Rogueish
12/16/11
So long as art declines to pass as cognition and is thus separated from practice, social practice tolerates it as it tolerates pleasure. But the Sirens’ song has not yet been rendered powerless by reduction to the condition of art….
[Civilization’s] road was that of obedience and labor, over which fulfillment shines forth perpetually-but only as illusive appearance, as devitalized beauty. The mind of Odysseus, inimical both to his own death and to his own happiness, is aware of this. He knows only two possible ways to escape. One of them he prescribes for his men. He plugs their ears with wax, and they must row with all their strength. Whoever would survive must not hear the temptation of that which is unrepeatable, and he is able to survive only by being unable to hear it. Society has always made provision for that. The laborers must be fresh and concentrate as they look ahead, and must ignore whatever lies to one side. They must doggedly sublimate in additional effort the drive that impels to diversion. And so they become practical. The other possibility Odysseus, the seigneur who allows the others to labor for themselves, reserves to himself. He listens, but while bound impotently to the mast; the greater the temptation the more he has his bonds tightened - just as later the burghers would deny themselves happiness all the more doggedly as it drew closer to them with the growth of their own power. What Odysseus hears is without consequence for him; he is able only to nod his head as a sign to be set free from his bonds; but it is too late; his men, who do not listen, know only the song’s danger but nothing of its beauty, and leave him at the mast in order to save him and themselves. They reproduce the oppressor’s life together with their own, and the oppressor is no longer able to escape his social role. The bonds with which he has irremediably tied himself to practice, also keep the Sirens away from practice: their temptation is neutralized and becomes a mere object of contemplation - becomes art. The prisoner is present at a concert, an inactive eavesdropper like later concertgoers, and his spirited call for liberation fades like applause.
― Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (32-4)
What Is College For?→
12/16/11
I’d suggest that research that doesn’t lead to improvements in the lives of the public (in terms of better technology or more effective policy or a better understanding of current events or whatever) is a really questionable funding priority for any university, especially a publicly funded one. And it’s up to the researchers themselves to demonstrate why their research matters off-campus, if they want to keep their funding.
Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (242-4):
Historical works, too, furnish material. Ways of applying it are to be sought not directly in industry but indirectly in the administrative sphere. Just as Machiavelli once wrote for princes and republics, so today work is undertaken on behalf of economic and political committees. The historical form has of course now become a hindrance, and it is far better to order historical material right away in the light of a given administrative task, such as the manipulation of commodity prices or of mass emotions. The interested parties include not only the authorities and industrial consortia but also trade unions and political parties.
The official philosophy ministers to science operating on these lines. It is expected, as a sort of Taylorism of the mind, to help improve its production methods, to rationalize the storage of knowledge, and to prevent any wastage of intellectual energy. It is allotted a place in the division of labor in the same way as chemistry or bacteriology. If the few remnants of philosophy that recall the medieval worship of God and the contemplation of eternal essences are still tolerated at secular universities, it is precisely because these establishments are so reactionary. Furthermore, a few historians of philosophy are still at work tirelessly expounding Plato and Descartes while remarking that these are already outdated. Here and there they are joined by some veteran exponent of sensualism or an accomplished personalist. They are employed in rooting out the dialectical weeds that might overrun the field of science.
But, unlike those who administer it, philosophy is concerned with thought, in so far as this does not succumb to the prevailing division of labor or allow it to dictate its tasks. The status quo compels men not merely by virtue of physical force and material interests but also through its overpowering suggestion. Philosophy is not synthesis; and it is not the fundamental or master science. It is the attempt to resist this suggestion, the determination to hang on to intellectual and real freedom.
The division of labor, as it has developed under domination, is by no means overlooked in the process, Philosophy sees in it only the lie that there is no escaping it. Resisting the fascination of superior strength, it follows it in every nook and cranny of the social apparatus, which a priori should be neither stormed nor redirected, but grasped for what it is, divested of the spell exerted by it. If the officials whom industry sponsors in its intellectual centers - the universities, the Churches, and the press - require philosophy to declare its principles as a condition for continuing its searching, it is in a mortal dilemma.
Philosophy knows of no workable abstract rules or goals to replace those at present in force. It is immune to the suggestion of the status quo for the very reason that it accepts bourgeois ideals without further consideration. These ideals may be those still proclaimed, though in distorted form, by the representatives of the status quo; or those which, however much they may have been tinkered about with, are still recognizable as the objective meaning of existing institutions, whether technical or cultural. Philosophy believes that the division of labor exists to serve mankind, and that progress leads to freedom. This is why it is so apt to come into conflict with both of them. It gives utterance to the contradiction between faith and reality while keeping close to the time-conditioned phenomenon. Unlike the press, it does not attach greater weight to mass slaughter than to the murder of a few mental defectives. It does not pay more attention to the intrigues of a statesman flirting with Fascism than to a lynching spree of modest proportions. For philosophy, the frenzied publicity of the film industry rates no higher than an intimate funeral announcement. Philosophy has little taste for sheer size. Therefore it is simultaneously alien and sympathetic to the status quo. Its voice belongs to the object, though without its will. It is the voice of contradiction, which would otherwise not be heard but triumph mutely
(Source: thenoobyorker)
