Jose Ortega y Gasset
Jose Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gassetwas a Spanish liberal philosopher, and essayist. He worked during the first half of the 20th century, while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism, and dictatorship. His philosophy has been characterized as a "philosophy of life" that "comprised a long-hidden beginning in a pragmatist metaphysics inspired by William James, and with a general method from a realist phenomenology imitating Edmund Husserl, which served both his proto-existentialism and his realist historicism, which has been compared to both Wilhelm Dilthey...
NationalitySpanish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth9 May 1883
CountrySpain
On the Bigotry of Culture: : it presented us with culture, with thought as something justified in itself, that is, which requires no justification but is valid by it's own essence, whatever its concrete employment and content maybe. Human life was to put itself at the service of culture because only thus would it become charged with value. From which it would follow that human life, our pure existence was, in itself, a mean and worthless thing.
Poetry has become the higher algebra of metaphors.
Beliefs constitute the basic stratum, that which lies deepest, in the architecture of our life. By them we live, and by the same token we rarely think of them.... One may symbolize the individual life as a bank of issue. The bank lives on the credit of a gold reserve which is rarely seen, which lies at the bottom of metal coffers hidden in the vaults of the building. The most elementary caution will suggest that from time to time the effective condition of these guaranties--of these credences, one might say, that are the basis of credit--be passed in review.
In these years we are witnessing the gigantic spectacle of innumerable human lives wandering about lost in their own labyrinths, through not having anything to which to give themselves.
Better beware of notions like genius and inspiration; they are a sort of magic wand and should be used sparingly by anybody who wants to see things clearly.
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.
There may be as much nobility in being last as in being first, because the two positions are equally necessary in the world, the one to complement the other.
To rule is not so much a question of the heavy hand as the firm seat.
There is but one way left to save a classic; to give up revering him and use him for our own salvation.
The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.
The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.
Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.
A revolution only lasts fifteen years, a period which coincides with the effectiveness of a generation.
We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving.