Interview: Sources of The Analytic Philosophy in Slovenia

Abstract

The interview of Andrew Schumann, the managing editor of Studia Humana, with Andrej Ule, Professor of Dept. of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Andrew Schumann: Logical tradition as well as tradition of analytic philosophy has deeply rooted in Slovenia, a small Central European country. How can it be explained? In a word why is it? Andrej Ule: Analytic philosophy in Slovenia has its roots in the algebraic logic of the late 19th century and in the Meinong school from the beginning of the 20th century. Our first modern logician was Mihael Markič who at the break of the 19th and 20th century developed his own unique system of algebraic logic and grammar. Mihajlo Rostohar and Franc Veber, both widely recognized Meinong’s pupils, also wrote on logic and epistemology, Veber actually being our first formal philosophy professor at the newly founded University of Ljubljana. I also have to mention a well-known Meinong’s pupil Ernst Mally, who was of Slovene descent, but renounced his Slovenian origin at the wake of the Second World War. Mally was an expert on deontic logic, ontology and epistemology. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the Second World War the philosophy in Slovenia completely broke off with previous schools of thought and for some time Marxist dogmatism prevailed. Luckily enough, some philosophers and intellectuals maintained the free spirit and this is especially true of my professor of logic and methodology Frane Jerman at the Department for Philosophy at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, in the 1960’s.