IN MEMORIAM ISTVÁN M. FEHÉR (1950-2021)

Abstract

On 17 June 2021, after a long illness born with patience and a persistent work ethic, István M. Fehér, professor emeritus, Széchenyi Prize-winning professor of philosophy, full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, passed away in Budapest. István M. Fehér was born on 24 April 1950 in Budapest. He began his university studies in English and Italian in 1969, and later graduated in philosophy from the Eötvös Loránd University. In 1977 he was appointed assistant professor at the Department of History of Philosophy at the Eötvös Loránd University. He defended his doctoral thesis in 1979, his candidate thesis in 1985 and his academic doctoral thesis in 1990. In 1981 he was promoted to assistant professor, in 1987 to associate professor and in 1992 to professor. Between 1990-97 he was head of department. He has lectured in the fields of modern and contemporary history of philosophy and philosophical hermeneutics, and since 1992 he has been the developer and director of the Doctoral Programme in Hermeneutics at the Eötvös Loránd University. In parallel, between 1992-97 he was also a professor at the University of Miskolc, and from 1993 he was head of the History of Philosophy Department. In 1991 he taught at the József Attila University in Szeged, and between 1995-97 he was professor at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University in Piliscsaba. While retaining his position as a historian of philosophy at the Eötvös Loránd University, he was also professor of the history of ideas at the Andrássy Gyula German Speaking University in Budapest, from its foundation in 2002 until his retirement. Between 1997-2000, he was awarded a Széchenyi Professor Fellowship. He has made extended research trips and held guest lectures at universities in Italy (1983-84), Germany (1987-88), and at the University of Virginia in the United States in 1992-93. He was a Humboldt fellow at the Ruhr University in Bochum and visiting professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 1999.