José Ortega y Gasset: Philosophy of Life and Historical Context
José Ortega y Gasset: Life as the Ultimate Reality
Life is the ultimate reality. The individual life of any person is going to be the radical data from which we will build philosophy. We feel that we are real, that we live, that with which we interact, but nothing is more immediate and obvious than our life. Life is not only immediate and obvious, such as thinking, but, far from being intentionally or abstract representation, it is an executive interaction, dynamic, concrete, and real with things and people.
The Categories of Life
The categories of life are the building blocks of life, the rational principles of our general interpretation of reality.
- Being Evidential: Life is evident for itself. This evidence is not like the Cartesian method.
- Being Circumstantial: “I am myself and my circumstances.” Living is found in the busy world of matters and things that impose our own circumstances. The world affects us; we are happy or sad because we are in it, and our emotions and feelings notify us of how we are in it. Life is primarily technical and secondarily theoretical. The things with which we deal and interact outside of us are primarily instruments and objects, not theoretical. It is natural to use and handle things; theoretical knowledge is secondary. Only when the instrument is missing do we make a theoretical consideration of things as an object of knowledge. The oven had not built tools and developed industry and knows he knows, but it develops the knowledge and knows he has constructed himself. The reason is fundamentally technical: the problem of truth requires a meditation technique or philosophy. We are in the world bare, as if thrown into it; we do not choose our world or the time of entry. The world into which we are thrown is shared with others; it is a social world.
The fact is the anti-paradise: The circumstances make our possibilities for action. It’s a sandbox. The fact resists and opposes our plan for life when it is not impossible. Hence the importance of saving the situation: “I am myself and my circumstance, and if I do not save it, I do not save myself.” We must engage with the circumstances, such as politically. This function of salvation is attributed to philosophy.
3. Living is Deciding: In continuing, we anticipate and choose our actions; we will decide. Our circumstances are inevitable. Our self is released in the fatality, a project defined by the possibilities of our environment. Our events are not predetermined either by natural forces or by historical powers. To live is to take care in advance, that is, worrying. Life weighs us down because we are forced to live and have a responsibility to become what we are. We are careless, but then we lose ourselves; our life is impersonal, improper, ceases to belong, and is no longer authentically ours or anyone’s. If we neglect our life, it is inauthentic. Life in ownership, that is, the authentic life, is a real conflict between the self and the circumstance; we must live with sportsmanship. The Christian spirit sees life as a distress in a valley of tears. The pagan spirit sees life as a fun part, that is, as a game. Ortega intends to live in a serious confrontation with the circumstances, to the anguish, as befits those who know that life goes on, but precisely because it gives value to life and endorsed even defeats.
Temporary Joint Life
If our life is decided, there is a temporal attribute in our lives, that is, the future. The primary mode of the time of our lives is the future; life is running into our future. It is not the present or the past that we live first. Life is an activity that runs forward, and the present or the past are discovered later, in relation to the future. Life is the future, which is not yet.
Ratiovitalism
The development of the issues that led him to perspectivism leads Ortega to positions classified as ratiovitalistic. Ortega rejects vitalism and rationalism when each intends to absorb the other but accepts both when they can integrate. This integration is the result of a conception of life as realidad radical. This is the life, the living of every particular man, and from that came the other realities: realidad radicada. Life, then, is to conduct activities to respond to different situations that you encounter. But these activities are not imposed on man; you have to invent them. However, it would be impossible for a man to invent his life in an original way. Tradition needs to orient its capabilities. Since one of the essential dimensions of life is to know, the instrument to reflect on life is right, the radical or historical reason, the one that can serve man to find his own destiny, his vocation.
Historical Background of Ortega’s Philosophy
Ortega’s philosophy is situated in a period of vital importance in the recent history of our country: the Bourbon Restoration, in the person of King Alfonso XII, the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera in 1923, with the formal alternation between the conservative and liberal parties, the proclamation of the Second Republic on April 14, 1931, the fall of the Republic, the Civil War (1936-1939), and the first years of the dictatorship of General Franco.
Since the late nineteenth century to the Civil War, economic conditions have made our country a backward society within Europe due to a very strong agricultural economy. This situation is coupled with a strong separation between a landowner and a cacique class.
Meanwhile, outside our borders, a series of events are happening from the beginning of the twentieth century until the middle:
- In the first decade of the century, we witnessed the rise of early capitalism in both the European powers and the U.S.
- In different countries, the political confrontation between the revolutionary working class and the capitalist class becomes more acute.
- In Europe, WWI occurs, falsely ending with the Treaty of Versailles, which means the loss of hegemony and capitulation of the former European Central Powers.
- The old Tsarist Russia succumbed to the rise of the labor movement led by Lenin, who led the 1917 Russian Revolution and the creation of the Third International.
- During the interwar period, there is the emergence of class parties, socialists and communists, and the proclamation and rise of fascist parties, especially in Italy, Spain, and Germany.
- In the U.S., the great crisis of 1929 takes place, which attempts to end with the political and economic reorientation led by Roosevelt (New Deal), which involves some intervention by the State against extreme economic liberalism.
- After the accession to power of fascist parties in Germany, Italy, and Spain, there is the outbreak of World War II.
- After the defeat of Germany, Italy, and Japan, and the victory of the Allies, after the death and barbarism of concentration camps and the Jewish Holocaust, the new international order is divided into two parts: the Western bloc revolves around the U.S. and is organized around NATO, and the communist bloc, which is articulated around the USSR military alliance, which was on behalf of the Warsaw Pact.