Home

Home of the European Prospect

Home of the European Prospect
Start ||| The Philosophical Europe ||| The Political Progress ||| European Witness
European Forum ||| Blog  |||  Special Homages :  Meister Eckhart  /  David Copperfield
 

Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses

CHAPTER XIV: WHO RULES THE WORLD?

ELPENOR EDITIONS IN PRINT
Page 38

I see, then, in the national State a historical structure, plebiscitary in character. All that it appears to be apart from that has a transitory, changing value, represents the content, or the form, or the consolidation which at each moment the plebiscite requires. Renan discovered the magic word, filled with light, which allows us to examine, as by cathode rays, the innermost vitals of a nation, composed of these two ingredients: first, a plan of common life with an enterprise in common; secondly, the adhesion of men to that attractive enterprise. This general adhesion gives rise to that internal solidity which distinguishes the national State from the States of antiquity, in which union is brought about and kept up by external pressure of the State on disparate groups, whereas here the vigour of the State proceeds from spontaneous, deep cohesion between the "subjects." In reality, the subjects are now the State, and cannot feel it- this is the new, the marvellous thing, in nationality- as something extraneous to themselves. And yet Renan very nearly annuls the success of his definition by giving to the plebiscite a retrospective element referred to a nation already formed, whose perpetuation it decides upon. I should prefer to change the sign and make it valid for the nation in statu nascendi. This is the decisive point of view. For in truth a nation is never formed. In this it differs from other types of State. The nation is always either in the making, or in the unmaking. Tertium non datur. It is either winning adherents, or losing them, according as the State does or does not represent at a given time, a vital enterprise.  Hence it would be most instructive to recall the series of unifying enterprises which have successively won enthusiasm from the human groups of the West. It would then be seen that Europeans have lived on these, not only in their public life, but in their most intimate concerns, that they have kept in training, or become flabby, according as there was or was not an enterprise in sight.  Such a study would clearly demonstrate another point. The State-enterprises of the ancients, by the very fact that they did not imply the close adherence of the human groups among whom they were launched by the very fact that the State properly so-called was always circumscribed by its necessary limitation- tribe or city- such enterprises were practically themselves limitless. A people- Persia, Macedonia, Rome- might reduce to a unit of sovereignty any and every portion of the planet. As the unity was not a genuine one, internal and definitive, it remained subject to no conditions other than the military and administrative efficiency of the conqueror.

Previous / First / Next Page of this chapter

Previous chapter  | Index  | Next chapter

Learned Freeware



Home of the European Prospect
 
Send a Comment ||| |||

get updates 
RSS Feeds / Ellopos Blog
sign up for Ellopos newsletter:

Donations
 
 CONTACT   JOIN   SEARCH   HOME  TOP 

ELLOPOSnet