José Ortega y Gasset

Spanish philosopher and essayist, he attained his degree in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of Madrid in 1902 with a thesis titled Los terrores del año mil. Crítica de una legenda. From 1905 to 1907 he studied in Germany, in Leipzig, Nuremberg, Cologne, Berlin and Marburg, where he was a student of Hermann Cohen. He taught metaphysics at the University of Madrid from 1910 to 1936. In 1923 he founded the Revista de Occidente; in 1948 he created the Institudo de Humanidades, together with his follower Julián Marias. Ortega y Gasset was an exponent of existentialism and of perspectivism, then of rational-vitalism, against the degeneration brought on by the standardization of values; following Nietzsche’s lead, he wished for the formation of an aristocratic minority, caretaker and interpreter of the highest spiritual traditions.