La Zeitdiagnose della società di massa. Gabriel Tarde e la prima Teoria critica

This essay reconstructs Gabriel Tarde’s “diagnoses of the times” and the early Critical Theory’s reflections on the origins and development of mass society. Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, industrialization, urbanization, and the combined pressures of capitalism and state intervention fostered the integration of broad popular strata into cultur-al life. Communication became increasingly performative and visual, shaped by mass rallies and the rise of modern media. Through the lens of the “spirit of the time” (Zeitgeist), the essay compares Tarde with Horkheimer and Adorno, highlighting parallel concerns about the transformation of the public sphere, the diffusion of ideologies, and the reshaping of individual autonomy. Through the analysis of these two research traditions, we argue that Zeitgeist is a category that avoids the substantialist and finalistic hazards of the philosophy of history and allows for a nuanced understanding of the asynchronous and contradictory social dynamics of modernity.