LUÍS ANTÓNIO UMBELINO
Luís António Umbelino is Professor of Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Coimbra (Portugal). He is Professor honoris causa of the International Institute for Hermeneutics. He was invited professor at the University of Toulouse (France) and is currently invited professor at the University of Salamanca (Spain). Umbelino is the Editor-in-Chief of the Revista Filosófica de Coimbra .
Luís António Umbelino’s philosophical work has mainly been devoted to philosophical approaches to body and space, crossing the fields of Biranism, contemporary phenomenology, and hermeneutics of architecture. His perspective is, in a way, inscribed in the vigorous micro-tradition of topological thought that tries do resist the prevailing devaluation of space regarding time in the history of philosophy. In this context, he has always been interested in the case of the spatial side of memory. In his book Memorabilia. O Lado Espacial da Memória [Memorabilia. The Spatial Side of Memory] (2019) the main features of the elusive phenomena of “spatial memory” are studied along three main axes: a phenomenological one, dealing with the “original pact” body and space seem to establish as if they mutually were to take each other in charge; an hermeneutic one, dealing with the repercussions of such a pact in the mediated experience of built human spaces, as human space is only accessed by architecture (playing the same role regarding space, as the one played by narrative regarding time); an ontological one, dealing with theendless description and interpretation of our spatial way of topologically belonging to the Earth.
In recent years Umbelino has further elaborated his phenomenological hermeneutic approach to space. He has mainly done so concentrating on two directions: a fundamental one, dealing with the research of the original “model” of an embodied unveiled space. In this context a return to the works of Maine de Biran is believed to be crucial and, in his book “Somatologia Subjetiva. Apercepção de Si e Corpo em Maine de Biran” [Subjective Somatology: Apperception of Oneself and Body in Maine de Biran] (2010) that is well demonstrated along a study of affectivity, of the stratification of memory, and of the notion of “interior space of the body”. A second direction is a “concrete” one, and currently deals with atmospheres, edges, fireplaces, churches, and burial sites.