Luis Garagalza
Member of the Consolidated Research Group- GAIT
Dr. Garagalza studied a degree in Philosophy at Deusto University from 1976-1981, where he took his doctorate in 1987 with a thesis directed by Andrés Ortiz-Osés on “The Hermeneutics of Language in E. Cassirer, H. G. Gadamer and G. Durand (Circle of Eranos)”. He currently works in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU and teaches at the Faculty of Arts of Vitoria-Gasteiz. His research focuses on the connections between philosophical hermeneutics, language, symbolism and culture, in an attempt to make explicit the grounds of a Hermeneutics of symbolic language. The aim would be to build a bridge between the two opposing fields of hermeneutics and symbolism, consciousness and unconscious. This opposition is not, however, absolute, and can be mediated by the different cultural languages in which the human sense is symbolically configured, giving rise to a diversity of cosmovisions, axiologies and mytho-logies. In this way, research moves from philosophical hermeneutics -initially centred on reflection on language- to the anthropological reflection on existential meaning. Now the transcendental notion of truth (absolute) is replaced by the immanent notion of relational and interhuman meaning.
He has collaborated with A. Ortiz-Osés, J. Beriain, P. Lanceros y Blanca Solares in the creation of the research group on symbolic Hermeneutics that published the Diccionario Interdisciplinar de Hermenéutica (Universidad Deusto, 1997) and Claves de Hermenéutica (Universidad Deusto, 2005). Michael Marder, Ikerbasque Researcher joined the group in 2009. Dr. Garagalza has published several articles, translations and books such as La interpretación de los símbolos. (Anthropos, 1992), Introducción a la Hermenéutica contemporánea.. Anthropos, 2002, El sentido de la Hermenéutica. (Anthropos, 2014) and, in collaboration with A. Ortiz-Osés, La mitología vasca. (Editorial Nerea, San Sebastián, 2006). He was the Coordinator of the International Tribute to A. Ortiz-Osés under the title of Filosofía, Hermenéutica y Cultura (Universidad Deusto, 2011).