Leonardo Polo

Leonardo Polo Barrena (Madrid, February 1, 1926-Pamplona, February 9, 2013) was a Spanish philosopher, university professor and writer.

Biography

He completed his primary education studies at the French Lyceum. In 1936 he began high school in his hometown. At that time, his father held the position of Deputy Mayor of Madrid. When the Civil War broke out, the Government of the Republic urged the civilian population to leave the capital of Spain, so Leonardo moved with his family to Albacete and took his first two high school courses there.

During the years 1937 to 1939, his father, who was a lawyer, served as Chief Prosecutor of the Albacete Court. Once the war was over, they returned to Madrid, except for his father, who was forced to go into exile, first in Nicaragua and then in Chile, where he died in 1946.

Leonardo continued his high school education at the Cardenal Cisneros Institute in Madrid. From his high school days he remembers reading Balmes' Fundamental Philosophy, which he read when he was 15 years old. The basic idea that he draws from this work is the importance of first principles in philosophy. His subsequent reading of the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas makes him think that this author can be corrected or expanded on some points, contrary to what most Thomists thought. Another author he read at that time is Ortega. He especially liked The Spectator, his literary style and the brilliance of his prose. He also read Zubiri, specifically, the work titled Nature, History and God. He attended a Zubiri course given at the Madrid Chamber of Commerce, and another by Ortega on Toynbee.

In addition to his philosophical readings, he also dedicates time to novels and poetry, especially in French and Spanish.

He finished high school in 1945 (19 years old) and obtained an extraordinary prize in the State exam. For family reasons, he decided to study Law (after having considered doing mathematics), since this career offered him the possibility of joining the law firm. of his uncle.

In 1949, upon finishing Law, he decided to enroll in doctoral courses in Law. After finishing his doctoral courses, he prepares for competitive examinations that he did not compete for and ends up opting for research. You will read Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Heidegger's Being and Time, Kant's Critique of Practical Reason, as well as writings by Aristotle and of Leibniz, the Ethics of Spinoza and others, and enrolled in Philosophy and Letters.

In 1950, Polo began to work with a concept that would mark his work as a philosopher. It is about the mental limit, which will influence thinkers like Trías in some way.

In 1952 he traveled to Rome with a scholarship from the Higher Council for Scientific Research to research the philosophy of law. In Rome he came into contact with jurists such as Del Vecchio and Capograssi, and dedicated himself to developing his 1950 discovery linked to the topic of his doctoral thesis "The Existential Character of Natural Law". However, he ends up focusing on philosophy, moving away from legal approaches.

In 1954 he returned from Rome and joined the University of Navarra to teach Natural Law and, later, Fundamentals of Philosophy and History of Philosophical Systems, as professor of History of Philosophy. At the same time he continued his studies of philosophy at the Central University of Madrid as a free student, and later transferred his academic record to the University of Barcelona due to the refusal of the Psychology professor to examine him because he was a free student. After completing his Philosophy degree, he took doctoral courses in Madrid and began his doctoral thesis in philosophy, directed by Antonio Millán-Puelles. In 1961 he obtained his doctorate with research on Descartes. In it he presents him as a voluntarist compared to the usual cliché of framing him as a rationalist. This caught the attention of thinkers like Paul Ricoeur, who while passing through Navarra in 1967 asked for Leonardo Polo, although he could not find him, since at that time Polo already held the chair of Fundamentals of Philosophy in Granada, obtained by competitive examination in 1966. The doctoral thesis on Descartes, published in 1963 under the title Evidence and reality in Descartes, won the Menéndez Pelayo prize from the Higher Council for Scientific Research.

In 1966, he left the University of Navarra. He took advantage of the layoff to sit for the exams for Professor of History of Philosophy at the University of Granada. After obtaining this position, he remained in Granada for two years, teaching his teaching. In 1968 he returned to the University of Navarra as an Ordinary Professor. There he was Director of Studies of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (1968-1972), and Director of the Department of History of Philosophy and Sciences. Between 1964 and 1969, he taught during the summer at the University of La Rábida (Huelva).

Starting in 1979, he made a series of trips around America. Specifically, he visited and taught his academic teaching at universities such as the Panamericana in Mexico (1979, 1983 and 1990); the University of Piura (Peru), to which he traveled seventeen times in the period 1983-1999, and where he received the Honoris Causa Doctorate (1994); the Universidad de la Sabana in Bogotá (Colombia), where he was five times between 1986 and 1997; and the University of Los Andes (Santiago de Chile), on six occasions between 1987 and 1998. In Europe, he taught at the Universitá de la Santa Cruz in Rome, on three occasions between 1990 and 1998; the University of Palermo in Sicily, on one occasion. In Spain, he visited the University of Malaga fourteen times, between 1979 and 1998.

In 1996 he was named Extraordinary Professor at the University of Navarra, and the following year, Honorary Professor. Since 1998, after giving a seminar at the University of Navarra and during the summer at the Universities of Los Andes (Chile) and Piura (Peru), he stopped teaching. From the fall of 1997, and until a week before his death, he worked in office 2200 of the former Library of the University of Navarra, and at his home on 6 Monasterio de la Oliva Street, in Pamplona.

Thought

His thinking proposes a methodological renewal of philosophy based on a discovery: what he calls the human mental limit (which lies in objectifying thought). This limit can be abandoned, and by doing so the great themes of philosophy are faced in a new and more fruitful way.

The detection of the mental limit corresponds to the discovery of the insertion of the intellectual operation in the scope of the person who exercises it. The person is more than the thought of them. Thought, the logical nature of man, is not something absolute, unconditioned, that imposes itself on individual subjectivity; but a manifestation of the person who provides it, according to which man has a world before him. The abandonment of the limit, then, will allow access to the extramental being, as independent of human thought and not referred to it. And also, on the other hand, to the personal being itself, which is not exhausted in the mere thinking nature of the person, nor does it refer to it.

The extramental being is a principle, the first principle of non-contradiction; and it is noted as persistence, because it would be contradictory for being to cease. For its part, the extramental essence is the analysis of the principle: its analysis in the different senses of causality. The joint consideration of causality is the physical universe. But the universe is created, because its existence depends on God: the non-contradictory cause refers to the original identity.

The personal being rather than existing, it must coexist. And it is described as being in addition, always in addition. Adding oneself, accompanying one another, contributing, and thus remaining oneself is what constitutes freedom: the person is existentially free. For this reason, the person has intimacy, does not close in on himself, and manifests in his essence: he disposes according to it. It is donal and free intimacy.

Finally, God is the original being, distinct from that which begins and from whom it is added. The Origin is the unfathomable identity and the unfathomable intimacy.

Tributes and the publication of his Complete Works

In 2014 a symposium was held in Malaga focused on the philosophy of Leonardo Polo.

Subsequently, in June 2019, the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Navarra held an event in memory of Polo, in which the edition of series A of his Complete Works, a compendium that collects the work that Polo carried out. Series A, published by Eunsa, consists of twenty-seven volumes that include 45 books and other minor writings already published. Series B will offer unpublished texts, preserved in the General Archive of the University of Navarra (AGUN), along with transcription of recorded tapes.