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Two Critical Spectators: José Ortega y Gasset and Raymond Aron

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2015

Brendon Westler  and
Aurelian Craiutu
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Abstract

This essay examines the role of “critical spectatorship” in the writings of two distinguished European intellectuals, José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955) and Raymond Aron (1905–1983). We begin the paper by commenting on the struggle between civilization and barbarism, a fundamental topic in their works. We then examine the rhetoric of going beyond the political left and right, which both Ortega and Aron used in their writings. Next, we turn to the concept of “critical spectatorship” that is central to their thought and comment on the similarities and differences between their forms of social and political criticism. We conclude by drawing a few conclusions on the relevance of Ortega's and Aron's ideas for us today.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 77 , Issue 4 , Fall 2015 , pp. 575 - 602
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2015 

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References

1 For a comprehensive account, see Bernard Wasserstein, Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Wasserstein begins his book by quoting Walter Benjamin's claim that “there is no document of civilization that is not simultaneously a document of barbarism” (vii).

2 As quoted in Stefan Zweig, Nietzsche, trans. Will Stone (London: Hesperus, 2013), 87.

3 Aron's poor health prevented him from delivering the text in Madrid. The original French text was published posthumously as “Ortega y Gasset et la ‘révolte des masses,’” Commentaire 40 (Winter 1987–1988): 733–40Google Scholar. An English translation appeared under the title “The Revolt of the Masses,” Partisan Review 55, no. 3 (1988): 359–70Google Scholar.

4 Aron, “The Revolt of the Masses,” 369.

5 This phrase is taken from Tony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944–1956 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 17; also see 229–45. On the history of (European) liberalism, see Pierre Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); and J. G. Merquoir, Liberalism: Old and New (Boston: Twayne, 1991).

6 Julien Benda, The Betrayal of the Intellectuals, trans. Richard Aldington (Boston: Beacon, 1955), 21.

7 We borrow the title of a well-known movie by the Canadian director Denys Arcand.

8 In The Company of Critics: Social Criticism and Political Commitment in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 2002), Michael Walzer devotes a few lines to Ortega, whom he describes, inaccurately, as a “conservative philosopher” with a “sardonic and disdainful” tone (24, 25). Aron is never mentioned in Walzer's book in spite of his prominent role as a social critic in postwar France.

9 The phrase is Allan Megill's in Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

10 For a critique of this obsession with political engagement, see Judt, Past Imperfect, esp. chaps. 1, 3, 6–7.

11 Benda, Betrayal of the Intellectuals, 31.

12 Ibid., 39.

13 The exact quote is: “We Germans will never again produce a Goethe, but indeed a Caesar” (Oswald Spengler, Pessimismus? [Berlin: Stilke, 1921], 79).

14 A fragment from Massis's Défense de l'Occident was translated into English by Flint, F. S. under the title “Defense of the West” in The Living Age, no. 330 (July–Sept. 1926): 536–45Google Scholar. For a collection of writings sharing Massis's concerns, see The Crisis of Modern Times: Perspectives from “The Review of Politics,” 1939–1962, ed. A. James McAdams (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).

15 José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: Norton, 1932), 19; Obras Completas, vol. 4 (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1966), 149. Quotations from Ortega are drawn from existing English translations where available; otherwise, translations are ours. References to Ortega include the location of the text in Obras Completas, vols. 1–11 (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1963–69), hereafter OC.

16 For a survey of these thinkers, see Joseph V. Femia, Against the Masses: Varieties of Anti-Democratic Thought since the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

17 On Ortega's political context, see Fonck, Béatrice, “Historia y política en La rebelión de las masas,” Revista de Occidente, no. 73 (1987): 75–87 Google Scholar. For a discussion of Ortega's reception in the United States, see John T. Graham, The Social Thought of Ortega y Gasset: A Systematic Synthesis in Postmodernism and Interdisciplinarity (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 278.

18 On Ortega's liberalism, see Gálan, Pedro Cerezo, “Razón vital y liberalismo en Ortega y Gasset,” Revista de Occidente, no. 120 (1991): 33–58 Google Scholar; Victor Ouimette, Los intelectuales españoles y el naufragio del liberalismo (1923–1936, vol. 2 (Valencia: Pre-Textos, 1998), 103–287; Suay, Ángel Peris, “El Liberalismo de Ortega más allá del individualismo,” Revista de estudios Orteguianos, no. 6 (May 2003): 166–98Google Scholar.

19 Graham, Social Thought of Ortega y Gasset, 289.

20 For an extended discussion of Ortega's political theory of the masses, see Alejandro de Haro Honrubia, Élites y masas: Filosofía y política en la obra de José Ortega y Gasset (Madrid: Editorial Biblioteca Nueva, 2008).

21 Ortega, The Revolt of the Masses, 74; OC, 4:190.

22 Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Government, trans. Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 6.

23 Ortega, The Revolt of the Masses, 74; OC, 4:190.

24 Ibid., 76; OC, 4:191.

25 In addition to The Revolt of the Masses, see, e.g., Invertebrate Spain (New York: Norton, 1974) (OC, 3:37–130); and La redención de las provincias, in OC, 11:181–332.

26 Ortega, The Revolt of the Masses, 76; OC, 4:191.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid., 75; OC, 4:191.

29 Ibid., 94; OC, 4:205.

30 Ibid., 139; OC, 4:241.

31 Ortega, Concord and Liberty, trans. Helene Weyl (New York: Norton, 1946), 51n1; OC, 5:517.

32 See Aron, L'Homme contre les tyrans, in Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), 209–10. All quotations from this book are from the Gallimard (Quarto) edition; the translations are ours, unless noted otherwise.

33 Aron, “L'avenir des religions séculières,” in “Raymond Aron, 1905–1983: Histoire et politique. Textes, études et témoignages,” special issue, Commentaire, nos. 28 and 29 (1985): 382.

34 Aron, “Une révolution antiprolétarienne,” Commentaire, nos. 28 and 29 (1985): 299–310Google Scholar.

35 Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. George Holoch (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1990), 58.

36 Aron, “L'avenir des religions séculières,” 369–83.

37 Ibid., 374.

38 Ibid., 378.

39 In his memoirs, Aron recalled the words of a German colleague: “You will always be a spectator, a critical spectator, you will not have the courage to commit yourself to action that carries the movement of crowds and of history” (Memoirs, 49).

40 Aron, L'Homme contre les tyrans, 140.

41 This lecture was published in Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, 55–106. It was translated into English and republished as an afterword to Raymond Aron, Thinking Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology, ed. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian Anderson (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997), 325–47. For more details, see Daniel J. Mahoney, The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011), 165–67.

42 Aron, “États démocratiques et états totalitaires,” 62.

43 Ibid., 77. The notion of heroism is also mentioned by Jacques Maritain in the conversation that followed Aron's lecture (see ibid., 78).

44 See Aron, L'Homme contre les tyrans, 137.

45 Ibid., 206.

46 Aron, “États démocratiques et états totalitaires,” 61.

47 Aron, L'Homme contre les tyrans, 137.

48 Ibid., 219.

49 Aron, “États démocratiques et états totalitaires,” 79.

50 Ibid., 70.

51 Unlike Ortega, Aron expressed little interest in this issue. His more democratic form of liberalism differed from the highly meritocratic form preferred by Ortega, who was suspicious of democracy. The Spaniard criticized the mass man lost in the crowd and contemplated the emergence of a new aristocracy (composed of writers, artists, doctors, and engineers) capable of adopting the widest possible perspectives from which to view and interpret events. For more details, see Andrew Dobson, An Introduction to the Politics and Philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 78.

52 Aron, “États démocratiques et états totalitaires,” 70.

53 See Aron, L'Homme contre les tyrans, 220.

54 See Eugène Ionesco, Rhinoceros and Other Plays, trans. Derek Prouse (New York: Grove, 1960).

55 Ortega, Toward a Philosophy of History, 70; OC, 4:130.

56 Ortega, “No ser hombre de partido,” in OC, 4:75.

57 Aron, “The Revolt of the Masses,” 363.

58 Here is Aron's self-portrait: “Un sans parti, dont les opinions heurtent tout à tour les uns et les autres, d'autant plus insupportable qu'il se veut modéré avec excès, et qu'il dissimule ses passions sous des arguments” (Nicolas Baverez, Raymond Aron [Paris: Flammarion, 2005], 338; see also Aron, Thinking Politically, 301).

59 Aron, Memoirs, 71.

60 Aron, “Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith,” appendix to The Opium of the Intellectuals (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2001), 342.

61 Jacques Maritain, “A Letter on Independence,” in Integral Humanism, Freedom in the Modern World, and A Letter on Independence, ed. Otto Bird (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), 122.

62 Ibid., 132.

63 See Walzer, The Company of Critics, 101–35.

64 See Dobson, An Introduction to the Politics and Philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset, 100.

65 Quoted in ibid.

66 Zeev Sternhell, Neither Left nor Right (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 15.

67 See ibid., 27.

68 Ortega, Man and Crisis (New York: Norton, 1958), 142; OC, 5:110.

69 Ortega, “Organización de la decencia nacional,” in OC, 11:272.

70 Ortega, “Democracia morbosa,” in OC, 2:136.

71 Ortega, “Maura o la política,” in OC, 11:71.

72 Ortega, “Democracia morbosa,” 138.

73 Ortega, “The Sunset of Revolution,” in The Modern Theme (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), 106; OC, 3:212.

74 See, e.g., “Vieja y nueva política,” in OC, 1:265–99; “Sobre la vieja política,” in OC, 11:26–31.

75 See Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, 332–34.

76 Ibid., 20.

77 Ibid., 21.

78 On this text, see Mahoney, Conservative Foundations, 177–81.

79 See Aron, Essais sur les libertés (Paris: Hachette, 1998), 71–136.

80 Aron, “The Liberal Definition of Liberty: Concerning F. A. Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty,” in In Defense of Liberal Reason, ed. Daniel J. Mahoney (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), 89.

81 Ibid., 85; see also 83. Also see Daniel J. Mahoney, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992), 73–90.

82 On Aron's political thought, see also Stephen Launay, La pensée politique de Raymond Aron (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995); Brian Anderson, Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997); Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron and the French Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 137–82; Aurelian Craiutu, “Raymond Aron and the French Tradition of Political Moderation,” in French Liberalism: From Montesquieu to the Present Day, eds. Raf Geenens and Helena Rosenblatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 271–90. Of special interest is the volume dedicated to Aron by Commentaire, the magazine he had founded several decades earlier. The special issue of Commentaire, nos. 28 and 29 (1985), contains many important articles on Aron written by those who knew him, among them Gaston Fessard, Stanley Hoffman, François Furet, Allan Bloom, and Pierre Hassner. Also worth consulting is “Raymond Aron and French Liberalism,” special issue, European Journal of Political Theory 2, no. 4 (2003)Google Scholar, which features several important essays on Aron.

83 Ortega, “No ser hombre de partido,” in OC, 4:75–83.

84 Ortega, “Verdad y perspectiva,” in OC, 2:15.

85 Because it retains the original term (“spectator”), we prefer to use the literal translation “committed spectator” (instead of “committed observer”) for Aron's spectateur engagé.

86 Among the notable essays in El Espectador are “Nada ‘moderno’ y ‘muy siglo XX’” (vol. 1), “Notas de vago estío” (vol. 5), and “Meditación del Escorial” (vol. 6).

87 Ortega, “Verdad y Perspectiva,” 15.

88 Ibid., 16. Aron, however, would not endorse such a radical view.

89 Ibid., 17.

90 Ortega, Toward a Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 70; OC, 4:130.

91 Julián Marías, History of Philosophy, trans. Stanley Appelbaum and Clarence C. Strowbridge (New York: Dover, 1967), 444.

92 Victor Ouimette, José Ortega y Gasset (Boston: Twayne, 1982), 62.

93 Ortega, “The Self and the Other,” in The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture, and Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948), 195; OC, 5:308.

94 Rockwell Gray, The Imperative of Modernity: An Intellectual Biography of José Ortega y Gasset (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 215, 223.

95 Ortega borrows the phrase amigos de mirar from Plato, Republic 476b.

96 See Ortega, The Modern Theme, 87; OC, 3:197

97 Ibid., 95; OC, 3:202.

98 Ortega, “Verdad y perspectiva,” 20.

99 Ortega, Toward a Philosophy of History, 70; OC, 4:130.

100 Ibid., 71; OC, 4:130.

101 Ortega, “Para la cultura del amor,” in OC, 2:144.

102 See John T. Graham, A Pragmatist Philosophy of Life in Ortega y Gasset (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), 187–228; Dobson, An Introduction, 144–62.

103 Ortega, The Modern Theme, 90; OC, 3:199.

104 Ibid., 89; OC, 3:199.

105 Ibid., 92; OC, 3:200.

106 Aron, Memoirs, 85.

107 See, for example, Aron, “Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith,” 346.

108 Le Spectateur engagé was published in the United States as Thinking Politically; also see Baverez, Raymond Aron, 496–500. Another important text in which Aron discusses the relation between studying and observing political phenomena is “Max Weber and Modern Social Science,” in History, Truth and Liberty: Selected Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 335–73.

109 Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, 210.

110 Aron, Thinking Politically, 154.

111 For more details, see ibid., 262.

112 See ibid., 74; see also Aurelian Craiutu, “Faces of Moderation: Raymond Aron's Committed Observer,” in Political Reason in an Age of Ideology, ed. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian Paul Frost (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2007), 261–83.

113 We borrow this phrase from Judt, The Burden of Responsibility.

114 On this topic, see Anderson, Raymond Aron, 121–66.

115 Aron, Thinking Politically, 242.

116 Ibid., 264.

117 Aron, “The Social Responsibility of the Philosopher,” in Politics and History, ed. Miriam Bernheim Conant (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1984), 259.

118 Aron, “History and Politics,” in Politics and History, 237.

119 Ibid., 238.

120 Ortega, “Competencia,” in OC, 10:227.

121 For an excellent intellectual portrait of Aron, see Pierre Manent's essay “Raymond Aron—Political Educator,” in Aron, In Defense of Liberal Reason, 1–23.

122 Aron, Memoirs, 456.

123 See Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); and Mahoney, Conservative Foundations, 183.

124 We borrow this phrase from Jeremy Waldron, “Civility and Formality,” in Civility, Legality, and Justice in America, ed. Austin Sarat (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 59.

125 Compare with Norberto Bobbio, A Political Life, ed. Alberto Papuzzi (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), 123.

126 Jeffrey Green has recently suggested that spectatorship can be part of “ocular democracy,” providing a disciplining gaze upon the rulers; see Jeffrey Green, The Eyes of the People: Democracy in an Age of Spectatorship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Our opinion is that spectatorship can be part of a more active model of social criticism as illustrated by Ortega and Aron.

127 Ortega, Toward a Philosophy of History, 64–65; OC, 4:126.

128 Ortega, The Revolt of the Masses, 76; OC, 4:192.

129 Walzer, The Company of Critics, xviii.

130 Dobson, An Introduction, 59; see also Ortega, “Sencillas reflexiones,” in OC, 10:169.

131 Ortega, Man and Crisis, 145; OC, 5:112.

132 Mounier as quoted in Judt, Past Imperfect, 121.

133 It might be argued—though we would like to leave this question open—that of the two authors, Aron saw better and farther because he may have had a superior understanding of the movement from spectatorship to action.

134 See Ortega, “Verdad y Perspectiva,” 20.

135 We borrow the phrase from Müller, Jan-Werner, “Fear and Freedom: On ‘Cold War Liberalism,’” European Journal of Political Theory 7, no. 1 (2008): 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

136 Ortega, Prólogo para Franceses, in OC, 4:139.