Hose Ortega-i-Gasset Son of the famous writer Ortega y Munia and the first Spanish philosopher. Date of Birth: 09.05.1883 Country: Spain

Biography of José Ortega y Gasset

José Ortega y Gasset was the son of the renowned writer Ortega y Munilla and the first Spanish philosopher. He received a thorough education in Latin and Ancient Greek while studying at the Jesuit College of Miraflores del Palo in Malaga. In 1904, he completed his doctoral theses titled El Milenario ("The Millennial") at the Central University.

Ortega then spent seven years in German universities, particularly favoring the University of Marburg, where G. Cohen was prominent at the time. Upon returning to Spain, he was appointed to the Complutense University of Madrid, where he taught until 1936 when the Spanish Civil War broke out.

In 1923, Ortega founded the Revista de Occidente ("Western Journal"), which served the purpose of "comparing the Pyrenees," aiming to Europeanize Spain, which was then isolated from the modern cultural process. As a politically engaged thinker, he led intellectual opposition during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930) and played a significant role in the overthrow of King Alfonso XIII. He was elected as the Civil Governor of Madrid, which eventually led him to leave the country at the start of the civil war.

Upon his return to Madrid in 1948, Ortega co-founded a humanitarian institute with Juan Marías, where he also taught. International recognition came to Ortega in the 1930s when he published "Rebellion of the Masses." His metaphysics, which he called ratio-vitalism, gained clarity in his work "Meditations on Quixote" (1914), where he declared human existence with things as the only reality: "I am myself and my surroundings." Ortega firmly believed that his metaphysics anticipated Heidegger's "Being and Time" by fifteen years. In general, Ortega regarded Heidegger coldly, even calling him a "Gelderlinian prophet."

The development of Ortega's theory of knowledge led to the creation of "perspectivism," which claimed that "each person's life is a point of view on the universe," and the only false perspective is the one that believes itself to be the only one.

Ortega's attempts to develop the so-called "aristocratic logic" are noteworthy, as well as his unfinished work "The Idea of Principle in Leibniz and the Evolution of Deductive Theory." According to Ortega, this work represented the "logic of invention": "Contemporary philosophy no longer begins with being, but with thought." Ortega's teaching activities also played a significant role in the establishment of a philosophical school in Spain. For example, the book "What is Philosophy?" was based on a series of lectures given by Ortega at the University of Madrid in 1929.