One of the most important Chilean Thomistic philosophers in the history of Thomism in Chile passed away this Thursday, december 19, 2024 at about 3:00 p.m., praying with his family. Professor of metaphysics and political philosophy. Professor Emeritus at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez. Former Director of the Institute of Philosophy of the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, Chile, where he exercised mostly his teaching and period in which great Chilean theologians and philosophers were formed with him. There, for more than 40 years (1961-2000) he taught Metaphysics and Political Philosophy, from which he wrote his opera magna “El Hombre: animal politico” (The Man: a political animal, 1984), a book that not only influenced, but also shaped the Catholic political thought in the third quarter of the twentieth century. Disciple of father Osvaldo Lira Pérez ss.cc, perhaps the most recognized figure of Chilean Thomism. Juan Antonio Widow was a teacher with all the depth of the concept. Like the ancient medieval masters that he himself taught: wise, humble, coherent until his death between what he believed, what he thought and what he lived, as attested by the hundreds of disciples scattered around the world. He agreed with Gilson, whom he had him read, in his vision of medieval philosophy and of intelligence and wisdom as a service to Christ the King.
Of Germanic descent, some of that was noticeable in his temperament. He had an imposing stature, a deep, deep voice and always saying few words. The necessary ones. Everything would point to a harsh personality. Specially in a country like Chile because its idiosyncrasy. But he was a master for his students. Intellectually respected by his dissidents and loved by his disciples and friends. He lived through politically conflictive times in Chile. The breakdown of democracy in 1973 by a regime in alliance between socialism and communism (UP party), Don Juan led, along with other intellectuals of the time, a magazine of philosophical-political dissemination, Tizona, which contributed, at the level of ideas, to the counterrevolution.
He did his doctoral studies at the current Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, with the spanish philosopher Antonio Millán-Puelles, at a very difficult time for a Chilean to do a doctorate abroad. His topics in philosophy were around metaphysics and political philosophy during his career. But he also addressed issues of Catholic culture, especially in his house in Viña del Mar, where he welcomed all students who wished to continue learning with him. Topics such as “The end of the times”, “The Catholic social order”, “Freedom in liberalism”, “nominalism and the collapse of metaphysics”, “the ideological corruption of language”, “democratic ideology”, “monarchy as a political doctrine”, among others, were part of meetings with students and friends, often at his home, and eventually became books or academic articles.
As he taught in his professorship, he was able to draw political conclusions from Thomistic metaphysics in an exceptional way. And that was his imprint.
His critique of the concept of “ideology” as a “closed set of ideas that is elevated as the source of all truth and all goodness” is well known in Chile, a definition he extracted from the political philosophy of Thomas Molnar, whom he met during one of his visits to Chile and quotes from his work “Utopia: The Perennial Heresy” (1967).
He was a recognized defender of the communitarian thesis. He shared with Charles De Konink the criticism of Jacques Maritain's personalist doctrine (De la primauté du bien commun contre les personnalistes. Université Laval, 1943), criticism that earned him great recognition in Spain, Mexico and Argentina, where he established great friendships. When the military took over the government of Chile in order to reestablish democratic order, he led open and very deep discussions about the ideological meaning of democracy versus an organic democratic system, as a mere electoral system and not as a set of essential values that distanced itself from the Christian moral tradition, as he denounced. For months and perhaps years, he debated in the mass media on this subject, with absolute philosophical vision, with Chilean thinkers mainly linked to Christian democratic parties. He was also critical of the economic vision that Chile began to assume at the same time that the military government was returning sovereignty to civilians.
For Don Juan Antonio Widow, the same danger that democratic ideology entailed was posed by economical ideology. In his book “The Man, a Political Animal” -which should be translated into English because of its consistent Thomistic and metaphysical foundation of the traditional Christian social order-, he dedicated several chapters to explaining the problem of technocracy and the separation of economics from ethics and gave us a coherent Christian and Thomistic vision of the role of economics in society, and the roles of the market, money, usury, and wealth, absolutely aligned with the magisterium of the Church, anticipating 40 years to the current social and economic crisis that Chile is going through and that calls into question precisely the radicalism of that economic system. He also warned of the return of Marxist ideology, not in the same way in which he legitimately came to power, but in cultural forms, when he wrote about the ideological corruption of language, to cite an example, or when he wrote an outstanding article on “The problem of education”, at the beginning of the 80's, which foresaw the deterioration we are witnessing today at a global level.
Every human subject was relevant for him. And in every answer to each of them one could hear or read almost without distinction the philosophy of St. Thomas. He did not move a millimeter away from his master, the one he taught to follow, not only intellectually, but also as a human model. His love for the Church was also a beacon in the midst of the multiple confusions we are witnessing. With an orthodoxy that is never seen, he was able to situate the exact place in which a Catholic should stand in each of the ecclesiological and moral debates of the present time.
Defender of tradition and hispanity. For him, tradition was not a word, he made it life. He also always exalted the Chilean idiosyncrasy, but not in a chauvinistic way, but he sunk our roots in the culture coming from the Spain of the Catholic Monarchs, from the American Baroque, and in turn from the medieval Christian Europe. One could feel the weight of two millennia of tradition being with him. But at the same time, and within his hieratic figure, one could feel welcomed by that master. I remember and I want to share a phrase that he told me in his library in his house located in Viña del Mar, when among so many times I went to look for light: “Thomism, if it is not studied praying, can become easily empty words”.
Pablo Maillet
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Finis Terrae University
Chile
December 22, 2024.
