PHILIP RIEFF AND THE PREMONITION OF POST-SECULAR CULTURE ARRIVAL

Abstract

During the second half of the 20th century the literary work of Philip Rieff remained almost unnoticed due to his “reclusive” life and the development of ideas that are relevant for the future. This paper presents Rieff’s vision of the processes of culture transformation in the second half of the 20th century in the context of secularization and post-secularization, as well as in the framework of the development of a “psychological person”, which echoes the personality type of a narcissistic culture. Rieff’s conceptual foundation influenced the views of a number of thinkers of the Western type of civilization; his ideas received publicity in the Hollywood cinema, in K. Lash’s theory, and at the present time can be useful for the analysis of the emerging post-secular culture. Long before the official trend of the “return of the religion”, Ph. Rieff outlined this tendency in the cultural paradigm.

Keywords

• secularization
• psychoanalysis
• therapeutic culture
• post-secular culture
• philip rieff