1_Doxa_and_Paradoxa_EN_Doxa_30

Although opinion is not knowledge, it is still a very powerful weapon. After all, it was men’s opinions that condemned Socrates to death. In this respect, the text of Crito is extremely enlightening. In this dialogue, Crito attempts to persuade Socrates to flee the city before the death sentence is carried out. Socrates attempts to determine whether this action would have a positive or negative effect on the city, by distinguishing between the opinion of the majority and the opinion of the minority. He asks Crito why the opinion of the majority is so important, and whether it is true that one should respect the opinions of certain men (specifically, wise men) and not the opinions of others. By invoking the metaphor of an athlete who must take care of his body, and therefore pays more attention to the opinions of his doctor or trainer than to the opinions of the majority, Socrates demonstrates that we should concern ourselves with the opinion of the minority, and not pay so much attention to the opinion of the majority. The opinion of the few (the aristoi) is counterposed with the opinion of the many (the hoi polloi).2 What is interesting about this dialogue is not only this opposition, but also the fact that Socrates begins by talking about the opinion of the majority, and that of the individual who has knowledge of important matters, and ends up talking about the law and his obedience thereto. As such, are laws –the only guarantors of our rights– an expression of the majority, or the expression of those who truly have knowledge? Leo Strauss provides an excellent discussion of this question in his book Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy. The opinions of the few, which are useful and sound, must be upheld to the detriment of the opinions of the majority. Importantly, however, “the opinion of the majority must be taken into account with regard to things that are just, noble and good, and their opposites, not because of the intrinsic value of these opinions, but because the majority has the power to kill us” (Strauss, 1985: 90).

Although this is not Ortega’s view of public opinion, it is nonetheless related to this idea. Ortega tells us that the value of public opinion does not lie in the fact that it arouses fear in us, or even causes us to fear for our lives; rather, its value lies in the fact that it imposes itself irresistibly upon us. Socrates called this imposition “laws”, and in Ortega’s philosophy, these laws came to represent the wider notion of “law”. However, in the background, the identity of the subject who makes the laws remains unresolved.

2 In relation to the opposition of aristoi and hoi polloi, Ortega’s philosophy gives us the opposition of the minority and the masses. In The Revolt of the Masses Ortega tells us that the concept of the masses versus the minority is not social, and has no sociological value: rather, it is anthropological. As noted by Ignacio Sánchez Cámara (1986: 49), the dyad of the masses and the minority is a social function, in the sense that they are types of men. The masses are the “average man”, in the words of Ortega: they are the men who feel like everyone else, who wish to impose their stereotypes, who are hostile to culture, who live vulgar and descending lives, and whose central attribute is inertia (Sánchez Cámara, 1986: 56). The minority, according to Ortega, is comprised of groups of highly educated individuals: however, their outstanding qualities are not due to their membership of the upper classes; rather, they are the result of the capacity of this “exemplar” minority to demand more of itself. Thus, Ortega concludes that there are two types of men: “those who make great demands on themselves, piling up difficulties and duties; and those who demand nothing special of themselves, but for whom to live is to be, every moment, what they already are, without imposing upon themselves any effort towards perfection; mere buoys that float on the waves” (2004-2010, ch. IV: 378). Only those who lead a life of effort and excellence with regard to demands and aspirations shall have the capacity to lead everyone else, and - as a result - to lead public opinion. For Ortega, this is the role of the exemplary minority. He had already defined the role of the minority in a text from 1908, titled De Re Politica, which was inspired by Cicero and argued in favour of the need to safeguard that which pertains to the public: “As everything must emanate from the people, that which is not of the people - i.e. the “select man” - must also originate therefrom. From the treasury of the people’s unconscious there emerge a number of consciousnesses that are charged with holding particular, unique and personal opinions, given that this treasury is the sum of all real and possible opinions, or total opinion (which is also the same thing as non-opinion). Because to opine is to hold “an” opinion; and he who holds all opinions holds none. All opinions are therefore personal in origin, and the only just meaning one can give to “public opinion” is that of a personal opinion that has expanded, that has been injected into a large number of individuals” (2004-2010, ch. I: 195). According to Alejandro de Haro, the people also give rise to that which is not of the people, but is instead representative of the people (2009: 139).