ABSTRACT
A clear and succinct account of the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset's philosophy of the meaning of human existence is that man must learn to live within himself; to ensimismarse. Ortega's ideas on the meaning of life are rooted in the interplay of ensimismamiento and alteracion. Ortega's 1939 essay "The Self and the Other" is a fine exposition of what the Spanish thinker views as the tension between man's inner life and the demands made by the world he inhabits. Ortega argues that difficulty and limitation teach man that human life is insecure. He explains: Life is our reaction to the basic insecurity which constitutes its substance. Ortega's critique of intellectualism views it as responsible for eroding the conditions that make the prospect of a meaningful life difficult to attain in modernity. Intellectualism is the result of alteracion. Thinking for thinking's sake, Ortega suggests, is an aberration.
