Nothing Personal
Sexual Functionalism & Promiscuous Habits in Tolstoy’s The Devil
In his essay “On the Ontological Mystery,” Gabriel Marcel identifies what he calls functionalism as a fundamental feature of modern urban life. Under the reign of functionalism, “the individual tends to appear both to himself and to others as an agglomeration of functions”; he tends to reduce himself, in other words, to something like a social or biological mechanism. Man in mass society can scarcely even see himself as a person:
Travelling on the Underground, I often wonder with a kind of dread what can be the inward reality of the life of this or that man employed on the railway —the man who opens the doors, for instance, or the one who punches the tickets. Surely everything both within him and outside him conspires to identify this man with his functions —meaning not only with his functions as a worker, as trade union member or as voter, but with his vital functions as well. The rather horrible expression “time table” perfectly describes his life.
THIS ARTICLE ONLY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS.
FOR QUICK ACCESS:
Michial Farmer is the author of Imagination and Idealism in John Updike’s Fiction (Camden House, 2017) and the translator of Gabriel Marcel’s Thirst (Cluny, 2021). He is a contributing editor at Front Porch Republic, and his essays have appeared in Local Culture, America, and Dappled Things, among other places. He teaches high-school history in Atlanta, where he is a member of St. Jude the Apostle Catholic Church.
A Journal of Mere Christianity—Delivered to Your Door
- Essays on theology, culture, and the Church
- Contributors from across the Christian traditions
Six print issues (one year) of Touchstone, plus full online access and PDF downloads for only $39.95.
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95.
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on literature from the online archives
30.2—March/April 2017
on Reading Don Quixote in Its Original Christian Context by Luis Cortest
32.2—March/April 2019
Misguided Mercy & Dante's Infernal Purgation by Joshua Hren
more from the online archives
29.5—Sept/Oct 2016
on the Loss of True Community & Rising Political Desperation by Karl D. Stephan
28.5—Sept/Oct 2015
Remembering Angka & the Idolatry of the Khmer Rouge 40 Years Later by Les Sillars
18.2—March 2005
On Conservatism as Vexation, Vanity & Near Impossibility by Graeme Hunter
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
