Manuel Sacristan

Manuel Sacristán Luzón (Madrid, September 5, 1925-Barcelona, August 27, 1985) was a Spanish philosopher and one of the most prominent introducers of Marxism in Spain. contributions in various fields, including logic and philosophy of science, and is considered by many to be the most important Spanish philosopher of the second half of the 20th century.

Biography

He was born on September 5, 1925 in Madrid. After the war, his family moved to Barcelona in 1940, the city where, except for rare and rare parentheses, he lived until his death. Raised in a family that supported the Francoist side, he soon became a member of the youth section of the Spanish Falange. He studied Law and Philosophy at the University of Barcelona, where he became a member of the cultural section of the Sindicato Español Universitario (Falange student union). After having contacts with clandestine anarchist groups, Sacristán and two other Falangist colleagues were removed from the SEU, which led to the suicide of one of them and the sending of death threats against Sacristán.

After this, he moved to the German city of Münster to study mathematical logic and philosophy of science (1954-1956), where he met Ulrike Meinhof. Upon his return, he joined the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters and the Faculty of Economics of the University of Barcelona as a non-tenured professor, where he would teach Fundamentals of Philosophy and Science Methodology respectively.

Sacristán's academic career was plagued with difficulties, he was expelled from the university in 1965 as a result of his anti-Franco political stance and was readmitted as a professor after the death of General Franco, being appointed Professor of Social Sciences Methodology at the University of Barcelona, not without multiple difficulties and embarrassments, after the establishment of democracy. During the 1982/1983 academic year he taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In Mexico he met Ángeles Lizón, who accompanied him until her death.

Since 1947 he was a promoter, creator and participant in different periodical publications of a political-cultural nature. Thus he directed, with Juan Carlos García-Borrón, the magazine Qvadrante, he was editor of the magazine Laye, Quaderns de Cultura Catalana (magazine clandestinely published by the PSUC), participated in Nous Horitzons, of which he was director, and in 1977 he was a founding member of the magazine Materiales. Together with Giulia Adinolfi, in 1979 they headed the initiative for a new magazine, Mientras Tanto, aimed at reconsidering the emancipatory-communist ideology in the light of ecological and feminist criticism and around the original Marxist matrix.. In it collaborated, among others, Antoni Domènech, Francisco Fernández Buey or Víctor Ríos.

Throughout his life he carried out intense work as an editor and translator for different publishers. He translated more than 80 works by various authors, including Mario Bunge, Quine, Marx, Engels, Gramsci (who can be considered one of his main intellectual references), Adorno, Karl Korsch, Lukács, Galvano Della Volpe, Galbraith., E. Fisher, Labriola, Marcuse, Agnes Héller, György Márkus, E. P. Thompson, etc. Among his work as an author, the Introduction to logic and formal analysis (Barcelona, Ariel, 1969) and numerous articles and short texts compiled posthumously in several volumes of Pamphlets and materials stand out. > (Barcelona, Icaria, 1983-1985).

In 1975 he projected a critical edition in Spanish of the complete works of Marx and Engels in 68 volumes, under the Editorial Grijalbo label. Only twelve volumes of this project came to light, including Sacristán's translations of Capital, book 1 and 2 and Anti-Dühring. Sacristán also prepared, edited and translated the anthology of texts by Antonio Gramsci for the Siglo XXI publishing house. His editorial work was always determined by a long and sustained commitment to research and teaching in the philosophical, methodological and critical-cultural fields, and a commitment to intervene in the ideological debate of his time.

His first contacts with the Spanish Communist Party occurred during his first stay in Germany. He was a member of the management bodies of the PSUC and the PCE in hiding, developing for many years intense political work on the university and cultural front. As of the 1968 crisis (the French May, the invasion of Czechoslovakia), his discrepancies with the official line of the PCE and the PSUC led him to resign from almost all his posts, although he would remain in his bases until the end of the 1970s. Only in 1979 would he publicly declare that he was not a member of any political party.

In 1978 he joined the Anti-Nuclear Committee of Catalonia and was part of the eco-pacifist movement and against NATO. He was also key in the formation of the Workers' Commissions for education.

Plaque in Barcelona in memory of Manuel Sacristán

Until his death in Barcelona on August 27, 1985, at the age of fifty-nine, Manuel Sacristán developed an intense intellectual activity and political struggle, undoubtedly becoming one of the most important Spanish political philosophers. highlights of the 20th century.

Work

• 1964 - Introduction to logic and formal analysis
• 1967 - The Formation of Marxism in Gramsci
• 1968 - On the Place of Philosophy in Higher Studies
• 1968 - The task of Engels in Anti-Dühring
• 1970 - Lenin and Philosophy
• Elemental logic. Editorial Vicens Vices.
• Heidegger's gnoseological ideas. Editorial Critica.
• About Geronimo. The old mole.
• Marx's scientific work and his notion of science. Editions of cultural intervention.
• About dialectics. The old mole.
• Writings about Capital (and related texts). The old mole.
• Six lectures. About Marxist tradition and new problems. The old mole.
• M.A.R.X. The old mole.
• Ecology and social science. Environmental reflections on the crisis of industrial society. Editorial Irrecuperables, 2021.

Pamphlets and materials:

• 1983 - About Marx and Marxism
• 1984 - Roles of philosophy

Founder of magazines:

• Materials
• In the meantime

Additional bibliography

• BarcelóAlfons (2011). «Notice and memory of Manuel Sacristán». [online]. Biblio 3W. Bibliographic Journal of Geography and Social Sciences (Barcelona: University of Barcelona) 16 (953). ISSN 1138-9796. Archived from the original on December 27, 2014.
• López Arnal, Salvador (2014). «The political Marxism, eccentric, heterodoxical, radical and unismos of a communist epistemologist who loved “The Magic Flute” (pdf). Isegoria (50): 285-304. ISSN 1130-2097.