Ortega y Gasset’s culture of love

Abstract

This article seeks to highlight the understanding of love (with its conditions and historicity), as expressed in some texts of the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. Above all, we aim to verify how his meditation phenomenologically discovers the specific traits of an affective experience that is often confused with its pseudomorphosis – in particular, desire, passion and affection. In search of what is unmistakable in love, the author points out the need to distinguish the emotion from the person who feels it and, on the other hand, from the actions of hate, which are comparable, despite the radical difference of sense or intention that opposes them.

Keywords: love, culture of love, J. Ortega y Gasset.