 In his works in the 1930s, Ortega posited “human life” as ultimate reality and, from this standpoint, connected the historicist philosophical point of view that of existential phenomenology. The existentialist perspective of Ortega closely resembles the Fundamentalontologie or existentiale Analytik in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. (Heidegger 1927 [1962: 21–83 ; Spiegelberg 1960: 62–74; Spiegelberg 1965: vol. 1, 408–413). Through the epistemological standpoint of “I am I and my circumstances”, the individual, in realizing the “vital possibilities” of the essence of his being, engages actively in the human world. The process of the realization of man’s “vital possibilities”—through the “circumstances” of his being—as a being-in-the-making and as a being-that-goes-on-being-in-the-world, Ortega characterized as a “drama” which “happens”. Ortega’s notions of “life as a happening”, the insecurity of human life in the face of death, the ontological distinction between human life and things and between “being” and “authentic being”, are strikingly similar to ideas which had been formulated by Heidegger in 1927. In What Is Philosophy? he aligned his philosophical position with that of Heidegger and the “new philosophy” of being, existence, and human life: