Þorsteinn Gylfason

This is an Icelandic name. The last name is a patronymic or matronymic, not a family name; this person is properly referred to by the given name Þorsteinn.

Þorsteinn Gylfason (12 August 1942 - 16 August 2005) was an Icelandic philosopher, translator, musician, poet, art enthusiast and intellectual. Þorsteinn was born and raised in Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland. His parents were Guðrún Vilmundardóttir and Gylfi Þ. Gíslason, a university professor and government minister. He was the brother of Vilmundur Gylfason, a prominent politician, and Þorvaldur Gylfason, a professor of economics.

Þorsteinn distinguished himself in Icelandic public life with his writings in newspapers, journals and publications.

Contents

His life and accomplishments

Education

Þorsteinn graduated from the Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík gymnasium in 1961 and subsequently received a grant to study at Harvard University. He left Harvard with a B.A. degree in philosophy, having studied under the tutelage of Willard Van Orman Quine. He returned home for graduate studies in Icelandic, and later attended the University of Munich and Magdalen College, Oxford from 1965-1971. At Oxford, he studied under Gilbert Ryle and befriended well-known characters from philosophical circles, such as Alfred Jules Ayer. This influence affected his work in philosophy to a considerable extent.

Career

Þorsteinn worked as an assistant professor at the University of Iceland from 1971, and received a full professorship in 1989. He was popular with his students, not only for his acumen and intelligence, but for his renowned generosity and friendliness. He was visiting professor at distinguished institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the London School of Economics.

Þorsteinn received a number of awards and acknowledgements for his achievements, amongst them the Þórbergur Þórðarson and National Icelandic Literature Prizes for his works in 1997. In 1994, he was awarded the Knights Cross of the Icelandic Falcon by Icelandic president Vigdís Finnbogadóttir, the highest honour bestowed on an Icelandic citizen, for his contribution to Icelandic culture and academia.

Works

Þorsteinn was a prolific writer. He wrote 12 books on philosophy and philology, the best known being An Essay on Man (1970), An Essay on the World (1992), Thinking in Icelandic (1996) and Justice and Injustice (1998). He also published over 37 major academic papers in various philosophical journals and composed poetry and lyrics in abundance, either with musical composer Atli Heimir Sveinsson or to the music of Kurt Weill and Richard Wagner.

He was also a gifted translator—his translations to Icelandic included On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, Søren Kierkegaard's Repetitions, Plato's Phaedo, Descartes' Meditations, to name but a few, all of whom were published by the Icelandic Literature Society, for which he served as a series chief editor for almost two decades.

Philosophy

Þorsteinn's philosophical work was mostly in the philosophy of language and mind and political philosophy. His method and style of philosophy was very much rooted in the analytic tradition, through influence from men such as W.V.O. Quine and Gilbert Ryle. He also found inspiration in the continental philosophers, especially from existentialism in the style of Søren Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger, whose works he translated into Icelandic. Later on, his focus rested firmly on contemporary work by Elizabeth Anscombe, Donald Davidson, Saul Kripke, John Rawls, Philippa Foot, Charles Taylor and Richard Rorty.

Þorsteinn's early works (An Essay on Man in particular) are in the style of 20th century logical positivism -- highly suspicious of esoteric Hegelian metaphysics. He later turned away from comprehensive theories to focus on specific problems. He considered himself an analytic philosopher insofar as "the ideas that have proven to be the most fruitful and inspiring, have been those of scholars generally considered to be 'analytic philosophers'. He usually said he was not much of a utilitarian neither in personal thinking nor politics and favoured deontology and virtue ethics.

His final words when describing himself as a philosopher were: "I believe that no philosophical theory can avoid paying the utmost heed to the natural sciences."

Death

Þorsteinn was diagnosed with terminal cancer of the stomach on the 12th of August 2005 and died four days later. His funeral took place in the Dómkirkjan church in Reykjavík and was attended by many Icelanders.

Publications

Books

Booklets

Principal Essays in Books or Periodicals

Principal Poems in Periodicals and Anthologies

Works for the Stage

Main Translations into Icelandic

External links