Self-absorption and technique: recent contributions for a systematic
interpretation of Ortega y Gasset’s work
Ensimismamiento y tecnicidad: aportaciones recientes para una interpretación
sistematizada de la obra de Ortega y Gasset
doxa.comunicación |
nº 35, pp. 379-393
| 379
July-December of 2022
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
How to cite this article:
Núñez Ladevéze, L.; Álvarez de Mon, I. and Núñez Canal, M. (2022). Self-absorption and technique: recent contributions for a systematic
interpretation of Ortega y Gasset’s work.
Doxa Comunicación
, 35, pp. 379-393.
https://doi.org/10.31921/doxacom.n35a1680
Luis Núñez Ladevéze
. Full Professor at Complutense University (now retired). He is currently Professor Emeritus of
CEU San Pablo University and Coordinator of the Doctoral Programme in Social Communication at
CEINDO
as well.
Professor Núñez Ladeveze has completed a total of six, 6-year research terms, and has held the position of PI on six R&D
projects since the year 2000. Moreover, he currently serves as the honorary president and founder of the International
Association of Researchers and is the founder and president of the editorial board of
Doxa Comunicación
, which has an
i10 index of 81 and an h-index of 22, according to Google Scholar Metrics. Other posts have included Chairman of the
Advisory Board of the Institute of Communication Arts (TRACOR) and Advisor to the Council of Universities. Professor
Núñez Ladevéze is a member of the following organisations as well: ANECA, ACAP, ACADEMIA, ANEP, CENAI, AQU,
ACSUG, ACSUCYL, and ICMEDIANET. He holds a PhD in Law, a Bachelor’s Degree and Doctorate in Philosophy and
Arts, and a BA in Information Science. He has also directed 25 doctoral theses. Chair. Emeritus professor.
CEU San Pablo University, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-5684-9885
Ignacio Álvarez de Mon
. Bachelor’s Degree in Law from the Universidad Ponticia de Comillas,
ICADE
(Spain). MBA from
Houston University (USA). PhD in Political Science and Sociology from the
Universidad Ponticia de Salamanca
(Spain).
Moreover, he is the author of the following books;
De ti depende
(It depends on you),
El desafío de la felicidad
(e challenge
of being happy),
Eduardo, estás despedido
(Eduardo, you’re red),
Emprendedores Sociales
(Social Entrepreneurs), and
El
trabajo de tu vida
(e job of your life), as well as numerous case studies, articles, and research papers published in
scientic journals. Professor of Leadership at the IE Business School. He has worked at the Universidad Antonio de Nebrija
as a professor and director of the Department of Economics and Business Administration, as well has holding the post of
professor at the Universidad Carlos III and Ponticia de Comillas (ICADE) in Madrid. He has also been a visiting professor
at Ashridge Business School (UK), Porto Business School (Portugal), the
Universidad de los Andes
(Colombia), the
Instituto
de Estudios de la Empresa
(Uruguay), and the
Instituto de Desarrollo Empresarial
(Ecuador).
Instituto de Empresa, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-4014-2180
Margarita Núñez Canal
. PhD in Communication from CEU San Pablo University (2013), Professor Núñez Canal has
also completed a Master’s Degree in Economics and Business Administration (MBA) from IESE University of Navarra
(1988), and is a research professor at ESIC university and ESIC Business & Marketing School in Spain as well. Moreover,
she is also a researcher on the CONVERED project (CSO2016-74980-C2-1-R) which is entitled “From mass culture to
social networks: media convergence in the digital society”. Professor Núñez Canal is also Director of Excellence in Teach
-
ing & Learning at ESIC Business & Marketing School in Spain as well.
ESIC Universidad / ESIC Business & Marketing School, Spain
[email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0002-5377-1592
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1. e myth of the monolith and the origin of technique in Ortega y Gasset
After reading Ortega’s assertion that “between the pure beast that was the anthropoid and the glimpse of humanity that was early
Palaeolithic man, Nature made a qualitative leap forward” (VI, p. 317), the natural reaction for anyone who has seen Stanley
Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey
is to associate this image with those at the beginning of the movie. Arthur Clarke’s short story,
e Sentinel
, which inspired Kubrick, is less impressive than the graphic sequence from the lm narrative of the latter; those
Goyaesque images in which a humanoid primate grabs the bone of a tapir and strikes his rival, as the frenetic pace of the ght
becomes a rhythmic ritual in which he wields the bone... In this moment of brilliance, the spectator perceives that the protagonist
suddenly becomes humanised when he realises that he can assign a useful function to an instrument... Perhaps, in an Orteguian
way, it is thus understood that if
natura non facit saltus
(nature does not make leaps), the one that occurs in the anthropoid might
be exactly what historically leads to going in the opposite direction of that of a nature that does not readily accept it.
It is worth recalling this epic moment that links the action of an anthropomorphic being to the origin of a fabulous expansion,
whose theme would later represent the history of human progress. It bears returning to it now in order to illustrate a commentary
on the occasion of the recent publication of several texts that have dealt with Ortega y Gasset’s philosophy, which have highlighted
the concept of technique as the main driving force of his work. We are not hindered by being labelled
simplistic
with regard to the
Abstract:
e digitised edition of the Complete Works
(
Obras Completas
)
of
the Centre for Orteguian Studies of the Ortega y Gasset Foundation
(
Centro de Estudios Orteguianos de la Fundación José Ortega y Gasset
),
in which a meticulous work method has been used to chronologically
organise his philosophical and journalistic endeavours, has served as
an eective platform for renewed interest in his legacy. Ortega y Gasset
forecasted several highly important phenomena, the importance
of which can now be veried, such as the accelerated advance of
technology, Europe’s lower prole as a world leader, transfer of the
revolt of the masses to social networks, and the close proximity of
the planet due to advances in communication. e fruition of these
prognostications and the meticulousness of the edition have created
renewed interest in studying his work, which has been reected in the
recent publication of writings that highlight the foresighted originality
of Orteguian philosophy. ese works concur in emphasising that
the core essence that gives meaning to Ortega’s work as a whole is to
be found in his philosophy of technique. is paper analyses a new
approach that updates the validity of the Madrid-born philosopher’s
vision by focusing on his concept of technology.
Keywords:
Philosophy of the technique; technology; mass culture; robotics.
Resumen:
La edición digitalizada de las Obras Completas del Centro de Estudios
Orteguianos de la Fundación José Ortega y Gasset, en la que se ha em
-
pleado un meticuloso método de trabajo para organizar cronológica
-
mente su labor losóca y periodística, ha servido de ecaz plataforma
para renovar el interés por su labor. Ortega y Gasset pronosticó impor
-
tantísimos fenómenos, cuya importancia puede actualmente compro
-
barse, como la aceleración de la técnica, la pérdida de la presencia
europea en el mando del mundo, el traspaso a las redes sociales de la
rebelión de las masas y la reducción planetaria por el avance de las co
-
municaciones. El cumplimiento de estas previsiones y la pulcritud de la
edición han renovado el interés por estudiar su obra. Un interés que se
muestra en la reciente publicación de trabajos que subrayan la origina
-
lidad previsora de la losofía orteguiana. Coinciden en destacar que el
meollo que da sentido a su conjunto se encuentra en su losofía de la
técnica. Este trabajo analiza el nuevo enfoque que actualiza la vigencia
de la visión del lósofo madrileño centrándola en su concepción de la
tecnicidad.
Palabras clave:
Filosofía de la técnica; tecnología; cultura de masas; robótica.
Received: 09/05/2022-Early access:12/05/2022 - Published: 01/07/2022
Recibido: 09/05/2022-En edición: 12/05/2022 - Publicado: 01/07/2022
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381
opinion that Kubrick’s lm condenses the essence of Ortega’s explanation of history. In two intense hours, this narrative links the
origin of human wanderings to the technological present day, and then projects it into an uncertain, robotic future. If there were
any doubts that Kubrick’s intention was focused in this direction, one only needs to listen to the spatial solemnity of the chords of
Richard Strauss’s
us Spoke Zarathustra
.
erefore, let us dwell on the unexpected presence of the monolith that illuminates the mind of the anthropopithecus. It is a
mythical explanation for a transformation that must have taken place at one time. Yet it is no more mythical than the “mere
hypothesis of malaria” (IX p. 1347; X p. 26), or Fernando Vela’s supposition of a change due to a disease, “that produces a
hypertrophy of the brain, which in turn leads to its hyper functioning” (2010). Whether mythical or hypothetical, the explanation
as an anomaly of the qualitative leap forward is anecdotal, and what is relevant is that the leap, perhaps genetic, introduces a
mental activity that links together behaviours to connect a “sketch of humanity” in order to present history and project it toward
an uncertain future.
e myth of the monolith weaves a narrative. Humanised by the impregnation of an artefact, perhaps of divine origin, or possibly
of a rational, technical source (what else can the monolith represent, whether or not it is a “thing” that appears without reason
or cause?), the primate gains an advantage in the struggle for domination over what appear to be his fellow primates when he
understands that the bone he wields can be used as a “weapon”. ere is nothing in the tapir’s bone that makes it a weapon other
than the function of holding it in order to convert it into a weapon. is is the idea that illuminates the anthropoid from within.
To describe this action using Ortega’s concept, he “imagines” and “invents” the practical utility of using the ossication to attack,
as he understands that he can increase the eectiveness of his claws by grasping the bone. is understanding does not dwell
within nor proceed from any characteristic of the bone he wields. It emerges suddenly as an occurrence of the one who holds it.
In Orteguian terms, in one way or another, the “intention” to utilise is the act of “making something for a reason” (V p. 368), which
proceeds from an internal activity.
Technique provides advantages for “the plan of attack on circumstances” (V p. 537), a plan that modulates historical change.
People without history are entrenched in the ritualised randomness of their technique. e primitive struggles against his
environment with ideas that he executes to modify it by using tools that project his bodily power outside himself. Man has
history, not nature, because this change of circumstances is fuelled by the novation of technical and moral ideas. Ortega assumed
that technique is socially ambivalent, an instrument of cooperation or domination that extends the corporeality and ideas of
the primitive beyond his organism. He dominates the uncontrollability of nature and strengthens his supremacy by adapting
it to the demands that denaturalise his progressive hominization. He can apply his inner strength to promote cooperation
with others, or to impose domination of some over others. Because he is a technician, “man lives with the permanent risk of
dehumanisation” (V p. 540; X p. 148).
2. e pretence of a system
e most recent work on Ortega y Gasset (Alonso 2021) insists that he was a thinker whose variations are explained by the
assumption that he modies his criteria so as to make them coherent with the demands prompted by changes in knowledge.
I have written “insists” because this approach has been maintained with varying degrees of success since the rst studies
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appeared on the Madrid philosopher’s work. Alonso’s approach nds the cohesive force of ideas that allow the variations of his
philosophical work to be woven together, integrating them into a perspective related to quest. It is clear that the intention to oer
comprehensive coherence by adapting to the changes in the scientic and philosophical landscape commits the philosopher to
going through various phases.
e novelty of Alonso’s work is not the result of nding a coherent thread in the profusion of Ortega’s texts, but rather in establishing
within the philosophy of technique the understanding of the modulations of the thread. Many exegetes have started from the
assumption that Ortega’s work involves continuous re-drafting that allows for overall understanding, yet only recently has the
focus been on the fact that Ortega nds what he is looking for in his concept of technique. Alonso’s note gives an account of
how this substratum of systemisation underlying the adaptations has been centralised in the philosophy of technique. However,
contrary to what Alonso believes, it is not “the rst work that deals with Ortega’s reections on technique in a comprehensive
manner” (p. 12). “For Ortega, technique is a constituent element of human life [...] the possibility for the human being to execute
diverse, vital projects”, writes García Madalena in his doctoral thesis (p. 19). Furthermore, in the thesis oered by Gutiérrez Simón
(2020), this researcher examines the practical inspiration that links Ortega’s philosophy to pragmatism.
e interpretation of Ortega’s philosophy as a search for coherence goes back a long way. is endeavour has been dicult due
to the boldness of his evocative style and the all too often journalistic way in which it is presented in dierent textual formats (cf.
Blanco 2003)
1
e philosopher from Madrid has been repeatedly examined under the assumption that his manner of cultivating
philosophy also concealed the pretence of a system. e basis for this judgment can be found in the words of Ortega himself:
“We have to represent the variations of thinking [...] as a change of orientation in man that leads him to see before himself other
truths dierent from those of yesterday. Rather than a change in truths, man is the one who changes, and because he changes he
goes through that series of truths” (VIII p. 120). Our commentary arises from the common belief that the systematic background
of Ortega’s thought oers a range of possibilities open to continuation –a “lode to be exploited” of “enormous potential and
completely current relevance” (Alonso, p. 13). Its scope transcends that of so many philosophers who explicitly reveal their desire
for a system. Alonso outlines this conviction with precision made possible by the digitisation of the
Obras Completas
[Complete
Works]. By organising the Orteguian corpus according to the strict chronology of the texts, the interpretative course of an original
thought obscured by a plethora of arbitrary compilations of his publications has become possible.
is commentary is reinforced by the fact that these current resources reproduce a precursor approach devoted to examining
his philosophical journey. Only ve years after his death, Jean Paul Borel made use of the
Obras Completas
[Complete Works],
which the journal
Revista de Occidente
began to publish in 1946 in order to “advance a few steps in the direction in which he
did not have time to continue” (p. 41), with the intention of nding a system concealed in the miscellany of compilations by
rearranging the references in chronological order. e expository order adheres strictly to the chronology of the texts. It disregards
the published groupings that articially bring together essays presented under the same title, as if they belonged to the same
work. e journal
Revista de Occidente
had published nine volumes at the time, of which the last three were compilations of
foundational, posthumous writings, such as
El hombre y la gente
[Man and People] and
La idea de principio en Leibniz
[e
1
González Galán (2021) has published a laborious commentary on the ordering, classication, and correlation of references on the Spanish reception of Ortega’s
work that does not directly aect this research.
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idea of principle in Leibniz]. For this reason, it is interesting to highlight the similarities between this early chronological view of
Ortega, which traces an underlying continuity, and the recent ones that support the same criterion by focusing on his philosophy
of technique. Borel is explicit: “We will try to show that Ortega’s work represents a coherent system” (p. 23).
3. I am myself and my circumstance
Like the more recent studies by Alonso, Gutiérrez Simón, and García Madalena, Borel’s earlier research also tried to show that
it is necessary to interpret the entirety of Ortega’s work as one unit. For Borel, the common thread that runs through his work
is an attempt to delimit the dierentiating aspect between the human and the animal in order to demarcate where the original
human aspect lies. e new approach also shares this criterion, yet species that man has an inner world of experiences that is
joined to the outer world through technical mediation. e conuence of both worlds determines a circumstance in which the
individual becomes more social. According to Borel, what humanises man in Orteguian thought is a reactive intervention by the
individual in order to full himself in the previously given circumstance in which he nds himself, and to which he reacts. By
patiently following the dates of the philosopher’s texts, and perhaps accepting the outline of Fernando Vela, whom Borel quotes
2
,
he shows how the expressive formula, “I am myself and my circumstance”, expounded for the rst time in 1914 in
Meditaciones del
Quijote
[Meditations on Quixote] (I, 757), led Ortega to apply an exegetical methodology that allows the interpreter to penetrate
the system hidden beneath the profusion of his writings. is formula, an apothegm to which the philosopher returns repeatedly
on so many occasions, represents a principle that gives meaning to the entirety for the purpose of explaining that “the world is the
circumstance experienced by an individual”, and “the circumstance is the place where man’s activity is inserted into the world”
(p.26). If Ortega’s philosophy seems dispersed, it is because of the “profound changes that the world in which he lived, and of
which he spoke, was undergoing” (p. 42). e perpetual factor that distinguishes hominization from animality in the background
of the system comes from the fact that the formula, “I am myself and my circumstance”, articulates the transversal method of
historical reason. From this method emerges the system of thought that explains how circumstance engenders historicity. is
formula serves as the thread of the system that supports his philosophy. e connection between formula, method of inquiry,
and the criterion of systemisation gives meaning to the corpus assembled in the
Obras Completas
[Complete Works]. In his work
entitled
Meditación de la técnica
[Meditation on technique], Orgega does not grasp the link between “circumstance” and the
anthropological dimension of technique as an explanatory assumption of historical change, yet he has already shown the thread
of continuity that allows us to see a system in its entirety.
Our point of view shares the concept that the root of Ortega’s vision lies in the interdependence of the notion of circumstance
with his philosophy of technique. To go one step further from Alonso’s understanding that for Ortega, “Technique is an essential
dimension of human life” (p.19), we will attempt to verify that technique is not simply “one” aspect, but rather “the crucial aspect”.
It could be said that Ortega presents man as a technical being by nature, if not for the fact that the progressive distancing that
historically takes place between man, who is an animal characterised by having an inner world, and nature, which is understood
2
Vela anticipates that Ortega’s philosophy constitutes an open system, and he goes ahead to contrast “I am myself and my circumstance” with the Cartesian
saying, “
cogito, ergo sum
” (I think, therefore I am), as opposing principles of each system.
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as the outer world in which this being acts, is a consequence of technique. As technique is an action that permeates this external
world, what appears to man as natural is already a denaturalisation that distances him from a primordially given nature.
is is the theme of Kubrick’s story. e lm imagines how a “circumstance” arises that cannot be explained as the result of any
evolutionary process. What is most inscrutable is the following distinct aspect: how to explain the emergence of a being that
distinguishes itself by opposing the external world through the use of its internal world in assigning functions to things in order
to use them. In the abrupt genesis of a consciousness that suddenly intuits a function in order to attribute it to an object, the
Orteguian imprint on the cinematic story is obvious. Kubrick presents the tale that Ortega y Gasset narrates in his
Meditación de
la técnica
[Meditation on Technique]
by showing that technique is the distinctive feature of the human narrative as opposed to
animality, which is devoid of a narrative.
4. Man has no nature, but rather technique
Recent interpretations of Ortega y Gasset, similar to that of Kubrick’s epic lm, place technique at the centre of his narrative
anthropology. e specic theme of “dictations made on the run” (V p. 527), hastily written in the academic lessons related
to
Meditación de la técnica
[Meditation on technique],
is the link that establishes continuity between his earlier and later
work. On this point, Ortega does not conceive technique as a story of the renewal of artisanship, gadgets, and mechanisation
that accelerates in the modern age when it becomes an application of empirically-controlled, scientic theory. He sees it as
anthropology. From its origins, an active, internal technique spills over into external technique in order to insulate history in the
face of mutating circumstances. In contrast to the static nature of the mineral, which seems to be located in a space outside of
time, divergent from the alteration that places the animal in a world that does not modify the regimen of its impermanence, the
use of fantasy and imagination ideates actions that change the circumstance in time (historicity) and space (
super-nature
). Man
is not nature, but history, because from the moment a genetic mutation takes place, he thinks when he acts, and he acts when he
thinks. Technique is an anthropological reaction to circumstance. It is the dierential condition, or the explanatory assumption
that governs coherence in the before and after of his texts.
Ortega believed that what is distinctly human can be understood by contrasting the Aristotelian permanence of the external
world with the mutable history of societies. Consequently, the statute of distinctive unity is not rigidly pre-established. Instead,
it emanates from the constant mutability of its being, or to state it literally by using another of his most characteristic formulas,
“man does not have nature, but history”. One does not have to go far to discover the origin of a breach between animality and
humanity, expressed in
Meditación de la técnica
[Meditation on technique]: “So, it does not matter that in the circumstance
here and now there is no re. We will make it” (V, 557). Making re is a task that is already a technical chore. As in the story of
the monolith, historicity is the element that connects the primitive action of “two sticks and tinder to make re” with modern
automation and the internet.
us, it follows that man is born and becomes socialised in an environment that is presented to him in a natural state, yet is
permeated by the cultural function of the instruments devised to modify it. He makes the tools because he conceives them.
Making involves thinking, and thinking is the “making” of thoughts in order to use them. is is the kind of activity that animals
are never able to do, and which from its most distant, unknown origins, distinguishes intelligent animality from brute animality
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Human technical presence is the main determinant of historical change of the circumstance. It is a consequence of inventiveness,
imagination, fantasy, and the eort to adapt the external world to a subject who ideates how to use a bone as if it were a mallet.
ere is nothing in the bone by which its osseous nature inspires a particular use. Using it for a purpose means inventing a use that
is not inherent to the bone in order to perceive it as something other than what it naturally is. If knowing how to make something
is a technical product, the invention of a function is a technical act. By integrating the adjudication of the function to the fantasy
of consciousness in this way, the technical act becomes an intellection in order to discover how to use it. Understanding the use
of the allocated function is an act that emerges from profound reection. Its expansion is inaccessible to animality, which does
not need to be understood, and distinguishes humanity, which must be narrated in order to be interpreted: “History has to be
right” (VI p. 539), for “the minimum assumption of history is that the subject of which it speaks can be understood” (VIII, p. 121).
5.
Homo sapiens
or
homo faber.
Discrepancy with Husserl
Current re-examinations of Ortega’s work pinpoint the qualitative leap from animal to human based on the philosophy of
technique, which Borel fails to nd. ey locate it by understanding the narrative anthropology of technique. It is not reduced to
the history of inventions or a description of how artefacts historically replace one another. If Ortega believes that man does not
have nature, but history, this is because the history of man is the history of his seclusion in himself in order to understand what
sense it makes to go outside himself by undertaking actions that manifest themselves in the modication of the surrounding,
external world, of the circumstance in which the corrective action taken by oneself unfolds. e reaction to the environment is
directly linked to the idea that historicity is based on the fact that it is inherently technical. He does not build because he inhabits.
He builds himself in order to inhabit. He does not act because he is. He acts in order to be. He does not exist because he thinks.
He thinks in order exist.
Ortega’s criticism of the denition of man can be found in this technical capability: “During a long tradition as
homo sapiens
(wise
man), a rational animal by nature”. e correct denition is
homo faber
(man the maker), or a being who intervenes technically in
nature in order to modify it. Rationality manifests itself in this intervention as something practical. Ortega questions the denition
of
homo sapiens
because he denies the concept that thought is the guarantee of certainty in the external world, as proposed
by Husserl’s phenomenology, following the model of the Cartesian
cogito
. Contemplation is “a unique case of man’s technical
activity” (VIII p. 621). Nevertheless, the expression
homo sapiens
is not rejected. Rather, it is simply questioned by Ortega:
“e Ancients, and those of the Middle Ages, had their minimal denition of man which, strictly speaking and to our shame, has not
been surpassed: that of the rational animal. We agree with this denition, yet the struggle for us is that it has become problematic to
know clearly what it means to be an animal and what it means to be rational” (VII, p. 121)
3
.
He is not saying that reason is not the dierential of the species, but that reason is demonstrated in technique, and that one thing
cannot be separated from the other: “We must invert the traditional order by saying that man does not make useful instruments
because he thinks and knows how to do so; on the contrary, he is
homo sapiens
because, whether he wants to or not, he is
homo
faber
[...]” (VIII pp. 621-623). Ortega had agreed with Bühler in the pragmatic development of the
Cratylus
, according to which:
3
Original Spanish: “Los antiguos y medievales tenían su denición mínima del hombre, en rigor y para nuestra vergüenza, no superada: es el animal racional.
Coincidimos con ella, la pena es que para nosotros se ha hecho no poco problemático saber claramente qué es ser animal y qué es ser racional” (VII, p. 121).
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“Human language belongs to ‘instruments’ or, stated in Platonic terms, it is an organon [...] Linguistics thus nds in the system of a
gestural nature, which is characteristic of language, the mental mode of
homo faber
, a creator and user of instruments” (p.67)
4
.
e soul, and even the body itself, is a tool of life: “It is mine because it is the immediate instrument I use to deal with other things
[...] It is the universal instrument, or organon, that I have; that is why my body is the supreme corporality” (X, p.221).
e way in which man generates this organon of making things, symbolised by the inuence of the monolith, remains out of reach.
According to Ortega’s view on this point, “History is narrative reason, a narration that explains, or an explanation that consists of
narration” (VI p. 539). He constantly impugns the phenomenological attempt to make deductions about the world based on the
Cartesian
cogito
, as established by the idealist programme of his master Husserl: “e consciousness of the existence of ‘I’, separate
from and before the environment, is only one thought among others of the man who was, and is, existing in the real world” (IV
p. 575). Even though man is not alone with reality in his circumstance (i.e., “the environment”, cf. Núñez Ladevéze and Núñez
Canal, 2022), reality is part of his circumstance. Human praxis must contend with the circumstance in which it is socialised, an
environment given beforehand that is considered natural, or “interpretations that man gives to what he rst encounters” (V p.
571), consisting of a set of beliefs and pre-established technical activities. Husserl calls it “the surrounding world” (1979 § 58 .),
and he adds “of life” (p. 210), and later, he calls it the “life-world” (1991 § 64 and 66).
e discrepancy with Husserl lies in the fact that this life-world cannot be subordinated to the consciousness of subjectivity.
“We do not live in order to think, but on the contrary, we think in order to live (V, 539; X, 147) [...] in order to subsist” (V, 543; X,
151). In order to survive in a given circumstance, we make a int axe, a cave painting, a stratagem, a rule of conduct, or a sacred
rite. We make what we have envisioned to create in order to overcome the external world we inhabit. Ideas are not outside in the
external world; they belong to the internal world; they are inside the mind. “Yet the idea of existing while being inside oneself is
the opposite of what we call living, which is to be outside oneself, ontologically consigned to the
other
, whether the
other
is called
the world or the circumstance” (VI p. 29). To be inside means that ideas are experienced and incorporated without thinking that
one has them. Ortega warns that the
cogito
is something we may or may not do when we think: “Reection, or consciousness, is
a possibility that is not an indispensable element of thought” (VIII, 201).
6. Common ground with Husserl: technique of the intentional act
To use an object requires thinking, or imagining something within oneself related to how to use something that is outside oneself.
Ortega accepts the analysis initiated by Husserl in the Logical Investigations. However, he objects to Husserl’s attempt to make
deductions about the reality of the world by prioritizing, along with so many others, the phenomenological act of consciousness,
or the
cogito
. “Being conscious of something is only an idea [...] life reason does not start from any idea, and that is why it is
not idealism” (VI p. 29). Phenomenology presents the ‘I’ of the noetic subject, a theoretical abstraction, as if it were a ‘ruling I’
that creates the existence of the object to which the intentional act refers. Bühler anticipated Ortega’s position by indicating the
following:
4
Original Spanish: “El lenguaje humano pertenece a los ‘instrumentos’, o –dicho en términos platónicos que es un
organon […].
La lingüística encuentra así en el
sistema de la naturaleza de signo propia del lenguaje el modelo mental del
homo faber,
un fabricante y usuario de instrumentos” (p.67).
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“Husserl’s phenomenology [...] does not accomplish it [his programme] because it constructs the entire world of signications in
reference to the subject” (p. 86).
ought becomes the rendering of life, not the other way round. Living is “an unconstrained event that happens to itself” (VIII, 229
.). As such, one must inquire into that which corresponds to this intentional “within”, and that which correlates to the rendering
of intention. Technique as a craft of bodily expressivity expands the observatory and globalises the pragmatic eld of interaction.
“Suddenly the world is limited, it is an orchard with walls” (III p. 652). He could have written, “e world is a global village”.
What Bühler and Ortega accept from Husserl is his analysis of the intentional act: we are conscious of what we ideate, which is
something that comes to our mind. What they say in opposition to Husserl is that this awareness that something ideated comes
to mind refers to a reality produced by the act of consciousness. If Bühler lurks furtively, Ortega goes to the very core of the issue
against the pretension of the Cartesian
cogito
. We do not exist because we doubt, we doubt because we exist. “Descartes doubts
the horse that he sees, not that he sees the horse” (IX p. 499). Neither life nor reality can be subordinated to a deduction: “e pain
I am thinking about does not truly hurt”; the noetic act of deduction or reection is one of the ways in which the characteristic of
a particular vital force is consummated (Ibid. VIII, p. 201 and 229 .). Excogitating is an activity of life that is produced by human
living. “Pure reason in its authentic state is vital reason” (IX p.518).
Ortega’s analysis separates two dimensions: the external, which corresponds to the reality of life; and the internal, or the act of
thinking. e idea
of something
, which is gestated
in
, and emerges
from
, is
cogitatio
. “Every thought, or
cogitatio
, has its object [...]
inking is transitive –a thought cannot think about itself– the most it can do is to think another thought dierent from the one
it is” (IX p. 507). erefore, Ortega accepts from Husserl the idea that the “
from
” of every idea originates from an inner technique
of comparison and unfolding (X, p.226): the intentional action of the subject, or noesis, consists of releasing the intention into
an object, or noema. Borel’s remark is very appropriate: “Reason is a technique of life*, and it loses all reality by wanting to be
only theory; reason does not choose its own problems, but it must solve those that life presents” (p. 38
5
). He observes the point
at which Ortega separates himself from Husserl, as the Madrid philosopher accepts, without refuting him, that his analysis of
intentionality is a theoretical construction, and that he does not recognise the reality of existence as the correlate of a deductive
act. He presents “all thought, even presumably the most contemplative, as a particular case” of historical technique. During the
academic course of 1932-1934, he points out that “thought is an instrument, an apparatus, a mechanism that man has in order to
leave himself and establish himself in that which is real” (IX 114). In the lessons of the following year, Ortega writes, “Philosophy is
not life, but a means of life; an organon; an instrument; in short, a technique [...] it is only a conceptual technique. Nothing more
and nothing less” (IX 198). Descartes did not analyse his own doubt: “My thought does not see itself while it is being performed”
(IX p. 504).
Intentio
, in an intentional act such as doubt, unfolds as an object in the consciousness, which may or may not refer
to something external to it (IX pp. 506-509). What he accepts from Husserl is that the correlate of the deductive act, the
cogito
,
is a notion of existing, the “
from
” of the internal reference that determines an inside, an
obiectum
, not the existence of the being
that excogitates, nor a reality external to the act of referring. He thus draws a dividing line that separates what is to be conceded
to idealism and what is to be recognised from a realism that is not naïve: “e world [...] does not exist by itself, apart from me.
5
e asterisk * indicates our own emphasis
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To believe the contrary was the realist error that we have forever overcome [...] e paradox of idealism is thus overcome without
relapsing into naive realism” (VIII p. 657). “Truth signies [...] a way out of our mere ideas into [...] authentic reality” (IX 113).
It is strange that Alonso does not include Bühler in his copious bibliography, and it is even more unusual that he does not include
Husserl, when Ortega himself considered him a master (IX p. 504), as mentioned in
El hombre y la gente
[Man and People],
and
studies him with more attention and respect than Bergson, Max Scheler, and of course, Heidegger:
“Consciousness is not a thing that refers to another thing, but rather is the act of referring to itself, or carrying within itself that which
is other than itself; in short, it means having an object and being aware of something. Resurrecting an evocative scholastic term, this
last and rst nature of consciousness has been called intentionality. Husserl proposes that whenever we use the term consciousness
we understand it as saying: “consciousness of”; all consciousness is consciousness of something” (VII 493)
6
.
Ortega accepted Husserl’s analysis of the noetic act after embracing the concept of intentionality of both Brentano and of the
scholastic interpretation. His respect for Brentano is explicit and perpetual. He does not rectify this essential point, as he sees
both of them as masters. He disassociates himself from Husserl’s Cartesian aliation, but not from Brentano’s realism.
“We reserve from all the variety of acts of consciousness [...] only one nal aspect they have in common: their nature of always
referring to something beyond themselves [...] let us call it ‘the contraposed’ [...] the object is everything that can be referred to in one
way or another. And vice versa: consciousness is referring to an object” (VII, p. 467)
7
.
A psychic act is a mental technique that consists of attributing a function to an
obiectum
to substitute for a thing that may be
internal or external, which is not in the object to which the act refers. e
cogito
is only one of many expressions of this technique.
7. Technique: intentional unfolding and self-absorption
By pinpointing technique as the focal point of coherence in his philosophy, Ortega’s current reviewers refute an instrumentalist
interpretation of his position. As Ortega arms, “Technique is assigned an activity which the former must achieve” (V p. 575);
“e vital programme is pre-technical” (V p. 579). García Madalena elaborates on this point (pp. 203 .). e new approach
focuses attention on the fact that Ortega “sees in self-absorption an absolute novelty”, which serves as a prelude to his concept of
technique. is leads Alonso to write that “technique is at the very origin of human life, not as a secondary consequence, but as
the main actor intertwined with self-absorption, and at the same level as the latter” (pp. 182 and 185). e relationship between
“self-absorption” and “technique” is the level at which the autonomy, originality, and systemisation of Ortega’s philosophy is
manifested, together with the multiple inuences it has been receiving and integrating.
According to Husserl’s analysis, the noetic act is a “contraposition” of the intention of a subject that unfolds into an object within
itself. Noesis is not an act of “making”, or an experience; it is an activity whose structure is present in every intentional experience
or action. e intentional unfolding of noesis is carried out in all conscious activity. is being so, in our opinion, it is possible to
6
Original Spanish: “La conciencia no es una cosa que se reera a otra, sino que es el referirse mismo, el llevar en sí lo otro que sí mismo, en suma, el tener un objeto,
el darse cuenta de algo. Resucitando un sugestivo término escolástico se ha llamado a este carácter último y primero de la conciencia: intencionalidad. Husserl
propone que siempre que usemos el término conciencia la entendamos como diciendo: «conciencia de...», toda conciencia es conciencia de algo” (VII 493).
7
Original Spanish: “Reservamos de toda esa variedad de actos de conciencia [...] solo lo que tienen de una última nota común: su carácter de referirse siempre a
algo más allá de ellos [...] llamémoslo «lo contrapuesto» [...] objeto es todo aquello a que cabe referirse de un modo o de otro. Y viceversa: conciencia es referirse
a un objeto” (VII, p. 467).
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apply Ockam’s razor in order to condense these two “co-original principles” of self-absorption and technique into one (Alonso p.
111), which dierentiates the human from the animal in Orteguian philosophy.
In distinguishing between activity and making, Ortega observes that “activity, whatever it may be, even the most intelligent, is
performed mechanically” (IX p. 185). “Action is acting within the setting of material things or of other men [...] erefore, there is
no authentic action if there is no thought, and there is no authentic thought if it is not followed by an action” (V, 543; IX pp. 49 .
IX185)
8
. In activity, “reason goes from being a humble instrument […] to becoming an arsenal of instruments”); observation tests
them and decides which one is the right one” (III p. 651). Self-absorption is making; it is not an “activity”
9
. It is a voluntary action
upon oneself to avoid any disturbance of one’s focus on the object of attention, or to deliberately suspend the activity and reverse
the contemplation onto the inner world of the consciousness preserved in the memory.
Intentio
unfolds its object in internalised
images and registers. It is equally intentional to attribute a function to a shing rod as to attribute a meaning to a signier. Both
are an unfolding of activity. “Suspending its direct preoccupation with things, detaching itself from its surroundings [...] attending
to its own privacy [...] and not to the
other
, or to things” (X, p. 142), in order to turn our attention to our intimacy; this is a vital act
that performs the same activity of attributing a function to an external object, only for the purpose of knowing how to adapt it to
oneself: “Action can only be spoken of insofar as it is to be governed by previous contemplation; and vice versa, as self-absorption
is merely a projection of future action” (X 147).
Ortega’s “self-absorption” encompasses attitudes, the activity of which consists of a technique of unfolding, or “contra positioning”,
the consciousness in order to constitute an object using memorised images as a correlate. “e perception of our thought requires,
in eect, its inner expression; rudimentary movements of the language [...]. Our body, from its inner part, reveals our own thought to
us” (VI p. 219)
10
. Analytically speaking, attitudes such as reection, contemplation, discouragement, introversion, examining one’s
conscience, meditation and self-analysis perform an intentional unfolding of activity. If this act of “going inside oneself” is a “virtual
or temporary retreat from the world” (X 143), in order to withdraw from the retained images of the inner world, its structure shares
the analytical form of all intentional activity of unfolding subjectivity: the contraposition of a memorised object onto the feelings
evoked by introversion, such as nostalgia, sadness, or grief. e intentional act of referring to oneself applies the same technique of
inner “contraposition” when it assigns a meaning to an external activity; for example, using a bone as a weapon or, when meditating,
understanding words by assigning a meaning to a signier. Another issue is why Ortega did not merge self-absorption and technique
beforehand, but instead dealt with them at dierent times in order to arrive at self-absorption after meditating on technique. “Man
is an insider, who must become an outsider” (247 V pp. 148 and 149; VIII p. 613). Every meaningful act becomes an instrument of
the activity of life.
By highlighting technique as the core of systemisation of Ortega’s discourse, the focus that supports the originality of his work with
regard to Heidegger is reinforced. In contrast to the technological pessimism of postmodernity, Ortega highlights the ambivalent
8
Ortega’s denition includes the following: “according to a preconceived plan in a previous contemplation or thought”. is addition is unnecessary. Man is self-
absorbed without the need to preconceive a plan, “preconceive a plan” is an added action (V 544).
9
Original Spanish: En la actividad “la razón pasa a ser humilde instrumento [...] se convierte en arsenal de instrumentos; la observación prueba éstos y decide
sobre cuál es el oportuno” (III p. 651). Ensimismarse es un hacer, no una “actividad”.
10
Original Spanish: “La percepción de nuestro pensamiento exige, en efecto, su expresión interior, movimientos embrionarios de la lengua [...] Nuestro cuerpo,
desde su faz interna, nos revela nuestro propio pensamiento” (VI p. 219).
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nature of technique and its compatibility with dierent cultural worlds (Vázquez and Núñez Ladevéze, 2020). His insight in
foreseeing global phenomena is more evident today than in the past. Alonso illustrates how Ortega’s assessment of “the revolt of
the masses” ties in with Bauman’s revision of Critical eory (p. 109 note. Cf. Núñez Ladevéze, Vázquez and Núñez Canal, 2020).
e cultural ambivalence of scientic technique is demonstrated by its transfer from the West to other life-worlds, yet without
westernising them. (Núñez Canal and Núñez Ladevéze (2021). “Instead of considering non-European cultures barbaric, we have
begun to respect them as lifestyles equivalent to our own” (III p. 648). e regressive revolt of the Western masses (Núñez Ladevéze,
Núñez Canal and Navarro, 2021), promoted by the critical deconstruction of their roots (Núñez Ladevéze, Núñez and Álvarez
2021), emphasises the transfer of Western hegemony to Eastern cultures: the West no longer rules the world (Núñez Ladevéze,
Núñez Canal and Álvarez de Mon, 2021).
8. Pragmatic realism
e question is to dene what is understood by the verb “to make”. Also distancing himself from Husserl, Bühler anticipates
Austin’s notion of the act of speaking when “he decisively describes speaking as an action, which is the entire
praxis
in Aristotelian
terms [...] the insertion of speaking into other meaningful conduct deserves a name of its own; these are known as
empractical
sayings [...] for all of us there are situations in which the problem of the moment, the task of the vital circumstance, is resolved by
speaking: linguistic actions [... is] the point that must be underscored in the concept of “verbal action”, and that which we must
not forget, is the fact that speaking [is] nished (accomplished) to the extent that it has fullled the mission of solving the practical
problem of the situation” (p. 72-73).
If
homo
practicus
is the one who knows how to take practical action, this is a correct denition. “ings are not originally
‘things’” [...] and my relation to them is pragmatic [...] a thing, with regard to
pragma
, is not something that exists by itself [...]
it is something that I shape for a certain purpose”(X p. 168). For that reason, “e world consists of a system of signicances,
matters, or
pragmata
” (X 175). Here we nd the connection between the philosophy of technique and pragmatism, which has
been addressed by the thesis of Gutiérrez Simón (2020). Circumstance “is about dealing with things”, yet not an established world
of things whose “existence is already given and achieved”, similar to that of Aristotelian thought. Instead, it is an environment
(also Aristotelian) where we have made
pragmata
of words and things, of our own body and soul, and of the body and soul of
others, or of vital
organon
. Hence, we nd Ortega’s distrust of the “kingdom of ends”, his rejection of idealism, and the disaection
with his Eurocentric investment in Heideggerian deconstruction, which eroded the cultural roots that have sustained it in the
West. e “paralytic” Heidegger (IX 518) promotes what Ortega is concerned about.
If man cannot establish himself as an objective for himself in the unpredictable, extreme reality of life, the attempt to treat others
as an objective will be useless. However, it is indeed possible to create a hierarchy of values in using one’s own body and those of
others. In contrast to Heidegger’s technological pessimism, Ortega’s uniqueness lies in seeing technique as the main determining
factor in the “plan of attack” that modies the circumstance, reacts against it, and subdues it. e external world, denaturalised
by technique and turned into an environment of aairs, is a pragmatic eld of interaction in which one can make logical sense
of individual initiatives, social relations, and the course of historicity that denaturalises the human habitat and pits communities
against each other in order to achieve or preserve cultural supremacy.
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e nal aim of this commentary is to nd acceptance for the incentive to take advantage of “an untapped lode” (Alonso p.
13), in order to do something that goes beyond what has been expressly stated without departing from the direction set by the
philosopher. We propose this contribution as an outline to place Ortega’s pragmatism and realism within his philosophical
concept of corporality. Although González Simón warns against the temptation to “limit it to allusions to what he calls pragmatic
elds” (p. 70), this is where its “enormous potential” lies. We have applied the communication system of the so-called “illustrious
book”,
Teoría del lenguaje
[eory of language] (VI pp. 598 .), to the Orteguian idea of “domain” which, although inspired by the
physics of his time, he nds in this work. Bühler distinguishes two domains; the “demonstrative” and the “symbolic” (1979 pp. 95,
98 .). Such notions introduce thematically innovative concepts that have been neglected in these reviews. By observing Bühler’s
diagram (pp. 44 .), as Ortega does, a distinction can be made between the domain of expression, or expressivity, emanating
from the speaker, which is the empirical eld that determines the observatory for the verication and refutation of theories,
and the universal pragmatic eld of interrelated matters shared on the Internet (Núñez Ladevéze, Núñez Canal and Álvarez,
2021). In these domains, reality goes hand in hand with a common circumstance, which is understood as an environment of
global interaction. ey are linked, through Bühler’s psychology, to that of the body as an “expressive eld” (X, p. 217), and to the
relationship between bodies as “pragmatic elds [...] where vitality and spirituality appear to us in the esh” (X, p. 230). Perhaps
the tension between Aristotelian idealism and realism is expressed in its most intense dialectical clarity in the last lecture of the
1933 academic course (IX pp. 119-122). Ultimately, the conditions of verication and refutation refer to what is within the reach
of the organic senses through means that modify that reach.
Understanding the body as a eld of expressivity is in line with the Orteguian view of social communication (Núñez Canal and
Núñez Ladevéze, 2021). If we give the name “eld of observation” to what we can observe, and “empirical eld” to what we can
test, verify or refute, then our “eld of knowledge” is ultimately subordinated to the rationalist-vitalist perspective of realistic
corporality. Both external and internal data reach us through the technical linkage to the sensory system that enhances or focuses
access to a reality that transcends such data. Knowledge depends on a perspective, but reality is present, as a given, which is
closer to what Aristotle thought and what is commonly accepted by people. “Reality is distrusted” (VII p.449), or in other words,
naive realism is not trusted because perspective makes the eld of observation relative in such a way that reality comprehended
directly through the senses is powerless to explain it. Galileo exclaimed, “
Eppur si muove
” [Yet it moves], as he leaned out from
his telescope. Our knowledge encompasses what we understand as reality outside of corporality, which is accessible through the
observation that instruments and measurements procure for the senses through technical mediation. e continuous broadening
of the empirical observatory, and of the eld of interaction where the unication of human engagement appears, may enable a
re-examination of the notion of “realism”. We are actually living beings in a world of real things, the observation of which has
been opened to the senses through apparatuses and theories that disproportionately extend their reach. We invent ideas that
we can use for whatever the world oers. ey are ours, but the reality of the world we inhabit remains the
other
that we are not,
which includes what we are, insofar as we perceive ourselves as observable objects within that world. In order to see more than
what is within reach we invent
unreal things
that adjust the theory outside of immediate sensory comprehension. ese unreal
things coincide with those that are real in becoming objects of an inner unfolding, “in being that to which we refer” (VII, p. 466),
Pythagorean mathematics, Euclidean geometry, Mendeleyev’s table, Newtonian or quantum physics, and the theory of relativity.
According to Ortega, every act of consciousness engenders the mental instrument of its object:
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“e thing we call “consciousness” is the strangest thing in the universe: for as it appears to us, it seems to consist of a combination
of the physical and the mental, and the perfect union of two totally distinct things: my act of
referring to
– and
that to which I refer
.
Moreover, it is necessary to well observe the total seriousness of the case: it is not that we recognise or discover
a posteriori
the absolute
dierence between the two things, but rather, the very fact of consciousness means that I nd before me something that is
distinct
and
otherly
” (VII, p. 466)
11
.
Technique as the artisanship of bodily expression expands the observatory and globalises the pragmatic eld of interaction.
“Suddenly the world is limited; it is an orchard with walls” (III p. 652). He could easily have written, “e world is a global village”.
It is possible to discern a two-way direction of technical progress that Ortega did not distinguish. On the one hand, the internal
incorporation of prostheses to remedy corporeality, which is no dierent than medical surgery as an ancestral technique that is
now being introduced into the body as cyborg technology (Núñez Ladevéze, Vázquez and Torrecillas, 2022). On the other hand,
the incorporation of gadgets has lengthened bodily members in order to broaden the empirical eld of observation and extend
the pragmatic domain of global interaction through the Internet. Ortega can be included in this discourse as a prognosticator of
media ecology (Núñez Ladevéze and Núñez Canal, 2021). Without the aid of applied scientic theory as a tool, Aristotle could
not understand the extent to which the technical instruments we devise modify the eld of observation of the senses, the eld of
experience of our circumstance, or the pragmatic eld of human interaction, which are now globalised on the Internet. McLuhan
understood this well when he referred to the fact that technical means prolong the bodily senses and make man’s nature a history
of technique (Núñez Canal and Núñez Ladevéze, 2021).
9. Acknowledgements
is paper has been translated by Charles Edmond Arthur.
10. Bibliographic references
Alonso, M. (2021).
Ortega y la técnica
. CSIC, 2021.
Borel, J. P. (1959).
Raison et vie chez Ortega y Gasset.
Neuchatel: La Baconnière, Citamos por trad. esp. (1969)
Introducción a Or
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tega y Gasset
. Madrid: Guadarrama.
Bühler, K. (1979).
Teoría del lenguaje.
Madrid: Alianza.
Conill, J. (2013). “La victoria de la técnica”, según Ortega y Gasset (una alternativa a Heidegger).
Revista Internacional de Tecnolo
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gía, Conocimiento y Sociedad
2(1), pp. 43-58.
García Madalena, A. (2019).
El centauro ontológico. Idea y sentido de la técnica en Ortega y Gasset
. Tesis doctoral, UCM.
González Galán, F. (2021).
La recepción de José Ortega y Gasset en España
. Madrid: Verbum.
11
Original Spanish: “Esa cosa que llamamos «conciencia» es la más rara que hay en el universo: pues tal y como se nos presenta parece consistir en la
conjunción, complexión o íntima, perfecta unión de dos cosas totalmente distintas: mi acto de
referirme a
–y
aquello a que me reero
. Y nótese bien toda
la gravedad del caso: no es que nosotros
a posteriori
reconozcamos o descubramos la absoluta diferencia entre ambas cosas, sino que el hecho mismo de
conciencia consiste en que yo hallo ante mí algo como distinto y otro” (VII, p. 466).
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Gutiérrez Simón, R. (2020).
Ortega y Gasset y el pragmatismo norteamericano.
Tesis doctoral, UCM.
Núñez Canal, M. y Núñez Ladevéze, L. (2021). “Understanding the revolt:
Man the technician
in global rhetoric”.
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& Society, 34
(4), pp. 33-47.
https://doi.org/10.15581/003.34.4.33-47
Núñez Ladevéze , L.; Vázquez Barrio, T. y Núñez Canal, M. (2020). El tránsito a la modernidad líquida global: la
rebelión de las
masas
en el
vecindario indenido
.
Arbor
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