“I have been silent for twelve years.” A philosophical reading of José Ortega y Gasset's silence in the face of the European collapse (1930-1940)

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.63487/reo.150

Keywords:

Ortega y Gasset, vital and historial reason, metapolitics, silence, exile, spectacle, political violence

Abstract

Based on the study of a text from 1945, the article examines Ortega’s silence and exile as philosophical gestures that respond to the violence that devastated Europe from 1930 onwards. His renunciation of public discourse and his exile express a rejection of a politics alien to truth, and serve as the basis for a radical metapolitical reflection on the new international circumstances of philosophy. These experiences enable him to develop a historical-rational concept of the exile and to set his concept of vital and historical reason in motion in search of circumstances conducive to its coming into effect.

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Author Biography

Xavier Ortega Martín, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales EHESS

Student-researcher in the Master's Degree in Political Studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris (EHESS). He is currently conducting his pre-doctoral research on Ortega's philosophy of the university and technology from the perspective of his political praxis, comparing it with the thinking of Manuel Sacristán. He has also worked on Ortega's marginalia, developing an inventory of them with the help of Marcos Alonso and Juan Bagur, systematized thanks to the construction of a comprehensive database of Ortega's personal library located at the Ortega-Marañón Foundation. Based on this work, he is the editor and translator from German to Spanish of Ernst Cassirer's book Language and Myth with comments by Ortega, which is forthcoming.

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Published

2025-05-01 — Updated on 2025-05-01

How to Cite

Ortega Martín, X. (2025). “I have been silent for twelve years.” A philosophical reading of José Ortega y Gasset’s silence in the face of the European collapse (1930-1940). Revista De Estudios Orteguianos, (50), 149–169. https://doi.org/10.63487/reo.150

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Articles