Abstract
During the first third of the 20th century, a vast intellectual movement — aware that epochs truly fecund and creative in philosophy are also periods of the flourishing of metaphysics — made a comeback after a brief but intense positivist parenthesis.1 Since Fichte, a certain need to link thought to life, in the concrete sense of the latter’s having primacy over the former, had been intuited; but the return would not be to any earlier metaphysics, either traditional or modern. The Occidental philosophical panorama found itself in the position of having to tackle one of the most serious questions of its historical journey, that is, the possibility of abandoning idealism and, as a consequence, putting an end to the modern age.2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Represented are philosophies of life (Bergson, Dilthey, Simmel) existentialism (Jaspers, Heidegger, Marcel, Sartre), philosophies of the spirit (Lavelle, Le Semme), phenomenology (Scheler, Hartmann) and others more difficult to classify such as the Spaniards Unamuno, Ortega y Gasset and Zubiri.
Ortega did not hesitate to identify this task as “The Theme of Our Time”, Collected Works, VII, 388–406. (Henceforth C.W. = Collected Works.) “To abandon idealism”, he later wrote, “is, without a doubt, the most serious, the most radical thing that the European can do today. Everything else is but an anecdote beside it. With it we abandon not only a space but an entire time: the `Modern Age”’. C.W. VIII, 41.
The deeper I penetrated with my analysis“, wrote Husserl, ”the more I became conscious that the logic of our time is not sufficient to explain the present science, this being, nonetheless, one of its main incumbencies“. E. Husserl, Logical Investigations I (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1967), pp. 19–20. See also Ortega, C.W. VIII, 47.
Sensation, Construction and Intuition“, Talk at the IV Congress of the Associación Espanola para el Progreso de las Ciencias, June 1913. C.W. XII, 487–499.
On the Concept of Sensation“, C.W. I, 244–260.
J. Marias, Obras,V. (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1956) pp. 433–439; and (J. Marias, 1960 and 1973) Ortega, Circunstancia y Vocación 2 (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1960, 1973) pp. 187–205.
For Ortega the traditional method of knowing (what he calls in other places in modorecto as opposed to in modo obliquo, C.W II, 388) is inadequate to go in entry to certain “fortresses” of knowledge. It is necessary to use the circular method,known also as the method of the dialectic series of Jericho,referred to twice with regard to the reading of the Quijote and of Kant, using the same rhetorical figure: situate the positions in wide turns, in concentric circles, as the Israelites did to take Jericho. C.W. I, 327 and C.W. IV, 44.
Meditations on Quijote (1914) in C.W. I, 311–400. Of special interest are the three editions of Julifin Marias because of his exhaustive Commentary (University of Puerto Rico, 1957) (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1966); and (Madrid: Cdtedra, 1984 and 1990). The last is to be recommended due to the placement of the commentaries at the foot of the Ortegan text.
Aesthetic Essay in the Manner of a Prologue“, Prologue to the book El Pasajero (The Traveler) by José Moreno Villa (Madrid: Imp. Clfisica Espanola, Carlos, 1914), 1 dup. pp. ix—xlvi. Collected in C.W. VI, 247–264.
A. Rodriguez Huéscar, La innovación metafisica de Ortega. Critica y superación del idealismo (Madrid: MEC, 1982), p. 19. English version by Jorge Garcia-Gómez: Jose Ortega y Gasset’s Metaphysical Innovation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995 ). One of the most important on the subject.
Great success“, wrote Ortega, ”was improbable. Nonetheless fortune had given us a prodigious tool: phenomenology“. ”Prologue for Germans“, C.W. VIII, 42.
J.Ferrater Mora Ortega y Gasset. Etapas de una filosofia (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1973), pp. 27–44. Translation of the original English Ortega y Gasset: An Outline of his Philosophy (London: Bowes & Bowes)
P. W. Silver, Phenomenology and Vital Reason (Madrid: Alianza, 1978 ), J. San Martin, Essays on Ortega ( Madrid: UNED, 1994 ).
Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, Renan (1909) and Adan en el paraiso (1910). C.W. I, 443–493.
See F. López-Frías, “Europe as a Solution” in The Spanish Constitution and the Ordering of the European Community (I) (Madrid: Ministerio de Justicia, 1995), pp. 1565–1579 (at press)
In the life of this spirit“, he will say in 1929, ”you only surmount what you retain (chrw(133)) as the third step surmounts the first two because it retains them below it. Should these disappear the third step would fall to be only the first. (chrw(133)) Contrary to life in bodies, in the life of the spirit the new ideas (the daughters) are those which carry in their bellies their mothers“, What Is Philosophy? C.W VII, 370 ff. C.W. IV, 25.
Ortega hopefully hailed Heidegger after the appearance of Sein and Zeit (C.W IV, 57) but soon vindicated his own discovery of the philosophical idea of life (C.W. IV, 403–404 and 541). In 1940 he made a splendid synthesis of the concept of Existenz remembering that Heidegger represented the last of the four great attempts, after Dilthey (1), Ortega himself (2), and Jaspers (3), to found philosophy on the new idea of life,“the great idea of life that, like it or not”, he said, “will be that which humanity will live on in the next stage” (C.W. XII, 192). Later he criticized the existential mode of anguish and the Heideggerian exposition of death (C.W. VII, 495–496), new radical discrepancies concerning the theme of being (C.W VIII, 270–316) and finally a certain reconciliation within the discrepancies (C.W. IX, 617–663).
The celebrated Copernican turn of Kant inverted the Aristotelian order but not the ultimate sense of the categorical. What differentiates them are their respective gnoseological or ontological structures. In Ortega being and entity are replaced by living and life; strictly speaking it is more fitting to speak of primalities than categories. The categorical notion of being is replaced by that of doing. Cf. A. Rodriguez Huéscar, op. cit., pp. 105–109.
Ortega, as well as other philosophers (Dilthey, Heidegger, Jaspers and Merleau-Ponty) distinguish these two forms of knowledge as far as the relationship of I with things is concerned: 1) An immediate knowledge belonging to a primary or transcendental relationship characteristic of non-theoretical knowledge and which corresponds to the practical world. Heidegger coins a new word, Bezug,and Ortega — in a more complicated conception — uses pairs of reconcilable concepts such as the executive I (as opposed to the seeing 1); human life (as opposed to culture); ideas (as opposed to beliefs); and doing metaphysics (as opposed to simply studying it) 2) A mediate knowledge belonging to a secondary or predicamental relationship characteristic of theoretical knowledge, and which belongs to the cultural and scientific world. Heidegger employs the term Beziehung,which in German means precisely relationship, and Ortega the same pairs of reconcilable concepts in reverse, that is, the seeing I (as opposed to the executive I); culture (as opposed to human life); beliefs (as opposed to ideas); studying metaphysics (as opposed to doing it). Cf. in Heidegger Sein and Zeit #12. In Ortega “Culture-Security”, C.W. I, 354–355; “Ideas and Beliefs”, C.W. V, 381–394; “On Historical Reason”, C.W. XII, 154–158; “Some Metaphysical Lessons”, C.W. XII, 15–128; “On the Concept of Sensation”, C.W. I, 244–260; and “The `I’ as the Executive”, C.W. VI, 250–252
A. Rodriguez Huéscar, “Advance Notes of Criticism”, in his La innovación, op. cit,pp. 103–109 and J. Ortega y Gasset, “The Two Great Metaphors”, C.W. 387–400.
Cf. esp. W. Biemel, Le Concept de monde chez Heidegger (Paris: J. Vrin, 1950 ) and J. V. Uexküll, Ideas para una concepción biologica del mundo (Ideas for a Biological Conception of the World). Prologue by J. Ortega y Gasset ( Madrid: Calpe, 1922 ).
At the beginning of Chapter II Ortega relates the question to the categorical imperative of Kant — within his known ethical postulate that men should not be treated as means but as ends — to the effect of showing that the 1 is the only thing which, although we might want to, we cannot change into thing. The executive I need not have recourse to any moral imperative to postulate personal dignity. “This dignity of the person”, says Ortega, “supervenes when we fulfill the immortal maxim of the Gospel: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. To make something I myself is the only way for it to stop being a thing. Much more than it seems, is it given to us to choose, before another man, before another subject, between treating it like a thing, using it, or treating it as I’. There is here margin for free will, margin which would not be possible if other human individuals were really `I’ ”. C.W. VI, 250.
The embryo of the argument is the following: “When I feel pain, when I love or hate, I do not see my pain, or see myself loving or hating. In order for me to see my pain it is necessary for me to interrupt my painful situation and become an observing I. This I which sees the other suffering I, is now the true I, the executive, the present. The suffering I, to be precise, was, and now is, only an image, a thing or object which I have before me”. C.W. VI, 254.
E. Husserl, Ideas ( Madrid: F.C.E., 1985 ), pp. 145–168.
C.W. VI, 247. Ortega proposes a theory of metaphor: a form of scientific thinking which it is necessary to use adequately and which is not exclusive to poetry but belongs also to science and philosophy. It is an intellectual process conceiving of certain difficult realities which one approaches not in modo recto but in modo obliquo. C.W. II, 387–402 and C.W. VIII, 53, footnote. On the subject cf. J. Marias, Ortega, Circumstance and Vocation (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1960), in Obras Works), IX, 408–432.
The selection of poetic ground for planting the seed of the concept of executiveness is not accidental. It is creative ground, as unreal and problematic as life itself, which does not give us solutions, but rather problems to be solved, the only ground it is fitting to step upon as long as the concepts of the new philosophy have not been sufficiently illuminated. For the first time he uses the expression — “The `I’ as Executive” — as the heading of a chapter, the second. The fifth, entitled “The Metaphor”, flows into unrealitychrw(133) pure poetry. Poetry, like the new philosophy it announces, creates — imagining — the fictitious space which it later makes real. In any case the man-philosopher-asexecutive-1 is not given to being as excessively metaphoric as the man-poetchrw(133) only as necessary. Cf. also the “The Idea of the Theater”, C.W. VII, 443–496.
Cf. iQué es conociento (What is Knowledge?) (Madrid: Revista de Occidente in Alianza Editoria). Not included in the Complete Works. Part I — Life as Execution (the Executive I) — was a course given in the Revista de Occidente from December, 1929 to March, 1930 and continued in April after the reopening of the University. Parts III and IV correspond to the 1930–1931 course.
The other two courses are “Some Lessons in Metaphysis” (1932–1933) given at the University of Madrid and “On Historical Reason” (1940) given in Buenos Aires. There was a continuation with the same title in Lisbon (1944). All are in C.W. XII, 15–318.
Prologue for Germans“, C.W. VIII, 15–58, especially 47–54.
X. Zubiri, Cinco lecciones de filosofia ( Five Lessons in Philosophy) (Madrid: Alianza, 1980 ), pp. 217–218.
In order for there to be consciousness“ says Ortega, ”it is necessary that I stop living immediately, primarily, what I have been living and, turning my attention behind, remember what has just happened to me“. C.W. VIII, 49.
Ortega uses the same reference to the Dii consentes two other times: in a lesson entitled “The Three Great Metaphors” (1916), in Anales de la Institución Cultural Espanola,I, (Buenos Aires, 1947), and in Historic Reason (Buenos Aires, 1940) in C.W. XII, 181.
There is in love an amplification of the individual which absorbs other things into it, which fuses them with uschrw(133) and makes us penetrate into the properties of the beloved [and] it reveals to us all of its value [telling us] that the beloved is, in turn, part of something elsechrw(133) that it is linked to something else that is also indispensable to uschrw(133). Love is a divine architect which comes down to the world — according to Plato — so that everything in the universe might live connected“. C.W. I, 312–313. This all-embracing connection leads him to consider ”that philosophy is the general science of love“. Ibid,p. 316.
It’s too late“, wrote Ortega, ”The Orb of absolute reality, which is for Husserl what he calls `pure experiences’ has nothing to do — in spite of its delicious name — with life: it is, strictly speaking, the opposite of life. The phenomenological attitude is precisely the contrary of what I call `vital reason’ “. C.W. V, 545.
Ortega attributes this capacity to self-catapult to some pure types of modern voluntarism. He is here referring to the Baron von Münchhausen (C.W. VIII, 52) but on another occasion he gives many more — and juicier — illustrations with regard to the Baron de la Castana. Cf. C.W. V, 504.
The first sign of the identity of philosophy takes place in the pure and primarily aletheic moment which Parmenides and Heraclitus represented. Cf. Origin and Epilogue of Philosophy. C.W IX, 349–434.
Origin and Epilogue of Philosophy C.W. IX, 399–412.
This obliges us“, writes Ortega, ”to ‘un-naturalize’ all the concepts referring to the integral phenomenon of human life and subject them to a radical historizing’ Nothing that man has been, is, or will be, has he been, is he, or will he be forever. Rather, he has come to be it one fine day and another fine day he will stop being it“. Notes on Thought. C.W. V, 538.
Cf. Ideas and Beliefs, C.W V, 379–408. He returns to the theme in “Historical Reason”, C.W. XII, 154 ff. The best development is in History as System, C.W VI, 13–50.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
López-Frías, F. (1998). Ortega Y Gasset’s Executive I and His Criticism of Phenomenological Idealism. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) Phenomenology of Life and the Human Creative Condition. Analecta Husserliana, vol 52. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2604-7_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2604-7_12
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4805-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-2604-7
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive