José Filipe Silva
Humanist of the day

José Filipe Silva

José Filipe Silva was born in Porto, Portugal. He studied Cultural Anthropology in Lisbon for one year, where he also engaged in amateur dramatics; however, he moved back to Porto and a degree in Philosophy. After graduating, he taught at several upper-secondary schools until he discovered (in Rome) the pleasure of medieval philosophy. In 2004, he moved to Helsinki to work on his PhD.

José Filipe Silva

José Filipe Pereira da Silva
Born October 5, 1975

Teacher Training (specialisation in philosophy) 1999; Master of Arts (medieval philosophy); PhD (Philosophy) 2009, University of Porto

PhD scholarship 2004–2008, Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology
Research Assistant (Medieval Philosophy) 2007–2008, University of Minho
Postdoctoral Researcher (University of Jyväskylä) 2009–2011
Fellow (Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies ) 2011–2014
Associate Professor in Medieval Philosophy (University of Helsinki) Tenure Track 2015–

Research interests: History of Philosophy, especially medieval, the mind/soul-body relationship, the philosophy of mind, epistemology and political philosophy

Publications, projects and other scientific activities

Prizes and Awards:
Kone Foundation Experienced Researcher (2015)
European Research Council Starting Grant (2015–2020) for the project Rationality in Perception: Transformations of Mind and Cognition 1250–1550

Photo: Veikko Somerpuro
Written by José Filipe Silva (Tiia Niemelä, ed.)
Revised by Matthew Billington

Perceptions of the world

It is our task to discover this common thread, if there is one. To do so, we need to painstakingly study their thought, understanding their individual development in context, come to grasp the questions that interested them, the answers they offered to these questions, and the arguments presented to support those answers. That is what philosophy does, whether the focus is on historical figures or not, and that certainly is what I want to do.

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Dictatorship of Failure - Opening of the Symposium

This is a video (I start at 6:28) of the introductory remarks of a Symposium I organized with my colleague Alejandro Lorite-Escorihuela (at the HCAS) on the European financial crisis, called Dictatorship of Failure.

We invited fellows and international scholars from over ten departments and disciplines – philosophy, geography…

My Dream

Photo: personal archive

When I was six or seven (as pictured), I could not have dreamt of being an academic in Helsinki or of being a philosopher – in fact, I didn’t even know that such things as Helsinki and philosophy existed. But now that I am turning 40 and…

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