The revolt of the masses

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The uprising of the masses ( Spanish La rebelión de las masas ) is an elite-sociological essay by the Spanish cultural philosopher José Ortega y Gasset , published in Spanish in 1929 and in German translation in 1931 .

In the uncertain days of the Great Depression Ortega y Gasset put a book with this sociological time diagnosis of mass civilization before. He analyzes the mass phenomenon from an aristocratic approach. Ortega sees it as negative that the average person no longer behaves passively and obediently and sees a danger in the fact that the world and life are open to this mass person. Its appearance leads to an amoralization of society. Ortega, on the other hand, describes the rise in the standard of living as well as an increase in the general intellectual level through the rise of the masses and in this respect faces a pureCultural pessimism towards doom. Ortega criticizes the state as self-service and develops it as a cooperation project. He analyzes the weaknesses of the nation- states defined by consanguinity and language and instead calls for the integration of Europe.

The uprising of the masses became the main work of José Ortega y Gasset and a great success in Spain. It is considered the most important contemporary diagnostic book of the 1930s. In Germany, too, the work became a bestseller after the Second World War , but was also criticized as a reactionary pamphlet .

Origin of the work

Ortega y Gasset cannot be assigned to a fixed political direction. The social scientist Frank Peter Geinitz describes him as follows:

“Like many of his compatriots, Ortega is instinctively conservative, liberal in his habits and an innate tendency [...] an intellectual anarchist. He is a thinker who takes up the political conflicts of his time and Spanish society between 1908 and 1937 with noticeable perseverance. "

In Spain , Miguel Primo de Rivera established a dictatorship in 1923 after military defeats in Morocco. Ortega sought orientation for Spain in the Generación del 98 and initially faced the dictator as a kind of teacher, but distanced himself more and more and became his critic. After the dictator's resignation and death in 1930 and the lifting of censorship, he also called for the end of the monarchy in an article in the daily newspaper El Sol on November 15, 1930. The article closes with the words: "Ceterum censeo delendam esse Monarchiam" (German: "By the way, I believe that the monarchy must be destroyed.") On April 14, 1931 King Alfonso XIII actually left . Spain.

In the course of the discovery of the phenomenon of the masses , Gustave Le Bon's work Psychology of the Masses was published in 1895 . In 1921 Sigmund Freud's work Mass Psychology and Ego Analysis was published . Ortega does not mention either of these writings, but his trips to Germany gave him a vivid impression of the rapidly developing urbanization and industrialization of the Weimar Republic . After the First World War , Germany continued to modernize , but the Roaring Twenties ended in an economic catastrophe, especially for the common people.

Ortega sees a great danger in the growth and rebellion of the majority of the ordinary population and tries to analyze this danger with his essay. In 1927 Julien Benda published the book The betrayal of the intellectuals (fr .: La Trahison des clercs), which also contrasts an elite with the masses and can be compared with Ortega's approach. In this sense, Ortega also ties in with earlier work, especially Stern and Unstern on Spain (1921). There he blames the lack of elites with state-building ideas for the collapse of Spain and does not even rule out the use of force in state-building from the outset. Ortega's philosophical prerequisite for the uprising of the masses is a Spanish variant of the philosophy of life (razón vital) in connection with a perspective-based epistemology .

The 15 chapters of the entire work were published in El Sol from 1926 onwards as individual essays, with the 14th chapter being the only one with eight sections that is quite extensive.

content

The mass man

Ortega initially motivates the portrayal of the crisis he saw as a “fact of overcrowding”. There would be crowds of people everywhere in the cities:

"The cities are overcrowded with people, the houses with tenants [...] What used to be no problem is now constant: finding a place."

The aim is to prepare a characterization of the mass man. The mass man (hombre-masa) is not determined quantitatively, but characterized psychologically. It is the average person who feels comfortable realizing that they are like everyone else.

In a good order, Ortega imagines the crowd as passive, as manageable by an elite. He detests the average person's activity:

"It is characteristic of the present moment, however, that the ordinary soul is clear about its ordinariness, but has the audacity to stand up for the law of ordinariness and use it everywhere."

It is dangerous that the average person accepts the achievements of civilization as something taken for granted, something given by nature, without any interest in the foundations from which they arose.

In the face of the threat of domination by the egalitarian organized masses, Ortega takes a position of class , but without justifying the decadent behavior of the nobility and the conditions before the French Revolution .

The increase in level

On the other hand, Ortega y Gasset perceives an increase in the standard of living (literally: historical level). The standard of living, which previously only a few could perceive, has increased. The wealth, the culture and the sexes became more similar. The level of the times has risen, one is proud of the forces of the new time and at the same time in fear of them. All of this is a symptom of a growth in life, which Ortega initially attaches to the possibility of global information: Sevillians tracked icebergs at the pole through their people's newspapers, which floated over the glowing background of the Guadalquivir landscape.

With this portrayal of the growth of life, the increase in the standard of living, Ortega turns against the downfall of the West depicted by Oswald Spengler . Ortega, like Spengler, saw a decline in values, but did not share the idea of ​​the inevitability of cultural decline. "An unmistakable sign of decline would only be a decline in vitality". But the average person has never had as many opportunities in life as they do today. The psychogram of the mass man should not be confused with the fundamental inadequacies of modern European culture, writes Ortega at the end of the work to justify his approach.

In science, too, there is an increase in the level by the masses: the brothers Jonathan R. and Stephen Cole put forward a so-called Ortega hypothesis : In the uprising of the masses , Ortega y Gasset stated that scientific progress was based on the work of all Scientists rely, d. H. especially on the work of a large mass of scientists with mediocre talent who would only achieve less significant results, the sum of all these minor advances making up a substantial part of the overall scientific advances.

Gasset describes a transition from the encyclopedic know-it-all of the 19th century to the specialized individual scientist today.

"This is how the average scholar promotes the progress of science, locked in his laboratory cell like a bee in the honeycomb of its hive or like a horse in the walking circle of the Göpel ."

Moral decline, desmoralización

Ortega describes a decline in morality in Europe due to the rise of the masses.

“Not that the mass man despises an outdated morality in favor of an uplifting one; at the center of his lifestyle is precisely the claim to live without moral ties. "

Ortega sees a barbarism as the absence of norms and appeal bodies. European bids have lost their validity without being replaced by new ones. The uprising of the masses in European civilization leads to a moral degeneration of humanity.

Under the sign of syndicalism or fascism , people would refrain from giving reasons, but simply enforce their opinions. Civilized manners are dispensed with and all of this endangers people's coexistence. On the other hand, liberalism proclaims to live with the weak enemy. The majority grant the minority their rights in a liberal democracy . This liberalism is seriously endangered because the masses prefer direct action without taking into account indirect instances such as courtesy, legal channels, justice or the like.

In the very extensive fourteenth chapter in the Spanish edition the expression desmoralización is used for this amoralism , which in the German translation is 'demoralization'. However, this word often has a different meaning in German. Ortega does not speak of "amorality", but even reinforces this expression to "immorality".

The state as a project of cooperation

From the criticism of the rebellion of the masses Ortega developed a criticism of the state.

In the first part of the work, the state is defined as a mere technique of administration which, after the bourgeoisie, was occupied by the anonymous masses. If the masses become active against their traditional passive role, they begin to lynch . So be it with the state. Since the European revolutions of 1848/1849 the revolutions in Europe have stopped. But then the anonymous masses took over the anonymous state. From a liberal stance, Ortega criticizes the state as a self-service organ. The whole of life is bureaucratised, the “satisfied young gentleman”, the youth, is pampered. There is "an enormous increase in the police force in all countries."

From this criticism of the state, Ortega also developed a criticism of Mussolini's fascism as a typical mass movement. In the second part of the work, Ortega counters the definition of the nation state by consanguinity and common language with a res publica , a politeia :

“The reality that we call the state is not the naturally formed community that is related by blood. The state begins when groups separated by birth are forced to live together. […] Above all else, the state is the project and program of cooperation. […] The state is neither consanguineous nor linguistic or territorial unit, nor is it a neighborhood of the living quarters. "

Nation-state Europe

In his criticism of the state, Ortega also criticizes nationalism , which stands up for a nation- state that is defined by the ethnic or linguistic community. The state never collapsed with a previously existing blood and language community. The state has always been the great interpreter.

Ortega argues against the impulse to form individual European nation states and instead sees an important task in the creation of a European nation state. At the end of the book he presents Bolshevism as a possible contagious lure and then comes to the conclusion that a united Europe is superior to the ideology of the Soviet five-year plan .

The book has an open conclusion: for Ortega it is only an approximation of the problem of modern man and must initially be viewed independently of the fundamental inadequacies of modern European culture, which requires a theory of human life ,

“Which is woven in like an accompaniment and murmurs along with it. Maybe that it will soon be a scream. "

Effect, review and criticism

José Ortega y Gasset at the Darmstadt Talks in 1951 .

Michael Stürmer compares the uprising of the masses with the famous speech by Karl Jaspers The Spiritual Situation of the Time of 1931. When diagnosing the time, Jaspers had the cold gaze of the critic that Ortega asked himself “at the same time similar questions, less systematic and therefore more realistic, less encrypted and therefore with more effect. ”Stürmer names the essay

"A major work of European self-criticism at the moment of pause, before Japan invaded Manchuria, the German republic succumbed to totalitarian temptation, the USA sought a new mode of state and society in the New Deal , the Spanish republic bled to death in civil war ."

The uprising of the masses only caused a “real sensation” in Germany decades after the Spanish first edition. The paperback edition published in 1956 sold around a hundred thousand copies in the first year and the essay was one of the most widely read foreign works in Germany: The theory of the “mass man” was reflected in political speeches such as Konrad Adenauer . The work has been included in the ZEIT library of 100 non-fiction books and discussed in this context by Lothar Baier . Baier considers Ortega to be an aristocratic reactionary who uses no serious method, tells his readers about follies and gives every reader the feeling that they do not belong to the masses.

The response from the German-speaking professional world was relatively low. Eckart Pankoke calls the essay a culturally critical pamphlet that portrays masses as the negative key figure of modernity , and sees in it a sociological variant of Nietzsche's polemics against the herd instinct. However, Pankoke finds the culture-critical approach stimulating for the formation of sociological concepts, because the scientific interest is directed from the concrete appearance of the masses to the social structure type of mass society .

Expenses (selection)

  • Spanish first edition: La rebelión de las masas. Madrid 1929
  • La rebelion de las masas. Barcelona 2009
  • The revolt of the masses. German publishing house, Stuttgart 1931
  • The revolt of the masses. rororo paperback, Reinbek 1956
  • (cited as AM ): The revolt of the masses. Authorized translation from Spanish by Helene Weyl . With an afterword by Michael Stürmer . Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Munich, new edition 2012, ISBN 978-3-421-04577-5

literature

Web links

Text output

Secondary texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Frank Peter Geinitz: The Falange Española and its founder José Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903-1936) . Diss. Munich 2008, p. 72
  2. An allusion to the recurring saying Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam by Cato the Elder
  3. ^ Frank Peter Geinitz: Falange Española , p. 57
  4. ^ Gustave Le Bon: Psychology des foules , Paris 1895; German: Psychology of the masses , translated by Rudolf Eisler ( digitized 2nd edition, Leipzig 1912), Kröner, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-520-71101-4
  5. See this comparison: Josep R. Llobera: Visions of Europe in the dark years: Julien Benda and José Ortega y Gasset. In: The European Legacy. 1, 1996, pp. 2084-2093, doi: 10.1080 / 10848779608579657 .
  6. ^ Spanish: La España invertebrada , Madrid 1921, German translation: Stern and Unstern over Spain , 1937
  7. Hans Widmer : Lecture Ortega The uprising of the masses (PDF) 2013
  8. ^ Thomas Rentsch : Ortega y Gasset . In: Jürgen Mittelstraß (Hrsg.): Encyclopedia Philosophy and Philosophy of Science. Volume 2. Metzler, Stuttgart 1995, 2004, p. 1098
  9. ^ Title of the first chapter. AM p.5
  10. AM, p. 6
  11. AM, p. 9
  12. AM, p. 121
  13. AM, p. 13
  14. ^ Friedrich Irmen: La rebelión de las masas , Kindler, p. 376
  15. Also following Nietzsche, compare The happy science chapter Noble and Common
  16. AM, p. 14ff
  17. AM, p. 19ff
  18. AM, p. 34
  19. AM, p. 35
  20. AM, again and again, e.g. BS 41
  21. cf. Urs Bitterli : 2011
  22. ^ Friedrich Irmen: La rebelión de las masas , Kindler, p. 376
  23. AM, p. 204
  24. AM, p. 115f
  25. AM, p. 117
  26. AM, p. 201
  27. AM, p. 143
  28. AM, p. 132
  29. AM, pp. 74f
  30. ^ Friedrich Irmen: La rebelión de las masas, p. 376
  31. AM, p. 132
  32. AM, p. 204. - Spanish: "esto no es amoral, sino inmoral", José Ortega y Gasset: La rebelión de las masas , Barcelona 2009, p. 232
  33. AM, p. 122ff
  34. AM, p. 128
  35. Chapter XI is called: The epoch of the “satisfied young gentleman” AM, p. 100ff.
  36. AM, p. 130
  37. AM, p. 173
  38. AM, p. 178
  39. AM, p. 198ff
  40. AM, p. 204
  41. Karl Jaspers: The spiritual situation of the time. Berlin / Leipzig 1931, ISBN 3-11-016391-8 .
  42. Michael Stürmer: Afterword . In: AM, p. 210.
  43. Michael Stürmer: Afterword . In: AM, p. 211.
  44. Lothar Baier: The uprising of the masses . In: Die Zeit , No. 2/1984
  45. Lothar Baier: The uprising of the masses
  46. Lothar Baier: The uprising of the masses
  47. Rafael Capurro: Ortega y Gasset Chapter III
  48. Eckart Pankoke: Mass II, Col. 831