Philosophical (Self) Critique of Literature: Lionel Trilling and the "Adversary Culture"

Abstract

In this paper Lionel Trilling's concept of "adversary culture" is introductorily expounded and compared with Herbert Marcuse's idea of "affirmative character of culture" and Hannah Arendt's notion of "crisis of culture", and then it is discussed against the backdrop of its subsequent interpretations by Raymond Williams, Daniel Bell, Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz and Jurgen Habermas. The analysis of Trilling's view of the relationship between the culture and the self foregrounds the turn towards philosophical criticism, which was developed in Trilling's writings in pair with his gradual distancing from the "adversary" domain of culture. This turn is perceived as a symptom of a broader and more profound trajectory of Trilling's thought, away from literature and its culture-based literary studies, through the history of ideas, and towards "pure "philosophy.