Obra ressenyada: Josep-Maria TERRICABRAS, El Pensament d'Eugeni d'Ors. Girona: Documenta Universitaria, 2010

Cabó, Joan

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103Journal of Catalan IntelleCtual HIstory, Issue 3, 2012   |   Print Issn 2014-1572 / online Issn 2014-1564DoI 10.2436/20.3001.02.44   |   P. 103-104http://revistes.iec.cat/index.php/JoCIH reviewosep-Maria Terricabras (ed.),  El pensament d’Eugeni d’Ors, Girona, Documenta Universitaria, 2010Joan Cabó universitat ramon llull joancabo89@gmail.com JEugeni d’Ors (1881-1954) was one of the most influential Catalan intellectuals of the first half of the 20th century. His was a multi-faceted personality who expressed his complex thought in original ways, especially through his articles in the daily press, which were nearly always printed under a pseudonym, such as Xènius or Octavi de Romeu. This superficial dispersion obscures his carefully considered systematic thought. This volume is drawn form the conferences on Ors organized by the Ferrater Mora Chair of the University of Girona and contains fifteen articles tackling very different facets of the writer. After the editor’s prologue, Miquel Siguan introduces us to the char-acter and career of Eugeni d’Ors. Several of the contributions of this volume follow the thread of his political development. The articles by Josep Maria Ruiz Simon and Maximiliano Fuentes Codera offer wide-ranging summaries of this aspect. As an elitist and anti-democrat, Ors propounded a universal nationalism that would export his Mediterranean values and civilisme to Spain and Europe. He also proposed the spread of the values of noucentisme as a reaction against the 19th century, an aspect studied by Josep Murgades, who offers us an Ors who is an “inventor” of Catalan traditions that fit into this scheme. It is in this politi-cal context that we can study his relationship with other similar movements developing at the same time across Europe, the seedbeds of the ideologies that have been imprecisely labelled as “fascist”. Antoni Mora studies Eugeni d’Ors as a “protofascist” in the context of the European intellectual movement. This is also the basis of Henry Ettinghausen’s analysis of La Ben Plantada, a work which exalts patriotism and race.Margarida Casacuberta tackles the figure of Xènius –the name under which he wrote many of his articles– as a literary construct of the author which finds expression in a Glossary which is in turn a form of epistolary between the 104Journal of Catalan Intellectual History. Issue 3. 2012. P. 103-104Joan CaBó character and his discerning readers. It also takes in another interesting literary phenomenon, that of Lídia of Cadaqués, who was driven by her love for Ors to make a paranoid reading of these glosses, a reading which is used by Oriol Pon-satí-Murlà to questions the interpretative theory of Umberto Eco. This varied collection also includes a text by Xavier Pla on some glosses which, although published, are little known, and which have been added to this volume.Three more articles reveal the relation of the Catalan intellectual with other prominent figures of the time. Jaume Trabal studies the relations between Ors and Joan Maragall, his wife’s godfather who, despite their disagreements, he would always consider a genius; Maria Torregrosa and Jaime Nubiola look into the influence of Ors on the work of Josep Ferrater Mora, whose entry on “Ors” was one of the earliest in his dictionary; and Joan Cuscó examines the similarities and antagonism between Xènius and Francesc Pujols.Finally, Norbert Bilbeny, Antonino González and Mercè Rius explore his philosophy of seny, his aesthetics and d’Ors’ position with regard to the mysticism of the 20th century, respectively. According to Bilbeny, Eugeni d’Ors developed his philosophy of intelligence by establishing a link between reason and life, logic and biology, which may have influenced the posterior formula of “vital reason” of his contemporary Ortega y Gasset. The following article, which examines the author’s work as art critic, carefully reveals his important contributions to aesthetics and presents his concept of arbitrarisme, with its blend of nature and liberty, as the nucleus of his philosophy, leading to the idea of seny, the distinction between reason and intellect, his philosophy of work and play and his criticism of modernity and the oftalmia of the modern world. The last article compares the figure of d’Ors with the outstanding exponents of 20th century mysticism, such as W. James, H. Bergson, S. Weil, G. Bataille, W. Ben-jamin, R. Musil, G. Colli, C. Diano or M. Cacciari.This volume, then, is an interesting collection of works on Eugeni d’Ors, the cosmopolitan, philosopher, writer, journalist, art critic and political ideologue; an eminently multi-faceted personality who deserves a great deal more study.

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