Ortega y Gasset, José (1883–1955)

Spanish philosopher and critic. He considered communism and fascism the cause of the downfall of Western civilization. His Toward a Philosophy of History (1941) contains philosophical reflections on the state and an interpretation of the meaning of human history.

In The Revolt of the Masses (1929) he depicted 20th-century society as dominated by the mediocrity of the masses, and argued for the vital role of intellectual elites in averting the slide into barbarism.

Ortega y Gasset was born in Madrid and educated at Bilbao and Madrid, and subsequently at German universities. He was professor of metaphysics at the Central University of Madrid 1910–36. A republican in politics, he was exiled during the Spanish Civil War, but returned in 1848 and founded the Institute of Humanities in Madrid.