Part 1: Using the article alone I would like to indicate my evaluation. Remember that "postmodernism" started as a sociological study by the sociologists F-R Loyatard, commisioned by a Canadian gov.. This seemingly accurate description was transformed into a movement with negarious effecs. That Ferré, after formulating a similar study, has entitled his interpretation of the Latin American condition …More
Part 1: Using the article alone I would like to indicate my evaluation. Remember that "postmodernism" started as a sociological study by the sociologists F-R Loyatard, commisioned by a Canadian gov.. This seemingly accurate description was transformed into a movement with negarious effecs. That Ferré, after formulating a similar study, has entitled his interpretation of the Latin American condition as "libertine atheism", is, well, reflects scientific study, just as was the analysis by Loyatard. Bergoglio designated the apparently same description as "hedonistic atheism", which is a valid interpretative intellectual act. I do not know enough about Latin American conditions to justify a judgment. However, applied to Western Europe and the US, I conclude with a slightly diff. analysis. So my critique is:
A better, though not adequate, term would be "libertine hedonism". Short explanation. "Atheism" is secondary. Only a few in the West push for atheism. A better term = Abs-theism. "If there were gods, how could I stand not to be a god" << Nietzsche. An A-theist is not free from God, rather must define himself in terms of theism. Rare occasion. For much of Western civil. many simply find God to be absent of value, i.e., God plays no significant role for life, particular re death. For the Absentist God, existing or not, is indifferent. He may, being pressed, note that he believes in God (= theist) or does not (= atheist). The fully developed absentist simply has no consciousness of God whatsoever. Theism or atheism is of no importance. Lesser developed absentists evaluate God as a marginal value.
Yes, the modern world is "hedonistic" if the term is to mean: seeking pleasure, feelings, meaning solely within the horizontal reality of THIS world. In this sense hedonism means affirming the affirmative parts of worldly experience (could be intellectual, not just sensate). However, the primary sensate experience is pan-sexualism. Pansexualism entails than acts of sex, though they are central. One can live a sexual lifestyle (Hugh Hefner being an extreme case). Pansexualism leads to destroying all hinderances, e.g., marriage and in Germany and elsewhere even sexual identity. In other words, there is no connection between biological sex and sexual self-identity in a socio-psychological sense. >> Current "Gender Mainstreaming" is an exaxmple. In history "religion" has held people together in large groups including nations. Pansexualism is aimed at replacing religion as what holds us together. "Libertine" as a designation loses all meaning for pansexualism, since any and all forms of sexual activity are accepted as "normatively" equal. Pansexualism thereby become the horizon of human existence.