José Ortega y Gasset What Is Knowledge
José Ortega y Gasset What Is Knowledge
José Ortega y Gasset What Is Knowledge
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE?
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page ii
What Is Knowledge?
José Ortega y Gasset
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page v
Contents
Translator’s Introduction 1
Jorge García-Gómez
II
Concerning Radical Reality 75
Second Lecture 77
Third Lecture 84
Fourth Lecture 93
IV
Glimpses of the History of Philosophy 153
Ninth Lecture 155
Tenth Lecture 156
Eleventh Lecture 167
Notes 205
Bibliography 245
Index 253
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 1
Translator’s Introduction
Jorge García-Gómez
Understandably, Paulino Garagorri, in his capacity of editor of the origi-
nal version of this book,1 was reluctant to offer the reader his own assess-
ment of the work, preferring to defer to the reader’s unprejudiced consid-
eration.2 Accordingly, he confined himself to taking a look at it from a
vantage point internal to Ortega’s “entire philosophical work,” and on
that basis he came to the conclusion that, “[a]s to the intellectual signifi-
cance of the new book,” one could appropriately say that “it is destined
to be one of the most important parts of his legacy.”3 I certainly concur
with him in that, and yet I cannot rest my case with a simple acknowledg-
ment of agreement, if for no other reason than the fact that Garagorri,
following Ortega’s own choice and his usage of terms in this work,4 has
chosen the Spanish equivalent of What Is Knowledge? as the title for the
book. But that decision, in my opinion, may prove misleading to the
reader, for it seems to suggest that this work of Ortega’s should be under-
stood as if it were a mere effort on his part to arrive at a further articula-
tion of the longstanding philosophical preoccupation with knowledge
and as his particular contribution to the field that has come to be known
as epistemology or theory or knowledge.5 That however would be, in
fact, a fatal misinterpretation of his intent and a failure to appreciate its
radicalness. Let me attempt to show that this is the case.
1
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2 What Is Knowledge?
translator’s introduction 3
understood univocally. Abbagnano, for one, argued that there have been
two basic interpretations of it, namely, one in which subject and object
are considered either identical or similar, and another in which subject
and object transcend each other.13
Ortega concurred with Abbagnano in principle, but also in identifying,
as the originary interpretation of knowledge, the one which “reduced”
the subject to the object, an interpretation that first took hold with the
Greeks and was assumed to be valid into the nineteenth century.14 Ortega
further agreed with him in breaking down the period during which it pre-
vailed into two phases.15
The first phase is realism, where one finds the pre-Socratics, Plato, and
Aristotle, among others. At this developmental stage, the subject—it is as-
sumed—assimilates itself to the object or unites with it.16 This interpreta-
tion came to its essential culmination with St. Thomas Aquinas, when he
contended that “the known . . . is in the knower after the fashion of the
knower,”17 a point that served, by balancing the weight of the subject
against that of the object,18 to temper somewhat Aristotle’s thesis that
knowledge in act is identical with the object in act.19
The second phase is idealism, where one finds Descartes, Leibniz, and
Kant, to mention only some of the salient figures. At this developmental
stage, knowledge, still considered a matter involving assimilation, moved
from dealing primarily with the objects of cognition to focusing on the
order they constitute.20 Indeed, this was so much so that in Descartes, for
instance, the assimilation and the identification of the order consisting of
ideas and that comprised of the objects of cognition are proposed and
pursued.21 Even Kant’s so-called “Copernican revolution” was not so
radical as to have been capable of transforming the classical conception
of knowledge, except to the extent of admitting that the “objective order
of things is modelled after the conditions of knowledge, not vice versa.”22
The second basic interpretation of knowledge, typical of many philos-
ophers of the twentieth century, consists in taking cognition to be a phe-
nomenon of transcendence, amounting as it would to being in the pres-
ence of, or at least to pointing to, an object.23 As Ortega himself did
acknowledge concerning such an interpretation,24 the cognitive initiative
belongs with the subject, and cognition is “directed toward making the
object present or manifest, toward rendering reality itself evident.”25
Perhaps it was Nicolai Hartmann who arrived at the clearest formula-
tion of the notion of cognitive transcendence, focusing as he did—to use
Hessen’s words—on the “relation between the content of thinking and its
object.”26 His point of departure was then the phenomenon of knowl-
edge, and he sought to work out, as the foundational preliminary to his
examination thereof, what Müller took to be, as already mentioned, the
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4 What Is Knowledge?
Despite the fact that, according to both Hartmann and Ortega, the
“subject” is the only active factor in cognition, it is nonetheless true, as it
turns out, that the product of knowledge, namely, what Hartmann calls
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translator’s introduction 5
“image” (Bild), would be the mere result of the subject’s passivity or re-
ceptivity, his characterization of it as a construction or creation (Gebilde)
in the subject notwithstanding.40 No doubt, such a conception would
serve to safeguard the externality and independence of the object with re-
gard to the subject,41 a notion that is essential to Hartmann’s idea of
knowledge, inasmuch as it involves the necessary reciprocal relationship
of transcendence between subject and object, although the object consid-
ered in itself does not belong to the subject’s makeup.42 But it does so at a
price, namely, that of taking the being-in-itself of the object for granted
and of confusing being with thinghood. If so, Hartmann’s position
would—at least in part—imply a reversal of his original stance, an ob-
scure manner of relapsing into the first interpretation of knowledge, an
implication that would place him at odds with his insistence on the recip-
rocal transcendence of subject and object in cognition.
However, this is not the most serious objection that could be raised
against Hartmann’s notion of cognitive transcendence. In fact, the most
troublesome aspect of it, even if one grants that it is the correct formula-
tion of an adequate—but static—essential phenomenological description
of knowledge, is that it takes the relationship of cognitive transcendence
and its termini for granted. Ortega directed our attention precisely to these
matters, when he pointed out that, in works like Hartmann’s, “it is still
held that the problem of knowledge has been posed when one has asserted
that it is the apprehension of being, then to proceed, without further ado,
to analyze the consequences of that definition.”43 But this will not do at
all, if one is in pursuit of complete clarity and certainty concerning the es-
sence of knowledge, because “neither the fact that human beings strive to
apprehend being nor the being apprehended [by them] raises any ques-
tions for Hartmann.”44 To that end, one must engage in three different, al-
beit necessarily interrelated, accounts, namely, an inquiry into the motives
leading human beings to strive to apprehend being, an investigation of the
meaning of being, and, lastly, an examination of the question of “how it is
that a subject is capable of grasping an object,”45 which is, or so it seems,
the only dimension of knowledge of significance to Hartmann.46 In what
follows, I propose to deal only with the first two of the questions men-
tioned,47 and to do so in light of Ortega’s analyses.
6 What Is Knowledge?
translator’s introduction 7
“[a]ll men by nature desire to know,”58 and this seems to mean for
him that the mere possession of intellectual and other, related faculties
automatically triggers cognitive activity, “just as looking consists in
using [the power of vision].”59 Now, this is not the case at all, since the
possession of faculties and our engaging in the execution of their acts,
however spontaneous this may be, are “not knowing itself.”60 And
they are not, first of all, because, obviously, “in order to make use of an
instrument, it is not enough to possess it,”61 and, secondly, because the
mere possession or use of instruments or faculties provides one with
no assurance that one will adequately come to the intended result,
which in our case is knowledge.62 Something else is needed which
would move us in the direction of some definite goal, in reference to
which the possession and use of such faculties just constitute the con-
ditio sine qua non.
2. Knowledge is logical thinking: Logical thinking is prescriptive or nor-
mative.63 Accordingly, no manner of thought would be acceptable as
leading to the truth, except that which is “characterized by certain dis-
tinguishing features: identity with itself, avoidance of contradiction,
exclusion of a third term between ‘true’ and ‘false.’”64 But this ap-
proach is affected by two disadvantages:
A. It limits the “rich morphology of thinking” to one sort by reducing
it to an “abstract pattern”65 satisfying the above-mentioned condi-
tions. But the scope of thinking is much wider. In fact, it is coexten-
sive with imagining, its various forms being specifications of the ac-
tivity of our mental capacity to constitute “ideal” worlds, such as
the religious, poetic, scientific, and other realms. They arise as corre-
lates of our different ways of exercising thinking in our attempts to
deal with the circumstance, and logical thinking turns out to be just
one of them.66
B. Logical thinking is not an actuality, but a “mere ideal.”67 Indeed, it
is nonexistent,68 inasmuch as the conditions thinking would have to
meet so as to be logical cannot be completely fulfilled.69 But, if this
is so, then either knowledge, as the pursuit of the truth, would have
to be abandoned, or it would have to exceed the boundaries of logi-
cal thinking.
3. Knowledge is coextensive with thinking: No doubt, cognition is
thinking, but not “all thinking is a cognitive act,”70 as has already
been suggested. Such a contention serves to obscure its nature, since
its distinctiveness, arising as it does by contrast with other manners of
thinking, would become impoverished or simply unavailable. Accord-
ingly, one would have to say that this thesis is no thesis at all, but a
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8 What Is Knowledge?
mere hypothesis, and a false one at that, namely, “that man whenever
he has set himself to thinking has done so with the same end in view:
to ascertain what things are,”71 to determine the being or essence of
things. But this intellectual exercise72 depends on conditions that are
seldom fulfilled in human history, conditions that may be summarized
by means of this formula: being placed in the “firm pre-rational belief
that there is being.”73
translator’s introduction 9
10 What Is Knowledge?
translator’s introduction 11
“First, a belief must obtain that [,] behind the confusion and chaos of
the world as it appears [,] there lies concealed a fixed and stable figure on
which all changes depend.”102 We do not know what and whether such a
figure might be, although to inquire into it we must believe that it has a
particular nature and that it exists.103 In light of this, cognition as such is
defined by Ortega as the “ascertainment of the being of things,”104 where
“being” is, to begin with, just the name for that figure.
Given that the inquiry in question is a “conceptual pursuit,”105 not an
affair of perception,106 the “second implication without which . . . [such
a] pursuit . . . would be absurd is the belief that this being is of consistency
akin to the natural gift called intellect.”107
Accordingly, if Ortega is right, one would have to assert, in brief,
that the “for the sake of” motive of knowledge—the one urging us
along in the cognitive enterprise—is none other than our dual belief in
the competence of our existing intellectual capacity to discover and de-
termine being.
Now, if successful in discovering being, a human being would gain—
and for good reason—a new ideative “life settlement” upon which to
abide, and, if further rational grounds and confirming experiences
abound, its consolidation as a belief as well. Whenever that comes to pass
as the outcome of the human cognitive behavior, “a state of . . . [tranquil-
ity] and certainty”108 would result concerning the particular “worldly” or
“subjective” area primordially affected by the radical doubt or perplexity.
The human cognitive effort, if carried to its ultimate consequences, be-
comes the search for absolutely first—i.e., universal or pantonomous and
indubitable or autonomous—grounds for living.109 This is the endeavor
which, at least since Plato, has been called philosophy, i.e., “the lógos of
reason” or “of truth,” amounting as it does to “àlétheia . . . [or the] dis-
covery of hidden being which is once and for all.”110 The phrase “ultimate
consequences” just employed suggests that philosophy, because of a re-
quirement forming part of its nature, must strive to take nothing for
granted, and that, of course, includes even itself as a finite, contingent ra-
tional endeavor permanently open to the possibility of its own extinction.
Thus any philosophy that is not so determinable is incomplete and only
in via towards itself.111 Ortega called it “naïve or unjustified” because “it
leaves outside its doctrinal body the motives from which it springs”112
(what he, as I have already pointed out, characterized as the “because”
and “for the sake of” motives).113 The first principle of philosophy must
therefore be its self-justification,114 and any given philosophical system
must be taken as having fallen short of itself, to the extent that it has
failed to include “what impels . . . [human beings] to philosophize . . . as
part of the philosophical theory itself.”115
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12 What Is Knowledge?
translator’s introduction 13
(or anything else for that matter, insofar as it lies within life)125 exists ab-
solutely; that is to say, it exists for me already in immediacy, or by virtue
of my spontaneously counting on it.126 Accordingly, this indefeasible
awareness does not require any reflective analysis for confirmation, being
a matter of ongoing self-validation.
This view presupposes that life, as the first “object” of philosophical
cognition, is conceived as consisting of doings or actions,127 such that, in
its midst, I, as the actional and actual totality of reciprocity comprised of
myself and my circumstance,128 find myself, as a matter of course but nec-
essarily, “in need of [being occupied] . . . with that which is not myself.”129
In other words, life presents itself, to begin with, as the unreflective
awareness of itself as the ongoing confrontation of self and circum-
stance.130 Accordingly, philosophical thinking, as any other manner of
thinking, consists in “react[ing] to a reality already present [to us; that is
to say, it consists in] interpret[ing it].”131 And yet this formally intellectual
way of being occupied with things or “self” is a distinctive style of think-
ing, inasmuch as, therein, things or the components of the “self” are “not
taken as utensils or obstacles but in respect of their being.”132 In this
sense, science and philosophy are not different from each other, except in
two important respects: in degree or quantitatively, since the philosophi-
cal endeavor would achieve its goal only when it does so in the absence of
any presupposition;133 and qualitatively, because, despite appearances to
the contrary, the question raised by philosophy is in kind other than the
one raised in any scientific investigation, for the form of the specifically
philosophical question is “‘what is the being of things?’ in general,”134
while the form of a scientific question properly so called is, “what is the
being of this or that?”135
There is no denying that philosophical knowledge is of a paradoxical
sort, if its point of departure is to be life’s unmediated access to itself. On
the one hand, as Ortega has insisted, life is only correctly understood—or
understands itself—as performativeness or performative being, i.e., as the
ongoing actional awareness of itself;136 and yet philosophy, as a theoreti-
cal—and thus as a reflective—performance of and in life, would have, as
its fundamental theme and origin, pretheoretical reality as such, i.e., “life
as self-performance.”137 The possibility of philosophy, therefore, essen-
tially hinges on the possibility of carrying out the task of examining such
a reality without effecting a metábasis eis allo génos.138
To summarize: philosophy, or absolute knowledge,139 is to be, of ne-
cessity, the intuitive grasp140 of life’s self-articulation. But if so, philoso-
phy, at its metaphysical or foundational level, would consist in carrying
out the categorial analysis of life. To verify this claim, let me now proceed
to the presentation, in principle, of such an analysis.141
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14 What Is Knowledge?
translator’s introduction 15
root of our need to know, since, as he also said, “for that very reason, it
obliges us, willy-nilly, to engage in an effort . . . to save ourselves from
being at a loss. This effort is knowledge.”163 What is then the aim of that
effort to save ourselves? It is “to know what [we can] livingly abide by.”164
Now then, for us “to be,” i.e., to live, is to strive after “security, clarity
about how to abide by each thing and . . . the world.”165 In one word, the
purpose of knowing, at its most fundamental and consequential level, is to
be able to persist living and to survive (pervivir) meaningfully.
Let me return to the problem of knowledge now that we have a suffi-
cient grounding in Ortega’s metaphysics. At this point, I believe it is pos-
sible to pose it not only correctly, but satisfactorily. In Ortega’s opinion, it
is “superficial to formulate the problem of knowledge in the usual fash-
ion,”166 i.e., in the way Hartmann and others seek to come to terms with
it, for it is not enough to reduce it
16 What Is Knowledge?
the expression “to ask a question” would not refer to a kind of behavior
the sense of which is merely grammatical. In fact, it reaches much further,
for, “[i]f I ask a question, . . . it must be that I am in need of doing so,”173
although I may not know, or actually focus upon, the need involved. This
is so because “the need is not found expressed or declared in the question,
remaining as it does prior to it,”174 i.e., in those past decisions and choices,
both positive and negative, I have already made, and in the figure of a man
I have come to cut in the world—in other words, in what constitutes the
“because of” motivational structures of my life’s present.
But what do I do “when I think or speak to myself”? In Ortega’s view,
what I originarily do then is to “perform the operation of rendering
[something manifest which] . . . was hidden and secret to me before [I
thought of it].”175 As is the case with any other form of doing, thinking
cannot be adequately understood unless one sees it as arising from a situ-
ation in which one finds oneself, a situation which, likewise, cannot be
adequately understood unless one sees it both as coming from and as
moving towards something else.176 A word, an utterance, a thought can-
not therefore be separated from its “surroundings” with impunity, for
the surroundings of a word are an essential part thereof . . . and the word
is an activity [i.e., a doing, not the act of a mechanism], something purely
dynamic, a pressure exerted by the surroundings on it and by it on the
surroundings.177
For the purposes at hand, the import of this passage may be assessed in
light of two remarks. First of all, the concept of linguistic “surroundings”
must be seen as a generalization, on Ortega’s part, of a notion that was
formulated much earlier by Wilhelm von Humboldt when he asserted
that in “the grammar of every language there is a part expressly signified
and another unspoken and to be added in thought (still schweigend hin-
zugedachter Theil).”178 Secondly, one must bear in mind the point made
by Ortega himself as a way of prefacing the remark quoted earlier, and
that point is that the word “surroundings” signifies something which, to
begin with, is a mere context comprised of words.179 But this understand-
ing can be generalized, in turn, to mean the context of the situation in
which the utterance is made (i.e., its “because” and “for the sake of” mo-
tivational structures), on the grounds that utterance or thinking is a form
of doing, and doing is a response to a given situation. Accordingly, we re-
spond to the pressure exerted on us by the situation and its surroundings,
upon which, in turn, we exert pressure by thinking, for my life is a mutu-
ality existing between what befalls me and what I do. Concerning this
contention, one should note two things:
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translator’s introduction 17
18 What Is Knowledge?
How is it possible for human beings not to be content with what they en-
counter before themselves, with the world of immediacy, but to go after the
world beyond, or world of being . . . , of which they do not have the slight-
est inkling?192
To answer this question, let me now take a step back and attempt de-
scriptively to present the way we live in this world, at least so far as it is
convenient for the purposes at hand. There we are engaged in dealings
with things, by means of which—or against which—we fashion our lives
by carrying out our designs. “Things are found”;193 we encounter and use
them, but we do not come across being as if it were another thing in the
“world.” At best, being is sought by us,194 and yet it would be sought by
us only when the things of this “world” will not do for what we want and
need to do. If our execution of particular projects, if our implementation
of our global program of being, leads us to apparently irremovable prob-
lems and stumbling blocks, that is, to those the overcoming of which re-
quires but does not find—in our perceptual acquaintance with and antic-
ipation of things—sufficient grounds leading to successful action, we
would go in search of further clarity, a clarity of which there is no trace in
the world. Such clarity—let me call it the “clarity of being”—is, to say it
again, not found but sought by us, for it is not of this world.195 To put it
in technical terms: being, or the clarity it would afford us, is, to begin
with, just the “for the sake of” motivational determination of our lives,
when we come to live in a situation of crisis and seek to overcome it criti-
cally and radically.
It is reasonable to wonder why this is so. Things may ultimately fail us
because they come and go, they arise and perish; their behavior leads us
to discover, time and again, that they do not measure up to any appar-
ently permanent determination we make about them.196 In fact, things
are never identical with what is predicated of them, and they are not be-
cause the predicates are self-identical, while things are not.197 Indeed, it
was the awareness of this factual condition of things, as already devel-
oped by the pre-Socratic thinkers among the Greeks, which “led Plato to
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translator’s introduction 19
20 What Is Knowledge?
translator’s introduction 21
22 What Is Knowledge?
I must have nothing to do with the data reaching me from without [i.e., via
perception] and withdraw into myself; I must enter into and abide in myself
[ensimismarme] and, in my sole company (auté kath’aute hè psykhé), dis-
cover in me the concept of justice . . . [or that of equality or whiteness or
being, or the like].222
In conformity with this, Ortega asserted that “it is I who endow or supply
. . . [things] with the being they are devoid of.”223 However, he was careful
to introduce his conclusion by means of the qualifier, “[i]n this sense,” by
means of which he was desirous to give expression to the point that, de-
spite the fact that being is both a component of and an answer to my es-
sential question concerning things, being (or equality or justice or the
like) is definitely not a mere “subjective” determination of the inquirer’s
mind, although, no doubt, that may occur in the case of error or any
other form of falsification. On the contrary, in the case of the success of
one’s inquiry, that is, when one arrives at the truth, being, proposed as it
is by the inquirer as an essential formula for the thing, is nonetheless the
thing’s own.224 Hence, Ortega’s final conclusion was this: “To know . . . is
[in principle] to enter into and abide in myself.”225
Finally, let me insist on a point which has been made before, but de-
serves greater attention. A thing properly so called is not an object of
non-mediate experience; rather, it is the result of the transformation
undergone by a thing as lived, a living thing, when it is considered in the
light of the concept of being. We have, on the one hand, the things “out
there,”226 that is to say, the circumstance, the “world” of non-mediate ex-
perience, or the set of things that “consist . . . solely and exclusively in act-
ing upon me with living evidence.”227 We come, on the other hand, to a
world comprised of “imaginary elements,” about each one of which, by
contrast with the living things, the following characteristics may be pred-
icated: self-identity, failure to contradict the other elements of the same
world, and relatedness to those elements without benefit of alteration.228
Let me refer to the attributes in question as the reality criteria that any-
thing must meet in order to be a member of such a world, as opposed to
the non-mediate circumstance. “Interpreted as an element of that world
and, therefore, as possessing such characteristics, a ‘thing out there’ is
said to be an entity,”229 and its being or essence is anything pertaining to
the entity which is so characterized. Without much exaggeration, this
could be taken as a position close to, if not identical with, Aristotle’s way
of understanding the “things out there”, or of saving the phenomena met-
aphysically, rather than physically or mathematically. That notwithstand-
ing, and employing the same reality criteria, one could also arrive at an
opposite assessment of the same things, by attributing “being” (so under-
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 23
translator’s introduction 23
stood) only to the “elements” of such a world, and thus by reducing phe-
nomena to the status of appearances, for “[not] everything there is can be
said to be if by being one understands Being as . . . [entity ].”230 This inter-
pretation could be considered as the sense of the Platonic way of dealing
with the “things out there,” which are thus set in opposition to the Ideas
as the genuine entities (óntos òn).231 Evidently, this move would effect a
reversal in the order of discovery and be responsible for an upset in real-
ity assessment, wherein Ideas would be taken as coming first and as being
fundamental, while the “things out there” would be taken as coming sec-
ond and as being derivative. Such a reversal and upset is mediated by the
identification of the real and the conceptual,232 identification which, de-
spite the clarification just made, can be taken either simpliciter (as in
Plato) or secundum quid (as in Aristotle). In conformity with this, one
can see that “being as entity” is not a primordial condition, for, even if the
Platonic or the Aristotelian or some other similarly grounded scheme be
considered valid, the condition in question would still have to be demon-
strated by some process of derivation from what “things out there” are as
given in living experience,233 which is precisely what Ortega is striving to
show in this book. Or as he has formulated it elsewhere:
“being” [and] “entity,” to begin with and in the primordial sense, do not
refer to the being of things [i.e., the things “out there” or living things], but
to a need [felt] by human beings and, therefore, to a manner of being of
human beings. But this can also be formulated as follows: human beings
need that something be (with genuine being).234
This is the fundamental (i.e., non-mediate) notion of being, namely, its in-
dubitable sense as question, which must not therefore be confused with
its sense as answer or solution, which lies only in the realm of possibility
and for which there is no a priori assurance.235 The latter sense of being is
what Ortega called “essence” in this book, and it should be distinguished
from others like real existence, logical existence, etc., but above all from
“entity,” when it signifies the “manner of existing” of an entity or the
“manner of being” of an existent, interpreted in light of the essence.236
The primordial sense of being (as question) would therefore correspond
to, be motivated by the sort of human being I have already become (or the
ensemble and tissue of decisions I have made), and be prompted by what
“things out there” are livingly or non-mediately (i.e., by their provocation
and response, whether positive or negative, to our life needs and pro-
jects). This is what has been conceptualized by Ortega, at least in part, on
the basis of his notion of prâgma or importance,237 of which I have
availed myself more than once and which does not coincide with what a
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24 What Is Knowledge?
translator’s introduction 25
at its basis, let me simply indicate that Ortega’s thought on the matter of
the metaphysical status of things moved, or endeavored to move, on a
plane, or in a direction, more radical than Plato’s or Aristotle’s. One way
of seeing this is to point to the Parmenidean element both have in com-
mon. Despite their differences, Plato and Aristotle sought to identify in
reality, following in the footsteps of Parmenides, that which truly is,
whether it is possessed of a quasi-individual status (as is the case with
Plato’s Ideas)252 or is, in general, something that abidingly pertains to a
particular sort of object (as is the case with Aristotle’s second sub-
stances).253 As I pointed out earlier,254 this stance is, according to Or-
tega, the product of taking as the really real only that which is, in some
sense, commensurate with logical concepts (e.g., the ón of Parmenides,
Plato’s Ideas, and Aristotle’s substantial forms),255 inasmuch as sense-
perceptual experience only discloses, without mediation, what is “con-
fused and diffused—in brief, what is inexact”256 (that is, the extra-
logical or non-conceptual).257 In an effort to overcome the distress that
human life is thus brought to thereby, those who were significantly de-
pendent on the Parmenidean tradition left the “things out there” be-
hind—either simpliciter or secundum quid—by primarily re-interpreting
them in the light of the concept of being. The net result was the concept
of thing qua entity, the formula for which would be the outcome of the
synthetic conjunction of the notion of “thing out there” and the concept
of being,258 the product in question allowing two possible, general spec-
ifications, to wit: one according to the “Platonic priority claim,” another
according to the “Aristotelian priority claim.” But whichever option is
adopted, the consequence is clear: an obliviousness to or a neglect of the
“things out there,” which could not be philosophically more damaging,
for things qua entities are neither original (they are not encountered
first) nor originary (they are not primordially given, requiring as they do
a special process of derivation on the basis of what is primordially expe-
rienced—i.e., the “things out there,” in Ortega’s sense of the expres-
sion—which is thus presupposed by them). Accordingly, and so con-
tended Ortega, if metaphysical inquiry is to be pursued radically, one
must transcend the plane of things qua entities by constituting them out
of the basic significance that “things out there” primordially have, to
begin with and always, in our lives, that is to say, on the grounds of
their fundamental sense of prágmata or importances.259 To carry out
such a project is precisely the ultimate sense of knowledge, in which all
its other layers of meaning are rooted, and on the basis of which they
can be accounted for and legitimated at the fundamental rational-
experiential level.
26 What Is Knowledge?
translator’s introduction 27
genus and specifies it.”260 When this happens, a failure in cognitive think-
ing occurs, if indeed its essential purpose is the certain grasp of the truth,
or of the reality under consideration, in its essential plenitude, which in
this case, where such a prescription goes unobserved, has led to the faulty
“hypothesis of the abstraction ‘human being.’”261
Last but not least, I would like to avail myself of these concluding re-
marks to thank my wife, Dr. Sara F. García-Gómez, who, as in previous
occasions, has read and revised the results of my work as a translator and
has provided numerous and invaluable suggestions, very often redound-
ing to the improvement of the clarity and accuracy of the final product.
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 28 blank
Paulino Garagorri
In the daily El Sol [The Sun], Ortega published a series of articles entitled
“What Is Knowledge? (Excerpts from a Course).” They appeared on Janu-
ary 18 and 25, February 1 and 22, and March 1, 1931. To date they have
never been reprinted, except in the journal Humanitas,1 but are now, for
the first time, making their appearance in book form in this new volume of
the collection, “Works of José Ortega y Gasset.”2 They are presently being
brought out as part of the entire course—as yet unpublished—from which
they had been taken, at points which I will specify later [by means of foot-
notes]. But in this new book, belonging to his posthumous work, I also in-
clude the text—unpublished as well—of two other courses, one given be-
fore and another afterward. I chose to do that because they are
interrelated, even though this is so, to some extent, by chance. I have
adopted What Is Knowledge? as the title for the new book, not only be-
cause it was the one already employed by the author [for his series of arti-
cles], but also by virtue of the fact that it is suitable for the totality of its
contents.
As is known, the closing of the University of Madrid forced Ortega to
continue his 1928–1929 public course, What Is Philosophy?3 “in the pro-
fane precinct of a theatre.”4 However, the period during which the univer-
sity was closed proved long, and Ortega was determined not to have his
*In his concluding remark to this Note, the Spanish editor stated that “[a]ny contribu-
tion for which the editor, not the author, is responsible will appear in brackets.” In the
text, I have omitted this sentence because, in order to avoid confusion, I decided not to
abide by his practice; instead, I have employed footnotes clearly identified as belonging
to the Spanish editor. By contrast, those which are of my own making will not be la-
belled at all, unless they appear to give rise to some misunderstanding. Accordingly,
any brackets will indicate my own additions.
29
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 30
30 What Is Knowledge?
teaching activities interrupted. This led him to resume his classes in the
following academic year (1929–1930); he did so before a small audience
in December, 1929 at the locale of Revista de Occidente, the journal and
publishing house he directed. The text of the course appears in Part I of
this book, to which, given its subject, I am assigning the title, “Life as Per-
formance (Performative Being).”
The reopening of the university allowed Ortega to resume his classes
there at the beginning of April, 1930. In that venue, he made the an-
nouncement that he would be offering a mini-course—it was, of neces-
sity, to be brief—that would be called, “Concerning Radical Reality.”5 Its
text is found in Part II of this book.
The subsequent (or 1930–1931) course was entitled, it seems, “What
Is Life?,” and its text is to be found—split [in two]—in Parts III and IV of
this book.
For the benefit of the reader, let me reiterate what I said at the begin-
ning of my edition of Ortega’s 1932–1933 course, Some Lessons in Met-
aphysics, to wit: that what is here transcribed are the notes he usually
drafted for himself in preparation for his courses.6 [Let me point out that]
the scattered condition in which the manuscripts for this book were
found has forced me to engage in the laborious effort to bring order to
them. I trust that, in the end, this endeavor of mine has met with reason-
able success. It is true that the text is abbreviated here and there, but, for
the most part, its composition is finished and the exposition complete.
As to the intellectual significance of this new book by Ortega, I believe
that, when considered in terms of his entire philosophical work, it is des-
tined to be one of the most important parts of his legacy. His fashioning
of new concepts, the inner “road” of his very innovations, and the (inap-
parent) construction of the method by which he arrives at them are set
forth in these courses with dramatic acuity. The presentation of one of
Ortega’s unpublished books is not, however, the proper place to advance
judgments or to impose them on the reader, who should come to them on
his own without pre-judgments.
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 31
PART I
LIFE AS PERFORMANCE
(Performative Being)
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 32 blank
Problems*
1. Who is the subject of life?, i.e., who am I, Mr. So and So?
2. What is the meaning of the possessive word “my” in [expressions like]
my body, my soul, my book, my things, and so on? [Where is] the line
of demarcation between that which is mine and that which is not?
3. Why is it incongruous to place life—a life—in the world? Because the
world in question belongs to my life, because it is the performative
[ejecutivo] or absolute1 world for me, while it is nothing of the sort for
a life impervious to my world, for a life which, in no sense, is found
therein.
4. The error or insufficiency of every form of idealism consists in proceed-
ing on the basis of the [would-be fact that] the mind or consciousness
reflects itself, on the grounds of Selbstbewusstsein [self-consciousness].
But there is no such thing as Selbstbewusstsein. An act performed by re-
flecting consciousness is not itself reflected; it is always other [than
what is being reflected upon]. Therefore, there is neither an act of reflec-
tion properly so called nor anything like one’s self [sí mismo] 2 either.
Like anything that engages in objectivation, Bewusstsein [conscious-
ness] severs itself from its object, whether the object in question is itself
or something else. True “self-reflection” is given only in life. It is odd,
indeed, that it be possible for the mind to reflect itself—a fact (?) on the
basis of which phenomenology proceeds—and yet for it not to have to
reflect itself, not to consist in doing so. Life is essentially self-reflection,
and yet reflection is not just intellectual in nature; rather, it is, more gen-
erally, [life’s] way of affecting itself. A belief, or a believing, not only suc-
ceeds in regarding itself, but in believing3 itself as well.
5. Phenomenology leaves out of consideration the performative character
of an act, which is precisely what renders it a living act, rather than a
*Ed.’s N: The set of notes bearing the title “Problems” seems [to have been] an exercise
in reflection to be done before the course.
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 34
34 What Is Knowledge?
mere act (or fact). This is our novel theme: the performative character
of every act.
6. Life is valid for itself—it is definitive, it is that which is definitive. It is
the radical4 “reality” not just for philosophy; rather, it consists in being
the absolute standpoint, since everything in it is absolute. That which
someone else believes is for me something relative to him or her, but
what I believe is absolute. If I were to apply as well to myself the rela-
tive character I attribute to my neighbor[’s life], I would thereby relin-
quish a vantage point that is living or vital;5 I would be turning my
back on it and see everything as a fact,6 not as a performative finality.
However, what I must do is the opposite: I must see my neighbor as an
operative subject, that is to say, as I would see myself if I did not objec-
tivate myself—in other words, [as I see myself] when I do not objecti-
vate myself, when I live. Therefore, life is absolute always, and not just
when or because it is mine. In ratiovitalism,7 I propound, over against
any form of idealism, that the ego is not possessed of theoretical privi-
lege of any kind.
7. Life is absolute positing [posición]. However, this must not be con-
strued as if the absolute positing of life were a philosophical outcome.
If that were the case, as any fact or positum8 considered as such, it
would be relative. A fact or positum can be radical at best, never abso-
lute. Life is absolute positing, and it is so not from a philosophical
[point of view], but in itself, by nature. This character originates in the
fact that life is performative and definitive for itself or in itself. If we
make our way into life on the basis of that character, which is the one
most evident to us, and seek to determine why life is absolute, we will
discover that it is so because it is always unique: it is being, or what the
unique one is. Now, the being of the unique one is having to be unique,
having of absolute necessity to refer to itself (and to refer everything to
itself); it is operative unicity (werktätige Einzigkeit).
[However,] the unique one is not the same as the only one, for there
may be an infinite number of unique ones, each and every one of them
being no less unique than the next.9 Yet, by the same token, the unicity
of life renders it impervious, non-communicating, and exclusive. By
virtue of its uniqueness, my life cannot—none of its parts can—belong
to you or to anybody else. By reason of its uniqueness, it is altogether
different from any other thing and any other life. My life is one of a
kind, and this is true in such a radical sense that its uniqueness sur-
passes God’s unicity, inasmuch as the latter is not internal to God but
[a determination] grounded in our own reasons. Only insofar as God
were living would He be truly unique.
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 35
life as performance 35
36 What Is Knowledge?
life as performance 37
38 What Is Knowledge?
life as performance 39
First Day
We are going to do philosophy. [To that end,] the plentifulness of the
“past” has its drawbacks. What others have thought they embodied in
formulae that weigh upon us. Accordingly, in what I said before, the
word “philosophy,” summarizing as it does a long past, does not prove
helpful but rather leads us astray. Now, our task is this: to do philoso-
phy. The word in question, however, does not incite us to do it our-
selves, but to go instead in search of what others have thought under
that name.
[There is] a way of avoiding that. For us, “philosophy” does not refer to
what has been. Rather, it is a term for a virginal task we are to discharge.
We are going to assign the name philosophy to an occupation of ours;
later there will be an opportunity to determine whether or not that occu-
pation is coincident with others which before have borne the same name.
One may ask the question, what is this? say, about a headache or a
storm. In the corresponding attitude or state, we find ourselves postulat-
ing, seeking after another state, which may be given expression by saying,
“it is such and such.” The prior state is balanced by the subsequent one,
[for in it] we find rest, tranquillity. That which soothes us we call “truth,”
i.e., a mental state or situation fixed and sufficient, characterized by
bringing restlessness and endeavor to term, and marked, therefore, by the
exclusion of a return to restlessness. A “problem” is restlessness. In bio-
logical parlance, we would say that the truth is that which regulates an
organism (and, consequently, an imbalance internal to it).
Now then, there are two kinds of rest and, therefore, of “truth,” to wit:
thoroughgoing restfulness and the restfulness of resignation.
*The Spanish editor added this title and the designation “first day.”
life as performance 41
To seek after the truth concerning something leads one to seek the
truth about everything else.
I make my departure in search of a problem, and this one poses
other problems to me. The series comprised of problems is continuous,
uninterrupted.
If I stop, it is not because I have achieved rest, but because I am unable
to reach it. [This would be] resignation.
[The condition of] “being unable to” is of two sorts: one that is a mat-
ter of fact and another which is a matter [well-]founded or de jure.
If the latter is the case, then my departure in search of the truth, as well
as the urge motivating it, is altogether satisfied when I find a truth such
that it makes no sense to continue the search. [This would be] a well-
founded manner of resignation or interruption.
[Let us recapitulate our] results: Anyone in search of the truth about
something is obligated—in principle, before him- or herself—to seek the
truth about everything. Or, to put it otherwise: a truth implies all others.
Searching for the truth is called “science” or “knowledge.”
A science does not deserve to be called a science, to the extent that its
[consideration of] problems is arbitrarily interrupted.
Every particular science presupposes [the existence of] further prob-
lems. [It is possible to distinguish between] the truth proper to each sci-
ence and truth in the full sense of the word. In physics, the locution truth
refers to the fact that the predictions made about the operation of its in-
struments are fulfilled. This is the [sort of] rest achieved in it.
But that is a conventional way of resting [one’s case], resulting as it
does from the fact that an entire series of problems has been relinquished.
[It is said: there is] only one field. But how does such a field arise? Why?
What for? Moreover, what is the sense of calling it the truth? What
grounds are there to justify the pliability of instruments to predictions?
Physics is not true if it is just physics. For it to be true, it has to ground
its proper truth in the fullness of the truth.
Every particular science is in search of truths proper to itself, of arbi-
trary [points of] rest, but it implies a search for the fullness of truth, for a
well-founded rest.
To seek after truth in the full sense of the word, that is to say, to seek
after the conditions [it is to fulfill]—that is what philosophy is. To do so is
to seek after rest by meeting all its requirements. The only truth deserving
the name derives from1 accepting problems without the prior delimita-
tion [thereof] and the elimination [of some]. It is not known whether a
truth like that is possible.
[In seeking after the truth in the full sense of the word,] one does not
42 What Is Knowledge?
begin with method, as is done in physics (i.e., with the measurable), but
with what is problematic.
[To propound] exactitude and sense-perceptual confirmation as attrib-
utes of the truth is arbitrary.
A truth, taken in the full sense of the word, is one which presupposes
no other truths; it is one presupposed by all other truths.
Now we can refer to history in order to simplify matters. In the past,
the two great positions [have been]:
1. Realism [or the doctrine in which the thesis that] some thing (or extra-
mental item) exists is acknowledged as the first truth. There is nothing
that is not problematic. [But such a thesis is] impossible, for it cancels
itself qua first truth. If anything extra-mental exists, a mind also exists
which thinks of it and exists outside of and in relation to it.
2. Hence, [the doctrine of] idealism, to wit: the truth that something
extra-mental exists, if indeed it is a truth, presupposes another truth,
which is prior and more certain, namely, that a mind, a subject think-
ing it, exists. [The existence of] mind, spirit, or cogitatio is more cer-
tain than [that of things]. I can doubt that . . . [things exist], but I can-
not doubt that thought exists, because to doubt is to think.2
Second Day*
Anything one may decidedly characterize as an error or substantial devia-
tion in philosophy, and [thus] as the origin of its periods of decadence,
amounts not so much to [the existence of] internal doctrinal differences
as it does to something prior, namely, to being oblivious or ignorant of
what philosophy qua intellectual occupation is.
Every human action (and every intellectual action, as one of its spe-
life as performance 43
44 What Is Knowledge?
life as performance 45
The thesis that “cosmic reality exists” (or that things or the world do)
co-implicates13 another proposition which is at least of equal rank, namely,
the proposition in question taken as such, that is to say, as a thought.14
Therefore, the said thesis requires [us to accept] the conjoint one.
46 What Is Knowledge?
Thought exists:
Thought
Figure 1
This duality requires that the relation between the two—the world and
thought—be determined. It is discovered, soon enough, that they are not
co-ordinate; it is found, instead, that thought is a priori with regard to the
world. The world—of which I say, “it exists”—is that which I think; in-
deed, the attribution of existence is likewise a thought.15
The realist thesis, therefore, becomes subordinate to the idealist thesis.
Or equivalently stated: it is necessary to derive the existence of the world
from the existence of thought.
The idealist thesis is simpler, not more complex, than the realist thesis,
which, in the final analysis, adds thought to the world. Idealism does
nothing but subtract the thesis of the world as something unnecessary.
And, in so doing, it thinks that the existence of thought does not imply
that of the world.
The idealist thesis seems to be exemplary qua ultimate and compre-
hensive truth, for it seems to imply only the thought by means of which
one thinks it. And yet the thought in which I think the existence of
thought is already part and parcel of the thesis in question.
Third Day
(Tuesday, January 28, 1930)
Let me continue by summarizing what I said the last day.
The admonition that every problem found by us is itself encompassed
by other problems, while these, in turn, are encompassed by an ever wider
sphere of problems, has the effect of producing in us the awareness that
everything is problematic. Or equivalently stated: that there is no actual
belief at all which is ultimately firm. Consequently, we find ourselves at a
loss in a void of theoretical certainty. The latter—I contended—is the
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 47
life as performance 47
48 What Is Knowledge?
I will call “truth” any proposition that fulfills the conditions specified
above; in other words, a proposition which in our estimation is abso-
lutely firm. Here “truth” signifies, then, that one “holds something as
firm.” But this formula cannot be interpreted psychologistically,20 for,
even though “firm” is employed here to refer to a firmness capable of
withstanding every criticism or counterproof and is thus a subjective state
of firmness or certainty, it is [nonetheless] one which lives precisely on the
objective firmness of the proposition. Or expressed otherwise: we do not
say that something is true because we subjectively hold it as firm, but the
other way round: we hold it as firm because we believe we are seeing the
grounds for its firmness.
life as performance 49
50 What Is Knowledge?
the world) and leaves the rest (i.e., thought) intact, by reason of its belief
that the existence of thought does not imply that of the world, while the
existence of the latter, on the contrary, implies that of the former.
In passing, please note how idealism is nothing but the realist thesis it-
self, once the portion of it called “world” has been subtracted. In saying
this, I am anticipating something we will only see clearly on another
ocassion, namely, that the so-called idealism is nothing but the realism of
thought.
But can we attain salvation by means of the idealist thesis?
In fact, it seems that its truth value is that of an exemplary truth, i.e., of
one which is intrinsic [ultimate?] and comprehensive, for the only thing
that seems to be implicated by the proposition “thought exists” is the act
of thinking by means of which one thinks it, and it is evident that such an
act is already part and parcel of the thesis in question and adds nothing
new to it.
The idealist thesis is unquestionably the firmest one known thus far.
But is it the case that it implicates nothing else? Is it the case that the
thesis that “thought exists” implicates nothing but the existence of the act
of thinking it?
In order to answer this question, we must come to a clear understand-
ing of the nature of what we call thought.
The [consideration of a] difficult matter is about to begin for every one
of us.
We may be seeing this room, for example; or, again, we may be think-
ing of the Himalayas. Any one of the two is called a cogitatio or thought,
in the broad sense of the word.
Now then, when we are engaged in seeing the room, we are not en-
gaged in seeing our seeing of it. In the thought “seeing the room,” noth-
ing is found but the room, which, by itself or in itself, is no thought.22
But if we close our eyes the room ceases to be; therefore, the room is not
what it is by itself but [only] in conjunction with our eyes. If there are no
eyes, there is no room. But apparently what is important is not our being
dependent on the eyes, but the fact that, if we were to entertain the
thought that nobody were here, that no one, no subject, were to—or
could—be found [here], then the room would not be, i.e., would not be
what it is. By contrast, if a subject, finding him- or herself in Peking,
were to see this room, it would be because he or she is hallucinating. In
other words, for a room to exist it is not necessary that it exist for itself
or in itself; rather, it is sufficient that a subject exist. This leads us to af-
firm that the reality of the room does not reside in it, and that it is not,
in the final analysis, identical with the room; but that the final quality of
such a reality is, instead, what we call “subject,” for lack of a better
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 51
life as performance 51
52 What Is Knowledge?
active significance [in Spanish], though not too much—a Spaniard does
not change his convictions; they are final and inert states, quasi-things.
The one who says “thought exists,” and means it as true, is convinced
of the fact; that is to say, to him or her thought exists absolutely.
The idealist thesis—no more and no less than any other—necessarily
implicates another, to wit: that a thesis or conviction exists.
By that I mean to say that if the reality or thing called “thought” is of
a sort, nature, or structure other than that of cosmic or bodily reality,
then what I call “conviction” is a reality radically different from
“thought” by virtue of its nature or structure.
Now, the idealist would say in reply to us that a conviction is nothing
but thought—that is to say, that we find ourselves in the same situation as
that in which a realist was when he or she was constrained to add the ex-
istence of thought to that of the world. But that served as the occasion to
establish a contrast between thought and world, for the purposes of iden-
tifying the manner of their relationship and determining which of them
contained the other.27
Yet there is a difference, [since,] for better or for worse, all of us were
cognizant of the nature of the “world” or “cosmic reality,” on the one
hand, and of that of thought, on the other, while on this occasion you are
cognizant of the nature of thought, but not of that of conviction. Here lies
precisely the radical innovation [I am proposing] in relation to no less
than the entire philosophical past.
Fortunately, we have to carry out one and the same task to see what
novel measure of reality there is to a conviction, on the one hand, and to
contrast my thesis with that of idealism, so as to be able to overcome it
once and for all, on the other. I say “once and for all,” for, in so doing, not
only would we overcome idealism but also realism, its opposite, at the
same time. In other words, we would thereby avoid and transcend the dis-
junction “realism or idealism.” Moreover, you will be able to appreciate
the commonplace simplicity [with which it is brought about].
Imagine that [I am] in a situation that would prove most favorable to
idealism. Say that I, Ortega, see an ichthyosaurus before me. My convic-
tion is that there is such a thing before me. This is the conviction we are
going to subject to analysis.
However, Fabre, an idealist, asserts that I am suffering a hallucination,
that there is no ichthyosaurus there, that there is only one of Ortega’s
thoughts, although, in this case, [he would assert the same thing] even if
he were no idealist.
Let us analyze that situation, [which one could call] the fact Ortega. In
it this is what we find: I am face to face with an ichthyosaurus. There is
me and the ichthyosaurus, as well as the world enveloping us both. ([But]
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 53
life as performance 53
now disregard the world, which is irrelevant, [for] one could equally have
said that there is a world within which there is an ichthyosaurus before
me.) The conviction in question contains my existence and that of the ich-
thyosaurus, both existences taken absolutely. I am absolutely convinced
that I exist and that the ichthyosaurus does too, neither more nor less in
either case. Don’t ask me why: it is of no consequence; there is not even a
need for a why. The question at hand is not whether the said conviction is
[well-]grounded or not; the example of the ichthyosaurus is a symbol of
that, and it has been chosen to underscore it. But, be that as it may, we are
dealing with a conviction, and what is of concern to us now is this: to
grasp that which is at work within it.
To reiterate it: in the conviction [under scrutiny] I and the ichthyosau-
rus exist absolutely. In it I find no thought whatever; there is nothing but
the absolute existence of the ichthyosaurus and my absolute existence.
This “I”—the one that is afraid of the ichthyosaurus and runs away
from it—is not the “I” [spoken of] in idealism and [playing a role] in
knowledge; it is not the “I” that is engaged just in thinking and knowing,
but the one made of flesh and blood and many other materials, the “one
that my friends usually call” Ortega. It is the “I” that a savage or the man
in the street would refer to. The nature of such an “I,” its precise defini-
tion, would be the outcome of hard work on our part, and yet in my con-
viction the question is not about defining myself, but about coming to a
simple and absolute encounter with myself, or to encounter that I as it
faces the ichthyosaurus. Neither do I “know” what the ichthyosaurus, its
definition, is, just as the “brag” does not know, in the final analysis, what
the bull he is running away from is. He is only certain that what he gives
that name to is there, and [that] it holds immediate consequences for him.
Let us now take notice of what is happening according to Fabre. [His is]
as much a conviction as is mine, but its contents are different. Strictly
speaking, [they are] two convictions [occurring] in succession: the one is
negative in quality (namely, that the ichthyosaurus does not exist); the
other, the one that matters to us, is positive in quality (to wit: that Ortega’s
thought exists or, equivalently, that the ichthyosaurus thought about exists).
Permit me to simplify matters. Ortega’s conviction is that the ichthyo-
saurus is real (IR),28 while Fabre’s is that the ichthyosaurus is one of
Ortega’s thoughts (IT).29
[Let F, O, I, R, and T stand for Fabre, Ortega, the ichthyosaurus, real-
ity, and thought, respectively.] What exists for F is not IR but O . . . who is
thinking I, or I as thought by O, i.e., IT. How is it possible for such a sub-
stantial change to have taken place? It is very simple. I is IR as seen from
O, that is to say, as seen in light of O’s conviction insofar as the latter is at
work as such, or insofar as it is being performed by me. When I perform
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 54
54 What Is Knowledge?
something, I say that I “live it.” By contrast, F does not perform or live my
conviction; rather, what he does is as different from that as it can be,
namely, he contemplates it or turns it into his object. And so it happens
that both O and F are right: I exists absolutely for me who is living the
said conviction; I does not exist as R but absolutely as T for F; F also lives
his conviction performatively, the object of which is my conviction, but,
inasmuch as the latter is [for him] only an object, he regards, assesses, and
qualifies it, that is to say, he objectivates it as T. But that my T exists is
also an absolute positing for him.
([Now consider] the case that later F comes to think that my T, in turn,
is nothing but a T of his own. There you have the idealistic thesis. That,
however, is another conviction which, though possessed of a different
content, is just as much a conviction as the former.)
We thus arrive at an observation of the greatest importance: that per-
formativeness is a standpoint—let me call it that at this juncture—alto-
gether different from objectivation. For us to objectivate something, or to
see it as an object, we must not “see it” performatively.
At this point, let us set aside the fact that this twofold employment of
the word “see” is troublesome; later you will be able to appreciate what
exceptional novelty lies behind such a use.
That notwithstanding, how is it that you have understood at some
point what I was for me, if I only is IR when I performatively live my con-
viction? It is very simple: because, instead of being content with an act of
mere contemplation (i.e., one by means of which you would look at
something from your own respective standpoints), you availed yourselves
of a fictive or complex modality of contemplation, [a characterization in
which] the word “fictive” is not to be taken pejoratively. In other words,
instead of seeing what you are seeing, viz., that there is no I, you have
feigned the abandonment of your standpoints and translated yourselves
to mine, that is to say, to the object I am. But since I, like you, am some-
one who is living, it so happens that the object Ortega itself envelops a
standpoint, that it is [a] standpoint because it is a performer, and perfor-
mativeness is and implies a standpoint.
(The wall is an object which is standpoint-free; its being is not perfor-
mative in character. Accordingly, its being is not vital or living, but the
being of a thing or matter.)
Let it be clearly understood, then, that a conviction is not a thought. The
being of a conviction is, exclusively and yet necessarily, a being for itself,
not a being for another. By contrast, a thought is never [a being] for itself.
What remains for us to do now is to show that, since a conviction is
not T, it is prior to T, that is to say, that T implicates it. But it is evident
that this follows precisely from what has been said.
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life as performance 55
Sixth Day*
(Tuesday, February 18, 1930)
We have seen how the proposition “the world, cosmos, Nature, or matter
exists” implicates itself qua proposition; in other words, that it presup-
poses the pre-existence of itself, that is, of thought.
The proposition “thought exists” presupposes as well the intellectual
act by means of or in which it is thought, but this is not to implicate, but
to imply.
Nonetheless, the idealist proposition is not ultimate in character either,
nor does it fail to be involved in strict co-implication. In other words, it
too presupposes the pre-existence of a sort or form of reality other than,
and prior and primordial in regard to, itself, a formulation in which
“prior” and “primordial” do not signify a temporal arrangement, but
rather a hierarchy in the order of truth and being.
In effect, as is the case with any other, the idealist proposition is a firm
judgment, involving as it does a claim to be true or something in which
one believes; in fine, it is a settled, firm thesis or positing, one that is per-
formatively in force for the one adopting it.
Therefore, one must place the thesis that the reality called “thesis” or
conviction exists prior to any other in which one affirms or denies some-
thing. Now then, such a reality does not simply involve the existence of
thought (the one given expression by the proposition), but also the fact
that someone, upon thinking a thought (say, matter exists or, again,
thought exists), takes as firm what the thought proposes, which is for him
or her something posited with finality, something which he or she abso-
lutely counts on. The content of the proposition, whatever its sort, is then
of no consequence. What matters is that someone be irremediably con-
vinced of a thesis when he or she constitutes it. This state of conviction or
certainty may be grounded in reasons or be arbitrary; it may be rational
or irrational. Such differences would only lead us to divide theses into
kinds, say, into rational and irrational, or into sensible and absurd. But
theses of both sorts would be theses nonetheless, that is to say, they would
be tantamount to “having someone count on something absolutely.”
The reality in question, namely, the existence of someone counting on
something absolutely, is prior to any other. If I say “thought exists,” I do it
because I have realized that it is so, discovered the existence of thought, or
become convinced of it. All of that has been verified within a reality that is
*The fourth and fifth days were devoted to class discussion. [This remark is the
author’s.]
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56 What Is Knowledge?
prior to the one named by the proposition, which is just a result and aspect
thereof. And what is more: if a true proposition or theoretical judgment is
to exist, it must originate in and live on a pre-theoretical reality that would
produce and support it in being, that would endow it with being. Someone
must actually believe in it. [To take] “believing” and “counting on” as
“thought” would always be, in turn, an act of “believing” and “counting
on”; it would be, therefore, a particular determination of that basic reality,
or one content among countless possible ones therein. Accordingly, such a
reality would be something other than thought; in other words, it would
be, at best, problematic to say that it is [in the nature of] thought.
Among the various ways in which I have expounded this system of
ideas, there is one that I have often availed myself of in my university
courses of recent years, and which I employed in the public course I
taught last year.30 With utmost brevity, it can be formulated as follows:
philosophy is a theory that sets itself to solve the absolute problem, not
one that has been delimited and restricted before the fact. Every problem
presupposes a datum, in the absence of which there is not even a prob-
lem. Since the problem dealt with in philosophy is absolute in character,
so will its datum or data be. Hence, philosophy must make its beginning
by finding the radical datum it counts on. A datum is something that is
unproblematic to us. Hence, the first positive problem encountered in
philosophy is that of identifying that which is unproblematic to us. Ideal-
ism [is the doctrine that] maintains that the existence of thought is un-
problematic to us. Its path or method is this: if the existence of thought is
problematic to me, then I doubt the existence of thought, but if I doubt, I
exist; that is to say, the doubt exists, and the doubt is thought, and thus
everything it presupposes, such as the “ego,” exists too.
Suppose we set aside the most flagrant error committed by Descartes
in his interpretation of that path or method, namely, his assigning of a
role to the idea of substance therein, as he did when he applied it, as a
matter of course, to the “ego.” Even then, and adopting the most favor-
able formulation of it (which I just advanced), the original idealist
method would [be found to] involve most serious errors. One can under-
stand that, so far as the first truth is concerned, every false co-implication
or implication—as is every one that is not strictly or unavoidably drawn—
is a most serious error.
The primordial and precise sense of [the proposition] “if I doubt, I
exist”31—or of “I doubt, I exist,” if we remove its conditional form, as
Descartes does sometimes—can only be the following: something must of
necessity exist for me, for the one who is engaged in doubting everything;
in other words, something is indubitable, or there is something abso-
lutely, namely, my doubting. This is the unquestionable, absolute reality,
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58 What Is Knowledge?
life as performance 59
other things, one of which is my body. In other words, [the reason for it
is] that I see a plurality of things before me, things that are different from
one another and yet the same, to the extent that none is I myself. That
plurality of things forms a structure which surrounds my body; [but,
since] I am placed in my body (though I do not know how) and also am,
at least, my body, I am therefore surrounded by it [too]. That which envel-
ops me I call “circumstance” or, if you will, “world.” Now, let it be clearly
understood that all of that exists absolutely.
Accordingly, the radical datum34 is neither thought nor subjectivity,
but another infinitely broader reality that consists of the existing of an I
and, also, of the existing of its surroundings, which are radically different
from it. Furthermore, the reality in question amounts to the fact that my
existing consists in finding myself in such surroundings, in my being di-
rected upon, busy with, and acted on by them. And, conversely, the said
reality amounts [as well] to the fact that the existing of the given sur-
roundings consists in surrounding me, in presenting me with problems
and necessities, in making me suffer or enjoy. Such a reality35 I must call
“my life.” My surroundings and I constitute an indivisible and absolutely
existent organism.
It is now that we can say, in all strictness, that “my life is the absolute.”
The radical datum or absolute reality is, then, no monomial, no mono-
logue, as it was in idealism (der Sich-selbstdenkende36), but a binomial or
dialogue.
In saying this, I have referred, by way of anticipation, to an aspect of
that reality, a reality that is different from all those known in the history
of philosophy. Now we can return to the “doubt” in order to show how it
is that the integrum [or whole I call] “my life” comes out of it, just as it
did out of [the proposition] “I am seeing this light.”
As I have already said,37 when the “doubt”38 exists, that which exists
absolutely is this: I who doubt, the doubtful, and the distance between the
two. I am doubting, and this means, first, that I find that I do not exist
alone, but, second, that my existing presently consists in doubting every-
thing, and, third, that what I have called “everything” is nothing but the
ensemble of my opinions, which are about many things, including myself.
Let us now set aside the portion of my doubting that concerns myself,
since it is just one of the countless components of my universal doubt. [At
present,] I am calling into doubt the opinion of mine according to which
the room surrounding me amounts to a material reality independent of
my thought. Now, that means—if I express myself broadly, though not
without the rigor befitting precisely our needs at this point—that what I
am casting into doubt is the philosophical definition that I can provide,
with assurance, of that which lies in my surroundings. In fine, my39
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60 What Is Knowledge?
life as performance 61
my existing were [taking place] side by side with yours and yours with
mine. Rather, the case is that you are ingredients [found] in my existing,
that my existing depends substantially on you, that my existence is essen-
tially interlocked with yours; in fine, that the very “substance” of my ex-
isting is, certainly, an actuating and functional co-existing with that which
is not me.
But the other way round [too]: the existence of this light and of this
room and your existence do not amount to being there, apart from me;
rather, they amount to [being] exclusively that which you, the light, and
the room are [respectively] in my existing or for me. That this light is not
very convenient, that it is placed there, that it is turned on and located
precisely so far from me—all of that is due to the fact that I want to see
these pages in order to read them. As a function of my will and purpose,
i.e., in order for me to read [something] to you, does the light exist there
and show itself to be inconvenient. And the other way round [also]: if you
exist, as you do here and now, and if your existence amounts as it does
presently to hearing, and not to being at a nightclub, it is because I have
summoned you [here], I who am Mr. So and So and display, as I do, such
and such conditions and attributes, which are proper to this most individ-
ual existence. Let us mark it well: your absolute existence is the existence
you have for me—this is the grain of truth contained in idealism. But the
me in question, the one I am, in turn exists for me too and only for me,
and yet its existence consists in depending, in part, on you. Therefore, it
consists in existing for me no more and no less than you do. And this is
the grain of truth contained in realism.
The absolute existence of the doubt, which is a theoretical activity, pre-
supposes or implicates, then, the absolute existence of a reality I describe
as the “actuating co-existence of myself, or of this I, and the circumstance
or world.” I am the one who has to exist here with you, and you and here
are those things with which I, Mr. So and So, this unique, most individual
being, have to co-exist. This co-existence I call “my life.”
The circumstance or world, then, consists exclusively of the determi-
nate correspondence to that which I, Mr. So and So, happen to be.
Please note the strange condition with which the absolute reality of my
life certainly presents itself to us:
I am, to begin with, the one who exists, but my existing (and therefore
I) consist in co-existing with the other, with the world. In other words, I
am the one who lives, but to live is to maintain myself, to perdure exist-
ing in the world. My life, then, depends on what the world might be like.
But this world is not an entity [that exists] apart from my life and, there-
fore, from me, from the one who is living; rather, it is, formally and ex-
clusively, “that with which I co-exist”; consequently, its nature, its being,
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62 What Is Knowledge?
its ontological profile depend on who the one living in it might be. If I am
blind, the world is altogether different from what it would be if I were
sighted; if I am an artist, otherwise than it would be if I were an econo-
mist; if I am an [African] black, otherwise than it is if I were a Spaniard; if
I am Ortega, otherwise than it would be if I were someone else. Is this not
a vicious circle? My life will be in accordance with the way the world in
which I live might be, and the world in accordance with what I, the one
living in it, might be. But, even if it ultimately proved to be a vicious cir-
cle, we would be forced into it and to acknowledge it as the plain truth. It
is at this point, however, that the term “my life” begins to render its good
services to us.
I am not in possession of a being, or existence, apart from my life, and
neither is the world. Therefore, both [I and the world] are only abstract
components of the radical reality “my life” is.
[Being] a philosopher, for example, is one such abstract component of
“my life,” one that I am when considered abstractly. The world belonging
to “my life” will consist of the ensemble of facilities and difficulties, as-
pects, and characters that “that which is not me” places at the disposal of
someone who, like me, is in need of existing as a philosopher. “My life”
may turn out to be of minimal philosophical significance. I could have
been born to a tribe in the Congo. In fine, I am not my life, but only an
element of it.
Considered abstractly, I am a philosopher, but, of course, I am many
other things, even when I am still being regarded abstractly: for example,
I am a man. But to my being a man corresponds the other abstract ele-
ment of my life, namely, the world or circumstance which is being consti-
tuted as possessing certain characters. As a man, I find myself assigned to
a male body with which I have to co-exist in immediacy and which im-
poses on me the ensemble of its instincts, bodily faculties (some excellent,
some defective), clinical temperament, illnesses, etc. I am not my illness,
which is one of the absolute characters of the world I happen to encoun-
ter and have to count on in order to exist. The pathological or medical
concept of illness is the theoretical definition of an absolute reality, the
primordial concept of which is to be given by metaphysics.
Therefore, inasmuch as my life is the absolute reality, the element
thereof I call surroundings, circumstance, or world originarily consists of
three fundamental categories or worldly modalities (to wit: necessities,
facilities, and difficulties), not of what we will later call things, when we
come to adopt a one-sided, secondary, and relative (i.e., non-absolute)
vantage point. Since my life amounts to my existing in co-existence with
the other, the other will consist of that which I have no choice but to do
or of that which I must needs count on in order to exist; consequently, [it
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life as performance 63
will be comprised of] “necessities,” [as well as of] the “facilities favoring
my existing” and the “difficulties hindering it.”
For the time being, this will suffice for us to have a glimpse of that as-
pect displayed by me and the world when one engages in the attempt to
think them as absolute elements of the absolute reality my life is.
My life, then, is possessed of two essential dimensions consisting in en-
countering difficulties and facilities. Therefore, my life or existence is
easy, but it is also hard. For the purpose of casting light on the essence of
life, few things will do better than availing oneself of the hypothetical
constructions of what life would be if it were just easy and what it would
be if it were just hard. The two constructions in question, by virtue of
their opposition, would render apparent to us, or would make us see and
conceive, though in a way already free of construction, what real life is,
namely, simultaneously necessitating, easy, and hard. (We will later have,
as well, an occasion to appreciate the radical significance of our construc-
tive capacity or pure reason.42)
But presently I will content myself with [saying] just this: among the
difficulties I encounter [in living], some originate in the fact that my
psyche fashions ideas or opinions about things, that is to say, that it finds
a world constituted not only by absolute realities, but by ideas about
them as well.43 It finds, for example, an illness, a toothache, the sea, cold,
heat, the need to feed oneself, other human beings (both taken individu-
ally and collectively); but it also finds an idea about the nature of illness
and physical pain, another about the nature of the deep, [and still others
about] the nature of nutrition, our neighbor, society, etc. Now then, such
ideas or opinions intrinsically are novel difficulties, because they are in-
trinsically problematic. I have to live or exist with my ideas, which should
serve to support me, and yet they do not prove to be firm, solid, certain; I
lose my footing in their midst, I doubt.
Self-doubt is one of the intrinsic dimensions of life, and self-doubt is
doubt about the ideas life has of itself. Or equivalently stated: living is also
theorizing, doubting, endeavoring to overcome doubt, and, therefore, it is,
ultimately, radical doubting and radical theorizing, i.e., philosophizing.
(Here I could repeat all I said, by way of introduction, about our phil-
osophical purpose, something which then seemed to be vague or arbi-
trary. Now it reappears in its entirety, but endowed already with the char-
acter of a determination intrinsic to philosophy itself and as a dimension
of the absolute reality my life is.44)
Let me say it again: my life is myself and my circumstance,45 with
which I exist by way of co-existence. Since my circumstance, at least in
part, is comprised of difficulties, my existing is difficult. Now then, for
an I that is inescapably intelligent, that is to say, one whose manners of
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64 What Is Knowledge?
life as performance 65
Seventh Day
We went in search of something firm, of an incontrovertible certainty or
truth. The possession of such firmness, or the awareness thereof, we
called “theory, science, knowledge.” It is already ours, and it amounts to
the following: every theory, even the doubt which is its incipient form, has
been acknowledged to be a modality of a reality that precedes it and is
broader than itself, namely, what I call “my life” or “life.” The firmness of
the existence of such a reality, or [of the proposition that asserts] “it is a
reality,” exceeds the firmness of any other conceivable proposition, even
[that of] the very reality of doubting, which is endowed with reality only
in life and as a living actuation.
Consequently, the acknowledgment of life as the primordial reality is
the first act of full and incontrovertible knowledge. Science or knowledge
thus begins with the intellectual positing of life as primary reality. Such an
act, then, is an absolute positing advanced within the realm of opinion.
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68 What Is Knowledge?
life as performance 69
70 What Is Knowledge?
life as performance 71
Eighth Day*
As you have seen, the idea of performativeness has led us to [form] an
idea of “entitative reflectiveness”69 as pertaining to everything real.
Let us go over the stations we have passed on our way to it:
1. My life is the totality of what exists for me, including my own existing.
2. Now, the “existing for me” which absolute reality is does not amount
to something existing objectively—or as an object—for me. It is not an
objective but a performative presence. It is the primary presence of an
ache insofar as it is hurting me, of a light insofar as it is illuminating
me, and of myself insofar as I am hurting and insofar as I am being il-
luminated. Consequently, [the character] “for me” does not signify
that the ache and the light each are [first] endowed with a being in it-
self, and that, later, they would enter that other entity which my con-
sciousness is, and in which they would acquire a new being or manner
of being, i.e., its “being for me.” Far from that being the case, the “I” or
“me” for whom they are is, instead, only insofar as it “counts on” the
ache and the light. Or to put it otherwise: I am the one to whom
[something] happens absolutely, [namely,] aching, being illuminated,
or stumbling on a stone. My existing consists in existing for the ache,
for the light, for the stone. The existing for me of those so-called things
is one and the same as my existing for them.
3. But this means that the presence constitutively attendant upon every-
thing that is, is not [the same as] the participation of things in me,
since it involves—to no lesser degree—my participation in them. It
does not consist in my being their subject, inasmuch as I am, so to
speak, also their object, contributing, as they do, to making me some-
one who hurts, is illuminated, or stumbles. If in order to understand
such a presence, we want—instrumentally or metaphorically—to em-
ploy the idea of subject (that is to say, the idea of someone before
whom that which is present presents itself), then we would say that
the subject in question is neither myself nor the other (or world), but
life itself, i.e., my life.70
For, in fact, when I speak of myself and say that I exist, [that
means] that I have had to go intellectually in search of myself, and
that I have found myself not in me, but in a reality prior to my-being-
apart. I have found myself to be a segment of a broader reality that
was present to itself before I was present to myself partitively. Life is
72 What Is Knowledge?
life as performance 73
such. Accordingly, it asserts [for example] that I encounter the fact [de-
scribable as] the “noise of a car’s horn” with evidence, but that I also en-
counter, by means of reflection, my hearing of that noise, my “conscious-
ness” of it. In other words, it asserts that I encounter not only the noise
itself, but its “presence before me” as well. I acknowledge that I have
never encountered any such thing. This gives notice of the fact that the
way I have chosen obligates one radically to reformulate the theme of
“perception” and, therefore, that of “consciousness” [too].
If we talk about the least questionable modalities of consciousness
(e.g., paying attention to something, imagining it, thinking it or thinking
about it), we will soon enough discover that they always amount to tak-
ing something as [if it were] separate from its pre-existence in my life, to
my manipulating or operating with it. Consciousness is, therefore, doing
something with something, one of the countless things that are part and
parcel of my life, such as making a chair out of wood. It is thus a reduc-
tion of my entire existing or living, whence it would follow—let me just
say this by way of anticipation—that, far from being an expansion of my-
self whereby something would be given to me that I did not already pos-
sess, something that did not exist for me, the consciousness of something,
strictly speaking, amounts to having a pre-existing and richer sphere con-
tract to, or concentrate on, a single point; it is the abandonment of the
whole [todo] for the sake of the specific, a withdrawal from the rest of my
life which implies a motivation.
In short, my consciousness proper, my intellectual ego, my ego as the
subject who thinks the world and for whom it is an object, is something
that my living ego finds in its life, and which, besides, it usually takes a
long time to find.
Let me summarize. My life, the primordial and absolute reality, is en-
dowed with a performative, not an objective being. And to such perfor-
mativeness belongs a constant self-presencing dimension, a dimension of
reflectiveness.
Instead I could also say that my life is an absolute event happening
to itself.72
My life amounts to the fact that I now find myself talking about phi-
losophy to other people in this room. This is an irrevocable, absolute
event, which I am unable to erase from absolute reality. But I am thus and
so—the one talking, etc.—because of something and for the sake of
something.73 If I do something, I do it for the sake of my future existing,
and thanks to, or because of, my past existing. In other words, I do not
find myself in the given now, unless I find myself in the broader sphere of
my future and my past, all of which is also an absolute event in which the
now is just one abstract dimension and component.74
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74 What Is Knowledge?
There is nothing, there has been nothing, there will be nothing which is
not a part of the absolute event my life is. Neither can my life step out of
itself nor does it allow anything to exist outside itself. In fine, my life is en-
tity, a unique entity.75 Everything else that, in some way or other, may be
said to be will be in my life. And if I call anything other than my life by the
name “entity,” it should be understood that it is so in a secondary, deriva-
tive sense, because its entity, its existing, its reality is acceded to by virtue
of forming part of my life.
Unicity is the third note of life. My life is unique or mine,76 because it
is that which exists for me.
No absolute reality corresponds to the expression “your life.” “Your
life” cannot exist performatively for me. You are part of my life, and only
as such you have absolute reality. In fact, what I can do in my life is to live
the thought of “your life”; I can think it. I can tell myself that you are, as
I am, a member of an absolute reality consisting of what exists performa-
tively for you. But all of that exists for me as an object, that is to say, it ex-
ists ideally. Ideal or objective being, which is just a species of performative
being, is found amidst all that which is performatively for me.
The fact that “my life” is unique does not imply that it is the “only
one.” It is possible for an infinite number of unique ones to be, each and
every one of them being no less unique than the next. That is possible, but
possible being is not absolute being.77
Unicity turns my life into an ontological realm which is impervious,
non-communicating, and exclusive. No one can partake of my life. No
one can do what I am doing, and no one can live [exist] my life [existir].
This is an immediate consequence of performativeness. Now, my life, by
virtue of its uniqueness, is altogether different from any other thing and
any other life. My life is one of a kind, and this is true in such a radical
sense that its uniqueness surpasses God’s unicity, inasmuch as the latter is
not [a determination] internal to the reality [called] God but one which is
grounded in our own reasons. God would be radically unique, if He
were—and only to the extent that He were—living.78
It is to be noted here that concepts having a performative content are
occasional in character.79 Accordingly, all possibly existing lives will be
lives because, in each one of them, “life” signifies a different reality, even
if all their attributes—and this is an unequalled fact—were, without ex-
ception, the same. This forces us to turn the principium identitatis indis-
cernibilium around and to affirm its opposite, namely, the principium de
discernendo identico.80
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 75
PART II
CONCERNING
RADICAL REALITY
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Second Lecture
(Wednesday, April 9, 1930)*
Philosophy is something a human being does. I have already said this, and
someone may perhaps judge this assertion to be a commonplace or, as peo-
ple usually put it, something that goes “without saying,” because it is well
known. To that I would respond by means of these three observations:
1. Most things which the least learned people usually take as going with-
out saying, because they are well known, are not, strictly speaking,
“known” at all. On the contrary, having always been just before their
[eyes], such things have never been noticed by them; their minds have
run clear through them without having stopped [to consider] them, or
taken them into account so far as their structure and significance are
concerned, just as one’s glance pierces through glass and air without
stopping [to consider] the nature of air or glass. It happens likewise in
the present case: philosophy has always been defined while leaving in
the shadows the unassuming, elementary evidence in favor of [the view
that], whatever philosophy’s other more impressive traits may be, it is,
to begin with, something a human being does. This is its most concrete
condition and nature, and everything else one may say of it, if it results
from one’s obliviousness of that and does not derive therefrom, will be
vague and utopian in character.
2. But, besides, one is so poorly acquainted with [the view in question]
that, even though I have just given expression to it, you—and perhaps
even myself—remain unacquainted with it. For no one can say he or
she is acquainted with it, except if he or she is acquainted with what
the nature of human beings and their doings is, although, however
strange this may seem, there is nothing that one is less acquainted with,
in the history of thought, than with [what] human beings themselves
[are], as we shall soon discover.
*The first lecture was not committed to writing; it corresponds to the first few pages of
the third lecture of the course which began to be imparted at [the offices of the] Re-
vista [de Occidente]. Ed.’s N. : This note was composed by the author, who is referring
to the course appearing earlier [in this book. Cf. supra, Part I, pp. 40 ff.]. The text of
the second lecture [which appears here] was published in the [Madrid] daily El País on
May 8, 1983 [on the eve of the centennial commemoration of the author’s birth].
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 78
78 What Is Knowledge?
3. Even if such a view were well known and most familiar, the attitude of
philosophers would have [nonetheless] to be such [as to require them]
completely to strip themselves of anything that is their own and to act
with such firm humility that they are to think only of saying what they
have to say, i.e., the naked truth, rather than keep their own counsel in
order just to make surprising or interesting utterances.1
80 What Is Knowledge?
to find its being, which is behind the light. I must, then, remove what I am
seeing from my mind12 so as to dis-cover what is latent.13 Therefore, the
light covers up its [own] being. That is why the event of finding being was
called à-letheúein by the Greeks, that is to say, dis-covery, un-
concealment. But àlétheia has been translated by the word “truth.” The
light I am seeing conceals or covers up its own truth.14
I have said that the thing “light” incites me to seek after the new thing
[describable as] the “being of the light,” or [as] “what the light is.” Obvi-
ously, the word “thing” is being employed here with two different signifi-
cations. When we speak of the “thing” called light, we use that word in a
more or less proper sense: “thing” is the name we avail ourselves of,
though imprecisely, to refer to anything ostensibly and non-mediately
found in our surroundings. However, the “being of the light,” into which
the question I asked inquires and which it postulates, is not something
about which we know whether or not it will be like the things found in
our surroundings; it is not, therefore, something about which we know
whether or not it will be, strictly speaking, a thing. In order to be able to
employ the word when speaking of the “being of things,” we will have to
broaden, generalize, and purify its use, and make “thing” synonymous
with “something,” a most abstract term.15 Obviously, [then,] the being we
are in search of will be “something.”16
This calls us to rectify our way of speaking [of these matters] and say
that the light is a thing, but that its being is not. At best, it would be a
quasi-thing.17 Let us employ the word “essence” to name the quasi-thing
that that which a thing is amounts to.
This results in a duplication of the world. Everyone of us lives sur-
rounded by things, by non-mediate objects presenting themselves and
making themselves manifest by themselves. Such are the minerals, the
other living things, and other people, but such also are those internal ob-
jects we find in no less a non-mediate way than they, namely, our hurts
and feelings, our appetites, volitions, and ideas.18 Let us call “world” the
ensemble of all things that are non-mediate entities, or which are present
by themselves. But, as it turns out now, each one of them is endowed with
a being or essence, and that involves a duplication of the world. The
world of essences lies behind the world of things. The sphere consisting of
the being of entities lies behind the entities. An entity is nothing but that
which is endowed with being.19
If we now compare those two worlds with one another, we will [be
able to] observe the following differentiating features:
scrutiny] already figured in our minds before [the question was raised].
By contrast, the world comprised of essences, of being, is never non-
mediate in character; it always lies behind things, mediated as it is by
them. It is of great importance that we come to realize and underscore
that strange condition, apparently of little import, but which, when the
time comes, will prove decisive, namely, that the being of essence is
something not given by itself, but is rather that which a human being
has to seek after and which is found, if at all, as the outcome of an ef-
fort that is, at times, most arduous. This is precisely the opposite of
what is the case about things, which not only we do not have originally
to seek after, but which are given by way of anticipation in respect of
any of our ways of being occupied with them, and which are even
given by way of anticipation in respect of our very lives. It is therefore
of the greatest importance for us to note that living signifies, already
and of its own, that we find ourselves, that is to say, that each and
every one of us finds him- or herself, primordially and necessarily,
among things, in front of them, surrounded by and submerged in
them. This is so much so that it is not possible for us not to be faced
with them, and that every effort of ours to do away with them is in
vain. Accordingly, while the finding of being involves a great effort on
a human being’s part, the finding of things not only involves no effort,
but every effort not to find them is, on the contrary, hopelessly doomed
to failure. A human being’s existence consists in existing among and
with things, in finding him- or herself in the world.20 That is why
Baudelaire succeeded in giving expression to a great paradox and to an
impossibility most properly so called when, upon being asked where
he would like to live, he said: “Oh, anywhere else, anywhere else! . . . If
only it were somewhere outside the world!”
2. [Now, if that is so,] a consequence would follow. If a human being’s
existence necessarily consists in existing among things, then a human
being is absolutely in need of things. By contrast, being, i.e., essences
are in need of us, at least and to begin with in the sense that they are in
need of being sought after by us. Please note that we take notice of the
being of things for the first time when we catch ourselves in the act of
seeking or inquiring after it. [Accordingly,] if we ever are successful in
finding it, it will be after [experiencing] a need for it. If we [now], an-
ticipating a little, observe that the answers we obtain to our questions
are, in turn, always questionable or uncertain, we will come to the re-
sult that the most certain [knowledge] we have of the being [of things]
is the one we possess when we inquire after it. For instance, the science
of optics would provide answers to the question, what is light? and do
so successively, so long as the question continues to be raised. It seems
as if we are certain that the light is endowed with being, although we
82 What Is Knowledge?
do not know of what particular sort it is. The genus “being” is, none-
theless, clear to us before we come across it in a particular case. In ef-
fect, we understand each other when we raise the said question, that is
to say, we understand what the being of something is in general. It is by
virtue of this fact that, when somebody teaches us about the being of
light in particular, or when we ascertain it on our own, we recognize it
as “being” or essence.
Doesn’t this already indicate that being is something that lies in a
question raised by a human being, that is to say, that it already consists
in being a question, [which is] a human doing? Now, if no one existed
with the capacity to ask, what is this or that? would then being exist?
Let that stand as a glimpse, as an odd-looking surmise. But how [is it
possible]? Is the being of things something that does not belong to
them, but rather something which originates in man, arising as it
would in the human doing [describable as] “raising a question”?21 To
say it again: let the matter stand. I would add only one thing which
now seems evident to me: that things or entities are found, while being
or essence is sought after. We will have an occasion to see how the two
definitions are formal in character, that is to say, that neither is the at-
tribute “being found” accidental (or extrinsic) to things, nor is the
character “being sought after” adventitious and fortuitous to being;
rather, [the case is] that, formally speaking, things consist in being
found, and being in being sought after.
3. Please note that we are doing nothing but analyzing the sense belonging
to the question concerning the being or essence of a thing, [the kind of]
question that here will henceforth be called an “essential question.” To
that end, let us simply endeavor to come to terms with the meaning of
the words which form part of such a question. As we do it, we may ob-
serve that the expression, what is . . . ?—found in [a question] like, what
is this or that?—implies a number of things integral to its meaning. To
begin with, it implies that human beings are not content with the mani-
fest world surrounding them; rather, this world incites them to postu-
late a world beyond, the condition of which is that of latency, lying as it
does in concealment behind the former. The world of immediacy, which
we encounter without searching, we encounter always and at the same
time that we encounter ourselves.22 Let me call your attention to the
fact that this is so because the mental act by means of which we become
aware of ourselves is not primary, inasmuch as we have to set the world
aside [or] abstract from it, if we are to take special notice of our very
selves,23 as it happens when, for instance, [I say that] I am perceiving,
imagining, loving or hating, willing or not willing.24 When I am actu-
ally engaged in seeing, say, this room, my seeing—and, therefore, that
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 83
which I am seeing—does not exist for me; rather, what exists is the
room where I am [together with and] undifferentiated from the other
objects. In order for me to become aware of myself as such (i.e., to ar-
rive at the celebrated [state of] self-consciousness, which has served as
the foundation of idealism for three centuries), I have to tear myself
away from among those objects and out of the room where I found my-
self. Now, in order to accomplish that, I must abstract myself from the
other things and suppose that this room does not truly exist, but that
only I do who am seeing it. The room ceases being what it was, namely,
a place where I am, and is transformed into the opposite of that, viz., a
visual image in me. But, then, the room, which has turned into a visual
image or perceptual state of mine, no longer is an actual room; the
world is no longer the world. Now then, my act of perceiving—i.e., the
one which is a mere seeing or an act and state of an ego all by itself, and
which no longer consists in actually encountering a real room wherein
I find myself enclosed—does not have the same significance [for us] as
did the primary sort. At best, it is an element or component of the pri-
mary situation in which what was truly found was a room, a world
wherein I really was. The one who is now thinking that only he or she
exists really, and that the room is just an image, is the same one who
was and continues really to be in the real room. That only I really exist
is just a thought entertained by that human being who was, and is, ex-
isting in a real world.
For a long while we are going to be busy in the attempt to bring about
this radical rectification of idealism, which, as we shall have an occasion
to see, is not the same as relapsing into realism. Don’t mind if this first
formulation of what is decisively to be borne in mind [for that purpose] is
not clear to you. The problem is to reappear once and again in one per-
spective or another.25
I only wanted, at this point, to underscore the fact that the world of
immediacy is the one we find without seeking after it, [that] what we
[thus] encounter we encounter in such a primordial sense that encounter-
ing the world in question does not presuppose [the performance of] a spe-
cialized sort of mental act; rather, to encounter it is one and the same
thing as our existence. To live is, in effect, to encounter oneself among
things and face to face with them.
Now, by means of the question, what are things? we are making it ap-
parent that we do not rest content with that which we find, which means
that such things (or the world or ensemble thereof) seem to us to suffer
from a strange insufficiency. [The world of immediacy] is not enough for
us. Non sufficit. But why?
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 84
84 What Is Knowledge?
Third Lecture*
As I have said, philosophy is, to begin with, something a human being
does26—for example, [what] we [are doing] now. Later I spoke a bit more
precisely [and specified that,] among the countless human doings, philos-
ophy was found to be one of those activities that always begin by posing
the question, what is this or that thing? to oneself (as, for example, when
one asks, what is this light?). By means of names like “essential ques-
tions” or “questions concerning being,” I have referred to questions of
that sort, i.e., those which inquire into—and postulate—what a thing is.
They serve, in turn, to institute a most special sort of human doing. We
were involved in analyzing it. [As we did,] a fact caught our eye, namely,
that when we ask, say, about what this light is, we do not mean thereby to
seek after the light. A blind man could ask us, “Where in the room is the
light?” He would not be inquiring, then, into the being of the light, but
would be seeking after the light itself. By contrast, we find the light right
before us; it is manifest to us; it lies there without mediation, unques-
tioned, giving us no reason to seek after it. What we inquire into is some-
thing other than the light: it is its being or essence. Now then, the essences
(or the being) of things are not found right before us, without mediation;
rather, it seems that they are always behind things, in the state of latency,
lying, resolutely, beyond them. Over against the world of things, or world
of immediacy, they constitute a world beyond, which, by virtue of its in-
exorable nature, lies at an absolute distance from us. In other words, the
being of this light is not more or less removed from us, as the streetlamp
at the Puerta del Sol27 is farther removed from us than this light. Rather,
it is radically or absolutely distant from us. By the same token, the world-
beyond imposes on us the task of seeking after it. It never presents itself
on its own and overtly, but, by its very nature, [can only] be found at the
conclusion of our effort of looking for it. It would seem that the world is
a hieroglyph, and that the “world-beyond,” or “world of being,” is a
phrase which, at the same time, signifies and conceals the world [of
things].28 But a hieroglyph would not be what it is solely by virtue of the
figures we see in it; [for it to be what it is,] someone must say to us that
“these figures are endowed, above and beyond their manifest form, with
a latent sense.” In the world, we find only figures which stand out, and
which no one has told us to hold suspect of harboring a secret sense. That
is why it occurred to me to ask the question as to how it is possible for
*Ed.’s N.: I am reproducing here the second article of the abovementioned series. [Cf.
supra, n. 1.] The article resulted from a reworking of the original manuscript of this
lecture.
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 85
human beings not to be content with what they encounter before them-
selves, with the world of immediacy, but to go after the world-beyond, or
world of being, of which no ultrahuman seafarer has ever told them, of
which they do not have the slightest inkling.
“Knowledge” is the name usually given to our effort to arrive at being,
of which the said question marks the beginning. Accordingly, that ques-
tion can also be phrased as follows: why does a human being strive to
know? In the solemn first page of his Metaphysics, Aristotle, acting the
part of Molière’s doctor,29 gave us this answer: “All men by nature desire
to know.”30 We could translate Aristotle’s reply into our terminology by
saying that human beings seek after being by virtue of the fact that they
constitutively are entities seeking after being. But we, who do not aspire to
play the part of Molière’s doctor, [will have to] inquire precisely into
what, in the makeup of a human being, brings him to [engage in an effort
to] know.
It is to be noted that Aristotle does not clearly grasp this prior ques-
tion, which is precisely the one we are raising now. The proof of it is
found in the fact that he adds the following to his statement: “An indica-
tion of this is the delight we take in our senses . . . and above all others [in]
the sense of sight.”31 Here Aristotle is thinking of Plato, who placed the
men of science, the philosophers, among the philotheámones, i.e., those
who are fond of looking or attend spectacles.32
“To look” is to examine what is there with one’s own eyes, while “to
know” is to seek after what is not there, namely, being. To know, then, is
precisely not to be content with seeing what one can see, but rather to re-
fuse what one sees, as being insufficient, and to postulate the invisible.
By means of that remark and many others which are plentiful in his
books, Aristotle makes his idea of knowledge apparent to us. According
to him, it would simply amount to using or exercising a faculty possessed
by a human being, just as looking consists in using [the power of] vision.
We are endowed with sensibility, with memory (which serves to preserve
the data derived therefrom), and with experience (in which [the contents
of] memory are selected and decanted).33 All of them are mechanisms be-
longing to the psyche of a human being, who, like it or not, exercises
them. Knowledge would be that exercise.
In my opinion, there exists a radical confusion with which the entire
history of philosophy has been weighed down, especially in the area of
epistemology. When one asks why human beings occupy themselves with
knowing, the forthcoming reply consists in exhibiting the intellectual
mechanisms a human being sets in motion in order to know. The said
mechanisms thus come to be identified with knowing. Now then, it is evi-
dent that to know a thing is not the same as to see or remember it, or, on
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 86
86 What Is Knowledge?
88 What Is Knowledge?
90 What Is Knowledge?
judgment, of an utterance, but of the reality itself. One of the most radical
and enduring errors committed in philosophy has been to suppose that
the truth is originarily an attribute of judgment, of thinking. It is only
with Scholasticism that one faintly [comes to] make out that the truth is,
to begin with, an attribute of things. And that is quite plain for, if some-
one were to inquire into the nature of the truth of a judgment, the reply
would be forthcoming to the effect that it is a character it possesses when-
ever what we think therein about a thing corresponds to what the thing in
question is. The truth is thus transferred from the judgment to the being
of the thing. The short philosophical dialogue [that once took place] at
the Praetorium expresses it better: “What is truth?”46 [Pilate said to
Jesus]. Truth is that which is.
But this is the question: what about a thing is its being, what about it
its truth? There are many values or aspects to the thing itself (say, to this
light). To begin with, it is such as it appears [to be]. Yet the appearance of
a thing is not the thing itself. If it were, seeing the thing would suffice, and
we could dispense with the job of thinking about it. But it so happens
that, when things [are considered] in terms of their non-mediate appear-
ance, they happen not to coincide with themselves, they are not equal to
what they genuinely are, with what they are in their truth. I see the stars
above as persistent specks of light. [Many questions may then occur to
me. For example:] Are they far or near? How big are they? What are they
made of? Why do some of them move, while others do not? How do they
hold themselves up there? My seeing of the stars, far from disclosing to
me the truth about them, their genuine being, or what “they themselves”
are, only furnishes me with one single, solitary finding, namely, that they
are not as they seem to be. Behind the light I see, there is, then, the true
light, which I do not see. And the truth of my judgment about it will not
amount just to the coincidence [of my judgment] with the light, or simply
with the thing, but with the truth of the light, or with the light in its truth.
People are always oblivious to this decisive point; they are always una-
ware of the fact that the behavior of reality itself is essentially twofold. If
by itself it were, as a matter of course, genuine in character, then every
contact of ours with things would already be the possession of their truth,
and the troubles and exertions involved in our thinking or knowing
[them] would be superfluous. But if human beings err when they attempt
to know, that is not due, primordially and solely, to some defect of theirs.
How could a human being err when confronted with a univocal reality,
with one that is just as it appears? An error in thinking consists in taking
as true reality something which is a reality [indeed], but one which [none-
theless] is not a true or genuine reality. Concerning this matter, we must
correct those modern practices which lead one to pose the problem of
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 92
92 What Is Knowledge?
error exclusively in terms of the knowing subject, while leaving out of ac-
count the fact that reality is a partner in error. It is urgent, therefore, to
pose that problem before we [even] begin with epistemological consider-
ations, at the very threshold of any philosophical system, at [the level of]
pure ontology.47
However, let us leave this matter alone. Perhaps we may return to it
later in a more substantial way, at which point we may come to realize the
frightful significance of [the question,] whether “a thing is in its truth or
not,” or the problem of the genuineness of being.
What is important to us presently is only to think that thought or
speech is the locus in which things manifest their truth; that, conse-
quently, they are not [out] there by themselves in their truth; but that, if
they are to be uncovered and laid bare, so that their genuine “nature”
may come through, they would require an effort on the knowing subject’s
part. That is why, as I pointed out,48 one speaks only of what is concealed
and secret, of what is not manifest. Every act of speaking, or utterance, is
that whereby a secret not belonging to us, but to things, is revealed. If it
were otherwise, our speaking and meditative doing would be altogether
superfluous and meaningless.
Let this suffice in respect of speaking in general. Please note, however,
that raising a question in one’s mind is that way of speaking in which
what one is saying reveals no secret. The question raised is precisely the
expression of our ignorance. What are we saying, then, what is it that we
are speaking about when we raise a question, if it turns out that, when we
do so, we are not in possession of the key to any secret, if we do not make
anything manifest to ourselves?
It is evident that, before we come to uncover a secret, cast light on
something that lies concealed, or solve a riddle,49 there must have been
[in us] a mental state in which we simply realized that there was a secret,
a riddle, a concealment. Without a mental state of that sort, the process of
thinking would not be triggered [in us], we would not strive to know and
speak.50 But how would we give expression to such a situation, in which
our minds are being confronted with a riddle as such?51 We would say to
ourselves: here is something about which I have to think, and, since to us
thinking is presently synonymous with speaking, here is something about
which we must speak. A problem or riddle is just that and nothing else,
viz., something about which one has to speak.52 Consequently, the mental
state in which we realize that there is a problem or riddle is, by itself, [the
condition in which] thinking or speaking is postulated, required, or de-
manded. Now then, is that not the sense of every question? A question is
an incomplete way of speaking, for a response is solicited therein. Strictly
speaking, it is nothing [but] a request; or, equivalently stated, to raise a
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 93
Fourth Lecture*
In brief, what is the meaning of the locution “being”55 in the question,
what is the light? It is not reasonable to believe that a simple inspection of
the locution would allow us to ascertain its meaning. If taken in isolation,
every word is ambiguous; it is an isolated organ. This is [also] true of a
phrase: every phrase refers to an organic totality, namely, to one’s living
situation (which is the fictive aspect of our example). [In order to under-
stand] a question, we have imaginatively to place ourselves in the living
situation out of which the question would arise.
Suppose all lights are turned off. Let us attempt to determine what has
occurred in such a situation. Before that was the case, we had not inquired
94 What Is Knowledge?
into the nature of the light; or, equivalently, we had not called the light
into question. The light was part and parcel of our lives; we availed our-
selves of its services. It was, in our lives, what it is non-mediately, namely,
that which illuminates us. Our living dealing with it originarily consisted
in availing ourselves of its services, just as we do with all other things in
our surroundings. At nightfall, as we found ourselves in need of light, we
would turn it on and thus reap for ourselves the benefits of its power to il-
luminate, [just as] we would turn it off when we were no longer in need of
it. During the day, [we would handle our situation] analogously, by open-
ing or closing the windows and curtains. In other words, the light was
not, to us, a “thing” properly so called; [rather,] it was a utensil, i.e.,
something the reality of which consists in rendering a service [to us]. And
since no service exists except in reference to the person taking advantage
of it, [we must say that] there is no utensil at all except within the scope
of someone’s life.56
A utensil, as such, does not exist except insofar as it is being put to
use; its existence or reality is reducible to its functioning, [whether] ac-
tual, past (which I remember), or posible (which I anticipate). I do not,
however, occupy myself originarily with a utensil apart from its actual
employment. I do not think of [the question,] what is a utensil? when I
am making no use of it, when it is not [actually] a utensil. Otherwise, it
would follow that my dealing with a utensil could not be reduced to my
use of it as a means in my life, for I would be able to occupy myself with
it outside that relationship. Moreover, outside its relationship with me, I
would [thus] be able to attribute to it a reality above and beyond that
which it possesses for my life, [that is to say,] therefore, a reality of its
own, a reality pertaining only to it, a reality in itself. [Now,] strictly
speaking, that is what the name “thing” refers to, [for] something is
[taken as] a thing when I realize that it is endowed with its own exis-
tence, with a nature that belongs to it when I neither see nor am occu-
pied with it.
Let me insist on this: one cannot think of a utensil as such without
thinking of its functioning; without, therefore, thinking of the service it
renders; without, therefore, thinking of the person to whom it renders its
service and to whom the utensil would not render it, if that person were
not in need of it. But that person would have no need of it if he or she
were not needy, that is to say, if he or she were not constrained to do or
make this or that. Now then, to live means to have to do or make this or
that, to be in need (of doing or making this or that). A utensil, then, impli-
cates a life of which it is an element, and, apart from which, a utensil does
not exist, it is nothing. You could say to me that that is not so, for, apart
from what a utensil is in a given life, it is a material thing endowed with a
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 95
reality of its own, with a reality independent of any life. Yet if you reflect
a little, you will come to note that for a hammer to be a thing—above and
beyond what it is as I avail myself of it when I need it to drive nails in—
presupposes that I have called into question what happens to a hammer
when it is not a hammer. But now we are endeavoring precisely to ascer-
tain how it is that a human being calls that and, in more general terms,
anything into question.
It is evident that no one’s life, to begin with, calls whatever surrounds
it into question; on the contrary, it finds itself, to begin with, in the midst
of a stock of items which make their appearance as utensils already in-
serted therein. Let us try to think of the lives of primitive human beings:
the earth is to them the solid [ground] supporting them and allowing
them to walk,57 by contrast with water, which serves to wash, clean, and
refresh them, but which does not offer them any support unless they
swim. A tree is that which serves to supply them with wood, fruit, or
shade. If such original instruments did not exist, human beings would not
[be able to] live. In other words, if human beings did not find in their sur-
roundings facilities of which to avail themselves as living support, the fact
we call “life” would not exist. To begin with, living consists, then, in en-
countering oneself, in encountering necessities or needs alongside oneself,
and in encountering, alongside them, a stock of facilities that befit and
serve to meet them. Let it be clearly understood that the discovery of the
original stock in question does not take place at a particular moment of
one’s life, but is identical with it. To live is already, ab initio [from the be-
ginning], to be engaged in using such utensils or facilities. If [you do] not
[agree], try to think of a life wherein there were, to begin with, no ade-
quate correspondence between necessities and means. Such a life would
of course be impossible, [and] it would be impossible not only to live it,
but even to think of it; it would be something radically other than that
which we call life.
Our situation is no different from that of the savage. Originally, we
also encounter utensils; strictly speaking, we encounter many more uten-
sils than the savage, utensils that provide us with greater facilities. It will
not do to say [however] that this electric light would not exist if some-
one had not wondered about the nature of light, if someone had not,
therefore, wondered about the light as it is in itself, not as a utensil. Who
would doubt that? But, as a matter of fact, even we, who are living now,
encountered the light originally as a utensil, later to find out from some-
one else that it was an artifact fashioned by other human beings. Accord-
ingly, dealing with something in terms of utility always has priority; it is
most probable that even a present-day human being would never have
seriously wondered about the nature of light, if he had not been obliged
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 96
96 What Is Knowledge?
98 What Is Knowledge?
could now say “being occupied with.” I am the one who is occupied with
this or that, and I am nothing but the swarm of my occupations. Living is
being occupied with something. This term is better suited to make appar-
ent that which is essential to my doing, since, as a matter of course, it sug-
gests that a doing of mine is only the one of which I am aware, the one in
which I am posited, the one, in fine, of which I consist, which is my being.
But just as an instrument is no thing, neither am I. I am neither my body
nor my soul. I am the one who lives in this world by means of the body
and the soul which have fallen to his lot. And if my soul is not endowed,
for example, with much of a will, with much of a memory, or with much
talent, I would have to put up with the fact, just as I would with not hav-
ing much money. Whether I like it or not, I have no choice but to live by
means of this poorly endowed soul and this rheumatic body in the midst
of the not very pleasant Spanish world of 1930. I am the one who has to
avail himself of all that (i.e., soul, body, and world), the one who has to
avail himself of all that in order to lead his own life.
Now, since it is a matter of innovating the most radical philosophical
questions and of turning the most venerable of traditional concepts up-
side down, when I engage one of them I have no choice—to some ex-
tent—but to touch on the rest by way of anticipation. Thus, by means of
ever-nearing turns or circles,62 I will be rendering specific the system that
such concepts form. A philosophical system can only be understood as a
whole.
Let me now return to the [case of the] hammer I see, which served me as
the occasion of saying to myself, “my dear fellow, there it is!”63 It was
[then] a question of determining the manner-of-being that the hammer
would be endowed with when I am not putting it to use, but when I merely
find it lying in the corner of the room. To that end, I raised the question,
what is the meaning of such an expression of silent discourse with myself?
I have already corrected my first and most obvious reply thereto, accord-
ing to which it would merely signify that I have seen the hammer. We have
learned that we always have to ask ourselves, whenever we speak of some-
thing, the question, what am I doing by means of it, or in its midst? Pri-
marily, I do not realize that I am seeing a hammer; I only realize that I have
found a hammer, that I have encountered it out there, that is to say, that I
have recognized it [as a hammer].64 And that was precisely what that
phrase gave expression to, viz., that I have recognized a hammer. And
this—to recognize it—is what I have done with it. Nothing else.
Please note, however, that a new complication arises: previously I had
made use of the hammer (e.g., I employed it to drive in nails), but at this
point I [come to] re-cognize it. Is it possible to re-cognize something if one
has not previously taken cognizance of it? Now, strictly speaking, I had
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 100
PART III
WHAT IS LIFE?
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 104 blank
Third Lecture*
(Wednesday, October 29, 1930)
To take something as the object of our meditation1 is to make our depar-
ture on the basis of the thing as it readily presents itself to us, but at the
same time to realize that, at first blush, it shows itself to us in a confused,
insufficient manner. In terms of the original aspect it spontaneously dis-
plays [before us], every thing is [given as] a muddle. We are in need of
achieving clarity about it. To that end, we analyze it [and] establish a pre-
liminary order in the midst of the confusion. This would already yield a
second aspect of the thing in question, one which—by virtue of our anal-
ysis or meditation—would appear beneath the original aspect [exhibited
by the thing]. And yet the newly emerging aspect would not prove suffi-
cient either; [at that point,] we would again subject it to analysis and ob-
tain a third aspect placed underneath the second. It is then that we may
say we have made progress in our meditation. This process is to continue
until we come to an aspect of the thing that, to us, would already seem to
be sufficiently clear; it would arise under all the others, and that is why it
would be the deepest aspect of the thing. Therefore, meditation is the
path traversed by the mind as it moves from the surface and muddled as-
pect [of a thing] to the one [presenting itself] with clarity and depth.
Now then, the meditative path in question is marked by a feature that
distinguishes it from a physical footway. In effect, we cannot proceed
from one aspect to another without mentally preserving the sequence of
aspects [already considered] or the itinerary of the stations [visited thus
far]. In order for us to seek after a new aspect, we have to make our de-
parture on the basis of the preceding one; however, since the latter only
made its appearance because, in turn, we arrived at it on the basis of an-
other, we must keep continually alive to the steps we have taken, or to the
thread of our reasoning,2 if we do not wish to go astray in our medita-
tion. We may walk along a road without being concerned with what we
are doing, since the path is there, apart from our traversing it and prior to
our treading it, while, in the case of meditation, [to proceed] is at once to
walk along a path and to bring it about. This is the reason why the mind
*Ed.’s N.: I take it that the missing first and second lectures of this 1930–1931 course
must have been similar to those immediately preceding them in [Part II of] this edition.
They were probably derived from them.
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 106
has to wrap itself up with the path it follows as it unfolds it;3 it has to
carry it—so to speak—on its own back, to keep it alive, or—to put it in
other words—it has to retrace it constantly, to traverse it time and again.
Otherwise, the mind would lose its way and make no progress, [with the
result that] the muddle would thicken again around the mind and render
it captive once more.
We will find ourselves [in these lectures] constantly in need of repro-
ducing the milestones of the intellectual process that is being born in us.
Let me remind you of them:
of thing (is) this most distinctive living situation that leads a human being
to ask about Being in general, and not merely about the being of this or
that thing? It is evident that a living situation of this kind would be the
wellspring of philosophy, the one out of which philosophy would emerge.
But this would unavoidably oblige us at present to consider in all ear-
nestness that matter upon which we have seen ourselves falling back time
and again from the very beginning. I mean life, human life, in the situa-
tions of which any manner of doing—and especially every act of knowing
and asking—apparently originates. Let us then pose a question that will
be, for the moment, the final one to be raised: What is life? It is at this
point that we have to begin giving an answer. It will be a long one and
will occupy us throughout a sizable portion of this lecture course. In a
way, the answer would contain the whole of metaphysics.
We shall proceed slowly until we arrive at a most exact formulation of
the concept of life. We are to subject life to a forceful and radical analysis.
Now, it would be suitable to have before us the very body we are to dis-
sect, were I to propose to you, at this point, that we join forces in carrying
out an analysis of life. I need you to “see,” to have the immediate intuition
of that to which I refer by “life.” In other words, what we are going to do
today is to formulate a preliminary description of life, a phenomenon of
vast proportions. In such a description are already contained the precise
components that would eventually form part of the exact concept of life;
yet, at this point, they would not be presented as the notes constituting its
formal definition, but only as mere suggestions in terms of which you
may—let me say it again—first come to “see” the fact of life. It is not pos-
sible to define, conceptualize, or think of something without having first
seen it.11
Fifth Lecture
(Wednesday, November 12, 1930)
I believe I have succeeded in putting you in touch with that odd reality I
call life, which—strange as it may seem—has been paid so little attention.
To begin with, [let me say that] we are not about to deal with a definition.
In order to come to understand a definition, one is required first to see the
object defined and then compare the latter—in a stepwise fashion—with
the concepts that form part of the definition in question. Accordingly,
you should henceforth endeavor to recreate the intuition of “life” you
have formed during [our meetings] these last two days, and to do so
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 109
nothing but life. And yet [the name] “human being” must be taken in its
individual sense. It is not a “human being in general” who lives; on the
contrary, every life is a most individual affair. It is always a given human
being who is living, a human being who is unique and irreplaceable, i.e.,
I. We shall then be using the terms “human being” or “I.” However, the
locution “I” does present us with some serious difficulties, [since] for the
last three hundred years [those who have cultivated] philosophy have
been concerned with the “I” [or ego], and have assigned various termin-
ological significations to the word, as a function of the standpoint
adopted [in turn] by each philosopher. This notwithstanding, when I say
now that I will be employing “I” to refer to the one living his or her life,
you must completely disregard all the senses given to the word through-
out the history of philosophy, and keep only to its everyday, primary
meaning, namely, that which it has when [each one of] us, Mr. or Ms. So
and So, says I.
The series of surgical and orthopedic operations to which the original
sense of the locution “I” has been subjected is astonishing, almost incred-
ible. What else has not yet been tried! Descartes began by defining the ego
as pensée [thought] or consciousness;14 Kant would [later] restrict the
scope of application of the term, but would at the same time complicate
matters more by distinguishing the empirical from the transcendental
ego.15 Nonetheless, the empirical ego is not to be identified with what the
locution “I” refers to in everyday speech, namely, the one living his or her
life; rather, it is the ego of which Descartes spoke. [Much later we will find
that,] for Husserl, the ego also is just the subject of the acts of conscious-
ness.16 Let me say it once more: it is incredible indeed that, for the first
time in the history of philosophy, the locution “I” is simply going to be as-
signed its original meaning, namely, I, this Mr. or Ms. So and So who is
engaged in living his or her life; who, among other things, talks to his or
her neighbor, suffers from stomach acidity, plays the lottery, attends phi-
losophy lectures at the University of Madrid, or bought a hat yesterday.
Having made this terminological observation, I now proceed to an-
swer the question I had posed earlier,17 namely, how is the reality I have
called “life” (i.e., “my life”) related to any other? We soon come to the re-
alization that any reality other than “my life” is part of my life, in the
sense that it depends on the reality which “my life” is. God himself,
should he exist, would first somehow exist for me in my life.
Let us try to think of a reality that would be completely divorced from
my life. What could I possibly say about it? I would not be able to say
whether or not there is any such thing, or (whether or not) it is [of] one
[kind] or another. And this means that in no sense would it be a reality.
“Reality” is a concept I establish in my life by keeping in view that which
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 111
course, we will, most exactingly, bring the new doctrine face to face with
the classical ones concerning every fundamental problem.
Accordingly, we are now going to attempt—in a somewhat more pre-
cise manner—to develop concepts about the sort of primordial reality
which life is, about its strange, peculiar, exclusive manner of being.
I have [already] stated that [my] life consists in encountering myself in
the midst of my circumstance or world. Anyone who, informed by tradi-
tional notions, hears this [assertion] would take it to mean that I am a
thing or substance endowed with the power to come to notice, see, think;
that [I am a thing or substance that] notices, sees, thinks of other things
and people that are found in my surrounding world and are substances
too. The sense of the technical name “substance” is well known: accord-
ing to Descartes, substance is “[. . . quod] nulla alia re indigeat ad existen-
dum” [“. . . {that which} needs no other thing in order to exist”].23 Color
[for example] is not a substance, because its manner of being requires
something else that would serve as its support or substrate. A color alone,
by itself, is incapable of holding itself up in being, that is to say, it cannot
be on its own, for it needs to be borne by another that would carry and
sustain it. This is the reason why it is said that the manner of being of
color is accidental and not substantive.
It is surprising to find, however, that in what we call life, in that reality
that appears to us as primordial, nothing is endowed with a manner of
being [characterizable as] either accidental or substantive.
I, the one living, Mr. So and So, do not have being or exist apart from
my surroundings. In no sense am I what is usually called a thing, whether
material or spiritual. I am the one living, and this means that I am the one
who is in need of many of the so-called “things” in order to exist (ad ex-
istendum). I am the one who is now sitting on this chair and in need of it,
so as not to grow tired or fall down. If I did not have a chair [at my dispo-
sal], I would be standing and in need of what I call the “muscles of my
body” to prop myself up, and of what I call the “ground,” so as to have
support for my body. I am the one who is reading to you [what is written
on] this paper, and [thus] I am in need of the paper from which I am read-
ing, of the ink I employed to write on it, of my eyes and glasses, and of the
light illuminating me. I am the one who is reading [what is written on]
this paper; in other words, I am the one who is doing something with
something belonging to my surroundings. There is no moment, there
could not possibly be any moment of my life that does not consist in
doing something with something or, as I said the other day, in being occu-
pied with the elements of my surroundings, with the world. The least I
could do is to kill or mark time,24 to wait in readiness to do something,
and this is as good a manner of doing something, or of being occupied
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 115
with the world, as any other. And what is more: “waiting in readiness”
usually is an exasperating and most difficult way of being occupied. “To
kill or mark time” is—in fact and not metaphorically—a living activity in
which one is busy with that “thing” called time, just as—when he is mak-
ing a table—a carpenter is busy with a “thing” called wood and those
things known as saw, chisel, and hammer.
I am then, willy-nilly, the one who—in order to exist and be—is in
need of occupying myself with, or acting upon, that which is not myself.
Therefore, I do not exist, nor am I the one I am, except by virtue of the
fact that I am with and upon my circumstance, with and upon that which
surrounds me. A follower of Aristotle and Descartes himself would say
that the one living is then an accident, since ad existendum [“in order to
exist”] he is in need of the surrounding world. Quite so, but unfortu-
nately that which is other than I and in which I find support—the so-
called “things” of my circumstance or world—is devoid of being in itself,
of substantive being, of being that [would be] independent of me. [For ex-
ample,] the ground upon which I find support is in effect—primordially
speaking—nothing but “that upon which I find support.”25 This light,
which is now illuminating me, is not something endowed with a nature or
being of its own, and independent of [the fact that] it is now illuminating
me. On the contrary, it is, purely and simply, [just] this: “that which illu-
minates me, insofar as and to the extent that it is illuminating me.”26 If I
asserted that that which is now illuminating me, above and beyond doing
so, is endowed with a being independent of me and consisting, [say,] of vi-
brations taking place in [a medium called] aether, or in being a state of the
electromagnetic field, I would have employed the term “being” in two dif-
ferent senses.
The being of light as a state of the electromagnetic field is a being that
I have invented, that I have fashioned by means of my thinking and that I
attribute or add to the primordial and only genuine being of this one
light, namely, that which is exhibited by it when it is illuminating me, and
which is neither a product of my thinking nor something I have
wrought.27 I come to invent the theories belonging to [the science of] op-
tics, because I find myself illuminated by this light fixture or by the sun-
light. And yet, no matter how firm such theories may be, they always re-
main problematic and, above all, exhibit the character of derivative
reality when contrasted with the primordial, evident, and unproblematic
reality of this light, as simply and actually engaged in illuminating me. We
have thus discovered that the so-called “things” are not—originarily and
truly speaking—anything of the sort, that is to say, items the manner of
being of which presupposes that they are independent of me. They are not
apart and by themselves, since their being consists only and exclusively in
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 116
acting upon me with living evidence. I am very sorry [to say that] you are
“the ones who are hearing me now,” and nothing else. That is to say, by
hearing me, you are now acting upon me. If you did not hear me, I would
be someone other than the one I am at present, namely, the one who is ad-
dressing you verbally. But what is more: if you were some other people
and nonetheless were listening to me now, I would also be other than I
am, because I would sense the difference [between you and them] with
some measure of clarity or other, and I would comport myself otherwise,
no matter how minor the difference might be. In effect, I am the one who
is saying what I am saying, because you—my listeners now—appear to
me to be the same people who heard me in the past. This is the reason
why I say to you what I am saying, trusting to some degree that you are
ready to understand me on the basis of what I have already said.
Strictly speaking, I am then nothing but the one who is acting upon my
circumstance, and [conversely] my circumstance is nothing but that
which is acting upon me. Neither I nor my circumstance have a being
apart; neither I nor my circumstance are “substances.” Moreover, neither
I nor my circumstance can be accidents of one another, for every accident
is an accident of a substance. Accordingly, in the reality called “life,” nei-
ther life nor anything therein exhibits a substantive or accidental charac-
ter. Rather, those two venerable categories are of no use to us, if we desire,
by means of them, to think the primordial reality life is and everything
present therein.
This is the pressing and most concrete reason why we are in need of a
new philosophy or conceptual system. [I do not say so] for the sake of
novelty, which is always a matter of frivolity, but because of an irresistible
intellectual necessity, for we are—by means of a clear and unimpeachable
intuition—face to face with a new manner of reality, that is to say, one
that has not been noticed heretofore, and which is not amenable to being
thought about by means of traditional concepts.
Let us then recapitulate our findings. I live; my life exists; there is life,
each and every one’s. But if there is such a thing, then there also are this
“I” who lives and the surrounding world in which one lives, my existence
essentially consisting in co-existing with such a world.
Sixth Lecture
As you look back and gather together the impressions received in these
lectures, you will probably come across an experience that was under-
gone time and again, namely, that we often take a step which, right before
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 117
possess, and it is therein that any other reality will have to appear, arise,
or be made manifest to us. Thus, for Christianity, God is the most inde-
pendent reality we can conceive in respect of our lives, and yet, even if it
may seem contradictory [to think so], the said God turns out to be depen-
dent on our lives in virtue of a most far-reaching theological reason. In ef-
fect, when we say of God that he is a reality independent of us, we are
saying that he transcends our lives altogether, or, equivalently, that we
cannot say anything at all about such a reality, or about its manner of
being, or even, in all strictness, about whether it exists.
If nothing in theology but God’s transcendence or absolute indepen-
dence in respect of us were asserted, it would be tantamount to saying
that there is no such reality. That is why, in theology, one does not limit
oneself to saying that God is a being altogether independent of and con-
cealed from us, but it is added that God, as the one who is independent of
us, in turn reveals himself to us. A God who would not bestow his revela-
tion on human beings would not be God, [for] even to that point is reve-
lation a necessary attribute of the idea of God. Now then, revelation is
God’s entry into a human being, into the life of a human being. God is
real to the extent that he reveals himself, and he has no other reality than
that which he has pleased to disclose to us in his revelation.
There is no way out, then. These [past few] days we glanced at life out
of sheer curiosity, and, lo, we now find that we can no longer leave it be-
hind. When one takes a look at life, one inevitably discovers that there is
nothing but life, that we are imprisoned therein. But since only my own
is life, that is, life [as that] which belongs to each and every one of us, a
human being finds him- or herself to be absolutely immersed in the ex-
clusive and hermetically sealed sphere of his or her life. Let us not be dis-
tressed by this, however, for our prison is not confining, being as it is co-
extensive with the universe. The error committed throughout our entire
philosophical past, the error I am attempting to correct, does not consist
in reducing the dimensions and wealth of what there is, of reality. In-
deed, we are in possession of no less than the universe, and yet, in the
past, one neglected to add the qualification “living” to the [term] uni-
verse. It is not that my life is in the universe, but that the universe is in
“my life,” inasmuch as the universe is not, except because I live it.29 Life
consists in my being at the universe; it consists, therefore, of three things:
myself, my being-at, and the universe.30 Consequently, life is the whole
and the universe a part. At this point, however, it would not be advisable
to employ, except in passing and by way of mischievous anticipation, a
word as vague and compromising as “universe.” Let us be content with
using locutions like circumstance, surroundings, living sphere, or, at
best, “world.”
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 119
When one realizes that life is the primordial reality in which every
other reality has its foundation and makes its appearance, one finds one-
self obliged to form a precise idea not only of what that reality contains
but, as well, of its manner of being real. I have devoted two lectures to
[presenting] a preliminary description of the essential characters or ingre-
dients of life, and that led me to say that to live is to be aware that one is
existing, to encounter oneself occupied with the surrounding world, to
decide at every moment what we are going to do next, etc.31 All such
notes are part and parcel of the reality called “my life.” But let me now in-
quire into the meaning of the real being attributed to life and to every one
of its ingredients.
Generally speaking, it is ill-advised solemnly to inform the listener or
reader that the subject one is about to deal with is of the greatest impor-
tance. Doing so would upset his or her mind and deprive him or her of the
coolness and serenity [needed] to understand the question with ease. But
in this case it would be unforgivable not to remark that the matter at hand
is decisive and of the greatest significance. In effect, the question involved
is the reduction—it is nothing less than that—of every known modality of
being or concept of reality to another which is altogether novel. The fact
that this novel and radical modality of reality has not been discovered
until now is due precisely to its having been covered up or hidden by other,
more obvious concepts of reality. That is why, if one wishes to take a look
at such a modality, one must be ready not to rest content with those con-
cepts, i.e., to take them for granted and as being beyond discussion. I take
the liberty, then, to demand of you the greatest possible attention and pa-
tience both today and in subsequent meetings. Undoubtedly we are now
going through the most difficult moment in the whole course, but, once it
is over, I promise you the most suggestive perspectives and landscapes.
A human being first encounters a reality; it is later that he or she thinks
about it, that is to say, strives to form a concept of it. The task of thinking,
then, is always a reaction to a reality already present [to us]. Or to put it
equivalently: to think is to interpret reality.
As you can gather, intellectual progress as a whole is dependent on our
taking care always to compare our interpretations or concepts with the
realities [they are about]. To this end, it is essential for us never to mistake
the given interpretation or concept for the reality itself, even in the case in
which the former seemed to us to be on target or evident.
You are now going to observe in yourselves an inclination that is quite
difficult to resist, namely, that of feeling at home with received concepts,
as if they were the reality itself.
Let each one of you attempt to take note of what your life genuinely is
and contains righ now. [If you did that,] you could say, for example, [the
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 120
refer to all such elements of our lives by means of the term “thing.” One
also thinks of this room and the material world as “things.” The word
“thing” signifies, then, a certain manner of being, to wit: independent,
substantial, or substantive being—the sheer manner of being exhibited by
something when it is in itself, when it sustains itself. We are used to saying
of a “thing” that it “is [out] there,” an expression by means of which we
signify that: (1) it is not in us, as an image would be, or as if it depended
on us in some sense or other; (2) it exists in and of itself; and (3) its man-
ner of existing is static. The being of a substance consists in statically
being what it is. This is the reason why we say that it is [out] there, that it
is in itself.
We think that the world is a large “thing,” and that there is nothing in
it, or outside it, that does not seem to us to possess, in the final analysis, a
substantive manner of being, or the character of a “thing.” What obvi-
ously is no “thing” (e.g., a color or a motion) does not seem to us to be
endowed with genuine “being,” and we are always motivated thereby to
search after some actual “thing” to serve as its support.34 That is why we
say that there is no color in and by itself, but rather that color is always
the color of a thing, and that motion is the moving [behavior] of a thing.
I even think of myself as a “thing”: when my analysis leads me to the re-
alization that there is something in me—i.e., the most characteristic and
important something about me—which is devoid of corporeal traits, I in-
vent a way of being a “thing”—i.e., being unextended and imponder-
able—which is dispossessed of the attributes of matter, but which is none-
theless endowed with the essential traits of a thing, namely, subsistence
apart from everything else and a static existence. This is what I call soul
or spirit.
There you have the concept of being, [or] of perennial reality, in the
history of philosophy, [a notion] undoubtedly borrowed from the pre-
philosophical interpretation human beings found as soon as it occurred
to them to think of being. This is, I would then say, ontology in its origi-
nal form. Why it is that human beings encounter that idea of being first
and rest content with it is a matter which, of course, will occupy us some
day. It is not probable for such an early and persistent understanding to
be a product of chance. What at this point I must underscore is that, to
my surprise, it has endured without interruption throughout our philo-
sophical development. [This has been so] because the differences
between philosophical systems amounted always to a preference of one
over another object (say, of matter or spirit, of finite or infinite mind,
etc.) as substantive being, while taking being or reality to mean static
subsistence was never formally cast in doubt, as we shall have an occa-
sion to see in detail.
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 122
namely, that which is proper to what is called a thing, i.e., a being in and
by itself. This would presuppose—mark this well, for it is decisive—that
I have called into question what happens to a chair when it is not a
chair, that is, when I put it to no use. But this37 new way I have of being
occupied with a chair, which is different from my sitting on it, is also a
way of doing something with it, namely, to inquire into its being, there-
fore, to philosophize.
Now, this way of being occupied with things, not taken as utensils or
obstacles but in respect of their being, this sort of occupation which al-
ready is formally intellectual in character, is nothing but a modality of my
life, a manner of living of mine. My sitting on a chair is as much a manner
of living of mine as is wondering about what the chair is when I put it to
no use. Placed in this new relationship with me, the chair is endowed, as
well, with a manner of existence that is also in the nature of a service, and
which is also dependent on me, to wit: the chair no longer serves as a seat
for my body, and yet it certainly exists as a problem for my intellect. It is
a problem for me, that is to say, it is a difficulty for me. Nothing has
changed, then. Accordingly, the being of that which lies in my surround-
ings still amounts to its being referred to me, to its living action on me. It
is not, it does not exist, except insofar as it acts and functions. Its being is
not static but dynamic, not substantive but active. The chair does not
exist by itself, while acting on me now and then; rather, it exists only as
long as it acts and in conformity with its action.
What we must grow accustomed to seeing and understanding is this:
a being requiring no prior, static substance behind its action, but
amounting to sheer self-performance, i.e., not substantive, but perfor-
mative being.
Yet, unless one inquires into the sort of being or reality I myself am en-
dowed with, one cannot grasp well [the point] that the so-called “things,”
or the elements of my circumstance, originarily are sheer actions [being
effected] on me insofar as I live, or that they are nothing but facilities or
difficulties. In fact, those items inaccurately called “things” have been de-
fined, in reference to myself, as actions [effected] on me. Now, if I hap-
pened to be a “thing” or substance, no innovation would have been intro-
duced here. We would still be under [the rule of] a quasi-idealism, in
terms of which the “things” of the world only are, in effect, in relation to
the subject thinking of them, a subject, however, that would be a sub-
stance bearing them within itself as its states or modalities. I have cer-
tainly not rested my case by saying that things—in terms of their living
and, therefore, primordial reality—constitutively refer to me, that they
exist only insofar as they exist for me, formulae which, without excep-
tion, belong to the most orthodox form of idealism. On the contrary, I
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 124
have specified that their way of referring to me and existing for me is tan-
tamount to their acting on me. When the time comes, I will have the occa-
sion to explain—for the benefit of anyone unable to understand it
today—why it is that the small variation between a mere “being for me”
and “acting on me” radically surpasses any form of idealism.38
Let us now turn to what is urgent, [namely, the question,] what sort of
reality is mine, what sort of existence do I possess in my life? Each one of
you could say of yourself: I am someone who is being illuminated by this
light, who is feeling this pain, who is sitting on this armchair, who is hear-
ing and thinking this, who finds him- or herself in the middle of this room
[and so on]. But each one of you is not all of that disconnectedly and by
sheer chance; rather, each one of you is all of that because each one of you
wanted to come to the university this afternoon, and wanted to do so be-
cause, or in view of the fact that, each one of you was and is—as well, and
prior to all that—someone who wants to learn about philosophy. More-
over, that each one of you was and is someone who wants to learn about
philosophy is so, in turn, because, or in view of the fact39 that, each one of
you has decided that your life as a whole, as it presents itself to you today
by way of anticipation, should be, more or less, the life of an intellectual.
To be accurate at this juncture, I would have to speak only about myself,
since each of us sees—non-mediately and fully—only his or her life. Each
one of us only knows about his or her neighbor’s life and, therefore, envi-
sions it only indirectly. But we are dealing here with life as lived, and not
with life insofar as one is more or less cognizant of it.
Someone could say to me it is quite true that many of those things “I”
presently am I am in view of, or because of, the fact that I have decided to
be an intellectual, but that I feel physical pain or pleasure, at the moment,
is not because or in view of that. It is possible and even very likely that, in
effect, the pain someone may perhaps feel did not exist because of his or
her decision to be an intellectual, and yet, in other cases, he or she cer-
tainly would feel pain or pleasure because of that, as it happens, for ex-
ample, [in connection with] all illnesses that the person in question knew
he or she was very probably going to suffer from, if he or she devoted
him- or herself to the given profession. Along with its advantages, every
profession brings disadvantages, proper to the field, to both spirit and
body. But that is the least of it. Let us say it is not so. However, I am not
just someone who has decided to be an intellectual; I am something much
more elementary, something which, being so familiar, one is oblivious of,
namely, a human being who has decided to continue to live. I would say
that this modest and elementary occupation is responsible for inevitably
bringing, as a consequence, the pains and illnesses proper to our kind.
Now then, to continue to live is as much a [matter of] decision—of a
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 125
Please note, however, that this “new being” of the armchair, like that of
“standing” or “sitting,” [is to be characterized as follows]:
Seventh Lecture
Let us continue with our attempt to take into account the odd manner of
being which the reality called “life” (and everything therein) exhibits. We
have emancipated ourselves from [holding] a substantialist interpretation
and have substituted for it the idea of reality as performativeness. Reality
would [accordingly] amount, purely and simply, to the action effected by
the circumstance on me and to my action on the circumstance. The arm-
chair [for example] is that which serves me for the purpose of sitting
down, and I am the one who puts the armchair to [that] use.
We are now to take notice of the fact that the action which something
(say, an armchair) consists in is always twofold, or one [so to speak] that
is raised to the second power. I mean that the armchair consists not only
in acting on me, but, as well, that the armchair’s acting on me is already
dependent on my action on it. Or to put it more clearly: the being of the
armchair [to keep to my example] consists in serving as the means for me
to sit down. But the armchair could not be endowed with that manner of
being, unless I were someone who is in need of sitting down and wants
to do so. [Consider] another instance, that of solid matter, say, this table
which consists in resisting the pressure I am exerting; it is evident, how-
ever, that that could not be the case, unless I, before the fact and on my
own, were someone pushing [against] and exerting pressure [on it]. It is
only because I am pushing [against it] that the table is resistant. There-
fore, please note that the action on me which solid matter amounts to
presupposes my prior action on it; it contains that action within itself,
i.e., it includes or implicates it. But the converse is true as well: if matter
did not resist me, I would not be “someone [engaged in] pushing,” and
[the action of] pushing would not be among the attributes—a most unas-
suming, yet evident one—constituting me. Accordingly, my action on the
table presupposes—as something prior—the table’s action on me; my ac-
tion includes and implicates it. One is dealing here with a reciprocal im-
plication, which is the reason why I said above that action is always two-
fold. A human being and the world are, to such a point and so
unfathomably, linked to, and affected by, each other. This formidable re-
ciprocal implication and the capacity of linkage between the two is pre-
cisely what I call “life.”
When human beings speak of their very own “existence,” it means that
they find themselves at that which is other than they, that is to say, that
they are at the world; therefore, that they are nothing but their being at,
and with, the things that are other than they (e.g., pieces of furniture,
houses, animals, people, money, pleasures, pains, all of which are—let me
say it again—things other than I). Now, I hope, a more accurate and more
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 128
from ours. He could say [of himself]: I am someone now being tormented
by this bench, by the words I have to lend an ear to, by this prison. All the
elements of the world which are presently facilities and conveniences for
us would become difficulties and inconveniences [for him]. His actual life
and self would be completely other than ours, simply because the one
thing in view of which he is motivated, and for the sake of which he lives,
is different [from ours].
This leads us to the realization that my present or actual life—and,
therefore, my self now, my actual and present self—is what it is in virtue
of my future self, my future life, and not the other way around. If you
now are thankful for being seated, the reason is that it facilitates your lis-
tening to me attentively and without annoyance, inasmuch as you not
only made the decision to learn philosophy or to increase your knowl-
edge of it, but you also, time and again, reiterate that decision or continue
to relive it at every moment. In other words, you do not now limit your-
selves to living your life of the moment, but—at the same time, at the very
selfsame time of the clock—you are living in your future. But we can ob-
viously go further and say that your future as philosophers is livingly
prior to your present as listeners. This is what one would give expression
to, in everyday parlance, by saying that you are hearing [me] because you
aspire to philosophize. “Because” [serves here to] indicate that what I
would call cause—without taking the word seriously at this point—is
prior to the effect. In our lives, it turns out that the cause of our now is
our future, [which is] therefore prior [to the now]. Life begins by being
future; it is only because we live ourselves in future [terms] that the
present circumstance arises, and does so endowed with its concrete char-
acteristics, whether convenient or not. Now we [can] understand why it is
that every self must have its exclusive circumstance, as well as appreciate,
with greater clarity, the sheer performative or operative being thereof. If I
lived myself in future terms according to a different style (i.e., not as a
philosopher, but, say, as an industrialist), by that very fact the present mo-
ment would be altered. My future, then, amounts to the pressure exerted
on my circumstance, to which the latter responds by constituting itself as
it is. To the pressure exerted by my future, the world responds in effect
[by providing me] with a series of facilities and a series of difficulties. In
opposition to my wanting to be a philosopher, the world sets up particu-
lar obstacles—for instance, by not endowing me with sufficient talent for
the work; by presenting me with a sickly body incapable of focusing its
[powers of] attention for an extended period; by being responsible for my
being born in Spain, where the tradition in those studies has disappeared,
etc. Yet the world also goes my way by providing me with particular facil-
ities—for instance, by endowing me with a strong will; by supplying me
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 130
with sufficient means and thus rendering me able to devote my short pe-
riods of health entirely to my studies; by my being well acquainted, since
childhood, with various languages, etc. But suppose that my future were
of a different sort (say, that I had decided to be a bullfighter), and you
would find that, by that very fact, the value of the world’s responses
would change, [for] what would I do [for example] with my knowledge
of German when confronted by a bull?
Thus, were I again to raise the question as to what the “self” is who is
living, I would no longer say that it is just, or even chiefly, what I, as a
matter of fact, am presently doing with, or suffering from, the things of
the world. Rather, I would say that I am the one who is to be a philoso-
pher, the one who has to be a philosopher. In other words, I would start
by defining the self as future, as “the one who is to be.”
In order for you to understand what follows with stark clarity, it is
necessary that I point out, once and for all, that, when I say that my fu-
ture self consists in my having to be a philosopher, I am only simplifying
matters by means of the example. In fact and in reality, such a thing is but
a component of my “self.” By virtue of reasons, the postponement of the
consideration of which is advisable at the present time, [one would have
to say that] that is a most important factor among those which constitute
me, but [also] that it is not, by any means at all, the only one. [For] I am
the one who as well has to support my family; the one who has to be a
Spaniard; in short, the one who has to continue living. Moreover, I am, or
have to be, each and every one of those characters by modulating them in
the most individual of fashions, something that words, because of their
ever-generic nature, are incapable of conveying. In reality, then, my future
“self” is comprised of a very substantial number of characters or ingre-
dients in conjunction. And what is more: some of them are unknown to
me; that is to say, I have not clearly thought of the fact that they consti-
tute me. And still others I try not to admit to myself; I evade acknowledg-
ing them; I endeavor to conceal them from my own eyes. We shall have an
occasion to appreciate how it is not just a matter of “unbecoming” ways
that I find in myself, but, rather, something running much more deeply
and which is common to all human beings. We shall have an occasion to
appreciate how it is that, in life, there is a natural tendency to avoid rais-
ing, in a serious and thoroughgoing fashion, the question as to who I am
in future terms.
Having made this observation, let me continue. I am not just the one
who is now living in a certain way. Rather, what I actually am has its
foundation in the fact that I am, priorly, the one living, in future terms, in
that certain way. Since I am thus and so in future terms, I am [thus and so]
presently. My present does not exist except by virtue of my future, under
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 131
the pressure exerted by my future. Now then, this means that, in the now
forming part of the time measured by the clock, I am at once my future
and my present. How this is possible is a matter of consequence that, for
the time being, I am leaving untouched. As will become apparent, there
are two different sorts of time, namely, living time, the real and primor-
dial kind, and the time appertaining to “things,” to the world of sub-
stances, the one measured by the clocks.47
To begin with, the only thing important for us to understand well is, in
effect, that I now am the one who is here, etc., because, at the same time
(as measured by the clock), I am the one who has to be a philosopher. But
already please note the odd lack of harmony [here]. Some of you, perhaps
nearly all of you, might be able to say [this]: in effect, I am under the im-
pression that I am the one who has to be a philosopher; I find in my
present something like the inevitability of having to be a philosopher; in
other words, if I now imagine that I did not achieve that [goal], my future
life would now appear to me as a failure or, equivalently, as if the “self” I
have to be had not come into being, as if it had been cancelled out.
I contend, then, that I now am [both] future and present in conjunc-
tion. My future exerts pressure on the now, and my present life arises by
virtue of the pressure [so] exerted on the circumstance. It is ill-advised,
then, to conceive of such a future, of my “having to be,” as if it referred to
a later time, as measured by the clock, which I now think of or imagine. It
is not the case that I think of my future from [the vantage point of] my
present. It is not a question of thinking, but of something prior to think-
ing. Conceive of it the other way round: from [the standpoint of] my fu-
ture I live my present, and all of that as lodged in the now. But did I not
say that my actual surroundings are what they are because of, or in view
of, the fact that I have to be a philosopher? Therefore, from [the stand-
point of] my having to be a philosopher, I live what is now surrounding
me; therefore, I also presently live my having to be a philosopher.
It is thus impossible to separate our living present from our living fu-
ture. The latter is an actual part of every present. What is more: it renders
it possible; it is the dynamic-ontic pressure constituting it. It is not that you
are going to be, or think that you are going to be, philosophers at some ap-
pointed time in the future; but, rather, that you already are philosophers in
that future manner of “having to be” which is, at once, present.
We have at our disposal two words that serve us admirably to give ex-
pression to that “future self,” to my “having to be.” They are “anticipa-
tion” and “project.” In the phenomenon I call “my life,” I encounter my-
self as being not merely lodged in the given surroundings; I also find, as
we had the occasion of seeing,48 that my-being-lodged therein is active in
character. I encounter myself occupied with the given surroundings, and
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 132
to be is indestructible; that is why the only thing one [thus succeeds in] ex-
cising is the realization thereof; [in fact,] upon excising it, one takes note,
all the more strongly, of the inexorable reality of the self one has to be. As
a project, it abides and constantly turns against one’s present life to level
an accusation against it and to exact torment from it, because of the crime
our present life has committed in negating, in prescinding from, it.
As you can see, we are gradually rendering specific the makeup53 of the
two termini which, by implicating [each other], constitute our lives, namely,
the circumstance or world and the self. The former amounts to the system
of facilities and difficulties encountered by the living self, and the latter to
the life project or program that has to be realized within the circumstance. I
may want not to live, that is to say, [I may want not] to realize the self I have
to be, but, even though I may avoid its realization, that does not imply that
I cease thereby from inexorably being the project I am. But that means that
my existence, my reality, has two components, to wit: my life as project and
my life as actual realization, my having to be “thus and so” and my actual
being “this or that.” As a project, I am a possibility; as lodged in the circum-
stance (i.e., as present), I am a realization. Let it be clearly understood that
that possibility I am is not the possibility of a mere thought; it is not just a
possibility thought about, but a real one as well; it is a modality and com-
ponent of living reality; it is an existing or living possibility.54
Similar to [the case of] “having to be” a philosopher is that of “having
to love a person and be loved by him or her.” (Amor, ch’a nullo amato
amar perdona.) 55
Now we can clearly see the various layers of meaning which are
crammed together and, so to speak, fused with one another in the for-
mula, “I am the one I have to be.” Here they are, one by one:
But it is not only for that reason that the vocation my self is cannot be
adequately expressed by the names of the trades or professions and, in
general, by those signifying life types (e.g., a dandy, a bohemian, a jouis-
seur [or sensualist], an adventurer, a Don Juan, a “bourgeois,” etc.), but
also because my life (and, therefore, the project I am) consists of various
living dimensions, of occupations, of activities not covered by the notion
of trade or profession or by that of life type. I am my vocation not only to
do philosophy, but as well, for example, to take walks in the country, to
enjoy gourmet meals, to converse with my friends (and not just with any
one of them, but with those whose condition is most specific); but I am
likewise my vocation to fall in love not just with any woman, but with
one whose qualities are very special, indeed so much so that perchance
she may not exist.
In brief, a vocation anticipates a life in its entirety, with each of its
sides, facets, and dimensions, while it fails to anticipate, of course, only
whatever finds its source in the circumstance. It anticipates as a whole the
one I have to be, but it does not anticipate the one I, in collision with the
circumstance, would later turn out to be. That is the reason why “I” am
not my circumstance, but precisely that which is other than my circum-
stance.56 That is the reason why my life is essentially tragic, i.e., because it
is a contradiction, which means that it consists in my having to realize my
vocation, the vocation I am, in that which is not me, in the world, in the
counter-self. It is in this sense that one can say that life is alienation and
essential betrayal, [for] to live is to encounter oneself delivered into the
hands of the enemy, of the world.
Vocation, then, is one’s sense of being called to be that most individual,
unique entity which, in effect, one is.57 Every vocation, strictly speaking,
is a vocation to be me ipsimum, my very self.
Eighth Lecture
In the last few lectures, my intention had been only to [help] you concen-
trate on the sort of reality which, during this course, I will be referring to
by means of the word “life.” To that end, we conducted a preliminary
analysis of it, and thereby we were able, as well, to gain a lot of ground,
which will already be at our disposal when the need arises. We [thus]
came to see how it is that life consists in my co-existing with the sur-
rounding world or circumstance. [However,] my co-existing with what
lies in my surroundings did not amount to my finding myself alongside
things, and to things being found alongside myself, in an inert fashion.
Rather, livingly and originarily, things are sheer facilities and difficulties
arising before me, because I am, as a matter of course, the definite pressure
I exert on [my] particular surroundings. As I said, I am the one who has to
be this or that; I am the vocation of my existence, or, to put it otherwise, I
radically consist of a need to realize a certain life program or project in the
world. To the active project I am, the surroundings respond by adopting a
special countenance, which is partly favorable and partly unfavorable.
We have come to form a preliminary idea of living reality, an idea pre-
senting it as a modality of being radically different from all the others
which, thus far, have been given expression in philosophy. In effect, life
appeared to be, in our eyes, something uncharacterizable as substance,
whether corporeal or spiritual.58 I contended that I am neither body nor
spirit; rather, I encounter myself with my body and with my spirit, just as
I encounter myself with the earth, the animals, and my fellow human be-
ings.59 I am a life task or program, something, therefore, which is in no
wise similar to a living substance. If anything, the latter would already be
this or that, and not that which amounts to just having to be. Likewise,
the elements of the world in which I have to be, that is to say, in which I
have to carry out the program I am, are not originarily endowed with a
substantive character. This chair, primarily speaking, is not a “thing”
properly so called; [instead,] it is a service being rendered to me by the
surrounding world, a service that allows me, when it is suitable to me, to
take a seat. That which is primordially endowed with no form of being
other than that of “something on which I am sitting” will later become a
theoretical problem for me, to wit: what about the chair when I make no
use of it? or, to put it otherwise, what is the chair when it is not “some-
thing on which I am sitting,” but, rather, when it is “something I am
thinking about ontologically,” that is, when I wonder about its being?
I and the world are for each other. The being of my self and the world
is not substantive in character. Neither my self nor the world abides sep-
arately, in and by itself. Rather, the being of my self refers to the world: to
live is to be, or to exist, at the world. And conversely: the world, originar-
ily and formally, is that which makes up the surroundings for the one who
is living.
It is important to me that one thing be clear in your minds about all
that, namely, the intuition of our life as a reality that amounts to a task.
Life is not something given to us ready-made; rather, we have to fashion
it.60 Its reality, then, is not that of a thing, but instead that of a task.
Now then, if this is so, every ingredient—and even every detail—of life
would consist, necessarily and exclusively, in being, in part, a function of
the task in question. Or to say it otherwise: if life as a whole is a task, then
anything found therein will be a task element and nothing else. It will
thus be a “means” for the task, or an obstacle thereto, or a defect of, and
a failure at, the task.
allow one to ascertain the nature of the being of things, the grasping of
which knowledge apparently amounts to.
It is evident that the problem of knowledge is not posed with any [de-
gree of] radicalness, unless one calls into question precisely what tradi-
tionally has been considered its elementary definition, to wit: the search
after, or the apprehension of, the truth, that is, the being of things. Instead
of taking these words as a satisfactory answer and resting our case with
them, they should serve to awaken the greatest disquiet in us. Once such
a definition has been advanced, it is not legitimate for one to go, without
further ado, in search of the being [of things] here or there (say, in psy-
chology, logic, or elsewhere), [since] this [procedure] would presuppose
that, without further ado, one admits the existence of something which
would deserve the name “being,” and that, without further ado, one pre-
sumes to know what “being” is about. It presupposes, as well, that one
does not find it surprising or problematic that the being [of things], which
apparently is found [just] there, has also to be sought after by us, instead
of being found by us without search of any kind. For it is the case that,
properly speaking, one does not have to seek after things; rather, they are
there, as a matter of course, exerting their pressure on one’s existence,
whether by causing offense or delight. Not only is it true that one does
not have to engage in the effort of searching for them, but also that one
cannot get rid of them. To live is just that: to be inescapbly besieged by
them. This is so much so that one need not go in search of them. [How-
ever,] what may come to pass, at a given moment, is that we require some-
thing that is beyond our reach. Yet, if we sense our need for it, it must be
that we had already had it, that we relied on its being available to us, and
that now, due to sheer chance, we are lacking it. The absence of a thing,
then, comes after its presence; we miss it now because we had it in our
possession before. Our being bereft of it is accidental in character; it may
be that we will come to have it again soon.
However, nothing of the sort happens to us concerning the being of
things. I find the light in my surroundings, as something making its ap-
pearance by itself, at its own risk, about me. That is why I say it is there.
Yet what the light is, the “being of the light,” is not found there, in my
surroundings; it is not where the light is, but is always located beyond the
there [of the light], characterized as it is by its essential absence and tran-
scendence. If one wishes to get to being, one must unavoidably set oneself
in motion, leaving behind every “there” and traveling to the “beyond”;75
one must go, necessarily and always, in search of it.
Now then, the fact that the being of the light is marked by its absence
bears no resemblance at all to the fact that, perhaps, one may accidentally
lack the thing called “light.” We are not now bereft of being because we
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 142
established, and they took them up as they could have done with any
other. Like it or not, one has to do something in life, which is intolerant of
the absence of all doing. Being bored—one of the most anxiety-
provoking tasks—would come to the fore when one sidesteps all others.
It is the dreadful task of marking or killing time,78 of sustaining—by
sheer effort of will—an empty life, which is the most burdensome of all,
one that collapses upon every single minute it lasts. Many human beings
do science, I contend, just to “do something.” But it is evident that they
themselves would not have invented the sort of human occupation found
embodied nowadays in regulated and endowed [research] institutes, pro-
fessorships, and social posts. The first person to have done physics did not
do it [just] to “do something,” but by virtue of an inner and most concrete
sort of need.
(Please note that, in almost every philosophy of the past, knowledge
makes its appearance as if through a trapdoor, without any account being
rendered of its existence in the universe. Nobody inquires into its prove-
nance or its roots; only the problems affecting its functioning—once it ex-
ists—are subject to study, but not that of the origin or foundation of its
existence. It is in this fashion that this major problem—as well as all oth-
ers, of course—arises in midair, rootless, absent all generative earth, and
belonging nowhere. Now then, I believe that philosophy is of very little
import, unless it consists, first and foremost, in ascertaining the founda-
tion and root responsible for the existence of something, unless it does
not amount to resting content with taking up what exists already in order
to study the way it functions.)
This need, which is the root of knowledge, must be laid bare by means
of a definition of the latter [which is advanced] with a claim to meaning-
fulness. The effort by means of which one goes in search of being emerges
from, and feeds on, our ignorance, which is one of the radical dimensions
of our lives. Ignorance is the most genuine presupposition of knowledge.
Only an entity ignorant by nature is capable of setting itself in motion by
engaging in the operation of knowing.
Yet not just anything would qualify as ignorant. Neither a stone nor
God is ignorant; that is why, strictly speaking, neither one nor the other
engages in knowing. One is dealing here with a human privilege, both
glorious and formidable.
What does it mean to be ignorant?79 Evidently, it is something other
than just not knowing. I do not know how many hairs belong to the white
hare which, at this very moment, is running along a given Arctic parallel.
And yet I am not ignorant of that fact; the ignorance in question does not
form part of myself, is not a component of my actual being. With as much
right one could say that a stone is ignorant. But no, my real, constitutive
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 144
mind which lasts only a while. The renowned [notion of] being would ac-
cordingly possess a purely intrahuman, domestic character. Apart from
human beings, there is no such thing as being (though perhaps, perhaps—
let us tread with care—one may have to take animals into account as
quasi–human beings). That is why being is not there; rather, for it to come
into existence, a human being has to go in search of it. Being is born pre-
cisely in this search.
Consider the sense in which ignorance is a radical attribute of human
beings. It amounts to the insecurity of which our lives consist, as a sort
of bitter matter. It is [our] not knowing what to abide by. Knowledge
does not have a frivolous origin. It is not the simple employment of [our]
intellectual mechanisms, nor is it something that begins to function be-
cause of curiosity or an eagerness to look, as Aristotle90 appears to
[have] assume[d].91
The greatest error committed in the entire philosophical tradition up
to Kant has been to presume that things, by themselves, on their own, are
endowed with being.92 Being was thus transformed into a fanciful “super-
thing,” and philosophy became a wandering procession in search of it
throughout the expanses of the universe, bereft as it was of orientation
and fixed trajectory [to do so]. But that is no way [of trying] to find any-
thing, much less some vague “super-thing.” Confronted with a problem,
what one must do first is to locate it, i.e., to determine where in the uni-
verse it takes root.93 Only thus, under the guidance of the root and settle-
ment thereof, can one approach it in some methodical way. It is no good
to say that “what I am looking for is somewhere; let us go find it.” Prob-
lems located nowhere are pseudo-problems. Genuine problems always
take root in some definite location. It is self-evident that there is no prob-
lem that is not a human being’s. Therefore, every problem must arise in
one or another dimension of human life.
Tradition overwhelms us with an avalanche of accumulated questions,
in which avalanche the substantial questions are mixed up with the fic-
tive. That is why it is urgent for us to conduct a radical inquiry into them,
that is to say, a rigorous examination of their rootedness in life, [an exam-
ination] that would allow us to eliminate all those questions that are be-
reft of it. [This is in keeping with] a general imperative of sobriety. One
must shake the world in order to reduce it, for the moment, to what is in-
evitable about it.
Things by themselves are not endowed with being. Being emerges as a
need human beings feel when they are confronted with things. What need?
It is this (let me insist on it): a human being is nothing but life. To live is to
encounter ourselves shipwrecked among things. There is no choice [for us]
but to hold on to them. However, they are in flux, uncertain, fortuitous.
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 149
PART IV
GLIMPSES OF THE
HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 154 blank
Ninth Lecture*
When we say of two given apples that they are equal to each other, we
have attributed the component of equality to their being.1 Now then, it
is evident that, when taken in isolation and by itself, each of the two ap-
ples does not possess or contain the character, note, or component of
equality with the other. For apple A to be equal to apple B, not only is
the existence of apple B necessary, but so is, as well, that of a subject
who would compare the apples in terms of size. Now, to compare them
in terms of size is to wonder how the two apples are related to each other
in such a respect. Only in view of this question and in its wake (and, I
would say, as a result of its impact) does the equality of the two apples
arise in them. For equality to exist, it has been necessary, then, for some-
one to compare the apples, but to compare them is to do something with
them. Nonetheless, what arises or results from the comparison, namely,
the equality of the apples, belongs to and derives from them. Whether or
not they are equal to each other does not depend on the subject who
would compare them.
Shall we [then] say that the equality of the apples is purely subjective?
The subject has laid on them his or her question, comparison, and meas-
urement, but he or she has not dictated what the answer would be; he or
she has not generated it; rather, it has been imposed on him or her by the
apples.
The millenial history of the theory of knowledge and, even more gen-
erally, of philosophy is nothing but the history of the various formulae
that have been tried out [in the attempt] to reduce to an equation the two
terms or factors that play a role in the problem of knowledge, to wit: sub-
ject and object; or, to put it otherwise, to determine what pertains, in
knowledge, to the subject engaged in knowing and what to that which is
being known.
In the initial stages of the work of philosophy, knowledge was inter-
preted as if the object contributed almost everything to it. It was be-
lieved that knowing amounted to the coming of the thing into the mind.
*Added by the Spanish editor. Ed.’s N.: Of this lecture only the fragment transcribed
here is extant. It is alluded to and complemented in the body of the next lecture. [Cf.
infra, pp. 159ff.] I [have decided to] group all the remaining lectures separately under
the heading, “Glimpses of the History of Philosophy,” because the author himself, in
the last one, characterizes them in that fashion. [Cf. infra, p. 169.]
Tenth Lecture*
In the preceding lectures, I believe I have fulfilled my promise to you,3
which was to tackle—most energetically but with the greatest restraint—
a fundamental metaphysical problem, namely, the problem of knowledge,
[and to do so] by showing you how it is possible to formulate it in a more
radical way than it has been heretofore and [point out] the sense of its so-
lution. But, properly speaking, I did not work out that formulation; in
other words, I did not prove its necessity and that of the solution I sug-
gested for it. In brief, what I did not do was to deal with it in depth and
formally. But if I did not do that, the reason was not only that I did not in-
tend to do so, but [also] that I intended to do the opposite. To have dealt
[with it] in depth would have led us, of necessity, to display the extensive
series of metaphysical questions in its entirety and, in consequence, to
stray, at least temporarily, in the midst of the forest [it constitutes]. Now
then, as you may remember,4 my purpose was to offer you—free of every
complication and with the utmost simplicity—the complete outline of a
major metaphysical problem from its first growth to its [final] fruit, so
that an instance as easily surveyable as this would serve as an introduc-
tion to our study of metaphysics.
If we now desired, in retrospect, to specify the most salient features ex-
hibited by what has been discovered, we would find the following three:
g l i m p s e s o f t h e h i s t o ry o f p h i l o s o p h y 157
Now then, if we take hold of the concept of a thing and proceed to an-
alyze its content without pre-judgments, what could we expect to find in
it? The thing itself, or something pertaining to it, and of which it would
consist when taken in isolation and without any reference to a human
being at all, i.e., to the life of the human being wherein the thing qua
thing is found? [For example,] is the thing [called] sun, or something of it,
part of the astronomical concept of the sun? When we analyze it, we are
surprised to discover that the concept of the sun contains nothing but the
formula of certain measurements we can carry out. This may astonish us,
but it is undeniable. The being of a thing, which the concept makes mani-
fest, does not contain the thing, but precisely the relationship the thing in
question bears to us and, therefore, its way of functioning within the
economy of our life.
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 158
The effort it takes for us even merely to understand this thesis, let
alone to accept it after understanding it, makes me suspect that, by virtue
of one or another cause, there is in us a primary inclination to admit the
opposite one, i.e., the thesis according to which the being of a thing is
[identical with] the thing, or is found in it, or pertains to it when it is
taken by itself. This native tendency would have become consolidated in
a tradition and a millenial habit of mind against which it is quite difficult
for us to react.
This is the reason why I believe that directing a quick look at the his-
torical process of philosophy from the point of view relevant to our thesis
would serve to bring the preceding limited attempt to its completion. In
the short film we are about to run for our benefit, we are only interested
in answering this question: what have the philosophers of the past be-
lieved the being of things consists in? But even when it has been thus cur-
tailed, our curiosity comes to be ambiguously formulated, since, in order
concretely to answer that question, one would [have] to try [to present]
the entire history of metaphysics. That is why it is advisable to specify
what we are now exclusively concerned with. If Thales held that things
consist of water,5 and Heraclitus of fire,6 and Democritus of atoms,7 it is
certain that they represent different philosophies, and such differences
are of great importance to the history of metaphysics. But it is no less cer-
tain that those three philosophies coincided in regarding the being of
things as equivalent to a thing, be it water, fire, or atoms. For the purposes
of our subject, then, the three philosophies in question amount to an
identical doctrine, at least in light of the general attitude corresponding to
them, since the distance separating things from their being is, in the three
of them, approximately the same.
Our interest would lie only in underscoring the major changes under-
gone by metaphysics in its way of interpreting the relationship between
things and their being. For it could possibly be the case—[and, if it were,]
it would be of exceeding elucidative value—that philosophy made its be-
ginning on the basis of the belief that the being of things resided in them
and was more or less identical with them, and [further] that the evolution
[of metaphysics] amounted to the ongoing establisment of a distance
between being and things, [a development] which, in some fashion,
would have resulted in the fact that being would progressively become
less [like] things and contain less of them. If this was the case, then the im-
mense process of the history of philosophy would be equivalent to the
progressive purification of the idea of being, that is to say, to our gradu-
ally becoming clearly aware of the fact that being as such, in all its purity,
cannot be mistaken for the things of which it is predicated. For this rea-
son—i.e., because what we say of a thing is quite different from it—it
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 159
g l i m p s e s o f t h e h i s t o ry o f p h i l o s o p h y 159
makes sense to say it of the thing, since, as we had the occasion to note,8
the act of saying consists in rendering something manifest or clarifying it,
in making something patent [and], therefore, in making it happen that
what was not already there about a thing be there.
Let us be satisfied now with underscoring a few typical stages of that
process. To this end, the quickest and easiest route [to follow] would con-
sist in asking—by cutting through the history of philosophy at various
moments along its path—what human beings believed they had to do—at
each one of those moments—in order to come to the possession of being
(or, what amounts to the same thing, in order to know).
At the beginning of philosophy, knowledge was interpreted as if the
object contributed everything to it. The subject did nothing; it was simply
acted upon; its role was a passive one. It was believed, without further
ado, that knowing was equivalent to a thing’s proceeding from its reality,
or from being in itself, to being in the mind. But since this [view] would
imply that a thing leaves its place and reality in the world in order to
come to form part of thought, it was necessary to look for an explanation
that would render comprehensible the contradiction which, to begin
with, the problem of knowledge actually amounts to, namely, that a thing
known qua thing lies outside my mind, while the thing qua known lies
within it. Such ubiquity, [i.e., the fact that a thing] is at once within and
without, is [precisely] the question.
Here is how some have answered it: each thing would emit, in every di-
rection, small replicas of itself (i.e., eídola, phantoms, images, or simula-
cra of the thing9), and it is these which enter the mind. The thing, then, ac-
tually and really proceeds into the mind, even though it is only its
duplicate, or eídolon, that does so. It could be said that there is, among
the real actions performed by the thing, one that consists in producing
copies of itself. To know would be to allow those copies in; it is, there-
fore, to copy, although, at this early stage, even the labor of copying is the
responsibility of the thing.
If for the purposes that interest us now, we fix the character of this
interpretation of knowledge by means of a few decisive features, we
would come to the following results:
These three notes, [characteristic of] the most naïve and primitive
interpretation of knowledge, are going, of course, to be rendered com-
plex and subtle during the subsequent evolution [of philosophy]. How-
ever, the surprising thing [about them] is precisely the opposite, namely,
the strict tenacity of their persistence and the enormous and longstand-
ing effort that has been required to overcome and dislodge one note after
the other.
For the moment, let me focus on the complication they immediately
underwent. At the same time that this idea of knowledge was being held,
it was noted—as indeed it could not have been helped—that knowledge
cannot rest its case with the duplication of the thing such as it is given
[out] there. This is so, in the first place, because one obviously comes to
the realization that the totality of the ingredients which a thing one sees
consists of breaks down into two groups of very different significance.
One of them comprises all characters, modalities, or notes that appear
and disappear in the thing, which supervene on it and dissipate. The other
includes precisely everything about a thing that seems to remain the same
through those variations. This means that a thing, as a matter of course, is
already divided, as it were, into two things, to wit: one permanent, an-
other variable. Now then, knowledge is interested, above all, in the per-
manent portion [of the thing]. But if this is so, then knowledge would not
be mere reception. It is well and good to affirm that [in knowing] I would
allow a thing in and that, absent this, without such passivity, there would
be no knowledge. And yet, once a thing has been allowed in, I would have
[nonetheless] to do something that already is active in character, namely, I
would have to separate the permanent from the mutable in the thing. This
realization would gradually intensify until Aristotle came to formulate it
as a doctrine, to which we are so accustomed that we fail to take note, in
full, of how odd it should look [to us]. It is the doctrine according to
which a thing consists of two beings, one essential, another accidental.10
Both are present in the thing; they belong to it; they blend with it; and yet
they are separate and distinct within it. Such a duality demands [that a
difference in] rank [exist] between those two [forms of] being, so that es-
sential being would have priority over accidental being. The former is the
principal [form of] being, the kûríos ón, the one endowed with ultimate
significance to knowledge, which is thus required to be essential knowl-
edge, or knowledge of the essence in the thing, or better yet, knowledge of
what is essential in the thing.
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g l i m p s e s o f t h e h i s t o ry o f p h i l o s o p h y 161
Now, this was the attitude and tendency characteristic of one of the
two teams [of thinkers] which, during the first three centuries of the his-
tory of philosophy (therefore, between 600 and 300 B.C.), collaborated in
the creation of science. The [members of the] other team, the Ionian
school, were also of the belief that things possess being by themselves,
and that knowledge is reception and copy, though it represents a special
modality, so far as what it seeks as the being of things is concerned. [The
members of] this team were not primarily interested in what is permanent
about things, but, in a way, in what is variable about them. And what is
more, they were of the opinion that what is constitutive of a thing, taken
as a whole and in its entirety, is not its being permanent, but its arising
and perishing. Or to put it otherwise: the Ionians departed from the con-
viction that the most evident aspect of things consists—to speak with pre-
cision—not in their being (at the present moment, obviously), but rather
in their not-having-been earlier and in their ceasing-to-be later. Hence,
the question about the being of things turns, for the Ionians, into another,
namely, whence are things coming and whither are they going? Or what
amounts to the same thing: the question about the being of things be-
comes a question about the origin and genesis thereof. When Thales as-
serted that things are water, he meant thereby that what is not water pres-
ently was water originally and will be water upon its being consumed.
The being of things is, then, that out of which they come and that toward
which they advance or [to which they] return. But this implies, of course,
that [the Ionians] acknowledged, for example, that the earth, which pres-
ently does not appear to be water, truly is water beneath its appearances;
that it is a modification of water. The latter persists in being through all
the apparent alterations it undergoes. Following a different path, we end
up, accordingly, with a duality similar to the one we [encountered] previ-
ously: the thing [was taken as] breaking down, in one case, into its essen-
tial and its accidental being, and, in another, into that which it is originar-
ily—or its latent principle—and that which it is as its modification or
appearance. Nonetheless, for the members of either team, the being of
things is always a thing. Just as its essential being is a part of the thing, so
is originary being ultimately a thing—say, water. The difference lies in the
fact that, for [the members of] the second team, knowledge amounts to
the reduction of many and various things to one thing or a few—e.g.,
water or fire—or, else, hot and cold, etc.
In order to summarize the entire complication of this first stage [in the
evolution of philosophy], let us advert only to the fact that, in it, a separa-
tion and division occur within the thing, even though being and the thing
itself merge. [And this means that] the thing is incapable of coinciding
with its being.
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 162
Along with the complication that arises in connection with [the matter
of] a thing and its being, seethes another about knowledge conceived as
the reception of a thing into the mind. Much too crude was the idea that,
for a human being to perceive a thing, it was enough to admit an eídolon
or miniature [replica] thereof to the mind. This is equivalent to thinking
of the mind as a large box wherein, just by entering, the external is trans-
formed into sensation and thought. Soon enough, one comes to the real-
ization that the entry of the external into the internal [sphere] must
amount to a more radical process. My sensation, my thought, is myself
sensing and thinking. The entering of a thing into myself must then con-
sist in its being transformed into myself, or in my being transformed into
the thing, in my becoming the thing. This already serves to complicate
simple reception. At the very least, it requires that the subject be capable of
becoming like the thing, of transforming itself into it. [For instance,]
Empedocles would contend that that is possible only if I was already, be-
fore the fact, somewhat [like] things; that is to say, if, when a thing reaches
me, it finds a prior affinity [for itself] in me: [for example,] the earth [must]
find earth in me, and water, water. In light of this, knowledge would be a
particular case of the action of like upon like, hómoion tó hómoio.11
In its extremely primitive form, Empedocles’ theory anticipated and
betokened the subtlest developments of the theory of knowledge, be-
cause, mind you, it seems to involve—in an unclear way—the realization
that I cannot know the being of a thing unless it is already in me. Now
then, this is to foresee, after a fashion, that knowledge always requires
something a priori. But let us not dwell on this point.
Aristotle—who believed, like the most primitive [of thinkers], that
knowledge is, first of all, sense-perception (and, therefore, reception)—
would, however, come to terms with [the notion that] “things come to
form part of myself” in a more refined way. It is not that things enter [into
myself], or that they send duplicates of themselves to the mind, or that the
elements of things—earth, fire, air, and water—pre-exist in me, as Empe-
docles would have had it. Rather, things have the power, even at a dis-
tance, to produce in me modifications that are in conformity with them.
The soul takes on the form [eîdos] of the thing;12 it becomes like the thing,
but it does so, of course, after the way13 in which that most special thing
called “mind” is capable of becoming like, or transforming itself into,
other things. Many centuries later St. Thomas [Aquinas] will formulate
quite well this Aristotelian idea by asserting that cognitum [. . . ] est in cog-
noscente per modum cognoscentis14 [the known . . . is in the knower after
the fashion of the knower]. To be sure, it is the modus cognoscentis [the
fashion of the knower] that one should clarify, and yet neither St. Thomas
nor Aristotle did so. But we are presently interested exclusively in pointing
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 163
g l i m p s e s o f t h e h i s t o ry o f p h i l o s o p h y 163
out how the subject, whether one likes it or not, is in the process of gain-
ing ground, even in those interpretations of knowledge according to
which it is sheer reception and copy, and in which, therefore, the object is
assigned the dominant role and the subject is believed to have nothing or
very little to contribute.
Let us jump to the second stage, which, chronologically speaking, is
prior to Aristotle. Plato is its representative.
Plato analyzed the things that are out there, and sought in them some-
thing that would be equivalent to their being. But being is not [just] any-
thing for Plato; for him it is that which is permanent, immutable, [self]
identical. Being cannot amount to something that is not, ceases to be,
[and] places itself in opposition to itself. This sheet of paper, for example,
is affected by non-being. If I say it is white, and I attribute to it the [man-
ner of] being we call “being-whiteness,” I discover that it is not altogether
[identical with] whiteness, but is also blueish and, therefore, non-white.
But, furthermore, this sheet of paper came into being one day and will per-
ish another; therefore, it was not earlier, and it will cease to be later. Con-
siderations of this sort—the validity of which we are not presently con-
cerned with putting to the test—led Plato to making the most paradoxical,
astonishing, daring, and fruitful of discoveries, namely, that things, taken
by themselves, are devoid of being. Since, moreover, Plato was incapable
of thinking of them without [appealing to] something like being, having
failed sufficiently to purify the idea of being, he found himself obliged to
distinguish between two modalities of being that come through in his ter-
minology. Things he will simply call “beings” (tà ónta); by contrast, he
will employ the name, óntôs ón (i.e., that which is like being [or the really
real]) to refer to that which truly constitutes being.15 Therefore, things are
not like being; they are not, in truth, endowed with being.
Now, Plato was faced with [the twofold fact] that, on the one hand,
there is, in a thing, no group of ingredients, or essence, deserving to be
taken as its being (as his disciple Aristotle came to believe once again), and
that, on the other, no thing exists to which all others would be reduced as
their originary being (as the Ionians had claimed). In brief, he was con-
fronted with the fact that in the world of things there is no such thing as
being, which must be sought after outside the world, in the ultramundane
realm [consisting of] what he called the Ideas. The Ideas constitute the
being of things, and yet the former have no intercourse with the latter.
Is it possible [to have] a more radical division between things and their
being? I am surprised that no one has taken notice of this side of Platon-
ism, apart from everything else it may imply: that no one has taken no-
tice of the separation—qua sheer separation as such—between things
and their being. And no one has taken notice of it, of course, because, just
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 164
g l i m p s e s o f t h e h i s t o ry o f p h i l o s o p h y 165
my dealings with it are limited to this, that light is not an entity. It ac-
quires the character of an entity when I ask whether or not it is, and, [if it
is,] what it is. This does not mean that the light in question would sud-
denly acquire a character not its own. The example I adduced the other
day,21 involving as it did two apples equal to each other, easily permits us
to understand well the possible meaning [of saying] that this light would
acquire the character of entity only when I ask whether or not it is, and,
[if it is,] what it is. The equality of apple A with apple B does not exist in
apple A, unless [1] apple B exists, and [2] someone compares the two ap-
ples. Apple A’s being equal to [apple] B is, as I pointed out [then], the way
it has of responding to our comparison; it is, so to speak, its reaction to
our action of comparing it [to the other].
Similarly, this light acquires the character of an entity when I occupy
myself with its being. How could it have been endowed with that charac-
ter earlier, since it had not run into my question and had not [had the op-
portunity of] responding, as an entity, to [the event of] running into it?
Yet this does not mean that the character in question, i.e., its response, is
not its own. The hardness of the table is the way the table has of reacting
to its being hit by my hand. Without the pressure exerted by my hand,
there is no hardness belonging to the table.
After having clarified this point, I do not think that the following ter-
minological distinction will present any difficulty to you. When I do noth-
ing with this light except allowing myself to be illuminated by it, the light
is a thing and not an entity. But it is an entity when I start to think of its
being. In view of this, we can say that an entity is a thing when I occupy
myself with its being, or insofar as it is referred to its being.
We can then formulate [this thesis as]:
things gives rise to a novel question, which is different from all of them.
And [this is to ask,] what is the being of things? in general, which is the
specifically philosophical question.
That question, however, does not point, to begin with, to its own pecu-
liar character. It presents itself as being of the same sort, and endowed with
the same sense, as the other questions; it only makes it apparent that it is
not about any particular or determinate thing, but about all and any of
them. That is why it is [tantamount to] taking it as sufficient, in order to be
faithful to itself, to prescind from determinations. However, this proves in-
sufficient, and it gives rise to an extended series of misunderstandings.
That series of misunderstandings of the very question posed by philosophy
is the history of philosophy. But, of course, such misunderstandings do not
amount to sheer error. They have been necessary, so that, through them
and by means of their mutual correction, the sense of the philosophical
question may gradually come to attain purity and become distinct and
clear.22
Now, what do such misunderstandings amount to, in the final analy-
sis? One can reduce them to two: (1) that, when one wonders about what
the being of things is, and not about what the being of this or that thing
is, one may believe one is still asking about an entity, about the being of a
thing, even if the thing is of an abstract, indeterminate sort; and (2) that,
in wondering about what the being of things is, one may believe to be
asking about things as a whole. In neither case does one leave [the realm
of] things; one would be after another entity, another being, be it an ab-
stract entity or entity as a whole.23 For this reason, the answers usually
advanced by philosophers to the questions they had raised were tanta-
mount to proposing a thing, whether fire, number, strife, Idea, thought,
matter, spirit, natura sive Deus [nature or God], or the ego. In the case of
Aristotle, the answer [set forth] was twofold, and his metaphysical system
suffered the confusion [resulting] from that twofoldness. To the question,
what is the being of things? he first replied by pointing out the ingredients
of abstract being, of being qua being, and later [by saying] that God is the
entity serving as the foundation of all other entities.24
In terms of our formula, we may give expression to this general error
as follows:
We see this very clearly in Plato. In answering the question, what are
things? it is not possible, in a more decisive fashion, to separate oneself
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g l i m p s e s o f t h e h i s t o ry o f p h i l o s o p h y 167
from them, to turn one’s back on them, and to acknowledge that they are
not [identical with] their being, than to say,25 [with Plato,] that they are
precisely in need of the being they are devoid of. Courageously, he aban-
doned the world in search of missing being; therefore, he left all things
behind, but, once he had transcended the world and found that what he
called Ideas is genuine being, he could not have thought of being, i.e., of
the Ideas, except, in turn, as entities, as things, although [he took them to
be] transcendent entities and super-things.
Eleventh Lecture*
We have seen how Plato, in search of the being of things, discovered that
they are devoid of it, that things are characterized precisely by the para-
doxical condition that their own being—the being they would have in
and of themselves—would be tantamount to their not being by them-
selves,26 to not being.
In effect, the being we attribute to a thing—to this sheet of paper, for
example—comprises the totality of expressions running like these: this
sheet of paper “is white, is square, it exists or is existent.” Of a human
being we say, likewise, that he or she “is courageous, is just, is a sculptor,
or is a physician.” We always, then, find the being of a thing in predica-
tion, and predication consists in attributing this or that manner of being
to a thing.
Now then, if we formally accept that which we are used to doing in-
formally, or by virtue of a mere habit lacking a clear awareness of itself,
and assert that things are endowed with being by themselves, we would
get lost in the midst of the most obvious contradictions. [This is so] be-
cause, in fact, if [one affirms that] this sheet of paper is endowed with, or
contains, the [property of] being-white on its own, what is meant
thereby would be that “this sheet of paper” and “whiteness” are one and
the same thing. But this sheet of paper is also somewhat blueish, or
chickpea [in color]; therefore, it is non-white [too]. It is, then, [both]
whiteness and non-whiteness. We could say the same thing of its being-
square, because it is square, though only approximately. Its square
[shape] is somewhat rectangular or non-square; its angles are not exactly
right, etc. Similarly, a just human being, as it turns out, would be Justice,
and yet it is a fact that no human being is identical with justice, but also
and at the same time, more or less identical with injustice. Therefore,
being-human and being-justice are not the same thing: the thing “human
being” and being-just are fundamentally different and apart [from each
other].
A thing is not, then, the being-thus-and-so-ness (e.g., whiteness,
squareness, justice) we predicate of it. And the first reason by virtue of
which we realize it is nothing of the sort may be formulated as follows:
every thing presents itself endowed with, or containing, both a being-
thus-and-so and its opposite.27
Yet, even if we just took the being-white of a thing into consideration,
we would advert to the fact that, at a given point in time, it ceases being
thus and so; and that, generally speaking, [even] its more enduring predi-
cate, namely, its merely-being-existent, turns into its opposite, [for] the
thing perishes. This leads us to a second reason not to mistake a thing for
its being, inasmuch as being is not, in itself, compatible with change, with
variation, therefore, with the negation of itself. Ultimately, one may only
predicate the [property of] being-white of something that is thus and so
always, eternally, and invariably. This obliged Plato to search for being
outside [the realm of] things, in something exhibiting the characters of
[self-]identity, permanence, invariability, etc.
But this topic also presents another aspect and gives rise to another
question. If no thing contains, [say,] the genuine [property of] being-white
(that is to say, pure and absolute whiteness), therefore, if nothing in the
world is, strictly speaking, whiteness, or squareness, or justice, from
whence have we derived our awareness of them?
It will not do to say that there are things that are a little white, more or
less white, or almost white, and that it is in such things that we learn what
whiteness is. [And it will not do] because that which is nearly-all-whiteness
is not whiteness. That which is nearly-all-whiteness is far from teaching us,
or disclosing for us, what whiteness is. What happens is the opposite: for
me to be able to see that small measure of whiteness, that quasi-whiteness,
I must precisely know, beforehand, genuine, pure, and complete whiteness;
once I know it, I am capable of finding, by comparing, [for example,]
snow, milk, and swan-down with it, some resemblance between such
things and whiteness. One becomes more clearly aware of this by adducing
the example of the straight line or [that of] justice. Who has [ever] seen a
straight line with his or her own eyes, who has [ever] found [full] justice in
a human being? Only the foreknowledge of the straight line, or of justice,
would allow us to acknowledge the quasi-straightness of the edge of an
object, or the quasi-justice of a given human being.
This makes us come to the realization that not only do things lack
the being we hastily attribute to them, but also that they do not prove
sufficient even for our [arriving at the] discovery of that being by means
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g l i m p s e s o f t h e h i s t o ry o f p h i l o s o p h y 169
of them. There must be another source, a source other than things, from
which to derive our cognizance of genuine being, if later we are to be able
to have some inkling of it in them. Accordingly, neither are things by
themselves endowed with a being of their own nor do they supply us with
a knowledge thereof.
The paradox is remarkable, as you may note. It turns upside down
every one of the most settled habitual ways of interpreting being and
knowledge that are preserved, in its first stage, by philosophy.
We already saw the other day28 how Plato became committed to
searching for being outside [the realm of] things, outside this world. If he
did free himself from [the error of] confusing things with [their] being, he
did not, [however,] free himself, as the good Greek he was, from the belief
that being must ultimately amount to a substrate, in short, to an entity,
therefore, to something which, no matter how pure and subtle it may
have become, would still preserve a certain likeness to what we, in gen-
eral, call a thing. But, naturally, the thing in question is impossible, be-
cause, on the one hand, it would have to behave precisely in a way oppo-
site to that of all actual things ([for] while these change, arise, perish, and
contradict themselves, the thing that truly is, the óntos ón, would be eter-
nal, self-identical, invariable), and, on the other hand, it would have to
preserve the character of “being [out] there in front of the subject,” “[of
being] posited in themselves,” which is exhibited by things.
It is evident that one cannot encounter entities as impossible as these.
They are a mere postulate, which, in this case, despite its impossibility, is
marked by genius because of its audacity. [Those entities] are the Platonic
Ideas.
Several have been the efforts of philologists and historians of philoso-
phy to cast light on what such Ideas were, when they are regarded as en-
tities. At its ultimate level of exactitude, Plato’s ontology will always re-
main something enigmatic or undecipherable, for, in all likelihood, it was
so for Plato himself.
Here you have a good example of the possible fruitfulness of the
method by means of which we began to gain access to the glimpses of the
history of philosophy we are enjoying. The method in question did not
amount to dwelling long on specifying what the philosophers [had to] say
to us about their way of interpreting being and its relationship with
things, but, rather, to engaging the philosophers directly and asking them
about what they believed a human being has to do in order to know, that
is to say, to take possession of the being of things. Thus, by flanking them
and [reaching them] through an unforeseen breach, we may perhaps get
from them a greater degree of clarity about their conception of being
than they themselves had.
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g l i m p s e s o f t h e h i s t o ry o f p h i l o s o p h y 171
Bodies, for example, would not be of any particular size, they would
not be in the shape of cubes or pyramids or spheres, unless I applied
geometry to them, unless I translated or transformed them into geometri-
cal shapes and measures. But geometry is what I contribute; it derives
from me; it is the work resulting from my interior labor, from my entering
into and abiding in myself. It is on its basis that I construct the bodies—
which the senses place before me—in terms of shapes, distances, and
measurements; I do geometry, that is to say, I measure the earth,34 I con-
struct the world by means of spatial specifications.
The second stage of the history of philosophy and its opposite (i.e., the
first one) serve to identify for us the two perpetual antagonists, whose un-
ending combat uninterruptedly gives life to the clods of that history. [We
have, on the one hand,] knowledge as passivity and reception, therefore,
as perception; accordingly, as the work belonging primarily to the senses:
this is sensationalism and empiricism. But [we have, on the other hand,]
knowledge as activity, as that which is superadded to things, as construc-
tion, as the contribution human beings make out of their prior, innate,
connate fund of ideas: this is idealism, innatism, apriorism.
Alongside the contraposition in the interpretation of knowledge there
is another in the interpretation of being: the sensationalist, the empiricist
will always be of the belief that being and things are identical, or, at most
(as we will have an occasion to see),35 that if things are not identical with
being, then there is no being at all. ([This is the thesis of] skepticism, pos-
itivism, phenomenalism.)
By contrast, the idealist or innatist is always of the belief that things
are not identical with being, which belongs to another realm; and, more-
over, that a human being plays precisely a certain role in the universe,
namely, that of being someone who, when occupied in knowing, joins the
realm of things devoid of being to that of being devoid of things.
In idealism,36 however, there remains, when all is said and done, a trace
of sensationalism and empiricism, a fact to which I alluded the other day.37
Knowledge is knowledge about things, and it cannot be anything else.
Things are the problem, and knowledge cannot amount, in the final anal-
ysis, to anything but to a solution of the problem that things, whether we
like it or not, pose to us. Naturally, Plato made his departure on this basis,
and yet, in his efforts to solve the problem posed by things, he found him-
self obliged to search for genuine being apart and separately from them.
Now, he searched for being as if it were thing-like or an entity. As a
Greek, he kept to his fundamental conviction, of which he himself was
not aware and against [the dangers of which] he took no precautions, i.e.,
the conviction according to which, in the end, being—whatever it may
turn out to be—exhibits the character of pre-existing our knowledge of it,
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g l i m p s e s o f t h e h i s t o ry o f p h i l o s o p h y 173
[of pre-existing] its being possessed by [us] in the mind. To put it other-
wise: for the Greeks, being—in whatever sense and form—consists in
being already, in being in itself; therefore, so far as the mind is concerned,
[it amounts to] being [out] there, outside the mind. Therefore, the mo-
ment is inevitable in which being, external as it is, would have to make its
entry into the mind.
Now then, Plato introduced a corrective to such inclinations of his
people with regard to things, but [he was able to do so] because—and
only to the extent that—they are not identical with being. Marvelously,
he made the discovery that to know is neither [an act of] reception nor a
perceiving nor the work of the senses; but, rather, that it is to enter into
and to abide in oneself, to find being in oneself. All of this, up to this
point, is marvelous. But in defining knowledge as recollection, as remem-
brance, he could not but wonder how he would be capable of joining to
himself, [for example,] the notion of justice and that of square[ness],
which he was then remembering. Remembrance serves only to translate
us to a prior act, which is no longer one of remembrance, but one by
which we establish unmediated, primordial contact with what presently
is only being remembered. In short, remembrance refers us to a prior per-
ception. Now, by “perception” we specifically understand the contact
which, by means of the senses, we make with things. This sensory [act of]
brushing against sense-perceptual things is characteristic of our lives. But
justice is not of this world; therefore, our perception thereof is no act of
this life and thus cannot be sensory in character. Therefore,38 recollection,
our perception of it, is not an act of this life, and thus cannot be sensory
in character. Recollection, then, presupposes that we would possess a
manner of existence quite different from this one, in which the subject
would find him- or herself in a world devoid of sense-perceptual things,
and, consequently, where he or she would be deprived of a body and re-
duced to its purest selfhood, which would directly deal with the Ideas,
pure entities too, unchanging and eternal. The a priori condition of
knowledge—i.e., that we, as it turns out, are already acquainted before-
hand with what things are prior to our seeing them, because we are al-
ready acquainted with pure being—requires that there be an a priori con-
dition of existence, namely, the pre-existence of our soul and of another
world in which the soul would exist. It is in that world in which the soul
would pre-exist that pure beings are found. This is how Plato reconciled
his discovery that being is not [out] there (that is, in things, in this world)
with the Greek conception that being consists in being [out] there, con-
fronting the mind. The “there” where the Ideas are found is a different
“there”: it is a “beyond”; it is another world.
Platonism effects a duplication of the world.39 Human beings would
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 174
APPENDIX
Chapter One
I
is no human life that does not, as a matter of course, consist of certain basic
beliefs and which is, so to speak, riding on them. To live is to be in need of
having it out with something—with the world and with oneself. But the
world and the “self” that a human being encounters appear to him or her
under the guise of an interpretation, of “ideas” about the world and the self.
Here we run into another layer of a human being’s ideas, and yet how
different are these “ideas” from those occurring to, or being adopted by,
him or her. The basic “ideas” that I call “beliefs”—we will have an occa-
sion of seeing why—do not arise at an appointed time within our lives;
we do not arrive at them by means of particular acts of thinking; they are
not, in short, thoughts we have; they are not our occurrences, not even of
the sort that is loftier in character because of their logical perfection and
to which we refer by the name “reasonings.” Quite the contrary: the ideas
that truly are “beliefs” form the container of our lives, and, because of
that, they do not exhibit the character of being particular contents within
our lives. It is possible to say that they are not ideas we have, but, rather,
ideas we are. What is more: precisely because they are our most radical
beliefs, we mistake them for reality itself—they are our world and our
being; they lose, therefore, the character of ideas, of being thoughts of
ours that could very well have failed to have occurred to us.
Once one has come to realize that there is a difference between those
two strata of ideas, the role it plays in our lives clearly appears [to us]
without further ado (and so does, to begin with, the enormous difference
in functional rank [between them]). Of ideas-occurrences—and let it be
clearly understood that I am including among them the strictest ideas of
science—we may say that they are produced, supported, debated, [and]
disseminated by us; that we fight in their defense; and even that we are ca-
pable of dying for them. What we cannot do is live off them. We have
fashioned them, and, for that reason, they already presuppose our lives,
which are established on the basis of ideas-beliefs that are not produced
by us; that, generally speaking, we do not even formulate to ourselves;
and that, of course, we do not debate or disseminate or offer any support
for. With beliefs, we do, properly speaking, nothing at all, but we simply
find ourselves placed in them. And this is precisely what never happens to
us—if we speak with care—in the case of our occurrences. Everyday
Spanish has accurately coined the expression, “to find onself placed in a
belief” [estar en la creencia]. In effect, we find ourselves placed in a belief,
and we possess an occurrence and give it our support. But a belief pos-
sesses us and gives us its support.
Accordingly, there are ideas we come upon (this is the reason why I call
them occurrences) and ideas in which we find ourselves placed, ideas that
seemingly are already there before we occupy ourselves with thinking.1
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 179
Once we have seen this point, it is surprising to see the term “ideas”
employed to refer to both. The fact that the name is the same is the only
thing hindering [us] from distinguishing the two things, the dissimilarity
between which would stand out so clearly before us just by simply using
the two terms “beliefs” and “occurrences” in opposition to each other.
The incongruous behavior consisting in assigning the same name to two
things so different from each other is not, however, a matter of chance or
of distraction. It derives from a deeper incongruity, namely, from confus-
ing two radically diverse problems demanding two ways of thinking and
naming which are no less dissimilar from each other.
But let us set this aspect of the topic aside; it is too abstruse. It will suf-
fice for us to remark that “idea” is a psychological term, and that psy-
chology, like every particular science, only possesses a subordinate juris-
diction. The truth of its concepts is relative to the special point of view
serving to constitute that science, and its validity would hold within the
horizon that the point of view in question produces and delimits. Thus,
when in psychology it is said that something is an “idea,” it is not being
claimed that the most decisive point, or what is most real about it, has
been conveyed. Life’s is the only point of view that is not particular and
relative, for the simple reason that all others are given within life and are
mere specifications of that point of view. Now then, as a living phenome-
non, a belief does not resemble an occurrence at all: its function in the or-
ganism of our existence is altogether different from, and in a way con-
trary to, that of the latter. In comparison with this, how important could
the fact be that, from a psychological standpoint, both are “ideas,” and
not feelings, volitions, etc.?2
It is advisable, then, to confine the term “ideas” to designate everything
that, in our lives, arises as a result of our intellectual engagement. But be-
liefs present themselves to us exhibiting the opposite character. We do not
arrive at them after an effort to understand; on the contrary, they already
are at work in our depths when we set out to think about something. That
is why we do not usually formulate them, but rest content with alluding to
them, as we usually do with everything that for us is reality itself. By con-
trast, theories, even the most truthful ones, exist only as long as they are
being thought about. Hence, they are in need of being formulated.
Without further ado, this serves to disclose the fact that any thing we
set out to think about has for us, for that very reason, a problematic real-
ity, and that, when it is compared with our genuine beliefs, it occupies a
secondary place in our lives. We do not think about are beliefs, now or
later; our relationship with them amounts to something much more effica-
cious, [for] it consists in counting on them, always, without interruption.
The contraposition between thinking of something and counting on it
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 180
II
how great the influence they exert on our lives may be, we can always
suspend our conceptions, disconnect ourselves from our theories. What
is more, to behave in conformity with what we think, that is, to take it
completely in earnest, in fact always requires of us a special effort. But
this makes it manifest that we do not believe in it, that we have a pre-
sentiment that trusting in our ideas, even to the point of entrusting our
behavior to them by treating them as if they were beliefs, is an essential
risk. Otherwise we would not value our being “consistent with our
ideas” as something especially heroic.
It cannot be denied, however, that it is normal for us to govern our be-
havior in conformity with many “scientific truths.” Without considering it
something heroic, we get vaccinated, we engage in practices, and employ
instruments which, strictly speaking, seem dangerous to us, but for which
science provides the only warranty. The explanation [for this] is very sim-
ple and serves, incidentally, to cast some light—for the reader’s benefit—
on some difficulties he or she will have stumbled upon since the beginning
of this essay. It is just a question of merely reminding him or her that one
of the most important beliefs found among those belonging to today’s
human beings is their belief in “reason,” in the intellect. Let us not specify
at this point the modifications undergone by that belief in the last few
years. Whichever they were, it is beyond dispute that the essential compo-
nent of that belief abides, that is to say, that human beings still count on
the efficacy of their intellect as one of the realities existing and forming
part of their lives. But please have the presence of mind [necessary] to note
that it is one thing to have faith in the intellect and another to believe in
certain ideas fashioned by the intellect. None of these ideas is believed in
straightforwardly. Our belief is a belief in the thing called the intellect, just
in general, but a faith like that is not an idea about the intellect. Compare
the precise nature of that faith in the intellect with the imprecise character
of the idea almost everybody has about the intellect. Besides, inasmuch as
the intellect unceasingly corrects the conceptions it produces and substi-
tutes today’s truth for yesterday’s, were our faith in the intellect to consist
in straightforwardly believing in ideas, the changes undergone by them
would have brought along the loss of our faith in the intellect. But what
happens is altogether the opposite. Our faith in reason has borne undis-
turbed the most scandalous changes about the theories it has produced,
including the profound changes about its theoretical account of what rea-
son itself is. To be sure, such changes have affected the shape of that faith,
and yet it has continued, unruffled, to act in one shape or another.
Here we have a splendid example of what, above all, should be of
interest to history the moment it truly resolves to be a science, i.e., the sci-
ence of the human. Instead of occupying itself only with developing the
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 185
III
and bearing all others, consists of beliefs.8 These constitute the terra firma
upon which we strive. (Incidentally, let me say that this metaphor finds its
origins in one of the most elementary beliefs we possess, one in the ab-
sence of which we perhaps would not be able to live, namely, the belief
that the ground is firm, in spite of the earthquakes that sometimes take
place on the surface of some of its regions. Imagine that tomorrow, for
one reason or another, such a belief were to disappear. To specify the
major lineaments of the radical change such a disappearance would bring
about in the shape of human life would be an excellent exercise by means
of which to be introduced into historical thought.)
Yet enormous gaps of doubt, scuttles as it were, open up in the midst
of the basic area comprising our beliefs. This is the moment to assert
that the doubt—that is, genuine doubt, which is not simply methodical
or intellectual in nature9—is a modality of belief and belongs therewith
in the same stratum of the architecture of life. One also finds oneself
placed in the doubt, except that, in this case, [the condition of] being
placed would exhibit a terrible character. One finds oneself placed in the
doubt as one would upon an abyss, that is to say, falling. It is thus the ne-
gation of stability. One suddenly senses that the firmness of the ground
gives way under the sole of one’s feet, and one has the feeling of falling,
of falling into the void, without being able to manage on one’s own,
without being able to do anything to affirm oneself, to live. It amounts,
so to speak, to dying in the midst of life, as if one were in attendance at
the annihilation of one’s own existence. Nonetheless, the doubt pre-
serves one of the characters exhibited by belief, namely, that of being
something in which one finds oneself placed. In other words, it is not
something one fashions or posits. It is not an idea one may or may not
think about, or that one could support, subject to criticism, or formu-
late, but an idea one absolutely is. Do not deem it a paradox but, in my
opinion, it is very difficult to describe genuine doubt except by saying
that one believes in it.
If this were not so, if we doubted our doubt, the doubt would be harm-
less. The terrible thing about it is that it acts in our lives exactly in the
same way as a belief would, and that it belongs in the same stratum [of
life] as a belief. The difference between faith and the doubt does not con-
sist, then, in our believing. The doubt is not a “not believing,” as opposed
to a believing, nor is it a “believing it is not the case that,” as opposed to
a “believing that it is.” The distinguishing element lies in that which is be-
lieved in. Faith believes that God exists or that he doesn’t. It situates us,
then, in a reality, whether positive or “negative,” but one that is unequiv-
ocal in character. This is the reason why, when we find ourselves placed in
it, we have the sense of being placed on something stable.
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 187
To entertain the presumption that the doubt does not make us con-
front a reality is what impedes our understanding of the role played by
the doubt in our lives. But this error derives, in turn, from being unaware
of the believing dimension of the doubt. It would be very convenient for
us if doubting something were sufficient for what we doubt to disappear
before us. But no such thing occurs; rather, the doubt casts us into the
realm of the doubtful and makes us be face to face with a reality as real as
the one based upon a belief, but a reality that is ambiguous, two-headed,
unstable, a reality in respect of which we do not know what to abide by
or do. The doubt, in short, consists in our being placed on what is un-
stable as such: it is our life at the moment of an earthquake, a permanent
and definitive earthquake.
On this point, as on many others concerning human life, we obtain
greater clarity from everyday language than from scientific thought.
Strange as it may seem, thinkers have always completely ignored the radi-
cal reality in question; they have turned their back on it. By contrast,
human beings who are not thinkers, more attentive as they are to decisive
matters, have cast keen glances at their own existence and left, in the ver-
nacular, the sediment resulting from their glimpses. We are too forgetful
of the fact that language already is thought, doctrine. When we avail our-
selves of it as an instrumernt [to form] more complex combinations of
ideas, we do not take seriously the primary set of ideas that it gives ex-
pression to, that it [itself] is. When, by chance, we are oblivious of what
we ourselves want to convey by means of the pre-established turns of
phrase of our tongue and heed what they say to us on their own, we are
surprised by their keenness, by their perceptive uncovering of reality.
All everyday expressions concerning doubt serve to convey to us that,
[when a human being] is doubting, he or she feels him- or herself to be
immersed in a non-solid, non-firm medium. The doubtful is a liquid real-
ity where a human being cannot hold him- or herself up; as a result, he or
she falls. Hence, [the phrase], “to find oneself in a sea of doubts.” This is
what lies in contraposition to the element of belief, namely, terra firma.10
Moreover, it would convey to us, if we insist on the same image, that the
doubt is like a fluctuation, like the movement to and fro of the waves. The
world of the doubtful is decidedly a seascape that awakens presumptions
of shipwreck in a human being. When described as a fluctuation, the
doubt brings us to the realization of how much it is [like] a belief. It is so
much [like] it that it is tantamount to the superfetation of believing. One
doubts because one finds oneself placed in two opposite beliefs, which
collide with one another and hurl us from one to the other, leaving us
without ground under the soles of our feet. The [component] two is quite
evident in the dou of the doubt.11
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 188
When a human being senses that he or she is falling into those abysses
opening up in the firm tract of land consisting of his or her beliefs, he or
she reacts in an energetic fashion by striving to “shed his or her doubts.”
But what is he or she to do? The doubtful is characterized by the fact that
we do not know what to do when we are confronted by it. What shall we
do, then, when what is happening to us is precisely that we do not know
what to do, because the world—that is, a portion thereof—appears to us
[riddled with] ambiguity? There is nothing for us to do about it. But it is
in a situation like that that a human being engages in an odd form of
doing that seems to be almost no doing at all: he or she sets out to think.
To think of something is the least thing we can do about it. We do not
even have to touch it. We do not even have to move. When everything
around us is failing, the possibility of meditating on what is failing us re-
mains, however, available to us. Of the devices a human being counts on,
the intellect is the closest. He or she always has it at hand. As long as a
human being engages in believing, he or she does not put it to use, be-
cause that would be an arduous effort. But when a human being falls in
doubt, he or she holds on to it as if it were a lifesaver.
The gaps in our beliefs thus constitute the living locus wherein the
intervention of the ideas finds its point of insertion. In the matter of ideas,
it is always a question of substituting a world from which ambiguity van-
ishes for the unstable, ambiguous world of the doubt. How is that
achieved? By fantasying or inventing worlds. An idea is an imagination.
No world already predetermined is given to human beings. Only the sor-
rows and joys of life are given to them. Under their guidance, they have to
invent the world. They have inherited a major portion of it from their eld-
ers, the portion in question being operative in their lives as a system of
firm beliefs. But each and every one [of us] has to have it out, on his or her
own, with everything that is doubtful, with everything that has been
called into question. To this end, he or she would test [various] imaginary
shapes of worlds and of his or her possible behavior therein. One among
them would seem to him or her to be ideally firmer, and he or she would
call that the truth. Let it be clearly noted, however, that that which is true,
even that which is scientifically true, is nothing but a particular case of
the fantastic. There are exact fantasies. And what is more: only the fantas-
tic can be exact. There is no way of understanding human beings ade-
quately, unless one takes notice of the fact that mathematics and poetry
spring up from the same root, namely, our imaginative gift.
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 189
Chapter Two
Inner Worlds
I
(1.) I have never found the root of a plant to resemble its flower or its
fruit at all. It is probable, then, that the nature of a cause is such that
it does not resemble its effect in the least. To entertain the opposite
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 190
belief was the error committed by [those who lived according to]
the magical interpretation of the world: similia similibus [similar to
similar]. The work [to be done] is this: there are certain ridiculous
things that have to be said, and philosophers exist for that purpose.
At least, Plato literally stated—in the most formal of ways and in
the most solemn of occasions—that the philosopher’s mission is to
be ridiculous.12 Don’t you think that it is a task easy to discharge. It
demands a courage of a sort that great warriors and the cruelest of
revolutionaries have usually lacked. Both [groups] have usually
[consisted of] rather vain people who got cold feet when, simply, it
was a question of becoming ridiculous. Hence, it would be advis-
able for humanity to take advantage of the philosopher’s special
brand of heroism.
[(2.)] We cannot live without a last recourse, the full validity of which we
would feel to be upon us. We would refer to it every single doubt
and argument of ours, as if it were a court of last resort. During the
last few centuries, the ideas, i.e., what used to be called “reason,”
constituted that sublime recourse. Presently, our faith in reason is
[becoming] hesitant, clouded. Since it serves as the support of the
rest of our lives, we cannot, consequently, live or live together,
since, as it turns out, there is no other faith on the horizon that
would be capable of replacing it. Hence, we would have that ap-
pearance of uprootedness that has been acquired by our existence
and the impression we are under that we are falling, that we are
falling into a bottomless void, so that, no matter how much we flap
our arms, we do not find anything to hold on to. Now then, it is not
possible for a faith to die, unless another has been born, just as it is
impossible to come to the realization that we are in error, unless we
find ourselves, by that very fact, standing on the ground of a new
truth. In our case, then, it would be a question of an ailment our
faith in reason is suffering from, not of its death. Let us make ready
its convalescence.
Let me remind the readers of the minor drama set off in their minds
when, during a trip, their car broke down, and they were ignorant of its
mechanical aspects. First act: to the effects of the trip, this event exhibits
an absolute character, because the car has stopped, not just a little or half-
way, but completely. Since they are not familiar with the parts making it
up, the car, so far as they are concerned, is an undivided whole. If the car
breaks down, that means that it has done so altogether. Hence, the unin-
itiated mind would go in search of a cause for the absolute fact that the
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 191
car has stopped, a cause that would be absolute too; and, further, every
breakdown would seem to it, at first, to be definitive and hopeless. Grief,
pathetic gestures. [We would be saying to ourselves:] “We’ll have to
spend the night here!” Second act: the mechanic approaches the motor
with astonishing presence of mind. He or she handles this or that bolt.
[He or she] takes hold of the steering wheel again. The car starts trium-
phantly, as if reborn from itself. Rejoicing. The feeling of being saved.
Third act: under the torrent of joy flooding us, a small measure of the op-
posite feeling trickles in, to wit: an aftertaste of shame, as it were. It seems
to us that our first and fatalistic reaction was absurd, rash, childish. How
was it that it did not occur to us that a machine is an assemblage of many
parts, so that the slightest maladjustment affecting one of them could
bring about the ceasing of its functioning? We [then] realize that the “ab-
solute” fact of the stoppage is not necessarily produced by a cause that
would be absolute too, but that a slight change would perhaps suffice to
bring the mechanism up to par. In short, we feel ashamed that we did not
possess the [requisite] presence of mind, and full of respect for the me-
chanic, for the human being who is familiar with the matter.
We are just living through the first act of the formidable breakdown
endured by historical life today. The case in question is all the more seri-
ous because, in a matter involving collective affairs and concerning the
public machine, it is not easy for the mechanic to handle the bolts with
presence of mind and efficiently, unless he or she [can] count, before the
fact, on the trust in and respect for him or her on the part of the travelers,
unless they believe there is someone who is “well up in the matter.” In
other words, the third act would have to precede the second, which is no
easy thing to do. Besides, the number of bolts requiring adjustment would
be large, and the bolts would be located in various places. Well, let each
person take care of his or her job without conceit, without histrionics.
This is the reason why I am engaged, while lying under the belly of the
motor, in repairing one of its most recondite roller bearings.
Let us return to the distinction I introduced between beliefs and ideas
or occurrences. Beliefs are all those things we absolutely count on, even
though we do not think of them. On the grounds of the sheer fact of
being certain that they exist, and that they are as we believe [them to be],
we do not call them into question; rather, we behave automatically while
taking them into account. When we walk along a street, we do not at-
tempt to go through buildings: we automatically avoid colliding with
them, without the express idea, “walls are impenetrable,” having to arise
in our minds. Our lives are riding every moment upon a huge stock of
analogous beliefs. But there are things and situations before which we
find ourselves bereft of any firm belief: we find ourselves doubting
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 192
whether or not they exist and whether or not they are one way or another.
Then we have no choice but to fashion for our use an idea, an opinion
about them. Thus, ideas are “things” we consciously construct or elab-
orate, precisely because we do not believe in them. I think this is the best,
the most pointed formulation, the one leaving the least room for avoid-
ance [, on our part,] of the major question as to which is the odd and
most subtle role that ideas play in our lives. Please note that under that
name all of them are included, whether they are commonplace or scien-
tific, be they religious ideas or of any other sort, because nothing is a com-
plete and genuine reality for us, except one in which we believe. But ideas
are born of the doubt, that is to say, of a void or gap in our beliefs. There-
fore, what we ideate is not a complete and genuine reality for us. What is
such a thing for us, then? One [may] certainly take note of the orthopedic
character exhibited by ideas: they function wherever a belief has broken
down or become weak.
Now it would not be advisable to inquire into the specific origin of our
beliefs, or into that from which they derive, because the answer, as we will
have an occasion to see,13 would require that we first adequately under-
stand what ideas are. It is better to proceed by making our departure on
the basis of the present situation, of the unquestionable fact that we con-
sist, on the one hand, of beliefs—whatever their origin may be—and, [on
the other,] of ideas; and [further] that the former constitute our real
world, while the latter are something we do not adequately know.
II
A human being’s most serious [d]efect is his or her ingratitude. I base this
extreme assessment on the fact that, since a human being’s substance
amounts to his or her history,14 every anti-historical behavior acquires a
suicidal character in him or her. An ingrate is oblivious of the fact that
most of what is his or hers is not of his or her own making, but that it is
a gift bestowed on him or her by others who strived to obtain it. Now
then, in being oblivious of that, a human being radically fails to be aware
of the true condition of what he or she has got. A human being believes
that it is a gift spontaneously bestowed [on him or her] by Nature, and
that, like Nature, it is indestructible. This makes a human being err
thoroughly in managing the advantages he or she finds and gradually
lose them to a greater or lesser degree. Today we are witnessing [the oc-
currence of] this phenomenon on a large scale. Contemporary human
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 193
optical device—from [the standpoint of] their inner world, of their ideas,
some of which would have become consolidated as beliefs. And this is the
astonishing thing I announced earlier:21 that human beings find them-
selves existing in two dimensions, being situated at once in the enigmatic
reality and in the luminous world consisting of the ideas that have oc-
curred to them. This other manner of existence is, for that very reason, an
“imaginary” one. Please note, however, that to have an imaginary manner
of existence pertains as such to the absolute reality of human beings.22
III
Let it be clearly understood, then, that what we usually call the real or
“external” world is not the naked, genuine, and primordial reality that
human beings encounter; rather, it already is an interpretation which they
have given of that reality. It is, therefore, an idea, [but] an idea consoli-
dated as a belief. To believe in an idea means to believe that it is reality
and no longer, therefore, to see it as a mere idea.
But the fact is, of course, that those beliefs began by “being just” oc-
currences or ideas properly so called. They arose one good day as the
work of the imagination of a human being who, in them, entered into and
abided in him- or herself, and [thus] for a moment became oblivious of
the real world. The science of physics, for example, is one of those ideal
architectures that human beings construct for themselves. Some of the
ideas belonging to that science are today operative in us as beliefs, but the
majority of them constitute, for us, [the content of a] science—nothing
more, nothing less. When the “physical world” is spoken of, then, please
note that we do not take it to be, for the most part, as the real world; it is,
rather, an imaginary or “inner” world.
Now, the question I am proposing to the reader is one that consists in
determining, [for example,] the attitude according to which the physicists
live when they are thinking the truths of their science, and in doing so in
all strictness, without allowing [the use of] vague or indistinct expressions.
Or to put it otherwise: [it is the question,] what is the world of the physi-
cists, the world of the science of physics, to them? Is it reality to them? Ob-
viously not. Their ideas seem true to them, but such an assessment serves
to underscore the character of mere thoughts that those ideas exhibit to
them. It is no longer possible—as it was in happier times—elegantly to de-
fine truth by saying that it is the adequacy of thought to reality.23 “Ade-
quacy” is an equivocal term. If one takes it to mean “equality,” [the con-
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 197
tention] turns out to be false. An idea is never equal to the thing it refers to.
But if one takes it in the sense of “correspondence,” which is vaguer, one
would already be acknowledging that ideas are not reality, but something
opposite [to that] altogether, namely, ideas and just ideas. The physicists
know very well that what their theories convey does not exist in reality.
Besides, [to see that], it would be enough to note that the world of
physics is incomplete, [that it is] crowded with unsolved problems oblig-
ing [the physicists] not to confuse it with reality itself, which is precisely
what is posing those problems to them. [The science of] physics, there-
fore, is not reality for them, but an imaginary realm in which they imag-
inarily live while, at the same time, they continue to live the genuine and
primordial reality of their lives.
Now then, this point is [admittedly] somewhat difficult to understand
when we speak of physics and, in general, of science, but is it not obvious
and clear when we observe what happens to us when we read a novel or
attend a play? The one reading a novel is living, of course, the reality of
his or her life, but this reality of his or her life at that moment consists in
having escaped it through the virtual dimension of fantasy and in quasi-
living in the imaginary world described for him or her by the novelist.
Here is the reason why the doctrine I began [to develop] in the first
chapter of this essay is, in my opinion, so fruitful, to wit: that we only ad-
equately understand what something is to us when it is not a reality for us
but an idea, if we think of what poetry represents to human beings, and
courageously succeed in regarding science sub specie poieseos [in the
guise of poetry].
The “world of poetry” is, in effect, the most transparent instance of
what I have called “inner worlds.” The characteristics proper to them ap-
pear in it with a carefree cynicism and, so to speak, in the open. We are
aware that it is a sheer invention of ours, a child of our fantasy. We do not
regard it as reality, and yet we occupy ourselves with its objects just as we
do with the things of the external world; that is to say, since to live is to be
occupied with [something], we live—for many stretches [of our lives]—
lodged in the world of poetry and absent from the real one. In passing, it
would be advisable to acknowledge that, up to the present, no one has
been able to provide a fair answer to the question of why human beings
make poetry; of why, investing no minor effort, they create a realm of
poetry for their own benefit. But the truth of the matter is that it could
not be stranger. As if human beings did not have plenty to do with their
real world for an explanation not to be required for the fact that they
amuse themselves in deliberately imagining irrealities!
But we have become used to speaking of poetry without great pa-
thos. When someone says that poetry is no serious matter, only the
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 198
poets become irritated, for, as is well known, they are of the genus irrita-
bile [irritable race].24 It does not take a lot, then, for us to acknowledge
that something so much lacking in seriousness may be pure fantasy. Fan-
tasy is famous for being the madwoman about the house.25 But what are
science and philosophy but fantasy? The mathematical point, the geomet-
rical triangle, and the physical atom, [for example,] would not possess the
precise qualities constituting them, if they were not mere mental con-
structions. When we want to find them in reality (that is, in the sense-
perceptible, not in the imaginary, domain), we have to resort to measure-
ment, but, by that very fact, their precise character is degraded, and they
are inevitably [affected by the qualification,] “a little more or less.” What
a coincidence! The same thing happens to characters in poetry. It is be-
yond doubt: a triangle and Hamlet have the same pedigree.26 They are the
offspring of the madwoman about the house; they are phantasmagories.
The fact that [the proponents of] scientific ideas are, with regard to re-
ality, subject to obligations different from the ones to which those who
accept poetical ideas are subject, and that the former’s relationship with
things is closer and more serious [than the latter’s], should not hinder us
from acknowledging that ideas are just fantasies and that we should only
live them as such, despite their serious character. If we do the opposite, we
distort the correct attitude [to be adopted] toward them: we would take
them as if they were reality. Or what amounts to the same thing: we
would confuse the internal with the external world. [But] this is, on a
somewhat larger scale, what the lunatic usually does.
Let the reader revive, in his or her mind, the originary situation of
human beings. In order to live, they would have to do something; they
would have to have it out with what is in their surroundings. But in order
to decide what they are going to do with all that, they would have to know
what to abide by about it; that is to say, they would have to know what it
is. Since that primordial reality does not amicably disclose its secret to
them, they would have no choice but to set in motion their intellectual ap-
paratus, the main organ of which—I contend—is the imagination. Human
beings would imagine a certain shape or manner of being reality. They
would entertain the supposition that it is thus or otherwise; they would in-
vent the world or a portion thereof, just as novelists do in respect of the
imaginary characters they create. The difference lies in the purpose for the
sake of which they create. A topographical map is just as fantastic as a
painter’s landscape. However, a painter would not have painted his or her
landscape in order to use it as a guide in a trip he or she would take
through some region, while the map has been made for that purpose. The
“inner world” of science is a huge map we have been engaged in develop-
ing in the last three-and-a-half centuries in order to travel among things. It
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 199
IV
My greatest concern is that the readers, even the least cultivated ones,
should not get lost in the rugged paths I have gotten them into. This
obliges me to repeat the [same] things several times and to emphasize the
stations [passed] along our way.
What we usually call reality or the “external world” is [for us] no
longer the primordial reality stripped of every human interpretation;
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 200
ence, was, for human beings, the [world] closest to reality. There was a
period of Greek history in which the “truth” was, for the Hellenes (and,
therefore, for Homer), what is usually called poetry.
This leads us to the great question. I contend that European conscious-
ness drags along the sin of speaking lightly of that plurality of worlds,
[for] it has never truly endeavored to clarify the relations obtaining
between them and the ultimate nature thereof. The sciences, [in terms of]
their own contents, are marvelous, but when anyone asks point-blank
what science is—as an occupation engaged in by human beings, and by
contrast with philosophy, religion, experiential wisdom, etc.—only replies
[containing] the vaguest of notions are forthcoming.
It is evident that all of them—science, philosophy, poetry, religion—are
things human beings do,30 but everything done is done because of some-
thing and for the sake of something.31 Well, but why is it that they do
such diverse things?
If human beings occupy themselves with knowing, if they do science or
philosophy, it is, to be sure, because one good day they find themselves
placed in the doubt concerning affairs that matter to them and aspire to
find themselves placed right in the truth. But one must come to an ade-
quate realization of what such a situation would imply. To begin with, we
may note that that cannot be an originary situation; in other words, to
find oneself placed in the doubt presupposes that one has fallen therein
one good day. Human beings cannot begin by doubting. The doubt hap-
pens suddenly to people who previously had a given faith or belief, in
which they had always found themselves placed without further ado. To
be occupied with knowing is not, then, something that is not dependent on
an antecedent situation. Someone who believes—i.e., someone who does
not doubt—does not set in motion his or her distressful cognitive activity.
Knowledge is born of the doubt and always keeps alive the force that
begot it. A scientist must constantly attempt to cast doubt on his or her
own truths. These are only cognitive truths to the extent that they are re-
sistant to any possible doubt; they live, then, on the basis of our perma-
nent struggle with skepticism.32 And “proof” is the name for this struggle.
On the other hand, this serves to uncover the fact that the knower—
whether scientist or philosopher—is not seeking after [just] any form of
certainty. Believers possess certainty precisely because they have not fash-
ioned it. A belief is a certainty in which we find ourselves placed without
our knowing how or where we have come into it. Every faith has been re-
ceived. That is why its prototype is “the faith of our fathers.” However,
when we occupy ourselves with knowing, we have lost precisely that cer-
tainty we had received as a gift, and in which we had found ourselves
placed, and we find ourselves having to invent [a new] one exclusively on
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 202
our own strength. Yet this is impossible, unless human beings believe that
they have the strength to do it.
Having exerted just minimal pressure on the most obvious notion of
knowledge has proven sufficient for this peculiar form of human doing to
appear limited by an entire set of conditions; that is to say, for the discov-
ery that human beings do not engage in knowing without further ado and
under any set of circumstances. Wouldn’t this also be true of all those
other great occupations of the mind, namely, religion, poetry, etc.?
However, thinkers have not yet made an effort, strange as this may
seem, to specify the conditions of such occupations. Strictly speaking,
they have not even brought them to a closer confrontation with one an-
other. To my knowledge, only [Wilhelm] Dilthey has dealt with the ques-
tion to some extent and has thought himself obliged, in order to tell us
what philosophy is, to tell us, as well, what science is, what religion is,
and what literature is.33 For it is quite clear that all of them have some-
thing in common. Cervantes or Shakespeare provided us with an idea of
the world, just as Aristotle or Newton did. And religion [too] is not some-
thing that would have nothing to do with the universe.
As it turns out, when philosophers have described the multiplicity of
directionalities [followed], say, by the intellectual activity34 of human be-
ings, they rest their case and believe they have done all they had to do
with the topic. It is beside the point to add myth, as some of them have
done, to [the list of] such directionalities, while distinguishing it from re-
ligion in some obscure way.35 What is certainly to the point is the realiza-
tion that for all of them, even for Dilthey, those directionalities are per-
manent and constitutive modalities of [being] human, of human life.36
[Accordingly,] a human being would be an entity essentially endowed
with those dispositions to activity, just as he or she has legs, an apparatus
to emit articulate sounds, and a system of physiological reflexes. [We
would have,] therefore, that a human being is religious as a matter of
course, that he or she engages in knowing in [the area of] philosophy or
mathematics as a matter of course, and that he or she does poetry as a
matter of course. By using the phrase, “as a matter of course,” I mean to
signify that a human being would be endowed with religion, knowledge,
and poetry as his or her “faculties” or permanent resources. At every mo-
ment, a human being would be all those things (i.e., a religious person, a
philosopher, a scientist, [and] a poet), albeit according to one or another
measure and proportion.
When [the philosophers in question] entertained such a thought, they
acknlowledged, of course, that the concept of religion, philosophy, sci-
ence, [or] poetry can only be formed in view of certain human tasks, man-
ners of behavior, [and] very specific endeavors, [all of] which arise at cer-
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 203
tain times and places in history. Just to linger about the clearest of cases,
[let me point to] the examples [of] philosophy, which only took a definite
form in the fifth century [B.C.] in Greece, and [of] science, which has only
acquired a special and unequivocal aspect since the seventeenth century
[of our era] in Europe. But, once one has fashioned a clear idea about a
chronologically specific human doing, one would go in search of some-
thing similar to it in every historical period, even if the similarity is scant.
In view of that, one would come to the conclusion that human beings, in
the given historical period, also were religious persons, scientists, [or]
poets. In other words, forming a clear idea of each of those things would
have proven useless; instead, it is later transformed into something vague
and ethereal, in order to be able to apply it to phenomena very different
from one another.
Such a transformation would amount to this: that we would drain
every concrete content from all those forms of human occupation, that
we would regard them as being clear of every specific content. For exam-
ple, we would consider religion not only every belief in a god, no matter
which, but we would also call Buddhism a religion, despite the fact that
Buddhism contains no belief in any god. Likewise, we would say that
every opinion about what exists is to be called knowledge, no matter
what the opinions entertained by human beings about what exists, or the
modality of their opining itself, may be. Furthermore, we would call
poetry any human work in words which pleases [us], whatever the ap-
pearance of that verbal product we take pleasure in may be. Moreover,
with exemplary magnanimity, we would ascribe the untamable and con-
tradictory variety of poetical contents to a boundless variation in styles,
pure and simple.
In my judgment, accordingly, this so firm a practice is to be subjected
at least to some revision, and probably to a profound reform. This is what
I am attempting to do elsewhere.37
December, 1934
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 204 blank
Notes
Translator’s Introduction
1. For its preparation on the basis of Ortega’s posthumous writings, see “Spanish
Editor’s Note,” infra, p. 30.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 29.
5. For the term Erkenntnistheorie or theory of knowledge, see Karl L. Reinhold, Ver-
such einer neuen Theorie des menschlischen Vorstellungsmögen (Prague and Jena:
Mauke, 1789) and Nicola Abbagnano, Dizionario di filosofia (Turin: Unione Ti-
pografica Editrice Torinese, 1961), “Conoscenza.” (Translation: Diccionario de
filosofía, 2nd ed., trans. A. N. Galletti [Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica,
1991], p. 227. All references are given according to the Spanish edition.)
6. D. M. Hamlyn, “Epistemology, History of” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
ed. P. Edwards (New York: Macmillan and The Free Press, 1967), III, pp. 8–9.
7. Ibid., pp. 9ff.
8. Cf. infra, pp. 55ff.
9. Cf. infra, p. 7 and Aloys Müller, Einleitung in die Philosophie (1925), chapter 2,
§1. (Translation: Introducción a la filosofía, trans. J. Gaos [Madrid: Revista de
Occidente, 1934], p. 80. All references are given according to the Spanish edi-
tion.)
10. Cf. D. M. Hamlyn, loc. cit., p. 9.
11. A. Müller, op. cit., p. 80.
12. Ibid. Cf. M. Blondel, Note to “Connaissance” in Vocabulaire technique et cri-
tique de la philosophie, by André Lalande, 8th ed. rev. and enl., ed. Société
Française de Philosophie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1960), p. 171,
and N. Abbagnano, op. cit., p. 237.
13. N. Abbagnano, op. cit., p. 217.
14. Cf. infra, n. 104.
15. Cf. infra, Part IV, pp. 155, 158, and 159ff. Vide N. Abbagnano, op. cit.,
pp. 224–225: “The [romantic] historical perspective . . . [takes as opposite] the
‘classical’ (or ancient and medieval) conception, according to which the opera-
tion of knowing would be ruled by the object, and the modern or romantic
understanding, according to which knowledge would be the activity of the sub-
ject and a manifestation of its creative power. . . .” See José Ferrater Mora, “Co-
nocimiento” in Diccionario de filosofía, 5th ed. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Suda-
mericana, 1965), I, p. 341, right-hand column.
205
AU: x-ref
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 206
16. Cf. N. Abbagnano, op. cit., p. 218, and St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gen-
tiles, II, 77 (Rome: Forzani, 1894), p. 235.
17. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Latin/English ed., Blackfriars (New
York: McGraw-Hill), III (1964), i, q. 2, a. 4, “Responsio,” p. 14. Cf. infra, Part IV,
p. 162.
18. Cf. N. Abbagnano, op. cit., p. 218.
19. Ibid. Cf. Aristotle, On the Soul, trans. J. A. Smith, II.5, 417 a 19–20, in The Com-
plete Works of Aristotle, ed. J. Barnes, rev. Oxford ed. (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press/Bollingen Series LXXI-2, 1984), I, p. 664.
20. Cf. N. Abbagnano, op. cit., p. 221.
21. Ibid. Cf. René Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind, v, in The Philo-
sophical Works of Descartes, trans. E. S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (New York:
Dover, 1955), I, p. 14.
22. N. Abbagnano, op. cit., p. 222. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1956), B 263.
23. Cf. N. Abbagnano, op. cit.
24. This does not mean, of course, that one would initiate cognitive activity indiffer-
ently or at pleasure. After all, thinking is a reactive effort into which we are
obliged by our pre-intellectual existence (see infra, Part III, p. 108), but it is none-
theless an effort we freely decide to make, even if it is for the purpose of meeting
a survival need of ours and of resolving a conjoint worldly difficulty.
25. N. Abbagnano, op. cit., p. 225. Concerning Husserl in this respect, cf. ibid.,
p. 224, and Edmund Husserl, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to
a Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nij-
hoff, 1982), §79, p. 187 [157]. Henceforth, I shall refer to this work as Ideas, I.
26. Johannes Hessen, Lehrbuch der Philosophie, I. Wissenschaftslehre (Munich:
Ernst Reinhardt Verlag, 1950), Book II, Introduction, §1, p. 175.
27. Cf. supra, p. 2 and n. 11. Abbagnano essentially agrees with this interpretive
point, although he adds the important specification that transcendence aims at,
or finds its terminus in, being-in-itself. (Cf. op. cit., p. 224.)
28. Nicolai Hartmann, Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, 2nd ed. enl.
(Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1925), Part I, ii, chap. 5, pp. 43ff.
For an apt summary of Hartmann’s analysis, cf. J. Hessen, Erkenntnistheorie
(1926), Part I, “Preliminary Phenomenological Investigation.” (Translation:
Teoría del conocimiento, trans. J. Gaos [Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1932],
pp. 30ff. All references are given from the Spanish edition.)
29. N. Hartmann, op. cit., No. 1, p. 43. Emphasis added.
30. Cf. ibid., No. 2.
31. Cf. ibid., No. 3.
32. Ibid., No. 4.
33. Cf. ibid., No. 5.
34. Cf. ibid., No. 6.
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105. Ibid.
106. Consequently, being is not given, but latent (ibid.; trans., p. 66), albeit in the sense
of a conceptual, not a perceptual, task, as can be gathered from the following: if
being exhibits the character of fixity and stability, then it would also present itself
as self-identical (ibid., p. 531; trans., p. 66); accordingly, for Ortega the notion of
being and the traditional concept of essence are synonymous (cf. ibid., p. 525;
trans., p. 59). It is then not surprising to hear that “. . . [a]s . . . [the] . . . character
[of identity] is proper to concepts also, being and thinking [qua cognition] turn
out to . . . [be comprised of the same attributes], and the laws that hold for con-
cepts hold for being” (ibid., p. 532; trans., p. 66; cf. “Ni vitalismo ni raciona-
lismo,” in OC III, p. 279). Only in the times of classical Greece, however, was
there unqualified human trust in being and, therefore, an “unshaken belief that
reality consists in being, wholly and exclusively . . . ,” and only then did human
beings pursue it, in cognition, “without reserve” (“Apuntes sobre el pensa-
miento,” p. 533; trans., p. 68). By contrast, “. . . [w]e have been left with . . . [such
a] conviction minus the faith on which it is based” (ibid., p. 535; trans., p. 70);
that is to say, we have been left with the idea of being, not with a belief therein.
107. Ibid., p. 531 (trans., pp. 65–66). The emphasis on “natural” is my responsibility.
108. Ibid. (trans., p. 66). Ortega illustrated his meaning by means of the example of
light, which, as long as it works well, is indubitably what it immediately shows it-
self to be, i.e., the living function of illuminating me. This he opposed to the being
of light, which is not part and parcel of its function, but rather the nonevident (or
conceptual) ground thereof (ibid., pp. 531–532; trans., p.66).
109. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, ¿Qué es filosofía?, chap. 5, and infra, Part I, “The
1929–1930 Course,” p. 45.
110. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Apuntes sobre el pensamiento,” p. 536 (trans., p. 71). Cf.
infra, Part II, pp. 79–80. Ortega availed himself of this classical characterization
of philosophy to contrast it with prayer, as the form of thinking or conduct of the
believer in God (“Apuntes sobre el pensamiento,” pp. 535–537; trans.,
pp. 70–72), and to oppose àlétheia to “the amen of faith . . .” (ibid., p. 536;
trans., p. 71). This allowed him to establish a gamut of forms of thinking (and
another consisting of the products thereof), to wit: mythology, magic, wisdom or
life experience, religion, science, and philosophy, all of which, despite their dif-
ferences as ways of thinking and in terms of the results obtainable thereby, have
nonetheless something in common, namely, being inventions originally proposed
by human beings—at various historical junctures—so as to meet the radical
doubt or perplexity affecting them at that point, and thus to secure for them-
selves a new life settlement in the wake of the loss of their former grounds of
credibility (cf. ibid., p. 537; trans., p. 72). The word “gamut,” however, may lend
itself mistakenly to the suggestion that there is a continuity of life forms, but that
is what is negated precisely by Ortega’s use of the term “invention” and his con-
necting it with the settings of various historical crises. Accordingly, every such
form of thinking is distinctive and discrete, and it enjoys its “lifespan” between
its points of insertion (invention) and disappearance (dissolution). This is even
true of philosophy, although philosophy, given its radicalism, may eventually
come to the full awareness of its finiteness and contingency. This “privilege”
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[the] way of referring to and existing for me [which is proper to things at the level
of immediacy] is tantamount to their acting on me . . .” (cf. infra, Part III, p. 124; cf.
p. 126), just as I spontaneously consist in my acting on them on the basis of my past
decisions and the needs they imply (i.e., my because-motivational grounds) and in
view of my vocation qua project or program (i.e., my ultimate or global for-the-
sake-of motivational grounds). Cf. A. Rodríguez Huéscar, José Ortega y Gasset’s
Metaphysical Innovation, Part I, chaps. 2–3.
139. Its truths would have to be characterized as autonomous (i.e., as completely pre-
suppositionless) and pantonomous (i.e., as altogether encompassing and univer-
sal). Cf. supra, n. 109.
140. Cf. supra, pp. 2 and 205, n. 11.
141. For a more complete account of the life categories, vide A. Rodríguez Huéscar,
José Ortega y Gasset’s Metaphysical Innovation, Part II, and my paper, “José Or-
tega y Gasset’s Categorial Analysis of Life,” Analecta Husserliana LVII (1998),
pp. 135ff.
142. Ortega, simplifying matters, contended that life is absolute in two senses of the
term, to wit: as the all-encompassing reality and as the reality that is indepen-
dent of everything else (cf. infra, Part I, “Problems,” §7, pp. 36f. and Part III,
pp. 112f [cf. pp. 117–118]). And this of course applies to every ingredient and
activity therein, when it is taken performatively. Hence, as to universality, “. . .
[w]hat is lived by us serves to delimit the sphere containing every reality.” (See
ibid., p. 112).
143. Cf. infra, Part I, “Problems,” §§4–6, pp. 33–34.
144. See ibid., “The 1929–1930 Course,” p. 73. Cf. A. Rodríguez Huéscar, José Or-
tega y Gasset’s Metaphysical Innovation, Part I, p. 83.
145. Cf. infra, Part I, “Problems,” §9, p. 38.
146. Cf. infra, Part I, “Problems,” pp. 36–37 and “The 1929–1930 Course,” p. 66. Or
expressed even more bluntly: life’s being is performative; it is doing, action.
(Ibid., “Problems,” §7, p. 34).
147. Ibid., “The 1929–1930 Course,” p. 68.
148. Cf. ibid.
149. Cf. ibid., p. 59. Cf. supra, n. 130, and infra, Part III, p. 111: “I am inexorably con-
fined within my life. . . .” In other words, my life includes myself and the “uni-
verse” in actional reciprocity. The circumstance, however, does not amount to a
stock of actual or present things favoring or opposing my life designs. I “sense”
that it encompasses “also . . . [the stock of] things past, as well as . . . [that] of
things future.” (Ibid.). Cf. ibid., pp. 129, 147, and also p. 131, and A. Rodríguez
Huéscar, José Ortega y Gasset’s Metaphysical Innovation, Part II, chap. 4, §8,
pp. 132ff. and §9, for the notion of vocation (i.e., one’s life global project or pro-
gram) which exerts its pressure on me to be myself and therefore on the circum-
stance, as the stock of “things” that would assist or hinder me in carrying out my
vocation.
150. See infra, Part I, “The 1929–1930 Course,” p. 61.
151. Cf. ibid., p. 70, and cf. supra, n. 125. The subject or “I” that explicitly confronts
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the circum-stance (i.e., the second “I” of Ortega’s formula for life’s actional
structure of reciprocity) is my objective presence to myself, which, as opposed to
the global subject of life, or first “I” of the said formula, is not global but parti-
tive. (Cf. infra, Part I, “The 1929–1930 Course,” p. 71–72.)
152. See ibid., p. 68. “Counting on” is a manner of acting, of doing (ibid.); indeed, it
is the basic style or form thereof.
153. Cf. ibid. and A. Rodríguez Huéscar, José Ortega y Gasset’s Metaphysical Innova-
tion, pp. 87–119.
154. See infra, Part III, p. 114. The failure to reject the pair “substance/accident” as in-
applicable to life would lead to the absurd proposition that life and “things” are
both substances and accidents. (Cf. ibid.)
155. Cf. ibid., p. 124.
156. See ibid., p. 111.
157. Cf. ibid.: “. . . any reality or thing that is not my life is either a part or (ingredient
of it [a ‘thing’ or a ‘subjective modality’]) or something which would have to be
made known to me in some modality of life [e.g., God].”
158. Ibid., p. 132. Even though I cannot go into the matter here, at least I must say—
if I want to do it minimal justice—that life’s essential future-tending character
(and its ongoing retroactive effect on my sense of the present and of the past, in-
cluding its selection and re-interpretation; cf. supra, n. 149) is the ground for the
dimension of self-realization. Self-realization is not simply the carrying into ef-
fect of directionalities pre-inscribed in my life, as if life were coinceivable accord-
ing to the Aristotelian idea of substance as tò tí en einai. (Cf. e.g., Aristotle, Met-
aphysics I, 983 a27, in The Metaphysics, trans. H. Tredennick, Greek/English ed.
[Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press/The Loeb Classical Library, 1961],
I, pp. 16 [Greek] and 17 [English]: “the essential nature of the thing. . . .”)
Rather, it is an evergoing determination of my present resulting from the pres-
sure exerted on it by my future, i.e., by my vocation or what I have to be,
whether I succeed in carrying it out or not (even in part). Cf. infra, Part III,
p. 136.
159. Cf. ibid., pp. 146f.
160. Cf. ibid.
161. Cf. infra, pp. 17–18.
162. See infra, Part III, p. 150.
163. See ibid.
164. See ibid., p. 147.
165. See ibid.
166. See ibid., p. 151.
167. See ibid.
168. See ibid. Or perhaps even more pointedly: “the problem of knowledge does not
originally arise with the relationship between its two termini, namely, the act of
‘apprehending’ and ‘being,’ but already with each of them” (ibid., p. 139).
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not be understood in terms of a notion of the self as a bundle of needs and reac-
tions, merely existing in reciprocity with the various pressures exerted on it by
the circumstance. And it cannot be so understood because, at every turn, we are
not pure passivity and receptivity, since we “come” to our present by virtue of a
prior decision to do something, a decision that is not usually the result of reflec-
tion and deliberation. Such decisions—intelligent or not, beneficial or not—are
the spontaneous “means” by which we ongoingly unify our lives. Those deci-
sions include not only those pertaining to what we are going to do next (that is
to say, what we are going to be next), but the decision to continue to live as well.
Cf. ibid., p. 124.
192. See infra, Part II, p. 84.
193. Ibid., p. 82.
194. Cf. ibid.
195. Cf. infra, Part III, p. 111.
196. Cf. infra, Part IV, p. 168.
197. Ibid., pp. 162–163.
198. Ibid., p. 163. (Emphasis added.) For Ortega’s critique of Plato’s Theory of Ideas
or Forms as a solution to this problem, cf. ibid., pp. 168 ff.
199. Ibid., p. 170.
200. See ibid., p. 168.
201. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, El hombre y la gente in OC VII, pp. 128–129. (Transla-
tion: Man and People, trans. W. R. Trask [New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,
1957], pp. 77–79).
202. See infra, “Appendix,” p. 188.
203. Ibid. Accordingly, the “world” and “things” (as the components thereof) are not
originarily encountered by us. A world is an order we construct, however well or
poorly, in order to live in the actual circumstance; it is the fruit of our imagina-
tive or interpretive work, while the circumstance is not, comprised as it is of
prágmata or importances exclusively. It is not out of curiosity, not even out of a
contemplative disinterest, but for the purposes of survival (pervivencia) and
meaningfulness that our lives consist in transforming the circumstance into a
world. Cf. infra, “Appendix,” passim.
204. Cf. ibid., pp. 194–195: “A human being reacts to the primordial and pre-
intellectual enigma [which genuine or naked reality is] by setting his or her intel-
lectual apparatus to work, an apparatus that is, above all, imagination.”
205. See ibid., p. 194. Take Ortega’s own example: the “Earth, taken by itself . . . is
not any ‘thing’ at all, but [just] an uncertain stock of facilities and difficulties in
our lives” (ibid.). At that level, it is, for instance, the support offered to our feet
(its “subjective” counterpart being the certainty and the ease of motion it pro-
vides for us); it is uphill or downhill (its “subjective” counterpart being, respec-
tively, the vexation or the delight it produces in us); it is that which separates us
from our loved ones or our enemies (its “subjective” counterpart being, respec-
tively, the emotional upheaval and suffering or the relief it causes in us), etc.
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notes 217
not be understood in terms of a notion of the self as a bundle of needs and reac-
tions, merely existing in reciprocity with the various pressures exerted on it by
the circumstance. And it cannot be so understood because, at every turn, we are
not pure passivity and receptivity, since we “come” to our present by virtue of a
prior decision to do something, a decision that is not usually the result of reflec-
tion and deliberation. Such decisions—intelligent or not, beneficial or not—are
the spontaneous “means” by which we ongoingly unify our lives. Those deci-
sions include not only those pertaining to what we are going to do next (that is
to say, what we are going to be next), but the decision to continue to live as well.
Cf. ibid., p. 124.
192. See infra, Part II, p. 84.
193. Ibid., p. 82.
194. Cf. ibid.
195. Cf. infra, Part III, p. 111.
196. Cf. infra, Part IV, p. 168.
197. Ibid., pp. 162–163.
198. Ibid., p. 163. (Emphasis added.) For Ortega’s critique of Plato’s Theory of Ideas
or Forms as a solution to this problem, cf. ibid., pp. 168 ff.
199. Ibid., p. 170.
200. See ibid., p. 168.
201. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, El hombre y la gente in OC VII, pp. 128–129. (Transla-
tion: Man and People, trans. W. R. Trask [New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,
1957], pp. 77–79).
202. See infra, “Appendix,” p. 188.
203. Ibid. Accordingly, the “world” and “things” (as the components thereof) are not
originarily encountered by us. A world is an order we construct, however well or
poorly, in order to live in the actual circumstance; it is the fruit of our imagina-
tive or interpretive work, while the circumstance is not, comprised as it is of
prágmata or importances exclusively. It is not out of curiosity, not even out of a
contemplative disinterest, but for the purposes of survival (pervivencia) and
meaningfulness that our lives consist in transforming the circumstance into a
world. Cf. infra, “Appendix,” passim.
204. Cf. ibid., pp. 194–195: “A human being reacts to the primordial and pre-
intellectual enigma [which genuine or naked reality is] by setting his or her intel-
lectual apparatus to work, an apparatus that is, above all, imagination.”
205. See ibid., p. 194. Take Ortega’s own example: the “Earth, taken by itself . . . is
not any ‘thing’ at all, but [just] an uncertain stock of facilities and difficulties in
our lives” (ibid.). At that level, it is, for instance, the support offered to our feet
(its “subjective” counterpart being the certainty and the ease of motion it pro-
vides for us); it is uphill or downhill (its “subjective” counterpart being, respec-
tively, the vexation or the delight it produces in us); it is that which separates us
from our loved ones or our enemies (its “subjective” counterpart being, respec-
tively, the emotional upheaval and suffering or the relief it causes in us), etc.
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248. Ibid.
249. Ibid., p. 19. Cf. pp. 87, 107, 124, and 201 (n. 18), and infra, Part IV, pp. 163ff.
and 169ff.
250. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Principios metafísicos de la razón vital,” viii, p. 44, and
supra, n. 103.
251. W.-R. Mann, op. cit., p. 30. Cf. p. 34:
“From Aristotle’s perspective, Plato’s quasi-Anaxagoreanism leaves him vulnerable to
. . . [the] criticism . . . [that] Plato has no good way of distinguishing between a partic-
ipant [in the Forms] changing (while remaining the same participant) and a partici-
pant being replaced (by some new participant), because he ultimately has no clear
way of regarding a participant as anything other than a ‘mixture,’ that is, as anything
other than a heap, rather than a thing. Thus, as a first approximation, what is wrong
with the Platonic view is that it treats all predication in the sensible world as, in effect,
accidental predication.”
252. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Principios metafísicos de la razón vital,” vii, pp. 40 and
42 and viii, pp. 44–45; see infra, Part IV, pp. 163–164.
253. Cf. W.-R. Mann, op. cit., pp. 23–24.
254. Cf. supra, p. 22ff.
255. Cf. Parmenides, Fragment 8 in Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, trans.
K. Freeman (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 43f.; J.
Ortega y Gasset, La idea de principio, p. 104 (trans., p. 63); and A. Rodríguez
Huéscar, José Ortega y Gasset’s Metaphysical Innovation, Part II, chap. 4, 5B,
p. 110.
256. J. Ortega y Gasset, La idea de principio, p. 104 (trans., p. 63).
257. Cf. ibid., pp. 209 and 211 (trans., pp. 196–198).
258. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Principios metafísicos de la razón vital,” vii, p. 41, and
infra, Part IV, pp. 164–166.
259. In the threefold sense of necessities, facilities, and difficulties. Cf. J. Ortega y Ga-
sset, El hombre y la gente, p. 111 (trans., p. 54).
260. Ibid., p. 166 (trans., p. 129).
261. Ibid. For the moral and political questions rooted in the equation “man = human
being,” cf. ibid., chap. 10, pp. 227–228 (trans., pp. 213ff.).
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notes 221
Revista de Occidente, 1983), VII, pp. 273ff. (henceforth this set will be referred
to as OC). Translation: What Is Philosophy?, trans. M. Adams (New York: W. W.
Norton & Co., 1960).]
4. Ibid., p. 275; cf. “Translator’s Preface,” What Is Philosophy?, p. 10: “in the pro-
fane surroundings of a theatre.”
5. The word “radical” is taken here etymologically, i.e., as deriving from radix
(“root”). Hence, “radical reality” is understood to mean “fundamental reality.”
The special sense of this expression will become apparent as it is used through-
out the book.
6. Ed.’s N.: This course has also been published as part of the above-mentioned col-
lection. [Cf. Unas lecciones de metafísica in OC, XII, p. 13, and “Note by the
Spanish Publishers” in Some Lessons in Metaphysics, trans. M. Adams (New
York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1969), p. 7.]
1. Problems
1. “Absolute” is taken, here and elsewhere, in its etymological sense, that is to say,
as the past participle of absolvo, which derives from ab- (away, off) and solvo (I
loosen), and thus means “that which is loosened or freed from.” In other words,
anything is absolute which stands altogether on its own to be what it is. Cf. The
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd ed. (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992), p. 7, left column. Ortega himself defines “abso-
lute” as that which is “self-relative.” Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Apuntes sobre el
pensamiento: su teurgia y su demiurgia,” OC V, p. 545. (“Notes on Thinking—
Its Creation of the World and Its Creation of God” in Concord and Liberty,
trans. H. Weyl [New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1946], p. 81.)
2. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, Meditaciones del Quijote, i, §11, OC I, p. 283 (transla-
tion: Meditations on Quixote, trans. E. Rugg et al. [New York: W. W. Norton &
Co., 1961], p. 138: “The Renaissance discovers the inner world in all its exten-
sion, the me ipsum [I myself], the consciousness, the subjective.”)
3. For the notion of belief in Ortega’s sense, cf. infra, “Appendix: Ideas and Beliefs,”
pp. 177ff.
4. Cf. supra, n. 5 on this page.
5. For Ortega, the fundamental sense of words like “living” or “vital” seems to be
the same as that of the term “performative” (ejecutivo), as will become apparent
in due course. One should therefore avoid taking them at the primordial level as
if they had biological significance.
6. “Fact” is usually taken by Ortega in an etymological sense, i.e., as deriving from
the Latin factum, the neuter past participle of facio (“I do”), hence as meaning
“deed” or “that which is done or made.” Cf. Charlton T. Lewis et al., A Latin
Dictionary (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1966), p. 716, left column.
7. This is the name that was given to Ortega’s doctrine in the 1920s. Cf., e.g., J. Or-
tega y Gasset, El tema de nuestro tiempo, iii–vi, OC III, pp. 157ff. (The Modern
Theme, trans. J . Cleugh [New York: Harper & Row, 1961], pp. 28ff.) and
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García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 222
“Guillermo Dilthey y la Idea de la Vida,” iv, OC VI, pp. 195–196, n. 2 (“A Chap-
ter from the History of Ideas” in Concord and Liberty, p. 164, n. 28).
8. Positum is the past participle of pono, meaning “I put,” “place,” or “set.” The
positum is, then, that which is set forth or forward. Cf., e.g., positio (2) in Roy J.
Deferrari, A Latin-English Dictionary of St. Thomas Aquinas (Boston: St. Paul
Editions, 1960), p. 803, col. 1: “setting down, putting down, affirmation, syno-
nym of affirmatio, the opposite of negatio and remotio. . . .” As is thus evident,
the traditional usage of positio (positing) and positum (the posited) has been de-
veloped at the propositional and related levels, while Ortega’s employment
thereof reaches much deeper, as will become apparent in the text.
9. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, El hombre y la gente, ii in OC VII, p. 107 (translation:
Man and People, trans. W. R. Trask [New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1957],
p. 49:
“The radical solitude of human life, the being of man, does not, then, consist
in there really being nothing except himself. . . . There is . . . an infinity of things
but—there it is!—amid them Man in his radical reality is alone—alone with
them. And since among these things there are other human beings, he is alone
with them too. If but one unique being existed, it could not properly be said to
be alone. Uniqueness has nothing to do with solitude”).
10. Cf. Antonio Rodríguez Huéscar, José Ortega y Gasset’s Metaphysical Innova-
tion. A Critique and Overcoming of Idealism, trans. and ed. J. García-Gómez
(Albany, N.Y. : State University of New York Press, 1995), pp. xxxv–xxxvi: “. . .
each and every concept referring to human life [is] . . . ‘a function of the given oc-
casion.’” Vide J. Ortega y Gasset, “Historia como sistema,” OC VI, pp. 35–36
(“History as a System” in History as a System and Other Essays Toward a Phi-
losophy of History, trans. H. Weyl [New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1941],
pp. 205–207), “Apuntes sobre el pensamiento: su teurgia y su demiurgia,”
pp. 538ff. (trans., pp. 73ff.), and El hombre y la gente, chaps. 1–4 (trans.
pp. 11–93). For the notion of occasional expression, see Edmund Husserl, Logi-
cal Investigations, i, §§26–27, trans. J. N. Findlay [New York: Humanities Press,
1970], I, pp. 313–320.)
11. Vide G. W. Leibniz, “First Truths” (“Primae veritates”), Opuscules et fragments
inédits de Leibniz, ed. L. Couturat (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1966; a re-
issue of the Paris, 1903 ed.), p. 519, in Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. and
trans. L. E. Loemker, 2nd ed. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1969), p. 268: “there cannot
be two individual things in nature which differ only numerically.” See also Leib-
niz, Discours de métaphysique et correspondance avec Arnauld, ed. and comm.
G. le Roy (Paris: J. Vrin, 1957), §9, p. 44 and pp. 218–219 (Comm.); The Mona-
dology in Discourse on Metaphysics. Correspondence with Arnauld. Monadol-
ogy, trans. G. R. Montgomery (La Salle: Open Court, 1957), §9, p. 252; Nou-
veaux essais sur l’entendement humain (Paris: Garnier/Flammarion, 1966), ii,
chap. 27, §3, p. 197; Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, ed. H. G. Alexander
(Manchester, 1956), No. 5, 21 (Die philosophischen Schriften von G. W. Leibniz,
ed. C. I. Gerhardt [Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1978; a re-issue of the
1875–1890 ed.], VII, pp. 393–394; henceforth this edition will be referred to as
G); and “Fourth Letter to Clarke,” Philosophical Papers and Letters, ed. and
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 223
notes 223
trans. L.E. Loemker, vii, §9, p. 687 (G VII, p. 372). Cf. John Dewey, Leibniz’s
“New Essays Concerning Human Understanding” (New York: Hillary House
Publishers, 1961; a re-issue of the 1888 ed.), chap. 9, p. 185, and Frederick Co-
pleston, A History of Philosophy (London: Burns & Oates, 1965), IV, pp. 290ff.
12. Vide J. Ortega y Gasset, “Historia como sistema,” p. 36, n. 1 (trans., p. 207). Cf.
J. García-Gómez, “Interpretación mundanal e identidad propia. Crítica del ex-
perimento mental de Bergson y de Schütz en torno a la naturaleza y los límites de
la conciencia,” Revista de Filosofía 3, No. 4 (1990) (Universidad Complutense
de Madrid), 3rd epoch, pp. 111ff. and especially pp. 117ff.
13. Vide René Descartes, Discours de la méthode, iii in Oeuvres de Descartes, ed.
Ch. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris: J. Vrin; a re-issue of the Paris 1897–1913 ed.),
VI (1965), pp. 32–33, and Meditationes de prima philosophia in ibid., VII
(1964), pp. 25 and 27. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, ¿Qué es filosofía?, pp. 394ff.
(trans., pp. 186ff.).
14. The word “thought” was added by the Spanish editor.
15. Cf. Antonio Rodríguez Huéscar, op. cit., ii, chap. 4, §2, p. 87: “In effect, to live is
to encounter myself [encontrarse] living.” (Cf. also p. 171, n. 6.) In Ortega’s text,
however, the verb is hallarse rather than encontrarse, yet the basic meaning is the
same, namely, “to find, encounter, or come across something or someone in the
world.” As opposed to this sense of “encounter,” to which Ortega objected in
the text, Rodríguez Huéscar identifies here a more fundamental signification,
one that is consistent with the notion of life as a non-mediately self-aware per-
formance and self-fashioning, managing at the same time to keep in view the du-
ality inscribed in life. (Cf. Meditaciones del Quijote, p. 322; trans., p. 45, slightly
modified: “I [“my life”] am myself [the objectivating ego] and my circumstance.”
Vide Julián Marías, “Comentario,” jointly published with Meditaciones del Qui-
jote [Madrid: Revista de Occidente/Ediciones de la Universidad de Puerto Rico,
1957], pp. 266ff.). This more fundamental sense of the word allows for the radi-
cal, active, and concomitant self-awareness of my living (which Ortega has here
in mind), even as I am conscious of something else, i.e., as I engage with and ob-
jectivate it.
16. Cf. supra, n. 6. The Spanish verb used here is hacer, which has a dual sense cor-
responding to two separate English verbs (viz., “to do” and “to make”). Such a
contextual duality, which at first glance may give rise to mere ambiguity, is
nonetheless fruitful in keeping the ad intra and ad extra dimensions of life not
just together, but intimately linked. For the related distinctions between poíesis
and prâxis and “action” and “working,” cf., respectively, Aristotle, Nicoma-
chean Ethics, vi, 4, 1140 a, trans. W. D. Ross, rev. J. O. Urmson (in The Com-
plete Works of Aristotle, rev. Oxford ed., ed. J. Barnes [Princeton: Princeton
University Press/Bollingen Series LXXI-2, 1984], II, pp. 1799–1800), and Alfred
Schutz, “On Multiple Realities,” i, 2 in Collected Papers (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1962), I (ed. M. Natanson), pp. 211–212. Vide Xavier Zubiri, Cinco
lecciones de filosofía (Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1963), i.ii,
pp. 36–37.
17. Vide Jean-Paul Sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme (Paris: Les Éditions
Nagel, 1970), p. 22: “l’homme n’est rien d’autre que ce qu’il se fait. . . .” (See also
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 224
p. 58 and L’être et le néant [Paris: Gallimard, 1943], pp. 61 and 513. Cf. J. Ortega
y Gasset, Una interpretación de la historia universal in OC IX, p. 216 [An Inter-
pretation of Universal History, trans. M. Adams {New York: W. W. Norton &
Co., 1973}, p. 285] and La idea de principio en Leibniz y la evolución de la
teoría deductiva in OC VIII, p. 315 [The Idea of Principle in Leibnitz and the Ev-
olution of Deductive Theory, trans. M. Adams {New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,
1971}, p. 332].) For the grounds of the contrast between Sartre and Ortega on
this point, cf. the discussion between members of the audience (particularly
Maurice Merleau-Ponty) and Ortega on the occasion of his lecture entitled “Pa-
sado y porvenir del hombre actual,” which was delivered by him as part of the
“Rencontres internationales de Genève” (1951) and was published, with the
other papers presented there, in La connaissance de l’homme au XXe. siècle
(Neuchâtel: Éditions de la Baconnière, 1952). The original text seems to have ap-
peared first in the Spanish translation of that volume, namely, Hombre y cultura
en el siglo XX, trans. M. Riaza (Madrid: Ediciones Guadarrama, 1957),
pp. 321–347; the discussion in question appears on pp. 349ff. (the relevant parts
being found on pp. 354–362). The text of the lecture is currently available in OC
IX, pp. 645ff.
18. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Ensayo de estética a manera de prólogo,” §§2–3, OC VI,
pp. 250ff. and particularly p. 252 (“An Essay in Esthetics by Way of a Preface” in
Phenomenology and Art, trans. Ph. W. Silver [New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,
1975], pp. 131ff. and especially pp. 133–134).
19. Cf. E. Husserl, Logical Investigations, i, chap. 1, §9 (I, pp. 280 f.) and v, chap. 2,
§10 (II, pp. 555–556), and Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a
Phenomenological Philosophy, I, trans. F. Kersten (The Hague: Martinus Nij-
hoff, 1982), §§34 (p. 67), 36 (pp. 73ff.), and 84 (pp. 199ff.). Henceforth I shall
be referring to the latter as Ideas, I. Vide J. Ortega y Gasset, Investigaciones
psicológicas in OC XII, pp. 377f. (Psychological Investigations, trans. J. García-
Gómez [New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1987], pp. 87ff.).
20. Cf. supra, §4. [This remark is by the author.]
21. Vide Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 131, trans. N. K. Smith (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961), p. 152: “It must be possible for the ‘I think’ to
accompany all my representations. . . .”
22. Cf. supra, §8. [This remark is by the author.]
notes 225
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the same origin cannot, so far as I know, be used to convey the two verbal func-
tions of the Spanish verb. Though, generally speaking, this phenomenon is com-
mon enough in translation and therefore trivial, it is not so in this case, given the
centrality of the opposition between appearing and seeming and that between
thinking and the content of thought in Ortega’s argument.
24. Cf. supra, p. 49.
25. In the original, the multiplication symbol is used instead, at this point, to relate
the subject thesis and what is predicated of it, while the sign “=” is employed in
connection with the subjects hypothesis, antithesis, and synthesis, which follow
immediately. I have taken “=” to mean is and substituted “signifies” for the mul-
tiplication symbol (and, by implication, for any other nexus of attribution). I be-
lieve that this is consistent with my construing the whole as an articulated series
of sentences.
26. Cf. supra, “Problems,” pp. 221 (n. 6) and 223 (n. 16).
27. Cf. supra, pp. 45–46 and 49ff.
28. The expression in parentheses has been added by the Spanish editor.
29. The expression in parentheses has been added by the Spanish editor.
30. Ed.’s N.: Cf. [J. Ortega y Gasset,] ¿Qué es filosofía? [particularly chaps. 3–5,
pp. 299–343; trans., pp. 47–113].
31. Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, ii in Oeuvres de Descartes,
A.-T., VII, pp. 25 (vv. 10–13) and 27 (vv. 8–12).
32. Cf. ibid., p. 28, vv. 20ff.
33. As will become apparent at once, the formula “seeing this light” is not the
equivalent of the expression “the seeing of this light,” which refers to a mere
psychological fact and is reducible, when carried to the limit, to the idealist the-
sis. Furthermore, let me call the reader’s attention to the fact that Ortega em-
ploys the expression extra ser later in this paragraph. That locution has been
translated here, given the context, as “external being,” though it may also mean
“additional or surplus being” by virtue of the prefix extra. Not only is there no
incompatibility between the two senses of Ortega’s phrase, but I believe he has
both in mind, and, though the English version does not lend itself easily to con-
veying this other signification, the reader, nonetheless, would be well advised to
bear it in mind as an essential determination to which one gains access by means
of his analysis.
34. Cf. ¿Qué es filosofía?, chap. 9, pp. 388ff. (trans., pp. 177ff.).
35. The opening phrase has been added by the Spanish editor.
36. Cf. supra, “Problems,” p. 36.
37. Cf. supra, p. 57.
38. As will become apparent immediately, Ortega is speaking here not just of doubt-
ing this or that, but of the universal doubt. Cf. R. Descartes, Meditationes de
prima philosophia, ii.
39. I have read the original text as if it said mi (“my”), rather than ni (“nei-
ther/nor”), which makes no sense in the present context.
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notes 227
40. In what follows, please compare Ortega’s distinction between para algo (“being
for,” “for the sake of,” or “in order to”) and por algo (“because” or “because
of”) with the similar differentiation introduced later by Alfred Schutz between
the Um-zu-Motiv (“in-order-to motive”) and the Weil-Motiv (“because mo-
tive”) in his Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt, 2nd ed. (Vienna: Springer
Verlag, 1960; 1st ed., 1932), §17 (p. 95) and 18 (p. 100); (translation: The Phe-
nomenology of the Social World, trans. G. Walsh et al. [Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1967]: “the act . . . projected in the future perfect tense and in
terms of which the action receives its orientation is the ‘in-order-to motive’ . . .
for the actor” (p. 88); “the in-order-to motive explains the act in terms of the
project, while the genuine because-motive explains the project in terms of the
actor’s past experiences . . . “ [p. 91].) Cf. A. Schutz, “Projects of Action,” iii in
Collected Papers (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff), I (1962, ed. M. Natanson),
pp. 69ff. and Reflections on the Problem of Relevance, ed. R. M. Zaner (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), chap. 2, §E, pp. 45ff.
41. Whenever possible, existir has been translated as “existing” or “to exist.” Occa-
sionally, when Ortega himself employs existencia or when translating existir in
the usual way would have been awkward, I have used “existence.” In any case,
however, all such words are always intended by Ortega to refer to the act of ex-
isting or living, not to something merely abstract, inert, or derivative.
42. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, El tema de nuestro tiempo, chap. 6, pp. 174ff. (trans.,
pp. 52ff.) and “Sensación, construcción e intuición” in OC XII, pp. 487ff. (trans.:
“Sensation, Construction, and Intuition” in Phenomenology and Art, pp. 79ff.).
43. Vide “Ideas y creencias,” pp. 384–385 (trans., cf. infra, pp. 178–179).
44. Cf. supra, pp. 40–46.
45. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, Meditaciones del Quijote, OC I, p. 322 (trans., p. 45).
46. Cf. ibid., pp. 320ff. (trans., pp. 43ff.). The expressions “theoretical culture,”
“theory,” and the like are meant here to cover the whole range of interpretations
that human beings may propose to meet the difficulties of living. Accordingly,
they are not intended to refer exclusively, or even primarily, to the plane of scien-
tific or philosophical meanings, which are a specialized and radical sort of con-
cepts, judgments, and inferences within the field of interpretations lato sensu.
See “Ideas y creencias,” pp. 406ff. and infra, pp. 200ff.
47. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, Meditaciones del Quijote, OC I, p. 322 (trans., p. 45): “In
short, the re-absorption of circumstance is the concrete destiny of man.” As Julián
Marías says in n. 7 to p. 172 of the translation, the “. . . reabsorption of the cir-
cumstance consists in its humanization, in its incorporation into that project of
man. Man makes himself with the things which are offered to him, makes life out
of them, his own life, he assumes them by projecting on them that sense, that
logos or significance” which in themselves, or apart from my life, they do not
have, so as “to convert that which simply ‘is there around me’ (circumstance) into
a real world, into personal human life.” (Cf. J. Marías, “Comentario,” p. 264.)
48. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideas, I, §§31 (pp. 57ff.), 32 (pp. 60ff.), 33 (pp. 65–66), 50
(pp. 112ff.), and 90 (p. 220), and A. Rodríguez Huéscar, José Ortega y Gasset’s
Metaphysical Innovation, Part I, chap. 3, pp. 51ff.
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49. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideas, I, §§51 (“Note,” p. 117) and 58 (pp. 133–134).
50. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Prólogo para alemanes,” pp. 47 and 52 (trans., pp. 60
and 67–68); ¿Qué es filosofía?, p. 414 (trans., p. 216); and Meditación de nues-
tro tiempo (Conferencias en Buenos Aires: 1928), in Meditación de nuestro
tiempo. Las Conferencias en Buenos Aires: 1916 y 1928, ed. J. L. Molinuevo
(Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1996), pp. 185, 186, and 188.
51. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, ¿Qué es filosofía?, p. 404 (trans., p. 201).
52. Added by the Spanish editor.
53. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit in GESAMTAUSGABE I.2 (Frankfurt: V.
Klostermann, 1977), §§9 (pp. 56ff.) and 25 (pp. 153ff.). (Being and Time, trans.
J. Macquarrie et al. [New York: Harper & Row, 1962], pp. 67ff. and 150ff.).
54. Cf. supra, “Problems,” p. 38.
55. The expressions “extra-” and “pre-intellectual” are the English translations for
the Spanish words extra-noético and pre-noético, respectively. The translations
adopted here are consistent with the sense of noético as a derivative of the Greek
words noûs (“intellect”) and noeîn (“to intuit intellectually”).
56. Cf. Henri Bergson, “Introduction à la métaphysique,” La pensée et le mouvant in
Oeuvres (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1963), p. 1398 [184]. (An Intro-
duction to Metaphysics, trans. T. E. Hulme [Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill
Co., 1955], p. 26: “A consciousness which could experience two identical mo-
ments would be a consciousness without memory. It would die and be born
again continually. In what other way could one represent unconsciousness?”)
57. An important artery in Madrid.
58. Later we shall see what this sense is. [This is a remark by the author. Cf. what fol-
lows immediately in the text.]
59. Cf. supra, “Problems,” pp. 38–39.
60. “Existence,” [another such expression,] cannot be regarded as technical. [More-
over,] let it be clearly understood that I use the word “exist” in its most tradi-
tional and even most common acceptation. [This remark is the author’s.]
61. Cf. supra, p. 40 and infra, Part IV, pp. 156ff. and 158ff.
62. Cf., e.g., Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. W. D. Ross, rev. J. O. Urmson in The Com-
plete Works of Aristotle, rev. Oxford ed., ix, 6–8, 1048 a 25–1051 a 33, II,
pp. 1655–1659.
63. Here I have translated ejecución literally, though normally I render it as “perfor-
mance” (as I usually do with its derivatives by means of the derivatives of the En-
glish word). My purpose is to give expression, as idiomatically as possible, to
Ortega’s notion of life—and its “ingredients”—as radical, unmediated being, as
opposed to the mediated sense it possesses in this context, namely, that of bring-
ing about something pre-conceived.
64. Cf. supra, n. 63.
65. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics in op. cit., i.3, 983 a 30 (II, p. 1555); 983 b 16 (II, p. 1556);
iv.8, 1017 b 23–26 (II, p. 1607); vii.13, 1038 b 5 (II, p. 1639); Physics, trans. R. P.
Hardie et al. in ibid., i.7, 190 a 33–35 (I, p. 325) and 9, 192 a 32 (I, p. 328).
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notes 229
66. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics in op. cit., v.4, 1015 a 11 and 16 (II, pp. 1602–1603);
Physics in ibid., ii.1, 193 b 7–8 (I, p. 330).
67. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics in op. cit., ix.8, 1050 a 15–16 (II, p. 1658) and xii.10,
1075 b 22 (II, p. 1700); On Generation and Corruption, trans. H. H. Joachim in
ibid., i.7, 324 b 18 (I, p. 530); and On the Soul, trans. J. A. Smith in ibid., ii.1,
412 a 9–10 (I, p. 656).
68. G. W. Leibniz, The Principles of Nature and Grace, §1 in Die philosophischen
Schriften von G. W. Leibniz, ed. C. I. Gerhardt, VI, p. 598; A New System of Na-
ture, ibid., IV, pp. 478–479; New Essays Concerning Human Understanding,
trans. A. G. Langley, 2nd ed. (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Co., 1916),
Appendix, p. 702 in ibid., p. 396.
69. Cf. supra, “Problems,” §9, pp. 38–39 and this course, p. 68.
70. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, Meditaciones del Quijote, OC I, p. 322 (trans., p. 45 and
J. Marías, n. 8, pp. 173–174; vide J. Marías, “Comentario,” pp. 266ff.).
71. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, Unas lecciones de metafísica, iii, OC XII, pp. 39ff. (trans.,
pp. 79ff.).
72. Cf. A. Rodríguez Huéscar, op. cit., ii, chap. 4, §1, pp. 83ff. and particularly
pp. 85f.; see also pp. 62ff.
73. Cf. supra, p. 60 and p. 227, n. 40.
74. Cf. A. Rodríguez Huéscar, op. cit., ii, chap. 4, §8, pp. 132ff.; see also his Éthos y
lógos, ed. J. Lasaga (Madrid: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia,
1996), i, chap. vi, §2, pp. 105ff.
75. Cf. supra, “Problems,” §7, pp. 34–35.
76. Cf. supra, n. 53.
77. Cf. supra, “Problems,” §7, p. 34.
78. Cf. ibid., p. 35.
79. Cf. ibid., p. 222, n. 10.
80. Cf. ibid., p. 35 and pp. 222–223, nn. 11 and 12.
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notes 233
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notes 235
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notes 237
56. Vide J. Ortega y Gasset, “Lector,” Meditaciones del Quijote, OC I, p. 322 (trans.,
p. 45, and J. Marías’s n. 8 to this edition on pp. 173–174; cf. J. Marías, “Comen-
tario,” p. 266ff.)
57. Cf. supra, Part I, “Problems,” §7, p. 34 and “The 1929–1930 Course,” p. 74.
58. Cf. supra, pp. 114ff.
59. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideas, I, §27, pp. 51 and 53.
60. Cf. Jean-Paul Sartre, L’existentialisme est un humanisme, p. 22.
61. Ed.’s N.: The development of the course, then, did not take place normally either.
62. Cf. supra, Part II, pp. 78ff.
63. Cf. supra, Part II, p. 91 and p. 232 (nn. 45–46).
64. Cf. supra, n. 62.
65. Cf. supra, Part II, pp. 87–88 and 232 (nn. 38–40).
66. Cf. supra, n. 62.
67. Cf. Nicolai Hartmann, Grundzüge einer Metaphysik der Erkenntnis, 2nd ed. enl.
(Berlin/Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1925).
68. For the connection and distinction between the concepts of being and thing, cf.
La idea de principio, pp. 161, 208, and 211 (trans., pp. 136, 195, and 198); “Co-
mentario al ‘Banquete’ de Platón,” p. 773; and infra, Part IV, pp. 157–167.
69. Cf. Nicolas Malebranche, Recueil de toutes les réponses du P. Malebranche,
prêtre de l’Oratoire, à M. Arnauld, Docteur en Sorbonne, ed. David, 4 vol.
(1709), vol. I, p. 415; apud Martial Gueroult, Malebranche (Paris: Aubier/Édi-
tions Montaigne, 1955–1959), I (1955), p. 157: “In accordance with St. Augus-
tine, I have maintained that matter was nothing but extension in terms of length,
width, and depth; but I have never entertained the thought that the idea of
length, width, and depth were long, wide, and deep, or that the intelligible body
were material, being larger in a larger than in a smaller space.”
70. Ed.’s N.: After this point, the rest of the lecture is identical with articles iv and v
(or last) of the series, “What Is Knowledge?” The reasons explaining this have al-
ready been given. [Cf. supra, Part II, iii, p. 84, n.(*)].
71. Cf. supra, Part II, pp. 85ff.
72. Cf. supra, n. 63.
73. Cf. supra, Part II, p. 92.
74. Cf. supra, p. 106.
75. Cf. E. Husserl, Ideas, I, §28, p. 54.
76. Cf. supra, Part II, pp. 78–79.
77. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Sobre el estudiar y el estudiante,” pp. 545ff.; Unas lec-
ciones de metafísica, chap. 1; and El hombre y la gente, chap. 1.
78. Cf. supra, Part II, p. 98.
79. Cf. supra, Part II, p. 79 and p. 230 (n. 10).
80. Cf. Plato, Symposium, 200 b and e.
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notes 239
92. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Filosofía pura. Anejo a mi folleto ‘Kant,’” OC IV,
pp. 54–59.
93. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, Investigaciones psicológicas, chaps. 4–6.
94. Cf. E. Husserl, “Phenomenology and Anthropology,” trans. R. G. Schmitt in
Shorter Works, ed. P. McCormick et al. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of
Notre Dame Press/Sussex, England: The Harvester Press, 1981), pp. 319ff. and
“Phenomenology,” trans. R. E. Palmer in ibid., ii, 7–9.
95. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Sensación, construcción e intuición,” pp. 487ff. (trans.,
pp. 79ff.).
96. Cf. “Ideas y creencias,” I, iv, pp. 405ff. (see infra, “Appendix,” pp. 199ff.)
97. Cf. ibid., p. 392 (see infra, pp. 185–186).
98. Somebody else can tell me I was born a good day, and I may take him or her at
his or her word, as if he or she had spoken to me of an eclipse that took place
three hundred years ago. But my birth is not lived by me; it does not belong to
my life, which is comprised only of those things I witness and which I, on my
own, enjoy or suffer. I also observe somebody else die, but that fact does not be-
long to the deceased. Birth and death exist only in somebody else’s life, not in
that of the one who is born or dies. [This note is the author’s.]
99. Ed.’s N.: Cf. the articles of the series entitled “¿Por qué se vuelve a la filosofía?,”
which were published in the Buenos Aires daily, La Nación. A few paragraphs
belonging to this lecture appeared there, and the series in question was reprinted
for the first time as an appendix to the fourth edition (1983) of the book, ¿Qué
es filosofía?, published as part of this collection [namely, Obras de José Ortega y
Gasset, as edited by P. Garagorri, which also included the present book, ¿Qué es
conocimiento?, that is, What Is Knowledge?].
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notes 241
26. The equivalent of “by themselves” has been added by the Spanish editor.
27. Cf. Plato, Republic, V.19, 477 a and 478 d.
28. Cf. supra, pp. 163–164.
29. Cf. supra, Part III, pp. 146ff.
30. Plato, Meno, 81 d. [This reference is by the author; here it appears as translated
by W. K. C. Guthrie in The Collected Dialogues of Plato, ed. E. Hamilton,
p. 364.]
31. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, El hombre y la gente, chap. 1, and “Ideas y creencias,”
p. 401 (and infra, pp. 195–196).
32. Cf. Plato, Meno, 86 a 9, in Platonis opera, ed. J. Burnet, III.
33. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Sensación, construcción e intuición,” pp. 487ff. and, e.g.,
Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A xvii, B xvi, B 1, A 19/B 29, A 69, B 94, and B
134.
34. This is so according to the etymology of the word, to wit: from the Greek gè
(“earth”) and metría (“measuring”). Cf. C. T. Onions et al., The Oxford Dic-
tionary of English Etymology (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1966): “geo-” (p. 394, right column), “geometry” (p. 395, left column), and
“metre” (p. 573, right column).
35. This occasion does not seem to arise in the remaining portion of the book.
36. At least in Plato’s version of it; we will later try to learn whether or not this is
also true of other forms of idealism. [This remark, which in the original appears
in the body of the text, is Ortega’s. The topic, whose discussion he anticipates
here, does not appear again in the remaining portion of the book, except in the
last paragraph by way of simple re-assertion. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, ¿Qué es
filosofía?, pp. 352 and 402; La idea de principio, pp. 157ff.]
37. Cf. supra, p. 50.
38. Reading por tanto (“therefore”) for tanto (“so much,” “so many”), which makes
no sense in this context.
39. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, I.9, 990 a 34–b 8.
40. This device, also called Cartesian diver, was employed “in physics laboratories for
the experimental study of the suspension, immersion, and flotation of bodies in a
liquid medium” (Diccionario enciclopédico hispano-americano de literatura, cien-
cias, artes, etc. [London: W. M. Jackson, n. d.], XII, p. 1176, right column). In its
simplified form (ibid., p. 1177, left column), it consists of “a hollow figure, partly
filled with water and partly with air, and made to float in a vessel nearly filled with
water, having an air-tight elastic covering. This covering being pressed down, the
air outside the vessel is compressed, and more water forced through a small aper-
ture into the figure, which consequently sinks, to rise again when the external pres-
sure is removed” (The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary [New
York: Oxford University Press, 1972], I, p. 345 [p. 139, right column]).
41. Ennead IV.8.4, vv. 33–35, in Plotinus, Enneads, Greek/English ed., trans. A. H. Arm-
strong (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press/The Loeb Classical Library,
1995), IV, pp. 410 and 411. The reference is given in the text by Ortega himself.
AU: x-ref
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 242
42. Ed.’s N.: The manuscript, as extant, breaks off at this point.
Appendix
1. An important play on words is unfortunately lost in the translation, namely, that
between “encontrarse con “ (“to come upon”) and “encontrarse en” (“to find
oneself placed in”). It would have been ideal to find one and the same English
verb, so as to be able to render adequately the two uses of encontrarse.
2. Cf., e.g., René Descartes, Méditations, iii, p. 29 (37), trans., I, p. 159; Wilhelm
Dilthey, “Vorrede,” Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften in Gesammelte
Schriften (Stuttgart: B. G. Teubner and Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), I
(1966), p. xviii; Franz Brentano, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint,
trans. A. C. Rancurello et al. (New York: Humanities Press, 1973), Book II, vi–ix,
pp. 194ff.; E. Husserl, Ideas, I, §§ 94–95.
3. Cf. supra, p. 180.
4. Cf. The Acts of the Apostles 17:28 in The New Testament of The Holy Bible,
King James Version, 1611 (New York: American Bible Society, 1985), p. 142.
5. Cf. supra, p. 179.
6. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, En torno a Galileo, particularly chaps. 8, 10, and 12.
7. That is, since 1914. Cf. infra, p. 203, for the date of this essay.
8. Let me leave the question untouched of whether, beneath this most profound of
strata, there is still something else, [namely,] a metaphysical bed that not even
our beliefs manage to reach. [This note is the author’s.]
9. Cf. R. Descartes, Discours de la Méthode in Oeuvres de Descartes, VI, p. 31
(trans., p. 101), and Méditations, i, in ibid., IX-1, pp. 17–18 (trans., pp. 148–149);
E. Husserl, Ideas, I, §31.
10. The locution terra derives from tersa, meaning dry, solid. [This note is the
author’s. Cf. Charles T. Lewis et al., A Latin Dictionary: terra (“ground, earth”;
p. 1861, center column); tersa (“clean or dry”; feminine form of the past partici-
ple of tergeo; p. 1862, left column); tergeo (“I wipe dry” or “clean”; p. 1858,
center column).
11. Doubt derives from dubitare, which means “to vibrate to and fro.” (Cf. dubito in
Charles T. Lewis, ibid., p. 613, center column.) The word involves the Indo-
European root dwo, meaning “two.” See The American Heritage Dictionary of
the English Language, pp. 555 and 2101.
12. Cf. [Plato,] Parmenides. [This reference was given in the body of the text by Or-
tega himself.]
13. This discussion does not seem to be found in this essay.
14. Cf. J. Ortega y Gasset, “Historia como sistema,” viii, p. 41 (trans., p. 217).
15. Cf. mâter, no. 5 in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,
p. 2113, left column.
16. Here lies the origin and justification of Ortega’s distinction between “circum-
AU: x-ref
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 243
notes 243
AU: x-ref
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 244
36. Cf. Wilhelm Dilthey, Das Wesen der Philosophie, passim and J. Ortega y Gasset,
“Guillermo Dilthey y la Idea de la Vida,” iv–v and p. 203.
37. The Spanish original of this essay can be found in OC V, pp. 381–409. For a crit-
ical examination of Ortega’s theory of ideas and beliefs, see my articles entitled,
“La acción y los usos intelectuales. En torno a la problemática de las ideas y las
creencias en la filosofía de Ortega,” Torre de los Lujanes (Real Sociedad
Económica Matritense de Amigos del País) 34, October 1997, pp. 117ff.; “Ca-
minos de la reflexión. En torno a la teoría orteguiana de las ideas y las creen-
cias,” Revista de Filosofía (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), 3rd epoch, 11,
nos. 19 and 20, 1998, pp. 5ff. and 113ff.; and “La teoría orteguiana de las ideas
y las creencias. Una dificultad interpretativa,” Humanitas 26 (Universidad
Autónoma de Nuevo León, Mexico), 1999, pp. 133–140.
AU: x-ref
García-Gómez: What Is Knowledge page 245
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Index
254 Index
Essence, 6, 8, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 79, 80, Idealism, 33, 36, 37, 38, 42, 45, 46,
81, 91, 149, 155, 157 49–50, 51, 52, 53, 55, 64, 67, 72, 83,
Essence as hypothesis, 20, 21, 23, 97, 123–124, 172, 174, 241 n.36
146, 147, 150, 169, 213 n.135, 218 Ideas, Platonic. See Forms or Ideas
n.215, 219 n.224 Identity. See Uniqueness
Essence as question, 20, 23, 81, 84, 85, Ignorance as confusion. See Knowledge
87, 88, 92, 93, 106, 138, 148, 216 as questioning
n.182 Imagination. See Philosophy as Metaphysics
Essence v. thinghood, 5, 18, 22, 23, 69, Insecurity. See Life, categorial analysis
79–80, 84, 140, 148–149, 155, 156, of
158, 159, 160, 163, 164, 165, 166, Intellect. See Knowledge
167, 167 ff., 171, 173, 211 n.106 Intellectualism, 180, 181, 182
Existence. See Life, human Ionians, 161, 163
Index 255
256 Index