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An Interpretation of Universal History
Ortega traces the course of Western civilization backward, searching out what makes a civilization rise or fall and offering a way of looking at our own time. Based on a series of lectures on A. J. Toynbee's A Study of History . The prospectus that announced the creation of The Institute of the Humanities promised an inaugural course of twelve lectures, to be given by its founder and entitled, “Concerning a New Interpretation of International History. (Exposition and Examination of A. J. Toynbee’s work, A Study of History .)” But the course as given (in 1948-49) went much farther than that announcement, for the “examination” consisted principally of a critique of Toynbee’s work from the point of view of Ortega’s own doctrines, together with the unfolding of his personal ideas about the science of history and the progress of peoples―in particular the Romans―with frequent side excursions, meant to be systematic, into the crisis of the present time. The central theme of these pages becomes “the analysis of life established in illegitimacy . . . of which the two gigantic examples are the declining days of the Roman Empire and the period in which we ourselves are living.” To the modern crisis, Ortega brings a basic analysis and a program of reform for intelligence by which contemporary life might emerge from the confusion it now suffers.
- GenresPhilosophy
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
2 people are currently reading
68 people want to read
About the author
José Ortega y Gasset
620 books770 followersJosé Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. He was, along with Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 20, 2020
I had more fun reading this book than I have had for a long time. It was not a light frivolous kind of fun, but a deeper more satisfying enjoyment. Partly this was the reward for taking my time, rereading paragraphs or several pages to find a fuller understanding of the shotgun pattern of ideas and concepts. Also closing my eyes and mentally integrating the new ideas with my present conception of current events. But mostly just taking the time to savor the almost poetic flow of precise, absolute language made the time spent here a nice interlude.
As always Jose Ortega y Gasset has opened new avenues of understanding history and life that no other academic has done for me.
If this will be your first Jose Ortega y Gasset “course” then you are in for a treat that can open vast vistas of perspective and understanding of the human condition. If you have met Jose Ortega y Gasset before then you will definitely want to read this book. I would suggest that this be a precursor to “Man and Crisis” and/or “Revolt of the Masses” but, of course, this is not a prerequisite.
As always Jose Ortega y Gasset has opened new avenues of understanding history and life that no other academic has done for me.
If this will be your first Jose Ortega y Gasset “course” then you are in for a treat that can open vast vistas of perspective and understanding of the human condition. If you have met Jose Ortega y Gasset before then you will definitely want to read this book. I would suggest that this be a precursor to “Man and Crisis” and/or “Revolt of the Masses” but, of course, this is not a prerequisite.
August 29, 2014
As with anything written by Ortega, the style is as engaging as the content is profound. In this work, Ortega bull-rushes British historian Arnold J. Toynbee. Toynbee argues that civilizations begin as a challenge-response to an environment, and that all but six primordial civilizations are inheritors of said civilizations (Andean, Yucatan, Egyptian, Aegean, Mesopotamian, and Chinese). Toynbee maintains that civilizations follow three laws - barbarian invasion (external proletariat), Which affects the destruction of the civilization (internal proletariat), and third, that during the centuries of chaos involved in this, a religion of the proletarian arises.
Ortega addresses all of these points in his own way, mingling fact, theory, philosophy, history, and etymology. A notable idea is that challenge and response as Toynbee understands it is almost right, but horribly insufficient. Challenge and response are terms defined by ourselves, reflecting what it is we want to be.
Some notable quotes:
> “Man is a fantastic animal; he was born of fantasy, he is the son of "the mad woman of the house." And universal history is the gigantic and thousand-year effort to go on putting order into that huge, disorderly, anti-animal fantasy. What we call reason is no more than fantasy put into shape. Is there anything in the world more fantastic than that which is the most rational? Is there anything more fantastic than the mathematical point, and the infinite line, and, in general, all mathematics and all physics? Is there a more fantastic fancy than what we call "justice" and the other thing that we call "happiness"?
We see, then, that even from the zoological point of view, which is the least interesting and—note this—not decisive, a being in such condition can never achieve a genuine equilibrium; we also see something that differs from the idea of challenge-response in Toynbee and, in my judgement, effectively constitutes human life: namely, that no surroundings or change of surroundings can in itself be described as an obstacle, a difficulty, and a challenge for man, but that the difficulty is always relative to the projects which man creates in his imagination, to what he customarily calls his ideals; in short, relative to what man wants to be. This affords us an idea of challenge-and-response which is much deeper and more decisive than the merely anecdotal, adventitious, and accidental idea which Toynbee proposes. In its light, all of human life appears to us as what it is permanently: a dramatic confrontation and struggle of man with the world and not a mere occasional maladjustment which is produced at certain moments.
Next time we will look at this from a much more basic point of view and one antedating all zoology, which, glimpsed only a little after my twentieth year, made write in those days that what is most valuable in man is his eternal and almost divine discontent, a discontent which is a kind of love without a beloved, and like an ache which we feel in members of our body that we do not have. Man is the only being that misses he has never had. And the whole of what we miss, without ever having had it, is never what we call happiness. From this one could start a meditation on happiness, an analysis of that strange condition which makes man the only being who is unhappy for the very reason that he needs to be happy. That is, because he needs to be what he is not.”
> “The terrain in itself does not determine history. There is a factor which we might call the "the historic inspiration of the peoples" which cannot be explained zoologically. And that factor is the decisive one in a people's destinies. With the same geographic and and even anthropological material there may be produced different histories. There is in addition another phenomenon of great importance, the migration of peoples. The autochthonous condition is always problematical and utopian. In fact we do not know more in history than that peoples who have set themselves in motion and then settled themselves temporarily—"temporarily" in terms of thousands of years, at times—in one place on the planet, have there created history. If we then cling to the strictness of events, what is important to understand is why a people which which displaced itself will suddenly stop and identify itself with with a landscape. It is like a man who moves forward among a group of women and suddenly stops, caught by one of them.
It is vain to take refuge, as is customary, in utilitarian considerations, in facts. One must end by recognizing an affinity between the soul of a people and the style of its landscape. Hence one fastens on this—because he likes it. For me, then, there is a symbolic relation between nation and territory. Peoples migrate in search of their ideal landscape, which, in the secret depths of their soul, has been promised them by God. The promised land is a promised landscape.”
> “For the first time after so many years I come back to cry aloud in the desert. Because this is the mission of the intellectual who is truly a prophet—to cry in the desert. The greatest of the prophets, Isaiah, made it notable, of course, when he spoke of himself as the voice of one "crying in the wilderness." Because the mission of the intellectual is to be the man who, from his desert, his basic solitude—and man is only man amid his truth, only himself when he is alone—cries aloud to others and invites them to each into his own solitude.”
Ortega addresses all of these points in his own way, mingling fact, theory, philosophy, history, and etymology. A notable idea is that challenge and response as Toynbee understands it is almost right, but horribly insufficient. Challenge and response are terms defined by ourselves, reflecting what it is we want to be.
Some notable quotes:
> “Man is a fantastic animal; he was born of fantasy, he is the son of "the mad woman of the house." And universal history is the gigantic and thousand-year effort to go on putting order into that huge, disorderly, anti-animal fantasy. What we call reason is no more than fantasy put into shape. Is there anything in the world more fantastic than that which is the most rational? Is there anything more fantastic than the mathematical point, and the infinite line, and, in general, all mathematics and all physics? Is there a more fantastic fancy than what we call "justice" and the other thing that we call "happiness"?
We see, then, that even from the zoological point of view, which is the least interesting and—note this—not decisive, a being in such condition can never achieve a genuine equilibrium; we also see something that differs from the idea of challenge-response in Toynbee and, in my judgement, effectively constitutes human life: namely, that no surroundings or change of surroundings can in itself be described as an obstacle, a difficulty, and a challenge for man, but that the difficulty is always relative to the projects which man creates in his imagination, to what he customarily calls his ideals; in short, relative to what man wants to be. This affords us an idea of challenge-and-response which is much deeper and more decisive than the merely anecdotal, adventitious, and accidental idea which Toynbee proposes. In its light, all of human life appears to us as what it is permanently: a dramatic confrontation and struggle of man with the world and not a mere occasional maladjustment which is produced at certain moments.
Next time we will look at this from a much more basic point of view and one antedating all zoology, which, glimpsed only a little after my twentieth year, made write in those days that what is most valuable in man is his eternal and almost divine discontent, a discontent which is a kind of love without a beloved, and like an ache which we feel in members of our body that we do not have. Man is the only being that misses he has never had. And the whole of what we miss, without ever having had it, is never what we call happiness. From this one could start a meditation on happiness, an analysis of that strange condition which makes man the only being who is unhappy for the very reason that he needs to be happy. That is, because he needs to be what he is not.”
> “The terrain in itself does not determine history. There is a factor which we might call the "the historic inspiration of the peoples" which cannot be explained zoologically. And that factor is the decisive one in a people's destinies. With the same geographic and and even anthropological material there may be produced different histories. There is in addition another phenomenon of great importance, the migration of peoples. The autochthonous condition is always problematical and utopian. In fact we do not know more in history than that peoples who have set themselves in motion and then settled themselves temporarily—"temporarily" in terms of thousands of years, at times—in one place on the planet, have there created history. If we then cling to the strictness of events, what is important to understand is why a people which which displaced itself will suddenly stop and identify itself with with a landscape. It is like a man who moves forward among a group of women and suddenly stops, caught by one of them.
It is vain to take refuge, as is customary, in utilitarian considerations, in facts. One must end by recognizing an affinity between the soul of a people and the style of its landscape. Hence one fastens on this—because he likes it. For me, then, there is a symbolic relation between nation and territory. Peoples migrate in search of their ideal landscape, which, in the secret depths of their soul, has been promised them by God. The promised land is a promised landscape.”
> “For the first time after so many years I come back to cry aloud in the desert. Because this is the mission of the intellectual who is truly a prophet—to cry in the desert. The greatest of the prophets, Isaiah, made it notable, of course, when he spoke of himself as the voice of one "crying in the wilderness." Because the mission of the intellectual is to be the man who, from his desert, his basic solitude—and man is only man amid his truth, only himself when he is alone—cries aloud to others and invites them to each into his own solitude.”
August 8, 2024
THE ESTEEMED SPANISH PHILOSOPHER'S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist; he also wrote 'History as a System and Other Essays Toward a Philosophy of History.' This book began as a 1948-1949 course of twelve lectures on Arnold Toynbee's 10-volume work, 'A Study of History,' and includes a synthesis of Ortega's original manuscript, as well as the stenographic version of the course as delivered.
He notes, "Mr. Toynbee, so successful in teaching us so many things, cannot ... teach me not to be inconveniently a nationalist. This a more serious matter... It is the gravest problem in the entire world today, because it is perhaps the only theme that ferments on both sides of what is called the Iron Curtain. Hence, when I see someone approaching it frivolously I feel as terrified as one who watches a child handling a machine gun." (Pg 59) He charges, "Toynbee's theory, then, encircles a great historical error: the disregard, or the ignorance of, a profound structural difference between the two civilizations [Greece and Rome]." (Pg. 86)
He observes, "Among our European peoples... The pure monarchy survived ... It was legitimacy par excellence... It is not that I believe privately and personally that the monarchy must be the only form of legitimate government... What I maintain is that when there was pure and full legitimacy among people in Greece, Italy, or Europe this was always monarchy---whether we like it or not." (Pg. 139-140)
He argues, "the state, the exercise of public power, begins by being illegitimate and ends by being illegitimate; that as a people reaches its extreme maturity the most unexpected thing happens: the reappearance of all the characteristics which the statal function manifests when it is primitive. Of this function there remains only what it has of urgent surgery, of social reaction in the hour of peril; the agent of this function is not the Chief by any right, but anyone at all can hold this post; everybody needs it and nobody wants it." (Pg. 198)
He asserts, "The radical separation between civilization and primitive societies, like many other things in Toynbee's work and doctrine, is set forth by him in a very arbitrary manner, without bothering even to give us reasons why he does it. Nevertheless, he has no choice but to recognize also in primitive society the characteristic of an intellgible historical field." (Pg. 220)
This book and Ortega's 'History as a System and Other Essays Toward a Philosophy of History' are of considerable interest to anyone interested in the philosophy of history.
José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) was a Spanish philosopher and essayist; he also wrote 'History as a System and Other Essays Toward a Philosophy of History.' This book began as a 1948-1949 course of twelve lectures on Arnold Toynbee's 10-volume work, 'A Study of History,' and includes a synthesis of Ortega's original manuscript, as well as the stenographic version of the course as delivered.
He notes, "Mr. Toynbee, so successful in teaching us so many things, cannot ... teach me not to be inconveniently a nationalist. This a more serious matter... It is the gravest problem in the entire world today, because it is perhaps the only theme that ferments on both sides of what is called the Iron Curtain. Hence, when I see someone approaching it frivolously I feel as terrified as one who watches a child handling a machine gun." (Pg 59) He charges, "Toynbee's theory, then, encircles a great historical error: the disregard, or the ignorance of, a profound structural difference between the two civilizations [Greece and Rome]." (Pg. 86)
He observes, "Among our European peoples... The pure monarchy survived ... It was legitimacy par excellence... It is not that I believe privately and personally that the monarchy must be the only form of legitimate government... What I maintain is that when there was pure and full legitimacy among people in Greece, Italy, or Europe this was always monarchy---whether we like it or not." (Pg. 139-140)
He argues, "the state, the exercise of public power, begins by being illegitimate and ends by being illegitimate; that as a people reaches its extreme maturity the most unexpected thing happens: the reappearance of all the characteristics which the statal function manifests when it is primitive. Of this function there remains only what it has of urgent surgery, of social reaction in the hour of peril; the agent of this function is not the Chief by any right, but anyone at all can hold this post; everybody needs it and nobody wants it." (Pg. 198)
He asserts, "The radical separation between civilization and primitive societies, like many other things in Toynbee's work and doctrine, is set forth by him in a very arbitrary manner, without bothering even to give us reasons why he does it. Nevertheless, he has no choice but to recognize also in primitive society the characteristic of an intellgible historical field." (Pg. 220)
This book and Ortega's 'History as a System and Other Essays Toward a Philosophy of History' are of considerable interest to anyone interested in the philosophy of history.
April 7, 2025
Una lectura amena y muy enriquecedora. Ofrece una critica interesante a la obra de Toynbee. Me han resultado especialmente enriquecedores los capitulos dedicados al Imperio Romano. Quizá la transcripción directa de las conferencias hace que la prosa pierda algo de fuerza en ocasiones.
December 16, 2022
¡Una obra maestra!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews