Jose Ortega y Gasset and Argentina

• Published in: Anales de la literatura española contemporánea 1983-01, Vol.8, p.59-81
• Main Author: Schwartz, Kessel
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Affection; Banquets; Consciousness; Hispanics; Latin American culture; Lectures; Pampas; Philosophical analysis; Philosophical psychology; Spiritual belief systems
• ISSN: 0272-1635

For almost fifty years there appeared in "La Nación" of Buenos Aires some of Ortega y Gasset's most important essays. The Spanish philosopher, who visited Argentina in 1916, 1928, and 1939, developed or wrote in that country works or parts of works such as "La rebelión de las masas" and "Ensimismamiento y alteración." His first visit fostered a new philosophic renaissance in Argentina, but his contact with Argentines produced also a lifelong effect on both his personality and his creative productions. Ortega lectured on every conceivable subject, but perhaps his most important contribution in 1916 was his "Las tres grandes metáforas." However important his German experience may have been, Ortega later recalled it as inauthentic in comparison with the influence of Argentina. Ortega felt a profound debt to Argentina and through the years wrote significant essays which dealt with the future of that country. As a result of his second visit Ortega wrote two important essays, "La Pampa... promesas" and "El hombre a la defensiva," both of which aroused a profound polemic. In the first essay he concentrates on an exegesis of the structure, anatomy, and physiology of the Pampa as an organic entity; in the second he analyzes what he calls the "inauthentic life" of the Argentine, a victim of hermetic and narcissistic traits. Through Ortega's work Argentines discovered their cultural inheritance, and they, in turn, helped him find and develop a new path in the exposition of his original philosophy.