Critical Realism vs. Idealism: Ortega’s Perspective

Posted on Mar 10, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Critical Realism and Idealism

Development requires a critical philosophy of both realism and idealism. Ortega addresses relativism and dogmatism: the former claims we cannot achieve universal truths, while the latter views perspective as an absurd notion. For Ortega, the only way to grasp reality is from one’s concrete circumstances; the world is our perspective. Therefore, our knowledge is neither pure realism nor pure idealism; it is knowledge rooted in life.

Realism vs. Idealism

  • Realism: Assumes that true reality consists of consequences independent of my thinking.
  • Idealism: Counters the physico-mathematical reason with the spirit. External reality is reduced to the experience of the subject; it is subjectivism.

Ortega argues that we cannot talk about things without the self, but neither can we speak of a self without things. Neither the self alone nor the world alone exists: it is the world *and* the self, the self *with* things; that is, life.

Critical Idealism and Realism: Realism places true reality in things, while idealism places it in the self. Realism is objectivist; idealism is subjectivist. Truth resides in the self *with* things; that is, life. The self is not merely an ingredient of circumstance. The fact itself is nothing; it only takes on consistency when related to the subject’s life. My radical reality is the awareness that I am myself and my circumstance.

Ratiovitalism

Ortega’s mature philosophical doctrine is usually known as “ratiovitalism.” The development and establishment of ratiovitalism stems from perspectivism, as it is a philosophical meditation on the two perspectives in which man is situated: the perspective of life and the perspective of reason.

Ratiovitalism is the theory of knowledge that takes life as its starting point.

Reason and Life

Since Socrates and Plato, reason has been seen as the source of true knowledge. Ortega questions whether reason can be self-sufficient. Ratiovitalism places reason in the service of life, which is the fundamental reality. The gifted man has reason to use it primarily for living. Ortega aims to put reason in its proper place, to put intellectual action in contact with reality; that is, above pure reason is vital reason.

The Categories of Life

Ortega understands the categories of life as concepts that express life’s unique peculiarities:

  1. Living is primarily being in the world. The world is experienced as such.
  2. But we are not in the world in a vague way, but in a specific one: we are busy with *something*. “To live is to live with a circumstance.”
  3. “Everything we do is taking care of something for something.” We are dedicated to something for a purpose. Life is never by default.
  4. Therefore, I have decided to do what I do: I have been free to decide.
  5. If I decide, I have “freedom to…” This is because living means finding oneself in a world that offers possibilities.
  6. But those possibilities are not unlimited. This expresses the categories of circumstance; life is circumstantial, and man must decide within the circumstance.
  7. The final category: an attribute is temporality. Our life is temporary; life is futurization. There are two levels:

Ontological Level

If all life is perspective and perspective is mobile, this mobility is the root of the temporality of human life itself.

Epistemological Level

This leads us to the threshold of the latest twist in Ortega’s thought. We will see that any notion concerning human life is a function of historical time.