Yo soy yo y mi circumstancia. Ortega y Gasset's most famous phrase says that there is no isolated self: we are always someone in a concrete situation.
The origin
The formula appears in Quixote's Meditations, from 1914, Ortega y Gasset's first book. There he uses Don Quixote as a key to thinking about modern man and Spain itself.
What do you mean
The self is not a closed substance that exists alone. It is always me plus my world: time, place, language, people, history. There is an echo of Heidegger's being-in-the-world: man is thrown into a context, and outside of it there is no subject.
The connection with Don Quixote
When the Dukes turn Don Quixote into a spectacle, the circumstance begins to shape the character. He stops being just a reader of soap operas and becomes an object of social reading. Circumstance literally remakes who he is.
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What does I am me and my circumstance mean?
That there is no self separate from your world. We are always a concrete person within a time, a place and a history, and this circumstance is part of who we are.
Who said I am me and my circumstances?
The Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, in Meditations of Quixote (1914).
Is the sentence deterministic?
No. Ortega adds a duty: to save my circumstance. Recognizing the context does not nullify freedom, it gives it a concrete starting point.
Continue: What is Ortega's perspectivism · Don Quixote, Part 2: summary and analysis · History of the Church of Christ, from Daniel Rops: the 10 volume guide
Source class (YouTube): Dom Quixote, Parte Dois (NousCast)