370
PARTISAN REVIEW
children who want to obtain everything without understanding the
causes of their opulence, without submitting themselves to moral
standards. This moral analysis is in contrast to the trend in Freudo–
Marxist analysis: that it is the regime that creates the men it needs.
Between these two methods or vocabularies,
I
would not hesi–
tate, under other circumstances,
to
state my preferences.
I
shall con–
tent myself to state here that Ortega and Marcuse resemble one
another in that they
judge
the condition of men in their society . Mar–
cuse is one of the sociologists of our time who does not hesitate to an–
nounce his moral stance even though he analyzes it. He belongs to
the Frankfort School that does not submit to the Weberian impera–
tive of the rigorous separation between
analysis offacts
and
judgment of
values.
I
hope that the legitimate and fertile development of scientific
sociology will leave room for the moralists of "historical reason," like
Ortega and Croce. They are valuable elements of European life, be–
ing acutely aware of the "artificial" character, the "relativity" of each
culture; they do not fail to judge, to distinguish between what
nourishes civilization and what produces barbarism, to distinguish
between an "elite" that submits to the demands of the "masses," and
an "elite" that knows what the "masses" want without having to ques–
tion them. They incarnate the "self-criticism" which doubtlessly re–
mains the richest source of European vitality. That is why, despite
and because of the anxieties he formulates, Ortega's book, which
I
have briefly presented, encourages me to plead even more vIgor–
ously the cause of a Europe which considers itself decadent.
