The Imperative of Modernity: An Intellectual Biography of José Ortega y Gasset - Hardcover

Gray, Rockwell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520062019 ISBN 13: 9780520062016

Publisher: University of California Press, 1989

Synopsis

In this biography, Rockwell Gray offers a compelling portrait of one of the greatest Spanish writers and philosophers of the twentieth century. José Ortega y Gasset was a driving force at the center of an extraordinary flowering of literary and artistic talent in Madrid during the 1920s and 1930s. Author of The Revolt of the Masses, The Dehumanization of Art, Man and Crisis, The Origin of Philosophy, and numerous other well-known books, Ortega articulated more clearly than any other Spanish writer what Gray has called "the imperative of modernity," the need to open the doors of his native culture to currents of thought, art, and scholarship from abroad.

That Ortega should still stand as the preeminent intellectual leader of modern Spain even after his exile from the country following the Spanish Civil War testifies to the importance and continuing influence of his writings. Incisive, witty, and often lyrical in tone, they constitute a unique contribution to modern philosophy and a complex reflection on a crucial half century in Spanish and European history. This comprehensive intellectual biography, the first in English, brings us a new understanding of one of the most celebrated figures in Spanish cultural life, a thinker whose work is inseparable from the main currents of modern European intellectual and cultural history.

About this title

About the Author

Rockwell Gray received his doctorate from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He is currently chairman of the Department of English at The Kiski School in Saltsburg, Pennsylvania, and has published a translation of Yolando Pino Saavedra's Folktales of Chile and many reviews and articles on modern culture and literature.

From the Back Cover

"Gray's full portrait of the witty and wise metaphysician and cultural critic who wore vast learning so lightly and conveyed deep thoughts so nimbly . . . is certainly the best general work on Ortega to date and ranks with the two or three dozen leading monographs in English on twentieth-century thinkers." --Rudolph Binion, Brandeis University

From the Inside Flap

"Gray's full portrait of the witty and wise metaphysician and cultural critic who wore vast learning so lightly and conveyed deep thoughts so nimbly . . . is certainly the best general work on Ortega to date and ranks with the two or three dozen leading monographs in English on twentieth-century thinkers." --Rudolph Binion, Brandeis University

Reviews

This study subsumes into a biographical framework the Germanophile writings, republican politics, and intellectual influence of Spain's major contributor to 20th-century philosophy, surpassing both in scope and perspective Franz Niedermayer's diminutive Jose Ortega y Gasset (1973) and even Jose Ferrater Mora's groundbreaking Ortega y Gasset: An Outline of His Philosophy (1956). Yet it falls somewhere between intimidating novices with polysyllabic explications and beguiling scholars with comprehensiveness while disappointing them with the lack of attention paid to individual works. Despite lapses into flowery rhetoric, especially in the opening segments, and a failure to deal with all of Ortega's prolific output, Gray nonetheless reaffirms Ortega's role in world letters.
- Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520062019
• ISBN 13: 9780520062016
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 437