Ortega y Gasset on the Masses: The Crushing of Excellence

The Quote

"The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified, and select."

— Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (1929/1930)

Historical Context

The Revolt of the Masses was written in 1929 and published as a book in 1930, on the eve of the catastrophes that would engulf Europe in the following decade. Jose Ortega y Gasset, then Spain's leading public intellectual, had spent the previous two decades diagnosing what he saw as the spiritual crisis of European civilization. The book appeared between the two world wars, in a period when democracy was collapsing across the continent, when fascism and communism were on the rise, and when the cultural achievements that Ortega identified with the European tradition seemed to be dissolving into a new and unfamiliar form of social life.

The concept of "the masses" that gives the book its title was not original to Ortega. Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd (1895) had analyzed the psychology of crowds, and a generation of social theorists, from Emile Durkheim to Max Weber, had grappled with the implications of mass society. What was original to Ortega was the philosophical depth of his analysis and the way he connected the phenomenon of mass society to a broader account of human existence and civilization. For Ortega, the revolt of the masses was not merely a sociological trend but a metaphysical event, a transformation in the fundamental character of human life in the modern world.

The book was written in Spanish, and Ortega's distinctive philosophical vocabulary, with its emphasis on vital reason, perspectivism, and the drama of human life, shaped every page. The English translation by Anthony Kerrigan, published in 1957, made the book available to a global audience, and it has since become one of the most widely read works of twentieth-century social philosophy. The passage quoted here appears in the opening chapter, where Ortega lays out the basic distinction between the mass-man and the select or excellent person that organizes the entire argument of the book.

Ortega was writing as a liberal, not as a conservative or a reactionary. He distrusted all forms of authoritarianism and was deeply suspicious of both fascism and communism. His critique of mass society was not a call for aristocratic rule but a warning about the conditions necessary for cultural and spiritual vitality. The book was controversial from the moment it appeared, criticized by the left as elitist and by the right as insufficiently committed to traditional authority. But its central insight, that the rise of the mass-man posed a threat to the achievements of civilization, struck a nerve and has continued to resonate with readers across the political spectrum.

Philosophical Interpretation

The passage operates on two levels. On the descriptive level, it makes a claim about the social dynamics of mass society. The mass, Ortega argues, is not a specific social class but a psychological type defined by its relationship to excellence and distinction. The mass-man is the person who takes civilization for granted, who feels entitled to its benefits without understanding the effort and discipline required to maintain them, and who is hostile to any claim that some people, some ideas, or some ways of life are better than others. This hostility is what Ortega means when he says that the mass "crushes" everything that is different and excellent. The mass-man does not merely ignore excellence; he actively resents it and seeks to flatten it to the level of the average.

On the philosophical level, the passage expresses Ortega's deeper conviction that civilization is a fragile achievement that depends on the existence of individuals who are willing to hold themselves to standards higher than those of the crowd. The mass-man, by definition, is the person who refuses to make this effort. He is, in Ortega's memorable phrase, "the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace," who "has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will." This is not a description of a particular economic class. Ortega is explicit that the mass-man can be found in every social stratum, from the worker to the aristocrat, and that the select man can likewise be found in any walk of life. What distinguishes the two is not social position but spiritual orientation: the mass-man makes no demands on himself, while the excellent man does.

The verbs in the passage are carefully chosen. The mass does not merely disagree with or compete with what is excellent; it "crushes" it. This verb conveys a sense of weight, of something heavy pressing down on something fragile, and it reflects Ortega's belief that the forces of mass society are not merely different from but actively hostile to the achievements of culture. The adjectives that follow, "different, excellent, individual, qualified, and select," form a catalog of the qualities that mass society threatens. Each term picks out a different aspect of what Ortega values: difference, the recognition that not all ways of living are the same; excellence, the achievement of standards higher than the average; individuality, the capacity to be a person rather than a member of a crowd; qualification, the expertise and knowledge that civilization requires; and selectivity, the discrimination that distinguishes the better from the worse.

The passage connects directly to Ortega's broader philosophy. His doctrine of vital reason holds that human life is a project that must be chosen, that each person is responsible for making something of themselves in and through their circumstances. The mass-man, in this framework, is the person who refuses this responsibility. He does not choose a life; he drifts with the current, taking whatever the culture gives him and making no effort to rise above it. This is why Ortega sees the revolt of the masses as a threat not just to culture but to human meaning itself. A life that makes no demands on itself, that takes everything for granted and strives for nothing, is, on Ortega's account, a life that has abdicated the most fundamental human task: the task of becoming someone, of making something definite of one's existence.

The passage also has implications for Ortega's concept of perspectivism. If truth is always perspectival, always seen from a particular vantage point, then the mass-man's demand for uniformity is a demand for the elimination of perspectives. The mass does not want the clash of different perspectives that, on Ortega's view, is the engine of knowledge and cultural progress. It wants sameness, conformity, the reduction of all perspectives to a single average. In this sense, the revolt of the masses is not just a social phenomenon but an epistemological one, a threat to the very conditions under which truth can be pursued.

Related Concepts

Ortega's critique of mass society connects to several broader philosophical traditions. In the existentialism tradition, the concept of the mass-man resonates with Nietzsche's critique of the "herd" and with Heidegger's analysis of "das Man" (the They), the anonymous public authority that levels all distinctions and absorbs the individual into the conformity of everyday life. All three thinkers identify a tendency in modern society to dissolve individuality into collectivity, and all three see this tendency as a threat to authentic human existence. Ortega's distinctive contribution is to connect this existential diagnosis to a concrete analysis of the social and cultural conditions of the modern world.

The critique also resonates with the broader tradition of cultural criticism that runs from Matthew Arnold through T. S. Eliot to Hannah Arendt. Like Arnold, Ortega worries about the decline of standards in an age of mass culture. Like Arendt, he sees the mass-man as a figure who threatens the political conditions necessary for freedom and excellence. And like all of these thinkers, he insists that culture is not a luxury but a necessity, that the achievements of civilization require constant effort and that their dissolution would leave humanity in a condition far worse than any primitive state.

Learning Path

To deepen your understanding of Ortega y Gasset's concept of the masses, consider the following path:

1. Start with the thinker: Read the full Jose Ortega y Gasset page to understand his biography, his doctrine of vital reason, and his broader philosophical project.
2. Explore the philosophical context: Ortega's critique of mass society is rooted in existentialism. Engaging with the existentialist tradition illuminates the theoretical background of his work.
3. Connect to meaning and purpose: The concept of the mass-man speaks directly to questions of meaning and purpose, asking what it means to live an authentic life in a world that tends toward conformity.
4. Explore the topics: Ortega's analysis engages fundamental life questions about the relationship between the individual and society, between excellence and equality, between culture and civilization.
5. Read the primary source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929/1930), available in Anthony Kerrigan's English translation (W. W. Norton, 1957), is the primary source of the passage discussed here and remains one of the most provocative works of twentieth-century social philosophy.

Sources

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Jose Ortega y Gasset." Covers Ortega's vital reason, perspectivism, and his analysis of mass society.
2. Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (La rebelion de las masas, 1929/1930). English translation by Anthony Kerrigan (New York: W. W. Norton, 1957). The primary source of the passage discussed in this entry.
3. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Jose Ortega y Gasset." An accessible overview of Ortega's philosophy and its intellectual context.
4. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Existentialism." Provides the broader philosophical context for Ortega's account of human existence.