RAYMOND ARON
369
Ortega never subscribed, it seems to me, to the radical histori–
cism of Benedetto Croce, although there was an inspirational rela–
tionship between the two men. Both acknowledge that the recon–
struction of the past inevitably refers to the historian's present. I do
not know if Ortega, like Croce, would have called European evolu–
tion, "the history of liberty ." Croce, without abandoning himself to
progressivism, believed, more strongly than Ortega, in
the happy
ending.
Through their liberalism, they belonged to the same spiritual
family. Both of them were interested in the French liberal
"doc–
trinaires"
of the beginning of the last century, in which the French
themselves had no interest. Croce was, at the beginning of this cen–
tury, closer to Marxism than Ortega ever was. But Croce, who in
his youth had criticized Italian parliamentarism so harshly, toward
the end of his life had a similar attitude to liberal democracy. How–
ever, their philosophical foundations differed profoundly . What
leads us to bring them together is their encyclopedic culture, the im–
mensity of their work, and the diversity of their books . There are no
domains of humanity that were strange to them, or about which they
did not write. They both placed themselves in the tradition of Ger–
man philosophy. I feel comforted in thinking that Ortega did not
scorn journalism. He wrote numerous articles, long and short.
Do Croce's and Ortega's style of philosophy belong to the past?
Of course, this style needs men capable of practicing it (Croces or
Ortegas do not arise by command). But the question I would like to
ask myself (in conclusion) addresses both method and content.
The
Revolt oj the Masses
belongs to what is called
Kulturkritik.
This genre
has not disappeared with the development of sociology. Herbert
Marcuse's book
One-dimensional Man
also addresses value judgments,
ways of living and thinking. A comparison can illustrate the per–
manence of certain themes of
Kulturkritik.
For Ortega the mass men
are like spoiled children; they enjoy material and even moral advan–
tages once reserved for a small minority but they want everything
immediately ; what is given to some must be for all. Inventions
spread to the masses and awaken everyone's desires. Marcuse,
weighed down by his Freudian and H egel ian vocabulary, presents
people in advanced industrial society as alienated, victims of the
media , hungry for goods, because the producers arouse the desire to
consume, without which the economic machine would cease to func–
tion. Ortega states that men of rich societies have become spoiled
