Summary
Jose Ortega y Gasset: The Structure of Crisis
The Essence of Galileo's Teaching
Man's life, history and crisis are the three essential motifs that form the core of this study. The basis of the research is always the crisis of modernity, which is already an old concern of Ortega's, but colored by the events experienced by the author himself. The new information is that the crisis of thinking does not explain anything, but is only a consequence of a deeper plan of reality. If reason worked well up to a certain date and then stopped doing so, it is because something that is not rational has changed: the form of life that rests on a belief system, the true ground of reality. Already in the first lecture, Ortega says that "man is not the same as human life", but that he is determined by what he does, by the task he is given. Man is not determined by his nature, physical and psychological apparatus, but to live means to be in certain circumstances in which things happen, between which it is necessary to make a choice. On one side are the circumstances and the world, on the other side is the free self. To live does not mean to be, but to happen.
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