Ortega y Gasset, Jose
Ortega y Gasset, Jose
Born in Madrid, May 9, 1883. At present in Buenos Aires, Argentine. Son of Ortega y Munillo, the famous Spanish journalist. Studied at the College of Jesuits in Miraflores and at the Central University of Madrid. In the latter he presented his Doctor’s dissertation, El Milenario, in 1904, thereby obtaining his Ph.D. degree. After studies in Leipzig, Berlin, Marburg, under the special influence of Hermann Cohen, the great exponent of Kant, who taught him the love for the scientific method and awoke in him the interest in educational philosophy, Ortega came to Spain where, after the death of Nicolas Salmeron, he occupied the professorship of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid. The following may be considered the most important works of Ortega y Gasset
Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914;
El Espectador, I-VIII, 1916-1935;
El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo, 1921;
Espaa Invertebrada, 1922;
Kant, 1924;
La Deshumanizacion del Arte, 1925;
Espiritu de la Letra, 1927;
La Rebelion de las Masas, 1929;
Goethe desde Adentio, 1934;
Estudios sobre el Amor, 1939;
Ensimismamiento y Alteracion, 1939;
El Libro de las Misiones, 1940;
Ideas y Creencias, 1940;
and others.
Although brought up in the Marburg school of thought, Ortega is not exactly a neo-Kantian. At the basis of his Weltanschauung one finds a denial of the fundamental presuppositions which characterized European Rationalism. It is life and not thought which is primary. Things have a sense and a value which must be affirmed independently. Things, however, are to be conceived as the totality of situations which constitute the circumstances of a man’s life. Hence, Ortega’s first philosophical principle”I am myself plus my circumstances”. Life as a problem, however, is but one of the poles of his formula. Reason is the other. The two together function, not by dialectical opposition, but by necessary coexistence. Life, according to Ortega, does not consist in being, but rather, in coming to be, and as such it is of the nature of direction, program building, purpose to be achieved, value to be realized. In this sense the future as a time dimension acquires new dignity, and even the present and the past become articulate and meaning-full only in relation to the future. Even History demands a new point of departure and becomes militant with new visions. — J.A.F.