Jose Ortega y Gasset. 
 
Norton: 1960. Second printing of the first edition. Hardcover in a jacket. Octavo. Price-clipped jacket has tears and is bent along the bottom and top. Boards have shelf wear along their bottom with dings on the corners. Droplets that have become stains are on the top-edge of the textblock. Former owner's name is written in ink on the endpaper, but the text is clean. 252 pages. Very good. 
 
The Cartesian cogito has led either to sterile idealism or to a mechanism denying all authority of thought. And yet thought, especially philosophy, thinking about thought, is necessary to us. Why? This is the problem, and the question, that Ortega y Gasset seeks to address. He suceeds spectacularly. 
 
"Since there is no way to escape the essential condition of living, and as living is reality, the best and most discreet course is to emphasize it, to underline it with irony. Let us accept that world of mist out of which to make a life that is more complete."