Brilliant Yet Shadowed Seminar Series – 3

Popular philosophical school of Simón Rodriguez

Professor Samuel Mendonça, PUC Campinas/CNPq/Brazil

Simón Rodríguez was an 18th century thinker who was born in Caracas, Venezuela. Critical of the Spanish hegemony that resulted from colonization, Rodríguez founded a popular philosophical school in the city of Chuquisaca, Bolivia, in the 19th century. For him, the school should be a place for blacks and whites, the poor and the rich, men and women. This advanced vision for the 19th century was met with barriers from hegemonic and economic groups who did not allow the school to prosper. Rodríguez was a teacher of Simón Bolívar, the Latin American revolutionary and liberator. In addition to his forceful defense of philosophy with students in training, with an emphasis on the construction of questions, his school also privileged free time. The article aims to look at biographical aspects of Simón Rodríguez and his relationship with Simón Bolívar, but above all to emphasize what underpins his definition of a popular philosophical school. The research problem can be understood through the question: does Simón Rodríguez’s popular philosophical school have a place in the 21st century, given the emphasis on skills and even on learning? The hypothesis of the text is that schools in general guided by rankings and learning policies, does not offer space for a school that emphasizes the act of asking questions, the fundamental basis of Simón Rodríguez’s popular philosophical school. In an attempt to resolve this impasse, the text aims to present a solution for building a popular philosophical school along the lines of the Chuquisaca model.

Samuel Mendonça is a professor and researcher in the field of Philosophy of Education at PUC-Campinas, Brazil. He has extensive experience in teacher education and educational theory, with a particular focus on ethics, human rights, and critical perspectives on education. He has served as coordinator of a graduate program in education and has been involved in international research activities, including as a visiting scholar at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is co-editor, with Nuraan Davids, of the recent volume Teaching Ethically in the Global South (Springer, 2026), which brings together perspectives from the Global South to rethink ethical frameworks in education. His work explores the intersections between education, culture, ethics, and social transformation.

Philosophy and historical Consciousness in Gerardo Marotta’s Thinking on Education

Milena Cuccurullo, Department of Education, University of Warwick

Gerardo Marotta has been the president of the Italian Institute for Philosophical Studies from 1975 until his death in 2018. The Institute has been a unique experiment, in the Italian recent cultural scene, of a multidisciplinary programme in higher education, offering to students a yearly programme of seminars, free of charge, on a variety of specialist subject matters and research projects conducted by international academics and experts. Next to philosophers, the Institute used to host scientists, scholars in the history of science and medicine, linguists, economists, psychologists and mathematicians, while keeping conferences, lectures and seminars constantly open to the public. At the heart of this peculiar institution lied Marotta’s ideal of a well-rounded and historically affected education, as well as his commitment to attend at the ethical preparation of future leaders, according to democratic values stemming from the Republican experience of the Neapolitan Revolution 1799. Historic consciousness and memory are the main features of Marotta’ pedagogical thinking, which however has remained unacknowledged, since he left no specialist publications on his own thinking. His educational ideals have been laid out in public speeches – some of them transcribed by students or videorecorded. The educational opportunities that the Institute offered to thousands of students and researchers between 1975-2018 remain the most accurate testament of his pedagogical utopia. As the world hangs on the brink of another nuclear war, I wish to shed some light on Marotta’s thinking about the education of future leaders, in the hope of preserving it from obliviousness.