Abstract

In 2015, Josep Maria Esquirol sketched his “philosophy of proximity”. Such a philosophy does not seek to attain a propositional, abstract, or purely theoretical truth. According to Esquirol, it is rather about healing the human person in the concreteness of his or her life. More precisely, without wishing to return to ancient metaphysics, Esquirol seeks to «resist» against the nihilistic forces of disintegration of meaning that leads the human being to the experience of nothingness. In our understanding, La Resistencia Íntima, the book that earned Esquirol the Premio Nacional Ensayo 2016, is prophetic, insofar as the current pandemic context corroborates his “metaphysics of gathering.” Moreover, Esquirol’s philosophy of proximity may teach us how to generate more life from our fragility, which reveals itself as insurmountable.