I As I write, longest peace-time economic expansion in United States history still continues, benefitting those who benefit from such expansions, and yet college- and university-level humanitiesparticularly foreign language and literature departments like German Studiesfind themselves newly or still or once again in crisis.' In absence of an obvious economic explanation for perceived crisis, professors in these departments argue variously that crisis is new (Berman, Reform 61), or old (Lindenberger), result of the of nation-state as a selfenclosed monolingual unit with a single national ethos (Miller 233), or of a deeplyrooted American isolationism (Bernhardt), of a backlash against bilingualism (Seeba), or decline of status of foreign languages, literature, and humanities in general (Henke), or because, with end of Cold War, universities are no longer exempted from market rationality and therefore begin to adapt themselves to a corporate model which discourages tradition, inflexibility, and high fixed costs of long-term, tenured, employment (Hohendahl 84). Enrollments in language and literature departments not teaching Spanish or Asian languages continue to fall; tenure-line billets are not replaced; brilliant and dedicated new PhDs (Miller 233) are not hired; professorial autonomy is eroded, while whole departments are closed or allowed to wither. Humanistic study in foreign languages and literatures, these commentators agree, is in midst of a long and serious crisis. By definition, crises are experienced as threatening. In a 1958 speech on crisis in American education, Hannah Arendt pointed out a potentially positive consequence of crisis: it can have salutory effect of destroying previously unquestioned assumptions, and therefore of opening up all previously settled questions for discussion. Der Verlust von Vorurteilen, Arendt argued, hei]3t ja nur, daB wir die Antworten verloren haben, mit denen wir uns gewohnlich behelfen, ohne auch nur zu wissen, daB sie urspriinglich Antworten auf Fragen warm. Eine Krise drangt uns auf die Fragen zur(ick and verlangt von uns neue oder alte Antworten, auf jeden Fall aber unmittelbare Urteile (5). In current situation of humanities, it is clearly case that we have lost effective use of at least some of justifications which were once our answers to questions about meaning of humanistic work. This is evident in indifferentism into which humanistic disciplines appear to have sunk after intoxicating mock-battles of age of pure theory. The current crisis of German Studies, then, is not only an economic or administrative one confined to small language departments, but also an intellectual crisis affecting humanities as a whole. The current crisis can enable us to become conscious of our habitual answers, but also of questions which prompted these answers. One of these answers seems to have been an ethic of professionalism: not so much, or not always, as an explicit credo, but as an assumption behind a very common defense of humanities which scholars began to give in response to legitimation deficits and consequent motivational crises of past thirty years, including political crisis of sixties, economic one of mid-seventies, and cultural wars of past decade.' Humanistic knowledge in form of literary or cultural theory, it was and is sometimes still argued, is justifiably as complex as physics or chemistry; there is no more reason that broader public should be conversant in one as in other. Although is not only Left or Left-liberal humanists who make or have made this argument, it has been particularly attractive to them for its non-political character. The argument was first heard in late seventies and early eighties, at a juncture when, in United States, a great political gulf had opened among university students, faculty, and extra-university organizations and publics. …