It is not difficult to understand why the author of this summary of the work of Ortega y Gasset begins his introduction by being apologetic of the human orchestra that Ortega was, not in a frivolous, but in a very Hispanic way. Professor Ferrater Mora is writing for an Anglo-Saxon public; and Anglo-Saxons have become, even more than the Germans, suspicious of any author whose specialization is not evident or immediately classifiable. Ortega y Gasset is almost unclassifiable, as were Unamuno and Ganivet. Yet, like Unamuno and Ganivet, he was a "specialist" in dealing with a variety of subjects - art, history, literature, landscape, politics, social problems, philosophy, religion - from the point of view of a philosopher who was a Spaniard: a Spaniard greatly affected, but not denatured or denaturalized, by French, English and German influences.

As a philosopher he was - and Professor Ferrater Mora’s summary shows it - far from being a conventional one. Therefore, Mr. Ferrater Mora seems to follow the right path when he takes in consideration the fact that Ortega, being "one of the very few (writers) in modern history who has noted with perfect clarity the problematic character of philosophical activity", is himself a philosopher whose "system" cannot be presented "in a pedantically academic manner". Ortega, the philosopher, has to be presented as "a man and his circumstances" - according to the cornerstone of his philosophy - in order to be understood as a philosopher who, despite his variety of interests, dealt with the various subjects he approached for analysis or for interpretation as a specialist in what a French critic, writing of another Hispanic author, has called "unity in interpretation" through a plurality of interests and methods. When a philosopher or a historian or an essayist or a novelist is guided by a "unity in interpretation", though he does not write exclusively on a particular subject, nor only as a professional philosopher, but also as an essayist, and on a variety of subject, he is, in a not too evident, but, in spite of this, very real way, a "specialist". He specializes in a type of interpretation of art, letters, politics, religion, social problems, that through this interpretation, become complementary to each other.

In this attitude, Ortega was a innovator only to a certain extent. To a large extent he was following a Hispanic tradition that way be said to account for a vitality in Hispanic arts, letters, thought, religion, that seems to be a product of a constant process of hybridization between plastic and speculative attitudes or tendencies in Hispanic creative artists, thinkers, scholars and even scientists. For Ramón y Cajal did not escape from it.

Mr. Ferrater Mora seems to uncover the Hispanic root of Ortega’s "vitalism" - of his emphasis on "vital spontaneity" - when he points out that, for the author of The Revolt of the Masses, "reality and life are both valuable and perishable", their value being linked to their "authenticity". But it must be pointed out that "the collapse of pure reason", for the philosophical interpretation of life, does not mean for Ortega "the collapse of all reason". He considers irrationalism no less dangerous than rationalism. In this he is perhaps less Hispanic than Unamuno though he seems to be, at present, a more attractive philosopher for Spanish youth than Unamuno. Perhaps this means that contemporary Spanish youth, though "spontaneously vital", in a way that only the Spaniard seems to be capable of being in modern Europe - and Picasso is perhaps the most vigorous and effective representative of a Spanish philosophy similar to that of Ortega, among present-day Europeans - is also seeking a more direct contact with Europeans and Anglo-Americans: a contact through "vital reason".

Succinct as is Mr. Ferrater Mora’s essay, it is surprisingly rich in interpretations of, rather in information about, Ortega as a philosopher. Perhaps Ortega would have liked to be dealt with in a more "biographical" - in the Ortegaen sense - way. But he probably would have been pleased with the capacity for the succinct interpretative treatment of a complex subject, revealed by the author of Ortega y Gasset, An Outline of His Philosophy. Ortega admired succinctness - I am told by one of the closest Portuguese friends he had during his period of residence in Lisbon - though analytical, and at the same time, interpretative, historical, non-fictional books, even when long, delighted him in such a way, that he went to the point of becoming enthusiastic about some of them. And true to his philosophy of "vital reason", Ortega was a philosophical critic of letters and arts, who did not disguise his enthusiasm for what seemed to him to be vitally valuable in literature and art. This is one of the traits that make him attractive to youth. For this means that he remained youthful himself. Mr. Ferrater Mora also presents Ortega as having been a philosopher "filled with enthusiasm for the struggle against estrangement and falsification...

Having been an enthusiast of this and other values, ethical as well as esthetic (without ever having become a moralist or an esthete), an outspoken social critic, a journalist of a high intellectual type, but, nevertheless, a journalist, and even, for some time, an active political revolutionary and a politician (a politican who failed as a practical Republican), Ortega does not correspond to the classical image or cliché of the detached philosopher. He was no George Santayana - to mention only a prominent contemporary who was also a Spaniard; though much less a Spaniard in his "circumstances" than Ortega. A careful interpretative analysis of Ortega’s work, however, such as the one that Mr. Ferrater Mora has done, so as to be capable of writing the concise book on the subject that he has written, shows that the author of Invertebrate Spain was able to illuminate a number of problems, both Spanish and human, through a group of master-concepts, developed by him into a flexible, but unified "system" of interpretation, as only a philosopher could have developed. Only this philosopher could hardly have been French or English or Italian or even German: he almost had to be a Spaniard. In this connection, one is reminded of what Havelock Ellis wrote about Spanish philosophy fifty years ago: "The fury of life moves in this grave and passionate Spanish soul, alike in its national philosophy and in its national dancing". Of Ortega one might almost say that he danced his philosophy and that is was a Dionysian dance.

Fonte: FREYRE, Gilberto. ORTEGA y Gasset: an outline of his philosophy. Science & Society. New York, v. 21, n. 4, 1957.