Abstract
The ontology of Ortega y Gasset crystallized slowly between the years of 1934 and 1945. These were years of exile, years of war and financial insecurity that forced him to move from country to country. His health too was sorely tested on various occasions during this period. Remoteness from intellectual resources, familiar libraries, co-laborers, were doubtlessly disturbing obstacles to his progress. Ortega was fifty in 1933; yet for all these hindrances the next decade of his life was his most ambitiously productive.
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Reference
History as a System (hereafter H.S.) (New York: W.W. Norton, 1941), p. 79.
In an article published in the newspaper La Nación, Buenos Aires, October, 1936, Ortega paints a vivid portrait of his friend the Spanish diplomat D. Gaspar de Mestanza. The article presents a few glimpses of Mestanza’s extensive memoirs which betray a considerable influence of this man of affairs on the social ideas of the philosopher. Cf. Obras Completas (hereafter O.C.), 4th ed. (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1958), Vol. V, pp. 477 ff.
This long essay published as a book (Buenos Aires: Espasa Calpe, 1940) had been long in ripening. The first part of it appeared in German translation in the Europäische Revue, 1936. See O.C., Vol. V, p. 379.
All of these have been translated into English; many as central essays in books of remarkable unity and coherence. Cf. What is Philosophy? (English tr. Mildred Adams) (New York: Norton, 1960)
Some Lessons in Metaphysics (tr. Mildred Adams) (New York: Norton, 1969)
Man and Crisis (tr. Mildred Adams) (New York: Norton, 1958)
History as a System (tr. Helene Weyl) (New York: Norton, 1961)
Concord and Liberty (tr. Helene Weyl) (New York: Norton, 1963)
Man and People (tr. Willard Trask) (New York: Norton, 1963). All of these writings are contained in Vols. V-VI-VII-X of the O.C.
It seems inexplicable that none of the contemporary structuralists and etho-logists, nor the followers of Merleau-Ponty or Polanyi have shown any interest in the vitalistic writings of Ortega. Among the best of these are: “The Sportive Origin of the State,” in H.S., pp. 13–40
Meditations on Hunting (tr. Howard B. Wescott) (New York: Scribner, 1972).
H.S., p. 230. The lectures on “What is Philosophy?” and on metaphysics (see note 4, above) constitute a slow winding, very exploratory exposition of the essentials of this doctrine.
See my “Ortega, Action and Ontology,” Cultural Hermeneutics, No. 2, July, 1973, esp. pp. 184ff.
The translations of these key terms in Man and People are correct but philosophically inadequate. The expression “being beside itself” here used is meant to convey the outreaching, dispersive aspect of all action. As for “being onto itself,” it is intended to point to the aspect of self-actualization typical of some. Man and People will be quoted hereafter as M.P.
The main concepts in these chapters correspond to those in the final four of What is Philosophy?, and in Lessons III, IV, V, and VIII of Some Lessons in Metaphysics, which were written earlier.
See “Ideas y Creencias,” in O.C., Vol. V., pp. 406–07.
M.P., p. 38; see also H.S., p. 165.
“Of course, these two things, man’s power of withdrawing himself from the world and his power of taking his stand within himself are not gifts conferred upon man. I emphasize this for those of you who are concerned with philosophy: they are not gifts conferred upon man. Nothing that is substantive has been conferred upon man” M.P., p. 20.
See What is Philosophy?, p. 200.
The ontological differentiation of human action in terms of principles other than “ideas” or “rational thought” seems, at first sight, to lead to irrationalism. The bulk of the ontological theory of Ortega proves the opposite, though at times he seems to fear the ever present possibility of irrationalism. See, for example the following text: “Is there room in the human scheme of things, both formally and substantively, for unreason as a form of authenticity, or is it no more than a notorious symptom of crisis and of life lived falsely?” Man and Crisis, p. 114.
H.S., p. 206; cf. ibid., p. 222 and 232. The notion of “occasional concepts” is based on identification and recognition as constitutive acts. See E. Husserl, Logical Investigations (English tr. J.N. Findlay) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970), Vol. I., p. 313 ff. See also Vol. II., p. 684 ff. Cf.
M. Scheler, Formalism in Ethics and Non-formal Ethics of Values (English tr. M. Frings and R. Funk) (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 430 ff.
H.S., p. 213.
Ibid., p. 217.
See Concord and Liberty (hereafter CL.), op. cit., p. 178.
See C.L., pp. 118–26.
C.L., p. 121 fn.
H.S., pp. 197–98. The Husserlian injunction: “To the things themselves!” needs reconsideration in the light of this text.
See H.S., p. 111. Cf. On Love (English tr. T. Talbot) (New York: World Publishing Co., 1957), pp. 51–52.
The following remarks written in 1934 prove that the discovery of Dilthey’s hermeneutics broadened and strengthened the “Cartesianism of life”: “I became acquainted with Dilthey’s work as late as 1929, and it took me four years before I knew it sufficiently well. This ignorance, I do not hesitate to maintain, has caused me to lose about ten years of my life-ten years in the first place of intellectual development, but that, of course, means an equal loss in other dimensions of life.” C.L., pp. 136–37.
“(Historical reason) does not believe it is throwing light on human phenomena by reducing them to a repertory of instincts and ‘faculties’-which would in effect be crude facts….” H.S., p. 232.
In fact, he bemoans Dilthey’s inability to apprehend the implications of those discoveries for a possible ontological elucidation of human existence based on biography. He attributes this inability to the “epistemological mania” and “ontophobia” characteristic of modern philosophy. C.L., p. 181.
W. Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften (Stuttgart: B.G. Teubner, 1922–31), Vol. I, pp. xvii–xviii. As quoted by Ortega, C.L., p. 155.
Dilthey, op. cit., Vol. VIII, p. 189. In Ortega, C.L., p. 168.
C.L., p. 72.
The notion of convictions appears for the first time as implicit within the distinction between reparar (to be conscious of) and contar con (to rely on, to take for granted), the first connoting an intuitive cognitive meaning of consciousness, the second indicating active reflectiveness. Convictions appear for the first time with this name in the essay on Dilthey (1934). See C.L., pp. 159–62. The notion is further elaborated in H.S. (1935), pp. 166–69; pp. 223–29; and in the essay “Ideas y Creencias.” (1936), O.C., Vol. V, pp. 379ff., cf. also the essay on the Roman Empire: C.L., pp. 16–21. For a comparison between the idea of convictions in Husserl and in Ortega, see C.L., pp. 55–9.
For the notions of usages and social projects see: H.S., p. 176; p. 210. Also M.P., pp. 192–210. It is very significant for what follows that the notions of convictions and usages overlap. For the notion of forms of life, see: H.S., p. 208. For that of life programs, see: H.S., p. 112; p. 121; p. 137; and p. 215.
H.S., p. 220. Emphasis added.
See M.P., pp. 179ff.
The influence of Mestanza on Ortega’s ideas on individuation of human life seems to have been very profound. Cf. O.C., Vol. V, pp. 484–89.
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© 1978 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Medina, A. (1978). Action, Interaction and Reflection in the Ontology of Ortega Y Gasset. In: Bruzina, R., Wilshire, B. (eds) Crosscurrents in Phenomenology. Selected Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-9698-4_5
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