14
PARTISAN REVIEW
evaluations to each new generation of students. But even if we assume
that judgment rather than knowledge should be the
aim
of English
studies, the question remains how to translate live critical thinking into
a curriculum. As with so many other questions, some of the difficulty
comes from the fact that the way we see the problem rests on assump–
tions that themselves need questioning. But to reexamine the things we
take for granted about education is harder than to sound off about cul–
ture, counterculture, and the liberation of the mind from learning.
It's not all just a question of intellectual tone, though that's not
something we should be too quick to dismiss. It goes deeper. We're angry,
we're frustrated, we're righteous, and we can't talk to each other any–
more. In this situation, polemics are simply thwarted politics.
w.
P.
P.S. A notable exception to all this: I am reminded by an inter–
view with Hannah Arendt I have just read that there is at least one
speculative mind still around: bold, free-wheeling, not looking to fash–
ionable opinion but with an eye for the current scene, never petty and
always on the level of the subject. It's not her conclusions that matter;
it's the freedom from contemporary cant -left and right - the univer–
sal language of those who know the solutions before they understand the
problems. Miss Arendt is a unique, anomalous figure. She belongs to a
time of strong thinkers and large theories, but could have a needed in–
fluence today. For though she is not herself a radical, in the usual sense
of the term, the left could use some of her intellectual temper.
