I am Argentine (nobody is perfect), from Rosario, in the province of Santa Fe. The greatest intellectual recognition of my life came from primary school. When I completed sixth grade, I was awarded a prize as the best student: a green membership card that entitled me to one year as a member of the Gimnasia y Esgrima club in my city. I was not so fortunate in secondary school. Perhaps it was adolescence. During those years, I fell in love for the first time, discovered the fiction of William Saroyan, and was dazzled by the literature of Marcel Proust. Looking back from my current perspective, I realize that I held an obstinate conviction: once a person has learned to read, write, and perform the four basic mathematical operations, the wisest course is to become self-taught. It is a conviction I still hold.

Nevertheless, the need to leave my parents’ home and breathe in the wider world led me to enroll at the National University of the Littoral, in the city of Santa Fe. There began my wandering through student boarding houses, politics, and bohemian life. The fact is that, betraying my own convictions, I graduated as a notary, a lawyer, and a Doctor of Juridical and Social Sciences from the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences. There I met Lucía Lauzón, whom I married, and with whom I shared a wonderful marriage until her death in 2014. After that, everything unfolded at a dizzying and dramatic pace. At the age of 25, I was appointed through a competitive selection process as a full professor of sociology of law, sociological theory, and industrial sociology at the Faculties of Law, Political Science, and Psychology, respectively, of the National University of Rosario. At 30, I was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities at the same university. As a consequence of this early academic experience, I had to leave the country with my wife and children for a long exile of ten years in Mexico and the United States (1974–1984).

In the United States, thanks to a Fulbright scholarship, I was able to pursue postgraduate studies at Harvard University and Tufts University. I graduated from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy with a Master’s degree in International Relations. In Mexico, I served as an adviser and speechwriter to two Secretaries of Finance and Public Credit: David Ibarra Muñoz and Jesús Silva Herzog. I worked as a consultant for several international organizations, including the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Organization of American States (OAS), and the World Bank. I also taught and conducted research at the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), at its Xochimilco and Iztapalapa campuses, and served as director of the Graduate Studies Section at Mexico’s National Technological Institute.

In 1984, with the return of democracy to Argentina, I held several distinguished positions in the administration of President Raúl Alfonsín (1983–1989). President Alfonsín first appointed me Secretary of Public Works and Services of the Argentine Republic and subsequently Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Argentine Republic, among other positions. Later, I resumed my work as a consultant for various international organizations within the United Nations system. In academia, I served as Executive Director of the Institute of Brazilian Studies at the National University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF) and of the Raúl Prebisch Foundation. I was also a member of the National Council for Policies to Consolidate Democracy (CONAPED). I have published three books and countless articles in publications in Argentina, Uruguay, Italy, Spain, Mexico, the United States, and Brazil.

I have served as Vice President of the Board of Directors of the Circle of Ministers, Secretaries, and Undersecretaries of the Executive Branch, as a consulting member of the Argentine Council for International Relations, and as a member of the Plan Fénix Open Chair at the Faculty of Economic Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires. I currently serve as the representative of the United Nations University for Peace in the Mercosur countries.

In recent years, philosophy, my first love, has become my navigational chart through the turbulent seas of this globalized and absurd world. From a philosophical perspective, I seek to unravel the meaning of contemporary events that concern geopolitics, international relations, and culture. With the serenity that comes with age and experience, I try to test—and put to the test myself—two aphorisms that have come to dominate my thinking. The first is by Hegel, who wrote: “The owl of Minerva, the bird of wisdom, takes flight at dusk.” The second is by Martin Heidegger, who said shortly before his death in an interview with Der Spiegel: “Only a God can save us.”