An itinerary: Bernardo Carlos Bazán (Mendoza 1939- Ottawa 2018)

Abstract

This paper presents a life’s itinerary and production of the philosopher from Mendoza Bernardo Carlos Bazán, thus contributing to keep memory of the events that were unleashed against the intellectuals and academics in the 70's. We go through Dr. Bazán’s forming years in the career of Philosophy in the School of Philosophy and Literature of the National University of Cuyo, and in the Higher Institute of Philosophy of the Catholic University of Louvain, where he obtained his PhD in Philosophy and in Medieval Studies. We review his performance as an educator and an academic at the School of Philosophy and Literature of the National University of Cuyo until 1975. Starting in the "purge of the undesirables" carried out in the Argentinean universities, including that of Cuyo, he commences his exile that leads him to the University of Ottawa in 1977, where he becomes Dean of the School of Arts between 1991 and 1996. Bazán claimed to be "only" a historian of medieval philosophy and discusssed his epistemological position regarding the study of medieval texts that included from being a curator and translator of manuscripts to interpreting them. We ultimately refer to his original philosophical approach to Thomas Aquinas and Siger of Brabant in the meeting of the philosophical writings of Aristotle and Avicenna with the theology of that time.