José Ortega Y Gasset, est à considérer parmis les intellectuels les plus pénétrants du 20eme siècle:
The whole of Europe, lately, has been
suffering a serious lowering of the stand-
ards of courtesy and civility; in Spain, we
have reached the ultimate in discourtesy.
Whenever anyone invites us to embrace a
plebeian attitude, our valetudinarian race
finds itself flattered, precisely in the way
that an invalid feels grateful to be allowed
to stretch out at full length. The plebeian
tone, triumphant in the world, tyrannizes
in Spain. Any tyranny being insufferable,
we must prepare the revolution against ple-
beianism, the most insulting of despotisms.
For the ascendancy of this dismaying
regime, we have the triumph of pure de-
mocracy to thank. Under the shadow of this
noble idea, there has sprouted in the public
conscience a perverse preference for every-
thing low.
…
During my own
lifetime, I have seen the conquest of the
upper classes by low manners: mine has
not been the best age in which to live. Even
before surrendering themselves to the man-
ners and argot of Lavapi6s [“Footwash,” a
dreary proletarian district of Madrid] , aris-
tocratic Spanish circles already had em-
braced characteristics more profoundly
plebeian. Every so-called “democratic” in-
terpretation of a realm of being outside the
domain of public equity becomes fatally plebeian.…
The past may have been organized by superstition, but, when
all is said, at least it was organized.
…
Now here is a standard for distinguish-
ing the line of demarcation between just
democratic opinion and plebeianism. Who-
ever is irritated at the sight of equal men
being treated unequally, but who is not dis-
turbed at seeing men who are unequal be-
ing treated equally-that person is no dem-
ocrat, but a plebeian.
…
The age in which democracy was a
healthy sentiment and an ascendant impulse
is now past. What today is called democ-
racy is much more like a degeneration of
the heart.
…
To Nietzsche we owe the discovery of
the peculiar device which functions in a
decayed public conscience : he called it
ressentiment. When a man feels himself
inferior because he lacks certain qualities
-intelligence, or courage, or elegance-he
attempts by indirection to increase his stat-
ure in his own eyes. He does this by de-
nying the excellence of those qualities in
which he is deficient. As a commentator on
Nietzsche has suggested perceptively, this
is not the case precisely of the fox and the
sour grapes. For the fox did not deny the
value of the ripe fruit-he still thought of
ripeness as a desirable quality in fruit-
but he simply denied that this estimable
quality happened to exist in those particu-
lar grapes which hung unattainable just
above his head.
The resentful man, on the other hand,
goes much further: he hates ripeness, pre-
ferring the sour, the green. A total inver-
sion of values takes place: the superior,
the higher, precisely because it is such,
suffers a capitis diminutio, and in its place
the low is exalted.
…
We live surrounded by people who do
not hold themselves in high esteem, per-
haps with good reason. These people want
the equality of all men to be immediately
and forthwith proclaimed; equality before
the law is not enough for them: they long
for a declaration that all men are equal in
talent, sensibility, refinement, and degree
of feeling. Every day that goes by without
the triumph of this unrealizable leveling is
a cruel day for these resentful creatures,
who feel themselves fatally condemned to
form the moral and intellectual plebs of
our species.
…
And thus it is that journalists, profes-
sors, and politicians without talent compose
the High Command of envy, which, as
Quevedo says, is so skinny and yellow be-
cause it goes about biting but does not eat.
What today we call “public opinion” and
democracy” are little but the purulent
secretion of these spiteful souls.
Via Across Difficult Country : José Ortega Y Gasset – Morbid Democracy
