Emilio Lledó Íñigo (Seville, 5th November 1927) graduated in Philosophy from the University of Madrid (1952) and studied at the University of Heidelberg (Germany) for three years on a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. There, he had the chance to immerse himself in German post-war philosophy and to become acquainted with Hans-Georg Gadamer, Karl Löwith and Otto Regenbogen.

The last of these philosophers steered him towards classic philology. He returned to the University of Madrid in 1955 as an assistant lecturer, where he earned his PhD in 1956. A year later, he returned to the University of Heidelberg as a Spanish conversation assistant and in 1964 obtained the Chair in Foundations of Philosophy and History of Philosophical Systems at the University of La Laguna (Tenerife). He moved to Barcelona in 1967 to take up the History of Philosophy Chair. In 1978, he joined Spain’s National Distance Education University (UNED), Madrid, as Professor of Philosophy, where he was to remain until his retirement. Life member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (1988), he was elected member of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) in 1993, occupying the “l” chair and the position of academic librarian between 1998 and 2006. He also chaired the expert committee that drew up the Report for Reforming State-Owned Media (2005).

He has played an important role in the recovery of Greek philosophy and Hellenism in Spain and has contributed to the development of hermeneutics within the field of contemporary Spanish philosophy. Lledó believes that language is an essential element in thinking and in the way humans integrate into society and nature. He thinks that philosophy is no other than meditation on this integration and the history of the philosophy is understood as the collective memory of the complex process followed by humanity.