Julián Marías is the best-known and most productive of the post–Civil War philosophers in Spain who have sought to reconcile the doctrines of their teacher, José Ortega y Gasset, with traditional theism. Born in Valladolid in 1914, Marías studied under Ortega in Madrid just before the Civil War. When Ortega returned from exile in 1948, they jointly founded the Institute of Humanities in Madrid. Marías has taught at the institute and, as visiting professor, at various American universities. The bulk of his published work concerns the history of philosophy, mainly Spanish and scholastic philosophy. His general Historia de la filosofía (1941), which he wrote at the age of twenty-six, emphasizes the Aristotelian and scholastic traditions and gives a prominent position to Spanish thought. In La escuela de Madrid (The...