Ortega y Gasset’s Philosophy of Existence in The Modern Theme

The man of the West is undergoing a process of radical disorientation because he no longer knows by what stars he is to guide his life.1

– Ortega y Gasset

The Roots of Ortega y Gasset’s Philosophy of Existence

Ortega begins The Modern Theme (El Tema de Nuestro Tiempo) by citing the importance of the concept of generations in human history and concludes it with an exposition of man’s perception of reality.2 These two concepts are related given that a generation signals the interplay of the individual and collective poles of man in the world. Ortega refers to different generations as varieties of the human race. This is indicative of his allegiance to individual existence as opposed to collective life.

The Modern Theme is one of Ortega’s first works. Yet it contains many of the dominant themes of his later thought. The trajectory of his thought demonstrates the foundational importance of The Modern Theme to his ideas on philosophy of history, Vital-Reason and the existential categories that inform his work.

Diligent readers of Ortega’s philosophy realize that The Modern Theme establishes a line of thinking that is pinned between Vital-Reason as lived-experience and a positivistic worldview that promises man a utopian explanation of human reality. These are two opposing metaphysical stances that affect man’s understanding of contingency.

Ortega saw positivism as destructive of man’s capacity for self-reflection. The latter, he accurately predicted in several of his works, including The Revolt of the Masses, would become the dominant weltanschauung in the twentieth century, especially through specialization and the disproportionate growth of scientism in relation to man’s existential security. Ortega articulates this belief throughout his collected work.

In Meditations on Quixote (Meditaciones del Quijote) the Spanish thinker explores the contrast between profundity and superficiality; latent and patent aspects of truth. Meditations on Quixote is an existential reflection on the individual vis-à-vis the cosmos. In that masterful work Ortega explains that “Individual life, the immediate, the circumstance, are different names for the same thing: those parts of life from which their inner spirit, their logos, has not yet been extracted.”2

Meditations on Quixote addresses the danger of confusing the forest for the trees. In that work, profundity and superficiality in human reality speak to man’s capacity to distinguish reality from appearance. Man experiences life as dynamic, though transparent to itself. Ortega argues that truth confronts individuals as existential agents that seek fidelity with lived-experience. While avoiding the neo-logisms and pedantry that academic philosophers have come to accept in philosophical discourse, the publication of Meditations on Quixote in 1914 launched Ortega’s critique of hyper-rationalism. He feared that hyper-rationalism was quickly becoming a substitute for biographical life (existence). Biographical life is one of the terms that Ortega uses to describe man as a metaphysical/existential being: “Erudition, then, occupies the outskirts of science because it is limited to accumulating facts, while philosophy represents its central aspiration, because it is pure synthesis.”3 Ortega refers to this form of synthesis as understanding.

While many readers know what reason and rationalism mean in Ortega’s work, biographical life remains somewhat obscure. This is the crux of the matter in The Modern Theme. By 1923, the year The Modern Theme was published, Ortega realized that science and positivism attempt to explain the universe, including human life, in mechanical terms. The Spanish thinker realized that in order to rein in the bloated confidence that many thinkers place in hyper-rationalism – this is one of the many ironies that Ortega points out – it is necessary

to understand human life as biographical, not merely biological. Biographical life is an existential category that Ortega first formulated in an essay published in 1910 entitled “Adam in Paradise”, (“Adan en el Paraíso”) and Meditations on Quixote. Biographical life is a fundamental existential category in Ortega’s work.

The Idea of Biographical Life

By arguing for a perspective of human life as extra-natural, that is, life that knows itself as existence and not merely biology, Ortega shuns the temptation to reduce life to a bio-chemical process. Ortega’s thought is metaphysical/existential in its ability to relate philosophical reflection to philosophical anthropology. One way to understand this is by confronting human reality through the lived-experience of individuals. Exercising subtle language and lyrical expression, Ortega shows how man has come to grow disillusioned with the utopian pretensions of positivism. Writing in the early to mid-twentieth century, Ortega predicted that this form of disillusionment would eventually asphyxiate modern man.

The Modern Theme connects the idea of generations as natural-life units of human age groups, which are made up of individuals, to vital sensibility. Vital is another existential category in Ortega’s thought. Neither vital, when understood as biological or vitality as vigor, are appropriate interpretations of what Ortega means by vital. Instead, vital is existential because it recognizes that in order for biological life to know itself it must come to terms with its own existence through self-reflection. This is a process that escapes animal and plant life. For this reason, vital in Vital-Reason is reason that knows itself as differentiated life as a human being. The aforementioned is a delicate operation that cannot be relegated to theorizing, especially when describing human life in collective terms.

Vital-Reason displays a degree of engagement with human reality that does not supplant life with pure reason, e.g., what Ortega considers the pursuit of hyper-rationalism. This is why he writes: “What we are going to call vital sensibility is the primary phenomenon in history and the first we should have to define in order to understand a particular age.”4 This is why Ortega argues that history is the result of lived-ideas- beliefs – as these serve as the foundation of individual human existence: “The active, creative nature of personality is, in fact, too evident for the collectivist picture of history to be acceptable.”5

Existential Reflection and Practical Self-Interest

Ortega’s focus on the nature of differentiated life as will-driven and capable of self-reflection is a reaction to positivism. When Ortega differentiates biological life from self-awareness as an aspect of interiority, as is the case in The Modern Theme, he is merely pointing out the obvious: “The business of thought is to reflect the world of phenomena, to adjust itself to them in a way or another: in short, to think is to think truth, just as to digest is to assimilate victuals.”6

Ortega further developed the latter idea in The Revolt of the Masses. The idea of man as differentiated and capable of self-awareness serves as the vehicle that makes science and positivism possible. This is the case because Ortega points out that science and positivism are modalities of human existence. He refers to man’s many life-modalities as having-to-do (que-hacer). In other words, life that recognizes itself as extra-natural, as is the case with man, fills the hours of the day by assuaging the assault of contingencies. While animal life must equally address natural necessities such as food, shelter and danger, these are not internalized as existential concerns.

For instance, when doctors describe the function and diseases of the liver, heart and kidneys, knowledge of these organs is attained as understanding that is ultimately self-interested. It is conceivable that medical science can remain theoretical; only interested in knowledge as sport. It is also conceivable that astrophysicists are merely interested in the laws of physics as theoretical mathematical curiosities. Even knowledge of weather patterns on Earth can be entertained as a theoretical form of art-for-art-sake. These possibilities can be granted to positivism, even in its most radical embodiment. However, Ortega argues that knowledge must work in the service of life. Intellectual honesty demands to know how long knowledge-for-its-own-sake can sustain itself before theoretical and intellectual burn-out set in. The aforementioned exhaustion ultimately turns into a form of disillusionment that undermines man’s grasp of human reality. This stage of disillusionment naturally affects man existentially.

Even if one accepts knowledge-for-its-own-sake without serving life, as Ortega suggests knowledge must do, we are still left with the possibility of knowledge as a form of egoism and narcissism. No doubt, scientism and portions of modern science operate as make-work, for it is impossible to vanish agency from scientific knowledge.

Meditations on Quixote is Ortega’s breakout book, a work where he addresses man’s metaphysical/existential predicament. In that work the Spanish thinker pays attention to ontological questions. Albeit, he does so without over-intellectualizing. Meditations on Quixote puts on display Ortega’s natural gifts as essayist and thinker. As an essayist, Ortega follows in the tradition of thinkers like Erasmus, Montaigne and Pascal, to name a few philosophers that possess the gift for clear and diligent exposition. Meditations on Quixote does not bombard readers with clinical and overtly pedantic epistemology. Ortega’s writing never falls prey to the hypothetical snares of analytic philosophers. Instead, Meditations on Quixote explores existential concerns and avoids intellectual calisthenics. This is one reason that Ortega often points out Comte and other positivists: “The ideal of the nineteenth century was realism. ‘Facts, only facts,’ clamors a Dickensian character in Hard Times. The how, not the why; the fact, not the idea, preaches August Comte.”7

Meditations on Quixote is misleading because, while writing about Don Quijote, Ortega’s main line of thinking remains existential reflection in response to human existence. He does not deviate from reflection on life as lived-experience. Life as lived-experience, tragedy and having-to-do are modes of differentiated human existence. This is one reason why he focuses on the question of ‘why?’ Because Ortega’s main concern is ontological, he addresses the value of human reflection and how man experiences reality as lived-experience. Meditations on Quixote is a study of interiority, as this is experienced as lived-experience.

Eschewing theoretical suppositions, Ortega’s depiction of Quijotismo depicts life as resistance to objectivity. This is a solitary task that reflective thinkers embrace. This is also an example of biographical life seeking the sublime. Don Quijote, Cervantes’ great creation, speaks to man as an extra-natural being who reflects on human existence in the objective world.

In his discussion of the relationship of the forest and trees in the forest of the Escorial – symbols of appearance and reality – Ortega concedes that knowledge is limited. While man can ascertain meaning through engaging with individual trees, the forest is constantly fleeing from us. Life is characterized as individual self-awareness. It is as Vital-Reason that life can transcend itself. However, transcendence does not mean engagement with absolute truth and understanding. This is also why Ortega argues that individual existence is unique and non-transferable. Ultimately, man’s necessity of having to confront individual existence makes life tragic.

Ortega’s transition from Meditations on Quixote to The Modern Theme signals recognition of the resistance that the modern world offers the reflective life. While Meditations on Quixote addresses individual existence as lived-experience, The Modern Theme is concerned with the plight of man in the modern world. Thus, modernity is like a dense forest that only supplies man with complexities that evade cohesion.

Beginning with The Modern Theme, Ortega went on to further develop his ideas about noble and mass man. One example of this is his description of noble minorities in The Modern Theme. From his discussion of interiority – what is essentially man’s discovery of the nature of subjectivity – Ortega focuses on the predicament of subjectivity in the world. Noble man lives a noble existence because he confronts the contingencies of life head-on courageously. This entails understanding that human existence cannot rely on the life of others to attain coherent knowledge of biographical life.

Life for the Purpose of Being Lived.8

Life as circumstance is an essential component of subjectivity (interiority) that Ortega identifies in Meditations on Quixote and his later work. The idea of life as one of the circumstances that inform human existence plays a pivotal role in The Modern Theme. In that work, Ortega argues that people must cultivate the capacity to adapt to their own nature. Stated in different terms, man must appropriate their scale of possibilities and limitations. This is a response to the demands that life makes on man. Acceptance of our circumstances entails reflection on fundamental aspects of life as existence. In other words, privation of the aforementioned, as is the case in animal life, means ignorance of our personal circumstances. The latter becomes a great problem when people compare their respective circumstances.

Ortega’s thought recognizes that modernity makes living life for its own sake an unprecedented challenge. The strain between life and the positivistic underpinnings of modernity is the central component of The Modern Theme. The understanding of rationalism that Ortega espouses makes modernity complicit with abuse of reason through the creation of hyper-rationalism. The form of reason that Ortega promotes must work in the service of life as lived-experience. This is what he means by Vital-Reason.

The main problem that modernity poses for man, Ortega suggests in The Modern Theme, is the question of truth. However, one must exercise caution when framing this age-old philosophical question. Ortega is not concerned with technical aspects of epistemology, especially as positivism conceives the latter. Epistemology is not a pressing concern of Ortega’s in The Modern Theme. His main focus is the relationship of life as lived-experience and man’s capacity to decipher coherence in objective reality. Ortega suggests that modernity obscures truth. This is tragic because truth acts as the anchor of man’s capacity to appropriate human reality.

In a chapter entitled “Relativism and Rationalism” Ortega calls truth a “highly dramatic problem.” This is one indication, according to him, that truth is not a theoretical concern. Instead, “truth, if it is to give an adequate reflection of the nature of phenomena, must be complete in itself and invariable.”9 Not an academic theory, Ortega views truth as serving to create security for man. Security is ultimately an essential component of man’s metaphysical/existential make-up. Hence, truth becomes a problem for modern man, not because it is objective and difficult to appropriate, but because modern man fragments it by making it relative. The relationship between relativism and rationalism in modernity is a major focus of Ortega’s work. He thinks of relativism as skepticism. Skepticism, he argues, is suicidal in nature.

Objective truth, as Ortega conceives it, is ascertained through his ideas on perspective. Perspectivism is the understanding that, while truth is objective, it is filtered through an individual’s capacity to ascertain it.  On the other hand, if objective truth is denied by relativists, then relativism cannot be taken seriously. Ortega’s suggestion is poignant, for truth must serve as a guide for life. Once truth is equated with opinion, man becomes lost given the incapacity to save his circumstances. Again, we must stress that Ortega’s main concern is with life as lived experience, not splitting hairs about epistemology.10

The Modern Theme: Biographical Life Against Radical Skepticism

 According to Ortega, modern life is squeezed between rationalism, which denounces life and relativism and skepticism, which denounce truth. Ortega argues in The Modern Theme that modernity obscures life through a glass darkly: radical skepticism. He believes that skepticism destroys man’s search for metaphysical/existential security.

In Ortega’s work, radical means root: the foundation of life as lived-experience. The form of Vital-Reason that Ortega argues for serves as the seat to ascertain other aspects of human reality. Vital-Reason is radical and foundational because it makes it possible for man to ascertain other aspects of truth. When man’s capacity to appropriate truth by placing it in the service of life is corrupted by radical skepticism, vital life begins to lose its bearings.

Far from cultivating life as lived-experience, Ortega argues that hyper-rationalism and skepticism are antithetical to life. Relying on calculative and quantitative principles, rationalism after Descartes and in positivism, impedes spontaneity in human life. According to Ortega, rationalism attempts to construct a rational order that originates in quantitative principles. Ortega argues that many rationalists make the mistake of applying rationalism to all aspects of human life. The Modern Theme showcases many examples of how modern life is stifled by rationalism, relativism and scientism. Ortega’s examples are plentiful, poignant and prescriptive of postmodernity to come. The Modern Theme introduces many philosophical concerns that Ortega was to develop later in The Revolt of the Masses.

The struggle of Vital-Reason to keep itself anchored in life and not become suffocated by hyper-rationalism is the mainstay of Ortega’s collected work. Vital-Reason is the recognition of conscious life that is endowed with the capacity for self-reflection. Ortega contrasts Vital-Reason with modernism’s encroachment on the lived-experience of individuals. This enables him to offer a social-political view of collective life that demonstrates modern man’s exhaustion as the result of embracing hyper-rationalism.

The Modern Theme concludes by offering a glimpse into the social-political expectations that hyper-rationalism and positivism created for man in the twentieth century. By offering a metaphysical/existential understanding of man, Ortega establishes subjectivity (interiority) as man’s extra-natural, existential condition.

In contrast to man as an extra-natural being, Ortega laments that modern man finds himself in the unprecedented predicament of believing himself the master of human reality. In turn, this misguided belief is the root of a vast number of modern pathologies, to say nothing of postmodernity. Ortega’s subtle analysis of man as a metaphysical/ existential being, an aspect of his thought that is often misunderstood by many of his critics, affords him the opportunity to contribute to our understanding of the crisis of Western civilization today.

The Modern Theme is a foreboding work that enables prescient readers to understand the origin and ominous scope of postmodern man’s existential exhaustion and disillusionment – what Ortega refers to as demoralization. Ortega further developed this poignant vision of man in The Revolt of the Masses, a work that exposes tired and cliché social-political categories.

References

Ortega y Gasset, José (1961). The Modern Theme. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers.

Ortega y Gasset, José (1961). Meditations on Quixote. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Notes

1. José Ortega y Gasset, The Modern Theme. (New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1961), 79.

2.  José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1961), 43.

3. Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote, 39.

4. Ibid., 13.

5.  Ibid., 14.

6.  Ortega y Gasset, The Modern Theme, 38. Ortega has the following to say about the generations: “The changes in vital sensibility which are decisive in history, appear under the form of the generation. A generation is not a handful of outstanding men, nor simply a mass of men; it resembles a new integration of the social body, with its select minority and its gross multitude, launched upon the orbit of existence with a pre-established vital trajectory. The generation is a dynamic compromise between mass and individual, and is the most important conception in history. It is, so to speak, the pivot responsible for the movements of historical evolution,”14.

7. Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote, 163.

8. Ortega y Gasset, The Modern Theme, 74.

9. Ibid., 28.

10. Ibid., 29. Ortega’s concern with the question of truth is existential. He casts man in the role of solicitor of truth, if truth is to serve human existence. He explains, “In the first place, if truth does not exist, relativism cannot take itself seriously. Secondly, belief in truth is a deeply-rooted foundation of human life; if we remove it, life is converted into an illusion and an absurdity. The operation of removal is itself devoid of common sense and philosophical value. Relativism is, in the long run, scepticism, and scepticism, when its justification is that it opposes all speculative theory, is in itself a theory of suicidal character.

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