Academic Engagement

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Notes

1. Cf. Max Weber, Gesamtausgabe, pt. 1, vol. 17, “Wissenschaft als Beruf,” ed. Horst Baier et al. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 105; edited and translated by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills as “Science as a Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 152. All translations appearing in this paper are mine, although I have occasionally consulted the published translations cited here.

2. Friedrich Nietzsche, Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, in Sämtliche Werke: Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967–), 2:221. To facilitate reference to the many different editions of Nietzsche's published writings in English, citations of his works include the translated title and paragraph number, here: Human, All Too Human, §266.

3. Cf. Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge, 1945): “democrats who do not see the difference between a friendly and a hostile criticism of democracy are themselves imbued with the totalitarian spirit” (1:166).

4. Thucydides 2.40; cf. 2.35.

5. Plato Apology 31c–32e; cf. 17c–e.

6. Cf. Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 4, Representative Men, ed. Douglas Emory Wilson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1987), 23–24.

7. Plato Phaedrus 274c–78e; cf. the same author's Protagoras 329a, and the seventh letter attributed to him, 342a–45c.

8. Cf. Pierre Hadot, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie antique? (Paris: Gallimard, 1995): “one will no longer be surprised to find in Plato, for example, or in Aristotle, or in Plotinus, aporias in which thought seems to close itself off [s'enfermer], returns and repetitions, apparent inconsistencies, if one remembers that they are intended not to communicate a knowledge, but to train and to exercise [à former et à exercer]”(412); translated by Michael Chase as What is Ancient Philosophy? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 274.

9. Sartre, “Présentation,” Les temps modernes 1 (1945): 6; translated by Jeffrey Mehlman as “Introducing Les Temps modernes,” in “What is Literature?” and Other Essays (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 253.

10. Sartre, Qu'est-ce que la littérature? (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), 24–28, 17–18, emphasis in original; translated by Bernard Frechtman in “What is Literature?” and Other Essays, 34–36, 28–29.

11. Theodor W. Adorno, “Engagement,” in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), 11:426; translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen as “Commitment,” in Notes to Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991–92), 2:90.

12. Adorno, “Engagement,” 11:411–12; “Commitment,” 78–79. In the French tradition, cf. Roland Barthes, Le degré zéro de l’écriture, in Œ uvres complètes, ed. Éric Marty (Paris: Seuil, 2002), 1:169–225; translated by Annette Lavers and Colin Smith as Writing Degree Zero (New York: Hill & Wang, 1968); and “Leçon,” in Œ uvres complètes ,5:427–46; translated as “Inaugural Lecture, Collège de France,” in A Barthes Reader, ed. Susan Sontag (New York: Hill & Wang, 1982), 457–78.

13. Adorno, “Der Essay als Form,” in Gesammelte Schriften, 11:9–16; translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen as “The Essay as Form,” in Notes to Literature, 1:3–9. Cf. Adorno's letter to Herbert Marcuse dated August 6, 1969, in Wolfgang Kraushaar, ed., Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung: Von der Flaschenpost zum Molotowcocktail, 1946–1995 (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins, 1998), 2:671; edited and translated by Esther Leslie as “Correspondence on the German Student Movement,” New Left Review 233 (1999): 135–36; “Keine Angst vor dem Elfenbeinturm,” Der Spiegel, May 5, 1969, 204; edited and translated by Gerhard Richter as “Who's Afraid of the Ivory Tower? A Conversation with Theodor W. Adorno,” Monatshefte für deutschsprachige Literatur und Kultur (2002): 10–23; and Herbert Marcuse, “Reflexionen zu Theodor W. Adorno—aus einem Gespräch mit Michaela Seiffe,” in Theodor W. Adorno zum Gedächtnis: Eine Sammlung, ed. Herman Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), 50–51.

14. René Descartes, Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences, in Œ uvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, rev. ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1964), 6:1–78; translated by Richard Kennington as Discourse on Method, ed. Pamela Kraus and Frank Hunt (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2007).

15. Adorno, “Der Essay als Form,” 11:22–26; “ Essay as Form,” 14–17.

16. “When one speaks in a public assembly [Volksversammlung] about democracy […] the words that one uses are […] swords against the enemies: means of war. In a lecture or auditorium it would be sacrilege [Frevel] to use the word in this way.” Weber, “Wissenschaft als Beruf,” 1/17:96; “Science as a Vocation,”145.

17. Marcus Tullius Cicero De oratore 3.63–64.

18. Cf. Jean-Luc Nancy, “Tout est-il politique? (simple note),” Actuel Marx 28 (2000): “politics has been withdrawn [s'est retirée] as the given [donation] (given by oneself or another, human or divine) of a common essence or purpose [destination]: it has been withdrawn [s'est retirée] as totality or as totalisation. In this sense, everything is not political” (81); translated by Philip M. Adamek as “Is Everything Political? (a brief remark),” Centennial Review 2.3 (2002): 20.

19. “To be surpassed scientifically [wissenschaftlich] is […] not only the destiny [Schicksal] of us all, but also the goal of us all.” Weber, “Wissenschaft als Beruf,” 1/17:85; “Science as a Vocation,” 138.

20. Immanuel Kant, “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?” in Kants gesammelte Schriften, Akademieausgabe (Berlin, 1923), 8:35; translated by H. B. Nisbet as “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” in Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),: 54.

21. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente, in Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, 3:140; translated by Edmund Jephcott as Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002),: 93.

22. Cf. Adorno, “Resignation,” in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 10, bk. 2, 794–99; translated by Henry W. Pickford as “Resignation,” in Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 289–93.

23. Cf. Nietzsche, Der Wanderer und sein Schatten, in Sämtliche Werke, 2:584–85; The Wanderer and His Shadow, §72.

24. Descartes, Discours de la méthode, 6:1–4, 31–40; Discourse on Method, 15–17, 32–37. Cf. Nietzsche, Sämtliche Werke, 1:86, 11:563, 12:107; The Birth of Tragedy, §12, and unpublished notebook entries from 1885 (§36[30]), and 1885–86 (§2[93]). Because the relevant volumes of The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995–) have not yet been published, passages from his Nachlass are cited according to approximate date and the Colli-Montinari reference system that is also being used in this edition.

25. Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, in Sämtliche Werke, 5:18–19; Beyond Good and Evil, §5.

26. See Ze Frank, “The show with zefrank,” video podcast, March 17, 2006 to March 17, 2007, http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/.

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Christopher Swift

Christopher Swift is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University