Alejandro Korn
Encyclopedia
Alejandro Korn was an Argentine
physician
, psychiatrist
, philosopher, reformist and politician
. For eighteen years, he was the director of the psychiaty hospital in Melchor Romero (a locality of La Plata in Buenos Aires
), named as the city. He was the first university official in Latin America
to be elected thanks to the student’s vote. He is considered to be the pioneer of Argentine philosophy. Along with Florentino Ameghino
, Juan Vucentich, Almafuerte and Carlos Spegazzini, he is considered to be one of the five wise men of La Plata
.
. His father, Carlos Adolfo Korn, was a liberal
German
-Prussian doctor and soldier, who had refused to take part in the repression that followed the worker’s strike in the textile sector during the Social Revolution in 1848. Sentenced to death, he fled to Switzerland
on horseback. There, he studied Medicine
and met his future wife, María Verena Meyer. He decided to migrate to Argentina, and there they got married. He settled down in San Vicente (Buenos Aires), where he worked as a doctor and a judge. He promoted the construction of the first flour mill and the lengthening of the railroad tracks to reach the city. He distinguished for his remarkable work fighting the cholera
epidemics , and, for that reason, he was awarded by the president Domingo F. Sarmiento. When he died, in 1905, the city of San Vicente paid him homage.
Alejandro Korn was the eldest of eight siblings. His only brother, Mauricio, would also become a doctor. In his youth, Alejandro showed an interest in culture and sport. In 1877 he settled down in Buenos Aires
to study, first at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires
and later at the Universidad de Buenos Aires's College of Medicine.
Afterwards, he met and married María Villafañe, and settled in La Plata. They had seven children, four of which survived childhood. One of them, Alejandro Korn Villafañe, was instrumental in the University Reform and is distinguished for his insights into catholic doctrine and his teaching position at the modern Escuela de La Plata. His other son, Guillermo Korn, was a left-wing reformer and student leader, journalist, leader of the Socialist Party and national deputy, as well as a playwright and the founder of the Teatro del Pueblo in La Plata.
In 1888 he was appointed to police doctor. In 1897 he was appointed to director of the Hospital Provincial de Melchor Romero, a hospital-colony with a surface of 80 hectares (which he would afterwards increase to 180 hectares), designed by his lodge mate Pedro Benoit
, placed 10 kilometers away from La Plata city, where Benoit lived.
It was inaugurated as a hospital in 1884, but then it specialized in treating mental diseases. It was the first hospital of its kind in Argentine, and, probably, in Latin America. Korn acted as director of Melchor Romero Hospital until 1916, when he resigned from the title in order to devote all his time and energies to philosophy. From 1900 onwards, his brother Mauricia Korn also worked there.
In 1910 he founded the Medical Association of La Plata where he acted as its president.
in 15 June 1881, aged 21, in the Germania Nº 19 lodge
. His father had entered the same lodge in Germany, and was a long-standing and influential member, who had in fact helped his lodge establish in Argentina, with the help of his Freemason Brothers in the country.
When he was 23 years old, Alejandro was appointed to Venerable Maestro (“Venerable Master”) of his lodge. Later, he entered the La Plata Nº 80 lodge, which included other influential inhabitants of La Plata such as Carlos Spegazzini and Pedro Benoit.
In 1917 he was elected as a deputy of La Plata again as part of UCR, and he opted to the title of national deputy in 1918. In that year, he left the UCR, embraced the socialist beliefs and wrote Socialismo ético (“Ethical socialism”) and Incipit Vita Nova:
In 1931 he entered the Socialist Party (Argentina). In 1934 he gave a much-praised series of lectures in the “Casa del Pueblo de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires” (“Buenos Aires’s People’s House”). The lectures were titled Jean Jaurés, Hegel y Marx (“Hegel and Marx”), and Antimarx, and were published by the Revista Socialista (“Socialist magazine”) in February 1935.
In 1934 he was elected to be a “convencional constituyente” to help rewrite the Constitution of the Buenos Aires Province, but he resigned from that title as a protest for the fraud that the government had committed in those elections, as did Alfredo Palacios
and his son Guillermo Korn.
Universities as well. He was also involved in the students’ reformist movement. In fact, both of his sons were leaders of students’ groups, though different ones.
In 1903 he entered in the National University of La Plata as councillor and vice-rector, when it was still a provincial one and Dardo Rocha
was its rector. From that moment, he was the associate professor of the History of Philosophy Cathedra. The Obstetrics School was created thanks to his initiative.
In 1919, in a moment of social unrest, the students’ movement chose him to be responsible for the University, together with Carlos Spegazzini and Edelmiro Calvo.
In 1906 he entered as a teacher of the History of Philosophy Cathedra in Buenos Aires’s University’s Philosophy Faculty. In 1912 he was elected Faculty councillor, a title he held until 1918. That year, with the University Reform as background, he was elected dean by the students of the Philosophy Faculty in the University of Buenos Aires
, a title he held until 1921.
In 1918, Korn was one of the professors, together with José Ingenieros
, Alfredo Palacios and José Vasconcelos
, to be taken as a model by the students’ organization that promoted the University Reform throughout Latin America. Unlike the situation in Cordoba
, where the movement was basically antischolastic, La Plata’s reformism was marked by a strong antipositivism because clericalism was almost completely inexistent in La Plata. This antipositivistic
reaction was guided by Alejandro Korn. Between 1919 and 1922, he wrote several articles about the impact of the University Reform in the cultural renovation of Latin America.
His most remarkable work, La Libertad creadora (“The creative freedom”) was wrote as a request from the “Centro de Estudiantes”, a Buenos Aires Law Student’s Association, to be published in their magazine Verbum, in order to give basis to the transforming activities in which the reformist youth was embarked upon. It was written under the concepts that inspired his vision of an “ethical socialism”. The former Guatemala president Juan José Arévalo
, former pupil of Korn in National University of La Plata defined him as the professor par excellence.
Deputy Silvia Augsburger claimed that Korn was the main thinker of the University Reform, in what concerns new syllabuses and modern teaching methods. Those aspects had also an important role in the agitated public debates in which Korn participated. Ahead of his time, following educationalist concepts that would be universally acknowledged in the 1950s, he remarked the need of make the student, as an active and creative subject, the center of the educationalist process. In La Reforma Universitaria (1919), he wrote:
, and helped spread it in Argentina, when it wasn’t the popular activity it is today.
In 1891, with an economic, political and social crisis started in 1890 as background, he was elected President of Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, a title he held until 1894. His most remarkable work, together with other leaders, was getting the estate enclosed by the streets Nº 1 and Nº 47 in order to build there the first sport’s field of the club.
, Alejandro Korn is considered to be the pioneer in Argentine philosophical thinking, and part of the foundational group of Latin American philosophy, together with Cuba
n Enrique José Varona, Mexican
José Vasconcelos
and Antonio Caso, Peru
vian Alejandro Desutúa, Uruguayan Carlos Vaz Ferreira
, Brazil
ian Raimundo Farías Brito and Chile
an Enrique Molina.
Alejandro Korn’s thinking inspired a profound renovation of Latin American philosophy, under the principles of the continental University Reform democratizing movement, in a moment when Argentina was experiencing a clash in order to exceed the “oligarchic republic”, which was based on electoral fraud
and “voto cantado” (“spoken vote”), and establish a democratic system that had respect for the general will as its core. The people who read his works were mainly young reformist students and left-center political and social activists. The central theme of his work was the study of values and freedom. Two notable works are La libertad creadora (1922) and Axiología (1930).
The crux of Alejandro Korn’s philosophy is the criticism towards positivism
and naïve realism
, that is to say, the principles and conclusions, usually spontaneous, that are considered evident in each age, and which are present in every philosophical system, often as items from the rational analysis that are considered obvious.
Korn conceives philosophy as thought intimately related to the culture of the moment, and the moment itself, a reflexion that comes as a by-product of a praxis linked to the problems and will of the specific individuals and democratic communities.
was conceived in 1882 as a cultural excellence center, open to the world, and specially open to Latin America. From its notable urbanistic design to its University and its famous Natural Sciences Museum, all the way up to the city’s historical theaters and its extensive students’, teachers’ and researchers’ communities, with people from several regions and countries, La Plata established itself as an educational and scientific center, often called one of the Latin American cultural beacons.
Korn was part of the core of that beacon, together with four other La Plata’s citizens known as the five wise men: poet Almafuerte, paleontologist and anthropologist Floretino Ameghino, philosopher Alejandro Korn, biologist Carlos Luis Spegazzini and criminologist Juan Vucetich
.
The five wise men were broadly the same sage: the two eldest ones, Ameghino and Almafuerte, were born in 1854, and the youngest, Korn himself, was born in 1860. Korn was, in addition, the last to die, in 1936; the first had been Ameghino in 1911.
and spread afterwards throughout Latin America
, which sought the generalization of the Latin American university kind that was found under a principle of autonomy, and with student participation in its government, as well as cathedra freedom. Korn had a decisive role in the University Reform, as a protagonist (he was the first dean to be elected by the students), and also as a thinker of the movement. In that way, The creative freedom is a profound philosophical reflexion about freedom, that sought boosting the role of the common man and woman, the “free subject”, as Korn called it, in the voluntarily transformation of the world.
Eugenio Pucciarelli wrote in the prologue to The creative freedom that “freedom is experienced as a liberation, as an emancipation from servitude, as an overcoming of an obstacle, as a triumph over resistance”. Korn himself stated that “our freedom would plunge if it were not leaning on the resistance that opposes it”.
The dynamics of antinomies is a fundamental trait of Alejandro Korn’s thought. With the same approaching method, Korn stated that justice itself doesn’t exist, that there’s only injustice and the constant fight against it towards the ideal of justice.
In order to understand the dynamics of freedom, Alejandro Korn started from the comprehension of “I” and the “subject” as active entities, bestowed with their own initiative.
Korn gave priority to the concept of present time over the concept of reality. Reality, defined from the idea of thing, tends to form a static and pasive field, whereas present time, defined from the idea of act, tends to form dynamic processes, always changing and influenced by human decisions. From this theory, Korn outlined a criticism for language when he says:
Korn approached the concept of creative freedom through the antinomy
of the objective world and the subjective world. The objective world, he said, obeys necessary rules, whereas the subjective world has no rules, it’s free.
From this conflict between freedom and necessity emerges a permanent process of both scientific and technical development that seeks obtaining power over the objective world and ethical self-domain of the subjective world that seeks subjugating necessity to freedom, thus reaching freedom itself in its uttermost development, dynamicly linking power and will (desire).
Freedom, thus understood, as an action, transformation and taking of an ethical position by an autonoumus subject, is referred to as creative freedom by Alejandro Korn
In La Plata, opposite the Natural Sciences Museum, there is a monument, called Monument to the Five Wise Men by sculptor Máximo Maldonado.
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
, philosopher, reformist and politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
. For eighteen years, he was the director of the psychiaty hospital in Melchor Romero (a locality of La Plata in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
), named as the city. He was the first university official in Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
to be elected thanks to the student’s vote. He is considered to be the pioneer of Argentine philosophy. Along with Florentino Ameghino
Florentino Ameghino
Florentino Ameghino was an Argentine naturalist, paleontologist, anthropologist and zoologist.Born in Luján, son of Italian immigrants, Ameghino was a self-taught naturalist, and focused his study on the lands of the southern Pampas...
, Juan Vucentich, Almafuerte and Carlos Spegazzini, he is considered to be one of the five wise men of La Plata
La Plata
La Plata is the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and of La Plata partido. According to the , the city proper has a population of 574,369 and its metropolitan area has 694,253 inhabitants....
.
Childhood, youth and family
Alejandro Korn was born in San Vicente, Buenos AiresSan Vicente, Buenos Aires
San Vicente is the head town of the San Vicente Partido in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is located within the Gran Buenos Aires metropolitan area and has about 44,500 inhabitants as per the ....
. His father, Carlos Adolfo Korn, was a liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
-Prussian doctor and soldier, who had refused to take part in the repression that followed the worker’s strike in the textile sector during the Social Revolution in 1848. Sentenced to death, he fled to Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
on horseback. There, he studied Medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
and met his future wife, María Verena Meyer. He decided to migrate to Argentina, and there they got married. He settled down in San Vicente (Buenos Aires), where he worked as a doctor and a judge. He promoted the construction of the first flour mill and the lengthening of the railroad tracks to reach the city. He distinguished for his remarkable work fighting the cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
epidemics , and, for that reason, he was awarded by the president Domingo F. Sarmiento. When he died, in 1905, the city of San Vicente paid him homage.
Alejandro Korn was the eldest of eight siblings. His only brother, Mauricio, would also become a doctor. In his youth, Alejandro showed an interest in culture and sport. In 1877 he settled down in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
to study, first at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires
Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires
Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires is a public high school in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the tradition of the European gymnasium it provides a free education that includes classical languages such as Latin and Greek. The school is one of the most prestigious in Argentina...
and later at the Universidad de Buenos Aires's College of Medicine.
Afterwards, he met and married María Villafañe, and settled in La Plata. They had seven children, four of which survived childhood. One of them, Alejandro Korn Villafañe, was instrumental in the University Reform and is distinguished for his insights into catholic doctrine and his teaching position at the modern Escuela de La Plata. His other son, Guillermo Korn, was a left-wing reformer and student leader, journalist, leader of the Socialist Party and national deputy, as well as a playwright and the founder of the Teatro del Pueblo in La Plata.
Doctor
He graduated in 1882, with his thesis Locura y crimen (“Insanity and crime”). He worked in the small towns of Navarro and Ranchos, where he was living at the time.In 1888 he was appointed to police doctor. In 1897 he was appointed to director of the Hospital Provincial de Melchor Romero, a hospital-colony with a surface of 80 hectares (which he would afterwards increase to 180 hectares), designed by his lodge mate Pedro Benoit
Pedro Benoit
Pedro Benoit was an Argentine architect, engineer and urbanist best known for designing the layout of the city of La Plata.-Life and times:...
, placed 10 kilometers away from La Plata city, where Benoit lived.
It was inaugurated as a hospital in 1884, but then it specialized in treating mental diseases. It was the first hospital of its kind in Argentine, and, probably, in Latin America. Korn acted as director of Melchor Romero Hospital until 1916, when he resigned from the title in order to devote all his time and energies to philosophy. From 1900 onwards, his brother Mauricia Korn also worked there.
In 1910 he founded the Medical Association of La Plata where he acted as its president.
Freemason
Alejandro Korn entered in the Argentine FreemasonryFreemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
in 15 June 1881, aged 21, in the Germania Nº 19 lodge
Masonic Lodge
This article is about the Masonic term for a membership group. For buildings named Masonic Lodge, see Masonic Lodge A Masonic Lodge, often termed a Private Lodge or Constituent Lodge, is the basic organisation of Freemasonry...
. His father had entered the same lodge in Germany, and was a long-standing and influential member, who had in fact helped his lodge establish in Argentina, with the help of his Freemason Brothers in the country.
When he was 23 years old, Alejandro was appointed to Venerable Maestro (“Venerable Master”) of his lodge. Later, he entered the La Plata Nº 80 lodge, which included other influential inhabitants of La Plata such as Carlos Spegazzini and Pedro Benoit.
Politician
He was a member of Unión Cívica Radical (“Radical Civic Union”) since its foundation in 1891, and, in the 1893 Revolution, he was appointed by the Revolutionary Junta to La Plata’s Intendant, a title that he held for some days until the defeat of the Revolution. In 1894, he was elected as a deputy of the UCR. He resigned from the title in 1897, to express his disapproval of a series of acts of corruption in the “Banco Hipotecario”, in which several other members he knew where involved.In 1917 he was elected as a deputy of La Plata again as part of UCR, and he opted to the title of national deputy in 1918. In that year, he left the UCR, embraced the socialist beliefs and wrote Socialismo ético (“Ethical socialism”) and Incipit Vita Nova:
The new philosophy will liberate us from the nightmare of mechanic automatism, and will give us back the dignity of our conscious free personality, free and master of its own destiny…If we want a better world, we will build it… Socialism itself, beyond Marx’s well-known theorem, asks for solidarity, that is to say, a theoretical feeling.
In 1931 he entered the Socialist Party (Argentina). In 1934 he gave a much-praised series of lectures in the “Casa del Pueblo de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires” (“Buenos Aires’s People’s House”). The lectures were titled Jean Jaurés, Hegel y Marx (“Hegel and Marx”), and Antimarx, and were published by the Revista Socialista (“Socialist magazine”) in February 1935.
In 1934 he was elected to be a “convencional constituyente” to help rewrite the Constitution of the Buenos Aires Province, but he resigned from that title as a protest for the fraud that the government had committed in those elections, as did Alfredo Palacios
Alfredo Palacios
Alfredo Lorenzo Palacios was an Argentine socialist politician.Palacios was born in Buenos Aires, and studied law at Universidad de Buenos Aires, after graduation he became a lawyer and taught at the university until becoming a dean.In 1902, he was elected to the Buenos Aires' legislature, and in...
and his son Guillermo Korn.
University Reformist
Alejandro Korn was not only a teacher, but a high-level official in La Plata's and Buenos Aires'sUniversity of Buenos Aires
The University of Buenos Aires is the largest university in Argentina and the largest university by enrollment in Latin America. Founded on August 12, 1821 in the city of Buenos Aires, it consists of 13 faculties, 6 hospitals, 10 museums and is linked to 4 high schools: Colegio Nacional de Buenos...
Universities as well. He was also involved in the students’ reformist movement. In fact, both of his sons were leaders of students’ groups, though different ones.
In 1903 he entered in the National University of La Plata as councillor and vice-rector, when it was still a provincial one and Dardo Rocha
Dardo Rocha
Dardo Rocha was an Argentine naval officer, lawyer and politician best known as the founder of the city of La Plata and of the University of La Plata.-Life and times:...
was its rector. From that moment, he was the associate professor of the History of Philosophy Cathedra. The Obstetrics School was created thanks to his initiative.
In 1919, in a moment of social unrest, the students’ movement chose him to be responsible for the University, together with Carlos Spegazzini and Edelmiro Calvo.
In 1906 he entered as a teacher of the History of Philosophy Cathedra in Buenos Aires’s University’s Philosophy Faculty. In 1912 he was elected Faculty councillor, a title he held until 1918. That year, with the University Reform as background, he was elected dean by the students of the Philosophy Faculty in the University of Buenos Aires
University of Buenos Aires
The University of Buenos Aires is the largest university in Argentina and the largest university by enrollment in Latin America. Founded on August 12, 1821 in the city of Buenos Aires, it consists of 13 faculties, 6 hospitals, 10 museums and is linked to 4 high schools: Colegio Nacional de Buenos...
, a title he held until 1921.
In 1918, Korn was one of the professors, together with José Ingenieros
José Ingenieros
José Ingenieros was an Argentine physician, pharmaceutic, positivist philosopher and essayist.He was born Giuseppe Ingegneri in Palermo , and graduated from the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine in 1900...
, Alfredo Palacios and José Vasconcelos
José Vasconcelos
José Vasconcelos Calderón was a Mexican writer, philosopher and politician. He is one of the most influential and controversial personalities in the development of modern Mexico. His philosophy of "indigenismo" affected all aspects of Mexican sociocultural, political, and economic...
, to be taken as a model by the students’ organization that promoted the University Reform throughout Latin America. Unlike the situation in Cordoba
Córdoba, Argentina
Córdoba is a city located near the geographical center of Argentina, in the foothills of the Sierras Chicas on the Suquía River, about northwest of Buenos Aires. It is the capital of Córdoba Province. Córdoba is the second-largest city in Argentina after the federal capital Buenos Aires, with...
, where the movement was basically antischolastic, La Plata’s reformism was marked by a strong antipositivism because clericalism was almost completely inexistent in La Plata. This antipositivistic
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
reaction was guided by Alejandro Korn. Between 1919 and 1922, he wrote several articles about the impact of the University Reform in the cultural renovation of Latin America.
His most remarkable work, La Libertad creadora (“The creative freedom”) was wrote as a request from the “Centro de Estudiantes”, a Buenos Aires Law Student’s Association, to be published in their magazine Verbum, in order to give basis to the transforming activities in which the reformist youth was embarked upon. It was written under the concepts that inspired his vision of an “ethical socialism”. The former Guatemala president Juan José Arévalo
Juan José Arévalo
Juan José Arévalo Bermejo was the first of the reformist presidents of Guatemala. Preceded by military junta interregnum after a definitive pro-democracy revolt in 1944...
, former pupil of Korn in National University of La Plata defined him as the professor par excellence.
Deputy Silvia Augsburger claimed that Korn was the main thinker of the University Reform, in what concerns new syllabuses and modern teaching methods. Those aspects had also an important role in the agitated public debates in which Korn participated. Ahead of his time, following educationalist concepts that would be universally acknowledged in the 1950s, he remarked the need of make the student, as an active and creative subject, the center of the educationalist process. In La Reforma Universitaria (1919), he wrote:
The Reform is a dynamic process, and its purpose is creating a new University spirit and giving the University back its lost prestige, being conscious of its mission and dignity. In order to attain so, the student’s participation in the University’s government is essential. They, and only they, represent the propulsion force, the efficient action, capable of moving inertia and avoid stagnation. Without them, nothing has been done, and nothing would have been done. The way in which they must intervene, that’s a secondary issue; the important thing is to make sure that they constitute such a power, that nothing will be done without it. We have announced the advent of an intense ethical and aesthetical culture, purely Argentine, noble because of its yearning of social justice; a culture meant to exceed, without harming Science, an intellectualist and utilitarianist age. It is pleasing to observe the youth looking for the light of new ideals through different paths. A free cathedra surrounded by free students, who own and are responsible for their acts, will contribute towards forging the national character in a better way than the wordy tutelage of those who never even had strength of character themselves.
Sportsman
Korn practiced sport, especially fencingFencing
Fencing, which is also known as modern fencing to distinguish it from historical fencing, is a family of combat sports using bladed weapons.Fencing is one of four sports which have been featured at every one of the modern Olympic Games...
, and helped spread it in Argentina, when it wasn’t the popular activity it is today.
In 1891, with an economic, political and social crisis started in 1890 as background, he was elected President of Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, a title he held until 1894. His most remarkable work, together with other leaders, was getting the estate enclosed by the streets Nº 1 and Nº 47 in order to build there the first sport’s field of the club.
Philosopher
Together with José IngenierosJosé Ingenieros
José Ingenieros was an Argentine physician, pharmaceutic, positivist philosopher and essayist.He was born Giuseppe Ingegneri in Palermo , and graduated from the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine in 1900...
, Alejandro Korn is considered to be the pioneer in Argentine philosophical thinking, and part of the foundational group of Latin American philosophy, together with Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
n Enrique José Varona, Mexican
Mexican people
Mexican people refers to all persons from Mexico, a multiethnic country in North America, and/or who identify with the Mexican cultural and/or national identity....
José Vasconcelos
José Vasconcelos
José Vasconcelos Calderón was a Mexican writer, philosopher and politician. He is one of the most influential and controversial personalities in the development of modern Mexico. His philosophy of "indigenismo" affected all aspects of Mexican sociocultural, political, and economic...
and Antonio Caso, Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....
vian Alejandro Desutúa, Uruguayan Carlos Vaz Ferreira
Carlos Vaz Ferreira
Carlos Vaz Ferreira was an Uruguayan philosopher, writer, and academic. Influenced by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer, he is notable for introducing liberal, pluralistic political values and pragmatic philosophical concepts to South American society.-Life:Vaz was born in Montevideo. His...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
ian Raimundo Farías Brito and Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
an Enrique Molina.
Alejandro Korn’s thinking inspired a profound renovation of Latin American philosophy, under the principles of the continental University Reform democratizing movement, in a moment when Argentina was experiencing a clash in order to exceed the “oligarchic republic”, which was based on electoral fraud
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
and “voto cantado” (“spoken vote”), and establish a democratic system that had respect for the general will as its core. The people who read his works were mainly young reformist students and left-center political and social activists. The central theme of his work was the study of values and freedom. Two notable works are La libertad creadora (1922) and Axiología (1930).
The crux of Alejandro Korn’s philosophy is the criticism towards positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
and naïve realism
Philosophical realism
Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality, or some aspect of it, is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc....
, that is to say, the principles and conclusions, usually spontaneous, that are considered evident in each age, and which are present in every philosophical system, often as items from the rational analysis that are considered obvious.
Korn conceives philosophy as thought intimately related to the culture of the moment, and the moment itself, a reflexion that comes as a by-product of a praxis linked to the problems and will of the specific individuals and democratic communities.
The five wise men of the cultural beacon
La PlataLa Plata
La Plata is the capital city of the Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and of La Plata partido. According to the , the city proper has a population of 574,369 and its metropolitan area has 694,253 inhabitants....
was conceived in 1882 as a cultural excellence center, open to the world, and specially open to Latin America. From its notable urbanistic design to its University and its famous Natural Sciences Museum, all the way up to the city’s historical theaters and its extensive students’, teachers’ and researchers’ communities, with people from several regions and countries, La Plata established itself as an educational and scientific center, often called one of the Latin American cultural beacons.
Korn was part of the core of that beacon, together with four other La Plata’s citizens known as the five wise men: poet Almafuerte, paleontologist and anthropologist Floretino Ameghino, philosopher Alejandro Korn, biologist Carlos Luis Spegazzini and criminologist Juan Vucetich
Juan Vucetich
Juan Vucetich was a Croatian-born Argentine anthropologist and police official who pioneered the use of fingerprinting.-Biography:...
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The five wise men were broadly the same sage: the two eldest ones, Ameghino and Almafuerte, were born in 1854, and the youngest, Korn himself, was born in 1860. Korn was, in addition, the last to die, in 1936; the first had been Ameghino in 1911.
The creative freedom (1920)
The Creative Freedom is a paper first published in 1920, by the Verbum magazine, by the Law Students Centre of the University of Buenos Aires. It was the time of the University Reform, started in 1918 in CórdobaCórdoba, Argentina
Córdoba is a city located near the geographical center of Argentina, in the foothills of the Sierras Chicas on the Suquía River, about northwest of Buenos Aires. It is the capital of Córdoba Province. Córdoba is the second-largest city in Argentina after the federal capital Buenos Aires, with...
and spread afterwards throughout Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
, which sought the generalization of the Latin American university kind that was found under a principle of autonomy, and with student participation in its government, as well as cathedra freedom. Korn had a decisive role in the University Reform, as a protagonist (he was the first dean to be elected by the students), and also as a thinker of the movement. In that way, The creative freedom is a profound philosophical reflexion about freedom, that sought boosting the role of the common man and woman, the “free subject”, as Korn called it, in the voluntarily transformation of the world.
Eugenio Pucciarelli wrote in the prologue to The creative freedom that “freedom is experienced as a liberation, as an emancipation from servitude, as an overcoming of an obstacle, as a triumph over resistance”. Korn himself stated that “our freedom would plunge if it were not leaning on the resistance that opposes it”.
The dynamics of antinomies is a fundamental trait of Alejandro Korn’s thought. With the same approaching method, Korn stated that justice itself doesn’t exist, that there’s only injustice and the constant fight against it towards the ideal of justice.
In order to understand the dynamics of freedom, Alejandro Korn started from the comprehension of “I” and the “subject” as active entities, bestowed with their own initiative.
The subject does not stand before the world in a comtemplative attitude, he is not, in any way, a disinterested spectator. Consciousness is the theater for the conflicts and harmonies between the subject that feel, judges and wants, and the object that adjusts and resists.
Korn gave priority to the concept of present time over the concept of reality. Reality, defined from the idea of thing, tends to form a static and pasive field, whereas present time, defined from the idea of act, tends to form dynamic processes, always changing and influenced by human decisions. From this theory, Korn outlined a criticism for language when he says:
A philosophy treatise, in order to be logical, should be written using verbs and not a single noun. We never use a verb without referring it to a noun or a pronoun that substitutes it. This way of using the language, suggested by the relative stagnancy of things, derives from naïve realism and leads us towards mistakes.
Korn approached the concept of creative freedom through the antinomy
Antinomy
Antinomy literally means the mutual incompatibility, real or apparent, of two laws. It is a term used in logic and epistemology....
of the objective world and the subjective world. The objective world, he said, obeys necessary rules, whereas the subjective world has no rules, it’s free.
Kant’s third antinomy states, in a concise way, the philosophical problem par excellence: the joint affirmation of necessity and freedom.
From this conflict between freedom and necessity emerges a permanent process of both scientific and technical development that seeks obtaining power over the objective world and ethical self-domain of the subjective world that seeks subjugating necessity to freedom, thus reaching freedom itself in its uttermost development, dynamicly linking power and will (desire).
Freedom, thus understood, as an action, transformation and taking of an ethical position by an autonoumus subject, is referred to as creative freedom by Alejandro Korn
Homage
The following items hold his name:- The town he was born in, previously known as Empalme San Vicente, was named after him in 1964.
- The Melchor Romero Neuropsychiatry Hospital, that he directed in the period 1898-1916, was named Alejandro Korn in 1954.
- The Alejandro Korn’s People’s University, founded the year of his death, which has been active since then.
- A cátedra libre (“free cathedra”) in National University of La Plata, created in 1997 in order to spread his thoughts and analyze novelties in art, science and philosophy.
- A student’s reformist association in National University of RosarioNational University of RosarioThe National University of Rosario is a research, educational and public university located in the city of Rosario, province of Santa Fe, Argentina.-Overview:...
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In La Plata, opposite the Natural Sciences Museum, there is a monument, called Monument to the Five Wise Men by sculptor Máximo Maldonado.
List of works
- Socialismo ético (1918) Ethical socialism
- Inscript vita nova (1918)
- La Reforma Universitaria (1919) The University's Reform
- La libertad creadora (1920) The creative freedom
- Esquema gnoseológico (1924)
- El concepto de ciencia (1926) The concept of science
- Axiología (1930)
- Apuntes filosóficos (1935) Philosophical notes
- Influencias filosóficas en la evolución nacional (1936)
- Filósofos y sistemas (1936) Philosophers and systems
- Ensayos críticos (1936)
- Obras completas (1949)
- Juan Pérez (1963)
- Estudios de filosofía contemporánea (1963)