Jorge Arregui Vincent (1958-2005)
CEPPA Fellow 1993
Jorge Arreggui was born in San Sebastian in Spain on January 4, 1958 and died in his hometown on December 19, 2005. He was president of the Hispanic Society of Philosophical Anthropology (having been a member since its founding in 1996).
Jorge took his BA from the University of Navarre in 1979, and was awarded the University prize for the most outstanding Degree. He was appointed Assistant Professor of philosophical anthropology at the University of Navarra from 1979 to 1981, and awarded a Ministry of Education and Science Fellowship in Teacher Training and Research from 1980 to 1983. He received his Doctorate in Philosophy from Navarre in 1982 for a thesis that explores the link between the notions of action and meaning. Arguing that Wittgenstein's Tractatus theory of meaning leads to a reduction of semantics to syntax, Arregui examined the connection between action and meaning in the later Wittgenstein, concluding that meaning is given through its pragmatic foundation which in turn is determined within a way of life. Thus action becomes crucial.
From 1982 to 1996 he was an associate professor of philosophy at Navarre from where he moved to become Professor of Philosophy in the University of Malaga. During his career he spent several periods in Britain: in 1988 at Oxford working with John Finnis, in 1990-91 at Glasgow University where he took a Master's degree; and again at Glasgow in 1993, the same year as his fellowship at the University of St Andrews. Between 1992 and 1994 he was involved in a joint project between Glasgow and Navarre funded by the British Council and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, and directed by Alejandro Llano and Alexander Broadie "to investigate the relations and mutual influences between the Spanish and Scottish philosophies". During 2003, he also conducted research at the University of the Sorbonne IV on the topic of cultural settings and emotion.
When he moved to the University of Malaga he joined research team on "German Idealism" directed by Ignacio Falgueras and funded by the Government of Andalusia. And in June 2001 he was as principal investigator of the research group "Hermeneutics and deconstruction in Anthropology, funded by the Government of Andalusia. While most of his many publications were in Spanish he also published in English in the British Journal of Aesthetics and the International Philosophical Quarterly. Jorge was married later in life and is survived by his widow.
Based on an obituary published in Spanish at http://www.filosofia.org/