Mihailo Marković was born in Belgrade on February 23rd 1923. While still in high school, he joined the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia, and then participated in the National liberation struggle during WWII, earning the rank of Captain. He studied philosophy at the University of Belgrade, graduating in 1950, and began teaching Logic, Philosophy of Science, and Methodology of scientific research at the Faculty of Philosophy the following year. He earned his Doctoral degree in 1955, and obtained his second PhD shortly thereafter in London, under the mentorship of Alfred J. Ayer. He served as Dean of Faculty of Philosophy 1966-1967, and as Head of the Institute for Philosophy (at the same Faculty), 1967-1975. He was a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (associate member from 1963, full member from 1983), International Philosophical Institute in Paris (1974), and European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg (1993).
Marković was the President of the Yugoslav Association for Philosophy (1960-1962), one of the founders of the Korčula Summer school (Praxis group), member of the editorial board of the Praxis journal, and the editor-in-chief of the Praxis International (1980-1986). He served as a guest lecturer at many universities in the US (where he first came as a Ford Fellow, with his longest position being at the University of Pennsylvania). Due to his active involvement during the protests of 1968 he was banned from teaching at the Faculty of Philosophy, and ultimately removed in 1981. The same year he started working as a researcher at the Center for Philosophy and Social Theory of the Institute for Social Sciences. His theoretical work contributed significantly to defying dogmatic dialectic materialism and “the theory of reflection.” His was a pioneer in studying connections between philosophy of science and epistemology on the one hand, and Marxist humanism on the other.
He strongly embraced Slobodan Milošević and his politics. He was the Vice President and the leading ideologue of Milošević’s Socialist Party of Serbia. He will be infamously remembered for his insistence on resolving “the Serbian territorial question:” from the outset of the Yugoslav wars in 1990s, he advocated unification of all Serbs and “humane displacement of populations.” Due to his firm beliefs regarding the wartime politics, he was gradually marginalized from political life, and finally, during the Dayton Peace negotiations, in 1995, excluded from the Socialist Party.
He passed away February 7th 2010.
His books: Revizija filozofskih osnova marksizma u Sovjetskom Savezu, 1952; Formalizam u savremenoj logici, 1957; Marksizam, dogmatizam i skepticizam,1958; Dijalektička teorija značenja, 1961; Osnovi marksističkog pogleda na svet, 1966; Humanizam i dijalektika, 1968; Preispitivanja, 1972; Dialektik der Praxis, 1968; From Affluence to Praxis, 1974; The Contemprorary Marx, 2 volumes, 1974; (with Branko Horvat and Rudi Supek) Self-Managing Socialism, 1975; Praxis, Yugoslav Philosophy of Social Sciences, 1979; Filozofski osnovi nauke, 1981; Democratic Socialism. Theory and Practice, 1982; Sloboda i praksa, 1997; Društvena misao na granici milenijuma, 1999; Filozofski susreti, 2003; Juriš na nebo: sećanja 1, 2008; Juriš na nebo: sećanja 2, 2009; Novovekovni srpski mislioci, 2009; Srbija u krizi, 2010.
He was recipient of a number of prizes and honors, both in Yugoslavia and abroad.