Perspicuity and Existential Alertness in José Ortega y Gasset’s Meditations on Hunting

Abstract

Meditations on Hunting is a book that expands José Ortega y Gasset’s philosophy of man as an extra-natural being. Man is extra-natural because, while man has a relationship with his physical circumstance, this is not the only factor that defines man. In Meditations on Hunting Ortega reminds us that a life worth living is a life that is alert to itself. Existential authenticity, then, requires that man sustain a sense of awe and wonder about his own existence and the world that surrounds us. The life-long strain that existential authenticity demands of man, I refer to as existential alertness. This intensity of vital reflection is fueled by a form of reflective perspicuity that never allows human existence to become too comfortable; to the point of acting as a detriment to self-reflection. I believe that existential alertness is an existential category that Ortega’s work illuminates in a way that few thinkers have paid attention to.