Ortega y Gasset, "Revolt of the Masses": summary, concept, relevance and history of creation

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Summary of "The Revolt of the Masses" by Ortega y Gasset will interest everyone who is fond of modern philosophy. This is a famous socio-philosophical treatise written by a Spanish thinker in 1930. He dedicated it to the cultural crisis in Europe, linking it to the changing role of the masses in the surrounding society. In this article, we will focus on the main points of this work, talk about its creation and relevance in our time.

History of Creation

Summary of "The Revolt of the Masses" by Ortega y Gasset gives a fairly complete and comprehensive picture of this work. The book was first published in Spain in 1930. In fact, the author compiled it from several of his own newspaper articles, which were combined by a commontheme. Because of this, in the treatise one can find diversity and inevitable repetitions. At the same time, individual elements of the "Rise of the Masses" have surprising persuasiveness.

In Russia, this work was first translated only in 1989. It was published on the pages of the journal "Questions of Philosophy".

Concept

The key concept of this treatise, which the philosopher uses, is mass. In the work, the author gives several definitions.

Mass - anyone and everyone who neither in good nor in evil does not measure himself with a special measure, but feels the same as everyone else, and not only is not depressed, but is satisfied with his own indistinguishability.

Mass - those who go with the flow and lack guidance. Therefore, a mass person does not create, even if his capabilities and strength are enormous.

In the view of Ortega y Gasset, the mass person is like a spoiled child who, from birth, is ingratitude towards everything that can somehow make his life easier.

At the same time, he opposes the so-called chosen minority to the mass. In his opinion, the chosen ones are those who live a busy life, constantly demanding from themselves as much as possible.

Noting the changing role of the masses in society, he notes that in his time they had achieved a standard of living that was previously considered achievable only for a few.

Summary

Ortega y Gasset begins his treatise "The Revolt of the Masses" with the argument thatthe whole of history appears to him as a vast laboratory in which all kinds of experiments are carried out. The goal is to find a recipe for social life that would be best for human development.

Summary of "The Revolt of the Masses" by Ortega y Gasset helps us to know what this work is about. The author acknowledges that over the past century, human resources have tripled due to two main factors - technological progress and liberal democracy. As a result, it is in liberal democracy that he sees the highest form of social life. Recognizing that there are shortcomings in it, he notes that in the future, improved forms will still be created on its basis. The main thing is not to return to the forms that existed before, as this will be detrimental to society.

Fascism and Bolshevism

Summary of "The Revolt of the Masses" by Ortega y Gasset will help you quickly refresh your memory of the main points of this work if there is an exam or test ahead. Dwelling on the main points of this work, it should be noted that the Spanish thinker is closely considering two new political trends for the world and Europe, which had just appeared at that time. This is fascism and Bolshevism.

Studying the content of "The Revolt of the Masses" by Ortega y Gasset, one must remember that the treatise was written in 1930, when there were still almost ten years before the start of World War II, and Bolshevism, which overthrew the autocracy in Russia, had not yet went into totalitarian repression. From this pointeven more interesting is how these political trends were treated by philosophers at the very beginning of their journey.

Thanks to the summary of the "Revolt of the Masses" we will refresh in memory the main ideas that the Spanish philosopher expressed on this subject. So, already at that time he argued that both Bolshevism and fascism were a backward movement. And not according to the meaning of these teachings themselves, but according to how ahistorically and antediluvian leaders used the share of truth contained in them.

For example, he considered it incomprehensible that a communist in 1917 starts a revolution that only repeats all past riots, does not correct a single flaw or mistake. He considers the revolution that has taken place historically inexpressive, since it did not mark the beginning of a new life. On the contrary, it has become only a rehash of the commonplaces of any revolution that has ever taken place in the world.

Jose Ortega y Gasset, in The Revolt of the Masses, notes that anyone who wants to create a new political and social society must first get rid of the stereotypes of historical experience.

In a similar vein, he criticized fascism, which he also considered an anachronism.

Triumph of the mass man

Telling a summary of the chapters of "The Revolt of the Masses", one should pay special attention to the triumph of the man of the masses, about which the thinker writes. He imagines the model of society as the unity of the masses and the minority.

At the same time, under the minority, José Ortega y Gasset in "The Revolt of the Masses" means a group of people orindividuals with special social dignity, and under the mass - gray mediocrity. He argues that it does not even take a large gathering of people to experience the mass as a psychological reality. The mass man is easy to recognize, because he does not feel in himself any gift or difference from others, but feels exactly the same as the rest. He explained the changed behavior of these masses by the fact that they began to believe that they had the right to turn their conversations in pubs into state laws. For him, this is the first era when the masses have felt such power and influence. The philosopher saw a feature of modern times in the fact that ordinary people begin to impose their mediocrity on everyone.

Feature of modern society

Giving a summary of Gasset's "Rise of the Masses", it is worth noting that he does not at all think that the masses are stupid. On the contrary, much smarter than they have ever been. But a specific representative of a given social group is not able to benefit from this. He once and for all learned a set of certain places, fragments of thoughts, prejudices, empty promises, which were piled up in his memory in a completely random way.

The philosopher sees the specificity of the contemporary time itself in the fact that mediocrity and dullness begin to consider themselves outstanding, while they proclaim their right to vulgarity. As a result, the average person has quite definite ideas about everything that happens in this world, as well as an opinion about how everything should develop in the future. As a result, he stops listening to others, soas he thinks he already knows everything.

In "Rise of the Masses" the author writes that to live in his mind means to be eternally condemned to freedom, to constantly decide what exactly you will become in this world in the near future. Surrendering to the will of chance, a person, nevertheless, makes a decision - not to decide anything himself. However, Ortega y Gasset does not agree that everything in life is done by chance. In his opinion, in fact, circumstances decide everything, and every life turns into a struggle for the right to become oneself. If a person at the same time stumbles upon any obstacles, they awaken his active abilities. For example, if the human body weighed nothing, none of us could walk, and if the atmospheric column did not press on us, we would feel our body as something spongy, empty and ghostly.

Civilization

In Ortega y Gasset's "Revolt of the Masses" close attention is paid to the features of the modern civilization of the author. He does not believe that it is a given and keeps itself. In his opinion, civilization is artificial; for its existence, a master and an artist are needed. A person can easily find himself without civilization at all if he is satisfied with its benefits, but he does not want to take care of it. Everything can disappear due to the slightest oversight.

As an example, he gives a problem that needs to be solved in the near future for a Westerner. Australian authorities are struggling with a similar problem: they need to prevent wild cacti from throwing people into the sea. Decades ago, an expat yearning forhis native home in Spain, brought a small sprout to Australia. As a result, this turned out to be a serious problem for the Australian budget, as a harmless nostalgic souvenir filled the entire continent, advancing on new lands at a speed of about one kilometer per year. The belief that civilization is like the elements puts man on a par with the savage, writes José Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the Masses. The foundations, without which the civilized world can simply collapse, simply do not exist for such a mass person.

However, in reality, the situation is even more dangerous than one might imagine. Briefly retelling "The Revolt of the Masses", it is necessary to dwell on the moment in which the philosopher argues that the years are rapidly passing away, a person can get used to the reduced tone of life that has been established at the moment. First of all, he will forget how to manage himself. As in most such situations, individuals try to remedy the situation by trying to artificially revive the principles that could lead to a crisis. It is this explanation of the nationalism that has become popular that Ortega y Gasset finds in The Revolt of the Masses. But this is a dead end, since nationalism is inherently opposed to the forces that can form a true state. This is only a mania, a kind of pretext that allows you to evade duty, a creative impulse, a really great cause. Those primitive methods that he manipulates, as well as the people he is able to inspire, clearly demonstrate that he directlyis the opposite of true historical creation.

Modern state

In the contents of "The Revolt of the Masses" one can find a detailed description of what the modern state appears before us. Ortega y Gasset writes that this is the most obvious product that civilization has to offer us today. In this regard, it is interesting to track how a mass person relates to the state.

He is amazed at it, knowing that it protects his life, but at the same time he does not realize that it was created by extraordinary people, based on universal human values. At the same time, he sees a faceless force in the state. When certain difficulties, conflicts or problems arise in the public life of a country, a mass person begins to demand that the state intervenes immediately and decides everything through "direct action", using unlimited resources for this.

In this, according to the philosopher, lies the main danger to civilization. This is the subordination of the entire life of society exclusively to the state, the absorption by the apparatus of social initiative, the expansion of power. Here we are talking about the creative principles on which all human destinies are supported and fed. When certain difficulties arise among the masses, it is no longer able to succumb to the temptation to start the monstrous mechanism without risk and doubt by pressing only one button. At the same time, the state is identical to the mass exactly as much as X is identical to Ygreku.

A mass man and a modern state are related only by their namelessness andfacelessness. The state seeks to stifle any social initiative, forcing society to live exclusively in the interests of the state machine. Due to the fact that this is only a machine, the condition and functioning of which depends solely on manpower, the bloodless state is dying.

Under government, the philosopher understands not physical violence and material force, but strong and normal relations between people, which under normal conditions never rest on force. This is a normal manifestation of power based on public opinion. So it was at all times, regardless of the level of development of civilization. Any power in the world always rests on public opinion. If in Newtonian physics the force of gravity becomes the cause of motion, then the law of universal gravitation in the field of political history is public opinion. Without it, history would immediately cease to be a science. If public opinion does not exist, society is divided into opposing groups, whose opinions may be completely opposite. But since nature does not tolerate emptiness, public opinion is replaced by brute force, which rapes society, and does not rule it.

In today's world, as the thinker noted, every European must be sure that one should only be a liberal. And it doesn't matter which form of liberalism is implied. At the same time, fascists and Bolsheviks know in the depths of their souls that the inner correctness of liberalism is unshakable, although they subject it to fair criticism. The point is, it's not truescientific, not theoretical and not rational. This is the truth of a fundamentally different nature, which has the final say in the surrounding world. This is the truth of life. The fate of our life is not subject to public discussion. It must be accepted entirely and categorically or completely rejected.

The prosperity and strength of democracy in this sense depends on such an insignificant detail as the procedures for democratic elections. Everything else fades into the background. If this procedure is organized correctly, its results will be correct, they will begin to reflect the real requirements and aspirations of society. Otherwise, the country runs the risk of perishing, things would not have been so good in other areas.

Another example from a Spanish philosopher refers to the beginning of the 1st century AD, when Rome was rich and omnipotent, it simply did not have any significant enemies. However, the empire was already on the verge of death, as it adhered to a false and ridiculous electoral system. Recall that only the inhabitants of Rome had the right to vote. The opinion of those who were in the provinces was not taken into account. Due to the fact that general elections were impossible, they had to be rigged. For example, the candidates themselves hired bandits who opened the ballot boxes. Out of work circus athletes and army veterans went to such a thing.

Structure of a nation

It is possible to penetrate the structure of any nation, given that the project of living together is only in a common cause, and the response of society to this project must be taken into account. Universal consent createsinternal strength, which distinguishes the "nation-state" from other ancient forms of the state. In this case, it was possible to achieve and maintain unity only through external pressure on certain strata and groups. In a nation, the strength of the state stems from the internal solidarity of all the "subjects" who make up this state. This miracle is the novelty of the nation. It should not and is not able to feel the state as something alien.

The reality called the state is not some kind of spontaneously formed community of like-minded people. It arises at the moment when groups of very different backgrounds begin to get along together. This is facilitated by the desire for a common goal, and not by the fact of any violence. According to Ortega y Gasset, the state is a program of cooperation that encourages diverse groups to work together. It is something inert, material and given, and does not mean only a common territory, language and blood relationship. It is a dynamic that calls for common and collaborative action. As a result, the state idea can be seriously interfered with by physical boundaries. At the same time, any state, in its essence, is only a call with which one group of people turns to another in order to do something together. This business boils down to creating a fundamentally new form of social life.

Different forms of the state in this case do not arise from those forms in which the initiative group cooperates with others. The fact is that the state itself carries out a call for universal activity,everyone who decides to join the common cause feels like a particle.

Blood, race, geographical homeland, language take second place. Citizens receive a more important right to political unity, which is permanent and fatal, what people were yesterday, but not what they are capable of becoming tomorrow. This is what unites people in the state.

As the thinker emphasized, it is precisely from this that the ease with which political unity in the West overcomes territorial and linguistic barriers develops. In contrast to ancient man, the European looks to the future, consciously preparing himself for it. The political impulse to form an ever broader unity in this sense becomes inevitable and a given.

Relevance

Despite the fact that "The Revolt of the Masses" by Ortega y Gasset was written almost 90 years ago, the problems of the cultural, social and spiritual life of Europe covered in it remain relevant today. First of all, because the author emphasized the future in his treatise. He actually foresaw some trends.

Summary of "The Revolt of the Masses" by Ortega y Gasset allows you to get acquainted with the main ideas expressed by the philosopher. For example, already in 1930 he foresaw the path to European integration, which actually resulted in the formation of the European Union, the role of which is constantly growing.