Join Travis Landry, the William P. Rice Professor of Spanish and Literature, for a lecture about José Ortega y Gasset, the most important Spanish philosopher of the 20th century.
Ortega combines a unique version of existentialism with a kind of vitalism. According to Ortega our thinking has to begin with what Ortega called "radical reality" — our on-going interaction with the world. But if I am to be understood as an interaction with the world — how should I think of the me? What happens to the self in this account? And how should we think of the world — if we think of the world as part of an interaction? The core of "radical reality" is the circumstances where we find ourselves. Ortega explores these themes.
Landry's publications include "Subversive Seduction: Darwin, Sexual Selection, and the Spanish Novel" (University of Washington Press and the Mellon Modern Language Initiative, 2012), "The Fruits of the Struggle in Diplomacy and War" (Bucknell University Press, 2016) and numerous articles. Landry completed a book on the philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset during his sabbatical in Spain on a Fulbright U.S. Senior Scholar Research Grant.