Jacques Taminiaux was educated at the University of Louvain, where he earned a B.A. in Philosophy in 1948, Doctor Juris in 1950, a Licentiate in Philosophy in 1951, a Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1954, and a Maître agrégé in Philosophy in 1967, with the dissertation, “La nostalgie de la Grèce à l’aube de l’Idéalisme allemand.” He has been professor of philosophy at Boston College since 1989. Prior to that he was professor of philosophy at Louvain-la-Neuve. He was also visiting professor at Universidad Federal, Rio de Janeiro, in 1980, at Université Laval in 1970, and at Boston College, every other year from 1968 to 1990.
Professor Taminiaux’s publications include the following books: Naissance de la philosophie Hégélienne de l’état: Commentaire et traduction de la Realphilosophie d’Iéna (1805-1806), Paris, 1984; Dialectic and Difference: Finitude in Modern Thought, London, 1985; Lectures de l’ontologie fondamentale: Essais sur Heidegger, Grenoble, 1989; La fille de Thrace et le penseur professionel: Arendt et Heidegger, Paris, 1992; Poetics, Speculation, and Judgment: The Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to Phenomenology, Albany, 1993; Le Théâtre des philosophes: La tragédie, l’être, l’action, Grenoble, 1995, and Sillages phénoménologiques / Auditeurs et lecteurs de Heidegger, Brussels, 2002. He has also published well over one hundred articles and has delivered many invited lectures.
In 1977 Professor Taminiaux received the Prix Francqui, which is awarded annually by the King of Belgium to the nation’s outstanding scholar. He is a member of the Académie Royale de Belgique, the Institut International de Philosophie, and of the Academia Europaea, Cambridge, U.K. He was awarded a medal by the National Foundation for Scientific Research, Belgium, in 1990, and received an honorary degree from the Pontificia Universita Catolica del Peru, Lima, in 1996.