MODERN HUMAN BEING AND CONSUMER IDEOLOGY IN MAX HORKHEIMER AND THEODOR W. ADORNO

This study aims to understand modern consumers' perception of life and life styles through consumer culture. With the globalization process, the idea of a human being that consumes more and constructs its existence through consuming has emerged. This human model has been shaped by the culture industry on the basis of consumers' shopping, mass media tools, social identity, family and spiritual values in daily life. The consumption culture, which was based on basic physical needs at first, was replaced by concepts like “pleasure”, “passion“, “desire”, “status”, “identity” and “prestige”. At the first stage, when production was neglected or even ignored, people started to gain an identity and shape their social position. Even people have gradually been reduced to an object. The theoretical details of the phenomenon of consumption, which has turned into an ideology rather than meeting today's needs, was investigated in this study within the framework of critical theories of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno of the Frankfurt School via their critiques of the consumer culture. In the application part, the individuals’ perceptions and thoughts about consumption were analyzed through in-depth interviews using the hermeneutic method, in this way the details of the individuals' inner worlds of consumption ideology were analyzed through their own thoughts. As a result, it is thought that the desire to have the physical and false needs brought by the consumption culture leads to the loss of values in the modern individual. It is seen that this result causes emotions such as unhappiness, lack of solidarity, loss of confidence, alienation, isolation and the vanish of meaning in the individual and causes loss of values and feelings that will provide peace in society