Ortega y Gasset: Influence, Philosophy, and European Vision
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Ortega y Gasset is probably the most influential Spanish philosopher. His influence extends to numerous disciples, such as María Zambrano. Ortega’s work inspired philosophical vocabulary and stylistic features in Castilian philosophical writing. He also significantly influenced German philosophy, anticipating some aspects of Heidegger’s thought, with whom he shared certain views, although he distanced himself on several occasions. Ortega also anticipated certain existentialist approaches, declaring the nature of the self as irreducibly open and free to the world: “We are free to the force.” Beyond philosophy, Ortega influenced Spanish social and political thought. Academic philosophy followed the directions set by the victors of the civil war. Some intellectuals and clergy rallied to the regime and attempted to discredit Ortega after the civil war. Attacks against him declined from the 1950s onwards. For many university and college students of the time, reading Ortega was a decisive step towards personal independence and became socially acceptable. The publication and sale of Marxist texts and other previously banned authors were legalized in Spain, so reading and citing Ortega’s texts were no longer considered a sign of independent thinking. More radical texts became enshrined in the channels of emancipation. Ortega was one of the first to realize that Spain should have a common project with Europe.
Relationship with Other Authors: Criticism of Descartes
Descartes was the first to establish the pillars of authentic idealism, the foundation of modern subjectivism: things are not certain. The senses deceive me, and I cannot distinguish dream from wakefulness. The only thing I cannot doubt is my thought. His entire philosophy is built on reason. That is, external reality is reduced to experience; the exterior fact is the self. Radical things are as they are for me. The radical truth is I, my thoughts. The being of things depends on their initial formation in the ‘I’. From a rationalist and idealist position, Ortega criticizes this stance, creating a synthesis between idealism and realism: idealism is correct in saying that I only know things as they are thought by me. But it cannot assert the independence of the subject from things. I am inseparable from things. I find myself at the same time with my self and my things. Thus, the radical fact of the universe cannot be thought but the thought and things, I with things, that is, life. Neither the world nor myself alone: we are the world and I with things. Idealism goes against life. The discovery of life as the fundamental reality is the overcoming of idealism and can point towards realism. Ortega’s concept of reason also differs from Descartes’. While Descartes posits a “pure reason” that regards the world outside a timeless subject, Ortega offers a vital and historical reason. This reason is temporary and corresponds to a real life in perspective. This means that there is not only one truth, but as many as there are subjects, and that the perspective of each of them is true, an irreplaceable role in the establishment of a truth. For Descartes, however, truth is absolute and eternal, and there is only one that reason reveals.
Historicism
Man’s life is a continuous undertaking. Ortega says that “man is not nature but history”: the life of man is not static nature, but it is history. Man lives in a given time. And that time is to be addressed not only with reason but also with life and from life. Because time is “not what clocks measure, but work.” The task of our time is always a mission that looks to the future. In every era, there is a way of life; it takes time; hence, several generations coexist in the same time. These exist in the same time; they are contemporary but not contemporary. Historicism has a clear meaning: Man has no nature, no essence; he is history. He is dynamic; neither does society have an essence; it is simply history. Society is a “task,” a chore in community, in relation to the world. The personal and social community is a participle.