the scholar, the intellectual, and the essay: weber, lukács,...

The Scholar, the Intellectual, and the Essay: Weber, Lukács, Adorno, and PostwarGermany

Peter Uwe Hohendahl

The German Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 3. (Summer, 1997), pp. 217-232.

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PETERUWEHOHENDAHL Cornell University

The Scholar, the Intellectual, and the Essay: Weber, Lukacs, Adorno, and Postwar Germany

Since the late 1980s the intellectual has been under attack-not only in this coun- try, but also in Europe, and especially in Germany. There is a sense of a general ma- laise on both sides of the Atlantic: The critical function once attributed to the intellectual seems to have evaporated. There is ground for a critical reassessment of the role of the intellectual, but it should not begin with a formal definition of the concept, since such a definition would remain abstract and therefore obscure important cultural difference^.^ For this reason, I will initially concentrate on the history of twen- tieth-century Central Europe and only in conclusion broaden the scope of my exploration by turning to the present inter- national debate about the function of the public intellectual and the social position of the intelligentsia.

The following discussion will focus on three moments in Germany's intellectual and social history, namely, the intervention of the young Georg Lukacs in the philosophical and literary discussion of the turn of the century; the discussion about the role of the intellectual in the work of Theodor W Adorno after his return to Germany in 1949; and, finally, an assessment of the intellectual in the present German context, for instance, in the contribution of Peter Biirger's most recent interventions and commentaries. What interests me in this discussion is not so much the philosophical ideas and systematic statements of these authors, but the question of style. What interests me, in other words, is a formal problem: How does the intellectual write?

Is there a difference between the approach and style of an intellectual and that of a scientist or a member of the political elite? Of course, this distinction already presupposes a specific definition of the intellectual as different from the scientist and the poli- tician. This presupposition contains implicit cultural structures and values which are commonly taken for granted in local discussions and, therefore, frequently remain unnoticed.

Ever since the turn of the century, the German debate, for example, has been informed by a fairly specific definition of the intellectual, which has relied on a number of oppositions that have been less significant in the American case.2 My choice of authors and texts reflects this bias toward a literary and aesthetic understanding of the concept, which shines through even in a radically political determination of the intellectual as we find it in the case of Georg Lukacs after 1918. Within the German discourse, the intellectual is as much defined by what he or she is not as by specific posi- tive features. Intellectuals are, for in-stance, to be distinguished from members of the academy, whereas in the American case this distinction would be less important unless underscored by the modifier "public intellectual."3

I want to begin my discussion of Lukacs with a detour to Max Weber's famous lecture on the role of science and the scientist.

The German Quarterly 70.3 (Summer 1997) 217

218 THEGERMANQUARTERLY Summer 1997

A grasp of Weber's project will help us to distinguish more clearly between scientist and intellectuaL4 This (especially in the German context) crucial distinction concerns the specific mode of the search for truth as well as the question of social practice. Given the rapidly increasing profes- sionalization of the social sciences and the humanities during the nineteenth century, the concept of science emphasizes strict boundaries which are determined in terms of methodological rigor. This search for strict demarcations also pertains to academic literary criticism. Although Weber was primarily interested in the status of the social sciences, his definition of science has important ramifications for other disciplines as well, since it contains the general idea of Wertfreiheit, i.e., the notion that scientific studies do not engage in value judgment. Scientists are expected to keep their distance from the objects of their research.

At the end of World War I these demarcations became a particularly urgent ethical and epistemological problem for Weber. Clearly in response to a revolutionary situation in Germany, which had undermined established institutions as well as accepted value^,^ Weber tried to define the responsibility of the scientist within a modern, rationalized, and demystified world. In an attempt to build up a wall against the politicization of the university, Weber designed a concept of science that would exclude metaphysical grounding. Not that the quest for such a ground was treated as meaningless; rather, Weber argued that institutionalized Wissenschaft had to refrain from ultimate questions of values and goals in order to carry out its mission. In other words, the role of the scientist, both in the humanities and the social sciences, had to be clearly distinguished from that of the artist or the religious and political leader. The modern university, Weber argued in 1919by pointing to the American model, is no longer simply a community of independent scholars. Modern universities are

"staatskapitalistische Unternehm~ngen,"~ in which the individual scholar and teacher has a restricted and highly specialized function. In this context, the production of research and knowledge follows accepted methodological rules that do not allow much individualization. There is no room for the talented dilettante:

Nur durch strenge Spezialisierung kann der wissenschaftliche Arbeiter tatsach- lich das Vollgefuhl, einmal und vielleicht nie wieder im Leben, sich zu eigen ma- chen: hier habe ich etwas geleistet, was dauern wird. Eine wirkliche endgiiltige und tiichtige Leistung ist heute stets: eine spezialistische ~ e i s t u n ~ . ~

It is noteworthy that Weber uses the term "labor" [Arbeit] for scientific research and calls the scholar explicitly a "worker" [Ar- beiter], unlike the dilettante, who is characterized by the fact that he or she has ideas but is incapable of carrying out research methodologically and systematically.

For Weber, the definition of science as specialized work is part of a much larger historical pattern. As he puts it: "Der wissenschaftliche Fortschritt ist ein Bruchteil, und zwar der wichtigste Bruchteil, jenes Intellektualisierungsprozesses, dem wir seit Jahrtausenden unterliegen, und zu dem heute iiblicherweise in so auljerorden- tlich negativer Art Stellung genommen ~ i r d . " ~This development results in a process of differentiation in which scientific work is clearly distinguished from religion and art. The latter two are concerned with values, but not, according to Weber, with scientific truth as aform of truth which can be defined in terms of methodological research. At the same time, Weber is aware of and even underscores the fact that many contemporaries are deeply dissatisfied with the procedures and results of the sciences, longing for a kind of truth that the disciplines of science cannot provide because they remain abstract and fail to an-swer the ultimate test. Since scientific pro- gress has discarded traditional goals like

HOHENDAHL: 219Scholar, Intellectual, Essay

access to God, the search for authentic be- ing, and the search for true happiness as illusory, modern civilized man is left with a void. I t is the very process of differentiation and rationalization which calls into question the belief in scientific truth as the ultimate a n ~ w e r . ~

By emphasizing the strength, but also the limitations of science and the role of the scientist, Weber simultaneously opened up the question of the ultimate ground of knowledge as well as the ultimate commitment of the individual seeking for truth and happiness.10 It is in this context that Weber makes a few comments on the modern intellectual. Their tone is negative; the modern intellectual-in contrast to the scientist-is seen as someone who longs for ultimate truth and redemption and, therefore, returns to forms of religious beliefs that he or she had already outgrown. The result is bad faith, an attempt to furnish one's interiority with the furniture of an older religion, which is no longer compat- ible with the process of rationalization We- ber had described before.ll

In the context of this essay, it is not my intention to analyze the contradiction of Weber's position. What interests me is, first of all, the critique of the intellectual from the point of view of institutionalized modern science. According to Weber, intellectuals fail because they are searching for a so- lution which was adequate only in the past. Secondly, and more importantly, Weber's lecture points to a problem for which he has no answer: the nature of knowledge outside the realm of science. The inauthenticity of some modern intellectuals does not make this question irrelevant. In fact, one might well reverse the question by asking: Is the hegemony of science, as claimed by Weber, legitimate? This may be a more appropriate way to address the thought of the early Lukacs, especially in the period between

Die Seele und die Formen and Theorie des Romans. As much as the later work of Lukacs, especially Geschichte und Klassen- bewubtsein, reflects the impact of Weber,12 the metaphysical approach of the early Lukacs remains much closer to the roman- tic tradition and idealist philosophy.13 Yet, it is not the question of tradition and influence that concerns me. Rather, what is at stake is the question of appropriation and the question of style. In the case of the early Lukacs, both are more or less identical. Their common ground is the essay form. The form of the essay, as Lukacs argues in Die Seele und die Formen, becomes the most appropriate vehicle for the intellectual.14 While Weber contrasts the intellectual with the scientist, on the one hand, and the religious or political leader, on the other, Lukacs views the essay as the ideal expression of the intellectual, who stands between the artist, on the one hand, and the philosopher, on the other. To be more precise, it is the essay form which defines the intellectual. For Lukacs, the essay contains a form of knowledge that transcends the research of the scientist; it asks ultimate questions which Weber's scientist must refuse, but it is not bound to the rigor of systematic philosophy.

What Lukacs shares with Weber is the delineation between science and other forms of knowledge; yet, he approaches this distinction from avery different viewpoint. In Lukacs's attempt to characterize and validate the essay form as the appropriate mode of expression of criticism, the opposition of science and non-science is modified and then replaced by the distinction between philosophy and the essay and between the essay form and the artwork. This shift has significant epistemological and ethical consequences for the under-standing of the role of the intellectual. While Weber reinforces the hegemony of scientific discourse, although he concedes the possibility of other forms of knowledge, the young Lukacs keeps his distance from the institutionalized discourse of the sci-


ences and emphasizes the need for a variety of discursive exchanges, among them the form of the essay. Its problematic and un- stable nature, which Lukacs underscores, allows the essay to explore and to search for moments of truth where Weberian science has fallen silent: "Die Ironie, dalj der Kritiker immer von den letzten Fragen des Lebens spricht, aber doch immer in dem Ton, als ob nur von Bildern und Buchern, nur von wesenlosen und hubschen Orna- menten des grol3en Lebens die Rede ware" (SF19).For Lukacs, the irony of the essay is its self-conscious discrepancy between mode of expression and thematic concern, between its tentative language and its implicit insistence on the possibility of metaphysical truth. Its author is the critic who approaches the question of truth indirectly through the interpretation of the artwork or the literary text, not the philosopher who responds to the need for a systematic ex- planation of truth. While Lukacs's essay on the essay does not question the feasibility ofsuch a systematic search (one might even say that it presupposes it), it displaces the systematic impulse of traditional philosophy to the margins, focusing instead on what it conceives of as the problematic lin- guistic means of the essay.

One would completely misunderstand Lukacs's discussion ofthe fragmentary and incomplete character of the essay if one took i t to be an admission of its insignifi- cance. On the contrary: What Lukacs wants to bring into the foreground is the importance and legitimacy of the essay form. Through its indirect nature, the essay can touch upon and explore the truth content (to use the later Adornian term) of the object under consideration. Clearly, however, for Lukacs, this object is little more than an Anlab and not central to the ultimate concern of the essay, which means that Lukacs problematizes the means and the tools of the search, but not the search itself, as, a generation later, Adorno will call into question the very possibility of estab- lishing the truth value of criticism.

At the center of Lukacs's discussion of the essay, we find the question of language and style. For him, the essay is neither a scientific article which communicates the results of research nor a tractate which dis- seminates theoretical knowledge in a systematic manner. Both modes are non-ironic. The essay is an ironic form, i.e., a mode of coded speaking in which language and meaning are not identical, in which the concrete object under discussion and the overall thematic concern of the essay remain, and consciously so, in a relationship characterized by tension. For this reason, the distinction between content and form, which Lukacs conflates with the distinction between science and art, does not apply to the essay. This makes the form ambiva- lent and, from Lhe point of view of art and science, problematic. Yet it is precisely this problematic nature that enables the essay to succeed where the scholarly treatment falls short, and the artwork must remain silent, for "Die Dichtung an sich kennt nichts, was jenseits der Dinge ware; ihr ist jedes Ding ein Ernstes und Einziges und Unvergleichliches. Darum kennt sie auch die Fragen nicht: man richtet an reine Dinge keine Fragen, nur an ihre Zusarn- menhange" (SF 12). The essay asks the kind of questions that the artwork cannot articulate and the scholarly article cannot legitimately raise: They instigate the search for metaphysical truth.

In his own analysis of the essay form, Adorno later suggested that Lukacs misun- derstood the character of the essay when he conflated the essay with poetry (Dich-tung). But this criticism misses the point. While Lukacs explicitly discusses the proximity of the two modes, he actually keeps them separate, using the argument that the essay is based on, and makes use of, poetry, i.e., the moment of form in poetry becomes the content of the essay: "Denn hier kann aus dem Endziel der Poesie ein Ausgangspunkt und ein Anfang werden; denn hier scheint die Form, selbst in ihrer abstrakten Begrifflichkeit, etwas sicher

HOHENDAHL: 221Scholar, Intellectual, Essay

und handgreiflich Wirkliches" (SF17).For Lukacs, in the writings of the essayist, poetic form becomes fate, that is, it becomes a moment of distinction between significant and insignificant aspects. It establishes a critical mode which is lacking in poetry itself.

In Lukacs's emphasis on form, then, we must recognize two distinct but equally important aspects: form as the mode of representation in the artwork, which is the object of discussion in the essay, and form as a shorthand for the discursive mode of the essay itself. They are equally important, since only in and through their com- bination can the search for truth succeed. The essay, in other words, establishes its independence (which remains always problematic) through its focus on the poetic form, which, then, becomes the basis of reflection. Thus, the essay is twice-removed from life. While the artwork touches on and preserves life experience, the essay reflects on its representation.

Lukacs embraces what Weber denies and shuns: the possibility of a different logic which does not respond to the law of contradiction. Since the essay is grafted on the artwork, traces its moments, and reflects on its form, it remains in the realm of the concrete and the particular. Its conceptual mode, Lukacs argues, is the image and the symbol. Hence the essay refrains from conceptual generalization as we find it in philosophy and science. The mode of generalization which Lukacs finds in the essay is that of vision and suggestion:

Es ist also nicht moglich, dalj zwei Essays einander widersprechen: jeder erschafft ja eine andere Welt und auch, indem er, um eine hijhere Allgemeinheit zu erlan- gen, dariiber hinausgeht, bleibt er in Ton, Farbe, Betonung doch immer in der er- schaffenen Welt; er verlaRt sie also nur im uneigentlichen Sinne. (SF22)

Through this immanence, the essay remains connected with the artwork, a close link which Adorno mistook for an attempt

on Lukacs's part to identify the artwork with the essay.

Anticipating Lukacs's later dialectical method, one might suggest that the essayist and critic mediates between the poet and the scientist or philosopher. This interpretation would, then, underscore the implicit drive toward systematic philosophy in the early Lukacs. From the perspective of his later Marxist work, this interpretation makes sense. Yet this reading does a certain amount of violence to Lukacs's early work, especially to Die Seele und die Formen. Lukacs's " h e r Wesen und Form des Essays: Briefe an Leo Popper" celebrates the unique role of the critic and its difference from that of the philosopher. To put it differently, it celebrates the role of the intellectual whose function cannot be conflated with that of the scientist or the philosopher.l5

In his critique of science and systematic philosophy, the Lukacs ofDie Seele und die Formen criticizes, but also affirms, Weber's definition of science insofar as the critic is closely linked to the aesthetic realm. While Lukacs suggests that the essay form does not exclusively deal with artworks and literature (referring to Montaigne), his own work clearly emphasizes the importance of the aesthetic. Aesthetic criticism becomes the core of intellectual activity. The intellectual is defined-and here Weber would quite a g r e e i n terms of art criticism within the literary public sphere. It is un- derstood that the critic is not an academic, but located in the general public sphere, without, however, having a specific place or a very clearly defined social function. In fact, compared with an older liberal model of literary criticism, Lukacs's intellectual has, more or less, lost the power of representative speech.16 The essay form articu- lates this loss as the absence of a clearly defined public that the critic wants to address. It is not incidental that Lukacs's essay on the essay chooses the format of a letter to a personal friend. For Lukacs, the bourgeois public has shrunk to a circle of


friends who can decode and appreciate the hints of the essayist.

It is well known that Lukacs embraced this position only for a short time. Already in Theorie des Romans, he searched for a new grounding of the critical voice and later, after his conversion to Marxism in 1918, he looked back a t the relativism of his early work with embarrassment.17 The philosophy of history, proposed in Theorie des Romans, allowed Lukacs to grasp a totality where the essay perceived only par- ticulars. I t also encouraged a modified definition of the critic and the intellectual. Armed with a coherent philosophy of history, which grants a telos to social evolu- tion, the intellectual-still in the guise of the literary critic-can speak again in the name of a broader idea, i.e., the historical process. In Geschichte und Klassenbewu/3t- sein (19231, this reversal is complete: Here the critic speaks in the name of Marxist theory, which asks him to identify with a collective subject, that is, the proletariat. The path from the essayistic position of 1910 to a Communist position a decade later was, for Lukacs, a question of commitment and responsibility. Still, we have to keep in mind that, in the case of Lukacs, the political configuration of the intellectual, as it emerges in Geschichte und Klas- senbewuptsein, is predicated on a moment of overcoming-namely, overcoming the specific definition of the intellectual as a critic of a r t and literature. Again, the comparison with Weber could be helpful. We- ber's definition of the political and the poli- tician would exclude the Lukacsian revolutionary as a prophet and visionary who stands outside the structure of modern society. For Weber, i t would be an aesthetic or religious and, therefore, illegitimate fea- ture, since it fails to acknowledge the differentiation of modern society.

There is no need to rehearse once more the path of Lukacs from his early commitment to a revolutionary Marxism through his compromise with Stalinism and his late recovery of a more critical position after 1956. In all phases, Lukacs remained committed to the Marxist project, in which the role of the Party is central. For him, the political intellectual remained anchored in a collective subject, i.e., the proletariat, and received his or her legitimacy from this link. In the German context, it was Adorno who drew the theoretical consequences of Lukacs's early writings when he rede- signed Critical Theory after World War II.18 Part of this reconfiguration was the refunctioning of the role of the intellectual, a common thematic concern of his postwar essays. Adorno's criticism specifically returned to the cultural sphere in order to re-articulate the locus of the intellectual. Once more the essay form becomes the focus for a reassessment of intellectual commitment.lg Of course, Adorno was fully aware of the intertextual situation; his famous piece "Der Essay als Form," published in 1958, is organized as a critical dialogue with the early Lukacs, returningcon- sciously to the latter's pre-Marxist phase, that is, to a time before he committed himself to a collective project.20 For Adorno, the unspoken question is: To whom and in whose name can the intellectual speak? Moreover, what language can he or she use in the context of the discursive system of advanced Western societies? I t is noteworthy that Adorno returned to the problemat- ics of the early Lukacs-notwithstanding the historical as well as epistemological rift that so clearly separated them-because what, from the perspective of the mature Lukacs, was a t best the reflection of youth- ful ambivalence and uncertainty, took on a new urgency in the eyes of Adorno after the devastating critique of the Enlightenment project in Dialektik der Aufilarung-a cri-tique that already presumed the moral col-

223 HOHENDAHL: Scholar, Intellectual, Essay

lapse of the Communist project in the So- viet Union.

Epistemologically and politically, Dia- lektik der Aufilarung underscored questions, among them the role of the critic and the mode of articulation. While Horkhei- mer and Adorno insisted that their own project continued the tradition of the En- lightenment, they rigorously subverted the authority of reason and the social apparatus based on the use of reason, thereby also questioning the ground of the critic. They clearly did not escape a performative contradiction insofar as they carried out their critique in the rational language of systematic philosophy. The tension is also re-flected in the destabilization of the critic: For and to whom were Horkheimer and Adorno speaking in Dialektik der Aufildi- rung? Written between 1941 and 1944 in exile with little hope of publication, the study served first and foremost as a means of self-clarification-a critique of the project that the Frankfurt School had formu- lated during the 1 9 3 0 s . ~ ~ More than Hork- heimer, it was Adorno who, after his return to Germany, attempted to come to grips with the epistemological, as well aspolitical consequences of Dialektik der Aufilarung. Generally critics have argued that he for- mulated his response in Negative Dialektik and ~sthetische T h e ~ r i e . ~ ~ Thematically, this is certainly correct. However, this answer overlooks the question of articulation (language). For Adorno, the essay form was not accidental-a means of expressing oc- casional thoughts. Rather, the essay form became the center of his philosophical project-as can be gleaned from the organization of ~sthetische Theorie.

For this reason, Adorno's essay on the essay-a performative salto mortale-must be taken very seriously; it addresses the role and function of critical intervention, that is to say, the question of the intellectual. Of course, Adorno, using the essay form for this discussion, is fully aware of the implications for his own position- the fact that he writes as an intellectual

about the task of the intellectual. Adorno's reading of Lukacs's essay pays little attention to the latter's ideological investment in the basic concepts of Lebensphiloso- phie-by and large, he replaces the concept of Leben with that of Geist-instead, he focuses on the methodological aspects. For him, the essay form provides a forum for a fundamentally non-systematic discus-sion-theoretically informed, but not determined by a systematic unfolding of a conceptual apparatus. This means that the question of style and language is even more central to Adorno than it was to the early Lukacs. It foregrounds a skeptical resistance to the heavy-handed terminology of academic philosophy and specifically reflects Adorno's opposition to Heidegger's ontology, which Adorno presents as typi- cally German and pre-Enlightenment:

In Deutschland reizt der Essay zur Ab- wehr, weil er an die Freiheit des Geistes mahnt, die, seit dem MiRlingen einer seit Leibnizischen Tagen nur lauen Aufkla- rung, bis heute, auch unter Bedingungen formaler Freiheit, nicht recht sich entfal- tete, sondern stets bereit war, die Unter- ordnung unter irgendwelche Instanzen als ihr eigentliches Anliegen zu verkiin-den. (GS 11:lO)

What Adorno sees as the failure of the Ger- man Enlightenment is the very tradition of systematic philosophy from Leibniz to Heidegger. Clearly in the spirit of Nietz- sche-whose name is not mentioned-Adorno insists on a different process of enlightenment, a different mode in the search for truth. This is the reason why the question of methodology preoccupies Adorno. The method of the essay is seen as a subversion of traditional philosophical argumentation. "Damit suspendiert er zugleich den traditionellen Begriff von Methode. Der Gedanke hat seine Tiefe danach, wie tief er in die Sache dringt, nicht danach, wie tief er sie auf ein anderes zuriickfiihrt" (GS 11: 18-19). Yet, this subversion is not to be equated with a mere


lack of rigor, for instance, a sellout to the feuilleton (which Adorno perceives as the potential danger of the essay form). The intellectual rigor of the essay, Adorno suggests, suspends traditional methods of philosophical thought; it makes use of the fragmentary, as well as discontinuous nature of the form. Its precision, which Adorno emphatically defends, is that of configurations. "In ihr bilden jene kein Kontinuum der Operation, der Gedanke schreitet nicht einsinnig fort, sondern die Momente verflechten sich teppichhaft" (GS 11:21). Hence, the success of an essay depends on what Adorno calls the "Dichte der Verflechtung" (GS 11:21).

Even if Adorno had not explicitly pointed to it, the anti-Cartesian drift of his essay is hard to overlook. "Insgesamt ware er zu interpretieren als Einspruch gegen die vier Regeln, die Descartes' Discours de la me'thode am Anfang der neueren, abend- landischen Wissenschaft und ihrer Theorie aufrichtet" (GS 11:14). As Adorno argues, neither does the essay follow the rule that the object has to be divided into manage- able parts, nor does it encourage a methodological search and analysis, beginning with the simple facts, and then moving on to more complex configurations. Finally, the essay resists the demand for complete analysis, which Kant later reiterated as a methodological principle. This resistance leaves the essay form vulnerable and open to criticism, as Adorno readily concedes.

Why, then, does Adorno defend the essay, even insisting on its superior value? At this point, I have to introduce the concept of experience (Erfahrung), which has the same centrality as the concept of life for the early Lukacs. Adorno refuses to define his term; thus, his readers have to grasp its sense by paying close attention to the moment of negation in his discussion of the Cartesian rules. What emerges are two moments-the insistence on particular objects and particular knowledge, and the acceptance, even praise, of uncertainty. To put it more pointedly, the search for the

truth content (Wahrheitsgehalt) remains an open one, therefore also exposed to error as part of the learning process. The central metaphor for the essay is the configuration, where concepts "einander tragen" (GS 11:21) rather than the building or the Geriist. Switching the metaphor, Adorno also speaks of a "Kraftfeld" (GS 11:22). This means that the thought processes are loaded with tensions, coming together at a particular point, without any guarantee of continuity. "Diskontinuitat ist dem Essay wesentlich, seine Sache stets ein still-gestellter Konflikt" (GS 11:25).

Clearly, for Adorno the essay form is more than a genre that is useful for certain subject matters, while other questions call for different forms and methods. Peter Biir- ger is right when he argues that Adorno's description of the essay is largely informed by his philosophical 0utlook.~3 Hence, Bur- ger treats it as a philosophical program which outlines Adorno's understanding of non-identity and negative dialectics. While his assessment captures the methodological and theoretical dimension of Adorno's essay, Burger fails to address its performative and political status. Adorno also situ- ates himself in the postwar debate about the role of the intellectual. In this context, Adorno accentuates his opposition to the German academic tradition, both its philosophical and its philological variety. When published in 1958, Adorno's essay implied a negativeverdict against theacademic tradition and its alliance with the social and political establishment. This position is mostly articulated through stylistic provo- cations, polemical and hyperbolic formula- tions-which attest to Nietzsche's pres- ence in the text.

The essayist's performance calls into question the apparatus of the academy, its unspoken alliance with the existing political order-under the guise of freedom of research and scientific objectivity. The essayist, once more, turns out to be a critic who addresses ultimate questions while dealing with specific, frequently marginal

225 HOHENDAHL:Scholar, Intellectual, Essay

issues. What the mature Adorno shares with the young Lukacs is a preoccupation with aesthetic questions. Yet thereis, I sub- mit, a stronger sense of marginality in Adorno's essays, an uncertainty about the possibility of communication. Adorno's essays do not present themselves as part of a dialogue. While the subjectivity of the critic asserts itself at every moment in the text, the role of the recipient remains underde- veloped.As arule, Adorno does not set himself up to teach by addressing his readers (with the exception of "Lyrik und Gesell- schaft"). Rather, it is in the act of reading itself that the learning process is preserved.

The style of Adorno's essays has, of course, a profound effect on the conception of the intellectual. I t subverts any notion of an organized collective project, as it was developed by the Institute for Social Re- search in the 1930s. It is not accidental, I believe, that Horkheimer and Adorno did not revive the Zeitschrift fur Sozialfor- schung after the war, as Herbert Marcuse had hoped.24 As a critic, Adorno made no effort to speak in the name of the Institute, which he codirected after its resurrection in 1949. The work of the Institute, mostly empirical studies, and Adorno's writings ran side by side without intersecting too frequently. The irony is that Horkheimer, Adorno, and their disciples were called a school when they had less of a common program than in the 1930s and early 1940s. One could possibly argue that the next generation, for instance, Habermas, Negt, Kluge, and Claus Offe, were searching again for a common critical program based on a revised version of Western Marxism and then integrated the writings of their teachers into the position of the "school." For Adorno, the notion of a philosophical school became increasingly alien, not to mention the commitment to a specific political party. As Adorno explained, revolutionary social theory had missed its histori- calmoment of practice and could not regain it through forced efforts on the part of the theorist. In other words, in a postrevolu-

tionary situation, the intellectual had to redefine his or her role vis-g-vis what Adorno called the totally administered society.25 The structure of the essay becomes the only viable strategy of the intellectual: Subver- sion replaces opposition; the act of writing (as a performance) replaces social praxis.

In 1968 neither his disciples nor the student movement as a whole were inclined to accept this position. Working with the as- sumption that the political and social crisis of the late sixties in the Federal Republic of Germany tended toward a revolutionary climax, they postulated a more active and stronger role for theory.26 In particular, they returned to a model of theory and praxis that Adorno had abandoned in the 1940s. Not surprisingly, then, Adorno re- jected the interventionist project of the radical students in 1968, calling instead for radical theoretical self-refle~tion.2~In Adorno's model, the intervention of the intellectual retreats to the moment of reflection in the act of writing-a position that the students found profoundly unsatisfac- tory.

In the meantime, the student rebellion of 1968 has been declared a failure. Es- pecially after 1989, there has been a grow- ing mood among German intellectuals to eclipse the generation of 1968 in the name of a renewed national identity. Has the defeat of the German Left vindicated Adorno's position, as some American critics have claimed?28 Clearly, Adorno's concept of the intellectual as an agent of subversion is more in agreement with more recent American attempts to redefine the role of the intellectual. It is interesting to note that, in Germany, Peter Burger has argued that Adorno's understanding of the essay is part of a closed past and cannot serve as a model for us today. While Burger underscores the significance of the essay form for contemporary thought, he also


criticizes Adorno's concept as no longer corresponding to our situation ("Problem- lagen),29since he remained wedded to a system ofantisystematicphilosophy, i.e., negative dialectics. Rightly, Biirger notes the two sides of Adorno's model-the formal and the methodological aspects-but he mistakenly concludes that Adorno ultimately sides with philosophy. Instead, I want to suggest, Adorno carried the essay form into systematic philosophy and ultimately undermined the traditional concept of writing philosophy.30 In Aesthetische Theorie, this direction becomes more radical than in Negative Dialektik. Adorno un- dercut the genre of the German mandarins, although he was part of the academy and, in certain respects, quite eager to play his professional role. In his repeated critique of the German academy, Adorno claimed for himself the role ofthe public intellectual who intervenes where the apparatus has become unable to extricate itself, yet he refused the gesture of speaking for a group or a collective subject. If at all, the Adornian intellectual, as a reader of artworks, can claim to disclose a truth content. It is this privileged link to the aesthetic sphere (which Adorno shares with the early Lukacs) that I see as both the strength and the limitation of Adorno7s model. Its form of legitimation connects it closely to the postrevolutionary phase of modernism, which, however, remained determined by the moment of the past revolution and its equivalent in the aesthetic avant-garde. The recent criticism of Adorno's understanding of mass culture by British culture theorists and American postmodernists,31 in spite of its reductive tendency, captures this aspect in Adorno's position-a contin-ued resistance to the changes in mass culture itself, a fixation on the 1930s and 1940s, when the intellectual was called upon to reveal the false ideology of the culture industry.

The Adornian model of the intellectual is mostly silent about its material aspects. Adorno gave his critical voice no concrete

social environment. Nor did he ever foreground his own precarious status as a Jew- ish kmigrk who returned to Germany after the Holocaust, an outsider who had become an insider in the world of the German mandarins-a world that was carefully restored after the Nazi period and began to crumble only in the late sixties under the pressure of the student movement. Unlike Ben- jamin, Adorno and Horkheimer were pro- fessors of philosophy and civil servants with pension rights at the University of Frankfurt. Was his defense of strictly non- collective intervention no more than a defense of the status quo ofpostwar Germany, as some radical students charged?

The revolutionary impetus requires, of course, collective action and, therefore, some notion of a collective subject, such as a political organization. Traditionally, intellectuals have played a crucial role in the organization and theoretical articulation of revolutionary parties-especially on the Left. Adorno's resistance to this role, which Lukacs had emphatically embraced, points to a shift that needs exploration. As we have seen, in Adorno's model of the essayist and critic, any allegiance to a social group or class has been subverted. The hope lies in the performative act of writing-regard- less of the audience. It was quite consistent with this model that Adorno later refused to support the politicization of the radical students and their efforts to organize political resistance. He argued that, historically, the moment for collective revolutionary action had passed-leaving the postrevolutionary intellectual only with the means of theoretical refle~tion.3~ The indictment of political action partly reflected the mood of the late Adorno, his concern with the completion of his own work. But such personal motives do not explain the decoupling of theory and praxis and the consistent emphasis on the power of critical language. By revoking the elements of political activism, Adorno returns to the in- ception of the culture of critical discourse, but without its initial belief in the totaliz-

227 HOHENDAHL:Scholar, Intellectual, Essay

ing strategy of philosophy. Still, it is worth noting that Adorno holds on to the emancipatory aspect of the project. In fact, I would argue that Adorno cannot escape this propensity without losing his intellectual identity. Even in the subversion of the enlightenment project, critical discourse leaves its imprint-as a call for a new and better Enlightenment. In this respect, Adorno may be more representative than he himself assumed, for, as Alvin W. Gould-ner puts it: "The paradox of the New Class is that it is both emancipatory and elitist."33

Has this project finally come to an end? Is Adorno's essay on the essay no more than a moment of past history, as Peter Burger suggests? What, then, remains of the power of speech, which Gouldner rightly perceives as the core of the project? In a fascinating fictional account, entitled Die Tranen des Odysseus, Peter Burger has described the end of the German Left as an inability to speak and write, as a falling silent which becomes analogous to a death while, at the same time, the voices on the Right are becoming louder and more strident.34 At the center of the narrative we find the pathology of the subject/narrator who experiences the breakup of intellectual communication in his small discussion group and, subsequently, observes his own pathological status--depression and feelings of worthlessness. Significantly enough, however, the subject continues to speak and write. The critical discourse turns on itself, i.e., the failure of a project becomes the target of the analysis. How- ever, it is noteworthy that this analysis is no longer carried out in discursive language, but in the form of fiction. The shift to an aesthetic mode of articulation has, it seems to me, fundamental implications for the subject position. While the critical discourse of the essay allowed for fragmenta-

tion and decentering, Burger's fictional narrative offers a plurality of voices with differing, conflicting positions. Unless one decides reductively to identify the author with the voice of the first-person narrator, the plurality of voices invites the reader to negotiate between a number of subject positions. In this structure, the plight of the individual intellectual becomes a problem of interior communication that mimics the conflicting voices in the critical discourse of the contemporary German public sphere. Precisely by staging the end of the leftist project in a fictional narrative, Bur- ger keeps it alive. In this respect, but in this respect only, he would concur with Karl Heinz Bohrer's celebration of the aesthetic as the moment of overcoming and redemp- ti0n.3~

Are we justified, then, in predicting the end of the intellectual, the end of a culture of critical discourse, and, more broadly speaking, theend of Gouldner's New Class? Once we extend the question in such a way as to include the fate of an entire social group, the present lament over the future of the intellectual seems overblown and ex- aggerated. Actual shifts and changes within the New Class are depicted as radical breaks and losses. The loss of particular functions, which depended on specific historical contexts, is turned into the end of an era. A comparison with the American situation might be helpful in under-standing the meaning of such shifts. An important theme of the recent American debate has been the decline of the public intellectual and his or her replacement by academic functionaries. Russell Jacoby has argued that these academics, secured by tenure and disciplined by the pressure of their academic institutions, have abandoned the commitment to the public at large and have moved away from the social and cultural causes that, a generation ago, defined the project of public intellectuals, i.e., of journalists and freelance writers.36 While such a shift from public to academic intellectuals has possibly taken place, the

228 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Summer 1997

indictment fails to take into account the structural transformations of the Ameri- can public sphere, which has also changed the academic public sphere. Contrary to popular sentiment, American universities have become considerably more public since the 1960s and, consequently, more political. As a result, academics have taken over functions that were formerly in the hands of journalists and freelance writers. But in this process, academics have not simply become public intellectuals-hence the complaint that the critical function has disappeared.

When we look at the larger picture, however, that is, at the social formation for which Gouldner and others have intro- duced the term "New Class," these shifts must not be overrated. They primarily concern the position of the humanists, especially literary intellectuals who tend to be more vocal in the public sphere. One of the reasons why this critique became particularly strident in Germany was precisely the traditional emphasis on the literary and aesthetic character of the intellectual's work, an emphasis that so strongly comes to the foreground in Adorno's writings and is also evident in Biirger's recent assessment of the essay form. If one replaces the old dichotomy between the scientist and the intellectual with the opposition between the expert and the public intellectual, the contemporary hostility becomes more understandable. Given the high de- gree of complexity of advances in industrial societies, the posture of the writer or poet as a moral critic fails to carry the weight it used to have even a generation ago. There no longer seems to be an obvious mandate for the writer to assume leadership.

Yet, the fact that the nature and character of the culture of critical discourse is presently contested should not be con-strued prematurely as the end of the intellectual or of the intelligentsia as a social group. As Gouldner has pointed out, advanced Western societies heavily depend on them for their efficiency: "The New Class

possesses the scientific knowledge and technical shlls on which the future of modern forces of production depend. "37 While Gouldner underscores the progressive character of the New Class as a whole and credits its members with a universalist and rational outlook, he also emphasizes the importance of its own class interests and notes that "the New Class is hardly the end of d0mination."~8 Its power is derived from cultural capital; in other words, it is linked to the culture of critical discourse. Yet, this culture is more ambiguous than its radical left wing has been prepared to concede: It is emancipatory and elitist or, more precisely, it is potentially elitist through its emancipatory perspective. This is not a matter of controlling the material means of production; rather, it concerns the level of discourse and epistemology. Historically, intellectuals as a social group have attempted to dominate the definition of truth and thereby set up a new power hierarchy.39

My assessment of intellectuals as a social group has underscored two points: its deeply contradictory character, and its con- tinuing internal divisions. Both are closely connected. The present indictment of the intellectuals in Germany, for instance, is carried out, to be sure, by conservative intellectuals or neo-conservatives, just as the critique of the German mandarins-i.e., the conservative academic intellectuals- was pursued by the Left.40 The tendency to identify intellectuals with the left political spectrum has possibly encouraged the notion of an ideologically unified group. It should be noted, however, that these in- fights, which have been so prominent since 1989, signify more than just a struggle for control over the critical discourse-this is obviously the case-they ultimately articulate the above-mentioned contradiction, which can best be described as a performative one. While intellectuals have defined themselves in terms of a critical discourse which separates them from immediate material interests, they have also insisted on

HOHENDAHL:Scholar, Intellectual, Essay

the control over the production and dis- semination of this discourse, which, then, becomes their property and power base. Yet, it is peculiar to the ethos of intellectuals that this very contradiction comes under scrutiny and becomes the focus of internal tensions between conflictinggroups.

Formally, the contradiction can be re- solved in two ways: Either the internal debate emphasizes the need for status and hierarchy vis-a-vis other classes at the ex- pense of the universal nature of the critical discourse, a conservative move toward class consolidation, or it can stress the performative contradiction itself, calling for a critical reassessment of the intellectual discourse. In this resolution, the intellectual subverts his or her own basis and potentially moves toward its self-destruction. Precisely this move, the calling into question of the intellectual's mission and the subversion of the culture of critical discourse on which this mission rests, also re- affirms this very mission and, thereby, the claims, as well as the status, of the social group. Hence, both Adorno's insistence on the essay form and Biirger's shift to a fictional self-assessment of the intellectual, through their gestures of undermining claims for a representative mission, also re- instate the moment of critique that has grounded the role of the intellectual in the first place.

In concrete historical situations, such as the German development since the fall of the Wall, a firm distinction between a conservative and a subversive resolution of the contradiction is not easy, since, in individual cases, aspects of subversion can overlap with aspects of conservative opposition. (The recent work of Botho StrauD would be a good case in point.) In other words, the internal division among intellectuals is as ambiguous as their social position. Hence the question as to whether there is a need for intellectuals in the future, and whether they have amission, cannot be answered unambiguously. Their answer depends on the level of the analysis.

Asked within intellectual culture at a specific time, for example, today, in this coun- try or in Germany, the answer will stress a particular position within the configuration of the present debate, for instance, the continued viability of the universal project of modernity or the call for a new cultural authority based on traditional high culture. This analysis, then, focuses on the on- going internal struggle for dominance; however, this conflict does not necessarily affect the future of the social group at large. The internal struggle is part of its articulation vis-a-vis other classes and the social system as a whole. The fate of the intelligentsia as a social group calls for a different kind of analysis in which the tensions and underlying contradictions are viewed as moments of a larger social and cultural dy- namic, which may well be crucial for its survival.

In the recent German debate about the fate of the intellectual, Helmut Schelsky's work seems not even to play a minor role -possibly because it belongs too much to the 1970s-but this debate shares Schel-sky's preoccupation with the meaning and use of culture. At its center we find the search for the production of meaning and the epistemological, as well as socio-cultural, conditions of this production. To use Schelsky's terms, the contemporary controversy concerns the function of "Heils- wissen" and "Orientierungswissen" rather than that of "Arbei ts~issen."~~ This conflict has been constructed either as an opposition between the insistence on modernity and rationality versus a return to traditional values, on the one hand, or as a struggle between a political and a radically aesthetic interpretation of the world, on the other. Other positions and dichotomies could easily be added. While these positions give us an indication of the scope of the controversy, they do not fully grasp the stakes of the deba te these come into the foreground only when we look more closely at the discourse itself. It is the culture of critical discourse, its boundaries and its


legitimacy, which is at the heart of the matter. Consequently, the question of style and writing has received much attention, because in the German tradition this problem defines the essence of the intellectual's intervention. Even those voices who mean to deny the legitimacy of such interventions and call for their abolishment or reconfiguration depend on critical discourse and use its language. This is precisely the double bind that makes the present attack on the intellectual both important and frustrat- ing. The frustration stems from the grow- ing reification in the polemic against the intellectual-as if those who call for the indictment of the intellectual were not part of the same social group and its problems. Important, however, would be a critique which deconstructs the fundamental cate- gories on which the culture of critical discourse is based, thereby arriving a t a more differentiated understanding of the problem.

It is in this context that Adorno's analysis of the essay form (of course, essayistic itself) is relevant again, beyond its initial historical meaning in the context of the early years of the Federal Republic, but not as a preparation for a more systematic theory, as Biirger suspects. Instead, a renewed reading would foreground the performative moment, i.e., the subversive character of the essayistic position, and its antisys- tematic nature. This reappropriation might well reposition itself vis-a-vis Adorno's gesture of distance toward the artwork and allow for a greater proximity of the discursive and the fictional mode as we find it in Burger's novel. The gain would be the possibility of a plurality of conflicting voices, shown in a process of negations, criticism, and countercriticism, which moves toward a reassessment of the inherited culture of critical discourse-a reassessment, not a rejection, of its critical aspect. The plurality undercuts the move towards a hardening of a single position.

Any suggestion of pluralism, however, is potentially exposed to the criticism that

it is evasive and fails to develop a clear-cut position which can influence public debate and thereby make a difference. In this context, the essay can be perceived as part of the implicit elitism that Gouldner attrib- utes to intellectuals as a social group. This argument strikes me as persuasive only when the concept of the intellectual has been narrowly defined in literary terms, as was frequently the case in Germany. But even here the Weberian split between scientist and intellectual, which Adorno still took seriously, has lost its structural importance. If one understands writers and literary critics as a mere segment of the larger group that Gouldner calls the New Class, then the intervention of the essay form takes on a different meaning. The essay encourages the vital process of self-reflection that the New Class needs to fulfill its critical cultural and social function. The essay as a subversive form resists dogmatic thought structures and undercuts the power of linear arguments. As Burger notes: "Auch der Essay hat seine Gesetze. Das vielleicht strengste verbietet ihm, Bi- lanz zu ziehen, den Ertrag einstreichen zu wollen. Seine Denkbewegung sperrt sich gegen den Versuch, sie, wie man sagt, auf den Punkt zu bringen."42 For this reason, it cannot and should not claim responsibility for the totality of the social. Still, the pluralism of conflicting voices does not sig- nal either a mere satisfaction with main- stream compromise or a celebration of un- decidability; rather, it evokes the need for intertwining individual experience and the movement of critical thought.

Notes

lFor an overview see K. H. Wewetzer, "In- telligenz, Intelligentsia, Intellektueller," Hi-storisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, ed. Joachim Ritter and Karlfried Griinder, 9 vols. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell- schaft. 1971-95) 4: 445-61.

2See Hauke Brunkhorst, Der Intellektuelle

HOHENDAHL: Scholar, Intellectual, Essay

i m Lande der Mandarine (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1987).

3For a detailed historical analysis, see Gan- golf Hubinger and Wolfgang J.Mommsen, eds. Intellektuelle i m deutschen Kaiserreich. (Frank-furt a. M.: Fischer, 1993); Michael Stark, ed. Deutsche Intellektuelle 191 0-1 933 (Heidel- berg: Lambert Schneider, 1984).

4Max Weber, "Wissenschaft als Beruf," Ge-samtausgabe, Abteilung I: Schriften und Re- den, ed. Horst Baier et al., 22 vols. (Tubingen: Mohr 1992) 17: 72-111. See Wolfgang J. Mommsen, "Max Weber: Ein politischer In- tellektueller im Deutschen Kaisserreich," Gangolf and Mommsen 33-61.

5For a discussion of the radical Left see Hans-Harald Miiller, Intellektueller Linksradi- kalismus in der Weimarer Republik (Kronberg: Scriptor, 1977).

6Weber, "Wissenschaft als Beruf' 74. 7Weber, "Wissenschaft als Beruf' 80. 8Weber, "Wissenschaft als Beruf' 86. gSee also Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Ge-

sellschafi (Koln: Kiepenhauer and Witsch, 1964) 1034-1102.

1°For Weber, this is primarily a question of leadership, more specifically, a matter of a clear distinction between teacher and leader. Again, Weber wants to place the emphasis on the lim- its of the role of academic teachers. They are not to be confused with political or religious leaders, since they cannot offer access to ultimate knowledge or values. Thus in the case of the theologian, Weber carefully distinguishes the task of systematizing the Christian belief system and the religious dogma itself, which the theologian has to accept as a given. Simi- larly, aesthetic theory (and here Weber refers to the work of the early Lukacs) is concerned with artworks, but presupposes the existence of art. Once the theorist decides to transcend the level of description and becomes involved with the aspect of revelation, he or she has left the sphere of science.

llSee also Max Weber, "Religionssoziolo- gie," Wirtschafi und Gesellschafr 417-88.

12See Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality (Berkeley: U of California T: 1984) 81-127.

13See Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Reappraisals: Shifting Alignments in Postwar Critical The- ory (Ithaca: Cornell UT: 1991) 31-52.

14Georg Lukacs, " h e r Wesen und Form des Essays: Briefe an Leo Popper," Die Seele

und die Formen: Essays (NeuwiedIBerlin: Luchterhand, 1971) 7-31. Page references to this edition are given in parentheses (SF).

15His essays on Kassner and Kierkegaard attempt to work out this difference. While the piece on Kassner foregrounds the nature of the critical voice (calling it Platonism), the essay on Kierkegaard focuses on the ethical problem. The ultimate question, however, is similar in both cases: How is authentic life experience possible? Using Kassner as the exemplary essayist and critic, Lukacs again highlights the mediated character of the link. For the Platon- ist Kassner, the world is available only through forms created in the past. The critical voice depends on the formal construct of the past. His own creation is a shadow of life (SF 41).

While Kassner's voice is that of the Platon- ist, Kierkegaard's voice-another incarnation of the critic-is that of the Asket who pretends to be the seducer of his fiancee in order to keep a rigorous distance to ordinary (relative) life. Kierkegaard's ethical rigor is philosophical, yet it turns against systematic philosophy (particularly that of Hegel). For Lukacs, Kierke- gaard's life is marked by absolute rigor, a rigor that must ultimately turn to God as the only appropriate object of his love. Still, Kierke- gaard's exemplary life, his heroic battle with his own time, remains a particular instance, possibly typical, but not generalizable. At the end of the essay, Lukacs relativizes the Kierkegaardian gesture, just as he relativized Kassner's Platonism. The critic, using the essay form, necessarily subverts his own claim and (in the person of Kierkegaard) submits to the indeterminable nature of life experiences. The ethical position of the critic is punktuell, determined by the circumstances of his or her object. What stabilizes this position is the moment of form enacted through and within the poetic vision.

16See Russell A. Berman, "Literary Criti- cism from Empire to Dictatorship, 1870-1933,"A History of German Literary Criticism, 1730-1980, ed. Peter Uwe Hohendahl (Lin- coln: U of Nebraska e 1988) 277-357, especially 300-12.

17For the early Lukacs see Mary Gluck, Georg Lukacs and his Generation 1900-1 918 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985). For the critical self-appraisal, see Lukacs's 1962 pref- ace to The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna

Summer 1997

Bostock (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971) 11-23. 18See Jay 241-75; Fredric Jameson, Late

Marxism: Adorno, or, The Persistence of the Dialectic (London, Verso, 1990); J. M. Bern- stein, The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno (University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1992).

lgSee Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Prismatic Thought: Theodor W Adorno (Lincoln: U of Nebraska E 1995) 45-72.

20Theodor W. Adorno, "Der Essay als Form," Noten zur Literatur, vol. 11of Gesam-melte Schriften, ed. Rolfe Tiedmann, 20 vols. (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1973-84), 11: 9-33. Unless otherwise noted, all references to Adorno's works are from this edition and are given in the text in parentheses (GS) .

21Rolf Wiggershaus, Die Frankfurter Schule: Geschichte, Theoretische Entwicklung, Politische Bedeutung (Munich: dtv, 1988) 364-83.

22See, for instance, Jameson and Bern- stein; see also Christoph Menke, Die Sou- veranitat der Kunst: ~s thet ische Erfahrung nach Adorno und Derrida (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1991).

23Peter Burger, Das Denken des Herrn: Bataille zwischen Hegel und dem Surrealis- mus (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1991) 7-14.

24Wiggershaus 515-19. 25See Theodor W Adorno, "Gesellschaft,"

GS 8: 9-19; "Spatkapitalismus oder Industrie- gesellschaft" GS 8: 354-70.

Sabine von Dirke, 'Xll Power to the Imagination": The West German Countercul- ture from the Student Movement to the Greens (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1997) 29-66.

27See Theodor W Adorno, "Resignation,"

GS 10.2: 794-802. 28See for instance, Michael Sullivan and

John T. Lysaker, "Between Impotence and 11- lusion: Adorno's Art of Theory and Practice," New German Critique 52 (Fall 1992): 87-122.

29Burger,D m Denken 9. 30See Hohendahl, Prismatic Thought

217-41. 31See, for example, Jim Collins, Uncommon

Cultures: Popular Culture and Postmodernism (New York: Routledge, 1983).

32Adorno, "Resignation." 33AlvinM! Gouldner, The Future of Intellec-

tuals and the Rise of the New Class (New York: Oxford 1978) 84.

34Peter Burger, Die Tranen des Odysseus (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1993).

35Karl Heinz Bohrer, Plotzlichkeit: Zum Augenblick des asthetischen Scheins (Frank-furt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1981).

36Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (New York: Basic Books, 1987).

37Gouldner 83. 38Gouldner 83. 39See Zygmunt Bauman, Legislators and

Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernity and Intellectuals (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987).

40For a prominent example of leftist criticism in Germany, see Jurgen Habermas, The New Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and the Historians' Debate, ed. and trans. Shierry We- ber Nicholsen (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989).

41Helmut Schelsky, Die Arbeit tun die an- deren: Klassenherrschaft und Priesterherr- schaft der Intellektuellen (Opladen: Westdeut- scher Verlag, 1975) 122-23.

42Burger,Das Denken 165.

the scholar, the intellectual, and the essay: weber, lukács,...

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