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Interview

Costica Bradatan

Costica Bradatan is a Professor of Humanities in the Honors College at Texas Tech University, and an Honorary Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Queensland. Francesco D’Isa talks with him about the philosophies of life and death.

You support the idea of a philosophy as a way of life, following a path that comes down to us from the Stoics to Nietzsche, from Ignazio of Loyola to Montaigne; but I could also add a bunch of Eastern thinkers from Laozi to Nagarjuna. Much of contemporary philosophy seems to have lost this dimension, becoming a cold game that only academics can play. Why is that, in your opinion?

Costica Bradatan portrait photo by Bram Budel

One of the reasons is that living philosophically is much harder than doing philosophy academically. All you need for the latter is a certain measure of intelligence, a set of sophistic skills, and a lack of inhibition.

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