Julián Marías Aguilera

Julián Marías Aguilera (born June 17, 1914 in Valladolid , † December 15, 2005 in Madrid ) was a Catholic Spanish philosopher , student and friend of José Ortega y Gasset .

Life

Julián Marías lived in Madrid since 1919, where he studied philosophy from 1931 to 1936 (during the period of the 2nd Spanish Republic ) .

During the Spanish Civil War , he sided with the Republic and published articles in the ABC and Blanco y Negro newspapers . After Franco's victory in 1939, he was imprisoned for a few months, but after his release he dealt with philosophy again, giving remedial classes in this subject. This resulted in his chronologically structured book on the history of philosophy, Historia de la Filosofía , which appeared in 1941 and became a basic work of philosophy that was widely used in Spain .

Because of a critical sentence in his doctoral thesis against Franco's rule , his doctorate was suspended in 1942 at the instigation of the spiritual university management.

In 1948 he founded the "Instituto de Humanidades de Madrid" with José Ortega y Gasset , of which he became director after Ortega y Gasset's death in 1955. In 1949 he received his doctorate with his thesis La Metafísica del conocimiento en Gratry (The Metaphysics of Knowledge in Gratry), which was rejected in 1942 . He represented ratiovitalism, a kind of Catholic existentialism, which is why he could not take up teaching at Spanish universities during the Franco dictatorship. He made a living from his publications and the activity as visiting professor at universities in the USA, where he represented the Madrid School of Philosophy.

In 1941 he married the teacher and writer Dolores Franco Manero, with whom he had five sons, including Javier (* 1951), a writer.

In 1964 he became a member of the Real Academia de la Lengua Española . In 1977, during the transition to democracy, he was appointed senator by the king. He held this position until 1979. In 1980 he was approved as a professor in Spain. In 1982 he was appointed by Pope John Paul II as the only Spaniard to the "International Pontifical Council for Culture". In 1996 he received the Prince of Asturias Prize for Communication and Humanities.

Significant works

• Historia de la filosofía (1941)
• San Anselmo y el insensato (1944)
• Idea de la metafísica (1954)
• La escuela de Madrid (1960)
• Antropología filosófica (1970)
• La España inteligible (1985)

Web links

• Literature by and about Julián Marías Aguilera in the catalog of the German National Library
• Biography of Julián Marías - Spanish