The Department

information | An historical introduction

If we reviewed the history of the philosophical studies in our University, in the more than 150 years than they separate to us of its modern renewal, it is not by noble and dry erudition. Neither to congratulate us of a past that all we know that it is full of outer limitations and a few inner deficits.

Obviously, Philosophy studies had changed to much in our University during this century and a half of development. From a subjet routinely distributed in all the faculties, it has become a whole Faculty that it has more of a thousand of students. In this evolution a series of stages has followed one another marking the style of the work made step by step.

The first period, and one of the most prosperous, was the 'Renaixença' one, during the years 1830 and 1860 of th 19th Century. It was the moment of the Restoration of the University and of a certain comeback of the education of the Philosophy after the long intellectual ostracism of 17th and 18th Centuries. The starter one of the new direction was Ramon Martí d'Eixalà, that already had been professor of the active School of the Junta de Comercio, an institution that covered in Barcelona the vacuum created by the loss of the University at the beginning of century XIX. Martí, a liberal and a moderate empirist, if that expression is allowed, went away from the dominant scholastic in the University of Cervera, and was influenced by the moderate academic versions of the informed philosophy that Royer-Collard and Cousin were giving in France. The eclecticism was also the main interest that prevailed in the first modern university philosophy of our country. A sign of this was that the philosophy began to teach itself in the University of Barcelona with the denomination of "Ideology", expression removed by Martí from Destutt de Tracy, apprentice of Condillac. This fact remarkably contrasts with the prevailing catholic thought then in the peninsula, which had in Balmes, disciple of Martí in Cervera, its main exponent.

At the same cultural period of 'Renaixença', at the time of Isabel II and the formation of the pragmatic mentality of the Catalan bourgeoisie, Xavier Llorens i Beard became continuator of the exhibition of a philosophy that, as Martí d'Eixalà postulated, begins with the psychological study of the conscience. Llorens went further on this and insisted on the correlation of the conscience with supposed determinations of the spiritual reality: the common sense and Herder's "National Spirit", to end up adjudging to the philosophy one more purely speculative than propedeutic function, i.e. the analysis of the foundations of thinking more than of the principles and objects of the thought. The Aristotelian Metaphysics begun to be put at issue. In this sense, it is very revealing that after exposing its theoretical philosophy, inspired by the Scottish school of common sense (Reid, Hamilton), that also had a certain fortune in France, Llorens begun its exhibition of a practical philosophy with a praise of Kant and a partial acceptance of its ethical rationalism. This seems enough surprising in relation to a traditionalistic culture like the one of the Catalan Renaixença. But it is not strange to us if we thought that it is also the moment of affirmation of the Catalan industrial bourgeoisie, and therefore of the moral of the autonomy of the subject.

When this professor passed off, the philosophy studies entered a prolonged lethargy. A period of relative progress was closed to open another one of frankly decadence regarding to this education. This period is simultaneous with the preservative reaction of the First Republican experience, reaction where it entered, naturally, the traditionalistic change of the Catalan Nationalist Movement. And, in individual, the nth renewal of the scholastic Tomism. The crisis of the philosophical studies was in favor agravated by the increase of the centralism of the Spanish University that already began with the 'Moyano' Law towards 1860. Little by little, the university philosophy fell into the sleepiness and the routine. The atony was so great that it was necessary to create, by this and other reasons, a parallel University: the Estudis Universitaris Catalans, inaugurated in 1903. Eugeni d'Ors was in charge of Philosophy and, specially, of Logic and Methodology of Sciences, following his work of diffusion of the new scientific and philosophical thought that we will find later in his Seminary of Philosophy. In contrast to it, when the School of Philosophy created its Section of Philosophy, in 1912, the first University professor who was named, Cosme Parpal, was a monk who counted between his merits the writing of a book on the infantile laziness and another work on "Santa Teresa de Jesus before psychology". However, everything was not in this way. Soon Jaume Serra Húnter occupied the Chair of History of the Philosophy, and Tomas Carreras i Artau, the one of Ethics. On the other hand, Pere Font i Puig, perhaps more remarkable philosophically than the previous ones, replaced Parpal in Psychology after the death of its holder.

The studies of which we spoke experience a fort increase of level and interest with the entrance towards the end of the '20s of Joaquim Xirau, that directed the School of Philosophy and after being declared "autonomous", like the one of Madrid, in 1931.

But the political regime that prevailed after the Civil War did not allow the continuity of this moment of splendor of the studies of philosophy in our University, being passed a century from the initial work of Martí d'Eixalà. In 1939 Xirau, Serra Húnter, Nicol, Casanovas, Roura i Parella went to the exile. Others, like Calsamiglia, were released of teaching. We entered, thus, in a new stage of repression and censorship and, therefore, of academic impoverishment. There were exceptions, like the presence of Zubiri, in the '40s, and the worthy paper of respect to the function of the teaching staff that exerted in those postwar years Joaquim Carreras i Artau, university professor of History, Jaime Bofill, of Metaphysics, and Francesc Mirabent, of Aesthetics.

No longer we could speak of other global stage of our studies, that the one started in the '60s with the demographic, political and cultural transformation of the University of Barcelona. To describe what meant '60s and '70s for us would now force us to do a too long explanation and a noneasy conclusion. Let us say, at least, that in the theoretical plane it is the time of the recovery of the European currents of the psychoanalysis and the introduction of contemporary tendencies, like the so called Analytical Philosophy and the Estructuralism. In the educational perspective this time is the one of the consolidation of the teaching of professors like Gomà, Siguan, Sanvisens, Canals, Valverde, Lledó, Sacristan, on the final curtain of the antifranquist student movement.

In this time, the School of Philosophy and Education Sciences is constituted (1973), separating the Sections of Philology and History, and soon this faculty is transferred to a new building, in 1975, at the district of Les Corts in Barcelona. In 1987 is created the School of Philosophy, and The Department of Theoretical and Practical Philosophy is created that same year.