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

Author(s): Peter Uwe HohendahlReviewed work(s):Source: The German Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 3 (Summer, 1997), pp. 217-232Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of GermanStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/408201 .

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PETER UWE HOHENDAHLCornellUniversity

The Scholar, the Intellectual, and the Essay:Weber, Luk&acs,Adorno, and Postwar Germany

Since the late 1980s the intellectual hasbeen under attack-not only in this coun-try, but also in Europe, and especially inGermany. There is a sense of a general ma-laise on both sides of the Atlantic: The criti-cal function once attributed to the intellec-tual seems to have evaporated. There isground for a critical reassessment of therole of the intellectual, but it should notbegin with a formal definition of the con-cept, since such a definition would remainabstract and therefore obscure importantcultural differences.1 For this reason, I willinitially concentrate on the history of twen-tieth-century Central Europe and only inconclusion broaden the scope of my ex-ploration by turning to the present inter-national debate about the function of thepublic intellectual and the social positionof the intelligentsia.The following discussion will focus onthree moments in Germany's intellectualand social history, namely, the interventionof the young Georg Lukacs in the philo-sophical and literary discussion of the turnof the century; the discussion about the roleof the intellectual in the work of TheodorW Adorno after his return to Germany in1949; and, finally, an assessment of the in-tellectual in the present German context,for instance, in the contribution of PeterBtirger's most recent interventions andcommentaries. What interests me in thisdiscussion is not so much the philosophicalideas and systematic statements of theseauthors, but the question of style. Whatinterests me, in other words, is a formalproblem: How does the intellectual write?

Is there a difference between the approachand style of an intellectual and that of ascientist or a member of the political elite?Of course, this distinction already presup-poses a specific definition of the intellectualas different from the scientist and the poli-tician. This presupposition contains im-plicit cultural structures and values whichare commonly taken for granted in localdiscussions and, therefore, frequently re-main unnoticed.Ever since the turn of the century, theGerman debate, for example, has been in-formed by a fairly specific definition of theintellectual, which has relied on a numberof oppositions that have been less signifi-cant in the American case.2 My choice ofauthors and texts reflects this bias towarda literary and aesthetic understanding ofthe concept, which shines through even ina radically political determination of theintellectual as we find it in the case of GeorgLukacs after 1918. Within the German dis-course, the intellectual is as much definedby what he or she is not as by specific posi-tive features. Intellectuals are, for in-stance, to be distinguished from membersof the academy, whereas in the Americancase this distinction would be less impor-tant unless underscored by the modifierpublic intellectual. 3

II want to begin my discussion of Lukacswith a detour to Max Weber's famous lec-ture on the role of science and the scientist.

The German Quarterly 70.3 (Summer 1997) 217

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218 THE GERMANQUARTERLY Summer 1997A grasp of Weber's project will help us todistinguish more clearly between scientistand intellectual.4 This (especially in theGerman context) crucial distinction con-cerns the specific mode of the search fortruth as well as the question of social prac-tice. Given the rapidly increasing profes-sionalization of the social sciences and thehumanities during the nineteenth century,the concept of science emphasizes strictboundaries which are determined in termsof methodological rigor. This search forstrict demarcations also pertains to aca-demic literary criticism. Although Weberwas primarily interested in the status ofthe social sciences, his definition of sciencehas important ramifications for other dis-ciplines as well, since it contains the gen-eral idea of Wertfreiheit, .e., the notion thatscientific studies do not engage in valuejudgment. Scientists are expected to keeptheir distance from the objects of their re-search.

At the end of World War I these demar-cations became a particularly urgent ethi-cal and epistemological problem for Weber.Clearly in response to a revolutionary situ-ation in Germany, which had underminedestablished institutions as well as acceptedvalues,5 Weber tried to define the respon-sibility of the scientist within a modern,rationalized, and demystified world. In anattempt to build up a wall against the poli-ticization of the university, Weber designeda concept of science that would excludemetaphysical grounding. Not that thequest for such a ground was treated asmeaningless; rather, Weber argued that in-stitutionalized Wissenschaft had to refrainfrom ultimate questions of values and goalsin order to carry out its mission. In otherwords, the role of the scientist, both in thehumanities and the social sciences, had tobe clearly distinguished from that of theartist or the religious and political leader.The modern university, Weber argued in1919 by pointing to the American model, isno longer simply a community of inde-pendent scholars. Modern universities are

staatskapitalistische Unternehmungen, 6in which the individual scholar and teacherhas a restricted and highly specialized func-tion. In this context, the production of re-search and knowledge follows acceptedmethodological rules that do not allowmuch individualization. There is no roomfor the talented dilettante:

Nur durchstrenge Spezialisierungkannder wissenschaftliche Arbeiter tatsich-lich das Vollgefiihl,einmal und vielleichtnie wieder im Leben, sich zu eigen ma-chen: hier habe ich etwas geleistet, wasdauern wird. Eine wirkliche endgiiltigeundtiichtigeLeistung st heutestets:einespezialistischeLeistung.7

It is noteworthy that Weber uses the termlabor [Arbeit] for scientific research andcalls the scholar explicitly a worker [Ar-beiter], unlike the dilettante, who is char-acterized by the fact that he or she hasideas but is incapable of carrying out re-search methodologically and systematically.For Weber, the definition of science asspecialized work is part of a much largerhistorical pattern. As he puts it: Der wis-senschaftliche Fortschritt ist ein Bruchteil,und zwar der wichtigste Bruchteil, jenesIntellektualisierungsprozesses, dem wirseit Jahrtausenden unterliegen, und zudem heute iiblicherweise in so aul3erorden-tlich negativer Art Stellung genommenwird. 8This development results in a proc-ess of differentiation in which scientificwork is clearly distinguished from religionand art. The latter two are concerned withvalues, but not, according to Weber, withscientific truth as a form of truth which canbe defined in terms of methodological re-search. At the same time, Weber is awareof and even underscores the fact that manycontemporaries are deeply dissatisfiedwith the procedures and results of the sci-ences, longing for a kind of truth that thedisciplines of science cannot provide be-cause they remain abstract and fail to an-swer the ultimate test. Since scientific pro-gress has discarded traditional goals like

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HOHENDAHL:cholar, Intellectual, Essay 219accessto God,the searchfor authenticbe-ing, and the search for true happinessasillusory,modern civilizedman is left witha void. It is the very process of differentia-tion and rationalization which calls intoquestion the belief in scientific truth as theultimate answer.9

By emphasizing the strength, but alsothe limitations of science and the role of thescientist, Weber simultaneously opened upthe question of the ultimate ground ofknowledge as well as the ultimate commit-ment of the individual seeking for truthand happiness.10 It is in this context thatWeber makes a few comments on the mod-ern intellectual. Their tone is negative; themodern intellectual-in contrast to the sci-entist-is seen as someone who longs forultimate truth and redemption and, there-fore, returns to forms of religious beliefsthat he or she had already outgrown. Theresult is bad faith, an attempt to furnishone's interiority with the furniture of anolder religion, which is no longer compat-ible with the process of rationalization We-ber had described before.11

IIIn the context of this essay, it is not myintention to analyze the contradiction ofWeber's position. What interests me is, firstof all, the critique of the intellectual from

the point of view of institutionalized mod-ern science. According to Weber, ntellectu-als fail because they are searching for a so-lution which was adequate only in the past.Secondly, and more importantly, Weber'slecture points to a problem for which he hasno answer: the nature of knowledge outsidethe realm of science. The inauthenticity ofsome modern intellectuals does not makethis question irrelevant. In fact, one mightwell reverse the question by asking: Is thehegemony of science, as claimed by Weber,legitimate? This may be a more appropriateway to address the thought of the earlyLukhcs, especially in the period between

Die Seele und die Formen and TheoriedesRomans. As much as the later work ofLukacs, especially Geschichte undKlassen-bewufltsein, reflects the impact of Weber,12the metaphysical approach of the earlyLukacs remains much closer to the roman-tic tradition and idealist philosophy.13Yet,it is not the question of tradition and influ-ence that concerns me. Rather, what is atstake is the question of appropriation andthe question of style. In the case of the earlyLukacs, both are more or less identical.Their common ground is the essay form.The form of the essay, as Lukacs argues inDie Seele und die Formen, becomes themost appropriate vehicle for the intellec-tual.14 While Weber contrasts the intellec-tual with the scientist, on the one hand, andthe religious or political leader, on theother, Lukacs views the essay as the idealexpression of the intellectual, who standsbetween the artist, on the one hand, andthe philosopher, on the other. To be moreprecise, it is the essay form which definesthe intellectual. For Luk cs, the essay con-tains a form of knowledge that transcendsthe research of the scientist; it asks ulti-mate questions which Weber's scientistmust refuse, but it is not bound to the rigorof systematic philosophy.What Lukacs shares with Weber is thedelineation between science and otherforms of knowledge; yet, he approaches thisdistinction from avery different viewpoint.In Lukacs's attempt to characterize andvalidate the essay form as the appropriatemode of expression of criticism, the oppo-sition of science and non-science is modi-fied and then replaced by the distinctionbetween philosophy and the essay and be-tween the essay form and the artwork. Thisshift has significant epistemological andethical consequences for the under-standing of the role of the intellectual.While Weber reinforces the hegemony ofscientific discourse, although he concedesthe possibility of other forms of knowledge,the young Lukics keeps his distance fromthe institutionalized discourse of the sci-

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220 THE GERMANQUARTERLY Summer1997ences and emphasizes the need for avarietyof discursive exchanges, among them theform of the essay. Its problematic and un-stable nature, which Lukacs underscores,allows the essay to explore and to searchfor moments of truth where Weberian sci-ence has fallen silent: Die Ironie, da13derKritiker immer von den letzten Fragen desLebens spricht, aber doch immer in demTon, als ob nur von Bildern und Biuchern,nur von wesenlosen und hilbschen Orna-menten des groBen Lebens die Rede ware(SF 19). For Lukacs, the irony of the essayis its self-conscious discrepancy betweenmode of expression and thematic concern,between its tentative language and its im-plicit insistence on the possibility of meta-physical truth. Its author is the critic whoapproaches the question of truth indirectlythrough the interpretation of the artworkor the literary text, not the philosopher whoresponds to the need for a systematic ex-planation of truth. While Lukaics'sessay onthe essay does not question the feasibilityof such a systematic search (one might evensay that it presupposes it), it displaces thesystematic impulse of traditional philoso-phy to the margins, focusing instead onwhat it conceives of as the problematic lin-guistic means of the essay.One would completely misunderstandLukaics'sdiscussion of the fragmentary andincomplete character of the essay if onetook it to be an admission of its insignifi-cance. On the contrary: What Lukaicswants to bring into the foreground is theimportance and legitimacy of the essayform. Through its indirect nature, the es-say can touch upon and explore the truthcontent (to use the later Adornian term)of the object under consideration. Clearly,however, for Lukacs, this object is littlemore than an Anla/3 and not central to theultimate concern of the essay, which meansthat Luk cs problematizes the means andthe tools of the search, but not the searchitself, as, a generation later,Adorno will callinto question the very possibility of estab-lishing the truth value of criticism.

At the center of Lukaics's discussion ofthe essay, we find the question of languageand style. For him, the essay is neither ascientific article which communicates theresults of research nor a tractate which dis-seminates theoretical knowledge in a sys-tematic manner. Both modes are non-ironic. The essay is an ironic form, i.e., amode of coded speaking in which languageand meaning are not identical, in which theconcrete object under discussion and theoverall thematic concern of the essay re-main, and consciously so, in a relationshipcharacterized by tension. For this reason,the distinction between content and form,which Lukacs conflates with the distinc-tion between science and art, does not applyto the essay. This makes the form ambiva-lent and, from the point of view of art andscience, problematic. Yet it is precisely thisproblematic nature that enables the essayto succeed where the scholarly treatmentfalls short, and the artwork must remainsilent, for Die Dichtung an sich kenntnichts, was jenseits der Dinge ware; ihr istjedes Ding ein Ernstes und Einziges undUnvergleichliches. Darum kennt sie auchdie Fragen nicht: man richtet an reineDinge keine Fragen, nur an ihre Zusam-menhdinge (SF 12). The essay asks thekind of questions that the artwork cannotarticulate and the scholarly article cannotlegitimately raise: They instigate the searchfor metaphysical truth.

In his own analysis of the essay form,Adorno later suggested that Lukaicsmisun-derstood the character of the essay whenhe conflated the essay with poetry (Dich-tung). But this criticism misses the point.While Lukaicsexplicitly discusses the prox-imity of the two modes, he actually keepsthem separate, using the argument thatthe essay is based on, and makes use of,poetry, i.e., the moment of form in poetrybecomes the content of the essay: Dennhier kann aus dem Endziel der Poesie einAusgangspunkt und ein Anfang werden;denn hier scheint die Form, selbst in ihrerabstrakten Begrifflichkeit, etwas sicher

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222 THE GERMANQUARTERLY Summer1997friends who can decode and appreciate thehints of the essayist.It is well known that Lukacs embracedthis position only for a short time. Alreadyin Theorie des Romans, he searched for anew grounding of the critical voice andlater, after his conversion to Marxism in1918, he looked back at the relativism ofhis early work with embarrassment.17 Thephilosophy of history, proposed in Theoriedes Romans, allowed Lukacs to grasp a to-tality where the essay perceived only par-ticulars. It also encouraged a modified defi-nition of the critic and the intellectual.Armed with a coherent philosophy of his-tory, which grants a telos to social evolu-tion, the intellectual-still in the guise ofthe literary critic-can speak again in thename of a broader idea, i.e., the historicalprocess. In Geschichte und Klassenbewuf3t-sein (1923), this reversal is complete: Herethe critic speaks in the name of Marxisttheory, which asks him to identify with acollective subject, that is, the proletariat.The path from the essayistic position of1910 to a Communist position a decadelater was, for Lukacs, a question of com-mitment and responsibility. Still, we haveto keep in mind that, in the case of Lukacs,the political configuration of the intellec-tual, as it emerges in Geschichte und Klas-senbewufltsein, is predicated on a momentof overcoming-namely, overcoming thespecific definition of the intellectual as acritic of art and literature. Again, the com-parison with Weber could be helpful. We-ber's definition of the political and the poli-tician would exclude the Lukacsian revolu-tionary as a prophet and visionary whostands outside the structure of modern so-ciety. For Weber,it would be an aesthetic orreligious and, therefore, illegitimate fea-ture, since it fails to acknowledge the dif-ferentiation of modern society.

IIIThere is no need to rehearse once more

the path of Lukacs from his early commit-ment to a revolutionary Marxism throughhis compromise with Stalinism and his laterecovery of a more critical position after1956. In all phases, Lukacs remained com-mitted to the Marxist project, in which therole of the Party is central. For him, thepolitical intellectual remained anchored ina collective subject, i.e., the proletariat, andreceived his or her legitimacy from thislink. In the German context, it was Adornowho drew the theoretical consequences ofLukacs's early writings when he rede-signed Critical Theory after World WarII.18 Part of this reconfiguration was therefunctioning of the role of the intellectual,a common thematic concern of his postwaressays. Adorno's criticism specifically re-turned to the cultural sphere in order tore-articulate the locus of the intellectual.Once more the essay form becomes the fo-cus for a reassessment of intellectual com-mitment.19 Of course, Adorno was fullyaware of the intertextual situation; his fa-mous piece Der Essay als Form, pub-lished in 1958, is organized as a critical dia-logue with the early Lukaics,returning con-sciously to the latter's pre-Marxist phase,that is, to a time before he committed him-self to a collective project.20 For Adorno,the unspoken question is: To whom and inwhose name can the intellectual speak?Moreover, what language can he or she usein the context of the discursive system ofadvanced Western societies? It is notewor-thy that Adorno returned to the problemat-ics of the early Lukaics-notwithstandingthe historical as well as epistemological riftthat so clearly separated them-becausewhat, from the perspective of the matureLukacs, was at best the reflection of youth-ful ambivalence and uncertainty, took on anew urgency in the eyes ofAdorno after thedevastating critique of the Enlightenmentproject in Dialektik der Aufkldrung-a cri-tique that already presumed the moral col-

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HOHENDAHL:cholar, Intellectual, Essay 223lapse of the Communistproject n the So-viet Union.

Epistemologicallyand politically,Dia-lektik der Aufkldrungunderscoredques-tions,amongthemthe roleof the criticandthe mode of articulation.While Horkhei-mer and Adorno insisted that their ownprojectcontinuedthe tradition of the En-lightenment, they rigorously ubverted heauthority of reason and the social appara-tus based on the use of reason, thereby alsoquestioning the ground of the critic. Theyclearly did not escape a performative con-tradiction insofar as they carried out theircritique in the rational language of system-atic philosophy. The tension is also re-flected in the destabilization of the critic:For and to whom were Horkheimer andAdorno speaking in Dialektik der Aufkld-rung? Written between 1941 and 1944 inexile with little hope of publication, thestudy served first and foremost as a meansof self-clarification-a critique of the pro-ject that the Frankfurt School had formu-lated during the 1930s.21 More than Hork-heimer, it was Adorno who, after his returnto Germany, attempted to come to gripswith the epistemological, as well as politicalconsequencesofDialektik derAufkldrung.Generally critics have argued that he for-mulated his response in Negative Dialektikand Asthetische Theorie.22 Thematically,this is certainly correct. However, this an-swer overlooks the question of articulation(language). ForAdorno, the essay form wasnot accidental-a means of expressing oc-casional thoughts. Rather, the essay formbecame the center of his philosophical pro-ject-as can be gleaned from the organiza-tion ofAsthetische Theorie.For this reason, Adorno's essay on theessay-a performative salto mortale--must be taken very seriously; it addressesthe role and function of critical interven-tion, that is to say, the question of the in-tellectual. Of course, Adorno, using the es-say form for this discussion, is fully awareof the implications for his own position--the fact that he writes as an intellectual

about the task of the intellectual. Adorno'sreading of Lukacs's essay pays little atten-tion to the latter's ideological investmentin the basic concepts of Lebensphiloso-phie-by and large, he replaces the conceptof Leben with that of Geist-instead, he fo-cuses on the methodological aspects. Forhim, the essay form provides a forum for afundamentally non-systematic discus-sion-theoretically informed, but not de-termined by a systematic unfolding of aconceptual apparatus. This means that thequestion of style and language is even morecentral to Adorno than it was to the earlyLukaics. It foregrounds a skeptical resis-tance to the heavy-handed terminology ofacademic philosophy and specifically re-flects Adorno's opposition to Heidegger'sontology, which Adorno presents as typi-cally German and pre-Enlightenment:

In Deutschland reizt der Essay zur Ab-wehr,weil er an die Freiheit des Geistesmahnt, die, seit demMiBlingeneiner seitLeibnizischen Tagen nur lauen Aufkld-rung,bis heute, auch unter BedingungenformalerFreiheit,nicht recht sich entfal-tete, sondernstets bereit war,die Unter-ordnung unter irgendwelche Instanzenals ihr eigentliches Anliegen zu verkiin-den. (GS 11:10)

What Adorno sees as the failure of the Ger-man Enlightenment is the very traditionof systematic philosophy from Leibniz toHeidegger. Clearly in the spirit of Nietz-sche--whose name is not mentioned-Adorno insists on a different process of en-lightenment, a different mode in thesearch for truth. This is the reason whythe question of methodology preoccupiesAdorno. The method of the essay is seenas a subversion of traditional philosophicalargumentation. Damit suspendiert erzugleich den traditionellen Begriff vonMethode. Der Gedanke hat seine Tiefedanach, wie tief er in die Sache dringt,nicht danach, wie tief er sie aufein andereszurtickftihrt (GS 11:18-19). Yet, this sub-version is not to be equated with a mere

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224 THE GERMANQUARTERLY Summer1997lack of rigor, for instance, a sellout to thefeuilleton (which Adorno perceives as thepotential danger of the essay form). Theintellectual rigor of the essay, Adorno sug-gests, suspends traditional methods ofphilosophical thought; it makes use of thefragmentary, as well as discontinuous na-ture of the form. Its precision, whichAdorno emphatically defends, is that ofconfigurations. In ihr bilden jene keinKontinuum der Operation, der Gedankeschreitet nicht einsinnig fort, sondern dieMomente verflechten sich teppichhaft(GS 11:21). Hence, the success of an essaydepends on what Adorno calls the Dichteder Verflechtung (GS 11:21).Even if Adorno had not explicitlypointed to it, the anti-Cartesian drift of hisessay is hard to overlook. Insgesamt wareer zu interpretieren als Einspruch gegendie vier Regeln, die Descartes' Discours dela mithode am Anfang der neueren, abend-landischen Wissenschaft und ihrer Theorieaufrichtet (GS 11:14). As Adorno argues,neither does the essay follow the rule thatthe object has to be divided into manage-able parts, nor does it encourage a meth-odological search and analysis, beginningwith the simple facts, and then moving onto more complex configurations. Finally,the essay resists the demand for completeanalysis, which Kant later reiterated as amethodological principle. This resistanceleaves the essay form vulnerable and opento criticism, as Adorno readily concedes.Why, then, does Adorno defend the es-say, even insisting on its superior value? Atthis point, I have to introduce the conceptof experience (Erfahrung), which has thesame centrality as the concept of life for theearly Lukacs. Adorno refuses to define histerm; thus, his readers have to grasp itssense by paying close attention to the mo-ment of negation in his discussion of theCartesian rules. What emerges are two mo-ments-the insistence on particular ob-jects and particular knowledge, and the ac-ceptance, even praise, of uncertainty. Toput it more pointedly, the search for the

truth content (Wahrheitsgehalt) remainsan open one, therefore also exposed to erroras part of the learning process. The centralmetaphor for the essay is the configuration,where concepts einander tragen (GS11:21) rather than the building or theGeriist. Switching the metaphor, Adornoalso speaks of a Kraftfeld (GS 11:22).This means that the thought processes areloaded with tensions, coming together at aparticular point, without any guarantee ofcontinuity. Diskontinuitat ist dem Essaywesentlich, seine Sache stets ein still-gestellter Konflikt (GS 11:25).Clearly, for Adorno the essay form ismore than a genre that is useful for certainsubject matters, while other questions callfor different forms and methods. Peter Buir-ger is right when he argues that Adorno'sdescription of the essay is largely informedby his philosophical outlook.23 Hence, Biir-ger treats it as a philosophical programwhich outlines Adorno's understanding ofnon-identity and negative dialectics. Whilehis assessment captures the methodologi-cal and theoretical dimension of Adorno'sessay, Buirgerfails to address its performa-tive and political status. Adorno also situ-ates himself in the postwar debate aboutthe role of the intellectual. In this context,Adorno accentuates his opposition to theGerman academic tradition, both its philo-sophical and its philological variety. Whenpublished in 1958, Adorno's essay implieda negative verdict against the academic tra-dition and its alliance with the social andpolitical establishment. This position ismostly 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 intoquestion the apparatus of the academy, itsunspoken alliance with the existing politi-cal order-under the guise of freedom ofresearch and scientific objectivity. The es-sayist, once more, turns out to be a criticwho addresses ultimate questions whiledealing with specific, frequently marginal

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HOHENDAHL:cholar, Intellectual, Essay 225issues. What the mature Adorno shareswith the young Lukacs is a preoccupationwith aesthetic questions. Yet there is, I sub-mit, a stronger sense of marginality inAdorno's essays, an uncertainty about thepossibility of communication. Adorno's es-says do not present themselves as part of adialogue. While the subjectivity of the criticasserts itself at every moment in the text,the role of the recipient remains underde-veloped. As a rule, Adorno does not set him-self up to teach by addressing his readers(with the exception of Lyrik und Gesell-schaft ). Rather, it is in the act of readingitself that the learning process is preserved.The style of Adorno's essays has, ofcourse, a profound effect on the conceptionof the intellectual. It subverts any notionof an organized collective project, as it wasdeveloped by the Institute for Social Re-search in the 1930s. It is not accidental, Ibelieve, that Horkheimer and Adorno didnot revive the Zeitschrift fiur Sozialfor-schung after the war, as Herbert Marcusehad hoped.24 As a critic, Adorno made noeffort to speak in the name of the Institute,which he codirected after its resurrectionin 1949. The work of the Institute, mostlyempirical studies, and Adorno's writingsran side by side without intersecting toofrequently. The irony is that Horkheimer,Adorno, and their disciples were called aschool when they had less of a common pro-gram than in the 1930s and early 1940s.One could possibly argue that the nextgeneration, for instance, Habermas, Negt,Kluge, and Claus Offe, were searchingagain for a common critical program basedon a revised version of Western Marxismand then integrated the writings of theirteachers into the position of the school.For Adorno, the notion of a philosophicalschool became increasingly alien, not tomention the commitment to a specific po-litical party. As Adorno explained, revolu-tionary social theory had missed its histori-cal moment of practice and could not regainit through forced efforts on the part of thetheorist. In other words, in a postrevolu-

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

IVIn 1968 neither his disciples nor the stu-dent movement as a whole were inclined to

accept this position. Working with the as-sumption that the political and social crisisof the late sixties in the Federal Republicof Germany tended toward a revolutionaryclimax, they postulated a more active andstronger role for theory.26 In particular,they returned to a model of theory andpraxis that Adorno had abandoned in the1940s. Not surprisingly, then, Adorno re-jected the interventionist project of theradical students in 1968, calling instead forradical theoretical self-reflection.27 InAdorno's model, the intervention of the in-tellectual retreats to the moment of reflec-tion in the act of writing-a position thatthe students found profoundly unsatisfac-tory.In the meantime, the student rebellionof 1968 has been declared a failure. Es-pecially after 1989, there has been a grow-ing mood among German intellectuals toeclipse the generation of 1968 in the nameof a renewed national identity. Has thedefeat of the German Left vindicatedAdorno's position, as some American crit-ics have claimed?28 Clearly, Adorno's con-cept of the intellectual as an agent of sub-version is more in agreement with morerecent American attempts to redefine therole of the intellectual. It is interesting tonote that, in Germany, Peter Buirger hasargued that Adorno's understanding of theessay is part of a closed past and cannotserve as a model for us today.While Bilrgerunderscores the significance of the essayform for contemporary thought, he also

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226 THE GERMANQUARTERLY Summer 1997criticizes Adorno's concept as no longercorresponding to our situation ( Problem-lage ),29since he remained wedded to a sys-tem of antisystematic philosophy, i.e., nega-tive dialectics. Rightly, Biurger notes thetwo sides of Adorno's model-the formaland the methodological aspects-but hemistakenly concludes that Adorno ulti-mately sides with philosophy. Instead, Iwant to suggest, Adorno carried the essayform into systematic philosophy and ulti-mately undermined the traditional conceptof writing philosophy.30 In AesthetischeTheorie, this direction becomes more radi-cal 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 hisprofessional role. In his repeated critiqueof the German academy, Adorno claimedfor himself the role of the public intellectualwho intervenes where the apparatus hasbecome unable to extricate itself, yet he re-fused the gesture of speaking for a groupor a collective subject. If at all, theAdornianintellectual, as a reader of artworks, canclaim to disclose a truth content. It is thisprivileged link to the aesthetic sphere(which Adorno shares with the earlyLukacs) that I see as both the strength andthe limitation of Adorno's model. Its formof legitimation connects it closely to thepostrevolutionary phase of modernism,which, however, remained determined bythe moment of the past revolution and itsequivalent in the aesthetic avant-garde.The recent criticism of Adorno's under-standing of mass culture by British culturetheorists and American postmodernists,31in spite of its reductive tendency, capturesthis aspect in Adorno's position-a contin-ued resistance to the changes in mass cul-ture itself, a fixation on the 1930s and1940s, when the intellectual was calledupon to reveal the false ideology of the cul-ture industry.The Adornian model of the intellectualis mostly silent about its material aspects.Adorno gave his critical voice no concrete

social environment. Nor did he ever fore-ground his own precarious status as a Jew-ish 6migr6 who returned to Germany afterthe Holocaust, an outsider who had becomean insider in the world of the German man-darins-a world that was carefully restoredafter the Nazi period and began to crumbleonly in the late sixties under the pressureof the student movement. Unlike Ben-jamin, Adorno and Horkheimer were pro-fessors of philosophy and civil servantswith pension rights at the University ofFrankfurt. Was his defense of strictly non-collective intervention no more than a de-fense of the status quo of postwar Germany,as some radical students charged?The revolutionary impetus requires, ofcourse, collective action and, therefore,some notion of a collective subject, such asa political organization. Traditionally, in-tellectuals have played a crucial role in theorganization and theoretical articulation ofrevolutionary parties-especially on theLeft. Adorno's resistance to this role, whichLukacs had emphatically embraced, pointsto a shift that needs exploration. As we haveseen, in Adorno's model of the essayist andcritic, any allegiance to a social group orclass has been subverted. The hope lies inthe performative act of writing-regard-less of the audience. It was quite consistentwith this model that Adorno later refusedto support the politicization of the radicalstudents and their efforts to organize po-litical resistance. He argued that, histori-cally, the moment for collective revolution-ary action had passed-leaving the post-revolutionary intellectual only with themeans of theoretical reflection.32 The in-dictment of political action partly reflectedthe mood of the late Adorno, his concernwith the completion of his own work. Butsuch personal motives do not explain thedecoupling of theory and praxis and theconsistent emphasis on the power of criticallanguage. By revoking the elements of po-litical activism, Adorno returns to the in-ception of the culture of critical discourse,but without its initial belief in the totaliz-

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HOHENDAHL:cholar, Intellectual, Essay 227ing strategy of philosophy. Still, it is worthnoting that Adorno holds on to the eman-cipatory aspect of the project. In fact, Iwould argue that Adorno cannot escapethis propensity without losing his intellec-tual identity. Even in the subversion of theenlightenment project, critical discourseleaves its imprint-as a call for a new andbetter Enlightenment. In this respect,Adorno may be more representative thanhe himself assumed, for,as Alvin W Gould-ner puts it: The paradox of the New Classis that it is both emancipatory and elit-ist. 33

VHas this project finally come to an end?Is Adorno's essay on the essay no more thana moment of past history, as Peter Buirgersuggests? What, then, remains of the powerof speech, which Gouldner rightly per-ceives as the core of the project? In afascinating fictional account, entitled DieTrdnen des Odysseus, Peter Buirger hasdescribed the end of the German Left as an

inability to speak and write, as a fallingsilent which becomes analogous to a deathwhile, at the same time, the voices on theRight are becoming louder and more stri-dent.34 At the center of the narrative wefind the pathology of the subject/narratorwho experiences the breakup of intellec-tual communication in his small discussiongroup and, subsequently, observes hisown pathological status--depression andfeelings of worthlessness. Significantlyenough, however, the subject continues tospeak and write. The critical discourseturns on itself, i.e., the failure of a projectbecomes the target of the analysis. How-ever, it is noteworthy that this analysis isno longer carried out in discursive lan-guage, but in the form of fiction. The shiftto an aesthetic mode of articulation has, itseems to me, fundamental implications forthe subject position. While the critical dis-course of the essay allowed for fragmenta-

tion and decentering, Biurger's fictionalnarrative offers a plurality of voices withdiffering, conflicting positions. Unless onedecides reductively to identify the authorwith the voice of the first-person narrator,the plurality of voices invites the reader tonegotiate between a number of subjectpositions. In this structure, the plight ofthe individual intellectual becomes a prob-lem of interior communication that mimicsthe conflicting voices in the critical dis-course of the contemporary German publicsphere. Precisely by staging the end of theleftist project in a fictional narrative, Biur-ger keeps it alive. In this respect, but in thisrespect only, he would concur with KarlHeinz Bohrer's celebration of the aestheticas the moment of overcoming and redemp-tion.35

Are we justified, then, in predicting theend of the intellectual, the end of a cultureof critical discourse, and, more broadlyspeaking, the end of Gouldner's New Class?Once we extend the question in such a wayas to include the fate of an entire socialgroup, the present lament over the futureof the intellectual seems overblown and ex-aggerated. Actual shifts and changeswithin the New Class are depicted as radi-cal breaks and losses. The loss of particularfunctions, which depended on specific his-torical contexts, is turned into the end ofan era. A comparison with the Americansituation might be helpful in under-standing the meaning of such shifts. Animportant theme of the recent Americandebate has been the decline of the publicintellectual and his or her replacement byacademic functionaries. Russell Jacoby hasargued that these academics, secured bytenure and disciplined by the pressure oftheir academic institutions, have aban-doned the commitment to the public atlarge and have moved away from the socialand cultural causes that, a generation ago,defined the project of public intellectuals,i.e., of journalists and freelance writers.36While such a shift from public to academicintellectuals has possibly taken place, the

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228 THE GERMANQUARTERLY Summer 1997indictment fails to take into account thestructural transformations of the Ameri-can public sphere, which has also changedthe academic public sphere. Contrary topopular sentiment, American universitieshave become considerably more publicsince the 1960s and, consequently, more po-litical. As a result, academics have takenover functions that were formerly in thehands of journalists and freelance writers.But in this process, academics have notsimply become public intellectuals-hencethe complaint that the critical function hasdisappeared.When we look at the larger picture, how-ever, that is, at the social formation forwhich Gouldner and others have intro-duced the term New Class, these shiftsmust not be overrated. They primarily con-cern the position of the humanists, espe-cially literary intellectuals who tend to bemore vocal in the public sphere. One of thereasons why this critique became particu-larly strident in Germany was precisely thetraditional emphasis on the literary andaesthetic character of the intellectual'swork, an emphasis that so strongly comesto the foreground in Adorno's writings andis also evident in Biirger's recent assess-ment of the essay form. If one replaces theold dichotomy between the scientist andthe intellectual with the opposition be-tween the expert and the public intellec-tual, the contemporary hostility becomesmore understandable. Given the high de-gree of complexity of advances in industrialsocieties, the posture of the writer or poetas a moral critic fails to carry the weight itused to have even a generation ago. Thereno longer seems to be an obvious mandatefor the writer to assume leadership.Yet, the fact that the nature and char-acter of the culture of critical discourse ispresently contested should not be con-strued prematurely as the end of the intel-lectual or of the intelligentsia as a socialgroup. As Gouldner has pointed out, ad-vanced Western societies heavily depend onthem for their efficiency: The New Class

possesses the scientific knowledge andtechnical skills on which the future of mod-ern forces of production depend.' 37WhileGouldner underscores the progressivecharacter of the New Class as a whole andcredits its members with a universalist andrational outlook, he also emphasizes theimportance of its own class interests andnotes that the New Class is hardly the endof domination. 38 Its power is derived fromcultural capital; in other words, it is linkedto the culture of critical discourse. Yet, thisculture is more ambiguous than its radicalleft wing has been prepared to concede: Itis emancipatory and elitist or, more pre-cisely, it is potentially elitist through itsemancipatory perspective. This is not amatter of controlling the material meansof production; rather, it concerns the levelof discourse and epistemology. Historically,intellectuals as a social group have at-tempted to dominate the definition of truthand thereby set up a new power hierar-chy.39

My assessment of intellectuals as a so-cial group has underscored two points: itsdeeply contradictory character, and its con-tinuing internal divisions. Both are closelyconnected. The present indictment of theintellectuals in Germany, for instance, iscarried out, to be sure, by conservative in-tellectuals or neo-conservatives, just as thecritique of the German mandarins-i.e.,the conservative academic intellectuals-was pursued by the Left.40 The tendencyto identify intellectuals with the left politi-cal spectrum has possibly encouraged thenotion of an ideologically unified group. Itshould be noted, however, that these in-fights, which have been so prominent since1989, signify more than just a struggle forcontrol over the critical discourse-this isobviously the case-they ultimately articu-late the above-mentioned contradiction,which can best be described as a performa-tive one. While intellectuals have definedthemselves in terms of a critical discoursewhich separates them from immediate ma-terial interests, they have also insisted on

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HOHENDAHL:cholar, Intellectual, Essay 229the control over the productionand dis-seminationof this discourse, which, then,becomes their property and power base.Yet, it is peculiar to the ethos of intellectu-als that this very contradiction comes un-der scrutiny and becomes the focus of in-ternal tensions between conflicting groups.Formally, the contradiction can be re-solved in two ways: Either the internal de-bate emphasizes the need for status andhierarchy vis-A-vis other classes at the ex-pense of the universal nature of the criticaldiscourse, a conservative move towardclass consolidation, or it can stress the per-formative contradiction itself, calling for acritical reassessment of the intellectual dis-course. In this resolution, the intellectualsubverts his or her own basis and poten-tially moves toward its self-destruction.Precisely this move, the calling into ques-tion of the intellectual's mission and thesubversion of the culture of critical dis-course on which this mission rests, also re-affirms this very mission and, thereby, theclaims, as well as the status, of the socialgroup. Hence, both Adorno's insistence onthe essay form and Bilrger's shift to a fic-tional self-assessment of the intellectual,through their gestures of underminingclaims for a representative mission, also re-instate the moment of critique that hasgrounded the role of the intellectual in thefirst place.In concrete historical situations, suchas the German development since the fallof the Wall, a firm distinction between aconservative and a subversive resolution ofthe contradiction is not easy, since, in indi-vidual cases, aspects of subversion canoverlap with aspects of conservative oppo-sition. (The recent work of Botho StraufBwould be a good case in point.) In otherwords, the internal division among intel-lectuals is as ambiguous as their social po-sition. Hence the question as to whetherthere is a need for intellectuals in the fu-ture, and whether they have a mission, can-not be answered unambiguously. Their an-swer depends on the level of the analysis.

Asked within intellectual culture at a spe-cific time, for example, today, in this coun-try or in Germany, the answer will stress aparticular position within the configura-tion of the present debate, for instance, thecontinued viability of the universal projectof modernity or the call for a new culturalauthority based on traditional high cul-ture. This analysis, then, focuses on the on-going internal struggle for dominance;however, this conflict does not necessarilyaffect the future of the social group at large.The internal struggle is part of its articu-lation vis-A-vis other classes and the socialsystem as a whole. The fate of the intelli-gentsia as a social group calls for a differentkind of analysis in which the tensions andunderlying contradictions are viewed asmoments of a larger social and cultural dy-namic, which may well be crucial for itssurvival.In the recent German debate about thefate of the intellectual, Helmut Schelsky'swork seems not even to play a minor role-possibly because it belongs too much tothe 1970s-but this debate shares Schel-sky's preoccupation with the meaning anduse of culture. At its center we find thesearch for the production of meaning andthe epistemological, as well as socio-cul-tural, conditions of this production. To useSchelsky's terms, the contemporary con-troversy concerns the function of Heils-wissen and Orientierungswissen ratherthan that of Arbeitswissen. 41 This con-flict has been constructed either as an op-position between the insistence on moder-nity and rationality versus a return to tra-ditional values, on the one hand, or as astruggle between a political and a radicallyaesthetic interpretation of the world, onthe other. Other positions and dichotomiescould easily be added. While these positionsgive us an indication of the scope of thecontroversy, they do not fully grasp thestakes of the debate--these come into theforeground only when we look more closelyat the discourse itself. It is the culture ofcritical discourse, its boundaries and its

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230 THE GERMANQUARTERLY Summer 1997legitimacy, which is at the heart of the mat-ter. Consequently, the question of style andwriting has received much attention, be-cause in the German tradition this problemdefines the essence of the intellectual's in-tervention. Even those voices who mean todeny the legitimacy of such interventionsand call for their abolishment or reconfigu-ration depend on critical discourse and useits language. This is precisely the doublebind that makes the present attack on theintellectual both important and frustrat-ing. The frustration stems from the grow-ing reification in the polemic against theintellectual-as if those who call for the in-dictment of the intellectual were not partof the same social group and its problems.Important, however, would be a critiquewhich deconstructs the fundamental cate-gories on which the culture of critical dis-course is based, thereby arriving at a moredifferentiated understanding of the prob-lem.It is in this context that Adorno's analy-sis of the essay form (of course, essayisticitself) is relevant again, beyond its initialhistorical meaning in the context of theearly years of the Federal Republic, but notas a preparation for a more systematic the-ory,as Biirger suspects. Instead, a renewedreading would foreground the performa-tive moment, i.e., the subversive characterof the essayistic position, and its antisys-tematic nature. This reappropriation mightwell reposition itself vis-a-vis Adorno's ges-ture of distance toward the artwork andallow for a greater proximity of the discur-sive and the fictional mode as we find it inBiirger's novel. The gain would be the pos-sibility of a plurality of conflicting voices,shown in a process of negations, criticism,and countercriticism, which moves towarda reassessment of the inherited culture ofcritical discourse--a reassessment, not arejection, of its critical aspect. The pluralityundercuts the move towards a hardeningof a single position.Any suggestion of pluralism, however,is potentially exposed to the criticism that

it is evasive and fails to develop a clear-cutposition which can influence public debateand thereby make a difference. In this con-text, the essay can be perceived as part ofthe implicit elitism that Gouldner attrib-utes to intellectuals as a social group. Thisargument strikes me as persuasive onlywhen the concept of the intellectual hasbeen narrowly defined in literary terms, aswas frequently the case in Germany. Buteven here the Weberian split between sci-entist and intellectual, which Adorno stilltook seriously, has lost its structural impor-tance. If one understands writers and lit-erary critics as a mere segment of the largergroup that Gouldner calls the New Class,then the intervention of the essay formtakes on a different meaning. The essayencourages the vital process of self-reflec-tion that the New Class needs to fulfill itscritical cultural and social function. The es-say as a subversive form resists dogmaticthought structures and undercuts thepower of linear arguments. As Biirgernotes: Auch der Essay hat seine Gesetze.Das vielleicht strengste verbietet ihm, Bi-lanz zu ziehen, den Ertrag einstreichen zuwollen. Seine Denkbewegung sperrt sichgegen den Versuch, sie, wie man sagt, aufden Punkt zu bringen. ''42 or this reason,it cannot and should not claim responsibil-ity for the totality of the social. Still, thepluralism 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 forintertwining individual experience and themovement of critical thought.

Notes

1Foran overviewsee K. H. Wewetzer, In-telligenz, Intelligentsia, Intellektueller, Hi-storisches Worterbuch der Philosophie, ed.JoachimRitter and KarlfriedGriinder,9 vols.(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesell-schaft, 1971-95) 4: 445-61.2See Hauke Brunkhorst, Der Intellektuelle

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HOHENDAHL:cholar,Intellectual, Essay 231im Lande der Mandarine (Frankfurt a. M.:Suhrkamp, 1987).3For a detailed historical analysis, see Gan-golf Hiibinger and Wolfgang J. Mommsen, eds.Intellektuelle im deutschen Kaiserreich. (Frank-furt a. M.: Fischer, 1993); Michael Stark, ed.Deutsche Intellektuelle 1910-1933 (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. (Tibingen: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 seeHans-Harald Miller, Intellektueller Linksradi-kalismus in der WeimarerRepublik (Kronberg:Scriptor, 1977).6Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf 74.

7Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf 80.8Weber, Wissenschaft als Beruf 86.9See also Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Ge-

sellschaft (Koln: Kiepenhauer and Witsch,1964) 1034-1102.10ForWeber,this is primarily a question ofleadership, more specifically, a matter of a cleardistinction between teacher and leader.Again,Weber wants to place the emphasis on the lim-its of the role of academic teachers. They arenot to be confused with political or religiousleaders, since they cannot offer access to ulti-mate knowledge or values. Thus in the case ofthe theologian, Weber carefully distinguishesthe task of systematizing the Christian beliefsystem and the religious dogma itself, whichthe theologian has to accept as a given. Simi-larly, aesthetic theory (and here Weber refersto the work of the early Lukacs) is concernedwith artworks, but presupposes the existenceof art. Once the theorist decides to transcendthe level of description and becomes involvedwith the aspect of revelation, he or she has leftthe sphere of science.11See also Max Weber, Religionssoziolo-gie, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft 417-88.12See Martin Jay, Marxism and Totality(Berkeley: U of California P, 1984) 81-127.

13See Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Reappraisals:Shifting Alignments in Postwar Critical The-ory (Ithaca: Cornell UP 1991) 31-52.14Georg Lukgcs, Uiber Wesen und Formdes Essays: Briefe an Leo Popper, Die Seele

und die Formen: Essays (Neuwied/Berlin:Luchterhand, 1971) 7-31. Page references tothis edition are given in parentheses (SF).15His essays on Kassner and Kierkegaardattempt to work out this difference. While the

piece on Kassner foregrounds the nature of thecritical voice (calling it Platonism), the essayon Kierkegaard focuses on the ethical problem.The ultimate question, however, is similar inboth cases: How is authentic life experiencepossible? Using Kassner as the exemplary es-sayist and critic, Lukacs again highlights themediated character of the link. For the Platon-ist Kassner, the world is available only throughforms created in the past. The critical voicedepends 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 incarnationof the critic-is that of the Asket who pretendsto be the seducer of his fiancee in order to keepa rigorous distance to ordinary (relative) life.Kierkegaard's ethical rigor is philosophical, yetit turns against systematic philosophy (par-ticularly that of Hegel). For Lukacs, Kierke-gaard's life is marked by absolute rigor, a rigorthat must ultimately turn to God as the onlyappropriate object of his love. Still, Kierke-gaard's exemplary life, his heroic battle withhis own time, remains a particular instance,possibly typical, but not generalizable. At theend of the essay, Lukacs relativizes theKierkegaardian gesture, just as he relativizedKassner's Platonism. The critic, using the es-say form, necessarily subverts his own claimand (in the person of Kierkegaard) submits tothe indeterminable nature of life experiences.The ethical position of the critic is punktuell,determined by the circumstances of his or herobject. What stabilizes this position is the mo-ment of form enacted through and within thepoetic 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 P, 1988) 277-357, espe-cially 300-12.

17For the early Lukics see Mary Gluck,Georg Lukdcs and his Generation 1900-1918(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985). For thecritical self-appraisal, see Luk~cs's 1962 pref-ace to The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna

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232 THE GERMANQUARTERLY Summer 1997Bostock (Cambridge:MITPress, 1971) 11-23.18SeeJay 241-75; Fredric Jameson, LateMarxism: Adorno, or, The Persistence of theDialectic (London,Verso, 1990); J. M. Bern-stein, The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienationfrom Kant to Derrida and Adorno (UniversityPark:PennsylvaniaState UP,1992).19See Peter Uwe Hohendahl, PrismaticThought: Theodor W Adorno (Lincoln: U ofNebraskaP,1995)45-72.20Theodor W. Adorno, Der Essay alsForm, Noten zur Literatur, vol. 11 of Gesam-melte Schriften, ed. Rolfe Tiedmann,20 vols.(Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1973-84), 11:9-33. Unless otherwisenoted,all referencestoAdorno's works are from this edition and aregiven in the text in parentheses (GS).21Rolf Wiggershaus, Die FrankfurterSchule: Geschichte, Theoretische Entwicklung,Politische Bedeutung (Munich: dtv, 1988)364-83.

22See, for instance, Jameson and Bern-stein; see also Christoph Menke, Die Sou-veranitdt der Kunst: Asthetische Erfahrungnach Adorno und Derrida (Frankfurt a. M.:Suhrkamp,1991).

23Peter Biirger, Das Denken des Herrn:Bataille zwischen Hegel und dem Surrealis-mus (Frankfurta. M.:Suhrkamp,1991) 7-14.24Wiggershaus 15-19.25SeeTheodor W Adorno, Gesellschaft,GS 8: 9-19; SpaitkapitalismusderIndustrie-gesellschaft GS 8: 354-70.26See Sabine von Dirke, 'All Power to theImagination : The West German Countercul-ture from the Student Movement to the Greens(Lincoln:U of NebraskaP,1997) 29-66.

27See TheodorW Adorno, Resignation,

GS 10.2: 794-802.28See for instance, Michael Sullivan andJohn T. Lysaker, BetweenImpotenceand Il-lusion: Adorno'sArt of Theoryand Practice,New German Critique 52 (Fall 1992): 87-122.29Buirger,Das Denken 9.30See Hohendahl, Prismatic Thought217-41.31See, orexample,JimCollins,UncommonCultures: Popular Culture and Postmodernism(New York:Routledge,1983).32Adorno, Resignation.33AlvinW Gouldner, The Future oflIntellec-tuals and the Rise of the New Class (New York:OxfordUP,1978)84.34Peter Buirger,Die Trdnen des Odysseus(Frankfurta. M.:Suhrkamp,1993).35Karl Heinz Bohrer, Plotzlichkeit: Zum

Augenblick des dsthetischen Scheins (Frank-furt a. M.:Suhrkamp,1981).36Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals:American Culture in the Age of Academe (NewYork:BasicBooks, 1987).37Gouldner 3.38Gouldner 3.39See Zygmunt Bauman, Legislators and

Interpreters: On Modernity, Post-Modernityand Intellectuals (Ithaca:CornellUP,1987).40Fora prominentexampleof leftist criti-cism in Germany, ee JuirgenHabermas,TheNew Conservatism: Cultural Criticism and theHistorians' Debate, ed. and trans. Shierry We-ber Nicholsen (Cambridge:MITPress, 1989).41Helmut Schelsky, Die Arbeit tun die an-deren: Klassenherrschaft und Priesterherr-schaft der Intellektuellen (Opladen: Westdeut-scher Verlag,1975) 122-23.42Biirger,Das Denken 165.