, stabilising devices such as curricula, handbooks, journals and reference works, and recurring boundary conflicts. The internationalisation of philosophy was also strongly shaped by geopolitics, especially after 1918 and under authoritarian regimes, which altered participation, exchanges, and the balance of symbolic authority.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The work combined a long-term reconstruction of the institutional conditions that made philosophy a recognisable academic discipline (with an attention to the nineteenth-century background) and an analysis of the congresses as concrete events and archives (delegates, programmes, debates, and organisational practices). To support this, I assembled structured research materials from the congress proceedings (a consolidated dataset on participants and a usable textual corpus) and complemented them with the help of text-mining, targeted archival work, including missions in Paris focused on correspondence connected to the early organisation of the congresses.
The main output is a two-volume book manuscript, Global Philosophy? The Emergence of a Strange Discipline, currently under review. The manuscript integrates a reconstruction of the conditions that made the congresses possible (volume I) with a detailed analysis of the congresses themselves as an international arena (volume II).
In addition, three single-authored articles were submitted to peer-reviewed open-access journals. The first, submitted to Revue germanique internationale, analyses international power relations in the interwar period and the role of Allied cultural diplomacy through the congresses (“La diplomatie culturelle dans les premiers congrès internationaux de philosophie de l’entre-deux-guerres”). The second, submitted to Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines, develops a transnational sociological perspective on the congresses (“Sociologie transnationale de la philosophie : le cas des congrès internationaux de philosophie”). The third, submitted to Lo Sguardo, examines the role of philosophical terminology and lexicography in the emergence of the congresses (“Il problema della lessicografia filosofica e l’origine dei congressi internazionali di filosofia”). These articles extract and sharpen key lines of argument from the broader manuscript, making the project’s results accessible in article format and addressing distinct audiences.
The project also generated an editorial outcome connected to one of its findings: the growing importance of historiography and methodological self-reflection within the congresses and within the consolidation of philosophy as a discipline. Building on this, I initiated an edited reader/handbook on methods in the historiography of philosophy (working title: The Oxford Handbook of Methodology in Historiography of Philosophy in France), prepared with Daniel Whistler, with a proposal planned for submission in Spring 2026.
Dissemination during the action included research presentations in academic settings (including Boston College, Université Laval, Ghent University, NYU, UQAM, the École normale supérieure de Lyon, UNIVE) and an interview for a philosophy-focused blog; a magazine piece is forthcoming. Because the book reached an advanced stage late in the action, broader public outreach was limited during the reporting period and is planned to expand once the main publications are available. In line with the Grant Agreement, the project’s papers, database, and research materials will be made available in open access through Ca’ Foscari’s institutional channels once publication constraints allow.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The project advances beyond existing scholarship by treating the first ten congresses (1900–1948) as a single historical object and by linking, in one interpretive framework, institutional history, international competition and cooperation, disciplinary boundary disputes, and the formation of shared agendas. Rather than focusing on one national tradition or one event, it reconstructs how an international arena was built and how authority and legitimacy circulated within it across changing political contexts.
Scientifically, the action delivers a synthetic interpretation, substantial publishable outputs (book and articles), and reusable research materials that can support future work in the history of philosophy, the history of universities, intellectual cooperation, and the sociology of disciplines. More broadly, it provides a historically grounded way to think about international academic cooperation: how it is made possible by institutions and shared standards, and how it can be distorted or interrupted by political polarisation, unequal symbolic hierarchies, and the instrumentalisation of culture.
By unveiling the ways in which dreams of cosmopolitism clashed with particular cultures and ideologies, the project provided new insights on the challenges of internationalism, on the role philosophers played in international organizations such as League of Nations, contributing to the European Societal Challenge concerning the construction of a more inclusive, innovative and reflective society. By focusing on knowledge-production on a European scale, I hope that the project will contribute to the first priority of Europe 2020.

postcard of the 4th international congress held in Bologna