Emilio Lledó

(Seville, Spain, 1927). He studied philosophy and classics at the University of Madrid, where he graduated top of his class in 1952. The following year, he won a scholarship to the University of Heidelberg in Germany at the proposal of Hans Georg Gadamer and Karl Löwith. He later studied at Humboldt University, Berlin (1953-1955). Over a long and distinguished academic career, Lledó headed the history of philosophy department at the University of Barcelona from 1967 to 1978, as chair professor, and was the dean of San Raimundo de Peñafort College from 1971 to 1978. After holding a professorship of history of philosophy at UNED, Spain's national distance-learning university, from 1978 to 1998, in 2004 he was appointed chairman of the official board concerned with the reform of state-controlled media.

A fellow of the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study from 1988 to 1989 and a visiting professor at the Philosophy Institute of the Free University of Berlin from 1989 to 1992, in 1990 he won the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize (Bonn) on the nomination of that university's philosophy faculty.

Lledó has won numerous awards, including the Spanish National Essay Prize (1992), the International Menéndez Pelayo Award (2004), the María Zambrano Prize (2008) and the Observatorio D'Achtall Award (2010). A member of the Paris-based Institut International de Philosophie and other academic institutions in Spain, Germany and Britain, in 1993 Lledó was appointed to a seat in the Royal Spanish Academy, of which he was the Librarian from 1998 to 2006.

His many published works include El concepto "poíesis" en la filosofía griega (1961), Filosofía y Lenguaje (1970), La filosofía hoy (1975), Lenguaje e Historia (1978), El Epicureísmo (1984), La memoria del Logos (1984), El silencio de la escritura (1991), El surco del tiempo (1992), Memoria de la Ética 1994), Días y Libros (1995), Palabras entrevistas (1997), Historia de la Filosofía (1997), Imágenes y Palabras (l998), Símbolos del alma (2004), Elogio de la infelicidad (2005), Ser quien eres: Ensayos para una educación democrática (2009), El marco de la belleza y el desierto de la arquitectura (2009). Lledó, the author of over two hundred academic papers and articles across a wide spectrum of journals and periodicals, has edited numerous philosophical classics and-throughout his eleven-year career at the University of Barcelona-supervised thirty doctoral theses and 106 master's theses. He has published several translations of Greek and German works.