Svetozar Stojanović was born on October 18th 1931 in Kragujevac. He studied philosophy at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade. In 1962 he obtained his PhD with a thesis on “Contemporary Meta-Ethics.” He taught Ethics from 1957 until 1974.
He was the editor-in-chief of the journal Philosophy, member of the editorial board of Praxis, and one of the organizers of the Korčula Summer School. From 1970 until 1974 he presided over the Philosophical Society of Serbia. He was invited to be a guest lecturer at universities in the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Austria, and India. He was the editor-in-chief of Praxis International, Oxford, Great Britain (1987–1990), and an elected member of the International Institute for Philosophy in Paris (1977) and the Moscow Academy for Humanist Research. Together with Branislav Petronijević and Mihailo Marković, he was included in the 1996 edition of the Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth Century Philosophers.
As a member of the dissident group of philosophers and sociologists, gathered around the Praxis journal, he was seen as one the instigators of the June 1968 protests and subsequently came under the attack of the Lex Specialis, passed in 1975, by which eight professors of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade were banned from teaching.
He returned to the Faculty in the early 1990s. From 1994 until 2000 he was the Director of the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. In 1991/1992, he was a special advisor of the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Dobrica Ćosić. Later, in Vojislav Koštunica’s government, he was a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
He passed away in Belgrade, May 7th 2010.
Books: Savremena metaetika, 1964; Između ideala i stvarnosti, 1969; Od marksizma do etatizma sa ljudskim licem, 1987; Istorija i partijska svest, 1988; Autoritet bez vlasti: Dobrica Ćosić kao šef države, 1993; Propast komunizma i razbijanje Jugoslavije, 1995; Na srpskom delu Titanika, 2000; Marksistička kritika komunizma, 2006.