Last update: Mgr. Martin Švantner, Ph.D. (06.03.2017)
Conceived as a continuation of the first year's program, the course aims to better explore the concept of ideology in
its connection to those of freedom, expression and communication. From this point of view, the question of
possible evolutions of our mass media societies reveals wider potentials both on an ethical and an anthropological
regards, involving the problem of desire in a social system of control and the perspective of a future development
of human kind. To do so students will be led to close read some important texts of H. Marcuse and Th. Adorno
analyzing those works in order to explore further the complexity of Frankfurt school's teachings.
1. Again on the concept of Cultural industry in our democracies.
2. Cultural industry and desire.
3. From external to internal control: forms of persuasion, forms of obedience, forms of (pseudo)rebellion.
4. One dimensional man in one dimensional society.
5. The legacy of Freud: ontogenetics and philogenetics.
6. The history of our civilisation as a history of repression.
7. Questioning the necessity of repression.
8. Repression and sublimation, expression and control.
9. The role of desire: eros in civilisation.
10. New ways on sublimation.
11. Eros, creation and procreation: the role of „perversion“.
12. Decreasement of standard of living as a necessity for better living.
