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Some of his articles have unusually broad resonance for example, articles against the military dictatorship and monarchy in 1929-1930,. When Franco's rebellion began, Ortega, despite the antipathy to the then government, defended the legitimate authority, but then, after seeing firsthand the right and left of terror in the country, he left Spain. Begin years of wandering: France, Holland, Argentina, Portugal, finally, in 1945, Ortega returned to his homeland. What awaited him here?

Any civil war is terrible, the result of the Spanish - a million dead, nearly a million immigrants, hundreds of thousands imprisoned, maimed. The war has left its mark and Ortega family - one of his son was a Republican and emigrated, another fought as Falangist. Almost all the students have left the country. With the rest of X. Marias Ortega founded in 1948 by the Institute of Human Sciences, where he teaches courses on the philosophy of history, Toynbee lecture series "The Man and the people." In Spain, he lived in the "inner emigration", without saying a single word in support of the regime, but refraining from open criticism and. Despite the fact that his entire adult life, Ortega was not a practicing Christian, before his death (October 19, 1955), he confessed and received Holy Communion.

It is difficult to say whether it was sincere appeal to God on his deathbed, or the execution of social conventions for the benefit of the family, as well as his books, which otherwise would fall immediately to the papal index and would have become unaffordable for Spanish readers. Trying to turn his books in the papal index was still made - immediately after death started a campaign in the official media, the phrase "vulgarizer-Europeanists", "cosmopolitan", "seducer of youth", "drunk philosophy," and the these are not descended from the mouth of "whistle-blowers". Particularly distinguished philosophers neotomisty Santiago Ramirez, who wrote three volumes, five against Ortega and his disciples.

The reasons for this campaign are quite clear: in the 1950s, teaching Ortega enjoyed enormous prestige among young people reading his books were almost the only source of philosophical dissent, free thought as such. Philosophical works of another major Spanish thinker, Unamuno, were included in the index, with the works of Ortega this still has not happened - started "liberalization" of the Franco regime, after the Vatican Council decreased by the church.

Every philosophical system contains, as a rod, some intuitive vision whole from which are then output side, there is a hierarchy of problems - some of them are of paramount importance, a different philosophy uninteresting. Ortega well known modern physics and biology, wrote about the philosophical problems of logic and mathematics, but all these issues had for him a subordinate significance. At the heart of his philosophy is steeped in historical becoming man "radical reality" for it is a human life, and he proposed the theory of "life of the mind" (ratsiovitalizm) aims to provide guidelines for the modern man to find himself in a crisis of European culture.

In his first sociological works "Dehumanization of Art" (1925) and "Revolt of the Masses" (1929) he argued that culture and civilization internally opposed democracy. Modern Age is unique in its rejection of the notion of an elitist society. Instead of receiving a compliant values, models and goals of the aristocracy, "superman" "mass man" now allows to impose itself conformism, tolerance and bad manners as the leading social principles.

In the "dehumanization of art," Ortega shows that contemporary art has antiegalitarnoe, undemocratic art. He argues that the purpose of such "difficult" artists like Mallarme, Stravinsky, Picasso, Joyce, Pirandello is to purposefully exclude mass of cultural life, which at all times is an elitist activity. The only area where the aristocratic model Ortega was disclosed on a particular material - is its aesthetics: the work of "Dehumanization of Art" is a treatise on sociology rather than aesthetic theory in the strict sense. Concept presented here was the point of contact with the avant-garde and the search for the beginning of the century had a certain influence on the work of a number of Spanish writers and artists. It should say that Ortega himself is not a big fan of the avant-garde and certainly did not represent the views of the bohemian esthete.

In "Revolt of the Masses" it stands for European unity in defense of a common Western culture against barbarism masses. Under the elite he understands those who have a certain "superiority" (not the money), and "superhuman" - is the one who freely chooses his targets, while the masses passively obey norms "set others."

New doctrine - Ortega later called it ratsiovitalizmom to emphasize the close relationship between thinking and life - grows on poor soil. In the book "Spain without spinal column" presents an analysis of the decomposition process. Separatism provinces of Catalonia, Biscay and particularism classes - it was the end of a long journey to the decline, which triumphed mass left without leadership. Forecast for Spain expands to the forecast for the whole of European culture. Ortega recognizes its unanimity with Spengler, Sorokin, Toynbee that culture mature and die. And along with these philosophers he applies his analysis to the contemporary situation. Its socio-political study of the mass uprising caused debate throughout Europe, equal to the value of the controversy surrounding the "Decline of the West."

Ortega explores the spiritual and mental condition of the person of our time - the mass man, he traces his path to victory, the path to the growing devastation of the content life.
