The Notion of ‘Belief’ and its Manifestation in Use or Validity. Towards a Phenomenology of the Social World in José Ortega Y Gasset

Abstract

This article aims to give an account of a fundamental reflection on the Ortega y Gasset’s philosophy. Parting from critics from the modern point of view and represented, in this case by Husserl, Ortega states his idea of human life as a radical reality.

The analysis of the “presence” of life entails the problem of the correlation human being-world as it questions how the self develops in the circumstance. Ortega’s answers to this question from the notion of “belief”, which is analyzed here as a central point for getting to the fundamental theme: the phenomenology of the social world, which is framed in concepts such as “use” and “validity”. Thus, this work wants to give an account of a phenomenological path parting from the concrete, from the “presence” of life and up to the existence of society as a fundamental circumstance
of all human life.