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Why is our collective mood so sour? We are awash with material wealth, and technology provides us with unprecedented powers. But this veneer of well-being masks a deeper crisis. Voter discontent, expressed in populist rejections of establishment candidates and platforms in favor of rabble-rousers on both left and right, indicates that the once dominant consensus in the West has lost its authority. Our institutions are crumbling, leaving us vulnerable and aimless. It’s this general decay of authority, not fervent ideological passion, that makes our public culture seem so dysfunctional. True, there are earnest defenders of the neoliberal status quo, as well as challengers who theorize bold new paradigms. But for the most part the West is frustrated, cynical, angry—and hysterical. How have we come to this condition?
Let me begin with the great Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Among the few Englishmen of his day who had studied in Germany, Coleridge was influenced by the critical philosophy of Kant and Hegel. Toward the end of his life, he wrote a treatise of social philosophy, On the Constitution of the Church and State. Drawing on Hegel’s notion of culture as a system of antagonistic concepts engaged in fruitful tension, Coleridge identified two elements of modern society.[...]
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