Eduardo Lourenco de Faria

Eduardo Lourenço de Faria was born on May 23, 1923 in São Pedro de Rio Seco, a small village in Beira Interior. He was the eldest of the seven children of Abílio de Faria, a captain of infantry, and Maria de Jesus Lourenço. He moved to Guarda in 1932 and entered the Military College in 1934, one year after his father left for Nampula, Mozambique. In 1940, he enrolled at the University of Coimbra, where he found an open atmosphere conducive to cultural reflection that he would always pursue. He obtained a degree in Historical and Philosophical Sciences in 1946, and became an assistant at the Faculty of Arts between 1947 and 1953, working with Joaquim de Carvalho. It was during this period that he published his first book, Heterodoxia (1949), which brings together part of his thesis, The Meaning of Dialectics in Absolute Idealism. He also collaborated in the Diário de Coimbra, publishing the Crónicas Heterodoxas. In 1949 he did an internship at the University of Bordeaux 2, with a Fulbright grant. He was a reader of Portuguese Culture between 1953 and 1955 at the universities of Hamburg and Heidelberg, and worked at Montpellier University from 1956 to 1958. He married Annie Salamon in Dinard in 1954. After a year at the Federal University of Bahia, as a guest professor of philosophy, he moved to France in 1960. He settled in Vence in 1965. He was a lecturer at the University of Grenoble from 1960 to 1965 and maître assistant at the University of Nice until 1987, becoming maître de conferences in 1986. He became a retired professor in Nice in 1988. In 1989, he became a cultural advisor to the Portuguese Embassy in Rome until 1991. Beginning in 1999, he held the position of non-executive director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon. Eduardo Lourenço was one of the most prominent and influential Portuguese intellectuals of the 20th and 21st centuries. He wrote extensively on Portuguese culture and identity, exploring themes such as nostalgia, myth, history and destiny. Some of his most notable works are O labirinto da saudade : psicanálise mítica do destino português (1978), Fernando Pessoa revisitado: leitura estruturante do drama em gente (1973), Nós e a Europa ou as duas razões (1988), A nau de Ícaro seguido de imagem e miragem da lusofonia (1999) and O esplendor do caos (2012). He received numerous awards and honors for his literary and academic achievements, including the Prémio D. Dinis (1995), the Prémio Camões (1996), the Prémio Vergílio Ferreira (2001), the Medalha de Mérito Cultural (2008), the Prémio Pessoa (2011), the Prémio Jacinto do Prado Coelho (1986, 2012), the Prémio P.E.N. Clube Português de Ensaio (1982, 2009) and the Prémio Vasco Graça Moura de Cidadania Cultural (2016). He was also a member of the Council of State from 2016 to 2020, by presidential appointment. Eduardo Lourenço died on December 1, 2020 in Lisbon, at the age of 97, from natural causes. He was buried at the Jerónimos Monastery, alongside other illustrious figures of Portuguese culture, such as Luís de Camões, Fernando Pessoa and Vasco da Gama.