Ortega’s Approach to Husserlian Phenomenology

Abstract

Ortega’s intellectual adventure begins in 1905, when he decides, after taking his doctorate, to plunge into the “treasures” of German culture, a plunge intended as an “intellectual, moral and aesthetic discipline,” as an introduction to “essential life.”¹ The historical and theoretical coordinates which define the outline of his philosophy are German: Cohen and Natorp’s Neo-Kantianism; existentialism — especially Heidegger; the historicist movement — Dilthey, Spengler and, at the fringes, the historical school; the contrast with the Lebensphilosophie of Nietzsche and Simmel; and lastly phenomenology, in the initial contact not only with Husserl and Scheler, but also with some exponents in the phenomenological circles in Göttingen and Munich such as Schapp, Geiger, and Pfänder.