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
The poet begins where the man ends. The man's lot is to live his human life, the poet's to invent what is nonexistent.
The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-sat-isfied man.
Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world .
The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man
The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.
Abasement, degradation is simply the manner of life of the man who has refused to be what it is his duty to be.
The essence of man is, discontent, divine discontent; a sort of love without a beloved, the ache we feel in a member we no longer have.
Under the species of Syndicalism and Fascism there appears for the first time in Europe a type of man who does not want to give reasons or to be right, but simply shows himself resolved to impose his opinions.
Man is a fugitive from nature.
"Natural" man is always there, under the changeable historical man. We call him and he comes-a little sleepy, benumbed, without his lost form of instinctive hunter, but, after all, still alive. Natural man is first prehistoric man-the hunter.
Men play at tragedy because they do not believe in the reality of the tragedy which is actually being staged in the civilised world
Man has to live with the body and soul which have fallen to him by chance.
The heart of man does not tolerate an absence of the excellent and supreme.
In order to master the unruly torrent of life the learned man meditates, the poet quivers, and the political hero erects the fortress of his will.