My Two Cents

In this selection, José Gaos considers the perspectivism of his teacher, José Ortega y Gasset, who famously argued that “I am myself and my circumstance, and if I do not save my circumstance, I do not save myself.” For Gaos, and eventually for Samuel Ramos, this view provided the epistemological justification for a national or continental philosophy—“American philosophy”— insofar as it helped to explain how philosophy could be both universal (concerned with the universe) and circumstantial. Philosophy for Gaos is universal in that it is philosophy sín más (as such), which cannot but acquire a nationality. The only mistake would be to do philosophy for the sake of producing a nationality because that is, in a sense, not doing philosophy.

Circumstantial evidence · Contemporary philosophy · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Mistake · Perspectivism · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought · Spanish Philosophy and Literature