José Gaos

Abstract

Born in Seville, Spain in 1900, José Gaos died in Mexico City in 1969. Without a doubt, he is the philosopher whose work has contributed most importantly to the spread of phenomenology in Mexico. In particular, he translated some of Husserl’s main works into Spanish, namely, Logical Investigations, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and a Phenomenological Philosophy, Cartesian Meditations, not to mention his translation of Heidegger’s Being and Time. Gaos’ main works are Two Ideas of Philosophy (1940), On Philosophy (a 1960 lecture published in 1962), and On Man (a 1965 lecture first published posthumously in 1970). Furthermore, Gaos’ method involved detailed investigations in the history of philosophy. For this reason his teaching supplied very strong motivation for studying the history of ideas in Latin America.