Philip Rieff's Mission

Abstract

The work of Philip Rieff remains seminal for sociological concerns with morality and values. Informed by Freudian theory, noting the impact of Freud in fostering a `therapeutic culture' in which `psychological man' places `feeling good' over community-based, transcendental systems of meaning and value, Rieff, like many intellectuals of his age, defended the importance of repression for maintaining civilization in face of the growth of mass-mediated popular culture, which, as a moment of consumerism, was complicit in under-mining repression and eroding the standards of taste. His analysis is still especially cogent as we face two challenges to Western civilization. In the first place, we have seen a `carnivalization of society' in which the `culture industries' offer more and more tasteless transgressions that foster a `regression in the service of consumer-ism' to encourage consumerism, shopping-mall selfhood and indifference to the political. Second, in face of the social stresses and strains of globalization in general, and the privatized, erotic hedonism of the carnival, we have seen worldwide proliferation of fundamentalisms mixing stern, austere restraint and repression with primary-process magical thought that would ameliorate the problems of the world through prayer, ritual and faith. Both represent expressions of anti-intellectualism and disdain of elites; neither sustains the values of civilization and civility that Rieff would defend.