ABSTRACT
From some philosophical perspectives, history is a construction deeply rooted in the human cognitive system. In the philosophy of Jose Ortega y Gasset, for example, the activity of making stories is an act almost as natural and as necessary as breathing, in that it constitutes a basic function of what he calls “vital reason.” This is not a secondary function, still less a by-product of Reason with a capital ‘R,” that is, paradigmatic reason as conceived by the Rationalists, as a universal instrument, that conceives of objects independently of time and perspective. On the contrary, historical reason, inevitably subject to conditions of time and perspective, is the most primary reason of people, which they employ to do something inevitable: interpret their own lives as they unfold. Thus, to conceive of life in terms of stories is to perform a cognitive activity so fundamental that, without it, human life would be merely a series of events, not just a biography with meaning.
