Towards a Sociology of Ideas: A Response to the Comments

Abstract

It is a both a pleasure and intellectually productive to respond to and dialogue with these three thoughtful comments on my “Collaborative circles and their discontents” essay on conflict and creativity in the early Frankfurt School. There are a number of points that I must concede and commit to address in the next version of my work on collaborative circles and on the critical theorists. I will begin by discussing a couple of these “on the mark” points while thanking the respondents for their care and intellectual engagement. I will then say a few brief things about the vitally important question raised in Michael Farrell’s comments about the importance of the larger fields in which collaborative circles operate while clarifying and expanding on specifics regarding the case of Fromm, particularly with his relationship to Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the 1960s. Finally, I will conclude with a few short remarks on some of the key issues this exchange highlights for future research in the sociology of ideas and creativity. Matteo Bortolini is certainly right that the story I have attempted to narrate and theorize here requires more engagement with diverse historical material, and this surely must include more work in archives. Moreover, Bortolini’s invoking of the examples of Eric Voegelin, Hannah Arendt, and Leo Strauss highlights for us the unquestionable value of seeing the story of Fromm and the Frankfurt School as part of a larger story of European refugees in America. And Michael Farrell’s deep and hard won empirical knowledge of the dynamics of dozens of circles allows him to remind us that there are numerous cases (he cites Cezanne the painter, Alan