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Modernity Versus Postmodernity Author(S): Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Ben-Habib Source: New German Critique, No

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Modernity Versus Postmodernity Author(S): Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Ben-Habib Source: New German Critique, No Modernity versus Postmodernity Author(s): Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Ben-Habib Source: New German Critique, No. 22, Special Issue on Modernism (Winter, 1981), pp. 3-14 Published by: New German Critique Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/487859 . Accessed: 14/01/2014 13:17 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. New German Critique and Duke University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to New German Critique. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.59.129.186 on Tue, 14 Jan 2014 13:17:35 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Modernityversus Postmodernity* by JiirgenHabermas Last year,architects were admittedto theBiennial in Venice, following paintersand filmmakers.The note sounded at thisfirst Architecture Bien- nial was o'he of disappointment.I would describe it by sayingthat those who exhibitedin Venice formedan avant-gardeof reversedfronts. I mean that theysacrificed the traditionof modernityin orderto make roomfor a new historicism.Upon thisoccasion, a criticof the German newspaper, FrankfurterAllgemeine Zeitung, advanced a thesis whose significance reaches beyond thisparticular event; it is a diagnosisof our times:"Post- modernitydefinitely presents itselfas Antimodernity."This statement describesan emotionalcurrent of our timeswhich has penetratedall spheres of intellectuallife. It has placed on the agenda theoriesof post-enlighten- ment, postmodernity,even of posthistory. From historywe know the phrase: "The Ancientsand theModerns" Let me begin by definingthese concepts. The term"modern" has a long history,one whichhas been investigatedby Hans Robert Jauss.The word "moderm"in itsLatin form"modernus" was used forthe first time in the late 5th centuryin order to distinguishthe present,which had become officiallyChristian, from the Roman and pagan past. Withvarying content, the term "modern" again and again expresses the consciousnessof an epoch thatrelates itself to the past of antiquity,in orderto viewitself as the resultof a transitionfrom the old to the new. Some writersrestrict this concept of "modernity"to the Renaissance, but this is historicallytoo narrow.People consideredthemselves modern duringthe period of Charles the Great, in the 12thcentury, as well as in France of the late 17thcentury, at the time of the famous"Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes." This is to say, the term"modern" appeared and reappeared exactly duringthose periods in Europe when the con- sciousness of a new epoch formeditself through a renewedrelationship * This essay was deliveredas a JamesLecture of The New York Institutefor the Humani- ties at New York Universityon March 5, 1981. It had been deliveredfirst in German in Sep- tember 1980 when Habermas was awarded the Theodor W. Adorno prize by the city of Frankfurt. 3 This content downloaded from 128.59.129.186 on Tue, 14 Jan 2014 13:17:35 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 4 Habermas to the ancients- whenever,moreover, antiquity was considereda model to be recoveredthrough some kindof imitation. The spell whichthe classicsof the ancientworld cast upon the spiritof later timeswas firstdissolved with the ideals of theFrench Enlightenment. Specifically,the idea of being "modern" by lookingback to the ancients changed with the belief, inspired by modern science, in the infinite progressof knowledgeand in the infiniteadvance towardssocial and moral betterment.Another formof modernistconsciousness was formedin the wake of this change. The romantic modernistsought to oppose the antique ideals of the classicists;he looked fora new historicalepoch, and found it in the idealized Middle Ages. However, this new ideal age, establishedearly in the 19thcentury, did not remaina fixedideal. In the course of the 19thcentury, there emerged out of thisromantic spirit that radicalized consciousnessof modernitywhich freed itself from all specific historical ties. This most recent modernismsimply makes an abstract oppositionbetween tradition and thepresent; and we are, in a way,still the contemporariesof thatkind of aestheticmodernity which first appeared in the midstof the 19thcentury. Since then,the distinguishing mark of works, which count as modern,is the "new." The characteristicof such worksis "the new" whichwill be overcomeand made obsolete throughthe novelty of the next style. But, while that which is merely"stylish" will soon become out-moded, that which is modern preservesa secret tie to the classical. Of course,whatever can survivetime has alwaysbeen considered to be a classic. But the emphaticallymodern document no longerborrows thispower of being a classic fromthe authorityof a past epoch; instead,a modern work becomes a classic because it has once been authentically modern. Our sense of modernitycreates its own self-enclosedcanons of being classic. In thissense we speak, e.g., in viewof thehistory of modern art, of classical modernity.The relationbetween "modern" and "classical" has definitelylost a fixedhistorical reference. The Discipline of AestheticModernity The spiritand disciplineof aestheticmodernity assumed clear contours in the workof Baudelaire. Modernitythen unfolded in variousavant-garde movements, and finallyreached its climax in the Caf6 Voltaire of the Dadaists, and in Surrealism. Aesthetic modernityis characterizedby attitudeswhich find a commonfocus in a changedconsciousness of time. This time consciousnessexpresses itselfthrough metaphors of the van- guard and the avant-garde.The avant-gardeunderstands itself as invad- ing unknown territory,exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, of shockingencounters, conquering an as yet unoccupiedfuture. The avant- garde mustfind a directionin a landscape intowhich no one seems to have yet ventured. This content downloaded from 128.59.129.186 on Tue, 14 Jan 2014 13:17:35 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Modernityversus Postmnodernitv 5 But theseforward gropings, this anticipation of an undefinedfuture and thecult of the new, mean in fact the exaltation of the present. The new timeconsciousness, which enters philosophy in thewritings of Bergson, does morethan express the experience of mobility in society, acceleration in history,of discontinuityin everyday life. The newvalue placed on the transitory,the elusive, and theephemeral, the very celebration of dynam- ism, disclosesthe longingfor an undefiled,an immaculateand stable present. This explainsthe ratherabstract language in whichthe modernist temperhas spokenof the "past." Individualepochs lose theirdistinct forces.Historical memory is replacedby the heroic affinity of thepresent withthe extremesof history:a sense of timewherein decadence im- mediatelyrecognizes itself in thebarbaric, the wild and the primitive. We observethe anarchistic intention of blowingup thecontinuum of history, and we can accountfor it in termsof the subversiveforce of thisnew aestheticconsciousness. Modernity revolts against the normalizing func- tionsof tradition; modernity lives on theexperience of rebelling against all thatis normative.This revoltis one wayto neutralizethe standards of both,morality and utility.This aesthetic consciousness continuously stages a dialecticalplay between secrecy and publicscandal; it is addictedto the fascinationof thathorror which accompanies the act of profaning,and is yetalways in flightfrom the trivial results of profanation. On theother hand, the time consciousness articulated in avant-garde art is notsimply ahistorical; it is directedagainst what might be calleda falsenormativity in history.The modern,avant-garde spirit has sought, instead,to use the past in a differentway; it disposesover those pasts whichhave been madeavailable by the objectifying scholarship of histori- cism,but it opposes at thesame time a neutralizedhistory, which is locked up in themuseum of historicism. Drawingupon the spirit of surrealism, Walter Benjamin constructs the relationshipof modernity to history,in what I wouldcall a post-historicist attitude.He remindsus of theself-understanding of the French Revolu- tion: "The Revolutioncited ancient Rome, just as fashioncites an anti- quateddress. Fashion has a scentfor what is current,whenever this moves withinthe thicketof whatwas once." This is Benjamin'sconcept of the Jetztzeit,ofthe present as a momentof revelation; a time, in which splinters ofa messianicpresence are enmeshed.In thissense, for Robbespierre, the antiqueRome was a pastladen with momentary revelations. Now,this spirit of aesthetic modernity has recently begun to age. It has been recitedonce morein the 1960s;after the 1970s,however, we must admitto ourselvesthat this modernism arouses a muchfainter response today than it did fifteenyears ago. OctavioPaz, a fellowtraveller of modernity,noted already in themiddle of the 1960s that "the avant-garde of 1967repeats the deeds and gestures of those of 1917.We areexperienc- ingthe end of the idea ofmodern art." The workof Peter Biurger has since This content downloaded from 128.59.129.186 on Tue, 14 Jan 2014 13:17:35 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 6 Habermas taughtus
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