FERRATER MORA CHAIR OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT


 

Director: Prof. Dr. Josep-Maria Terricabras

Office

  • Address: Plaça Ferrater Mora, 1. GIRONA 17071
  • Telephone number: +34 - 972418019
  • Fax number: +34 - 972418978
  • E-mail: dir.cfm@udg.es

The Ferrater Mora Chair of Contemporary Thought was founded in 1989. It organizes two sessions of lessons each year (November and June) on contemporary thought conducted by eminent thinkers of international renown. The Chair, whilst devoted to thought, is not however strictly confined to the discipline of Philosophy, welcoming as it does the contribution of interdisciplinary seminars from across the board of Sciences and the Arts. The Chair's Guest Lecturers expose the main lines and questions to which they have devoted their intellectual life. The first session was directed by Prof. Josep Ferrater Mora himself in November 1989.

Who was Ferrater Mora?

Josep Ferrater Mora (1912-1991) was born in Barcelona. There he studied Philosophy. When the Spanish Civil War was over, and after a few periods spent in Cuba (1939-1941) and Santiago de Chile (1941-1947), he went to the United States with a Guggenheim award (1947). He was Professor of Philosophy at Brian Mawr College from 1949 until his retirement as emeritus professor in 1981. He has been visiting professor at many American and European universities and has been granted Doctor Honoris Causa degrees by some of these institutions. He is author of the well known Diccionario de Filosofía, and of other philosophical works such as: El ser y la muerte, Fundamentos de Filosofía, Cambio de marcha en filosofía and De la materia a la razón. He is also author of short stories and novels. Ferrater Mora is, without doubt, the most internationally known Catalan philosopher of the twentieth century.
 

 

Activities

 

FERRATER MORA ESSAY PRIZE   

 

 

The Ferrater Mora Foundation (Pennsylvania, USA) and the Ferrater Mora Chair of Contemporary Thought at the University of Girona (Catalonia, Spain) call for entries for the 1st Ferrater Mora Essay Prize.

 

The prize will be awarded to the best original, unpublished essay on any aspect of Ferrater Mora’s work (philosophy, literature, opinion journalism, cinematography, etc.). The amount of the prize is 6,000 euros.

 

Click here for more information  / Cliqueu aquí per veure les bases del premi

 

Programmed Seminars


 

Seminars carried out

  • Josep-Ferrater Mora (Pennsylvania): Un sistema obert, November 1989
  • Paul Ricoeur (Paris): Reflexions sur l'agir humain , June 1990
  • Willard V. Quine (Harvard): From Stimulus to Science, November 1990
  • Adam Schaff (Vien): Mi currículum vitae científico, June 1991
  • Ll.A. Santaló (Buenos Aires): La matemàtica, una filosofia i una tècnica, November 1991
  • Miquel Batllori (Rome): De l'edat mitjana als temps moderns i contemporanis, June 1992
  • Noam Chomsky (M.I.T.): Language and the Cognitive Revolutions, November 1992
  • Eric Hobsbawm (London): A Historian tries to Understand his Century, June 1993
  • Ilya Prigogine (Brussels): Time, Chaos and the Quantum Towards the Resolution of the Time Paradox, June 1993
  • Donald Davidson (Berkeley): The Social Basis of Thought, June 1994
  • Mario Bunge (Montreal): Una filosofía nueva, June 1995
  • Karl-Otto Apel (Frankfurt am Main); Transcendental Semiotics as First Philosophy, November 1995
  • David Harvey (Johns Hopkins): Prospect on Geography: Space, Place and Environment in Contemporary Theory, June 1996
  • Richard Rorty (Virginia): Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism, June 1996
  • Leonardo Boff (Rio de Janeiro): Nuevo paradigma ecológico y teología cristiana, October 1997
  • Alain Touraine (CNRS, Paris): Los desafios de la democracia, June 1998
  • Leszek Kolakowski (Oxford): Reason and the Sacred, October 1999
  • Theo Angelopoulos (Atenes): L'univers cinematographique de Theo Angelopoulos, June 2000
  • Hans Heinz Holz (Groningen): Mi evolución filosófica en el contexto de la filosofía después de 1945, June 2001
  • Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (Stanford), Genetics and Culture in the Evolution of Modern Humans, October 2001
  • Edgar Morin (Paris), Pensée complexe et éthique, June 2002
  • Peter Singer (Princeton), Ethics: A Utilitarian Approach, June 2003 
  • Agnes Heller (New York), The World / Our World,  June 2005
  • Seyla Benhabib (Yale), Cosmopolitanism, Universalism and Globalization, June 2005
  • Michael Nyman, (London) Michael Nyman on Michael Nyman, November, 2006 
  • Ernst Tugendhat (Tübingen), Cinco conferencias sobre temas de antropología filosófica, June 2007
  • Joseph Stiglitz (Columbia), The Three Trillion Dolar War, May 2008

  • Gianni Vattimo (Torino), Existencialismo, cristianismo, ontología de la actualidad, October 2008

 

 

Published Works

The Ferrater Mora Chair publishes the lectures of the Seminars in Catalan (Eumo Editorial) and in Spanish (Ariel Editorial). The following titles have been published:

  • Schaff, A.; Currículum científic d'un marxista, Eumo,Vic, 1992
  • ---; El marxismo a final de siglo, Ariel, Barcelona, 1994
  • Batllori, M.; De l'edat mitjana als temps contemporanis, Eumo, Vic, 1994
  • ---; De la edad media a la contemporánea, Ariel, Barcelona, 1994
  • Santaló, LL. A.; La matemàtica: una filosofia i una tècnica, Eumo, Vic, 1993
  • ---; La matemática: una filosofía y una técnica, Ariel, Barcelona, 1994
  • Quine, W.V.; De l'estímul a la ciència, Eumo, Vic, 1996
  • ---; Del estímulo a la ciencia, Ariel Filosofía, Barcelona, 1998
  • Rorty, R.; El pragmatisme, una versió. Antiautoritarisme en ètica i epistemologia, Eumo, Vic, 1998
  • ---; El pragmatismo, una versión. Antiautoritarismo en ética y epistemología, Ariel, Barcelona, 2000
  • Hare, R. M.; Ordenant l'Ètica. Una classificació de les teories ètiques, Eumo, Vic, 2000
  • ---; Ordenando la Ética. Una clasificación de las teorías éticas, Ariel, Barcelona, 1999

·         Apel, K.-O.; Filosofia primera, avui i ètica del discurs, Eumo, Vic, 2001

Three political talks given by Noam Chomsky during his Lectureship have also been published:

  • Chomsky, N., Discurs Polític, Empúries, Barcelona, 1993
  • ---, Política y cultura a finales del siglo XX, Ariel, Barcelona, 2002 (3ª ed.)


 

Future Projects


 

From 1996 onwards, in accordance with its foundational principles, the Chair plans to initiate further activities to enhance and promote contemporary thought. The aim is to emphasize the interdisciplinary project of the Chair.

Symposia:

In addition to the Chair's biannual series of lectures and seminars, symposia shall be organized on the work and thought of historical figures of contemporary thought renowned for the breadth of their interests and for having greatly influenced the direction of their academic disciplines. In actual fact the first of these symposia took place in April 1989 celebrating the works and thought of Wittgenstein in the year of the centenary of his birth (Terricabras,J.-M. (de.) A Wittgenstein Symposium-Girona 1989, Rodopi, Amsterdam-Atlanta, 1993) Although the Wittgenstein Symposium actually preceded the foundation of the Chair by a few months it greatly inspired its inception and organising principles.

Symposia carried out

In 1997, a Symposium in Girona had been dedicated to the memory of the distinguished mathematician Karl Menger (1902-1985): International Menger Symposium. As a member of the Vienna Circle, Menger was involved in many different fields of thought and was renowned for the contribution of his ideas and theoretical insights to disciplines as diverse in scope as mathematics, economics, physics, the philosophy of science, ethics and the history of philosophy. The Chair plans to bring the Menger symposium to his hometown Vienna.

 

Interdisciplinary-Meetings

The Chair also plans to implement interdisciplinary-meetings in order to bring together researchers, thinkers, technicians, artists, business people and social workers, around issues and subjects of common interest. It is hoped that these meetings will enable groups to:

  • gain first hand knowledge of each other's proposals, opinions and criticisms
  • discuss points of shared interest
  • engage ultimately in some interdisciplinary collaborative ventures and projects
  • establish and maintain regular contact with each other.


Just as the Chair's seminars and symposia are intended to provide a valuable function for the university communities, interdisciplinary-meetings are intended to serve the vital functions of improving the connection between the university and society and to promote the collaboration of different social areas. This seems to be an increasingly urgent task since research and theoretical activity, technology and industry are often directed by corporate interests and as a result many interesting projects never come to fruition because of over-specialization and lack of alternative resources.
 


 

Library Collections


 

Ferrater Mora Library:

Shortly before his death, Josep Ferrater Mora bequeathed his private library to the Ferrater Mora Chair at the University of Girona. The library contains 7.255 volumes and 156 periodicals along with the philosopher's private papers and letters. The main corpus of the library is comprised of philosophical works, including the studies of the great philosophers together with titles concerning philosophical systems and movements, logic, epistemology, aesthetics, the philosophy of science, philosophy of language and the history of philosophy.

In addition, there is a large amount of literature -mainly by Hispano-American authors- and a substantial amount of Catalan and Anglo-American works. There is also a number of titles devoted to the cinema.

Ferrater Mora Chair Collection

This collection is comprised of the works of all those contemporary thinkers who have lectured at the Chair from its inception. The Chair collection also contains the complete works of the main authors in the history of philosophy.

Wittgenstein Collection

The Ferrater Mora Chair has in its possession the complete works of Ludwig Wittgenstein in various editions, along with literature on Wittgenstein's work. It also includes the exhaustive microfilm compilation of all the unpublished Wittgenstein Papers.

 

Links

Ferrater Mora website

Terricabras-filosofia

 


 

For further information please contact: ramon.fabrega@udg.edu