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Delfim Pinto dos Santos | |
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| Born | 6 November 1907 (1907-11-06) |
| Died | 25 September 1966(1966-09-25) (aged 58) |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | |
| Main interests |
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| Notable ideas | 'Pluriverse' Regions of Reality Philosophy as Aporia |
| Signature | |
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Delfim Pinto dos Santos (1907–1966), was a Portuguese academic, philosopher, educationist, essayist and book and movie reviewer.
Delfim Santos was born inOporto, Portugal in 1907, to Arnaldo Pinto and Amelia dos Santos Oliveira. His father was a goldsmith and trained him for his craft, which Delfim successfully practiced as apprentice until Arnaldo's untimely death, occurred when the son was aged 15. Still under the impact of his recent orphan condition, the young Delfim kept the family business running for a while, only to become aware that his vocation and motivation lay elsewhere and thereby decided to pursue a lifelong engagement with study and intellectual quest. By that time he had converted from a non-religious upbringing toProtestantism, and became an active member of the cultural and sportive activities of the PortugueseYMCA.
By 1927, aged 20 (rather late according to average standards of 16/17) he completed high school and enrolled in theUniversity of Porto Faculty of Arts graduating in History and Philosophy in 1931, being one of the last students of this famous school, closed by the authorities shortly after. He hadLeonardo Coimbra and Teixeira Rego as his mentors during his student years and among his colleagues wereAgostinho da Silva andAdolfo Casais Monteiro.
Immediately after graduation he initiated a career as high school teacher, first in Oporto, then in Lisbon, where he made hisaggregation exam required to become a teacher in state run Portuguese high-schools. Having applied to a fellowship to study under the guidance ofMartin Heidegger at Freiburg, he was awarded against his will a similar position inVienna, Austria where he settled by October 1935 as a fellow of the Portuguese Higher Culture Institute, to study underMoritz Schlick,Karl Bühler andOthmar Spann, attending some of the famous Vienna Circle seminars, and writing his critical study on Logical Positivism entitledPositivism: a critical reappraisal (Situação Valorativa do Positivismo) which he presented as his two-years fellowship final report to the Portuguese funding entity. During the Winter Semester of 1936 he visited Berlin to meetNicolai Hartmann andEduard Spranger. Finally, he completed his critical survey ofneopositivism by moving to the UK and studying withJohn Macmurray at theUniversity College, London, and withCharlie Dunbar Broad[1] andGeorge Edward Moore atTrinity College, Cambridge, where the neopositivists had another stronghold (in 1939 the later was to be replaced byLudwig Wittgenstein,[2] a former loose associate of theVienna Circle).
By mid-1937 he returned to Portugal for a short leave and was summoned to take the position of Portuguese Language Lecturer at the Luso-Brazilian Institute of theUniversity of Berlin, a position he was actively seeking in order to become familiar withphenomenology. In the German capital he attended regularly the philosophical seminar ofNicolai Hartmann while getting also acquainted with some prominentMartin Heidegger's disciples likeErnesto Grassi. Delfim Santos was among the first to introduceMartin Heidegger to a Portuguese audience in his 1938 essayHeidegger and Hölderlin or the Essence of Poetry (Heidegger e Hölderlin ou a Essência da Poesia). Meanwhile, Delfim received his PhD in 1940 fromCoimbra University presenting a thesis onKnowledge and Reality (Conhecimento e Realidade), and returned to Berlin where he was to remain until 1942, the year in which he permanently resettled in Portugal.
In 1947 he attained the position of Assistant Professor of Pedagogy atLisbon University, submitting his essay onThe Existential Foundations of Pedagogy (Fundamentação Existencial da Pedagogia), considered his most influential work among Portuguese and Brazilian educators and teachers, published in Portugal in 1946 and in Brazil in 1952. In 1950 he became the first Chair Professor of Pedagogy in Portugal. Among other subjects, he taught onHistory of Ancient Philosophy,History of Education,Ethics and School Administration. He also taughtPsychology during several years in thePortuguese Military Academy.
Delfim attended numerous international Philosophy congresses and symposia, namely the 9th International Congress of Philosophy - Descartes Congress, Paris, France 1937, the 10th International Congress of Philosophy - Amsterdam. Holland 1948, the 1949 'First National Philosophy Congress' in Mendoza, Argentina, organized by theUniversity of Cuyo,[3] and the 1st International Philosophy Congress of Brazil, São Paulo, Brazil, 1954, organized byMiguel Reale. He also took part in some of the celebratedEranos seminars in Switzerland. Under his guidance aCenter for Pedagogic Studies was created in 1962 by theCalouste Gulbenkian Foundation, of which he became the Director until his early death, occurred in 1966, aged 58.
He was member of theLisbon Academy of Sciences and exchanged personal correspondence with international scholars and writers such asMircea Eliade,Constantin Noica,Hermann Hesse,Ernesto Grassi andMichael de Ferdinandy. One high school and several streets were named after him in the Portuguese districts of Lisbon, Evora, and Matosinhos (Oporto). In 1965 he was awarded a decoration by the Education Secretary of the city of São Paulo, Brazil.
Most of his writings were assembled in four volumes published by theCalouste Gulbenkian Foundation, ranging from philosophical and educational themes to cultural and issues of his time. His main books are:
Aware of the cinema educational and formative potential, he wrote a number of movie reviews, namely onThe Prodigal Son (Luis Trenker, Germany 1934),The Third Man (Carol Reed, USA 1949) andUmberto D. (Vittorio de Sica, Italy 1952).
Some of his texts are available online:
Delfim's philosophical writings cover the study of modern and contemporary European thinkers, specially the contemporary GermanPhenomenologists, adopting theaporetic and anti-systematic approach to philosophical inquiry similar to onto-phenomenologistNicolai Hartmann. Also from Hartmann's 'levels of reality' he adapted and further developed his ownpluriversal or ratherpluriregional views on 'reality', ascribing the scientific method of study exclusively to the material world and not to philosophical matters as theneopositivists propounded. He wrote comprehensively about the history of philosophical thinking in Portugal and Brazil, particularly onSilvestre Pinheiro Ferreira (1769–1846) arguably Brazil's first philosopher, and onFrancisco Suárez (1548–1617), a Spanish scholar active atCoimbra University between 1597 and 1616.
In Education his work was highly influential to the renewal of Portuguese pedagogical ideas, aiming at an existential synthesis between Philosophy and Pedagogy. Delfim made extensive public proposals towards a complete reform of the Portuguese educational system from kindergarten to university, showing a strong concern for professional instruction and apprenticeship; he recommendedcharacterology as an auxiliary to vocational guidance and published several essays on foreign pedagogues, namely onJohann Heinrich Pestalozzi andMaria Montessori, making also pioneering research on some of the most prominent Portuguese educationalists, notablyAlmeida Garrett (1799–1854) andAdolfo Coelho (1847–1919).
In the literary and aesthetic field he was one of the directors of theJournalA Águia and one of the ideologues of thePresença literary movement, (the so-called "Portuguese SecondModernism) which favored 'psychologism' by paying special attention to the protagonists' inner thoughts and conflicts of conscience, and articulated the Portuguese editions of German authorHermann Hesse, 1946 LiteratureNobel laureate, whose work was deeply inspired by educational issues.
