O Espaço Interior

Portuguese philosopher and thinker born in 1939 in Lourenço Marques, Mozambique. After completing secondary school in the Mozambican capital, in 1957 he came to study at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, where he enrolled in the Mathematical Sciences course. However, the following year he moved to Paris, France, where he continued his studies in Mathematics. However, he realized that his preferred area was Philosophy and changed courses. In 1968 he graduated in Philosophy from the Faculty of Letters of Paris, at the Sorbonne University. The following year he obtained a master's degree in Philosophy, with a thesis on Kant's morality. In 1982 he completed his doctorate with the thesis Body, Space and Power, published as a book in 1988.
However, since 1965 he had been a Philosophy teacher at a high school, a position he held until 1973, with stints in Vincennes and Corsica. From that time on, he was coordinator of the Department of Psychoanalysis and Philosophy at the University of Paris VIII. At the same time, he translated scientific texts for a body of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
In 1976, José Gil returned to Portugal to serve as an assistant to the Secretary of State for Higher Education and Scientific Research. Five years later, he settled permanently in Portugal when he became a visiting assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the New University of Lisbon. He taught Aesthetics and Contemporary Philosophy. At the same time, he taught at the International College of Philosophy in Paris, at a school in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. He also led several seminars in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and participated in Philosophy congresses in the United States of America. From 1996 onwards, he directed the Philosophy Collection of the Relógio D'Água publishing house.
He published numerous scientific articles and essays in journals and encyclopedias worldwide, with a particular focus on reflections about the body. He also produced some works on the poet Fernando Pessoa.
In 2004 he published Portugal Today: The Fear of ExistenceHis first work written directly in Portuguese, which quickly became a bestseller, discusses everyday life in a simple and accessible way. Before that, he had already published several works on topics as diverse as Salazar, Fernando Pessoa, Corsica, the body, or... The Little Prince, by Saint-Exupéry.
In January 2005, the renowned French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur José Gil was included in the group of the 25 greatest thinkers in the world.