Background

Pedro Laín Entralgo was born on February 15, 1908, in Urrea de Gaén, Teruel. He was the son of Pedro Laín Lacasa, a physician, and Concepción Entralgo Montejo.

Education

Pedro Laín Entralgo attended universities of Zaragoza, Valencia, and Vienna. He received the degrees of Medicine and Chemical Sciences and a Doctor of Philosophy in Medicine with the dissertation, "The problem of the relationships between medicine and history," at the Central University of Madrid.

Career

After education, Pedro Laín Entralgo did his military service in Valencia in the 1930s. Then, he started to work in public health in the Hydrographic Community of the Guadalquivir, and subsequently in 1934 in the Provincial Psychiatric Institute of Valencia. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he was in Santander and moved to Pamplona. During the war, he collaborated on Arriba España and other publications. Beginning in 1938, Laín Entralgo directed a publishing house that later became the Editora Nacional, and published Zubiri's first book, Naturaleza, Historia, Dios in 1942.

Pedro Laín Entralgo became the chair of the History of Medicine at the University of Madrid, which he held in 1942-1978. Later, he was a rector of that university from 1951 to 1956. In 1954 students began to protest Franco's regime, and Laín Entralgo wrote in support of them, resigned from his position to protest Franco's curtailments of freedom of thought in Spanish universities. Also, Pedro Laín Entralgo founded the University Hospital Arnau de Vilanova in 1943. He was also elected academician of the Spanish Royal National Academy of Medicine, the Royal Academy of Spanish Language, and the Spanish Royal Academy of History. At the Royal Spanish Academy of Language Pedro, Laín Entralgo served as a director in 1982-1987.

As a writer Pedro Laín Entralgo wrote widely, covering history, philosophy, and culture, and even penning some theatre. Over his nearly sixty-year writing career, Laín Entralgo wrote many books, including his first, Medicina I historia: others included the work sometimes considered to be his masterpiece, La historia clínica, and his massive 1984 publication, the culmination of his years of research titled Antropología médica para clínicos. Pedro Laín Entralgo also was the author of numerous prefaces and forewords. He provided editorial assistance in the fields of the history of medicine, ethics, theater, philosophy, and the nature of Spanish culture. In some of his early works, he wrote about the need to Christianize science and to relate traditional Catholic values to modern Spanish culture. One of these books, La Espera y la esperanza, was a response, from a Catholic viewpoint to the pessimistic, nihilistic existential philosophies gaining currency in Europe by the mid-twentieth century. His political thoughts had shown in his books, including one of his most famous works, La generación del Noventa y Ocho. In this book, Laín Entralgo drew on the thoughts of more liberal thinkers in making his arguments.

Achievements

• Pedro Laín Entralgo was widely known as a writer, educator, and philosopher. He contributed much to the study of medicine and the humanities. In 1943, he promoted the creation of the Arnau de Vilanova Institute of History of Medicine. Besides, Laín Entralgo was a holder of several awards, such as a Premio Nacional de Teatro in 1970, Premio Montaigne in 1975, Orden Civil de Alfonso X el Sabio in 1978, Gran Cruz de la Orden Civil de Sanidad in 1980. Also, his awards included a Premio Aragón in 1984, Premio Internacional Menéndez Pelayo in 1991, and Premio Internacional de Ensayo Jovellanos in 1999 for his work, Qué es el hombre: evolución y sentido de la vida. Pedro Laín Entralgo further became a honorary professor of the University of Santiago in Chile, Université de Toulouse, and Universidad de San Marcos in Peru.

Works

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  • Los valores morales del Nacional sindicalismo 1941
  • Estudios de historia de la medicina y de antropología médica 1943
  • La generación del noventa y ocho 1945
  • Vestigios. Ensayos De Critica Y Amistad 1948
  • España como problema 1949
  • Menéndez Pelayo 1952
  • Menéndez Pelayo 1954
  • La espera y la esperanza 1957
  • La Curación por la Palabra en la Antiguedad Clásica 1958
  • Ejercicios De Comprensión 1959
  • Enfermedad y pecado 1961
  • Miguel Angel y el cuerpo humano 1964
  • Una y diversa España 1967
  • El problema de la universidad 1967
  • Gregorio Marañón 1969
  • A Que Llamamos Espana 1971
  • Historia de la medicina 1973
  • Descargo de Conciencia (1930-1960) 1976
  • La aventura de leer 1964
  • Antropología de la esperanza 1978
  • Más de cien españoles 1981
  • La medicina actual 1981
  • Teoria y Realidad del Otro 1983
  • Teatro del mundo 1986
  • Ciencia, técnica y medicina 1986
  • El cuerpo humano 1987
  • La medicina hipocrática 1987
  • La antropología en la obra de Fray Luis de Granada 1988
  • Cuerpo y alma 1991
  • Tan solo hombres 1991
  • El cuerpo humano: Teoría actual 1991
  • Esperanza en tiempo de crisis 1993
  • Creer, esperar, amar 1993
  • Sobre la amistad 1994
  • Teatro y vida 1995
  • Alma, cuerpo, persona 1995
  • El Problema De Ser Cristiano 1997
  • La Historia Clinica 1998
  • Españoles de tres generaciones 1998
  • Qué es el hombre 1999

Politics

As a member of the nationalist, right-wing Falange party, during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War, Pedro Laín Entralgo was allied with fascist General Francisco Franco. He did not go into exile during or after the war. However, during the 1950s, Laín Entralgo broke with Franco's regime and started to support left-leaning views.

Views

Pedro Laín Entralgo believed that philosophical anthropology should be the fundamental basis of any history and theory of medicine, since it could give a general concept of the human being as a whole, including both the biological and cultural dimensions of human essence. Also, his distinctive contribution to modern Spanish philosophical thought consisted in the elaboration of views of illness and the doctor-patient relationship. Laín Entralgo characterized human beings as entities with substantivity. Persons are free agents, and as a result, the future, in which their actions are major shaping factors, is always uncertain. Human existence, therefore, always includes an element of uncertainty, and this is one of the major factors which made Laín Entralgo characterize the human condition as one of poverty. These ideas form the presuppositions of his views on illness and the unique form of relationship between selves which obtains between doctor and patient. The illness he regards as a particular and accidental form of the constitutive poverty of the human condition. The doctor-patient relationship falls between the two poles, which characterize the relationships of two selves, the objectifying and the interpersonal. In the former, he regarded the other as a pure object or spectacle, nature, and in the latter, he treated them as intelligent, free agents. Also, this relationship is not wholly objectifying. Pedro Laín Entralgo argues that it is better thought of as other aid-giving relationships such as between counselor and counsellee or teacher and pupil. In the doctor-patient relationship, execution of actions needed as a means to health, and objectification elevated to the status of the proper end of the relationship because what sought is a modification of the other one.

Quotations: "Time is a great judge, will show how useful my efforts are for all those for whom the reality of man remains the promised land."

"Work has a fundamental value in life. Man realizes his life, changing the world in which he lives much or little. Imagination and work fashion history and the fundamental task of man is to contribute, with his own toward the enterprise of humanity which will come after."

Membership

• Royal Spanish Academy of Language , Spain

  1954

• Royal National Academy of Medicine , Spain

  1946

• Royal National Academy of History , Spain

  1956

• Akademy der Wissenschaften , Germany

Interests

• Philosophers & Thinkers

  Xavier Zubiri

Connections

Pedro Laín Entralgo married Milagro Martínez Prieto in 1934. They had two children, Milagro and Pedro.

Father:

Pedro Laín Lacasa

Mother:

Concepción Entralgo Montejo

Brother:

Concepción Entralgo

Brother:

José Entralgo

Wife:

Milagro Martínez Prieto

Daughter:

Milagro Entralgo

Son:

Pedro Entralgo

colleague:

Luis Sánchez Granjel

Luis Sánchez Granjel was a Spanish physician and medical historian.

colleague:

José María López Piñero

José María López Piñero was a Spanish physician and historian of science and an outstanding specialist in the field of medical bibliometry.

colleague:

Juan Antonio Paniagua Arellano

Juan Antonio Paniagua Arellano was a Spanish minister and medical historian.

colleague:

Agustín Albarracín Teulón

Agustín Albarracín Teulón was a Spanish physician and medical historian.

colleague:

Diego Gracia Guillén

Diego Gracia Guillén was a Spanish physician, writer, and philosopher, specialist in psychology and psychiatry, considered one of the great Spanish experts in the field of bioethics.

colleague:

Xavier Zubiri

Xavier Zubiri was a Spanish one of the most profound philosophers of the 20th century.