Ortega's thoughts on "intellectualism".

"This doctrine has been given the name "intellectualism"; it is an idolatry of intelligence which isolates thought from its setting, from its function in the general economy of human life. As if man thinks, and not because...he has to to think in order to maintain himself among things! As if thought could awaken and function of its own motion, as if it began and ended in itself, and were not...engendered by action and having its roots and end in action!
Under the name first of Reason, then of Enlightenment, and finally of Culture, the most radical equivocation of terms and the most discreet deification of the intelligence were effected...culture, thought, came to fill the vacant office of a God who had been put to flight. All my work, from its first stutterings has been a fight against this attitude which many years ago I called the "bigotry of culture'. The Bigotry Of Culture because it presented us with culture, with thought, as something justified by itself, that is, which requires no justification but is valid by its own essence.
The way of reversing the relation of life and culture, between action and contemplation, brought it about that, the last century...there has been an overproduction of ideas, of books and works of art, a real cultural inflation. We have arrived at what--jokingly, because I distrust "-isms"--we might call a "capitalism of culture", a modern reflection of Byzantinism. There has been production for production's sake, instead of production in view of consumption, in view of the necessary ideas which the man of today needs and can absorb. And as occurs in capitalism, the market became saturated and crisis ensued...it lies in presenting culture, contemplation, thought, as a grace or jewel which man is to add to his life--hence as something that lies outside his life and as if there were life without culture and thought...
....I have said that the substance of man is purely and simply danger. Man always travels along precipices, and, whether he will or no, his truest obligation is to keep his balance."

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Dear Poirot,

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Thank you for introducing me to José Ortega y Gasset. I looked him up on Wikipedia.

No doubt he was a brilliant mind but appears to have had difficulty detaching himself from his bourgeois intellectual environment.

He must have felt the menace to his life very acutely to flee the country at the age of 53 at the outbreak of the civil war, not returning to Madrid until 1948, nine years after the end of the civil war, at the age of 65. He obviously was no hero. No communist resistant. No adventurer. No Hemingway.

All his major works were published either prior to or during his 12 year exile. He died seven years later at the age of 72.
He regretted that cultural offer exceeded demand. I wonder what value he placed on freedom of expression, he who was from a journalistic background? Would he possibly have been elitist?

He condemned what he called "The Bigotry Of Culture ... because it presented us with culture, with thought, as something justified by itself, that is, which requires no justification but is valid by its own essence". I would rather call it the "wonder" of culture, the "marvel" of culture or the "magic" of culture.

He probably hit it on the nail when he explained, at the age of 31 "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" ("I am I and my circumstance") (Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914).

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Dear Squeers,

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I'm afraid I do not merit your compliments. Any romanticism you perceive can only be circumstantial or simply illusory.

Please be assured that I have not invented anything. To my great regret, none of the ideas expressed in my previous post are original.

As you may know, it was the French philosopher, Auguste Comte, who invented both of those two well known terms, sociology and altruism. In his "System of Positive Polity, or Treatise on Sociology, Instituting the Religion of Humanity" (1851-1854), he saw altruism as the solicitude for fellow human beings that would eventually constitute a new religion, replacing what he considered to be a false, theological, pre-scientific, and metaphysical religion.

I understand that sociobiologists consider that mankind distinguishes himself from all other animal species, not only by his superior intelligence, but also by his greater propensity to cooperate and coordinate his activities with others.

They point out that "altruistic behaviour is common throughout the animal kingdom, particularly in species with complex social structures" . They differentiate, however, biological altruism and altruism as a conscious, voluntary act on the part of the benefactor.

A British evolutionary biologist, W.D. Hamilton suggested that we acquired our propensity for altruism genetically (Hamilton's Rule) and others, that is was acquired psychologically and culturally ("Unto Others: The Evolution and Psychology of Unselfish Behavior", Sober & Wilson).

Even though I don't deserve your very kind compliments, Squeers, they are certainly an encouragement and I shall do my best to live up to them in future.

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Banjo Paterson,
I wasn't conscious of paying you a compliment or, heaven forbid, an insult--that is if your twice-mentioned sense of a compliment is meant to be ironic. I used the term romanticism in the canonical-literary sense and not the adjectival or vernacular. As for originality, I said something similar myself above: "I haven't said anything original, remarkable or even controversial". And this is of course the thesis I've been arguing, that we are all constrained by time and place and sensibility--though more broadly that our idealism is escapism, or inverted life. Even that the subconscious is a better barometer of our well-being than our conscious selves.
I think I'm going to have to find another way of expressing myself in future. Apologies for being abrupt sometimes. I'm usually challenging my own ideas as much as anybody else's.

Thanks for your splendid quotes, Poirot.

'I used the term romanticism in the canonical-literary sense and not the adjectival or vernacular.'

Spot the lecturer.

Sorry squeers couldn't resist.

I came here for the awe. I yearn for awe! My heart yearns for awe!

Which line do I stand in for the awe?

Actually scrap that yearning is more fun, in fact I think it's the whole point of the exercise.

Awwwwww.

Hiya Houellebecq,

You're dead right.

But all that yearning (desire) for awe is symptomatic rather than self-determined. We invented religion because cultured life is boring!

(I miss the wits and the wags here, but busy of late)