Georg Simmel Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Arthur A. Molitierno

Critical Essay by Arthur A. Molitierno

SOURCE: "Georg Simmel's Cultural Narcissism: A Non-Ideological Approach," in The Midwest Quarterly, Vol. XXX, No. 3, Spring, 1989, pp. 308-23.

In the following essay, Molitierno compares the central ideas of Christopher Lasch's The Culture of Narcissism with Simmel's concept of the "tragedy of culture. '"

In a comprehensive statement about the concept of instrumentality in Georg Simmel's sociological analysis of modern culture, Guy Oakes aptly refers to the concept of narcissism. Although Simmel does not refer to narcissism per se, his views on the problems of modernity surely encompass this concept:

According to Simmel, the instrumentalization of culture is responsible for the belief that life has become meaningless. This perception of the pointlessness or absurdity of life is the source of the qualities of personal life that typify advanced cultures: banality, decadence, narcissism, aestheticism, solipsism, skepticism, relativism, and nihilism.

Equally true, the alienation which Marx had criticized as part...
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