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Jose Ortega y Gasset Biography

Jose Ortega y Gasset

José Ortega y Gasset (Spanish: [xoˈse orˈteɣa i ɣaˈset]; 9 May 1883 – 18 October 1955) was a Spanish 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 (prior to Martin Heidegger's) and his realist historicism, which has been compared to both Wilhelm Dilthey and Benedetto Croce."

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Jose Ortega y Gasset Quotes

Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is "mass" or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself good or ill based on specific grounds, but which feels itself "just like everybody," and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.

Facts, Individual, Psychological, Sets, Waiting

The person portrayed and the portrait are two entirely different things.

Different, Person, Portrait, Portraits, Two

Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.

Adolescence, Poetry Is, Preserved, Poetry, Fermented

The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart.

Contours, Emotional, Heart, Type

Life is fired at us point blank.

Blank, Fired, Life, Life Is

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

Attention, Gratitude, Pay, Tell

Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort.

Civilization, Lasts, Nothing, Resort, Resorts

Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.

Absence, Appeal, Barbarism, Made, Standards

Today violence is the rhetoric of the period.

Period, Periods, Rhetoric, Today, Violence

The choice of a point of view is the initial act of a culture.

Act, Choices, Culture, Initial, Point, Views

In their choice of lovers both the male and the female reveal their essential nature. The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart. Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted.

Heart, Impulse, Love, Love Is, Lovers, Spring

The nineteenth century, utilitarian throughout, set up a utilitarian interpretation of the phenomenon of life which has come down to us and may still be considered as the commonplace of everyday thinking. . . . An innate blindness seems to have closed the eyes of this epoch to all but those facts which show life as a phenomenon of utility

Everyday, Eye, Life, Phenomenon, Thinking, Utilitarian

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.

Effective, Hidden, Issues, Lying, Stratum, Thinking

I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.

Aristocratic, Believe, Conviction, Essence, Extreme

[T]he direction of society has been taken over by a type of man who is not interested in the principles of civilisation. Not of this or that civilisation but from what we can judge to-day of any civilisation. . . . [T]he type of man dominant to-day is a primitive one, a Naturmensch rising up in the midst of a civilised world.

Dominant, Men, Principles, Rising Up, Society, Taken

We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfection upon another person. One day, the fantasy evaporates and with it, love dies.

Falling In Love, Imagination, Person, Projects, Sarcastic, Valentine

The librarian's mission should be, not like up to now, a mere handling of the book as an object, but rather a know how (mise au point) of the book as a vital function.

Book, Function, Librarian, Library, Point

[L]ife, individual or collective, personal or historic, is the one entity in the universe whose substance is compact of danger, of adventure. It is, in the strict sense of the word, drama. . . . [T]he primary, radical meaning of life appears when it is employed in the sense not of biology, but of biography. For the very strong reason that the whole of biology is quite definitely only a chapter in certain biographies, it is what biologists do in the portion of their lives open to biography.

Adventure, Certain, Drama, Entity, Sense, Strong

Living is a constant process of deciding what we are going to do.

Moving On, Moving Forward, Decision, Living, Constant, Deciding

Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us - by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. 'To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law. '

Man, Men, Nobility, Noble Man, Oblige, Rights

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