Towards the definition of a new liberalism. The late thought of Ortega y Gasset

Abstract

This essay shows the theoretical Ortega’s inability to understand Tocqueville’s thinking. This inability was established by a number of positions/ideas and prejudices about the destiny of the American way of life, by a wrong active euro-centrism and a badly understood liberalism. The main consequence was undoubtedly the impossibility of assuming the main Tocqueville’s thesis: the democracy as a destiny. The sudden interruption of the reading of the French author, back to the Spanish exile became a symptom of the bankrupt of a philosophical thinking.