and Utopia by Emil Cioran (who had left for France), he was sentenced to 25 years of forced labor in the Jilava prison as a political prisoner, and all his possessions confiscated. He was pardoned after 6 years as part of a general amnesty and released in August 1964. From 1965 he lived in Bucharest, where he was the principal researcher at the Romanian Academy's Center of Logics. In his two-room apartment, located in Western Drumul Taberei, he held seminars on Hegel's, Plato's and Kant's philosophy. Among the participants there were Sorin Vieru (his colleague at the Center of Logics), Gabriel Liiceanu and Andrei Pleșu. In 1975 he retired and went to live in Păltiniș, near Sibiu, where he remained for the next 12 years, until his death on 4 December 1987. He was buried at the nearby hermitage, having left behind numerous philosophical essays. In 1988 Constantin Noica was posthumously awarded the Herder Prize, and in 1990, after the fall of communism in Romania, he was accepted as a posthumous member of the Romanian Academy. Philosophy The 20th century is thought to be dominated by science. The model of scientific knowledge, which means transforming reality into formal and abstract concepts, is applied in judging the entire environment. This kind of thinking is called by Noica "the logic of Ares", as it considers the individual a simple variable in the Whole. The existence is, for this scientific way of considering things, a statistical fact. In order to recover the individual senses, the sense of existence, Noica proposes, in opposition with "the logic of Ares", "the logic of Hermes", a way of thinking which considers the individual a reflection of the Whole. The logic of Hermes means understanding the Whole through the part, it means identifying in a single existence the general principles of reality. This way of thinking allows one to understand the meaning of the life of a man oppressed by the quick present moment. Noica appreciated Greek and German philosophers, as well as several Romanian writers. He recommended to read philosophy, to learn classical languages, particularly ancient Greek, and modern languages, particularly German. Books 1934 – Mathesis or simple pleasances ("Mathesis sau bucuriile simple") 1936 – Open concepts in the history of philosophy in Descartes, Leibniz and Kant ("Concepte deschise în istoria filozofiei la Descartes, Leibniz și Kant") 1937 – De caelo. Essay around knowledge and the individual