Word: gasset
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset once compared a work of art to a window through which life can be seen without the need to account for the structure, transparency and color of the windowpane. Nowadays, most artists would argue that quite the reverse is true. With cameras available to record the view behind the windowpane, the artist must concentrate on making his window preeminent. In fact, the 20th century has witnessed the development of a genre that consists of windows seen through other windows: in other words, works of art that deal with other works...
...race relations, engaging in the improvement of- housing and rehabilitation of moral derelicts, uplifting economically depressed areas, or supplying art to the community-all this without evidence that they are equipped with the talent, organization or experience to succeed." Barzun agrees with the late Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset that the university "has abandoned almost entirely the teaching or transmission of culture...
Buckley himself feels that the U.S. may be moving-at a snail's pace, to be sure-toward his kind of society. This is the point he makes in a book he is writing: The Revolt Against the Masses, a sequel to Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses. To Ortega's somber message that the mass mind has displaced the aristocratic ideal, Buckley replies that there are signs of a resurgence of that ideal-in the movement away from behaviorism, from the "extreme pretensions of democratism." If Buckley foresees a conservative society emerging, however...
...saint, a sage, or an averagely decent human being. Like Arthur Miller, another public accountant of guilt, Sartre wants to even the score of past wrongs, to wrench justice from fate. This mentality is impervious to the tragic sense, the view of existence best expressed by Ortega y Gasset when he said: "The condition of man is essential uncertainty. Man feels himself lost, shipwrecked." Nor can Sartre, as an atheist, accept the dispensation of Christian grace, which redeems the sinner without denying the sin. In Sartre's world, the problem of evil is as shallow as Narcissus' pool...
Burden of Choice. Americans have never really learned to speak of the "masses." Vast crowds do not give the U.S. the sense of doom that Ortega y Gasset felt when he shuddered about "mass man." Yet, sheer numbers are an overwhelming factor in the individual's existence. Demographers calculate that, given a U.S. population density of ten people per square mile in the mid-19th century, each American inside a ten-mile radius could "interact" with about 3,000 others. But the density in the U.S. today is 60 people per square mile, making possible interaction with nearly...