Pavo Barišić

In May 2021, Barišić has been elected as ordinary member of the European Academy of Science and Arts, which has its headquarters in Salzburg, Austria.

Since 1986, he has been a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy in Zagreb, and its director between 1991 and 2001. He was a full professor at the University of Split, where he was head of the Department of Philosophy from 2005 to 2013. From 2019 he is a full professor at the University of Zagreb and from 10 December 2019 to 16 March 2021 was a dean of Faculty of Croatian Studies.

His mandate ended on 9 June 2017, when the government coalition was reshuffled and his Ministry of Science and Education was entrusted to the Croatian People's Party. According to the coalition agreement, Barišić was offered the position of a minister at the Ministry of Labour and Pension System in exchange, which he declined. Two months later, asked by reporters if he was sorry that Barišić was no longer a minister, the Prime Minister Andrej Plenković explained that it was the professor's decision and that he was offered a ministerial position in the new parliamentary majority: „He could have been the minister if he wanted. In the configuration of the new parliamentary majority, he had the opportunity to be a minister in the government. He thanked, but he has my support. We are in communication.“

As deputy minister at the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports from 2004 to 2006, he was the Head of the Operational Staff for the Implementation of the Bologna Reform and the First President of the Steering Board of the Agency for Science and Higher Education. On 19 October 2016 he was appointed as the Minister of Science and Education in the Cabinet of Andrej Plenković.

In 2015, Barišić received the award for scientific excellence from the Institute of Philosophy. In 2018, he received the Recognition of the Humboldt Foundation for research and international collaboration, and a special Recognition from the Rector of the university for his contribution and promotion of the University of Split. In 2022, he was awarded for scientific works with high international visibility at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Croatian Studies.

In the thematic issue on Democracy and Political Education, edited on the 150th anniversary of John Dewey, Barišić highlights two key moral criteria "that in a special way point to the superiority of the educational ideal in a democratic community over any other form of social integration. First, there is the level of common interest that is realised in a society. The second principle is that of freedom to develop new common and individual interests in various forms of association."

From 2014 until 2016 he was a president of the Croatian Humboldt Club, and from 2021 the vice president. For 13 years, from 2003 to 2016, he was the president of the Croatian Paneuropean Union, and since 2015 he has been the Secretary General of the International Pan-European Union.

He was an editor-in-chief of the leading Croatian and international philosophical journals Filozofska istraživanja and Synthesis Philosophica. From 2007 to 2009, he was a president of the Croatian Philosophical Society.

In 2002–2003, he was a visiting professor at the Kwansei Gakuin University in Nishinomiya, Japan, where, together with Hideki Mine and Masakatsu Fujita, he prepared a thematic issue on Philosophy in Japan.

The main topic of the book Welt und Ethos (1992) is Hegel's attitude towards the sundown of the occidental spiritual development. It analyses the turning point from the pinnacle of the absolute idealism to the nihilistic eclipse of the European metaphysics. In focus of its reconsideration is the concept of the world as ethos of the man, his whereabouts, abode, domicile, home, ecumene, the inhabited earth. It sheds light on Hegel's re-narration of the teleological order of events in the world history.

Pavo Barišić graduated from the University of Zagreb, its Faculty of Law in 1982, and its Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in 1983. He gained a PhD degree from the University of Augsburg in 1989 with the dissertation Welt und Ethos [World and Ethos].

Pavo Barišić (born 9 September 1959) is a Croatian philosopher and politician who served as the Minister of Science and Education in the Cabinet of Andrej Plenković from 19 October 2016 until 9 June 2017. He publishes in the field of philosophy of law, politics and democracy, history of philosophy, and bioethics. He is a member of Croatian Democratic Union.