This paper presents the text of an imagined oration from a senior faculty member to a newly hired faculty member on the topic of how to stay sane in the academy. It begins by characterizing the basic problem at the heart of the university: students are not learning as much as they should and professors are not teaching them in a way that ensures they do. The problem is one of dysfunction and denial. The university is not able to effectively perform its main function and the involved stakeholders pretend everything is fine. Seen in the light of Fromm’s (1955) criteria of mental health, many aspects of modern university life are quite >insane<. I discuss three specific things to avoid that will protect the faculty member’s sanity: avoid the >unstated compact< between faculty and students, avoid the prospect of a promotion to the administration, and avoid the lure of popularity and politics. I then discuss three affirmative steps to enhance faculty mental health: consider first things, honor the call of truth in the world and your discipline, and regularly recall the deeper purpose of the university. The paper concludes with a candid analysis of why the professoriate’s public prestige has precipitously fallen over the past 40 years. (APA PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)
Erich Fromm’s >Escape from Freedom< (1941) charts the growth and decline of freedom and selfawareness in the West from the Middle Ages to modern times, when people sought refuge from insecurity and responsibility in totalitarian movements, such as Nazism and Fascism. In contrast to the thesis that >Escape from Freedom< is evidence of >The Americanization of a European Intellectual,< Fromm wrote it because freedom, or the lack of it, was an acute problem in Nazi Germany, not America. His language and concepts were formed and fused during the crucial ideological and intellectual struggles of a specific, wretched moment in German history, the rise and triumph of Nazism; hence, he waged a Kulturkampf against Nazi barbarism to save Western humanist civilization.
Aktualność Pism Proroków
(2018)
本文将根据海因里希•伯尔短篇小说《优哉游哉》的文本,剖析其中>游客<形象的不自由及其对自身不自由的无意识,并由此展开到当时的社会历史环境,结合弗洛姆对马克思>异化<的思想继承,探讨当时历史背景下人同自身、同胞以及人同决定社会生活的社会力量相异化的情况的真实存在。同时,在对>异化<现象的深入挖掘中,发现其根源在于人类的贪欲,其本身也是本真欲望的一种异化。另一方面,通过认识到自由是人类的<类本质<,即本心所在,而由贪欲所引发的>异化<往往使人们的行动背离本心,继而提出人道主义呼吁对于反>异化<的意义。最终又回归小说文本,通过其反对>异化<的呼吁及对回归本心及自由的追求,论述人道主义文学创作时至今日的价值所在。
Paolo Gerbaudo’s book >The Mask and the Flag: Populism, Citizenism and Global Protest<, whose approach is reflected in his Crosscurrents piece in the issue of >Media, Culture & Society< at hand, is a response to these societal, political and academic challenges. This Cross Currents comment asks, I ask, the following: Why is it that right-wing authoritarian populism in recent times has become much more popular than left-wing movements? How do right-wing authoritarian movements communicate? Why is it that right-wing political communication strategies seem to garner and result in mass support? The critical theory of authoritarianism advanced by the Frankfurt School and related authors on fascism, Nazism, and the authoritarian personality help us to critically analyse the communication of authoritarianism. In this context, particularly the works by Franz Leopold Neumann, Erich Fromm, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Leo Löwenthal, and Willhelm Reich are relevant.
与马尔库塞和阿格尔等人分别基于人道视角、生态视角批判自由消费的异化本质不同,鲍德里亚以物(商品)的功能的零度化为理论切入口,通过对消费内涵的重新定义,以及对符号拜物教的理论指认,提出必须引入符号学才能彻底揭露现代资本主义社会的消费异化本质及其统治策略的隐蔽机制,由此建构了基于符号视角的独特批判向度。但鲍德里亚将其理论语境和关注视野仅仅锁定在符号消费和文化意识层面,过度夸大了消费对社会发展的深层作用以及符号逻辑批判的积极效应,遮蔽了资本这一现代性问题域的轴心地位和根本意义,从而导致其批判理论只是停留在分析异化现实的直接性和表象性层面上,阻断了深入社会现实本质的可能,并最终陷入符号决定论的虚无主义理论局限。