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THECRITIQUEOFCRITICALTHEORY:Reason,UtopiaandtheDialicticofEnlightenment
THECRITIQUEOFCRITICALTHEORY:Reason,UtopiaandtheDialicticofEnlightenment
byAlbrechtWellmer
Source:PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:2/1983,pages:83107,onwww.ceeol.com.
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Praxis International 83
Praxis International 3:2 July 1983 0260-8448
THE CRITIQUE OF CRITICAL THEORY
REASON, UTOPIA, AND THE DIALECTIC OFENLIGHTENMENT
Albrecht Wellmer
I
At the time when Karl Marx developed his theory of capitalist
society,socialist and anarchist ideas about a future liberated
society were alreadywidely current among oppositional workers and
intellectuals of his time.Socialists and anarchists usually held
ideal conceptions of a future state ofsociety without exploitation
and without domination of man over man. Marx,who had learned his
lesson from Hegel, was deeply convinced of the futility ofopposing
ideal, utopian counterimages to the bad reality of an existing
society.At the same time, however, he shared the radical impulses
of socialists andanarchists and considered Hegels attempt to
justify the existing modern stateas a manifestation of Reason as
deeply wrong. Marx was much more clearlyaware than Hegel was of the
catastrophic, dehumanizing and alienatingaspects of the emerging
capitalist societies of his day. Consequently he con-sidered what
Hegel had seen as the major achievement of the modern state the
reconciliation of the Universal and the Particular, the restoration
of asubstantive ethical life under conditions of a generally
emancipated sub-jectivity, i.e., the establishment of a polis
without slaves not as beingrealized but as a historical task for
mankind which still was to be broughtabout in a communist
revolution. Hegels vindication of the modern state asbeing the
highest manifestation of Reason therefore was for Marx only
theideological formulation of a problem; the reconciliation of
opposites in Hegelstheory was for Marx only a reconciliation in
thought, while in fact it had still tobe brought about
practically.
If the negative sides of modern societies the loss of ethical
life in thesphere of civil society, the catastrophic dynamics of
capitalist economy, thedehumanization of work and the misery of the
working class were to bepractically negated instead of being only
alleged to be already negated in theconcrete ethical life of the
state, and if this practical negation was to beconceived of in a
realistic way as a historical possibility and not in the wayutopian
socialists and anarchists conceived of it, then Marx had to show
howthe emancipated society was already prefigured in the dynamics,
the crisesand the logic of development of capitalist societies.
Marx, in other words, hadto transform socialism from a utopia into
a science (as Engels later put it).
Marxs theory of capitalist society consequently is an attempt to
show howthis society through the universalization of capitalist
exchange relationships,the unlimited growth of the productive
forces, the ensuing intensification ofeconomic crises and the
production of a revolutionary proletarian class carries the seed of
its own negation within it. The end of capitalism, however,
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i.e., the abolition of private property, will according to Marx
result in theestablishment of a classless, communist society. In
different ways, Marx hasagain and again tried to show that the
objective and subjective conditions ofthe communist society were
already forming themselves within the womb ofcapitalist society; to
show, in other words, that communism was not a mereideal but would
be the necessary result of the dialectical negation of
capitalistcommodity production. By this attempt to construe the
future emancipationof mankind in terms of a historical dialectics,
Marx tries to overcome theimpotence and arbitrariness of utopian
thinking without giving up the radicalpolitical impulses of
socialism and anarchism. However, trying to theoreti-cally
eliminate all the contingencies which might be thought to stand
betweenthe present state of capitalist society and the future of a
communist society,Marx in fact is led back to the impasses of
utopian thinking only now theyreappear in a disguised form. For
Marx cannot really show that the plannedeconomy which he predicts
for the time after capitalism will take the form of acommunist
society; consequently the idea of communism remains as much
autopian ideal in his theory as it was for earlier socialists and
anarchists.
For Marx the idea of communism refers to a society in which the
associatedindividuals would have brought their metabolism with
nature under theirconscious and rational control. In this society
the bourgeois forms of law,morality and politics would have lost
their function, since they only expressthe antagonistic
relationship of capitalist class society: bourgeois politics asthe
agency of an illusory reconciliation of individual interests with a
commongood; bourgeois law as, on the one hand, the expression of
capitalist commod-ity production and capitalist exchange
relationships, and on the other hand,the juridical expression of
the domination of one class over the other;bourgeois morality,
finally, as a form of moral consciousness which functionsin the
interest of the stabilization of capitalist class-relations. These
ideologicalforms of an illusory reconciliation between the
Universal and the Particularbecome superfluous in a classless
society, since in this society everybodysneeds can be satisfied and
the sources of conflict and competition between theindividuals have
disappeared. The only limitation of freedom in this society
isdefined by the continuing necessity to produce a living; since,
however,production will be organized according to a rational plan
by the associatedindividuals, it can be expected that all
individuals will equally and voluntarilyaccept the restriction of
their personal freedom which is unavoidable insofar asthere still
exists a realm of necessity. Concerning this realm of necessity,
thefreedom of the individuals consists in their voluntary
acceptance of theconstraints implied in their participation in the
production process. Beyondthis realm of necessity, however, i.e.,
in the realm of freedom, the individualswill live in a community in
which the free development of each will be thecondition for the
free development of all, in which the individuals willdevelop into
total individuals, in which work will have been transformedinto
self-affirmation and in which the interaction between the
individuals(which so far has been only a conditioned interaction)
will have beentransformed into an interaction between the
individuals as such. This means,
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however, that except for the somehow trivialized problem of the
adminis-trative regulation of the production process, there will be
no need for aninstitutional objectification of social
relationships, i.e., the reconciliationbetween the Universal and
the Particular will no longer need to be mediatedby a complex
system of social and political institutions. As far as
institutionsare necessary in a classless society, from Marxs
perspective they only appearas instruments of a common will, the
essential unity of which is alreadyguaranteed by the disappearance
of class-division. Under conditions of exploi-tation, class-rule
and scarcity, the common will could only have an illusoryexistence
in the social, juridical and political institutions of the modern
state.With the abolition of capitalism, men will no longer be
forced to externalizetheir social powers into institutions which
then confront the individuals withan independent existence and with
a logic and power of their own. With thebackground of such
assumptions Engels has spoken about the transformationof the
domination of men over men into the administration of things,
andLenin has predicted the withering away of the state in the
coming commun-ist society.
Freedom in communist society is consequently conceived as the
removal ofall obstacles to the unimpeded development of all, the
only limitation comingfrom the continuing necessity of societys
metabolism with nature. But sinceas a consequence of technological
progress, the working day will be reduced toa small fraction of
what it was under capitalist conditions, even this limitationwill
hardly be felt, and, what is more important, it will be freely
accepted as anecessary limitation of freedom by all individuals in
society. As far as thecoordination of social interaction and the
formation of a common will isconcerned, however, Marx, in contrast
to Hegel, does not develop the cate-gories which would allow him to
articulate the idea of a free association ofindividuals given the
conditions of modern, industrialized societies beyond its most
abstract formulation. Consequently this idea is abstractlyopposed
to the system of class-domination which was the object of
Marxsanalysis. Since, however, it plays at the same time the
theoretical role ofsignifying the type of post-capitalist social
formation which, according toMarx, is already immanent in
capitalist society, this idea of a free associationcould only be
understood via a built-in category-mistake, as it were, as
alsospelling out the organizational principle of a communist
society. But if it isunderstood as an organizational principle, it
implies the denial that there isany problem of an
institutionalization of freedom after capitalism has beenabolished.
The idea of a free association of the producers is then turned
intothe utopian perspective of a collective life process, the unity
and harmony ofwhich would spontaneously emerge from the
institutionally unmediated inter-action of emancipated individuals.
Whatever the value of such a utopianperspective is, however, it is
obvious that Marx never showed nor could hehave shown that this is
the historical perspective immanent in the crisismechanisms and the
developmental tendencies of capitalist societies. As far asthe
Hegelian problem of the institutionalization of freedom under
conditionsof modernity is concerned, one could rather say that
Marx, having criticizedthe Hegelian solution with strong arguments,
through his theoretical strategy
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buries the Hegelian problem Instead of solving it. And
generations of Marxistsfollowed him in this respect.
As one might expect there Is a reciprocal relationship between
what ismissing In Marxs articulation of the idea of a classless
society, on the onehand, and what is deficient in his critical
analysis of capitalist society, on theother. Using modern
terminology one could say that Marx had criticizedHegel for
justifying the functional differentiation in the modern state,
theemergence of relatively autonomous subsystems of economy,
politics, ad-ministration, jurisdiction or culture, as well as the
loss of ethical life in civilsociety, as being in accordance with a
fuller conception of reason. Hegelsthesis was, that under
conditions of modernity, i.e., under conditions of anemancipated
subjectivity, of universal human rights, the substantive
ethicallife of the Greek polis could only be recovered as the
reconciliation of oppo-sites on a higher level. The immediate and
all-pervasive identification of theindividual with his polis was
not possible in a polis without slaves and oracles,i.e., in a
polis, where the rights of individuals qua human beings
wereuniversally recognized and where the right to use ones own
reason was notlimited by tradition, authority or religion. Marx, in
contrast, thought thatwith his critique of the ideological
justifications of capitalist property he hadfound the clue for an
alternative explanation of all the phenomena of alien-ation in
modern societies, and therefore felt entitled to tear down the
wholeedifice of Hegels political thought. In his explanation,
however, Marxlumped together two different kinds of phenomena which
at least we ought tokeep separate: exploitation, pauperization and
degradation of the workingclass, the dehumanization of work and the
lack of democratic control of theeconomy, on the one hand, and the
emergence of formal law based onuniversalist principles of human
right, together with the functional and syste-mic differentiation
of modern societies, on the other. Because In his critique
ofalienation, Marx lumped together these two different types of
phenomena, hecould believe that the abolition of capitalist
property was sufficient to clear theroad not only for an abolition
of the dehumanizing features of modernindustrial societies, but
also for an abolition of all the functional differentia-tions and
the systemic complexities which had come with it and thereforefor
the recovery of an immediate unity and solidarity among men in
acommunist society.
The progress of history itself together with a growing awareness
of theproblems to be faced by industrial societies has made the
historical dialecticsconstrued by Marx increasingly implausible,
even for Marxists. Neomarxistphilosophers in our century, like
Lukcs and the philosophers of the Frank-furt school, have learned
from another great social scientist, namely MaxWeber, in whose
reconstruction of the modernization process one can findtraces of
an alternative historical dialectics: a negative dialectics of
progressand enlightenment.
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II
Max Weber has tried to interpret the world-historical process of
moderniz-ation as a process of progressive rationalization. Since
rationalizationsignifies an increase in rationality, Weber is in
some important sense still theheir of an Enlightenment tradition,
for which history appeared as a progresstoward Reason. This
progress toward reason, however, has assumed forWeber a highly
ambiguous meaning; or perhaps I should rather say that theconcept
of reason Weber rather speaks of rationality has assumed ahighly
ambiguous meaning for Weber.
One could distinguish three different aspects in Webers
conception ofrationality: purposive, formal, and discursive
rationality. In its narrowestsense rationality for Weber means
Zweckrationalitt, purposive rationality,i.e., the type of
rationality exhibited in the choice of the most efficient meansfor
realizing pre-defined goals; rationalization in this sense is
therefore tiedup with the increase of economic or administrative
efficiency. In an extendedsense the concept of rationality
signifies the imposition of a coherent andsystematic order upon the
chaotic manifold of different situations, beliefs,experiences,
alternatives of actions etc. In this sense the concept of
rationaliz-ation is tied up with the formalization and
universalization of law in modernbourgeois society, with the
extension of bureaucratic forms of organizationand even with the
systematic re-organization of something like musicalmaterial: it
signifies an increase in coherence, systematic order,
calculability,control and systematic planning. With respect to
modes of action and interac-tion rationalization signifies a
transition from communal to associativeforms of social action.
While communal social action is oriented towardtraditional norms
and personal characteristics, associative social action isoriented
toward impersonal, enacted and general norms, and dominated
byinstrumental or strategic considerations either in the context of
bureaucraticorganizations or in the context of market
relationships. In its extended sensethe notion of rationality
assumes connotations of a practical rationality in amore
traditional sense: for it also signifies the coherence imposed upon
thechaotic manifold of impulses, evaluations and possible choices
of the indi-vidual (the rational life plan of the puritan) as well
as the coherence imposedupon a symbolic material (e.g., theology)
and the corresponding discursiveattitudes. Finally rationality is
conceptually related to the authenticity of anattitude free from
illusions and self-deceptions; it therefore also signifies
thedisenchantment brought about by the de-sacralization of the
natural andsocial world, it signifies scientific rationality and
the new ethos of scientificobjectivity.
Weber, in a way, continues the tradition of his nineteenth
century predeces-sors when he analyzes the transition to modernity
as a process of rationaliz-ation; a process of rationalization,
moreover, in which the social sciences arebound to play an
increasing role. However, through his analysis of theinstitutional
correlates of progressive rationalization capitalist
economy,bureaucracy, and professionalized empirical science he
shows at the same
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time that the rationalization of society does not carry any
utopian perspec-tive, but is rather likely to lead to an increasing
imprisonment of modern manin dehumanized systems of a new kind to
an increasing reification, asWebers disciple Lukcs later on would
call it. The paradox, that rationaliz-ation connotates emancipation
and reification both at the same time, remainsunresolved in Webers
theory; it is this paradox which Adorno and Hork-heimer later tried
to resolve through their conception of a dialectic
ofEnlightenment.
This paradox, of course, can only arise because for Weber
rationality andrationalization are not only analytical or
descriptive categories by which heanalyzes the structures and
genesis of modern societies, but that they have anirreducible
normative connotation which links them up with a more emphaticand
comprehensive idea of reason an idea of reason as it was still
alive in thephilosophy of the Enlightenment. Rationalization,
therefore, on the onehand, signifies for Weber a set of
interrelated tendencies operating on variouslevels (or in various
subsystems) and pointing toward increasing formaliz-ation,
instrumentalization, and bureaucratization according to an
internalsystemic logic or necessity. These tendencies point toward
a state of societyin which the European ideal of the autonomous
individual becomes more andmore of an anachronism and in which the
symbolic structures which oncesupported the formation of autonomous
individuals and the leading of ameaningful life have disintegrated
into a pluralism of privatized value choices;a state of society,
therefore, in which the autonomous individual, this creationand
discovery of modern European history, is likely to disappear
theEgyptianization of society or to merely survive at the fringes
of depersonal-ized systems. On the other hand, the notion of
rationalization has for Weberstill a normative connotation. The
concept of rationalization, in the way heuses it, is still
determined by a European tradition in which being rationalsignifies
a basic condition and a task of human beings qua human beings.
Thebasic reason why Weber cannot really disconnect his formal
conception ofrationality and his analysis of the modern European
process of rationalizationfrom a more emphatic Enlightenment
conception of reason is, that for him theemergence of modern
science and modern law as well as the emergence ofsecularized
systems of instrumental or strategic action and the destruction
ofobjective meaning systems (like religious world views) is
internally related towhat he has called the disenchantment of the
world. Not only is thisdisenchantment of the world, historically
and conceptually, a necessary pre-condition for rationalization
processes of that type which for Weber arespecific to modern
European history, it rather also signifies for Weber acognitive
achievement of a substantive kind, through which the boundaries
ofwhat may be called rational are defined in a new way. As Weber
uses theterm disenchantment of the world, it also signifies the
normative core of hisown epistemological and moral position; this
comes out most clearly in hismethodological reflections. Webers
distinction between matters of fact andmatters of value, his notion
of an ethics of responsibility, his
quasi-existentialistunderstanding of ultimate value choices all
these elements of Webers self-understanding, which indisputably
have a direct bearing on the way in which
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he develops the basic categories of his theory, articulate the
world view of aman for whom it is a matter of moral authenticity
and intellectual honesty notto look for objective meaning or
ultimate values in the domain of empiricalfacts any more. That the
world, objectively speaking, is devoid of meaningand of values, can
only be claimed by somebody for whom the process ofdisenchantment
is a process of disillusionment, i.e., a process of enlighten-ment.
This process of enlightenment is a process of rationalization in
apeculiar sense: for (1) it amounts, as Habermas has shown in his
recent Theoriedes Kommunikativen Handelns, to a differentiation of
categories of knowledgeand spheres of validity from each other the
factual, the normative, and theexpressive which in traditional
societies are not yet clearly separated fromeach other, and (2) on
the basis of this process of differentiation it brings toawareness
the sphere of symbolically mediated human praxis as the
onlypossible source of meaning and validity, and therefore as the
only possibleframe of reference for intersubjective validity
claims. Without externalguarantees for meaning or validity, every
belief becomes a potential validityclaim for which no
intersubjective redemption is possible except througharguments. The
disenchantment of the world consequently is the historicalprocess
through which those cognitive structures have emerged which
couldsupport a specifically modern conception of rationality and
which providedthe basis for the emergence of modern science, the
rationalization of law onthe basis of a dissociation of legality
from morality, and the emancipationof art from contexts of
religious and practical concerns. Now precisely insofaras it is a
matter of intellectual sincerity that as modern human beings we
haveto face the world as a disenchanted one, there still exists for
Weber an internalrelationship between rationalization and
enlightenment, or between a formalconception of rationality and
rationality as a normative idea, signifying anauthentic mode of
life. It is only for this reason that we can speak of aparadox of
rationalization in Webers theory: Once the cognitive structuresof a
disenchanted consciousness are institutionalized as secularized
systems ofcultural discourse and social interaction, a process of
rationalization now inthe specifically Weberian sense is set into
motion which tends to underminethe social basis for the existence
of autonomous and rational individuals. Forthis reason there is a
profoundly pessimistic philosophy of history implicit inWebers
theory of modern rationalization. Mans becoming rational
i.e.,reasons coming of age (which, after all, is mans task and
destiny) by aninternal logic triggers historical processes which
tend to de-personalize socialrelationships, to desiccate symbolic
communication and to subject human lifeto the impersonal logic of
rationalized, anonymous administrative systems;historical
processes, in short, which tend to make human life
mechanized,unfree and meaningless. Given these tendencies, Weber,
as is well known, didnot consider a socialist society to be a
viable alternative to the capitalistsocieties of his day.
Socialism, so he predicted, could only be the ultimatetriumph of
bureaucracy a prediction which, one must say, at least for thetime
being has been rather drastically confirmed by the history of
socialistrevolutions in our century.
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III
Neomarxist philosophers have tried to integrate some of Webers
insightsinto a revised Marxian framework. Simplifying, one could
describe the basicstrategy of the philosophers of the Frankfurt
school (Horkheimer, Adorno,and Marcuse in particular) as follows:
they adopted the negative dialectics ofprogress from Weber and, at
the same time, criticized his notion of formal andinstrumental
rationality as a truncated conception of rationality which didnot
even allow him to conceive of the possibility of a rational
organization ofsociety which would be in accord with an emphatic
conception of reason. Thisemphatic conception of reason would
comprise the ideas of freedom, justice,and happiness, and therefore
would provide a vantage point from which therationalized societies
of the twentieth century could be criticized as irra-tional, as
fundamentally violating the idea of rationality in their
internalorganization. This is a way of thinking, which for Weber
would indeed havebeen impossible. For Weber, in a disenchanted
world, no rational justificationof norms, values or forms of social
organization was possible; consequentlythe idea of a rational
organization of society as a whole would not have madesense to him.
The Frankfurt philosophers, on the other hand, did acknow-ledge
that Webers truncated conception of rationality corresponded to
thereality of advanced industrial societies; for them this notion
of rationality wasnot only adequate for describing the actual route
which the process ofmodernization had taken in European history, it
rather also expressed theideological deformation of consciousness
and the reification of social rela-tionships which had been brought
about by the development of capitalism.For this reason they also
could agree with Weber against Marx that theimmanent logic of the
capitalist modernization process pointed not to theemergence of a
classless society but rather to the emergence of a closed systemof
instrumental and administrative rationality, rooted not at last in
the reifiedconsciousness of individuals who were increasingly
subsumed under the capi-talist production process. For the
Frankfurt philosophers, Webers concep-tion of rationality
represented the truth about modern society, its internallogic of
development, and its basic ideology. However, holding againstWeber
to the Marxian perspective of a liberated, rationally organized,
class-less society, they had to re-think the historical dialectics
of progress andrevolution; or rather they had to disconnect the
dialectics of progress from theperspective of a revolutionary
transformation of society. The dialectics ofprogress becomes a
negative one, aiming at the destruction rather than therealization
of reason. Consequently the liberated society can no longer
beconceived as the natural or logical result of the unfolding of
the contradictionsof capitalism; its realization has rather to be
thought of as a break through thebad continuum of progress, as a
leap from the prehistory of compulsiveprogress into the realm of
freedom. A radical revolution thus would be thefree historical act
by which humankind would finally liberate itself from thenegative
dialectics of progress.
My sketch of the position of the so-called Critical Theory rests
on anover-simplification, disregarding in particular much of the
work which was
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done during the early years of the Frankfurt school. However, it
comes closeto the position which was developed by Horkheimer and
Adorno, partlyunder the influence of Benjamin, during the late
thirties and the early forties,notably in the Dialectic of
Enlightenment. Since it is this version of CriticalTheory which has
had the greatest impact on postwar critical thought inGermany, and
since even the later Marcuse was still rather close to
positionsdeveloped in the Dialectic of Enlightenment (although he
tried to recover atleast some of the immanentism of traditional
Marxist thought), I want tofocus here mainly on that form of
Critical Theory as it was developed aroundthe Dialectic of
Enlightenment as its seminal text. About this form of
CriticalTheory one can say that it no longer tries to identify the
objective historicaland social tendencies and mechanisms which
point toward the emergence of aliberated post-capitalist society.
Thereby it avoids the bad immanentism(objectivism) of Marxs theory.
However, by stressing the radical discontinuityrather than the
historical continuity between the history of class-society and
theliberated society, it obviously risks ending up with a new form
of utopianism,which would be but the back side of its radical
negativism; a form of utopian-ism, i.e., in which the future would
be related to the present only by a radical,but abstract negation.
Whether the replacement of Marxs positive dialectic ofliberation by
Webers negative dialectic of reification i.e., the reversal
ofsigns, as it were, in Marxs philosophy of history is compatible
withmaintaining the Marxian perspective of a liberated, rationally
organizedsociety, seems to depend not at last on whether these two
aspects of CriticalTheory are intelligibly linked to each other by
a conception of reason whichcan be used for a critical analysis of
modern societies, as much as it opens upthe perspective of a
historical alternative.
The conception of reason, as it has been articulated in the
works of criticaltheorists, clearly reflects the Hegelian-Marxist
heritage of Critical Theory.Basically the idea of reason and of a
rational organization of society areexpressed in terms of a
reconciliation between the Universal and the Particu-lar, where the
particular in contrast to what was done to it in the Hegeliansystem
is no longer sacrificed to the universal, so that the ideas of
freedom,truth and justice are reconciled with the desire for
happiness. ConsequentlyCritical Theory could be said to be based on
an idea of reason which comprisesthe image of a harmonious unity of
the collective life process, a situation inwhich the opposition
between volont gnral and the individuals will andneeds, as well as
the opposition between our rational faculties and our sen-suous
nature would be overcome. Using this idea of reason as a basic, if
oftenonly implicit, normative standard for their analysis of
contemporary society,the theorists of the Frankfurt school could be
said, somewhat simplifying, tomake a double claim: (1) They claim
that the realization of the demands ofreason has become
historically possible, given the technological developmentof modern
industrial societies if only the individuals would grasp this
possi-bility; and (2) they claim that the logic of development of
modern societies of the rationalization process in Webers sense
points in the opposite direc-tion: it tends to lead to the
establishment of a closed system of instrumentalreason, of
reification and repression. Although with the growing threat of
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barbarism the possibilities of freedom have grown
simultaneously, the reverseappears to be more true for Critical
Theory: with the growing possibilities offreedom, the threat of
barbarism has grown almost to an unlimited degree.This is the
critical theorists version of the old slogan socialism or
bar-barism.
Now it seems to be obvious although somewhat paradoxical that
similarobjections, as I have raised them against the utopian
perspective of Marxstheory, can be raised against the utopian
perspective of Critical Theory aswell. For it is hard to see how
any intelligible link between the negativedialectic of progress and
the idea of a liberated society could exist, if presentsocieties as
closed systems of instrumental rationality can only be seen
asnegative counter-images of true reason. The idea of reason must
under suchconditions appear as the idea of a future state of
society beyond humanhistory a human history, i.e., which as a whole
appears as hopelessly godfor-saken, as a pile of debris growing
skyward, to use a phrase of Benjamin.
I believe that it is not the emphatic idea of reason as such,
which thephilosophers of the Frankfurt school maintained against
Max Weber, whichmust lead to such desperate consequences; I rather
think that it is because ofthe way in which Horkheimer and Adorno
elaborated this idea in theirreconstruction of the paradox of
rationalization, that their attempt to integratea Weberian
perspective into a Marxian framework ultimately took on the noteof
an impotent protest against Webers claim, that in a world without
religionor metaphysics, the idea of objective reason can have no
place. In theDialectic of Enlightenment Horkheimer and Adorno
attempt to relate theone-dimensional character of modern processes
of rationalization to an in-ternal tendency toward reification and
instrumental reason which is inherentin conceptual thinking as
such, i.e., in symbolically mediated cognition andaction. In the
most radical passages of the Dialectic of Enlightenment^
formallogic, the law of non-contradiction and the general and
identifying nature ofconceptual thinking appear as the ultimate
roots of a process of rationaliz-ation, which according to its
internal logic terminates in the reduction ofreason to formal and
instrumental reason, in the establishment of a
completelyrationalized system of domination, and in the liquidation
of the autonomoussubject. In the enlightened world there is no
place for the idea of reason anymore; in this Horkheimer and Adorno
agree with Weber. But the explanationthey give is different from
Webers. It is not that the idea of reason has proveduntenable, it
is rather that the false rationality of the modern world makes
theidea of reason appear to be a mere illusion. Except for marginal
phenomenalike advanced art, the idea of reason and the memory of it
have beenextirpated from the reproduction process of modern
societies. For the irresist-ible tendency of one-dimensional
rationality toward the establishment ofunity, system and coherence
does not only manifest itself in the rationalizationand
bureaucratization processes of modernity, it does not only manifest
itselfin the increasing scientific objectification of the world and
in the universaliz-ation of the capitalist exchange principle, it
rather also expresses itself in aprogressive reification of
consciousness which in the end makes the idea ofreason and
therefore the idea of liberation literally unthinkable. Even
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philosophy, inasmuch as from Parmenides to Russell it gives in
to theimpulse toward systematic thinking, unwillingly executes the
laws of adialectical enlightenment; it is no wonder, then, that
mankind as a whole, ascontrasted to the monkey in Kafkas Bericht
vor einer Akademie, cannotremember any more to which purpose it
took upon herself the immenseamount of suffering connected with the
effort of becoming human; and yet,whether humanization will finally
succeed depends alone on whether thespark of memory will be ignited
once more.
A philosophical theory with such a dramatic self-interpretation
cannot pointany more to traces, elements or tendencies of
historical reality itself to sub-stantiate the emphatic idea of
reason which it nevertheless opposes to theperverted rationality of
existing social reality. Since Horkheimer and Adorno,in ironical
agreement with Weber, see conceptual thinking geared to domi-nation
and self-preservation as the ultimate root of the perversions of
mod-ern rationality, they cannot even trust that the idea of an
unperverted ration-ality could be kept alive in the sphere of
discursive thinking; only if concep-tual thinking is turned against
itself and against its own reifying tendenciescan there be any hope
that the memory of reconciliation is preserved inphilosophical
thought.
It is Adorno, who in his later writings has worked out the
consequenceswhich follow from this desperate position of a Critical
Theory which tries todefend an idea of reason which, strictly
speaking, it can no longer defend inthe medium of discursive
thought. For Adorno it is the work of art i.e., theauthentic,
advanced work of art, which virtually becomes the last residue
ofreason in a rationalized world. For art represents a type of
logic andsynthesis which is markedly different from the repressive
type of logic andsynthesis characteristic for identifying thought.
The aesthetic synthesisachieved by the work of art is different
from that of conceptual thinking inthat it does not do violence to
the particular, the suppressed, the non-identical. It is for this
reason that the work of art becomes for Adorno thepre-eminent
medium of a non-reified cognition and, at the same time,
theparadigm for a non-repressive integration of elements into a
whole. Both thesefunctions of art are intimately connected with
each other: through the con-figuration of its elements the work of
art reveals the irrational and falsecharacter of existing reality
and, at the same time, by way of its aestheticsynthesis, it
prefigures an order of reconciliation. Correspondinglyinstrumental
(and conceptual) rationality is sublated in a twofold sense inthe
work of art: It owes its specific, aesthetic rationality to the
merging ofmimetic impulses with elements of rational construction;
and it represents atransfiguration of the elements of empirical
reality, making reality appear inthe light of reconciliation: the
work of art as the semblance of reconciliation.
Now it seems that the aesthetic synthesis achieved by the work
of art couldbe understood as prefiguring an order of reconciliation
only if the aestheticintegration of elements into a whole could be
taken as an analogy, or a modelof the dialogical relationships
between human individuals in a liberatedsociety. At certain points
in his Aesthetic Theory Adorno comes close to sayingthis; but what
is perhaps more important is, that because of his understanding
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of the repressive character of identifying thought, the
aesthetic rationalityof the work of art became for him the only
possible model for an alternativeform of rationality, in which
instrumental rationality would be preserved onlyas a sublated
moment. But then the organization of the work of art doesbecome the
only possible model for the organization and the rationality of
anemancipated society; it is only for this reason that the
aesthetic synthesis canprefigure a non-repressive social
synthesis.
A peculiar historical dialectic is emerging here. Adorno was
Marxist enoughto believe in the emancipatory potential of a highly
developed technology;correspondingly he believed, that a fully
developed form of instrumentalreason was the precondition for a
form of reconciliation, which would not be arelapse into the terror
of an archaic age or the repression of traditionalsocieties. But in
a closed universe of instrumental rationality the
emancipatorypotentials of civilization were virtually hidden; they
could be unleashed onlythrough a transformation of society, which
Adorno could ultimately conceiveof only in terms of a sublation of
instrumental into aesthetic rationality.However, instrumental and
aesthetic rationality, although they signifydifferent types of
orientations, of discourse, of production, of acting and
ofthinking, cannot possibly signify alternative forms of social
integration. Moreimportantly, the aesthetic synthesis represented
by the work of art, even if weconcede to Adorno that it contains a
promesse du bonheur, can hardly beunderstood as a model of
dialogical relationship between individuals, whorecognize each
other in their individuality, as equals and as absolute othersboth
at the same time. If beauty is a promise of happiness, of
reconciliationwith our internal and with external nature, the work
of art would be a mediumof this transcending experience rather than
a model of reconciliation itself. Forat least the moral synthesis
of a dialogical relationship can only be mediated,but not be
brought to appearance by the aesthetic synthesis of the work of
art.Even if, as Adorno stresses, the subject, which comes to speak
in the work ofart, is a we (and not the individual artist), this
collective subject speaks withone voice, speaking to itself, as it
were; i.e., the rules of synthesis of thistrans-subjective speech
cannot possibly prefigure the open rules of a dialoguewith many
voices. Aesthetic synthesis is no possible model for a state of
societyfree from repression. Instead one could also say, that the
ideas of freedom, ofbeing-oneself in a non-repressive sense, of
justice or of mutual recognition andsolidarity, if they are
interpreted in terms of the non-repressive configurationof elements
in the work of art, can only signify a trans-human state of
affairs,but not a life form of speaking and interacting
individuals.
From the vantage point of an idea of reason which ultimately can
only beexplicated in terms of a trans-discursive aesthetic
rationality, the functional,systemic and cognitive differentiation
processes of European modernity canonly be conceived as being
altogether geared to the process of instrumentalrationalization.
This is the ironical agreement between Critical Theory andMax Weber
which I have spoken of before. This ironical agreement withWeber,
however, is the reason why Critical Theory could also maintain
aquasi-orthodox Marxist perspective on the differentiation
processes of modernsocieties. In particular, the emergence of an
economic system with money as a
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general medium of exchange, the rationalization of law on the
basis of aseparation of morality from legality, and the emergence
of a sphere of auton-omous art separated from the material
reproduction process of society theseresults of capitalist
rationalization processes tend to be seen by critical theor-ists as
being forms or symptoms of reification to the same degree as they
areforms of differentiation. The emancipatory potential of modern
rationality,then, can only reside in the advanced work of art
inasmuch as it resists beingassimilated to the ideological
functions which the sphere of art as a whole hasassumed in
rationalized societies. Under these conditions, however, and
with-out Marxs optimistic evaluation of the logic of modern
rationalization proces-ses, the attempt to defend an idea of
reason, which would comprise the ideasof truth, justice and
happiness can in the end only appear as an impotentprotest against
Max Webers negative verdict about the fate of reason in themodern
world.
Both Marx and Critical Theory tried to analyze modern societies
in the lightof a normatively grounded idea of an emancipated
society. Both did notsucceed to establish an intelligible link
between their analysis of modernsociety and the utopian horizon of
their theory. Both, so it seems, werecommitted to a categorial
framework which did not allow for the necessarydifferentiations to
really account for the contradictory and ambiguous charac-ter of
modern rationalization processes. This categorial framework appears
toleave a choice ultimately only between an uncritical affirmation
(Marx) and aradical negation (Critical Theory) of instrumental
reason. The critical andutopian impulses which both Marx and
critical theorists shared, could not bearticulated adequately
within a conceptual framework which was geared to aone-dimensional
conception of rationality: within such a framework an eman-cipatory
perspective could only be articulated either via an uncritical
affirm-ation of the tendencies of formal and technical
rationalization (Marx) or via anabstract negation of the
historically existing forms of rationality (CriticalTheory). Of
course, these statements should be taken with a grain of salt: I
amnot talking here about the substantive content of either Marxs
theory orCritical Theory as a whole, but about problems of
conceptual strategy, aboutproblems of deep-grammar, as it were.
However, these meta-theoretical prob-lems of conceptual strategy
evidently have a bearing on the substantivecontent of theoretical
analysis as well; it is for this reason that sometimes arevision of
conceptual strategies appears necessary to save the truth content
ofgreat theories.
IV
It is the merit of Jrgen Habermas that he has proposed
conceptual revi-sions within Critical Theory which appear to make
it possible to avoid thetheoretical impasses of Marxism and of
Critical Theory, which I have pointedout so far. Over the past
twenty years Habermas has worked out his ownversion of a critical
theory of modern society; in his recent Theorie desKommunikativen
Handelns1 he has presented his theory in its most elaboratedform so
far. I cannot attempt to give an outline of Habermas theory
here;
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rather I want to continue this essay as an essay on conceptual
strategy, tryingto show the significance of Habermas conceptual
revisions with regard to theproblems I have discussed so far.
Basically one could say that Habermas has translated the project
of acritical theory of society from the conceptual framework of a
philosophy ofconsciousness, geared to a subject-object-model of
cognition and action, intothe conceptual framework of a theory of
language and of communicativeaction. This basic move enabled
Habermas to categorially distinguish betweentypes of rationality
and of action in particular between instrumental andcommunicative
rationality and action which for conceptual reasons neitherMarx,
nor Weber, nor Adorno and Horkheimer could clearly keep
separatefrom each other. The direct consequences which follow from
this conceptualrevision with regard to the theories of Marx, Weber
and Adorno/Horkheimerare: (1) Against Marx, Habermas can show that
the bourgeois forms ofuniversalist morality and universalist law
cannot be understood as beingmerely ideological reflexes of the
capitalist mode of production but, however,closely they may be
related genetically to the emergence of capitalism, must beseen
also as being expressive of an irreversible collective learning
processwhich must be categorially distinguished from learning
processes in thedimension of science and technology. (2) Against
Weber, Habermas can showthat this emergence of universalist
morality and universalist legal conceptions,which has led to a
specifically modern conception of democracy and humanrights,
represents a type of rationalization process which has categorially
to bedistinguished from rationalization in the sense of formal and
bureaucraticrationalization. (3) Against Horkheimer and Adorno,
Habermas shows thatthe idea of a rational organization of society,
i.e., an organization of societywhich would be based on a free
agreement among its members, is inwhatever a distorted form already
embodied and recognized in the democra-tic institutions, the
legitimacy principles and the self-interpretations of mod-ern
industrial societies; only for this reason a critical analysis of
modernsocieties can share a common normative ground with its object
of analysis andcan assume the form of an immanent critique.
To make the basic thrust of Habermas theoretical approach as
contrastedto those of Marx, Weber and Adorno/Horkheimer a little
clearer, I want to sayfirst something about his conception of
communicative rationality. Haber-mas5 claim is that the notion of
communicative rationality is implicitly con-tained in the structure
of human speech as such, and that it signifies the basicstandard of
rationality which competent speakers at least in modern
societiesshare. I wish to clarify the notion of communicative
rationality by contrastingit to a minimal notion of rationality,
which according to authors like StevenLukes would be the only
standard of rationality which is universally valid forall cultures:
such a notion of rationality can be seen simply as a derivative
ofthe law of non-contradiction and therefore expresses a minimal
core of formallogic which we must hold to be valid for all forms of
symbolic interaction.
The notion of communicative rationality, in contrast, could be
said toexpress the conception of rationality which a speaker must
acknowledge, whounderstands the internal relationship between the
raising of intersubjective
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validity claims and the commitment to give and be receptive to
arguments.Communicative rationality, then, signifies a mode of
dealing with (raising andaccepting) validity claims. However, the
formal character of this notion ofrationality should not be
confused with the formal character of a postulate oflogical
coherence (Lukes minimal standard of rationality), even if we
under-stand the latter as demanding coherent relationships between
the linguisticutterances, actions and expressions of an actor. For
what cannot be expressedby such a minimal conception of rationality
is the internal, normative rela-tionships between the
intersubjectivity of validity claims, modes of argumen-tation, and
the idea of a rational agreement. Through the notion of
com-municative rationality the law of non-contradiction is, as It
were, projectedback from the one-dimensional space of logical
relationships between proposi-tions (and actions) onto the
two-dimensional space of dialogical relationshipsbetween different
speakers. This means, that communicative rationality alsosignifies
a specific (rational) attitude which individuals take toward others
andtoward themselves as well as a specific relationship of mutual
recognitionbetween different individuals.
It is obvious that these claims need some more qualifications to
make themappear plausible. For one could still argue, that the
notion of communicativerationality is formal in the sense of empty,
except if we think it to be operativeunder specific cultural
conditions with specific (substantive) standards ofrationality
built into them. But then we would not really have gained
anythingby opposing it to a minimal notion of rationality in the
above mentioned sense.The qualification which has yet to be added
is, that the notion of communica-tive rationality is also meant to
indicate a conception (and self-conception) ofsymbolic
communication which does not allow for any validity claims to
beexempt in principle from possible critical examination. This is a
reflexiveconception of human communication according to which
validity claims,because they can only emerge from the sphere of
communication, can also onlybe redeemed in the sphere of human
discourse: there are no possible externalsources of validity, since
the sphere of validity is conceptually is identicalwith the sphere
of human speech. This reflexive awareness of human speechas the
reference point of all validity claims presupposes, so it seems,
that thevalidity dimensions of objective truth, normative
rightness, and subjectivesincerity or, as Habermas has recently put
it: the world of objective facts,the world of social norms, and the
world of inner experience have beenclearly differentiated from each
other. The notion of communicative ration-ality reflects the
cognitive and moral condition of humans in a disenchantedworld.
It is only for this reason that Habermas can conceive of
communicativeaction not only as a mechanism of coordination for the
actions of individualsin society, but also as bearing a rationality
potential, i.e., a potential ofcommunicative rationality, which can
become manifest only after the implicitdogmatism of traditional
world views has been shattered and validity claimshave been
recognized as validity claims for which no justification is
possibleexcept through arguments. At this point argumentation as a
means of restor-ing intersubjective agreement begins to assume a
central role even in those
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spheres of social reality where in traditional societies the
authority of religionor of tradition secured a safe foundation of
common beliefs, practices andorientations. Habermas speaks of
communicative rationalization (or rationaliz-ation of the life
world), wherever forms of communicative action and ofargumentation
replace other mechanisms of coordination of actions, of
socialintegration or of symbolic reproduction.
Before I can point out what we can gain from Habermas concept
ofcommunicative action and his distinction between instrumental and
com-municative action with regard to the problems I have discussed
before, I wishto introduce one further conceptual distinction which
is basic for Habermastheory: the distinction between social
integration and systemic integration.Social integration and
systemic integration represent for Habermas two differ-ent
mechanisms of action coordination. While social integration
operatesthrough coordinating the action orientations of individuals
in society, systemicintegration operates through steering media
like money and power indepen-dently of the action orientations of
individual actors. Habermas claims thatonly in modern societies
social and systemic integration are clearly different-iated from
each other; his thesis is that the de-coupling of system and
lifeworld from each other which has occurred with the emergence of
economicand administrative systems of action in the early phases of
capitalism became possible only after the de-centering of world
conceptions in earlymodern history, i.e., after the differentiation
of three distinct validity dimen-sions of discourse from each other
and the corresponding differentiation oflegality from morality. Or,
to put it more simply: the rationalization of law (inthe Weberian
sense), which was the precondition for the institutionalization
ofrationalized economic and administrative systems, presupposes the
differenti-ation of a sphere of formal law from the sphere of moral
discourse and moralorientations; and this differentiation of
legality from morality in turn presup-poses what Weber called the
disenchantment of the world and Habermasthe decentering of world
conceptions.
What follows is, that systemic rationalization (economic and
bureaucraticrationalization) and systemic differentiation, on the
one hand, and com-municative rationalization, on the other, are
complementary possibilities ofrationalization in the modern world,
complementary possibilities which con-dition and demand each other.
Without forms of systemic integration theproblems of social
integration would become overcomplex in a post-traditionalsociety:
communicative action is too fragile a mechanism of action
coordi-nation, as it were, to carry the whole load of integration
in modern societies.Systemic integration, on the other hand, needs
to be institutionalized andthereby anchored in the life world: it
presupposes forms of social integrationand a legitimation of basic
laws and institutions. With these premisses Haber-mas reformulates
the problem of rationalization (in the Weberian sense) asfollows:
Given the two complementary trends toward systemic and
com-municative rationalization in the modern world, there is a
range of possibleconstellations in which system and life world can
be related to each other:Either the institutions, through which the
steering mechanisms like moneyor power are anchored in the life
world, are channelling the influence which the
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life world exerts upon the formally organized systems of action,
or, reversely,they are channelling the influence which the system
exerts upon the communi-catively structured contexts of action. In
the one case they function as theinstitutional framework which
subjects the maintenance of the system to thenormative restrictions
of the life world, in the other case they function as thebasis
which subjects the life world to the constraints of material
reproductionand thereby mediatizes it (Habermas (1981), II,
275/76). As far as theinternal, logical possibilities are
concerned, the process of modernization is anessentially ambiguous
one: the balance can shift to one or the other side.
However, what has happened in the actual history of capitalism
is, that theforces of system rationalization and system
differentiation have proved to besuperior to those of communicative
rationalization. Thus far the counterforcesemerging from the life
world in the form of social movements e.g., theworkers movement in
the nineteenth century have not been able to reversethis trend
toward a mediatization of the life world by an increasingly
complexsystem. Today the structures of the life world appear to be
threatened as suchby the logic of systemic differentiation and
rationalization Habermas speaksof a colonization of the life world.
Correspondingly there is a shift in thebasic themes of new social
movements: these new social movements more andmore defend the
integrity of the life world as such against the logic of asystemic
rationalization process which threatens to push the individuals to
thefringes of completely reified systems.
Habermas diagnosis of dominating trends in the recent history of
indus-trialized societies is not so far apart from what Weber or
Horkheimer andAdorno said. However, the paradox of rationalization
appears in a new light inHabermas5 theory; Habermas reformulates
this paradox in terms of his dis-tinction between system and
life-world. The paradox of rationalization wouldbe, that a
rationalization of the life world was the precondition and the
startingpoint for a process of systemic rationalization and
differentiation, which thenhas become more and more autonomous
vis--vis the normative constraintsembodied in the life-world, until
in the end the systemic imperatives begin toinstrumentalize the
life world and threaten to destroy it (l.c. p. 232/33).
Against Weber and Horkheimer/Adorno, however, Habermas objects
thatthis paradox of rationalization does not express an internal
logic (or dialectic) ofmodern rationalization processes; it is,
strictly speaking, not a paradox ofrationalization, if we use this
term in the broad sense of a post-traditionalconception of
rationality which, as Habermas shows, we have to substitute
forWebers restricted conception of rationality. From the
perspective of an actiontheory in Webers sense, then, there would
neither be a paradox of rationaliz-ation nor a dialectic of
enlightenment; rather it would be more adequate tospeak of a
selective process of rationalization, where the selective
characterof this process may be explained by the peculiar
restrictions put upon com-municative rationalization by the
boundary conditions and the dynamics of acapitalist process of
production (l.c. p. 485). Because Weber, for conceptualreasons
could not distinguish between systemic and communicative
rationaliz-ation processes, he could not even identify those
elements of communicative
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rationalization, which have been institutionalized or preserved
in the univer-salist principles of modern constitutions, in
democratic forms of politicalorganization, in forms of scientific,
political or aesthetic discourse, or in theself-interpretations and
goals of social movements which fight for the rights ofthe
individuals, the integrity of the life world, or the democratic
organizationof collective will formation. For Weber those elements
of communicativerationalization, as far as he could not integrate
them into his conception offormal and bureaucratic rationalization,
in the end appeared as residues ofirrational life forces in a
rationalized world or as irrational counter-reactionsagainst the
constraints of modern rationalism. Once we acknowledge
theseelements of or impulses toward communicative rationalization
in themodern world as what they are, we can also recognize the
essential ambiguity ofthe world-historical process of
modernization, a kind of ambiguity withoutwhich it would indeed be
impossible to combine as Horkheimer and Adornotried to do a
Weberian perspective on economic and bureaucratic rationaliz-ation
with the Marxian perspective of an emancipated society.
Habermas basic thesis against Weber as well as Horkheimer and
Adorno is,that given the emergence of a post-traditional form of
rationality in modernEuropean history, the actual course which the
process of rationalization hastaken in the modern world was only
one among a number of different possiblecourses (l.c. I, 338/39),
corresponding to different possible constellationsconcerning the
relationship between system and life world. Given the fact,however,
that all possible constellations of system and life world in
themodern world have as their basis a post-traditional form of
rationality, we cansay without going beyond the normative
structures embodied in the basicinstitutions of modern societies
that only those constellations conform to amodern idea of
rationality, in which the processes of systemic rationalizationare
brought under the control of a rationalized life world. It is
precisely in thissense that Habermas re-interprets Marxs idea of an
emancipated society: in anemancipated society the life world would
no longer be subjected to theimperatives of system maintenance; a
rationalized life world would rathersubject the systemic mechanisms
to the needs of the associated individuals.Only then would, to put
it in Marxs terms, the dependence of the super-structure on the
base i.e., the dependence of the life world on thesystem come to an
end.
V
In Habermas reconstruction of Critical Theory, Marxs idea of a
freeassociation of the producers is re-interpreted as the idea of a
fully rationalizedlife world. The basic direction concerning
changes in the forms of socialintegration which is indicated by the
notion of communicative rationalizationis, as I have indicated
before, such that the process of communicative actionitself becomes
more and more the decisive mechanism for the securing ofconsensus
and the coordination of action (l.c., II, p. 268/9). The
utopianperspective inherent in the conception of communicative
rationalization there-fore is the idea of a state of society, in
which the reproduction of the life
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world is no longer only channelled through the medium of
communicativeaction (l.c., p. 218/19), but in which this
reproduction is brought about by thecommunicative and interpretive
acts of the individuals. The universal dis-course points to an
idealized life world, reproducing itself through a mechan-ism of
communicative action which has become largely independent of
norma-tive contexts and is based on rationally motivated
Yes/No-decisions. (l.c., p.219). Habermas also speaks of a
communicative fluidization of traditions,normative structures and
ego-identities (l.c., p. 219/20).
While the idea of an idealized life world spells out the utopian
perspectiveinherent in the idea of communicative rationality, it is
not meant to provide ananswer to the question, what an
institutionalization of freedom in a post-capitalist society would
look like. Habermas notion of communicativerationalization has
rather built into it a categorial distinction between the
regula-tive idea of a fully rationalized life world, on the one
hand, and the organiza-tional principles which would express the
institutional structures of communi-catively rationalized societies
at a given point in history, on the other.
Historically speaking, the problem posed by the disproportion
betweensystem and life-world in present-day industrial societies
would be theproblem of an adequate objectification of communicative
rationality in newsocial and political institutions; by
institutions, i.e., which, on the one hand,would represent the
normative anchoring of the system in the life world, and,on the
other, would protect the communicative structures of the life
worldthemselves and secure a rational and democratic control of the
system by thelife world. Habermas does not try to answer the
question how such institu-tional structures would look in a
post-capitalist society. This is quiteconsistent with his general
position; it is not the task of the theoretician todetermine what
the content of a future social consensus will be.
Speaking about conceptual strategies, I think it is one of the
great achieve-ments of Habermas reconstruction of Critical Theory
that it mediatesbetween the theoretical perspectives of Hegel, Marx
and Weber in a moresuccessful way than older versions of Critical
Theory did. In particular,Habermas theory (1) bridges the gap
between a Hegelian perspective onthe differentiation processes of
modern societies, on the one hand, and theutopian perspective of
Marxs critique of political economy, on the other. Itallows us to
understand the Marxian problem of emancipation as the political
andhistorical problem of a new institutionalization of freedom in
the modern world,while at the same time making intelligible the
utopian perspective inherent in thishistorical project. And
Habermas theory (2) bridges the gap between a Weberianperspective
on modern rationalization processes, on the one hand, and Marxsview
of historical progress, on the other. For it establishes an
intelligible linkbetween the negative dynamic of progress in
present-day capitalism and anemancipatory historical project in the
Marxian sense.
These are large claims, which will be disputed by Hegelians,
hermeneuticphilosophers, functionalists and conservative political
philosophers alike, andwhich I cannot really defend in this essay.
However, I want at least to putforward a few arguments concerning
the relationship between the historicalproject of a new
institutionalization of freedom in the modern world and the
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utopian perspective of an idealized life world. A criticism, as
it is often putforward against utopian rationalism by philosophers
with an Aristotelian orhermeneutic background is, that democratic
legitimacy, although it must beconceived of as being based on a
consensus of basic norms, institutions andvalues, cannot be
understood as being based on a rational consensus. Theupshot of
this criticism is, that communicative action and rational
discourseultimately cannot generate legitimate institutions
(legitimate power), but thatonly legitimate institutions
(legitimate power) could set free communicativeaction as a
mechanism of social coordination. As far as the legitimacy
ofinstitutions is concerned, however, there can be no ideal limit;
there is ratheran irreducible element of voluntas as against ratio,
or, to put it in HannahArendts terms, legitimate power can only be
based on opinion. Thismeans, however, that (1) there is no internal
link between the ideas ofrationality and radical democracy, and (2)
that normative idealizations likethat of an idealized life world
are, strictly speaking, meaningless. In short,there is no rational
solution to the problem of an institutionalization offreedom.
The argument, as I have presented it here, might be called
left-Aristotelian or left-hermeneutic. In my response I do not wish
to elaborateand defend Habermas consensus theory of truth, nor do I
wish to go into moredetails of his theory of communicative action.
I rather want to take an indirectline of defense, showing that what
the critic accepts is enough to validateHabermas general
position.
Let us first take the consensus on basic norms, institutions,
and values.Certainly nothing prevents us from assuming, that part
of this consensus is aprinciple saying, that in cases of
disagreement on practical matters agreementought to be brought
about by argument as much as possible. Under theseconditions
communicative action might become the primary mechanism ofaction
coordination. This does not necessarily mean that there are, e.g.,
nomajority decisions; it simply means that in cases of normative
disagreementsome kind of agreement is brought about which is
considered as fair orjust by all individuals involved (e.g., that a
majority vote should be takenand accepted by all). This means,
evidently, that nobody is forced to do or totolerate what he is not
convinced he/she should (morally should) do or tolerate.
By free agreements we mean, of course, agreements which are not
the result ofmanipulation or of internalized pressure. Although
this is not a trivial qualifi-cation, it is enough to state it
here, since we may assume that the individualsinvolved know how to
apply the distinctions in question. Since the basicagreement is
never put into question, although nobody is prevented fromputting
it into question (actually nobody sees a reason to do so), this
agree-ment can be called rational at least in the sense, that no
arguments are broughtforward against it (and none are suppressed):
The basic agreement beingstable means that the individuals
experience their form of life as a good formof life. We need not
know how this agreement has come into being; it could,e.g., have
been the result of a long struggle for recognition between
differentfactions or groups in society.
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Here we have Habermas idealized life world. Since coordination
byrational agreement is its all-pervasive principle, it seems
almost paradoxical toask why it should be called a rationalized
life world. The question, however,was whether such an organization
of society could be called rational as a whole(not having an
irrational basis). Basically this is the question, whether
the(successfully applied) principle of consensual action
coordination is but oneamong many possible contents of a democratic
consensus. Now I think thatthis question has to be answered in the
negative precisely insofar as we believethat rational argument
about practical matters or norms is in principle possible. For
insofar as we believe that, granting equal rights and liberties
toeverybody, including equal rights of political participation, is
tantamount toaccepting a principle of consensual action
coordination. Without going intothe question, whether the
democratic principle is itself rooted in the struc-tures of speech
as such, we must say that if the principle of rationality
iscombined with the democratic principle, a principle of consensual
actioncoordination becomes unavoidable insofar as we believe in the
possibility ofrational argument. Consequently the question under
debate boils down to thequestion, whether there are any limits of
rational argument in principle, i.e.,limits of rational discourse
where the idea of a rational agreement with respectto controversial
issues does not make sense any more. At this point, however,the
Aristotelian or heraieneutic defender of democracy is in a weak
position:for the idea of a democratic consensus on basic norms,
institutions and valuesdoes hardly make sense, if it is not
conceived as being also a consensus on theapplication of basic
rules and norms and on basic criteria of justice or fairness.But
then on the basis of this consensus rational argument about
normativematters must be possible. If that much is granted,
however, to deny therationality of the basic consensus amounts to
drawing an arbitrary boundaryline between questions concerning the
basic framework of norms, institutionsand interpretations, on the
one hand, and questions which are internal to thisframework, on the
other. I say arbitrary, not because I deny the
qualitativedifference between questions internal to a conceptual
framework and ques-tions concerning the conceptual framework as a
whole, but because in thecontinuum of problems which stretches from
problems of one kind to those ofthe other we cannot fix a boundary
line beyond which the notion of rationalargument ceases to apply.
That much, I think, has been shown by recentdebates in the
philosophy of science. If this is granted, however, the
basicconsensus, which I have presupposed in my argument, deserves
to be calledrational precisely inasmuch as the principle of
coordination by rationalagreement, which is part of this consensus,
is not restricted in its applicationto any particular level of
societal life, i.e., if no norms, institutions or inter-pretations
are in principle exempt from the possibility of critical
examination.
The upshot of my considerations is, that the principle of
consensual coordi-nation must be considered as the normative core
of the very democraticconsensus, which the critic took for granted;
and that we cannot draw anydefinite line of demarcation between
internal rational agreements andexternal agreements based on mere
voluntas. But then an idealized lifeworld in Habermas sense begins
to appear as the normative center of
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gravitation of any democratic and egalitarian form of social and
politicalorganization. By this I mean, that the more a consensual
mode of actioncoordination has already become real in the
institutions and practices of asociety, the more will a society
gravitate toward dissolving the remnants ofbrute force and mere
compulsion. Accordingly I would think that the utopianperspective
inherent in the democratic tradition should not so much
beconsidered in analogy to geometrical idealizations, which can
never be per-fectly embodied in the recalcitrant material of
physical bodies (one mightrather think of an infinite process of
possible approximations), but rather asthe center of gravitation of
democratic forms of organization, the attractiveforce of which
becomes proportionately stronger as a relationship of
mutualrecognition is already embodied in consensual forms of action
coordination.
Conversely, I think it is obvious that for democratic legitimacy
to be keptalive a consensus about basic procedural norms and rules
irrespective of anychances of rational agreement is not enough; for
beyond a certain pointdisagreement about substantive matters will
necessarily turn into disagree-ment about procedural rules or a
disagreement about the interpretation ofbasic norms. (The new
social movements provide ample material for illus-tration.) This
again shows, that there is a more or less with respect todemocratic
legitimacy; and the (internal) standard of this more or less
isexpressed precisely by the normative idealization which Habermas
derivesfrom his notion of communicative rationality. This means,
however, thatcommunicative action in the ideal case would become
the exclusivemechanism not of action coordination, since we suppose
systemic forms ofintegration to persist, but of securing consensus
and of dealing with dissen-sus. Needless to say, that such a form
of life may never become true; what isimportant at this point is
not, what will be historically possible, but how thedeep-grammar of
our historical projects is to be understood.
The idea of communicative rationalization with its inherent
utopian pers-pective does not put into question the differentiation
processes of modernsocieties as such, not even the differentiation
of systemic from socialintegration. And yet it enables us to give a
new, more precise meaning to theold ideas, inseparable from the
Marxist tradition, of a sublation (Aufhebung)of the bourgeois form
of law, of politics, or of art in an emancipated,post-capitalist
society. Underlying these ideas, as they were expressed notonly in
the Marxist tradition up to Marcuse and Adorno, but also in
avant-garde movements of art and by rebellious students, has always
been theawareness that those specific forms of systemic and
functional differentiationsas they have grown out of the capitalist
rationalization process, have becomeobsolete and oppressive:
politics being separated from the life world, thesphere of formal
law being disconnected from the sphere of moral
discourse,autonomous art being separated from the life process of
the individuals, andfinally the life world as such being
increasingly subjected to the dynamics ofeconomic and
administrative processes, which more and more threaten topush the
individuals to the fringes of a reified social system. I have
indicatedabove, that we have to distinguish between those
irreversible differentiationprocesses, which signify the end of
traditional society and the emergence of
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specifically modern, universalist conceptions of rationality,
freedom anddemocracy, on the one hand, and the specific form in
which these differenti-ation processes have been articulated and
institutionalized in capitalistsocieties. It is obviously to the
latter only that the ideas of a sublation of formallaw, politics or
art can meaningfully apply. What they can mean is what couldbe
called a new permeability of the relatively autonomous subsystems
orcultural spheres for each other: The formalized processes of
administration,legislation and jurisdiction would then enter into a
new constellation withnon-formalized or not necessarily formalized
processes of communicationand will-formation, so that the
formalized decision processes would becomepermeable to the
need-interpretations, moral impulses or aesthetic experi-ences
articulated beneath the level of formal organizations. The arts,
withoutloosing their autonomy, would become a medium of
communication,objectifying as well as transforming the experience
and self-experience of theindividuals; they would re-enter into the
life process by affecting the articu-lation of needs and the
self-interpretations of the individuals, who otherwisewould become
mute and blind vis--vis their own internal nature. The cri-tique of
autonomous art, then, would not question the autonomy of art
although it was often misunderstood in this way; its genuine
impulses arerather directed against art as a bourgeois institution,
against art as commodityand as a part of mass-culture, and against
art as a self-contained sphere ofideological consolations.
As far as the Marxist critique of formal law is concerned, the
point underdebate can be made a little clearer if we contrast the
idea of a reconciliation ofthe legal and the moral sphere, as it is
contained in the notion of communica-tive rationalization, to the
practice of negating the differentiation of legalityfrom morality,
as it can be found in modern totalitarian systems. I think thatthe
latter, i.e. the repressive abolition of a differentiation process
constitutiveof modern societies, should be seen as a regressive
counterfeit of thatreconciliation of morality with legality, which
would be brought about wherelegal norms and political institutions
would loose their repressive characterand would no longer be in
conflict with moral demands. The latter presupposesthe
differentiation of morality from legality, but tries to adjust
formal law tomoral principles; the former is meant to undo this
differentiation by subjectingmoral consciousness to the demands of
positive law. Seen from the perspectiveof communicative
rationalization, therefore, the critique of the bourgeoisform of
law, as it was prominent in the Marxist tradition up to
AdornosNegative Dialectic, can be seen in its deeper right and as
being continuous withthe tradition of Enlightenment. This applies
in particular to the critique of theformal character of the
principles of bourgeois constitutions: Not the abolitionof formally
guaranteed liberties and rights the great achievement of
thebourgeois revolutions is what is aimed at in this critique, but
their becomingthe true fundament of a liberated social life for all
individuals in modernsocieties. This is certainly what Marx meant
when he said (in On the JewishQuestion) that human emancipation
will only be completed when the real,individual man has absorbed
into himself the abstract citizen; when as indi-vidual man, in his
everyday life, in his work and in his relationships, he has
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become a species-being; and when he has recognized and organized
his forcespropres as social powers so that he no longer separates
his social power fromhimself as political power.
Coming finally back to Adorno, I might now rephrase my
objections againsthis aesthetic interpretation of a utopian
perspective as follows: The disinteg-ration of objective reason
into its partial moments (Habermas) scientific-technical
rationality, practical-moral rationality, and aesthetic rationality
which went along with the process of modernization, cannot possibly
beovercome by a transformation of society, for which one moment of
reason aesthetic rationality would provide the model. Of course,
Adorno wouldnever have said it in this way. However, the specific
rationality of aestheticproduction certainly became for him the
dominant model in terms of which hetried to conceive of a sublation
of instrumental rationality into a non-repressive form of reason.
The idea is tempting, since art in particularmusic does obviously
contain an element of instrumental rationality, oftechnique and of
construction, and therefore provides a model forinstrumental reason
being sublated into a field of forces which is ruled by alogic
higher than that of identifying thought and instrumental
action.
Through integrating instrumental (and discursive) rationality as
a sublatedmoment, the work of art for Adorno was able to achieve
its specific, non-repressive i.e., aesthetic-unity out of a
manifold of its individual elements.Therefore the authentic work of
art could appear to him as a semblance ofreconciliation. However,
the interplay between mimetic impulses and rationalelements,
constitutive of the aesthetic integration of elements into a
whole,could not possibly provide an image of what the domestication
ofinstrumental reason could mean with respect to the problem of
bringing abouta non-repressive form of social integration. Adorno,
then, had good reasons toalso distrust aesthetic experience if it
was left on its own: he insisted, paradox-ically, that only
philosophy can bring out what the truth of aesthetic experi-ence
really is. I think it would be better to concede that art in itself
cannot bethe bearer of a utopian perspective. As far as a semblance
of reconciliation isconstitutive of the work of art, it might
rather be suspected that this reconcili-ation is one beyond reason,
a stepping out of the confines of space, time andcausality,
ecstatic rather than anticipatory. Perhaps for Adorno these
ecstaticmoments of aesthetic experience were the only genuinely
transcedingimpulses he could detect in a closed universe of
instrumental reason; so hetried to decipher them as meaning
reconciliation in space and time, utopia inthe materialist, Marxian
sense. The price for this, however, was that thepolitical dimension
of the historical project of emancipation was lost again.
And yet, there is another sense in which aesthetic experience
can be relatedto the utopian perspective of Critical Theory. Adorno
himself has occasionallyinterpreted the utopian potential of art as
residing in its speech-like character:art can say what we cannot
say. At this point, however, aesthetic experiencecan be seen as
being related to the utopian perspective of unblocked
com-municative relationships between the individuals as well as of
the individualswith themselves. If we take the work of art as
providing a medium rather than a
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Praxis International 3:2 July 1983 0260-8448
model of such communicative relationships, we can, I think,
better under-stand, why Adorno insisted on the transcending
elements in genuine aestheticexperience, transcending, that is, the
confines of mere aesthetic pleasure. Butthe beyond of art, to which
it points and to which it is related, is not somethingsuperseding
art as art, but the social life process itself as it can be
affected byaesthetic experience. Understood in this way, aesthetic
experience, byilluminating our life praxis and our
self-understanding, by pushing back theboundaries of muteness and
inarticulate silence, and by making accessible thehidden depths of
our lives to ourselves, is, as Adorno thought, the presence ofa
utopian perspective.
Evidently there is a sense, in which the old radical ideas of a
supersessionof bourgeois politics, of the bourgeois form of law, or
of bourgeois art, can beadopted without questioning irreversible
differentiation processes as they areconstitutive of the project of
modernity. To adopt these radical ideas can,however, only mean to
reinterpret them, i.e., to place them into a newtheoretical context
and to fill them with new and more complex connotations.To
reinterpret them as I have suggested in this essay might be useful
if wetry to understand what is progressive (and what is regressive)
in those newsocial movements which have sprung up everywhere in the
Western worldduring the past twenty years; in particular if we try
to understand them notonly as defensive movements, but in their
possible meaning with regard to thehistorical project of a
post-capitalist institutionalization of freedom: By this Imean
above all the institutionalization of public spaces for political
partici-pation and communal action, which would not only provide a
basis for ademocratic control of economic and administrative
processes, but whichwould also provide the social basis for a
viable identity of the individuals whoare increasingly threatened
by anomie and alienation. Last but not least, suchan
institutionalization of freedom would provide the basis for
transformingalienated labour into meaningful work. The old
communist slogan toeach according to his needs could, after all,
still become true if humanneeds, instead of being determined by the
process of material production,would begin to determine its
direction as well as its form of organization; i.e.,if the
disastrous dynamics of the capitalist production process, which
atpresent leads to an increasing destruction of the human habitat,
an increasingreification of consciousness and of social
relationships, a mindless over-consumption for the privileged and a
degrading poverty for the rest, could bebrought to a halt. I do not
know whether we should still use the old andmuch-discredited term
socialism for this historical project. If we do, I thinkone might
say that the signs are increasing again that the only alternative
forthe capitalist world, after all, still is: Socialism or
Barbarism. Provided westill have time enough to choose.
NOTES
1 Jrgen Habermas, Theorie des Kommunikativen Haudelns, Vol. I
and II, Frankfurt/Main,1981. (The following translations are
mine.)