Refine
Document Type
- Articles (71) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- no (71) (remove)
Year of publication
- 2021 (71) (remove)
As social theorists seek to understand the contemporary challenges of radical populism, we would do well to reconsider the febrile insights of the psychoanalytic social theorist Erich Fromm. It was Fromm who, at the beginning of the 1930s, conceptualized the emotional and sociological roots of a new ‘authoritarian character’ who was meek in the face of great power above and ruthless to the powerless below. It was Fromm, in the 1950s, who argued that societies, not only individuals, could be sick. This essay traces the intertwining of psychoanalytic and sociological methods that allowed Fromm to create such new ideas. At the same time, it highlights how Fromm’s sociology was hampered by an economistic Marxist approach to the institutions and culture of democratic capitalist societies. Such theoretical restriction prevented Fromm from conceptualizing how institutions like democracy, science, and psychotherapy can provide resources for widespread emotional recuperation and civil repair.
The Pathology of Modernity
(2021)
This chapter presents the psychological burden of living under modernity’s law of gravitation as the defining focus of much continental philosophy and social science. Most Western philosophers with any self-respect have their own diagnoses of present-day society, intended to capture the essence of living in modernity. Key thinkers such as Nietzsche, Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Freud, Adorno and Horkheimer, Fromm, Rieff, Eriksson and Mitscherlich gave their important contribution to individuation – the development of a unique self, socialization and subjectivation. Equally important is the question of failed individuation as these psychologists, sociologists and philosophers ask themselves whether modern man can manage without >God< and if the science-based Enlightenment’s promise of secular happiness would hold water.
西方马克思主义是新中国初期对西方文论展开批判性接受的重要一环,涉及的范围包括以卢卡奇的批判现实主义、布莱希特的现代主义戏剧理论、加洛蒂等人的>无边的现实主义<等为代表的西马现实主义维度,以列斐伏尔、萨特、梅洛-庞蒂、考德威尔、弗洛姆等为代表的西马美学维度以及卢森堡、葛兰西、东欧新马克思主义等。西方马克思主义与马克思主义的学术渊源,以及其身处的发达资本主义时代的学术语境,导致新中国初期在对西方马克思主义接受过程中采取>资产阶级文艺思想<和>马克思主义在20世纪的新发展<的双重视域,形成了批判性接受的特点。新中国初期对西方马克思主义的批判性接受为改革开放之后重新接续对西方马克思主义文论的接受做了铺垫。
桑塔格认为我们所处的景观社会是一个>奇观社会<>电视新闻青睐灾难和人类悲剧,它唤起的不是净化或理解,而是很快会消失殆尽的滥情与怜悯情绪,及对这些事件的伪仪式感和伪参与感。<[1] 为了让麻木的情绪被重新激活起来,电子媒体需要提高刺激强度,将更多的苦难揭示出来。无论是马尔库塞的《单向度的人》,还是弗洛姆的《健全的社会》等,均严厉批判人们马上迎来的后工业时代社会[2],强调现代人已经处于>单向度<性精神危机。现如今,人类实现了明确的、精细的分工,为人类自身带来的损害是十分严重。正如雅卡尔所言,孤立的个体、失望的个体以及残废的个体都是精细分工的后果[3]。>孤立的个体<让人们的沟通产生障碍,使个体自己将自己包裹起来,拒绝他人靠近,与人的道德感背道而驰[4]。