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The Redemption of Modernism in Spain. An Approach to José Ortega y

Gasset's "The Dehumanization of Art"

Thesis · January 2014

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NAME: Constanza NIETO YUSTA

UNIVERSITY: Universidad

Complutense de Madrid

E-MAIL: cnietoy@geo.uned.es

TÍTULO: La redención de la modernidad en España. Una lectura de La

deshumanización del arte de José Ortega y Gasset

TITLE: The Redemption of Modernism in Spain. An Approach to Ortega

y Gasset’s The Dehumanization of Art.

RESUMEN: El ensayo que Ortega y Gasset publicó en 1925 con el título

de La deshumanización del arte fue resultado del proyecto de evangelización

cultural que el filósofo madrileño puso en marcha para la redención

moderna de España.

ABSTRACT: Ortega y Gasset’s essay The Dehumanization of Art, published

in 1925, was the result of the philosopher’s project for cultural

evangelization, with which he intended to achieve the modern redemption

of Spain.

PALABRAS CLAVE: Ortega y Gasset; deshumanización; modernidad;

religión; cultura; vanguardia; orden; Jean Izoulet; Jacques Novicow;

Marcellin Berthelot.

KEYWORDS: Ortega y Gasset; Dehumanization; Modernism; Religion;

Culture; Avant-garde; Jean Izoulet; Jacques Novicow; Marcellin Berthelot.

2 ABSTRACT

Fig. 1. José Ortega y Gasset posing as Balzac, circa 1900.

ABSTRACT 3

In 1900, right at the turn of the century, a 17-year-old Ortega y

Gasset decided to portray himself as Honoré de Balzac (fig. 1). Mimicking

the pose in which the author of The Human Comedy had been immortalized

in a daguerreotype, in 1840. The future Spanish philosopher was not only

playing tribute to the French writer, who had occupied a large part of his

early readings; Ortega intended to go beyond a historical or aesthetic

amusement by building a self-image that relayed on the concept of oath.

The oath, a linguistic sacrament of power related both to religion and

politics, has been one of the decisive axes of the evolution of history in the

West.1 That image would be re-enacted twenty-two years later – in 1922

Ortega would repeat the solemnity of the chivalrous gesture, with his hand

on his chest (fig. 2). Thus revealing his soul, which begs the question: what

did the young Ortega promise himself? Or, more precisely, what promise

had he announced to the world, putting it back into circulation and updating

it twenty years after that image of himself? And, more importantly, why had

the philosopher turned to France, when all the experts acknowledge a major

German influence?

The answers are to be found in two letters that Ortega sent to his

parents during the summer of 1902. In the first one, signed August 9th,

Ortega confessed to his father that he already was «thinking about a great

project, maybe even heroic». This heroic project was based on him reaching

the age of 26 with not only a degree in Philosophy, but also having studied

Electronics, Chemistry, Physics and Industrial Engineering, as well as

Histology, Biology or Physiology: the ideal education to become «one of the

Spaniards with more points of view» and, consequently, «a chair, a thinker, a

critic or a politician».2 And in the following letter, dated just five days later,

the future philosopher revealed the origin of such a project to his parents:

«the reading of three brilliantly serious and profound books, the most

modern books: one by Izoulet, one by Novicow, and another by the chemist

Bethelot».3 Just as Ortega had confessed in this letter, these three books had

resulted in the transformation of his thought and the genesis of his wish to

write the modern book essential for Spain’s scientific and cultural progress.

For that reason, the philosopher had no doubts when re-building his image,

1 The political and religious significance that the figure of the oath encompasses has been analysed by Giorgio Agamben in his magnificent essay The Sacrament of Language: An Arqueology of the Oath, Cambridge, Polity, 2010. 2 José Ortega y Gasset, Cartas de un joven español (1891-1908), Edición de Soledad Ortega, Madrid, Ediciones El Arquero, 1991, pp. 89-90. 3 Op. cit., p. 95.

4 ABSTRACT

even though this time the signature that concluded his words read Tirteo de

los ingenieros (Tyrtaeus of the Engineers), instead of Ortega y Gasset. With

that signature, he made clear his promise, to urge the motherland to fight

for glory just as the Spartan poet had, and he confirmed his commitment

with the «new man» born with the modern times of industrial production

and progress: the «engineer».

The three «modern» authors that made such an impact on the young

Ortega invite us to turn our gaze to France. Jean Izoulet was a sociologist of

the Collège de France, Jacques Novicow was a Russian sociologist who

wrote in French, and Marcellin Berthelot was a chemist, politician, scientific

historian and essayist. They all belong to the French context of the end of

the 19th century and beginning of the 20th. Where, together with the

decadent ambiance and the jaded outcome of the ennui du temps

foreshadowed by Alfred Musset, the redeeming promises of modern

pedagogy started to flourish.4 These three authors, therefore, contrast with

the general vision concerning his intellectual formation, given by both

Ortega and the scholars dedicated to his study; that is, the belief that the

German influence in his thought was superior to any other.5 However, the

undeniable Germanness of the philosopher from Madrid must not lead us

to dismiss the influence that France would have in his intellectual evolution,

as has been pointed out by Hans Juretschke. In spite of Ortega’s reiterated

condemnation of French decadence and its profoundly adverse influence on

Spain, «the place that he concedes to France in his task of Europeization is

far more important than most believe».6 This would also be noted by Julián

Marías, who states that it is in the context of Ortega y Gasset’s French

education where one should place not only his «Germanness» but the

totality of his thought as well, since in it there was an «intimate linkage to

French thought, maintained until the end».7

Our research has tried to recover Ortega’s long-gone intellectual

training, in an attempt to shed some light. As we shall see, these three

4 Denis Pernot, «Paris, province pédagogique», Romantisme, # 83, 1994, pp. 107-118. 5 Ortega y Gasset’s German influences have dominated most of the research dedicated to his thought. Of all the studies and articles that have analysed the connections between Ortega and German thought, and its key figures (Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl, Scheler, Simmel, etc.), the most exhaustive might be Nelson R. Orringer’s Ortega y sus fuentes germánicas (Madrid, Gredos, 1979). At the same time, it is the most obvious proof of the absence of similar studies centred on the French presence within the Spanish philosopher’s thought. 6 Hans Juretschke, España ante Francia, Madrid, Editorial Nacional, 1940, p. 172. 7 Julián Marías, Ortega. Circunstancia y vocación, Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 1983, p. 189.

ABSTRACT 5

authors that the young Ortega read with devotion will allow us to reveal

from where and with what criteria had the heroic ortegian project emerged.

The train of thought underlying this investigation stems from their analysis,

due to the fact that in all of them we can observe a common element: the

understanding of modernism, be it scientific or cultural, as a new messianic

time soon to come, that is, as a promise of an earthly redemption that shall

fill the spiritual void left by the death of the old religions. And it is in this

sense that we should understand Ortega y Gasset’s scientific and cultural

modernization undertaking in Spain. Far from the decadence and harmful

rhetoric of French romanticism, in the work of these authors Ortega found

the promise of the new and, consequently, the guidelines for the cultural

economy of the modern world. His approach no longer has to do with that

obsolete, out-dated and yellowish knowledge of the old parchments that lay,

filled with dust, in the forgotten, archived, shelves of History. In his pages,

still white and pure, everything is yet to be written, and his role consisted on

nothing less than framing his work to come. His promise was to prophesise

this empty space that modernism would come to fill with its new sentiment,

an empty space that is also reflected in the pages of L’ Esprit Nouveau (fig. 3).

⁂

6 ABSTRACT

Fig. 2. Ortega y Gasset posing once again as Balzac, 1922.

ABSTRACT 7

Fig. 3. «Place for a work of modern sentiment». Le Corbusier, Urbanism,

G. Crès et Cie, Paris, 1925, p. 38.

8 ABSTRACT

⁂

The study of Jean Izoulet’s (1854-1919) work tells us that we are

dealing with an extravagant and contradictory thinker, when compared to

some of his contemporaries, such as Émile Durkheim, Gabriel Tarde or

Henri Bergson. Of his thought, shaped by a series of disparate references

such as Joseph de Maistre, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Claude Bernard or Alfred

Espinas, barely any records remain. Only two works, helmed by his disciple

Émile Bocquillon, have given an account of the complexity of Izoulet’s

theories and of their numerous connections with European totalitarianism.8

But, overall, Izoulet is one of the many sociologists of the turn of the

century that nowadays have been forgotten. An oversight that should not

prevent us from regarding the fact that, in spite of the extravagance of his

theories and the continuous and enraged critical responses that he received

from his start, Izoulet was one of the most popular professors at the Collège

de France. Fanatical and incoherent according to his peers, Izoulet managed,

on the other hand, to arouse passion among the French youth of the early

20th century. His classes were always full and his books were best sellers.

These facts, together with the recovery of Izoulet by some recent scholars,

allow us to state that the importance that his doctrines could have acquired

during his time has yet to be taken into full consideration.9

8 In 1937, Émile Bocquillon published La Religion civique et la Mission de la France. Mussolini, Hitler, Kou-Houng-Ming, Izoulet confrontés (París, Librairie Vuivert, 1937), a book that gathered fragments of the works by Mussolini, Hitler, the Chinese intellectual Kou-Houng-Ming and Izoulet, under one topic: the new European civic religion. With this book, Bocquillon, sole heir to Izoulet’s thought, did an ill service to his master, to his regret, by showing the many connecting points of the French sociologist’s thought with the totalitarianisms that would soon devastate Europe. Perhaps for that reason, five years later Bocquillon would publish the only study in existence on the life and work of his master: Izoulet et son oeuvre (París, Baudinière, 1943), where he attempted to restore the image of Izoulet, even to the point of extolling him as a new Confucius for the West. 9 The articles that the French sociologist Hervé Terral published in recent years are an example of this attempted recovery: «Jean Izoulet: de la religion à la sociologie (et retour)» (Actes du Colloque Sciences humaines et religions, XXVIII-XXème siècle, EHESS, 2005) and «Jean Izoulet (1854-1929): un penseur quecynois à redécouvrir» (Bulletin de la Société archéologique de Tarn-et-Garonne, vol. 131, 2006, pp. 125-133). Similarly, albeit in a transversal manner, other experts have encountered Jean Izoulet in their researches. That is the case of Cynthia J. Gamble, whose work Proust as a[n] Interpreter of Ruskin: The Seven Lamps of Translation (Birmingham, Alabama, Summa Publications, 2002, p. 73) points out, not only Proust’s early interest in Izoulet’s theories, but also how the author read, not always with pleasure, the

ABSTRACT 9

Of all the studies published by Jean Izoulet, Ortega y Gasset only had

access to one: La Cité moderne et la métaphysique de la sociologie (1894). Even

though it was Izoulet’s Doctoral Thesis, all of the ideas that would conform

Izoulet’s future thought were developed along these six hundred pages,

therefore, the young Spanish philosopher learned through them the radical

hypotheses that the French sociologist would dare to present as solutions

for the modern world.10

There is an obvious influence in the pages of Izoulet’s book: Saint-

Simonianism. All the ideas in La Cité moderne lead back to his doctrines: the

exaltation of science, the cult of progress, the vindication of the supremacy

of the new men of science, the exaltation of the city as a new urban utopia,

and, ultimately, the belief in the need for a new modern catechism where

science and religion would be definitively reconciled. However, Jean Izoulet

would try to go even further with these spiritual proposals for the modern

world. The city Izoulet dreamed of, understood through a bio-social prism,

that is as the largest and most perfect organism that evolution had reached,

should necessarily be built based on a hierarchical structure where only a

few organs would be in charge of the vital functions of the totality. The

nucleus of the social brain, would be represented by the great men or heroes

of the modern world, in whose hands fell the control of the multitudes to

reach the necessary order with which Humanity could direct itself to the

culmination of its historical time. Izoulet, therefore, defended a new

aristocracy for the cities, an elitism based on men of reason and science, on

speculative citizens. Something that Ortega would also defend in several

articles, and that would reach its definitive formulation in The Revolt of the

Masses.11

translations that Izoulet had done in 1888 of Carlyle’s On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History and in 1895 of Emerson’s Representative Men. 10 Jean Izoulet’s thought would reach its highest level of extravagance and paroxysm during the second decade of the 20th century, when he published a series of works where he would claim the arrival of a new secular or civic religion for the modern world: La Rentrée de Dieu dans l’École et dans l’État (1924), Paris, Capitale des Religions ou la Mission d’Israël (1926), La Métmophose de l’Église ou la Sociologie , fille du Décalogue au Collége de France (1928), and Le Panthéisme d’Occident, ou le super- läicisme et le fondoment métaphysique de la République et du Socialisme hiérarchiques (1928). 11 Some of the articles where Ortega argues for the supremacy of an elite made of men of science and intellectuals, as well as their role in the social reorganization, are «Asamblea para el progreso de las ciencias» (1908; «Assembly for the Progress of Sciences»), «Sobre una apologia de la inexactitud» (1908; «On a Defence of Inaccuracy»), and «Democracia morbosa» (1917; «Morbid Democracy»). Even though this social elitism appeared in Invertebrate Spain (1922), it was in The Revolt of the Masses (1930) where Ortega would

10 ABSTRACT

Among the published works of the Russian sociologist Jacques

Novicow (1849-1912), we shall centre our attention on one: Les luttes entre

sociétés humaines et leurs phases succesives (1893). Marked by an obvious social

Darwinism, which in the future the author would attempt to distance

himself from.12 This study is a defence of struggle as motor and evolution of

the world, but, first and foremost, as a political, social and pedagogical

programme put at the service of the key warrior of the contemporary world:

the intellectual. In light of the philosophical, political and cultural path that

Ortega y Gasset would follow during the rest of his life, this book by

Novicow would become more than just a youth reading; it would reveal

itself as a dogma that the young Spanish philosopher would have been

determined to follow literally in his reformation project for Spain.

For Novicow, society, governed by both cosmic principles and

natural selection, consisted of far more than just the struggle for survival: it

was the result of the struggle between economies, policies, cultures and,

ultimately, between ideas. This last type of struggle, la lute intellectuelle, would

be the essential battle in the configuration of society. The achievement of

both the individual and collective conscience of the social body depended

on the implantation of new ideas. Guided by a few, the intellectuals, this

fight would open its battlefield to all possible fronts; of which print and

education, the two mediums of the modern world par excellence, would be his

principle platforms for propaganda.13 And to ensure its success, as Novicow

would point out, religion would be an essential element in the intellectual

definitively establish his conclusions on the loss of prominence of illustrious men, confronted by the unstoppable advancement of the masses in the cities. 12 Even though Jacques Novicow published a book, in 1910, in which he definitively distanced himself from social Darwinism, La critique du darwinisme social, his work has always been traversed by the shadows of that movement. Many scholars have tried to defend Novicow’s position, by pointing out that his biopolitical theory took from evolutionism the idea of the struggle for existence without taking it to its extreme, i.e. to war. That is the case with David Paul Crook (Darwinism, War and History. The Debate Over the Biology of War from the ‘Origin of Species’ to the Fist World War, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 112-114) and Pierre-André Taguieff («Critiques du progrès et pensées de la décadence. Essai de clarification des visions de l’histoire», Mil neuf cent, núm. 14, 1996, pp. 23 and 29). On the other hand, other authors such as Daniel Becquemont point Novicow out as one of those responsible for the equivocal dissemination of the denomination of «social Darwinism», by uniting in his thought a pacifist tendency with a strong defence of the social dominance of an aristocracy characterized in biological terms («Une régression épistémologique: le ‘darwinisme social’», Espaces Temps, núm. 84-86, 2004, p. 97). 13 An exhaustive analysis of the intellectual struggle, as well as its different means of propaganda, can be found in Jacques Novicow, Les luttes entre sociétés humaines et leurs phases succesives, Paris, Félix Alcan Éditeur, 1896, pp. 96-112 and 276-329.

ABSTRACT 11

fight, and dogmas and cults the fundamental weapons for its indoctrination.

Only in this manner would the implantation of the new ideas manage to

leap from reason to sentiment, and expand from the learned man to the

unlearned man with the transfigurative power that lives in every religious

belief.14 Novicow, a man of science like Izoulet, was incapable of leaving

aside the determining role that religion had played in the history of

Humanity, not only as a means of ideological indoctrination but also, and

chiefly, as a vehicle for the promise of man’s happiness.15

The philosophical writings of the chemist, essayist and politician

Marcellin Berthelot (1827-1907) should be understood along the same lines.

Without holding any resemblance to Novicow’s evolutionary approach,

Berthelot also defended the need to build a society where happiness was

possible. Both of them represented, therefore, the continuity of the idea of

Bonheur that during the 18th century became a pillar for the new spiritual

proclamation of the newly born contemporary age, that is, that «l’homme est

fait pour être heureux». 16 Marcellin Berthelot, responsible for the new

approach that French chemistry would adopt after the publication of his

study La Chimie organique fondée sur la synthèse (1860) and researcher of such

diverse fields as medicine, thermochemistry, plant physiology, and

explosives, believed that science and its inseparable companion Freethought

were the only possible paths that lead to the fulfilment of modern happiness

on earth. He expressed as much in Science et morale (1897), a compilation of

his political speeches that, without a doubt, was the work that young Ortega

read and lead him to proclaim himself as the new heroic figure that Spain

was in need of: Tyrtaeus of the engineers.

The basic idea that underlines all of the French chemist and

politician’s speeches is the claim for science as the new pillar for

pedagogical, cultural and moral reform for the new times. According to

Berthelot, Science - that is, the modern incarnation of logos - is the only path

that leads to the emancipation of thought and, ultimately, the emancipation

of the people. Everything, including creation, poiesis, is based on scientific

14 Jacques Novicow, Op. cit., p. 109. 15 In further studies Jacques Novicow will address the need for a new religious experience for modern times; a religion, secularized by reason and science, that could assure justice and, consequently, the happiness of men here on earth. In this respect see Les gaspillages des sociétés modernes: contribution à l’étude de la question sociales, Paris, Félix Alcan Éditeur, 1894, p. 194; La possibilité de bonheur, Paris, V. Giard & E. Brière Librairies-Éditeurs, 1904; and La justice et l’expansion de la vie. Essai sur le bonheur des sociétés humaines, Paris, Félix Alcan Éditeur, 1905, pp. 374-375. 16 Robert Mauzi, L’idée du bonheur au XVIII siècle, Paris, Librairie Armand Colin, 1969, p. 80.

12 ABSTRACT

pillars: «between science and art, between science and poetry, exists a

necessary relationship, an unbreakable alliance between beauty and truth

that had already been claimed by Plato».17 And in order to reach this divine

state that is emancipation, that place where thought would be redeemed of

all submission to dogmatic principles foreign to reason itself, education

would be the only viable path. For Berthelot, that is the great challenge

faced by modern times: the emancipation of education from tradition, in

order to insert it in the new systems of scientific knowledge. Science,

therefore, is not only emancipatory, but educational as well:18 its inclusion in

the pedagogical programmes of schools and universities would result in the

improvement of both the intellectual order and the moral order. Thanks to

mathematic and algebraic methods, the deductive and rational capacities of

the students would be cultivated, hence favouring the understanding of

signs and symbols, those «necessary instruments that increase the power and

scope of the human spirit».19 The observation of the world and the curiosity

for the understanding of its phenomena could be stimulated through the

study of Natural Sciences and Physics, which would enable the aesthetical

sentiment. And, ultimately, morality would emerge from natural law and

truth. Thus Science would be able to shape useful men, as well as citizens

free of prejudice and morally fit for the rational modern world.

This organization proposed by Berthelot would only be possible after

the new sage born with industrial development, the engineer, took centre

stage in the reformation of the modern world.20 Berthelot saw in this figure,

born out of technology and its industrial application, the possibility of

achieving the happiness dreamt for modern times: the conversion of the old

world of manual labour and human inequalities into an Eden like land, «into

a vast garden, garnished with the effusion of subterranean waters, where the

17 «Entre la science et l’art, entre le science et la poésie, il existe cette relation nécessaire, cette Alliance indisoluble du beau et du vrai, déjà proclamée par Platon.» Marcellin Berthelot, «La Science émancipatrice» in Science et moral, Paris, Calmann Lévy Éditeur, 1897, p. 42. 18 The idea of science as education is clearly elaborated on in an article that complements «La Science émancipatrice»: «La Science éducatrice». Op. cit., pp. 57-125. 19 «Ce n’est pas tout: les mathématiques, l’alg`bre et l’abalyse infinitésimale principalement, suscitent à un haut degré la conception des signes et des symboles, instruments nécessaires qui augmentent la puissance et la portée de l’esprit humain.» Op. cit., p. 117. 20 Berthelot would expose this idea and the following ones in his speech «La haute Culture et la loi militaire», Op. cit., pp. 154-207.

ABSTRACT 13

human race would live in abundance and in the happiness of the legendary

golden age».21

⁂

Ortega y Gasset’s thought would evolve in light of these teachings

after readings of the works of Izoulet, Novicow and Berthelot, building a

cultural project that could possibly redeem Spain in order to face its

incorporation in European modernism. From Izoulet he would take the

belief in the messianic role of the elites as the guides for the modern world

in its path towards the lost order, the belief in the key role the new

generations would play in the evangelization of new ideas, and the

importance that a new civic or social religion would play in their very

consolidation. From Jacques Novicow, Ortega would assimilate whole-

heartedly his program for intellectual struggle, developing the propaganda of

his modern doctrines for all possible fronts: as a writer in newspapers and

journals (Vida Nueva, Helio, La Lectura, Faro, El Imparcial, to name a few); as

a professor during his time as Chair of Metaphysics in Madrid’s Central

University, since 1910; as editor and cultural promoter with the foundation

of journals such as Europa (1910), España (1915) and the seminal Revista de

Occidente (1923); and as a political man with the creation of associations such

as Liga de Educación Política Española in 1914 (The League for Spanish

Political Education) that, in spite of its brief existence, attested the intention

of putting into action the process of Spanish regeneration through «the

political mission of intellectual minorities».22 And from Marcellin Berthelot,

21 This utopic vision of the redeeming future in hands of the progressions of Science was exposed by Berthelot in the speech he gave/pronounced on April 5th 1894 before the Trade Chamber of Chemical Products entitled «En L’An 2000». Op. cit., p. 514. 22 The first section of the «Prospecto», The Programme for the League for Spanish Political Education was specifically titled «The political mission of the intellectual minorities», a true statement of purpose for the political and cultural reform that Ortega would work on: «For us, therefore, the first thing is to enhance the organization of a minority in charge of the political education of the masses. There is no sense in pushing Spain towards any perceptible improvement while the worker in the city, the peasant in the field, the middle class in the towns and in the capitals have not learnt to impose the rough willpower of their own desires, on the one hand; and to desire a clear, specific and serious future, on the other.» José Ortega y Gasset, «Prospecto de la ‘Liga de Educación Política Española’», Obras completas. Tomo I (1902-1915), Madrid, Taurus, 2004, p. 739.

14 ABSTRACT

Ortega would inherit his quasi-religious belief in science as the sole motor

for change in Spain.23

The approach of this Doctoral Thesis in its considerations has

followed the common leitmotiv shared by these three French authors, that is,

the need for a new religion for the modern world. Even though Ortega y

Gasset relentlessly distanced himself from traditional religious doctrines,

and despite his defence of secularism in the new education system in Spain,

we should not arrive to the conclusion that he opposed every form of

spiritual communion. As he would proclaim in his 1908 article, «La cuestión

moral» («The moral question»), Science should play the social and moral role

of religion in the modern world.24 For Ortega the socialisation of Spain

should be built on religious emancipation, a thought he would elaborate on

in 1909 and that would confirm its necessity for mankind in 1916.25 Far

from opposing religious sentiment, Ortega rejected the indoctrination and

superstition of past systems of belief, leaving open a possible approach to

any religion that could adapt itself to modern times.

Practically all of Ortega y Gasset’s writing is illustrated with religious

metaphors, which should not surprise us, since the Spanish philosopher’s

understanding of human life was inextricably linked to vocation.26 The alter

ego that Ortega would use for some years, the Spanish mystic Rubín de

Cendoya is a clear example of this understanding.27 His Doctoral Thesis Los

23 The proclamation of Science as the means of salvation for Spain can be found in articles such as «Assamblea para el progreso de las ciencias» (1908; «Assembly for the Progress of Sciences»), where Ortega states that the only possible solution for Spanish progress was «science, which represents – not to be forgotten- the only guaranty of moral and material survival for Europe». (Op. cit., p. 198). His definitive defence would be stated in El tema de nuestro tiempo (1923; The Theme of Our Time). 24 José Ortega y Gasset, «La cuestión moral», Obras completas. Tomo I (1902-1915), Madrid, Taurus, 2004, pp. 211-212. 25 The definition of unity or social communion as religious emotion can be found in his 1909 article «Fuera de discreción» (Op. cit., p. 251) and the confession of the need for a religious sentiment in man as a way of going further into the depth of things can be found in the article «Sobre El Santo» («On The Saint») from 1916 (José Ortega y Gasset, Obras completas. Tomo II, Madrid, Taurus, 2004, pp. 19-26). 26 There have been plenty of studies centred on Ortega y Gasset’s life and work understood as vocation. Here we shall only mention two: Julián Marías book Ortega: circunstancia y vocación (Madrid, Alianza Universidad, 1983) and the article by José Lasaga Medina «Las vidas contadas de José Ortega y Gasset» (Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía, vol. 20, 2003, pp. 301-319). 27 Rubín de Cendoya appears in articles such as «Pedagogía del paisaje» (1906; «Pedagogy of Landscapes»), «Teoría del clasicismo» (1907; «Classicism Theory») and «Planeta sitibundo» (1910; «Thirsty Planet»). One of the most interesting analysis of Ortega’s alter ego and an

ABSTRACT 15

terrors del año mil. Crítica de una leyenda (1909; The Terrors of the Year One

Thousand. Critique of a Legend), centred on the apocalyptic sentiments that

marked the 11th century; as well the titles of some of his writings on art:

«Adán en el Paraíso» (1910; «Adam in Paradise»), «Arte de este mundo y del

otro» (1911; «Art of this World and of the Other»), «La vida en torno.

Muerte y resurrección» (1916; «Surrounding Life. Death and Resurrection»),

«Vitalidad, alma, espíritu» (1911; «Vitality, Soul, Spirit»), and «Meditación del

Escorial» (1916; «Meditation on The Escorial») are just a few of the most

relevant examples of his use of religious metaphors. His entire intellectual

battle can be understood as a mechanism for the religious reinterpretation

of modernism’s imperative as an exclusive means for cultural and scientific

evangelization of Spanish society. And, in view of Spain’s historical and

cultural background, understanding Ortega’s cultural mission from these

parameters is not farfetched. The Generation of ‘98, to which Ortega is

more indebted to than he leads on, set up the spiritual basis to which the

next generations would try to respond. Since the issuing of Ángel Ganivet’s

Idearium español (Spain, an Interpretation) in 1898, Spain seemed to be

immersed in a spiritual scepticism that was doomed. It was this situation

that the Generation of ‘98 would try to confront, with Krausism as the

greatest exponent of the allegiance between scientific thought, pedagogy and

religious sentiment.28 In spite of some of Ortega’s articles, such as «Una

respuesta a una pregunta» (1911; «An Answer to a Question»), where he

wrote on the krausist effort as a failure typical of a time stuck in the past, his

efforts for Spanish regeneration and integration would replace this

movement, reformulating and reshaping its cultural precepts to meet the

necessities of modern times. Culture, located in the very centre of scientific,

pedagogical and spiritual concerns would become, thanks to Ortega, the

new silent ideal of modernism, the new transfigured Messiah claimed by the

Spanish philosopher in 1910. In his own words: «And this religion of culture

will be like a new allegiance closed on the ruins of that old allegiance broken

in these past years: that of the old Spain, barren of unifying ideals, within

exhaustive account of all the figures in which the philosopher wished to incarnate himself during his youth can be found Noe Massó Lago’s Doctoral Thesis La imagen del ser humano en el joven Ortega (1902-1916), Madrid, Facultad de Filosofía, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, 2001, and published under the title El joven José Ortega: anatomía del pensador adolescente, Pontevedra, Ellago Ediciones, 2006. 28 A general, but in depth, view of these relations can be found in Teresa Rodríguez, «El pensamiento religioso durante el 98: el krausismo», Ilu. Revista de Ciencias de las Religiones, núm. 3, 1998, pp. 249-260.

16 ABSTRACT

which it was not possible to collaborate because there was nothing that

could be done».29

In light of theses considerations, the essay The Dehumanization of Art

that Ortega y Gasset published in 1925 acquires a new and revealing

importance, not only in relation to Ortega’s entire thought but also for the

totality of the Spanish modernization process of the early 20th century.

Within the specific context that John Crispin has united under the label «the

aesthetic of the generations of 1925»,30 Ortega’s essay could be considered a

point of arrival, the resulting explosion of the entire passage of spiritual

regeneration travelled since the very beginning of his intellectual journey.

The year 1925 saw the publication of several texts that intended to offer an

account of what had happened in the art of the first two decades of the 20th

century: Franz Roh’s After Expressionism: Magical Realism: Problems of the newest

European Painting, Die Kunstismen: 1914-1924 by Hans Arp and El Lizzitzky,

and Guillermo Torre’s Literaturas europeas de vanguardia. With them, a desire

for order, for a clear account of the confusing domain of the isms was

emerging in Europe. As had been announced by the International

Exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Arts celebrated in Paris that same

year (that included the presence of Le Corbusier), a new spirit, an «aesthetic

of the engineer» was trying to place himself definitively within artistic

creation during the Interwar Period in Europe. It would seem, therefore,

that 1925 was a turning point in a time marked by the horror of the First

World War and that, ten years later, seemed to be consumed by a

messianism that announced the passage to a new era. That same year saw

the publication of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a warning sign of this new

time, uncertain and threatening, that heralded the arrival of a new religious

power, the most despotic one of all: totalitarianism.

In this sense, Ortega y Gasset’s essay could be understood as a

pioneering attempt in Spain of ordering the new artistic context, an attempt

to clarity the essential structures on which the avant-garde had been built

(the intentional separation of the public, the use of metaphor as a way of

alluding reality by non mimetic means; its playful character, the crucial role

29 José Ortega y Gasset, «Diputado por la cultura», Obras completas. Tomo I (1902-1915), Madrid, Taurus, 2004, p. 351. 30 John Crispin, La estética de las generaciones de 1925, Valencia, Pre-Textos, 2002. Crispin’s essay is essential to our study, since it introduces the consideration of a new generation that spans the distance between the Generation of ‘14 and the Generation of ‘27. In its pages it proves the importance of the year 1925 within the Spanish artistic and cultural scene, relating it to the contemporary European context.

ABSTRACT 17

of humour and irony). Nonetheless, Ortega’s essay allows us to widen this

interpretation. Commonly, The Dehumanization of Art has been subject to

many critical interpretations that, as can be seen in Juan José Lahuerta’s

magnificent essay Decir Anti es Pro. Escenas de las vanguardia en España (To Say

Anti Is To Say Pro. Scenes of the Avant-garde in Spain), tend to establish within

the very concept of dehumanization the axis of their critiques to grasp the

problem, not without peril, raised by the separation between art and life.31

Leaving aside that interpretation, our investigation considers that the term

dehumanization might not refer to this excluding abysm and, in its stead,

could signify the bridge that during that time lay between the previous

epoch and a new time to come, incarnated in the figure of the new man.32

Dehumanization, understood as the disintegrating process that leads to a

further transformation or rebirth, would remit to the evaporation of man,

severed from the past, and to the advent of his future regeneration in a new

figure, still void, where, once order is established, could hold the new pillars

of the modern sentiment. What Ortega was attempting was nothing but the

largest challenge of his life: to complete his project for cultural redemption

within the field of artistic creation. By spreading art’s inherent keys, the

Spanish philosopher was trying to overcome the insurmountable abysm

between creation and public that impeded the fulfilment of his modern

evangelization in Spain. Only by the new cult of modern times – new art –

and by the elevation of the new temples – museums - would Ortega reach

the spiritual order with which he could drive, once and for all, the Spanish

people in the religious sentiment that was modernism.

31 Juan José Lahuerta, «Deshumanización, Cubismo, Surrealismo», in Decir Anti es decir Pro. Escenas de la vanguardia en España, Teruel, Museo de Teruel, 1999, pp. 13-31. 32 An excellent analysis encompassing all the theories on the regeneration of the so-called «new man» during the 1930s can be found in the catalogue of the exhibit directed by Jean Clair, Les années 1930. La fabrique de ‘l’Homme nouveau’, Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 2008.

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