Autoritarismo e modernità. Forme sociali e limiti politici del razionalismo

Heinrich Popitz suggests that freedom is a disposition to act derived from the need for social recognition and near-term future orientation; power, consequently, operates on the values that guide behaviors within both relational and historical contexts. Since modern social order motivates action based on instrumental rationality, presenting a singular value model, modern rationalism can be considered an authoritarian matrix if it sacrifices the subject's emotional dispositions by imposing univocal behavioral regularities that predispose individuals to aggression. We will highlight Weberian reflections on the relationship between subjectivity and power in Calvinist ethics to point out how Wilhelm Reich's contribution serves as an invitation to consider the excesses of power as a consequence of the repressive regulation of body and emotions at work in the process of civilization. The relevance of a social theory that preserves the political value of reason while investigating authoritarianism through a sociological analysis of cultural phenomena is confirmed in light of the democratic crisis characterizing the present.