Author Description

Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), the most widely known and well liked of Spanish philosophers, was much admired in the United States from the 1930s through the 1960s for Revolt of the Masses, History as a System, and Dehumanization of Art, among other works. Those popular works, however, poorly revealed his ill-known and very complex philosophy. In this first historical analysis of all the parts of Ortega's philosophical thought, John Graham explores the extent to which Ortega's metaphysics was built not only on a native Spanish realism but also upon the pragmatism and "new realism" of William James. Graham then details the extent to which Ortega developed from that basis an existentialism before Martin Heidegger and a new historicism less absolute than Benedetto Croce's, by means of phenomenological method - all within a comprehensive philosophy of life similar to Wilhelm Dilthey's, but more realist and more social. In addition, an extensive bibliographical essay examines how Ortega's philosophy, as a whole and in each part, has stood in the estimation of critics worldwide from the 1920s to the present. Over ten years in preparation, A Pragmatist Philosophy of Life in Ortega y Gasset reveals how open, adaptable, and inventive was pragmatism as Ortega elaborated its philosophical implications and applications for Spain, Europe, and the Americas. It is based on extensive use of the twelve volumes of Ortega's Obras Completas, the eighty microfilm reels of his archive in the Library of Congress, and his large private library in Madrid. These sources, many of which have not been available previously, provide the essential evidence needed to demonstrate the novelty and subtlety, the diversity and unity, of Ortega's thematic "system" of thought. Students and scholars of intellectual history, philosophy, and Spanish literature will welcome this important new study.