Eliseo Vivas


Eliseo Vivas was a 20th-century philosopher and literary theorist.
As a child, his family fled Colombia in response to the presidency of Cipriano Castro. They went to Curacao, then Paris, then, in 1915, to New York City. Vivas served as the Venezuelan consul in Philadelphia, then turned to academia studying or teaching at, among other schools, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, Ohio State University, Northwestern University, Rockford College, and the University of Iowa.
Vivas's philosophy was essentially conservative, and he relied on poetry as metaphysics while abandoning naturalism. He arrived at his conclusions after trying on many schools, "from Marxism to conservatism, and from naturalism to value realism."
His papers are collected by Northwestern University.

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