Nell and Patricia had met on a brief autumn vacation on an adventure quest to the book store of Dujiangyan Zhongshuge (Chengdu, China). Almost lost on the endless stairs and inside enigmatic architecture, they noticed each other the third or fourth time they passed by. First time they noticed, they smiled, seeing the slightly ridiculous in the over satiated appetite for making a good deal on literature only a select few people would consider seminal.

In the end, they had dizzied themselves on the surreal architecture itself. Second time they passed, their smile belied an increasing fatigue.

Third time, Nell had spoken: “I can’t seem to reach the floor anymore! Down seems to mean up in this place”. Patricia had chuckled back: “If I can’t trust my senses anymore, what’s the point in carrying on?! There’s a good spot to die over there..”. She pointed and Nell wouldn’t mind putting down her huge stack of books for just a moment.

Seated by a small coffee table, she introduced herself.

“Nell, I’m actually Scottish, but I’ve moved to a cottage in England to chase a man. I’m thinking about moving back again someday, though, since nothing came of it.”

“Patricia. Nice to know you. I have lived close to Carlisle most of my life. I’m 26 so that can certainly change. I live in downtown Carlisle now.”

“Is that so? I can drive to Carlisle fairly fast. Less than an hour. I live further south. I’ve moved around a couple of times looking for a comfortable area. But I’m done with moving now. I’m 47, and can’t see the point anymore.”

Patricia rose to fetch a cup from the machine behind them. She noticed Nell was leaning over her book stack.

“It’s a big pile of philosophy. The honest answer is that I signed up for photography at Carlisle, just to do something with my life other than working odd jobs.”

She grimaced like a trampled insect.

“.. But I feel I’m becoming more and more stupid every day in an age where knowing “one thing” is beyond useless. It was bad ten years ago, but today I really have no idea what everybody is talking about.”

Nell sighed. “I get that feeling. I studied wildlife conservation at Ambleside. That’s why I live south of Carlisle. But most of my life afterwards I feel my vocational education has little value. All my opinions seemed embarrassingly unenlightened. I like working with nature. But if I venture into a debate today, I feel more like a specimen on a microscope slide. In the end, I did what you did, started reading.”

Nell and Patricia exchanged details on their life and hardships. Then Nell popped the question.

N: “Is that Horkheimer and Adorno?”

Patricia likewise noted Nell’s stack.

P: “It is. Just not the important books I had wanted. Is that Dewey?”

N: “You got me. I remember his name from a philosophy class I once took. Many of the other philosophers had an air of mystique and excitement to them. Dewey sounded like an utter bore.”

P: “I know! But all of a sudden this boring chap is showing up in conservative conspiracy theories! Let’s help each other, can we not? My legs are hurting and I can’t climb stairs anymore.”

N: “I’d love to. But where do we start?”

P: “Easy. You know how Dewey sounded boring, until his name cropped up in National Review magazines? I found that if I pursue a trail with a conflict in mind, I can much easier relate to the matter.”

N: “I love that. If only the teachers had done that instead.”

Patricia took her small laptop out. Apparently she was using articles as reference to bibliography.

N: “Oh, is that National Review? It’s an American magazine for conservative viewpoints, right?”

P: “Correct. It’s a new universe to me. I started because I saw a book introduction with David Goodwin and Pete Hegseth where they debated the topic of their new book: How the education system produced adherents to Critical Theory.”

N: “Hegseth is Secretary of Defense in Trump’s new cabinet…”

P: “A former soldier and Fox host. I found this article: To Tackle Critical Theory in the K–12 Classroom, Start with Colleges of Education.”

Nell read the article.

N: “Modern debate. It’s always so provocative in nature. Like people are trying to have a physical scuffle but with words. This quote here…”

Critical pedagogy is grounded in the teachings of Antonio Gramsci, the founder of Italy’s Communist Party in the 1920s. He wanted to use education to advance socialism by imposing a “counter-narrative” that would produce students who were ready to install the socialist revolution. That was Gramsci’s theory of “Cultural Hegemony,” and Horkheimer’s Critical Theory was merely the tool.

N: “Gramsci was in prison when a younger Horkheimer was involved with the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. He died right after he got out of prison. And… No, the usual rubbish. They try to yell ‘Marx!’ for every other word because their micro brains are unable to digest the hard books.”

P: “Mike Gonzalez and Lindsey M. Burke are not stellar writers. This name sounds interesting. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. The rest of the article is just rubbish. "

N: “Temper temper, dear. Our two essayists thinks along different lines. They reduce Gramsci to a man who ‘wants to use education to advance socialism’, but understand ‘socialism’ to mean ‘a disease’. In their mind, all socialists know they are parasites, unhealthy, and they cannot but try to virally spread following their nature.”

P: “You’re right. The healthy-sickness dichotomy underlies their christian perspective.”

Traditional theory, Horkheimer claimed, fetishized knowledge and objectivity. Critical theory, its opposite, held that there were no universal truths and man could not be objective. Instead of truths, there were competing narratives, and it was the job of the Left to impose its own. This relativism in itself was nothing less than an assault on Western civilization.

P: “Aside from the latent healthy-sickness aspect, and aside from the overzealous choice of the word ‘fetishised’, as if the Horkheimer accusation against bourgeoisie thinking is that the latter had a perverse preference for the silly ideas like ‘objectivity’ and ’truth’. Aside from the ‘colouring’ so to speak, is this far from the truth?”

Nell turned to the vendor machine and got a cup herself.

N: “It is true that ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’ reads like a manifest, though. In a twisted way they are right. The part about knowledge and objectivity is directly inherited from Marxist thinking. Critical theory in a way tries to make Marx’ idea more complete.”

The essay was easily to locate online. Patricia sat and read for a while. Nell noticed she went back again and again, reading the same thing multiple times.

P: “What is he talking about?! There’s that feeling again. I have no idea what he is saying. Nell, you have read it, haven’t you?”

N: “I got through half of it. Do you want me to help you stay focused? I’d like to return to my hotel soon, but we could meet later?”

P: “Yes please! I really want to understand!”

As planned, they met at Nell’s hotel in the lobby later that day. Patricia had stayed for another few hours before feeling ridiculous over words that seemed to have lost meaning or at least they were not designed to function together in such an unnatural way as the gentlemen philosophers had orchestrated. She left and went straight to the address given.

P: “I get that Horkheimer and Adorno extends the classical Marxist argument which observes that bourgeois ideology serves the bourgeois class system. It replaced the feudal ideology which served the feudal system. But I get stuck on the abstractions!”

N: “You can see how they describe science as a social process, right? As an introduction, they reiterate the Enlightenment mindset.”

Nell had brought her paper notes. She handed them over to Patricia.

Interlude

Patricia stretched her back. It was late evening, and the warm, humid July air in Chengdu irritated her. She oscillated between feeling too warm or cold and sweaty. It blew her concentration.

N: “Are you okay, dear?”

P: “God, this place is damp. I should have gone by my hotel and taken an evening shower.”

N: “My room is few paces away. Here’s my access card. I can’t think either when my skin feels icky. Help yourself to a towel.”

Patricia delightedly jumped out of view. Ten minutes later she was back. She looked visibly sharper.

P: “That helped. I am trying to remember our present-day conservative angle. Horkheimer is this devious Marxist who is leading an »assault on Western civilisation«, in particular, knowledge and objectivity. This is the very objectivity we are discussing now.”

N: “Well, natural sciences or human sciences? While they is no doubt that they are treated different by H & A, they are also treated similarly. Specifically all sciences are package and parcel of the industrial society. Their participants are members in a society. Here, look at my notes.”

P: “Ok, so Horkheimer (or Adorno) injects a lot of social control into these hotspots in the formation process, i.e. facts (or what we think of as facts), knowledge and concepts.”

N: “You got it. When we talk about facts or knowledge, we think that we talk about something out there, so to speak. But in reality, the brain employs the patterns it has been imprinted with.

I think it is important that we realise that sociology and other ‘soft’ sciences were young compared to physics and mathematics. Initially their proponents tried to add solidity by imitating natural sciences, but later they realised that their trade was just fundamentally different. The disagreements were major, though. How should a historian justify his methods? Weber wanted historical development to fit into a p ⇒ q format. The critique lambasted from natural science is easy to guess: How do you figure out which facts should be in the chain of historical events?

And that’s just traditional science at play. Scientists struggle to become objective which then means their theories are bullet proof.”

But the conception of theory was absolutized, as though it were grounded in the inner nature of knowledge as such or justified in some other ahistorical way, and thus it became a reified, ideological category.

N: “We fail when we believe in the absoluteness of historical objective truth.”

P: “I thought Adorno og Horkheimer was talking about all sciences.”

N: “He certainly is talking about the reality that scientists act in a socially regulated way. But in these pages, they clearly address the brutal reduction in factual data that the historian is forced to make. But true, they do in general point to similar mechanisms in all sciences. "

That new views in fact win out is due to concrete historical circumstances, even if the scientist himself may be determined to change his views only by immanent motives.

N: “H & A compares with the transition to the Copernican system, as an example from astronomy.”

Patricia laughed when she saw the note in the margins:

“Screw epicycles, we go Copernican!”

N: “Yes, but they argue that if theory advanced according to non-social principles, the system would have been picked up immediately. It took time. In a very Marxist fashion, he explains:”

That Coper­nicanism, hardly mentioned in the sixteenth century, should now become a revolutionary force is part of the larger historical process by which mechanistic thinking came to prevail.

N: “Unlike the pragmatists and the positivists who do recognise a kind of relevance of psychology in science, such as the inclination to research in matters that feel like contributing to society.”

P: “So we are aware of the influence of society on our scientific process!”

N: “Oh no. H & A outright rejects the importance of a personal conviction. The scientist can be convinced of this or that or he perhaps he was not convinced of anything. He is still embedded into a reality produced by society.”

In the social division of labor the savant’s role is to integrate facts into conceptual frameworks

N: “From this point on, H & A really turns to the social aspect of science. Here, my notes:”

P: “Wait, time out. Can you please summarise?”

N: “Sure. The argument runs its course starting in the thick of daily life:

1. Physicists look at historians and laugh: Muaha, you call that a science? Where are the facts that you inductively assembly into a theory?
2. Sociologists look at history and say: The object of our science is historical events. We look at history and grab hold of things we call events. They form a progression
3. All: Okay then. Sounds like we can all establish certain, objective truths!
4. Skeptical sociologists: Wait a minute. We put too much of ourselves into the pot. We make choices, we wilfully ignore parts of the rich data material.
5. Marxist sociologists: NONE of that really matters. You overlook the most important aspect: The very words you use, the facts you receive (from society), the knowledge you take for granted, the objectives and purposes of your activity are package and parcel of a system that grew out of the enlightenment. The very knowledge is shaped along principles that all points back to the bourgeois revolution.

You see?”

Patricia looked like someone was about to swindle her. Nell laughed disarmingly.

P: “They aren’t exactly working overtime to prove any of this, are they?”

Nell laughed slightly, remembering her own objections. She could answer that one by just shaking her head slowly.

N: “Here’s the dilemma. Both way of thinking about the world works. Of course the scientist is a social being with a social brain with a temporal lobe that needs to learn language through upbringing. And of course it is absurd to state that Newton’s mechanics is not revealing the law-abiding nature of physical items in the world. And yet, if you accept both, you go insane.”

P: “But I want to interject! True, the scientist today is more than ever integrated into an industrial society. But the outcome has become one in which intelligent people are loathed with the demands. Simply because the essence of science is not a ‘mode of production’, but exactly the opposite: To expect the unexpected!”

N: “I’m the devil’s advocate now.

You are romanticising science. Similarly to the way they argue, you could maintain that realistic science walked hand in hand with the fairytale version. It was the romance with the unknown that lured young men and women into spending their lives there. It is the intrigue of the unknown that drives many each day. But you could say the same thing about a factory worker saving up for something special. All these mechanisms are exactly built into the culture which is nurtured by the bourgeois capitalist host organism.”

Patricia liked Nell. She was not some stubborn proponent for a viewpoint that was a pipe dream. Rather she had gained sufficient insight that she could present Patricia with a counterargument that left her thinking.

And god she needed to think.

P: “Look, Nell. I think I should read the rest of the essay. How long are you staying in Chengdu? The night is young and I can try to get through a good bunch tonight. How about we spend the day together tomorrow?”

Nell didn’t want to sound too eager, but she fumbled slightly with the words.

N: “I would so love to keep this conversation going. When and where?”

P: “Ding’s Coffee… as early as possible tomorrow? I can be there at 10AM.”

Poor Nell wanted to give her a hug, but felt silly and awkward. She did manage to professionally shake her hand. But that felt way more off-putting than she had wanted to imply.

•P•A•R•A•D•O•X•