Alejandro Korn, an Argentine metaphysician and ethical philosopher, was born in San Vicente. He took his doctorate in medicine and directed a hospital for the mentally ill. In 1906 he joined the faculty of philosophy and letters at Buenos Aires. Although he wrote little, he had immense personal influence on Argentine philosophy. His philosophical writing came late in his life: La libertad creadora (La Plata, 1930), his major work, is a compilation of five essays dating from 1918 to 1930.

Korn is sometimes called a positivist, a label suggested by his scientific training, his empiricism, the skeptical note in his metaphysics, and his ethical relativism. However, his "Incipit Vita Nova" (1918) set the stage for his own criticism of positivism. In this essay, he maintained that despite the scientific and technological progress of preceding decades, contemporary man is dissatisfied and disillusioned. The cause is the impairment of ethics by...