Marías, Julián

b. 1914, Valladolid

   Philosopher and essayist

   A leading disciple of José Ortega y Gasset, Marías has expanded his master's theories of vital and historical reason into his own system of "the empirical structure of human life". Ortega's vital and historical reason assumes that the task of philosophy is to serve human needs in their concrete social and cultural immediacy; it therefore reflects our attempt to find meaning and direction within a specific historical circumstance. Marías has assimilated this principle as well as ancillary categories crucial to Ortega's understanding of human life—such as the role of narrativity, the importance of beliefs, and his theory of generations —into his own science of reality. This science acquires for the author a metaphysical status: it recognizes the primacy of concrete personal existence, conditioned by historical forces as the foundations of all reality. To paraphrase an important passage in the author's work, the structure of human life assumes that past and future are present in the life of one and all, and that these features are implicated in the why and the for what of our actions. Also noteworthy is the author's study of Unamuno, and of Spain during the reign of Charles III.

   See also: cultural institutions and movements; intellectual life; philosophy

   THOMAS MERMALL