Jos� Ortega y Gasset was born 9 May 1883 in Madrid.

His father was director of the

newspaper El Imparcial, which belonged to the family of his mother, Dolores Gasset.
The family was definitively of Spain's end-of-the-century liberal and educated
bourgeoisie. The liberal tradition and journalistic engagement of his family had a
profound influence in Ortega y Gasset's activism in politics.

Ortega was first schooled by the Jesuit priests of San Estanislao in Miraflores del
Palo, M�laga (1891�1897). He attended the University of Deusto, Bilbao (1897�98)
and the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the Central University of Madrid (now
Complutense University of Madrid) (1898�1904), receiving a doctorate in Philosophy.
From 1905 to 1907, he continued his studies in Germany at Leipzig, Nuremberg,
Cologne, Berlin and, above all Marburg. At Marburg, he was influenced by the neo-
Kantianism of Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp, among others.

On his return to Spain in 1908, he was appointed professor of Psychology, Logic and
Ethics at the Escuela Superior del Magisterio de Madrid[5] and in October 1910 he
was named full professor of Metaphysics at Complutense University of Madrid, a
vacant seat previously held by Nicol�s Salmer�n.

In 1917 he became a contributor to the newspaper El Sol, where he published, as a

series of essays, his two principal works: Espa�a invertebrada (Invertebrate Spain)
and La rebeli�n de las masas (The Revolt of the Masses). The latter made him
internationally famous. He founded the Revista de Occidente [es] in 1923, remaining
its director until 1936. This publication promoted translation of (and commentary
upon) the most important figures and tendencies in philosophy, including Oswald
Spengler, Johan Huizinga, Edmund Husserl, Georg Simmel, Jakob von Uexk�ll, Heinz
Heimsoeth, Franz Brentano, Hans Driesch, Ernst M�ller, Alexander Pf�nder, and
Bertrand Russell.

Elected deputy for the Province of Le�n in the constituent assembly of the Second
Spanish Republic, he was the leader of a parliamentary group of intellectuals known
as Agrupaci�n al Servicio de la Rep�blica[6] ("The Grouping at the Service of the
Republic"), which supported the platform of Socialist Republican candidates,[7] but
he soon abandoned politics, disappointed.

Leaving Spain at the outbreak of the Civil War, he spent years of exile in Buenos
Aires, Argentina until moving back to Europe in 1942.[5] He settled in Portugal by
mid-1945 and slowly began to make short visits to Spain. In 1948 he returned to
Madrid, where he founded the Institute of Humanities, at which he lectured.[8] Upon
his return to Spain, he often privately expressed his hostility to the Franco
regime, stating that the government did not deserve anyone's confidence and that
his beliefs were "incompatible with Franco."[9]

Philosophy
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Liberalism
The Revolt of the Masses is Ortega's best known work. In this book he defends the
values of meritocratic liberalism reminiscent of John Stuart Mill against attacks
from both communists and right-wing populists.[10] Ortega likewise shares Mill's
fears of the "tyranny of the majority" and the "collective mediocrity" of the
masses which threaten individuality, free thought, and protections for minorities.
[10] Ortega characterized liberalism as a politics of "magnanimity."[10]

Ortega's rejection of the Spanish Conservative Party under Antonio C�novas del
Castillo and his successors was unequivocal, as was his distrust of the Spanish
monarchy and Catholic Church.[10][11] However, again in a manner similar to Mill,
Ortega was open-minded toward certain socialists and non-Marxist forms of
socialism, and even complimented Pablo Iglesias Posse as a "lay saint."[12] Under
the influence of German social democrats such as Paul Natorp and Hermann Cohen, he
adopted a communitarian ontology and could be critical of capitalism, particularly
the laissez-faire variant, declaring that "nineteenth-century capitalism has
demoralized humanity" and that it had "impoverished the ethical consciousness of
man."[13]

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"Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia"
For Ortega y Gasset, philosophy has a critical duty to lay siege to beliefs in
order to promote new ideas and to explain reality. To accomplish such tasks, the
philosopher must�as Husserl proposed�leave behind prejudices and previously
existing beliefs, and investigate the essential reality of the universe. Ortega y
Gasset proposes that philosophy must overcome the limitations of both idealism (in
which reality centers around the ego) and ancient-medieval realism (in which
reality is outside the subject) to focus on the only truthful reality: "my
life"�the life of each individual. He suggests that there is no 'me' without
things, and things are nothing without me: "I" (human being) cannot be detached
from "my circumstance" (world). This led Ortega y Gasset to pronounce his famous
maxim "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" ("I am I and my circumstance") (Meditaciones
del Quijote, 1914)[14] which he always put at the core of his philosophy.

For Ortega y Gasset, as for Husserl, the Cartesian 'cogito ergo sum' is
insufficient to explain reality. Therefore, the Spanish philosopher proposes a
system wherein the basic or "radical" reality is "my life" (the first yo), which
consists of "I" (the second yo) and "my circumstance" (mi circunstancia). This
circunstancia is oppressive; therefore, there is a continual dialectical
interaction between the person and his or her circumstances and, as a result, life
is a drama that exists between necessity and freedom.

In this sense Ortega y Gasset wrote that life is at the same time fate and freedom,
and that freedom "is being free inside of a given fate. Fate gives us an inexorable
repertory of determinate possibilities, that is, it gives us different destinies.
We accept fate and within it we choose one destiny." In this tied down fate we must
therefore be active, decide and create a "project of life"�thus not be like those
who live a conventional life of customs and given structures who prefer an
unconcerned and imperturbable life because they are afraid of the duty of choosing
a project.

Raciovitalismo
With a philosophical system that centered around life, Ortega y Gasset also stepped
out of Descartes' cogito ergo sum and asserted "I live therefore I think". This
stood at the root of his Kantian-inspired perspectivism,[1] which he developed by
adding a non-relativistic character in which absolute truth does exist and would be
obtained by the sum of all perspectives of all lives, since for each human being
life takes a concrete form and life itself is a true radical reality from which any
philosophical system must derive. In this sense, Ortega coined the terms "raz�n
vital" ("vital reason" or "reason with life as its foundation") to refer to a new
type of reason that constantly defends the life from which it has surged and
"raciovitalismo", a theory that based knowledge in the radical reality of life, one
of whose essential components is reason itself. This system of thought, which he
introduces in History as System, escaped from Nietzsche's vitalism in which life
responded to impulses; for Ortega, reason is crucial to create and develop the
above-mentioned project of life.