Abstract

Despite both thinkers belonging to the tragic generation of 1914, Ludwig Wittgenstein (1888-1951) and José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) never actually met in their lives or in their texts (neither those they wrote nor those they read). Coming from very separate philosophical traditions -- the logical atomism of Wittgenstein and the neo-Kantianism and phenomenology of Ortega -- the works of these two philosophers nevertheless show latent conceptual affinities. We shall limit ourselves to suggesting three possible conceptual keys: limit, context and belief. We shall then finally take Wittgenstein"s distinction between sagen and zeigen in the light of the difference Ortega highlights between talking and saying, reflecting upon the limits of language and the meaning each thinker gives to silence