Title:  The Sense of the World  Author:  Andrés Ortiz-Osés Translated by David Sumares Series:   Contemporary European Cultural Studies soft cover 170 pp. $20.00 US ISBN 978-1-888570-34-2 January, 2008 The Sense of the World, by one of the most influential of Spanish philosophers, is the author's first book in English and effectively summarizes his entire body of work, which can be divided into four categories: hermeneutical treatises; symbolic and mythological studies, especially interpretations of Basque mythology; metaphysics of the sense of life; and aphorisms. In this work, Ortiz-Osés places the question of the meaning of the world in the context of a philosophy of the soul, a key concept of which is affective reason. He takes into account the meaning of existence and compares several world views with a special emphasis on a Latin/Hispanic-American worldview. Contents Foreword by Manuel Sumares Author’s Preface: The Sense of the World Overture: Interview General Introduction: A Philosophy of the Soul I. Symbolical Hermeneutics of Sense Affective Reason Myth and Belief: Animism and Magic Homo-Implicator: Reality and Symbolism Appendix: The Sense of Existence II. Cultural Mythologies Cultural Mythologies Hispanic Mythology The Hispanic Notion of Sense Appendix: The Latin Christ A Conclusion of Sorts: A Manifesto of Sense Excursus: On Heideggerian Being Coda: Love and Humor Aphoristic Appendix Bibliography From the Preface The sense of the world lies outside the world (Wittgenstein): but the human sense of the world lies within the world. … The Sense of the World offers the key to our symbolical hermeneutics of sense. In fact, it is about re-examining the radical question of the human sense of life that has suffered over time the effects of a double boycott: on the one hand, by the extremism of absolute truth/reason; and on the other, by the extremism of self-complacent non-sense and nihilism. However, it is precisely in this regard that the question of sense, always already under the threat of falling into some kind of fundamentalist absolutism, must avoid being projected in terms of an absolute truth, or even an absolute relativism. The point we shall endeavor to make is that sense is relational, mediating and mediated, inter-linguistic, intercultural, transversal and open. Because of all this the sense of the world is a world of sense.… Author Andrés Ortiz-Osés, philosopher, theologian and anthropologist, is a professor of hermeneutics at the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Spain. He earned a PhD in hermeneutics from the Institute of Philosophy in Innsbruck, where he studied under Gadamer and Coreth. He was a member of the Eranos group, inspired by C.G. Jung, and subsequently became the principal proponent of Jungian theories among Spanish and Latin American intellectuals. He is the author of more than thirty books and is the founder of symbolic hermeneutics, a philosophical trend that gave a symbolic twist to north European hermeneutics.