Historicity and human in Jose Ortega y Gasset's philosophical anthropology

Jose Ortega y Gasset is known as one of the Spanish philosophers of the 20th century. The concept of "human" which he refers to as his philosophical monument, has an important place in his philosophy. Human is a historical being for him and in this respect he believes that man should be understood in relation to his past. As a historical being, the past of human influences his/her present thoughts and actions. Therefore, in order to understand human, it is necessary to understand his historical context. Ortega y Gasset's philosophy, in addition to understanding human as a historical being, also emphasizes that human's thoughts and actions can change over time. In this case, it is tried to understand the future thoughts of human beings by looking at their past thoughts. The past of human is determined by historical conditions. Therefore, there is an undeniable relationship between human nature and historical conditions. In other words, human nature changes according to the conditions of the society in which people live. To understand human means to consider his conditions in their historicity. For this reason, the main purpose of this study is to reveal the problem of the effect of historical conditions on human beings and the effort to understand humans in their historicity in terms of Ortega's philosophy.