Civilization, happiness and the thinking millipede
a commentary on Norbert Elias's spontaneity and self-consciousness
pp. 95-117
in: Jan Haut, Paddy Dolan, Dieter Reicher, Raul Sánchez García (eds), Excitement processes, Berlin, Springer, 2018Abstract
When Elias chose the polarity between spontaneity and self-consciousness in his text on the future of leisure, he came, in contrast to the thinking of some Frankfurt-school-theorists, to the conclusion that more spare-time as a consequence of technological progress might well lead to more directness of emotional experience. 1) How can we understand the core idea of this paper against the background of Elias's already published opus? 2) Having written on the emotional costs of highly productive Western societies myself, I would like to compare Elias's newly found text with my own solution. 3) How could such a book be written today, considering that technology and the economy have since then dramatically changed?
