, 4 December 1898 - Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, 21 September 1983) was a Spanish

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 philosopher noted for his intellectual rigor. A major accomplishment of Zubiri's philosophy is its systematic development of a new conception of reality such that within it man, as a "sentient intelligence," appears in a different light. Because man is "relegated" by the "power of the real", his personal reality can now be seen to be intimately connected with being situated in a real context. At the same time, man can be considered the author of his own personal being, his "I", through the appropriation of experience and the exercise of personal freedom within this real context, so that Zubiri can refer to man as the "animal of realities." This openness of man to possibilities is what makes man an "open essence", as opposed to a "closed essence" (i.e., a structure that simply operates according to rules of functionality). Many of his works have been translated into English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 by Thomas B. Fowler, Robert Caponigri and by Nelson Orringer. After his death, the Fundación Xavier Zubiri and the Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America were set up as charities to disseminate his work.

Zubiri's critique of classical metaphysics

Probably the most innovative aspect of Zubiri's philosophy is its critique of classical metaphysics, particularly the notion of reality as "subject" in the Aristotelian sense, that is, the view that reality is separate from and, therefore, to be conceived as autonomous from its context. Zubiri conceives reality as an interconnected structure of "notes,", which structure is "in its own right" to a certain degree (a property Zubiri refers to as "substantivity", in contrast with the classical notion of "substantiality"). The notes themselves are reality's ways of "giving-of-itself" in being, so in this respect reality is actually prior to being rather than being identifiable with being. Thus, Zubiri can criticise the "logification of intellect" that identifies what is intellectively known with being, which in turn leads to the "entification of reality" (identification of reality with being). This critique spans the entire history of philosophy, from Parmenides

Parmenides

Parmenides of Elea was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Greek city on the southern coast of Italy. He was the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy. The single known work of Parmenides is a poem, On Nature, which has survived only in fragmentary form. In this poem, Parmenides...

 to the medieval scholastics

Scholasticism

Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...

 all the way to Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...

 and Heidegger

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...

 (who himself was one of Zubiri's philosophical mentors, along with Edmund Husserl

Edmund Husserl

Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...

).

The possibilities for applying Zubiri's metaphysics in a theological context are quite diverse, owing to its ability to adapt classical metaphysical formulations of theology into Zubiri's own terms. Zubiri himself applied such adaptations to the Nicene

Nicene Creed

The Nicene Creed is the creed or profession of faith that is most widely used in Christian liturgy. It is called Nicene because, in its original form, it was adopted in the city of Nicaea by the first ecumenical council, which met there in the year 325.The Nicene Creed has been normative to the...

 doctrine of the Trinity

Trinity

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons : the Father, the Son , and the Holy Spirit. The three persons are distinct yet coexist in unity, and are co-equal, co-eternal and consubstantial . Put another way, the three persons of the Trinity are of one being...

, the Incarnation

Incarnation

Incarnation literally means embodied in flesh or taking on flesh. It refers to the conception and birth of a sentient creature who is the material manifestation of an entity, god or force whose original nature is immaterial....

 of Christ, and the Real Presence

Real Presence

Real Presence is a term used in various Christian traditions to express belief that in the Eucharist, Jesus Christ is really present in what was previously just bread and wine, and not merely present in symbol, a figure of speech , or by his power .Not all Christian traditions accept this dogma...

 of the Eucharist, as well as other diverse theological subjects. Of note is the intrinsic compatibility of Zubiri's notion of reality as prior to being with the earlier patristic notion that God Himself is beyond being. Thus, Zubiri's system has significant potential for reconciling what appear to be inherent contradictions between Eastern and Western theology, such as the debate over the so-called "essence-energies distinction" and the filioque

Filioque clause

Filioque , Latin for "and the Son", is a phrase found in the form of Nicene Creed in use in the Latin Church. It is not present in the Greek text of the Nicene Creed as originally formulated at the First Council of Constantinople, which says only that the Holy Spirit proceeds "from the Father":The...

. Unfortunately, the application of Zubiri's work in the theological sphere has been relatively limited apart from Ignacio Ellacuría

Ignacio Ellacuría

Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J. was a Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian who did important work as a professor and rector at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" , a Jesuit university in El Salvador founded in 1965...

's work in liberation theology

Liberation theology

Liberation theology is a Christian movement in political theology which interprets the teachings of Jesus Christ in terms of a liberation from unjust economic, political, or social conditions...

.

Works

• Sócrates y la sabiduría griega [1940]
• Naturaleza, Historia, Dios [1942; 6th ed. 1974]
• El hombre, realidad personal [1963]
• Sobre la esencia [1963]
• El origen del hombre [1964]
• Notas sobre la inteligencia humana [1966–67]
• La dimensión histórica del ser humano [1973]
• El hombre y su cuerpo [1974]
• El problema teologal del hombre [1975]
• El concepto descriptivo del tiempo [1976]
• Respectividad de lo real [1979]
• Inteligencia Sentiente: Inteligencia y Realidad [1980]
• Prólogo a la traducción norteamericana de Naturaleza, Historia, Dios [1981]
• Inteligencia Sentiente: Inteligencia y Logos [1982]
• Reflexiones teológicas sobre la eucaristía [1981]
• Inteligencia Sentiente: Inteligencia y Razón [1983]
• ¿Qué es investigar?

External links

• Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America
• Fundación Xavier Zubiri (Madrid)
• Materiales sobre Xavier Zubiri by Roberto Hernáez [Spain
• El Estallido de la Verdad en América Latina Alejandro Sánchez - Revista Nómadas- (Xavier Zubiri en Colombia -Grupo de Bogotá)