Instituto Cervantes: De la filosofía española a través de la literatura

On Thursday, January 30, Prof. Ilia Galán will present the lecture titled “De la filosofía española a través de la literatura.” Histories of Spanish philosophy, such as Abellán’s, include Don Quixote, Life Is a Dream, and the works of St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Ávila, among other landmarks of Spanish literature. Jorge Santayana, in his Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe, carried on this tradition and, not coincidentally, cultivated the novel as a genre. Many philosophers have notably used literary forms to express unique models of knowledge. The boundaries between philosophy and literature are fluid. Literary fiction often embraces philosophical knowledge and reflections with a rigor comparable to that of philosophical treatises. Literature can serve as philosophy—and occasionally does. Similarly, philosophy, inevitably conveyed through language, sometimes manifests poetically or within fictional frameworks. Prof. Galán’s presentation will explore philosophy as expressed in artistic—specifically literary—works. He will discuss examples from Spanish lyric poetry, narrative, and theater that develop philosophical insights in ways distinctly different from academic texts.