Crisi sociale e disagio nel nostro tempo. Rileggendo Le passioni tristi quindici anni dopo

Abstract

The article reexamines Benasayag and Schmit’s The Sad Passions, the prophetic contribution that already fifteen years ago had intuited and highlighted many important elements of a social crisis that seems to have increased today, and it is along the pathways that had already been identified by the two authors.
From this perspective, some characteristics of the crisis are examined, through the transition from the future as a promise to the future as a threat, to the crisis of the authoritative model of the paternal figure, to the deformation of the adolescent age, and to a critique of psychiatric care.
The article concludes with some further pedagogical considerations on how to cope with that crisis, whose crucial issues seem more and more linked to some perverse effects of today’s times in the context of increasing social inequalities and reduced sense of social solidarity. From this viewpoint, to face the crisis, the value and the contribution of a critical pedagogy and a resistance to the dictates of hedonism, individualism and pathological narcissism must be renewed.