Fernando Savater

Fernando Fernández-Savater Martín (San Sebastián, June 21, 1947) is a Spanish philosopher, philosophy professor and writer. He stands out in the field of essays and newspaper articles, and has also cultivated the novel and the dramatic genre.

Biography

He was a professor of Philosophy at various universities. In the fall of 1973 he did not have a contract renewed in Madrid, being interpreted as a political retaliation for what there were strikes and student protests.

Once democracy arrived, he began to teach the subject of Ethics at the University of the Basque Country. His outreach work and cultural criticism made him a benchmark for an entire generation in Spain, which made his titles such as Ethics for Amador (1991) or The content of happiness (1986).

Savater considers philosophy as an activity of permanent criticism, expression of subjectivity and even provocation, which he translates into his works through a bold and expressive style that often uses nuance, irony and paradox as reasoning structures. On the other hand, his style has acquired a literary mold through a gradual process of approaching the narrative in which several stages can be detected.

In 1976 he published the essay La infancia recuperada , in its pages he defended the need for novelized fiction and the passion to tell stories against the sophistication of the narrative committed to linguistic and structural experimentation. In his literary criticism, Savater takes up and enthusiastically proposes fantastic narration, the history of ethical and heroic content through the analysis of authors and characters such as Jules Verne, Sherlock Holmes, Guillermo Brown, Jack London or H. P. Lovecraft.

A later stage of his deepening along the narrative itineraries corresponds to Creatures of the air (1979), in which a series of characters from history or literature, such as Tarzan, Sleeping Beauty, Dracula, Juliano the Apostate, Mikhail Bakunin or Savater himself, monologue about their lives, destiny, violence, love or death, and confirm, deny and narrate situations of their existence.

In 1981 he wrote his first novel, Caronte awaits, a detective story that mixes a personal plot with a political conspiracy, and which constitutes a meditation on the forms of evil, crime and revenge. This was followed by Job's Diary (1983) and The Dialect of Life (1985).

He has also written plays, including Juliano en Eleusis (1981), Come to Sinapia (1983) and Guerrero en casa i> (1992).

Thought and style

Savater is a prolific author, who defines himself as a «companion philosopher», in the style of the French philosophes, not as an academic Philosopher with a capital letter. His philosophy is enlightened and vitalist; his way of expression, controversial and iconoclastic; his opinions often sail against the current. His sharp, incisive and ironic style is evident in his newspaper articles, a genre for which he has a preference.

He admits to being influenced by Nietzsche, Cioran and Spinoza, among others. In the seventies he was considered a disciple of Agustín García Calvo for a long time, but from 1981 his paths ostensibly diverged. As he writes in his autobiography Look where , "finding him was fundamental in my intellectual and moral development, no less than later detaching myself from him."

Following Spinoza, he advocates an ethic of wanting as opposed to an ethic of duty. Human beings naturally seek their own happiness and ethics helps to clarify this will and show the ways of its realization. Therefore, ethics should not judge actions by abstract criteria and alien to one's own happiness.

His political philosophy has evolved from libertarian thought, which he maintained in the 1970s, to the democratic, social democratic, liberal, and universalist individualism of his later stage. The turning point from the young to the mature Savater can be situated in The Hero's Task (1981), where he writes: «I have been a revolutionary without anger; I hope to be a conservative without vileness." He has also often reflected on the role of religions in current democratic societies, advocating a secular society model in its broadest sense, which helps to confront not only theocratic approaches, "but also identity sectarianisms of ethnicisms, nationalisms and any other that intends to submit the rights of abstract and egalitarian citizenship to a segregationist determinism". Criticized from Catholic sectors, Ricardo de la Cierva described Savater and Francisco Umbral as "tambourine intellectuals" who fought in the pages of El País "for the record of nonsense that was previously called blasphemy".

Fernando Savater at an event at the Complutense University of Madrid.

From firstly libertarian and then liberal coordinates, he has always opposed nationalism in general:

Nationalism in general is imbecilizing, although there are mild and severe ones, those of the aliron's forumph and the one that puts the knife in the mouth to kill. There are people without historical knowledge, tuned nationalism and some are virulent. Fortunately in Catalonia the situation is different from that of the Basque Country, although that minority is an alarm that tells us that something needs to be done. Nationalism is an inflammation of the nation as appendicitis is an inflammation of the appendix.

Savater opposes those parties that make patriotic exaltation their main sign of identity. His ideological evolution was revealed in the controversy he had with Javier Sádaba, also a Basque philosophy professor, with whom he wrote the book entitled Euskadi: thinking about the conflict in the eighties, at the same time that he supported with his sign the legalization of Herri Batasuna. His ideological and philosophical evolution has later led him to clearly anti-nationalist positions, which have made him one of the referents for the citizens of the Basque Country who feel oppressed by Basque nationalism. Savater considers the policies of the PNV and EA to be exclusive, nineteenth-century and complacent with ETA terrorism. Without renouncing his Basque status, he considers himself anti-nationalist and rejects Basqueism, a position that he describes as “kind nonsense.” He is also an active collaborator of the Ciudadanos de Catalunya association.

He requested a boycott of the 2007 Basque elections because he understood that they were neither fair nor democratic, due to ETA. Savater, defender of the Spanish Constitution, the Guernica statute and the unity of the State, has expressed on numerous occasions his opposition to all types of nationalism and his desire to overcome them in favor of an ideal of shared universal humanity, translated into a governmental body with world authority over the governments of national states, which would serve to resolve disputes and carry out the administrative tasks of common utility.

He has actively collaborated with the Plataforma Pro, which was created with the aim of creating a new national political party capable of transcending the traditional left-right political division. This party was created in September 2007 under the name of Unión Progreso y Democracia, and Fernando Savater, together with Rosa Díez, Albert Boadella and Mario Vargas Llosa, was one of those who took part in his presentation. Savater became the head of the Senate list for the Madrid Circumscription in the 2015 General Elections, obtaining 118,683 votes, and later he was ranked number 5 on the list for Madrid in the 2016 General Elections.

Alvaro Pombo (left), together with Fernando Savater (right), in an act of UPyD.

In June 2008, he was the main promoter —together with twenty other intellectuals including Carmen Iglesias, Mario Vargas Llosa, Albert Boadella, Álvaro Pombo and Arcadi Espada— of the so-called Manifesto for the Common Language, in which it is argued that «citizens are the ones who have linguistic rights and not the territories, much less the languages». The Manifesto claims the right of citizens throughout Spain to receive their education and interact with the Administration, both state and regional, in Spanish ("common language" of all Spaniards, as defined by the manifesto), whatever their language maternal. He maintains that the study plans must include options that contemplate the other co-official autonomous languages, but never as exclusive vehicular languages, and criticizes the situation that, in his opinion, occurs in certain autonomous communities, in which Spanish is discriminated against in the public administration and study plans and the use of the other co-official languages is imposed on citizens.

In April 2013, he was considered one of the 65 most influential thinkers in the world (47th position) by the British magazine Prospect, specialized in politics and economics, as a result of a vote carried out in more from 100 countries with more than 10,000 votes counted.

On September 17, 2017, he was the first signatory of the manifesto Stop the coup. 500 professors in defense of constitutional democracy which was made public ten days after the independence majority of the Parliament of Catalonia approved between September 6 and 7 the Self-Determination Referendum Law for Catalonia and the Transitory Law that broke with the constitutional and statutory legality and that were immediately suspended (and later annulled) by the Constitutional Court. The manifesto demanded that the Government of Mariano Rajoy prevent "the holding of a false illegitimate and illegal "referendum", bringing to justice those responsible for this violation of democracy and placing the full weight of the law".

Criticism

His criticisms of Basque nationalism have placed Savater in the midst of frequent polemics. He received death threats from ETA and lived under escort for more than a decade, until the end of 2011. Peripheral nationalists, especially the Basques, accuse him of being a nationalist of the opposite sign, Spanish and centralist.

He received occasional criticism from the Ermua Forum, an organization in which he has actively participated, due to its initial favorable assessment of the dialogue with ETA undertaken by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. He later modified his position.His defense of secularism and freedom of individual decision on issues such as abortion and euthanasia has also won him some detractors. The Manifesto for the Common Language was received with hostility by some peripheral nationalist sectors, who considered it clearly "Spanish bias." They also deny that Spanish is "the common language" throughout Spain.

He has also been in favor of bullfighting, which has earned him strong criticism.

Work

His intellectual and cultural production, made up of more than fifty essays and countless newspaper articles, has been translated into English, French, Swedish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Japanese and Danish. He has won numerous awards, including the National Essay Award, the Anagram, for Invitation to ethics ; the Francisco Cerecedo for journalism and the Planet, for The brotherhood of good luck (in 1993 he had been a finalist for this award with his epistolary novel El jardín de las dudas, about One of his favorite authors, Voltaire, was won by Mario Vargas Llosa that year with Lituma en los Andes). i>), is due to him the translation and dissemination in the Hispanic world of the work of one of the most notable thinkers of contemporary nihilism, Emil Cioran.

He stands out for his interest in bringing philosophy closer to young people, with works such as Ethics for Amador, one of the most popular philosophical-themed books in Spain at the time, Politics for Amador or The questions of life; he also champions popular culture for expressing youthful vitality, from adventure novels, fairy tales, and horror stories to comics and role-playing games.

Fernando Savater has also been concerned with the subject of education: in The value of educating he addresses this subject with analogies and elaborate language, but at the same time makes it motivating and interesting. Aimed especially at primary and secondary school teachers in Mexico, this book was commissioned by Professor Elba Esther Gordillo to motivate teachers to "make the child a knowledge factory and not just a garbage dump" and presents, In addition to the author's analysis of education and the different approaches that it has in Mexico, an important compilation of fragments written by thinkers of all times on education.

Awards and recognitions

• Grand Cross of the Order of the Two of May (2022)
• V Taurino City of Seville (2019)
• Eulalio Ferrer International Prize (2015)
• Doctor honoris causa University of Panama (2014)
• Prize for Culture [Literature] of the Community of Madrid (2013)
• Mariano Award for Journalism of the Daily ABC (2012)
• International Poetry and Essay Award Octavio Paz (2012)
• Novela Spring Prize (2012) by The guests of the princess
• ABC Cultural Award (2010)
• Doctor honoris causa by Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí (2010)
• Doctor honoris causa University of Colima (2010)^{[chuckles]required]}
• Doctor honoris causa by Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (2009)^{[chuckles]required]}
• International Prize for Equality and against Discrimination (2007)
• Doctor honoris causa by Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (2006)
• Doctor honoris causa University of Caracas (2001)
• Concordia Award Fernando Abril Martorell (2000)
• Ortega y Gasset Prize for Journalism (2000)
• Sakharov Prize (2000) for the movement Enough Ya!, which is part of
• Euskadi Silver Award (1999) by The questions of life.
• Continent Journalism Award (1999)
• Doctor honoris causa by Simon Bolivar University (1998)
• Society Award for the Advancement of Critical Thought (1998)
• Francisco Cerecedo Award (1997)
• Finalist of the Planet Prize (1993) with The garden of doubts
• Planeta Award (2008) The brotherhood of good luck
• Ijuve Media Award (1990)
• Pablo Iglesias Award (1989), Social Sciences Section
• National Essay Prize (1982) by The task of the hero
• Anagram Prize (1982) by Invitation to ethics
• World Rehearsal Award (1978) by Pamphlet against the whole