Abstract
This chapter explores the process of progressive regression from which humanistic intelligence has suffered, from 1968 to today. The themes developed are as follows: The defeat of American intellectuals and their resounding silence; Post-art and post-philosophy in a post-human age of destruction; Heroes of enlightenment versus the disappearance of public human intelligence; Signs of intellectual deflation; Berlin 1978, a chronicle of defeat; The demolition of the Humanities in American and European universities; Modern intellectuals and enlightenment, from Kant to Kafka and from Franklin to Mumford; Paris 1968: the uprising against the society of spectacle; The end of philosophy and the triumph of linguistics; Anti-human humanities and a voided future; The redefinition of enlightenment, from Socrates to socialism; The end of the world?
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Notes
- 1.
The signifier “holocaust” has tended to be associated with the Jewish shoah, perpetuated by German national socialism of the twentieth century. In this chapter, I restore the concept of the holocaust to the meaning ascribed to it by Greek etymology: holo-kauston or the “total cremation” of a sacrificial victim.
- 2.
“Cine-truth”
- 3.
“Die vollends aufgeklärte Erde strahlt im Zeichen triumphalen Unheils.”
- 4.
“The wretched of the earth,” from The International anthem.
- 5.
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”
- 6.
Das Prinzip Hoffnung (“The Principle of Hope”) is a work by Ernst Bloch that was written between 1938 and 1947 during his exile in the United States.
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Subirats, E. (2021). Besieged Existence. In: Intellectuals in the Society of Spectacle. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-73106-9_1
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