The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity

Twelve Lectures

Jürgen Habermas, Frederick Lawrence

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780745608303, 9780745603605
• eBook ISBN: 9780745694474
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Social Philosophy

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Introduction by Thomas McCarthy, translated by Frederick Lawrence.

Notes

Preface

1. Jürgen Habermas, “Modernity versus Postmodernity,” New German Critique 22(1981): 3–14.

2. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis, 1984) . On this see Axel Honneth, “Der Affekt gegen das Allgemeine,” Merkur 430(December 1984): 893ff.; Richard Rorty, “Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity,” in Richard Bernstein, ed., Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, 1985) , pp. 161–175; and my reply: “Questions and Counterquestions,” ibid., pp. 192— 216.

3. On this see Peter Bürger, Zur Kritik der idealistischen ästhetik (Frankfurt, 1983); H. R. Jauss, “Der literarische Prozess des Modernismus von Rousseau bis Adorno,” in L. von Friedeburg and J. Habermas, eds., Adorno-Konferenz 1983 (Frankfurt, 1983), pp. 95ff.; Albrecht Wellmer, Zur Dialektik von Moderne und Postmoderne (Frankfurt, 1985).

4. Contained in Karl Heinz Bohrer, ed., Mythos und Moderne (Frankfurt, 1982), pp. 415–430. Parts of this appeared in English as “The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment,” New German Critique 26(1982): 13–30.

5. Jürgen Habermas, Die Neue Unübersichtlichkeit (Frankfurt, 1985).

Lecture I

Modernity’s Consciousness of Time and Its Need for Self-Reassurance

1. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1958), p. 25.

2. On this see Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, volume 1 (Boston, 1983), chapter II.

3. See the article on “Modernization” by James Coleman in The Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 10, at p. 397.

4. Arnold Gehlen, “über kulturelle Kristallisation,” in Studien zur Anthropologie (Neuwied, 1963), p. 321.

5. H. E. Holthusen, in his essay “Heimweh nach Geschichte,” Merkur 430(1984): 1916ff., suggests that Gehlen may have borrowed the term “posthistoire” from his intellectual ally Hendrik de Man.

6. Reinhart Koselleck, “‘Neuzeit,’” in Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time (Cambridge, MA, 1985), pp. 231–266; here p. 241.

7. Ibid., p. 250.

8. Ibid., pp. 246ff.

9. G. W. F. Hegel, “The Preface to the Phenomenology,” in W. Kaufmann, ed., Texts and Commentary (New York, 1966), p. 20.

10. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (New York, 1956), p. 442.

11. Koselleck, Futures Past, pp. 267ff.

12. Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit (Frankfurt, 1966), p. 72. A revised edition appeared in 1974 and has been translated as The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (Cambridge, MA, 1983).

13. G. W. F. Hegel, “The Positivity of the Christian Religion,” in On Christianity. Early Theological Writings by Hegel (New York, 1948), p. 159.

14. H. V. Gumbrecht, “Modern,” in O. Brunner, W. Conze, and R. Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, Bd. 4, pp. 93ff.

15. H. R. Jauss, “Ursprung und Bedeutung der Fortschrittsidee in der ‘Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes,’” in H. Kuhn and F. Wiedmann, eds., Die Philosophie und die Frage nach dem Fortschritt (Munich, 1964), pp. 51ff.

16. For what follows I am drawing upon H. R. Jauss, “Literarische Tradition und gegenwärtiges Bewusstsein der Modernität,” in Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Frankfurt, 1970), pp. 11ff. See also his “Der literarische Prozess des Modernismus von Rousseau bis Adorno,” in L. von Friedeburg and J. Habermas, eds., Adorno-Konferenz 1983 (Frankfurt, 1983), pp. 95ff.

17. Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life,” in Selected Writings on Art and Artists (New York and Harmondsworth, 1972), pp. 390–435; here p. 403.

18. “In order that any form of modernity may be worthy of becoming antiquity, the mysterious beauty that human life unintentionally puts into it must have been extracted from it” (ibid., p. 404).

19. Ibid., p. 392.

20. Ibid., p. 435.

21. “All share the same characteristic of opposition and revolt; all are representations of what is best in human pride, of that need, which is too rare, to combat and destroy triviality” (ibid., p. 421).

22. Ibid., p. 402.

23. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations (New York, 1969), pp. 253–264; here p. 261.

24. Ibid., p. 263.

25. Koselleck, ‘“Space of Experience’ and ‘Horizon of Expectation,’” in Futures Past, p. 276.

26. Ibid., p. 279.

27. “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another” (Thesis VII).

28. See Helmut Peukert, “Dimensions, Fundamental Problems, and Aporias of a Theory of Communicative Action,” in Science, Action, and Fundamental Theology: Toward a Theology of Communicative Action (Cambridge, MA, 1984), pp. 163–210; see also my reply to H. Ottmann in “A Reply to My Critics,” in J. B. Thompson and D. Held, eds., Habermas: Critical Debates (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1982), pp. 245ff.

29. G. W. F. Hegel, The Difference Between the Fichtean and Schellingian Systems of Philosophy (Reseda, CA, 1978), p. 10; henceforth cited as The Difference.

30. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Oxford, 1952), p. 286.

31. Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. III (New York, 1896; reprinted 1968), p. 423.

32. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, p. 112.

33. Ibid., p. 295.

34. Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, vol. I (New York, 1892; reprinted 1968), p. 423.

35. Ibid., vol. Ill, p. 549.

36. G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (London, 1968).

37. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, p. 440.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, p. 75.

41. G. W. F. Hegel, On Art, Religion, Philosophy (New York, 1970), p. 99.

42. Ibid., p. 98.

43. Ibid.

44. See the résumé in #124 of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: “The right of the subject’s particularity ... is the pivot and center of the difference between antiquity and modern times. This right in its infinity is given expression in Christianity and it has become the universal effective principle of a new form of civilization. Amongst the primary shapes which this right assumes are love, romanticism, the quest for eternal salvation of the individual, etc.; next come moral convictions and conscience; and finally, the other forms, some of which come into prominence ... as the principle of civil society and as moments in the constitution of the state, while others appear in the course of history, particularly in the history of art, science, and philosophy” (p. 84).

45. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (New York, 19...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Introduction by Thomas McCarthy
• Preface
• I Modernity’s Consciousness of Time and Its Need for Self-Reassurance
• II Hegel’s Concept of Modernity
• Excursus on Schiller’s “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man’
• III Three Perspectives: Left Hegelians, Right Hegelians, and Nietzsche
• Excursus on the Obsolescence of the Production Paradigm
• IV The Entry into Postmodernity: Nietzsche as a Turning Point
• V The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno
• VI The Undermining of Western Rationalism through the Critique of Metaphysics: Martin Heidegger
• VII Beyond a Temporalized Philosophy of Origins: Jacques Derrida’s Critique of Phonocentrism
• Excursus on Leveling the Genre Distinction between Philosophy and Literature
• VIII Between Eroticism and General Economics: Georges Bataille
• IX The Critique of Reason as an Unmasking of the Human Sciences: Michel Foucault
• X Some Questions Concerning the Theory of Power: Foucault Again
• XI An Alternative Way out of the Philosophy of the Subject: Communicative versus Subject-Centered Reason
• Excursus on Cornelius Castoriadis: The Imaginary Institution
• XII The Normative Content of Modernity
• Excursus on Luhmann s Appropriation of the Philosophy of the Subject through Systems Theory
• Notes
• Name Index
• Subject and Title Index