Vital Ethics in Ortega y Gasset

Abstract

Life and Ethics, as forms to be and to build, constitute the intimate fabric in which our human existence expresses itself and upon which it is based. Our “circumstance”, and its character of spatiality and temporality, is a faithful reflection of the indigence and neediness of our reality. The ethics, insofar as ethos or “system of moral reactions,” more than a philosophical reflection on morality or a “set of ideal norms,” is a vital attitude, deeply rooted in our own life, as a constituent part of this life, whose fundamental mission is to illuminate us and guide us in our daily task in order to know, at all times, what to rely on.