Professor Emeritus, Doctor of Philosophy Juha Manninen died in Helsinki on December 13, 2023. He was 78 years old, born in Helsinki on November 24, 1945.
On the father's side, the roots were in Moravia of the Habsburgs, since 1736 in the German community of St. Petersburg. In 1918, the family emigrated to Finland, Sweden and Germany via the Kannas villa. My mother's roots were from a different world, from the countryside of Eastern and Southern Finland. Along with great military sorrows, families were united by making art. That was not the way to live in the post-war period. Manninen often told how much help the potter's mother and her sons received from their grandparents after the divorce. And how he learned to love Helsinki while traveling with his “second sister” who worked as an illustrator.
Thus also found antiquarian shops, Juha Manninen's first universities. At the actual university, he chose theoretical and practical philosophy and psychology in 1966. Soon he was founding the student association Dilemmaa, worked as a “part-time assistant” for Oiva Ketonen and as an editorial assistant for the international Synthese piloted by Jaakko Hintika and the domestic Psykologia.
Marx and Hegel inspired him, but after hearing about the professorship of the history of ideas and doctrine coming to Oulu, Manninen made a bold career plan. A manuscript about JV Snellman as a Hegelian was enough for the appointment in 1977. Since then, he has been involved in working on critical institutions of both Snellman's and Antti Chydenius's works. Societas Hegeliana opened connections with Central and Southern Europe and socialist countries.
The interest in Eino Kaila and the Vienna area, which had already arisen in antique shops, led to returning home and applying to the University of Helsinki's research college in 2005. The last articles on the subject have been published in international collections. Also recent are the last texts on the philosophy of the period of Finnish autonomy, co-authored by Georg Gimpl and Ilkka Niiniluoto.
Exercise it was Juha's cycling: in Oulu we went to the sea, in Helsinki to Vantaa to Pitkäkoski, on holidays abroad to the southern shores of the Baltic Sea and the Thames. Photography became at least as important. His grandparents had owned a photography studio in Suomenlinna, and his mother photographed the island itself along with the islanders. Juha recorded the daily and annual cycle of Arabianranta and gained many local followers on social media.
After receiving the diagnosis, he picked up his science fiction classics, but the science fiction drawing of his school days remained. Last autumn, however, I had enough strength to study the genealogy prepared by German-great-uncle and the photos and diaries of the families.
Juha met his future spouse Aino after inviting her to give a lecture on the novelty of the discipline, women's studies. This union lasted 40 years. Juha deserved special thanks for taking care of the family during the years when his wife was working abroad. It was clear that she was proud of her daughter's argument.
Aino Saarinen-Manninen
The author is Juha Manninen's wife.
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