can be considered a scientific former of opinion, although he manifested a certain ambivalence concerning such status.49
According to Lepenies,50 not for a second would it occur to Schelsky to conceive the expert as a natural scientist. As he notes in Aufstieg und Fall der Intellektuellen in Europa, Sociology comes to assume a role previously reserved for the prophets which insisted on enlivening dead ideals, affirming itself in a productive gap between the application of the scientific method to society and the unrestrained digests of literature. It presented a third way between the melancholic contemplation, a negativity towards the present order that has lost its efficacy in the socio-economic conditions of liberal democracies, and the achievement of the utopian technocracy, presuming to hold the pathways to perfection and compulsive happiness.
The fall of the homo europaeus Intellectualis and his “faith in genuine, authentic revolution, which would put an end to the ills of the west”51 leaves a void which cannot be filled by the social scientist or the technician. According to Lepenies, the engaged position of the scholars coming from the eastern bloc – we may think of intellectuals of the stature of Vaclav Havel – brought renewed enthusiasm around values and principles cemented on personal commitment and consistency, that had long given place to abstract, technocratic views, or everyday commentary. The return of the philosopher, first as the engaged melancholic that called for an open society and later as the “failed intellectual” engaged in the political arena, contrasted with the safe and lukewarm attitudes of the public intellectuals of the west.
In his reading of Lepenies’ views, Kwiek52 pointed to the role of the intellectual in reviewing the conviction of a new objective order of society
49 This ambivalence was well captured by Hans Gumbrecht. Luhmann refused that his theory was contaminated by personal influences and, conform to Weber’s model of the expert, already at the time of publication of Sozial Systeme in 1984, acted as if his theory was the outcome of a large network of social sciences’ laboratories and “all the world worked in systems theory, as a great swarm” (Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, “‘Alteuropa’ und ‘Der Soziologe’ Wie verhält sich Niklas Luhmanns Theorie zur philosophischen Tradition?,” in Luhmann Lektüren, ed. Wolfram Burckhardt [Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2010], 73). At the same time, due to his own relevance and prestige, Luhmann's personal views acquired a great potential to influence political agenda and policy-making.
50 Wolf Lepenies, Between Literature and Science: The Rise of Sociology, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 348.
51 Bernard-Henri Lévy, Adventures on the Freedom Road The French Intellectuals in the 20th Century, trans. Richard Veasey (London: The Harvill Press, 1995), 43.
52 Marek Kwiek, “Wolf Lepenies: Homo Europaeus Intellectualis Revisited,” in Philosophie an der Schwelle des 21. Jahrhunderts, ed. E. Czerwinska-Schupp (Frankfurt am Main and New York: Peter Lang, 2003).
where everything can be trusted to analytical and technical approaches, condemning the intellectual to a vain play of “unemployed negativity,” similar to the incredulous conclusion that Georges Bataille extracted from Kojève’s reading of the Hegelian system.
Academic instruction certainly provides a better assessment of socio-political issues and interdisciplinary ways to understand and manage them. In the Arts and Humanities for instance, in the attempt to reach and engage the larger public – sometimes accepting the risk of damaging their muses – scholars may realize that in order to raise awareness or “touch” the public the conventional perimeter of the academy must be exceeded. Apropos constitutive possibilities of the university, Peter Sloterdijk asked: “what is an academy aside from institutionalized melancholy about the fact that art is long and life is short and we can neither solve crucial problems nor forget them?”53
As an alternative to resignation or despair, dreaming and utopian imagination have been the privileged soil for class or group resentment over their demise or loss of significance in public life. Not without irony, Luhmann presented a similar view on philosophy’s resentment over its loss of dominium over public opinion, first with the emergence of social sciences and mass media, and later with its ambivalent attitude about the possibility of adaptation of its contribution.54
According to Bauman’s diagnosis of post-modernity, the mandate for academic “legislative reason” has ceased, being replaced by the plurality of “interpretative reason.”55 This change is expressed in a striking paradox that we may witness in recent decades. The greater the academic freedom, particularly in the humanities, the greater relative irrelevance of scholar’s words, theories and counsels.56 This “powerlessness of an intellectual”
53 Peter Sloterdijk, The Aesthetic Imperative: Writings on Art, trans. Karen Margolis (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017 [2007]), 281.
54 “If one wants to judge the possibilities of self-description in and by modern society, one must above all consider that it is no longer passed down orally as a teaching of wisdom and no longer articulates high final thoughts as a philosophy, but follows the autonomy of the mass media. Inevitably, every morning and evening, the web of news descends upon the earth, determining what has been and what is to be expected. Some events happen of their own accord, and society is turbulent enough that something is always happening. Others are produced for the mass media. Above all, the expression of an opinion can be treated as an event, so that media can reflexively allow their material to enter itself.” Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 1097.
55 Zygmunt Bauman, “Philosophical Affinities of Postmodern Sociology,” Sociological Review 38, no. 3 (1990): 411–444.
56 This was the bittersweet diagnosis of Zygmunt Bauman according to which: “Having reached the nadir of their political relevance modern intellectuals enjoy freedom of thought and
contrasts deeply with the Kojevean assumption according to which the conveying of a philosopher’s understanding could bring world redemption.
But the disappearance of the public intellectuals is only apparent. The ever-renewed call for public participation has its counterpart in the emergence of new forms of academic public positioning.57
This reflects Thomas Macho’s58 distinction between two ideal types of counsel: one based on the presence and (presumed) wisdom that takes part in a mysterious ritual of revelation, a form termed “charismatic,” and the counsel of the one who speaks “out of experience” and with a knowledge that allows questioning and demonstration, termed “pragmatic.” The charismatic model of counsel, which characterized the golden era of post-war intellectuals, is no longer viable. Through the ritualization of statements, these charismatic forms of counsel countered the clarification or the access to the metacomunicative level.
In recent decades, in highly mediatized societies, various factors have contributed to a rejection of unconditional and unqualified assertions grounded exclusively in authority. This change has been favored by a less hierarchical educative system, emerging communication technologies, and society's greater complexity and contingency.
In contemporary society, with the explosion of social media and the imposition of the culture of influencers, any position is open to scrutiny and interactive comment, taking part in what Sloterdijk termed the “collective fields of excitation,”59 in which “dialogical intellectuals” take part, since “[c]ontrary to both authoritative and expert public intellectuals, dialogical public intellectuals do not assume a superior stance towards their publics.”60 Although the discursive position of the “knowing all”
expression they could not dream of at the time that words mattered politically. This is an autonomy of no practical consequence outside the self-enclosed world of intellectual discourse.” (“Legislators and Interpreters: Culture as the Ideology of Intellectuals,” in Intimations of Postmodernity [London: Routledge, 1992], 16).
57 See, for instance, Sloterdijk’s appeal: “[t]he comprehensive world crisis of our time should provoke the philosophers who had been hiding in the bosom of the universities to come out of hiding. We must go back to the streets and squares, to the pages littéraires and the screens, to the schools and the popular festivals, to give back to our trade, the brightest and most melancholy in the world, the importance that, well done, it also has on the fields of non-academic life. Countless people are asking more urgently than they have for a long time what that is: the good and conscious life. Anyone who thinks they know the answer – or who wants to ask a counter-question: they should now go forward and talk.” (Was geschah im 20. Jahrhundert? [Berlin: Suhrkamp 2016], 213).
58 Macho, “Zur Ideengeschichte der Beratung,” 22–27.
59 Peter Sloterdijk, Neither Sun nor Death, with Hans-Jürgen Heinrichs, trans. Steve Corcoran (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) 2011[2001]), 84.
60 Baert, “The Philosopher as Public Intellectual,” 170.
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