What is Knowledge? (review)

José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) is the most original philosophical voice in modern Spanish history. This posthumous work is composed of lectures and seminars held in Madrid, 1929-34. While Ortega was meeting with students, Spain was in turmoil. In 1931, the king was deposed; within a year of the last lecture, Spain had descended into civil war. Ortega made his classroom a refuge where philosophy would continue to be taught despite the swelling barbarism. Throughout his arguments, there are echoes of Dewey's pragmatism, Bergson's vitalism, and Heidegger's existential ontology, with anticipations of Wittgenstein and Foucault. In the end, though, Ortega is completely on his own—a subtle, erudite, urbane, Socratic philosopher, whose newly translated lectures on knowledge comprise a Dionysian epistemology with constant reference to Cervantes.