Ortega y Gasset: Philosophy, History, and Vital Reason
Ortega’s Historical Context
The historical context in which the Spanish thinker’s thought arises is marked internationally by:
- The two World Wars (1914-1918 and 1939-1945), wars that forced human beings to confront their lack of rationality and capacity for barbarism in managing and resolving conflicts.
- The Russian Revolution (1917).
- The rise of Italian Fascism under Mussolini.
- National Socialism under Hitler in Germany.
- Stalinist Soviet totalitarianism.
Ortega criticized these forms of power consolidation in his writings. We must also mention the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange (1929).
Nationally, in Spain, we witness:
- The loss of the colonies of Cuba and the Philippines (1898), producing a generalized crisis.
- The dictatorship of Primo de Rivera.
- The proclamation of the Second Republic.
- The Spanish Civil War, which would leave a lasting mark on the thinker’s intellectual biography.
Regarding the socio-cultural context, industrial Spain lagged behind economically and culturally compared to the rest of Europe. This created a sense of global failure, prompting the emergence of Krausism and the Free Institution of Teaching, the Generation of ’98, and the Generation of ’27.
From a philosophical point of view, Europe was torn between two schools of thought: vitalism and historicism.
- Vitalism, with Nietzsche as its exponent, considered that the essence of reality is not reducible to pure reason; instead, its fundamental principle is life itself.
- Historicism, a current that emerged in Germany, stated that history is the most important element for understanding humans. For this school of thought, the human being is history.
As a result of these two movements, two key concepts emerged in Ortega’s philosophy: vital reason and historical reason. To this, we must add the later philosophies of Husserl and his phenomenological system, which also influenced Ortega, especially his concept of perspective.
Ortega, Nietzsche, and the Relevance of Perspectivism
I will start by comparing the position taken by Ortega regarding truth as the sum of perspectives and the necessary link between reason and life to give a coherent account of the human phenomenon, with the German thinker F. Nietzsche.
For Nietzsche, truth is an outdated concept from the expiring Western tradition. This philosopher’s position leads him to distrust the concept of truth. Remember that for Ortega, absolute truth cannot exist, but skepticism is not feasible either. For the Spanish thinker, truth is only an ideal reference, a construction formed by the accumulation of complementary perspectives.
Furthermore, for Nietzsche, reason cannot be the instrument that defines the human; we do not define ourselves as rational beings, but as living beings. Life wins the battle against reason, which Nietzsche considers valueless. He thinks it is loaded with all the prejudices of tradition and is not a valid instrument.
For Ortega, life is also essential to place human beings in their circumstance and their perspective. Thus, in his eagerness to join perspectives, Ortega combines Nietzschean vitalism with rationalism, resulting in a historical reason oriented towards life.
Contemporary Relevance
Regarding the timeliness of the subject, the central dialectic remains a relevant topic. Moreover, Ortega’s proposals offer serious reflection on ways to proceed in certain states and institutions.
Today, in almost all institutions of democratic Western states, efforts are made to integrate different positions so they are represented and form part of the decision-making process.
Regarding the unification of reason and life, recent philosophical paths seem to validate Ortega’s intuition of the need to unite the two. We can observe the growing presence of bioethics committees in medical and scientific institutions.
This demonstrates how thought, or speculative reason, must carve out an increasingly central space in societies. It is, following Ortega’s philosophical scheme, the only way to preserve what makes us human: our ability to expand our horizons, supplementing our own with those of others.