Pere Lluís Font dies at 91, the most beloved philosopher

BarcelonaOn the verge of turning 92 - he would have turned 92 on May 1st -, the historian of philosophy Pere Lluís Font, a benchmark for a couple of generations of Catalan thinkers, passed away this Thursday. Recipient of the Honorific Prize for Catalan Literature in 2025, throughout his prolific career he carried out immense academic and cultural work, always with wise and erudite discretion, and only achieved a certain popular and media recognition upon reaching his nineties. Despite the ailments of age, he was able to peacefully enjoy the tributes and awards of this final stage of his life, accompanied by enviable agility and intellectual vitality.

Pere Lluís Font leaves an enviable legacy for Catalan culture thanks to having spent his life reading and writing, thinking and teaching others to think, educating the intellectual sensibility of thousands of students and readers, primarily guided by the French trio of thinkers Montaigne, Descartes, and Pascal, but also by Kant, Leibniz, Kierkegaard, Bergson, Ramon Llull and Saint Augustine, the Greco-Latin classics, and a long etcetera of authors. His solidity as a scholar was built on rigor and seriousness, the antithesis of any kind of showmanship. What he truly enjoyed was delving into his favorite authors, transmitting the passion he felt for them, and thinking alongside them, banishing dogmatism. Therefore, Pere Lluís Font, who held a great esteem for philosophy, has surely been one of the most beloved and respected philosophers among the profession.

Inseparably linked to his philosophical passion was his appreciation for the Catalan language - he, who mastered so many languages, living and dead: French, Italian, English, German, Latin, and Greek, in addition, of course, to Catalan and Castilian -. The country owes him, in this regard, the collection of nearly a hundred titles of classics of philosophical thought in Catalan, which he took charge of for years and had initiated in the 70s together with Pep Calsamiglia and Josep Ramoneda. A work that served to place the native language in conversation with universal heritage in the field of essay writing.

Key figure at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) from its beginnings and for decades, he always sought dialogue between Christianity - he was a believer - and modernity, hence his interest in Blaise Pascal. Once retired, he dedicated years to translating the "Pensées" by this major French author, a monumental task that in 2022 earned him the National Translation Prize and the Catalan PEN Club prize. Last year, before receiving the Honorary Award, he still published the Catalan translation of the "Essential Poems" (Fragmenta) by Saint John of the Cross, whose mystical as well as erotic readings he particularly highlighted.

, he declared: "I have always thought that the best way to teach philosophy is by doing the history of philosophy, which is like the philosopher's laboratory. Stubborn in fighting philosophy's inferiority complex in the face of science, he was also very critical of philosophical postmodernity, which he considered "a deception". Regarding this, he said: "To define the characteristics of current culture, things like globalization, the digital revolution, feminism, the sexual revolution, and ecological awareness are much more decisive than postmodernity". It pained him that Hobbes' "homo lupus homini" had more currency today than Kant's "perpetual peace," and he longed for the ideals of the Enlightenment.

During the dynamic 70s, between the end of Francoism and the beginning of the Transition, he was a philosophical advisor to Enciclopedia Catalana, an active participant in the Congress of Catalan Culture, and president of the Institut Eiximenis ((1975-1980), among other positions and initiatives. In 1980, he participated in the refoundation of the Societat Catalana de Filosofia and was a member of the Col·legi de Filosofia de Barcelona. His cultural activity in many other institutions, from the Fundació Joan Maragall to the Bernat Metge, and through the Corporació Catalana de Ràdio i Televisió, denotes both his civic commitment and his drive. And he did all this, over the years, in parallel to his teaching and an extensive body of work with a hundred papers on modern philosophy.

Modesto, already nonagenarian, in an interview to this newspaper, he declared: "I have always thought that the best way to teach philosophy is by doing the history of philosophy, which is like the philosopher's laboratory. Philo-sophy means lover of wisdom. In this sense, I cannot deny it, I am a philosopher. But to call a person a philosopher seems too solemn to me". With solemnity we can say today, however, that with Pere Lluís Font, Catalan culture is left orphaned of an exemplary scholar, historian, professor, and sage. Rest in peace.