That’s right! The French philosophes’ notion that scientific enlightenment - for which we are only truly free once we’ve liberated ourselves from internal constraints, and decided for ourselves what’s important - is the only form of enlightenment exacerbated German thinkers’ own highbrow tendencies. And as I wrote in Hermenaut, back in ’99, middlebrow’s program of pseudo-rebellious “fake authenticity” can be traced to Diderot’s “Rameau’s Nephew” and Rousseau’s Du contrat social. The discourse of enlightened rebelliousness wasn’t coopted by the forces of postwar Middlebrow in order to sell us more consumer products as Thomas Frank demonstrates in The Conquest of Cool (1997), it was the postwar marketers of consumer products who sold us on enlightened rebellion. But if he refuses, he does not only renounce something, he is also saying yes.” “What is a man who revolts?” asked Camus. Unlike the highbrow Kant, the hibrow doesn’t insist that enlightenment is simply a question of resisting the influence of (parental) authority figures it’s possible to be enlightened, as far as the hibrow is concerned, without buying into the discourse of rebellion. But their existentialist critique of the West’s dominant discourse was defanged via American (middlebrow) mass culture - and transformed into the pseudo-deep rebelliousness of grown-up adolescents known as beatniks. Who opposed such rhetoric? A tiny handful of intellectuals, including Albert Camus. immaturity - to be mature meant, e.g., being “post-ideological” - in order to shame and silence the few remaining utopian thinkers and visionaries among them. In the Forties (1944-53) and Fifties (1954-63), influential proto-neoliberal Western intellectuals used the rhetoric of maturity vs. From Kant through Habermas, with the exception of a few hilobrow types - e.g., Nietzsche, Bloch, Benjamin, Adorno - modern German and Germanophile thinkers have tended to equate immaturity with un-enlightenment. Those of us familiar with German WWI propaganda, in which Germany is always portrayed as a ( pipe-smoking) adult chastising his juvenile adversaries, might go so far as to say that Kant’s definition of Enlightenment is typically German. “Grow up!” is the motto of highbrow scientific enlightenment, not enlightenment in toto.įrom our perspective, Kant’s much-cited definition of Enlightenment is typically highbrow - which is to say, ham-handed. Though Kant is saying: “‘Grow up!’ - that is the motto of enlightenment,” Highbrow is merely one of several important aspects of enlightenment. That’s not maturity, Kant insists - it’s immaturity! It’s cowardly! However, enlightenment is a more complex phenomenon than Kant would have us believe. Kant’s rhetoric of “growing up” is a rebellious challenge to premodern notions of what it meant to be grown-up - i.e., internalizing the authority of church and state. Sapere Aude! “Have courage to use your own understanding!” - that is the motto of enlightenment. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another.
The rhetoric of “growing up” - which is challenged by the NYT Magazine story, in a highbrow fashion - cannot but make one think of Immanuel Kant’s much-cited 1784 essay, “Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” According to Kant, “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.” He continues: The subtitle of the cover story in the latest New York Times Magazine (“What Is It About 20-Somethings?”) asks: “Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?” I’m not going to write about this (not very interesting) example of journalistic generationsploitation instead, I’m going to use it as an excuse to share a few notes I’ve scribbled on the difference between High-and Hibrow.