José Ortega y Gasset: Philosophy of Vital Reason and Perspectivism
The Meaning of Philosophy
For Ortega, philosophy is vital. Human beings have a vital need to understand the universe and “all there is.” However, philosophy currently finds itself at a dead end due to the opposition between realism and idealism, which it must now overcome.
Critique of Realism and Idealism
Ortega criticizes idealism for considering the subject as the axis around which reality revolves. He also criticizes realism for considering the subject merely a part of reality. Ortega understands the subject as a reality that lives “here and now.”
For realism, true reality consists of substances (the notion that things exist in themselves and are independent of our minds), relegating consciousness to a secondary place. Ortega cannot accept that the “I” is just a simple part of reality. Realism, in his view, has failed by diminishing the importance of the “I,” diluting it in the external world.
For idealism, things exist insofar as the “I” constitutes them. Ortega criticizes this because it goes against life. If everything is thought, then living is to suffer an optical illusion. The dilemma between realism and idealism is a false one because there are things that no one thinks, but there is also no “I” outside of things to think about, and the world is not solely what the “I” thinks.
Ortega finds in “living” an intermediate synthesis that surpasses both idealism and realism. The radical datum of the universe is life, understood as the “World with the I.”
Vital Reason: Ratiovitalism
The ratiovitalist theory of knowledge is part of life. Through ratiovitalism, Ortega seeks to overcome the opposition between rationalism and vitalism. For him, neither pure rationalism nor vitality alone exists, but rather ratiovitalism. It is wrong to speak of reason as something separate from life.
Ratiovitalism considers reason as a vital function that arises from life and tries to understand it. Humans have the right to live. Reason is something that humans have had to invent in order to live; it is vital reason.
The Vital Reason
Vital reason accounts for life; it does not address what has already been done but what is in the making. Reason, life, and history are linked. There can be no opposition between reason and life; therefore, pure reason must yield its supremacy to vital reason. Our task consists of making vital reason pure reason.
Since Greek philosophy, reason has been considered the only source of true knowledge, supplanting life. Reason has been understood as the design that captures the essence of things. This position culminates in the mathematical reason of the 17th-century rationalists and the Pure Reason of Kant. But “exact” reason is unable to capture changing realities. Thus, vitalist currents have emerged that place life above reason. Reasoning means referring something to my entire life. This vital reason leads to understanding humans in a more complex dimension than pure reason.
In his Meditations on Quixote, Ortega makes the following statement: “I am myself and my circumstances.” With this formula, Ortega expresses the relationship of the self to the world.
- I am myself: In Ortega’s philosophy, life is individualized; humans tend toward their “I,” toward being themselves.
- And my circumstances: My life is not only me but all the reality that surrounds me. Circumstance is all that is imposed and that I cannot choose. Thus, my circumstance would be all others, customs, ideas, beliefs, etc., displayed around me.
Human life is a project. Ortega understands human life as a project, something that humans have to invent; it is a constant decision. Thus, life is a project. Humans are actually “futurized,” a continuous task, a plan for the future but built in the present. We live by planning and anticipating the future, and this “project” is a characteristic of human reason. If we were only living, we would live installed in the “here and now.” For Ortega, living enslaved by the present is an animal life.
Circumstance and decision are two basic elements that make up life. For Ortega, humans must save their destiny. Living is being lost among things. Humans must be saved, that is, be themselves.
Historical Reason: Historicism
This ratiovitalist position is placed in a broader context provided by historical reason. Reason is constitutively historical. Human life is constantly becoming. Therefore, “humans do not have nature, but history.” Human life is something that is being made. Humans live at a specific time, and that time must be addressed, from and since life. It converts our present and future into problems that we must solve. History is the proper place of human being. History assigns the circumstances from which we begin to develop our own lives.
The Doctrine of the Point of View: Perspectivism
Perspectivism is the theory that Ortega develops in his work. He finds an original solution to perspectivism. Perspectivism holds that there is no single absolute view of reality. Every human, every life, is a point of view. We know reality as it is presented to each of us, from the perspective that it offers us.
There are as many perspectives as there are individuals. The views are endless, and each one looks at reality from the place where they have had to live. Therefore, for Ortega, knowledge is “true,” but it is not an absolute truth. No one has the right to impose their view but to complement it with others. I have a place in space and time from which, and only from which, I know things.
Just as each individual knows everything in perspective, communities and peoples have their own spatio-temporal perspective. Thus, no village, community, or nation can absolutize its perspective but must complement and enrich it with that of other peoples. The possibility of reaching a sum of all perspectives is feasible. Ortega speculates about a subject who could do this, whom he calls God. God is the sum of all individual perspectives. The divine is the sum of all these perspectives.