By Bosphorus News Life Desk
İoanna Kuçuradi, one of Türkiye's leading philosophers of ethics, human rights and value theory, will be buried in Istanbul on Sunday, the day she would have turned 90.
Kuçuradi died on October 2 at Maltepe University Hospital after a period of illness. Born in Istanbul on October 4, 1936, she was 89. A memorial ceremony is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. at Maltepe University's Mimar Vedat Çakırca Conference Hall, followed by burial at the Şişli Greek Orthodox Cemetery at 1:30 p.m.
Building philosophy as an institution
Kuçuradi graduated from Istanbul University's Department of Philosophy in 1959 and completed her doctorate in 1965. After working at Atatürk University in Erzurum, she founded Hacettepe University's Department of Philosophy in 1969 and headed it until her retirement in 2003.
At Hacettepe, she built a program in which ethics, value theory and human rights became central fields of study. Her work asked how values are recognized, how people make judgments in concrete situations and what is required to protect human dignity.
İoanna Kuçuradi
"Human rights express certain requirements concerning every human being."
Bosphorus News translation from Turkish.
For Kuçuradi, human rights were not simply legal formulations. She approached them as requirements for recognizing and protecting the value of human beings.
Human dignity at the center
The value of the human being became one of the defining subjects of Kuçuradi's philosophy.
She did not locate that value in social status, identity or individual achievement. Her starting point was the capacities that distinguish human beings as a species.
İoanna Kuçuradi
"By the value of the human being, I mean the special place of the human being among other living beings."
Bosphorus News translation from Turkish.
She connected that "special place" to the human capacity to know, evaluate, create and act ethically. Her work on human rights followed from the same premise: institutions and individuals should be judged partly by whether those human capacities can be protected and exercised.
Her ethics also resisted reducing moral judgment to a list of fixed rules. Kuçuradi placed weight on the concrete situation, the values involved and the reasons for choosing one action over another.
From Hacettepe to UNESCO
Kuçuradi held senior roles in international philosophy organizations as her work became more closely tied to human rights education.
She served as secretary-general of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP) from 1988 to 1998 and later became its president.
At Maltepe University, she headed the UNESCO Chair in Philosophy and Human Rights. The chair, established in 2009 through an agreement between UNESCO and the university, focused on research and education in philosophy and human rights.
The Turkish National Commission for UNESCO, announcing her death, also credited Kuçuradi with contributing to UNESCO's establishment of World Philosophy Day. The commission said she devoted her life to ethics, human dignity and human rights.
A 90th-birthday program had already been prepared
A full-day program had been scheduled in Istanbul for October 10 to mark Kuçuradi's 90th year.
The event at the Boğaziçi Culture and Arts Center in Sarıyer was to include sessions on her ethics and value theory, philosophy, art and human rights education. The evening program included Antigone, written by Kemal Demirel and dedicated to Kuçuradi.
Her death came shortly after the program was announced. No new official statement has yet said whether the October 10 event will proceed in its original form.
Kuçuradi will instead be buried on the birthday the program was intended to celebrate.
She leaves behind the philosophy department she founded, institutions she helped build and decades of work centered on a demanding proposition: that human value must be recognized not in the abstract, but in the way people judge, act and treat one another.
One formulation attributed to Kuçuradi in materials on her work puts that idea plainly:
İoanna Kuçuradi
"Philosophy is not a luxury; it is a fundamental need if people are to have a say over their own lives and actions."
Sources: Philosophical Society of Turkey, Hacettepe University, UNESCO Turkish National Commission, Maltepe University, Anadolu Agency, Cumhuriyet, Bosphorus News review and reporting.