Ortega y Gasset, la sociologia, le parole

By considering the wide José Ortega y Gasset’s contribution to a sociological perspective, this paper is aimed at showing the relevance for social theorists of his insights in the field of language, in particular in his conceptualization of the act of saying and of the act of listening to, in their multiple expressions such as reading, translating, creating and reading literary texts, etc. In particular, I will highlight how language is not only a crucial field in which the relation between the individual and society is constituted but, more relevant, that it represents the context in which an original theory of the production of new meanings and insights is latently proposed by Ortega, based on the concept of utopia and on the character of “privilege and honor” connected with it. In order to show this, in conclusion I will take into consideration his work of debut, Meditaciones del Quijote [1914], which can be considered as a general proof of a method consisting in a dialog with a literary masterpiece aimed at producing new insights and keys in order to interpret reality.