Jose Ortega y Gasset

Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality - the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.

Summary

Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883 - 1956) was a Spanish philosopher. His writings range over history, politics, aesthetics and art criticism, as well as the history of philosophy, Metaphysics, epistemology and ethics.

He called the lived body the Intrabody, the result of a rain of stimuli from the organs and conducted to the sensory centres, giving space to a diffused image - a global Vivencia of body (see Vital Unconscious and Biocentric Principle).

Ideas

• Human beings and their circumstances exist in a dynamic interplay - 'I am I and my circumstance' is the phrase that conveys this dynamic interplay,
• The individual can influence his circumstance but he cannot disregard it - How the individual influences his circumstance is his 'quehacer vital', or his creative action,
• Vital reason as opposed to pure reason is derived from history, which provides a story that leads to the reality of human life - Human beings create their lives by exercising vital reason and exerting their will,
• The hero, or the excellent man, creates the noble life by exerting his will to go beyond the ordinary and the given,
• The opposite of the hero, the mass man, is content with his own mediocrity and relies on opinion rather than reason,
• Perspectivism means that although each individual sees truth from a unique perspective, truth itself is absolute.