BrothersJudd Blog: THE MASSES ARE REVOLTING:

August 20, 2011

THE MASSES ARE REVOLTING:

Ortega y Gasset’s Metaphysical Cure for Invertebrate Cultures (Pedro Blas González, winter 2011, University Bookman)

Ortega is quick to point out that all political, in fact, all social activity always recoils back into metaphysics. His collected work exhibits a measured and rational account of reality that is often absent from other thinkers who dabble in political philosophy. It is precisely for this reason that The Revolt of the Masses is anathema to the political catch phrases of the twentieth century. Ortega juxtaposes words like mass, minority, rebellion, and social justice with such currently unpopular, yet timeless ideas as nobility of spirit, meritocracy, duty, individuality, and character. To judge this profound and nuanced book by its cover, one would think that materialists of all denominations would be enthralled with such a work, or at least its alluring title. That is not the case.

There is no denying that man is imbued with a metaphysical—and hence an existential—subjectivity that allows for individuality. This basic existential reality is grounded in our ability to view ourselves as conscious entities. In other words, man is capable of self-knowledge. This auto-knosis cannot be separated from our ability to fashion values for ourselves. In addition, our existential condition is temporally driven: man is a future-oriented being. Ortega argues that this pole of human existence is always put to the test by the conditions brought about by human agglomeration. Therefore, the matrix of Ortega’s dual notions of mass man and noble man is rooted in the understanding that man is an existential being that can transcend his own temporal circumstances.

One reason The Revolt of the Masses does not receive the attention it merits is that Ortega’s thought is a refutation of philosophical materialism. He embraces metaphysical conceptions of personhood and the perennial, anthro-philosophical question, “What is man?” It is appropriate to point out that Ortega rejects the sociological view of man founded on the model of the natural sciences. His thought does not begin with societal institutions and only subsequently acknowledge the role of the individual, as do social-political materialists. Instead, his concern is with the nature of the individual, in both his splendor and his depravity, and only then with the contribution the individual makes to society.

This understanding is criticized by positivists as being nothing more than a bourgeois metaphysical supposition. But from the first page of The Revolt of the Masses the author asserts, “It is important from the start to avoid giving to the words, ‘rebellion,’ ‘masses,’ and ‘social power’ a meaning exclusively or primarily political.” Ortega’s attempt at creating a constructive and rational foundation for political philosophy is basis enough for Marxists, socialists, and even today’s liberals to brand him with a slew of spirited names in attempts to discredit his work. This is lamentable. Fortunately, Ortega is not alone in this respect. In scholarship, as in all other interpersonal human endeavors, the role that good will plays must remain a prerequisite of engagement.

The import of his disclaimer in the opening pages of this classic philosophical text is to make clear that his terms mass man and its counterpart, noble man, apply irrespective of social standing, formal education, wealth, race, or gender. Ortega’s thought is the result of careful philosophical analysis. In turn, he views the mass mind as believing “that it has the right to impose and to give force of law to notions born in the cafés.” Having asserted this, he begins his essential assault on the sacred cows of philosophical materialism.

Ortega traces the nature of the masses back to the Roman Empire. The masses, as a matter of sheer number, have always existed, but he contends that they did not begin to direct the course of history until the French Revolution:

The individuals who made up these multitudes existed, but not qua multitude. Scattered about the world in small groups, or solitary, they lived a life, to all appearances, divergent, dissociate, apart.

This pattern, he argues, has shifted and has consequently inverted the order of human reality. The movement of the masses into the “places of relatively refined creation of human culture” has meant that the place of the noble man has been relegated to that of the “chorus.”

However, in true Ortegan fashion, he makes his case with metaphysical reflection, not with political ideology. He writes of the masses, “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 impose them wherever it will.” The mass man, he reasons, is that character type who refuses to demand more of himself—one who does not attempt to transcend himself in lieu of objectifying material forces, and who expects the same attitude in others. Instead, the mass man “crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified, and select.” Hence, the concept of the multitude is often nothing other than the reality of quantitative agglomeration being guided by social inertia. Ortega refers to this condition as indicative of “the social mass.”