We do not know what is happening to us, and
this is precisely what is happening
to us,
not to know what is happening to us:
the
man of today is beginning to be disoriented
with respect to himself, dépaysé, he
is outside
of his country, thrown into a new circumstance
that is like a terra incognita. (1926)
The Spanish essayist and philosopher,
José
Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), was born
in
Madrid of a patrician family. He was
educated
at a Jesuit college and the University
of
Madrid, where he received his doctorate
in
philosophy in 1904. Ortega spent the
next
five years at German universities in
Berlin
and Leipzig and at the University of
Marburg.
Appointed professor of physics at the
University
of Madrid in 1910, he taughhere until
the
outbreak of the Spanish Civil war in
1936.
He was also active as a journalist
and as
a politician. In 1923 he founded the
Revista
de occidente, a review of books that
was
instrumental in bringing Spain in touch
with
Western, and specifically German thought.
Ortega's work as editor and publisher
helped
end Spain's isolation from contemporary
western
culture.
Ortega led the republican intellectual
opposition
under the dictatorship of Primo de
Rivera
(1923-1936), and he played a role in
the
overthrow of King Alfonso XIII in 1931.
Elected
deputy for the province of León in
the constituent
assembly of the second Spanish republic,
he was the leader of a parliamentary
group
of intellectuals know as La Agrupación
al
servicio de la república ("In
the service
of the republic") and was named
civil
governor of Madrid. Such a commitment
obliged
him to leave Spain at the outbreak
of the
Civil War, and he spent years of exile
in
Argentina and Europe. He settled in
Portugal
in 1945 and began to make visits to
Spain.
In 1948 he returned to Madrid and founded
the Institute of Humanities, at which
he
lectured.
A prolific writer, Ortega was the head
of
the most productive school of thinkers
Spain
had known for more than three centuries
and
helped place philosophy beyond the
reach
of a centuries-old reproach that it
was somehow
un-Spanish, and therefore dangerous.
What follows are excerpts from his
influential
work on social theory, The Revolt of
the
Masses, first published in 1930.
There is one fact which, whether for
good
or ill, is of utmost importance in
the public
life of Europe at its present moment.
The
fact is the accession of the masses
to complete
social power. As the masses, by definition,
neither should nor can direct their
own personal
existence, and still less rule society
in
general, this fact means that actually
Europe
is suffering from the greatest general
crisis
that can afflict peoples, nations and
civilization.
Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological
fact, can be defined without waiting
for
individuals to appear in mass formation.
In the presence of one individual we
can
decide whether he is "mass"
or
not. The mass is all that which sets
no value
on itself -- good or ill -- based on
specific
grounds, but which feels itself "just
like everybody," and nevertheless
is
not concerned about it; is, in fact,
quite
happy to feel itself as one with everybody
else.
The mass believes that it has the right
to
impose and to give force of law to
motions
born in the café. I doubt whether there
have
been other periods of history in which
the
multitude has come to govern more directly
than in our own.
The characteristic of the hour is that
the
commonplace mind, knowing itself to
be commonplace,
has the assurance to proclaim the rights
of the commonplace and to impose them
wherever
it will. As they say in the United
States:
"to be different is to be indecent."
The mass crushes beneath it everything
that
is different, everything that is excellent,
individual, qualified and select. Anybody
who is not like everybody, who does
not think
like everybody, runs the risk of being
eliminated.
It is illusory to imagine that the
mass-man
of to-day will be able to control,
by himself,
the process of civilization. I say
process,
and not progress. The simple process
of preserving
our present civilization is supremely
complex,
and demands incalculably subtle powers.
Ill-fitted
to direct it is this average man who
has
learned to use much of the machinery
of civilization,
but who is characterized by root-ignorance
of the very principles of that civilization.
The command over the public life exercised
today by the intellectually vulgar
is perhaps
the factor of the present situation
which
is most novel, least assimilable to
anything
in the past. At least in European history
up to the present, the vulgar had never
believed
itself to have "ideas" on
things.
It had beliefs, traditions, experiences,
proverbs, mental habits, but it never
imagine
itself in possession of theoretical
opinions
on what things are or ought to be.
To-day,
on the other hand, the average man
has the
most mathematical "ideas"
on all
that happens or ought to happen in
the universe.
Hence he has lost the use of his hearing.
Why should he listen if he has within
him
all that is necessary? There is no
reason
now for listening, but rather for judging,
pronouncing, deciding. There is no
question
concerning public life, in which he
does
not intervene, blind and deaf as he
is, imposing
his "opinions."
But, is this not an advantage? Is it
not
a sign of immense progress that the
masses
should have "ideas," that
is to
say, should be cultured? By no means.
The
"ideas" of the average man
are
not genuine ideas, nor is their possession
culture. Whoever wishes to have ideas
must
first prepare himself to desire truth
and
to accept the rules of the game imposed
by
it. It is no use speaking of ideas
when there
is no acceptance of a higher authority
to
regulate them, a series of standards
to which
it is possible to appeal in a discussion.
These standards are the principles
on which
culture rests. I am not concerned with
the
form they take. What I affirm is that
there
is no culture where there are no standards
to which our fellow-man can have recourse.
There is no culture where there are
no principles
of legality to which to appeal. There
is
no culture where there is no acceptance
of
certain final intellectual positions
to which
a dispute may be referred. There is
no culture
where economic relations are not subject
to a regulating principle to protect
interests
involved. There is no culture where
aesthetic
controversy does not recognize the
necessity
of justifying the work of art.
When all these things are lacking there
is
no culture; there is in the strictest
sense
of the word, barbarism. And let us
not deceive
ourselves, this is what is beginning
to appear
in Europe under the progressive rebellion
of the masses. The traveler knows that
in
the territory there are no ruling principles
to which it is possible to appeal.
Properly
speaking, there are no barbarian standards.
Barbarism is the absence of standards
to
which appeal can be made.
Under Fascism there appears for the
first
time in Europe a type of man who does
not
want to give reasons or to be right,
but
simply shows himself resolved to impose
his
opinions. This is the new thing: the
right
not to be reasonable, the "reason
of
unreason." Here I see the most
palpable
manifestation of the new mentality
of the
masses, due to their having decided
to rule
society without the capacity for doing
so.
In their political conduct the structure
of the new mentality is revealed in
the rawest,
most convincing manner. The average
man finds
himself with "ideas" in his
head,
but he lacks the faculty of ideation.
He
has no conception even of the rare
atmosphere
in which ideals live. He wishes to
have opinions,
but is unwilling to accept the conditions
and presuppositions that underlie all
opinion.
Hence his ideas are in effect nothing
more
than appetites in words.
To have an idea means believing one
is in
possession of the reasons for having
it,
and consequently means believing that
there
is such a thing as reason, a world
of intelligible
truths. To have ideas, to form opinions,
is identical with appealing to such
an authority,
submitting oneself to it, accepting
its code
and its decisions, and therefore believing
that the highest form of intercommunication
is the dialogue in which the reasons
for
our ideas are discussed. But the mass-man
would feel himself lost if he accepted
discussion,
and instinctively repudiates the obligation
of accepting that supreme authority
lying
outside himself. Hence the "new
thing"
in Europe is "to have done with
discussions,"
and detestation is expressed for all
forms
of intercommunication, which imply
acceptance
of objective standards, ranging from
conversation
to Parliament, and taking in science.
This
means that there is a renunciation
of the
common life of barbarism. All the normal
processes are suppressed in order to
arrive
directly at the imposition of what
is desired.
The hermeticism of the soul which,
as we
have seen before, urges the mass to
intervene
in the whole of public life.
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