Dr. Harold Raley, Expert on Modern Spanish Literature, Addresses Radical Reality

The first presentation within the St. Thomas and St. Catherine Lecture Series for 2003-04 was recently given by Dr. Harold Raley who spoke on the thought of José Ortega y Gasset and Julian Marias. The lecture was entitled, “Two Theories of Human Life in Ortega and Marias.” In actuality, Dr. Raley noted it may have been one theory developing in two people, although Marias took the theory a bit further, as we shall see.

Dr. Harold Raley, a recognized expert on modern Spanish thought and literature, is a Professor in Language and Scholar-in-Residence at Houston Baptist University. Raley has authored Jose Ortega y Gasset: Philosopher of European Unity; Responsible Vision: The Philosophy of Julian Marias; and Un siglo de Ortega, along with more than a hundred studies, articles, and reviews on Hispanic thought and the history of modern ideas.

Raley began his lecture to a standing-room-only group of faculty, staff, and students with an introduction on the metaphysical concepts of classic philosophers. Following a brief discourse on Christian constructs, he turned to his main topic, Ortega and Marias. He noted first that Ortega in the Meditations on Quixote successfully resurrected Don Quixote and along with him, an exaltation of life over reason.

Raley proposed that the first portion of the Meditations takes the reader through a stroll in the forest and with Ortega’s mastery of language, before we even know it, we are in an entirely “new philosophical landscape.” It was a new way of thinking and seeing that rejected the Hegelian concept of history as system and endorsed “life as radical reality.” The forest in the story has depth and structure because of the individual’s encounter with it. The individual’s life is the center, transforming both the subjectivism of the idealist and the objectivism of the materialist. All things must be placed in their circumstantial relationships. Raley posits that metaphysics, according to Ortega, cannot be identified with ontology, but must be drawn from a person’s life.

Marias, as Raley noted, took Ortega’s concepts further. Marias also saw living as “apprehending reality in its connectedness.” Using an illustration to make this point, Raley inquired what the audience would say if asked to define a pentagon. The response would most likely be, “a five-sided figure.” If they were to define an owl, they would probably give another dictionary definition. If they were asked to define Cervantes, however, they would have to give at least a brief biography, a brief story to even try to come close to defining Cervantes.

This line of reasoning brought Marias to his concept of metaphysical anthropology in which certain empirical assumptions could be made about the human, including the reciprocal sexuite, bodily being, amorous condition, linguistic condition, and facial. One could, however, no longer ask “what the human is” but must ask “who the human is.” The definition of human would always be tied to the biographical; it seems that it might also always be tied to the individual. In fact, the only thing that might save one from strictly radical individualism and isolation is, as Raley noted, the individual’s need for other people in order to identify who he/she is.

Thus, in Ortega, we have life not as being or as existence, but as radical reality, with all its various circumstances centered upon the individual and his/her perspective. In Marias, we have the final end point of this reasoning where the human can not be defined by what he/she is (being, existence, or characteristics) but must be defined by a narrative, a brief biography that takes into account the circumstances surrounding that individual.

Raley ended his lecture by noting that these revolutionary thoughts would not be accessible to Americans without the work of translators. He encouraged the audience to learn Spanish (especially to read Ortega in the original, given his gifted prose) and to recognize the value of translating texts in order to enhance the sharing and development of potentially world-altering concepts.