Narrative and Metaphor as Cognitive Instruments: Ortega y Gasset’s Work and the Linguistic Turn in Historical Theory

The notion of the linguistic turn and its implications became particularly prominent within Anglophone academic contexts, where it emerged as a central theme in discussions of historical theory. This article examines other intellectual traditions that, in different ways, also rearticulated the role of language and narrative in the constitution of historical knowledge, with particular attention to José Ortega y Gasset, whose contributions have frequently been neglected in these debates. Whereas Danto, Mink, and White, from an epistemological standpoint, treated narrative and metaphor as cognitive instruments, Ortega advanced an ontological framework that safeguards a place for historical reality. The aim here is not to present him as a precursor to the Anglophone formulations of the linguistic turn, but rather to demonstrate how, in parallel with these developments, he articulated modes of inquiry capable of preserving the domain of historical reality. Ortega consistently maintained attention to the ontological particularities of the human past. To elucidate these particularities, this article introduces two conceptual categories: entities that function analogously to dramas and dramatic substances.

Keywords:
Linguistic turn; José Ortega y Gasset; dramatic substances