José Ortega y Gasset on the Idea of Life (Part 5)

By way of concluding this all too brief sketch of Ortega’s idea of life, perhaps it is worth taking account of “that anxiety both dolorous and delicious contained in every moment” of the present age.[1] If the essential and naked being—or not yet being—of humanity has been laid bare, are all people conscious [...]

José Ortega y Gasset on the Idea of Life (Part 4)

While I possess a great deal of freedom with respect to deciding my future possibilities, in life, I am condemned to choose. On that matter, I have no say. Before Heidegger’s “thrownness” (Geworfenheit) of Dasein came Ortega’s description of the human condition as a “biological projectile launched…with pre-determined force and direction.”[1] I [...]

José Ortega y Gasset on the Idea of Life (Part 3)

“The new great Idea in which man is beginning to abide is the Idea of life.”[1] Ortega tells us that this new idea had its first adumbrations in the philosophical output of Nietzsche and Dilthey, who Ortega acknowledge as his guides, as well as in the literature of Goethe.[2] These great [...]

José Ortega y Gasset on the Idea of Life (Part 2)

The modern age appeared under what Ortega calls a generación, which is a general term in his philosophy that denotes a peculiar social reality marked by a decisive sort of sensibility. The generación of modernity was determined by the ascendency of physico-mathematical reason, first among its intellectual minority and later among the vast multitude [...]

José Ortega y Gasset on the Idea of Life (Part 1)

José Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher and politician, is one of the more exhilarating theorists to read. Commenting on themes philosophical, political, aesthetic and cultural, Ortega was perhaps the first modern Spanish thinker whose ideas made up a true export. Uniquely original, masterfully didactic and unusually perspicuous, Ortega is a genuinely enjoyable read. [...]