José Ortega y Gasset

Dzieła

• 1914Medytacje o Don Kichocie

  Pierwsza książka Ortegi, która formułuje „Ja jestem ja i moja okoliczność” i wzywa do ocalenia swojej okoliczności przez jej zrozumienie.

• 1923Temat naszych czasów

  Przedstawia rozum witalny i perspektywizm: każde życie widzi świat z unikalnego punktu widzenia, a prawda jest integracją perspektyw.

• 1930Bunt mas

  Diagnozuje powstanie „człowieka masowego”, który rości sobie prawa, nie uznając obowiązków, i opowiada się za zjednoczoną Europą.

Stanowisko

Ortega is on the map as the central figure of 20th-century Spanish philosophy and the founder of what is called the School of Madrid. From neo-Kantianism and Husserl’s phenomenology he moved to a philosophy of life: the radical reality is my life, the dealings of an I with its circumstance, summed up in 1914 in the formula “I am I and my circumstance”. Against both rationalism and vitalism he set a “vital reason”, later a “historical reason” that understands human beings through the story of what they have done; his late reading of Dilthey confirmed this direction. His perspectivism holds that every life sees a true but partial aspect of reality. Ortega claimed to have anticipated themes of Heidegger’s “Being and Time”, a claim scholars assess in different ways. “The Revolt of the Masses” made him known internationally; it has been read as a liberal defence of standards and as an elitist critique of mass democracy. His students Xavier Zubiri, José Gaos and María Zambrano took his thought in different directions, and through Gaos it shaped the history of ideas in Mexico (Leopoldo Zea). Critics point to the essayistic, unsystematic form of much of his work. His public silence during the Civil War and his return to Franco’s Spain have been judged critically, for instance by Gregorio Morán (1998); he held no office under the regime.

Życie i kontekst

José Ortega y Gasset was born on 9 May 1883 in Madrid into a family of journalists; his father edited the literary supplement of the newspaper “El Imparcial”. Educated by the Jesuits, he studied at Deusto and in Madrid, where he took his doctorate in 1904, and from 1905 to 1907 in Leipzig, Berlin and above all Marburg with the neo-Kantians Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp. In 1910 he became professor of metaphysics at the University of Madrid. He wrote for the press throughout his life, helped found the daily “El Sol” in 1917 and in 1923 founded the “Revista de Occidente”, which published translations of German philosophy and science. In 1931 he co-founded the Group at the Service of the Republic and sat in the Constituent Cortes, but soon withdrew from politics. When the Civil War broke out in 1936 he left Spain and lived in Paris, the Netherlands, Argentina and from 1942 in Lisbon. From 1945 he spent time in Madrid again, where in 1948 he founded the Institute of Humanities with his student Julián Marías; he did not resume university teaching. In the 1950s he lectured in Germany, among other occasions at the Darmstadt colloquium of 1951, where Heidegger also spoke. He died in Madrid on 18 October 1955.

Dalsze główne dzieła

• Meditations on Quixote (Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914)
• The Modern Theme (El tema de nuestro tiempo, 1923)
• The Dehumanization of Art (La deshumanización del arte, 1925)
• The Revolt of the Masses (La rebelión de las masas, 1930)
• Man and People (El hombre y la gente, posthumous, 1957)