The 3 best books by José Ortega y Gasset

One of the greatest successes of the great philosopher José Ortega y Gasset It was for me to propose on many occasions an adaptation of philosophy to the idiosyncrasy of the individual's environment. Posing philosophy as a generalized abstraction can facilitate the task of thought, of logic, of that fatuous attempt to touch wisdom, but ultimately it lacks fundamental nuances. In the big book of him «Don Quixote Meditations", this advantageous student of Hegel he delves into that metavision that is closer to that monad from which the consciousness of the most individual being is born, made in Spain, in this case.

It is also true that the demands of philosophy towards politics, in a twentieth century in which the search for ideologues on any front was fundamental, led to this adjustment of wisdom around social needs more specific to each place.

It was no longer a matter of abounding in the most rhetorical epistemology, but rather of finding the basis to guide social evolution towards parameters where the moral, the legal, the ideological and any other aspect that affected the whole of a society in constant change between conflicts were combined. entrenched and varied crises.

The philosopher's commitment as a free thinker always ends up colliding with the most spurious interests of a XNUMXth century politics still committed to indoctrination.

In the convulsive Spain of the Republic or even at the beginning of the civil war, Ortega y Gasset did not agree with impositions of one or the other side that sought in the prestige of its endorsement the justification of some ideals, and thus ended up facing a repeated exile in new occasions until his final return to Spain shortly before his death.

At Lóleo Eventos, extensive bibliography of Ortega y Gasset We can find books on more social philosophy for a Spain and a Europe of the twentieth century subjected to sinister ideological worries, but we also discover those volumes of purer philosophy that analyze and readapt formulas of other great thinkers in history. Although the concepts are sometimes dense, Ortega y Gasset's narrative allows better access to that field of ideas that is always philosophy.

Top 3 recommended books by Ortega y Gasset

Don Quixote Meditations

Every author, every thinker finds in his first books the basis of his later writings. The first film of a philosopher is a declaration of intentions that could be developed or finally discarded.

It is about raising the thesis, looking for possible antitheses during the rest of life and leaving the synthesis for all those who approach the whole of the work. In this book we find that fusion between philosophy and Spanish idiosyncrasy that I already mentioned before.

The world literary work that is Don Quixote gathers a necessary imagery on the perspective of the world from this old Iberian peninsula and if a lucid Quixote (the one who appears prostrate in his bed in the last scenes) could expose what the world is and what He holds ideas as possible clarifications about the life and future of Europe and our civilization, this would be his testimony. A necessary starting point in the journey is to address what is written by Ortega y Gasset.

Don Quixote Meditations

the Rebelion of the mass

Any book that addresses the social and more or less intentionally the political (and even more so in the troubled twentieth century) always ends up trying to link with a trend or faction.

Something like this happened with this book about the fit of the individual and the functioning of the masses as diverse and easily directable groups. The presentation of society in the mid-XNUMXth century as a space assigned to the roles of individuals, overcoming dependencies from the past, but creating new voids that can be easily addressed through integration into the mass is approached as one of the great dilemmas.

A dilemma addressed in this book from its social evolutionary perspective in which solutions are sought or at least those deficiencies are presented, not always considered by the individual himself, who is able to draw a more or less prosperous destiny with greater autonomy.

The specialization required since the Industrial Revolution and complemented in every area of ​​social development can fill the existence, everything perceivable under the prism of a knowledge not at all adjusted to the approachable universe of ideas.

Ignorance in short is an essential breeding ground for that rebellion of the masses, directed from the top of an ideological pyramid that redirects the least covered gap, that of existence beyond dedication or materialistic ambition made vital sustenance.

the Rebelion of the mass

Invertebrate Spain

It never hurts, these days, to approach this book by Ortega y Gasset that explains the configuration of Spain from the social point of view. The concept coined by Ortega y Gasset of historical reason acquires its most complete essence in this book.

The nature of each individual of this old peninsula cannot be considered as its own entity. The miscellany of civilizations represents a distortion of any idea of ​​Spanish (something that, by the way, happens anywhere in a world penetrated and moved from one civilization to another)

The point is that only historical movements can support the greater or lesser structure of a state. From the general world of the world to the particular of Spain, the author addresses all that historical process moved by regionalisms, characters taken as emblems, the impossible consideration of the whole disintegrated towards a dispersion of the concept of that always artificial homeland that offers a protection that not always ends up being well received and that can be easily reinterpreted in any of the historical movements that occurred from the Pyrenees to the Strait of Gibraltar (homegrown)

Invertebrate Spain
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3 comments on "The 3 best books by José Ortega y Gasset"

  1. Can you accept that the don quixote is not a Spanish book, but an English publication ..

    Reply

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