Objective:

This article argues the need to approach the intellectual Estanislao Zuleta Velásquez (1935-1990) from a biographical perspective typical of the "reflexive turn". To do so, it offers an outline of his profile -emphasizing his beginnings- and shows the biographical horizon and the related theoretical and methodological tools used to construct it.

Methodology:

As a biography, our point of observation is placed on the individual, however, the horizon we propose is that of a social biography, which leads to a constant decentering of the subject and encompasses the dynamics that conditioned it. Thus, our aim is to reconstruct sociabilities, practices, and intellectual interventions through the analysis of different publications. The latter are the main sources, in addition to interviews, memoirs, and documents.

Originality:

We portray a long period of time, but do not pretend to produce a "total and unified biography". On the contrary, we show the relevance of a synchronic strategy that attends to successive life nuclei among which there are continuities and discontinuities.

Conclusions:

We propose five biographical moments in which Zuleta's political-intellectual ideas had different positionings and define him as an "intellectual of commitment". Furthermore, we argue that he developed a humanist understanding of Marxism (with a Sartrean stamp) that stressed structuralism and that he transitioned from revolution to democracy (an arch not infrequent in Latin American intelligentsia of the time).