Marx, Nietzsche, and Ortega y Gasset: Key Philosophical Ideas
Marx
- Economy: The economic base of society. For Marx, it’s the infrastructure; the superstructure are the laws and ideas. “The economy moves the world.”
- Labor: Linked to production and human praxis (action). It defines the human being. Work is why everything exists.
- Private Property: A capital fact in history. It led to the emergence of social classes, historical materialism, wars, and class struggles.
- Truth: Establishing the concept of dialectic and truth. As dialectic is change, so is truth. Truth is a thesis-antithesis-synthesis process. What is “real” is a statement you can show otherwise. There is no total truth. It is the antithesis, a new concept.
- For Marx, truth should be demonstrable. If it works, it is true; if not, it is not.
- Historical and Dialectical Materialism
- For Marx, history is a class struggle. Capitalism poses overcoming the domination of some over others. It raises socialism and communism, equality before the law, and economic equality. It removes private property, products are for state benefits, and it eliminates class exploitation.
- After that comes communism, caring people, no robbery or murder, the abolition of government, police, and army. The end of the story.
Nietzsche (19th Century)
- Critique of Western Culture
- For Nietzsche, morality is unnatural and opposed to instincts, like Christianity. The Christian moral represses life, making us subservient and docile. Christianity invented a god to give us messages and to direct our lives. It is opposed to life.
- Critique of Metaphysics
- He criticizes Plato and Socrates for creating the world of ideas. He believes they were afraid of life, unity, and essence. He sees their philosophies as nihilistic, life-denying, and decadent.
- Critique of Science
- He criticizes science because it embodies the real, which is being with its own qualities. Science is a number with an empty abstraction.
- Science does not know of passions. Besides, we create ourselves.
- Critique of Language: No wonder if we cheat. Language stabilizes something changing and forgets the essence of each thing.
Nihilism
It’s a denial, it is the plus and minus. Christianity and Platonism are also nihilistic. Nietzsche wants to make culture, to deny its plus side. This leads him to destroy all of the above and to find an output value of life. It will be called will to power. It is accepting many gods, and that truth is different ways of thinking. It is called perspectivism. Reality is not unique; it is in continuous evolution, with many perspectives.
Will to power is to accept only that “reality” is also the material world.
What is true?: The view that favors life, that makes it bigger and more creative, like art.
- Will to power is also creating language. We can handle metaphors, connecting different concepts, and creating new meanings, closer to the truth.
- Superman
- He will overcome nihilism, giving meaning through the will to power. His life becomes a creative process and artistic material. He is a camel (Christian), a brave lion (nihilistic), a child (innocent), and a new man who dances. He believes that Christianity is poor and servile. The Superman is bright and a denier of equality, theory, and mass. For Nietzsche, like the Enlightenment and Marxism, the idea of progress is circular time; everything repeats, eternal recurrence.
Ortega y Gasset (20th Century)
- Idea of Philosophy
- Influences on his thinking:
- Husserl: Phenomenology as a philosophical method.
- Dilthey: Concept of history.
- Nietzsche: Anthologies of life.
- Heidegger: Meditation on time.
- Philosophy is a necessary intellect. It seeks guidance. Philosophy is only a tool to find a vital project. It gives meaning to our lives and guides us in the world.
- Philosophy is a radical and autonomous search to see the true nature of things.
- Ortega y Gasset criticizes positivism and idealism:
- a) He criticizes that the human appears as a physical-biological phenomenon, with nothing about its nature.
- b) He rejects idealism because it gives consistency and identity to ideas. His rationalism attempts to link reason with life, history, and the world.
- Life as a Truly Radical Reality
- The most radical reality is life. Our being is perspective, with particular and non-transferable ways. There are multiple perspectives. Reality is not universal; it would unite all perspectives.
- Our life is circumstance. I relate to the world. I have to do something. The human project gives meaning to our lives.
The Project of Man
Our life has a series of attributes:
- Life is personal and an individual biography.
- Life is our essence.
- Living is being in the world.
- To live is to engage in something.
- Our life has a purpose, more opportunities, and problems.
- Nothing is said. He spoke of freedom, we realize it or not, we think about it and anticipate it. In early life, it is possible.
- The life-world is factual (hexose). It is temporary.
- If life is temporary, it is historical. We are in a certain, specific time. We receive all the spiritual and material heritage.
Generation in History
Ortega y Gasset called it ratiovitalism. Our biography is determined by reason and life. Life unfolds in history, personally and collectively.