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Reason, Practice and the Promise of a New Spain: Ortega's 'Vieja y nueva política' and Meditaciones del 'Quijote'

This paper analyses José Ortega y Gasset’s conceptions of the reform of the Spanish nation and national culture in his 1914 speech ‘Vieja y nueva política’ and book-length essay Meditaciones del ‘Quijote’, published the same year.1 While focusing on a reading of these two texts, this paper also establishes a dialogue with some contemporary critical accounts of Ortega’s thought, in so far as they try to elucidate the twofold demand which stood at the basis of his intellectual commitment. As a Spanish intellectual, Ortega found himself torn between two competing tasks: national reform and modernization, and a change of the concept of European culture through a shift of philosophical paradigms. Consequently, an attempt to read Ortega’s thought as a product of the tradition of the mainstream European philosophy, and a tendency to emphasize, for better or worse, those inherent and original properties of his philosophical project, miss some important questions concerning his intellectual production. How are some specific aspects of Ortega’s thought—for example, his participation in different attempts at national reform in Spain—connected to his overall intellectual position, and conversely, why and how did his self-fashioned intellectual style make certain philosophical and political choices appear logical or necessary? I am juxtaposing two texts which belong to the same historical moment but whose histories of reception have followed quite different paths. While Meditaciones del ‘Quijote’ is considered as one of the milestones in Ortega’s career and a canonical text of Spanish contemporary culture, ‘Vieja y nueva política’ has been viewed as a piece of great biographical and not so great