It was a journey that went from Ramon Llull via Aristotle to Torras i Bages. Such is the nature of humanities which, how could it be otherwise, embraces the entire history of humankind.
To start off, David Senabre, Vice Dean of the faculty, welcomed those attending and handed over to Professor Jordi Puigdomènech, who spoke about his book on the Mallorcan writer Ramon Llull, which this year sees the seventh centenary of his death.
In Ramon Llull. Passió i reflexió, Puigdomènech describes the times of this writer who was also, amongst many other things, a philosopher, mystic and theologian as well as playing a central role during the years between the 13th and 14th centuries when the western Mediterranean was a crossroad of cultures. In the book, the author tells us how Llull was able to condense the best of those cultures into his own thoughts and add to them the Greco-Roman legacy derived from the classical world he was familiar with, especially through his studies of the works of Plato, Aristotle and his commentators.
Professor Xavier Escribano also spoke about the author from Stagira when he presented the book by Magda Bosch entitled La ética amable, commenting that “it is an invitation to read a great classic, honed by of fifteen years of teaching”; before handing over to Bosch herself, who thanked him for his kind words and paraphrased the title of the book. She explained that “according to Aristotle, good in itself is an amiable virtue and so therefore good is a pleasant thing to be and to do: if we were all able to see this, how different everything would be!”
Finally, Professor Bosch spoke about the book Torras i Bages. L’home de l’eternitat, on which she collaborated with Professor Marta Crispí, course director for the Master's in Cultural Management, and Professor Xavier Baró. All three spoke about their experience writing a choral work and seemed very satisfied with the end result.
To finish off, the celebration of the patron saint also called for a cocktail party in the spirit of sharing that Seneca continued on to describe in his Epistolarium moralium ad Lucilium liber primus: VI. Séneca Lucilio suo salutem from which we quoted at the beginning of this short piece: “And if wisdom were given to me under the express condition that it must be kept hidden and not uttered, I should refuse it. No good thing is pleasant to possess without friends to share it”. No sooner said than done.
