Academician Muhamed Filipovic died on Wednesday at the age of 91. He was a philosophical writer, theorist, essayist and one of the most significant philosophers of Bosnia- Herzegovina, Avaz news portal reports.
Academician Filipovic was born in Banja Luka on August 3, 1929. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy and received his doctorate in 1960. He was a member of the Bosnian Academy of Sciences and president of the Bosnian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
He worked as a professor at the Faculty of Philosophy in Sarajevo. He has published 56 books, some of which have been translated into other languages. The largest number of translations was experienced by the book “Lenin – A Monograph of His Thought”, which was translated into Danish, Swedish, French, Bulgarian, Slovak, Italian and Chinese.
He was a founder and leader of the Muslim Bosniak Organization (MBO).
At the beginning of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA, est. 1990), the party also included a very influential secular nationalist grouping, led by Adil Zulfikarpašić and Muhamed Filipović.
He led a delegation and negotiated both with presidents of Croatia and Slovenia republics in SFRY, who invited Bosnia to join them on the planned path to secession, and later in June 1991, on behalf of SDA president Alija Izetbegović, Zulfikarpašić and Filipović met with SDS president Radovan Karadžić, Nikola Koljević and Momčilo Krajišnik to discuss the future status of SR Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He then met with representatives of Serbia who invited Bosnia to stay. Both proposals were rejected by Muslim leaders at the time. He considered especially tragic that proposal to stay in Yugoslavia together with Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro was rejected by Alija Izetbegović, after very successful negotiations with Slobodan Milošević, who agreed to all of his numerous demands – from Bosniak president and army chief of Yugoslavia to preserving unity of Bosnia within Yugoslavia. The proposal was eventually rejected by SDA.
During the Bosnian War, he was the ambassador to the United Kingdom.
