While support for this noble idea might not be lost in theory, it feels curiously outdated today. The most obvious reason for this feeling is that literary criticism doesn't happen in that ideal space where, other than aesthetic judgment, no rules apply. Criticism is supposed to sell books, too. Walking up the stairs of the grand Literaturhaus, where the conference was being held, I wondered how this shift would be felt here and how my colleagues from other countries would perceive it.  I was in for a surprise. The mood was optimistic. If there were any cultural pessimists among the assembled critics, they were in disguise. The concerns raised were of a concrete and tangible kind and more on the grounds of quirks of individual countries. Take Norway, where literary criticism tends to take the form of book recommendations and it is frowned upon to interview the same person twice. Or the Czech Republic, which has little impact on the world book market. There are Croatia and Bulgaria which, after decades of censorship, are in the middle of a slow process of reconstituting their political and literary identities. Finally, there was Italy, where the media is almost completely under Silvio Berlusconi's control. 

So the sombre tone with which cultural pessimism slowly invades debates about criticism was not absent but kept in the background in Munich. Doesn't this indicate that contemporary criticism is turning into a lightweight, perhaps even somewhat glib form of writing about culture, done by dilettantes who don't take criticism as a vocation seriously and care even less about Art with a capital "A"? 

Actually, it doesn't have to be that way. For the role of the critic in a democratic society has never been to shut himself off from his surroundings. If the critic is to remain in a position to reshape our knowledge of the world, he needs to adapt to his surroundings — and then elevate himself above them by exercising powers of aesthetic judgment. 

Strolling one morning through Munich's baroque Hofgarten with its intricate Renaissance garden design, I revisited my thoughts on cultural pessimism from when I first arrived there. Perhaps now is the best time to bury the talk about pessimism and simply rekindle our interest in criticism. For the most significant of all the judgments we make in a critique is not whether we like this book or dislike that exhibition, but what we use in doing so. Our capacity to judge is one of the most important expressions of human freedom.