Il naufragio dell'umano. Ortega y Gasset e la barbarie dell'uomo-massa

The triumph of "hyperdemocracy", as stated by Ortega, is the distinctive feature of the modern European civilization that has brought the masses to full social power. It has generated from within itself the "new barbarian", the "primitive", the "mass-man" who, revealing uncivilized tendencies, has broken into the scenery of history, imposing his "brutal" and "crude" political and spiritual empire. The scope of this essay is to explore the concept of barbarism through the description of the mass-man's typical psychological traits, which Ortega describes in some of his main works, and in particular in the 1930's The revolt of the masses, his most well-known and significant work.