Renouncing thought under institutional pressure becomes an incapacity for it

Evidence

But far from finding anything inimical in the prohibitions on thinking, the candidates – and all scientists are candidates for posts – feel relieved. Because thinking burdens them with a subjective responsibility which their objective position in the productive process does not allow them to meet, they renounce it, shiver a bit, and run to join their opponents. Dislike of thinking rapidly becomes incapacity for it: people who can effortlessly discover the most sophisticated statistical objections when it is a question of sabotaging a piece of knowledge, are unable to make ex cathedra the simplest predictions. They hit out at speculation and in it kill common sense. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 151

Categorization

• SEED: The observation that researchers who can deploy the most sophisticated statistical objections to sabotage a piece of knowledge are unable to make simple predictions is a vivid, quotable account of ‘pathic stupidity’ — a strong hook for an essay on academic bad-faith.
• XREF: connects to: Modern administration abolishes the reflective hesitation that once mediated individual and general.; Exile mutilates the intellectual even when it spares direct coordination — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 29; Liberties lose their critical force once institutionalized — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 106 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Liberties lose their critical force once institutionalized #expands (0.85) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 106
• Modern philosophy voluntarily shrinks itself to avoid touching established reality #exemplifies (0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 648
• Institutionalizing a critical field can strip it of political meaning #expands (0.80)
• Institutional intellectual weakness is acclaimed as moral asceticism #complicates (0.75)
• Ideas that violate folk intuitions spread only with heavy institutional support #corroborates (0.72) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 361