- Unwanted knowledge: Knowledge that is ‘outside of his interests’ (ibid.).
- Practical knowledge is further subdivided into:
a) professional knowledge
b) business knowledge
c) workman’s knowledge
d) political knowledge
e) household knowledge
f) and other practical knowledge.
There are several problems of Machlup’s theory of knowledge:
• Abstractness: it is abstract and does not stress the class and contested character of knowledge in modern society.
• Arbitrariness: Machlup’s typology of knowledge is arbitrary. He does not provide an underlying theoretical criterion for distinguishing these five types.
• Religious fetishism: the category of spiritual knowledge presupposes that God and salvation of the soul exist. He does not see religious knowledge as a specific form of ethical/moral knowledge, but rather reifies it.
• Elitism: Machlup (1962, 25) says that chamber music is intellectual knowledge because it requires attention, serious strain, and concentration, whereas he classifies rock ’n’ roll as pastime knowledge (Machlup 1962, 25). He makes an elitist distinction between high culture and low/popular culture that reminds one of conservative cultural theorists such as Matthew Arnold, who were criticised by people like Raymond Williams for their elitist concept of culture. Machlup indirectly expresses that he thinks fans of pop culture are stupid and primitive. ‘My decisions may possibly be judged, by my critics, as high-brow or even snobbish’ (Machlup 1962, 25).
3.3.10. Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold defined culture as cultivation that produces individuals who are ‘led, not by their class spirit, but by a general humane spirit, by the love of human perfection’ (1869/2006, 81) and are educated by engaging with ‘the best which has been thought and said in the world’ (1869/2006, 5). Culture is:
a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically, vainly imagining that there is a virtue in following them staunchly which makes up for the mischief of following them mechanically.
Theodor W. Adorno and the Critical Theory of Knowledge
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