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A review by kxowledge
The Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset
5.0
A book that it's prone to misunderstandings (especially with Americans, which is further proof that the USA is a paradise for the masses), yet incredibly relevant to the current age - a historical period not separate from the one Ortega y Gasset originally talked about, in which the same phenomenon thrives. Worth reading not just for the main thesis, but for all of the philosophical underpinnings.
This is a summary that does not in no way do justice to the depth of the book but nevertheless: The central thesis is clearly posed in the title – the rise of the masses . By 'masses’ he defines multitudes of people who think in the same way. The rise of the masses has brought a crisis – it’s the triumph of pseudo-intellecutals doing activities that were the prerogative of qualified minorities before. The dominion of the masses is especially clear in the recent political innovations (a hyperdemocracy in which the mass acts directly, outside the law, imposing its aspirations and its desires by means of material pressure). Now, ‘Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated’. By rise, he means appropriation and expansion, sprung from a democratic inspiration but turned in arrogant presumptions, which has led to a levelling of the society. The feeling finds correspondence in the increase in the worlds’ possibilities – more precisely, an increase of vital potentiality in a world of comfort; yet ‘we live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create’. The current society - The Self-Satisfied Age - looks back on the past with a feeling of superiority, and looks ahead expecting always progress. Yet it is disoriented and does not know how to act. And ‘when the mass acts on its own, it does so only in one way, for it has no other: it lynches. It is not altogether by chance that lynch law comes from America, for America is, in a fashion, the paradise of the masses.’
An interesting parallel to be made, I think, is with Vico’s cycles – with us being the declining end before an new one, just like the end of the Roman Empire declined into the middle ages.
This is a summary that does not in no way do justice to the depth of the book but nevertheless: The central thesis is clearly posed in the title – the rise of the masses . By 'masses’ he defines multitudes of people who think in the same way. The rise of the masses has brought a crisis – it’s the triumph of pseudo-intellecutals doing activities that were the prerogative of qualified minorities before. The dominion of the masses is especially clear in the recent political innovations (a hyperdemocracy in which the mass acts directly, outside the law, imposing its aspirations and its desires by means of material pressure). Now, ‘Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated’. By rise, he means appropriation and expansion, sprung from a democratic inspiration but turned in arrogant presumptions, which has led to a levelling of the society. The feeling finds correspondence in the increase in the worlds’ possibilities – more precisely, an increase of vital potentiality in a world of comfort; yet ‘we live at a time when man believes himself fabulously capable of creation, but he does not know what to create’. The current society - The Self-Satisfied Age - looks back on the past with a feeling of superiority, and looks ahead expecting always progress. Yet it is disoriented and does not know how to act. And ‘when the mass acts on its own, it does so only in one way, for it has no other: it lynches. It is not altogether by chance that lynch law comes from America, for America is, in a fashion, the paradise of the masses.’
An interesting parallel to be made, I think, is with Vico’s cycles – with us being the declining end before an new one, just like the end of the Roman Empire declined into the middle ages.