José Ortega y Gasset
Encyclopedia
José Ortega y Gasset (9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish
liberal
philosopher
and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy
, republicanism
and dictatorship
. He was, along with Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism
.
Ortega was first schooled by the Jesuit priests 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, (now Complutense 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.
On his return to Spain in 1908, he was appointed professor of Psychology
, Logic
and Ethics
at the Escuela Superior del Magisterio de Madrid and in October 1910 he was named full professor of Metaphysics
at Complutense University of Madrid, a vacant seat previously held by of Nicolás Salmerón.
In 1917 he became a contributor to the newspaper El Sol, where he published as a series of essays his two principal works: España invertebrada (Invertebrate Spain) and La rebelión de las masas (The Revolt of the Masses
). The latter made him internationally famous.
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 led the Republican intellectual opposition under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera
(1923–1930), and he played a role in the overthrow of King Alfonso XIII in 1931. Elected deputy for the province of León in the constituent assembly of the second Spanish Republic, he was the leader of a parliamentary group of intellectuals known as La Agrupación al servicio de la república ("At the service of the Republic"), but he soon abandoned politics, disappointed.
Leaving Spain at the outbreak of the Civil War, he spent years of exile in Buenos Aires
, Argentina
until moving back to Europe
in 1942. He settled in Portugal
by mid 1945 and slowly began to make short visits to Spain. In 1948 he returned to Madrid
, where he founded the Institute of Humanities, at which he lectured.
proposed, leave behind prejudices and previously existing beliefs and investigate the essential reality of the universe. Ortega y Gasset proposes that philosophy must overcome the limitations of both idealism
(in which reality is centered around the ego) and ancient-medieval realism
(in which reality is located outside the subject) in order to focus on the only truthful reality (i.e., "my life" — the life of each individual). He suggests that there is no me without things and things are nothing without me: "I" (human being) can not be detached from "my circumstance" (world). This led Ortega y Gasset to pronounce his famous maxim "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" ("I am I and my circumstance")(Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914) which he always situated at the core of his philosophy.
For Ortega y Gasset, as for Husserl, the Cartesian
'cogito ergo sum' is insufficient to explain reality. Therefore the Spanish philosopher proposes a system wherein the basic or "radical" reality is "my life" (the first yo) which consists of "I" (the second yo) and "my circumstance" (mi circunstancia). This circunstancia is oppressive; therefore, there is a continual dialectical interaction between the person and his or her circumstances and, as a result, life is a drama that exists between necessity and freedom.
In this sense Ortega y Gasset wrote that life is at the same time fate and freedom, and that freedom “is being free inside of a given fate. Fate gives us an inexorable repertory of determinate possibilities, that is, it gives us different destinies. We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny.” In this tied down fate we must therefore be active, decide and create a “project of life” — thus not be like those who live a conventional life of customs and given structures who prefer an unconcerned and imperturbable life because they are afraid of the duty of choosing a project.
and asserted "I live therefore I think". This stood at the root of his Kantian-inspired perspectivism
, which he developed by adding a non-relativistic character in which absolute truth does exist and would be obtained by the sum of all perspectives of all lives, since for each human being life takes a concrete form and life itself is a true radical reality from which any philosophical system must derive. In this sense, Ortega coined the terms "razón vital" ("vital reason" or "reason with life as its foundation") to refer to a new type of reason that constantly defends the life from which it has surged and "raciovitalismo", a theory that based knowledge in the radical reality of life, one of whose essential components is reason itself. This system of thought, which he introduces in History as System, escaped from Nietzsche's vitalism in which life responded to impulses; for Ortega, reason is crucial to create and develop the above-mentioned project of life.
pointed out, its history. In Ortega’s words, humans have “no nature, but history” and reason should not focus on what is (static) but what becomes (dynamic).
Among those strongly influenced by Ortega y Gasset were Luis Buñuel
, Manuel García Morente, Joaquín Xirau, Xavier Zubiri
, Ignacio Ellacuría
, Emilio Komar
, José Gaos
, Luis Recaséns Siches, Manuel Granell, Francisco Ayala
, María Zambrano
, Agustín Basave, Máximo Etchecopar
, Pedro Laín Entralgo
, José Luis López-Aranguren, Julián Marías
, John Lukacs
, Pierre Bourdieu
, and Paulino Garagorri.
Ortega y Gasset influenced existentialism
and the work of Martin Heidegger
.
German grape breeder Hans Breider named the grape variety Ortega
in his honor.
The American philosopher Graham Harman has recognized Ortega y Gasset as a source of inspiration for his own Object Oriented Ontology.
There have been two translations of La rebellion de las massas (The Revolt of the Masses
) into English. The first, in 1932, is by a translator who did not provide his/her name. The first translator is generally accepted to be J.R. Carey.
The second translation was published by the University of Notre Dame Press
in 1985 in association with W.W. Norton & Co. This translation was carried out by Anthony Kerrigan (translator) and Kenneth Moore (editor), with an introduction by Saul Bellow
.
Mildred Adams
is the translator of the main body of Ortega's work, including Invertebrate Spain, Man and Crisis, What is Philosophy, Some Lessons in Metaphysics, The Idea of Principle in Leibniz and the Evolution of Deductive Theory, and An Interpretation of Universal History.
, a group of poets that arose in Spanish literature in 1920s.
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
liberal
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy
Alfonso XIII of Spain
Alfonso XIII was King of Spain from 1886 until 1931. His mother, Maria Christina of Austria, was appointed regent during his minority...
, republicanism
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
and dictatorship
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. He was, along with Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism
Perspectivism
Perspectivism is the philosophical view developed by Friedrich Nietzsche that all ideations take place from particular perspectives. This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives in which judgment of truth or value can be made...
.
Biography
José Ortega y Gasset was born 9 May 1883 in Madrid. His father was director of the newspaper El Imparcial, which belonged to the family of his mother, Dolores Gasset. The family was definitively of Spain's end-of-the-century liberal and educated bourgeoisie. The liberal tradition and journalistic engagement of his family had a profound influence in Ortega y Gasset's activism in politics.Ortega was first schooled by the Jesuit priests of San Estanislao in Miraflores del Palo, Málaga
Málaga
Málaga is a city and a municipality in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, Spain. With a population of 568,507 in 2010, it is the second most populous city of Andalusia and the sixth largest in Spain. This is the southernmost large city in Europe...
(1891–1897). He attended the University of Deusto
University of Deusto
The University of Deusto is a Spanish Jesuit University, with campuses in Bilbao and San Sebastián, Spain.-History:The University of Deusto first opened in 1886, having been founded because of the Basque Country's desire to have its own university and the Society of Jesus's wish to move its School...
, Bilbao
Bilbao
Bilbao ) is a Spanish municipality, capital of the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country. With a population of 353,187 , it is the largest city of its autonomous community and the tenth largest in Spain...
(1897–98) and the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the Central University of Madrid, (now Complutense University of Madrid
Complutense University of Madrid
The Complutense University of Madrid is a university in Madrid, and one of the oldest universities in the world. It is located on a sprawling campus that occupies the entirety of the Ciudad Universitaria district of Madrid, with annexes in the district of Somosaguas in the neighboring city of...
) (1898–1904), receiving a doctorate in Philosophy. From 1905 to 1907, he continued his studies in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
at Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
, Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...
, Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and, above all Marburg
Marburg
Marburg is a city in the state of Hesse, Germany, on the River Lahn. It is the main town of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district and its population, as of March 2010, was 79,911.- Founding and early history :...
. At Marburg, he was influenced by the neo-Kantianism
Neo-Kantianism
Neo-Kantianism refers broadly to a revived type of philosophy along the lines of that laid down by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century, or more specifically by Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophy in his work The World as Will and Representation , as well as by other post-Kantian...
of Hermann Cohen
Hermann Cohen
Hermann Cohen was a German-Jewish philosopher, one of the founders of the Marburg School of Neo-Kantianism, and he is often held to be "probably the most important Jewish philosopher of the nineteenth century".-Life:...
and Paul Natorp
Paul Natorp
Paul Gerhard Natorp was a German philosopher and educationalist, considered one of the co-founders of the Marburg school of neo-Kantianism. He was known as an authority on Plato....
, among others.
On his return to Spain in 1908, he was appointed professor of Psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, Logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
and Ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
at the Escuela Superior del Magisterio de Madrid and in October 1910 he was named full professor of Metaphysics
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
at Complutense University of Madrid, a vacant seat previously held by of Nicolás Salmerón.
In 1917 he became a contributor to the newspaper El Sol, where he published as a series of essays his two principal works: España invertebrada (Invertebrate Spain) and La rebelión de las masas (The Revolt of the Masses
The Revolt of the Masses
The Revolt of the Masses is the English translation of José Ortega y Gasset's La rebelión de las masas. The original was first published as a book in 1930; the English translation, first published two years later, was authorized by the author...
). The latter made him internationally famous.
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
Oswald Spengler
Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler was a German historian and philosopher whose interests also included mathematics, science, and art. He is best known for his book The Decline of the West , published in 1918, which puts forth a cyclical theory of the rise and decline of civilizations...
, Johan Huizinga
Johan Huizinga
Johan Huizinga , was a Dutch historian and one of the founders of modern cultural history.-Life:Born in Groningen as the son of Dirk Huizinga, a professor of physiology, and Jacoba Tonkens, who died two years after his birth, he started out as a student of Indo-Germanic languages, earning his...
, Edmund Husserl
Edmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
, Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel was a major German sociologist, philosopher, and critic.Simmel was one of the first generation of German sociologists: his neo-Kantian approach laid the foundations for sociological antipositivism, asking 'What is society?' in a direct allusion to Kant's question 'What is nature?',...
, Jakob von Uexküll
Jakob von Uexküll
Jakob Johann von Uexküll was a Estonian biologist who worked in the fields of muscular physiology, animal behaviour studies, and the cybernetics of life. However, his most notable contribution is the notion of umwelt, used by semiotician Thomas Sebeok...
, Heinz Heimsoeth
Heinz Heimsoeth
Heinz Heimsoeth was a German historian of philosophy.Heimsoeth began his studies at Heidelberg in 1905, but soon transferred to Berlin, where he studied with Wilhelm Dilthey, Alois Riehl, and Ernst Cassirer. Due to his interest in Kant he transferred in 1907 to Marburg, where he studied with...
, Franz Brentano
Franz Brentano
Franz Clemens Honoratus Hermann Brentano was an influential German philosopher and psychologist whose influence was felt by other such luminaries as Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, Kazimierz Twardowski and Alexius Meinong, who followed and adapted his views.-Life:Brentano was born at Marienberg am...
, Hans Driesch, Ernst Müller, Alexander Pfänder
Alexander Pfänder
Alexander Pfänder was a German philosopher and phenomenologist. He was born in Iserlohn and spent his entire academic career in Munich, where he was a student of Theodor Lipps and one of the founding members of the Munich circle of phenomenologists...
, and Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, and social critic. At various points in his life he considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had never been any of these things...
.
Ortega led the Republican intellectual opposition under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera
Primo de Rivera
Primo de Rivera is a Spanish family prominent in politics of the 19th and 20th centuries:*Fernando Primo de Rivera, Spanish politician and soldier, 1831-1921*Miguel Primo de Rivera , dictator of Spain from 23 September 1923 to 1930...
(1923–1930), and he played a role in the overthrow of King Alfonso XIII in 1931. Elected deputy for the province of León in the constituent assembly of the second Spanish Republic, he was the leader of a parliamentary group of intellectuals known as La Agrupación al servicio de la república ("At the service of the Republic"), but he soon abandoned politics, disappointed.
Leaving Spain at the outbreak of the Civil War, he spent years of exile in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
until moving back to Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
in 1942. He settled in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
by mid 1945 and slowly began to make short visits to Spain. In 1948 he returned to Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, where he founded the Institute of Humanities, at which he lectured.
"Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia"
For Ortega y Gasset, philosophy has a critical duty to lay siege to beliefs in order to promote new ideas and to explain reality. In order to accomplish such tasks the philosopher must, as HusserlEdmund Husserl
Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl was a philosopher and mathematician and the founder of the 20th century philosophical school of phenomenology. He broke with the positivist orientation of the science and philosophy of his day, yet he elaborated critiques of historicism and of psychologism in logic...
proposed, leave behind prejudices and previously existing beliefs and investigate the essential reality of the universe. Ortega y Gasset proposes that philosophy must overcome the limitations of both idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
(in which reality is centered around the ego) and ancient-medieval realism
Philosophical realism
Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality, or some aspect of it, is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc....
(in which reality is located outside the subject) in order to focus on the only truthful reality (i.e., "my life" — the life of each individual). He suggests that there is no me without things and things are nothing without me: "I" (human being) can not be detached from "my circumstance" (world). This led Ortega y Gasset to pronounce his famous maxim "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" ("I am I and my circumstance")(Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914) which he always situated at the core of his philosophy.
For Ortega y Gasset, as for Husserl, the Cartesian
René Descartes
René Descartes ; was a French philosopher and writer who spent most of his adult life in the Dutch Republic. He has been dubbed the 'Father of Modern Philosophy', and much subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings, which are studied closely to this day...
'cogito ergo sum' is insufficient to explain reality. Therefore the Spanish philosopher proposes a system wherein the basic or "radical" reality is "my life" (the first yo) which consists of "I" (the second yo) and "my circumstance" (mi circunstancia). This circunstancia is oppressive; therefore, there is a continual dialectical interaction between the person and his or her circumstances and, as a result, life is a drama that exists between necessity and freedom.
In this sense Ortega y Gasset wrote that life is at the same time fate and freedom, and that freedom “is being free inside of a given fate. Fate gives us an inexorable repertory of determinate possibilities, that is, it gives us different destinies. We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny.” In this tied down fate we must therefore be active, decide and create a “project of life” — thus not be like those who live a conventional life of customs and given structures who prefer an unconcerned and imperturbable life because they are afraid of the duty of choosing a project.
Raciovitalismo
With a philosophical system that centered around life, Ortega y Gasset also stepped out of Descartes' cogito ergo sumCogito ergo sum
is a philosophical Latin statement proposed by . The simple meaning of the phrase is that someone wondering whether or not they exist is, in and of itself, proof that something, an "I", exists to do the thinking — However this "I" is not the more or less permanent person we call "I"...
and asserted "I live therefore I think". This stood at the root of his Kantian-inspired perspectivism
Perspectivism
Perspectivism is the philosophical view developed by Friedrich Nietzsche that all ideations take place from particular perspectives. This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives in which judgment of truth or value can be made...
, which he developed by adding a non-relativistic character in which absolute truth does exist and would be obtained by the sum of all perspectives of all lives, since for each human being life takes a concrete form and life itself is a true radical reality from which any philosophical system must derive. In this sense, Ortega coined the terms "razón vital" ("vital reason" or "reason with life as its foundation") to refer to a new type of reason that constantly defends the life from which it has surged and "raciovitalismo", a theory that based knowledge in the radical reality of life, one of whose essential components is reason itself. This system of thought, which he introduces in History as System, escaped from Nietzsche's vitalism in which life responded to impulses; for Ortega, reason is crucial to create and develop the above-mentioned project of life.
Razón Histórica
For Ortega y Gasset, vital reason is also “historical reason”, for individuals and societies are not detached from their past. In order to understand a reality we must understand, as DiltheyWilhelm Dilthey
Wilhelm Dilthey was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist and hermeneutic philosopher, who held Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of...
pointed out, its history. In Ortega’s words, humans have “no nature, but history” and reason should not focus on what is (static) but what becomes (dynamic).
Influence
Ortega y Gasset's influence was considerable, not only because many sympathized with his philosophical writings, but also because those writings did not require that the reader be well-versed in technical philosophy.Among those strongly influenced by Ortega y Gasset were Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
, Manuel García Morente, Joaquín Xirau, Xavier Zubiri
Xavier Zubiri
Xavier Zubiri was a Spanish philosopher noted for his intellectual rigor. A major accomplishment of Zubiri's philosophy is its systematic development of a new conception of reality such that within it man, as a "sentient intelligence," appears in a different light...
, Ignacio Ellacuría
Ignacio Ellacuría
Ignacio Ellacuría, S.J. was a Jesuit priest, philosopher, and theologian who did important work as a professor and rector at the Universidad Centroamericana "José Simeón Cañas" , a Jesuit university in El Salvador founded in 1965...
, Emilio Komar
Milan Komar
Milan Komar, also known as Emilio Komar was a Slovene Argentine Catholic philosopher and essayist.-Life:...
, José Gaos
José Gaos
José Gaos was a Spanish-born philosopher who obtained political asylum in Mexico during the Spanish Civil War....
, Luis Recaséns Siches, Manuel Granell, Francisco Ayala
Francisco Ayala
Francisco Ayala may refer to:* Francisco Ayala Spanish novelist* Francisco J. Ayala , Spanish-American biologist and philosopher...
, María Zambrano
María Zambrano
María Zambrano Alarcón was a Spanish essayist and philosopher.Zambrano studied under and was influenced by José Ortega y Gasset and went on to teach Metaphysics at Madrid University from 1931 to 1936...
, Agustín Basave, Máximo Etchecopar
Máximo Etchecopar
Máximo Etchecopar was an Argentine diplomat, writer and early adherent of the nationalist strain in the country's political and intellectual elite.-Political career:...
, Pedro Laín Entralgo
Pedro Laín Entralgo
Pedro Laín Entralgo was a Spanish medical researcher. He won the Prince of Asturias award in 1989 for Communication and Humanities.In 1964 he entered the Royal Academy of History...
, José Luis López-Aranguren, Julián Marías
Julián Marías
Julián Marías Aguilera , was a Spanish philosopher. His History of Philosophy is widely accepted as the greatest work written in Spanish on the subject of the history of philosophy...
, John Lukacs
John Lukacs
John Adalbert Lukacs is a Hungarian-born American historian who has written more than thirty books, including Five Days in London, May 1940 and A New Republic...
, Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher.Starting from the role of economic capital for social positioning, Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location,...
, and Paulino Garagorri.
Ortega y Gasset influenced existentialism
Existentialism
Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
and the work of Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
.
German grape breeder Hans Breider named the grape variety Ortega
Ortega (grape)
Ortega is a grape variety used for white wine. It was created in 1948 by Hans Breider at the Bayerischen Landesanstalt für Wein-, Obst- und Gartenbau in Würzburg and was released with varietal protection in 1981. It is a cross between Müller-Thurgau and Siegerrebe...
in his honor.
The American philosopher Graham Harman has recognized Ortega y Gasset as a source of inspiration for his own Object Oriented Ontology.
There have been two translations of La rebellion de las massas (The Revolt of the Masses
The Revolt of the Masses
The Revolt of the Masses is the English translation of José Ortega y Gasset's La rebelión de las masas. The original was first published as a book in 1930; the English translation, first published two years later, was authorized by the author...
) into English. The first, in 1932, is by a translator who did not provide his/her name. The first translator is generally accepted to be J.R. Carey.
The second translation was published by the University of Notre Dame Press
University of Notre Dame Press
The University of Notre Dame Press is a university press that is part of the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States.-External links:*...
in 1985 in association with W.W. Norton & Co. This translation was carried out by Anthony Kerrigan (translator) and Kenneth Moore (editor), with an introduction by Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
.
Mildred Adams
Mildred Adams
Mildred Adams was the name used by Mildred Adams Kenyon, an American journalist, writer, translator, and critic of Spanish literature.-Biography:...
is the translator of the main body of Ortega's work, including Invertebrate Spain, Man and Crisis, What is Philosophy, Some Lessons in Metaphysics, The Idea of Principle in Leibniz and the Evolution of Deductive Theory, and An Interpretation of Universal History.
Influence on the Generation of '27
Ortega y Gasset had considerable influence on writers of the Generation of '27Generation of '27
The Generation of '27 was an influential group of poets that arose in Spanish literary circles between 1923 and 1927, essentially out of a shared desire to experience and work with avant-garde forms of art and poetry. Their first formal meeting took place in Seville in 1927 to mark the 300th...
, a group of poets that arose in Spanish literature in 1920s.
Works
Much of Ortega y Gasset's work consists of course 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.- Meditaciones del Quijote (Meditations on Quixote, 1914)
- Vieja y nueva política (Old and new politics, 1914)
- Investigaciones psicológicas (Psychological Investigations, course given 1915-16 and published in 1982)
- Personas, Obras, Cosas (People, Works, Things, articles and essays written 1904-1912: "RenanErnest RenanErnest Renan was a French expert of Middle East ancient languages and civilizations, philosopher and writer, devoted to his native province of Brittany...
", "Adán en el Paraíso" – "Adam in Paradise", "La pedagogía social como programa político" – "Pedagogy as a political program", "Problemas culturales" – "Cultural problems", etc., published 1916) - El Espectador (The Spectator, 8 volumes published 1916-1934)
- España Invertebrada (Invertebrate Spain, 1921)
- El tema de nuestro tiempo (The theme of our time, 1923)
- Las Atlántidas (The Atlantides, 1924)
- La deshumanización del Arte e Ideas sobre la novela (The Dehumanization of art and Ideas about the Novel, 1925)
- Espíritu de la letra (The spirit of the letter 1927)
- Mirabeau o el político (MirabeauMirabeauMirabeau can refer to:People* Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau, a French physiocrat and economist.* Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, renowned orator, a figure in the French Revolution and son of Victor....
or politics, 1928–1929) - ¿Qué es filosofía? (What is philosophy? 1928-1929, course published posthumously in 1957)
- KantImmanuel KantImmanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
(1929–31) - ¿Qué es conocimiento? (What is knowledge? Published in 1984, covering three courses taught in 1929, 1930, and 1931, entitled, respectively: "Vida como ejecución (El ser ejecutivo)" – "Life as execution (The Executive Being)", "Sobre la realidad radical" – "On radical reality" and "¿Qué es la vida?" – "What is life?")
- La rebelión de las masas (The Revolt of the MassesThe Revolt of the MassesThe Revolt of the Masses is the English translation of José Ortega y Gasset's La rebelión de las masas. The original was first published as a book in 1930; the English translation, first published two years later, was authorized by the author...
, 1930) - Rectificación de la República; La redención de las provincias y la decencia nacional (Rectification of the Republic: Redemption of the provinces and national decency, 1931)
- Goethe desde dentro (Goethe from within, 1932)
- Unas lecciones de metafísica (Some lessons in metaphysics, course given 1932-33, published 1966)
- En torno a Galileo (About GalileoGalileo GalileiGalileo Galilei , was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism...
, course given 1933-34; portions were published in 1942 under the title "Esquema de las crisis" – "Scheme of the Crisis"; Mildred AdamsMildred AdamsMildred Adams was the name used by Mildred Adams Kenyon, an American journalist, writer, translator, and critic of Spanish literature.-Biography:...
's translation was published in 1958 as Man and Crisis.) - Prólogo para alemanes (Prologue for Germans, prologue to the third German edition of El tema de nuestro tiempo. Ortega himself prevented its publication "because of the events of MunichMunichMunich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
in 1934". It was finally published, in Spanish, in 1958.) - History as a system (First published in English in 1935. the Spanish version, Historia como sistema, 1941, adds an essay "El Imperio romano" – "The Roman EmpireRoman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
"). - Ensimismamiento y alteración. Meditación de la técnica. (This title is not easily translated, because the title uses a neologism and there is a play on words. Literally, it is "Sameness-making and alteration", but it could also be read as "The making of sameness and difference." In either case, the subtitle means "A meditation on technique." 1939)
- Ideas y Creencias (Ideas and Beliefs: on historical reason, a course taught in 1940 Buenos AiresBuenos AiresBuenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, published 1979 along with Sobre la razón histórica) - Teoría de Andalucía y otros ensayos • Guillermo Dilthey y la Idea de vida (The theory of Andalucia and other essays: Wilhelm DiltheyWilhelm DiltheyWilhelm Dilthey was a German historian, psychologist, sociologist and hermeneutic philosopher, who held Hegel's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Berlin. As a polymathic philosopher, working in a modern research university, Dilthey's research interests revolved around questions of...
and the idea of life, 1942) - Sobre la razón histórica (On historical reason, course given in LisbonLisbonLisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
, 1944, published 1979 along with Ideas y Crencias) - Prólogo a un Tratado de Montería (Preface to a Treatise on the Hunt [separately published as Meditations on the Hunt], created as preface to a book on the hunt by Count Ybes published 1944)
- Idea del Teatro. Una abreviatura (The idea of theater, a shortened version, lecture given in Lisbon April 1946, and in Madrid, May 1946; published in 1958, La Revista Nacional de educación num. 62 contained the version given in Madrid.)
- La Idea de principio en Leibniz y la evolución de la teoría deductiva (The Idea of the Beginning in Leibniz and the evolution of deductiveDeductive reasoningDeductive reasoning, also called deductive logic, is reasoning which constructs or evaluates deductive arguments. Deductive arguments are attempts to show that a conclusion necessarily follows from a set of premises or hypothesis...
theory, 1947, published 1958) - Una interpretación de la Historia Universal. En torno a Toynbee (An interpretation of Universal History. On ToynbeeArnold J. ToynbeeArnold Joseph Toynbee CH was a British historian whose twelve-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History, 1934–1961, was a synthesis of world history, a metahistory based on universal rhythms of rise, flowering and decline, which examined history from a global...
, 1948, published in 1960) - Meditación de Europa (Meditation on EuropeEuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
), lecture given in BerlinBerlinBerlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
in 1949 with the LatinLatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
-language title De Europa meditatio quaedam. Published 1960 together with other previously unpublished works. - El hombre y la gente (Man and the populace, course given 1949-1950 at the Institute of the Humanities, published 1957; Willard Trask's translation as Man and People published 1957; Partisan ReviewPartisan ReviewPartisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...
published parts of this translation in 1952) - Papeles sobre Velázquez y Goya (Papers on VelázquezDiego VelázquezDiego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...
and GoyaFrancisco GoyaFrancisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
, 1950) - Pasado y porvenir para el hombre actual (Past and future for the man of today, published 1962, brings together a series of lectures given in Germany, SwitzerlandSwitzerlandSwitzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, and EnglandEnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in the period 1951-1954, published together with a commentary on PlatoPlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
's SymposiumSymposiumIn ancient Greece, the symposium was a drinking party. Literary works that describe or take place at a symposium include two Socratic dialogues, Plato's Symposium and Xenophon's Symposium, as well as a number of Greek poems such as the elegies of Theognis of Megara...
.) - Goya (1958)
- Velázquez (1959)
- Origen y epílogo de la Filosofía (Origin and epilog to Philosophy, 1960),
- La caza y los toros (Hunting and Bullfighting, 1960)
- Meditations on Hunting (1972) translated into English by Howard B. Westcott - the ethical logic and reasoning behind hunting