RomanticismandCulturalCriticism

RomanticismandCulturalCriticism

byHaukeBrunkhorst

The following ad supports maintaining our C.E.E.O.L. service

Source: PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:4/1986,pages:397415,onwww.ceeol.com.

MODERNITY, AESTHETICS AND POLITICS

ROMANTICISM AND CULTURAL CRITICISIM*

Hauke Brunkhorst To begin with, I would like to make some preliminary remarks on the methodological status of my theses and on the concept of romanticism: a) I am not primarily concerned with an empirical investigation of the historical relationship between Enlightenment and romanticism. Rather, my primary concern it conceptual clarification. Is what we usually understand by "Enlightenment" compatible or incomr,atible with our understanding of "romanticism"? These concepts are frequently used in such a way that an unbridgeable opposition between them is created. Such an understanding of romanticism and Enlightenment is historically plausible. Yet there are other explications of these concepts which are historically no less plausible, and which make is appear possible to overcome the fundamental opposition of Enlightenment and romanticism in favour of a dialectical strategy of mediation, complementation, and reciprocal correction. I will begin here with the distinction between two contradictory types of cultural criticism. The paradigm of cultural criticism I is the classical rationalism of the age of Enlightenment; the paradigm of cultural criticism I I is the explicit irrationalism of the German "critique of civilization": from Klages to Spengler; from Nietzsche to Scheler; from Othmar Spann to Carl Schmitt; from the George-circle to the Tat-circle; from the youth movement to the "ideas of 1914"; from Lebensphilosophie to "conservative revolution". We shall see that romanticism as critique of the Enlightenment and of the alienation of modern life cuts across both types of cultural criticism in a peculiar way. It resists being easily subsumed under either, and its relationship to the irrationalistic cultural criticism 11 is at least ambivalent. Here I proceed from the frequently observed fact that the history of irrationalism proper begins, in a schematic sense, only after the death of Hegel. Originally, the romantic impulse was by no means anti-rational or irrational--contrary to the way it has been read from Lukacs to Popper. As Herbert Schnadelbach concludes in his book German Philosophy 1831-1933, the history of Lebensphilosophie (which plays a paradigmatic role in cultural criticism 11 as a "metaphysics of the irrational") begins only "where 'life' as a principle is set against the principles of 'rationalism', which is by no means the case in Romanticism. It is only in Schelling's late philosophy, which originates as a counter-move against his own system of identity, and then above all in Schopenhauer's work that the critique of rationalism is transformed into a metaphysics of the irrational."l This transformation necessitates differentiations in the concept ofromanticism.
* Translated by John Cole.
Praxis International 6:4 January 1987
0260-8448 $2.00

Access via CEEOL NL Germany

398

Praxis I ntemational

It becomes clear that the actual social thrust of romanticism lies in its aesthetic and expressive modernism. To use a technical metaphor perhaps not entirely appropriate to the theme, this thrust is one of the motors of social differentiation: that is, the differentiation of art and erotics. But from this sociological point of view the rigid, fundamental opposition of romanticism and Enlightenment begins to loosen. The contrasts remain quite sharp, yet their mediation no longer seems impossible. But to this end a further conceptual differentiation becomes necessary-this time in the concept of Enlightenment. The movement of the Enlightenment was followed by the differentiation of technology and science, of law and morality; the Romantic movements were followed by a differentiation of art and erotics. The logic which comes to prevail in all areas according to the inherent principles of each operates throughout on the premise that the differentated cultural spheres of value must form their identity on their own patterns and only on their own patterns. The logic set in motion by the Enlightenment is one of objectivization and moralization of nature and society; whereas the logic unleashed by Romanticism is subjectivizing and sensitizing. Both of these logics are self-explicative, justifiable only in their own terms, and completely immanent. They represent a type of logic which renounces and breaks with all metaphysics dependent upon a transcendent source or based upon support from external authorities. As Habermas has put it, "a modernity without models, open to the future and addicted to innovation, can produce its standards only out of itself."2 That is what finally unites Enlightenment and romanticism, for all their differences. b) I would like to make one more preliminary remark on the concept of "romanticism". The attempt to come up with an operational definition is futile. We must be satisfied with what Wittgenstein called "family resemblances" or at best, perhaps, necessary (but not sufficient) conditions. In any case, the counterpart of romanticism is not "Enlightenment" but "classicism". As Mario Praz remarks in the introduction to his book on black romanticism, The Romantic Agony, such terms
are approximate labels which have long been in use. The philosopher solemnly dismisses them, exorcizing them with unerring logic; but they quietly slip back in and obtrude themselves--elusive, tiresome, but indispensable. The literary historian tries to give them their proper status, their rank and fixed definition; but at the end of all his laborious efforts he discovers that he has been treating shadows as though they were solid substance. Like so many other words in daily usage, these approximate terms have their value and fulfill a useful role, provided that they are treated as what they are-namely, approximate termsand that what they cannot give is not expected of them . . . They are empirical categories, whose fictitious character can easily be demonstrated. But if the proof that they are relatively arbitrary leads us to dispense with their services, then I do not see that literary history would benefit by it. 3

Let us begin our discussion of romanticism and cultural criticism with a schematic diagnosis of the contemporary scene. My first point concerns (1) the contemporary relevance of Georg Lukacs' thesis on the "destruction of reason". The differentiations in the concept of romanticism which emerge from the

Praxis International

399

discussion of Lukacs then serve to call to mind (2) the modernism of romanticism. As a third step, I will deal with the developmental logic of romantic modernism: that is, with (3) the differentiation of art and erotics, as a result of which a new one-sidedness and new exclusive claims to absolute validity and totality originate. Out of these (4) paradoxes ofromantic modernism grows the pathological fundamental opposition of Enlightenment and romanticism, from which we will be saved in the end-if all goes well!-by the dialectical strategy of a (5) corrective complementation of Enlightenment and romanticism. Whether such a mediation can actually be worked out is an open, practical question. The issue here is to consider whether it is theoretically possible. Let us begin, then, with a diagnosis of the contemporary scene.

1.

The Contemporary Relevance of Lukacs

For those who are still committed to Enlightenment and who believe that critique can draw its strength from the utopian potential of Western rationalism, the formula for denouncing the spirit of the times lies close to hand: the straggling remains of dialectical reason, once a proud avant-garde on the broad march route of progress, have been caught between the fronts of neo-conservatism and neo-romanticism and are being ground down. If the utopian vision of the neo-conservatives has been blinded, then that of the neo-romantics has sunken into itself and faces backwards-in an inward, imploring longing for undestroyed nature and original wholeness. Thus neo-conservatives and neo-romantics carve up among themselves the business of the destruction of reason. It suddenly seems that Lukcics has once again become relevant for critical intellectuals, to whom he had seemed utterly superseded by the Dialectic ofEnlightenment. Relevant, at least, is the thesis of his book, as summed up in its title: The Destruction of Reason. And so is the dichotomy of rationalism and irrationalism, which separates good from evil. Of course, the thesis is very general and the dichotomy an oversimplification. They are also burdened from the outset with overly strong value judgements which, one may suspect, presume the validity of a highly speculative philosophy of history. Nevertheless, Lukacs' thesis is quite plausible for the development of the conservative counter-revolution against the "ideas of 1789" in the period following Hegel's death. Toward the end of the nineteenth century lateromantic, lebensphilosophische, and existential anti-rationalism became the leading intellectual currents and thus a formative influence on the pre-fascist educated elites. In Germany, these tendencies first culminated in the "ideas of 1914", continued later in the so-called "conservative revolution", the "revolt of the middle classes" (Kracauer), and finally ended in the "national awakening" of 1933. Nor are the tendencies of our own times suited to refute the old thesis of the destruction of reason. On the contrary: the development from the cultural criticsm of the 1960's to that of the 1980's has followed a line from utopian rationalism to profound skepticism about reason. Growing

400

Praxis International

obscurantism and irrationalism: these are the signs of the times. They lead backward from rational cultural criticism to a rather irrational critique of civilization. In most, if not all, cases a rationalistic cultural criticism has a utopian orientation toward the progress of Enlightenment, demystification, demythologization, and a "receding of natural barriers" (Marx). It is politically universalistic, socially egalitarian and inclusive; as critique, it is cognitivistic and moralistic. Let us call this ideal-typical version of cultural criticism: cultural criticism I. Its counterpart is cultural criticism 11: on the whole, this is an irrationalistic critique of civilization which links the contradiction of culture and civilization to a negative historical metaphysics of cultural decay. Cultural criticism 11 is politically particularistic, socially exclusive, and oriented toward critical standards which are primarily aesthetic and expressive. (Cf. Figure 1)
standards of evaluative criticism cultural criticism I cultural criticism
cognitive

social
inclusive

political
universalistic

historical
progressive

ontological
culture vs. nature culture vs. civilization

expressive

exclusive particularistic

regressive

11

Figure 1
The romantic protest against modern alienation and the objectivism of science has often been identified with cultural criticism 11, for example by Lukacs, Russell, and Popper,4 above all because romantic criticism is oriented toward aesthetic and expressive standards. Romanticism is seen as a regressive reaction to the process of modernization; that is, romanticism is seen as irrationalism. The irrationalism thesis identifies the dichotomy of cultural criticism I and 11 with the fundamental opposition between Enlightenment and romanticism. It is usually supplemented with a historical continuity thesis: the suggestive construction of an almost unbroken continuum of development in the history of ideas from Romanticism (1800) via the irrationalistic critique of civilization (1900) to fascism (1933)-and then, at will, on into the "green"-alternative fundamental opposition and the West German peace movement of our own time. But this interpretation fails to take account of the well-analyzed, specific, and radical modernism of romanticism. The conceptual equipment of a rigid dichotomy between rationalism and irrationalism, or between cultural criticism I and cultural criticism 11, cannot do justice to this aspect ofromanticism and bring it into play. Such dichotomies distort our view of the dialectic of Enlightenment and romanticism. Cultural criticism 11 is romantic only in the sense of a dogmatized version ofromantic thought which perverts it into a degraded metaphysics ofhistory.

Praxis International

401

Against the irrationalism thesis, which equates romanticism with cultural criticism 11, I would like to argue for a position which agrees with the emphasis on the modernism of romanticism and takes it even further: that the romantic impulse includes a socially significant potential for rationalization. This position is also opposed to the continuity thesis. The transformation of romantic motives into irrationalistic cultural criticism-via which it passed into the hands of the fascists--is not the sole imaginable pattern of development. It is a borderline case (and certainly the most momentous), the most extreme possibility of development which can be reconstructed with any plausibility. That it actually won out was due to the seemingly paradoxical circumstance that romantic modernism, and with it the rational potential of romanticism, remained socially ineffective. Incidentally, this thesis (which I cannot go into more closely here)5 was represented by Talcott Parsons from the 1940's onwards. According to Parsons, "romantic elements are inherent in the nature of modern societies."6 Thus Parsons accounts for the development of German fascism partly in terms of a degeneration and twisting of the romantic impulse into its opposite. This meant a peculiar masculinization of romanticism, whose causes Parsons saw in peculiarities of German history, and quite similar to those cultural and structural lags analyzed around the same time by Plessner and Lukacs, and long before by Heine, Marx, and Engels and then later by Dahrendorf and Ringer, among others. Precisely the model of romantic love, whose inclusive, universalistic tendency to break up social stratification is characteristic of all Western societies, has remained ineffective in this case. Far into the twentieth century, intimate relations remain oriented toward pre-modern, feudal models. Under these circumstances the Nazis managed "to mobilize the deeply-rooted romantic tendencies in German society in the service of one of the most aggressive political movements."7 As Parsons points out, it seems that the "inclination to a romantic idealization of the youth model ... is characteristic of modern Western society as a whole." Yet in Germany, the one-sided masculinization of romanticism in the ideal of the warrior-hero led to the dominance of a model which "corresponded" to the quasi-feudal, pre-modern "separation of sex-roles in Germany: a model which idealizes the man in that role for which the woman is traditionally least suited, the role of the fighter." '''Comradeship' in a sense very close to that of soldiers in the field was emphasized from the beginning as the ideal social relationship in the strongest possible way. By way of contrast, in American youth culture and its image as romanticized by adults, the relationship between the sexes stands much more clearly in the foreground . . . The dominant model was always the idealization of the isolated, romanticized couple. Certainly among radical youth there were certain tendencies to a political orientation, yet in these cases there was a complete lack of emphasis on solidarity with members of the same sex. Instead, the tendency was much more to completely ignore differences of sex by means of an interest in common ideals. "8 Such a non-reactionary politicization of romantic motives throughout the Western world took place spectacularly and on a broad scale-and in Germany for the first time - in the course of the student protest movements of the 1960's.

402

Praxis International

Let me summarize the theses of the first section. First, the irrationalism thesis equates romanticism with cultural criticism 11; second, within the framework of German history, a continuity thesis is then deduced: from Romanticism (1800), via the critique of civilization (1900), to fascism (1933). Against these two theses I would like to make a case for the modernism thesis, which will be discussed in more detail in the following section.

2. The Modernism of Romanticism

The continuity thesis draws its power of suggestion from the identification of the aesthetic and expressive modernism of romanticism, which can scarcely be disputed, with the politically regressive longing for original wholenesswhether in the form of an archaic, mythological unity with nature or of a "spiritually-fired theocracy" with redeemer, leader, and following. 9 A conservative political utopianism has undoubtedly shaped the self-image of many romantics and many aestheticiansof modernism, at least in their pious or neo-pagan late phases. Among the romantics such turns have only too often resulted from fright in the face of their own modernism, a fear "of the indefinite monstrosity of their own purposes" (Marx). Nevertheless, we must draw a sharp sociological distinction between the motley variety of the romantics' self-interpretations and the modernistic, aesthetic and expressive impulse of romanticism. In the process of social differentiation, this impulse is largely independent and has often been objectively effective against the resistance of changing self-interpretations. Indeed, the insurmountable breach between aesthetic-expressive practice and socio-political practice is precisely the objective contradiction of romanticism itself. Thus the Romantics' love-hate relationship to Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, which had become the aesthetic symbol of the affirmative idea of an ascetic-realistic unity of art and life-as the Romantics saw it, unattainably and for the last time. This very unity is destroyed by the aesthetic modernism of romanticism. In transforming affirmative aesthetic utopias into the intermittent utopia of the aesthetic instant, aesthetic modernism explodes the continuum of past and future. It becomes a rebellion against the "male gang of economy, science, and politics", against the normative and ethical ordering of life, against reality itself: the dissolution of all relations to the world, "self-dissolution", "self-illumination" (Karl-Heinz Bohrer).lo From Giinderode and Brentano to Benjamin and Adorno
The only spiritual communication between the objective system and subjective experience is the explosion which tears them from each other, illuminating for a split second with its blast of flame the figure which they form together. 11

Since the days of early Romanticism, the tendency which led first to art-for-art's-sake and then to Surrealism has been clear: the total "de-realizing of the real" (Sartre),12 the transformation of reality into fantasy and dream,

Praxis International

403

into mere appearance; the absolutizing of the New into a point without extension, a literally timeless instant. The essence of the romantic, according to Mario Praz, consists
in that which cannot be uttered. Word and form, says Schlegel in Lucinde, are only accessories. The Romantic exalts the artist who does not give material form to his dreams: the poet ecstatic before a page which forever remains blank, the musician who listens in on the prodigious concerts in his soul without attempting to translate them into notes. How often has the enchantment of the ineffable been celebrated: from Keats' verse-"Melodies heard are sweet, but those unheard/Are sweeter"-to Maeterlinck's theory that silence is more musical than any sound! 13

And Baudelaire notes: "What does an eternity of damnation mean to one who has experienced the infinity of pleasure in a second?,,14 There is, then, an aestheticist version of romanticism-let us call it version I-which came into its own in art-for-art's-sake and in Surrealism, and was conceptually formulated by Nietzsche and Benjamin. We can only do justice to the aesthetic modernism of romanticism if we strictly distinguish this aestheticist version of romanticism, version I, from its historical-metaphysical decay form (version 11), which ultimately leads to cultural criticism 11. Only the modernistic version I of romanticism has become effective as a driving force in the process of social differentiation. Of course, we should not be too quick to condemn version 11. A longing for wholeness in view of the "atomism" and "division" (Hegel) of the modern world, expressed in an aesthetically-sensitized subjective experience, is not always irrational and politically conservative. We can distinguish between the ideal types of a utopian-rationalistic version (II a) and its regressive-irrationalistic counterpart (version lIb). Only version lIb resembles the irrationalistic critique of civilization (i.e. cultural criticism 11). The paradigm of version Ila is the Oldest System-Program of German Idealism (Hegel, Holderlin, Schelling), which, in an entirely rationalistic fashion, places poetry and the aesthetic at the center of social integration construed in the utopian form of a "mythology of reason". Here, wholeness is not a regressive fantasy of fusion but is seen as dialectical, proceeding through alienation and difference. Nevertheless, it seems no accident that no program of research has followed this paradigm. Aside from the early Schelling, there have only been isolated attempts to pursue it scientifically or philosophically-above all in the much later interpretation of Freud by Herbert Marcuse, and recently in Manfred Frank's attempts to build bridges between transcendental hermeneutics and post-structuralism. In any case, solid foundations for cashing in on the comprehensive socio-theoretical claims of the Oldest System-Program are nowhere in sight. Prima facie, the program is implausible: the illocutionary binding force of the aesthetic is obviously weaker than that of the normative. This is particularly true under the conditions of aesthetic modernity: the utopia of the aesthetic state pales in view of the detachment of the aesthetic realm from that of the normative, which was instituted by romanticism. The idea of social integration through the medium of poetry becomes abstract insofar as the aesthetic by now represents just the contrary: an explosive force

404

Praxis International

in the structure of social normality, and as such is a destructive force of social differentiation. In this respect, the new, aesthetically-construed "mythology of reason" does not really represent a historically promising alternative to the aesthetic modernism of romanticism (version I). Whether in its likeable, progressive form or in its repugnant, reactionary form, romanticism in version 11 represents the attempt to shift the modernism of romanticism I back into the framework of an integrative, most often "bad" metaphysics. Only this relapse into the times of integral world-views, times which are irretrievably gone and in fact no longer desirable at all, makes it possible to exalt and transfigure the aesthetic into a socially-integrative force. But such an affirmative transfiguration is completely foreign to the aesthetic modernism of romanticism. That, in my opinion, is the most important message of Adorno's aesthetics. The socially-integrative transfiguration of the aesthetic is profoundly conservative. 15 Perhaps it is this conservatism, this reflex against "fright in face of the indeterminate monstrosity of one's own goals", which time and again has driven so many of the Romantics, along with Nietzsche, Bataille, and Heidegger, into an ideological and philosophical mystification of the specifically aesthetic-a step which Adorno and Benjamin resisted taking. In any case, we can define romanticism in versions IIa and b as the attempt to reconcile version I with the socially-integrative binding forces of a long-decayed metaphysics, and thereby to renew the affirmative character of culture (Marcuse) on the level of aesthetic modernism. The diagram summarizes the distinctions which have been reached so far:

Romanticism version I
aesthetic and expressive modernism

version 11
aestheticism integrated through a metaphysics of history

version IIa
utopianrationalistic

version lIb
regressiveirrationalistic (and cultural criticism 11)

Figure 2
These distinctions form the basis for the (3) modernism thesis: the rationalizing potential of romanticism I becomes manifest in a social-evolutionary fashion in the differentiation of art and erotics. This is the subject of part 3.

Praxis International

405

3. The Differentiation of Art and Erotics Romanticism is by no means a merely passive reaction to modernizing impulses set loose elsewhere. Rather, in its characteristic response to Enlightenment and classicism, it develops a modernity of its own and becomes a forward-driving element in the modernizing process: as innovative as science, bent on the New, it makes past experiences obsolete, shatters traditional dogmas, and sets anti-traditional accents by doing just as the sciences do-by radicalizing questions of validity and detaching them from traditional frames of reference. To the extent that such common characteristics of science and romanticism can be termed "rational", a rational potential emerges in romantic and aesthetic modernism as well. Of course, romantic motives analogous to those of Enlightenment and science work themselves out in other realms: not in politics and the economy, research and technology, but rather in art and in love. In these areas, romanticism and aestheticism convincingly refute the imperialism of the Enlightenment's cognitive and moral claims. Such a restriction of the specifically aesthetic and expressive to the areas proper to them-art and erotics-may not make romantic art and romantic love more rational than their pre-modern predecessors. But romanticism does show that the encroachment of religion and tradition upon art and love is just as inappropriate as that of Enlightenment and science. And such a well-founded refutation or relativization of inappropriate claims can be considered rational. This has two implications: first; in this way, the aesthetic and expressive modernism of romanticism indirectly brings forth a rational potential. But second, modernization and rationalization produce new divisions, "ruptures", and "collisions" (Hegel); they run up against limits, which can eventually lead to paradoxical, self-destructive consequences. First: the differentiation of art and erotics as autonomous realms was set in motion, at the latest, by romanticism and then further radicalized by aestheticism. It has separated the cultural specificity of these realms from each other, but above all from other "spheres of value" in society: from economy and politics, from estate and class, from law and morality, from science and technology. The proponents of Enlightenment and science have produced reflexive formulae ofautonomy for the realm of the economy ("profit-for-profit's sake"-Ricardo/Marx; "commodity production by means of commodities"(Sraffa) or for science ("value-free science"-Max Weber). Romanticism and aestheticism have likewise developed similar reflexive formulae for the autonomy of art and erotics. The principle of "art-for-art's sake", propagated by Gautier, Elaubert, and Baudelaire against the binding of art to utility and morality, was prepared by Romanticism through the stress upon reflexive forms (art criticism as completion or continuation of the work of art; the Kunstlerroman; techniques such as the "deceived deception"), as well as through experimental anticlassicism and open anti-moralism (the beauty of crime; black romanticism; the aesthetic of the unconscious, the grotesque, the paradoxical; the flowers of evil). As Enzensberger has shown, Clemens Brentano's poetics is already suffused with modernistic "shocks" and the "distortion" of traditional poetic

406

Praxis International

and religious models. 16 Diderot was one of the first to anchor the autonomy of the aesthetic sphere in the anti-moralism of the beautiful. For Diderot "evil" has already become an "aesthetic category" (Karl-Heinz Bohrer):17 "Whatever injures moral beauty almost always doubles poetic beauty.,,18 Similarly in love: Jean Paul proclaims the slogan of romantic love, unrestricted by any traditional bonds or instrumental considerations. "Lovefor-Iove's-sake" marks off the sphere of personal relations from all others which are "nonpersonal": "All love loves only love; it is its own object." (Levana) For Friedrich Schlegel, the beautiful is "distinct from the true and the ethical ... and (has) rights equal to these" (Athenaeum Fragment 252). But this legal claim is also a claim to rationality. It expresses a reasonable insight because it negates the applicability of moral categories to aesthetic or erotic objects-consider, for example, Schlegel's Lucinde. As objects of sensitive subjective experience, these are of a different kind than objects of moral judgement or instrumental manipulation. The claim to autonomy made by art and love is rational in the sense that it exposes and corrects a category mistake. As the aestheticians of modernism have argued since the days of early Romanticism, moral reservations are impermissible on categorial grounds within the precincts of subjective self-realization. Duties against oneself, meant to fetter this realm with normative shackles, are invalid. This is the entirely rational point in the romantic celebration of suicide or in the discovery of evil as an aesthetic category. The concept of evil, ironically estranged from its own context and stylized into an aesthetic category, loses its specifically normative sense and serves the unmasking of a category mistake. Scandal, which stages evil in the realm of aesthetic appearances, exposes the imperialistic flourish of moralizing pathos as an excessive, empty gesture. Hegel, in his Aesthetics,19 defines the specific modernism of romantically radicalized aesthetic and erotic experience as the "inward infinity of the subject": "In classical art, love does not appear as a subjective inwardness of sensation." What is new in romantic love is "this seizing hold of the whole of one's existence", "utter randomness", "the arbitrariness of subjectivity." Like modern art, romantic love brings "subjectivity as such" into its own; it destroys the space-time continuum of the existing world and shines forth as an instantaneous utopia "which has neither extension nor generality", which builds upon nothing and edifies no one. Bound up with the differentiation of art and erotics is a radicalization of questions of validity, a clear tendency toward the principalization of themes. This is quite analogous to modern science, which also radicalizes questions of truth-by allowing in principle only statements which are generally defensible and susceptible of examination, and by seeking to substantiate the truth without regard to whether it is beautiful or ugly, good or evil. In analogous fashion, romantic love radicalizes questions of sincerity and candor in personal relations. Whether love is true is ultimately determined neither by the paternal will nor by the correct ceremony or marriage certificate; in the end, only the lovers themselves know. In the "willfulness" of romantic love, which "gives absolute preference to

Praxis International

407

one and one only, each and every time", Hegel as a conservative aesthetic theorist criticizes the moments of "obstinacy" and "particularity". But at the same time, he is also enough of a modernist, inspired by his philosophy of history, to give an emphatic defense of the new, post-traditional standard of validity in love. For in its new foundation of validity, romantic love "acknowledges the higher freedom of subjectivity and its absolute choice-the freedom not merely to be subjected to a pathos or a divinity, like Euripides' Phaedra." Second: This development of enlightened and romanticized spheres of value is by no means without its risks. It produces and intensifies tensions between the spheres. The radicalized validity claims posed by the specificity of a given area are at once universal and one-sided-with the result that each makes claims to totality which exclude the totality claims of the others; that is, each tends to exclude the others. Thus, for example, in principle everything and anything can become the object of scientific research: for the purposes of science, no areas are exempted from the scientific search for truth. Whereas for every other way of considering the world, science is blind (i.e. one-sided), from within the perspective of science aesthetic, religious, or moral considerations of the same world are utterly senseless'. To the extent that they have nothing to say on the question of truth, they are scientifically worthless. And vice-versa: the aesthetic orientation toward the world, which has been radicalized time and again since the Romantic movement, means that everything, any object, "the many" (Adorno), however trivial and "low", can become the object of aesthetic experience-from Blake's famous grain of sand to Beuys' honey pump. Arthur C. Danto has reduced this to the formula of the "transfiguration of the commonplace" in his book of the same title; Gouldner even speaks of a romantic "democratization of reality": "The 'classical' view of the world had shut out certain enclaves of reality, whose neglect seemed without any hesitation to be justified. From the romantic point of view, the insignificance of such things was due to a lack of imaginative power; reality was democratized.,,20 And Mario Praz cites Flaubert-"There is poetry hidden everywhere and in everything"-in order to stress that since romanticism "even things which are commonly seen as low and repugnant can serve as the material of beauty and poetry."21 But here, too, the post-classical, inclusive tendency corresponds to anew, secondary exclusivity: the radical devaluation of the instrumental and technical, the utilitarian, and finally even the religious and ethical orientations to the world. The scientific and the romantic-aesthetic experience of the world come to seem irreconcilable. Apparently there are tensions built into the very logic of differentiation: tensions connected with cultural one-sidedness and secondary exclusivity, which can produce a fundamentalistic rivalry among the differentiated spheres of value. (Think of Weber's polytheism of values, the "eternal struggle" between "ultimate orientations" to life.) In the course of this rivalry the questions, perspectives, orientations, and goals of each area become increasingly incomprehensible to the others-and thus senseless and devaluated.

408

Praxis International

As Hegel already saw, the specifically modern trait of romantic love drives it toward "collisions" with "family life, political organization, the citizenry, the law, justice, mores, and so on." "On account of theses ruptures, the purposes of love cannot be carried out in concrete reality without leading to collisions, for alongside love the various other spheres of life claim their rights and may thereby infringe on its absolute sovereignty. "22 What Hegel refers to here as "absolute sovereignty" is what I have called secondary exclusivity, the self-destructive totality claims of particularized spheres of value against one another: "Reason splits itself into a plurality of spheres of value, destroying its own universality. "23 Such consequences emerge clearly in yet another respect: in the relationship of the differentiated spheres of validity to everyday social life. Here, too, there arise novel problems in communication which can lead to the loss and destruction of meaning. The language of lovers becomes idiosyncratic and decays into family pathologies, ending up as double-bind and schizophrenic communication. Having a true identity to express becomes part of Foucault's threatening dispositifs of control and invisible but universal power relations. No one understands the provocations of the artistic avant-garde any more. Scientific research shrinks into senseless specialization, counting amoebas in an aqarium, and the radicalism of moral convictions has terroristic consequences. As the differentiated spheres of value gradually shut themselves off from each other, perplexity begins to spread and it becomes unlikely that the army of social repair brigades-therapists and art teachers, social workers and university instructors-will have much more impact than the earnest panel discussions conducted on television. To summarize the modernity thesis (3): 1. Romanticism in version I is the cultural driving-force in the differentiation of art and erotics. The realms of the aesthetic and of intimate relations separate themselves off from the pre-modern cultural totality according to their own, inherent spheres of value. In this they set out by following the models of romantic art and romantic love. 2. From these models a rational potential emerges in their socio-evolutionary development. This can be seen in three respects: a) in the rejection of categorially inappropriate claims made on art and love-first by tradition and religion, then by Enlightenment and science. The reflexive formulae of autonomy are meant to expose all claims originating outside a given sphere as category mistakes, which fail to address what is really at stake; b) in the tendency to radicalize and principalize questions of validity, the standards proper to these spheres become clear: subjective concern and authenticity, sensibility and candor. (The value of "authentic expression", as Taylor calls it); c) in the inclusive tendency to draw in "the many", Romantic art and Romantic love blast open the classical hierarchies of reality, the evaluative gradation of being; they transcend all traditional class barriers and social stratification.

Praxis International
3.

409

At the same time, the development of autonomous spheres of. value produces new perils by releasing new potentials of rationality through cultural differentiation: secondary exclusivities and absolutistic claims to totality on the part of the particular spheres shift the achieved gains into the twilight of the dialectic of Enlightenment. This leads us to consider point 4: the paradoxes of romantic modernism.

4. The Paradoxes of Romantic Modernism

All cultural protest movements whose crItIque of the Enlightenment's secondary-exclusive partialities--instrumentalism, objectivism, and reificationis brought to bear modernistically are romantic. That is, they proceed from the perspective of sensitized self-experience, which follows from the principalization and differentiation of art and erotics into autonomous, self-referential spheres of action. But the modernistic radicalization of aesthetic and erotic experience embodied in autonomous art and romantic love also destroys meaning. At the outset, their effects are quite similar to those of the phenomena they criticize-scientific-technical Enlightenment and the differentiation of economy and science, law and morality. They respond to the Enlightenment's secondary-exclusive partialities at the price of creating further exclusive partialities. This is the paradox of romantic modernism. Romanticism, which begins as a critique of the instrumentalistic destruction of traditional meanings, itself becomes an expressivistic destruction of traditional meanings. The Romantic critique of the devastation of culture becomes possible through a shift of perspective-from instrumental to expressive, from objective to subjective modernity-at the price of a further round of devastation. From "love as passion" on down to "love as problem:"24the outcomes are circular discourse, empty activity, schizophrenia and the family, the endless quest for selffulfillment and fulfilled meaning, spontaneity as a program. Such dramatic possibilities of development were envisioned by Max Weber in his well-known vision of a grimly swaggering "nothingness", parading as the pinnacle of "humanity" at the post-modern endpoint of modern cultural development: "specialists without spirit, dilettantes without heart"; or, as Hegel put it, "empty breadth" and "empty depth". The discovery of such paradoxical developmental perspectives throws a harsh light on the profound ambiguity of romantic modernism ill two respects. On the one hand, the differentiation of art and erotics asserts motifs from the romantic critique of reification: longings for fulfilled expression; for a nature which "speaks" meaningfully and "returns our gaze"; for origins beyond the original sin of instrumentalism; for subjective meaning and collective orientation. This takes place along the entire romantic spectrum, in all three versions (I, Ila and lIb). And thereby romantic modernism edges bewilderingly close to the conservative or reactionary fundamental opposition to modern culture and its utopian rationalism. This is why the road which leads from a "refusal to equate modernity with reification" (Gouldner),25 which at first was by no means irrational (romanticism in versions I and Ila),

410

Praxis International

back to a conservative anti-modernism (romanticism in version lIb and cultural criticism 11) was often not long-above all, when it was paved with one's own class interests. On the other hand, the motives which underlie the romantic critique of reification are not identifiable as rational in quite the same way as those in technology, economy, and science-the traditional domains of the purposiverational model of action. The dominance of the positivist myth which equates rationality with instrumental rationality makes it difficult to recognize the rational motives which distinguish the authentic expression of our subjectivity from its pathological distortion. The result has been the irrationalistic self-misunderstanding which has lurked in cultural criticism 11 since the days of early Romanticism. This phenomenon has been justly criticized in Nietzsche by observers from Lukacs to Habermas: Nietzsche deceives himself about the "rational moment" which lies "in the specificity of the radically differentiated realm of avant-garde art." He constantly tries to push this moment off into the "metaphysically transfigured irrational." His critique of reason, which absolutizes the aesthetic point of view, possesses "a certain suggestiveness" only because of its implicit, relative rationality. Nietzsche appeals "at least implicitly to standards . . . which derive from the basic experiences of aesthetic modernity." He "enthrones taste, the 'Yes and No of the palate', as the organ of knowledge beyond true and false, beyond good and evil. But he cannot legitimate the standards of aesthetic judgement he retains: because he transposes aesthetic experience into the archaic; and because he will not acknowledge that the faculty of valuation, sharpened in dealing with modern art, is an aspect of reason, still linked to objectivizing knowledge and moral insight in the process of discursive substantiation.,,26 To bring the motives of the romantic critique of reification to bear rationally aginst a merely partial, secondary-exclusive rationality is an indispensable methodological step away from skepticism in reason, which in turn leads to irrationalism. It leads instead via the romantic paradoxes to the dialectic of Enlightenment-that is, to the unabridged rationality of Enlightenment. Rationality so understood can prove itself only in the dissolution of instrumentalistic partialities and secondary exclusivities, never in a mere break in perspectives, a fundamentalistic jump from one dogmatic partiality to the next. Gouldner: "To the extent that romanticism strives to replace (instead of complement) enlightening objectivism with a modernity founded in subjective experience, it becomes prone to irrationalism and antiintellectualism. "27 The border which separates reason from irrationalism runs between the strategies of complementation and replacement. That is the only reasonable conclusion which we can draw from the paradoxes of romantic modernism: the idea of a dialectical mediation or, to dispense with the Hegelian vocabulary, a reciprocally corrective complementation of Enlightenment and romanticism. 5. Enlightenment and Romanticism
This brings us to the final point. There is an alternative to the fundamental

Praxis International

411

oppostion of Enlightenment and romanticism: it is the idea of their mediation. Mediation means complementation, reciprocal correction of the extremes through the extremes, without falling back beneath the level of the "great partialities which constitute the signature of the modern".28 What must be superseded is not the partiality of spheres of value, their extremism, but rather their absolutization-their secondary exclusivity. The romantic impulse, in its aesthetically and expressively radicalized modernism, becomes productive as a "critique . . . of a rationality which has become an absolute", as Adorno says in his Aesthetic Theory. Dialectic so understood pursues the practical goal of dissolving the ''false identities" of the modern world, whose malady is based on the fact that "they set up something conditioned as absolute, in everyday life as in philosophy."29 "Mediation" and "dialectic" in the sense intended here-as a methodical strategy of complementation-must be distinguished from two other readings of these concepts: from the neo-aristotelian concepts of a Geisteswissenschaft shorn of transcendental speculation, as well as from the orthodox, transcendental concepts of "mediation" and "dialectic" embedded in a speculative philosophy of history. In the first of these, the neo-aristotelian, geisteswissenschaftliche reading (Ritter school), mediation shrivels into the Aristotelian category of the mean, if not into compromise and bargaining; dialectic becomes cleverness, phronesis, closed hermeneutics, retrospective appropriation of the intellectual and cultural tradition, respectfully bowing before its authority. History has run its course, the horizon of the future is closed. In its fundamental opposition to the utopian potential of Western rationalism, this reading turns out to be a high-brow version of cultural criticism 11. On the other hand, the strategy of complementation breaks with the philosophical absolutism of the speculative, historico-philosophical readings of dialectic and mediation, whose validity Georg Lukacs still simply assumed. The relata which are to be mediated in the process of complementation are the more radical heirs of Enlightenment and romanticism: uncompromisingly post-absolutistic knowledge (scientific and moral-practical knowledge which is open to revision and refutation); and uncompromisingly anti-traditionalistic romanticism, in the evolutionarily progressive, aestheticist version I. Having set out by demarcating the concept of romanticism (in versions I and Ila) from that of cultural criticism 11, we now find ourselves compelled to a final twist. Two orientations of rationally enlightened thought (i.e. cultural criticism I) toward romanticism must be distinguished: an older form based on a philosophy of history, presented idealistically by Hegel and materialistically by Lukacs (cultural criticism la); and a more advanced form which is post-absolutistic and scientific (cultural criticism Ib). The following schema summarizes all the distinctions made so far and integrates the distinction between a historical-metaphysical version la and a post-traditional cultural criticism Ib:

412

Praxis I ntemational Enlightenment Romanticism

,cultural criticism

~ cultural
criticism

verSion~Sion
modernistic

II

la

Ib
affirmative

the Enlightenment criticalphilosophy of scientific history Enlightenment

verslon IIa

~ verslon
lIb
cultural criticism Ilc

metaphysics of history

post-traditional, post-absolutistic
RATIONALISM

metaphysics of history
IRRATIONALISM

Figure 3
Hegel, in his Logic, had still tried to develop the speculative dialectic out of the terminus medius which joins or mediates the termini extremi of Aristotelian syllogistics. For us, in terms of figure 3, the dialectic lies in the posttraditional middle of the diagram, if not in strict, logically speculative proofs. Our schema implies a supplement to the (3) modernism thesis in the form of a (4) compatibility thesis: Enlightenment as cultural criticism Ib is compatible with romanticism in version I; And finally an (5) incompatibility thesis: In version lIb or as cultural criticism 11, romanticism is incompatible with Enlightenment. Romanticism in verion Ila is only compatible with Enlightenment as cultural criticism la within the framework of a metaphysics of history (or a philosophical anthropology). The condemnation of romanticism, from the late Hegel to Lukacs, can now be seen as the result of a twofold blindness. Once the romantic impulse has been reduced to irrationalism and cultural criticism II-that is, to the extreme right wing of Figure 3-so that from this perspective the modernism of romanticism begins to escape the critical view, then the subsumption of the aesthetic under the concept of reason (in Hegel's Aesthetics and in the late Lukacs) cuts off the specificity of the aesthetic and expressive even further. The perspective of cultural criticism la is also blind to the incommensurable

Praxis International

413

and non-identical moments in romantic modernism. Only the second orientation of enlightened thought to romanticism (cultural criticism Ib) makes it possible to correct this distortion. Today the sciences are heir to the rationalism of the enlightened cultural tradition. Whether they lay claim to this inheritance or let it decay into the positivism of everyday, run-of-the-mill science-in any case, the rationalism of the Enlightenment becomes a conjecture which can prove false, a hope which can be disappointed, a knowledge which can become obsolete. In the age of science, even the very idea of Enlightenment comes to be seen for what it really is: a system of propositions for which there is no certainty and which has exhausted the dream of an absolutely secure metaphysicswithout abandoning the methodical search for practicable routes and thus surrendering them to the pastors of Being. The idea of a mediation between Enlightenment and romanticism is thereby transformed and radicalized into the idea of a mediation of cultural criticism Ib and version I of the romantic impulse-that is, it is concentrated in the middle of Figure 3. These days, such a project is forced to wrestle with the troublesome problems of a scientifically disenchanted rationalism. The rational motives of romanticism must also pass through this needle's eye, now that the hope of a speculative mediation has collapsed along with Hegel's idea of a non-aristotelian logic. In order to avert the threat of a relapse into a new absolutism, what is needed is reflection: that is, a corrective learning process by which the scientized spheres would learn to incorporate romantic motives reflexivelyand without injuring the specificity of the respective spheres of validity. Thus, the mediation of Enlightenment and romanticism must also prove itself within the framework of scientific rationality. Then the cultural-critical motives of Enlightenment could become effective together with cultural-critical motives of romantic origin in the context of the social sciences. Wherever this succeeds, we can speak of a concrete example of an exemplary mediation between Enlightenment and romanticism. It is Alvin Gouldner's achievement to have provided a case study which demonstrates the fruitfulness of genuinely romantic motifs in the history of the social sciences. Moreover, this takes place under the premises of a radically hypothetical mode of thought (cultural criticism Ib), which renounces all historico-philosophical certainty (cultural criticism la) as well as any kind of fundamentalist critique of civilization (cultural criticism 11): romanticism in the cross-tabulations and in the technical vocabulary of social research-in nineteenth-century French sociology as in Marx and Weber, in Freud and in Anglo-Saxon cultural anthropology as in George Herbert Mead and the Chicago School, and even in positivistic methodologies such as that of Paul Lazarsfeld, not to mention such intellectual figures as Charles Wright Mills. 30 Gouldner's study demonstrates that the Frankfurt School, from Horkheimer and Adorno to Apel and Habermas, is anything but an exception to this transformation of romantic motifs into programs of social-scientific research. From the other direction, one can also point to examples of a mediation

414

Praxis International

between romantIcIsm and Enlightenment in the context of aesthetic and expressive forms. A good example is the long-standing controversy over Peter Weiss' Aesthetic of Resistance, a work which transcends the petty borders between the disciplines. Weiss manages-without injuring the specificity of an uncompromisingly modern aestheticism-to handle themes and motifs in such a way that our cognitive image of history (the theory of fascism) along with our practical orientation to it (resistance) are de-ranged and changed. 31 Other examples can be found in the realm of the avant-garde essay: in the radicalized continuation of Adorno's method of aestheticizing philosophy in the form of the essay. These days, as Karl-Heinz Bohrer has observed, the aesthetic and surreal modernism of the "shock", which has run up against its limits in the idling avant-garde, tries to put science at its service. But in a dialectical irony, it does so only to sense its own limits all the more painfully: "The sensation in the salon, the wild orgies in the halls of academia, which had been sought even before the Surrealists: these no longer make it as they once did. Such delights may still be re-enacted these days, but we don't get away with it so easily any more: today's debauchees must be more spartan if they want to rape reason and still find something left over afterwards . . . Scandal arises only when the essay's violent fornication with reason has all the trappings of the permissable: one knows how to deploy one's footnotes and bows to the rules of logic. But whereas science ends up by patting itself on the back and can no longer think because of its compulsive theorizing, the essay succeeds in thinking further by wishing to recommend its results to no one. Without meaning to, it carries on the tradition of Romantic irony. That's just what's so fantastic about scandals: their contradiction with reason only becomes apparent when they seem most reasonable."32 Only when such mediations succeed, whether in the framework of science or of its aesthetic-expressive complement, are we no longer forced to retreat even a single step behind the critical-scientific rationalism of cultural criticism Ib and its utopian heritage-the step of retreat which leads down the treacherous slope toward cultural criticism 11. This is precisely what distinguishes the dialectical idea of a mediation of Enlightenment and romanticism from all conservative attacks against the Enlightenment, which seek to blind its utopian vision and force it back into naIvete. One of Botho Straufi' most-quoted sentences runs: "Without dialectics we think more stupidly at once; but so it must be: without it." Why, actually? Even today there is nothing to be added to the answer already given in Minima Moralia: "The defense of the naive, as practiced by irrationalists and vicious anti-intellectuals of all sorts, is degrading."

NOTES
1.

2. 3.

Cambridge 1983, quoted from the German edition, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983,) p. 177. J. Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985) p. 55. Mario Praz, Liebe, Tod und Teufel. Die schwarze Romantik (Miinchen: dtv, 1970), p. 27.

Praxis Intemational
4.

415

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

G. Lukacs, Die Zerst6rung der Vernunft (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1962); B. Russell, "Die geistigen Vater des Faschismus," in: Russell, Philosophische und politische Aufsiitze (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1971), pp. 114-135; K. R. Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies (London: G. Routledge, 1945). cf. my book: H. Brunkhorst, Der Intellektuelle im Land der Mandarine (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1986). Essays in Sociological Theory (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1954), quoted from the German translation: Soziologische Theorie (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1964), p. 281. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 81f. cf. M. Brumlik in: Th. Kreuder, H. Loewy, Konservatismus in der Strukturkrise (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985). K. H. Bohrer, "Identitat als Selbstverlust. Zum romantischen Subjektbegriff', Merkur, Vol. 426, 1984, p. 379. Th. W. Adorno, Prismen, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969) p. 106. cf. H. Brunkhorst on Sartre's 'Flaubert' ('L'idiot de la famille'): "Wie man sich zu dem macht, der man ist," in: T. Konig, ed.: Sartre's Flaubert lesen, (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1980) pp. 27-43. M. Praz, op. cit., pp. 40ff. Quoted by M. Praz, op. cit., p. 150. J. Ritter has made an influential attempt to build such a program of neoconservative aesthetics: Landschaft, Zur Funktion des Asthetischen in der modernen Gesellschaft, in: Ritter, Subjektivitat (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974), pp. 141ff; for a critique of Ritter and the German neoconservative school of his desciples, cf. H. Brunkhorst, op. cit. (1986). H. M. Enzensberger, Brentanos Poetik, (Miinchen: Hanser, 1961). One of the first poets, who has celebrated Brentanos' aesthetic modernism of shock, distortion and destruction, was Heinrich Heine, as Enzensberger emphasizes: "Einen ganz wesentlichen Aspekt der Entstellung, namlich den der Zerstorung des Vorgegebenen, sieht am scharfsten Heinrich Heine: 'Die Muse die uns aus den Poesien des Herrn Clemens Brentano so wahnsinnig entgegenlacht, ... zerreifit ... die glattesten Atlasschleppen und die glanzendsten Goldtressen, und ihre zerstorungssiichtige Liebenswiirdigkeit, und ihre jauchzend bliihende Tollheit erfiillt unsere Seele mit unheimlichen Entziicken und liisterner Angst. Seit fiinfzehn Jahren lebt aber Herr Brentano entfernt von der Welt, eingeschlossen, ja, eingemauert in seinen Katholizismus. Es gab nichts kostbares mehr zu zerreifien ... Gegen sich selbst und sein poetisches Talent hat er am meisten seine Zerstorungssucht geiibt.' ("Die romantische Schule," erschienen 1833/35) Heinrich Heine ist auch der einzige Dichter des 19. Jahrhunderts, auf den die Poesie Brentanos eine unmittelbare Wirkung ausgeiibt hat." (Enzensberger, op. cit., p. 134). The quotation from Heine shows him making implicit use of our distinction between Romanticism I and II, in celebrating Brentanos' poetic modernism and condemning his later turn to catholicism as the pious end of his poetic force. K. H. Bohrer, "Das Bose-eine asthetische Kategorie"? Merkur, Vol. 436, pp. 459-473. Letter to Sophie Volland, quoted by M. Praz, op. cit., p. 50. G. W. F. Hegel, Asthetik IIII (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1971), pp. 564ff; especially, pp. 620ff. A. W. Gouldner, "Romantisches und klassisches Denken," in: Gouldner, Reziprozitiit und Autonomie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), p. 174. M. Praz, op. cit., p. 46. Hegel, op. cit., pp. 624ff. J. Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, Vol. I, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981), p. 337. cf. N. Luhmann, Liebe als Passion (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982). Gouldner, op. cit., p. 174 Habermas, op. cit., (1985) pp. 117 ff. Gouldner, op. cit., p. 175. Habermas, op. cit. (1981), Vol. 11, p. 584. Adorno, Asthetische Theorie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1973), p. 93; Habermas, op. cit. (1985) Gouldner, op. cit., pp. 165-214. cf. the interesting essay by A. Sollner in Leviathan Vol. 3 (1984): 'Peter Weifi' "Asthetik des Widerstands", gelesen von einem Sozialwissenschaftler.' K. H. Bohrer, Plotzlichkeit (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981) p. 87.