Matthias Roggo (roggo-m)
Biographical note
Matthias Roggo was born in 1969 in Bern, Switzerland. He dedicated his early years to the classical guitar and had the good fortune to meet famous guitar virtuosos around 1990. He was friends with Boris Mersson and Oleg Maisenberg, pianists and conductors with roots in Odessa, and with the Russian guitarist and composer Piotr Panin. In recent times he made friends with guitarist and composer Emanuele Torrente in Florence and guitarist Alvi Joensen in Malmö, to whom he dedicated three short guitar pieces. See the interview with Maestro Torrente in Italian on this portal, and the Pirate piece interpreted by Mr. Joensen (Youtube).
Music and literature lead him eventually to the gates of philosophy. He studied at the University of Basel Philosophy (Prof. Dominik Perler), along with Sociology and Ethnology as secondary branches. Later he studied at the universities of Bern (Prof. Andreas Graeser) and Geneva (Prof. Jonathan Barnes, Prof. Alain de Libera), focusing mainly on ancient philosophy and the Aristotelian tradition. He also went to the University of Fribourg in order to hear Prof. Dominic O’Meara and to attend a seminary held by Prof. Richard Sorabji.
Matt Roggo is deeply impressed with the beauty of Plotinus’ and Bergson’s writings. He is one of few aware that Archytas - an almost forgotten philosopher from ancient Tarentum - deserves a different status in the history of philosophy. This opinion was condivided by the late Prof. Graeser, and probably also by Prof. Barnes, if the argument was made to him.
Mr. Roggo's free time and energy is used for reading and writing, and potentially for guitar lessons with talented students. Matt Roggo made plans for a neo-Celtic fantasy novel Rider of the Morrow (Facebook).
Works
James und Whitehead: Evolution und die Rückkehr zur Tradition
Doctoral dissertation (Bern 2009)
(online, needs revision & translation)
"Diluting Man and Nature: The Strange Case of Mr. Sprigge" (2008)
"God and the Temporal Order: A Reply to George Allan" (2009)
"James' Vision and Problem: Idealism between Berkeley and Royce" (2010)
La Chitarra Liberata (1991)
Guitar Style and Technique
Metamusica (2006)
The Roggo / Royo album
(prose poems in English with Spanish)
"Human Capital in Cultural Context" (2012)
"Tolkien 60 Years After" (2015)
Historical background to Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence (2018)
Neugallisch in 20 Lektionen (2024)
being Steve Hansen's Modern Gaulish in 20 Lessons
