The Novel and Reading in the Philosophy of Jose Ortega y Gasset: Ad Intra and Ad Extra Cover Image
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Романът и четенето във философията на Хосе Ортега-и-Гасет – Аd Intra и Ad Extra
The Novel and Reading in the Philosophy of Jose Ortega y Gasset: Ad Intra and Ad Extra

Author(s): Lazar Koprinarov
Subject(s): Anthropology, Philosophy, Aesthetics, Social Philosophy, Marxism, Culture and social structure
Published by: Институт по философия и социология при БАН
Keywords: José Ortega y Gasset; novel; reading; Russian formalism; Wolfgang Iser; anthropology of literature

Summary/Abstract: The article presents José Ortega y Gasset’s ideas concerning the novel and reading. The analysis is deployed in two directions: ad intra, “inside”, in the context of Ortega’s philosophy, and ad extra, “outside”, in the context of alternative views on the novel and reading. In the first part of the article, the author argues that José Ortega y Gasset aestheticizes philosophy, bringing it closer to literature. At the basis of this intensive “approximation” of philosophy and literature, lies Ortega y Gasset’s concept of man as “a novelist of himself”. In the second part of the article, comparisons are made between the approach of Ortega y Gasset and that of the Russian formalists with respect to the specificity of the novel. The third section outlines some similarities between Ortega y Gasset’s conception of reading as a “spreading of oneself” and Wolfgang Iser’s literary anthropology. Both thinkers interpret the need to read as a human need to look at the real world, and on ourselves, as being only one of many possibilities. The revealed similarities are treated as signs of belonging to a common transformation processes in the aesthetics of the twentieth century.

  • Issue Year: XXVI/2017
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 142-158
  • Page Count: 17
  • Language: English, Bulgarian