The Fall Of Public Man Sennett Analysis

In 1977 Richard Sennett published ‘The Fall of Public Man’ to inform the society of the decay of the public in the city and the inflictions that the imbalance of the two domains, public and private, imposes upon both realms. Sennett begins chapter 11 ‘The End of Public Culture’ by telling us to picture the past through images of the rise and fall of a prized way of life. He warns us that these images produce a sense of regret and that regret is a dangerous sentiment. Sennett believes that he has not assembled this picture to produce regret, rather to ‘create a perspective on beliefs, aspirations, and myths of modern life which seem to be humane but are in fact dangerous’ (1977: 259). In this review of Sennett’s work I will address the main …show more content…
Sennett professes that ‘the belief in closeness between persons as a moral good is in fact the product of a profound confusion which capitalism and secular belief produced in the last century’ (1977: 259). He argues that because of this erosion of behaviours which allows us to be sociable means we are becoming more egotistical and narcissistic and we are becoming unwilling to consider anything that does not impact us directly. According to Sennett, the dislocation caused by capitalism and secular beliefs caused people to ‘seek personal meanings in impersonal situations, objects and in the objective conditions of society itself’ and when they could not find these meanings they wanted to escape and ‘find in the private realms of life, especially in the family, some principle of order in the perception of personality’ (1977: 259). Simply put, Sennett argues that as communities become less friendly and neighbourly, the self becomes more …show more content…
This issue is the structure of incivility in modern political leadership, specifically the work of charismatic leaders. Sennett suggests that ‘the modern leader destroys any distance between his own beliefs and impulses and those of his audience, therefore focusing his followers on his motivations and deflects them from measuring him in terms of his acts’ however the electronic media ‘play an important role in this deflection by concurrently overexposing the leader’s personal life and hiding his work in office’ (1977: 265). As a result of this exposure, the leader’s followers are burdened with making sense of him as a person in order to understand what he will do once in power. It is, however, uncivilised for a society to make its citizens feel a leader is believable because he is able to exaggerate his own motivations. According to Sennett, leadership on these terms is a form of seduction (1977: 265). This form of governing a large group does not necessarily involve persuasion or intimidation; instead it can be exercised through seduction so that people want to be governed by a single