Spanish Metaphysics 101
No more Greek Kalends
«For the ancients, reality—Being—meant 'thing'; for the moderns, it means 'intimacy, subjectivity'; for us, being means 'living'—therefore, intimacy both with oneself and with things».
José Ortega y Gasset, What is Philosophy?, 1929
In History as a System, Ortega recalls a particular detail that had a profound influence on his thinking.
Many years prior, he was reading a lecture by the physiologist Jacques Loeb on tropisms. “Tropism” is a concept used to describe and clarify the law governing the elementary movements of infusoria, which serves to explain some of these phenomena—trópos (τρόπος) means “turn,” “change,” or “manner”.
But at the end of his lecture, Loeb added: “The time will come when what we now call man's moral acts will be explained simply as tropisms.”
«This audacity unsettled me deeply, for it opened my eyes to many other judgments in modern science that, though less ostentatiously, commit the same mistake. So—I thought—a concept like tropism, barely capable of penetrating the secret of simple phenomena as the jumps of infusoria, may one day suffice to explain something as mysterious and complex as human ethical acts? What sense does this make? Science must resolve its problems today, not defer them to the Greek Kalends».1
Ortega claims that all his philosophical thought emanated from this idea of the Greek Kalends. This colloquial expression alludes to a time indefinitely remote, as—unlike the Roman calendar—the Greek calendar had no calends.
«There, in germ, lies my entire idea of radical reality and of knowledge as a function internal to our life, not independent or utopian». To place truth in a vague tomorrow «has been the stupefying opium of humanity», a renunciation of concrete truthfulness in anticipation of some greater revelation.
The pursuit of truth in the here and now (hinc et nunc) is an attitude that runs through all of Spanish philosophy. Ortega expanded its possibilities by shaping it into a cohesive response to idealism—one that continued to develop throughout the 20th century.
«I thought that it was necessary to develop a philosophy that, as its formal principle, excluded the Greek Kalends. Because life is the opposite of these Kalends. Life is urgency; it urgently needs to know what to rely on, and we must make this urgency the method of truth».
On a hunt for radical data at the Infanta Beatriz Theatre
In February 1929, Ortega y Gasset began a course at the University of Madrid titled What is Philosophy? As he tells his Argentine readers to contextualize the publication of his lectures: «The closure of the university due to political reasons and my subsequent resignation forced me to continue it in the profanity of a theater».
Indeed, following government intervention, Ortega resigned from his professorship and resumed the course at Sala Rex, a little theater where he attracted an audience so large and diverse that—from the seventh lecture onward—had to be relocated to the much larger Teatro Infanta Beatriz.
The event’s popular success turned it into a peculiar social phenomenon in Spanish culture, especially considering that it was a philosophy course determined to be «rigorously scientific».
The audience was part of a collective spirit reflecting a growing curiosity for philosophy—one that, thirty years earlier, had faded under the positivist demand that thought adhere strictly to facts, reducing reality to the object of natural science and leaving philosophy gradually shrinking into mere epistemology.
Ortega bore witness to this newfound vitality:
«This curiosity, this eagerness—felt in varying degrees of conscious clarity—consists of two elements: the public once again feels a need for ideas, and at the same time, it takes pleasure in them. The combination of these two traits is no accident; we shall see that in every living being, any essential need that arises from its very Being—rather than being imposed upon it externally—comes accompanied by delight.
Delight is the face, the facies, of happiness. And every being is happy when it fulfills its destiny—that is, when it follows the slope of its inclination, of its essential need, when it realizes itself, when it is being what it truly is».
The philosophical need is the conscientious breaking free from vital beliefs. In life, we accept without a shadow of a doubt the full reality of our cosmic stage, but philosophy cannot accept as truth what another science merely demonstrates as true, even less what life merely believes. But this detachment can only be virtual, intellectual: «carried out solely for the purpose of theorizing, it is itself theoretical».
«In short, this is why I find it grotesque when people are solemnly invited to 'enter' philosophy». Ideas such as that the external world might not exist can be taken seriously only to some extent. For the philosopher, «seriousness does not mean solemnity; rather, it is simply the virtue of arranging our concepts in sequence, in order».
«In strict terms, what philosophy asserts is only this: neither the existence nor the nonexistence of the surrounding world is self-evident; therefore, one cannot start from either, for that would mean starting from an assumption. And philosophy is committed to not beginning from what is assumed, but only from what establishes itself— that is, from what imposes itself».
Descartes’ experience is paradigmatical. By surrendering us to doubting everything, in order to find an indubitable principle in which to anchor our beliefs, the ebb of doubt sweeps away the world, our friends, our own body.
What remains, then, indubitably in the Universe? When one doubts the world and even the entire Universe, what is left?
«What remains is... doubt—the very fact that I doubt. If I doubt whether the world exists, I cannot doubt that I am doubting. Here lies the ultimate limit of all possible doubt. No matter how far we extend the sphere of doubt, we find that it collides with itself and self-destructs.
Do we seek something indubitable? Here it is: doubt. In order to doubt everything, I must not doubt that I am doubting. Doubt is only possible as long as it does not touch itself; in attempting to bite itself, it shatters its own tooth».
But it is not that Descartes inaugurated nothing less than the Modern Age simply because he came up with the little quip that we cannot doubt that we doubt—a notion already found in Saint Augustine. To grasp the profound innovation of Cartesian thought—that gave birth to Modernity—it is crucial that we see clearly what privilege doubt holds, such that we cannot doubt it.
When I doubt, I cannot doubt the existence of my doubt. It is, therefore, a radical fact, an unquestionable reality of the Universe. But why?
I can doubt that this laptop in which I write truly exists—perhaps I am now experiencing a hallucination. Perhaps, in the omnipotence of youth, I once dreamt that I was delving on Spanish philosophy in Substack to a global audience, and now I do not know whether that dream is coming true at this moment or whether this moment was merely part of that dream and I am still that dreamer.
The real world and the dreamed world do not differ radically in their content; they are neighboring compartments, separated only by a wall of air. Without any substantial change, we can pass from the real to the dreamed, and therefore doubt the reality of Substack. But I cannot doubt that I doubt it. To doubt means that something appears to me as doubtful and problematic. Appearing to me and thinking are the same thing. Doubt is nothing but a thought.
«Put in another way: thought is the only thing in the Universe whose existence cannot be denied because to deny is to think. The things I think about may not exist in the Universe, but that I think them is indubitable. I repeat: for something to be doubtful is for it to appear doubtful to me, and the entire Universe may appear doubtful to me—except for my own appearing to myself».
Thought has the mysterious privilege that what it claims to be is reduced to appearing to me—to being for me. Thought is the only thing whose being—what it truly is—consists in nothing more than what it is for itself. It is what it appears to be and nothing more: it appears to be what it is. «Its essence is exhausted in its appearance».
From this, it follows that the only thing in the Universe that is truly given to thought is thought itself. And it is given indubitably because it consists in nothing other than being given. It is pure presence, pure appearance, pure appearing to me.
«This is the magnificent, the decisive discovery of Descartes, which, like a great Chinese wall, divides the history of philosophy into two vast halves: the ancients and medievals remain on one side—on the other stands modernity in its entirety».
Life as Radical Reality
Since thought consists exclusively in being aware of itself, it cannot doubt its own existence. So, the first truth about what is would be this: thought exists—cogitatio est.
All other realities might be illusory, but this one—the very illusion itself, the act of thinking—exists without any possible doubt.
But this is not how Descartes begins. He does not say, as we do, 'thought exists'—cogitatio est—but rather, 'I think, therefore I am'—Cogito, ergo sum. In the very same phrase, in the very same gesture with which Descartes reveals a new world to us, he simultaneously withdraws and nullifies it.
When Descartes realizes that thought consists in appearing to itself, he does not believe it to be self-sufficient. Blindly, mechanically, he applies to it the old category of Substance, seeking some substantive thing beneath thought, something that emits it, emanates it, and manifests itself through it: he believes he has found the being of thought not in thought itself, but in a thing that thinks—res cogitans.
«We are still caught in the magical habit of assuming an entity that we do not see behind what is evident. Descartes trades the first part of his proposition, which is self-evident—'thought exists'—for the second part, which is highly problematic, unnecessary, and that distorts the nature of thought by paralyzing it into a substantive being, into a thing».
It is certain that the so-called external reality of the world is only presumed—therefore, philosophy cannot accept it. But this simply means that the external world is not truly apart from my awareness—that the external world does not exist in the external world, but rather in my awareness of it. Then, we shall place it within my awareness, my mind, my thought, within me.
Idealism sees this issue as a dilemma: either this Substack has absolute reality outside of me, or it has it within me; «for in order to exist, it must be somewhere, and there is no doubt that something is. I cannot affirm that it is outside of me, for I cannot step outside myself to reach that supposed absolute reality. Thus, the only remaining option is to acknowledge its existence within me, as mental content».
Here, Ortega says, «idealism should have proceeded with more caution». Before concluding that there are only these two possibilities—Substack is either outside of me or inside of me—it should have considered the obvious answer: it is not inside my thought, as though it were part of it, but neither is it outside my thought if by outside we mean something that has nothing to do with it.
«It is with my thought—inseparably with it—neither inside nor outside, but alongside my thinking it. Like the obverse with the reverse, and the right with the left.
The external world does not exist without my thinking it,
but the external world is not my thought.
I am not the theater, nor the world—I exist facing this theater, I exist with the world.
We are: the world and I».
The mistake of idealism was to become subjectivism—to emphasize the dependence of things on my thinking them, on my subjectivity, but without realizing that my subjectivity also depends on the existence of objects.
«I cannot step outside of myself—but to find a world distinct from me, I do not need to leave myself. It is always with me, and my being is being-with-the-world. I am intimacy, for no transcendent being enters into me; yet, at the same time, I am the place where the world appears naked—what I am not, the exotic in relation to myself. The external world, the Cosmos, is immediate to me and, in this sense, intimate to me—but it is not me, and in this sense, it is foreign, strange to me».
By seeking with rigor what is the radical datum of the Universe, pushing doubt to its extreme, Ortega finds that there is a primary fact that establishes and affirms itself. «This fact is the joint existence of a self or subjectivity and its world. Therefore, the radical and inescapable datum is not my existence, it is not I exist—but rather, it is my coexistence with the world».
«Far from being closed, the I is, above all, openness.
The truth is that I exist with my world and in my world—and I consist in engaging with that world of mine: in seeing it, imagining it, thinking it, loving it, hating it, feeling joy or sorrow within it and because of it, moving through it, transforming it, and suffering it».
We couldn’t be any of this if the world did not coexist with us—before us, around us, pressing upon us, manifesting itself, enthusing us, distressing us.
Unwittingly, we have stumbled upon the radical fact of someone who sees, loves, hates, desires a world, moves through it, suffers in it, and strives within it. That is «what has always been called, in the humblest and most universal vocabulary, my life».
«Not merely my I, not my hermetically sealed consciousness—those are already interpretations, the idealist interpretation. What is given to me is my life, and my life is, above all, my finding myself in the world—not in some vague way, but in this world, in the world of now, and not in some abstract manner, but in this theater, in this instant, doing precisely what I am doing in it, in this theatrical fragment of my vital world—I am philosophizing».
In seeking the indubitable fact, we do not encounter a philosophical theory—we find the philosopher philosophizing. Living, in the present, the very act of philosophizing.2
In other words, philosophy finds philosophizing—theorizing—as an act, a vital fact, a mere detail of life immersed within the vastness of life itself—its joys and sorrows, its hopes and terrors.
We confirm that we have reached a higher spiritual level because if we look down at our feet, at our starting point—living—we find that within it, antiquity and modernity are preserved, integrated into one another, and surpassed. «We stand on a higher level—we stand at our level—we are at the height of our times».
«We are outside the confined I-centered enclosure, that hermetically sealed sickroom, lined with mirrors that desperately returned to us nothing but our own profile—we are outside, in the open air, lungs once again exposed to the cosmic oxygen, wings ready for flight, the heart pointing toward what is lovable.
The world is once again a vital horizon that, like the line of the sea, curves magnificently around us like the arc of a bow, making our heart yearn like an arrow—our heart, which in itself, wounded, is always a wound of pain or delight.
Ladies & gentlemen, we have the fortune of inaugurating concepts».
José Ortega y Gasset, History as system, IV, 1935. Throughout the article, we’ll use castillian quotation marks (« ») every time Ortega speaks.
«Just as that same philosopher might later find himself wandering melancholically through the streets, or dancing in a club, or suffering from colic, or loving the beauty of a passing stranger».
Really interesting! I've never read him before. Thank you!
Wonderful, absolutely wonderful!
To this day I still bring out the insight from Ortega y Gasset that “I am I and my circumstances, nether my I without my circumstances, nor my circumstances without my I.”