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Biography

What would it look like if Ferrater Mora had designed his own web site? His biographical sketch would not contain more than four or five dates, while he would have probably acknowledged his awards and honors very modestly by saying he had received some honorary degrees. No doubt he would not have included photographs of himself, although certainly he would have enjoyed displaying the photographs that he took. He would also have included some autobiographical notes for obviously he wrote them to be seen. All of these preferences can be explained by Ferrater's intense interest in seeing his work disseminated and in his lack of interest in promoting himself as the object of attention.

Ferrater Mora would have rejected a detailed biography for the same reason that he refused to write his memoirs: he thought such dates and such memories tended to be boring and were of no help in explaining the intellectual or creative life of a person. As he once said in a video interview, the past would not in the least elucidate the life of someone like himself who was born on the Mediterranean coast. When asked, Ferrater claimed he was not interested in the past. As he asserted, not only in interviews, but also in Being and Death what was of vital importance was the future, having projects. Often he emphasized this idea by repeating that what was significant for him was Zukunst and not Vergangenheit. Nevertheless, many people believe that knowing some of the objective details of Ferrater's life may help to explain his broad interests and vast knowledge or the development of his thought. For this reason, a number of dates have been given in the biographical sketch and a number of awards and distinctions are listed.

Objective data, in the form of dates or photographs, show what Ferrater did or what he looked like, but unless scrutinized with great care, such data reveal little of his personality. What kind of a person was Ferrater? Partial answers to that question can be found scattered throughout this web site: in his own more informal writings on his work, in his letters and interviews, and in the subjective, sometimes contradictory, reflections on him by colleagues, students, friends and acquaintances.