The Conflict Between Nietzschean and Ortegan Vitalism
Nietzschean Vitalism Versus Ortega’s Philosophy
Nietzsche’s vitalism affirmed the value of life as the ground of human being. This value sets a framework of irrationality against reason. Nietzsche says the human being has always been concerned with explaining how to live or how one should live, rather than actually living. This concern, in turn, has broken into metaphysics, morality, and history, generating the “conceptual mummies” that prevent us from living fully.
Nietzsche argued that it is necessary to live like the Übermensch (superman), imposing their desires and criteria (the morality of the master), compared to an absurd and unrealistic formality. Life must be lived as it is presented to the feeling, without going through the filter of reason, in an absolutely irrational way.
Ortega’s Synthesis of Life and Reason
Ortega proposed that we must live life counting on the qualities and characteristics of the human being. If man is equipped with a biological life and reason, he must assume these conditions. For Ortega, we must reasonably live life, because life and reason are inseparably linked and collaborate to help us write our history as well.
Ortega famously stated: “I myself and my circumstances are being,” these circumstances being the umbilical cord that unites the rest of the universe to us, serving as our starting point in our vital and philosophical voyage.
Ortega’s Critique of Technique and the Mass Man
Ortega’s thinking alerts us to the dangers of the era of technique where the mass man dominates. The issue of technique enlarges the peculiar crossroads of Western culture. The importance of art in contemporary culture has given rise to a technological mentality that tends to be separated from life and put in its place.
Ortega proposed bringing technique back to life and reminds Westerners that the human being, whose idea and project is his own being, is invited to the humanist construction of a new technology. If the West puts its life at the hands of technique, it will be led to wreck. The West must ponder its relations with artificial intelligence and technical mechanisms to properly project the location of technique in its life.
The Danger of the Mass Man
In his book The Revolt of the Masses, Ortega warns Europeans of the danger of destruction and barbarity represented by the domain of the mass man in European social life.
What is the Mass Man?
The mass man is a kind of social life—the average person who lacks a vital project. He lives demoralized, depersonalized, and adrift in society. He lives according to the uses and opinions that satisfy him and believes they are his own. Born with civic and social rights in easy and safe economic circumstances, he knows comfort and public order.
The mass man recognizes no barrier to the development of his social life and fails to recognize social inequalities. He believes everything is his, just like his own body or what he finds in nature. He is:
- An inert being, without life, satisfied with the facilities offered by his favorable circumstances.
- Insensitive to the demands of his own being.
- A hollow life, unable to attend to and follow the superior and excellent.
- Morally and intellectually docile, which makes him contrary to any guidance and education.
He does not understand his situation or reasons if the situation is bad, and so his dissatisfaction leads to direct action. This potential leads to totalitarianism and destructive violence. The danger is that the mass man, concerned only for his neglected welfare, can destroy that which he attempts to use (nature).
Ortega proposes that the European mass man return to the care of himself and regain his sensitivity to the superior and excellent. A man achieves the maximum of Pindar: “To be what you are.” The good life is symbolized by the image of the Archer who bends his bow and directs his life toward its own target in the world.
Ortega’s ideas share common ground with Habermas, Heidegger, and postmodern philosophy, as well as environmental social movements.