The concept of life in the philosophy of Jose Ortega y Gassett

The primary and basic "fact" in the universe for Ortega is the existence of human life, always in the mode of a personal life. The core of Ortega's philosophical endeavors consists in revealing the structures and characteristics of this basic reality which is in each one's own living existence. Life, however, is an attribute which is predicated of beings other than humans--all animals of course are living entities. Ortega is well aware that life is not a quality peculiar to humankind, but he insists that human life is most unlike other types of life forms.

The phenomenon of human life then may be approached in either of two manners. It may be situated within a cosmological setting in which case it is necessary to accent the affinity of human life to other life forms. On the other hand, one may analyze the nature of personal existence itself without explicit concern for the modes of existence of other animate beings. In this context, one's own personal life is the most intimate of "data" and the most evident of "experiences" upon the basis of which philosophical inquiry might proceed.

Both lines of approach are discernible in Ortega's work. As a result an ambiguity is present in Ortega's conception of life which obscures the unity and solidity of his major theme. On the one hand, human life is used in a zoological sense by Ortega to denote an animate being existing within the context of animate being as a whole. On the other hand, human life is used in a philosophical sense and denotes the basic and irreducible reality which is each person's own unique and untransferable existence. I argue that these two perspectives are not incompatible and that Ortega sees these two lines of approach to the phenomenon of human life converge and culminate in an ontology of human existence which links man to the processes of animate life as such while respecting the personalist dimension of existential experience.