Raimond Gaita - Life

Life

Born in Dortmund, Germany in 1946 to a Romanian father (Romulus Gaiţă) and a German mother (Christine Anna Dörr), he arrived in Australia in 1950 at the age of four. He attended St. Patrick's College, Ballarat (Victoria) Melbourne High School (Victoria), University of Melbourne (BA Hons, MA) and University of Leeds (PhD).

The story of his childhood and the lives of his family members and close friends is told in his award winning memoir Romulus, My Father, which was made into an award winning film starring Eric Bana (Romulus), Franka Potente (Christine), Kodi Smit-McPhee (Raimond) and Marton Csokas (Hora). In a later book, After Romulus, a collection of essays, “he reflects on the writing of the Romulus, My Father, the making of the film, his relationship to the desolate beauty of the central Victorian landscape, the philosophies that underpinned his father’s relationship to the world and, most movingly, the presence and absence of his mother and his unassuaged longing for her”. (from the Publisher)

He is married to Yael Gaita, who was born in Tel Aviv and was until 2008 a teacher at The King David School, where she taught Hebrew. Gaita has two children, Katerina and Eva and two step children, Dahlia and Michelle.

Because he believes that it is generally a good thing for philosophers to address an educated and hard-thinking lay audience as well as their colleagues, Gaita has contributed extensively to public discussion about reconciliation, collective responsibility, the role of moral considerations in politics, genocide and the alleged uniqueness of the Holocaust, education (the nature of teaching as a vocation, the role of love in learning) and about the plight of the universities. He has also been active in speaking and writing against people who advocate that in order to protect ourselves against terrorists we should legalise some forms of torture.