Juan David García Bacca

Juan David García Bacca was a Spanish-Venezuelan philosopher and university professor.

He was born in Pamplona on June 26, 1901, and died on August 5, 1992, in Quito, Ecuador.

Juan David García Bacca was born on June 26, 1901, in Pamplona (Navarra).

The premature death of his father, a schoolteacher of Aragonese origin, Juan Isidro García, led him to enter the Seminary of the Claretian Fathers at a very young age, with whom he did his novitiate in Cervera in the course of 1916- 17.

In the same Catalan city, Cervera, he studied philosophy and theology (1917–23), to be ordained a Claretian priest (1925) after two years of moral and law studies in Solsona.

He will never see his family again, as he confesses on page 11 of his autobiographical work "because of that" for love of Me -Jesus- the believer in Me will leave father, mother "", on page 27 he will say "I I haven't had a childhood."

His mother, Martina Bacca Benavides, gave birth to him and three other children, but little more than that comes to us from his confessions; on page 11 he wrote:"My mother died […] in [1922]. […] The superiors did not allow me to go see her. […] And let it be said with the harsh truth, such news did not impress me as it should have been due to nature, due to humanity. Years and years had gone by without thinking about my mother."So insipid, finite, family environment only reinforces his momentum, his vocation, of cronopio; García Bacca will forge a rigorous style, a philosophical way of life, with peculiar mischief, which in some will cause astonishment and admiration, although in others it will cause rejection.

During his stay at the seminary he met the Hellenist Daniel Ruíz Bueno.

His good academic results determine his dedication to studies and teaching, for which he was sent to various Central European universities to complete his theological, philosophical and scientific training.

In Louvain he got to know the renewing current of the Thomist philosophy, in which he had been trained.

In this period he focuses on his scientific training by studying at universities such as Munich, Zurich, Paris, etc.

The thirties are characterized by a progressive separation from his ecclesiastical studies, a process exacerbated by the Civil War and exile.

Bacca began his education under the Claretians and was ordained as a priest in 1925.

He continued his studies at the University of Munich, the University of Zurich, and the University of Paris.

However, during the 1930s, he left the Church and pursued philosophy at the University of Barcelona.

He graduated in philosophy from the University of Barcelona in 1934, reaching his doctorate a year later with the thesis Essay on the logical-genetic structure of the physical sciences.

As a member of the Vienna Circle (1934-6) he taught mathematical logic and philosophy of science at the University of Barcelona between 1933 and 1937.

In 1936 after criticizing Francisco Franco, Bacca was forced to live in exile.

In February 1936 he obtained the chair of Introduction to Philosophy at the University of Santiago de Compostela, but he did not exercise it since he had to leave Spain precipitously due to the start of the Civil War.

In 1938 he left the priesthood after having lost his faith.

It would have felt finite.

He will then embark on a journey, propelled to a great extent by the well-received teachings of Christian theology, towards infinity.

In that year, when the ecclesiastical authorities ordered him to return to Franco's Spain where he risked being tried and even shot because he had identified himself as a republican and was prohibited from publishing his writings, he decided to reveal himself.

In his work Confessions: intimate and exterior autobiography he comments as follows:"One day [October 26], after lunch, at noon, I knelt down and asked the community for forgiveness for the bad examples I had given, while thanking them for their fraternal and generous hospitality. We all retired to take the usual Spanish siesta. I went up to my cell, took off my cassock, hung it in the closet; I dressed fully as a layman, took my suitcase, went downstairs; but instead of going through the goal, I went out through the church. I found myself on the street. I felt free, for the first time in my life. (p.68)"1938 had not ended when the General Council of the Congregation agreed on November 13 to expel and exclaustrate him.

He first traveled to Ecuador where he taught at the Central University of Ecuador (1939-1942).

While in Ecuador he became close friends with a writer named Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco.

He was critical of the Francoist uprising, which is why he remained in Paris during the hostilities, years in which he devoted himself to logic, to go into exile, after the war, in Ecuador (1939–42), Mexico City, Morelia, (1942) and finally in Venezuela, where he has established residence since 1946.

So that the Spanish civil war ended with victory for Franco, García Bacca opted for the tropics of America.

Upon arriving in the equatorial capital, already hired as a professor in the Philosophy section (which he himself inaugurated) of the Higher Institute of Pedagogy and Letters, he established a great friendship with Alfredo Gangotena.

Also in Quito, he married Fanny Palacios Vásconez.

Later in Mexico he would work as a professor of philosophy, mathematics, physics and Greek at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

He also served as a collaborator of the Fondo de Cultura Económica and a member of La Casa de España in Mexico, later El Colegio de México, where he befriended Alfonso Reyes.

During his stay in Morelia (Mexico) he was also a professor at the Universidad Michoacana.

He then went to Mexico where he taught at UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) from 1942 to 1946.

In 1943 he became a founding member of the Mexican Mathematical Society.

He entered El Colegio de México in April 1943, in June of that year and at the request of El Colegio he taught a course on Greek Philosophical Philology at the UNAM Faculty of Philosophy and Letters and another on Mathematical Logic at the Faculty of Sciences.

He eventually established himself in Venezuela in 1946 and was granted citizenship in 1952.

Years later, in 1965, the ecclesiastical hierarchy granted him "full dispensation" from priestly obligations.

Bacca was a professor at the Central University of Venezuela until his retirement in 1971.

He was recognized for his life's work and was awarded the National Prize for Literature in 1978.