Biographical Life and Ratio-Vitalism in the Thought of Ortega Y Gasset

Abstract

Jose Ortega y Gasset's (1883-1955) introduction to neo-Kantianism while studying at University of Marburg from 1906 to 1908 was to serve young, twenty-three year old Spaniard as a philosophical epiphany.1 Studying with Herman Cohen and Paul Natorp taught Ortega to view self-conscious existence as ultimate and irreducible form of human life. Also, while at Marburg Ortega learned to critique what he called common-sense reasoning of naive realism. But most importantly, at Marburg he began his life-long attempt to refute absolute idealism that was so prevalent at Marburg at time. From this encounter with neo-Kantianism emerged major themes that are found in Ortega's work: 1) life as a poetic-existential undertaking, 2) human life as biographical existence, 3) vital reason as immediate, differentiated ground of historical reason, 4) human existence as drama or narrative, 5) life as quehacer (having-to-do, project), and 6) life as radical-reality. I shall argue in this essay that this intellectual awakening of Ortega following his return to Spain is already quite clear in his publication, Adam in Paradise, an article that he wrote in 1910. This work serves as an early indication of existential and phenomenological direction that his work was to take. He would fully develop these themes in his book, Meditations On Quixote, a work that was published four years later. However, his earliest concerns are with exploration of human life as that, which owing to its self-conscious nature, surpasses all renditions of man as merely a biological entity. These central themes in Ortega's work are already present in Adam In Paradise. In these pages I want specifically to develop theme of what Ortega refers to as biographical life. Biographical life, he argues is both a self-recognition of our and also how this becomes manifest as interiority. He proposes this as distinguishing act of our coming to terms with our individual essence. These developments are equally important in light of his existential questions, which will be taken up by subsequent thinkers such as Heidegger, Sartre, Marcel, and Jaspers, for instance. I have divided this essay into three parts. In part I, Discovery of Interiority, I emphasize Ortega's treatment of Adam's discovery of as a sort of anthro-existential first man. In part II, Objective World as My Circumstance, further attention is paid to this subjective inward turn, except that now emphasis is on external world as part of my existential circumstance. Part III, Yo y Mis Circumstancias, works as a rounding-off of Ortega's concern that while realism must be surpassed, as well cannot become self-encapsulated. Ortega's philosophical task in Adam lit Paradise is essentially an attempt to surpass idealist thesis but at same time not to accept realism wholeheartedly. The significance of this project as far as Ortega scholarship is concerned is realization that this particular concern, which is dominant throughout entirety of his philosophical writing, is elaborated in Adam In Paradise, a very early essay.2 It is in this work and not in Meditations On Quixote as is commonly believed, which was written in 1914, where aforementioned thesis is espoused. The foundation of this argument, then, is Ortega's notion of co-existence between man, a biographical-existential entity, and his external circumstances as a broadening of man's perspective. Adam in Paradise is Ortega's discovery of human life as philosophical concern. It is from this work that his idea of life as radical reality evolves. In this work persona of Adam, though not necessarily that of Biblical character, serves role of a dual metaphor. In its function, Adam can be seen as representing discovery of what Ortega calls the primordial reality of conscious, of subjectivity (Ortega, What Is Philosophy? …