Ortega y Gasset: Philosophy of Life

José Ortega y Gasset: Context

Ortega y Gasset was born in Madrid in 1883. He was a professor of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid. He studied in Germany and acquired a solid neo-Kantian foundation, though he did not identify with this school. His work shows two main periods: the perspectivist period and the ratiovitalist period. Among his notable works are: History as a System, The Revolt of the Masses, and What is Philosophy?

Theme: The Categories of Life

The categories of life.

Key Ideas

• Human life is a radical reality, as all other realities must appear within it.
• Human life is doing something in order to exist.
• Life is not something given to us, but something we make. Life is a continuous pursuit.
• We are always compelled to do something, though not anything concrete.
• To do something, we must first decide what we will do.

Structure of the Text

Explanatory text. In the first idea, Ortega explains what life is. The following ideas (2, 3, 4, and 5) develop the concept of life as an activity – something we are constantly doing as we live.

Understanding the Ideas

For Ortega, life is a radical reality. The life of each individual, unlike any simple mode of reality, is the fundamental reality upon which others are based: our life. For Ortega, reality is not the external world (realism) nor the data of consciousness (idealism), but life itself.

Life is the radical figure of the universe and is "my co-existence with the world." Thus, the first task of philosophy is to define the meaning of my life, to seek the categories of life – the concepts that express the uniqueness of human life:

• To live is the radical mode of being; life is radical because all other realities must refer to it.
• To live is to encounter the world, doing what I am doing within it. My life is dealing with this 'my-world' (mundomío) – to see, think, feel, want...
• To live is to deal with something: our life is a constant decision. This living involves moving towards the future, anticipating, worrying.
• Life is a continuous task. Since nothing is a given fact, we need a project to undertake and must choose how. In this, life is free.
• Life is the problem: each of us is a problem.
• To live is to find oneself, to be transparent to oneself. To live is to be where I feel not only the subject, but also the world.
• Living is coexistence: the concrete reality is the subject of vital community with all other individuals. The isolated individual and the community are generic abstractions. We have been thrown into a life that involves a whole: people, circumstances, worlds...