Eugenio Trías Sagnier

In The Sirens Chant' and The Sonorous Imagination'' Trias argued that the philosophy of the 21st century must draw upon musical aspects over language, since the former represents the most perfect synthesis of beauty and knowledge.

Trias considers himself as an "illuminist exorcist" who exposes philosophical reason to a permanent dialogue with their shadows.

As an alternative to logical positivism, the analytical philosophy or Marxist thought, he extended reason to spheres including irrationality and the madness (Philosophy and carnival); the mythical and magical thought (Methodology of magical thought); passionate love (Treaty on passion); the Sinister (The beauty and the sinister) as a shade of the categories of beauty and the sublime which founded traditional aesthetics; or the world of religions as The Shadow of modern Western reason (The age of the Spirit).

Eugenio Trías Sagnier (31 August 1942 – 10 February 2013 ) was a Spanish philosopher.

Critics have likened his work to Ortega y Gasset in the philosophical literature written in Spanish.

Trías was born in Barcelona.

After obtaining his bachelor's degree in philosophy at the University of Barcelona in 1964, he continued his studies in Pamplona, Madrid, Bonn and Cologne.

Since 1965 he was assistant professor and, later, associate professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona (UB) and the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona (UAB).

His first book, The philosophy and its shadow, published in 1969, was called as "the philosophy of a new generation" (Josep Maria Carandell).

Trías had an encyclopedical conception of philosophy and worked in fields including ethics, politics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, philosophy of history, theory of knowledge, and ontology.

His personal conception of ontology, usually called the philosophy of Limit," informed much of his work.

In chronological order, the main topics of Trias' philosophical works have been:

In 1976 he became assistant professor of aesthetics and composition at the School of Architecture of Barcelona.

The most significant innovation of Trías' philosophy appeared in the early 1980s, when he discussed the concept of limes ("limit").

His concept of the limit is the result of an intense dialogue with the Kantian tradition, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, and a commentary on Wittgenstein's statement "subject is a limit of the world."

Trías proposed that being (whose issue has always been the main question for Western philosophy from its origins) may be understood as "being of limit" -- that is, the border area that separates as well as joins the phenomena and the noumena.

That limit is also the boundary between the reason and its shadows.

Whereas in Kant's thought there was not such a limit or borderline that merges and splits the phenomenon and the thing-in-itself, Trias held that such a limit exists.

He argued that it is a precarious, delicate, subtle but fundamental, and the being that philosophers intend to define.

Trias develops an anthropology in which the person is conceived as an inhabitant of the being's limit.

On this respect, person is always referred to the abovementioned limit, which for Trias has an ontological significance.

In 1986 he became Chair of Philosophy at this University, where he remained until 1992.

In 1992 he became Chair Professor of Philosophy at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, where he remained as a professor of History of Ideas until his death.

Trias died in his home city at age 70.

Trias published over thirty-five books, some of which have had several editions in Spain and abroad.

His work is regarded by the critics as one of two most significant philosophical pillars of the contemporary Spanish thought.