The two Ages of Time or the Triangle’s Vertex: Ortega y Gasset’s Naturphilosophie from Schelling’s late reflection

Abstract

Understand how the spiritual dimension emerges out of matter is an important task of contemporary philosophy. The debates within philosophy of neuroscience and within the ethics of Artificial Intelligence stress the urgence of a Naturphilosophie able to develop an ontological monism which can think the mystery of Being’s enrichment, as contemporary works such as Baidou’s (1988, 2006) and Gabriel’s (2020, 2022) suggest. With that in mind, I develop the implicit ontology of two texts by Ortega y Gasset (1933, 1966), reading them side by side with Schelling’s Weltalter (1811/1985). I aim to formalize two figures, the Ages of Time, to clarify the ground for this possible Naturphilosophie, whose task is to think the fact of ontological enrichment. Our comparative reading of Ortega’s and Schelling’s texts results in the explanation of an ontological monism marked by discontinuous continuity, in Ortega y Gasset suggested by his ratiovitalistic description of the technique, whereas in Schelling it lies in his discussion of time’s three dimensions. Thus, I offer as possible conclusion the figure of the Triangle’s Vertex, a picture which allows us to dialectize, in epistemic and ontological terms, the relation between blind nature and its waking to itself through human consciousness.