Narcissism оr Necrophilia?
Svetlana Zhuravleva
Abstract
The subject of this article is the concepts, method and cultural theses contained in the article by Orekhovsky P.A., Razumov V.I. “The Onset of Narcissistic Culture: Consequences for Education, Science, Politics”, published in the 13th volume of the journal “Ideas and Ideals” (No. 3, Part 1, 2021). The authors’ arbitrary use of the basic concepts of ‘high’ culture and ‘narcissistic’ culture is shown. The philosophical methodology in the article is basically absent and replaced by a kind of ‘cultural method’, the essence of which is similar to a postmodern game of concepts, where everything is connected with everything and can be explained as the author pleases.
The main statements of the authors are subjected to critical analysis, namely:
1) the criterion of ‘high’ culture is recognition by the majority of humanity;
2) the mass culture of the twentieth century, contrary to the criticism of philosophers, is a high culture;
3) organization of life and leisure in an industrial capitalist society is an example of a rational organization of life;
4) the service of the spiritual production institutions to the people is an ordinary, banal factor of mass culture in general (including Western);
5) in modern culture there has been an ‘epochal shift’ towards social narcissism;
6) individualism in entrepreneurship, the destruction of classical standards of hierarchy and discipline in education, the transformation of politics into a theater with the support of the ‘silent majority’ and the absence of protest moods, the popularity of a healthy lifestyle are signs of an inevitably narcissistic culture;
7) ‘cultural (or social) narcissism’ can be ‘healthy’.
In conclusion, the thesis is substantiated that a more accurate psychoanalytic definition of the social trends of modern culture will not be narcissism, but necrophilia, which manifests itself in the preference of the dead, soulless and mechanistic, orderly - to all living, rampantly growing, disordered and uncontrolled.