Abstract

Dynamic Structure of Reality makes available in English some of the most mature thought of the modern Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri. He first presented this material as a set of 1968 public lectures in Madrid. They were collected, edited, and published in 1989 as Estructura dinámica de la realidad. In 1962 Zubiri had published Sobre la esencia, a work of metaphysics that was praised by critics with one qualification: its treatment of reality was too static. The 1968 course was devised as a response to those critics. Dynamic Structure of Reality retraces the road Hegel traveled concerning the creation of a self and how that self is realized by an interplay between spirit and nature. Like his great predecessor José Ortega y Gasset, and like his great Jewish contemporary Emmanuel Levinas, Zubiri takes religion in all seriousness and locates its questions within the questions of modern philosophy. In harmony with science, he advances a new idea of becoming. Reality, not being, becomes. As reality’s traits are revealed, in different degrees, reality resembles God, the universal self-giver. Zubiri systematically touches on many disciplines to show the varieties of self-giving--throughout the universe--of structural dynamism.