Ortega y Gasset Jose: Razmišljanja o tehnici

Jose Ortega y Gasset: Reflections on technique

`Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) spiritually belongs to the ``Generation 98'' (Unamuno, Baroga, Maćado, Pimenes) which resolutely set out to revive Spain, since the loss of its royal and conquering glory found it on the edge of Europe. A European by culture, Ortega warned against Spanish provincialism, claiming ``Europe concerns me more than Spain, and Spain only if it complements Europe spiritually. He wanted to say that due to obsession with the past, infatuation with former glory, immersion in mysticism, preoccupation with the question of good, evil and the soul (which he reproached Unamun in one of his youthful letters), due to territorial and social particularism, Spain will not be able to keep up with the modern world. This opinion was contrary to the established opinion of the Spaniards about Spain, it wavered blind satisfaction with the past and raised doubts about the reality of Spain. Advocating for a radical spiritual, social and cultural revolution ("We will not fight, we simply want to win", he reprimanded the Spaniards), Ortega insisted on spiritual elitism (which was then, and still is, misunderstood today) which meant that a new and strong society could only be built by a morally and intellectually selected minority, whose ideas, deeds and virtues would serve as an example for the masses to shape their behavior. In his most famous work La rebelio de las masas (Rebellion of the Masses), Ortega contrasted the man-mass with a spiritual aristocrat, analyzing the catastrophic consequences of the ``absence of the better'', arguing that the mass cannot create an organized state, nor art, nor science - that is a matter for individuals - while the people perform only elementary functions. is the realm of ideas, and this is facilitated by technology. It enables him to survive more easily so that he has the opportunity and time to return to himself, in order to confirm the meaning of human existence. Man uses technology to change nature, which imposed this need on him, and thus ceases to be dependent on it. By means of the technique, the environment adapts to the individual, and not the individual to the environment, thereby confirming man as the most powerful being in nature. This is why Ortega says that ``a man without technique, meaning without a reaction against his environment, is not a man''. Technology not only makes life easier for man, it creates well-being, it creates redundancy in terms of the abundance of living that is necessary for him not to succumb to the anxiety of the world. But this is where the basic problem arises in the relationship between man and technology, a problem that is more relevant today than ever: technology begins to make life meaningless, so man loses the desire for essential focus and strengthens the need for well-being, thinks about action, and forgets about ``our unspoiled depths''. This is why Ortega's warning from sixty years ago was prophetic: ``Technology, as an unlimited ability, brings man into a dependent position and makes his life empty, because to exist exclusively as a being of technology for man is the possibility of being everything, and therefore of being nothing determined''. Branko Kukić`