Day: July 5, 2012

I shun the idea of typical contemporary elitism derived from heredity, attendance at the “right” schools, big bucks in the bank (or under one’s thumb) or association with political power for its own sake. But, in The Revolt of the Masses (1930?), Jose Ortega y Gasset presents a strong argument in favor of a genuine elite. A brief sample:

“…we distinguished the excellent man from the common man by saying that the former is the one who makes great demands on himself, and the latter the one who makes no demands on himself, but contents himself with what he is, and is delighted with himself. Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, and not the common man who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendental. Hence he does not look upon the necessity of serving as an oppression. When, by chance, such necessity is lacking, he grows restless and invents some new standard, more difficult, more exigent, with which to coerce himself. This is life lived as a discipline — the noble life. Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us — by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. ‘To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law.’ (Goethe)” – Ortega y Gasset

Much of Ortega’s description of genuine elitism evokes echoes of Viktor Frankl’s humbly transcendent “pursuit of meaning” found in “From Death Camp to Existentialism” (later revised and expanded as “Man’s Search for Meaning”) wherein he describes an existentialism counter to that common to such as Sartre, filled with hope and even joy in the midst of terrible circumstances.