Milan Komar
Encyclopedia
Milan Komar, also known as Emilio Komar (4 June 1921 - 20 January 2006) was a Slovene Argentine
Argentines of Slovene descent
Argentines of Slovene descent, also Slovene Argentines or Argentine Slovenes , is a term referring to the group of Slovenes residing in Argentina...

 Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

 philosopher and essayist.

Life

He was born in Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...

, Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, to a Slovene family who had emigrated from the Italian-occupied Julian March
Julian March
The Julian March is a former political region of southeastern Europe on what are now the borders between Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy...

. His father, Ludvik was a retired officer of the Austro-Hungarian Army
Austro-Hungarian Army
The Austro-Hungarian Army was the ground force of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy from 1867 to 1918. It was composed of three parts: the joint army , the Austrian Landwehr , and the Hungarian Honvédség .In the wake of fighting between the...

. Milan spent his childhood in Ljubljana and Škofja Loka
Škofja Loka
-Art colony:Before the civil war in the former Yugoslavia the Serbian town of Smederevska Palanka and the town of Škofja Loka held art colonies Groharijeva kolonija run by an art teacher from elementary school Olga Milošević in Smederevska Palanka. Now, after the split of SFR Yugoslavia, the two...

, and in 1939 he enrolled to the University of Ljubljana
University of Ljubljana
The University of Ljubljana is the oldest and largest university in Slovenia. With 64,000 enrolled graduate and postgraduate students, it is among the largest universities in Europe.-Beginnings:...

 where he studied law. He specialized in Canonical law and continued his studies at the University of Turin
University of Turin
The University of Turin is a university in the city of Turin in the Piedmont region of north-western Italy...

, where he graduated in 1942. He first developed an interest in philosophy in Ljubljana, under the supervision of the Slovenian Neo-thomist thinker Aleš Ušeničnik
Aleš Ušenicnik
Aleš Ušeničnik was a Slovene Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, sociologist and theologian. He was one of the main philosophers of neo-Thomism in Slovenia and in Yugoslavia....

 and the Russian émigré
White Emigre
A white émigré was a Russian who emigrated from Russia in the wake of the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War, and who was in opposition to the contemporary Russian political climate....

 Eugeni Spektorsky who thought philosophy of law at the University of Ljubljana. He further developed his philosophical knowledge in Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...

 under the influence of Giuseppe Gemellaro and Carlo Mazzantini. In those years, he also discovered the thought of French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 personalists
Personalism
Personalism is a philosophical school of thought searching to describe the uniqueness of a human person in the world of nature, specifically in relation to animals...

 such as Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain
Jacques Maritain was a French Catholic philosopher. Raised as a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism in 1906. An author of more than 60 books, he helped to revive St. Thomas Aquinas for modern times and is a prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights...

 and Emmanuel Mounier
Emmanuel Mounier
Emmanuel Mounier was a French philosopher.Mounier was the guiding spirit in the French Personalist movement, and founder and director of Esprit, the magazine which was the organ of the movement. Mounier, who was the child of peasants, was a brilliant scholar at the Sorbonne...

. He was also influenced by the political writings of Luigi Sturzo
Luigi Sturzo
Don Luigi Sturzo was an Italian Catholic priest and politician. Known in his lifetime as a "clerical socialist," Sturzo is considered one of the fathers of Christian democracy. Sturzo was one of the founders of the Partito Popolare Italiano in 1919, but was forced into exile in 1924 with the rise...

 which were then circulationg in the Catholic anti-Fascist underground.

Already as a student in Ljubljana, he became involved in a Catholic integralist
Integralism
Integralism, or Integral nationalism, is an ideology according to which a nation is an organic unity. Integralism defends social differentiation and hierarchy with co-operation between social classes, transcending conflict between social and economic groups...

 youth group, organized within the Slovenian Catholic Action
Catholic Action
Catholic Action was the name of many groups of lay Catholics who were attempting to encourage a Catholic influence on society.They were especially active in the nineteenth century in historically Catholic countries that fell under anti-clerical regimes such as Spain, Italy, Bavaria, France, and...

. This group, called Borci ("Fighters", after their internal journal, Mi mladi borci, that is "We, young fighters") had a radical anti-Communist ideology. To them, Communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 was the greatest danger to humanity; nevertheless, they insisted to fight it on a cultural, intellectual and artistic field, rejecting both direct political engagement and armed struggle.

After the Capitulation of Italy in September 1943, Komar returned to Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

, which was then occupied by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

. In the Slovenian Littoral
Slovenian Littoral
The Slovenian Littoral is a historical region of Slovenia. Its name recalls the historical Habsburg crown land of the Austrian Littoral, of which the Slovenian Littoral was a part....

, he joined the Slovenian National Defence Corps (Slovenski narodno varstveni zbor - SNVZ), a small collaborationist militia, closely affiliated to the Slovene Home Guard, which fought against the partisan resistance in the Julian March
Julian March
The Julian March is a former political region of southeastern Europe on what are now the borders between Croatia, Slovenia, and Italy...

. Until 1945, he worked in the section for propaganda and culture, and helped to establish several cultural institutions (journals, publishing houses, schools) throughout the Goriška
Goriška
Goriška is a traditional region in western Slovenia on the border with Italy. The name means "the Gorizia region" because it is named after Gorizia, Italy. It is part of the wider traditional region of the Slovenian Littoral . Its principal urban center is Nova Gorica...

 region. In May 1945, he withdrew to the Allied
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...

-occupied Northern Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 in order to escape Communist persecution. From there he emigrated to Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

 in 1948.

He settled in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

, where he spent most of his later life. Initially, he worked as a manual worker in a glass factory, studying for the habilitation
Habilitation
Habilitation is the highest academic qualification a scholar can achieve by his or her own pursuit in several European and Asian countries. Earned after obtaining a research doctorate, such as a PhD, habilitation requires the candidate to write a professorial thesis based on independent...

 exam in philosophy and pedagogy
Pedagogy
Pedagogy is the study of being a teacher or the process of teaching. The term generally refers to strategies of instruction, or a style of instruction....

. In the late 1940s, he started teaching philosophy and classical languages in different high schools, and later philosophy and pedagogy at the University of Buenos Aires
University of Buenos Aires
The University of Buenos Aires is the largest university in Argentina and the largest university by enrollment in Latin America. Founded on August 12, 1821 in the city of Buenos Aires, it consists of 13 faculties, 6 hospitals, 10 museums and is linked to 4 high schools: Colegio Nacional de Buenos...

. In 1959, started teaching history of modern philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina
Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina
The Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina is a university in Argentina with campus in the cities of Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Rosario, Paraná, Mendoza and Pergamino. The main campus is located in Puerto Madero, one of the most modern neighborhood of Buenos Aires...

. From 1981 to 1982, he was dean of the Faculty for Philosophy at the same university. He retired from his teaching position in 1998.

During his time in emigration
Emigration
Emigration is the act of leaving one's country or region to settle in another. It is the same as immigration but from the perspective of the country of origin. Human movement before the establishment of political boundaries or within one state is termed migration. There are many reasons why people...

, he started to publish essays in the local Slovenian
Slovenian language
Slovene or Slovenian is a South Slavic language spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. It is the first language of about 1.85 million people and is one of the 23 official and working languages of the European Union...

, as well as Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

-language press. Nevertheless, he became famous especially as a teacher and a pedagogue and the so-called "Komar School" developed around him. In 1992, pope John Paul II gave him the insignia of the Order of St. Gregory the Great
Order of St. Gregory the Great
The Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great , was established on September 1, 1831, by Pope Gregory XVI, seven months after his election.It is one of the five orders of knighthood of the Holy See...

. He spent the last decades of his life in the town of Boulogne sur Mer in the Buenos Aires Province
Buenos Aires Province
The Province of Buenos Aires is the largest and most populous province of Argentina. It takes the name from the city of Buenos Aires, which used to be the provincial capital until it was federalized in 1880...

. He died at the age of 84 in the Argentine town of San Isidro
San Isidro, Buenos Aires
San Isidro, Buenos Aires is a municipality in Greater Buenos Aires and one of the most affluent municipalities in Argentina. It is located in San Isidro Partido in the Buenos Aires Province....

 and was buried in the Žale
Žale
Žale Central cemetery , often abbreviated to Žale, is the largest and the central cemetery in Ljubljana. It is located in the Bežigrad district and operated by the Žale Public Company.- History :...

 Cemetery in his native Ljubljana
Ljubljana
Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia and its largest city. It is the centre of the City Municipality of Ljubljana. It is located in the centre of the country in the Ljubljana Basin, and is a mid-sized city of some 270,000 inhabitants...

.

Komar was a polyglot
Polyglot (person)
A polyglot is someone with a high degree of proficiency in several languages. A bilingual person can speak two languages fluently, whereas a trilingual three; above that the term multilingual may be used.-Hyperpolyglot:...

: he was fluent in Slovenian
Slovenian language
Slovene or Slovenian is a South Slavic language spoken by approximately 2.5 million speakers worldwide, the majority of whom live in Slovenia. It is the first language of about 1.85 million people and is one of the 23 official and working languages of the European Union...

, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...

, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

 and Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

; he read also in Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...

 and Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

.

Thought

He started as an expert on the Rationalist philosophy of Christian Wolff
Christian Wolff (philosopher)
Christian Wolff was a German philosopher.He was the most eminent German philosopher between Leibniz and Kant...

 and later turned to Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...

 and Hegel. He was an attentive critic of modern immanentist
Immanence
Immanence refers to philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence, in which the divine is seen to be manifested in or encompassing of the material world. It is often contrasted with theories of transcendence, in which the divine is seen to be outside the material world...

 philosophy, which drew him closer to certain aspect of phenomenology, especially the current represented by Edith Stein
Edith Stein
Saint Teresia Benedicta of the Cross, sometimes also known as Saint Edith Stein , was a German Roman Catholic philosopher and nun, regarded as a martyr and saint of the Roman Catholic Church...

. He was also strongly influenced by the thought of the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. He was, along with Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism.-Biography:José Ortega y Gasset was...

 and, to a lesser extent, Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher.-Biography:...

. He later developed an interest in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...

, particularly Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

, to whom he kept a respectful disaccord, and Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson
Erik Erikson was a Danish-German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst known for his theory on social development of human beings. He may be most famous for coining the phrase identity crisis. His son, Kai T...

.

He was also influenced by non-conformist
Non-conformists of the 1930s
The Non-Conformists of the 1930s refers to a nebula of groups and individuals during the inter-war period in France which was looking for new solutions to face the political, economical and social crisis. The name was coined in 1969 by the historian Jean-Louis Loubet del Bayle to describe a...

 Catholic thinkers such as G. K. Chesterton
G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, KC*SG was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction....

 and Georges Bernanos
Georges Bernanos
Georges Bernanos was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. Of Roman Catholic and monarchist leanings, he was a violent adversary to bourgeois thought and to what he identified as defeatism leading to France's defeat in 1940.-Biography:Bernanos was born at Paris, into a family of...

, but he always remained connected to the Neo-Scholastic
Neo-Scholasticism
Neo-Scholasticism is the revival and development of medieval scholastic philosophy starting from the second half of the 19th century. It has some times been called neo-Thomism partly because Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century gave to scholasticism a final form, partly because the idea gained ground...

 tradition, best exemplified by the thought of Étienne Gilson
Étienne Gilson
Étienne Gilson was a French Thomistic philosopher and historian of philosophy...

 and Josef Pieper
Josef Pieper
Josef Pieper was a German Catholic philosopher, at the forefront of the Neo-Thomistic wave in twentieth century Catholic philosophy. Among his most notable works are The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance; Leisure: the Basis of Culture; The Philosophical Act and Guide...

. In the mid 1960s, he developed a strong intellectual and personal friendship with the Italian philosopher and political scientist Augusto del Noce, whom he ragarded as his "spiritual brother". Together with him and with the Polish
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 philosopher Stefan Swieżawski, he started to work on his uncompleted life project, namely the reperiodization of modern philosophy.

During the Communist regime, all his writings were prohibited in Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...

; they were first published in the early 1990s, but his influence is still stronger in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

, in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 and in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 than in his native country.

Major works

  • Pot iz mrtvila (Buenos Aires, 1965)
  • Apuntes filosóficos (Buenos Aires, 1973)
  • Juliette o iluminismo y moral (Buenos Aires, 1974)
  • Para una filosofía de la filiación (Buenos Aires, 1975)
  • Fe y cultura (Buenos Aires, 1986)
  • Partecipación: términos, etimologías, definiciones (Buenos Aires, 1986)
  • Modernidad y postmodernidad (Buenos Aires, 1989)
  • Orden y misterio (Buenos Aires, 1996)
  • Iz dolge vigilije (Ljubljana, 2002)

External links


Sources

  • Bojan Godeša, Kdor ni z nami, je proti nam: slovenski izobraženci med okupatorji, Osvobodilno fronto in protirevolucionarnim taborom (Ljubljana: Cankarjeva založba, 1995).
  • Mitja Ogrin, "Milan Komar", preface to Milan Komar: Razmišljanja ob razgovorih (Ljubljana: Založba Družina, 2000)
  • Igor Senčar, "Milan Komar", afterword to Milan Komar: Pot iz mrtvila (Ljubljana: Študentska založba, 1999)
  • Enrique María Serra, "Milan Komar - Maestro de realismo vivido", Huellas, n.4/2006 (1.4. 2006)
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