Ortega y Gasset V, Happiness and Freedom

Ortega has followed two trails. The success of his argument depends on his ability to make them coincide. We can define each trail by its endpoints. One trail leads from Nature to History; the other trail leads from the laborious chores and jobs to the pleasing. On Ortega’s telling Nature and the pleasing coincide with one another. [actually, I don't think this is quite right, but I've got to go back to re-read to get the right nuance.] Likewise, history and the laborious designate the same destination.

This is a surprising move. Philosophers working in the wake of Hegel see humans moving from forced labor toward freedom, and this is a steady move forward. In hunting Ortega sees humans moving from forced labor to happiness, and this move is a reversal back to Nature. He makes this move in the following paragraph:

“All this indicates that man, painfully submerged in his work or obligatory occupations, projects beyond them, imagines another kind of life consisting of very different occupations, in the execution of which he would not feel as if he were losing time, but, on the contrary, gaining it, filling it satisfactorily and as it should be filled. Opposite a life which annihilates itself and fails – a life of work – he erects the plan of a life successful in itself – a life of delight and happiness” (p. 37).

This last phrase, “a life of delight and happiness,” marks the precise place where we would have expected to read “a life of freedom and liberty.” But Ortega is convinced the hunter is looking back and not forward, that he is looking for happiness and not going deeper into history and toward freedom.