Constantin Noica, one
\nof the leading Romanian philosophers of the 20th Century, was born
\nin 1909 in Teleorman County, in the south of Romania, and died on December 4, 1987
\nin Sibiu.<\/p>\n
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He attended the School
\nof Philosophy and Letters of the Bucharest University, where he graduated in 1931
\nwith a paper on the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. He was drawn to the views
\nof Romanian existentialism, whose main promoter was Nae Ionescu, one of Noica’s
\nprofessors. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the 1930s, Noica was close to the Criterion philosophy
\nsociety. In 1940, after a one-year residency in France, he returned to Romania
\nto present his Ph.D. thesis in philosophy. That same year, he left for Berlin,
\nto work with the Romanian-German Institute, and stayed there until 1944, when
\nRomania left its alliance with Nazi Germany. During his stay in Germany, Noica
\nattended Martin Heidegger’s philosophy seminar.<\/p>\n
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After the war and
\nafter the communists seized power in Romania, in 1949 Noica was placed by the
\nauthorities of the time in a forced residence in C\u00e2mpulung-Muscel. In 1958 he
\nwas arrested, prosecuted and sentenced to 25 years of forced labour together
\nwith the other participants in the informal meetings of the so-called Noica-Pillat
\ngroup. <\/p>\n
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Released in 1964, he
\nwas employed by the Logic Centre of the Romanian Academy in Bucharest. This is
\nwhere he became friends with acclaimed Romanian intellectuals like the
\nphilosophers Gabriel Liiceanu, Sorin Vieru, Andrei Ple\u0219u, Andrei Cornea. In
\n1975 he moved to P\u0103ltini\u0219, a mountain resort 15 km from the city of Sibiu, where
\nhe received the visits of those seeking answers to the philosophical questions
\nof the time. <\/p>\n
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Noica’s work
\ncomprises 32 volumes of philosophy, literary and art criticism, journalism articles,
\nof which 20 published during his lifetime and 12 after his death. <\/p>\n
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\n
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The philosopher and essayist
\nAndrei Ple\u0219u was one of Noica’s disciples. Ple\u0219u made it quite clear that he
\nowes his intellectual growth to the jailbirds, as the Romanian intellectual elite
\nsent to prison by the communists were dubbed. One of the jailbirds was
\nConstantin Noica. <\/p>\n
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Andrei Pe\u015fu: I was lucky to get my training next to a
\nnumber of jailbirds. They were of decisive help to me, they shaped me, they
\nmade me rebuild an intellectual continuity with the previous generations, and
\nthis was tremendously important for the young man that I was. I was lucky to
\nmeet early on Alexandru Paleologu, Sergiu Al-George, Remus Nicolescu, Teodor
\nEnescu, I. D. S\u00e2rbu even, although not in his capacity as a teacher. As a
\nstudent, I was colleagues with a gentleman 10 years my senior, who had graduated
\nfrom the theology institute, had also served some time in prison, and now he
\nwas an art history freshman. His name was Marin Tarangul and I had a lot of
\nrespect for him, because he was a gentleman and he had an extraordinary
\nlibrary, for those times. One day he came to me and said, Listen, there is
\nsomeone writing for Rom\u00e2nia literar\u0103 now, you certainly didn’t hear about it.
\nHis name is Constantin Noica. Read him, Marin said, to see what the true
\nlanguage of philosophy sounds like. <\/p>\n
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For Andrei Ple\u0219u, meeting
\nNoica’s philosophy, and then meeting Noica himself, meant the opening of an new
\nexistential and cultural horizon. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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Andrei Ple\u015fu: I read it, I was in awe, it was a completely
\ndifferent sound from what I had heard before. It so happened that I was
\nstudying English with a lady Meri Polihroniade, the widow of a right-wing
\nprofessor who had died in prison, but whose second husband had served time in
\nprison with Mr. Noica. And this is how I was able to get to Mr. Noica. He was
\nliving in Berceni, in a two-room flat in a new apartment building. He was quite
\nproperly dressed, I remember I was surprised with his elegance. After talking
\nwith him, together with Marin, he offered us 10 ancient Greek lessons. And he
\nwas also the one who told me, if you want to take up philosophy, you absolutely
\nneed German, so start learning the language. And he also gave me 3 books to
\nread.<\/p>\n
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Constantin Noica remains
\na great name in Romanian 20th Century philosophy, not only thanks to
\nhis scholarly works and translations from ancient Greek philosophers, but also
\nas a model of professionalism and academic integrity. (AMP)<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Constantin Noica was one of the leading Romanian philosophers of the 20th Century<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":123226,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41141],"tags":[42951,42952,42953,42954],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-131574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-history-show","tag-noica","tag-philosopher","tag-plesu","tag-writer"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n