1. Delfim Santos was born in Oporto, Portugal in 1907, to Arnaldo Pinto and Amelia dos Santos Oliveira.
11 Facts About Delfim Santos
1. 2.
Delfim Santos's father was a goldsmith and trained him for his craft, which Delfim successfully practiced as apprentice until Arnaldo's untimely death, occurred when the son was aged 15.
3.
Still under the impact of his recent orphan condition, the young Delfim kept the family business running for a while, only to become aware that his vocation and motivation lay elsewhere and thereby decided to pursue a lifelong engagement with study and intellectual quest.
4.
Delfim Santos had Leonardo Coimbra and Teixeira Rego as his mentors during his student years and among his colleagues were Agostinho da Silva and Adolfo Casais Monteiro.
5.
Delfim Santos was among the first to introduce Martin Heidegger to a Portuguese audience in his 1938 essay Heidegger and Holderlin or the Essence of Poetry.
6.
Meanwhile, Delfim Santos received his PhD in 1940 from Coimbra University presenting a thesis on Knowledge and Reality, and returned to Berlin where he was to remain until 1942, the year in which he permanently resettled in Portugal.
7.
Delfim Santos taught Psychology during several years in the Portuguese Military Academy.
8.
Delfim Santos attended numerous international Philosophy congresses and symposia, namely the 9th International Congress of Philosophy - Descartes Congress, Paris, France 1937, the 10th International Congress of Philosophy - Amsterdam.
9.
Delfim Santos took part in some of the celebrated Eranos seminars in Switzerland.
10.
Delfim Santos was member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences and exchanged personal correspondence with international scholars and writers such as Mircea Eliade, Constantin Noica, Hermann Hesse, Ernesto Grassi and Michael de Ferdinandy.
11.
Delfim Santos wrote comprehensively about the history of philosophical thinking in Portugal and Brazil, particularly on Silvestre Pinheiro Ferreira arguably Brazil's first philosopher, and on Francisco Suarez, a Spanish scholar active at Coimbra University between 1597 and 1616.