Summary of Ortega y Gasset en 3 minutos

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Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish philosopher who was influential in the 20th century. He believed that the "I" is constituted by the world around it, and that only through a partial understanding of that world can I be complete. His work had a significant impact on authors of the Generation of 1927.

• 00:00:00 Ortega y Gasset is the intellectual figure of Spanish culture in the 20th century. He was born in 1883 in Madrid, and raised in a liberal bourgeois family with a wide education. He studied philosophy and took courses in Germany in the early 1900s, during which time the dominant philosophical trend was Idealism, as opposed to Hegelianism. He was also a student of Husserl, the father of the Phenomenology movement. Ortega's vocations as a teacher and journalist are noteworthy. He was aware of the cultural lag of Spain compared to Europe, and had close relationships with authors of the Generation of 1898. His work had a significant impact on authors of the Generation of 1927. He was born between these two generations, and bridged them. Ortega's writing style is clear and accessible. He said that clarity is the courtesy of the philosopher. His most famous sentence, "I am I and my circumstances," is based on this idea. It is a new idea in philosophy: the existence of an abstract, isolated "I" that does not exist in reality. The "I" is constituted by the world around it. Only through a partial understanding of that world can I be complete.