Constructing a philosophical voice: discursive positions in the Moldovan journal of philosophy and...

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Constructing a philosophical voice: discursive positions in the Moldovan journal of philosophy and...

Alexandru Cosmescu

Institute of History, Chisinau

Abstract

In the present paper, author examines the way philosophical discourse constituted itself in post-Soviet Moldova, analyzing the discursive position present in the Journal of Philosophy and Law (as it was called in 1992 - 2006) and Journal of Philosophy, Social Science and Political Science (as it is called since 2006), the main philosophical journal of the country. The paper presents synchronic surveys of two key years: 1992, the first year of its independent publication, and 2007, the year in which it changed its title and became its current incarnation.

In the article, author provides analyzes and presents the ideas from the total of 25 published papers, commenting on the construction of the philosophical voice in them. The main position of a philosopher, firmly established in 1992 and continuing up to present times, seems to be one of "reclaiming the heritage" that was neglected or considered taboo during the Soviet period, mainly paraphrasing and exposing the work of the "great philosophers of the past" that can be claimed, one way or another, as belonging to an "us", usually ethnically constructed. Another position, obvious in most 2007 papers, is one of "defender of values" in the face of postmodern "insecurities" and relativism. The tone is usually that of an "expert"- someone claiming special abilities or special knowledge, and able to formulate "recommendations" about "what needs to be done". Only gradually, and initially in the work of PhD students, the position of the philosopher as a reflective reader emerges. philosophical discourse journal

Key words: philosophical discourse, discursive position, post-Soviet philosophy, heritage, values

A philosophical journal / a philosophical community

The space in which the transformation of philosophical discourse in the Republic of Moldova during the last 30 years becomes obvious is the main (partly) philosophical journal of the country, published initially under the aegis of the Academy of Sciences, and currently, after the Academy was restructured and its institutes became formally autonomous, by the Institute for Juridical, Political, and Sociological Research. Accordingly, the title of the journal changed over the years, depending on its subordination and on the fields of research in which the institute coordinating and issuing it was active: Journal of Philosophy and Law (issued by the Institute for Philosophy and Law, as it was called during 1991 - 2006), and Journal of Philosophy, Social Science, and Political Science (issued by the inheritor of the former institute-called in various ways, after subsequent reforms, depending on the subdivisions it was including: Institute of Philosophy, Sociology, and Law; Institute of Philosophy, Social Science, and Political Science; Institute of European Integration and Political Science; Institute for Political and Sociological Research; Institute for Juridical, Political, and Sociological Research). It should be noted that, since 2009, there is no institute that includes the word "philosophy" in its title; moreover, the philosophy section-composed currently of 7 researchers-- formerly part of the institute that issues the journal, is, since 2013, part of the Institute of History.

The Journal of Philosophy and...--as one might jokingly call it in order to emphasize the continuity-shows, just through its title, the way philosophy is positioned in Moldovan academia: a discipline among others, the links it has with these other disciplines having more to do with the institutional subordination (or the memory of former institutional ties, since 2013) than with any intrinsic sympathy or commonality of approach. For reasons of institutional tradition, philosophy still has priority of place, though, in the title of the journal, even if, for quite a long time already, the philosophy sector has a different institutional affiliation than the rest of the disciplines currently included in the title.

The central role of this journal for Moldova's philosophical community is due to a phenomenon that derives from the Soviet period, and still determines a fracture in the academic community: people who work in universities mainly teach, people who work in research institutes mainly do research. Accordingly, there is much less pressure to publish among Moldovan lecturers, since their main task is teaching and publishing course materials; when they do publish research papers, they mainly do it in collections of conference papers or in the various series of the annual Studia Universitatis Moldavie (which has no specialized philosophy section: philosophy papers are published in the "Humanistic Sciences" fascicle). On the other hand, people who work in the institutes are (informally) required to publish in the academic journals coordinated by the institutes they work for; there is even an informal pressure to publish at least one paper a year there, regardless if they publish other papers in foreign journals or in collections of conference papers or not. The journal becomes, this way, both the space that receives the written output of people who specialize in academic philosophy, and an institution that requires this written output from researchers, in order to perpetuate its existence and to justify the researchers' employment at the institution that issues the said journal.

This double status of the journal-as exercising a kind of attraction for researchers, Lecturers, and PhD students wanting to publish in the only (partly) philosophical journal of the country, and as pressuring researchers and PhD students to publish there- contributes to giving it a special place in the construction of a Moldovan philosophical discourse and philosophical voice. As a space in which short- to medium-length papers are published, it was, for 30 years, the main field in which (would-be) philosophers explored what a (post-? non-? Soviet) philosophical paper should look like, how would a (post-? non-? Soviet) philosophical voice sound, what are the acceptable topics (would the journal accept this for publication?), what are the acceptable discursive positions (how present an author should be in their text? are they present despite their attempts to be impersonal? does explicit commitment to certain values leak into the voice the paper is written in?).

Another advantage offered by a journal like this is the ability to investigate most of the relevant "yearly philosophical output" of a (small, post-Soviet) country "at a glance". This is what I will attempt in the present paper: a synchronic examination of the 25 philosophy papers published in the Journal of Philosophy and... in two key years, 1992 and 2007. 1992 was the first year after state independence was declared, also the year the journal itself came into its own as Journal of Philosophy and Law; 2007-the year the institute issuing it changed its name, so the journal became Journal of Philosophy, Social Science, and Political Science, the title it bears until now. I will pay attention, first of all, to the attempts to construct (and define) a philosophical voice, to the discursive stance that is cultivated in these papers, to explicit commitments the author is taking; in the type of reading that I propose here, the topics themselves, although important, are secondary to the attempt itself to write philosophy freely while the authors are finding out for themselves what writing philosophy means at all. I will quote at length from the papers I will analyze, usually in my translation (except for the abstracts, originally in English), in order to illustrate the phenomena I am examining. After these two synchronic analyses, I will point out the evolution of certain trends that are also present currently in Moldovan philosophical discourse-having survived since their first formulation in 1992-as well as the emergent divergence from them in the work of, mainly, PhD students.

1992: Reclaiming "heritage"

The first issue of the Journal of Philosophy and Law, published in 1992, includes four rubrics: Philosophy; Law; Comments on Current Legislation; Reviews. There are three papers published with the rubric Philosophy. Two of them are written in Romanian, one in Russian. All the papers include an abstract in 2 languages: English and Russian. Given the fact that Russian is the lingua franca of the post-Soviet space, and English-of the Western academic community, the symbolic value of this choice is obvious-the editors of the journal see as their audience both the post-Soviet and the Western community, and the abstracts are perceived as possible ways of access for potentially interested researchers.

The first paper, authored by Panteleimon M. Varzari, bears the title Production and Man: The Creative Potential of the Personality in the Sphere of Work. The paper is dedicated to various "changes in the sphere of work"-for example, the phenomenon of unemployment, newly established in law-correlated with the "transformation of personality". I will quote the last paragraph of the paper:

From what has been said, we can conclude that the formation and consolidation of a free personality can take place only when it can fully manifest its innate capabilities and accumulated skills. Of course, it has to do with their revealing and realization in the main sphere of activity that man has - the sphere of work. But this process can unfold in an easier way if the agents of economic units will have optimal work conditions, if social problems of production will be solved together with other major problems in the interest of workers. Only in this case humanism will express human dignity as a supreme value and as a general goal of social progress. And this will condition an interested attitude of workers towards their work, a raise in production markers, and, as a consequence, a quick sanitation of national economy aiming at the continuous improvement of the population's living standards and its prosperity. (Varzari 1992: 12)

What can one notice, based on reading a paragraph like this, 30 years later?

First, "work", in a Marxist framework, is perceived as the "main sphere of human activity". Reflecting about work and about the desirable "free personality" leads to what I think is essential for the construction of a certain voice, expressed here: a reflection about "what should be done" by "economic agents", by the government, and by society in general. The second thing I would point out is the categorical tone, expressed through "only"-present two times in the paragraph: "only when..." and "only in this case".

So, as what does the philosopher speak? As one who knows what should be done, who has confidence in what can happen (and can predict what will happen), and knows that this will happen "only when" certain conditions will be in place-and as one who points out what these conditions should be in order to reach a desired future, the "continuous improvement of living standards and prosperity", with the possibility of establishing dignity as a "supreme value".

We can retain this futural orientation and confidence in one's seeing, together with the confidence that certain things can happen one way only. We will encounter them again, in other papers.

The second philosophy paper published in this first issue of the journal is History of Philosophy Research in Moldova. Accomplishments and Perspectives, by Alexandru I. Babii. My claim is that it anticipates and contains, in nuce, most of the subsequent developments in Moldovan philosophy, and here I would just quote and analyze several relevant portions. The first one establishes the concept of heritage as a way of conceptualizing the past and, as we shall see, it becomes an essential framework for Moldovan philosophical discourse:

Currently, in the spiritual life of our society, one can notice an increasing interest in knowing the past in general and the past of our Homeland in particular. This fact can be understood in its totality if we seriously entertain the thesis that that the grandeur of the jump towards future, that finds an adequate expression in the process of society's subsequent development, also determines the need to take into account, in as realistic a way as possible, the lessons of the past, as well as the appeal to history as a collective memory of the nation. In the process of realizing these necessities, the task that appear in front of the science of history of philosophy are of enormous importance, because the past, in the totality of its manifestations, cannot be conceived without a deep knowledge of philosophy, which, according to Marx, represents a "spiritual quintessence of the period". Thus, a deep interest in the spiritual heritage of the past results, conceived by larger circles of the society as a real phenomenon of national culture.

The valorization of our cultural heritage, including the philosophical one, requires us to distinguish the concepts of "heritage" and "continuity". "Heritage" can be assessed as a characteristic of the totality of the social results of human activity, constituting the base of contemporary culture's social memory. "Continuity" is the totality of meanings that "heritage" acquires as it is appropriated by the culture. As it seems, meaning has to be understood as the capacity of a cultural phenomenon to respond to a certain question that preoccupies contemporary culture. If a certain monument of past culture cannot satisfy any of the actual necessities of contemporary culture, from the latter's point of view, it loses any meaning, becomes devoid of content.

The task of the history of philosophy consists not just in discovering philosophical monuments of the past, but also in renewing the basis of social memory, as well as revealing the whole complexity of the multitude of meanings of monuments that it researches, in various cultural contexts. Unfortunately, in the real practice of historical-philosophical investigations, this problem was not given its due attention, a fact which caused certain vicissitudes. (Babii 1992: 13-14)

I quoted extensively, because this passage reads like a manifesto for doing a certain type of history of philosophy-one that Babii argues was neglected during Soviet times (and presents several reasons for its neglect). Before going into further details with the analysis of this paper, I would like to point out several aspects of what is going on in this passage:

- The voice of the philosopher becomes that of "someone who notices" and reflects on what can be noticed;

- What one does-performs-when something is noticed is "making distinctions", as an essential philosophical discursive move (in the case of this paragraphheritage" and "continuity");

- Based on the "noticings" and on "distinctions", the philosopher can be able to formulate a "task";

- The history of philosophy is seen as having to do with what is presented as "heritage"-"monuments" that can have meaning for the present-and with revealing the meaningfulness they have in the present context-the present questions to which something found in the past can be relevant;

- A neutral reference to Marx is used as a legitimation for focusing on the history of philosophy-one might hypothesize that this is either a habit from the times when quoting Marx was compulsory, or a way to abate criticism from Marxists that would question his view, maybe even a way to "save the Living core of Marx" from his dogmatic interpreters (although saying this might be an over-interpretation);

- This task is presented as having to do with "social progress", the "jump into the future"; Babii's insisting on the "lessons of the past" as having a special importance are the ones that emphasize, in his view, the importance of the history of philosophy-as that which helps with finding "meanings" in a whole layer of "monuments of the past" that were neglected due to "vicissitudes".

The vicissitudes he mentions-the problems with research in the history of philosophy in Moldova-are due to ... the general state of philosophical science in the Soviet Union, determined by a long domination of certain anti-scientific and non-scientific views that consolidated themselves in our country in the period of Stalinism and stagnation. (Babii 1992: 15)

Then, Babii goes on to present a list of the problems he identified, deriving from "an indifferent, cowardly, and limited dogmatism that was clawing its way in the philosopher's soul, killing any embryo of a fresh idea" (Babii 1992: 15):

- The fact that the history of philosophy was perceived as a struggle between materialism and idealism, without taking into account the local specifics and leading to exclusions of authors;

- The "narrow class approach" that led to "manic attacks" and to "dividing all thinkers in two classes: the ones who were right and the ones who were wrong";

- Emphasizing the Russian and Ukrainian influence and neglecting the Romanian context of philosophical work carried by Moldovan thinkers;

- The lack of a properly philosophical training of researchers; the fact that, in doctoral training programs, what was encouraged was reading a single author, who often did not even self-identify as a philosopher, and neglecting all others, including the history of philosophy of other nations;

- The lack of specialists that would be familiar with classical languages;

- The lack of critical editions, including the fact that, at that moment in 1992, there were no complete published works of any Moldovan philosopher.

This list of "problems" included in Babii's "manifesto", together with the ethos that he proposed-a reverent attitude towards the "heritage" in an attempt to "recover" it- continues to shape Moldovan philosophy at the present moment too. We can note, especially, the insistence on the concept of "heritage"-which has become a shibboleth in the Moldovan philosophical community, being used (as we shall see) as a title for journal rubrics, conferences, book collections, etc. The manifesto tone of this article, in an attempt to mark a break with the "vicissitudes" of the Soviet era (but, at the same time, insisting on "not neglecting the work that was done even then") can be read as an attempt to create a new philosophical voice-the voice, we might say, of the philosopher as "aware of the task that is imposed to him by the subject matter he chooses"-the "philosophical heritage" that he is supposed to recover, publish, and where he is supposed to discover "meanings" that he can offer to his present community.

The Last paper published in this issue under the rubric Philosophy belongs to S. C. Pahopol. It is written in Russian and bears the title The Culture of Marriage-Family Relationships. I will quote the abstract first:

In the paper, based on statistical and sociological data, taking into account the specific development of the family in Moldova, we analyze its critical situation and the culture of family relations. The latter are characterized as being determined, first of all, by social conditions. At the same time, we specify certain actions that are required in order to raise the cultural level of these relations. (Pahopol 1992: 37).

Reading the abstract, one might question what is specifically philosophical about an approach such as this one. In a sense, this is the product of taking institutional affiliation of a person as that which defines what they do: if they belong to the philosophy section of a Philosophy and Law institute, what they do should count as philosophy, regardless of what it is that they do-an empirical research, in this case, together with recommendations such as:

Relationships in a cultured family can be benevolent, calm, the motives for tensions will be eliminated, hidden and obvious grudges will diminish, if the financial situation will be resolved as well. The latter changes substantially the psychological climate in families. (Pahopol 1992: 33)

The spouses that respect themselves and others usually evaluate in a self-critical way their own behavior, accommodate each other, find a way to make concessions, not with the appearance of an offended victim, but with benevolence, because they understand: this way it is going to be better, calmer, more comfortable and more useful for both of us, for the family. (Pahopol 1992: 34)

Leaving aside the question whether this would "count" as philosophical writing- it was published in the Philosophy rubric of the journal, after all-what is the most striking is the normative tone of the paper. The author presents an idealized image of "how a cultured family interacts" and, based on responses to questionnaires and other data, points out various issues in family relationships. Even within the normative image of "how a good family should look like", Pahopol still challenges what is regarded as a "traditional" model of a family, speaking, instead, of a "cultured", "egalitarian", and "democratic" one- describing it and proposing it as desirable. So, the voice of "the one who recommends a model", "the one who offers something as this-is-what-it-should-ideally-look-like".

The second 1992 issue of the Journal of Philosophy and Law includes four articles published under the rubric Philosophy. The first of these, signed by Petru M. Rumleanschi and Vasile A. Tapoc, bears the title Fundamental Principles of Human Knowledge and Their Role in Scientific Creation. I will quote the abstract, originally in English:

The article deals with the essence of the basic principles of the human knowledge applied both to scientific and non-scientific knowledge. The role of the reflection, activity and continuity principles as well as dialectic opposition in the human creation is researched. These principles, according to the authors' opinion, are sufficient for the scientific system analysis of creation in the limits of the general theory of creation. (Rumleanschi & Tapoc 1992: 11)

The paper contains a general account of what the authors call "the principle of reflection", "the principle of activity", and "the principle of continuity", presented as "fundamental principles of knowledge". We can notice the schematism of Rumleanschi and Tapoc's attempt, as well as the ambition to present "the fundamental principles of human knowledge" (the definite article shows the degree of conviction about these three "principles" and their status) and how they are applied to "scientific creation" in an 8-page paper. In a sense, an attempt like this one expresses a deeply-seated confidence in what philosophy can accomplish, and, again, a confidence in the philosopher's knowledge. The voice of this paper is one that states how things are, with an optimistic epistemology and with confidence in its own abilities-almost surprising for a newly-"freed" field, like philosophy was perceived to be at that moment.

The second paper published in this issue is authored by the Romanian academic Alexandru Boboc-Philosophy and Value System in the "Enlightenment" Culture (Boboc 1992). As a paper by a Romanian author, referring to the Enlightenment message and its reception in the Romanian space, it would say very little about the formation of a postSoviet Moldovan philosophical voice. Its publication can be regarded more as a rekindling of historical connections. Moldovans being ethnic Romanians and speaking Romanian-a fact that was denied / questioned during the Soviet times; publishing a Romanian author is clearly intended as a way of recreating a bridge between the Romanian culture and the post-Soviet Moldovan one. The publication of a Romanian colleague's work is intended to illustrate, if we refer to A. Babii's manifesto / program that I previously analyzed, a way of relating to the heritage, being itself a symbolic way of reclaiming (by Moldovans) the Romanian heritage.

Gheorghe Bobana's paper, "Pro fide et patria" in Petru Movilffs View (Bobana 1992), illustrates the same attitude: a way of reclaiming as "Moldovan philosophical heritage" the work of Petru Movila / Peter Mogila, regarded here as an author relevant for Moldovan / Romanian philosophy. The paper focuses on a historical description of Mogila's work, presenting his advocacy for equal rights for Orthodox, Catholic, and other Christian denominations. The paper itself is, together with Boboc's, a way of fulfilling Babii's program of a version of doing history of philosophy focusing on "reclaiming a heritage" neglected during the Soviet era-both from a thematic point of view and because the historical figure itself was contested. The discursive posture, as in Boboc's case, is that of the philosopher as reader and expositor of previous material, maybe with a tinge of evaluation-emphasizing the "importance" of what was said by the authors they analyze.

The final paper (in Russian) published in this issue is I. F. Sarbu's Some Philosophical Problems of General Ecology (Sarbu 1992). The philosophical voice / posture is closer to Rumleanschi and Tapoc's in the same issue: presenting a "new" topic-ecology in this case-without any explicit reference to Marxist dogma, speaking, in 10 pages, about "general ecology", "human ecology", and "social ecology", and "what should these disciplines focus on / study". We can notice, again, a certain confidence that the author knows what the task is for a discipline-and casually presents it for their readers. A deeply- seated enthusiasm and confidence in the possibility of a philosophical discourse marks, thus, the philosophical voices of the first two 1992 issues: it is possible to say what "should" be the case, how reality "should" look like, and what philosophy "should" do. And, at least for the history of philosophy, the initial task is clear and already assumed: reclaiming the neglected "heritage".

The third 1992 issue of the Journal of Philosophy and Law marks a slight change in philosophical voice-the appearance of a more polemic tone, with explicit reference to a set of values that is "supported", "defended", or "promoted". The first example of this is a paper by Alexandru Rosca --Man as a Subject of Social Action (Rosca 1992). Rosca starts from the idea that, in the Soviet times, "man" was neglected, leading to the phenomenon of homo sovieticus and to a certain lack of creativity. According to him, ... we need a fundamentally new point of view on the problem of relations between man and society, a realistic approach of the interaction between the social determinants and the personal factor, between the objective conditions and human subjectivity, between objectifying and subjectifying acts in the social process. (Rosca 1992: 6)

We can notice, again, a construction of the voice of the philosopher as "the one who knows what we need" - and using classic dichotomies to frame his view of the situation. This scheme leads Rosca to say, at a later point in the paper,

Leaving behind the old univocal approaches, that instituted the absolute priority of society over personality, of the collectivity over the individual, it is important to not turn altogether in the direction of a totalitarian Robinson, of a mad individualism, of the man stuck in his existence and thrown in the opposite direction. It is necessary to not pass from the individual's depersonalization in the conditions of the old norms to the disintegration and annihilation of society as a result of its reckless transformation. (Rosca 1992: 9)

The philosopher becomes here "the warning voice", the one who is anticipating possibilities of a "dark future" if "we" decide "recklessly" to go to the "other extreme" than the Soviet collectivist way of being. The topoi that the philosopher is using for creating a persuasive effect are actually typical for propaganda: painting something in dark colors by using evocative language: "totalitarian Robinson", "mad individualism", imagining even the "disintegration and annihilation of society", whatever this might mean, as something possible if "we" turn towards "mad individualism". The philosopher as a voice presenting a dark future unless "we" do what he is saying--and what he is saying involves not leaving behind what was "good" about Soviet times in jumping towards a new mode of being without questioning it at first.

The next article of this issue, by Lidia Trofaila, Divergences in the Family: Social- Psychological Aspect (Trofaila 1992) continues the ambiguity of (Pahopol 1992): a paper published under the rubric Philosophy, but presenting itself more like a social science one. The paper presents, on the basis on questionnaires, sources of conflicts in 25 couples and proposes ways to "neutralize divergences", such as:

- Neglecting the non-essential divergences, because their sharpening in unwanted situations could create misunderstandings between the spouses, would create conflict situations;

- Both spouses' effort to help each other in self-perfection, in the tendency to solve all their divergences with benevolence, without hurting personal dignity;

- Emphasizing, in any situation, the best, the essential in the spouse's behavior (Trofaila 1992: 15).

Leaving aside one more time the question of whether this is "philosophy proper", and the content itself, we notice, again, that the voice embodied in this paper is presenting a certain behavior as "desirable", thus, construing itself as "the voice of one who knows how things should be".

A different kind of questioning voice appears in a paper written in Russian by V. I. Anikin, Metamorphoses of Social Justice (The Humanistic Aspect) (Anikin 1992). The context in which the paper is written is put in the following way:

Currently, we claim, everyday practice proposes as a primordial task redefining the concept itself of social justice, its turning towards the human, towards his nature, interest, and necessities. (Anikin 1992: 16)

We notice, again, the language of "tasks" imposed by "reality"-the philosopher being presented implicitly as the one who notices the current reality and can formulate the task deriving from it. Then, Anikin continues:

First of all, the powerful pressure of collectivist ideology affected human individuality itself, the social essence of the human was unjustifiably overvalued, his biological necessity was not taken into account, and neither were his personal interests and necessities, which led, in the end, to a levelling of individuality.

As we know, attention to personality, its interests and feelings, in official science were equated with the so-called bourgeois individualism and almost with a betrayal of the proletarian cause. Thus, for decades, according to the authorities' decree, the biological essence of man was gradually excluded from the masses' consciousness, and in the relation between biological individuality and social justice the first was basically ignored.

But, in the end, people could not stop themselves from asking: how can one live in harmony with the community (the collective, the society) without being in harmony with oneself, or how can one be a natural part of a whole if you are not an autonomous cell of that whole? (Anikin 1992: 17).

The philosophical posture here is different from all the papers that we saw previously. First of all, it lacks the pretense of a special kind of "knowing": the knowing belongs to a "we"-a community of people who can notice. The philosopher's reflection is not about a special knowledge, more about questioning something that was taken for granted. Due to various conditions, it stopped being taken for granted and the community itself started questioning it-so the philosopher deepens this questioning and examines what were the conditions that made the "we" take it for granted, and what were the conditions that led to its stopping being taken for granted. In the process, the meaning of the concept itself ("social justice", in this case) is questioned. The orientation towards the (then recent) past is critical; Anikin presents the general attitude of the Soviet times as problematic. But, at the same time, he points out the critique as something that arose naturally for people who start questioning. Here, the philosopher as "the one who takes up reflectively a line of questioning already present in the society and deepens it" makes their appearance.

The last article published in 1992 in the Journal inaugurates a new rubric, responding to Babii's initial program: From the Philosophical Heritage. The paper is coauthored by A. Babii and Emil T. Vrabie (Babii & Vrabie 1992) and appears under the title A Study Worthy of Attention. In the logic of "reclaiming heritage", it is the first republishing of an article by a 19^th Century Moldovan philosopher, Alexandru Scarlat Sturdza, Ideal and Imitation in Fine Arts, with a short introduction where a biography of the author is presented, together with the assessment of Sturdza's "ideas". The authors don't hesitate to call some of them "justified" and others "mistaken", but they claim that the justified ones "constitute, compared to the ideas of his predecessors, something new in Russian and Moldovan aesthetic thinking and, as such, they deserve to be studied and known. A part of them did not lose their actuality even in our days" (Babii & Vrabie 1992: 32). We can see here the logic of "heritage" operating: a given text of the past is presented as having something new to say compared to other texts. The fact itself of newness is one reason for studying it, the other being its relevance for contemporaneity. The value of the text depends, in the eyes of a historian of philosophy who operates in the logic of "heritage", on both of these, to which, implicitly, previous neglect of that text or the risk of its not being brought to the attention of the public is added. What is asked for by the title itself of the presentation is attention-the fact of reading it, presumably, and maybe engaging with its ideas. The presence of the adjective "worthy" functions as a proposal for the potential readers to read it and engage with it-and the reasons why it is considered "worthy of attention" are presented in the short study that accompanies the republication. The main one remains implicit: it is "ours", it can be claimed by "us". So, a new philosophical posture: the philosopher / historian of philosophy that finds in the past of a community something that they consider worthy of attention for the present audience, republishes it, and comments on what makes it worthy.

Generalizing, on the basis of this reading, we find, in 1992, three main philosophical voices / postures:

1. The philosopher as the one who "knows what should be done / what will happen / what is really happening" and presents their "answer" as normative for the audience.

2. The philosopher as reflective questioner / one who takes up a line of questioning present in society and deepens it.

3. The philosopher as a researcher of the "heritage", finding bits and pieces that were neglected and that can be reclaimed as "ours" and relevant for the present- and republishing and commenting on them.

2007: The Great Value Controversy

2007 is the year that marked a change in the name of the Journal of Philosophy and Law: it became Journal of Philosophy, Social Science, and Political Science--partly in order to proclaim publicly the autonomy of social science and political science, which, as we saw in papers published in 1992, were then still institutionally associated with philosophy and gained "independence" initially through their own rubrics, then through being included in the title of the journal. "Law" disappeared from the title, since the Law department was merged with the History Institute (an institutional move reversed in 2013). At the same time, the "new" journal claimed the "heritage" of the Journal of Philosophy and Law: it was edited by part of the previous institutional team, and the same authors continued to publish there. The first difference is the variety of rubrics: the rubric Philosophy continues to be the main one for philosophers, but, together with it, philosophy papers by PhD students are published, together with papers by PhD students studying other disciplines, in the rubric Research Reports; the Heritage rubric, inaugurated in 1992, continues; conference reviews appears in the rubric Scientific Life. Alongside, there are special rubrics for Political Science and Social Science.

The first philosophy paper published in the first 2007 issue of the new incarnation of the journal was Lidia Troianowski's Aesthetic values: Globalization Versus Universality (Troianowski, 2007a). The paper presents itself as a critique of postmodernity in art, citing, among others, authors like Michel Butor or Ihab Hassan:

The inventory of particular resources of globalization culture shows not only a crisis of aesthetical-moral and artistic values, but of emotions, feelings, spirit as well; what is lately claimed to be called art has the mission of triggering indignation, discouraging the elevated audience, educated on the basis of classic works. The crisis that we are reflecting about affected radically all artistic genres, but we attest the most serious consequences in literature, theater, cinematography, painting. Today one is not shocked when one hears as ultima ratio about an exhibition that painting, as an artistic genre, is stuck in the past.

Assessing the situation in the field of literature-a genre meant to inform, analyze, cultivate, promote ideals, given that poetry, novels create for the reader the real chance to penetrate fields where the most sensitive human feelings, emotions, and aspirations are dealt with, we observe a crisis situation. Although, through the complex tools that it has, literature, more than other genres, is able to teach love, consideration, respect for tradition, nation, homeland, the last hour creations of a lot of local artists, and not only them, create the impression of being meant to deny these qualities, because a simple monitoring of the titles of works by prose writers like St. Bastovoi and A. Vakulovski [the author refers to A. Vakulovski's 2002 debut novel, Pizdet, titled with a Russian vernacular analogous in function to the English Oh fuck - A. C.] create an aesthetic-moral discomfort due to indecent, licentious, vulgar language. Thus, one just has to resign oneself with the thought that we can learn patriotism, love, respect for values only from the works of classics like Eminescu, Eliade, lorga, Blaga, Goethe, Shakespeare, etc., works that even after 300-400 years will remain an unsurpassed model, always actual and valid. (Troianowski, 2007a: 52)

The tone of this paper illustrates a stance that, in the late 1990s-early 2000s, was widespread in the Moldovan cultural establishment-a rejection of "postmodernism", identified with denial of "traditional values". So, the author's voice becomes that of a cultural critic--the philosopher as the one who criticizes the "rotten present" in the name of "eternal values". The author identifies herself with the "elevated audience", educated on the basis of a "classical canon", and rejects what creates a visceral reaction of "indignation" due to not "promoting" the values the author identifies with. So, another nuance is present in the critique of "postmodernity": the voice of the philosopher as "defender" of a cultural corpus and of the values it expresses, in the face of what they perceive as disturbing. The conservative agenda is obvious.

The same topic is continued--but with a different attitude--in Silvia Saptefrati's paper The Status of Value in Postmodernism (Saptefrati 2007). Saptefrati has a more sympathetic view towards postmodernism, and, after a tour through Nietzsche, Scheler, Derrida, Vattimo, Bauman, she states:

Because the hierarchy of values is individual and spontaneous, Max Scheler's attempt to accomplish an absolute hierarchy of values failed. In the postmodern condition, that rears up both when confronted with definitions and with immutable criteria of classification and hierarchies, such an attempt is meaningless. (Saptefrati 2007: 60)

And she continues--a position that I think is worth mentioning both in the context of both the previous paper in the issue (Troianwoski 2007a) and the one that follows (Capcelea 2007a):

... an axiological disagreement is neither fatal, nor solvable, representing an inevitable consequence of a pluralistic society. (Saptefrati 2007: 61)

Thus, Saptefrati's claim--and the basic orientation of the philosophical voice she is inhabiting - is one of quietist noticing of an impossibility, while attuned to present conditions. The impossibility of reaching a consensus about a hierarchy of values is not decried but presented as "the way things are now". In these conditions, she does not hesitate to formulate a normative proposal anyway, but with a different rationale:

Neglecting spiritual values inevitably leads to a flattening of axiological competence. [...] Authentic values are not given once and for all, they require a continuous effort of sensitization and understanding [...]. Thus, educationally, the family, society, and educational institutions have to join their efforts, acting not through imposing values, but indirectly, through stimulating axiological necessities, so that young people would seek values, would intuit them, take them up and, ultimately, aspire to create new values. (Saptefrati 2007: 62)

The normative aspect of Saptefrati's proposal is not related to a concrete type of value, but to a kind of sensitivity to values as such, which, she claims, is needed because without cultivating it something essential about being a human is lost. The voice itself is much more nuanced than others: the voice of "someone who notices" and claims that the deepest problematic issue is not in what others think is the substantive issue ("axiological disagreement"), but in something that lies beyond simple disagreement between supporters of one camp or another. Again in contrast to others, the "call to action", or the "task" is not a positive program, but cultivating a type of sensitivity. The voice of the philosopher as unbothered by what bothers others so much as to enter debates and looking at issues that lie beyond the usual (positive) subject of debates-the philosopher as a contemplative quietist.

In contrast to Saptefrati, and closer ideologically and structurally to Troianowski, Valeriu Capcelea's paper (the last one published in the rubric Philosophy of this issue) The Philosophical Dimension of the Category "Tradition" and Its Social Functions (Capcelea 2007a) presents itself as an unapologetic defense of "tradition" and "traditional values" in the face of the "foreign influence"-both the Soviet past and the contemporary cosmopolitism. I will quote an excerpt that illustrates these attitudes:

The volume of information contained in the national traditions creates optimal conditions for the assimilation by the young generation of the being, history, and behavioral norms of the people it is a part of. But the nihilistic and indifferent attitude towards the traditions of our people, promoted for decades by the totalitarian regime, determined the rise of a generation that is indifferent to its own past, to historical heritage, to the Homeland [...]. As a consequence, the urgency of the issue of maintaining national memory, continuity of generations, of their solidarity, which would exclude the current tensions, divergences, and antagonisms. A special, and very important place in solving this problem belongs to national traditions, which can help with the reorientation of individual consciousness from cultural values that are foreign to the local environment towards the national memory and the traditional cultural values of our people [...]. Only in this case the socialization process can be efficient, because it will be determined by the experience distilled due to traditions, traditional methods of child rearing (Capcelea, 2007a: 70-71).

Beyond the ideological commitments and the far-right language I would prefer to not comment on, the philosophical position / voice that the author is inhabiting is one of "defender" of what is perceived as "traditional heritage", proposing a clear normative program and insisting that "only in this case" the future would look bright. So, with the voice nuances that we also saw in other articles, the philosopher as a "critic of the present", "defender of values", and "knower of the way out of the present predicament".

The philosophy paper published in the Research Reports rubric - belonging to Alexe Rau, the late director of the National Library of Moldova, a poet and essayist interested in philosophy that decided to study for a PhD late in his life - bears the title Writing as Daseinogram (Rau 2007: 87-95). The paper reads like a free-form essay (much more so than any of the papers previously analyzed here), filled with references to Heidegger, Derrida, Bergson, Borges, Plato, A. de Muralt, Merleau-Ponty-mostly names relevant for the continental / phenomenological tradition. The author follows the trail of a basic metaphor:

Traces of beings are a codified information about these beings. Just as we research other living beings based on the tracks they leave in nature, writing can be considered, as well, the trace left by Dasein during its spiritual path, the trace that speaks mostly about the invisible of the human being and about its transcendental dimension (just as a cardiogram shows / tells us almost everything about the heart without seeing the latter). Writing can thus be also considered as a kind of cardiogram of the less- or not seen part of being, of spirit. Writing is a daseinogram, and the book and the library are, in this sense, a daseinoscope, a being-graph. (Rau 2007: 89)

In reading this excerpt, we can notice a clear commitment to a Heideggerian / Derridean-inspired vocabulary and at least an attempt to "follow" them in disclosing a field that is personally interesting for the author. So an "essayistic" voice of the philosopher as one exploring a topic by using resources offered by the philosophical tradition to which they are committed. One thing that can be emphasized about the paper is that this wholly different kind of voice appears as the voice of a PhD student publishing in the Research Reports rubric-of someone exploring a topic and a way of writing about it, not someone who presents their text as a "paper". We will encounter this kind of innovative voice in other papers published in the same rubric.

The paper published in the Heritage rubric, a stable one already in the journal, belongs to Gheorghe Bobana, and it is called Mircea Eliade and the Romanian Axiological Identity. It operates in the same logic of "heritage", proposed by A. Babii in the first 1992 issue of the journal: taking the work of a philosopher and reclaiming it as belonging in some way to the space of Moldovan philosophy (explicitly perceived as part of the Romanian cultural space) and as relevant to the present moment. The text consists, mainly, in presenting Eliade's theses on Romanian axiological identity. I will quote an excerpt in order to show how Bobana is doing it:

The history of Romanians, as Mircea Eliade notices, does not know long periods of quiet: this is why the creative spirit could not manifest unless intermittently on the plane of written, scholarly culture. It manifests itself continuously and inexhaustibly only in the popular spiritual creation: only it reveals the constants of Romanian genius (Bobana 2007: 133).

The voice present here is one of the historian of philosophy operating in the "heritage" logic-the voice of someone who reads and retells something which is part of a tradition they could claim, for various reasons, as "ours", and most of the time subscribes to what they are retelling. The tone is self-effacing: in the paraphrase, for full paragraphs sometimes, there is no clear boundary between the voice of the quoted author and the voice of the one who is writing now--it is almost as if they merge into a single voice. A living philosopher borrowing their own voice to a dead one, deemed "worthy of attention".

Another take on the heritage logic is present in an article by Lidia Troianwoski published in the Scientific Life rubric of the journal (Troianowski, 2007b: 136-139)--a conference review of a symposium dedicated to Mircea Eliade's 100^th anniversary. According to her,

A retrospective of the papers presented by the participants in the symposium shows us Mircea Eliade as one of the most representative figures of modernity; in this temporal span, few could compete with him: a person with an enviable intellectual level that made history, tradition, and religion rhyme; he valorized things, phenomena, views, emotions, and feelings that are worthy of consideration and which he offered, as a compensation and, simultaneously, with dignity, to future generations. (Troianowski 2007b: 136)

What one can hear in such an account of the conference-the attitude claimed to be expressed by all the papers presented, and which is also transparent in the author's own writing-sounds almost like ancestor worship, and can be paraphrased, slightly tongue-in-cheek, as: "We have this great figure in our past, and (almost) no one can compete with it; it is ours, and it expresses something meaningful for us; moreover, it left us a heritage that we cherish and which we gathered to celebrate."

The second 2007 issue of the Journal of Philosophy, Social Science, and Political Science includes five philosophy papers-for of them, signed by PhDs, published in the rubric Philosophy, and one, by a PhD student-in the Research Reports section.