From Charisma: The Gift of Grace and How It Has Been Taken Away From Us by Philip Rieff, the profoundly influential social theorist, is a posthumously published analysis of the deepest level of crisis in our culture. In From Charisma: The Gift of Grace and How It Has Been Taken Away From Us by Philip Rieff, according to the author, the contemporary notion of charisma-the personal magnetism of political leaders or movie stars-is a tragic misunderstanding of a profoundly important concept.
Charisma originally meant religious grace and authority transferred through divine inspiration, before it evolved into little more than a form of celebrity stripped of moral considerations. Rieff argues that without morality, the gift of grace becomes indistinguishable from the gift of evil and devolves into a license to destroy in the name of faith or ideology.
Also in From Charisma: The Gift of Grace and How It Has Been Taken Away From Us by Philip Rieff he offers brilliant interpretations of Kierkegaard, Weber, Kafka, Nietzsche, and Freud, and shows how certain thinkers attacked the very possibility of faith and genuine charisma and helped prepare the way for a therapeutic culture in which it is impossible to recognize anything as sacred.
