Ortega y Gasset’s Philosophy: Autonomy, Pantonomy, and Vital Reason
Features of Philosophy According to Ortega y Gasset
The philosopher Ortega y Gasset studied all aspects of the universe and identified some key traits of philosophy:
Autonomy
The philosopher must not accept truths established by other forms of knowledge. They should only admit truths that can be proven with evidence.
Pantonomy or Universalism
While sciences are interested in specific parts of reality, philosophy is interested in the universe in general. It tries to discover the meaning of things, being present throughout.
Theoretical Knowledge
Philosophy is a precise system. Ortega presents concepts that make philosophy essential for knowledge: the eagerness for knowledge, the search for truth, and its existential utility.
The Method of Philosophy: Philosophical Intuition
Human knowledge is based on basic principles that are reached by intuition. Against empiricist positivism, which limited the positive to perception, Ortega claimed radical positivism: the possibility of intuitions or immediate knowledge of truth. There exists philosophical intuition: it is an act of immediate presence of truth. Ortega considers that our task is to overcome the basic principles of modernity.
In the modern age, the basic principle is subjectivity, which is what rationalism and idealism do. Rationalists consider reason to be the defining dimension of man. Rationalism is against life. Idealism presents the world as a construction of the knowing subject. Idealism is the opposite thesis of rationalism and opposes realism and relativism. Ortega considers that these two objections are not correct.
Ratio-vitalism
Ortega rejects the transpersonal vision of reason, but without proposing a radical attitude to life, like Nietzsche’s ratio-vitalism. He claims a notion of reason that is not contrary to life: vital reason. There are two conflicting interpretations of reality: realism and idealism. The realist conception has its own existence; the knowing subject does not build reality.
The metaphor of the seal and wax: when we know reality, it impresses upon our mind. Idealism defends the opposite: reality is a construction of subjectivity or mind. In the presented consciousness, there exist things or objects present in the world.
Ortega was influenced in his youth by neo-Kantian thought. He presents the metaphysical concept of “gods,” which were inseparable and involved in common destiny. Reality has two faces: the world and the self, and both extremes need each other; one does not exist without the other.
Terms “I” and “circumstances”: the world is not something independent. The “I” cannot proceed without circumstances.
The Ultimate Reality
Ultimate reality is the reality in which all others exist. From epistemology, the first truth will be, until ontology, the area where everything is included. For radical realism, reality was something foreign to the subject. For idealism, it was subjectified subjectivism. Ortega will require a new fundamental reality: the correlation between subject and world, between self and circumstances, that is, life is the first truth and the first reality.