Philosopher wins the Galilei Award

János Kelemen is a Hungarian philosopher, historian of philosophy, Italianist, and university professor holding the Széchenyi Prize. He is also a full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was born in Kassa (Košice, Slovakia) in 1943. He started his university studies at the József Attila University, from where he graduated as a secondary school teacher of Italian and Russian in 1966. He earned his degree in Philosophy at the Eötvös Loránd University in 1969.

His teaching and academic career started at the Radnóti Miklós Secondary Grammar School, in Szeged. From 1967 to 1970, he worked at the Department of Philosophy of the József Attila University. Subsequently, between 1970 and 2012, ha was a lecturer at the Department of Philosophy, later Department of General Philosophy of ELTE. He was appointed to the position of university professor in 1984. From 1995 to 2015, he led the “Analytical Philosophy” programme at the Doctoral School of Philosophy, ELTE. In 2000, he was elected director of the Doctoral School of Philosophy and head of the Department of General Philosophy, ELTE. Since 2013, he has been professor emeritus at ELTE. In 2016, he was elected full member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

His fields of research include linguistic philosophy, analytic philosophy, as well as history of ideas and philosophy in Italy.

In addition to several Italian professional recognitions, he won the Hungarian Széchenyi Prize in 2007 for his academic work in the fields of linguistic philosophy, history of philosophy, and history of philosophical ideas in Italy, as well as for his domestic and international activities in philosophical public life.

The professor emeritus receives the award at the University of Pisa on 6 October 2018.