The Davos Debate, Pure Philosophy and Normativity: Thinking from the Perspective of the History of Philosophy

The reception history of the Davos Debate may help us gain insight about how to
approach the history of philosophy. Firstly, any serious account of a historical debate
must be grounded in a sound conception of the intellectual environment in which it
took place and as such we cultivate intellectual history. Furthermore, interpretations
of historical debates also imply a mirroring of the historical themes in contemporary
philosophical discussions, and finally that we can bracket the historical situation in
order to focus systematically on the motifs and forms of argumentation in a historical
debate. I criticize what I argue is a fourth and popular interpretation strategy of
the Davos Debate aiming to declare a winner of the debate. Such an interpretation
approach can be aligned with a scholastic fallacy which views philosophy as a means
to confirm social group identity rather than free thinking. While scholastic fallacies are
common in the history of European philosophy and its reception, I argue that aspirations
to think philosophy in its world concept and thus to aspire to understand the
laws of human reason imply that we must take intercultural dialogue seriously in our
philosophical endeavors.