“The concept of “human existence” suggests an abstract human condition; “class existence” indicts bad conditions. The former suggests a nonexistent egalitarianism, as if master and slave, owner and worker, bomber and bombed all participate in the same universal abstraction. … The human condition for the rich is the inhuman one for the impoverished.”

—  Russell Jacoby

Source: Social Amnesia: A Critique of Conformist Psychology from Adler to Laing (1975), p. 62

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Russell Jacoby photo
Russell Jacoby 50
American historian 1945

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