Lepra, idealismo y socialismo: los primeros ensayos de Ortega

Abstract

Ortega chose the best of his early production in the volume Personas, obras, cosas  (1916). Undoubtfully was it an opportune selection, but the knowledge of Ortega’s thought in the time of maturation makes necessary to take also into account every piece of politics and philosophy Ortega excluded from his book. The whole picture changes significantly. In this paper, thus, I will focus exclusively on that part of Ortega's earliest writings which was in fact known to the readers of his time, And, given that, I will concentrate purely on the conceptual content, and not on the biographical anecdotes, however helpful these may occasionally be for the understanding of Ortega's works. What I would like to carefully examine is, in particular, the kind of knowledge Ortega applied, having in thought the Spanish society, to the almost exclusive problem which kept him busy on the course of his journalistic work for various newspapers: that is, the regeneration of Spain –or, one would almost want to say, its resurrection–.