Aleš Ušeničnik

Who was Aleš Ušeničnik?

Aleš Ušeničnik was a Slovene Roman Catholic priest, philosopher, sociologist and theologian. He was one of the main philosophers of neo-Thomism in Slovenia and in Yugoslavia.

Ušeničnik was born in the village of Poljane near the Upper Carniolan town of Škofja Loka, in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. In 1897, he became professor at the Theological Semminary in Ljubljana. In 1919, he became professor at the Faculty for Theology at the University of Ljubljana, where he taught philosophy. In the years 1922 and 1923, he served as the fourth rector of the University of Ljubljana. In 1937, he became a member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas and in 1938 one of the founding members of the Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana. In 1948, he was expulsed from the Academy by the new Communist regime.

He died in Ljubljana in 1952.