Martin Jay > Quotes

“It was not surprising that after the war Dostoevsky was linked to Kierkegaard as a prophet of social resignation.”
― Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School & the Institute of Social Research, 1923-50

“To the horror of those who can genuinely claim to have suffered from its effects, alienation has proved a highly profitable commodity in the cultural marketplace. Modernist art with its dissonances and torments, to take one example, has become the staple diet of an increasingly voracious army of culture consumers who know good investments when they see them. The avant-garde, if indeed the term can still be used, has become an honored ornament of our cultural life, less to be feared than feted. The philosophy of existentialism, to cite another case, which scarcely a generation ago seemed like a breath of fresh air, has now degenerated into a set of easily manipulated clichés and sadly hollow gestures. This decline occurred, it should be noted, not because analytic philosophers exposed the meaninglessness of its categories, but rather as a result of our culture’s uncanny ability to absorb and defuse even its most uncompromising opponents.”
― Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School & the Institute of Social Research, 1923-50

“Shortly before my departure in January 1969, I happened to be at a party in New York, where I was introduced to Mark Rudd, the fiery leader of the Columbia student uprising who was soon to embark on the desperate, self-destructive adventure that was called the Weather Underground.”
― Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism): A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950

“The multi-faceted defense of a certain notion of benign mimesis both in Critical Theory and the work of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe has also attracted attention, as have certain affinities with Lacan's critique of ego psychology.”
― Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism): A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950