The following passage is, again, from Ortega's primary sociological work, Man and People. It begins to explain what he means by the concept of My Circumstance. I have highlighted the terms or expressions that he uses as synonyms for the word "circumstance," such as "environment," "world," and "ambit," even though elsewhere in his work they are disambiguated. (I have also included in an Appendix the various expressions that Ortega uses in his works as synonymous, equivalent, or related to the word "circumstance.")

In a previous thread we discussed Ortega's Conception of "My Life" as "Consisting" of the "Interrelations" between "My Self" and "My Circumstance." Before we go into what Ortega means by "My Self," I will discuss what he means by "My Circumstance."

In the following passage we will see that "My Circumstance" Consists of "Concerns," "Importances," or "Pragmata." You will notice that I have highlighted not only words that are referred to in the title, i.e., "circumstance," "concerns," "importances," and "pragma(ta)," but also some other terms that are related to them, some of which we will discuss in future postings, such as "environment," "world," "matters," "facilities" and "difficulties," "means," "instrument(s)," "impediment(s)," "practices," and "makes."

　
[CENTER]"My Circumstance" Consists of "Concerns," "Importances," or "Pragmata" [/CENTER]

"Man, then, finding himself alive, finds himself having to come to terms with what we have called environment, circumstance, or world. Whether these three words will gradually take on separate meanings for us is something that does not concern us now. [longknowledge: I will deal with this in a later posting.] At this moment, they mean the same thing to us, namely the foreign, alien element "outside of himself," in which man has to work at being. That world is a great thing, an immense thing, with shadowy frontiers and full to bursting with smaller things, with what we call "things" and commonly distinguish in a broad and rough classification, saying that in the world there are minerals, plants, animals, and men. What these things are is the concern of the various sciences-for example, biology treats of plants and animals. But biology, like any other science, is a particular activity with which certain men concern themselves in their lives, that is, after they are already living. Biology and any other science, then, supposes that before its operations begin all these things are already within our view, exist for us. And this fact that things are for us, originally and primarily in our human life, before we are physicists, mineralogists, biologists, and so on, represents what these things are in their radical reality. What the sciences afterwards tell us about them may be as plausible, as convincing, as true as you please, but it remains clear that they have drawn all of it, by complicated intellectual methods, from what in the beginning, primordially and with no further ado, things were to us in our living.

The Earth may be a planet in a certain solar system belonging to a certain galaxy or nebula, and may be made of atoms, each one of which in its turn contains a multiplicity of things, or quasi-things or guess-what things called electrons, protons, mesons, neutrons, and so on. But none of this knowledge would exist if the earth did not exist before it as a component of our life, as something with which we have to come to terms and hence something that is of importance to us, matters to us-that matters to us because it confronts us with certain difficulties and provides us with certain facilities. This means that on this pre-existent and radical plane from which the sciences set out and which they assume, the Earth is none of these things that physics and astronomy tell us it is, but is what firmly holds me up; is terra firma, in contradiction to the sea, in which I sink (the word terra, according to Boreal, comes from tersa, "dry"); it is what I sometimes have laboriously to climb, because it inclines upward, sometimes easily descend, because it inclines downward; it is what parts and separates me from the woman I love or forces me to live close to someone whom I loathe; it is what makes some things far from me and others near me, some here and others there and others yonder, and so on and so on. These and many similar attributes are the genuine reality of the earth, just as it appears to me in the radical ambit of my life. Please observe that all these attributes-supporting me, making me go up or down hill, making me tire myself in crossing it to where what I need happens to be, separating me from those I love, and so on-all refer to me; so that the Earth in its primordial appearance consists entirely in utilitarian referencesin respect to me.

You will find the same if you take any other example-tree, animal, ocean, river. If we leave out of consideration what they are in reference to us, I mean, their being for some use of ours-as means, instruments or vice versa, as impediment and difficulties for our ends-they are left being nothing. Or, to put it differently: everything that composes, fills, and makes up the world in which man finds himself at birth possesses no independent condition of itself, possesses no being of its own, is nothing in itself-but is simply something for or something against our ends. We ought not to have called them "things," then, in view of the meaning that the word bears for us today. A "thing" means something that has its own being, independently of me, independently of what it is for man. If this is the case with everything in the circumstance or world, it means that the world in its radical reality is a body of somethings with which I, man, can or just do this or that-that it is a body of means and impediments, facilities and difficulties which, in order to live in any real sense, I encounter.

Things are not originally "things," but something that I try to use or avoid in order to live and to live as well as possible; are, therefore, that with which I occupy myself and by which I am occupied, with which I act and operate, with which I succeed or fail to do what I want to do; in short, they are concerns to which I am constantly attending. And since "to do" and " to occupy oneself," "to have concerns" is expressed in Greek by "practice," praxis-things are radically pragmata and my relation to them is pragmatic. Unfortunately, at least so far as I am aware, our language does not have a word that adequately expresses what the word pragma does. We can only say that a thing, as pragma, is not something that exists by itself and has nothing to do with me. In the world or circumstance of each one of us there is nothing that has nothing to do with us and in turn we have to do with whatever forms part of this same circumstance or world. This is composed exclusively of references to me, and I am remanded to whatever it contains, I depend on it, for better or for worse; everything is favorable or adverse to me, caress or friction, flattery or injury, service or harm. A thing as pragma, then, is something that I manipulate for a particular end, that I deal with or avoid, that I must count upon or discount; it is an instrument or an impediment for: a task, a chattel, a gadget, a deficiency, a failure, an obstacle; in short, it is a concern to be attended to, something that to a greater or less degree is of import for me, that I lack, that I have too much of, hence an importance. I hope, now that I have accumulated all these various expressions, that the difference will begin to be clear if you contrast in your minds the idea of a world of things and the idea of a world of concerns or importances. In a world of things we play no part: it and everything in it is of itself. But in a world of concerns or importances, everything consists solely in its reference to us, everything plays a part in us, that is, everything is of import to us and is only to the extent to which and in the way in which it concerns, is of import to, and affects us.

Such is the radical truth concerning what the world is-because it expresses the world's "consistency" or that in which it originally consists as element in which we have to live our life. Everything else that the sciences tell us about his world -is and was at best a secondary, derivative, hypothetical, and questionable truth-for the simple reason, I repeat, that we begin to practice science after we are already living in the world and hence when for us the world is already this that it is. Science is only one of the countless activities, actions operations that man practices [or makes] in his life.

Man practices science as he practices patience, as he attends to his affairs, as he practices poetry, politics, business, makes journeys, makes love, makes believe, marks [makes]. . . time, and above all man conjures [makes] upillusions.
All these locutions represent the most ordinary, familiar, colloquial kind of speech. Yet now we see that they are technical terms in a theory of human life. To the shame of philosophers it must be said that they have never seen the radical phenomenon that is our life. They have always turned their backs on it, and it has been the poets and novelists, but above all the "ordinary man," who has been aware of it with its modes and situations. Hence this series of terms represents a series of titles announcing great philosophical themes on which much would need to be said."

[From: Man and Peoplelongknowledge: I have made some slight changes in paragraphing and punctuation, and some additions in [brackets], to make this passage more comprehensible.]
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[CENTER]APPENDIX
Spanish Terms Used by Ortega for "Circumstance"
(with my translations into English)[/CENTER]

The following terms were culled from various passages in which Ortega discusses what he generally refers to as "circunstancia," or "circumstance."

alrededor - surrounding (literally "all around")
ambiente - ambience
- ambit
- that in which one is
- the here and now
- nearness
circunstancia(s) - circumstance(s)
contorno - neighborhood, surroundings, or environs
cosmos - Greek "world"
derredor - surrounding(s)
el absoluto afuera - the absolute outside
environs - French "environment"
habitat - English "habitat"
lo circunstancial - the circumstantial
lo circundante - what surrounds
lo otro que no es uno mismo - the other that is not oneself
lo otro que yo - the other than I
lo que acaece - that which befalls
- that which is happening/that which happens
lo que me envuelve por todos lados - that which envelops me on all sides
lo que nos rodea - that which surrounds us
lo que se halla cerca - that which is found nearby
lo que se halla fuera de nosotros - that which is found outside of us
medio - medium
medio ambiente - ambient medium (Spanish translation of "environment")
milieu - French "medium"
mundo - world
orbe - orbe
otras cosas que yo - other things than I
- everything around me
universo - universe

In my next posting, entitled "More on 'My Circumstance' Consists of 'Concerns' or 'Importances'," I will discuss this terminological and semantic variability and the implications these terms have not only for understanding Ortega's thought but also for expanding our notions of what constitutes the "human circumstance."