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José Ortega y Gasset, né le 9 mai 1883 à Madrid et mort dans la même ville le 18 octobre 1955 , est un philosophe, sociologue, essayiste, homme de presse et homme politique espagnol. Il est le chef de file du mouvement littéraire et artistique appelé « Génération de 14 ». Wikipedia  

✵ 9. mai 1883 – 18. octobre 1955   •   Autres noms Y Gasset José Ortega
José Ortega y Gasset photo
José Ortega y Gasset: 91   citations 0   J'aime

José Ortega y Gasset citations célèbres

“L'homme n'est pas un être, mais un faire; il n'est pas une nature, mais une histoire.”

José Ortega y Gasset

Le Spectateur, 1992

“Chaque chose nous impose tacitement une distance spécifique et une perspective déterminée. Qui veut voir l'univers comme il est doit accepter cette loi de courtoisie cosmique.”

José Ortega y Gasset

Le Spectateur ('), 1916-1936

“La gloire, comme les phénomènes qui lui sont apparentés — le lever et le coucher du soleil —, a un habit d'or, mais non la consistance de l'or; elle en a la couleur et l'éclat.”

José Ortega y Gasset

Le Spectateur (El Espectador), 1916-1936

“Alors que dans toutes les autres circonstances de la vie, rien ne nous répugne autant que de voir les frontières de notre existence individuelle franchies par un autre être, le plaisir de l'amour consiste à se sentir métaphysiquement poreux à une autre individualité, en sorte de ne trouver satisfaction que dans la fusion des deux individualités, dans une « individualité à deux.»”

José Ortega y Gasset

Études sur l'amour (Estudios sobre el amor), 1926

“Dans l'acte amoureux, la personne sort d'elle-même : c'est peut-être le plus grand essai que la Nature fasse pour que chacun sorte de soi-même vers autre chose.”

José Ortega y Gasset

Le Spectateur ('), 1916-1936

“Ce qui distingue peut-être le plus l'esprit infantile de l'esprit adulte, c'est que le premier ne reconnaît pas la juridiction de la réalité et substitue aux choses leurs images désirées.”

José Ortega y Gasset

Le Spectateur ('), 1916-1936

José Ortega y Gasset: Citations en anglais

“[I]t is necessary to insist upon this extraordinary but undeniable fact: experimental science has progressed thanks in great part to the work of men astoundingly mediocre, and even less than mediocre. That is to say, modern science, the root and symbol of our actual civilization, finds a place for the intellectually commonplace man and allows him to work therein with success.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XII: The Barbarism Of "Specialisation"

“[T]he direction of society has been taken over by a type of man who is not interested in the principles of civilisation. Not of this or that civilisation but — from what we can judge to-day — of any civilisation. …[T]he type of man dominant to-day is a primitive one, a Naturmensch rising up in the midst of a civilised world.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Chap.IX: The Primitive and the Technical
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

“Similarly a work of art vanishes from sight for a beholder who seeks in it nothing but the moving fate of John and Mary or Tristan and Isolde and adjusts his vision to this. Tristan's sorrows are sorrows and can evoke compassion only in so far as they are taken as real. But an object of art is artistic only in so far as it is not real. In order to enjoy Titian's portrait of Charles the Fifth on horseback we must forget that this is Charles the Fifth in person and see instead a portrait — that is, an image, a fiction. The portrayed person and his portrait are two entirely different things; we are interested in either one or the other. In the first case we "live" with Charles the Fifth, in the second we look at an object of art.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset

"The Dehumanization of Art"
The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel (1925)

“I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Chap.II: The Rise Of The Historic Level
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

“The surrealist thinks he has outstripped the whole of literary history when he has written (here a word that there is no need to write) where others have written "jasmines, swans and fauns." But what he has really done has been simply to bring to light another form of rhetoric which hitherto lay hidden in the latrines.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age

“When all these things are lacking there is no culture; there is in the strictest sense of the word, barbarism. And let us not deceive ourselves, this is what is beginning to appear in Europe under the progressive rebellion of the masses. The traveller who arrives in a barbarous country knows that in that territory there are no ruling principles to which it is possible to appeal. Properly speaking, there are no barbarian standards. Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

“That science is incapable of solving in its own way those fundamental questions is no sufficient reason for slighting them”

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José Ortega Y Gasset

Source: History as a System (1962), p. 14

“Whatever be the substance which takes possession of such a soul, it will produce the same result, and will change into a pretext for not conforming to any concrete purpose. If it appears as reactionary or anti-liberal it will be in order to affirm that the salvation of the State gives a right to level down all other standards, and to manhandle one's neighbour, above all if one's neighbour is an outstanding personality. But the same happens if it decides to act the revolutionary; the apparent enthusiasm for the manual worker, for the afflicted and for social justice, serves as a mask to facilitate the refusal of all obligations, such as courtesy, truthfulness and, above all, respect or esteem for superior individuals. … As regards other kinds of Dictatorship, we have seen only too well how they flatter the mass-man, by trampling on everything that appeared to be above the common level.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XV: We Arrive At The Real Question

“Is it not altogether absurd that, under actual circumstances, the average man does not feel spontaneously, and without being preached at, an ardent enthusiasm for those sciences and the related ones of biology?… Every day furnishes a new invention which this average man utilises. Every day produces a new anesthetic or vaccine from which this average man benefits. … How is it, nevertheless, that there is no sign of the masses imposing on themselves any sacrifice of money or attention in order to endow science more worthily? Far from this being the case, the post-war period has converted the man of science into a new social pariah.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Chap.IX: The Primitive and the Technical
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

“The assurance that we have no means of answering [final] questions is no valid excuse for callousness towards them. The more deeply should we feel, down to the roots of our being, their pressure and their sting. Whose hunger has ever been [sated] with the knowledge that he could not eat?”

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José Ortega Y Gasset

Source: History as a System (1962), p. 15

“Man must not only make himself: the weightiest thing he has to do is to determine what he is going to be. He is causa sui to the second power.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset

As quoted in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, p. 155
History as a System (1962)

“Meditation on any theme, if positive and honest, inevitably separates him who does the meditating from the opinion prevailing around him, from that which … can be called “public” or “popular” opinion.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset

Source: What is Philosophy? (1964), p. 15

“This fighting-shy of every obligation partly explains the phenomenon, half ridiculous, half disgraceful, Of the setting-up in our days of the platform of "youth" as youth. … In comic fashion people call themselves "young," because they have heard that youth has more rights than obligations, since it can put off the fulfilment of these latter to the Greek Kalends of maturity. …[T]he astounding thing at present is that these take it as an effective right precisely in order to claim for themselves all those other rights which only belong to the man who has already done something.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XV: We Arrive At The Real Question

“The species with eyes appears suddenly, capriciously as it were, and it is this species which changes the environment by creating its visible aspect. The eye does not come into being because it is needed. Just the contrary; because the eye appears it can henceforth be applied as a serviceable instrument. Each species builds up its stock of useful habits by selecting among, and taking advantage of, the innumerable useless actions which a living being performs out of sheer exuberance.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset

Source: History as a System (1962), p. 17

“Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is "mass" or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself — good or ill — based on specific grounds, but which feels itself "just like everybody," and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Chap.I: The Coming Of The Masses
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

“[I]s this not an advantage? Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have "ideas," that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

“The primary meaning of the words "modern," "modernity," with which recent times have baptised themselves, brings out very sharply that feeling of "the height of time" which I am at present analysing. "Modern" is what is "in the fashion, "that is to say, the new fashion or modification which has arisen over against the old traditional fashions used in the past. The word "modern" then expresses a consciousness of a new life, superior to the old one, and at the same time an imperative call to be at the height of one's time. For the "modern" man, not to be "modern" means to fall below the historic level.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Chap. III: The Height Of The Times
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

“The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from those fantastic "ideas" and looks life in the face, realises that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. As this is the simple truth — that to live is to feel oneself lost — he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look round for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?

“[L]ife, individual or collective, personal or historic, is the one entity in the universe whose substance is compact of danger, of adventure. It is, in the strict sense of the word, drama. … [T]he primary, radical meaning of life appears when it is employed in the sense not of biology, but of biography. For the very strong reason that the whole of biology is quite definitely only a chapter in certain biographies, it is what biologists do in the portion of their lives open to biography.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Chap.IX: The Primitive and the Technical
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

“Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo — or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role?”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age

“The history of the Roman Empire is also the history of the uprising of the Empire of the Masses, who absorb and annul the directing minorities and put themselves in their place. Then, also, is produced the phenomenon of agglomeration, of "the full." For that reason, as Spengler has very well observed, it was necessary, just as in our day, to construct enormous buildings. The epoch of the masses is the epoch of the colossal.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

Chap.II: The Rise Of The Historic Level
The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

“I think that the philosopher must, for his own purposes, carry methodological strictness to an extreme when he is investigating and pursuing his truths, but when he is ready to enunciate them and give them out, he ought to avoid the cynical skill with which some scientists, like a Hercules at the fair, amuse themselves by displaying to the public the biceps of their technique.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset

Source: What is Philosophy? (1964), pp. 19-20

“Life is fired at us point blank.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset

More context: "To live or to be alive or, what is the same thing, to be a man, does not admit of any preparations or preliminary experiments. Life is fired at us point blank. ... Where and when we are born, or happen to find ourselves after we were born, there and then, like it or not, we must sink or swim."
Man and People [El hombre y la gente] (1957), p. 42, translated by Willard R. Trask. ISBN 0-393-00123-7

“It is not that one ought not to do just what one pleases; it is simply that one cannot do other than what each of us has to do, has to be. The only way out is to refuse to do what has to be done, but this does not set us free to do something else just because it pleases us. In this matter we only possess a negative freedom of will, a noluntas.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset livre The Revolt of the Masses

We can quite well turn away from our true destiny, but only to fall a prisoner in the deeper dungeons of our destiny. … Theoretic truths not only are disputable, but their whole meaning and force lie in their being disputed, they spring from discussion. They live as long as they are discussed, and they are made exclusively for discussion. But destiny — what from a vital point of view one has to be or has not to be — is not discussed, it is either accepted or rejected. If we accept it, we are genuine; if not, we are the negation, the falsification of ourselves. Destiny does not consist in what we feel we should like to do; rather is it recognised in its clear features in the consciousness that we must do what we do not feel like doing.
Source: The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age

“Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.”

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José Ortega Y Gasset

Meditations on Quixote (1914)
Source: as quoted in Susan Ratcliffe (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of Quotations by Subject, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010-03-11, page 223, ISBN 9780199567065

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