Biography:

Dr. Luis E Navia is professor of philosophy at New York Institute of Technology, where he was teaching and serving as the dean for many years. He published many books in recent years, all of them in philosophy.

Luis E. Navia was born in Colombia, where he was educated by the Jesuits and where he was first introduced to the study of philosophy and classical languages at an early age. He came to the United States before his eighteenth birthday and has lived in New York since that time.

He received a B.A. in philosophy from Queens College (CUNY) in 1963, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in philosophy from New York University in 1967 and 1972. His doctoral dissertation was on Schopenhauer, specifically on the problem of the freedom of the will from the perspective of the German philosopher. In 1977 he was awarded a fellowship for post-doctoral work at Princeton University, where he studied ancient Greek cosmology. He holds a diploma in astronomy from the Coast School of Navigational Astronomy in California.

After a variety of jobs held in his early twenties (United Nations, The New York Daily News, and others), Navia began his teaching career in 1965 at Hofstra University, where he taught foreign languages, and at Queens College (CUNY), where he taught philosophy. In 1968 he joined the faculty of New York Institute of Technology, where he has been a professor of philosophy since that time and where he has held various administrative positions, including the deanship of the College of Arts, Sciences, and Communication. He has also taught courses in philosophy and astronomy at New York University, School of Visual Arts, Touro College, and other institutions. From 1974 to 2006, he worked for the Commission on Higher Education (Middle States Association) as an evaluator, consultant, and pro tempore commissioner.

He has been the recipient of numerous national and international awards for teaching and scholarship. His biography has been included in biographical works such as Who’s Who and Men of Achievement.

He is the author of twenty books, several of them on ancient Greek philosophy. Some of his books deal with the Cynic movement and with Cynics such as Antisthenes and Diogenes the Dog (whom he regards as the most faithful followers of Socrates). Some of his books, as well as his articles, have been translated into languages such as German, French, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese, and Japanese. He views his new book, Socrates: A Life Examined, as the summation of his writing career and as his most significant contribution in philosophy.

Fluent in several languages and with a solid knowledge of Greek and Latin, Navia regards himself as a citizen of the world. He defines philosophy as a vocation, not just as a way of making a living, that obliges him to live an examined life and to regard reason as the only source of legislation for himself and those close to him. This, he believes, is the lesson that philosophy has taught him since the time, when as a child in Colombia, he learned about Aristotle from his father.

Favorite philosophers? Socrates, Diogenes the Dog, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. Favorite quotes? From Socrates: “An unexamined life is not worth living,” and from Nietzsche: “A philosopher should be recognized not by what he says or writes, but by how he lives, even by how he walks.” Favorite composers? Bach and Mozart.

Best quote from his new book? “It takes only a small dosage of lucidity to conclude , as Schopenhauer did, that human life gives every indication of being some kind of a mistake. Still, at least from Socrates’ perspective, if human life is a mistake, it is we, not God or nature or even society, that are responsible for the mistake, and if so, it is we, in our own individuality, who must attempt to correct it.”

Unanswered questions? Many and growing in number with the passage of time. For many years, Navia has been puzzled about the issue of the origin of the human species and, in particular, with the development of the human mind. He has steadily suspected that the human species could have had an extraterrestrial origin and for this reason he has lent an attentive ear to the challenging ideas of Eric von Däniken, who has written extensively on this subject. Two of Navia’s early books dealt with this issue, and in them he attempted to validate the hypothetical value of the idea that the human species was once influenced by the presence of extraterrestrial beings on our dismal planet.

Links and further web information:
Dr. Luis Navia, New York Institute of Technology
Literature, awards etc.