If Unamuno had been able to choose how to be remembered, he would have wanted him to be a poet. This book wants to do justice to that happy possibility. But above all because Unamuno was a poet in the highest sense: he was while writing the same essay as a novel, or theater, letter or verse, and he was also a poet when he passionately lived all the facets of his intense existence. His intellectual work was poetic and his (...) personal relationships, as well as his political activity, also responded to that peculiar Unamunian aesthetic in which the vital horizon is inescapably confused with the tasks of thought." --Translated from back cover. (shrink)

Nella storiografia filosofica spagnola non esiste, probabilmente, una definizione ambigua e problematica come quella che riguarda la cosiddetta "Scuola di Barcellona". La tesi principale di questo articolo è che tale scuola non giunse mai a nascere, ma ne esistette soltanto una forma embrionale che non poté maturare perché, in conseguenza della situazione politica venutasi a creare con la guerra civile , i suoi componenti si dispersero nell'esilio. Ciò nonostante, è possibile riconoscere alcuni tratti comuni, seppur labili e non sostanziali, nella (...) diaspora degli intellettuali catalani che rendono possibile definirla, con le dovute cautele, "Scuola di Barcellona". Tali caratteristiche comuni si possono far risalire a colui che, in un certo senso, fu il fondatore della scuola, essendo il principale maestro delle nuove leve filosofiche della Catalogna all'inizio del XX secolo: Jaume Serra Hunter. The expression "Barcelona School" is hard to find in the history of Spanish philosophy. The main thesis of my essay is that the "Barcelona School" never really existed. On the other hand, some kind of embryonic philosophical project was in fact sketched in the 1930s, but it could not attain its peak and full development because many scholars had to go into exile as a consequence of the Spanish Civil War . It is possible, nevertheless, to make a list of strong common points and aims among members of the Catalan intellectual diaspora, which would perhaps allow us to speak of a "Barcelona school". Such common points and aims can be found in the thought of the philosopher Jaume Serra Hunter, the most representative figure among the new philosophers in Catalonia at the beginning of the 20th century. (shrink)

The Noucentisme was, in the first twenty years of the XX century, the leading movement in the Catalan cultural life. It was characterized by important positivist and pragmatist influences. In this period two interesting philosophical reflections appeared, both characterized by the fundamental role of human being’s biological aspect. One was published by Eugeni d'Ors between 1909 and 1910, while the other is the main contribution to philosophy of the Barcelona-born scientist Ramon Turró. Although the starting point of both theory was (...) the idea that the foundation of existence is essentially biological and that it is necessary to search in the biological itself for the origin and meaning of man's relationship with the external environment, each one of the thinkers developed his own independent theory and came to different conclusions and interpretations of the world, sometimes even opposed. (shrink)