{"id":10031,"date":"2012-01-04T18:42:26","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T18:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/01\/04\/xavier-ortiz-monasterio-1926-2011-an-existentialist-remembered\/"},"modified":"2012-01-04T18:42:26","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T18:42:26","slug":"xavier-ortiz-monasterio-1926-2011-an-existentialist-remembered","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/01\/04\/xavier-ortiz-monasterio-1926-2011-an-existentialist-remembered\/","title":{"rendered":"Xavier Ortiz Monasterio (1926-2011): An Existentialist Remembered"},"content":{"rendered":"

My former colleague Xavier Monasterio died last year on this date.  Curiously, January 4th was also the date of death of his philosophical hero Albert Camus.  This being a weblog, and thus an online journal of the personal and the impersonal, I didn't want the day to pass without a brief remembrance of the man.  I'll say a little today and perhaps supplement it later on. <\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

We were initially strongly attracted to each other's intensity and passion.  We shared the conviction that philosophy is an existential matter, not a an academic game or something merely theoretical.  And we were both steeped in Continental philosophy, he having studied in France, and I in Germany.  Husserl and Heidgger, Sartre and Camus provided a common vocabulary and set of concerns. Discussions ensued, and his kindness and humanity were made manifest.  He took me to see his personal doctor once when I was extremely ill and hardly able to move.  He loaned me his car so that I could check the mileage of a running route.  He had me over for drinks and dinner on several occasions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Real friendship is not possible among those who take ideas seriously except on the ground of broad agreement on fundamentals.  There is of course no fruitful interaction without difference, but the latter must be grounded in deep agreement.  Soon enough it became clear to me that Monasterio's brand of existentialism was repugnant to me, infected as it was with irrationalism and an anti-philosophical attitude which he expressed on many occasions and in many different ways.  If there is one thing I cannot abide it is that form of misology <\/a>which is the anti-philosophical attitude.<\/span><\/p>\n

He once said to me, "Find yourself a girl, fall in love, and you will forget all about philosophy."  To my mind, that remark betrayed an utter failure to appreciate what philosophy is. It would be as if someone said, "Find yourself a girl, fall in love, and you will forget all about God, the soul, and the meaning of life." <\/span><\/p>\n

In graduate school I was friends for a time with a New York Jew, a classic red-diaper baby who was brought up  Communist in the way I was brought up Catholic.  The pattern was similar: our passion, intensity, and seriousness brought Paul Eckstein and me together but then our ideological differences drove us apart.  Eckstein once said to me, "Read Marx, understand that the shit is about to hit the capitalist fan, and you'll forget all about Husserl."  At the time, Husserl was my main research interest.<\/span><\/p>\n

Monasterio the Catholic and Eckstein the Communist had their worldviews, worldviews with ready-made answers to all the ultimate questions.  How could they appreciate philosophy?  They felt no need for it.  The pattern is repeated also in those scientistic types who make of science a worldview.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My former colleague Xavier Monasterio died last year on this date.  Curiously, January 4th was also the date of death of his philosophical hero Albert Camus.  This being a weblog, and thus an online journal of the personal and the impersonal, I didn't want the day to pass without a brief remembrance of the man.  I'll … Continue reading “Xavier Ortiz Monasterio (1926-2011): An Existentialist Remembered”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92,145],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiographical","category-obituaries"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}