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< | <h2>Bibliographic Annotations</h2> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter I — Aspirations</h3> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A15">A15</div><div class="annotext">HERACLITUS EPIGRAPHS (p. 33). The fragments quoted at the end of Chapters III, IV, V, X, XI, and XV have been translated by Kathleen Freeman in her <i>Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers</i>. The fragments quoted at the end of Chapters I, VI, VII, VII, and XVI have been translated by Philip Wheelwright in his <i>Heraclitus</i>. By Wheelwright's numbering system the fragments quoted are 10, 83, 88, 70, and 45. The fragment quoted at the end of Chapter IX has been translated by G. 5. Kirk and J. E. Raven in <i>The Pre-Socratic Philosophers</i> where it is numbered fragment 254. The fragment quoted at the end of Chapter XII has been translated by John Burnet in his <i>Early Greek Philosophy</i>, fragment 7. The fragments at the end of Chapters II, XIII, and XIV have been translated by W. H. S. Jones in the Loeb Classical Library edition of <i>Heraclitus</i>, fragments I, CXXVI, and XIX.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A15">A15</div><div class="annotext">HERACLITUS EPIGRAPHS (p. 33). The fragments quoted at the end of Chapters III, IV, V, X, XI, and XV have been translated by Kathleen Freeman in her <i>Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers</i>. The fragments quoted at the end of Chapters I, VI, VII, VII, and XVI have been translated by Philip Wheelwright in his <i>Heraclitus</i>. By Wheelwright's numbering system the fragments quoted are 10, 83, 88, 70, and 45. The fragment quoted at the end of Chapter IX has been translated by G. 5. Kirk and J. E. Raven in <i>The Pre-Socratic Philosophers</i> where it is numbered fragment 254. The fragment quoted at the end of Chapter XII has been translated by John Burnet in his <i>Early Greek Philosophy</i>, fragment 7. The fragments at the end of Chapters II, XIII, and XIV have been translated by W. H. S. Jones in the Loeb Classical Library edition of <i>Heraclitus</i>, fragments I, CXXVI, and XIX.</div> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter II — Preparations</h3> | ||
<hr> | <hr> | ||
<div class="anno" ID="A16">A16</div><div class="annotext">RECOURSE TO LOVE ... IS NEEDED TD EXPLIN TWO FEATURES OF LEARNING (p. 35). I In addition to Ortega's writings on the subject discussed below, my views have been influenced by Plato and Goethe. Plato's <i>Symposium</i> is, of course, fundamental but his attitude also is insinuated through most of his works and a familiarity with these is helpful in trying to follow Diotima's teaching as it is recounted by Socrates in the <i>Symposium</i>. There are useful discussions of <i>Eros</i> in Plato's philosophy in Paul Friedländer, <i>Plato: An Introduction</i>, <i>passim</i> and esp. pp. 32-58; F. M. Cornford, <i>The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays</i>, pp. 68-80; G. M. A. Grube, <i>Plato's Thought</i>, pp. 87-119; and Julius Stenzel, <i>Platon der Erzieher</i>, pp. 191-248. Goethe's great examination of the relation of love and self-culture is in <i>Wilhelm Meister</i>, <i>passim</i>. An excellent study by Ortega's contemporary, Max Scheler, is <i>Wesen und Formen der Sympathie</i>, a book that Ortega was quite familiar with. A striking book on <i>Eros and Education</i> could be written.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A16">A16</div><div class="annotext">RECOURSE TO LOVE ... IS NEEDED TD EXPLIN TWO FEATURES OF LEARNING (p. 35). I In addition to Ortega's writings on the subject discussed below, my views have been influenced by Plato and Goethe. Plato's <i>Symposium</i> is, of course, fundamental but his attitude also is insinuated through most of his works and a familiarity with these is helpful in trying to follow Diotima's teaching as it is recounted by Socrates in the <i>Symposium</i>. There are useful discussions of <i>Eros</i> in Plato's philosophy in Paul Friedländer, <i>Plato: An Introduction</i>, <i>passim</i> and esp. pp. 32-58; F. M. Cornford, <i>The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays</i>, pp. 68-80; G. M. A. Grube, <i>Plato's Thought</i>, pp. 87-119; and Julius Stenzel, <i>Platon der Erzieher</i>, pp. 191-248. Goethe's great examination of the relation of love and self-culture is in <i>Wilhelm Meister</i>, <i>passim</i>. An excellent study by Ortega's contemporary, Max Scheler, is <i>Wesen und Formen der Sympathie</i>, a book that Ortega was quite familiar with. A striking book on <i>Eros and Education</i> could be written.</div> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A30">A30</div><div class="annotext">AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL THEORISTS HAVE FORGOTTEN NATORP (p. 52). In 1900, a short review by Arthur Allin of the first edition of Natorp's <i>Sozialpädagogik</i> appeared in the <i>Educational Review</i>, Vol. 19, March 1900, pp. 290-295. A more substantial essay, "Paul Natorp's Social Pedagogy," by M. W. Meyerhardt was published in <i>The Pedagogical Seminary</i>, Vol. 23, March 1916, pp. 51-62. One of the few other significant pieces on Natorp published in the United States is the short, lucid article by Horace L. Friess, "Paul Natorp," in the <i>Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences</i>, Vol. 11, p. 283. Another excellent review of Natorp' s accomplishments is the translation of an article, "Paul Natorp," by Mariano Campo in <i>The Encyclopedia of Philosophy</i>, Vol. 5, pp. 445-8.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A30">A30</div><div class="annotext">AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL THEORISTS HAVE FORGOTTEN NATORP (p. 52). In 1900, a short review by Arthur Allin of the first edition of Natorp's <i>Sozialpädagogik</i> appeared in the <i>Educational Review</i>, Vol. 19, March 1900, pp. 290-295. A more substantial essay, "Paul Natorp's Social Pedagogy," by M. W. Meyerhardt was published in <i>The Pedagogical Seminary</i>, Vol. 23, March 1916, pp. 51-62. One of the few other significant pieces on Natorp published in the United States is the short, lucid article by Horace L. Friess, "Paul Natorp," in the <i>Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences</i>, Vol. 11, p. 283. Another excellent review of Natorp' s accomplishments is the translation of an article, "Paul Natorp," by Mariano Campo in <i>The Encyclopedia of Philosophy</i>, Vol. 5, pp. 445-8.</div> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter III — Programs</h3> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A31">A31</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA'S PRECOCITY WAS TO REALIZE THAT SPANISH RENOVATION WAS AN EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM (p. 62). This conviction was apparent in some of Ortega's earliest essays. See "La pedagogía del paisaje," 1906; "Sobre los estudios clásicos," 1907; "'Pidiendo una biblioteca," 1908; and "Asamblea para el progreso de las ciencias," 1908; in <i>Obras</i> I, pp. 53–7, 63–7, 81–5, and 99–110. See also "Reforma del carácter, no reforma de costumbres," <i>El Imparcial</i>, October 5, 1907, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 17–21. In the letter of May 28, 1905, to Navarro Ledesma, Ortega wrote about the educational responsibilities of the Spanish reformers; see "Cartas inéditas a Navarro Ledesma," <i>Cuadernos</i>, November 1961, especially p. 12.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A31">A31</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA'S PRECOCITY WAS TO REALIZE THAT SPANISH RENOVATION WAS AN EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM (p. 62). This conviction was apparent in some of Ortega's earliest essays. See "La pedagogía del paisaje," 1906; "Sobre los estudios clásicos," 1907; "'Pidiendo una biblioteca," 1908; and "Asamblea para el progreso de las ciencias," 1908; in <i>Obras</i> I, pp. 53–7, 63–7, 81–5, and 99–110. See also "Reforma del carácter, no reforma de costumbres," <i>El Imparcial</i>, October 5, 1907, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 17–21. In the letter of May 28, 1905, to Navarro Ledesma, Ortega wrote about the educational responsibilities of the Spanish reformers; see "Cartas inéditas a Navarro Ledesma," <i>Cuadernos</i>, November 1961, especially p. 12.</div> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A46">A46</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA WAS NO TECHNOCRAT (p. 86). In "Competencia," 1913, Obras X, pp. 226--231, Ortega showed a keen appreciation for the importance of high technical competence within industry and government ministries. Thus, in saying that he was no technocrat, one is not saying that he scorned technical excellence. The question, rather, concerned the kind of shared· aspirations that might bring about and sustain technical excellence. To achieve technical excellence, a people had to aspire to much more than technical excellence, for the truly competent technician was the man who had set out to master the pinnacles of science and who found along the way that his proper contribution was working somewhere short of that goal. This view was fundamental to Ortega's analysis of the dangers to modern civilization inherent in a general lowering of aspirations, and he gave a good early expression of it in "Asamblea para el progreso de las ciencias," 1908, <i>Obras</i> I, pp. 99–110. The greatest menace to technology was the technocrat who believed that technology would alone suffice.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A46">A46</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA WAS NO TECHNOCRAT (p. 86). In "Competencia," 1913, Obras X, pp. 226--231, Ortega showed a keen appreciation for the importance of high technical competence within industry and government ministries. Thus, in saying that he was no technocrat, one is not saying that he scorned technical excellence. The question, rather, concerned the kind of shared· aspirations that might bring about and sustain technical excellence. To achieve technical excellence, a people had to aspire to much more than technical excellence, for the truly competent technician was the man who had set out to master the pinnacles of science and who found along the way that his proper contribution was working somewhere short of that goal. This view was fundamental to Ortega's analysis of the dangers to modern civilization inherent in a general lowering of aspirations, and he gave a good early expression of it in "Asamblea para el progreso de las ciencias," 1908, <i>Obras</i> I, pp. 99–110. The greatest menace to technology was the technocrat who believed that technology would alone suffice.</div> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter IV — The Pedagogy of Prose </h3> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A47">A47</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA'S PURPOSES ARE REFLECTED IN HIS PROSE STYLE (p. 98). There have been several studies of Ortega as a writer. A rather technical but useful work is <i>Lengua y estilo de Ortega y Gasset</i> by Ricardo Senabre Sempere, although Senabre goes too far towards considering Ortega's style independent from his thought. Sister Mary Terese Avila Duffy does not do this in her interesting dissertation, "José Ortega y Gasset: The Creation of a Literary Genre for Philosophy"; but Ortega's style was more than a philosophical genre. Julián Marías has a thoughtful section on Ortega as a writer in <i>Ortega—I: Circunstancia y vocación</i>, pp. 259–353. In <i>Origen y epílogo de la filosofía</i>, 1943, 1960, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 400–2, Ortega briefly discussed the importance of style for comprehending philosophy, and it is a subject that merits much further study. It is surprising, in view of all the attention that has been paid in recent years to language in philosophy, that the techniques of the literary critic have not been more fruitfully applied to the works of past philosophers. <i>A Grammar of Motives</i> and <i>A Rhetoric of Motives</i> by Kenneth Burke indicate the possibilities that might arise for systematic philosophy and <i>Preface to Plato</i> by Eric A. Havelock the possibilities for historical interpretation.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A47">A47</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA'S PURPOSES ARE REFLECTED IN HIS PROSE STYLE (p. 98). There have been several studies of Ortega as a writer. A rather technical but useful work is <i>Lengua y estilo de Ortega y Gasset</i> by Ricardo Senabre Sempere, although Senabre goes too far towards considering Ortega's style independent from his thought. Sister Mary Terese Avila Duffy does not do this in her interesting dissertation, "José Ortega y Gasset: The Creation of a Literary Genre for Philosophy"; but Ortega's style was more than a philosophical genre. Julián Marías has a thoughtful section on Ortega as a writer in <i>Ortega—I: Circunstancia y vocación</i>, pp. 259–353. In <i>Origen y epílogo de la filosofía</i>, 1943, 1960, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 400–2, Ortega briefly discussed the importance of style for comprehending philosophy, and it is a subject that merits much further study. It is surprising, in view of all the attention that has been paid in recent years to language in philosophy, that the techniques of the literary critic have not been more fruitfully applied to the works of past philosophers. <i>A Grammar of Motives</i> and <i>A Rhetoric of Motives</i> by Kenneth Burke indicate the possibilities that might arise for systematic philosophy and <i>Preface to Plato</i> by Eric A. Havelock the possibilities for historical interpretation.</div> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A53">A53</div><div class="annotext">THUS, ORTEGA COULD USE THE PEDAGOGY OF ALLUSIQN (p. 113). Owing to the narrowness of our present conception of pedagogy, important dimensions of comparison between the work of various thinkers are difficult to perceive. For instance, there are difficulties explaining how the philosophical views of Ortega and Heidegger differed; yet these difficulties would disappear if we could compare the allusive pedagogy Ortega used in explaining his position with Heidegger's pedagogy of specification. Compare how Ortega and Heidegger handled the problem of ensuring that philosophy referred to life as it was lived. Whereas Ortega chose to explicate his ideas by means of references to everyday situations, Heidegger conceptualized the everyday and insisted that the problem for ontology was to understand the Being of Dasein "in its average everydayness." (<i>Being and Time</i>, Macquarrie and Robinson, trans., pp. 37–8.) Both men began with the same insight into the transcendent primacy of personal existence, and from there one proceeded to convert the technical into the everyday and the other the everyday into the technical. By considering the pedagogical dimension, the way a philosopher chooses to present his views, certain significant questions open up. For instance, what part of the human consequences of a doctrine stems from the doctrine itself and what part from the pedagogy chosen by the philosopher to inform his presentation of his doctrine? This question is significant, for many choose their philosophies according to the human consequences they believe these bear, and it is not always clear whether objectionable consequences derive from the doctrine or the teaching of the doctrine. Thus, in <i>Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay</i>, Stanley Rosen severely criticizes Heidegger for nihilism, suggesting that Heidegger equated silence with the source of significance. One comes away, however, from Rosen's critique with an unsatisfied question: do the doctrines themselves lead to silence or the modes of presenting the doctrines chosen by particular adherents to them?</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A53">A53</div><div class="annotext">THUS, ORTEGA COULD USE THE PEDAGOGY OF ALLUSIQN (p. 113). Owing to the narrowness of our present conception of pedagogy, important dimensions of comparison between the work of various thinkers are difficult to perceive. For instance, there are difficulties explaining how the philosophical views of Ortega and Heidegger differed; yet these difficulties would disappear if we could compare the allusive pedagogy Ortega used in explaining his position with Heidegger's pedagogy of specification. Compare how Ortega and Heidegger handled the problem of ensuring that philosophy referred to life as it was lived. Whereas Ortega chose to explicate his ideas by means of references to everyday situations, Heidegger conceptualized the everyday and insisted that the problem for ontology was to understand the Being of Dasein "in its average everydayness." (<i>Being and Time</i>, Macquarrie and Robinson, trans., pp. 37–8.) Both men began with the same insight into the transcendent primacy of personal existence, and from there one proceeded to convert the technical into the everyday and the other the everyday into the technical. By considering the pedagogical dimension, the way a philosopher chooses to present his views, certain significant questions open up. For instance, what part of the human consequences of a doctrine stems from the doctrine itself and what part from the pedagogy chosen by the philosopher to inform his presentation of his doctrine? This question is significant, for many choose their philosophies according to the human consequences they believe these bear, and it is not always clear whether objectionable consequences derive from the doctrine or the teaching of the doctrine. Thus, in <i>Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay</i>, Stanley Rosen severely criticizes Heidegger for nihilism, suggesting that Heidegger equated silence with the source of significance. One comes away, however, from Rosen's critique with an unsatisfied question: do the doctrines themselves lead to silence or the modes of presenting the doctrines chosen by particular adherents to them?</div> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter V — The Partly Faithful Professor</h3> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A54">A54</div><div class="annotext"TO CULTIVATE INTELLECTUALITY IN SPAIN (p. 119). >In giving Ortega the Chair of Metaphysics, the university was taking a surprising step, for Ortega had been outspoken about the existing inadequacies of the university and had made known his intention to try to change things. Articles unlikely to endear Ortega to the complacent academic establishment were "Sobre los estudios clásicos," 1907; "Pidiendo una biblioteca," 1908; "Asamblea para el progreso de las ciencias," 1908; and "Una fiesta de paz," 1909, <i>Obras</i> I, pp. 63–7, 81–5, 99–110, 124–7. Other essays that reflect the same views are "La reforma liberal," <i>Faro</i>, February 23, 1908, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 31–8; "La conservación de la cultura," <i>Faro</i>, March 8, 1908, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 39–46; "Sobre la pequeña filosofía," <i>El Imparcial</i>, April 13, 1908, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 51–5; "La cuestión moral," <i>El Imparcial</i>, August 27, 1908, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 73–8; "Catecismo para la lectura de una carta," <i>El Imparcial</i>, February 10, 1910, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 133–B; "Pablo Iglesias," <i>El Imparcial</i>, May 13, 1910, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 139–142; "Diputado por la cultura," <i>El Imparcial</i>, May 28, 1910, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 143–6; and a lecture given in La Casa de Partido Socialista Madrileño, December 2, 1910 on "La ciencia y la religión como problemas políticos," <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 119–127. It is interesting to compare Ortega's views in this lecture with those of some radical students and professors today who are suggesting with some basis that in times of deep division even the seemingly most disinterested studies are not really apolitical. Somehow we need to learn how to claim protection for originating and exploring ideas without asserting the sterile pretension to disinterestedness.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A54">A54</div><div class="annotext"TO CULTIVATE INTELLECTUALITY IN SPAIN (p. 119). >In giving Ortega the Chair of Metaphysics, the university was taking a surprising step, for Ortega had been outspoken about the existing inadequacies of the university and had made known his intention to try to change things. Articles unlikely to endear Ortega to the complacent academic establishment were "Sobre los estudios clásicos," 1907; "Pidiendo una biblioteca," 1908; "Asamblea para el progreso de las ciencias," 1908; and "Una fiesta de paz," 1909, <i>Obras</i> I, pp. 63–7, 81–5, 99–110, 124–7. Other essays that reflect the same views are "La reforma liberal," <i>Faro</i>, February 23, 1908, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 31–8; "La conservación de la cultura," <i>Faro</i>, March 8, 1908, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 39–46; "Sobre la pequeña filosofía," <i>El Imparcial</i>, April 13, 1908, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 51–5; "La cuestión moral," <i>El Imparcial</i>, August 27, 1908, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 73–8; "Catecismo para la lectura de una carta," <i>El Imparcial</i>, February 10, 1910, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 133–B; "Pablo Iglesias," <i>El Imparcial</i>, May 13, 1910, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 139–142; "Diputado por la cultura," <i>El Imparcial</i>, May 28, 1910, <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 143–6; and a lecture given in La Casa de Partido Socialista Madrileño, December 2, 1910 on "La ciencia y la religión como problemas políticos," <i>Obras</i> X, pp. 119–127. It is interesting to compare Ortega's views in this lecture with those of some radical students and professors today who are suggesting with some basis that in times of deep division even the seemingly most disinterested studies are not really apolitical. Somehow we need to learn how to claim protection for originating and exploring ideas without asserting the sterile pretension to disinterestedness.</div> | ||
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An indication of how contemporary educators attribute purposes to the curriculum rather than to students is to be found in Daniel Bell's excellent critique of general education, <i>The Reforming of General Education</i>, p. 152. Purposes that are properly embodied in men are spoken of as embodied in the curriculum. "In the more limited and specific ways that such purposes can be embodied in a curriculum, the content of liberal education ... can be defined through six purposes: 1) To overcome intellectual provincialism; 2) To appreciate the centrality of method; 3) To gain an awareness of history; 4) To show how ideas relate to social structures; 5) To understand the way values infuse all inquiry; 6) To demonstrate the civilizing role of the humanities." Take the first purpose, to overcome intellectual provincialism. If it is to be embodied in the curriculum, many intellectual provinces will have to be presented sympathetically. If it is embodied in the student, the curriculum will need to give effective instruction in the many languages, the use of which will permit the student to chart his own course through the various provinces. A cosmopolitan curriculum is a kind of intellectual Disneyland, whereas a true cosmopolitan has really made the Grand Tour, learning to use a rich inheritance—monetary or spiritual—with effect. I have discussed the rationale of study and the liberal arts more fully in "On the Liberality of the Liberal Arts," <i>Teachers College Record</i>, Vol. 72, No. 3, February 1971, pp. 405-416; and "Towards a Place for Study in a World of Instruction," to be published in <i>Teachers College Record</i>, Vol. 73, No. 2, December 1971.</div> | An indication of how contemporary educators attribute purposes to the curriculum rather than to students is to be found in Daniel Bell's excellent critique of general education, <i>The Reforming of General Education</i>, p. 152. Purposes that are properly embodied in men are spoken of as embodied in the curriculum. "In the more limited and specific ways that such purposes can be embodied in a curriculum, the content of liberal education ... can be defined through six purposes: 1) To overcome intellectual provincialism; 2) To appreciate the centrality of method; 3) To gain an awareness of history; 4) To show how ideas relate to social structures; 5) To understand the way values infuse all inquiry; 6) To demonstrate the civilizing role of the humanities." Take the first purpose, to overcome intellectual provincialism. If it is to be embodied in the curriculum, many intellectual provinces will have to be presented sympathetically. If it is embodied in the student, the curriculum will need to give effective instruction in the many languages, the use of which will permit the student to chart his own course through the various provinces. A cosmopolitan curriculum is a kind of intellectual Disneyland, whereas a true cosmopolitan has really made the Grand Tour, learning to use a rich inheritance—monetary or spiritual—with effect. I have discussed the rationale of study and the liberal arts more fully in "On the Liberality of the Liberal Arts," <i>Teachers College Record</i>, Vol. 72, No. 3, February 1971, pp. 405-416; and "Towards a Place for Study in a World of Instruction," to be published in <i>Teachers College Record</i>, Vol. 73, No. 2, December 1971.</div> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter VI — The People's Pedagogue</h3> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A65">A65</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA EARLY BROKE WITH EL IMPARCIAL (p. 153). My account of Ortega's break with his family's paper diverges from the usual accounts. Both Lorenzo Luzuriaga, in his "Las fundaciones de Ortega y Gasset," Instituto de Filosofía, <i>Homenaje a Ortega y Gasset</i>, and Evelyne López-Campillo,in her "Ortega: <i>El Imparcial</i> y las Juntas," <i>Revista de Occidente</i>, June 1969, pp. 311–7, base the chronology of their account almost solely on a remark by Ortega in <i>La decencia nacional</i>, 1932. Ortega's remark, a note explaining why he included "Bajo el arco en ruina" in the book, was as follows: "This article was published in <i>El Imparcial</i> on June 11, 1917. A few days before, in Barcelona, the Juntas de Defensa del Arma de Infantería had declared themselves in rebellion. The disputes to which this article gave rise had, as a result, the founding of the newspaper <i>El Sol</i> by D. Nicolás María de Urgoiti." (<i>Obras</i> XI, p. 265, n. 1). On this basis, both Luzuriaga and López-Campillo contend that Ortega's break with <i>El Imparcial</i> came at this time. This contention, however, is unsatisfactory.<br/><br/> | <div class="anno" ID="A65">A65</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA EARLY BROKE WITH EL IMPARCIAL (p. 153). My account of Ortega's break with his family's paper diverges from the usual accounts. Both Lorenzo Luzuriaga, in his "Las fundaciones de Ortega y Gasset," Instituto de Filosofía, <i>Homenaje a Ortega y Gasset</i>, and Evelyne López-Campillo,in her "Ortega: <i>El Imparcial</i> y las Juntas," <i>Revista de Occidente</i>, June 1969, pp. 311–7, base the chronology of their account almost solely on a remark by Ortega in <i>La decencia nacional</i>, 1932. Ortega's remark, a note explaining why he included "Bajo el arco en ruina" in the book, was as follows: "This article was published in <i>El Imparcial</i> on June 11, 1917. A few days before, in Barcelona, the Juntas de Defensa del Arma de Infantería had declared themselves in rebellion. The disputes to which this article gave rise had, as a result, the founding of the newspaper <i>El Sol</i> by D. Nicolás María de Urgoiti." (<i>Obras</i> XI, p. 265, n. 1). On this basis, both Luzuriaga and López-Campillo contend that Ortega's break with <i>El Imparcial</i> came at this time. This contention, however, is unsatisfactory.<br/><br/> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A67">A67</div><div class="annotext">WRITERS HAVE CONFUSED THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE (p. 173). The erroneous belief, unfortunately propagated by T. S. Eliot in <i>Notes Towards the Definition of Culture</i>, 1949, that there is a divergence between the so-called "literary" idea of culture and the "anthropological" has freed too many writers who should know better to play fast and loose with the idea of culture. If "culture" is to denote human artifacts, the word itself is meaningless, for it will denote everything. Hence, it will become significant only when qualified: aristocratic, democratic, proletarian, mass, high, middle, low, popular, unpopular, primitive, and so on <i>ad infinitum</i>. There are, taking up this procedure, many interesting essays on the problems of popular or mass culture. Many of these are gathered by Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White in <i>Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America</i>. See also Dwight Macdonald, "Masscult and Midcult," in <i>Against the American Grain</i>. Most of this writing seems to have missed the reality of culture, which is not in the artifact, but in the man. Both the literary humanist and the anthropologist seem to be nearing agreement that culture is man's symbolic means for giving a particular character to himself. The important book here is not the overrated compendium by A. L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, <i>Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions</i>, but Eric R, Wolf's <i>Anthropology</i>. Wolf shows that anthropologists need to view the culture of any particular people as a hierarchical symbolic system by which those people give themselves their unique character. As soon as culture can again be seen as an hierarchical system, the disjunction between different strata of culture can be overcome, and we can make the concept serve as a powerful tool for fashioning a better understanding of education. In this context, John Dewey's <i>Freedom and Culture</i> will be found to be a much more effective examination of the function of culture in industrial democracies than the confused talk about mass culture. There is an immense literature on the idea of culture. Raymond Williams' <i>Culture and Society</i> is a useful survey of the development of these two concepts in English intellectual history. Such a study should be made of how ideas of culture and education have developed since 1750, for it may well be that many of the current difficulties with the idea of culture have arisen because educators, in the name of democratic egalitarianism, have avoided dealing with "culture," which can only be defined properly in relation to education. Matthew Arnold's <i>Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism</i> is an excellent companion to Ortega's <i>Revolt of the Masses</i>. Arnold's conception of culture as the pursuit of perfection (see especially Chapter 1) is still valid; it is consistent with current anthropological findings; and it is crucial to developing an alternative to the continued aggrandisement of the contemporary state, a state very different from the one Arnold so revered.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A67">A67</div><div class="annotext">WRITERS HAVE CONFUSED THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE (p. 173). The erroneous belief, unfortunately propagated by T. S. Eliot in <i>Notes Towards the Definition of Culture</i>, 1949, that there is a divergence between the so-called "literary" idea of culture and the "anthropological" has freed too many writers who should know better to play fast and loose with the idea of culture. If "culture" is to denote human artifacts, the word itself is meaningless, for it will denote everything. Hence, it will become significant only when qualified: aristocratic, democratic, proletarian, mass, high, middle, low, popular, unpopular, primitive, and so on <i>ad infinitum</i>. There are, taking up this procedure, many interesting essays on the problems of popular or mass culture. Many of these are gathered by Bernard Rosenberg and David Manning White in <i>Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America</i>. See also Dwight Macdonald, "Masscult and Midcult," in <i>Against the American Grain</i>. Most of this writing seems to have missed the reality of culture, which is not in the artifact, but in the man. Both the literary humanist and the anthropologist seem to be nearing agreement that culture is man's symbolic means for giving a particular character to himself. The important book here is not the overrated compendium by A. L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, <i>Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions</i>, but Eric R, Wolf's <i>Anthropology</i>. Wolf shows that anthropologists need to view the culture of any particular people as a hierarchical symbolic system by which those people give themselves their unique character. As soon as culture can again be seen as an hierarchical system, the disjunction between different strata of culture can be overcome, and we can make the concept serve as a powerful tool for fashioning a better understanding of education. In this context, John Dewey's <i>Freedom and Culture</i> will be found to be a much more effective examination of the function of culture in industrial democracies than the confused talk about mass culture. There is an immense literature on the idea of culture. Raymond Williams' <i>Culture and Society</i> is a useful survey of the development of these two concepts in English intellectual history. Such a study should be made of how ideas of culture and education have developed since 1750, for it may well be that many of the current difficulties with the idea of culture have arisen because educators, in the name of democratic egalitarianism, have avoided dealing with "culture," which can only be defined properly in relation to education. Matthew Arnold's <i>Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism</i> is an excellent companion to Ortega's <i>Revolt of the Masses</i>. Arnold's conception of culture as the pursuit of perfection (see especially Chapter 1) is still valid; it is consistent with current anthropological findings; and it is crucial to developing an alternative to the continued aggrandisement of the contemporary state, a state very different from the one Arnold so revered.</div> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter VII — The Spain That Is</h3> | ||
<hr> | <hr> | ||
<div class="anno" ID="A68">A68</div><div class="annotext">ROUSSEAU'S PRESENTATION OF THE WILL OF ALL AND THE GENERAL WILL WAS FLAWED (p. 202). From the beginning Rousseau has suffered at the hands of critics who will substitute a <i>Bon mot</i> for an argument. To me, Rousseau's writings are second only to Plato's in their heuristic value; and being inclined to approach Rousseau's writings as heuristic stimulants, not epitomes of some dogma—romantic, democratic, totalitarian, or anti-intellectual—I find most of the debate about Rousseau incomprehensible. Rousseau's writing reflects a deep sympathy with the thought of Plato and the Stoics; Rousseau had internalized their work, and surely the greatness of the "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences" is that it displays the proper use of civilization in the course of condemning the abuse of civilization. Rousseau should be read, responded to, reflected on; he does not provide doctrines: he may, however, stimulate thought. Since my sophomore year in college I have found Rousseau to repay careful, recurrent reading. I am closest to the two "Discourses," <i>Emile</i>, and <i>The Social Contract</i>, and have learned much from having dealt with the last two works in a Colloquium I have given over the past five years. I think, as a brief commentary, Jacques Barzun's discussion of Rousseau in <i>Classic, Romantic, and Modern</i>, II, i-ii, pp. 18-28, is without match. It is especially valuable for driving home the point that <i>The Social Contract</i> does not concern the mode of conducting practical politics—Rousseau was neither a democrat nor a totalitarian—but the conditions under which any system of conducting practical politics can be considered legitimate. The two books by Ernst Cassirer, <i>The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau</i>, Peter Gay, trans., and <i>Rousseau, Kant, and Goethe</i>, Gutmann, Kristeller, and Randall, trans., are helpful, especially in locating Rousseau in the history of ideas. For those who want a check on the <i>Confessions</i>, Jean Guéhenno's <i>Jean-Jacques Rousseau</i>, 2 vols., John and Doreen Weightman, trans., is excellent, although it does not try to assess Rousseau's intellectual background in much depth, an assessment that seems to me crucial in deciding how to read Rousseau. The <i>Bibliothèque de la Pléiade</i> edition of Rousseau's <i>Oeuvres complètes</i> is excellent, presenting his works in a readable format, with sufficient critical apparatus to inform oneself of the issues but not so extensive or intrusive that it interferes with following Rousseau's argument.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A68">A68</div><div class="annotext">ROUSSEAU'S PRESENTATION OF THE WILL OF ALL AND THE GENERAL WILL WAS FLAWED (p. 202). From the beginning Rousseau has suffered at the hands of critics who will substitute a <i>Bon mot</i> for an argument. To me, Rousseau's writings are second only to Plato's in their heuristic value; and being inclined to approach Rousseau's writings as heuristic stimulants, not epitomes of some dogma—romantic, democratic, totalitarian, or anti-intellectual—I find most of the debate about Rousseau incomprehensible. Rousseau's writing reflects a deep sympathy with the thought of Plato and the Stoics; Rousseau had internalized their work, and surely the greatness of the "Discourse on the Arts and Sciences" is that it displays the proper use of civilization in the course of condemning the abuse of civilization. Rousseau should be read, responded to, reflected on; he does not provide doctrines: he may, however, stimulate thought. Since my sophomore year in college I have found Rousseau to repay careful, recurrent reading. I am closest to the two "Discourses," <i>Emile</i>, and <i>The Social Contract</i>, and have learned much from having dealt with the last two works in a Colloquium I have given over the past five years. I think, as a brief commentary, Jacques Barzun's discussion of Rousseau in <i>Classic, Romantic, and Modern</i>, II, i-ii, pp. 18-28, is without match. It is especially valuable for driving home the point that <i>The Social Contract</i> does not concern the mode of conducting practical politics—Rousseau was neither a democrat nor a totalitarian—but the conditions under which any system of conducting practical politics can be considered legitimate. The two books by Ernst Cassirer, <i>The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau</i>, Peter Gay, trans., and <i>Rousseau, Kant, and Goethe</i>, Gutmann, Kristeller, and Randall, trans., are helpful, especially in locating Rousseau in the history of ideas. For those who want a check on the <i>Confessions</i>, Jean Guéhenno's <i>Jean-Jacques Rousseau</i>, 2 vols., John and Doreen Weightman, trans., is excellent, although it does not try to assess Rousseau's intellectual background in much depth, an assessment that seems to me crucial in deciding how to read Rousseau. The <i>Bibliothèque de la Pléiade</i> edition of Rousseau's <i>Oeuvres complètes</i> is excellent, presenting his works in a readable format, with sufficient critical apparatus to inform oneself of the issues but not so extensive or intrusive that it interferes with following Rousseau's argument.</div> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter VIII — Failure</h3> | ||
<hr> | <hr> | ||
<div class="anno" ID="A69">A69</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA'S PREROGATIVES AS A CLERC EXISTED NO MORE (p. 213). An indication of the difficulty that Ortega had in acting as a clerc after he had participated in politics is found in the reaction of his fellow intellectual-turned-politician, Manuel Azaña. Thus, in the <i>Memorias intimas de Azaña</i>, edited by Joaquín Arrarás, 1939, pp. 179–180, Ortega's criticisms of partisanship in the Republic were dismissed as an attempt to appease the Jesuit backers of <i>El Sol</i> for the passage of Article 26, which closed the religious orders. <i>El Sol</i>, which had long crusaded for better lay education, was anything but a pro-Jesuit paper! Care, however, should prevent one from taking the <i>Memorias</i> to be an accurate indication of Azaña's views and character; the book was an extremely fragmentary selection from Azaña's diary, and the selection was made by an enthusiast of Franco and published just after the Civil War. It is a masterpiece of political satire, and the added Falangist caricatures show that not all of the Spanish wits were on the loyalist side.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A69">A69</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA'S PREROGATIVES AS A CLERC EXISTED NO MORE (p. 213). An indication of the difficulty that Ortega had in acting as a clerc after he had participated in politics is found in the reaction of his fellow intellectual-turned-politician, Manuel Azaña. Thus, in the <i>Memorias intimas de Azaña</i>, edited by Joaquín Arrarás, 1939, pp. 179–180, Ortega's criticisms of partisanship in the Republic were dismissed as an attempt to appease the Jesuit backers of <i>El Sol</i> for the passage of Article 26, which closed the religious orders. <i>El Sol</i>, which had long crusaded for better lay education, was anything but a pro-Jesuit paper! Care, however, should prevent one from taking the <i>Memorias</i> to be an accurate indication of Azaña's views and character; the book was an extremely fragmentary selection from Azaña's diary, and the selection was made by an enthusiast of Franco and published just after the Civil War. It is a masterpiece of political satire, and the added Falangist caricatures show that not all of the Spanish wits were on the loyalist side.</div> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A76">A76</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA TRIED TO CONVERT THE GROUP IN THE SERVICE OF THE REPUBLIC INTO A NATIONAL PARTY (p. 228). For speeches made in this effort, see "Nación y Trabajo: he aquí el tema de la Agrupación al Servicio de la República: 'Hoy no es possible un partido conservador': Elocuente brindis de Don José Ortega y Gasset en Granada," <i>El Sol</i>, February 5, 1932; and "Don José Ortega y Gasset en Oviedo: 'La política Republicana se ha de cimentar sobre dos principios: Nación y Trabajo'," <i>El Sol</i>, April 12, 1932. For articles written about a national party, see "Hacia un partido de la nación," <i>Luz</i>, January 7, 15, and 29, 1932; "Estos republicanos no son la República," <i>Luz</i>, June 16, 1932; and "Hay que reanimar a la República," <i>Luz</i>, June 18, 1932. Ortega's withdrawal from politics was first made public in "Conferencia de Don José Ortega y Gasset en la Universidad de Granada: 'Tras dos años de exorbitancia política—dice—vuelvo plenamente a la conciencia intelectual'." <i>El Sol</i>, October 9, 1932. See for all except the first and last mentioned <i>Obras</i> XI, pp. 425–450, 489–493.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A76">A76</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA TRIED TO CONVERT THE GROUP IN THE SERVICE OF THE REPUBLIC INTO A NATIONAL PARTY (p. 228). For speeches made in this effort, see "Nación y Trabajo: he aquí el tema de la Agrupación al Servicio de la República: 'Hoy no es possible un partido conservador': Elocuente brindis de Don José Ortega y Gasset en Granada," <i>El Sol</i>, February 5, 1932; and "Don José Ortega y Gasset en Oviedo: 'La política Republicana se ha de cimentar sobre dos principios: Nación y Trabajo'," <i>El Sol</i>, April 12, 1932. For articles written about a national party, see "Hacia un partido de la nación," <i>Luz</i>, January 7, 15, and 29, 1932; "Estos republicanos no son la República," <i>Luz</i>, June 16, 1932; and "Hay que reanimar a la República," <i>Luz</i>, June 18, 1932. Ortega's withdrawal from politics was first made public in "Conferencia de Don José Ortega y Gasset en la Universidad de Granada: 'Tras dos años de exorbitancia política—dice—vuelvo plenamente a la conciencia intelectual'." <i>El Sol</i>, October 9, 1932. See for all except the first and last mentioned <i>Obras</i> XI, pp. 425–450, 489–493.</div> | ||
<h2 >PART TWO — Europe: The Second Voyage</ | <h2 >PART TWO — Europe: The Second Voyage</h3> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter IX — On the Crisis of Europe</h3> | ||
<hr> | <hr> | ||
<div class="anno" ID="A77">A77</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA CONTRIBUTED TO THE GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN (p. 239. There is an immense literature on the human sciences, much of which is egregiously unfamiliar to American scholars. As the exposition unfolds, many works will be cited in more particular contexts. Here mention should be made of the best introduction to the subject so far written in America, <i>The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–1933</i>, by Fritz K. Ringer. Unfortunately, this work does not give a sympathetic treatment to the human sciences; it subjects them instead to a reductive sociological explanation. Nevertheless, until a writer comes forward who is willing to take the subject seriously, contending rigorously with the substance as well as the social source of the human sciences, Ringer's book will stand as the most useful introduction to the literature.<br /><br /> | <div class="anno" ID="A77">A77</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA CONTRIBUTED TO THE GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN (p. 239. There is an immense literature on the human sciences, much of which is egregiously unfamiliar to American scholars. As the exposition unfolds, many works will be cited in more particular contexts. Here mention should be made of the best introduction to the subject so far written in America, <i>The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–1933</i>, by Fritz K. Ringer. Unfortunately, this work does not give a sympathetic treatment to the human sciences; it subjects them instead to a reductive sociological explanation. Nevertheless, until a writer comes forward who is willing to take the subject seriously, contending rigorously with the substance as well as the social source of the human sciences, Ringer's book will stand as the most useful introduction to the literature.<br /><br /> | ||
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Many other works have contributed to my understanding not only of the problems raised by mass communications, but also by bureaucracy and ideological criticism. Among them are <i>The Bias of Communications</i> by Harold A. Innis. <i>Le temps hacerlant</i> by Enrico Castelli; <i>The Origins of Totalitarianism</i> by Hannah Arendt; <i>Man in the Modern Age</i> by Karl Jaspers; <i>The House of Intellect</i> by Jacques Barzun, and many others. In calling attention to these difficulties, one is not foretelling doom or condemning traditional aspirations. One is, however, asking for the reinvigoration of the theoretical imagination. The empirical obsessions of social science seem to me to indicate a deep-seated death wish. The political forces in the midst of which we live have little to do, integrally, organically, with our national institutions; yet our conceptions of what political procedures are proper, which ones will allow the human spirit to flourish humanely, are all keyed to the nation-states. The productive capital of political theory that we have inherited from the Enlightenment is fast wearing out, yet very few people have been trying speculatively to construct replacements. The defense of freedom and reason must find an arena other than national politics, and itsabsurd extension in inter-national politics, in which to conduct its campaign. Political and pedagogical theorists have before them the task of setting forth such a supranational community.</div> | Many other works have contributed to my understanding not only of the problems raised by mass communications, but also by bureaucracy and ideological criticism. Among them are <i>The Bias of Communications</i> by Harold A. Innis. <i>Le temps hacerlant</i> by Enrico Castelli; <i>The Origins of Totalitarianism</i> by Hannah Arendt; <i>Man in the Modern Age</i> by Karl Jaspers; <i>The House of Intellect</i> by Jacques Barzun, and many others. In calling attention to these difficulties, one is not foretelling doom or condemning traditional aspirations. One is, however, asking for the reinvigoration of the theoretical imagination. The empirical obsessions of social science seem to me to indicate a deep-seated death wish. The political forces in the midst of which we live have little to do, integrally, organically, with our national institutions; yet our conceptions of what political procedures are proper, which ones will allow the human spirit to flourish humanely, are all keyed to the nation-states. The productive capital of political theory that we have inherited from the Enlightenment is fast wearing out, yet very few people have been trying speculatively to construct replacements. The defense of freedom and reason must find an arena other than national politics, and itsabsurd extension in inter-national politics, in which to conduct its campaign. Political and pedagogical theorists have before them the task of setting forth such a supranational community.</div> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter X — Scarcity and Abundance</h3> | ||
<hr> | <hr> | ||
<div class="anno" ID="A82">A82</div><div class="annotext">FOR AGES THE WISE HAVE KNOWN THAT LUXURY WEAKENS THE WILL (p. 279). By reading this proposition as a statement about the effects of wealth on individual character, with the only social effects seen being certain invidious aspersions on the <i>nouveau riche</i>, one can ignore its most serious import. In such a form, the idea is quite uninteresting; but its more profound exponents have been concerned not with wealth as an individual attribute, but with wealth as a social attribute. Thus Heraclitus wished riches not on his individual enemies, but on Ephesus as a whole. The debilitative effects of wealth may develop even though the wealthiest are very active and far from debauched. What is unhealthy is not the effect of wealth on the particular individuals who hold it, but use of the category "wealth," by both rich and poor, as the basic means of making judgments of human worth. For this practice of making wealth a major standard of value, modern Western civilization has been roundly condemned by a series of critics who have not opposed the existence of material well-being, but who have rejected the common practice of using distinctions between the degree of well-being various persons enjoy as means of judging the relative worth of those persons. Thus the spiritual power of money is decried. Witness Nietzsche: "money now stands for power, glory, pre-eminence, dignity, and influence ... " (<i>The Dawn of Day</i>, #203, J. M. Kennedy, trans.); " ... what was once done 'for the love of God' is now done for the love of money, i.e. for the love of that which at present affords us the highest feeling of power and a good conscience" (<i>Ibid</i>., #204). Witness also Jacob Burckhardt: "money becomes and remains the greatest measure of things, poverty the greatest vice," in his <i>On History and Historians</i>, Harry Zohn, trans., p. 222.<br/><br/> | <div class="anno" ID="A82">A82</div><div class="annotext">FOR AGES THE WISE HAVE KNOWN THAT LUXURY WEAKENS THE WILL (p. 279). By reading this proposition as a statement about the effects of wealth on individual character, with the only social effects seen being certain invidious aspersions on the <i>nouveau riche</i>, one can ignore its most serious import. In such a form, the idea is quite uninteresting; but its more profound exponents have been concerned not with wealth as an individual attribute, but with wealth as a social attribute. Thus Heraclitus wished riches not on his individual enemies, but on Ephesus as a whole. The debilitative effects of wealth may develop even though the wealthiest are very active and far from debauched. What is unhealthy is not the effect of wealth on the particular individuals who hold it, but use of the category "wealth," by both rich and poor, as the basic means of making judgments of human worth. For this practice of making wealth a major standard of value, modern Western civilization has been roundly condemned by a series of critics who have not opposed the existence of material well-being, but who have rejected the common practice of using distinctions between the degree of well-being various persons enjoy as means of judging the relative worth of those persons. Thus the spiritual power of money is decried. Witness Nietzsche: "money now stands for power, glory, pre-eminence, dignity, and influence ... " (<i>The Dawn of Day</i>, #203, J. M. Kennedy, trans.); " ... what was once done 'for the love of God' is now done for the love of money, i.e. for the love of that which at present affords us the highest feeling of power and a good conscience" (<i>Ibid</i>., #204). Witness also Jacob Burckhardt: "money becomes and remains the greatest measure of things, poverty the greatest vice," in his <i>On History and Historians</i>, Harry Zohn, trans., p. 222.<br/><br/> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A83">A83</div><div class="annotext">IBN KHALDO'N PERCEIVED HOW POVERTY BEGAT VIRTUE •.• (p. 290). While Ortega was preparing <i>The Revolt of the Masses</i> he wrote about Ibn Khaldûn and his philosophy of history; see "Abenjaldun nos revela el secreto: pensamientos sobre Africa menor," 1928, <i>Obras</i> III, pp. 669–687. In <i>The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History</i>, Ibn Khaldûn developed a cyclic theory of history based on the complementary social systems of the nomads and the city dwellers. On the desert a pedagogy of scarcity, a subsistence economy, maintained the elemental vital virtues of the Bedouin; he remained tough, adaptable, courageous, honest, and religious, as well as brutal, uncouth, and uncivilized. In the city a pedagogy of abundance, a luxury economy, inculcated a hedonistic view of life. The urbanite became sensitive and civilized, as well as wily, dishonest, base, and profane. The pleasures of the city always attracted the Bedouin; and once the urbanite's moral decline went too far, the city would not be able to defend itself from the desert dwellers. The Bedouins would take the city over in stages; and slowly the city would urbanize its barbarian masters, and convert them from their elemental virtues. Eventually, these new city dynasties would fall before the pressures of another wave of nomadic hordes. See <i>The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History</i>, Franz Rosenthal, trans., especially Vol. 1, pp. 71–86, 249–310, Vol. II, pp. 117–137. Ibn Khaldûn's system was quite similar to Ortega's except that the North African's pedagogy of scarcity and pedagogy of abundance were in effect at the same time but in different places (the desert and the city), whereas Ortega's operated in the same place (Europe) but at different times (nineteenth century and twentieth century). The main difference between the two was that Ibn Khaldûn's cycle was closed, whereas Ortega saw a way to break his.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A83">A83</div><div class="annotext">IBN KHALDO'N PERCEIVED HOW POVERTY BEGAT VIRTUE •.• (p. 290). While Ortega was preparing <i>The Revolt of the Masses</i> he wrote about Ibn Khaldûn and his philosophy of history; see "Abenjaldun nos revela el secreto: pensamientos sobre Africa menor," 1928, <i>Obras</i> III, pp. 669–687. In <i>The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History</i>, Ibn Khaldûn developed a cyclic theory of history based on the complementary social systems of the nomads and the city dwellers. On the desert a pedagogy of scarcity, a subsistence economy, maintained the elemental vital virtues of the Bedouin; he remained tough, adaptable, courageous, honest, and religious, as well as brutal, uncouth, and uncivilized. In the city a pedagogy of abundance, a luxury economy, inculcated a hedonistic view of life. The urbanite became sensitive and civilized, as well as wily, dishonest, base, and profane. The pleasures of the city always attracted the Bedouin; and once the urbanite's moral decline went too far, the city would not be able to defend itself from the desert dwellers. The Bedouins would take the city over in stages; and slowly the city would urbanize its barbarian masters, and convert them from their elemental virtues. Eventually, these new city dynasties would fall before the pressures of another wave of nomadic hordes. See <i>The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History</i>, Franz Rosenthal, trans., especially Vol. 1, pp. 71–86, 249–310, Vol. II, pp. 117–137. Ibn Khaldûn's system was quite similar to Ortega's except that the North African's pedagogy of scarcity and pedagogy of abundance were in effect at the same time but in different places (the desert and the city), whereas Ortega's operated in the same place (Europe) but at different times (nineteenth century and twentieth century). The main difference between the two was that Ibn Khaldûn's cycle was closed, whereas Ortega saw a way to break his.</div> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter XI — The Critic's Power</h3> | ||
<hr> | <hr> | ||
<div class="anno" ID="A84">A84</div><div class="annotext">HISTORIC DEVELOPMENTS OCCUR AS CRITICS ALTER A PEOPLE'S VIEW OF LlFE (p. 296). An example of this critical power has become manifest on a small scale in recent years: the reluctance of many talented college graduates to consider business careers. This reluctance can be traced back to critical assessments of corporate culture such as <i>The Organization Man</i> by William H. Whyte, Jr. The antipathy for business may turn out to be simply the leading edge of a much deeper shift in aspirations and expectations, one on a par with the Renaissance and Reformation or the democratic revolution.<br/><br/> | <div class="anno" ID="A84">A84</div><div class="annotext">HISTORIC DEVELOPMENTS OCCUR AS CRITICS ALTER A PEOPLE'S VIEW OF LlFE (p. 296). An example of this critical power has become manifest on a small scale in recent years: the reluctance of many talented college graduates to consider business careers. This reluctance can be traced back to critical assessments of corporate culture such as <i>The Organization Man</i> by William H. Whyte, Jr. The antipathy for business may turn out to be simply the leading edge of a much deeper shift in aspirations and expectations, one on a par with the Renaissance and Reformation or the democratic revolution.<br/><br/> | ||
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Ortega's work was an element in the ongoing effort to define the issues affecting the humane quality of life in this world. This effort, of course, has a rich history. But in the twentieth century, it has become the central concern in a great number of works, some good, some bad, and each with its unique bent. Among those pertinent to reading Ortega, I would include the following: Albert Camus, <i>L'Homme revolté</i>, 1957, as well as most of his other writings; M. Merleau-Ponty, <i>Sens et non-sens</i>, Cinquième édition, 1965; Jacques Maritain, <i>Humanisme integral</i>, Nouvelle édition, 1936; Karl Jaspers, <i>Man in the Modern Age</i>, Eden and Cedar Paul, trans., 1931, <i>Philosophy and the World</i>, 1963, and <i>The Future of Mankind</i>, E. B. Ashton, trans., 1961; Nicolas Berdyaev, <i>The Destiny of Man</i>, Natalie Duddington, trans., 1960; and so on. From such studies—and many more might be listed—agreement about the quality of life is not to be expected; rather what is happening is that the issues are being sharpened, our awareness of the connection between seemingly separate concerns is building up, and out of this awareness new issues for concerted action may emerge.</div> | Ortega's work was an element in the ongoing effort to define the issues affecting the humane quality of life in this world. This effort, of course, has a rich history. But in the twentieth century, it has become the central concern in a great number of works, some good, some bad, and each with its unique bent. Among those pertinent to reading Ortega, I would include the following: Albert Camus, <i>L'Homme revolté</i>, 1957, as well as most of his other writings; M. Merleau-Ponty, <i>Sens et non-sens</i>, Cinquième édition, 1965; Jacques Maritain, <i>Humanisme integral</i>, Nouvelle édition, 1936; Karl Jaspers, <i>Man in the Modern Age</i>, Eden and Cedar Paul, trans., 1931, <i>Philosophy and the World</i>, 1963, and <i>The Future of Mankind</i>, E. B. Ashton, trans., 1961; Nicolas Berdyaev, <i>The Destiny of Man</i>, Natalie Duddington, trans., 1960; and so on. From such studies—and many more might be listed—agreement about the quality of life is not to be expected; rather what is happening is that the issues are being sharpened, our awareness of the connection between seemingly separate concerns is building up, and out of this awareness new issues for concerted action may emerge.</div> | ||
< | <h3>XII — Towards an Exuberant Europe</h3> | ||
<hr> | <hr> | ||
<div class="anno" ID="A91">A91</div><div class="annotext">THERE IS AN END OF CERTAIN SORTS OF IDEOLOGY (p. 331). Throughout The End of Ideology and especially in the epilogue, "The End of Ideology in the West" (p. 373), Daniel Bell makes points similar to Shklar about the condition of political theory. A difference, however, is that Shklar sought a rebirth of political theory, whereas Bell was content to see it pass, to be replaced by the techniques of administration. Bell's view, which itself can be considered as a widely shared ideology in a rigorous sense of the word, a body of ideas reflecting the interests of a group, in this case the students and practitioners of social, economic, and political technique, is not convincing. In the essays that Bell gathered under the heading "The End of Ideology," he did not really come to grips with the important subject that the phrase announced, and it is regrettable that such a weak book carried such an influential title.<br/><br/> | <div class="anno" ID="A91">A91</div><div class="annotext">THERE IS AN END OF CERTAIN SORTS OF IDEOLOGY (p. 331). Throughout The End of Ideology and especially in the epilogue, "The End of Ideology in the West" (p. 373), Daniel Bell makes points similar to Shklar about the condition of political theory. A difference, however, is that Shklar sought a rebirth of political theory, whereas Bell was content to see it pass, to be replaced by the techniques of administration. Bell's view, which itself can be considered as a widely shared ideology in a rigorous sense of the word, a body of ideas reflecting the interests of a group, in this case the students and practitioners of social, economic, and political technique, is not convincing. In the essays that Bell gathered under the heading "The End of Ideology," he did not really come to grips with the important subject that the phrase announced, and it is regrettable that such a weak book carried such an influential title.<br/><br/> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A100">A100</div><div class="annotext">YOUTH WAS THE ''CHANTAGE'' (p. 359).Ortega's polemic was against a caricature of youth, depicting it as a period with no duties—those good old college days, the best ones of your life. Consequently, in "Juventud," 1927, <i>Obras</i> Ill, pp. 463–471, Ortega was more favorable to the youth of his time, but he reminded his readers that youthfulness was an obligation to set one's course for maturity. See also En torno a Galileo, 1933, <i>Obras</i> V, pp. 46–50, for more on the missions of youth, maturity, and old age. At the end of "Pasado y porvenir para el hombre actual," 1962, <i>Obras</i> IX, p. 663, Ortega made a dramatic appeal to youth, but it was an appeal that threw great obligations on the young. According to the stages of life Ortega gave in En torno a Galileo the mature man had to contend against those both younger and older than himself in order to realize his aspirations in the world. The old man, having attempted the active fulfillment of his destiny, would instead try to incite the young to define their destinies in view of the problems that the aged had found to be important. Curiously, the difference between somewhat skeptical attitudes toward youth in The Revolt of the Masses and the very enthusiastic attitude in "The Past and Future of Present Man" may be accounted for by Ortega's own transition from maturity to old age. In keeping with his own description of the stages of life, at 45 Ortega was skeptical and at 68 he was enthusiastic. Who says that Ortega was not systematic?</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A100">A100</div><div class="annotext">YOUTH WAS THE ''CHANTAGE'' (p. 359).Ortega's polemic was against a caricature of youth, depicting it as a period with no duties—those good old college days, the best ones of your life. Consequently, in "Juventud," 1927, <i>Obras</i> Ill, pp. 463–471, Ortega was more favorable to the youth of his time, but he reminded his readers that youthfulness was an obligation to set one's course for maturity. See also En torno a Galileo, 1933, <i>Obras</i> V, pp. 46–50, for more on the missions of youth, maturity, and old age. At the end of "Pasado y porvenir para el hombre actual," 1962, <i>Obras</i> IX, p. 663, Ortega made a dramatic appeal to youth, but it was an appeal that threw great obligations on the young. According to the stages of life Ortega gave in En torno a Galileo the mature man had to contend against those both younger and older than himself in order to realize his aspirations in the world. The old man, having attempted the active fulfillment of his destiny, would instead try to incite the young to define their destinies in view of the problems that the aged had found to be important. Curiously, the difference between somewhat skeptical attitudes toward youth in The Revolt of the Masses and the very enthusiastic attitude in "The Past and Future of Present Man" may be accounted for by Ortega's own transition from maturity to old age. In keeping with his own description of the stages of life, at 45 Ortega was skeptical and at 68 he was enthusiastic. Who says that Ortega was not systematic?</div> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter XIII — The Reform of Technique</h3> | ||
<hr> | <hr> | ||
<div class="anno" ID="A101">A101</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA SPOKE OF AN INSUFFICIENCY IN EUROPEAN CULTURE (p. 364). European writers have been less moved than American and English writers by the development of anthropology to absorb the traditional, pedagogical conception of culture into a scientific one. Thus, whereas Matthew Arnold's <i>Culture and Anarchy</i> is good background for studying Ortega's position, Raymond Williams' <i>Culture and Society</i> and T. S. Eliot's <i>Notes Towards the Definition of Culture</i> are not particularly useful. The German conception of culture is fundamental to understanding Ortega. In <i>Force and Freedom</i> Jacob Burckhardt pointed out some of the public functions of culture in this sense. For the development and use of the idea by some of Ortega's contemporaries, see Georg Simmel <i>The Conflict in Modern Culture and Other Essays</i>, K. Peter Etzkorn, trans.; Max Scheler, <i>Man's Place in Nature</i>, Hans Meyerhoft trans., and <i>Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens</i> in Scheler, <i>Gesammelte Werke</i>, Vol. 8; and Eduard Spranger, <i>Cultura y educación</i>. Two historical works are particularly useful: Bruno Snell, <i>The Discovery of the Mind</i>, and Werner Jaeger, <i>Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture</i>, Gilbert Highet, trans.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A101">A101</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA SPOKE OF AN INSUFFICIENCY IN EUROPEAN CULTURE (p. 364). European writers have been less moved than American and English writers by the development of anthropology to absorb the traditional, pedagogical conception of culture into a scientific one. Thus, whereas Matthew Arnold's <i>Culture and Anarchy</i> is good background for studying Ortega's position, Raymond Williams' <i>Culture and Society</i> and T. S. Eliot's <i>Notes Towards the Definition of Culture</i> are not particularly useful. The German conception of culture is fundamental to understanding Ortega. In <i>Force and Freedom</i> Jacob Burckhardt pointed out some of the public functions of culture in this sense. For the development and use of the idea by some of Ortega's contemporaries, see Georg Simmel <i>The Conflict in Modern Culture and Other Essays</i>, K. Peter Etzkorn, trans.; Max Scheler, <i>Man's Place in Nature</i>, Hans Meyerhoft trans., and <i>Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens</i> in Scheler, <i>Gesammelte Werke</i>, Vol. 8; and Eduard Spranger, <i>Cultura y educación</i>. Two historical works are particularly useful: Bruno Snell, <i>The Discovery of the Mind</i>, and Werner Jaeger, <i>Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture</i>, Gilbert Highet, trans.</div> | ||
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<div class="anno" ID="A108">A108</div><div class="annotext">PRACTICAL PLANNERS WILL DISLIKE ORTEGA'S CONCEPTION OF TECHNOLOGY (p. 393). Ortega will fall under the heading of the apocalyptic rebels that Daniel Bell sees as one pole of the contemporary academic view of the post-industrial world, for Ortega was willing to see that world fall apart in a rather profound social transformation based on an ineluctable transvaluation of values. See Bell's "The Scholar Cornered: About The Reforming of General Education," <i>The American Scholar</i>, Summer 1968, pp. 401–6. For the planners' views of such issues see <i>Toward the Year 2000</i>, <i>Daedalus</i>, Summer 1967. The complacency of the practical outlook on technology and related problems is well criticized by John McDermott, "Technology: The Opiate of the Intellectuals," The <i>New York Review of Books</i>, July 31, 1969. The complacency McDermott castigates is quintessentially exemplified by Irving Kristol, "American Intellectuals and Foreign Policy," <i>Foreign Affairs</i>, July 1967.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A108">A108</div><div class="annotext">PRACTICAL PLANNERS WILL DISLIKE ORTEGA'S CONCEPTION OF TECHNOLOGY (p. 393). Ortega will fall under the heading of the apocalyptic rebels that Daniel Bell sees as one pole of the contemporary academic view of the post-industrial world, for Ortega was willing to see that world fall apart in a rather profound social transformation based on an ineluctable transvaluation of values. See Bell's "The Scholar Cornered: About The Reforming of General Education," <i>The American Scholar</i>, Summer 1968, pp. 401–6. For the planners' views of such issues see <i>Toward the Year 2000</i>, <i>Daedalus</i>, Summer 1967. The complacency of the practical outlook on technology and related problems is well criticized by John McDermott, "Technology: The Opiate of the Intellectuals," The <i>New York Review of Books</i>, July 31, 1969. The complacency McDermott castigates is quintessentially exemplified by Irving Kristol, "American Intellectuals and Foreign Policy," <i>Foreign Affairs</i>, July 1967.</div> | ||
< | <h3>XIV — The Reform of Reason</h3> | ||
<hr> | <hr> | ||
<div class="anno" ID="A109">A109</div><div class="annotext">VICO AND THE GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN (p. 399). Recently an important contribution to the understanding of Vice's place in the history of thought has been made through the substantial volume <i>Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium</i>, edited by Giorgio Tagliacozzo. For Vico's works in English, see <i>The New Science of Giambattista Vico</i>, Thomas G. Bergin and Max H. Fisch, trans., and <i>On the Study Methods of Our Time</i>, Elio Gianturco, trans. In <i>Immagine e parola nella formazione dell'uomo</i>, M. T. Gentile indicates the pattern for a reinterpretation of the history of educational theory that assigns a very important place to Vico.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A109">A109</div><div class="annotext">VICO AND THE GEISTESWISSENSCHAFTEN (p. 399). Recently an important contribution to the understanding of Vice's place in the history of thought has been made through the substantial volume <i>Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium</i>, edited by Giorgio Tagliacozzo. For Vico's works in English, see <i>The New Science of Giambattista Vico</i>, Thomas G. Bergin and Max H. Fisch, trans., and <i>On the Study Methods of Our Time</i>, Elio Gianturco, trans. In <i>Immagine e parola nella formazione dell'uomo</i>, M. T. Gentile indicates the pattern for a reinterpretation of the history of educational theory that assigns a very important place to Vico.</div> | ||
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mere fiction ....</div> | mere fiction ....</div> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter XV — The Dawn of Historic Reason</h3> | ||
<hr> | <hr> | ||
<div class="anno" ID="A114">A114</div><div class="annotext">WERE THIS5 BOOK ON THE REFORM OF REASON, NUMEROUS CONTRIBUTORS WOULD HAVE TO BE DISCUSSED IN ADDITION TO ORTEGA (p. 424).Speculative philosophy faces forward; it is not, as Alfred North Whitehead would have had us believe, a series of footnotes to Plato, or it does not at least arise in this retrospective manner. On the contrary, speculative philosophy is our effort to solve in the future certain problems we perceive in the present; and only when we are searching for a day yet to come can we usefully write footnotes to Plato, for in this way they gain a prospective significance. Present problems and future hopes are the foundation of all historical valuations: history is the teleological science <i>par excellence</i>; and anachronism is an historical sin, not because it violates the past, but because it diminishes our sense of the future. Since history is a teleological study, historians often overturn the valuations of their predecessors, and historical figures are usually most comprehensible when they are seen, not as the genetic product of their past, but as the teleological creation of their future. The continuity of culture lies, not in the mysterious power of great works to mold their progeny in the pattern of the past, but in the magnificent capacity of great men to appropriate their patrimony in the work of the future. Since we have by no means finished appropriating the patrimony of the last hundred years, the intellectual history of this period is still indeterminate.<br/><br/> | <div class="anno" ID="A114">A114</div><div class="annotext">WERE THIS5 BOOK ON THE REFORM OF REASON, NUMEROUS CONTRIBUTORS WOULD HAVE TO BE DISCUSSED IN ADDITION TO ORTEGA (p. 424).Speculative philosophy faces forward; it is not, as Alfred North Whitehead would have had us believe, a series of footnotes to Plato, or it does not at least arise in this retrospective manner. On the contrary, speculative philosophy is our effort to solve in the future certain problems we perceive in the present; and only when we are searching for a day yet to come can we usefully write footnotes to Plato, for in this way they gain a prospective significance. Present problems and future hopes are the foundation of all historical valuations: history is the teleological science <i>par excellence</i>; and anachronism is an historical sin, not because it violates the past, but because it diminishes our sense of the future. Since history is a teleological study, historians often overturn the valuations of their predecessors, and historical figures are usually most comprehensible when they are seen, not as the genetic product of their past, but as the teleological creation of their future. The continuity of culture lies, not in the mysterious power of great works to mold their progeny in the pattern of the past, but in the magnificent capacity of great men to appropriate their patrimony in the work of the future. Since we have by no means finished appropriating the patrimony of the last hundred years, the intellectual history of this period is still indeterminate.<br/><br/> | ||
Line 457: | Line 457: | ||
<div class="anno" ID="A115">A115</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA'S ATTEMPT AT A NEW ONTOLOGY (p. 424).Most of the important sources are mentioned in the notes. It may be helpful, however, to list here the major sources for this effort along with their approximate dates of composition: <i>¿Qué es filosofía?</i> (1929), "¿Qué es el conocimiento?" (1931), <i>Unas lecciones de metafísica</i> (1932), En torno a Galileo (1933), "Guillermo Dilthey y Ia idea de Ia vida" (1934), "Historia como sistema" (1936), <i>Ideas y creencias</i> (1940), "Apuntes sobre el pensamiento" (1941), "Prólogo a veinte años de caza mayor, del Conde de Yerbes" (1942), Origen y epílogo de Ia filosofía (1943), "Commentario al Banquete de Platón" (1946), and <i>La idea de principia en Leibniz y la evolución de Ia teoría deductiva</i> (1947).<br/><br/></div> | <div class="anno" ID="A115">A115</div><div class="annotext">ORTEGA'S ATTEMPT AT A NEW ONTOLOGY (p. 424).Most of the important sources are mentioned in the notes. It may be helpful, however, to list here the major sources for this effort along with their approximate dates of composition: <i>¿Qué es filosofía?</i> (1929), "¿Qué es el conocimiento?" (1931), <i>Unas lecciones de metafísica</i> (1932), En torno a Galileo (1933), "Guillermo Dilthey y Ia idea de Ia vida" (1934), "Historia como sistema" (1936), <i>Ideas y creencias</i> (1940), "Apuntes sobre el pensamiento" (1941), "Prólogo a veinte años de caza mayor, del Conde de Yerbes" (1942), Origen y epílogo de Ia filosofía (1943), "Commentario al Banquete de Platón" (1946), and <i>La idea de principia en Leibniz y la evolución de Ia teoría deductiva</i> (1947).<br/><br/></div> | ||
< | <h3>Chapter XVI — On the Past and Future of Present Man</h3> | ||
<hr> | <hr> | ||
<div class="anno" ID="A116">A116</div><div class="annotext">LITERATURE ON THE REFORM OF THE CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS (p. 472). This literature is immense and can be merely introduced here. In keeping with the analysis below, it can be divided into two kinds: prescriptive and protreptic. Representative examples of the prescriptive are: F. R. Leavis, <i>Education and the University: A Sketch for an 'English School'</i>; the Committee on the Objectives of a General Education in a Free Society, <i>General Education in a Free Society</i>; Howard Mumford Jones,<i> Education and World Tragedy</i>; The American Assembly, <i>The Federal Government and Higher Education</i>; Charles G. Dobbins, ed., <i>Higher Education and the Federal Government</i>; The Commission on the Humanities, <i>Report of the Commission on the Humanities</i>; James Bryant Conant, <i>The Education of American Teachers</i>; and Daniel Bell, <i>The Reforming of General Education</i>. Leading examples of the protreptic group are, besides Ortega's <i>Misión de la universidad</i>, Robert Maynard Hutchins, <i>The Higher Learning in America</i>; Mark van Doren, <i>Liberal Education</i>; Karl Jaspers, <i>The Idea of the University</i>; Jacques Barzun, <i>Teacher in America</i>; Jacques Barzun, <i>The House of intellect</i>; C. P. Snow, <i>The Two Cultures</i>; and James A. Perkins, <i>The University in Transition</i>. These groups, of course, reflect similarities of method, not of aim.</div> | <div class="anno" ID="A116">A116</div><div class="annotext">LITERATURE ON THE REFORM OF THE CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS (p. 472). This literature is immense and can be merely introduced here. In keeping with the analysis below, it can be divided into two kinds: prescriptive and protreptic. Representative examples of the prescriptive are: F. R. Leavis, <i>Education and the University: A Sketch for an 'English School'</i>; the Committee on the Objectives of a General Education in a Free Society, <i>General Education in a Free Society</i>; Howard Mumford Jones,<i> Education and World Tragedy</i>; The American Assembly, <i>The Federal Government and Higher Education</i>; Charles G. Dobbins, ed., <i>Higher Education and the Federal Government</i>; The Commission on the Humanities, <i>Report of the Commission on the Humanities</i>; James Bryant Conant, <i>The Education of American Teachers</i>; and Daniel Bell, <i>The Reforming of General Education</i>. Leading examples of the protreptic group are, besides Ortega's <i>Misión de la universidad</i>, Robert Maynard Hutchins, <i>The Higher Learning in America</i>; Mark van Doren, <i>Liberal Education</i>; Karl Jaspers, <i>The Idea of the University</i>; Jacques Barzun, <i>Teacher in America</i>; Jacques Barzun, <i>The House of intellect</i>; C. P. Snow, <i>The Two Cultures</i>; and James A. Perkins, <i>The University in Transition</i>. These groups, of course, reflect similarities of method, not of aim.</div> |
Latest revision as of 12:13, 26 November 2024
Bibliographic Annotations
Chapter I — Aspirations
The intellectual history of the time is very important. For the condition of Spanish thought in the first decade of the twentieth century see Julián Marías, Ortega—I: Circunstancia y vocación, pp. 33-72, 113-173. Perhaps the fullest and best study of the effect of 1898 on Spanish cultural life is España como problema by Pedro Laín Entralgo. Another shorter, excellent work, which did much to give a scholarly definition to the "generation of 98," is by Hans Jeschke, Die Generation von 1898 in Spanien, in Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, 1934.
Obviously, my conception of classical political theory has been deeply influenced by Plato, primarily by the Republic and Gorgias, and secondarily by Protagoras, Meno, Apology, and Crito. I have been initiated into a study of Plato by Martin S. Dworkin through many long conversations and through his courses at Teachers College, Columbia University, on "'Aesthetics and Education"' and "Education, Ideology, and Mass Communication." The conception of Plato he nurtured in me has been reinforced by Eric A. Havelock's Preface to Plato and by Werner Jaeger's Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, 3 vols., Gilbert Highet, trans.
It is worthwhile to note the similarity of Ortega's conception of a civic ideal as something that points to the infinite and Edmund Husserl's conception of the telos of European man as an infinite, rather than a finite goal, "Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man," in Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, Quentin Lauer, trans., pp. 157-8.
For Ortega's expectation of a most historic era, see especially En torno a Galileo, 1933, Obras V, pp. 69-80, which gives the fullest development of his contention that Western history was going through a crisis. Ortega's essay "El ocaso de las revoluciones," 1923, Obras III, pp. 207-230, in which he argued that violent, rapid social revolutions were no longer possible, should not be taken to mean that historical change would stop.
American law proceeds on the basis of a practical ethic: One may do more or less as one pleases provided the concrete consequences of an act do not infringe on the rights of others. This procedure is well and good, for positive law must deal with concrete instances, which cannot be ordered on the basis of universal principles. This point is basic in the idealistic tradition, a fact that is often overlooked by critics of idealism. (See Plato, Statesman, 294 f., Republic, IV, 425 f., and Laws, 788, 807.) However, besides positive law, with its courts and police power, there is a moral or spiritual law, which is enforced by criticism, exhortation, self-discipline, and the real, but mysterious, nemesis. Whereas the weakness of Continental rationalism has been a tendency to attempt to legislate the moral law into a positive law, the failing of Anglo-American pragmatism has been a tendency to judge the moral law on the basis of its practical positive ethic, when in fact a spiritual, educational ethic has been in order. Thus many contemporary rhetoricians do not understand criticism of their persuasive practices. The criticism is pitched on the spiritual level and it objects to the rhetoricians' debasement of the standards of truth, beauty, and propriety. The rhetoricians understand the criticism on the practical level and quickly wrap themselves in the Constitutional defenses against those who would deprive them of their freedom of speech. For instance, note how, in Edward G. Bernays, ed., The Engineering of Consent, especially p. 8, a problem of educational ethics is reduced to one of practical ethics: surely the critics of public relations would not want to do away with our rights to speak freely? But the objection was not against the practice, but against the principle implicit in practice. The critics are really asking the PR men to decide freely to speak in a different manner. Bernays does not entertain this possibility in his breathless justification of the persuader's rights. A practical ethic passes on whether a concrete act infringes on the rights of others; an educational ethic examines the general rule implied by a concrete act. To be sure, the categorical imperative cannot replace common sense as the guide to our practical actions, nor one may add, was it meant to do so. The categorical imperative is, however, the formal principle of educational ethics. In our concrete activities we not only accomplish specific acts, but we also make existential affirmations of general principles, even though we may not be aware of it. Now, we should act so that the principles thus affirmed are ones that we would be willing to uphold as general rules of moral conduct, of aesthetic creation, and of intellectual activity. Thus, we should conduct our activities on the practical basis of common sense within the spiritual limits of a categorical imperative. Practical matters are not divorced from questions of principle any more than are real questions of principle independent of practice. Thus, in The Vocation of the Scholar, Fichte put the matter this way: "I may here ... express the fundamental principle of morality in the following formula:—'So act that thou may est look upon the dictate of thy will as an eternal law to thyself'." William Smith, trans., The Popular [sic!] Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1889, p. 152.
Chapter II — Preparations
The effectiveness of this critique of systematic philosophy has permitted some thinkers to ignore the real alternatives. Here let us mention only John Dewey's The Quest for Certainty, 1929, for it lacks some of the partisan drawbacks of the wartime books, but is, nevertheless, a systematic critique of the systematic effort to construct a prescriptive conception of reason. Dewey made the same error as Russell did later and as many anti-systematic philosophers do: he imputed a prescriptive theory of knowledge to thinkers in the grand tradition who expounded a prescriptive theory of reason. To prescribe how reasoning should proceed if it is to be cogent is not to prescribe a set of true beliefs that all must mouth. Furthermore, it is one thing to go along with Dewey and to give up prescriptive standards with respect to knowledge, standards that purport to lay down eternal certainties forever valid for all, but it is quite another thing to give up prescriptive standards with respect to reason, standards that describe the mental steps by means of which we can think about the phenomena we perceive with reasonable certitude. The irony of Dewey's critique is that most of his own speculation is a good example of "the quest for certainty" reasonably understood.
Chapter III — Programs
WRITING ABOUT SPANISH REFORM (p. 64). There is need for a a study comparing the view of Spanish reform held by the two critics. Paulino Garagorri's excellent work, Unamuno, Ortega, Zubiri en la filosofía Española, is confined, as the title suggests, to a comparison of philosophical views. A study of their theories of reform should be encouraged by the recent appearance of Ortega's political writings in Obras X and XI and of the definitive edition of Unamuno's works. Such a study would stretch from the 1890's up to 1936 and might point out similarities and dissimilarities between the reactions of the two to events. I have made a much less ambitious comparison, confining myself to the period up to World War I for the most part, comparing views on more general political. economic, and social matters, not particular events. Unamuno seems to me to have dealt with these matters more explicitly, but with less commitment.
Both favored an effective political system responsive to the popular will but not necessarily following familiar parliamentary procedures. Such a position was an integral element in most views of Spanish reform because one very important aspect of Spain's difficulties was that its population had never been integrated into a single body of citizens all of whom had an equal stake in the community. With numerous elements of the people effectively excluded from participation in national life, democratic machinery frequently served very undemocratic ends. In 1898, Unamuno sounded these themes in "Architectura social," OC XI, pp. 53–9 i "Mas sociabilidad," OC XI, pp. 60–7; and "Renovación," Obras I. pp. 686–8. (The abbreviation OC is used for the 1958 edition of Unamuno's Obras completas published by Afrodisio Aguado; the abbreviation Obras is used for the Definitive Edition of Unamuno's Obras completas published by Escelicer, beginning in 1966. For some essays it has been necessary to use the earlier edition, as the later one is not yet complete.) Some of Unamuno's clearest statements on the form of politics he would like are in "La civilización es civismo," 1907, Obras III, pp. 303–7, and "Glosas a la vida: sobre la opinión pública," 1904, Obras III, pp. 308–310. In the latter article Unamuno contended that the great problem in Spanish politics was the difficulty of building up an effective system of public opinion about public affairs in the Spanish populace; and he was not sanguine because with such a large portion of the populace composed of illiterates and semi-literates, the spread of public opinion was greatly impeded. In the former article Unamuno condemned the tendency in Spanish politics to over-represent rural areas because the rural populace could not then hold its representatives accountable; popular government turned into an irresponsible government. Urbanization and the mechanization of farming were conditions of the reform of Spanish politics, he suggested. For somewhat later views along parallel lines, see "Los profesionales de la política," 1914, OC IX, pp. 797–801, and "Hacer política," 1915, OC IX, pp. 843–7.
Ortega's views of political reform will be treated at some length in the text. His major pre-World War I statement on politics is Vieja y nueva política, 1914, Obras I, pp. 265–307. Earlier expressions may be found throughout Obras X, passim; especially in "De re política," El Imparcial, July 31, 1908, Obras X, pp. 62–7; "Pablo Iglesias," El Imparcial, May 13, 1910, Obras X, pp. 139–142; "Sencillas reflexiones," El Imparcial, August 22 and September 6, 1910, Obras X, pp. 162–170; "De puerta de tierra: la opinión pública," El Imparcial, September 19 and 20, 1912, Obras X, pp. 186–194; "Ni legislar ni gobernar," El Imparcial, September 25, 1912, Obras X, pp. 195–199; and "De un estorbo nacional," El Imparcial, April 22, 1913, and El País, May 12, 1913, Obras X, pp. 232–7, 241–5.
Both Unamuno and Ortega desired a stronger economy and a more egalitarian distribution of the national product. This was a fundamental concern for anyone aiming at Spanish reform. As early as 1896 Unamuno came out strongly in "La dignidad humana," Obras I, pp. 971–7, for a more humane, egalitarian use of the economic product. In this essay Unamuno spoke out against nineteenth-century liberalism in both economics and culture, for laissez-faire individualism expended energies destructively in efforts by each to differentiate himself from others. The proper measure of the value of things material and spiritual was not the degree to which they differentiated one man from the others, but the degree to which they facilitated each man's effort to fulfill his human dignity. Such views lead to the twentieth-century liberalism of the welfare state. For other essays by Unamuno explaining his economic views, see "Doctores en industria, 1898, Obras III, pp. 692–7; "La conquista de las mesetas," 1899, Obras III, pp. 702–711; "Hay que crear necesidades," 1899, OC XI, pp. 71–4; "La dehesa Española, 1899, OC XI, pp. 75–82; "Examen de conciencia," 1900, OC XI, pp. 95–101; "Pan y letras: el campo y la ciudad," 1908, OC XI, pp. 163–7; and "Campaña agraria," 1914, OC XI, pp. 300–313.
In a letter to Ortega, Salamanca, November 21, 1912, in Revista de Occidente, October 1964, p. 20, Unamuno contended that for liberalism to be relevant to twentieth-century Spain, it had "to make itself democratic and socialist." This was a position Ortega had himself been developing at some length. Ortega's development of this argument can be followed in the following: "'La reforma liberal," Faro, February 23, 1908, Obras X, pp. 31–8; "El recato socialista," El Imparcial, September 2, 1908, Obras X, pp. 79–81; "La ciencia y la religión como problemas políticos," lecture in the Madrid Casa del Partido Socialista, December 2, 1909, Obras X, pp. 119–125; "Pablo Iglesias," El Imparcial, May 13, 1910, Obras X, pp. 139–142; "La herencia viva de Costa," El Imparcial February 20, 1911, Obras X, pp. 171–5; "Miscelánea socialista," El Imparcial, September 30, and October 6, 1912, Obras X, pp. 200–206; and so on.
Perhaps the essay that best shows the link between Unamuno's economic and educational views is "La pirámide nacional," 1898, Obras III, pp. 689–691. In it Unamuno contended that as the production of goods for popular consumption was the basis of the strength of a national economy, so the creation of culture for popular consumption was the foundation of a nation's intellectual strength. Spain needed a great extension of popular education, but it lacked the teachers, Unamuno observed. In the face of this situation, it was important that many teachers on the higher levels convert themselves into primary school instructors. This emphasis on the broadening of popular education went along with another emphasis, one on the qualitative improvement of higher education, a concern that both Unamuno and Ortega were intimately involved in. At first the stress on wider popular education and more thorough higher education may not seem to go together. Unamuno put the theory well in "Los escritores y el pueblo," 1908, Obras III, pp. 294–8. It was not essential that high culture be popular if it was to have a public effect; to do so it needed to be inwardly virile, robust, powerful. A literate populace would not directly consume high culture, but they would contribute to it and be affected by it indirectly if that culture were powerful, not weak and diluted. Thus the best condition of a nation's culture would be achieved with very extensive popular education and very rigorous higher education.
Unamuno produced many essays on education. A good study of his work as a leader in the university is Miguel de Unamuno, Universitaire by Yvonne Turin. In "La educación, prólogo a la obra de Bunge," 1902, Obras I, pp. 1021–2, Unamuno made a distinction, similar to that which was important for Ortega, between the education of the person, "pedagogía," and the education of the community, "demagogía" in the Greek sense or "demopedía." Because Unamuno used his essays to conduct demopedía, a number of those concerning the preservation of Spanish virtues and dealing with the problem of separatism in the provinces were about education. This holds especially for Unamuno's views of the catalán question, for he primarily feared linguistic localism as a threat to the full development of Spanish culture. In addition, however, to his many acts of demopedía, Unamuno published much on pedagogy per se. The long essay, "De la enseñanza superior en España," 1899, Obras I, pp. 734–772, is an excellent introduction to the problems of higher education in Spain. In "Los cerebrales," 1899, OC XI, pp. 89–94, and "Cientificismo," 1907, Obras III, pp. 352–7, he raised questions about the unreserved pursuit of pure intellect. In "Recelosidad y pedantaría," 1912, OC XI, pp. 197–200; "No hipotequeís el pensamiento," 1913, OC XI, pp. 251–3; "Arabesco pedagógico" and "Otro arabesco pedagógico," 1913, OC XI, pp. 290–300; and "¿Barbados? ¿Pedantes?", 1914, OC XI, pp. 806–810 he entered into polemics of the time for and against trends that were attracting attention.
Ortega also devoted much attention to both popular and higher education, agreeing that the former should be greatly extended and the latter substantially improved. For Ortega the most objectionable feature in popular education was the split between schools for the rich and schools for the poor, a phenomenon that he decried in "Reforma del carácter, no reforma de costumbres," El Imparcial, October 5, 1907, Obras X, p. 20; "La pedagogía social como programa política," 1910, Obras I, p. 518; and elsewhere. Ortega's educational views are discussed throughout the text; representative sources for this period include "Catecismo para la lectura de una carta," El Imparcial, February 10, 1910, Obras X, pp. 133–8; "Diputado par la cultura," El Imparcial, May 28, 1910, Obras X, pp. 143–6; "Sobre los estudios clásicos," 1907, "Pidiendo una biblioteca," 1908, and "Asamblea para el progreso de las ciencias," 1908, Obras I, pp. 63–7, 81–5, and 99–110.
Both Unamuno and Ortega sought to preserve Spanish virtues and to avoid materialism in Spain. This point is crucial for Unamuno. Well before 1898 he had developed it at length in En torno al casticismo, 1895, Obras I, pp. 775–869. In 1898, in "De regeneración: en lo justo," Obras III, pp. 700–I, Unamuno put very well the task of the enterprise that would occupy Spanish critics for many years: "Today, the first duty of the directing classes in Spain is, more than teaching the pueblo physics, chemistry, or English, to study it, à fond and with love, drawing from it its unconscious ideal of life, the spirit that moves it through its passage on earth, comprehending its regional differences in order to conserve them by integrating them, and studying the prospects of capital and labor." In "Afrancesamiento," 1899, OC XI, pp. 68–70, Unamuno spoke out against the inflated copying of French mores at the sacrifice of the Spanish; in "De patriotismo," 1899, Obras III, pp. 712–4; "El pueblo español," 1902, Obras III, pp. 715–7; "El individualismo español," 1903, Obras I, pp. 1085–1094; and "Sobre la independencia patria," 1908, Obras III, pp. 730–2, he analyzed aspects of Spanish character he believed essential to Spain's future; and in "Escepticismo fanático," 1908, Obras III, pp. 358–362, and "Materialismo popular," 1909, Obras III, pp. 363–7, he warned against intellectual outlooks that were easily adopted yet that were threats to Spanish culture. In "La supesta anormalidad española," 1913, Obras III, pp. 733–7, Unamuno criticized Ortega for calling Spain an abnormal nation.
Despite this criticism, Ortega's views were not far from Unamuno's, as I explain in the text. For Ortega's concern for Spanish character, see "Reforma del carácter, no reforma de costumbres," El Imparcial, October 5, 1907, Obras X, pp. 17–21; "La cuestión moral," El Imparcial, August 22, 1908, Obras X, pp. 73–8; "El lirismo en Montjuich," El Imparcial, August 10, 1910, Obras X, pp. 159–161; and "Moralejas," 1906, "La epopeya castellana," 1910, "Nuevo libro de Azorín," 1912, and "AI margen del libro Los Iberos," 1909, Obras I, pp. 44–57, 146, 239–244, and 494–8.
On the question of separatism, both Unamuno and Ortega saw the source of the problem to be, not in regional malevolence, but in the weakness of the capital. Both would solve the problem by recognizing authentic diversities and making Castile more worthy of pre-eminence. Unamuno was deeply concerned by the problem. In contrast to Ortega, Unamuno, a Basque, had to face the problem in his inner character. Unamuno clearly gave his allegiance to Castilian, and owing to this, he was in some ways less sympathetic to linguistic separatism than Ortega. Thus, in "La cuestión del vascuence," 1902, Obras I, pp. 1043–1062, Unamuno was not sympathetic with those who wanted to preserve Basque as a living language at any price. Different aspects of Unamuno's view of the whole question can be found in "La crisis del patriotismo," 1896, Obras I, pp. 978–984; "Injustia inútil," 1899, OC XI, pp. 83–5; "La reforma del castellano," 1901, OC III, pp. 273–280; "Contra el purismo," 1903, Obras I. pp. 1063–1073; "La crisis actuel del patriotismo español," 1905, Obras I, pp. 1286–1298; "Mas sabre la crisis del patriotismo," 1906, Obras III, pp. 865–875; "Sobre el problema catalan," 1908, OC XI, pp. 147–162; "Sabre el regionalismo español," 1915, OC XI, pp. 357–361; "La soledad de la España castellana," 1916, Obras III, pp. 763–7; and "Los solidos y los mestureros," 1917, Obras III, pp. 768–770; and so on.
Unamuno put great store in the cultural value of Castilian Spanish, which he hoped would become a great inclusive, linguistic tool, binding all of Spain and Spanish America together. Ortega put less store on a language as the foundation of a culture; thus he wrote far less about the genius of languages than did Unamuno and he looked on separatism more as a political problem than did Unamuno. Unamuno's linguistic view of the separatist question came out very clearly in his essay "Política y cultura," 1908, Obras III, pp. 299–302. In it Unamuno recognized the political strength and value of Catalán nationalism, but he contended that it was not a strong force culturally, for what little would be gained by resurrecting Catalán would be far outweighed by what would be lost by making Castilian a second language in the Catalán provinces. Since Spanish progress depended primarily on cultural improvement, Unamuno thought that, over all, Catalán nationalism was not a constructive force.
Like Unamuno, Ortega aimed to preserve Castilian preeminence in Spain, and he thought that the main source of separatist sentiment was the weakness of the center. However, Ortega did not think that the cultural strength of a nation should be based on linguistic unity; for Ortega, a nation was more properly an articulation of diversities. Consequently, he was a bit more receptive to Catalán nationalism than Unamuno was. Early views of Ortega's appreciation of diversity within a nation may be found in "Sobre el proceso Rull," Faro, April 12, 1908, Obras X, pp. 47–50; "Diputado por la cultura," El Imparcial, May 25, 1910, Obras X, pp. 143–6; and "Ni Legislar ni gobernar," El Imparcial, September 25, 1912, Obras X, pp. 195–9.
That both Unamuno and Ortega envisaged a cultural commonwealth with Spanish America is clear, not only from what they wrote, but from what they did. Unamuno published a significant portion of his essays in Argentine newspapers and in them he often responded to queries and criticisms made to him by Spanish American correspondents. Furthermore, Unamuno wrote voluminously about Spanish America; see especially La lengua Española en América, Obras IV, pp. 569–703, and Letras de América y otros lecturas," Obras IV, pp. 709–1054. See also, "Sobre la argentinidad," 1910, Obras III, pp. 543–7, and "Algunas consideraciones sabre la literatura Hispano-Americana," 1906, Obras III, pp. 900–924. Ortega had similar involvements. He started writing for La Prensa at least as early as 1913, as a reference by Unamuno (OC, IV, p. 1099) shows. A thorough examination of that paper and La Nación might turn up earlier articles. In "Nueva España contra vieja España," España, February 19, 1915, Obras X, pp. 252–3, Ortega noted that Spain was not respected in Latin America, a sign of the need for Spanish rejuvenation. Soon afterwards he went on a lecture trip to Buenos Aires, the success of which was reported with some pride in España. See: J. M. M. S., "Ortega y Gasset en America," España, March 7, 1917, p. 11.
Thus, conservatives, such as Albert J. Nock in Our Enemy, the State, have drawn on Ortega's work for their criticism of the expansion of American government. Ralph Adams Cram relied heavily on Ortega's writings for his critical analysis of The End of Democracy, pp. 10–1, 24–5, 66, 86–8, 102–4, 112–9, 249–250. Both Nock and Cram quoted passages from The Revolt of the Masses that coincided with their own views without trying to give an analysis of Ortega's complete argument. Francis Stuart Campbell bolstered his very reactionary contentions in The Menace of the Herd, or Procrustes at Large, pp. 18, 35, 92, 100, 105, 330, 337, 340, 344, and 356, with references to Ortega, especially the American compilation called Invertebrate Spain. Norman L. Stamps referred to Ortega's Revolt of the Masses in Why Democracies Fail: A Critical Evaluation of the Causes for Modern Dictatorships, but he reduces Ortega's argument to a paraphrase of Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd. Representing a younger generation of conservatives, William Buckley, Jr., is reported to be writing a book on Ortega; see Ronald Martinetti, "I've Been Reading: Wild Bill Buckley," The Columbia University Forum, Fall 1967, p. 45.
With such friends, it is not surprising that Ortega has made enemies among American enthusiasts of democracy. In Patterns of Anti-Democratic Thought, pp. 96, 106–7, and 132, David Spitz identifies Ortega among the enemy, mainly on the basis of Cram's praise of Ortega in The End of Democracy. In The Revival of Democratic Theory, pp. 41, 85–6, and 144–5, Neal Riemer characterizes Ortega as an opponent of democracy, contending that the doubts Ortega raises about the average man lead logically to an espousal of a paternal, totalitarian dictatorship. In The New Belief in the Common Man, p. 246, Carl J. Friedrich includes Ortega among those who impede democracy by casting excessive doubt on the common man. In The New Democracy and the New Despotism, p. 75, fn. 2, Charles E. Merriam included Ortega among the anti-democrats, but on pp. 203–5, he used Ortega's ideas as an effective aid in analyzing the totalitarian problem. In The Accidental Century, pp. 213–219, 220, 223, 228, 229, Michael Harrington criticizes Ortega as an aristocratic spokesman whose theory of the masses was a reactionary impediment to the development of egalitarian democracy.
Chapter IV — The Pedagogy of Prose
Most of Ortega's explicit statements about dialogue will be quoted below, but these alone do not give a sufficient idea of the importance of dialogue for him. To grasp the full importance of dialogue it is necessary to keep in mind Ortega's perspectivist epistemology as it is explained in El tema de nuestra tiempo, 1923, Obras III, pp. 145–242; his conception of the history of thought as a creative, dialectical development as he explains in "Prólogo a Historia de la filosofía de Emile Bréhier," 1942, Obras VI, pp. 377–412, and Origen y epílogo de la filosofía, 1943, 1960, Obras IX, pp. 349–434; and his sense for the problems of writing and reading as they are explained in "Prólogo a una edición de sus Obras," 1932, Obras VI, pp. 342–354; "Miseria y esplendor de la traducción," 1937, Obras V, pp. 433–452; and "Comentario al Banquete de Platón," 1946, 1961, Obras IX, pp. 751–767.
Chapter V — The Partly Faithful Professor
For Ortega, freedom was an intrinsic component of the process of historical determination, and human thought was central to freedom as an historical reality, for thought was man's free response to his circumstances. Major works pertinent to this matter are "Historia como sistema," 1936, Obras VI, pp. 11-50; "Guillermo Dilthey y la idea de la vida," 1933, Obras VI, pp. 165-214; "Prólogo a Historia de la filosofía de Karl Vorländer," 1922, Obras VI, pp. 292-300; "Prólogo a Historia de la filosofía de Emile Bréhier," 1942, Obras VI, pp. 377-418; En torno a Galileo, 1933, Obras V, pp. 13-164; and Origen y epílogo de la filosofía, 1944, 1953, 1960, Obras IX, pp. 349-434.
Even in classical times the rationale for the circle of studies that became known as the liberal arts was not easy to maintain. Plato made it clear in the Republic that their purpose was not to teach virtue, but to equip men to search for virtue. See especially VI:502–VII:541. Traditionally this has been the basis of the liberal position: rather than assert that the truth will make men free, the liberal recognizes that because a man is free, he must seek the truth. The goal of instruction in the liberal tradition is to make the student independent of his teachers.
Epistle 88 of Seneca's Epistulae Morales, Richard M. Gummere, trans., is of great importance for understanding this pedagogy of the liberal arts. The liberal arts are "useful only insofar as they give the mind a preparation and do not engage it permanently. One should linger upon them only so long as the mind can occupy itself with nothing greater; they are our apprenticeship, not our real work." (88:1) "'We ought not to be learning such things; we should have done with learning them." {88 :2) "'What then,' you say, 'do the liberal studies contribute nothing to our welfare?' Very much in other respects, but nothing at all as regards virtue. For even these arts of which I have spoken, though admittedly of a low grade—depending as they do upon handiwork—contribute greatly toward the equipment of life, but nevertheless have nothing to do with virtue. And if you inquire, 'Why, then, do we educate our children in the liberal studies?' it is not because they can bestow virtue, but because they prepare the soul for the reception of virtue. Just as that 'primary course,' as the ancients called it, in grammar, which gave boys their elementary training, does not teach them the liberal arts, so the liberal arts do not conduct the soul all the way to virtue, but merely set it going in that direction." (88:20) The importance of being able to follow studies without a teacher was subtly implied in Augustine's description of how, even though he did not need to rely on a teacher, he mastered the liberal arts yet derived little from them; Confessions, Bk. IV, Chapter 16. Unless we recognize the virtue of going without a teacher, his statement is absurd. Even more explicit is the Renaissance educator, Battista Guarino, in "Concerning the Order and the Method to be Observed in Teaching." He wrote: "A master who should carry his scholars through the curriculum which I have now laid down may have confidence that he has given them a training which will enable them, not only to carry forward their own reading without assistance, but also to act efficiently as teachers in their turn." W. H. Woodward, trans., in his Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators, p. 172.
This rationale of the liberal arts gives the basis for a revision of our understanding of the old-time collegiate curriculum and of the significance of its demise. As I have pointed out very briefly with Jean McClintock in our essay "Architecture and Pedagogy," The Journal of Aesthetic Education, October 1968, especially pp. 69-71, 75-6, the purpose of the old-time pedagogy was to equip the student as efficiently as possible for self-education. This rationale is well explained in the much maligned, but little comprehended "Yale Report of 1828," in Hofstadter and Smith, eds., American Higher Education, Vol. I, pp. 275-291. The way this curriculum functions is exemplified in Perry Miller's study of Jonathan Edwards, pp. 54-68. As Perry Miller makes obvious, there was very little substantive content in the old college curriculum, despite its ambitious "technologia." Jonathan Edwards was not the only young man who was effectively prepared by a narrow, formal curriculum to be able to get a rich general education by his own devices through the extracurriculum.
In addition to whatever academic value it had; the replacement of this old-time curriculum keyed to the self-education of each student, with an elective system, was a development that clearly served the needs of a growing, paternal, industrial state. The elective system was a system introduced in the name of the students' freedom: each could choose what subjects he would study. At the same time the system was extremely useful in distributing socially beneficial skills. The American educator, Francis Wayland, explained the rationale for this system well in "Thoughts on the Present Collegiate System," 1842, and his "Report to the Corporation of Brown"; see Hofstadter and Smith, eds., American Higher Education, Vol. I, p. 341; Vol. II, pp. 478-487. For these tendencies in the European university, see Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as Educator, pp. 59–62, but whereas Wayland was enthusiastic, Nietzsche was bitterly critical for Nietzsche saw that a specialized education not only disseminated useful skills, but it also made the acquirer rather dependent on that skill, increasing the moral inertia of men in high places. Owing to the paternal idea that an education is to provide a student with a certain set of skills, we have seriously hypostatized and even personified the curriculum. It is a standard assumption in schools of education that a well-designed curriculum has causal power over those who study it, and even friends of the liberal tradition create difficulties for themselves by putting their hope in the curriculum, not the student.
Chapter VI — The People's Pedagogue
The most useful evidence for understanding Ortega's relations with El Imparcial is a rather complete listing of his journalistic articles. Such a list shows rather clearly the following chronology: up until April 22, 1913, with "De un estorbo nacional" Ortega was quite content to write for El Imparcial; "De un estorbo nacional" provoked a break with El Imparcial and Ortega switched to El País, for which he wrote through 1914, a year in which he wrote few newspaper articles undoubtedly because of his preoccupation with the League for Spanish Political Education and Meditaciones del Quijote. From then until his Argentine tour in late 1916, Ortega was content to publish through España and El Espectador. During his joint lecture tour with his Father, a tour trough which he established many contacts with Argentine newspaper publishers and writers, Ortega was probably convinced to give El Imparcial another try, for in the Spring of 1917 Ortega wrote two articles for El Imparcial, first "Bajo el arco en ruina" and two weeks later "El verano, ¿sera tranquilo?"; and finally, in the Fall of 1917 Ortega wrote brief1y for El Día and then, starting in December, he devoted himself to the newly-founded El Sol. From these facts, it is clear that when El Imparcial refused the second part of "De un estorbo nacional" Ortega decided to go it on his own. It takes time to organize an enterprise on the scale of El Sol, and it is probable that Ortega's short rapprochement with El Imparcial in 1917 came when María de Urgoiti was negotiating for the purchase of El Imparcial and that Liberal displeasure over Ortega's articles on the Juntas may have prevented the purchase. This interpretation is as consistent with Ortega's remarks in La decencia nacional as is that of Luzuriaga and López-Campillo, more 50 because Ortega's remarks speak only of disputes that led to El Sol (by blocking the purchase of El Imparcial) and nothing of disputes causing El Imparcial to close its columns to Ortega. As a matter of fact, two weeks after "Bajo el arco en ruina" El Imparcial published another essay by Ortega. Fuller evidence on Ortega's relations with El Imparcial and El Sol, and all his other publishing ventures, for that matter, would help greatly.
Chapter VII — The Spain That Is
Chapter VIII — Failure
PART TWO — Europe: The Second Voyage
Chapter IX — On the Crisis of Europe
A thorough study of the different modes of applying knowledge to life would help define the mission of various disciplines. For a study of this question with the human sciences, a provocative source is Briefwechsel zwischen Wilhelm Dilthey und Graf Paul Yorck von Wartenburg. A lack of subtlety on this matter has impeded the ability of some contemporary philosophers to maintain confidence in the "relevance" of their enterprise. Thus, a good antidote to efforts to make philosophy a propaedeutic to science is Der pädagogische Beruf der Philosophie by Günther Böhme, a book which is excellent background reading for understanding the centrality of education to Ortega's reflective effort.
Much more leeway for imagination arises when one deals with the Greek influence on political theory. One may look on Jaeger's Paideia as a treatise on the Homeric influence on later Greek political and educational theory. The potential excess of this influence is pointed out profoundly in The Tyranny of Greece over Germany by E. M. Butler. But it is not only "the Germanic mind," if that exists, that can draw fruitfully from the Greek example, as is shown by Herbert J. Muller in Freedom in the Ancient World and Eric A. Havelock in The Liberal Temper in Greek Politics, two worthy books with which I have learned to have basic disagreements.
No adequate study of the political implications of contemporary European philosophy has been made. It is also far from clear what significance these have for judging philosophies qua philosophies. Sartre and Merleau-Ponty are usually treated positively for having backed the resistance in World War II, whereas Gentile has been largely dismissed as a Fascist and Heidegger has been severely criticized for originally cooperating with Hitler. On this matter, I have found Merleau-Ponty's Humanisme et terreur: essai sur le probleme communiste, H. Stuart Hughes' The Obstructed Path: French Social Thought, 1930–1960, and Stanley Rosen's Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay to be instructive.
The first aspect of the matter to raise fundamental questions is that the liberal theory of toleration does not adequately anticipate ideological criticism as it has developed in the past two hundred years. For the basic theory, see Locke, "A Letter Concerning Toleration," and John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, especially Chapter 2. The assumption that free discussion can only strengthen truth is in theory unobjectionable; what theories of ideology do is to raise the question whether discussion can in fact be free, and doubts to this effect lead to very serious consequences. For good introductions to the development of the concept of ideology see Henry D. Aiken, "Philosophy and Ideology in the Nineteenth Century," The Age of Ideology, pp. 13–26, and George Lichtheim, The Concept of Ideology and Other Essays, pp. 3–46.
Three of the most significant examples of committed ideological criticism are The German Ideology by Marx and Engels, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Veblen, and The Illusions of Progress by Georges Sorel. These critics used their powers to expose the rationalization of interests by the established groups and to advance the interests of those who were exploited. This tradition of ideological criticism has by no means died out, but it has been complemented by another which aspires to be more disinterested. The best known work of this sort is Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia, in which a program for the sociology of knowledge is set forth. There is much more work along these lines that deserves to be better known. For instance, Theodor Geiger gives a rather different, more open value to ideology in his Ideologie und Wahrheit and other works. For a good introduction to his work see Paolo Farneti, Theodor Geiger e la coscienza della società industriale. Whereas Geiger sees ideological differences indicating real differences that should not be destroyed through reductionism, much of contemporary thought on the subject leads in the opposite direction, indicating a hope that ideology will disappear. This is the theme sounded in the conclusions to The Opium of the Intellectuals by Raymond Aron and The End of Ideology by Daniel Bell. Both writers are learned and humane, yet one should ask whether a purported end of ideology is not itself an ideological rationalization of interests of technicians, bureaucrats, and social scientists: ideological conflicts are the most serious impediments to their rational control of society. But is it perfectly rational? This question is put movingly by Alberto Moravia in Man as an End.
For the purposes of this study, these and other works that might also be mentioned add up to a serious difficulty for liberal political theory. What is the relation between opinion, interest, and truth? How can men who are convinced that discussion between ordinary persons leads to the imposition of falsehood, not the uncovering of truth, be persuaded to defend political freedoms and liberal procedures? For a clear statement of the direction in which such convictions lead see A Critique of Pure Tolerance by Robert Paul Wolff, Barrington Moore, Jr., and Herbert Marcuse.
If the theory of ideology tends to release the opponents of the established system from the restraints of liberalism, the facts of bureaucracy do the same for the members of the established system. The classic presentations of liberal theory on this matter are the discussion of faction and its dangers in The Federalist Papers and the analysis of the unchecked power of the majority in chapters 15 and 16 of Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Government should be conducted by responsible individuals if the rights of minorities are to be defended. Tocqueville argued that one of the few factors mitigating the natural power of the majority was the lack of a centralized administrative apparatus in the United States; that check has disappeared.
By the development of bureaucracy, I mean something more inclusive than a particular form of administrative organization: in that sense bureaucracy has always existed. What is important is the application in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries of highly formalized, rational group organization to major military, economic, and political institutions. A number of general histories are useful in following the development of these organizations and attempts at alternatives to them. In Western Civilization Since the Renaissance: Peace, War, Industry, and the Arts, John U. Nef puts some of the central questions concerning the relation of war, industry, and impersonal organization, raising the suspicion that the so-called civilian benefits from military development may not be worth the cost. Friedrich Meinecke's Machiavellism: The Doctrine of Raison D'Etat and Its Place in Modern History, Douglas Scott, trans., is an excellent study laying bare the arguments by which the responsible public servant converts himself into an irresponsible servant of the state. In a less profound work, European History, 1789–1914: Men, Machines, and Freedom, John McManners charts the economic and political developments behind the growth of national administrative systems and in pp. 403–6 he indicates some of the dilemmas that arose with the modem state, namely, that it brings mixed blessings. Guido de Ruggiero in The History of European Liberalism, R. G. Collingwood, trans., traces the development of the liberal view of the state and shows how it culminates in parallel conflicts between individualism and bureaucracy as well as between Liberalism and Socialism.
One of the central matters that should be considered in reflecting on the impact of bureaucracy upon our political forms is the character of war and the military. An excellent introduction to this subject is Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, edited by Edward Mead Earle. A great work for clarifying the impact of war on twentieth-century life is Quincy Wright's A Study of War, and a more popular work covering some of the same ground is Raymond Aron's The Century of Total War. The background informing a reading of these works should be an involvement as a citizen in the national debates concerning arms expenditure, disarmament, and foreign commitments. To me, such a combination of concerns quite undercuts the whole system of political theory upon which the nation-state is based; we should go back to fundamentals and seriously consider the question whether sane men can responsibly hold mere nations to be sovereign.
The problem of bureaucracy is not confined to war and international politics. Various aspects of the problem are brought out, with varying personal reactions to the phenomena they uncover, by James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World; Joseph A. Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy; William H. Whyte's The Organization Man; Milovan Djilas' The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System; Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society; C. Wright Mills' The Power Elite; Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem; and Sebastian de Grazia's Of Time, Work, and Leisure. All these have, in one way or another, influenced my view of the question.
The problems that bureaucracy raises for our inherited political principles are compounded by the closely related problem of mass communications. Liberal political theory has been traditionally cautious about the contagion of opinion. For instance, those who would blame Rousseau for the excesses committed in the French Revolution in the name of the general will overlook the fact that the acts ensued from political deliberations antithetical to those Rousseau commended. Rousseau insisted that each have full information and that each deliberate alone, the authenticity of his opinion protected from contamination by that of others. Whether or not we can preserve the approximate possibility for such deliberations is the great conundrum of mass communications.
One group of studies, which suggests difficulties in preserving autonomous deliberation, is the study of crowds, which actually goes back very far into our tradition as readers of Heraclitus, Thucydides, Plato, and Seneca know. In more recent times, the issue has come back to the fore. Gustave Le Bon's work The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, is often connected to Ortega's Revolt of the Masses although they are about quite different phenomena: the latter concerns a chronic condition of personal character; the former, the characteristics regularly manifested by crowds, groups in which men lose their individuality. Since Le Bon's book, there have been a number of popularizations, connecting the crowd or mob to American culture, especially popular culture; among these are Gerald Stanley Lee's Crowds: A Moving Picture of Democracy (1913); Frank K. Notch's King Mob: A Study of the Present-Day Mind (1930); and Bernard Iddings Bell's Crowd Culture: An Examination of the American Way of Life (1952). On a quite different level of ambition is Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti, Carol Stewart, trans., a far-reaching, profound study of the nature of crowds and their relation to political power throughout world history.
Studies of propaganda and mass communication are legion. Propaganda by Jacques Ellul strikes me as the best introduction to the subject, for Ellul does not shirk the difficult aspects of the matter: he shows that propaganda is an established element of everyone's way of life, that it has definite effects, some good and many bad, and that there is a tremendous, perhaps impossible, problem in reconciling the facts of propaganda with our political heritage and hopes. An earlier work that also excels as an introduction to the matter is Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion, which expresses greater optimism about the ability of reason to control and absorb propaganda than does Ellul's work. Both Lippmann and Ellul raise questions ultimately reflecting doubts whether the recipient of propaganda and mass communications can maintain his autonomous powers of judgment, whether the recipient can keep from being drawn into a crowd. Wilbur Schramm in his important book Responsibility in Mass Communication looks at the matter from the other end, asking whether open, responsible access to the means of communication can be maintained. Although this is itself a crucial question, on which there is a great deal of discussion that may be found by using Schramm's bibliography, the questions raised by Ellul and Lippmann seem to me more fundamental.
Chapter X — Scarcity and Abundance
Ortega's criticism of the use of wealth as a criterion for judging our highest values was paralleled by his contemporaries. For instance, in "Mass Civilization and Minority Culture" (1930), F. R. Leavis objected to the practice of denoting the goods that the average man could buy as "the standard of living." Leavis, of course, was not arguing, as critics like Lord Snow seem to suggest, that the poor should be made to persist at poor subsistence; Leavis' argument was against the arbitrary elevation of income statistics into the most common arbiter of values. To argue against wealth as a standard of value is not to argue against the value of wealth. Instead, the concern was with the extra-economic significance attached to economic criteria. No economist had demonstrated that, of all possible standards, the measure of purchasing power was the only valid valuation of life, the standard of living. See: Leavis, Education and the University, pp. 146, 149; cf. p. 119.
Chapter XI — The Critic's Power
There is need for a truly "critical" history of modern Europe, that is, a history that shows the constructive effects of criticism over time. Such a history would be neither an account of political development nor of ideological development; rather it would lay bare the underlying systems of expectation that sustain politics and inform ideology. So far, the closest to such critical history is the Weltanschauung analysis initiated by Wilhelm Dilthey. His fullest effort is his Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 2, but this work is hard to differentiate from an intellectual history of the period. What is needed, as Dilthey suggested in his Pädagogik: Geschichte und Grundlinien des Systems, in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 9, is a means of showing the effect of a world view on historical development; one place to look for this is in the history of education. A major effort influenced by Dilthey's historiography was Hermann Leser's Das pädagogische Problem, which tries to show how, from the Renaissance through Romanticism, changes in world views affected people's conceptions of pedagogical aims and methods. It is a history that has been unduly ignored by American historians of education.
Philosophers such as Ernest Nagel have condemned vitalism for scientific infertility—a fatal flaw according to those who account for truth by its cash value; see Nagel's "Mechanistic Explanation and Organismic Biology," in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. II, 1951, p. 327. Basically, Nagel's argument is that vitalism is dead because it has given rise to no significant research. It is not dear, however, whether such a conclusion is founded on an observed lack of research or whether the observed lack of research is founded on the conclusion. This alternative should be considered seriously because there have been a number of vitalistically inclined researchers whose work has not been considered in a spirit of "sweetness and light" by members of the dominant schools. In Modern Science and the Nature of Life, pp. 291–2, William S. Beck scornfully dismisses vitalistic dissenters from his materialistic interpretation of the nature of life. His method is not scientific. Thus Beck responds to the work of Edmund W. Sinnott: "The author presents 'scientific' evidence for the existence of the soul...." A pair of well-placed quotation marks thus substitutes for an argument, and Beck goes on to exclaim at Sinnott's imbecility for considering a vitalistic position as possibly scientific: "This from within our scientific ranks. This in a discussion of the very subject upon which our ultimate understanding of cancer must depend, the nature of the organism." A soul, indeed!
Commentators who were not familiar with the particular theories that Ortega drew from have misunderstood his use of biological thought. Thus, in his Ortega y Gasset, pp. 32–33, José Ferrater Mora was embarrassed by Ortega's predilection for biological theories "of the von Uexküll-Driesch brand." In "Ni vitalismo, ni racionalismo" (1924, Obras III, pp. 271–280) Ortega denied that Driesch had influenced him. He said nothing about Uexküll, whose influence he warmly acknowledged elsewhere. We can conclude that Ortega was influenced by Uexküll and that he did not consider Uexküll to be a vitalist of the Driesch brand. Writers such as Ferrater Mora think that Ortega's use of Uexküll's ideas needs to be defended because it seems inconsistent that an anti–positivist philosopher like Ortega would use biological science to support his philosophy. The inconsistency is an appearance that arises with the erroneous assumption that Uexküll's biology was positivistic. It was not. Uexküll was a neo–Kantian transcendental idealist who began his biological theory with a meditation on the Critique of Pure Reason. Uexküll's idealistic conception of science, rather than his vitalism, seems to have been the major difficulty that other biologists encountered in his work, for most of them were positivists. Even vitalistic writers, such as Raymond Ruyer (Néo–finalisme, p. 217, fn. 1) criticized Uexküll's conception of science. The following quotation from Uexküll's Theoretical Biology, (Mackinnon, trans., p. x) gives a sense of his anti–positivism and of his agreement with Ortega's idea of science: "In Nature everything is certain; in science everything is problematical. Science can fulfill its purpose only if it is built up like a scaffolding against the wall of a house. Its purpose is to ensure the workman of a firm support everywhere, so that he may get to any point without losing a general survey of the whole. Accordingly, it is of first importance that the structure of the scaffolding be built in such a way as to afford this comprehensive view, and it must never be forgotten that the scaffolding does not itself pertain to Nature, but is always something extraneous." Surely, there was no inconsistency in an anti–positivist drawing on Uexküll's theories.
DUTY OF THE CRITIC WAS TO REMIND MEN TO FORM INTELLIGIBLE REASONS FOR THEIR VIEWS (p. 314). See En torno a Galileo, 1933, Obras V, pp. 295-315; El hombre 11 la gente, 1949, 1957, Obras VIII, pp. 99-196; and ¿Qué es filosofía?, 1929. 1957, Obras VII, pp. 277-438. Ortega's critique of rationalism and relativism has similarities to positions Immanuel Kant adopted in "Criticism of the Fourth Paralogism of Transcendental Psychology." Both the rationalists and the relativists were transcendental realists who therefore had to treat phenomena with either a dogmatic, or a skeptical, empirical idealism. In contrast, Ortega was a transcendental idealist whose doctrine of perspectivism elaborated the fact that all knowledge was of phenomena. With reference to phenomena Ortega could maintain an empirical realism that was neither dogmatic nor skeptical. Also, in "Considerations on the whole of Pure Psychology" Kant showed that dogmatic and skeptical criticism both claimed to have enough knowledge about an object to assert or deny anything about it. Critical criticism, much like Ortega's canon, claimed no knowledge of the object but examined the adequacy of the claims made by others. Critical objections established no doctrine, they simply indicated where others erred. See The Critique of Pure Reason, first edition, Chapter 1 of Book II of the Second Division, Transcendental Dialectic." Ortega differed from Kant on the possibility of an ontology; see below.
It is interesting that at about the same time, Walter Lippmann contended that the complications of public policy had become so great that voters should no longer attempt to judge the rightness or wrongness of various policies. Instead, they should try to evaluate whether or not the policy was arrived at by means of proper procedure. See Public Opinion, 1922, Part VII, pp. 369-418.To create such an arena, however, one needs more than a good will. One needs first to define the issues that will be at stake within it, and one needs second to locate the institutions by means of which men can make effective decisions about the issues at stake. To me., it seems increasingly clear: the issues will be those that might be denoted as the problems affecting the humane quality of life in this world; the institutions will be the cultural and educational institutions, with the university developing in the future a place in public affairs somewhat like that which the state now holds, except that the university will not be national. Somewhere in the current academic turmoil, the foundations for such developments may be building up.
XII — Towards an Exuberant Europe
Ideological conflict is no closer to ending than is political theory, but the categories of both are going through transformations. To come to grips with these transformations, we need a truly post-Marxian social theory, one that can go beyond the categories that Marx set forth. We do not need more neo-Marxian theories, ones that rely on Marx's categories and that find, as a result, an end of ideology. The means of production have arrived at a point at which class warfare in its Marxian sense is disappearing. The great issue in the resultant situation is the one about which Marx was prophetic and obscure: the withering away of the state. The state will not wither unless it is made to do so—that has become clear in recent decades—and it has become equally clear that certain people have an interest in maintaining the state apparatus and others have an interest in dismantling it. Contemporary ideologies will be found to be arising from conflicts engendered by these divergent interests, not between the rich and the poor, but between the governors and the governed.
In Plato's Republic Glaucon presented a social contract theory in Book II, 358–360; and the just state, especially in its early stages, is described as the result of an "as if" social contract in 368–374. See also: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part One, Chapter XIV; John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, Chapter VIII; and Rousseau, Du Contrat social, Livre I. In "Conjectural Beginning of Human History," Kant used both theories and in "Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View" and in "Perpetual Peace" he relied mainly on the contract. See Kant, On History, pp. 11–26, 53–68, 85–135. Ortega's own conception included several contracts. There was a contract between the virile males, and contract between the less active groups to control the virile males. See "El origen deportivo del estado," 1924, Obras II, especially pp. 616–9.
Ortega's statement that even wealth is a sporting achievement does not necessarily conflict with Weber's reflections about the relation of the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Salvation was the truly serious matter for the Protestant because it was so difficult. Weber's analysis of the relation of Calvinism to the spirit of capitalism unwittingly brought the latter very close to a form of sport, however. Calvinists believed in predestination, and therefore there was no earning grace through good works. One gained nothing of personal significance through business activity. "The life of the saint was directed solely toward a transcendent end, salvation. But precisely for that reason it was thoroughly rationalized in this world and dominated entirely by the aim to add to the glory of God on earth" (p. 118). As in sport, honor and glory were the end, only it was the glory of God rather than of the contestant. Also, there was another sportive quality to Calvinistic capitalism. The athlete seeks to prove to himself that he can perform the feat he attempts. Likewise, "in the course of its development Calvinism added something positive to this [confrontation of the ascetic with the world by ending monasticism], the idea of the necessity of proving [to oneself and one's peers, for God knew] one's faith by worldly activity" (p. 121). In general, see Weber, The Protestant Ethic, pp. 99–154. The possibility of a sportive interpretation of Weber's thesis does not contradict the observations in the previous paragraph; it is to pursue an answer to the concluding question.
Chapter XIII — The Reform of Technique
Ortega should be carefully compared to Dewey on three points: the present one of their respective views of the instrumentality of knowledge, Ortega's use of perspectivism as a means of overcoming the difficulties that led Dewey to criticize all forms of dualism, and their common emphasis on education as the foundation of public affairs. These problems were touched on only obliquely by José Arsenio Torres in his dissertation "Philosophic Reconstruction and Social Reform in John Dewey and José Ortega y Gasset."
XIV — The Reform of Reason
Although completely devoid oi technical expertise in philology, I have found that meditating on the possible meaning of the pre-Socratics to be a fruitful heuristic. With respect to all periods, the problem for the educational historian is to appreciate the eventual rationality of diverse, very strange modes of thinking. I do not believe that there are any conclusions, in a real sense, to this process; it is, if you will, a continuous entry. Yet, although no conclusions develop, there is real progress; layer after layer of possibility appears and unexpected systems of connections unfold.
ideal which serves as basis for the complete determination that necessarily belongs to all that exists. This ideal is the supreme and complete material condition of the possibility of all that exists-the condition to which all thought of objects so far as their content is concerned, has to be traced back....
"If, in following up this idea of ours, we proceed to hypostatize it, we shall be able to determine the primordial being through the mere concept of the highest reality, as a being that is one, simple, all-suffícient, eterna!, etc. In short, we shall be able to determine it, in íts unconditioned completeness, through all predicaments. The concept of such a being is the concept of God, taken in the transcendental sense.... In any such use of the transcendental idea we should, however, be overstepping the limits of its purpose and validity. For reason, in employing it as a basis for the complete determination of things, has used it only as the concept of all reality, without requiring that all this reality be objectively given and be itself a thing. Such a thing is a
mere fiction ....Chapter XV — The Dawn of Historic Reason
What is it that a creative thinker appropriates from his peers? It is not primarily a series of particular points; men of large mind take in so much from their past and present that one would lose control of one's work trying to identify each bit and assign it to its proper source. A creative thinker primarily appropriates a set of central concerns from his peers; in communicating with them in fact and fancy, he comes to see certain problems as the ones that must be mastered if he is to take a leading part in the thought of his time. The job of the intellectual historian is to make manifest the great systems of concern that give rise over time and space to an intellectual community.
So far, only H. Stuart Hughes has essayed a full assessment of the concerns uniting European social thinkers since the late nineteenth century. Consciousness and Society: The Reconstruction of European Social Thought, 1890–1930 and The Obstructed Path: French Social Thought in the Years of Desperation, 1930–1960 are the first two of a three part survey of the situation. These are competent works. Hughes has, unlike many popularizers of particular movements, acquainted himself with the full range of what was written. This is especially true of Consciousness and Society, but even in this book there is discernible an obtrusion of American behaviorism onto the controlling definition of social thought, which prompts the author to ignore significant thinkers. In the sequel, the complete omission of Jacques Ellul and Georges Gurvitch from his assessment of French social thought is a serious flaw, which could on the proper occasion lead into a full-scale critique of Hughes' division of the social thought of 1930 to 1960 into "French" and "anti-Fascist emigré" schools.
A less satisfactory general survey is After Utopia by Judith N. Shklar. This book was criticized in the text, pp. 327–30. Its weakness is integral, arising it seems to me because the author did not have a thorough acquaintance with any single writer with whom she dealt; as a consequence, she did not really understand her subject. A scholar develops a much surer sense of the issues of a time after he has contended with the complete work of one of its representatives. My own conception of European social philosophy is shaped by my study of Ortega: my knowledge of Ortega has affected the way I read others, and a reading of other writers has informed my understanding of Ortega. I have become convinced that the lines along which the social philosophy of the last hundred years have been described are wrong and arbitrary and that we should ignore these and construct alternatives. This is not the right occasion to develop the theme that I think holds together the divergent lines of inquiry during this period; namely, the desirability of creating a system of normative discourse equal to the scope, range, and intimacy of our actual, normative relations. My sense of this problem is still dominated by Ortega; I see him at the center of a large group that is united by a common concern for the disjunction between our ability to act upon each other and our ability to assume reasonable responsibility for the consequences of these actions. Whether after the full study of this group I will still find Ortega central to it, is for the future to tell.
Men have never been able to anticipate perfectly the consequences of their actions, and thus philosophers have always been concerned to improve our capacity to think through the implications of our deeds. But in recent times, the scale of human action has greatly expanded, which has intensified the age-old problem of understanding our personal and collective responsibilities. This concern has unified the work of many recent thinkers, all of whom have worried intensely about what might best be described by a phrase of Wolfgang Köhler, "'the place of value in a world of facts." The literature that developed from this concern is variegated and profound. A full discussion of it here would take us too far afield; I hope in the future to take up such a discussion on the scale it merits in a three volume study of cosmopolitanism and nationalism in modern thought, Power and Pedagogy. Here I shall merely note the contributions to the concern that have informed my understanding of Ortega. For the sake of brevity, these writers can be grouped as Ortega's elders, peers, and juniors. I mention those who, although not necessarily an influence on Ortega or influenced by Ortega, have contributed to my understanding of Ortega.
Foremost among Ortega's elders was Wilhelm Dilthey. I do not agree with interpreters who think that Dilthey's form of historicism ends in a relativism; whenever locally circumscribed systems of value come up against evidence of the diversity of human mores, the first step is to recognize the dependence on locality of every particular precept and to find the highest values not in the particular precepts, but in the quality of the relation between different precepts and the situations to which they pertain. The works by Dilthey I have consulted are given in the bibliographical list. Most illuminating of them for displaying the concern animating Dilthey's reflection is Briefwechsel zwischen Dilthey und Graf Yorck.
Although a biologist, Jacob von Uexküll was deeply concerned with finding a place for value in biological science by uncovering its place in life. For Uexküll see the bibliographical annotation XI:e.
Neo-Kantianism, in the version of the Marburg school and in Hans Vaihinger's work, was an effort, among other things, to provide a foundation for rational valuation. Cohen's works cited in annotation II:e and Natorp's mentioned in II :m have already been discussed. Die Philosophie des Als Ob by Hans Vaihinger seems to those of a naturalistic orientation to lead to skeptical consequences; but in its context of replying to a naive overconfidence in positivistic science, it should be seen as a rather successful and influential effort to put reasoning about fact and reasoning about value on an equal footing, on which the proponents of one cannot denigrate the other as "mere speculation."
The important work of Brentano, Meinong, and Ehrenfels in searching for a rigorous conception of value as it is manifest in life is well surveyed by Howard 0. Eaton, The Austrian Philosophy of Values.
Also of great importance in giving a common basis to our reasoning about facts and values is the work of Edmund Husserl, which I am acquainted with through Phenomenology and the Crisis of Philosophy, Quentin Lauer, trans.; Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, W. R. Boyce Gibson, trans.; and "Phenomenology," in the 14th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XVII, pp. 700–22.
Although German thinkers such as these were most influential on Ortega, others contributed to the clarification of the place of values in a world of fact. I have learned much from the works of Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, Arthur Mitchell, trans.; The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, Andrea and Brenton, trans.; Time and Free Will, F. L. Pogson, trans.; and Matter and Memory, Paul and Palmer, trans.
My own introduction to the problem of values has been in large part through American writers. Henry Adams is, I think, more important with respect to this question than is generally recognized. In addition to The Education of Henry Adams, a sustained treatise on the dilemmas arising from the disjunction between power and our understanding, see The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma, Democracy, and many of his letters, which all have penetrating insights into the problem of values in industrial democracies.
For William James, see The Will to Believe, Varieties of Religious Experience, and Pragmatism.
For Dewey, see Art as Experience, Democracy and Education, Experience and Nature, Freedom and Culture, The Quest for Certainty, and Theory of Valuation. It is important to treat serious pragmatism in its European, neo-Kantian context, rather than in the usual one of "American" pragmatism. James and Dewey both had the problem of value at the center of their concern, a fact inexcusably obscured by Dewey by his cant about scientific method, which opened his ideas to debasement by a horde of hangers-on.
Three books by Santayana have been useful to me in forming my ideas about Ortega: Scepticism and Animal Faith, The Life of Reason, and The Sense of Beauty. Unlike many, Santayana was far less concerned to apply the great tradition to contemporary problems and developments as he was to give a contemporary restatement of the tradition; thus his work lacks a pretension to novelty, a lack that repels some, but it has a grasp of the fundamentals and a literary grace that are an invaluable propaedeutic to a study of Ortega
Another writer of this era whose work is pertinent but not as well known to me is Alfred North Whitehead.
The thought of Ortega's peers has been presented in English in a way that reveals the herd instincts of the scholar. Neither phenomenology nor "existentialism" is a self-contained movement; and the attention that has been lavished on these has been way out of proportion to the relative lack of interest in closely related developments. To right the balance we need a work that will bring out the community of concern between men like Ernst Cassirer, Eduard Spranger, Friedrich Meinecke, Martin Buber, Theodor Litt, Werner Jaeger, Max Scheler, Georg Simmel, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Gabriel Marcel, Jacques Maritain, Johan Huizinga, and many others.
Unlike his fellow neo-Kantians, Cassirer was not interested in writing and re-writing fundamental critiques of reason; he seems to have agreed tacitly with the Hegelian position that the true phenomenology of mind is to be found in the historical unfolding of reason. Hence, his epistemology owes more to history than to logic. For instance, many of his works at first seem to be dispassionate historical reports, and rather dry reports at that. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, Koelln and Pettegrove, trans., does not preserve the wit characteristic of Enlightenment thinkers; but it performs a much greater service, that of making present-day readers contend with the systematic convictions upon which Enlightenment thinkers based modern politics and philosophy, for these convictions are usually ignored by historians. By laying bare these convictions, as Cassirer said (p. xi), we confront not only our history, but the implicit premises of our living orthodoxies; and when we find these premises to be difficult and obscure, the intellectual history of the Enlightenment becomes the occasion for our critical examination of our present. This integral combination of history and philosophy characterized Cassirer's other major works—Substance and Function, Swabey and Swabey, trans.; The Problem of Knowledge, Woglom and Hendel, trans.; The Myth of the State; An Essay on Man; and The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 3 vols., Ralph Manheim, trans. These works have provided important background for my study of Ortega; both the subjects they deal with and the discipline they engender are valuable in understanding Ortega.
Eduard Spranger was well known to Ortega and he is of much greater importance than is recognized in the United States. His Types of Men: the Psychology and Ethics of Personality, Paul J. W. Pigors, trans., has never found an American audience, partly because the translation, although "authorized," is far from the best one possible, and partly because Spranger's thought, like that of so many Europeans of his time, is too wide ranging to fit neatly into any of America's academic niches. In addition to Types of Men, I have found Spranger's Cultura y educación useful in my study of Ortega.
Of Buber's work, I have studied I and Thou, R. G. Smith, trans.; Daniel: Dialogues on Realization, Maurice Friedman, trans.; and Pointing the Way, Maurice Friedman, trans. In addition, Friedman's biography, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, is well worth consulting. Buber' s place in neo-Kantianism has not yet been adequately studied, and an inquiry into the relations between Buber and Cassirer, Spranger, Litt, and others would be fruitful.
For instance, Theodor Litt, who has been almost completely ignored, advanced ideas about the I-thou relation quite parallel and prior to Huber's, in Individuum und Gemeinschaft: Grundlage der Kulturphilosophie, which is, I think, an important book for the problem of value in the twentieth century.
Max Scheler was highly respected by Ortega, who memorialized Scheler's death in 1928 in "Max Scheler," Obras IV, pp. 507–511. I am familiar with Scheler's work through his On the Eternal in Man, Bernard Noble, trans.; Man's Place in Nature, Hans Meyerhoff, trans.; Philosophical Perspectives, Oscar A. Haac, trans.; and Probleme einer Soziologie des Wissens. John Raphael Staude's Max Scheler, 1874–1928: An Intellectual Portrait is an adequate introduction to Scheler's work, although Scheler's complicated and everchanging relations to the intellectual developments of his time still need further elucidation.
There is no escaping the fact, no matter how much one may dislike his character, style, or politics, that Heidegger's Being and Time is a most important book for anyone engaged in the study of systematic philosophy in the twentieth century. For such a person, the discipline of following Heidegger's reasoning leads to a tremendous clarification of certain problems discussed in the text above. However, let us be wary of Heideggerians who find his language a handy means for making a claim to personal profundity by aping their master's obscurity without matching his mission. Heidegger's ideas are not all that difficult, and it is these, not his jargon, that the student needs to master. In addition to Being and Time, I have studied Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, James S. Churchill, trans., and Existence and Being, Werner Brock, trans. The most helpful secondary source on Heidegger is, I think, Thomas Langan's The Meaning of Heidegger: A Critical Study of An Existentialist Phenomenology.
The work of Karl Jaspers has been less satisfactorily presented in English. More of Jaspers' writing has been translated than of Heidegger's, but until recently the major works by Heidegger had been translated whereas only the minor and middling works of Jaspers had been published here. Two books by Jaspers are closely related in concern and subject to books by Ortega, Jaspers' Man in the Modern Age (1931) to Ortega's Revolt of the Masses (1930), and The Idea of the University to The Mission of the University. In addition, I have found The Future of Mankind, E. B. Ashton, trans.; Philosophy and the World, E. B. Ashton, trans.; and The Origin and Goal of History, Michael Bullock, trans., significant in my work on Ortega. The recent publication of E. B. Ashton's translation of Jaspers' Philosophy, Vol. I, is a major addition, which begins to bring the English presentation of Jaspers into balance with that of Heidegger.
The important relation of Huizinga's Homo Ludens to Ortega's thought is discussed in annotation XII :g.
Among the books by Ortega's juniors that illuminate his thought, I would single out the following. Ortega himself pointed to similarities and differences between his thought and that of French existentialism, which meant to him primarily Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. For Sartre, see L'être et le néant, and for Merleau-Ponty see Phénoménologie de la perception, La structure du comportement, Humanisme et terreur: essai sur le probleme commumiste, and Sens et Non–sens. Two secondary works that are competent analyses are Joseph P. Felt III, Emotion in the Thought of Sartre, which goes beyond the strict limits of its title, and Albert Rabil, Jr., Merleau-Ponty: Existentialist of the Social World. The two most interesting writers carrying on Ortega's concern for the relation between technique and the humane value of life are Jacques Ellul in The Technological Society, Propagandes, and The Political Illusion, which are all discussed in the bibliographical annotations, and the Italian, Enrico Castelli, in Le temps harcelant, Introduction a une phénoménologie de notre époque, and L'enquête quotidienne. Of the two, Ellul is the more substantial and systematic thinker. There is a good review article on Ellul by William Gorman, "Ellul—A Prophetic Voice," in The Center Magazine, October–November 1967, pp. 34–7.
Chapter XVI — On the Past and Future of Present Man
In 1935, speaking about the "Mission of the Librarian," Ortega contended that, owing to the profusion of books, that venerable instrument of thought was falling into crisis; "from now on it will be necessary to care for the book as a living function; it will be necessary to control books by means of a policy and to become the tamers of the tumultuous tomes." Here was the librarian's mission. "Misión del bibliotecario," 1935, Obras V, p. 227, cf. pp. 209–234.
In 1935, speaking in the P.E.N. Club of Madrid, Ortega stated that "the mission of the writer, the biped with a pen, is to elevate towards the heights everything inert and dull. When the writer does not succeed or, at least, when he does not manage to do this, ah!, then the writer is not the writer because then the pen is not a pen, but a gun." Fateful words, these! "En el P.E.N. Club de Madrid," 1935, Obras VI, p. 233.
In 1937, musing on "A Quarrel in Physics," he contended that physicists should accept a systematic philosophic discipline in order to settle disagreements that were significant but insoluble by physical experiment; and if the physicists developed such intellectual foundations they would point the way to the rebirth of a European concord. "Branca en la fisica," 1937, Obras V, pp. 271–287.
In 1937, reflecting on "The Misery and Splendor of Translation," Ortega perceived a great educational mission for the translator: as Goethe had observed, the humane can live fully only among all men, and the task before the translator was to enable each of us, everyman, to live among all men, regardless of historic and linguistic barriers. "Miseria y esplendor de la traducción," 1937, Obras V, pp. 433–452. In 1943 and 1946, celebrating Velazquez, Ortega suggested to painters that men who had the capacity like Velazquez to reshape fundamentally the office of the painter are basic influences in the evolution of society: "they transcend, thus, the history of art and consign us to history in its entirety, the only one that is truly history." Velázquez, 1943, 1946, 1959, Obras VIII, p. 501, cf. pp. 484–5.
In 1946, writing on The Idea of the Theater, Ortega called it "a visible metaphor" that, like any metaphor, should allow men to go beyond themselves, intuiting things presently outside their powers of apprehension, for a few hours achieving "the supreme aspiration of the human being: managing to be sublime." Idea del teatro, 1946, 1958, Obras VII, pp. 459, 471, cf. pp. 443–501.
In 1948, in the "Prospectus of the Institute of the Humanities," Ortega proposed that those interested band together to partake in "man's most constitutive sport, that is theorizing," in this case theorizing in an atmosphere of healthy calm about how men can further humanize themselves. "Prospecto del Instituto de Humanidades," 1948, Obras VII, pp. 11–23.
In 1951, at a conference at Darmstadt on Man and Room, he called on the architect to free himself, like the technician, from reasoning from necessity and to fantasize new forms within which men might live. "El mito del hombre allende a técnica," 1951, Obras IX, pp. 617–623.
In 1953, at another Darmstadt conference, this time on The Individual and Organization, he contended that organization for its own sake was a threat to human life, that the welfare state, which aims to make life good for the individual, tends by virtue of its paternalism "to asphyxiate the individual," but that contemporary organization, if used as a basis, not a substitute, for individual effort, could be the groundwork of tremendous improvement in the quality of life. "Individuo y organización," 1953, Obras IX, pp. 677–680.
In 1954, speaking about "The Liberal Professions," he called on lawyers, doctors, engineers, financiers, and other professionals to resist the "hermeticism," the tendency to close themselves to larger issues, which they had recently manifested, and to "create new forms of individual activity," to invent ever more demanding realms of practice, and thus to preserve the "variety of situations" that characterized Europe. "Las profesiones liberales," 1954, Obras IX, pp. 691–706.