Ortega: The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thought

Abstract

An intense metaphilosophical reflexion is made clear in Ortega's work, surely stimulated by a general concern for the question of the fate of philosophy characteristic of the XXth century. According to that, at the last stage of his career he even announces an imminent end of Philosophy. At first sight this diagnosis seems to bring Ortega close to certain positionings of a postmodernist kind. On the other hand, as I intend to show, this diagnosis generates various tensions inside the orteguian corpus. The fundamental statement upon which the orteguian opinion in relation to the end of Philosophy rests is that which affirms the exhaustion of the “way of thinking” as knowledge which gave rise to that former in ancient Greece. This is a logic way of thinking which stands upon the posit that things have a “being” liable of being mirrored by the human rational structure.