Milan Komar

Milan Komar, also known as Emilio Komar, was born on June 4, 1921, in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He was a Slovene Argentine Catholic philosopher and essayist. His early education was in Ljubljana and Škofja Loka, and he enrolled in the University of Ljubljana in 1939 to study law. He specialized in Canonical law and continued his studies at the University of Turin, graduating in 1942. His philosophical journey began in Ljubljana under the guidance of Aleš Ušeničnik and Eugeni Vasilievitch Spektorsky, and he further developed his ideas in Turin with Giuseppe Gemellaro and Carlo Mazzantini. He was also influenced by French personalists like Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier, and the political writings of Luigi Sturzo. Komar was involved in a Catholic integralist youth group in Ljubljana, which was anti-Communist. After Italy's capitulation in 1943, he returned to Slovenia and joined the Slovene National Defense Corps, a collaborationist militia. He worked in propaganda and culture until 1945, then escaped to Allied-occupied Italy and emigrated to Argentina in 1948. In Buenos Aires, he worked as a manual laborer while studying for his habilitation in philosophy and pedagogy. He began teaching philosophy and classical languages in high schools and later philosophy and pedagogy at the University of Buenos Aires. From 1959, he taught history of modern philosophy at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, serving as dean of its Philosophy Faculty from 1981 to 1982. He retired in 1998. Komar published essays in Slovenian and Spanish and became known for his "Komar School." Pope John Paul II awarded him the Order of St. Gregory the Great in 1992. He lived in Boulogne sur Mer and died in San Isidro, Argentina, on January 20, 2006. He was buried in Ljubljana. Komar was a polyglot, fluent in Slovenian, Spanish, Italian, German, Serbo-Croatian, French, Latin, and Greek, and read Polish, Catalan, and Portuguese. His philosophical thought evolved from an expertise in Christian Wolff's Rationalism to engagement with Kant and Hegel. He critiqued immanentist philosophy, drawing closer to phenomenology and the works of Edith Stein. He was also influenced by José Ortega y Gasset and Miguel de Unamuno, and explored psychology, particularly Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson. He admired G. K. Chesterton and Georges Bernanos, while remaining connected to Neo-Scholasticism through figures like Étienne Gilson and Josef Pieper. He formed a close friendship with Augusto Del Noce, with whom he planned to reperiodize modern philosophy. His writings were initially banned in Slovenia but were published in the 1990s. His influence is more prominent in Latin America, Spain, and Italy.