Juha Varto is a Finnish philosopher, considered the most important phenomenologist in Finland, known also for his prolific output on a variety of philosophical themes. Since 1999 he has been professor of research in visual art and education at the Aalto University School of Art and Design, Helsinki. Before that he taught research methodology and acted as director of research in various Finnish universities and polytechnics and before that taught philosophy at the University of Tampere. During the 1990s Varto produced over 100 programmes for Finnish radio and television, mainly dealing with philosophical questions. He has been awarded an honorary doctorate for theatre and drama by the Theatre Academy Helsinki. Autumn 2016, the president of Aalto University, Tuula Teeri, appointed Varto an Aalto Distinguished Professor in recognition of his significant scientific merits. July 2017, Varto retired from Aalto University.
Career
Varto’s early philosophical interest was in the history of logic; his mentor, professor Raili Kauppi was an internationally known Leibniz scholar and writer in intentional logic. Varto’s doctoral thesis dealt with the subject of 12th century logic. Later he wrote on questions that touch upon the relationship between formal and philosophical in logic. Varto’s main corpus of writing is in Finnish, since during his early career there were only few texts in Finnish in philosophy and even less on phenomenology. His pedagogical interest was in elaborating Plato’s texts as a starting point in philosophy. But he has also dealt with texts on Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Scheler, Adolf Reinach, Edith Stein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas and Michel Henry. He has also studied the writings of Simone Weil and her approach to issues important to every day life. In recent years Varto has published extensive texts on aesthetics and artistic thinking and the methodology of artistic research.
The so-called ”Tampere School of Phenomenology” emerged around Varto’s scholarship activities in the 1980s. This group included both philosophers and scholars of other areas, such as politics and sociology. Today, many of his former students from that period hold leading positions in Finnish universities, as well as governmental institutions and private enterprises. The group identified itself as the ”Finnish Phenomenological Institute”, but after Varto moved to Helsinki it became known as the ”Society of European Philosophy”. The Institute published 44 volumes of scholarship in phenomenology, ranging from doctoral theses to monographs on individual intellectuals and translations of works by foreign intellectuals. Like Varto himself, the Institute and later the Society has been active in civil and public discussions on issues that previously lacked any intellectual approach. Notably, in 1993 they founded the philosophical journal ”niin&näin”, which became a known discussion forum, not tied to any particular school.
