for example, no one bothers any longer to ask what a person thinks. The verdict on someone’s thinking is ready at hand as long as you can assign it to its corresponding, formal category: conservative, reactionary, fundamentalist, progressive, revolutionary. Assignment to a formal scheme suffices to render unnecessary coming to terms with the content. The same thing can be seen in more concentrated form in art. What a work of art says is indifferent. It can glorify God or the devil. The sole standard