Adorno being Adorno in Minima Moralia:
The circumstance that intellectuals mostly have to do with intellectuals, should not deceive them into believing their own kind still more base than the rest of mankind. For they get to know each other in the most shameful and degrading of all situations, that of competing supplicants, and are thus virtually compelled to show each other their most repulsive sides….The justified guilt-feelings of those exempt from physical work ought not become an excuse for the ’idiocy of rural life’. Intellectuals, who alone write about intellectuals and give them their bad name in that of honesty, reinforce the lie.
If this conception dims - and who could still trust blindly in it - the downward urge of the intellect loses its inhibitions and all the detritus dumped in the individual by barbarous culture - half-learning, slackness heavy familiarity coarseness - comes to light. Usually it is rationalized as humanity, desire to be understood by others, worldly-wise responsibility. But the sacrifice of intellectual self-discipline comes much too easily to its maker for us to believe his assurance that it is one.
