Mass society as the basis of social narcissism

Abstract

Currently, more and more researchers in the field of philosophy emphasize that modern society is narcissistic. It is generally accepted that such transformation of society occurred after the Second World War, when the average person became disillusioned with the ideals of modernism and withdrew into himself, not wanting to participate more actively in public life. The prevalence of such life strategy allowed us to call the modern era narcissistic. However, looking at previous times, we can see that such a transformation of man began even before the forties of the twentieth century and the foundation of such social order was laid at the beginning of the last century. Having familiarized ourselves with the works of philosophers of those times, it becomes clear that the basis of such society is mass character, the growth of which was actively written about in the twentieth century. This article attempts to demonstrate the influence of mass society on the emergence of narcissism. The work describes the characteristics of mass character, demonstrating that it was precisely this social order that could become the foundation on which the narcissistic society described in the works of modern philosophers would be built in the future.