Abstract
This chapter shows that despite cultural and linguistic differences John Dewey and José Ortega y Gasset have similar starting points in their philosophies. The chapter hopes to show that in spite of the difference in the vocabulary which each invokes to point to the starting point of his philosophical investigations, and in spite of the disparity in the detritus of their different philosophical backgrounds with which each is encumbered, their starting points are much the same. The importance of this is that at the root of a philosophical vision is something which, once we recognize it, we find it is surprisingly simple, and second that the root idea must be “viewed from” to understand that vision, in order to be unearthed and unambiguously communicated to a philosophical audience.