Academic and freelance philosophers face opposite but equal forms of coercion

Evidence

Piety, indolence and calculation allow philosophy to keep muddling along within an ever narrower academic groove, and even there steadily increasing efforts are made to replace it by organized tautology. Those who throw in their lot with salaried profundity are compelled, as a hundred years ago, to be at each moment as naive as the colleagues on whom their careers depend. But extra-academic thinking, which seeks to escape such compulsion, with its contradiction between high-flown subject matter and petty-minded treatment, faces a scarcely lesser threat: the economic pressure of the market, from which in Europe the professors at least were protected. The philosopher who wishes to earn his living as a writer is obliged at each moment to have something choice, ultra-select to offer, and to counter the monopoly of office with that of rarity. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 79

Categorization

• XREF: This is a self-locating passage: Adorno is describing his own situation as a freelance writer — a material precondition for the aphoristic form of Minima Moralia itself. Connects to Bourdieu’s later account of the double bind of cultural producers. — connects to: Self-endorsed ideologies substitute for physical coercion in hierarchy; Academic pluralism often masks political constraints rather than expressing intellectual freedom — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 279; Formal democratic liberties rest on an unseen foundation of physical coercion — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 346 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Formal democratic liberties rest on an unseen foundation of physical coercion #expands (0.78) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 346
• Cooperation rests on coercion, interests, values, and personal bonds #expands (0.78) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2202
• Self-endorsed ideologies substitute for physical coercion in hierarchy #expands (0.75)
• Class differentiation into castes dissolves the moral authority needed for coercion #expands (0.75)
• Academic pluralism often masks political constraints rather than expressing intellectual freedom #exemplifies (0.72) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 279
• Pluralistic institutional openness can disguise strategic defense against political attacks on humanities #expands (0.72)