Some Lessons in Metaphysics

by José Ortega y Gasset, Mildred Adams (Translator)

José Ortega y Gasset was a writer and a thinker in the finest sense of both words. He was also an extraordinary educator who attracted eager students and enthusiasts of all ages. His inexhaustible subject was man and man's problems. Ortega's entry into the writing world came by way of newspaper essays that are still read by generations seeking revelations and interpretations of the world. He wrote on varied subjects: love, bullfighting, hunting, education, and Don Quixote. His incessant search for knowledge led him into political theory and practice and metaphysics as well. This present book represents Ortega's incursions into a field of thought along which anyone curious enough to travel will find leads him into a succession of ideas that extend his vision and his understanding of himself. If generations of men have puzzled over man's role in the universe and have tried to put it into words, Ortega's phrase "I am myself and my circumstances" is so simply and appealingly true that it may come as a great surprise to find it hailed as an important philosophic contribution. In this day of alienation, when the young have difficulty finding out who they are, Ortega's venture into metaphysics is a lit lamp in the first chapter, of the student's role will shed light on the reason for present student disorders.

Genres: Philosophy, Metaphysics, Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

José Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. He was, along with Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism.

Reviews

[Joel Foster · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one I’m going to have to keep coming back to. It is deep and dense but somehow approachable. I’m excited to read more by Ortega y Gasset

[Noah Goats · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Some Lessons in Metaphysics, Jose Ortega y Gasset explores the nature of reality and tries to get to the bottom of the dispute between the idealists and the realists. Compared to a lot of other philosophers, he writes pretty clearly and he also has an ear for the felicitous turn of phrase. He's readable and seems like he would have been a good teacher.

Among the many interesting points Ortega y Gasset makes, is the fact that we each have freedom to act, but only within the circumstances into which we have been thrown into existence. He says, "He who is most resolved to follow only reason - that is to say, his own inmost evidence - cannot, in fact, follow this norm except in small sectors of his life; the rest of it he entrusts to tradition and lives on it. Without this sector of conventional ideas he could not live; his lack of security with regard to the greater part of his surroundings would be intolerable. Society, which is to say, tradition, carries him in its arms and at the same time, keeps him prisoner." This statement was true at the time he was writing, and for almost all of human history before him (except for during brief revolutionary periods) but I'm not sure it's correct to say that the sector of conventional ideas necessarily comes from tradition anymore. People seem to fall back on all kinds of ideas because they are the ideas that are prevalent in their social media networks. Many of these ideas are quite radical when placed in a historical context. People from twenty years ago, or even just ten, would find much of our current conventional wisdom to be incredibly untraditional.

[م · Rating 4 out of 5]

كتاب واضح وسهل

[Raul · Rating 5 out of 5]

"¿Qué es, pues, vida? No busquen ustedes lejos, no traten de recordar sabidurías aprendidas. Las verdades fundamentales tienen que estar siempre a la mano, porque sólo así son fundamentales. Las que es preciso ir a buscar es que están sólo en un sitio, que son verdades particulares, localizadas, provinciales, de rincón, no básicas. Vida es lo que somos y lo que hacemos: es, pues, de todas las cosas la más próxima a cada cual. Pongamos la mano sobre ella, se dejará apresar como una ave mansa." * "Pero la vida es siempre un «ahora» y consiste en lo que ahora se es. El pasado de su vida y el futuro de la misma sólo tiene realidad en el ahora, merced a que ustedes recuerden ahora su pasado o anticipen ahora su porvenir. En este sentido la vida es pura actualidad, es puntual, es un punto – el presente –, que contiene todo nuestro pasado y todo nuestro porvenir." * "Vivir es esa realidad extraña, única que tiene el privilegio de existir para sí misma. Todo vivir es vivirse, sentirse vivir, saberse existiendo; donde saber no implica conocimiento intelectual ni sabiduría especial ninguna, sino que es esa sorprendente presencia que su vida tiene para cada cual: sin ese saberse, sin ese darse cuenta, el dolor de muelas no nos dolería. " * “Vivir es encontrarse náufrago entre las cosas. No hay más remedio que agarrarse a ellas. Pero ellas son fluidas, indecisas, fortuitas. De aquí que nuestra relación con las cosas sea constitutivamente inseguridad.” * "El pensamiento es mío, es yo. Mi vida no es mía, sino que yo soy de ella. Ella es la amplia, inmensa realidad de la coexistencia mía con las cosa."

[Maruu Dom · Rating 5 out of 5]

¡Este es el problema de la vida! Que la vida consiste en que tenemos que existir en una circunstancia. El mensaje que se puede resumir de este libro es: no podemos cambiar nuestras circunstancias, pero sí podemos elegir dentro de un margen de posibilidades, intentar mejorarlas de algún modo.

Este libro es filosofía pura, explicada con genialidad y un dominio inusual de la argumentación y del lenguaje. Es el primer libro que leo de Ortega y me enganchó para siempre. No apto para personas que no disfruten de reflexionar sobre el mundo y de ir más allá de lo inmediato.

[Marco Sán Sán]

Las últimas seis lecciones son fascinantes, gran y clara exposición de la especulación que es el exponer ideas. Sin juzgarlas, ni despreciarlas, exponerlas en su justa medida por lo que son, abstracciones subjetivas del individuo con la esperanza en poder describir la experiencia individual.

"El físico puede aprovechar las opiniones ajenas, valiéndose de ellas, siempre que le resulten útiles. El físico hace su física apoyándola en convicciones de los que no son físicos. Hace, pues, su ciencia con otros. Pero el metafísico, al tener que renunciar a toda opinión que él mismo no se fabrique, al no poder recibir de los demás nada como bueno y firme, tiene que hacérselo él todo, o lo que es igual, tiene que quedarse solo. La Metafísica es soledad. Los demás podrán ponernos en camino de ella, pero cuando, de verdad, hacemos metafísica, esto es, cuando nos fabricamos nuestras convicciones radicales tenemos que hacerlo cada cual por sí y para sí, en radical soledad. Nadie, por excelente que sea su voluntad, puede damos hechas nuestras convicciones. Tenemos que convencernos a nosotros mismos."

- José Ortega y Gasset

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ortega y Gasset defines metaphysics as the search for "a basic orientation in [our] situation" (26), and this situation is the reality he calls life, which, although he redefines it constantly throughout the book, is essentially reducible to I and my circumstance. The lessons are perhaps the clearest demonstrations of phenomenology; he was influenced by Husserl and Heidegger, but he also separates himself from them, speaking (this was a lecture) in a readily understandable way to a popular audience. He speaks about who "I" am, the primacy of the future, the urgency of decision, the world as historical, the way we interact with the world, and the shortcomings of both realism and idealism, all with the intent of returning us to a simple fact: That we live life.

[Don Luis · Rating 4 out of 5]

La exposición, los ejemplos, ese saber hilar, explicar, desarrollar y conducir el pensamiento es brillante. Practicamente si se lee en voz alta es efectivamente una lección. Todo sintetizado en la famosa coletilla "yo soy yo y mi circunstancia".

[Phármakon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ortega puto amo y Gasset

[cadfael · Rating 5 out of 5]

The "should-be" primer to metaphysics.