Language Spanish Nationality mexican | Name Juan Silva Role Professor | |
Born November 6, 1945
Mexico City, Mexico ( 1945-11-06 ) Occupation philosopher, Cathedratic Professor, and academic functionary Literary movement Metaphysics, Ethics and philosophic Anthropology Notable awards Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz University Merit Medal Alma mater National Autonomous University of Mexico | ||
Juan Manuel Silva Camarena (Mexico City, November 6, 1945), is an important Mexican philosopher, Cathedratic Professor and academic functionary who has already brought many generations of students up according with the ideas of conviction of inviolable vocational compromise and inalienable moral responsibility about the actual situation of humanity in the world he develops in his work.
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Biography
Juan Manuel Silva Camarena was born on November 6, 1945, younger son of the candy, chocolate and Mexican cream (rompope) manufacturer Heladio Silva Chávez (1887–1963), who was Gutiérrez Nájera's El Duque Job admirer and native to Tancítaro, Michoacán, and Refugio Camarena Padilla (1913–2000), born in Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco, tireless reader of Mexican poets like Manuel Acuña, Juan de Dios Peza and Manuel M. Flores, and novelists such as Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie or Georges Simenon. Doña Refugio, daughter of a prestigious baker, brought her four children up by reciting them poems, popular saying and proverbs.
Young Juan Manuel read Freud and Schopenhauer before he was 15, and while attending the Junior High School, he read the chapters that Daily El Fígaro published weekly about the Memories of José Vasconcelos, friend of his uncle, José Silva, who was professor in the Faculty of Law of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
When he was on High School, he used to visit the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature to listen some Greek or Latin classes, which complemented the compulsory classes of the Preparatoria Número 4 humanities area. There, he personally met the writer juan José Arreola, who explained in a conference the adventure of his peculiar writing education, awakening in the young Juan Manuel an admiration to his auto-didactic training, as he understood he couldn't study Philosophy by his own, so he should look for a guide or master.
While he was attending the 3rd year on High-School, he published his first article about vocation on the school newspaper: La Fragua Universitaria. On 1969, afterwards living the striking experience of 1968, he was accepted to UNAM in the Philosophy Course.
Later in 1973, by means of public contest (in Spanish 'concurso de oposición', a way to enter a course or academic vacancy), he incorporated Juan Garzón Ontology course in the Facultad de Filosofía y Letras as help professor, and achieved a professor vacancy for the subject: Ethics and Mankind Knowledge in the recently founded Science and Humanities College too, where he began teachindg his incipient thought about the human nature, central topic of his philosophic preoccupations.
In 1971, he married Rosario Grimaldi. His honeymoon was also a chance for trying to find his philosophic guide in any of the European thinkers. In Paris he looked unsuccessfully for Jean-Paul Sartre, but successfully he found Gabriel Marcel. At last he could visit the magic world of the Sorbonne (in that days with Pierre Aubenque ad his investigations about Aristoteles) and the new Nanteterre University (with Paul Ricoeur and his Will Philosophy, and Emmanuel Levinas and his Subjectivity Defense in his Critic to the Totality Idea).
Back to Mexico in 1972, where his daughter Marianna was born, he could discover in its fair measure his Metaphysics teacher Eduardo Nicol, author of Metafísica de la expresión (1957) and Los principios de la ciencia (1965). The eminent Catalan teacher, who belongs to the Republican Spanish exile to Mexico, admitted him as member of the Metaphysics Seminar and years later he appointed him Academic Secretary of that Seminar, post he held until Nicol died in 1990.
Education and Professional Work
Juan Manuel Silva Camarena learned and taught in the UNAM: in 1977 he presented a brilliant thesis about theoretic methods of philosophic knowledge that the human being has used for his own self-knowledge: Autognosis. Since 1978, by own merits and the recommendation of recognized professors as Nicol himself, Ramón Xirau, Juliana González and Wonfilio Trejo, he enjoyed an UNAM scholarship to study the master and doctorate in Philosophy. His master average was 9.7 and his doctorate average, 10. Once, when some of his pupils were praising his way of teaching Philosophy, he answered immediately: “Well. I did have good teachers: Nicol, Xirau, Sánchez Vázquez, Villoro...”
In December 1981 he received an UNAM official document, signed by principal Octavio Romero which declared professor Silva Camarena winner in the public contest for a definitive designation as professor in the Class of Metaphysics at the Philosophy College of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature. He also taught regularly in that Faculty Philosophic Anthropology, where he started exploring the psychoanalysis as a particular man theory.
His youth interest in psychology and Freud carried him, first, to study as second career the Degree Course in Psychology (1979), and then to make, in 1981, the Master in Psychoanalysis, at the Investigation and Psychoanalytic Studies Center which was directed by Néstor Braunstein and Frida Saal. That year, he redacted his investigation Hacia una metafísica del inconsciente.
He was hired as professor in the Universidad Iberoamericana in 1985, and for many years he gave courses and conferences, he directed his Philosophic Anthropology Seminar and published works and translations at the Philosophy Magazine that Rubén Sanabria ran.
From 1992 to 1998 he was the first principal of the Universidad del Claustro de Sor Juana, which he founded, and in which he could create degree courses innovative programs and prestigious cultural events, such as the Cultural Stages, designed to bring the students closer to the distinguished voices of culture in Mexico.
Work
Book gathered work:
[[Archivo:O. Paz, M. Limón.jpg|thumb|Octavio Paz, Miguel M. Limón and Juan Manuel Silva Camarena, in 1996]]