Jose Ortega y Gasset

Spanish philosopher and cultural critic — author of The Revolt of the Masses (1930), a prescient diagnosis of mass society's dangers, and developer of perspectivism as a philosophy.

The Revolt of the Masses: Ortega's 1930 analysis diagnosed the 'mass man' as a new historical phenomenon — technically capable but morally and culturally barbaric, demanding rights without accepting responsibilities, filling positions without mastering their requirements. The 'specialist who is not a philosopher' — expert in one domain, primitive in all others — is his central figure. Written before Fascism's full emergence, it diagnosed the cultural conditions that made it possible. Perspectivism: Ortega's epistemology that all knowledge is situated ('I am I and my circumstance') — a middle path between relativism and absolutism.