Eduardo Lourenço pursued secondary education at the Colégio Militar , following in the footsteps of his father, who was an Infantry Captain. He graduated in Historical-Philosophical Studies from the University of Coimbra, where he remained for five years as an Assistant to Joaquim de Carvalho. Lourenço subsequently served as Lecturer in Portuguese Culture at the universities of Hamburg, Heidelberg, and Montpellier, followed by a year of teaching at the Federal University of Bahia. From 1965, he resided in France (Vence), teaching first at the University of Grenoble and then at the University of Nice, as maître de conférences . After retiring, he served as Cultural Adviser at the Portuguese Embassy in Rome and as a non-executive Administrator at the Gulbenkian Foundation. Since 2013, he has been living in Lisbon. Among the many awards he has received are the Prémio Camões , the Prémio Pessoa , and the Prix Européen de l’Essai Charles Veillon . His honorary doctorates include those from the universities of Bologna, Coimbra, and Rio de Janeiro. He has been decorated with Portugal’s highest honours and, among foreign accolades, holds the Ordre National de la Légion d’Honneur . Lourenço was elected an honorary member of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences and a corresponding member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. His first book of particular relevance to historians was published in 1978: O Labirinto da Saudade. Psicanálise Mítica do Destino Português [The Labyrinth of Longing: A Mythical Psychoanalysis of Portuguese Destiny] (Lisbon: Publicações Dom Quixote).

Eduardo Lourenço never considered himself a historian; nevertheless, among non-professional historians, no other Portuguese intellectual of the second half of the 20th century has demonstrated such a structured and coherent vision of the history of Portugal. An essayist above all, his closest parallel might be António Sérgio, from the preceding generation (from whom Lourenço explicitly distances himself — see “Sérgio como mito cultural” [“Sérgio as a Cultural Myth”] in O Labirinto da Saudade ). Like Lourenço, Sérgio was also an essayist with a consistent perspective on Portugal, producing a carefully constructed and well-grounded interpretation of Portuguese history. However, Sérgio’s focus was more fragmented, dealing with specific historical issues and engaging more heavily with empirical data. By contrast, Lourenço’s approach is broader, adopting a forest-wide perspective rather than examining individual trees. His vision of history encompasses the entirety of a people’s cultural life. Building on the premises of a philosophy of history, Lourenço conducts a philosophical analysis of Portuguese culture, or what might be termed a phenomenology of Portuguese culture across time (considering the philosophical tradition in which he was trained). He highlights its most significant moments in politically and socially critical contexts, focusing particularly on behavioural trends that indicate or reflect the values, myths, and deepest aspirations of the national collective. In other words, Lourenço typically invests in the fundamental structures that must be understood through philosophical reflection, which he articulates in his more theoretical writings, including those addressing literature. Lourenço regards literature as one of a community's highest creations, as its literary expressions reflect the community's most profound way of being. In his view, cultures—especially Portuguese culture—manifest themselves through their literary imaginaries (it is this perspective that appears to align with the title of an interview published in book form, A História é a Suprema Ficção [History is the Supreme Fiction]. Literature, including both fiction and poetry, serves as a privileged medium for uncovering culturally significant moments that reveal a community's identity.

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