Ortega y Gasset



         



José Ortega y Gasset (May 9, 1883 - October 18, 1955) was a Spanish philosopher.

Born in Madrid, he was first schooled by the Jesuit Fathers of San Estanislao in Miraflores del Palo, Málaga (1891-1897). He attended the University of Deusto, Bilbao (1897-98) and the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the Central University of Madrid (1898-1904), receiving a doctorate in Philosophy. From 1905 to 1907, he continued his studies in Germany at Leipzig, Nuremberg, Cologne, Berlin and, above all Marburg. At Marburg, he was influenced by the neo-Kantianism of Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, among others.

Upon his return to Spain (1909) he was named numerary professor of Psychology, Logic and Ethics at the Escuela Superior del Magisterio de Madrid; in October 1910 he was granted the Chair (Cátedra) in Metaphysics of the Central University, empty since the death of Nicolás Salmerón.

In 1917 he became a contributor to the newspaper El Sol, where he published as a series of essays his two principle works: España invertebrada (Invertebrate Spain) and La rebelión de las masas (The Rebellion of the Masses). He founded the Revista de Occidente in 1923, remaining its director until 1936. This publication promoted translation of (and commentary upon) the most important figures and tendencies in philosophy, including Oswald Spengler, Johan Huizinga, Edmund Husserl, Georg Simmel, Jakob von Uexküll, Heinz Heimsoeth, Franz Brentano, Hans Driesch, Ernst Müller, Alexander Pfänder, and Bertrand Russell.

Ortega y Gasset had not only a grand influence through the philosophical themes of his works, but also because his literary style made him accessible to the general public.

Among the philosophers strongly influenced by Ortega y Gasset were Manuel García Morente, Joaquín Xirau, Xavier Zubiri, José Gaos, Luis Recaséns Siches, Manuel Granell, Francisco Ayala, María Zambrano, Pedro Laín Entralgo, José Luis López-Aranguren, Julián Marías, and Paulino Garagorri.

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Works

Much of Ortega y Gasset's work consists of courses lectures published years after the fact, often posthumously. This list attempts to list works in chronological order by when they were written, rather than when they were published.

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Philosophy

Perhaps the key to understanding Ortega y Gasset's philosophy is the word "circunstancia" ("circumstances"), which Ortega famously used in his expression: "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" ("I am myself and my circumstances"). This stood at the root of his "perspectivism." In 1920 he developed "raciovitalismo" ("rational vitalism"), a theory that based knowledge in the radical reality of life, one of whose essential components is reason itself.

For Ortega, life itself is the true radical reality from which any philosophical system must derive. For each human being, life takes a concrete form.

He coined the terms "razón vital" ("vital reason" or "reason with life as its foundation") to refer to a new type of reason and "raciovitalismo" to the mode of thinking supported by this new concept of reason. "Vital reason" is reason that constantly defends the life from which it has surged.

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Bibliography

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See also

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