In Memoriam: Nenad Miščević (Zagreb, November 1, 1950 – Rijeka, May 10, 2024)
Dear colleagues, friends of the Croatian Society for Analytic Philosophy,
It is with great sadness that we inform you of the passing of our dear colleague, friend, and mentor, Professor Nenad Miščević. Nenad was one of the most influential and widely cited philosophers from Croatia. In addition to being a prominent philosopher, Nenad was a columnist for several publications, editor of scholarly articles and books, and a public intellectual. From the late 1970s to the early 1990s, he worked as a professor of philosophy at the University of Zadar. After that, he joined the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Maribor (Slovenia), where he served as a tenured professor of philosophy until his untimely death. Furthermore, since the establishment of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Rijeka and the Department of Philosophy at the Central European University in Budapest (now in Vienna), he has been involved as an external collaborator in teaching, curriculum development, and organization of academic events.
Nenad was a versatile philosopher who made significant contributions to the fields of philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. His bibliography (up to 2012) and autobiographical notes can be found in the book “Nenad Miščević: Faces of Philosophy”, edited by Petar Bojanić (Belgrade) and Snježana Prijić-Samaržija (Rijeka) on the occasion of his 60th birthday. The book is available at this link. Additionally, two more publications were released where distinguished philosopher colleagues discussed Nenad’s philosophical views. In 2014, a special issue of the European Journal of Analytic Philosophy was published, covering various aspects of Nenad’s perspectives, including his comments on these articles. Following that, in 2017 on the occasion of his 65th birthday, Nenad’s colleagues from Maribor, Bojan Borstner and Smiljana Gartner, edited the book titled “Thought Experiments between Nature and Society: A Festschrift for Nenad Miščević“, focusing on Nenad’s contributions in the field of thought experiments.
Nenad was a longstanding member of the Croatian Society for Analytic Philosophy (CSAP) and the founders of the Rijeka Philosophical Circle, whose activities led to the establishment of the Department of Philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy in Rijeka, where CSAP mostly conducts its activities. It cannot be emphasised sufficiently that without Nenad’s organizational, professional, and scholarly work, the Rijeka philosophical-analytic “circle” and the Department of Philosophy would likely not exist. Speaking of the work of this informal but highly active group of philosophers who operated in Rijeka in the 1980s, one of the founders of CASP, Boran Berčić (Rijeka), states:
“The central figure in the group was undoubtedly Nenad Miščević. He possessed immense intellectual, social, and organizational energy. He was the main driving force of the group, truly the spiritus movens.”
The entire article documenting the events related to the Rijeka Philosophical Circle, written by Boran (in Croatian), can be read here.
We bid farewell to our dear Nenad, confident that his philosophical legacy will continue to inspire future generations of philosophers in Croatia.
Several news articles about the passing of our dear Nenad have been published. Below are links to the available texts, and we will add new ones as they appear:
In the Croatian Journal of Philosophy, which was founded by Nenad and where he served as a long-time editor, an issue has been published featuring papers dedicated to his philosophical work. The papers are available via this link: https://hrcak.srce.hr/en/broj/24785
In Memoriam: Nenad Miščević:
Nenad Smokrović in the Croatian Journal of Philosophy
Dunja Jutronić in the Croatia Journal of Philosophy
Bojan Borstner in the Croatian Journal of Philosophy
Department of Philosophy at the University of Maribor