The disappearance of Metaphysical Feelings as a Cause of the Crisis of Culture

Abstract

In my opinion, the unquestionable progress in technology is currently accompanied by the crisis of culture in the West. What is controversial is its intensification. One may defend a view that what is developing is simultaneously partly decomposing. Thus, crisis is permanent and is a function of progress, but it is also impossible to reject the accuracy of the catastrophic diagnosis. This crisis undoubtedly manifests itself differently and has different sources. In this article I focus on the source pointed by I. S. Witkiewicz: on the disappearance of the “Metaphysical Sense of the Oddity of Existence” as well as its results. I try to apply Witkacy’s diagnosis, which seems to me generally accurate, to modern times. In my opinion, the disappearance of metaphysical feelings is now stimulated by a not only increasingly convenient and hermetic “civilisation cocoon” yet also “oblivion of death” (death becomes taboo in the culture) as well as the methodological naturalism in science, which results in the world ceasing to appear “odd” or “mysterious”. All this damages and “sterilizes” the upper tiers of culture, which means that it affects adversely the activities of artistic, philosophical or religious elites.