Vol 2, No 7 2000 pp. 407 - 408
In Memoriam
BOGDAN ŠEŠIĆ /1909-1999/
One of the most prominent Serbian philosophers, Bogdan Šešić was born in Valjevo on July 4, 1909.  After 90 years of active life, he died in Belgrade on February 10, 1999.
Upon completion of high school in Niš where he had lived in the period from 1924 to 1929, Šešić devoted himself to the studies of philosophy in Belgrade and managed to complete course requirements in 1935. After that he attended advanced specialized studies in logic and gnoseology in Berlin and Prague. His first significant works date from that particular period: Principles of the Absolute Truth (1938) and Universal Logic Axiomatics (1939), both in German, originally conceived as doctoral dissertations. It was a period when he was very close to the new Kantianism. However, he soon accepted Marxism and wrote a doctoral dissertation on J. Dietzgen which was not defended until 1955, although it was completed in 1939-40. He started his career of a university teacher of philosophy at the University of Skopje (1950-54), and continued it in Belgrade (1954-76) where he remained until retirement. In the period before the Second World War he spent some time working as a secondary school teacher in Zaječar and Belgrade (1934-37).
Living in tumultuous times of the breakthrough and later disaster of the Hitler's Nazism, rise and fall of the Stalinism, as well as in times of the Yugoslav socialism of self-management, professor Šešić encountered numerous difficulties and conflicts, trying to maintain a theoretically consistent and ethically proper attitude, often defying the "fooleries" of his own time and milieu, with a feeling of "a hunted game".
As a teacher of philosophy at the Philosophical Faculty of Belgrade he acted calmly and thoroughly. His public appearances and comments in journals, although very polemic, were chiefly based on theoretical rather than ideological arguments and explications which were not much compliant with the spiritual climate of the time.
Professor Šešić is one of the most prolific writers among the Yugoslav philosophers. He published a considerable number of works in the area of logic and gnoseology. He also dealt with the problems of other philosophical disciplines such as: ontology, anthropology, axiology, esthetics, modern Marxist philosophy, philosophy of science, etc.
His opus published in Serbia includes:
 1. Dialectic Materialism of Joseph Dietzgen. 1957.
 2. Introduction to Dialectical Logic. 1957.
 3. Esthetic Studies. The Tragic As a Type of Esthetic Reality. 1958.
 4. Logic and Scientific Methodology. 1962.
 1. Dialectic Materialism. 1962 /Co-author: A. Stojković/
 6. Necessity and Freedom. 1963.
 7. Contemporary Man and the World. 1969.
 8. Contemporary Theories on the Physical Reality. 1972.
 9. Philosophical Fundamentals of Physics. 1973.
 10. Development and Contemporary Problems of Marxist Philosophy. 1974.
 11. Man, Sense and Nonsense. Dialectics of Sense and Nonsense. 1979.
 12. Marxist Philosophy of Sense. 1979.
 13. Philosophy of History. 1986.
 14. Universale logische Axiomatik. 1991.
He published numerous treatises and articles in the philosophical and other journals in Serbian and other languages. Many of them deal with various problems of Marxist philosophy, particularly with dialectics. He also published a considerable number of works on logic. Among other works, he published a treatise on the Aristotle's logic teachings ("Aristotle's Organon", 1965), as well as a number of articles on the questions of symbolic logic among which there was one voluminous work entitled Logic of Change (Bologna, 1973). It can be assumed that he gave a significant contribution to the logic of science. His text-book Fundamentals of Logic went through several editions. It is generally believed that Šešić is the most significant Serbian logician among our philosophers. His works General Methodology (1971) and Fundamentals of Social Sciences (1974) are considered to be very important for the application of logic in scientific research.
His works dealing with the philosophy of natural sciences also stand out on account of their significance and value. His analysis and criticism of the theories on physical reality and on the fundamentals of physics deserve attention of both philosophers and scientists. As for his works focused on sense, they are not only significantly informative of the state of the philosophical thought in this field, but also highly stimulative for those showing desire to deal with the matter.
As a lecturer, professor Šešić was thorough and balanced, and as a man modest and attentive, always ready to help. A certain dose of timidity and caution which sometimes could be perceived in his behavior, were a consequence of various political and ideological pressures of his social milieu.
He wrote about his misfortunes in a rather reserved and objective manner in his book My Life Story - Memories and Reflections (1993).

Gligorije Zaječaranović