Devitaization as a social epiphenomenon: rereading H. Ortega-y-Gasset

Abstract

H. Ortega put into scientific discourse the concept of “devitalization” to explain the rise in tendency to lowering the viability in the society of the first half of the twentieth century. One reason for this publication is the author’s discovering the fact that this concept has been ignored by some translators and substituted by other translators, although the process which the Spanish philosopher meant has not disappeared, and scored even higher speed, especially in a society of the turn of the ХХ-ХХI centuries. Thus, the historical and philosophical appeal to the scientific heritage of Ortega in the context of forming a new social philosophy categorical apparatus looks appropriate and timely. It is concluded that under devitalisation Ortega meant the process of falling the person's ability to spill out creatively the organically inherented his power and energy. Also the idea is formulated that causes of devitalization except for spreading of one of these pathogenic ideas as the idea of equality that filled the minds of the Romantic era and created a mass society as a qualitative characteristic of the twentieth century, are the loss of the past by a person  in connection with scale forgetfulness and changes in the man himself at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (prolonged problem with self-determination, centering on oneself, indifference to others, etc.).