Lavić: From Professor Jelena Berberović we learned that knowledge is the greatest gift to man

Written by: Prof. Dr. Senadin Lavić

In the period from 1960 to 1990, the Department of Philosophy and Sociology of the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo grew into a serious philosophical-scientific research community of competent interlocutors. This was a period when a generation of professors matured and fully realized themselves. It is important to recall that the University of Sarajevo was already producing its own scientific staff in the 1960s.

Among these “domestic forces” was Professor Jelena Berberović (1938-2017), who earned her doctorate at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo. The manuscript copy of her doctoral dissertation, Critique of Metaphysics in the Work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is dated September 1964, when it was completed, and it was defended a few months later in 1965. In a brief dedication at the beginning of the manuscript, the professor expresses gratitude to professors Vanja Sutlić and Gajo Petrović. In this way, she links her own philosophical experience and efforts with the philosophical ideas and currents in which the two older professors and colleagues had already participated and left a significant mark in Sarajevo and Zagreb, as well as in the broader intellectual space that was linguistically close and entirely understandable.

After graduating from the Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, in 1960, Professor Berberović began her career as an assistant in 1961. All the time of this world stood before the young, talented, and responsible assistant who would become a professor of the subject Gnoseology (as it was once called), i.e., Theory of Knowledge or Epistemology. She immediately engaged in research with Wittgenstein and his thought, which would lead to an epochal turn in European philosophical thought and the social sciences in general. Language and knowledge of the world are not mere “mirrors” or mere “reflections of the world” around us – language “creates” the world, and knowledge is an expression of our “production” of the world. The professor would honor generations of students with top-notch lectures on gnoseological problems, linguistic-analytic philosophy, and the importance of language for understanding thought, culture, and human interactions in general, leading young lovers of knowledge through philosophical labyrinths and worlds of human adventures on the path of episteme-scientia-Wissenschaft/science, through ancient, modern, and contemporary definitions of knowledge.

Professor Berberović became an assistant professor in the subject Theory of Knowledge in 1967, was elected associate professor in 1973, and full professor in 1978. During this period, she dealt with the ideas of L. Wittgenstein, R. Carnap, K. R. Popper, Th. S. Kuhn, P. Feyerabend, I. Lakatos, and many other authors who researched problems of knowledge and scientific theory. She was an active member of the editorial boards of the journals Pregled and Dijalog, and a member of the scientific editorial boards of the publishing house Svjetlost, in the “Nauka” edition, and the Logos and Polis libraries of the Sarajevo publishing house “Veselin Masleša”. Professor Berberović was also a member of the Center for Philosophical Research of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. For her work and scientific contribution, she received the Annual Award of the publishing house Svjetlost in 1978 and the “Veselin Masleša” Award for Scientific Work in 1984.

During the aggression against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, she took refuge in Belgrade, where she taught at the Faculty of Philosophy from 1993 to 2000. She returned to Sarajevo in 2000, where she worked until her retirement in 2009.

Published books by Professor Jelena Berberović: Knowledge and Truth (Belgrade, 1972), Philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Sarajevo, 1978), Terminological Multiplicities (Sarajevo, 1979), Philosophy and the World of Science (Sarajevo, 1990), Main Directions of Analytic Philosophy in the 20th Century (Belgrade, 2002), Rationality and Language. Essays on Contemporary Philosophy (Sarajevo, 2004).

We remember Professor Berberović as a perceptive interlocutor, a courageous personality with philosophical serenity and precise speech. I know that generations of students remembered her cheerful smile and the depth of her blue eyes, that magnificent “gay science” (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft / La gaya scienza) which she represented through the interpretation of philosophy and historically important thinkers. From her we learned that knowledge is the greatest gift to man and that because of this one should be happy. Therefore, philosophy was the absolute expression of human joy before the world that evokes wonder in him.

Gratitude and respect towards one's professors go beyond the usual forms of civic politeness and courtesy. We remember our professors and exceptional people with pride.