Vanja Sutlić

Who was Vanja Sutlić?

Vanja Sutlić was a Croatian philosopher. He was regarded as the father of the Heideggerian philosophy in former Yugoslavia and its successor states, especially in Croatia and Slovenia.

He was born in Karlovac, Croatia, in what was then the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. He graduated from philosophy at the University of Zagreb, where he also obtained his PhD. In, he was hired as an assistant professor at the University, but in 1952 he was removed by the Yugoslav Communist authorities and forcibly transferred to Nova Gradiška. Already in 1953, he could return to Zagreb, continuing his teaching position. Between 1956 and 1964, he taught at the University of Sarajevo. Between 1964 until his death, he worked as a professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Zagreb. He died in Zagreb in 1989.

Sutlić's main philosophical preoccupation was the thought of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Through Hedeggerian phenomenology, Sutlić engaged in reflections on the modern epoch, which he frequently referred to as "the world of Work". In dialogue with the philosophies of Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche, he reflected on the meaning of modern nihilism, and the possibilities of its overcoming.