“In the slow accretion of self-images that is the mortar between periods in the history of our civilization, a third character ideal emerged, in part from the failure of the previous two [political man and religious man]: economic man, one who would cultivate rationally his very own garden, meanwhile solacing himself with the assumption that by thus attending to his own lower needs a general satisfaction of the higher needs would occur. A moral revolution was the result: what had been lower in the established hierarchy of human interests was asserted to be higher.”

— Philip Rieff

"Reflections on Psychological Man in America," The Feeling Intellect (1990), p. 4

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Philip Rieff 16

American sociologist 1922–2006

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