The Community Although Lonely. Paradoxes of the Ortegian Philosophy of Life

Abstract

José Ortega y Gasset’s philosophy, regardless of its actual specific weight and a diversity of opinions which are delivered about it, does not stop occupying the following generations of researchers’ attention, not losing in attractiveness and seeming to be very current as well, and also universally important and significant. The vitalism of this philosophy, thanks to combining it with ratio, stands above a mediocrity of overview, protecting successfully against a superficial judgement and melting into impressive aphoristics. Life – both object and subject of Ortega’s philosophy, marked by ambivalence and complexity, with necessity makes the same as it the philosophy distilled from it. To the substantial attributes of life at Ortega belong communality, on the one hand, and loneliness on the other. There is a numerous of premises which are a sign of the communion dimension of life. There are so many arguments, however, for the lonely character of it. The main issue the article is concentrated on is a thesis that Ortega y Gasset belongs to the biggest-ever and the most interesting philosophers of loneliness, developing or even more – bringing to a culmination of the centuries-old tradition of struggling with existential determination of the essence of loneliness, that leads to acknowledgment of loneliness as an essential attribute of the human life.