What is Knowledge?: (SUNY series in Latin American and Iberian Thought and Culture)

Appearing in English for the first time, this book comprises two of Ortega's most important works, ¿Qué es conocimiento? and the essay "Ideas y creencias." This is Ortega's attempt to systematically present the foundations of his metaphysics of human life and, on that basis, to provide a radical philosophical account of knowledge. In so doing, he criticizes idealism and overcomes it. Accordingly, this book goes well beyond a treatise on epistemology; in fact, as understood in modern philosophy, this discipline and its questions are shown to be derivative and, in that sense, they are transcended here by Ortega's systematic effort. Written during the time of his maturity, these works are representative of his fruitful and radical period. Both ¿Qué es conocimiento? and "Ideas y creencias" are equally decisive not only for the understanding and radical completion of Ortega's work, but also for their relevance to the work of continental philosophers during the same period and for years to come (e.g., Husserl, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, and others).

Table of Contents:
Translator's Introduction Jorge Garcia-Gomez Spanish Editor's Note Paulino Garagorri I. Life as Performance (Performative Being) Problems December 19, 1929 The 1929-1930 Course First Day Second Day Third Day Sixth Day Seventh Day Eighth Day II. Concerning Radical Reality Second Lecture Third Lecture Fourth Lecture III. What Is Life? Third Lecture Fifth Lecture Sixth Lecture Seventh Lecture Eighth Lecture IV. Glimpses of the History of Philosophy Ninth Lecture Tenth Lecture Eleventh Lecture Appendix: Ideas and Beliefs 1: Believing and Thinking I. We Have Ideas, But We Find Ourselves Placed in Our Beliefs. To "Think About Things" and "To Count on Them." II. The Befuddlement of Our Times. We Believe in Reason, Not in Its Ideas. Science Almost Poetry. III. Doubt and Belief. A "Sea of Doubts." The Place of the Ideas. 2: Inner Worlds I. The Philosopher's Ridiculousness. A Car's Breakdown and the Breakdown of History. "Ideas and Beliefs," All Over Again. II. The Ingratitude of Human Beings and Naked Reality III. Science as Poetry. A Triangle and Hamlet. The Treasury of Errors. IV. The Articulation of the Inner Worlds. Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), Spanish essayist and philosopher, remains one of the most famous Spanish philosophers of the last century. Jorge Garcia-Gomez is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Long Island University and has translated several books, including Antonio Rodriguez Huescar's Jose Ortega y Gasset's Metaphysical Innovation: A Critique and Overcoming of Idealism, also published by SUNY Press, and Jose Ortega y Gasset's Psychological Investigations.

Review :
"...a highly original, very readable book that carries the reader's interest from lecture to lecture in unanticipated ways. The lucid journey imaginatively rethinks many common philosophical starting points, habits of thought, and standard articulations regarding such questions as what it is to philosophize, how most accurately to describe human life and its realities, how to set up and describe the process of knowing, and what it is that we can count on in human life." - Review of Metaphysics "As to the intellectual significance of this new book by Ortega,it is destined to be one of the most important parts of his legacy." -- from the Spanish editor's note by Paulino Garagorri