Luis Garagalza received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Deusto with a thesis on the hermeneutics of language. He is a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country and teaches at the Faculty of Arts in Vitoria-Gasteiz. He has taught Philosophical Anthropology, Modern Philosophy and Contemporary Philosophy. His research work focuses on the connections between philosophical hermeneutics, language, symbolism and culture, in an attempt to make explicit the bases of a Hermeneutics of symbolic language.
Garagalza tries to build a bridge between two fields such as hermeneutics and symbolism, between which an opposition similar to that which exists between consciousness and the unconscious is posited from the outset. This opposition is not, however, absolute, but can be, and indeed is, mediated by the different cultural languages as spheres of manifestation (Heidegger) in which human meaning is symbolically configured, giving rise to the various worldviews, axiologies and mythologies. In this way, the research shifts from philosophical hermeneutics, initially centred on reflection on language, towards an anthropological reflection on existential meaning.