Ferraz da Rosa’s Work Is Rooted in the Islands of the Atlantic, Yet Open to the Universality of Culture

On Thursday, February 26, at 6:00 p.m., the Biblioteca Pública e Arquivo Regional de Ponta Delgada will host the launch and presentation of the latest book by Professor Eduardo Ferraz da Rosa: The Logic of Ideas – Studies in Philosophy and Literary Criticism. The event will take place in the Library’s Screening Room and will feature presentations by Professors Brandão da Luz and Urbano Bettencourt.

In his Preface, Professor Mendo Castro Henriques of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa writes that “Eduardo Ferraz da Rosa stands as one of the most singular voices in contemporary Portuguese philosophy and culture.” Henriques emphasizes that the author’s intellectual journey—spanning literature, theology, anthropology, aesthetics, ethics, and history—reveals “a thinker who does not separate the act of thinking from the experience of living, and who sees philosophy not merely as a discipline, but as a form of presence before the world.”

The volume, nearly 600 pages in length, is organized into two major thematic sections, each divided into three units that explore a wide range of perspectives, subjects, and authors.

The first section is devoted to “pure” philosophy and related disciplines—Theology, Psychology, Ethics, and Religion—engaging in dialogue with figures such as José Enes, Rahner, Lonergan, Ratzinger, Lévinas, Heidegger, Kant, and Aristotle, alongside Portuguese thinkers including Antero and Leonardo Coimbra. Here, Ferraz da Rosa moves within the great currents of Western thought, yet does so with a distinctly Atlantic inflection—an island-born sensibility attentive to both metaphysical rigor and existential fragility.

The second section turns toward literary criticism, gathering a broad constellation of writers—global, national, and Azorean. Among them are Álamo Oliveira, Fernando Aires, Sidónio Bettencourt, Rui Rodrigues, Daniel de Sá, Emanuel Félix, Eça de Queirós, Fernando Pessoa, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, Álvaro Cunhal, Ruy Belo, Luís de Camões, Iturbe, Le Clézio, Alberto Manguel, and Albert Camus. Ferraz da Rosa approaches each not merely as a critic, but as an interlocutor, reading literature as a field where ontology, ethics, and language converge.

Henriques also underscores the “hermeneutic and luminous, symbolic and affective” character of Ferraz da Rosa’s prose—writing “rooted in the island Atlantic, yet open to the universality of Culture.” As noted on the book’s back cover, with commentaries by Carlos Reis, José Enes, Adriano Moreira, and Mendo Henriques, the work traces a “trajectory that unites Ontology, Ethics, Language, Literature, and Hope under a single hermeneutic horizon.” The reflection unfolds in sustained dialogue with Scholasticism, Theology, and Phenomenology, invoking—both implicitly and explicitly—Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Lonergan, J. B. Metz, Jean-Luc Marion, Emmanuel Falque, and other contemporary thinkers in an effort to reconcile philosophical reflection and theological inquiry, mystical sensibility and poetic creation.

Born in Praia da Vitória, on Terceira Island, Eduardo Ferraz da Rosa is a university professor, writer, researcher, and essayist. He earned his degree in Philosophy from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, completing a thesis on Vitorino Nemésio (published in Ponta Delgada with a preface by José Enes). His academic path has taken him through the Universidade de Coimbra, the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, and the Universidade dos Açores, where he has served as Assistant Professor, Visiting Professor, and Director of the Teacher Training Program.

His intellectual range extends well beyond philosophy. With experience in Portuguese culture, systemic psychology, and biomedical sciences, he served as Associate Researcher in Epidemiology and Molecular Biology and as Director of the Scientific Documentation Center at the Hospital of Terceira Island.

A member of several cultural and scientific institutions—including the Instituto de Filosofia Luso-Brasileira, the Instituto Açoriano de Cultura, and the Instituto Cultural de Ponta Delgada—he has served as President of the Historical Institute of Terceira Island and as a Distinguished Member of the Sociedade Histórica da Independência de Portugal, representing it in the Autonomous Region of the Azores. As a consultant to the Regional Government and various Azorean municipalities, he has also coordinated major commemorations, including the bicentennial of Almeida Garrett and the centennial of Vitorino Nemésio.

Ferraz da Rosa was elected by the Azorean Legislative Assembly to serve as a National Counselor of Education and has produced an extensive body of literary, academic, and socio-cultural work, encompassing poetry, essays, literary criticism, philosophical studies, and major editorial projects. In 2025, he presided over the jury of the Vitorino Nemésio Prize, and this new volume includes the full text of his closing address delivered at the award ceremony—a fitting testament to a thinker who understands philosophy not as abstraction, but as a lived vocation.

With The Logic of Ideas, Eduardo Ferraz da Rosa offers more than a scholarly compendium. He offers an Atlantic meditation—rigorous yet intimate—on how thought, faith, language, and literature continue to illuminate one another in a world too often fractured between intellect and spirit.

In Atlântico Expresso-Natalino Viveiros, director