Cultural worldviews are defended by disproving opposing views.

Evidence

Adorno regards the conservative defence of high art and culture as reflecting an unreflective hypostatization of culture that protects the economic status quo. He perceives the end of culture as the suspension of its reified status, its resubmersion in the actual life-process of society. And this final joining of culture and society would token the realignment of mental and manual labour, to whose radical separation culture owes its existence. Dialectical criticism, as opposed to conservative cultural criticism, aims to heighten ‘cultural criticism until the notion of culture is itself negated, fulfilled and surmounted in one’. Whatever the hyperbole involved in this statement of the procedures and goals of cultural criticism, its point is to reveal the gap between the claims of culture and the world it inhabits. High culture exists because what it promises does not. One can only defend culture by indicting the reasons for and not the fact of its existence. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 48 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Denigrating outsiders can be used to defend one’s own worldview. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 78; Defending culture requires indicting the reasons for its existence, not defending its fact — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 48; People often distort evidence to fit preexisting worldviews rather than updating beliefs — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 108 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Defending culture requires indicting the reasons for its existence, not defending its fact #complicates (0.78) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 48