Abstract

This chapter explores the process of progressive regression from which humanistic intelligence has suffered, from 1968 to today. The themes developed are as follows: The defeat of American intellectuals and their resounding silence; Post-art and post-philosophy in a post-human age of destruction; Heroes of enlightenment versus the disappearance of public human intelligence; Signs of intellectual deflation; Berlin 1978, a chronicle of defeat; The demolition of the Humanities in American and European universities; Modern intellectuals and enlightenment, from Kant to Kafka and from Franklin to Mumford; Paris 1968: the uprising against the society of spectacle; The end of philosophy and the triumph of linguistics; Anti-human humanities and a voided future; The redefinition of enlightenment, from Socrates to socialism; The end of the world?