José Ortega y Gasset
- LAST REVIEWED: 27 June 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 27 June 2022
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766581-0270
- LAST REVIEWED: 27 June 2022
- LAST MODIFIED: 27 June 2022
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766581-0270
Introduction
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset (b. 1883–d. 1955) engaged with questions of national identity, cultural regeneration, the arts, history, and the nature of reality. His extensive corpus impacted, primarily, the intellectual thought and politics of Spain, but also, more broadly, of Latin America and Europe. University teaching, lectures, letters, and involvement with influential periodicals likewise remain inseparable from his legacy. Ortega enjoyed a mythic public persona, whose voice sounded the tumultuous, often violent upheavals of his day, spanning the 1898 Spanish-American War, World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the outset of the Franco dictatorship. As a young man, his studies in Germany cemented an indebtedness to and, ultimately, complex positioning against idealism, and his three extended stays in Argentina at distinct moments of his personal history have importance for his transatlantic reach and association with writing of exile. Though his philosophical production can appear unsystematic or incomplete because so disparate in its breadth, the trajectory of his career shows coherence. Above all, Ortega maintained that reality depends on a dynamic, relational exchange between self and circumstance. It is not surprising, therefore, that he found himself fascinated by Einsteinian relativity, believing his own views on history and perspective to be parallel to coetaneous advances in physics. Ortega sought to define and regenerate the national conscience of Spain, immersed himself in its politics, and saw some of his most malleable ideas appropriated for the rhetoric of emerging far-right factions. His later years of political reticence and withdrawal further complicate this association. In time, he developed a notion of reality founded on the premise of ratio-vitalism, which would constitute the hallmark of his understanding of being. In brief, the external world is non-rational and only becomes rational when subjected to human reason, as ratio, that is, when it comes into being by means of reflection, while that same consciousness cannot be separated from the biological forces of living, as vitalism, in the world. Thus, Ortega bridges subjective idealism with positivist materialism, neither of which he believed could alone account for subject-object codependence of existence. Wide-ranging and open-ended, Ortega’s writings have an enduring interdisciplinary appeal rooted in his stylistic ambiguities, the imagination, issues of modernity, and sweeping subject matter.
General Overviews
Select scholars of Ortega, like those who authored Garagorri 1970 and Molinuevo 2002, have sought to make his philosophy accessible to a general audience by identifying the main concepts and contextualizing them in the historical trajectory of his thought. With more targeted reading, Cerezo Galán 1984 approaches Ortega from the eye of a philosopher, while Marías 1971 discusses his impact from the perspective of having been his pupil. To appreciate Ortega’s broader reach, especially across different disciplines, one should consult Graham 2001, and for more on Ortega’s use of language and writing style, see Senabre Sempere 1964. Most recently, Morujão, et al. 2021 reconsiders Ortega across a range of social, historical, and philosophical issues related to his writings, which they see in conversation with one another and ultimately framed by an anti-idealist paradigm of lived experience.
Cerezo Galán, Pedro. La voluntad de aventura: aproximaciones críticas al pensamiento de Ortega y Gasset. Barcelona: Ariel, 1984.
A classic exploration of Ortega’s thought by one of his most astute readers, this study explores questions of culture, morality, language, and creativity, while situating them against the backdrop of Spain, a range of influences, and the contemporaries with whom Ortega engaged. As a Spanish philosopher in his own right, Cerezo Galán offers insights with the intimacy of one whose early formation overlapped with the latter decades of Ortega’s life.
Garagorri, Paulino. Introducción a Ortega. Madrid: Alianza, 1970.
This pithy “pocket” resource makes the more challenging philosophical problems confronted by Ortega accessible to the initiated and uninitiated alike. From his firsthand experiences with Ortega and as secretary at the Revista de Occidente, Garagorri is able to deftly unpack Ortega’s often unwieldy solutions to the quandaries of human life as radical reality, the nature of truth in perspective, and history as an ever-unfolding potentiality of being.
Graham, John T. The Social Thought of Ortega y Gasset: A Systematic Synthesis in Postmodernism and Interdisciplinarity. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.
The breadth of Graham’s agenda serves as a foundation for the integrative approach he employs to adumbrate a systematic cohesion across the guiding parameters of Ortega’s writings, which he reads as philosophical, historical, and social in a trifold composition. A multifaceted thesis then emerges that is concerned, more specifically, with the postmodern reach of Ortega’s interdisciplinary ideas as they relate to late-20th-century methodologies in a range of fields.
Marías, Julián. Acerca de Ortega. Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1971.
This indispensable collection of essays written over twenty years by Ortega’s revered pupil contextualizes transitional moments in the evolution of Ortega’s position on metaphysics, phenomenology, ratio-vitalism, conscience, and the collective. Marías captures Ortega in his history, including with biographical and personal reflections on his passing in 1955 and impact on Spain. Marías’s early considerations of how Ortega saw the world and, by extension, future potentiality remain a fundamental point of reference.
Molinuevo, José Luis. Para leer a Ortega. Madrid: Alianza, 2002.
The clarity of organization and a well-presented discussion of topics for being sufficiently versed in Ortega make Molinuevo’s contribution utilitarian in the best sense. It also stands out for attention to Ortega’s quasi-psychological, symbolically infused reflections on landscapes and regions, along with the various means by which Ortega framed reason (vital, historical, narrative).
Morujão, Carlos, Samuel Dimas, and Susana Relvas. The Philosophy of Ortega y Gasset Reevaluated. Cham, Switzlerland: Springer, 2021.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-79249-7
This study assesses Ortega’s formation vis-à-vis the philosophers that he read, alongside those whose works influenced more directly what he wrote. The authors emphasize the constellation of writing that defines Ortega’s trajectory, and further contextualize the debated views on Ortega’s politics, with attention to his interest in anthropology and years in exile. The thesis posits Ortega as anti-idealist, privileging, within his writings, human life as a drama of being in the world.
Senabre Sempere, Ricardo. Lengua y estilo de Ortega y Gasset. Salamanca, Spain: Acta Salmanticensia, 1964.
Ortega’s literary style and shifting terminology make his use of language a key consideration for parsing out his meaning across the many writings of his lengthy career. Senabre Sempere offers a unique cataloguing of parts of speech, syntactical variations, metaphors, images, and other tropes in these writings, with concise reflections on Ortega’s choices, especially, with respect to his irony, humor, and interest in drama.
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Abolition
- Abortion and Infanticide
- African-Descent Women in Colonial Latin America
- Agricultural Technologies
- Alcohol Use
- Ancient Andean Textiles
- Andean Contributions to Rethinking the State and the Natio...
- Andean Music
- Andean Social Movements (Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru)
- Anti-Asian Racism
- Antislavery Narratives
- Arab Diaspora in Brazil, The
- Arab Diaspora in Latin America, The
- Argentina in the Era of Mass Immigration
- Argentina, Slavery in
- Argentine Literature
- Army of Chile in the 19th Century
- Asian Art and Its Impact in the Americas, 1565–1840
- Asian-Peruvian Literature
- Asunción
- Atlantic Creoles
- Baroque and Neo-baroque Literary Tradition
- Beauty in Latin America
- Bello, Andrés
- Black Experience in Colonial Latin America, The
- Black Experience in Modern Latin America, The
- Body, The
- Bogotá
- Bolaño, Roberto
- Borderlands in Latin America, Conquest of
- Borges, Jorge Luis
- Bourbon Reforms, The
- Brazilian Northeast, History of the
- Brazilian Popular Music, Performance, and Culture
- Buenos Aires
- Cali
- California Missions, The
- Caracas
- Caribbean Philosophical Association, The
- Caribbean, The Archaeology of the
- Cartagena de Indias
- Caste War of Yucatán, The
- Caudillos, 19th Century
- Cádiz Constitution and Liberalism, The
- Central America, The Archaeology of
- Chaco War
- Children, History of
- Chile's Struggle for Independence
- Chronicle, The
- Church in Colonial Latin America, The
- Chávez, Hugo, and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela
- Cinema, Contemporary Brazilian
- Cinema, Latin American
- Colonial Central America
- Colonial Latin America, Crime and Punishment in
- Colonial Latin America, Pilgrimage in
- Colonial Legal History of Peru
- Colonial Lima
- Colonial New Granada
- Colonial Portuguese Amazon Region, from the 17th to 18th C...
- Comics, Cartoons, Graphic Novels
- Contemporary Indigenous Film and Video Production
- Contemporary Indigenous Social and Political Thought
- Contemporary Maya, The
- Cortés, Hernán
- Costa Rica
- Cárdenas and Cardenismo
- Cuban Revolution, The
- de Alva Ixtlilxochitl, Fernando
- Dependency Theory in Latin American History
- Development of Architecture in New Spain, 1500–1810, The
- Development of Painting in Peru, 1520–1820, The
- Disability
- Drug Trades in Latin America
- Dutch in South America and the Caribbean, The
- Early Colonial Forms of Native Expression in Mexico and Pe...
- Economies from Independence to Industrialization
- Ecuador
- Ecuador, La Generación del 30 in
- Education in New Spain
- El Salvador
- Enlightenment and its Visual Manifestations in Spanish Ame...
- Environmental History
- Era of Porfirio Díaz, 1876–1911, The
- Family History
- Film, Science Fiction
- Football (Soccer) in Latin America
- Franciscans in Colonial Latin America
- From "National Culture" to the "National Popular" and the ...
- Gaucho Literature
- Gender and History in the Andes
- Gender during the Period of Latin American Independence
- Gender in Colonial Brazil
- Gender in Postcolonial Latin America
- Gentrification in Latin America
- Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe
- Guaraní and Their Legacy, The
- Guatemala and Yucatan, Conquest of
- Guatemala City
- Guatemala (Colonial Period)
- Guatemala (Modern & National Period)
- Haitian Revolution, The
- Havana
- Health and Disease in Modern Latin America, History of
- History, Cultural
- History, Food
- History of Health and Disease in Latin America and the Car...
- Honor in Latin America to 1900
- Honor in Mexican Public Life
- Horror in Literature and Film in Latin America
- Hospitals
- Human Rights in Latin America
- Immigration in Latin America
- Independence in Argentina
- Indigenous Borderlands in Colonial and 19th-Century Latin ...
- Indigenous Elites in the Colonial Andes
- Indigenous Peoples of the Andean Region during the Colonia...
- Indigenous Population and Justice System in Central Mexico...
- Indigenous Voices in Literature
- Japanese Presence in Latin America
- Jesuits in Colonial Latin America
- Jewish Presence in Latin America, The
- José María Arguedas and Early 21st Century Cultural and Po...
- Las Casas, Bartolomé de
- Latin American Independence
- Latin American Multispecies Studies
- Latin American Theater and Performance
- Latin American Urbanism, 1850-1950
- Law and Society in Latin America since 1800
- Legal History of New Spain, 16th-17th Centuries
- Legal History of the State and Church in 18th Century New ...
- LGBT Literature
- Literature, Argentinian
- Machado de Assis
- Magical Realism
- Maroon Societies in Latin America
- Marriage in Colonial Latin America
- Martí, José, and Cuba
- Menchú, Rigoberta
- Mesoamerica, The Archaeology of
- Mestizaje and the Legacy of José María Arguedas
- Mexican Nationalism
- Mexican Revolution, 1910–1940, The
- Mexican-US Relations
- Mexico, Conquest of
- Mexico, Education in
- Mexico, Health Care in 20th-Century
- Migration to the United States
- Military and Modern Latin America, The
- Military Government in Latin America, 1959–1990
- Military Institution in Colonial Latin America, The
- Mining
- Mining Extraction in Latin America
- Modern Decorative Arts and Design, 1900–2000
- Modern Populism in Latin America
- Modernity and Decoloniality
- Montevideo
- Music in Colonial Latin America
- Musical Tradition in Latin America, The
- Mystics and Mysticism
- Native Presence in Postconquest Central Peru
- Natural Disasters in Early Modern Latin America
- Neoliberalism
- Neruda, Pablo
- New Conquest History and the New Philology in Colonial Mes...
- New Left in Latin America, The
- Novel, Chronology of the Venezuelan
- Novel of the Mexican Revolution, The
- Novel, 19th Century Haitian
- Novel, The Colombian
- Nuns and Convents in Colonial Latin America
- Oaxaca, Conquest and Colonial
- Ortega, José y Gasset
- Painting in New Spain, 1521–1820
- Paraguay
- Paraguayan War (War of the Triple Alliance)
- Pastoralism in the Andes
- Paz, Octavio
- Perón and Peronism
- Peru, Colonial
- Peru, Conquest of
- Peru, Slavery in
- Philippines Under Spanish Rule, 1571-1898
- Photography in the History of Race and Nation
- Piracy
- Political Exile in Latin America
- Ponce de León
- Popular Culture and Globalization
- Popular Movements in 19th-Century Latin America
- Portuguese-Spanish Interactions in Colonial South America
- Post Conquest Aztecs
- Post-Conquest Demographic Collapse
- Poverty in Latin America
- Preconquest Incas
- Pre-conquest Mesoamerican States, The
- Pre-Revolutionary Mexico, State and Nation Formation in
- Printing and the Book
- Prints and the Circulation of Colonial Images
- Protestantism in Latin America
- Puerto Rican Literature
- Quipu
- Religions in Latin America
- Revolution and Reaction in Central America
- Rosas, Juan Manuel de
- Sandinista Revolution and the FSLN, The
- Santo Domingo
- Science and Empire in the Iberian Atlantic
- Science and Technology in Modern Latin America
- Sephardic Culture
- Sexualities in Latin America and the Caribbean
- Slavery in Brazil
- São Paulo
- South American Dirty Wars
- South American Missions
- Spanish American Arab Literature
- Spanish and Portuguese Trade, 1500–1750
- Spanish Caribbean In The Colonial Period, The
- Spanish Colonial Decorative Arts, 1500-1825
- Spanish Florida
- Spanish Pacific, The
- Spiritual Conquest of Latin America, The
- Sports in Latin America and the Caribbean
- Studies on Academic Literacies in Spanish-Speaking Latin A...
- Telenovelas and Melodrama in Latin America
- Textile Traditions of the Andes
- 19th Century and Modernismo Poetry in Spanish America
- 20th-Century Mexico, Mass Media and Consumer Culture in
- 16th-Century New Spain
- Tourism in Modern Latin America
- Transculturation and Literature
- Trujillo, Rafael
- Tupac Amaru Rebellion, The
- United States and Castro's Cuba in the Cold War, The
- United States and the Guatemalan Revolution, The
- United States Invasion of the Dominican Republic, 1961–196...
- Urban History
- Urbanization in the 20th Century, Latin America’s
- Uruguay
- US–Latin American Relations during the Cold War
- Vargas, Getúlio
- Venezuela
- Venezuelan Literature
- Women and Labor in 20th-Century Latin America
- Women in Colonial Latin American History
- Women in Modern Latin American History
- Women's Property Rights, Asset Ownership, and Wealth in La...
- World War I in Latin America
- Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas