Nietzsche and Ortega y Gasset: Vitalism and Ratiovitalism

Nietzsche and Ortega y Gasset

The Theme of Life

Similarities

• Both **Ortega and Nietzsche** are situated within vitalism. For both, the absolute reality is *life*. Life is the radical fact of the universe and the privileged object of philosophy. Against rationalism, the absolute is life.
• Both also agree in rejecting the static conception of reality and are inclined towards a dynamic conception to understand the fundamental reality and constant flux that is life.

Differences

• The concept of life has distinct nuances in Ortega and Nietzsche. In Nietzsche, life has a more biological character, and its essence is the will to power. In Ortega, life has a certain biological nature, but throughout his thought, a more biographical character is dominant. Life is the result of the self interacting with things in the world. Ortega says that biological and psychic realities appear and are located in the work of the self with things; this is life.
• Both are against rationalism, but Nietzsche is irrational. He opposes reason to life because life distorts reason and is unable to know it. Ortega does not propose an opposition between reason and life but a surpassing of it in his theory of ratiovitalism. Reason's function is subordinate to life, but life needs reason to know what to do.

On the Subject of Knowledge

Similarities

• Both are vitalists and affirm the primacy of life over reason.
• Against rationalism, they say that Cartesian reason is incapable of understanding life because it handles fixed concepts, while life is a flowing reality, an untamable fluid.
• They oppose the claim of the positive sciences to be the only form of valid knowledge. Life cannot be understood through physical and chemical categories, nor can its components be reduced to the physical and chemical.

Differences

• For Ortega, life and reason are not opposed, as Nietzsche believed, because reason distorts reality and is unable to experience life, managing fixed concepts while life is a dynamic reality in constant change. Nietzsche prefers art and metaphor to capture human life.
• Ortega prefers to speak of ratiovitalism. Against Nietzsche's irrationalism, he speaks of a vital reason as a faculty subject to life, as a function at the service of life, and as a necessary function for life so that it knows what to abide by. Reason is not the enemy of life; it is necessary for it, and human life is self-conscious.