The Discovery of the Masses

Abstract

In the 1930s we were midway between two world wars. Democracy, in the traditional sense, was casting its last beams. It retained the charm of those crepuscular beings who have almost outlived their time. Other, more sinister and violent social and political forces were already attacking its positions. An unprecedented storm was brewing. Two philosophers, Ortega y Gasset (1929) and Jaspers (1933), totally foreign to each other, simultaneously scrutinized the Western horizon. In order to focus their gaze and predict the future correctly both adopted an identical key image: the crowd. The former, responding to a typically Spanish pathos, mingled triumph and anguish in his tone when he declared that mass rebellion was a symbol of the times, the sign of their total novelty. A new man had emerged in the Western world, the man of the crowd: