ABSTRACT
It is possible that, because of this focus on contemporary relevance, current discussion of critical social theory is being deprived of precisely those impulses which, not yet fully considered, could-in actuality!— constitute the specific contemporaneity of his thought. What is at stake here is not the historical appropriateness of particular analytical utterances or individual theoretical formulations, nor the compatibility of the many different philosophical, cultural, and epistemological references contained in his works. The issue is the more fundamental one of the
manner of philosophizing, thinking, analysing, of the attitude adopted towards ideas and constellations encountered, of the modes of approaching and working with the signs and the material of history and culture-in short, of the ‘work of presence of mind incarnate’ (Werk leibhaftiger Geistesgegenwart) (GS IV.1, 142; OWS 99, translation modified).
