DOI: 10.17072/2078-7898/2018-4-517-531

Influence of moral presumptions of capitalist gestalt on the modern communicative practices

Olga V. Khlebnikova
Doctor of Philosophy, Docent,
Professor of the Department of History, Philosophy and Cultural Studies

Omsk State Transport University,
35, K. Marx av., Omsk, 644046, Russia;
e-mail: hlebnikova_ov@mail.ru
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7573-3650

The article explores the moral presumptions of modern capitalist gestaltin the context of their influence on the existence of communicative practices. The term «capitalist gestalt» is understood as a special set of basic ontologizing attitudes of the modern consciousness of capitalism. Those are interpreted in the paper through the prism of poststructuralism and postmodernism. In this context, the illegitimacy of the fundamental transcendental references, the «naturalness» of the man’s moral right, the relevance of formal rather than substantial morality and the reduction of humanity to the pure proceduralityof the ordinary serve as the initial grounds for reasoning about morality. The most important moral presumptions of the modern capitalist gestalt include the implicit self-worth of economic logic and the importance of recursion of social changes. The capitalist gestalt assumes identification of rationality in general with the principles of the existence of precisely economic rationality, transforming the latter into the only variety of logic being morally permissible. This transformation forces the modern man to exist as a mechanical element in the universal structure of the desire machine, which is declared to be his free moral choice. This state of affairs sets the general direction of all relevant communicative practices.The development of capitalism also constantly requires constituting recursion of social changes, outside of which it would not only cease to be possible but would also lose the right to the ideological claim of moral superiority over other types of socioeconomic organization. Capitalism needs permanent, but programmable and directed, changes in the landscape of reality as in the most important mechanism of its survival. Such changes serve as a leading agent in intensifying the process of the ontological Good formation against the backgroundof total multiplication of capitalist profit.The most important effect of the capitalist gestalt, affecting any modern communicative practice, is producing a neurotic experience of the illusion of usefulness of one’s own being in every person.

Keywords: morality, communicative practice, capitalist gestalt, economic logic, daily life, desire machine, recursion of social changes, neurotic experience.

 

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Received 22.07.2018

For citation:

Khlebnikova O.V. Influence of moral presumptions of capitalist gestalt on the modern communicative practices // Perm University Herald. Series «Philosophy. Psychology. Sociology». 2018. Iss. 4. P. 517–531. DOI: 10.17072/2078-7898/2018-4-517-531