OBJECTIVISM See NATURALISM.

ONTOLOGY, FORMAL & MATERIAL

& MATERIAL ONTOLOGY.

See FORMAL

ONTOLOGY, FUNDAMENTAL

ONTOLOGY.

See FUNDAMENTAL

ORDINARY LANGUAGE ANALYSIS "Lin-

guistic analysis" has been used to designate a number of

different philosophical schools. In its broadest sense it

has included LOGICAL PosmvisM; logica! behaviorism;

logica! atomism; formal analysis and ideal language

philosophy; and ordinary language philosophy. In its

narrower sense it frequently designates only the last

two of these, and it is with the latter that we shali be

primarily concemed. At the turn of the 20th century, philosophers were

looking for new paradigms and new methods for phi­

losophy. The phenomenal success of the natural sci­

ences provided a seductive model. Scientific theories

were clearly stated, carefuliy argued, and appeared to

be progressing toward consensus. Some philosophers

looked on these characteristics as providing a standard

for philosophy as well. They urged an emphasis on

clarity, attention to logic and argument- ali issuing

in a focus on the structure and use of language. But

the particular ways in which philosophers attended to

language differed in teliing respects.

The logica! positivists, the logica! behaviorists, and

the philosophers involved in constructing artificiallan­

guages ali shared one basic assumption: that ordinary,

everyday language was either the source ofphilosophi­

cal problems or was at least incapable ofresolving such

problems. For the logica! positivists, it contained some

meaningless statements that purported tobe metaphysi­

cal; for the logica! behaviorists, it contained misleading

mental terms that needed to be reduced to behavioral

equivalents; and for the artificiallanguage enthusiasts,

interested in constructing a logically perfect language

for philosophic use, the syntax and much of the se­

mantics of ordinary language were misleading. Logica!

atomists, on the other hand, saw in portions of it ( e.g.,

atomic and molecular propositions) a reflection ofthe

structure of reality (atomic and molecular facts). For

the first group, ordinary language was unsystematic

and deceptive; for the second group, careful analysis

showed that some of it mirrored the structure of facts.

In contrast to both groups, ordinary language phi­

losophy was committed to the view that everyday lan­

guage is philosophicaliy useful and important as it

stands, but does not offer anything like an unambigu­

ous reflection of reality. Ordinary language philosophy

abandoned the quest for absolute logica! precision and

for certainty about the nature of reality. To see how

some of the details of the view were advanced, con­

sider two of its leading proponents- Wittgenstein and

Austin. (Some other philosophers whose work !ies at

least partialiy within ordinary language philosophy in­

clude Gilbert Ryle, Stuart Hampshire, P. F. Strawson,

and John Searle.) LUDWIG W!TTGENSTEIN, an Austrian by birth, was ed­

ucated at Cambridge University in England by G. E.

Moore, Bertrand Russeli, and others involved in the

founding of ciassicaJ ANAL YTIC PHILOSOPHY. In 1922

he published Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, a work

squarely within the tradition of logica! atomism. But

by the early 1930s his views had begun to change dra­

maticaliy. In 1933, he dictated a set of class notes that

were circu1ated in a blue cover, and carne to be known

as The Blue Book. Two years !ater he dictated a second

set of notes; these circulated with a brown cover, and

were known as The Brown Book. Together, these pro­

vided the raw material for his enormously influential

book, Philosophical Investigations, which was pub­

lished posthumously. In these three works the "!ater"

Wittgenstein argued strenuously against his own ear­

lier logica! atomism and argued for the philosophical

importance oflooking carefully at language as it func­

tions in everyday life.

Early in The Blue Book Wittgenstein claims that phi­

losophy's efforts to mimic science, by explaining and

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, Jose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, 503 Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. ?.aner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

504 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

generalizing, lead into "complete darkness." Philoso­phy's primary business is to describe, not to explain or to reduce anything to anything else. This in itself marks a decisive departure from the spirit of the lin­guistic philosophy practiced earlier in the century. It is also a point of convergence with phenomenology. Clarity will continue to bea standard for ordinary lan­guage analysis, but complete precision, and progress toward explaining reality, are now said to ha ve impor­tant limits.

One motivation for this softening of the standards borrowed from the sciences lay in Wittgenstein's atti­tude toward concepts. For the tradition of Leibniz and Kant, concepts were thought to have sharply defined boundaries. Wittgenstein challenges this notion, writ­ing in The Blue Book, "We are unable clearly to circum­scribe the concepts we use; not because we don 't know their real definition, but because there is no real 'def­inition' to them." His view that concepts have fuzzy edges, and that the meaning they have can vary from one context to another, dominates virtually ali of his !ater work.

In Philosophical Investigations he uses the concept "game" to illustrate his point - there are bal! games, board games, solitary games, games with scores and games without scores, games with winners and losers and games without winners and losers, etc. That is to say, the concept "game" covers a number of different cases that ha ve overlapping similarities but do not ha ve any one essential and defining characteristic. They are connected only by a set of"family resemblances." It is important to notice that "game" is only one illustration of his more general claim. The concept of LANGUAGE

itself, according to Wittgenstein, is best understood as a series of overlapping games that can be played, for which there are a series of conventional rules but no one essential definition.

In The Brown Book Wittgenstein constructs a long series of possible "language games," many of which exclude elements that are part of our own ordinary lan­guage but that he takes nonetheless to be reasonably usable languages. Some ofthese he creates completely out of commands, part ofhis effort to show that naming is not the only, nor even the most important, function of language. His point seems to be that the elements actually involved in ordinary language are largely con­tingent.

Furthermore, he argues that the psychological states thought to accompany aur use of language are also quite contingent. An interna! state of meaning or un­derstanding or knowing is not obviously necessary, on his view, in explaining the competent use oflanguage in ali cases. In the case of learning and using a language, for example, Wittgenstein considers what is involved infollowing a rule. He argues that if, in order to ex­plain how one follows a rule for language-use, one's final appeal is to the mental states of individuals -for example, their intentions- ali manner of diverse interpretations ofthe rule can be made plausible. Ulti­mately, one needs to rely on social practice to decide how particular rules are meant tobe followed. And o ne has then to look to behavior rather than to individual mental states in order to decide when the rule is being followed.

While he makes repeated attempts to move discus­sions of understanding, interpretation, meaning, etc., away from notions ofinternal mental states and toward behavior- relating them, for example, to being able to go on, being able to compare one (externa!) thing with another, etc. -it is probably an oversimplification to depict his view simply as behaviorism. He does not deny the possibility of interna! mental states, but he is at pains to show that we can explain what needs to be explained about language-use without having recourse to them.

Wittgenstein maintains that the same ftexibility that attends our use of the concept "game" also prevails for concepts like "understanding," "interpreting," "in­tending," etc. There is not some one interna! abject that these terms name, an abject that might be "pointed to" introspectively. The terms are used in connection with a wide variety of situations and behaviors, and any insight into what the terms mean will require that these variable factors be taken into account. Mental concepts, like most ofthe others, have fuzzy, ftexible, overlapping boundaries.

In addition, Wittgenstein suggests that some mental states have a character analogous to what phenome­nologists would cal! a "temporal horizon." States like believing or loving or hop ing cannot, he says, last only for an instant. They require a certain duration and nor­mally get their meaning as part of a larger context. That, he claims, is an additional reason why they do not lend themselves to simple introspection. "Do not

ORDINARY LANGUAGE ANALYSIS 505

try to analyse your own inner experience ... what is

at issue is the fixing of concepts," he writes in his

Philosophical Investigations. One ofthe reasons that Wittgenstein argues for flex­

ibility in our understanding of concepts is that he sees

the MEANING of words as something that we give to

them. Meanings do not descend from some source in­dependent of us. And we give words their meanings

in the context ofvariable "language games" and broad

"forms of life" that develop and fade. Thus there is no

reason to assume that the meanings we give to words

will be fixed within rigid boundaries. Essential defini­

tions will be rare, occurring mostly in areas like logic

and mathematics. But even here one needs to take ac­

count ofWittgenstein's view ofthe a priori: "But ifit is

a priori, that means that it is a form of account which

is very convincing to us." Even the a priori loses every trace of immutability.

Against logica! atomism he argues that one cannot

understand language by approaching it atomistically;

words must be taken in the context of a rich and vari­

able set of relations- relations to other words, to the

conventions ofthe particular language game, to the sit­

uations in which they are used, to the forms oflife from

which they emerge. On his view, ordinary language be­

comes philosophically problematic only when one tries to abstract it from these normal relations.

J. L. Austin also argues for the philosophical im­

portance of ordinary language. Like Wittgenstein, he opposes both logica! atomism and the philosophical

importance of constructing artificial languages. What

then is the philosophical task in relation to language? In

his Philosophical Papers (1961) he writes that words

are "our tools, and ... we should use clean tools ... [ and] realize their inadequacies and arbitrariness, and

... relook at the world without blinkers." Ordinary

language, on his view, will not simply tell one, unam­

biguously, about reality, but if one uses it with care

and attention, it is likely to provide some valuable dis­

tinctions and connections that have been found useful

through generations ofuse. Here there is a convergence

with HERMENEUTICAL PHENOMENOLOGY.

Austin agrees with Wittgenstein that the meaning

of terms is a function of the context of their use. In

this connection he emphasizes the importance of con­

sidering the meaning of statements or utterances and

not simply sentences or isolated words. He expands on

the notion of the use of an utterance to ca li attention to

what he termed the "illocutionary forces" oflanguage­

use. Among these he gives special consideration to

the "constati ve" and "performative" uses of language.

The former includes ali ofthe ways in which we assert

things. The latter, the performative use, includes ali the

things that we do simply by our use of words- like

promising, bequeathing, commanding, etc. - and as

he eventually shows, even stating and asserting ha ve a

performative aspect. Austin 's point is that to link the

meaning of language to its use requires that one take

full account of the many dimensions of its use. The

different contexts in which individual words can be

used is important in understanding their meanings -

he gives a fine example ofthis in his discussion ofthe

term "real." But taking account of the ways in which

whole utterances can be used, the total "speech act,"

is equally important if one is fully to understand the

meaning of a piece of language.

Austin's discussion of language is particularly in­

structive in eliminating a common misconception

about ordinary language philosophy. It has sometimes

been suggested that the latter concerns itself solely with discussing pieces oflanguage, and ignores ali the more

significant problems of traditional philosophy. Austin 's

book Sense and Sensibilia (1962) makes it quite clear

that this is untrue. In it he uses a detailed analysis of various terms of ordinary language- "real," "look,"

"illusion," etc.- to argue that phenomenalism, ofthe

sort offered by A. J. Ayer and others, is based on a

mistaken use of terms of ordinary language. His goal

is to dislodge a misguided theory of perception; his

tools include an analysis of ordinary language. Simi­

larly, he uses the view he shares with Wittgenstein­

namely, that not ali nouns must name something- to

argue against the existence of universals - including

the universal "meaning."

Again, like Wittgenstein, he acknowledges that or­

dinary language is sometimes not adequate to our

needs. Austin himself coined the term "performative"

because he found no other term that captured the spe­

cific aspect of speech that he wanted to highlight. In

deciding a particular case, however, one needs to pay

close attention to the facts of both experience and lin­

guistic conventions. In Philosophical Papers he writes:

"We are using a sharpened awareness of words to

sharpen our perception of, though not as the final ar-

506 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

biter of, the phenomena. For this reason 1 think it might be better to use, for this way of doing philosophy ... 'linguistic phenomenology' ."

This well-known statement by Austin suggests that ordinary language philosophy shares some common ground with phenomenology. And indeed it does. Both the ordinary language philosophers and the phenome­nologists argue for the importance of context, of re­lations; both groups oppose atomistic approaches to philosophical issues. And for both groups (including the !ater work of EDMUND HUSSERL and Wittgenstein) this means looking at problems in the context of a lived world, a cu! ture. Both schools are unwilling to take the model of science or of logic as the only valid frame­work for doing philosophy. Furthermore, both groups place heavy emphasis on description. On the one hand, this means an effort to avoid imposing theoretical pre­suppositions on their investigations; on the other hand, it also means somewhat less emphasis on argumentand proof, and more emphasis on laying out the data clearly for others to see for themselves. Philosophy is seen by both Husserl and the ordinary language philosophers as a method rather than as a body of doctrine.

Some phenomenologists, notably the early MARTIN

HEIDEGGER, shared with ordinary language philosophers a valuing of the commonplace. Both find everyday things (whether hammers or speech) tobe philosoph­ically relevant and revelatory. Furthermore, Wittgen­stein, MAURICE MERLEAU-PONTY, and the !ater Heidegger ali argue for the inseparability ofthought and language (a view apparently not shared by Husserl). Merleau­Ponty also shares with ordinary language philosophy an emphasis on the social dimension of language; one begins, he says, to understand a foreign language by "taking part in a communallife." He analogizes one's use of language to one's "use" of one's own soov: neither requires an interna! mental act to represent it. Language is simply part of the "equipment" that one can reach toward and use.

There are, however, important differences between phenomenology and ordinary language philosophy. These become more apparent when one considers the philosophers individually. Where Husserl, for exam­ple, looks for an absolutely certain starting point for his philosophy, the ordinary language philosophers aban­don such a quest. (But then, so too do some of the !ater phenomenologists.) Where Husserl is concerned

to uncover essences, universals, and commonalities, both Wittgenstein and Austin are committed to un­covering particularities, differences, and distinctions. Where Husserl takes concepts to have clean bound­aries, Wittgenstein and Austin see them as far less tidy.

On Husserl's view, one task ofphenomenologyis to uncover the defining characteristics of diverse mental states by intuiting and then describing them. Wittgen­stein, by contrast, argues that reflection on our mental states is not what reveals their meaning. Rather, we learn their meaning by seeing how the words we use to describe them play roles in different language games and involve differing types of contexts and behaviors. For Husserl, the act ofmeaning-giving on the part ofthe individual EGO is of central importance; for Wittgen­stein and Austin, meaning is largely a function of so­cial contexts and conventions. And for them, meanings are not entities of any sort, while for Husserl they are "ideal" (i.e., timeless) entities. When Husserl does talk about language, and he rarely does that in the context ofhis phenomenology, he is primarily concerned with its logica! structure rather than with the web of dis­tinctions embodied in its everyday uses. He speaks, in fact, of the desirability of having an unambiguous language in which to articulate precisely the insights revealed by his phenomenological analyses- a view profoundly at odds with ordinary language philosophy. While Husserl is heavily committed to the importance of the a priori, Wittgenstein counts it as no more than psychologically compelling. And although Austin, like Husserl, opposes skepticism, unlike Husserl he does not opt for the cogito as a certain starting point ofphi­losophy. Rather, he tries to undercut the very sort of argument that allows skepticism to gain a foothold in the first place- the argument from illusion.

In the case of Heidegger, too, there are significant divergences from ordinary language philosophy. For him, a careful investigation of language will help to uncover the true meaning of Being, while for Wittgen­stein it will help to uncover the mistaken notion that language has some privileged relation to reality, a re­lation that is revelatory of the nature of that reality. While both Wittgenstein and Heidegger refer to the importance of the relation between understanding po­etry and understanding language, Wittgenstein is not concerned, as Heidegger is, with the originality of the use oflanguage in poetry, nor with its capacity to reveal

JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET 507

Being. Rather, he focuses on the idea that the under­

standing ofpoetry carries with it a slightly different and

important sense of "understanding" than it does in the

context ofunderstanding, say, scientific prose. For Hei­

degger (and at least the early Husserl), one discovers

the meaning of terms. With Heidegger this frequently

involves tracing the etymology of the term. Wittgen­

stein and Austin, by contrast, take the meanings of

words to be human constructs. For them, etymology

is entirely legitimate, but it is not taken as revealing

the "true" meaning ofwords; it might simply highlight

some meanings that ha ve been forgotten or altered over

time. Finally, for Heidegger language is not so much

an object to be analyzed as it is one of our vehicles

for being-in-the-world. It is, as he says enigmatically,

the "house ofBeing." Ordinary language philosophers

would be likely to reply that such a phrase uses ordi­

nary words in a most extraordinary way.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Austin, J. L. Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Clarendon, 1961. ~. Sense and Sensibilia. London: Oxford University Press,

1962. ~. How to Do Things with Words. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 1975. Durfee, Harold, ed. Analytic Philosophy and Phenomen­

ology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976. Dwyer, Philip. Sense and Subjectivity. A Study o{Wittgenstein

and Merleau-Ponty. Leiden: Brill, 1990. Gier, Nicholas. Wittgenstein and Phenomenology. A Compar­

ative Study of the Later Wittgenstein. Husserl, Heidegger; and Merleau-Ponty. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1981.

Heidegger, Martin. Unterwegs zur Sprache. Pfullingen: Neske, 1959; On the Way to Language. Trans. Peter Hertz. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

~. Poetry, Language, and Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.

Husserl, Edmund. E1fahrung und Urteil [1939]. Ed. Ludwig Landgrebe. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1954; Experienceand Judgment. Trans. James. S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks. Evanston, IL: Northwestem University Press, 1975.

Mays, Wolfe, and S. C. Brown, eds. Linguistic Analysis and Phenomenology. Lewisburg, PA, n.d. [proceedings of 1969 symposia ].

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Signes. Paris: Gallimard, 1960; Signs. Trans. Richard C. McCleary. Evanston, IL: North­western University Press, 1964.

Reeder, Harry. Language and Experience: Descriptions of Living Language in Husserl and Wittgenstein. Lan­ham, MD: Center for Advanced Research in Phenomen­ology/University Press of America, 1984.

Rorty, Richard, ed. The Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in

Philosophica/ Method. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 196 7.

Spiegelberg, Herbert. "'Linguistic Phenomenology': John Austin and Alexander Pfander." In his The Context of the Phenomenological Movement. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1981, 83-92.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. The Blue and Brown Books. New York: Harper & Row, 1958.

~. Philosophical lnvestigations. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan, 1958.

SUZANNE CUNNINGHAM

Loyola University of Chicago

JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET Ortega (1883-

1955), was bom and died in Madrid. After completing

his studies at the University of Madrid in 1904, he did

postdoctoral work in Germany ( 1905-8, 1911 ), pri­

marily at Marburg and especially with Herman Cohen

( 1842-1918). In 1912, he became familiar with pheno­

menology as practiced by EDMUND HUSSERL in his Lo­

gische Untersuchungen ( 1900-1901 ). After that, his

works were to contain numerous references to ques­

tions and authors of phenomenological import. His

broadly conceived and far-reaching pedagogica! effort

~implemented by means ofhis teaching at the Univer­

sity of Madrid (1911-36) and elsewhere, his writings

and lectures (leamed and semi-popular), his journal,

Revista de Occidente (first period: 1923-36), and the

publishing house by the same name that he founded

- permitted him to give shape to and foster a phe­

nomenologically oriented movement throughout SPAIN

ANO LATIN AMERICA.

Ortega's early and generous reception of pheno­

menology was not uncritical. By the time of his first

book, Meditaciones de! Quijote ( 1914), he had arrived

at the conviction that idealism, as the philosophical

doctrine and attitude proper to the modern era, had al­

ready exhausted its historical potentialities. Hence he

saw his philosophical task as essentially involving the

critique and overcoming of idealism, both classical and

phenomenological, and therefore of modemity.

Since the time of Descartes, conscious experience

had primordially meant self-consciousness or reflec­

tion. This axiom was rooted in the search for the

indubitable, which could be recognized by its non­

dependent sta tus. In the eyes of Descartes and his foi-

Lester Embree, Elizabeth A. Behnke, David Carr, J. Claude Evans, iose Huertas-Jourda, Joseph J. Kockelmans, William R. McKenna, Algis Mickunas, Jitendra Nath Mohanty, Thomas M. Seebohm, Richard M. Zaner ( eds.), Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.

508 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

lowers, this required denying the world an absolute character, for one gains access to the WORLD not directly but by means of consciousness, which is thus taken as the non-dependent sphere (;_,Que es filosofia? [What is philosophy?, 1929]). This notion, which corresponds precisely to Husserl's understanding of Cartesianism, had to be corrected by the founder of phenomenology as the expression of a faulty description. Consciousness was indeed self-consciousness, but only through and in conjunction with the primordial phenomenon ofbeing "conscious of' something or other. Yet this duality is not tantamount to the availability of two realities that would subsist si de by side, even if one (consciousness) refers to the other (world); it is instead, as Ortega put it in his lnvestigaciones psicol6gicas ( 1915-16), the event consisting in one referring to the other, which is what Husserl called INTENTIONALITY.

Now, just as Husserl subjected Descartes's under­standing of the nature of the absolute dimension of experience to a critique that, descriptively speaking, showed it tobe incomplete, so too did Ortega endeavor to establish that Husserl 's thesis to the effect that the fundamental fact is the dual unity of consciousness and world was likewise essentially inadequate. As he put it in La idea de principio en Leibniz ( 194 7), Husserl 's phenomenological philosophy, or the idealistic inter­pretation of it, is nota pure description but involves an hypothesis, namely, that an act of consciousness is real, but its object is only intentiona!, and thus irreal. Such a position is not in keeping with the goal pursued by philosophers, who are basically after some primordial, exemplary, ultimately firm reality to which they may refer ali others, i.e., something that can serve as their foundation.

That notwithstanding, Husserl's effort was not seen by Ortega as being either groundless or arbitrary. On the contrary, he understood Husserl tobe trying to iden­tify something that the philosopher would not posit, but just the opposite- namely, that which would be im-posed on him, something therefore that would be self-posited, something "positive" or "given." This he

believed to have found in "pure consciousness," i.e., in the contemplative regard in which one is confined to the self-aware presentation ofthings as they appear, whatever their sort. But then the world would be re­duced to sense, phenomenon, or pure intelligibility, as the correlate and outcome ofthe freely executed act of

consciousness that Husserl in Jdeen zu einer reinen Phanomenologie und phanomenologischen Philoso­

phie 1 ( 1913) called the phenomenological EPOCHE AND

REDUCTION. Equivalently, Husserl took consciousness as being relative only to itself, and what appears thereto (i.e., the world) as being relative to the acts of con­sciousness ("Apuntes sobre el pensamiento," 1941 ). But that is altogether impossible. Ortega's critique of the notion of epoche or reduction hinges on the dis­tinction between a primary and a reflective act of con­sciousness and the adequate descriptive account ofthe difference between them. According to him, a primary or straightforward act of consciousness is naive or un­reflective, and therefore it is a performance in which people believe in what they think about and effectively will what they will, etc. In other words, it is the un­mediated access to the world, for to such an act nothing is just an object; rather, everything is a rea1ity. Now, if this is correct, one is already in possession of what Husserl was looking for, i.e., the self-positing or ab­solute dimension of experience, which cannot be the outcome of an ad hoc intellectual process in which one would be involved subsequently, as is the case with one's arriving at the world qua phenomenon as the result of carrying out the phenomenological reduction.

Naturally, Ortega did not mean thereby that one is unable to perform an act of consciousness by means of which one would deal with a preceding act in one of severa! possible ways ( e.g., analysis or description). Quite the contrary: one can even go, in fact, so far as to cancel it with respect to the truth claims it makes by considering it, say, as an error or an illusion. But one cannot un do, de-realize, or suspend the reality of a prior act, if for no other reason than the reality of such an act, as concluded, is no longer able to be altered.

In Ortega 's opinion, here in !ies the fundamental rea­son why idealism must be overcome. The ultimate fail­ure of description, which is part and parcel of that doc­trine, even in its exacting phenomenological version, amounts to this: that it approaches the given as if it were a "primary and naive act of consciousness," which is

precisely what it is not. Rather, it is reality itself, the living situation in which the real is rendered available non-mediately. Accordingly, it is Ortega's position in his "Prologo para alemanes" (1934) that ali idealists

presuppose the real by making their departure on its basis and then, by placing themselves in another real-

JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET 509

ity, proceed to characterize the primary act as a mere

act of consciousness. Moreover, the idealistic turn of

phenomenology is logically contradictory, for were it

practicable, then the result would be that reflection

would do away with the most essential feature of the primary act, to wit: its character ofreality, thus showing

itself to be incompatible with the basic aim of pheno­menology-namely, to effect the essential-descriptive

analysis of what is given, just as it is given, not to en­gage in the explanation of it ("Sobre el concepto de

sensaci6n," 1913 ). Therefore, Husserl 's search for the absolute would ha ve come to grief precisely with the

performance ofthe epoche, which, ifOrtega's analysis is correct, would be both unnecessary and impossible.

In light of this, Ortega grasped the need to identify something that would truly be given non-mediately by

means of an essential and adequate description of ex­

perience. Recently an intriguing suggestion has been made

by Javier San Martin- namely, that Ortega 's critique

ofthe idealist interpretation ofphenomenology and his elaboration of a systematic, descriptive account of hu­man life qua radical reality are consistent with many of

the posthumouslypublished analyses that Husserl con­ducted after Jdeen 1. Be that as it may, as submitted

to Husserl through EUGEN FINK, Ortega's "liminal ob­jection" to phenomenological idealism may then be summarized as follows: first, the suspension of the

most intrinsic dimension of an act of consciousness, namely, its performative value, vollziehender Charak­

ter, or positing power, is tantamount to its nullification;

second, one is called upon to suspend the performa­tive value of an act of consciousness by means of the

"phenomenological reduction," which, though reflec­tive, is as much an act of consciousness as the primary

act and is thus in no special position to suspend it; and

third, the reduction, though an act of consciousness, is

nonetheless allowed to keep its vollziehender Charak­

ter and to posit primary consciousness as absolute be­ing, which is accordingly understood as Erlebnis, or the

self-aware givenness of something other precisely as

it appears ("Ensayo de Estetica a manera de pr6logo," 1914 ).

In short, reflective consciousness is assigned a priv­

ileged status in both classical and phenomenological

idealism, and such a status is none other than that of

a weltsetzend or world-positing power. But this is pre-

cisely the problem, for it is contradictory to assign

it such a status and yet make it amount to its self­removal, for, on the one hand, it is presented as the

straightforward access to reality and, on the other, it is taken tobe the objectivation ofthe latter and its reduc­tion to the disclosure ofthe phenomenal. Accordingly,

Ortega contended that "consciousness" is "precisely that which cannot be suspended or revoked," since it

is no act of pure contemplation, but rather consists in our being placed without mediation at the real. How­ever, if this is so, "consciousness" is "reality, not con­sciousness." In consequence, he was called upon, on

the grounds of his refined descriptive analysis of the phenomenon "consciousness of," to abandon idealism

and to substitute something else for consciousness as the first datum concern ing the uni verse. Individual hu­man life was to play this role for Ortega.

This formulation, however, does not do complete

justice to Ortega 's motivation in his effort to overcome

idealism. In his "Pr6logo," he argues that philosophy had reached maturity with German idealism (FICHTE,

SCHELLING, and HEGEL), in which the movement of re­flection achieved the fullness of its intellectual form.

According to Ortega, this meant that, for the first time, philosophers had arrived at an understanding of their discipline as the product of a systematic way ofthink­ing that, inasmuch as it deals with its own problematic possibility and is content with nothing but the plen­itude of the real, cannot be mistaken for a science. This notwithstanding, the excesses of Romantic ide­

alism, arising from the conflict between philosophy's

commitment to truth and its systematic manner ofpro­ceeding, had to be brought under control. At the turn

of the century, the neo-Kantians, among others, were faced with this task. Yet this school was found wanting by Ortega and other members ofhis generation, such as

NICOLAI HARTMANN and Heinz Heimsoeth (1886-1975),

his fellow students at Marburg, for it did not thor­

oughly subject its theses to an unprejudiced confronta­tion with the real, taking instead something derivative ("culture") as the originary. They had, however, the

"good fortune" of finding the "wondrous instrument" called phenomenology, which permitted the required

confrontation (truthfulness), yet failed as the means

to systematic thought, for, by its very nature, pheno­

menology is incapable of arriving at a systematic form or structure. Accordingly, ifphilosophy was to remain

510 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

practicable at the level of its maturity, it had to be­come an essential-descriptive analysis of a self-giving reality that, as given, would prove itself to be system­atically structured and come to be adequately grasped as such. It was precisely Ortega's contention that only individual human life measured up to such a require­ment, and it was his lifelong philosophical endeavor to demonstrate it.

Ortega's first mature expression of the idea of life is his formula "1 am 1 and my circum-stance," which is found in Meditaciones de! Quijote. This amounts to a descriptive radicalization ofHusserl's concept "con­sciousness of," and so it was taken tobe by Ortega, who brought it now to signify, first of ali, the coexistence of myself and my world. But this meant that the unity of reciprocity of which life basically consists cannot be seen any longer as synonymous with the notion of ego cogito cogitatum qua cogitatum, as Husserl was !ater to enunciate it in Cartesianische Meditationen [ 1931], for human life so understood is not ideality, i.e., inten­tionality, but reality itself. Life is an irreducible event amounting to my ongoing struggle with my circum­stance. lf one wishes to go on employing terms like Erleben and Erlebnis to present life at the level ofpri­mordiality, then one should strip them oftheir intellec­tualistic and idealist connotations and lea ve them only with their basic signification - namely, that which points to life as the happening in which something be­falls me absolutely and cries out for my making sense of it, so that 1 may be able to li ve and go on living. Ac­cordingly, 1 am no res cogitans or thinking being; 1 do not exist because 1 think, but the other way round: cog­ito quia vivo. I think because 1 experience my being, without mediation or choice, as my struggle to exist in the world. In fact, 1 am a being who is condemned to translate this necessity into freedom. Freedom is born in and conditioned by such an encounter. 1 am thus a res dramatica, the drama enacted by myself in the world with things ofthe world.

1 am aware of this encounter, but not by means of an explicit presentation. My glance is not directed upon my engagement with things in the same way as it is objectively conscious of and straightforwardly con­cerned with them. The self-presence of my life is the paradox of its transparency, for my life is the neces­sary and ongoing giving of itself to the things of the world ("Guillermo Dilthey," 1933-34 ). This, however,

should not be misunderstood as ifit were a contempla­tive affair. To begin with and always, living is, to some degree or other, "finding ... [myself] shipwrecked in the world" ("Centenario," 1930) and thus in need of guidance that cannot be dispensed with except at the perii of my life. (One could compare this notion with Heidegger's Geworfenheit.) In other words, thinking, in the formal acceptation of the word, cannot be my fundamental way of being connected with things, for when 1 set out to think 1 do so as a response to my pre­intellectual and dialectica! relationship with them, to wit: the problematic situation that 1 already find myself living in, and that 1 have to overcome in order to be able to continue living with a modicum of sense.

This brief categoria! analysis oflife is pregnant with consequences (cf. Un as lecciones de meta.fisica, 1932-33 ). First of ali, it implies an interpretation of the his­tory of philosophical reftection, and second, it cries out for a characterization of our POSTMODERN predicament. Already in 1916, while lecturing at the University of Buenos Aires, Ortega had succeeded in providing both. According to him, it is possible to take the movement of philosophical thought as a search for the absolute, which, in succession, is identified with the independent reality of the world (as conveyed by the metaphor of the wax tablet) among the thinkers of antiquity and the Middle Ages, and with the independent reality of thinking (as given expression by the metaphor of the container and its contents) among the thinkers of the modern era. The articulation of these two stages was provided by the critique of realism found at the heart of idealism; the articulation of the second phase and our postmodern situation is the critique of idealism that Ortega thought he had adequately carried out ("Las dos grandes metaforas," 1924). But again the outcome is to be a new metaphor, and he proposed that of Cas­tor and Pollux, the Dioscuri, Gemini, or Twins who can exist only as Dii consentes or mutually consenting deities. This metaphor is useful to present the abso­luteness of human life as a dual unity of reciprocity, and corresponds to the sense of Ortega's formula, "1 am 1 and my circum-stance," provided that the "and" can be descriptively shown to be irreducible and not just a matter of appearance, inasmuch as it means the "dynamic dialogue between 'myself and my circum­stance.'"

To appreciate the full significance of Ortega's for-

JOSE ORTEGA Y GASSET 511

mula, one must underscore the fact that it contains at

least two differeni senses of self or EGO. One of them

is fundamental or grounding, and the other derivative

or grounded. The former may be characterized as the

awareness constitutive of life, that is to say, as the per­formative or entitative availability of life to itself (or

as life's being-for-itself, which is expressed by the first "I" of such a formula). The latter may be characterized

as an awareness occurring in life, that is to say, as the

consciousness in which I objectivate some matter of concern or other in the world (oras life's engagement

with things, which is expressed by the second "I" of the formula). The failure to recognize this distinction

and its irreducibility is the error of idealism. Self-reflection, as the mark ofhuman life, is thus no

longer tobe mode led after objectivating consciousness.

If it were, it would cancel itself in contradiction. The

one-thinking-itself (der Sich-selbst-denkende) would

then posit itself, as any positing activity (conscious­ness) would, but that would be tantamount to pre­supposing itself, i.e., to taking itself as its own ter­minus, or as being already endowed with a (posited)

nature. Now, ifanything, life is that which, ofnecessity,

is always in the offing as that which is to be fashioned

by itself. Hence life turns out to be the most elusive of "phenomena," for it is in no sense readily available, ei­ther as one ofits products (the posited) oras any ofthe identifiable acts of (positing) consciousness. But nei­

ther is it reducible or merely retraceable to the temporal bed of such events or to the mental flow "springing"

therefrom (Bewusstseinsstrom), as Husserl seems ulti­

mately to ha ve believed (i_,Que es conocimiento? [What is consciousness? 1929-31]; cf. Husserl 's Vorlesun­

gen zur Phdnomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins

[ 1905]). Moreover, if any act of consciousness per­formed by me - i.e., by the second "I" of Ortega's

formula - is reflective in character (in a derivative

sense), then the act that is being reflected upon (in­

cluding its reference to its NOEMA) must already be

self-reflective ( or reflective in a primordial sense as a

being-for-itself), or the terrors of infinite regress and

the lack of final intelligibility would ensue. Life, there­

fore, is the "non-objective, straightforward entitative

self-presencing ofbeing," the "sphere ofreflection in­itself," or the domain of originary reflexivity wherein

I (as the second "I" of Ortega's formula) actually find

myself"immersed ... as it were, in a medium oflight."

In view of this, one must say that Ortega's meta­physical position clearly entails a radical reformula­

tion of the commerce of life and REASON. In a sense, he has "generalized" the concept of reason, for hu­man life is seen by him, even in the most humble of

its engagements, as an adventure consisting in making

sense of self and world. However, in opposition to the physical-mathematical and technical forms of reason,

which are only some ofits specialized styles ofperfor­mance, "living reason" fundamentally proceeds on the basis ofthe why (what have I done or become?) and the

whatfor (what amI aiming to do and transform myself into?). Hence the basic form ofreason is narrative and

its character is historical, whether one is considering

individual or collective life ("Historia como sistema," 1935). We have occasion to appreciate this in terms of

the logic of the unfolding of philosophical reflection,

for, in order to think adequately, philosophers must

first "understand the nature of the historical situation"

in which they find themselves. Self-justification, in the

sense just indicated, is the.first principle ofphilosophy.

Consistent with this, phenomenology, like other philo­sophical positions before it, was adjudged "naive" by

Ortega to the extent that it left the nondoctrinal reasons

motivating and requiring its emergence- i.e., the eri­sis of idealism and modernity - outside the scope of its examination.

Ortega 's commitment to the clarification and justi­fication ofthings in life, as the locus of experience and

understanding, thus precluded him from falling prey to subjectivism or irrationalism (cf. El tema de nuestro

tiempo, [The theme of our time, 1923 ]). Consistent with such a position, first philosophy or metaphysics

was taken by him to be the endeavor to carry out the

systematic categoria! analysis of life, which is possi­

ble only if life itself exhibits a systematic character.

To be sure, that could not have been done by Ortega

without the methods and tools belonging to pheno­menology, and yet, as we have seen, his goal showed

itself to be incompatible with Husserl 's account of the phenomenon "consciousness of," to the extent that his

description of it is essentially inadequate. Ortega's step

beyond Husserl amounted to seeing, first and foremost,

that our individuallives are, pre-theoretically and with­out mediation, at reality itself. Taking that step, how­

ever, did not imply for Ortega that metaphysics would

be transformed into the "thinking of Being," as hap-

512 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHENOMENOLOGY

pened with Heidegger, or into an onto1ogy, whether in the form ofMARTIN HEIDEGGER's fundamentalproject in Sein und Zeit (1927), or in that ofNicolai Hartmann's regional onto1ogies, or in that of JEAN-PAUL SARTRE's EX­ISTENTIAL PHENOMENOLOGY in L 'etre et le neant (1943). And it could not have meant any such thing because Being, in any ofits forms, is "only endowed with sense as a question posed by a subject ... who is essentially a movement toward it" ("Filosofia pura," 1929). This

movement is the endeavor to fathom itself that human life basically amounts to, and the manifo1d significa­tions attributed to Being in the history ofthought are, in light of this, reducible to a "subsistent relationship" to human beings qua living reason ( even, by way of para­dox, in the case of the idea of Being as the In-Itself). But ifthis is so, then Being is "only an hypothesis"­

perhaps the most radical o ne- that human life has pro­duced for its se1f-interpretation (El hombre y la gen te,

1949-50), yet an hypothesis nonethe1ess. Accordingly, those "disciplines," and the manners of thinking from which they arise, presuppose life as the radical reality

and thus cannot come to constitute an ultimate "sci­ence," which, in keeping with Ortega's position, may not be any other than metaphysics, if construed as the categoria! analytic ofhuman life.

FOR FURTHER STUDY

Ferrater Mora, Jose. Ortega y Gasset: An Outline ofhis Phi­losophy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957.

Marias, Julian. Ortega. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Madrid: Alianza Edi­torial, 1983; voi. 1 trans. as Jose Ortega y Gasset: Circum­stance and Vocation. Trans. Frances M. L6pez-Morillas. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970.

Ortega y Gasset, Jose. Obras Completas. 12 vols. Madrid: Alianza Editorial/Revista de Occidente, 1983. For present purposes, the most important works are:

-."Sobre el concepto de sensaci6n" (I) [1913]; "On the Concept ofSensation." Trans. Philip W. Silver. In Pheno­menology and Art. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975, 95-115.

-. Meditaciones de{ Quijote (l) [1914]. Meditations on Quixote. Trans. E. Rugg et al. New York: W. W. Norton, 1961.

-. "Ensayo de estetica a manera de pr6logo" (VI) [1914]. "An Essay in Esthetics by way of a Preface." In Pheno­menology and Art, 127-50.

-. Jnvestigaciones psico/6/ogicas (XII) [1915-16]. Psycho­logical Jnvestigations. Trans. Jorge Garcia-G6mez. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1987.

-.El tema de nuestro tiempo (III) [1923]; The Modern Theme. Trans. J. Cleugh. New York: Harper & Row, 1961.

-."Las dos grandes metaforas" (Il) [1924]. -. ";,Que esfilosofia? (VII) [1929]; What is Philosophy?

Trans. M. Adams. New York: W. W. Norton, 1960. -."Filosofia pura: Anejo a mi folleto 'Kant'" (IV) [1929]. -. "En el centenario de una universidad" (IV) [ 1930]. -. "Pidiendo un Goethe desde dentro" (IV) [ 1932]; "In

search of a Goethe from within." Trans. Willard R. Trask. In Dehumanization in Art and Other Writings on Art and Cu/ture. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956, 121--60.

-. Unas lecciones de metajisica (XII) [1932--33]; Some Lessons in Metaphysics. Trans. M. Adams. New York: W. W. N orton, 1969.

-. "Guillermo Dilthey y la idea de la vida" (VI) [1933-34]; "A Chapter from the History ofldeas- Wilhelm Dilthey and the !dea of Life." In Concord and Libertv. Trans. H. Weyl. New York: W. W. Norton, 1946, 129--82. ,

-. "Pr6logo para alemanes" (VIII) [ 1934]; "Preface for Ger­mans." In Phenomenology and Art, 17-76.

-. "Historia como si stema" (VI) [1935]; History as a System and Other Essays toward a Philosophy ofHistory. Trans. H. Weyl. New York: W. W. Norton, 1941.

-.La raz6n hist6rica (XII) [1940/1944]; Historical Reason. Trans. Philip W. Silver. New York: W. W. Norton, 1984.

-. "Apuntes sobre el pensamiento, su teurgia y su demiur­gia" (V) [1941]; "Notes on Thinking -Ils Creation ofthe World and Its Creation of God." In Concord and Libertv, 49--82. .

-.La idea de principio en Leibniz y la evoluci6n de la teoria deductiva (VIII) [1947}; The !dea of Principle in Leibniz and the Evolution ofDeductive Theory. Trans. M. Adams. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971.

-.El hombre y la gente (VII) [1949--50]; Man and People. Trans. Willard R. Trask. New York: W. W. Norton, 1957.

-. ,;Que es conocimiento? [1929, 1930-31]. Madrid: Alianza Editorial/Revista de Occidente, 1984.

Rodriguez Huescar, Antonio. La innovaci6n metajisica de Ortega: Critica y superaci6n de/ idealism o. Madrid: Min­isterio de Educaci6n y Ciencia, 1982; Jose Ortega y Gas­set s Metaphysical !nnovation: A Critique and Overcom­ing of Idealism. Trans. Jorge Garcia-G6mez. Albany, NY: State University ofNew York Press, 1994.

-.Perspectiva y verdad. 2nd. ed. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1985.

San Martin, Javier. Ensayos sobre Ortega. Madrid: Univer­sidad Nacionala Distancia, 1994.

Schutz, Alfred. "Husserl's Importance for the Social Sci­ences." In his Collected Papers 1: The Problem of Social Reality. Ed. Maurice Natanson. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962, 140-49.

Silver, Philip W. Ortega as Phenomenologist: The Genesis of Meditations on Quixote. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.

JORGE GARCÎA-GOMEZ Southampton Ca/lege