Emilio Lledó Íñigo (
Seville, 5 November 1927) is a Spanish philosopher. He has been a professor at several universities and is a member of the
Royal Spanish Academy.[1]
Career
He took his bachelor's degree at the Instituto de Bachillerato Cervantes and, in 1952, his degree in philosophy at the
Complutense University of Madrid. He went to Germany to continue his studies in classical philosophy with
Hans-Georg Gadamer, who helped him to finish his doctoral thesis by securing him a scholarship from the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In 1955, he obtained a position at the Complutense University of Madrid, but returned to Germany after his marriage in 1958 because Gadamer, who was then a Dean of the faculty at the
University of Heidelberg, had offered him a position there.[2]
In 1962, he again returned to Spain, taking a job as an instructor at the Instituto Núñez de Arce in
Valladolid. After two years, he obtained a chair at the
University of La Laguna. Shortly thereafter, in 1967, he moved to the
University of Barcelona, where he had been given the chair in Philosophy. In 1978, he moved again, to the
National University of Distance Education (UNED), where he remained until his retirement.[2]
Lledó was elected to Seat l of the
Real Academia Española on 11 November 1993, he took up his seat on 27 November 1994.[3]
Philosophical thought
According to Lledó, the history of philosophy should be understood as a form of "collective memory", embracing mankind's total development, that can be structured through three main elements:
Attention to language as the principal object of philosophical analysis; which clearly converges in the development of the main currents of post-war European thought.
Elaborating fully a consideration of
temporality and writing that will lead to a "philosophy of memory" and a textual anthropology, from
hermeneutic roots.