The Cultivation of Humanities in the Global Society

On Ortega y Gasset's Institute of Humanities

Abstract

Once he returned to Madrid from his long exile, between 1948 and 1950 José Ortega y Gasset founded the Instituto de Humanidades (Institute of Humanities). This non-formal educational institution was conceived as a counterpoint to the cultural hegemony of the Francoist regime. This article aims to shed light on this usually neglected project developed by Ortega y Gasset during the last years of his intellectual career. A project that can be said to represent one of the most significant realizations of his pedagogical meditations on the role of humanistic education and philosophy in society, a recurrent topic of his writings at least since his Misión de la Universidad (Mission of the University). This case study is particularly relevant since the Institute constituted both a significant attempt to define the role of Western cultural tradition in the second post-war period and to defend the need for freedom of expression even under a censorious dictatorship. Moreover, this experiment was strictly entangled with the process of internationalization in education, which was promoting the construction of a global peace after the end of the Second World War. A project that still inspires the agenda of several international agencies, such as UNESCO.