The German Genius

aura of the pastor even today.
    Not all the influence of Bildung was good. Fritz Ringer concluded that in Germany the classical idea of the humanists became “entangled” with political conservatism and social snobbery. 34 This was to have profound consequences.
    R ESEARCH, THE P H D, S CHOLARSHIP, AND M ODERNITY
     
    Research was not a German invention. As early as the twelfth century, Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln and chancellor of Oxford University, had conceived of the experiment as a way to further knowledge. But the important—the significant—achievement of the German universities of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was to institutionalize research, at the University of Berlin and subsequent universities modeled on it. In particular, the concept of the modern PhD is a German idea—and this is, conceivably, after Idealism, Marxism, and Freudianism, the most influential German innovation of modern times but much less appreciated.
    This may seem an excessive claim to make, but the habit of having a well-educated young adult, usually in his or her mid- to late twenties, spend three or more years examining in detail a very specific aspect of the world about us, for little money but instead for love of the subject and, no less important, the honor of putting the letters “Dr.” before one’s name, setting one slightly apart (and above) and being accepted as part of the professoriate, has had an extraordinary effect on our times. It means that, at relatively little expense, we know our world in far more detail than anyone before, say, 1780, could ever have imagined.
    The institutionalization of research released an entirely new activity on the world that many people who were not geniuses were nevertheless very good at. Modern democracies are characterized by entire new industries, each with their own talents—advertising and marketing, film directing, sports, journalism. Research was one of the first and by far the most important because so much else is based on it.
    A third aspect of the institutionalization of research is that it has been a factor in the differentiation and fragmentation of the world. A direct effect of the PhD has been the proliferation of new disciplines, not just in the sciences (though proliferation has been especially strong there) but in the humanities, too, and in the social sciences. The fragmentation of the world and the specialization of scientists are issues of modernity that have especially taxed German writers, philosophers, and artists.
    A fourth effect is that research is now a rival form of authority in the world—a rival, that is, to tradition, to religion, and to political experience. Almost all government policies and the practices of large industrial and commercial corporations are undertaken now only after assiduous research exercises. Moreover, many of us are more comfortable with this form of authority than any other because, provided the research methodology is sound, it tends to meet both rational and moral criteria. The fact that this authority is impersonal is both a strength and a weakness. It is fairer, but perhaps alienating.
    In fact, research is now so important in our lives—as it has been for decades, if not for over a century—that it should really take its place alongside urbanization, industrialization, and the development of the mass media as a defining phenomenon of modernity itself.
    T HE L ONGING FOR A R EDEMPTIVE C OMMUNITY
     
    This theme runs through modern German philosophy, literature, social science, history, art, and politics. It overlaps with, and is associated with, a similar longing for the “whole.”
    Kant was obsessed with the relationship between the whole and its parts, the meaning of organic unity; singing in choruses was understood by Goethe to be appropriate training for citizenship. Hofmannsthal believed that the ultimate theatrical experience was the “ceremony of the whole.” The point—and the tragedy—of mass society, Hannah Arendt said, was that instead of creating “a higher form of human community,” it produced isolation and loneliness, which, she insisted, was the common ground of terror and the cold and inflexible logicality of bureaucracy, leading to the executioners. For Max Weber there was no salvation in the modern world other than “the sentiment of community.” 35 Wagner wanted to create the Gesamtkunstwerk , the whole artwork; Friedrich Meinecke advocated the formation of