With the development and settlement of capitalism, the way of thinking as Homo Economicus has become the dominant mode of subjectification embodied by not only the capitalist but the entire class. This study examines the various cultural controversies ...
With the development and settlement of capitalism, the way of thinking as Homo Economicus has become the dominant mode of subjectification embodied by not only the capitalist but the entire class. This study examines the various cultural controversies that have occurred in France during the period between the first and the second Great War, especially in the politics and ideology, where the anxiety about the fluctuation of the traditional spiritual values due to the enlargement of the capitalist order. Especially we are trying to look at the criticism of Homo Economicus of "Aden Arabia" of Paul Nizan.
"Aden Arabia" begins in the form of travel essay, but the author's gaze finds contradictions in European society, not an exodus from everywhere in Aden. The cause of divisions and alienations that people place everywhere in the world is found in the situation of the present society where we can not be a "whole human being". In the identity of Homo Economicus, the focus is on the economic man, who behaves like an automatic machine according to his motivation for profit, only pursues imaginative satisfaction but does not know true happiness. They are trying not only to maintain and defend their misfortunes, but to make the whole world the same. After this argument, it is not directly revealed but it is perceived various antecedents such as antipathy to ideological philosophy, the reification of Lukács's conceptualization of 'reification' and Marxism's 'total humanity'. This is the intellectual discourse shared by many people of the present day, especially the young intellectuals of the New generation.
The critique of subordination and conspiracy to the materialism, individualism, and false consciousness of the ruling class bourgeoisie was not a mere nonsense but a widely shared criticism at the time. Nationalist right wing intellectuals sought to return to traditional sources of values such as community, nation, and nationalism in a way that solves anxiety about the fading values. Catholics, who have a long tradition of criticisme about Homo Economicus, diagnose society in the 1930s in terms of 'mental value'. On the other hand, the opposition of attitudes to Sartre shows a differentiation of meaning. Although the mockery and criticism of the snob was shared, if the author of "La Nausée" abandoned the snippets and left the world of art, the imaginary and nonrealistic world, the author of "Aden Arabia" left the world of snobs to fight against them. If Nizan's thought is regarded as a kind of 'existential Marxism' that has not been realized, then the 'combination of existentialism and Marxism' that Sartre tried in the '50s and' 60s would be already tested in Aden Arabie.
Thus, the logic of various criticisms of Homo Economicus in the 1930s presupposes human type. A patriot for Peguy, a devotee of spiritual values for the “Esprit” group, and an artist for Sartre. For Nizan il would be a revolutionary, close to a bohemian rebel that stands out in the 68.