«Tristia» (Nostalgia de la muntanya).

Abstract

In this text, which was started in February 2016 and concluded at the end of summer 2017, professor Octavi Fullat i Genís (Alforja, 1928) emulates Ovid, who during his exile beside the Black Sea wrote a text with the same title of Tristia, sad thoughts and feelings. The piece is offered to readers as a kind of easing of the conscience or testamentary memoir to account for the development and systematics of Fullat’s anthropological, philosophical and pedagogical thought. In fact, the author’s mental universe is marked by three years during the Civil War (1936–1939) when he lived in direct contact with nature. This natural world collided with the technical and scientific civilisation of modern society. As an alternative, he opted for a culturalist solution inspired by biblical tradition and classical culture. According to Fullat, the human being in the abstract does not exist; we can only talk about the historical human, the human who walks through time. Therefore, Fullat’s world view is informed by historicism (Dilthey), phenomenology (Husserl), existentialism (Heidegger), hermeneutics (Gadamer, Ricoeur) and the philosophy of language (Wittgenstein), as well as other sources such as Catholic and Lutheran theology. The text complements Fullat’s book Impertinentes. El desgarro de pensar (Barcelona, 2016), published by the University of Barcelona, and establishes an opening in hermeneutics to negotiate a trail that can take us beyond death without hope. Meanwhile, and during his own wait for the black widow, professor Fullat seeks refuge and solace in reading the Latin classics (Cicero, Seneca) and the bible stories, particularly the books of Job and Ecclesiastes.