[WS:] yeah yeah yeah, You really have a rare knack of evading the substance and turn every argument into a semantic one, or philological speculation. FYI, Durkheim cites Kantian categories as an inspiration in his Elementary forms of Religious Life which offers the idea of frames determining out thinking and perception. Whether these frames are true Kantian forms or not may be of interest to philologists but it is splitting the hair to a social scientist. What matters is that there are pre-rational determinants of human cognition that are socially constructed but rarely critically examined - but they affect what conclusions we draw in everyday life discourse. That is is. You can call them whatever you want - a shit on a stick if this is your fancy.
As to Chuck's comments - I agree that literature is always safer than social science because it is more appealing on a personal level and less subject to nit picking. My problem with the story was that it actually happened as described, and contrary to Joanna's interpretation I was not the one who laughed. I knew from the get go that I lost the argument due to the idiotic reaction of my buddies - it was impossible to continue the topic even though I was certainly able to provide a relatively coherent response despite my blood alcohol level ;) That is why I remember the story - by thinking, time and gain, what I would have said I if had had a chance to answer. When I started writing the story I intended to provide an answer but the one that I came up in the piece is probably not much different in essence than the one I would have given some forty years ago.
I was well away of the distinction between "freedom from" and "freedom to" (Fromm was my favorite author).
Finally, regarding the class alignment of the intellectuals - it is really hard to make any generalizations. College professors always tended to be on a conservative side, but writers, artists etc is a different story - they fall all over the map.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."