This chapter reassesses Bradbury’s fictionalization of the academic world as a multifaceted exploration of the ironies of a value-free society and of literature’s responses to dehumanization, from the 1950’s “Age of Anxiety” to the postmodern vanishing of the author and its much-awaited re-materialization. From the ambivalence of liberal humanism in Eating People Is Wrong to the bitter satire of sociology as a threat to free will and accountability in The History Man, from the caricature of intellectual arrogance in Doctor Criminale and Mensonge to the problematization of anti-foundational epistemologies that legitimize interpretation in To the Hermitage, Bradbury’s novels of ideas dissect the institutional conditions of knowledge in democratic societies. They offer us not only a humorous outlook on postwar England but also a critical lens to examine the role of the humanities and the mission of academic institutions on a broader scale, issues that continue to be timely.

The experience of uncertainty is outlined at two levels: individual and societal. On the individual level, uncertainty has both positive, constructive implications and negative, maladaptive ones. As a main response on the individual level, the function of promoter positions is delineated, with the Rogerian concept of “organismic valuing” as a prototypical example of an “inner compass.” Organismic valuing as a bottom-up approach is critically discussed, and the dialogical self is proposed as an interchange of bottom-up and top-down processes. On the societal level, the experience of uncertainty is addressed with reference to Zygmunt Bauman’s liquid society and Ulrich Beck’s risk society. Some adaptive and some less adaptive responses to several of the main challenges of our time are sketched: climate change and the corona pandemic. An identity model is presented that consists of identity positions at four levels of inclusiveness: individual, social (group), collective, and ecological, each with their specific types of responsibility.

The chapter explores the person in control. It is the predominant form of subjectivity traversing privacy rights. Engaging with the work of Bauman, the book explores the individualism of this notion.