Abstract

A picture which reflects the contradictions of our era: Glutton adults, who are always bored and constantly demand new toys and hungry children who have grown untimely. Completely different lives in the same world: Those in the display windows and those in the garbage... This picture is the starting point of the Age of Gluttony. Silier who uses a plain and fluent language, starts from a story of Kafka and touches upon the reasons of obedience to authorities, the internal fears that hinder freedom and issues related with the “meaning of life”. She then proceeds by searching answers to new questions: How does the fetishism of happiness encourage individualism and prevent the flourishing of individuality? Taking inspiration from Kant, Marx, Mill and Sartre can we form a conceptual frame for critical and objective ethical values? What are the different accounts of individuality that lay at the foundations of Marx’s goal of overcoming alienation and existentialists’ yearning for authenticity? How does postmodernism confuse different conceptions of “reason” and “progress”, to charge the Enlightenment as guilty for the crimes and devastation caused by capitalism? How were women transformed through history from goddess to pariah by being domesticated? Can motherhood experiences be saved from the oppressive effects of “motherhood ideology” and have a liberating potential? What kind of link exists between narcissistic individuals who relate freedom with the absence of rules and limits and the ideology of consumerism, which redefines gluttony as a virtue? As greedy companies which rule the world shape both consumers and employers in their image, how does the “irrational” system at the basis of “deformed” and alienated individuals become naturalised and invisible?