Term Paper--The Unfinished Project of Modernity by Jurgen Habermas

Habermas is one of the leading figures of post-World War II liberal political philosophy. Even though, he is influenced by Marxian philosophy and was part of Frankfurt School, he valued the civil liberties and the formal equality before the law guaranteed in modern Western democracies. He argues that “the welfare state, or what Europeans call ‘social democracy,’ has a better track record than socialism or other alternatives in promoting and spreading prosperity”  (Habermas 1742). He vehemently opposed the critique of modernity developed by French poststructuralist writers like Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard.

According to Maurizio Passerin, “Habermas set out to defend the unrealized normative potential of modernity” (9). Unlike the poststructuralist, Habermas supported the enlightenment ideals of universal reason rights, and justice. “Habermas privileges the responsibility to act in the world in a normatively justified way, the postmodernists celebrate the responsibility to otherness, namely, the openness to difference, dissonance and ambiguity” (d'Entreves 10). While postmodernists view reason as a term used “to exclude, denigrate, or silence opinions that differ from the dominant view” (1742). But Habermas’ view is oppositional.

Habermas’ first book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, portrays his interests in civil society, civil liberties and public communication. This concept has tremendous influence in the development of “the project of modernity”. Habermas accepts that the modernity is the result of the economic arrangements of capitalism, of technological advancements and also due to the formation of nation-states. “Habermas’ philosophy presents itself as a critical theory of society, emphasizes its scientific rigour and also claims to withstand the test of interdisciplinary and even empirical research” (Steinhoff 1).

The essay “Modernity—An Incomplete Project” was originally delivered as a talk at the Theodor W. Adorno award function by the city of Frankfurt. Subsequently it was delivered as James Lecture of the New York Institute for the Humanities in March 1981. The essay was translated by Seyla Benhabib and was edited by Hal Foster.

Habermas’ major argument is that the modernity has failed. Luke Goode opines:

At the centre of Habermas’s critical theory is a belief that, in the transition from tradition to modernity, capitalist development has engendered a one-sided form of rationalisation, one that privileges systematic imperatives. The result is that the life world loses its capacity to shape an increasingly autonomous system and the discourses of means and ends pass like ships in the night. . . . the administrative tentacles of the welfare state have intruded into the fabric of everyday life; political debate has become scientifically managed; capitalism has learned to commodify and instrumentalise education, sexuality, death, leisure, tourism, artistic endeavour, and the myriad other sites of cultural practice implicated in contemporary struggles for meaning. (133)

Although Habermas highlights the flaws of modernity and its failure, he insists on the continuity of the project with renewed focus. The mistake of the postmodernist negation of modernity can be corrected and thus the project of modernity can be continued. According to Habermas “the project of modernity has not yet been fulfilled” (1758).

Habermas begins with the Biennial in Venice in 1980, where, according to him the tradition of modernity was sacrificed “in order to make room for a new historicism” (1748). The term modern comes from Latin ‘modernus’. It was used for the first time in the fifth century to distinguish the Christian present from the Roman pagan past. Habermas argues that the term modern is always related to the past. “The term ‘modern’ again and again expresses the consciousness of an epoch that relates itself to the past of antiquity, in order to view itself as the result of a transition from the old to the new” (1749).

Some writers restricts the term modernity only to Renaissance, which is very parochial vision of modernity. People in the 12th century and in the 17th century considered themselves modern. During those times, the term denoted a renewed relationship to the past. “[The] term appeared and reappeared exactly during those periods in Europe when the consciousness of a new epoch formed itself through a renewed relationship to the ancients—whenever, moreover, antiquity was considered a model to be recovered through some kind of imitation” (1749).

With the ideals of French Enlightenment, the very concept of ‘modern’ underwent serious transformation and the advent of modern sciences, the progress of knowledge and the advancement of social and moral betterment further triggered this transformation. Consequently, this change brought out a platform for the development of another consciousness of modernity. The romantic modernist opposed the classical ideals and embraced the medieval ideals. But this ideal was not a fixed ideal and underwent serious changes. As a result, in the 19th century, there was an emergence of “radicalized consciousness of modernity which freed itself from all specific historical ties” (1749). This new consciousness of modernity broke all the ties between the tradition and present and there emerged a serious opposition between the two. What was modern was something ‘new’ not something from past. The very concept highlights ‘the new’ which overcome and obsolete the old. As a result, the aesthetic modernity which was freed from tradition was born and it redefined the very concept of “modern” into “new”. But, Habermas argues that, what is modern preserves a secret tie to the classical. The ‘stylish’ though seems to be modern, will be obsoleted. But the new consciousness of modernity does not borrow this power of being “classical” form the “the authority of a past epoch” (1750). In the 19th century a work becomes classic since it has been authentically modern. Habermas opines, “our sense of modernity creates its own self-enclosed canons of being classic” (1750).

Habermas further moves to the discipline of aesthetic modernity and points out the contours of the spirit of aesthetic modernity in the work of Baudelaire. After expanding too many avant-garde movements, it finally reached at the climax in the Café Voltaire of the Dadaists and in Surrealism. Dadaism as an anti-artist movement, somersaulted all sort of traditional conceptual frameworks of art and tried to picture the shocking realities of life through absurdist, grotesque artistic representations. The contrasting collaboration of different elements in art further expanded the concept of aesthetic modernity. The characteristics of aesthetic modernity is that it is based on attitudes “which find a common focus in a changed consciousness of time” (1750). This time consciousness, according to Habermas, expresses through the “metaphors of the vanguard and the avant-garde” (1750).

What is so peculiar about the new time consciousness is that there is conspicuous exaltation of the present. It can be seen in the writer-critic Bergson. This new time consciousness express more than the mobility in the society, the acceleration in history, and the discontinuity of everyday life, and further there is “a longing for an undefiled, immaculate and stable present” (1750).

In this process, the “past” got depicted in rather abstract manner. The individual epochs lost their distinctive forces and “historic memory is replaced by the heroic affinity of the present with the extremes of history” (1750). The tendency to blow up the continuum of the history and to break the connection with the present with the past was a leading trend in this time of modernity. As a result, modernity became a revolt against the normalizing function of tradition. It is a rebellion against all that is normative as a result, this revolt aims at to neutralize the standards of both morality and utility.

Habermas also points out the other side. The time consciousness in the avant-garde art is not ahistorical. The time consciousness questions the false normativity of history. It speculates the past in a different way. Habermas observes that the new time consciousness emerged out of the modernity has lost its avant-garde by the repeated re-articulation. So, Habermas uses the concept of ‘post-avant-garde’ of Peter Burger. It is in this manner that Walter Benjamin attempted to explain the relation of modernity to history in a posthistorical manner. It can be observed that, this spirit of this modernity declined by the 1960s since the era of Benjamin. The Surrealist movement also could not make a reasonable impact.

The impasse of modernity caused by the repeated re-articulation of avant-garde erupts questions like whether this is the end of modernity or this post avant-garde is the transformation of modernity into postmodernity. Daniel Bell, a well-known social theorist and one of the famous American neoconservative thinkers, in his The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism tries to tackle this issue. According to him the crisis in the modern society can be tracked back to “a split between culture and society” (1571), between cultural modernity and the demands of the economic and administrative systems. The modernist culture penetrates to the everyday life. “Because of modernism, the principle of unlimited self-realization, the demand for authentic self-experience and the subjectivism of a hyper stimulated sensitivity have come to be dominant” (1571). According to Bell, modernity is incompatible with professional life and moral foundations, since it advocates the unrestrained self-realization, demand for authentic self-experience, and discharge of hedonistic motivations. Bell proposes that the dissolution of protestant ethics on the “adversary culture” as the reason for the worsened state of modernity.

The neoconservatives are concerned with questions like how to establish norms that will restrain libertinism, promote discipline and ethic and encourage the virtues of individual competitiveness. According to Bell the only solution for this is some kind of religious renewal that will be based on the tradition. As a result there would be clearly definable individual identities and they must procure an existential sense of security for the individual.

The neoconservatives could initiate an intellectual and political confrontation with carriers of cultural modernity in the 1970s. Peter Steinfels, an observer of this neoconservative intellectual movement observes, “exposing every manifestation of what could be considered an oppositionist mentality and tracing its “logic” so as to link it to various forms of extremism” (qtd in Habermas 1752). So, they drew connection between modernism and nihilism, between government regulation and totalitarianism, between criticism of arms expenditures and subservience to communism, between women’s liberation or queer rights and the destruction of the family, between the left generally and terrorism, anti-semitism, fascism etc. Habermas observes that this ad hominem approach is not because of the psychology of the neoconservative writers but because of their analytical weaknesses on neoconservative doctrine itself.

The neoconservative doctrine blurs the relationship between the process of social modernization and the cultural development. They do not analyse the causes for the altered attitude towards work, consumption, achievement and leisure. As a result, the neoconservatives attribute everything (hedonism, lack of social identification, lack of obedience, narcissism, lack of competition) to the domain of culture. The attribution of culture to everything the neoconservative seem as problematic exposes their analytical weakness. Though culture has a role in the every problems, they are only in a very indirect and mediated fashion.

The main reason for the neoconservatives’ discontent for the intellectuals of project of modernity is “rooted in deep-seated reactions against the process of social modernization” (1753). Under the pressures of economic growth and the organizational accomplishments of the state, the social modernization pierces further to the “previous forms of human existence” (1753). Habermas points out that this subordination of the life worlds under the imperatives of systems disturbs the communicative infrastructure of everyday life.

As an example, Habermas points out the neopopulist concern over the destruction of urban and natural environment and forms of human sociability. But for Habermas, communicative rationality is necessary for the tasking of passing cultural tradition, social integration and socialization. But protests and discontents are originated when the communicative rationality is overruled by standards of administrative rationality. The neoconservatives do not focus of these social process instead they limit themselves in projecting the causes.

Habermas points out that cultural modernity has its own aporias. The consequences of social modernization and cultural development, triggers the motives of doubting the project of modernity. Through the exploration of issues that touched the aporias of cultural modernity Habermas shifts his focus to questions like whether to call for a postmodernity, recommend a return to some form of premodernity, or throw modernity overboard.

The general idea of modernity is inextricably tied to the development of European art. But according to Habermas, “the project of modernity” comes only with the dispensation of the unusual concentration on art. Quoting Max Weber, Habermas describes cultural modernity as “the separation of the substantive reason expressed in religion and metaphysics into three autonomous spheres” (1753). These autonomous spheres are; science, morality, and art.  By dispensing these domains, the unified worldviews of religion and metaphysics are separated. So, the problems inherited from early form of worldviews fell under specific aspects of validity like truth, normative rightness, authenticity and beauty. As a result, scientific discourse, theories of morality, jurisprudence, and the production and criticism of art would become institutionalised. By dispensing each domain of culture into different spheres there would be a professionalized treatment of each. Consequently, “the structures of cognitive-instrumental, of moral-practical and of aesthetic-expressive rationality, [would be] under the control of specialists who seem more adept at being logical in these particular way than other people are” (1754).

The institutionalized separation of different domains of culture has its own problem too. There will be a growing distance between the experts and the general public due to this institutionalization of culture. The specialized treatment and reflection of the domains of culture may not become the property of everyday praxis of culture. As a result, through this cultural rationalization, the life-world which is already been devalued would become more and more penurious.

In the 18th century, the enlightenment philosophers who were the proponents of the project of modernity, tried to create “objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic” (1754). The enlightenment philosophers wanted to use the dispensed treatment of culture for the enrichment of everyday life, in other words, “for the rational organization of everyday social life (1754). But in the twentieth century this optimism was shattered. The institutionalized domains of culture became autonomous segments treated by specialist and they created an abysmal separation from the hermeneutics of everyday communication. As a result, there were questions on the negations of culture. Questions like whether the enlightenment principles of the project of modernity should be continued or whether the entire project of modernity a lost cause became prominent in the philosophical zone. Here, Habermas tries to pinpoint the problems of artistic culture and tries to explain why aesthetic modernity is only a part of cultural modernity in general.

Habermas points out that in tracing the evolution of modern art one can observe a linear progression of the development of more and more autonomy in the definition and practice of art. The category of ‘beauty’ and the domain of beautiful objects was the creation of Renaissance. During the 18th century, literature, fine art and music became separate institutionalized practices, independent from the religious and courtly life. In the middle of the 19^th century an aesthetic concept of art emerged and promoted the concept of ‘art for art’s sake.’ The 19th century, there was a new movement in painting and literature where, “colour, lines, sounds and movement ceased to serve primarily the cause of representation; the media of expression and the techniques of production themselves became the aesthetic object” (1755). This new development in art resulted in the projection of the disparity between the reality and the aesthetic representation in the art.  This development in art alienated art itself from the realty of life. In the modernist art, art became a critical mirror and projected the irreconcilable nature of art and society. Consequently, art withdrew itself to the abyss of complete autonomy.

The surrealist movement was a novel attempt to shatter the autarkical nature of art and to bring back art from its heights to the ordinary realities of life. But at the same time, the attempts to “level art and life, fiction and praxis, appearance and reality to one plane; the attempt to remove the distinction between artefact and object of use, between conscious staging and spontaneous excitement; the attempt to declare everything to art and every one to be an artist . . . proved themselves to be nonsense experiments (1755). This resulted in oppositional result. Trough attempts like these, those structures of art which the project of modernity tried to dissolve were brought back and it ended up in the negation of art.

Surrealist revolt, according to Habermas, was destroyed by two mistakes. Firstly, they failed to understand that when the containers of an autonomously developed culture sphere get shattered, the contents also get dispersed. There will be nothing remaining from a destructed cultural sphere. Secondly, in everyday communication, cognitive meaning, moral expectations, subjective expressions and evaluations must be related to each other and all the shperes of culture—cognitive, moral-practical and expressive—must be covered in the communicative process. By breaking upon a single cultural sphere one cannot save the rationalized everyday life from impoverishment.

Coming to other domains of culture, theoretical knowledge and morality, there are also parallel failed attempts that resulted in the false negation of culture. Coming to Marxism one can observe that there is a parallel movement in the negation philosophy as if in the surrealist movement there is an attempt to negate art. But, their attempts were at the peripheral and like the surrealists, there were also parallel mistakes that hampered their initiative.

The reified everyday praxis can only be saved by the unconstrained interaction of the different spheres of culture. The cognitive, moral-practical and aesthetic expressive realms must come together to free the life world from the industrial rationality. Like the Surrealist, Marxists could open up and make accessible only one of the highly stylized cultural spheres. Consequently, the opening up of single cultural sphere triggers the possibilities of extremism and terroristic activities and chances of overextension of any one of these sphere into other domains are high. The tendencies to aestheticize politics, or to replace politics with moral rigorism are apt examples of the possible over-extension of one cultural sphere into another.

For Habermas, optimism is the key to the problems of modernity. Rather than the negation of the project of modernity, he insists on learning from the mistakes made by earlier attempts and continuing the project. Instead of beating around the bush, for Habermas, concentrating on the types of reception of art may give some clue to correct the trajectory of the project of modernity. He points out that bourgeois art had two expectations from the audience. On the one hand, the common readers who enjoy art should educate themselves to become experts. And on the other hand, he should also become a competent consumer and learn to use art and aesthetic experience to relate his own life experience.

Habermas warns that artistic expression is at risk until it explores solutions for the problems of institutionalized autonomy and the alienation of life-world and deals with the exoteric questions of everyday life. There is sharp difference between a common man (layman) and a professional critic in the reception of art. While the expert focuses only on one aspect of validity, a common man widens his view and includes other aspects of truth and justice among his own social and historical background to understand the art.

Quoting Albrecht Wellmer, Habermas points out:

an aesthetic experience which is not framed around the expert’s critical judgement of taste can have its significance altered; as soon as such an experience is used to illuminate a life-historical situation and is related to life problems, it enters into a language game which is no longer that of the aesthetic critic. (1757)

The aesthetic experience renders the perception of art and help to relate it with the life-world and its day to day affairs. It permeates the cognitive significations and normative expectations and changes the manner in which all these things are related to one another.

The appropriation of expert’s culture form the standpoint of the life-world does justice to the early initiators to solve the problems of modernity. For Habermas, the project of modernity is not yet completed. The reception of art cannot be judged as the whole benchmark to judge modernity. It is only one of at least three aspects of modernity. In Habermasean view, the project of modernity “aims at a differentiated relinking of modern culture with an everyday praxis that still depends on vital heritages, but would be impoverished through mere traditionalism” (1758). To establish a link between the two, there must be a steering social modernization. The life world must be able to create its own institutions with control of the internal dynamics and imperatives of an autonomous economic system and administrative complements.

But the chances for such an initiative are very rare. In the West, the trend that encourages the capitalist modernization process as well as the trend to limit the cultural modernism prevails. The disillusionment of the early programs to negate art and philosophy has come up to serve as a pretence for conservative positions. The antimodernism of the ‘young conservatives’, the premodernism of the ‘old conservative’ and the postmodernism of the neoconservatives straightjacket the project of modernity form developing further.

Habermas points out that the “young conservatives” insists on the basic experience of aesthetic modernity. Their focus, according to Habermas, is on decentered subjectivity, “emancipated from the imperatives of work and usefulness, and with the experience they step outside the modern world” (1758). They justify an antimodernism on the basis of modernist attitudes. Habermas accuses that they remove themselves to the sphere of far-away and archaic and ties themselves to the spontaneous power of imagination, self-experience and emotion. They have nothing to offer against the instrumental thinking but some Manichean thought based on Dionysiac force. Habermas categorizes the French critical scholarship from George Bataille via Michel Foucault to Jacques Derrida under the “young conservatives”.

The “old conservatives”, According to Habermas, keeps themselves away from the cultural modernism. “They observe the decline of substantive reason, the differentiation of science, morality and art, the modern world view and its merely procedural rationality, with sadness and recommend a withdrawal to a position anterior to modernity” (1758). Among the “old conservatives,” Neo-Aristotalianism enjoys certain success today. The problematics of ecology allows it for a call for cosmological ethic. This category of critics originates from Leo Strauss and includes Hans Jonas and Robert Spaemann.

The last group of neoconservatives welcome the development of modern science as long as it does not go beyond the sphere of technical progress, capitalist growth and rational administration. Further they recommend a politics of defusing the explosive content of cultural modernity. Among many theses among the neoconservatives, one thesis highlights the meaninglessness of science, and another thesis proposes for the distancing of politics from the demands of moral-practical justification as far as possible. And a third thesis asserts the pure imminence of art and it must limits its aesthetic experience to privacy. But again this confinement of science morality and art, administered by the experts and kept away from the life-world would only give an oppositional effect to the project of modernity.

Habermas do not hide his concerns, “[he] fear[s] that the ideas of anitmodernity, together with an additional touch of premodernity, are becoming popular in the circles of alternative culture” (1759). But instead of abandoning the project modernity, he insists on the continuation of the project with rectified measures.

Bibliography

d'Entreves, Maurizio Passerin. “Introduction.” Habermas and The Unfinished Project of Modernity. Ed. Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves and Benhabib Seyla. Massachusetts: MIT, 1997. 9-45. Print.

Goode, Luke. Jurgen Habermas Democracy and Public Sphere. London: Pluto, 2005. Print.

Habermas, Jurgan. “Modernity an Unfishished Project.” Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ney York: Norton and Company, 2001. 1741-1748. Print.

Steinhoff, Uwe. The Philosophy of Jurgen Habermas a Critical Intruduction. Trans. Karsten Schollner. New York: Oxford UP, 2009.