The Influence of the 1898 Disaster and the Ideology of the German Mandarins in the Genesis of Ortega y Gasset’s Theory of Generations

Abstract

In this article I will address, on the basis of a very specific case, the way in which the social trajectory of philosophers and the processes of the collective definition of philosophical products are expressed in key categories of philosophical discourse, that is, in the symbolic forms proper to the social practice we call philosophy. To do so, I will show that the formative period of the young Ortega is crossed by two fundamental social experiences that were interpreted in a generational key: the 1898 Disaster and contact with the German mandarin ideology. I also hope to show that these experiences were incorporated or translated into the central categories of the philosopher, who was then just beginning to take his first steps in the Spanish political and intellectual field. Later, these categories would become, among other symbolic forms, part of his mature theory of generations. The aim of this article is to point out how the residues of these two experiences permeate his theory through these key categories. In doing so, I would like to focus on two ways of research: 1) deepening a better understanding of his work through the sociology of philosophy and 2) warning against the risk of uncritically incorporating such residues in an unreflective application of Ortega's theory of generations to the present day.