Wolfram Multivoice in the Genealogy of the Intellectual

Books discussed/references

Our era is no longer the time of grand theories. Today, there are a large number of small theories that relate to many parts of reality. At the same time, the legacy of the European Enlightenment finds itself threatened more than ever by its scientific, technical, economic, political and social consequences. Therefore, it is time to remember the great theories to which this heritage owes its existence. Only enlightenment itself, with its rational powers, can avoid the disaster it caused. For this to work, we have to imagine again the form of modernity's life plan and the life mission that makes itself the subject and ambassador of those great theories: the figure of the universal intellectual. What is the outline of this figure, who drew it, how and why? How did he change? Does the character still exist today or is it now a thing of the past? If so, can it be brought back to the present?

Literary and media scholar Wolfram Multivoice, author of numerous scholarly, essayistic and fictional publications, answers these questions in his new book The global intellectual. A little genealogy a. The range of topics ranges from the “Diderot complex” to Hegel, Marx, Max Weber, Mannheim, Jünger, Sartre, Adorno, Derrida, and “the intellectual” to the “appeasement intellectual.”

Editor's note: Literaturkritik.de does not review books written by magazine staff, members of our university or by the publishing house LiteraturWissenschaft.de. However, these books may be referenced separately here.