Ortega on liberalism and democracy: revisiting an old discussion

In this paper I address the problem of Ortega’s liberalism. I try to characterize Ortega’s liberal creed considering his well-known statemen, in The Revolt of the Masses, that the 20th century needs a liberalism different from the 19th century one. I argue that some traits of Ortega’s liberalism, namely, Ortega’s concern with social rights, can also be found in some liberal authors of the Weimar Republic. However, my central claim in this paper is that the kind of liberalism Ortega proposes is only understandable in the light of its philosophical groundwork. I also try to highlight the changes in Ortega’s concept of liberalism, from his early liberal socialism (under the influence of Paul Natorp) to the mature liberalism that follows Ortega’s acceptance of phenomenology, of which we find a document in Meditations on Quixote of 1914 and in “New and old politics”, published in the same year. On the basis of this phenomenological turn, Ortega will propose a distinction between liberalism and democracy, as two different answers to two different problems. Finaly, I discuss the hypotheses of the existence of a third phase in Ortega’s liberalism, more pessimistic and conservative, of which evidence can be found in his essay On the Romam Empire.