¹ For a comprehensive account, see Bernard Wasserstein, Barbarism and Civilization: A History of Europe in Our Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Wasserstein begins his book by quoting Walter Benjamin's claim that “there is no document of civilization that is not simultaneously a document of barbarism” (vii).

² As quoted in Stefan Zweig, Nietzsche, trans. Will Stone (London: Hesperus, 2013), 87.

³ Aron's poor health prevented him from delivering the text in Madrid. The original French text was published posthumously as “Ortega y Gasset et la ‘révolte des masses,’” Commentaire 40 (Winter 1987–1988): 733–40Google Scholar. An English translation appeared under the title “The Revolt of the Masses,” Partisan Review 55, no. 3 (1988): 359–70Google Scholar.

⁴ Aron, “The Revolt of the Masses,” 369.

⁵ This phrase is taken from Tony Judt, Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944–1956 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 17; also see 229–45. On the history of (European) liberalism, see Pierre Manent, An Intellectual History of Liberalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); and J. G. Merquoir, Liberalism: Old and New (Boston: Twayne, 1991).

⁶ Julien Benda, The Betrayal of the Intellectuals, trans. Richard Aldington (Boston: Beacon, 1955), 21.

⁷ We borrow the title of a well-known movie by the Canadian director Denys Arcand.

⁸ In The Company of Critics: Social Criticism and Political Commitment in the Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 2002), Michael Walzer devotes a few lines to Ortega, whom he describes, inaccurately, as a “conservative philosopher” with a “sardonic and disdainful” tone (24, 25). Aron is never mentioned in Walzer's book in spite of his prominent role as a social critic in postwar France.

⁹ The phrase is Allan Megill's in Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985).

¹⁰ For a critique of this obsession with political engagement, see Judt, Past Imperfect, esp. chaps. 1, 3, 6–7.

¹¹ Benda, Betrayal of the Intellectuals, 31.

¹² Ibid., 39.

¹³ The exact quote is: “We Germans will never again produce a Goethe, but indeed a Caesar” (Oswald Spengler, Pessimismus? [Berlin: Stilke, 1921], 79).

¹⁴ A fragment from Massis's Défense de l'Occident was translated into English by Flint, F. S. under the title “Defense of the West” in The Living Age, no. 330 (July–Sept. 1926): 536–45Google Scholar. For a collection of writings sharing Massis's concerns, see The Crisis of Modern Times: Perspectives from “The Review of Politics,” 1939–1962, ed. A. James McAdams (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).

¹⁵ José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (New York: Norton, 1932), 19; Obras Completas, vol. 4 (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1966), 149. Quotations from Ortega are drawn from existing English translations where available; otherwise, translations are ours. References to Ortega include the location of the text in Obras Completas, vols. 1–11 (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1963–69), hereafter OC.

¹⁶ For a survey of these thinkers, see Joseph V. Femia, Against the Masses: Varieties of Anti-Democratic Thought since the French Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

¹⁷ On Ortega's political context, see Fonck, Béatrice, “Historia y política en La rebelión de las masas,” Revista de Occidente, no. 73 (1987): 75–87 Google Scholar. For a discussion of Ortega's reception in the United States, see John T. Graham, The Social Thought of Ortega y Gasset: A Systematic Synthesis in Postmodernism and Interdisciplinarity (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 278.

¹⁸ On Ortega's liberalism, see Gálan, Pedro Cerezo, “Razón vital y liberalismo en Ortega y Gasset,” Revista de Occidente, no. 120 (1991): 33–58 Google Scholar; Victor Ouimette, Los intelectuales españoles y el naufragio del liberalismo (1923–1936, vol. 2 (Valencia: Pre-Textos, 1998), 103–287; Suay, Ángel Peris, “El Liberalismo de Ortega más allá del individualismo,” Revista de estudios Orteguianos, no. 6 (May 2003): 166–98Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Graham, Social Thought of Ortega y Gasset, 289.

²⁰ For an extended discussion of Ortega's political theory of the masses, see Alejandro de Haro Honrubia, Élites y masas: Filosofía y política en la obra de José Ortega y Gasset (Madrid: Editorial Biblioteca Nueva, 2008).

²¹ Ortega, The Revolt of the Masses, 74; OC, 4:190.

²² Carl Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Government, trans. Ellen Kennedy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 6.

²³ Ortega, The Revolt of the Masses, 74; OC, 4:190.

²⁴ Ibid., 76; OC, 4:191.

²⁵ In addition to The Revolt of the Masses, see, e.g., Invertebrate Spain (New York: Norton, 1974) (OC, 3:37–130); and La redención de las provincias, in OC, 11:181–332.

²⁶ Ortega, The Revolt of the Masses, 76; OC, 4:191.

²⁷ Ibid.

²⁸ Ibid., 75; OC, 4:191.

²⁹ Ibid., 94; OC, 4:205.

³⁰ Ibid., 139; OC, 4:241.

³¹ Ortega, Concord and Liberty, trans. Helene Weyl (New York: Norton, 1946), 51n1; OC, 5:517.

³² See Aron, L'Homme contre les tyrans, in Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), 209–10. All quotations from this book are from the Gallimard (Quarto) edition; the translations are ours, unless noted otherwise.

³³ Aron, “L'avenir des religions séculières,” in “Raymond Aron, 1905–1983: Histoire et politique. Textes, études et témoignages,” special issue, Commentaire, nos. 28 and 29 (1985): 382.

³⁴ Aron, “Une révolution antiprolétarienne,” Commentaire, nos. 28 and 29 (1985): 299–310Google Scholar.

³⁵ Raymond Aron, Memoirs: Fifty Years of Political Reflection, trans. George Holoch (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1990), 58.

³⁶ Aron, “L'avenir des religions séculières,” 369–83.

³⁷ Ibid., 374.

³⁸ Ibid., 378.

³⁹ In his memoirs, Aron recalled the words of a German colleague: “You will always be a spectator, a critical spectator, you will not have the courage to commit yourself to action that carries the movement of crowds and of history” (Memoirs, 49).

⁴⁰ Aron, L'Homme contre les tyrans, 140.

⁴¹ This lecture was published in Penser la liberté, penser la démocratie, 55–106. It was translated into English and republished as an afterword to Raymond Aron, Thinking Politically: A Liberal in the Age of Ideology, ed. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian Anderson (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997), 325–47. For more details, see Daniel J. Mahoney, The Conservative Foundations of the Liberal Order (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2011), 165–67.

⁴² Aron, “États démocratiques et états totalitaires,” 62.

⁴³ Ibid., 77. The notion of heroism is also mentioned by Jacques Maritain in the conversation that followed Aron's lecture (see ibid., 78).

⁴⁴ See Aron, L'Homme contre les tyrans, 137.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 206.

⁴⁶ Aron, “États démocratiques et états totalitaires,” 61.

⁴⁷ Aron, L'Homme contre les tyrans, 137.

⁴⁸ Ibid., 219.

⁴⁹ Aron, “États démocratiques et états totalitaires,” 79.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 70.

⁵¹ Unlike Ortega, Aron expressed little interest in this issue. His more democratic form of liberalism differed from the highly meritocratic form preferred by Ortega, who was suspicious of democracy. The Spaniard criticized the mass man lost in the crowd and contemplated the emergence of a new aristocracy (composed of writers, artists, doctors, and engineers) capable of adopting the widest possible perspectives from which to view and interpret events. For more details, see Andrew Dobson, An Introduction to the Politics and Philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 78.

⁵² Aron, “États démocratiques et états totalitaires,” 70.

⁵³ See Aron, L'Homme contre les tyrans, 220.

⁵⁴ See Eugène Ionesco, Rhinoceros and Other Plays, trans. Derek Prouse (New York: Grove, 1960).

⁵⁵ Ortega, Toward a Philosophy of History, 70; OC, 4:130.

⁵⁶ Ortega, “No ser hombre de partido,” in OC, 4:75.

⁵⁷ Aron, “The Revolt of the Masses,” 363.

⁵⁸ Here is Aron's self-portrait: “Un sans parti, dont les opinions heurtent tout à tour les uns et les autres, d'autant plus insupportable qu'il se veut modéré avec excès, et qu'il dissimule ses passions sous des arguments” (Nicolas Baverez, Raymond Aron [Paris: Flammarion, 2005], 338; see also Aron, Thinking Politically, 301).

⁵⁹ Aron, Memoirs, 71.

⁶⁰ Aron, “Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith,” appendix to The Opium of the Intellectuals (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2001), 342.

⁶¹ Jacques Maritain, “A Letter on Independence,” in Integral Humanism, Freedom in the Modern World, and A Letter on Independence, ed. Otto Bird (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), 122.

⁶² Ibid., 132.

⁶³ See Walzer, The Company of Critics, 101–35.

⁶⁴ See Dobson, An Introduction to the Politics and Philosophy of José Ortega y Gasset, 100.

⁶⁵ Quoted in ibid.

⁶⁶ Zeev Sternhell, Neither Left nor Right (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 15.

⁶⁷ See ibid., 27.

⁶⁸ Ortega, Man and Crisis (New York: Norton, 1958), 142; OC, 5:110.

⁶⁹ Ortega, “Organización de la decencia nacional,” in OC, 11:272.

⁷⁰ Ortega, “Democracia morbosa,” in OC, 2:136.

⁷¹ Ortega, “Maura o la política,” in OC, 11:71.

⁷² Ortega, “Democracia morbosa,” 138.

⁷³ Ortega, “The Sunset of Revolution,” in The Modern Theme (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961), 106; OC, 3:212.

⁷⁴ See, e.g., “Vieja y nueva política,” in OC, 1:265–99; “Sobre la vieja política,” in OC, 11:26–31.

⁷⁵ See Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, 332–34.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 20.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 21.

⁷⁸ On this text, see Mahoney, Conservative Foundations, 177–81.

⁷⁹ See Aron, Essais sur les libertés (Paris: Hachette, 1998), 71–136.

⁸⁰ Aron, “The Liberal Definition of Liberty: Concerning F. A. Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty,” in In Defense of Liberal Reason, ed. Daniel J. Mahoney (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), 89.

⁸¹ Ibid., 85; see also 83. Also see Daniel J. Mahoney, The Liberal Political Science of Raymond Aron (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992), 73–90.

⁸² On Aron's political thought, see also Stephen Launay, La pensée politique de Raymond Aron (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1995); Brian Anderson, Raymond Aron: The Recovery of the Political (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997); Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron and the French Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 137–82; Aurelian Craiutu, “Raymond Aron and the French Tradition of Political Moderation,” in French Liberalism: From Montesquieu to the Present Day, eds. Raf Geenens and Helena Rosenblatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 271–90. Of special interest is the volume dedicated to Aron by Commentaire, the magazine he had founded several decades earlier. The special issue of Commentaire, nos. 28 and 29 (1985), contains many important articles on Aron written by those who knew him, among them Gaston Fessard, Stanley Hoffman, François Furet, Allan Bloom, and Pierre Hassner. Also worth consulting is “Raymond Aron and French Liberalism,” special issue, European Journal of Political Theory 2, no. 4 (2003)Google Scholar, which features several important essays on Aron.

⁸³ Ortega, “No ser hombre de partido,” in OC, 4:75–83.

⁸⁴ Ortega, “Verdad y perspectiva,” in OC, 2:15.

⁸⁵ Because it retains the original term (“spectator”), we prefer to use the literal translation “committed spectator” (instead of “committed observer”) for Aron's spectateur engagé.

⁸⁶ Among the notable essays in El Espectador are “Nada ‘moderno’ y ‘muy siglo XX’” (vol. 1), “Notas de vago estío” (vol. 5), and “Meditación del Escorial” (vol. 6).

⁸⁷ Ortega, “Verdad y Perspectiva,” 15.

⁸⁸ Ibid., 16. Aron, however, would not endorse such a radical view.

⁸⁹ Ibid., 17.

⁹⁰ Ortega, Toward a Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 70; OC, 4:130.

⁹¹ Julián Marías, History of Philosophy, trans. Stanley Appelbaum and Clarence C. Strowbridge (New York: Dover, 1967), 444.

⁹² Victor Ouimette, José Ortega y Gasset (Boston: Twayne, 1982), 62.

⁹³ Ortega, “The Self and the Other,” in The Dehumanization of Art and Other Essays on Art, Culture, and Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948), 195; OC, 5:308.

⁹⁴ Rockwell Gray, The Imperative of Modernity: An Intellectual Biography of José Ortega y Gasset (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 215, 223.

⁹⁵ Ortega borrows the phrase amigos de mirar from Plato, Republic 476b.

⁹⁶ See Ortega, The Modern Theme, 87; OC, 3:197

⁹⁷ Ibid., 95; OC, 3:202.

⁹⁸ Ortega, “Verdad y perspectiva,” 20.

⁹⁹ Ortega, Toward a Philosophy of History, 70; OC, 4:130.

¹⁰⁰ Ibid., 71; OC, 4:130.

¹⁰¹ Ortega, “Para la cultura del amor,” in OC, 2:144.

¹⁰² See John T. Graham, A Pragmatist Philosophy of Life in Ortega y Gasset (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), 187–228; Dobson, An Introduction, 144–62.

¹⁰³ Ortega, The Modern Theme, 90; OC, 3:199.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., 89; OC, 3:199.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., 92; OC, 3:200.

¹⁰⁶ Aron, Memoirs, 85.

¹⁰⁷ See, for example, Aron, “Fanaticism, Prudence, and Faith,” 346.

¹⁰⁸ Le Spectateur engagé was published in the United States as Thinking Politically; also see Baverez, Raymond Aron, 496–500. Another important text in which Aron discusses the relation between studying and observing political phenomena is “Max Weber and Modern Social Science,” in History, Truth and Liberty: Selected Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 335–73.

¹⁰⁹ Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals, 210.

¹¹⁰ Aron, Thinking Politically, 154.

¹¹¹ For more details, see ibid., 262.

¹¹² See ibid., 74; see also Aurelian Craiutu, “Faces of Moderation: Raymond Aron's Committed Observer,” in Political Reason in an Age of Ideology, ed. Daniel J. Mahoney and Brian Paul Frost (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2007), 261–83.

¹¹³ We borrow this phrase from Judt, The Burden of Responsibility.

¹¹⁴ On this topic, see Anderson, Raymond Aron, 121–66.

¹¹⁵ Aron, Thinking Politically, 242.

¹¹⁶ Ibid., 264.

¹¹⁷ Aron, “The Social Responsibility of the Philosopher,” in Politics and History, ed. Miriam Bernheim Conant (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1984), 259.

¹¹⁸ Aron, “History and Politics,” in Politics and History, 237.

¹¹⁹ Ibid., 238.

¹²⁰ Ortega, “Competencia,” in OC, 10:227.

¹²¹ For an excellent intellectual portrait of Aron, see Pierre Manent's essay “Raymond Aron—Political Educator,” in Aron, In Defense of Liberal Reason, 1–23.

¹²² Aron, Memoirs, 456.

¹²³ See Michael Walzer, Interpretation and Social Criticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987); and Mahoney, Conservative Foundations, 183.

¹²⁴ We borrow this phrase from Jeremy Waldron, “Civility and Formality,” in Civility, Legality, and Justice in America, ed. Austin Sarat (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 59.

¹²⁵ Compare with Norberto Bobbio, A Political Life, ed. Alberto Papuzzi (Cambridge: Polity, 2002), 123.

¹²⁶ Jeffrey Green has recently suggested that spectatorship can be part of “ocular democracy,” providing a disciplining gaze upon the rulers; see Jeffrey Green, The Eyes of the People: Democracy in an Age of Spectatorship (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). Our opinion is that spectatorship can be part of a more active model of social criticism as illustrated by Ortega and Aron.

¹²⁷ Ortega, Toward a Philosophy of History, 64–65; OC, 4:126.

¹²⁸ Ortega, The Revolt of the Masses, 76; OC, 4:192.

¹²⁹ Walzer, The Company of Critics, xviii.

¹³⁰ Dobson, An Introduction, 59; see also Ortega, “Sencillas reflexiones,” in OC, 10:169.

¹³¹ Ortega, Man and Crisis, 145; OC, 5:112.

¹³² Mounier as quoted in Judt, Past Imperfect, 121.

¹³³ It might be argued—though we would like to leave this question open—that of the two authors, Aron saw better and farther because he may have had a superior understanding of the movement from spectatorship to action.

¹³⁴ See Ortega, “Verdad y Perspectiva,” 20.

¹³⁵ We borrow the phrase from Müller, Jan-Werner, “Fear and Freedom: On ‘Cold War Liberalism,’” European Journal of Political Theory 7, no. 1 (2008): 59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹³⁶ Ortega, Prólogo para Franceses, in OC, 4:139.