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 Look for two attitudes November 15, 2008
Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Having been outvoted on any major issue that I would like to address, I feel that I have been the victim of mass man as a political phenomenon as much as anyone has. The book ends with a real question, but to keep the book short, no effort is made to solve the problem which remains to plague thinkers after all these years. Ending up with this wisdom is about like finding something by Nietzsche about an animal crawling off by itself to be alone when it dies.
 Ortega's Revolt of the Masses February 5, 2008
Peter Schotch
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is an important book, perhaps the most important, of an author who has been unjustly ignored. Ortega is the forgotten existentialist and one of the best of the bunch. Anybody with even a passing interest in the continental tradition in philosophy should read Ortega.
 The Coming of the Masses December 29, 2006
P.K. Ryan (Albany, NY USA)
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
In this brief but sophisticated work, Jose Ortega y Gasset argues against the onslaught of the "mass-man" in social and political life. Who is this mass-man? The mass-man, Ortega argues, is a primitive man who makes use of all the products of modern civilization, but does not appreciate nor respect the superior intelligence and effort by the individuals who are responsible for their development. He takes it for granted that civilization is "just there" and has no appreciation for the intricate processes that are required in order to maintain it. The mass-man is content in his own mediocrity, and feels it unnecessary to strive toward excellence. This mass-man who once submitted to his superiors, now feels compelled to involve himself in everything and impose his will on everyone. This is often done through violence and is done without regard for rationality or reason. The mass-man is like a spoiled child who has taken over the household.
It seems that there have been a couple of different interpretations of this book by reviewers. Some have pointed to Ortega's elitism and contempt for mass-man as a sign of him being anti-democratic. And this certainly seems like a logical conclusion except for the fact that Ortega himself asserts that a liberal democracy is the ideal form of government! I was somewhat puzzled by this seemingly contradictory pronouncement myself. It seems to me that democracy inevitably leads to rule by the mass-man. After all, democracy literally means "rule by the people." Nevertheless, on page 76, Ortega writes:
"The political doctrine which has represented the loftiest endeavour towards common life is liberal democracy. It carries to the extreme the determination to have consideration for one's neighbor and is the prototype of 'indirect action.' Liberalism is that principle of political rights, according to which the public authority, in spite of being all-powerful, limits itself and attempts, even at its own expense, to leave room in the State over which it rules for those to live who neither think nor feel as it does, that is to say as do the stronger, the majority. Liberalism-it is well to recall today-is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded on the planet."
Contrary to some other reviewers, I also found Ortega's philosophy to be very progressive. One of his main criticisms of mass-man is of his primitive and archaic way of thinking. He points out that movements like fascism and communism tend to look to some bygone glorious past as a model for government. He calls them a "monotonous repetition of the eternal revolution." Ortega instead urges us to look to the future, to persist in bettering ourselves, and maintain liberalism until it can be superseded by something better.
I found this book to be somewhat paradoxical. Although it seemed that some of the author's ideas contradicted each other, I still found it to be a very worthwhile and intriguing read. Although written in the 1930's, there is much in it that remains relevant today and I would not hesitate in recommending it. It is definitely intellectual candy for the political/philosophical mind.
 the mass-man October 23, 2006
Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium)
2 out of 14 found this review helpful
For Ortega y Gasset, `the reality of history lies in biological power'. A demographic explosion is a sign of vitality, but it has an evil side-effect: it generates a hyperdemocracy, where the masses act directly, outside the law, by means of material pressure.
Ortega y Gasset is fundamentally an anti-democrat in the Plato or Lenin style: the masses are too stupid to see or to fight for their real interests. They create a `brutal empire'.
His vision of mankind is too pessimistic. For him, the mass-man claims the right to be unreasonable. He acts as a spoilt child for whom everything is permitted and who has no obligations. His mass-man is not interested in the principles of civilization (law, politics, art, morals or religion) and turns his back on technique. He wrecks the European civilization and paves the way for a return to barbarism.
The mass-man realizes his aspirations through the State. But he doesn't understand that the State crushes the independence of the individual and that ultimately he will only live for the governmental machine (the bureaucracy and the military).
Science, art and technique need the tonic atmosphere created by the consciousness of authority. But, the mass-man doesn't accept a ruler who can propose a vision, a project, a goal. For him, `L'Etat, c'est moi.'
Following Ortega y Gasset's analysis, the future of Europe at that moment was far from rosy.
However, not the mass-men dug Europe's grave, but its nationalist wars.
The author is very conscious of this disastrous problem, for he defends one cardinal point: the need for the United States of Europe and a common market: `the building-up of Europe into a great national State is the one enterprise'.
This book is the reflection of a demoralized liberal democrat. It will mostly appeal to historians.
Shipwrecked July 23, 2006
Daniel Myers (Greenville, SC USA)
12 out of 15 found this review helpful
What a muddle (most) reviewers have made of this book. I am reminded of De Tocqueville, whom all factions regard as "prescient" and appropriate him to their own positions. Let's get some facts straight, Gasset is a reactionary and an elitist, just as De Tocqueville was an aristocrat attempting to make sense of an alien American democracy. The difference is that De Tocqueville was only a reactionary in sentiment. He felt that democracy was inevitable. Not so Gasset, who believes that we MUST in some way turn back the clock. The ways he proposes that this might be done are, as another reviewer has noted, somewhat at odds with each other. So, perhaps, it's no great wonder that the reviews are muddled.
Gasset is an intellectual descendant of Nietzsche, believing in the noble man above the masses. And, truly, this book at its heart, is more about the aristocratic man, than the aristocratic society, which is merely a means to this end. And, Gasset asserts, a true "society" is aristocratic by definition. Otherwise, it's not a society. But, to return to Gasset's aristocratic or noble man, who is a spin-off of Nietzsche's notion of the artist hero. If we keep our eyes on this notion, the book is a harrowing and effective plea for his existence.
Unfortunately, Nietzsche came to America in the form of the distinctly middlebrow Ayn Rand, whose terrible writing and weighted, tendentious novels found a home in middlebrow America and started a harebrained literary tradition that continues this day. One of the longer-winded reviewers mentioned some of the most recently published books of this sort. Neither her character Howard Roark nor her vision of society: "A coal mine is more beautiful than Niagara Falls." - What twaddle - are at all what Nietzsche or Gasset has in mind. Oh well, one can't expect much from an author who can't spell her own name.
Look, here is the type of soul Gasset adores and admires and is terribly worried is becoming extinct:
"The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from those fantastic "ideas" and looks life in the face, realizes that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. As this is the simple truth - that to live is to feel oneself lost - he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look round for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked." P.157
I have quoted at length because I believe this passage is at the root of what Gasset is all about here: The soul with a sense of the tragic inherent in life seeking from this existential shipwreck to wring his own foundered chaos of notions he calls himself is the essence of the noble, aristocratic artist-hero, to whom this book should have been dedicated. And, finally, perhaps Gasset was (sadly) right. The revolt of the masses and the engendering of their proclivities in what we would call a society leave no room for the preeminence of such a spirit.
Finally, if one wishes to read these ideas in the original, close thy Gasset and open Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra.
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