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Jose Ortega Y Gassett, The Revolt Of The Masses
CHAPTER XIV: WHO RULES THE WORLD?
Page 4
They are times in which men love, hate, desire, detest; all this without limit; but, on the other hand, there is no opinion. Such epochs are not without their charm. But in the great epochs, what mankind lives by is opinion, and therefore, order rules. On the further side of the Middle Ages we also find a period in which, as in the Modern Age, there is someone in command, though only over a limited portion of the world: Rome, the great director. It was she who set up order in the Mediterranean and its borders. In these post-war times the word is beginning to go round that Europe no longer rules in the world. Is the full gravity of this diagnosis realised? By it there is announced a displacement of power. In what direction? Who is going to succeed Europe in ruling over the world? But is it so sure that anyone is going to succeed her? And if no one, what then is going to happen? -
2. It is true, of course, that at any moment, and therefore actually, an infinity of things is happening in the world. Any attempt, then, to say what is happening in the world to-day must be taken as being conscious of its own irony. But for the very reason that we are unable to have directly complete knowledge of reality, there is nothing for us but arbitrarily to construct a reality, to suppose that things are happening after a certain fashion. This provides us with an outline, a concept or framework of concepts. With this, as through a "sight," we then look at the actual reality, and it is only then that we obtain an approximate vision of it. It is in this that scientific method consists. Nay, more, in this consists all use of the intellect. When we see our friend coming up the garden path, and we say: "Here's Peter," we are committing, deliberately, ironically, an error. For Peter implies for us a complex of ways of behaviour, physical and moral- what we call "character"- and the plain truth is that, at times, our friend Peter is not in the least like the concept "our friend Peter." Every concept, the simplest and the most technical, is framed in its own irony as the geometrically cut diamond is held in its setting of gold. The concept tells us quite seriously: "This thing is A, that thing is B." But the seriousness is that of the man who is playing a joke on you, the unstable seriousness of one who is swallowing a laugh, which will burst out if he does not keep his lips tight-closed. It knows very well that this thing is not just merely A, or that thing just merely B. What the concept really thinks is a little bit different from what it says, and herein the irony lies. What it really thinks is this: I know that, strictly speaking, this thing is not A, nor that thing B; but by taking them as A and B, I come to an understanding with myself for the purposes of my practical attitude towards both of these things. This theory of rational knowledge would have displeased a Greek.