Francesco TOMATIS

Born in Carrù, Italy, in 1964, Francesco isa philosopher, mountaineer and Kung Fu instructor. He is professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Salerno.

His research focussed on Friedrich Schelling, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger in the German context, Luigi Pareyson and Luigi Einaudi in Italy, and Lao Tzu and Yang Chengfu in China, delving in particular into the ontological problem of freedom and evil, time and eschatology, principles and non-knowledge. He then developed an experiential philosophy, mainly focussed on mountains, which understands existence as a personal experience of the verticality of the limit, as well as a hermeneutic philosophy of intercultural dialogue, particularly attentive to the Trinitarian Christian theology and Chinese Daoism.

For Francesco, the mountain environment offers a unique perspective to understand and address the fundamental questions of human life. On the peaks, everything can be comprehended fully, with depth and a sense of participatory detachment, as if viewed from above.

He has been writing in the cultural pages of the Italian daily newspaper Avvenire since 1995. He edits a column in Ousitanio Vivo, the monthly magazine of the Occitan valleys of Italy, of which he has been a contributor since 1998, and has collaborated with the magazine of the Italian Alpine Club.

He has written a long series of books, among which also Filosofia della montagna (Mountain Philosophy), a book in which Francesco invites readers to consider mountaineering in its material and intellectual wholeness.