Ivo Urbančič, Slovenian philosopher, Died at 85

  Educator

Ivo Urbančič was born November 12, 1930, and died on August 8, 2016.

He was a Slovenian philosopher.

Ivo was considered to be one of the fathers of the phenomenological school in Slovenia.

Urbančič’s role in the development of the philosophical thought is comparable to the one of Mihailo Đurić in Serbia or Vanja Sutlić in Croatia.

When he completed technical high school in Kranj, Ivo attended a one-year course in communication technology in Belgrade.

During 1960, the friend Jože Pučnik convinced him to enroll to the University of Ljubljana, where he studied philosophy.

When he was still a student, he became involved with a group of young intellectuals, known as the Critical generation.

During 1970, Ivo received his PhD at the University of Zagreb.

Ivo studied at the University of Vienna between 1969-1970, and between 1971-1972 in Cologne where he worked with the philosopher Karl-Heinz Volkmann-Schluck.

Urbančič became a researcher at the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy at the University of Ljubljana, in 1964.

He developed a critical stance towards the Titoist regime which prevented him from getting a job in the pedagogic process at the University.

But, Urbančič managed to turn the Institute for Sociology and Philosophy into some sort of refuge for critical intellectuals (among the people brought by Urbančič to the Institute was also the philosopher Slavoj Žižek).

During the late 1980s, Ivo worked as an editor in the prestigious publishing house Slovenska matica, where he supervised the translation and first edition of many major Western thinkers in Slovene language.

In his other work, he was instrumental in the publishing of the complete works of Nietzsche.

During the early 1980s, Ivo was one of the co-founders of the alternative review Nova revija.

During 1987, he was among the authors of the Contributions to the Slovenian National Program, an intellectual manifesto demanding a democratic, pluralistic and independent Slovenia.

He was one of the first who introduced the thought of Heidegger to Slovenia.

Ivo also wrote several monographies on Nietzsche.

Urbančič has been interested in questions regarding the issue of political power, the individual existence in the modern and post-modern technological world.

Urbančič developed an interest in the system theory, namely in the functioning of large social systems in the intersection of culture, politics and technology.

Urbančič has been preoccupied and fascinated by the issue of modern nihilism which he sees, following Nietzsche, as the essence of modern society.

He has also written several works on the history of philosophy in the Slovene Lands.

Ivo Urbančič passed away at 85 years old.