Juan José Urráburu

Juan José Urráburu (1844–1904) was a Spanish Jesuit and a scholastic philosopher who worked for some time as a professor of philosophy at the Gregorian University in Rome. Beginning in 1890, he published eight large volumes treating of Scholastic philosophy under the title Institutiones Philosophicae. The last volume appeared in 1900, though he reworked the Institutiones into the slightly abbreviated five-volume Compendium Philosophiae Scholasticae.

Biography

He joined the Society of Jesus on May 3, 1860, in Loyola. After completing his studies, he began teaching rhetoric and humanities. He also taught philosophy and theology in Poyanne, France. In 1878, Urráburu was appointed to teach philosophy at the Gregorian University. Nine years later, he returned to Spain to take on administrative roles, serving as rector of the College of Valladolid (1887–1890), the Colegio Máximo de Oña (1891–1897), and the Jesuit seminary of Salamanca (1898–1902).

During this period, he published his renowned manuals Institutiones Philosophicae (8 volumes, Valladolid, 1890–1900), later summarised in Compendium Philosophiae Scholasticae (5 volumes, Valladolid, 1902–1904; republished in 1924 and 1927). These works integrated into the Scholastic tradition the elements he found valuable in rationalism and empiricism while rejecting what he deemed insufficient in these schools of thought.

The influence of Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Suárez is predominant in his writings, although traces of the thought of René Descartes and Immanuel Kant are also noticeable.

Works 1890, Institutiones Philosophicae, Volumen Primum: Logica 1891, Institutiones Philosophicae, Volumen Secundum: Ontologia 1892, Institutiones Philosophicae, Volumen Tertium: Cosmologia 1894, Institutiones Philosophicae, Volumen Quartum: Psychologiae, Pars Prima 1896, Institutiones Philosophicae, Volumen Quintum: Psychologiae, Pars Secunda 1898, Institutiones Philosophicae, Volumen Sextum: Psychologiae, Pars Secunda 1899, Institutiones Philosophicae, Volumen Septimum: Theodiceae, Primum 1900, Institutiones Philosophicae, Volumen Octavum: Theodiceae, Secundum