What is Knowledge… sample essay

I agree with Jose Ortega y Gasset’s idea that knowledge that a person possesses is derived from life and occurs in life. Truly, barring instincts and unconditional reflexes, we gain no information from something that isn’t our lives. The information transmitted to children form their parents cannot be called knowledge at all, since it carries such information as person’s height, eye color. Genes and DNA do convey data to the child, but not knowledge.

Jose Ortega’s book “What Is Knowledge?” suggests rather radical ideas about who human beings are, what life is, and what knowledge is. The book is actually a series of lectures (Jose was a great teacher) consisting of four parts: Life as Performance, Concerning Radical Reality, What is Life?, and Glimpse of the History of Philosophy. “What is Knowledge?” (title given by redactor, not the author) portrays Jose Ortega’s personal points of view about nature of life and knowledge, the two notions about which humanity has been arguing forever.

Jose Ortega’s main point of the writings is that literally everything is derived from life. Truly, life is the means by which we have everything that we have. All kinds of activities we do are enclosed in life and are also taken from it. In other words, would it be useful to go to college if I weren’t alive? Or, would one love to go to Tahiti, if he/she were not in the domain of life? Surely not! One would not even dislike or feel anything about it, because he/she would not even know anything about it, because would not live and think. Ortega supports his suggestions by various statements, and argues that “human beings cannot be defined in terms of their cognitive activity, because knowing occurs in life and is derived from life”. A person, who knows nothing can still be identified with human being (though would hardly identify with a person).

Ortega’s ideas in many ways contradict with the ideas of earlier philosophers. For example, unlike Descartes suggested, “I think, therefore I am” (Cogito Ergo Sum), Jose asserted that life is “the primordic and absolute reality endowed with a performative, not objective being” (p. 73). However, Ortega uses examples and draws vivid pictures in minds of readers (listeners) that prove his rightness, “whether I like it or not, I have no chance but to live by means of this poorly endowed soul and this rheumatic body in the midst of the not very pleasant Spanish world of 1930” (p. 99). His statements are very affective, and convey a radical, controversial (but convincing) perception of metaphysics.

Ortega’s conceptions made me think over this life and knowledge, and he also made me conceive absolutely new and fascinating ideas for myself. I figured that life is the primary and most important condition to anything in the world. And by anything I mean the thing I am in contact with. Therefore, things I do not have contact with do not exist for me at that moment. In other words, you live, and that is the primary condition that gives you opportunities to do other things, and not vice versa. You live and then you think and move and whatsoever; not you think and move, therefore you live. His marginal conception of himself also made me think about it a lot. All people without exceptions take some things for granted, like their parents, their body, homeland, and it does not appear to the person to change them or to have them changed.

However, when Jose Ortega said characterized himself as one who had no choice but to live by means of soul in this body in the middle of Spain, I did not catch much rightness in it. I strongly disagreed with this idea of his: yes, surely none of human beings can change their body, and hardly anybody can alter their soul, but nearly anybody can change location easily. Probably what Ortega meant by that was that he, or anyone, has this particular body, and this particular soul, located in the very place that it is at the present moment. The fact that anybody can travel is evident (excluding some exceptional minority) and is the first contradiction to the idea. Secondly, he states that his body is rheumatic. Maybe in hi particular example next to nothing could be done to amend the situation, but generally by means of physical training any body can become healthy and beautiful. And last, his soul he called “poorly endowed;” this part directly depended on his faith in God. Probably what Ortega meant by that was that he, or anyone, has this particular body, and this particular soul, located in the very place that it is at the present moment; at least this is the best explanation.

Generally, Jose Ortega y Gasset has suggested a new look on metaphysics. Stating that “the acknowledgement of life as a primordial reality is the first act of full and incontrovertible knowledge” (p. 65), he argued that the root from which everything is derived is life. One of his main points was that we live, and therefore we think and perceive reality, and not “I think, therefore I am.” Jose Ortega not only made a valuable contribution into philosophy, and particularly metaphysics; he made me think about life and its significant value as the initial root and base that bolsters and backs all that people do or think or feel.

Bibliography

1. Ortega y Gosset, Jose. What Is Knowledge? State University of New York Press. 2001.
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