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PARTISAN REVIEW
This mental or moral affliction is the result of a misunderstand–
ing of the imperative wishes of "historical reason": continuity and
change. Ortega, who detests the revolutionaries, remains faithful to
liberalism. He respects and admires the French
"doctrinaires,"
so
neglected and misunderstood in their own country. He states
unhesitatingly: "It is possible that the future belongs to the intellec–
tual tendencies similar to theirs ... different from the lympathic ra–
tionalism of the encyclopedists, and the revolutionaries who find ab–
solutes in some false abstractions, the
doctrinaires
who discover that
history is the real absolute. History is man's reality. There is no
other.
It
is through history that man has come to be the way he is.
Negation of the past is absurd and illusory, because the past is the
nature of man returning at a gallop .... " Man differs from
animals because he does not forget his past, because each generation
does not start afresh. Man's treasure is his past.
As to political institutions, Ortega clearly states his prefer–
ence: parliamentary democracy or, if you like, representative in–
stitutions. He doesn't deny the eventual necessity to reform these in–
stitutions but he defends them, justifying them in the light of
historical reason. Who are the enemies of representative institu–
tions? First of all, they are those who refuse discussion and do not
believe they and their actions must be held accountable. "Under cer–
tain types of syndicalism and fascism in Europe, for the first time
there surfaced a type of man who neither wants to give a reason nor
to have one, but who simply is determined to impose his opinions."
Ortega's antifascism is in and of itself. A civilized philoso–
pher - allow me a few words that might pass as redundancy, but
there were in our century renowned philosophers who thought politi–
cally like barbarians - therefore wants to reduce force to ultimate
reasons. "Direct action" consists of reversing the order and proclaim–
ing violence as the primary rationale and even as the only reason.
Writing before the rise of Nazism, Ortega sees in the French syn–
dicalist revolutionaries, in
"L'Action Francaise,}}
pioneers of this bar–
barism.
Between the domination of the masses and the taste for "direct
action," the philosopher sees a specific relationship. "When direct in–
tervention by the masses in public life has become normal, acciden–
tal and less frequent than it was, 'direct action' appears as an official
norm."
The justification of liberal democracy does not come from in–
tellectual poverty or from the brutality of those who oppose it: "The
