Biography of José Ortega y Gasset | Essayist and philosopher.

(Madrid, 1883-1955) Spanish essayist and philosopher. His thinking, reflected in numerous trials, exerted a great influence on several generations of intellectuals.

José Ortega y Gasset (Zuloaga oil)

Son of the journalist José Ortega Munilla, did his secondary education at the colegio Miraflores de Palo (Malaga) and university students in Deusto and Madrid, at whose University earned a doctorate in philosophy and literature with a thesis on the terrors of the year 1000 (1904), subtitled critique of a legend. Between 1905 and 1908, he completed his studies in Leipzig, Berlin, and Marburg, where he attended the courses of the neokantiano Hermann Cohen.

He was Professor of metaphysics (the previous owner had been Nicolás Salmerón) of the University of Madrid between 1910 and 1936. In 1916 he was appointed academic of the of moral and political sciences. He founded the Revista de Occidente (1923-1936), the more open to European thought intellectual publication of our century. Annexed to it has operated a publishing house, as well as their gatherings, he has represented the finest intellectual modernity of his time.

Elected Deputy to the Republic was proclaimed, he founded with cashew and Pérez de Ayala the grouping to the service of the Republic. From 1936 he lived in France, Holland, Argentina and Portugal. He returned to Spain in 1945 and lived (except for trips abroad, especially to Germany) in Madrid. In 1948 with his disciple, the prestigious Julián Marías, founded the Institute of Humanities.

Ortega held a privileged place in the history of the Spanish thought of the Central decades of the 20th century. Master of several promotions of young intellectuals, was not only a brilliant popularizer of ideas they developed a philosophical discourse of remarkable originality.

Much of his activity was channelled through journalism, a world that was known for family reasons and conformed perfectly to the essence of its theses and their purposes animate the cultural life of the country. In addition to collaborating on an extensive list of publications, he founded El Sol (1917), the magazine Spain (1915) and the Revista de Occidente (1923).

In his articles and essays he tried topics varied and always incardinated now its time, both in philosophy and politics and art and literature. His work does not constitute a systematic doctrine, but an open program that are good shows the eight volumes of the spectator (1916-1935), where poured sharp comments about more heterogeneous topics.

However, as common denominator of his thought can point the perspectivism, according to which the different conceptions of the world depends on point of view, the circumstances of individuals and the vital reason, try overcoming of pure reason and practical reason of idealists and rationalists. For Ortega, the truth arises from the juxtaposition of partial views, in which the constant dialogue between the man and the life that manifests itself is fundamental to his around, especially in the world of the arts.

The core of the used ideology is in works such as invertebrate Spain (1921), the subject of our time (1923), the revolt of the masses (1930), Ideas and beliefs (1940), history as a system (1940) and what is philosophy? (1958).

The issues of aesthetics and literary criticism were object of his reflections on Meditations of the Quixote (1914), Ideas about the novel (1925), the dehumanization of art (1925), Goethe from within (1932), papers on Velázquez and Goya (1950) and Idea of the theatre (1958). Permanently close to the immediate reality, it addressed political issues in old and new politics (1914), the national decline (1930), the University's mission (1930) or Rectification of the Republic (1931).

Its style, closer to literary prose of philosophical discourse, has an exhibition brilliance that lies one of the keys to the success and diffusion of their books.

Extracted from the website: Biografías y Vidas