World Philosophy Day 2020: The current validity of the thought of José María Blanco White, by Ernesto Castro

José María Blanco «White» (Seville, 1775 - Liverpool, 1841) was a writer, theologian, journalist, literary critic, secularized Catholic priest and one of the three great Spanish heterodox converts to 19th century Protestantism, along with Luis de Usoz and Río and Juan Calderón. Blanco «White» (whose real name was Jose María Blanco Crespo) was characterized by his progressive ideas, by his critical stance towards slavery and social inequality, and by his gradual support for the independence of the Spanish colonies in America. More than a century after his death, the writer Juan Goytisolo, winner of the 2014 Cervantes Prize, once again gave voice to Blanco «White» by writing extensively about his life and work, mainly with the publication of the anthology Blanco White, El Español y la independence of Spanish America. In it, Goytisolo collected the chronicles signed by the thinker for the monthly magazine El Español, founded in 1810. 

Ernesto Castro Córdoba (Madrid, 1990) has worked as a lecturer of Philosophy at the Complutense University of Madrid and the University of Zaragoza and has published non-fiction works Contra la postmodernidad: Un libelo del 15-M  (Alpha Decay, 2011), Un palo al agua: Textos de crítica cultural (Micromegas, 2016), El trap: Filosofía millennial para la crisis en España (Errata Naturae, 2019), Realismo poscontinental: Ontología y epistemología para el siglo XXI (Materia Oscura , 2020) and Ética, estética y política: Ensayos (y errores) de un metaindignado (Arpa, 2020). He also has a YouTube channel with more than 65,000 subscribers to which he uploads videos of his classes, lectures, interviews and other collaborations. 

World Philosophy Day was inaugurated in 2005 by UNESCO, which scheduled it on the third Thursday of November. With this, UNESCO aims to highlight the importance of this discipline, emphasizing the special values that young people can find in it. As UNESCO stated, "philosophy is a discipline that encourages critical and independent thinking and is capable of working towards a better understanding the world and promoting tolerance and peace".

The conference will be given in Spanish.