Contents
Part I
1 Literary Institution and Modernization
Rationality and irrationality of art as a sociological problem (Max Weber/Jürgen Habermas)
The institutionalization of the doctrine classique in French absolutism
The success and crisis of the Enlightenment concept of literature
The aesthetics of genius and the discovery of barbarism in art
Some analogies between the doctrine classique and the aesthetics of autonomy
The literary institution as a functional equivalent of the religious institution
2 Walter Benjamin’s ‘Redemptive Critique’: Some Preliminary Reflections on the Project of a Critical Hermeneutics
The interpretation of Benjamin in the work of Jürgen Habermas
Ideology critique and redemptive critique
The construction of a contemporary perspective
3 The Decline of Modernism
4 The Return of Analogy: Aesthetics as Vanishing Point in Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things
Part II
5 Some Reflections upon the Historico-Sociological Explanation of the
6 Morality and Society in Diderot and de Sade
On the contemporary significance of the Enlightenment
Diderot
de Sade
de Sade and the Frankfurt School
7 Naturalism, Aestheticism and the Problem of Subjectivity
Preliminary remarks
The programme of French naturalism
The consequences of the naturalist conception of literature for the development of the epic material
Aestheticism and the turn to the subject. The ‘discovery of the self’ in Maurice Barrès
Problems of the sociology of literature
8 Dissolution of the Subject and the Hardened Self: Modernity and the Avant-garde in Wyndham Lewis’s Novel Tarr
9 On the Actuality of Art: The Aesthetic in Peter Weiss’s Aesthetic of Resistance
10 Everydayness, Allegory and the Avant-garde: Some Reflections on the Work of Joseph Beuys
The aporias of either–or
The transgressor
Material allegory
The return of symbolic form
Notes
Index
This edition copyright © Polity Press 1992
Chapter 1 © Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland) 1983; also published in German as Institution Literatur und odernisierungsprozess, © Suhrkamp Verlag 1983; chapter 6 © Suhrkamp Verlag 1977; chapters 2 & 7 © Suhrkamp 1979; chapter 9 © Suhrkamp 1983; chapters 4 & 10 © Suhrkamp 1987; chapter 3 © Telos Press Ltd 1984, first published in German as Benjamins ‘rettende Kritik’: Vorüberlegungen zum Entwurf einer kritischen Hermeneutik, © Suhrkamp 1979; chapter 5 © Peter Bürger 1991; first published in German as Überlegungen zur historisch-soziologischen Eklärung der Genie-Ästhetik im 18. Jahrhundert © Carl Winter Verlag 1984; chapter 8 © Peter Bürger 1991.
First published in 1992 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers
Reprinted 2007
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ISBN: 978-0-74560-622-4
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Chapter 1 is reprinted from ‘Literary institution and modernization’, Poetics, 12 (1983), © Elsevier Science Publishers BV, by kind permission. Chapter 3 is reprinted from ‘The decline of the modern age’, Telos, 62 (1984–5), ©Telos Press Ltd, by kind permission.
Translated by the author in collaboration with a native speaker of English, this chapter is a revised version of a lecture given in April 1981 in the course ‘Theories of modernity’ organized by the Inter-University-Centre of Doubrovnik and January 1982 at the Universities of Stockholm, Göteborg and Oslo.
The title needs an explanation. I intend to refer not to the theories of modernity developed in the United States,1 but to the German sociological tradition represented by Max Weber and Jürgen Habermas. For Max Weber, the distinctive mark of capitalist societies lies in the fact that in these societies the process he calls rationalization comes to full development. This process concerns, on the one hand, the faculty to dominate things by calculation, on the other, the systematization of world-views and, finally, the elaboration of a systematic way of life.2 The principle of rationalization shapes all areas of human activity. It determines not only scientific and technical processes, but also moral decisions and the organization of everyday life. The very fact that the critical social theories of the twentieth century refer to Max Weber makes obvious that his concept of rationalism is indispensable for the analysis of capitalist society. This can be seen as well in the famous chapter on reification in Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness, as in the Dialectics of Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno, and finally in Habermas’s recent Theory of Communicative Action. Besides, we can observe that a certain type of anticapitalist opposition from Rousseau to the ecological movements of our day can be characterized by its attitude towards rationalism in the Weberian sense. If this holds true, a cultural theory concerned with the social function of art or literature must study the relationship between art or literature and rationalization. Let us briefly examine the solutions to this problem proposed by Habermas and Weber.
In his Adorno Prize Lecture, Jürgen Habermas thus defines the relation between art and modernization (thereby recalling an idea of Max Weber):
As the [religious and metaphysical] world-views dissolved and the problems inherited from these – now arranged in terms of truth, normative correctness, authenticity or beauty – could be treated as questions of knowledge, justice or taste, so a clear categorization of areas of values arose between science, morals and art [ … ]. The idea of the modern world projected in the 18th century by the philosophers of the Enlightenment consists of their efforts to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art, each according to its own inner logic. At the same time, this project intended to release the cognitive potentials of each of these domains to set them free from their esoteric forms. The Enlightenment philosophers wanted to utilize this accumulation of specialized culture for the enrichment of everyday life, that is to say, for the rational organization of everyday social life.3
This construction, continuing as it does the Kantian tradition, is fascinating in two respects: (1) The inner logic of the development of art and that of modernization are congruent. The differentiation of art as an autonomous sphere of value corresponds to that of the spheres of science and morality; (2) Habermas reconciles the autonomous development of art with the utilization of its potentials in everyday social life. But this elegant construction is not without problems. Habermas does not take into account the historical changes in the status of art, the analysis of which seems to me necessary for a complete comprehension of its actual crisis. What is more important, Habermas’s harmonistic view risks concealing the contradiction between art (institutionalized as an autonomous sphere) and rationality (as the dominant principle of bourgeois society).
As to Max Weber, he gives different interpretations of the relation between art and Western rationality. In one of his sketches of universal history, he understands art (like science and capitalist economy) as a sphere of social praxis equally defined by occidental rationalism.4 In this context, Weber cites the rational use of the arch in Gothic architecture, the organization of the tonic system in harmonic music and the linear perspective in painting. Weber apparently views as rational the development of an architectural, musical or visual system, coherent in itself, which constitutes an optimal solution to given technical problems. According to this, rationality would be set at the level of what might be called artistic material, to use the term introduced by Th. W. Adorno and Hanns Eisler. In this essay of Weber’s, art does not occupy any special position within occidental societies, but is mentioned among other spheres as an example of rationalism.
It is very interesting that Weber characterizes the position of art within modern society differently in a paragraph in Economy and Society. Above all, he now lays the stress on the opposition between the spheres of art and religion (especially the Christian spirit of fraternity). Weber discovers this opposition on the following levels: (1) the secular salvation which art claims to provide is opposed to religious salvation; (2) the application of aesthetic judgement (strictly confined to the subjectivity of the individual) to human relations contests the validity of religious norms; (3) it is just this rationalization of religion (‘the devaluation of magical, orgiastic, ecstatic and ritual elements of religion’) that brings about a devaluation of art by religion.5
On all three levels, the opposition of religion and art is interpreted as one of irrationality and rationality. Any rational religious ethic has to oppose secular irrational salvation by means of art.6 Individual aesthetic judgement applied to human behaviour calls the rationality of moral norms into question, just as, conversely, religion denounces the survival of irrational practices within the context of art, practices which religion had got rid of a long time ago. Because of its irrational character, art here opposes Christian religion. For Weber there is no doubt about the fact that ‘the systematic condemnation of any devotion to the proper values of art [ … ] must help to develop an intellectual and rational organization of everyday life’.7 In this perspective, art is not part of occidental rationalism but is radically opposed to it.
At first glance, Max Weber seems to get mixed up in an insoluble contradiction, if art is to be considered as both rational and irrational. This contradiction can probably be solved when we become aware of what precisely the two texts are about. The first text is concerned with the artistic material (and it is no coincidence here that lyric poetry has been left out); the second text, by contrast, deals with art as an institution which comes into conflict with another institution, that is to say religion. According to Weber, in this conflict religion reproaches art with its irrationality. Thus, there need not be a contradiction between the rationality of the development of artistic material and techniques and their application within the scope of an irrational institution.
This solution of the contradiction between the two Weber texts must not veil the underlying problems mentioned above: (1) during the formation of bourgeois society the status of art undergoes important changes; (2) the present crisis of art is one of its status. I want to elucidate this current problem by a historical approach. I suppose that the autonomization of art is not a unilinear process of emancipation ending in the institutionalization of a value-sphere coexisting with other spheres, but a highly contradictory process characterized not only by the acquisition of new potentials but also by the loss of others.
Before we come to the historical analysis of the changes the status of literature has undergone since the era of absolutism, we must bear in mind that we are not concerned here with individual works, but with the status of literature, that is to say with the literary institution.8 The concept of literary institution does not signify the totality of literary practices of a given period, but only the practice characterized by the following distinctive features: the literary institution serves special purposes in the social system as a whole; it develops an aesthetic code functioning as a boundary against other literary practices; it claims an unlimited validity (it is the institution which determines what in a given period is regarded as literature). The normative level is at the centre of a thus defined concept of institution, because it determines the patterns of behaviour both of the producers and the recipients. Sub-institutions of literary distribution, like theatres, publishers, cabinets de lecture or book cooperatives and so on will lose in this conception the appearance of autonomy. And they will be perceived as instances where the claim of validity imposed by the institution turns out to be accepted or refused. Thus literary debates are of great importance; they may be regarded as struggles to establish the norms of the literary institution. These debates can also represent an attempt to set up a counter-institution. We may interpret these struggles as the often contradictory expression of social conflicts.
The debate on the validity of the doctrine classique opened by the first performance of Corneille’s Le Cid (1637) marks an important step towards the establishment of the feudal–absolutist literary institution.9 The rules which constitute the yardstick of the critics of Corneille’s tragicomedy Le Cid were not yet acknowledged, neither by the majority of the playwrights nor by the public. Only because of the intervention of Richelieu and of the Académie Française, who both sided with Corneille’s critics, did the rules obtain the status of an officially recognized literary doctrine, the validity of which remained almost undisputed until the nineteenth century. In the debate on Le Cid there is, on the one hand, a socially mixed public interested in strong emotional effects, and on the other, the representatives of the doctrine classique who attempt to submit the theatre to new normative tendencies. For the public the aesthetic value of a drama is identical with the pleasure it provides and therefore cannot be rationally explained. The supporters of the classical doctrine, by contrast, have at their disposal an instrument which enables them to formulate rational judgements on the aesthetic value of a play. On the one hand, social norms function as aesthetic rules and enforce a conformity between the plot of the play and a set of social norms, which in this period were not even accepted by the aristocratic elite. The introduction of the doctrine classique thus furthers the affect-control which, according to Norbert Elias, is one of the important features of modernization.10 On the other hand, the well-known unities of action, place and time submit the plot of the plays to rationally controllable criteria. These criteria may be called rational because they can be applied to all objects of the same genre (principle of universality) and because an intersubjective consensus on their fulfilment or violation can be reached without any problems in the individual case. It is significant that the opponents of the doctrine classique are forced to agree with the judgements deduced from the rules.
The main social force promoting the new literary institution is the absolutist state. Intending to overcome the rivalry of the seigneurs, absolutism not only sets up a standing army and a centralized administration, but also tries to establish a cultural monopoly. The regulation of literary (artistic) production is supposed to provide the political system with a culture of high rank which can serve as a means of representation. Absolutism delegates the formulation and implementation of its cultural programme to the members of the bourgoisie versed in jurisprudence. It is part of the peculiarities of the institutionalization of the doctrine classique that in its beginnings – in spite of its moments of bourgeois rationality – it is not carried on by the strata of the public which may be called bourgeois. During this period, this public maintains an attitude of reception only aimed at the immediate pleasure of the performance. The absolutist state, submitting literature to political ends, fosters bourgeois rationality against the very interest of the contemporary bourgeoisie. Here, we must take note of the contradictoriness in absolutism where bourgeois and feudal moments fuse in a rather particular way. At first glance the question of whether the feudal absolutist literary institution may be called autonomous seems vain, because its dependence on the political system of absolutism, that is to say its heteronomy, cannot be ignored. But things are not as simple as they may seem. The incontestable dependence on the political system offers to the literary institution a certain (but strictly limited) scope vis-à-vis that institution with which literature has been in competition since the beginning of the process of bourgeois emancipation during the Renaissance: the church. Even as late as 1619, i.e. shortly before the coming to power of Richelieu, Vanini was publicly burned as a libertine in Toulouse, and some years later Théophile de Viau was sent to prison because of some allegedly atheistic verses. The rivalry between the literary institution and the church lasted for the whole century; it manifested itself above all in the attack of the church against the morally pernicious influence of the theatre. This attack was by no means primarily directed against the folk theatre (théâtre de la foire) and the popular genres like tragicomedy, but against high literature which, institutionally secured, claimed a cultural superiority. The more the theatre is submitted to the rules of decency – this is the argument of Nicole and Bossuet – the more it becomes tempting and thus pernicious. The conflict about the public performance of Molière’s Tartuffe may be considered the climax of the struggle between the literary institution and the church during the seventeenth century. In the same measure as the theatre goes beyond its mere function of entertainment in order to discuss moral problems, it rivals the dominance of the church. The result of this conflict is of importance for the problem of autonomy. Molière could only push through the public performance of Tartuffe with the massive support of the King. Political dependence, at least in this case, is a precondition for the possibility of literature to cope with the church as a rival institution. Indeed, the conflict is continued in the eighteenth century with undiminished violence: Voltaire takes the offensive by proclaiming ‘écrasez l’infâme’.
We can summarize as follows: the loss of validity of religious world-views is not only a process of erosion but also a result of conflicts, in which literature is fighting for its institutional autonomy. In so far as literature encourages the loss of validity of religious world-views, its evolution during the feudal absolutist era is in harmony with modernization. This can also be applied to the doctrine classique, which can be seen as the normative core of the feudal absolutist literary institution. It is characterized by the effort to submit literary production to a process of social standardization and thus literature is put under the central principle of modernity: the principle of rationality. Obviously that does not mean that emotional effects are abandoned, but their uncontrolled implementation is restricted and their calculability postulated. We must take into account the fact that rationality still remains within the framework of the feudal absolutist state, whose requirements of representation classical French literature serves. Nevertheless, we can only explain the relatively stable validity of the doctrine classique during the ascent of the bourgeoisie during the eighteenth century if we recognize the modern element of rationality in it.
The changes in the literary institution during the eighteenth century can be schematized as follows: the institutionalized genres – epic, tragedy, comedy and lyric poetry – are still under the control of the doctrine classique. Even Voltaire becomes famous as a writer of classical tragedies. But those genres which do not fall under the jurisdiction of the doctrine – aphorism, portrait, letter, dialogue, essay and, finally, the novel – become more and more important for the alternative literary practice we usually call the literature of the Enlightenment. There are at least two features which differentiate this new practice from the feudal-absolutist one: the prose form and the fusion of a didactic intention with the principle of rational critique. It is true that the doctrine classique had also submitted literature to social norms, but the rule of decency (bienséance) required only the conformity of the conduct of the persons on stage with the aristocratic norms; there were only verbal references to the prodesse in the formula of Horace. This completely changes with the Enlightenment: now, literature has not only to be in agreement with social norms, but is to infuse norms into the patterns of behaviour of the individual. As Jochen Schulte-Sasse pointed out in his studies on the early German Enlightenment, the rising manufacture and trade bourgeoisie was interested in a very elementary way in the validity of moral norms: they are an essential precondition for the functioning of the market economy.11 Thus an alternative literary practice turns into a new institution of literature: in this institution works of art serve as instruments of moral education.
No doubt it is inadmissible to reduce the literary practice of the Enlightenment to moral education only. The principles and norms conveyed to the individual by literature are first discussed in public. Literature is at the same time an instrument of moral education and a medium of political and moral discussion. The two literary institutions coexist without major friction as long as the claim to validity of the classical doctrine is not contested. This is indirectly the case when the novel claims recognition as a literary genre and directly with Diderot’s bourgeois drama. Inasmuch as they attempt a critique of the central categories of the doctrine classique, Diderot’s programmatical statements reach another level and may be interpreted as an attempt to impose the hegemony of the new literary institution. This attempt to put an end to the coexistence of poetry submitted to the doctrine classique on the one hand with Enlightenment prose submitted to the new literary institution on the other, by establishing a cultural monopoly of the rising bourgeoisie, failed.12
The literary institution of Enlightenment occupies a central position in the process of modernization. In the same measure as the norms of human interaction are no longer legitimized by the traditional authority of systems of belief, they must be worked out in discussions. And in so far as the internalization of norms is no longer exclusively assured by religious education, other modes of integration of individuals into the normative framework must be developed. Both tasks now fall to literature in the wider sense. As philosophical critique, literature examines the claim to validity of norms; as belles lettres it promotes the internalization of norms. The emotional qualities of literature, its ability to affect and to move the recipient deeply, is incorporated into a rational project to organize the achievement of a humane society. In the Enlightenment the modern capitalist bourgeoisie (in contrast to the bourgeoisie d’Ancien Régime, which remained attached to traditional patterns of behaviour) constitutes itself as the subject of history. The process of modernization thus obtains a new quality: the character of a conscious project. In so far as this occurs in literature, literature becomes a central institution of social life.
The crisis of the Enlightenment and of the corresponding concept of literature was in former times often explained as an effect of the French Revolution. This view is not totally wrong, but it traces the changes in the literary institution directly back to the political events. The critique of the dominating principle of utility is first formulated by Rousseau and taken up by K. Ph. Moritz and the authors of the Sturm und Drang. It was to become an essential basis of idealistic aesthetics and indicates that – even before the French Revolution – modernization gives rise to a certain kind of fundamental critique of bourgeois society. Though this critique is orientated at traditional ways of life (Herder and the young Goethe, for example, take up impulses from the traditionalist Justus Möser), we cannot simply classify it as traditionalist. The ardent desire for a life experienced in its totality is opposed to the principle of utility, to the submission of all spheres of life to mechanization and to the fragmentation of activities. This desire is based on experiences in traditional contexts of life, but was only to be formulated under the impact of modernization. This fundamental critique of the rationalization of social life could not be inserted into religion, because religion – as Weber and Groethuysen have proved – is involved in the process of rationalization. In addition to this, it has lost for the privileged classes its importance as an institution guaranteeing an aim in life. The literary institution of the Enlightenment does not grant any space to this kind of radical critique either; since the critique of rationality leads to a questioning of the literary institution as such. There is no doubt about the fact that critique is part of the Enlightenment, but it is based upon the very confidence in reason and in the agreement of reason with humanity. Whoever renounced this foundation, attacked the literary institution of the Enlightenment. The aesthetics of autonomy locating art in a sphere no longer submitted to theoretical or moral criteria, claims for the work of art a free space within society. In this view it constitutes a consistent answer to the crisis of the literary institution of the Enlightenment. But the autonomization of literature as art is charged with problems right from the start. This can be seen in the aesthetics of genius, which prepares the way for the new concept of autonomy.13
From the point of view of the early Enlightenment, including Voltaire, the process of civilization is a straight development (although often threatened by regression) from barbarism to civilization. Voltaire considers the literature of the ‘siècle de Louis XIV’ as an indication of the cultural level reached in his day; he does not take into account the representative function of this literature for the absolutist state, but lays the stress on the importance of a national tradition and on the rationality of the doctrine classique. It is worth noting that the rationalism of the early Enlightenment does not harmonize to such a degree with the doctrine classique as Voltaire wants us to believe. This can be seen in his controversy with La Motte, who had turned the principle of rationality against the rules, questioning the rationality of the unities of place and time and attacking in the name of probability (vraisemblance), the use of verse in tragedy. The weakness of the arguments put forward by Voltaire in his answer reveals his position as a traditional one: attack against the unities and verse is an attack against poetry in general; this is Voltaire’s argument when he claims for the classical doctrine a status beyond critique and discussion. The importance of the controversy consists in the fact that poetry and reason, which form a unity in the doctrine classique, begin to develop in different directions. There is no better witness for this process than d’Alembert’s vain attempt to reconcile them again. Dialogue entre la poésie et la philosophie pour servir de préliminaire et de base à un traité de paix et d’amitié perpétuelle entre l’une et l’autre (dialogue between poetry and philosophy in order to provide an introduction and a base to a mutual treaty of peace and eternal friendship) is the title of one of his essays where he unwittingly admits the gap between artistic sensitivity and reason. D’AIembert cannot help recognizing that there is a connection between the increase of rationality and the loss of intensity of pleasure (‘nos lumières sont presque toujours aux dépens de nos plaisirs’).14
From here it is but a step to transform into a positive quality what Voltaire abhors: barbarism. This happens in France around Diderot, in Germany in the Sturm und Drang. A comparison of Voltaire’s statements on enthusiasm and imagination in the Philosophical Dictionary with the corresponding passages of Saint-Lambert’s Encyclopedia-article Génie, makes clear the consequences of the self-critique of the Enlightenment for the literary institution. While Voltaire ridicules poetic enthusiasm and attributes only little importance to imagination for artistic creation, these two faculties constitute the core of the new concept of the poet as a genius. The rules, devaluated now as conventions, are opposed to irregularity and savageness as aesthetic qualities. Finally, the concept of genius is linked to a type of authentic perception, in opposition to the restricted sensibility of all those pursuing precisely defined aims. Here we can notice the beginning of the critique of alienation developed by Moritz and Schiller.
Appeal for an unrestricted sensibility, plea for the spontaneity of the artist, pleasure taken in works alien to the classical ideal of beauty: in the aesthetics of genius worked out in the second half of the eighteenth century, we can see the rise of an art opposed to modernization. The categories of the aesthetics of genius contain in a more or less explicit manner a critique of the principles of rationality and calculated labour. This critique is formulated in the name of a partially new revaluation of barbarism, which in Voltaire’s cultural theory was definitely attributed to the past. ‘La poésie veut quelque chose d’énorme, de barbare et de sauvage’, says Diderot.15 And more than this, he thinks that great epic and dramatic poetry can only develop in an archaic society. Poetry (the term already designates what we now call art) is brought into radical opposition to modernity (in the sociological meaning).
When we inquire about social conditions which made this new conception of poetry possible, we must remember that at least in the eighteenth century in France the aesthetics of genius is far from being dominant. Even in Diderot’s and Mercier’s writings we only find it in dispersed utterances and often mingled with other conceptions (like the didactic one). The aesthetics of genius, which separates art from rationality and prevailing moral thinking, can be regarded as corresponding to Rousseau’s critique of civilization. Thus the aesthetics of genius is part of the self-critique of the Enlightenment. The more scientific and technical development progresses, the more it reveals its contradictory character. The bourgeois subject, claiming personal autonomy, and being itself a result of modernization, opposes society as an alien object. The critique which has been concerned with traditional residues, such as dogmatic system of belief, can now turn against modernization itself. Rousseau’s thesis in his Discours sur l’inégalité says: historical progress is at the same time a process of regression; the technical and scientific progress is accompanied by a regression in human relations. The revaluation of nature (to put it more precisely: of an early state of civilization ignoring competition) is the theoretical response to an experience of suffering, resulting from the loss of traditional patterns of behaviour.16 According to Rousseau, nature is a category allowing a critique of civilization. He never believed a return to nature could be possible. The aesthetics of genius starts from Rousseau’s critique of civilization, but does not find satisfaction in its results. It intends to introduce ‘nature’ into the given society. This is only possible if one claims an exceptional status for the subject of such a natural experience. For the radicalism of its critique of modernization the aesthetics of genius has to pay a high price: binding the critique of alienation to the great individual, it abandons one of the essentials of the Enlightenment, the principle of universality. Fascinated by barbarism, it runs the risk of succumbing to legitimization of inhuman action.
It is obvious that the aesthetics of genius, as it was developed in France in the second half of the eighteenth century, contains important elements which the aesthetics of autonomy, worked out by Moritz, Kant and Schiller, could adopt. Nevertheless there is no formulation in France, between 1780 and 1815, of a coherent idealistic aesthetics. Considering the rapid success of the aesthetics of autonomy – the latter dominates the aesthetic discussions from the beginning of the nineteenth century – we need an explanation for the different development in France, above all because of the fact that the concept of autonomy was generally accepted there in the long run.
Like the aesthetics of genius, the aesthetics of autonomy sets the artist as a producer up against society. Concerning the type of making experiences, presupposed in this case, we have to take into consideration the fact that the preconditions were missing in pre-revolutionary France. In spite of the violence of the social conflicts the philosophers of the Enlightenment could justly think that they were participating in the process of social progress. And so there was no need for them to adapt and further develop the model of a radical opposition of artist and society, which the aesthetics of genius proposed. In this context Rousseau is an exception: determined by traumatic childhood experiences, he acquired a special sensitivity to the deformations of human relations conditioned by a society of competition, and he reacted to this at least as far as he himself was concerned with an acute opposition of individual and society.
When in France at the end of the eighteenth century practically no concepts of autonomy are formulated, this is, without any doubt, due to the dominance of the doctrine classique, which is not called in question even by the philosophers of the Enlightenment. This may be understood by the fact that the genres favoured by the philosophers of the Enlightenment and which we may today call operative genres are not affected by the rules. The separation of poetry and prose helps to avoid conflicts. In addition to this, there is the importance of French classical literature which gives evidence of the validity of the doctrine classique. Schiller and Goethe, who do not lack self-assurance (we only need to remember their Xenien), can only imagine the development of a German national literature in accordance with French classicism. This suggests the question of whether the doctrine classique and the aesthetics of autonomy, regarded under the aspect of institutionalization of art (poetry) in bourgeois society, represent functional equivalents. If this could be proved, we might understand the lack of an aesthetics of autonomy in France.
Now, it is not a question of finding out correspondences between the two aesthetics but only of demonstrating their functional equivalence. We may see one principle in the separation of art and life praxis. This principle is theoretically worked out in idealistic aesthetics (autonomy of an aesthetic sphere opposed to the spheres of theoretical and practical reason, as we find it in the thinking of Kant), and has the status of an aesthetic rule (produktionsästhetische Anweisung), in the doctrine classique’spostulation of idealization.17 When in popular aesthetics since the beginning of the nineteenth century in Germany the postulation of autonomy is interpreted as a rule of aesthetic production this seems to prove the assumption mentioned above. Notwithstanding the differences between the aesthetics of autonomy and doctrine classique, they serve the same function, that is to separate the work of art, as part of an ideal world, from reality.
Even with regard to the relation between art and morals, we may consider the two theories as functional equivalents. This may seem astonishing because in the doctrine classique moral norms work as aesthetic ones, while idealistic aesthetics separates explicitly the sphere of aesthetics from that of morals. This argumentation would ignore the fact that the autonomy of an aesthetic sphere is in most cases linked to the submission of the work of art to moral norms. This is as well especially true for the popular aesthetics which determine to a great extent the conception of art of the German educated bourgeoisie.
When, in the long run, even in France concepts of autonomy prevail, this may be due to the following reasons: within the doctrine classique one could not imagine any aesthetic evolution. Since it binds the aesthetic quality to the fulfilment of rules and, what is more, supposes unattainable models of aesthetic perfection, any change within the aesthetic material must be regarded as an attack on the doctrine itself. This is exactly what happened in the era of the romantic drama in France. When Victor Hugo timidly calls in question some rules of the doctrine, this appears – to himself as well as to his opponents – to be a literary revolution. At the same time he does not even dare advocate the use of prose in drama. Thus in France romanticism is brought into a fictitious opposition with classicism, unknown to such a degree in the history of literature in Germany (where Goethe is celebrated by the romantics of Jena), because idealistic aesthetics constitutes the basis for both movements.
The superiority of idealistic aesthetics vis-à-vis the doctrine classique, making it the normative framework of the literary institution in bourgeois society, may be seen in the fact that different and even opposite movements lay claim to it. To give an example: Victor Cousin, a very important propagator of idealistic aesthetics in France, to whom we owe the formulation ‘l’art pour l’art’, emphasizes the autonomy of art, while sticking on the other hand to moral effects (‘si l’art produit le perfectionnement moral, il ne le cherche pas’).18 While Cousin interprets the conception of autonomy in art in the sense of a conformity of art and dominating morals, Théophile Gautier radicalizes the postulate of autonomy in attacking (in his Mademoiselle de Maupin)the dominant sexual morals of his time. We may summarize as follows: in the long run only an aesthetics giving a contradictory definition of the relation of art and morals could normatively govern the institution of art/literature.19 This literary institution is within bourgeois society that level where its immanent contradictions are apparently solved. Not only morals and liberty but also calculation and spontaneity, rationality and its contrary are to be reconciled here. In this perspective it may be plausible to discuss three central categories of idealistic aesthetics concerning production, reception and work of art; that is to say: the artist as a genius, reception as an act of contemplation, the work of art as organic totality. I do not intend to undertake a dialectical critique of these categories; I only want to discuss the relation between this concept of art and modernity.
As we suggested above, the category of genius results from the process of modernization (that is to say it is a response to this process) and at the same time it is opposed to it (non-rational faculties and modes of behaviour as well as imagination and spontaneity are taken as positive values). It seems obvious that the two other categories are determined by the same contradiction. Contemplative immersion in the work of art means a mode of behaviour lacking rational criteria to control its success and to calculate its efficiency. This emphatic reception is more reminiscent of certain forms of appropriation of religious beliefs than of a specifically modern, rational approach. There may be something like a technique of contemplation, but there is no method which permits a verification of procedure and its success. Although the emphatic recipient can focus on every part of the object, he does not proceed systematically, with the intention of grasping all the parts in their peculiarity; his aim on the contrary is to merge in the work of art. While rational procedures of appropriation presuppose and emphasize the distance between subject and object, contemplation tends to blur it.
Studying the early formulations of the aesthetics of autonomy (especially the writings of Karl Philipp Moritz), we can see that they give an answer to experiences which have their roots in the process of modernization. The subsumption of different areas of human activity under the law of rationality and the loss of opportunities for authentic experience provoke alternative patterns of behaviour, because at the same time religious beliefs increasingly lose their credibility.20
Like the categories of genius and contemplation, the concept of the work of art as an organic totality is opposed to the principle of formal reason. The machine, not the organism, is the most advanced result of rational planning of production. Man is not able to create organisms. To consider the work of art as an organism, or an organic totality, means to separate it from the area of normal human production and to assign to it a quasi natural status. Here the categories of the organic work and the genius are linked. Only the genius is able to create objects totally different from those which can be produced by rationally planned human activity. The concept of the work of art as an organic totality as well as the two other categories must be regarded as a reaction to the increasing importance of rational patterns of action. In so far as formal reason is indifferent to moral criteria and an increasing loss of validity of religious beliefs can be observed, a need for a sphere of objects arises, which enables man to experience a meaningful world. ‘Art constitutes a sphere of independent values and functions as a means of profane salvation of everyday life and above all of the increasing pressure of theoretical and practical rationalism.’21
Our reflections suggest that the institution of art/literature in a fully developed bourgeois society may be considered as a functional equivalent of the institution of religion. The separation of this world and the other world is replaced by a corresponding separation of art and everyday life. On the basis of this opposition, the aesthetic form can be delivered from the obligation to serve certain purposes and be considered as something of independent value. It is true that works of art do not have the same status as religious texts, but as we have seen, they are not received like other products of human activity; on the contrary, they are provided with the quality of absolute originality, as products of a genius. The quasi transcendent quality of works of art demands a reception which corresponds to religious contemplation. Walter Benjamin’s concept of Aura intends to show this, as does Adorno’s critique of art-religion.22 As in former times religion, art now offers a refuge where only the privileged classes can find shelter. Far from rationally organized everyday life, a type of subjectivity is cultivated, the problematic of which – as Herbert Marcuse pointed out – consists in this separation.23
We must take into account, however, that a functional equivalence does not require the identity of its agents. In other words: we must not conclude from the functional equivalence of the institutions that art in bourgeois society is ‘nothing else’ than a substitute for religion. This conclusion would be problematic because it presupposes that works would be totally determined by the institution. But that is not the case; art in bourgeois society is based on the tension between institution and individual work.
Any attempt to define Walter Benjamin’s1 contribution to the project of critical hermeneutics today must begin by considering Habermas’s important essay on Benjamin,2 for it was Habermas who introduced into the contemporary debate the fundamental distinction between Benjamin’s ‘redemptive critique’ and the critique of ideology and thus made an essential contribution to our understanding of the unique character of Benjamin’s approach. However, it is not difficult to see that the way in which Habermas underlines the distinction between these two types of critique also decisively conflicts with the idea of trying to claim Benjamin for the cause of a critical hermeneutics. In this connection we shall have to discuss the relationship between ‘redemptive critique’ and the critique of ideology, as well as Habermas’s attempt to characterize the former as a kind of conservative critique. Finally, we shall also have to address the question as to whether the anti-evolutionary elements in Benjamin’s idea of history bring his view into conflict with hermeneutics.
Habermas begins by contrasting Herbert Marcuse’s essay ‘On the affirmative character of culture’ as an example of analysis in the style of ideology critique with Benjamin’s piece ‘The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction’. Habermas proceeds to make the following distinctions: