POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE THOUGHT OF JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET: A SOCIAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL ONTOLOGY (LATIN AMERICAN)

This work is a study of the social and philosophical ontology of Jose Ortega y Gasset. The work analyzes Ortega\u27s philosophical and social ontological investigations in terms of the Modern predicament of vital disorientation and of the condition of personal and social alienation that it has produced. The central thesis of the work is that this crisis or predicament of vital disorientation can be identified in Ortega\u27s social and philosophical ontology through the conflict between individual and circumstance that appears in his thought. The work proceeds to discuss this conflict in Ortega\u27s thought by analyzing its manifestation within Ortega\u27s circumstances and within his own philosophical and socio-political ideas. Ortega\u27s work is studied in terms of its content as well as in terms of its purpose and intent, considering it as an effort to understand and mediate the alienation that exists between individual and circumstance, personal and social reality. Chapter I provides a historical framework by which this intellectual crisis of vital disorientation and the condition of radical alienation it produces can be apprehended at the level of Ortega\u27s own personal and social circumstances. Chapter II pursues this crisis of vital disorientation at the level of Ortega\u27s own intellectual life, analyzing his conception of philosophy in terms of the basic doctrine of ratio-vitalism and in terms of the kind of philosophic belief that is best captioned under the concept of philosophy of life. Chapter III defines this alienation as it appears in Ortega\u27s political thought and his ideas about public life; this is done by contrasting Ortega\u27s basic pedagogical notion of politics to his more fundamental sociological understanding of political reality and the State. This work concludes that the predicament of vital disorientation introduced into Ortega\u27s philosophy a sense of vital historicism that accompanied his ontological thought and which may be traced back to Wilhelm Dilthey\u27s Philosophy of Life