Art as the Unrealisation of Reality and the Realisation of Unreality. Art, Science and Politics in the Thought of Ortega y Gasset

Abstract

This article explains how human life has two aspects according to Ortega y Gasset : life as germinal reason and life as reason deployed, i. e., the culture, which is defined as interpretation – revealing – of life, this last one understood as reason ‘in potentia’. This paper shows how the escape from life is a condition of possibility of the interpretative turn towards life-world, in which art consists of as cultural form. It clarifies how Ortega transforms Baudelerian ‘ennui’ – or existential angst facing the world – in an ordinary mechanism of human life, based on the fact that the human being is a fantastic animal and, therefore, he needs to rest from the heavy weight of existence and have some diversion. Regarding the concept of culture as diversion, this article comprehends art as the ultimate method to escape and, at the same time, as declaration of truth. It shows the different relations that art, science and politics present in regard to irreality.