Ortega y Gasset: Influence and Impact on 20th-Century Thought
Influence and Impact of Ortega y Gasset
Influences
The influence of previous philosophy on Ortega’s thought is organized in different ways, but all start from the conception that Ortega has of life as the key explanatory reality in relation to reason. Socrates, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, and Hegel believed that there was only one reason or understanding, one and the same for all mankind. Ortega felt that there was no reason that was universal and unchanging, but the real reason is, in each case, a singular and specific reason (yours, hers, mine), that is, a vital and historical reason, entered in the life of each.
It can be argued that a clear influence of Cartesian Rationalism is controversial as regards (to criticize) in Ortega. While Rationalism states what reason is, Ortega corrects that reason is a historical product, depending on the time variable. He also criticized Rationalism’s excess confidence in reason, since the Spaniard considered knowledge as a challenging task, a continuous screening for faults.
In summary, Ortega changes the Cartesian maxim “I think, therefore I am” (Cogito ergo sum) to “I exist, then I think” because only experience arises from reflection.
There is also a clear influence of English Empiricism. Ortega agreed that our knowledge will always be problematical and may never show the reality in itself, but he denied Hume’s theory of the idea that man should not hope to attract the objective truth. Ortega does not believe in this waiver and believed that human reason, vital and historical, should seek to achieve authenticity, however unattainable.
Ortega’s critique of Idealism is structured in two authors: Kant, as a transcendental idealist, according to Ortega, brought a new vision of the subject but kept the radical opposition between it and the object, instead of integrating them into the same reality. This is what Ortega makes through ratio-vitalism with the concepts of “I” (as a vital project) and circumstance (as a given situation to that project). In this same line of criticism, he criticizes Hegel, who holds the supremacy of reason or logos as inseparable from the whole, with the absolute and divine. The basis for Ortega is valid, the reason is inseparable, but not absolute but life, the tangible thing that represents the life of each.
Without a doubt, the most important influence is the vitalism of Nietzsche, although the backbone of Ortega’s vitalism is based on the concrete biographical life of everyone, while Nietzsche made it from a biological perspective. Ortega also denied any connection between his philosophy and the irrationalism of Schopenhauer.
In any case, the philosophy of Ortega is a coherent construct that takes back all the previous thinking.
Impact
Twentieth-century Spanish philosophy is indebted to the thought of Ortega. Disciples of Ortega, such as Julian Marias, Maria Zambrano, and Gaos, have continued and spread Ortega’s thought. Although its influence is not reduced to the philosophical field, psychology emerged in the figure of José Luis Pinillos, also linked to the thought of Ortega, and is the basis of some writers, such as Rosa Chacel. Also relevant is the contribution made to journalism with publications such as Revista de Occidente.
The value and uniqueness of Ortega’s thought today are beyond doubt.