This pioneering volume explores the extraordinary Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) and his relationship to philosophy. On the one hand, this book reveals Pessoa’s serious knowledge of philosophy and playful philosophical explorations and how he has the gift of synthesizing, appropriating, and subverting complex ideas into his art; and, on the other hand, the chapters shed new light on central aspects and problems of philosophy through the prism of Pessoa’s diverse writings. The volume includes sixteen new essays from an international group of scholars, analyzing Pessoa’s multifaceted poetic work alongside philosophical themes and movements, from conceptions of time, ancient and modern aesthetics, philosophy of language, transcendentalism, immanence, and nihilism; to Islamic philosophy, Indian philosophy, Daoism, neo-paganism, and the philosophy of the self. The breadth of his work provides a springboard for new thinking on the aesthetic and the spiritual, the logic of value and capitalist modernity, and ecological thought and postmodernism.

The volume also includes the most complete English translation of Pessoa’s text (written by his heteronym Álvaro de Campos) called “Notes for the Memory of my Master Caeiro.”

If, indeed, ‘there is something in literature that is out of reach of the philosopher,’ innumerable readers have yet striven to bridge such a gap. Never more timely nor expertly confronted than here, comes a perceptive international grappling with that very dangerous binary of separation which suffuses the intellectual appeal of Pessoa’s own texts: ‘Countless lives inhabit us’ . . . and countless genres, too.

— Bernard McGuirk, Emeritus Professor, University of Nottingham

About the Authors

Bartholomew Ryan (editor) is a researcher in the Nova Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA), and the coordinator of Culturelab at the New University of Lisbon.

Giovanbattista Tusa (editor) is a philosopher and media researcher based in Lisbon, where is currently researching philosophy and ecology at the Nova Institute of Philosophy, New University of Lisbon.

Antonio Cardiello (editor) is a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute for Philosophy of the Nova University of Lisbon, where he is an integrated member of CulturLab’s research group “Questions of Subjectivity: Philosophy and Literature”.

Book Details

Title: Fernando Pessoa and Philosophy: Countless Lives Inhabit Us

Authors: Bartholomew Ryan, Giovanbattista Tusa, and Antonio Cardiello

Publisher‏: ‎Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Series: Global Aesthetics Research

Publication Date: August 22, 2023

Language‏: ‎English

Paperback‏: ‎416pp

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