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: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/487859 Accessed: 21-01-2016 08:02 UTC

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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 131.170.6.51 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:02:20 UTC 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.

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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 modernityto 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 131.170.6.51 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:02:20 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 6 Habermas taughtus to speak of "post-avant-garde"art; thisterm is chosento indicate the failure of the surrealistrebellion. But, what is the meaningof this failure?Does it signal a farewellto modernity?Thinking more generally, does the existenceof a post-avant-gardemean thereis a transitionto that broader phenomenoncalled postmodernity? This is in fact how Daniel Bell, the most brilliantof the American neoconservatives,interprets matters. In his book, The CulturalContra- dictionsof Capitalism,Bell arguesthat the crises of thedeveloped societies of the West are to be traced back to a splitbetween culture and society. Modernistculture has come to penetratethe values of everydaylife; the life-worldis infectedby modernism.Because of the forcesof modernism, the principleof unlimitedself-realization, the demand forauthentic self- experienceand thesubjectivism of a hyperstimulatedsensitivity have come to be dominant.This temperamentunleashes hedonistic motives irrecon- cilable withthe disciplineof professionallife in society,Bell says. More- over, modernistculture is altogetherincompatible with the moral basis of a purposiverational conduct of life.In thismanner, Bell places theburden of responsibilityfor the dissolutionof the Protestantethic (a phenomenon which has already disturbedMax Weber), on the "adversaryculture." Culture, in its modern form,stirs up hatredagainst the conventionsand virtues of an everyday life, which has become rationalizedunder the pressuresof economic and administrativeimperatives. I would call your attentionto a complex wrinklein this view. The impulseof modernity,we are told on theother hand, is exhausted;anyone who considers himselfavant-garde can read his own death warrant.Al- thoughthe avant-gardeis stillconsidered to be expanding,it is supposedly no longer creative. Modernism is dominantbut dead. For the neocon- servative,the question then arises: how can normsarise in societywhich will limitlibertinism, reestablish the ethic of disciplineand work?What new normswill put a brake on the levellingcaused bythe social welfarestate, so that the virtues of individual competitionfor achievementcan again dominate? Bell sees a religiousrevival to be the only solution.Religious faithtied to a faithin traditionwill provide individuals with clearly defined identities,and withexistential security.

CulturalModernity and Societal Modernization

One can certainlynot conjure up by magicthe compelling beliefs which command authority.Analyses like Bell's, therefore,only result in an attitudewhich is spreadingin Germanyno less thanhere in the States: an intellectualand politicalconfrontation with the carriers of culturalmodern- ity. I cite Peter Steinfells,an observerof the new stylewhich the neocon- servativeshave imposed upon the intellectualscene in the 1970s.

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The strugglestakes the form of exposing every manifestation ofwhat could be consideredan oppositionistmentality and tracing its "logic" so as to link it to variousforms of extremism: drawing the connection between modern- ism and nihilism. . . betweengovernment regulation and totalitarianism, betweencriticism of armsexpenditures and subservienceto communism, betweenWomen's liberation or homosexualrights and thedestruction of the family. . . betweenthe Leftgenerally and terrorism,anti-semitism, and fascism.... (Steinfells,The Neoconservatives, p. 65) The ad hominemapproach and the bitternessof these intellectualaccusa- tions have also been trumpetedloudly in Germany.They should not be explained so much in termsof the psychologyof neoconservativewriters; rather, they are rooted in the analyticalweaknesses of neoconservative doctrineitself. Neoconservatism shiftsonto cultural modernismthe uncomfortable burdens of a more or less successful capitalist modernizationof the economy and society.The neoconservativedoctrine blurs the relationship between the welcomed processof societalmodernization on the one hand, and the lamentedcultural development on the other.The neoconservative does not uncoverthe economic and social causes forthe alteredattitudes towards work, consumption,achievement, and leisure. Consequently,he attributesall of the following- hedonism,the lack of social identification, the lack of obedience, narcissism,the withdrawalfrom status and achieve- mentcompetition - to the domain of "culture." In fact,however, culture is interveningin the creationof all these problemsin only a veryindirect and mediated fashion. In the neoconservativeview, those intellectualswho still feel them- selves committedto the projectof modernityare thenpresented as taking the place of those unanalyzedcauses. The mood whichfeeds neoconserv- atismtoday in no way originatesfrom the discontents about theantinomian consequences of a culturebreaking from the museumsinto the streamof ordinarylife. These discontentshave not been called intolife by modernist intellectuals.They are rooted in deep seated reactionsagainst the process of societal modernization.Under the pressuresof the dynamicsof econ- omic growthand the organizationalaccomplishments of the state, this social modernizationpenetrates deeper and deeper intoprevious forms of human existence. I would describe this subordinationof the life-worlds under system'simperatives as a matterof disturbingthe communicative infrastructureof everydaylife. Thus, for example, neo-populistprotests only bringto expressionin pointed fashiona widespreadfear regardingthe destructionof the urban and natural environment,and of formsof human sociability.There is a certain ironyabout these protestsin termsof neoconservatism.The tasks of passing on a culturaltradition, of social integration,and of socialization require the adherence to a criterionof communicativerationality. The occasions for protest and discontentoriginate exactly when spheres of

This content downloaded from 131.170.6.51 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:02:20 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 8 Habermas communicativeaction, centeredon the reproductionand transmissionof values and norms,are penetratedby a formof modernizationguided by standardsof economic and administrativerationality; however, those very spheres are dependent on quite differentstandards of rationalization- on the standards of what I would call communicativerationality. But, neoconservativedoctrines turn our attentionprecisely away fromsuch societal processes: theyproject the causes, whichthey do notbring to light, onto the plane of a subversiveculture and its advocates. To be sure, cultural modernitygenerates its own aporias as well. Independentlyfrom the consequencesof societalmodernization, and from withinthe perspective of culturaldevelopment itself, there originate mot- ives fordoubting the projectof modernity.Having dealt witha feeblekind of criticismof modernity- thatof neoconservatism- let me now move our discussionof modernityand itsdiscontents into a differentdomain that touches on these aporias of culturalmodernity, issues whichoften serve only as a pretensefor those positions(which either call fora postmodern- ity,or recommenda returnto some formof premodernityor whichthrow modernityradically overboard).

The Project of Enlightenment

The idea of modernityis intimatelytied to the developmentof Europ- ean art; but what I call "the projectof modernity"comes onlyinto focus when we dispense withthe usual concentrationupon art. Let me starta differentanalysis by recallingan idea fromMax Weber. He characterized culturalmodernity as the separationof the substantivereason expressed in religion and metaphysicsinto three autonomousspheres. They are: sci- ence, moralityand art.These came to be differentiatedbecause theunified world conceptionsof religionand metaphysicsfell apart. Since the 18th century,the problemsinherited from these older world-viewscould be re- arranged so as to fall under specificaspects of validity:truth, normative rightness,authenticity and beauty. They could then be handled as ques- tions of knowledge, or of justice and morality,or of taste. Scientific discourse,theories of morality,jurisprudence, the production and criticism of art, could in turnbe institutionalized.Each domain of culturecould be made to correspondto culturalprofessions, in whichproblems could be dealt with as the concern of special experts.This professionalizedtreat- ment of the culturaltradition brings to the forethe intrinsicstructures of each of the three dimensionsof culture.There appear the structuresof cognitive-instrumental,moral-practical, and of aesthetic-expressivera- tionality,each of these under the controlof specialistswho seem more adept at being logical in these particularways than other people are. As a result,the distancehas grownbetween the cultureof the expertsand that of the largerpublic. What accruesto culturethrough specialized treatment

This content downloaded from 131.170.6.51 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:02:20 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Modernityversus Postmodernity 9 and reflexiondoes not immediatelyand necessarilybecome theproperty of everydaypraxis. With culturalrationalization of thissort, the threatin- creases that the life-world,whose traditionalsubstance has alreadybeen devaluated, will become more and more impoverished. The projectof modernityformulated in the 18thcentury by thephiloso- phers of the Enlightenmentconsisted in theirefforts to develop objective science, universal moralityand law, and autonomous art, accordingto their inner logic. At the same time, this project intendedto release the cognitivepotentials of each of these domains to set themfree from their esoteric forms. The Enlightenmentphilosophers wanted to utilize this accumulation of specialized culturefor the enrichmentof everydaylife, thatis to say,for the rational organization of everydaysocial life. Enlightenmentthinkers of thecast of mindof Condorcetstill had the extravagantexpectation that the arts and thesciences would promote not onlythe control of natural forces, but would also furtherunderstanding of the worldand of theself, would promote moral progress, the justice of institutions,and even the happiness of human beings. The 20th century has shatteredthis optimism. The differentiationof science, morality, and art has come to meanthe autonomy of thesegments treated by the specialist and at thesame time letting them split off from the hermeneutics ofevery- day communication.This splitting off is theproblem that has given rise to thoseefforts to "negate"the culture of expertise.But theproblem won't go away:should we tryto holdon to theintentions of theEnlightenment, feebleas theymay be, or shouldwe declarethe entire project of modernity a lostcause? I nowwant to returnto theproblem of artistic culture, having explainedwhy, historically, that aesthetic modernity is a partonly of culturalmodernity in general.

The False Programsof theNegation of Culture

Greatlyoversimplifying, I would say in thehistory of modernart one can detecta trendtoward ever greater autonomy in the definitionand practiceof art. The categoryof "beauty"and the domainof beautiful objectswere first constituted in theRenaissance. In thecourse of the 18th century,literature, the fine arts and music were institutionalized as activities independentfrom sacred and courtly life. Finally, around the middle of the 19thcentury an aestheticistconception of artemerged, which encouraged theartist to producehis work according to thedistinct consciousness of art forart's sake. The autonomyof theaesthetic sphere could then become a deliberateproject: the talentedartist could lend authentic expression to thoseexperiences he hadin encountering his own de-centered subjectivity, detachedfrom the constraints of routinized cognition and everyday action. In themid-19th century, in paintingand literature,a movement began whichOctavio Paz findsepitomized already in the art criticism ofBaudelaire.

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Color, lines, sounds and movementceased to serveprimarily the cause of representation;the media of expressionand the techniquesof production themselvesbecame the aestheticobject. Theodor W. Adorno could there- forebegin hisAesthetic Theory with the following sentence: "It is now taken for grantedthat nothingwhich concerns art can be taken forgranted any more: neitherart itself,nor art in its relationshipto the whole, nor even the rightof art to exist." And this is what surrealismthen denied: das Existenzrechtder Kunstals Kunst.To be sure, surrealismwould not have challengedthe rightof art to exist,if modern art no longerhad advanced a promise of happiness concerningits own relationship"to the whole" of life. For Schiller,such a promisewas deliveredby aestheticintuition, but not fulfilledby it. Schiller'sLetters on theAesthetic Education of Man speak to us of a utopia reachingbeyond art itself.But by the timeof Baudelaire, who repeated thispromesse de bonheur,via art, the utopia of reconcilia- tion with society had gone sour. A relationof opposites had come into being; art had become a criticalmirror, showing the irreconcilablenature of the aestheticand the social world.This modernisttransformation was all the more painfullyrealized, the more art alienated itselffrom life and withdrewinto the untouchablenessof complete autonomy.Out of such emotionalcurrents finally gathered those explosive energies which unloaded themselvesin the surrealistattempt to blow up theautarkical sphere of art and to force a reconciliationof art and life. But all those attemptsto level art and life,fiction and praxis,appear- ance and realityto one plane; the attemptsto remove the distinction between artifactand object of use, between consciousstaging and spon- taneous excitement;the attemptsto declare everythingto be art and everyone to be artist,to retractall criteriaand to equate aestheticjudge- ment with the expression of subjective experiences- all these under- takings have proved themselves to be sort of nonsense experiments. These experimentshave served to bringback to life,and to illuminateall the more glaringly,exactly those structures of artwhich they were meant to dissolve. They gave a new legitimacy,as an end in itself,to appearance as the medium of fiction,to the transcendenceof the art workover society, to the concentratedand planned characterof artisticproduction as well as to the special cognitivestatus of judgementsof taste. The radical attempt to negate art has ended up ironicallyby giving due exactly to these categories throughwhich Enlightenment aesthetics had circumscribedits object domain. The surrealistswaged the most extremewarfare, but two mistakesin particulardestroyed their revolt. First, when the containersof an autonomouslydeveloped culturalsphere are shattered,the contents get dispersed.Nothing remains from a desublimatedmeaning or a destructured form;an emancipatoryeffect does not follow. Their second mistakehas more importantconsequences. In everyday communication,cognitive meanings, moral expectations, subjective expres- sions and evaluationsmust relate to one another.Communication processes

This content downloaded from 131.170.6.51 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:02:20 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Modernityversus Postmodernity 11 need a culturaltradition covering all spheres- cognitive,moral-practical and expressive. A rationalizedeveryday life, therefore,could hardlybe saved fromcultural impoverishment through breaking open a singlecultural sphere - art - and so providingaccess to just one of the specialized knowledgecomplexes. The surrealistrevolt would have replacedonly one abstraction. In the sphere of theoreticalknowledge and moralityas well, thereare parallels to thisfailed attemptof what we mightcall the false negationof culture. Only they are less pronounced. Since the days of the Young Hegelians, there has been talk about the negationof philosophy.Since Marx, the question of the relationshipof theoryand practicehas been posed. However, Marxistintellectuals joined a social movement;and only at its peripherieswere theresectarian attempts to carryout a programof the negationof philosophysimilar to the surrealistprogram to negate art. A parallel to the surrealistmistakes becomes visible in these programs when one observes the consequencesof dogmatismand of moralrigorism. A reifiedeveryday praxis can be cured only by creatingunconstrained interactionof the cognitivewith the moral-practicaland the aesthetic- expressiveelements. Reification cannot be overcomeby forcingjust one of those highlystylized cultural spheres to open up and become more acces- sible. Instead, we see under certaincircumstances a relationshipemerge between terroristicactivities and the over-extensionof any one of these spheres into other domains: exampleswould be tendenciesto aestheticize politics, or to replace politics by moral rigorismor to submitit to the dogmatismof a doctrine.These phenomenashould not lead us, however, into denouncingthe intentionsof the survivingEnlightenment tradition as intentionsrooted in a "terroristicreason." Those who lump togetherthe veryproject of modernitywith the state of consciousnessand thespectacular action of the individualterrorist are no less short-sightedthan those who would claim thatthe incomparablymore persistentand extensivebureau- cratic terrorpracticed in the dark, in the cellarsof the militaryand secret police, and in camps and institutions,is the raison d'?tre of the modern state, only because this kind of administrativeterror makes use of the coercive means of modernbureaucracies.

Alternatives

I thinkthat instead of givingup modernityand itsproject as a lostcause, we should learn fromthe mistakesof those extravagantprograms which have triedto negate modernity.Perhaps the typesof receptionof artmay offeran example whichat least indicatesthe directionof a way out. Bourgeois art had two expectationsat once fromits audiences. On the one hand, the laymanwho enjoyed art should educate himselfto become an expert. On the other hand, he should also behave as a competent

This content downloaded from 131.170.6.51 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:02:20 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 12 Habermas consumer who uses art and relates aestheticexperiences to his own life problems. This second, and seeminglyharmless, manner of experiencing art has lost its radical implications,exactly because it had a confused relation to the attitudeof being expertand professional. To be sure, artisticproduction would dryup, if it were not carriedout in the formof a specialized treatmentof autonomousproblems, and if it were to cease to be the concernof expertswho do not pay so muchatten- tion to exotericquestions. Both artistsand criticsaccept therebythe fact that such problemsfall underthe spell of what I earliercalled the "inner logic" of a cultural domain. But this sharp delineation,this exclusive concentrationon one aspect of validityalone, and the exclusionof aspects of truthand justice, breaks down as soon as aestheticexperience is drawn into an individuallife history and is absorbed intoordinary life. The recep- tion of art by the layman,or by the "everydayexpert," goes in a rather differentdirection than the receptionof art by the professionalcritic. AlbrechtWellmer has drawnmy attention to one way thatan aesthetic experience whichis not framedaround the experts'critical judgements of taste can have itssignificance altered: as soon as suchan experienceis used to illuminatea life-historicalsituation and is related to life problems,it entersinto a languagegame whichis no longerthat of the aestheticcritic. The aesthetic experience then not only renewsthe interpretationof our needs in whose lightwe perceivethe world.It permeatesas well our cogni- tive significationsand our normativeexpections and changes the manner in whichall thesemoments refer to one another.Let me givean exampleof this process. This manner of receivingand relatingto art is suggestedin the first volume of the work The Aestheticsof Resistanceby the German-Swedish writerPeter Weiss. Weiss describesthe processof reappropriatingart by presentinga group of politicallymotivated, knowledge-hungry workers in 1937 in Berlin. These were young people, who, throughan even- ing high school education, acquired the intellectualmeans to fathom the general and the social historyof European art. Out of the resilient edifice of the objective mind, embodied in worksof art whichthey saw again and again in the museumsin Berlin,they started removing their own chips of stone, which they gathered togetherand reassembled in the contextof theirown milieu.This milieuwas farremoved from that of tradi- tional education as well as fromthe then existingregime. These young workerswent back and forthbetween the edifice of European artand their own milieu untilthey were able to illuminateboth. In examples like thiswhich illustrate the reappropriationof theexpert's culture fromthe standpointof the life-world,we can discernan element which does justice to the intentionsof the hopeless surrealistrevolts, perhaps even more to Brecht'sand Benjamin's interestsin how art works, which lost theiraura, could yet be receivedin illuminatingways. In sum, the projectof modernityhas notyet been fulfilled.And the receptionof art

This content downloaded from 131.170.6.51 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:02:20 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Modernityversus Postmodernity 13 is onlyone of at leastthree of itsaspects. The projectaims at a differentiated relinkingof modernculture with an everydaypraxis that still depends on vital heritages,but would be impoverishedthrough mere traditionalism. This new connection,however, can only be establishedunder the condi- tion that societal modernizationwill also be steered in a different direction.The life-worldhas to become able to developinstitutions out of it- self whichsets limitsto the internaldynamics and to the imperativesof an almost autonomous economic systemand its administrativecomplements. If I am not mistaken,the chances for this today are not verygood. More or less in the entireWestern world, a climate has developed that furtherscapitalist modernizationprocesses as well as trends critical of cultural modernism. The disillusionmentwith the very failures of those programsthat called forthe negationof artand philosophyhas come to serve as a pretensefor conservative positions. Let me brieflydistinguish the antimodernismof the youngconservatives from the premodernismof the old conservativesand fromthe postmodernismof the neoconservatives. The Young Conservativesrecapitulate the basic experienceof aesthetic modernity.They claim as theirown the revelationsof a decenteredsubjec- tivity,emancipated from the imperativesof workand usefulness,and with this experience they step outside the modern world. On the basis of modernisticattitudes, they justify an irreconcilableanti-modernism. They remove into the sphere of the far away and the archaic the spontaneous powers of imagination,of self-experienceand of emotionality.To instru- mental reason, theyjuxtapose in manicheanfashion a principleonly acces- sible throughevocation, be it the will to power or sovereignty,Being or the dionysiacforce of the poetical. In France thisline leads fromBataille via Foucault to Derrida. The Old Conservativesdo not allow themselvesto be contaminatedby culturalmodernism. They observe the decline of substantivereason, the differentiationof science, moralityand art,the modernworld view and its merelyprocedural rationality, with sadness and recommenda withdrawal to a positionanterior to modernity. Neo-Aristotelianism,in particular,enjoys a certainsuccess today. In view of the problematicof ecology,it allows itselfto call fora cosmological ethic. As belongingto thisschool, whichorginates with Leo Strauss,one can count for example the interestingworks of Hans Jonas and Robert Spaemann. Finally, the Neoconservativeswelcome the developmentof modern science,as longas thisonly goes beyondits sphere to carryforward technical progress, capitalist growthand rational administration.Moreover, they recommenda politicsof defusingthe explosivecontent of culturalmoder- nity. According to one thesis, science, when properlyunderstood, has become irrevocablymeaningless for the orientationof the life-world.A furtherthesis is thatpolitics must be keptas faraloof as possiblefrom the demands of moral-practicaljustification. And a thirdthesis asserts the pure

This content downloaded from 131.170.6.51 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:02:20 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 14 Habermas immanenceof art, disputesthat it has a utopiancontent, and pointsto its illusorycharacter in orderto limitthe aestheticexperience to privacy.One could name here the early Wittgenstein,Carl Schmittof the middle period, and GottfriedBenn of the late period. But with the decisive confinementof science, moralityand artto autonomousspheres separated fromthe life-worldand administeredby experts,what remainsfrom the project of culturalmodernity is onlywhat we would have ifwe wereto give up the project of modernityaltogether. As a replacementone points to traditions,which, however, are held to be immuneto demandsof (norma- tive) justificationand validation. This typologyis like any other,of course, a simplification;but it may not prove totallyuseless forthe analysisof contemporaryintellectual and political confrontations.I fear that the ideas of anti-modernity,together with an additional touch of premodernity,are becomingpopular in the circles of alternativeculture. When one observes the transformationsof consciousnesswithin political parties in Germany,a new ideologicalshift (Tendenzwende)becomes visible.And thisis the allianceof postmodernists withpremodernists. It seems to me thatthere is no partyin particularthat monopolizesthe abuse of intellectualsand theposition of neoconservatism. I thereforehave good reason to be thankfulfor the liberalspirit in whichthe cityof Frankfurtoffers me a prize bearingthe name of Theodor Adorno. Adorno, a most significantson of thiscity, who as philosopherand writer has stamped the image of the intellectualin our countryin incomparable fashion; even more, who has become the veryimage of emulationfor the intellectual.

Translatedby Sevla Ben-Habib

This content downloaded from 131.170.6.51 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 08:02:20 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions