The real is not the rational Book

In his The Coming Fin De Siècle (1991) Mestrovic invites a reexamination of the state of society at the turn of the twenty-first century in light of the spirit of the previous fin de siècle. Durkheim, from whom Mestrovic draws most heavily, and other thinkers from the previous fin de siècle which was heavily soaked in Schopenhauer's philosophy, insisted on the importance of the irrational in the life of the individual and society by stressing on both the benign and the destructive aspects of this irrationality. By contrast, postmodernity (which, despite its supposed rebellion at all narratives - its anti-narrative narrative - is rather an extention of modernity than a genuine rebellion against it) completely overlooks the role of the irrational. The gist of Mestrovic's book is that postmodern culture is dominated by the 'mind' at the expense of the 'heart', and is still living in a post-Enlightenment, neo-Kantian world, despite the fact that the Enlightenment was already criticized in the previous fin de siècle. Thus thinkers from that period, who all emphasized the importance of the 'heart' when brought into contemporary discourse are being misinterpreted and vulgarized in order to fit with the postmodernist narrative - eg Freud is seen as a 'doctor of the mind' (as noted by Riesman) and Durkheim as a rationalist despite both thinkers' emphasis on the importance of the irrational part of human nature. Postmodernity boosters foolish optimism and a naive belief in social progress and rationality, yet cynicism, disillusionment, kitsch, decadence, crimes, and suicide, among other things, are on the rise in contemporary society. The problems that worried thinkers from the previous fin de siècle are much more prominent at the turn of the twenty-first century, and observations of thinkers from that period couldn't have been more relevant - Durkheim's anomic man, Simmel's blasé urbanite, Baudalaire's modern dandy, Tönnies Gessllschaft to name a few. Yet all these thinkers called for the important role of the 'heart', compassion, irrationality - and their ideas are not incorporated into contemporary postmodern abstractionism. A reexamination of those thinkers in the spirit of the previous fin de siècle and a return to the 'heart' is what we need.