Mihailo Markovic

From Philosopedia

Mihailo Markovic (24 February 1927 – )

Markovic, a professor of philosophy at the University of Belgrade who also once headed the Serbian Academy of Science and Arts, was a co-president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. His specialty was logic.

Some remember his felt criticism of Stalinism in the name of a Humanist Marxism. Like Adam Schaff in Poland, he called into question the simplistic, Stalinist notions of "contradiction," which was the cornerstone of Marxist orthodoxy and bureaucratic double-speak. In 1978 at the Seventh International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) World Congress in London, Prof. Markovic addressed the group, as he did also at the Eighth held in Hannover (1982). Markovic wrote The Contemporary Marx: Essays on Humanist Communism (1974) and Democratic Socialism (1982).

For the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Markovic wrote the section on Yugoslav philosophy.

Although he once was named a Humanist Laureate in the Council of Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism, the honor was revoked at the recommendation of Paul Kurtz because of Markovic’s political views concerning genocide in Yugoslavia, views about Serbian nationalism which were considered anti-humanistic.

{SHD}