Many important
people, who have played an important part in education, culture, science,
sport, and other cultural domains in Serbia deserve to be mentioned. Among them there are well-known
philosophers, historians, university professors, play writers, actors,
painters, football players…
Svetomir Nikolajevic
was born 1844, in the village Radusa near Ub. He attended the elementary school
in Valjevo, and high school in Sabac. As a cadet, he studied History and World
Literature in Switzerland, Germany, and England.
He had been lecturing
at Belgrade’s Grande Ecole for nearly 20 years, and he had been the rector in
the time period of 1888-1890.
He published the
first Serbian essayistic book: ‘’Listici iz knjizevnosti’’. He could speak many languages: Greek, Latin, German, French,Italian,
English, Russian, Koine Greek, and almost each writer whom he based his
lecturing on he could read as if he were a native speaker of that language.
He was a member of
The Serbian Fellowship of Educated Men since 1874,
and regular member of the Serbian Royal Academy since 1887.
The first reliable data
about courses taught at the University of Belgrade, which also covered English
literature originate from 1873, when Professor Svetomir Nikolajević
introduced sections on Shakespeare and Byron in his lectures. According to him,
Shakespeare is a poet to whom psychological truth is the most important goal of
dramatic art.
Nikolajević
served as the Prime Minister of Serbia from April 3 to 27 October 1894, as the
Mayor of Belgrade and as the Minister of Internal Affairs. He was one of the
founders of the People's Radical Party and the Society of St. Sava. He was also
one of the founders the Masonic lodge "Pobratim". Nikolajević was
an early member of the Serbian Red Cross, founded by Vladan Đorđević
during the Serbian-Ottoman War (1876-1877).
In politics, Svetomir
Nikolajević insisted that preparations for an agreement for a
Macedonian settlement should continue in case the Prime Minister Ilija Garašanin
was compelled to resign. Following the disappointing turn of events in 1885
(Serbo-Bulgarian War), the Serbian policy toward Macedonia acquired new
momentum in 1886, with the establishment of the Society of Saint Sava. Since he was elected
as its president, Svetolir Nikolajević was the founder of the society, and was
known for his moderate views of Greek claims in Macedonia. Nikolajević is
the first Serbian historian to write about Rigas Feraios.
By the early
twentieth century, the first professor of the newly established Department of
World Literature in the Belgrade School of Philosophy was Svetomir Nikolajević,
later Professor at the School of Philology at the University of Belgrade.
In his Listići iz
književnosti
(Leaves from Literature), published in two volumes (Belgrade, 1883 and 1888),
Nikolajević rendered great services to the study of foreign writers and
poets such as Tacitus, Shakespeare, Ludovico Ariosto, Montesquieu, Byron, Luis
de Camões and Torquato Tasso. That work was continued by Marko Car when Nikolajević
entered politics.
He died in 1922, in Belgrade.
Branislav
Petronijevic was born on April 6,
1875, in village Sovljak near Ub. . He attended the elementary school in Ub, grammar school in Valjevo, and Grande Ecole in
Belgrade. He had studied Medicine for three semesters in Vienna, and then he transferred
his field of studies onto Philosophy in Leipzig, where he obtained his Phd Degree. He was a
professor at Belgrade’s Grande Ecole and
at University of Belgrade.
We learn more about
him in the Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, Vol. 11:
A man who impressed
me, not so much by his ability as by his resolute absorption in philosophy even
under the most arduous circumstances, was the only Yugoslav philosopher of our
time, whose name was Branislav Petroniević. I met him only once, in the year
1917. The only language we both knew was German and so we had to use it,
although it caused people in the streets to look at us with suspicion. The
Serbs had recently carried out their heroic retreat before the German invaders,
and I was anxious to get a first-hand account of this retreat from him, but he
only wanted to expound his doctrine that the number of points in space is
finite and can be estimated by considerations derived from the theory of
numbers. The consequence of this difference in our interests was a somewhat
curious conversation. I said, "Were you in the great retreat?" and he
replied, "Yes, but you see the way to calculate the number of points in
space is." I said, "Were you on foot?" and he said, "Yes,
you see the number must be a prime." I said, "Did you not try to get
a horse?" and he said, "I started on a horse, but I fell off, and it
should not be difficult to find out what prime." In spite of all my
efforts, I could get nothing further from him about anything so trivial as the
Great War. I admired his capacity for intellectual detachment from the
accidents of his corporeal existence, in which I felt that few ancient Stoics
could have rivalled him. After the First War he was employed by the Yugoslav
Government to bring out a magnificent edition of the eighteenth-century
Yugoslav philosopher Boskovic, but what happened to him after that I do not
know.
He should be
remembered by his scientific works- he was interested in philosophy,
psychology, mathematics, palaeontology, history of science, and promoting of
philosophy. He published his works in
three languages, Serbian, German and French.
His major works are:Prinzipien der Metaphysik (Principles of
Metaphysics), first published in Heidelberg in 1904. three principal
philosophical works, Principi Metafizike (Principles of Metaphysics), O
Vrednosti života (About Value of Life), Istorija novije filozofije
(History of a Newer Philosophy).
Petronijević was
completely devoted to philosophy and science. He spent his life working never
accepting any social duties. In essence he espouses the synthetic-deductive
philosophy which divides the system of knowledge into three spheres:
metaphysical, intermediary and empirical. He considers himself a "born
metaphysician" and devotes all his efforts into building of the original
system of the spiritualistic objective idealism. In that metaphysical system he
introduces the theory of cognition and philosophy of nature. Using this method,
he seeks to reconcile the philosophies of Leibnitz and Spinoza. In his
self-designated, starting stance of a monopluralist, he connects with the
original empirical-rationalist theory of cognition, with his own discrete
geometry and philosophy of developing nature. He argues that the universe is
evolving from a condition of instability towards one of absolute stability, in
which there will be equilibrium in the relation between particular elements or
monads and the universal substance which underlies them. This last is the
subject of a special division of philosophy, beyond metaphysics, which he calls
hypermetaphysics.
Petronijević is
a strict finitist in everything. As synthetic philosopher and dialectician he
tries to merge primary philosophic doctrines: in gnoseology, empirism and
rationalism; in metaphysics, monadology and substantialism; in ontology and
methodology, dialectics and metaphysics (in Hegel's sense); science and
religion, science and speculation and others. His main philosophic work
"Principles of Metaphysics" (I and II) was left undone. He believed,
however, that there is a parallel between metaphysics and mathematics. With
regard to the method, metaphysics remains physics, and in it lies both their
strength and weakness. The motto of the first part of Petronijević's
"The Principles of Metaphysics" (published in Hidelberg in 1904)
reads: "Exact mathematical notions are a key to the solution of the
world's enigma." These metaphysics can be theology as well—these
two sciences are related—but they will never be able to give any
full answers to the so-called ultimate questions.
Petronijević
upheld an ethical theory of transcendental optimism and free will. He devoted a
number of studies to aesthetics, particularly in the work of the Serbian
poet-prince-bishop Petar II Petrović Njegoš and Leo Tolstoy.
Some 53 original
principles, discoveries and innovations were published by him. He considered
that the highest level in science he reached in mathematics, especially with
his original discrete and finite geometry. Time and space are real forms of the
being and the space itself is simultaneous coexistence of real points and the
fragments of the being in the time. That geometry mathematicians today consider
as unusual, abstruse and not strictly mathematically grounded.
It is very important to point out that grammar school in Ub has an honor to be
named after Branislav Petronijevic.
