A Pragmatist Philosophy of Life in Ortega y Gasset (Comprehensive Studies on the Thought of Ortega Y Gasset) - Hardcover

Graham, John T.

9780826209382: A Pragmatist Philosophy of Life in Ortega y Gasset (Comprehensive Studies on the Thought of Ortega Y Gasset)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0826209386 ISBN 13: 9780826209382

Publisher: University of Missouri, 1994

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 reflected the complexity of Ortega's philosophy. In this first historical analysis of all the parts of Ortega's total 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 of William James. Graham details the extent to which Ortega developed an existentialsim before Martin Heidegger and a new historicism less absolute than Benedetto Croce's, by means of a phenomenological method-all within a comprehensive philosophy of life similar to Wilhelm Dilthey's, but more realist and 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 private library of fifteen hundred volumes 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, Spanish literature, and philosophy will welcome this important new study.

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About the Author:

John T. Graham is Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City with specialization in European Intellectual History, especially Spanish. He is the author of Donoso Cortes: Utopian Romanticist and Political Realist.

Review:

"The present study is the product of ten years of research and writing, including consultation of Ortega's unpublished class notes and uncompleted articles and book projects collected in the Fundaci�n Ortega y Gasset of Madrid, Spain. By coordinating his own original investigations with those of the many senior scholars who have worked on Ortega, Graham does what may be the most complete job yet of tracing Ortega's intellectual debts, innovations, and overall development during the first half of the 20th century. This exciting, suggestive book will be useful to anyone interested in Western philosophy between 1860 and 1955."--Choice

"Graham combines an historical-biographical account of the life and time or Ortega with chapters of analytic penetration into his thought. . . . The bibliographical material is both excellent and even overwhelming. Every university library should possess this book, as well as all students of modern philosophical thought. . . . A splendidly conceived and admirably executed book."--University Bookman

"Graham opens up new angles of vision not only on Ortega's ideas but on twentieth-century thought in general. Not more than a handful of scholars writing today are as familiar as Graham with the many subtle shifts and changes in Ortega's oeuvre over a half-century of writing."--American Historical Review

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