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Wow. That wasn't my intention at all. I'm not sure where I went wrong, but I didn't mean any of that.
At a basic level I just wanted to reaffirm what you already guessed: you were right that they were common phrases in philosophical circles. When I said that they had "relatively straightforward definitions", what I was trying to convey was that they're nothing to be intimidated by. People aren't smart just because they use those words. You too could look up the words and learn what they mean (if you wanted to! you don't have to, of course!), and then you'd understand them just as well as the "experts". The words are no big deal. That's all I meant. There was certainly no snobbishness intended.
I didn't actually go into the definitions of the terms myself because I wasn't sure if you would actually be interested, but I'm happy to do that if you or anyone else is.
I fed "desublimated higher culture" into Google and found this conversation, Marcuse's book and
Trying Bing.com
Typing
into Google gets me various autocompletions
The pleasure principle Geometrie De La Mort TV series
The pleasure principle Studio album by Gary Numan
Clearly the phrase once had cultural cachet.
It gets worse. Wikipedia has articles on Pleasure principle and Reality principle. I want to be one of the cool intellectuals, who is down with these sophisticated concepts. How can I do that when Wikipedia puts their vapid triviality on public display :-(
Pleasure principle and reality principle are very simple concepts, yes. Which is exactly what I said in the post you replied to.
Freud's concept of sublimation is that unacceptable impulses (especially sexual ones) get redirected towards socially acceptable ends (especially art and science), thereby instilling the target of the redirection with a sort of elevated aura of importance. "Desublimated" higher culture would then be higher culture demystified, stripped of its aura so its material reality could be laid bare, and deprived of the underlying psychic intensity that had been redirected from the sexual drive.
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