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Social Scientist

Habermas and the Post Modernist Critique of the EnlightenmentAuthor(s): Shaswati MazumdarReviewed work(s):Source: Social Scientist, Vol. 20, No. 12 (Dec., 1992), pp. 53-66Published by: Social ScientistStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3517742 .

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SHASWATI MAZUMDAR

Habermasand the Post Modernist Critique ofthe EnlightenmentIn Brecht's play Life of Galileo, a young monk explains to Galileo thereasons why he supports the papal decree against the results ofGalileo's researches on the planetary system showing that it was notthe sun that moved round the earth but the earth that moved aroundthe sun:

My parents were peasants in the Campagna, and I grew up there.They are simple people. They know all about olive trees, but notmuch else ... They are badly off, but even their misfortunes imply acertain order . . . There is a regularity about the disasters thatbefall them ... They have been assured that God's eye is always onthem-probingly, even anxiously-that the whole drama of theworld is constructed around them so that they, the performers mayprove themselves in their greater or lesser roles. What would mypeople say if I told them that they happen to be on a small knob ofstone twisting endlessly through the void round a second-rate star,just one among myriads? What would be the value or necessity thenof so much patience, such understanding of their poverty? Whatwould be the use of Holy Scripture, which has explained andjustified it all-the sweat, the patience, the hunger, thesubmissiveness-and now turns out to be full of errors? No: I can seetheir eyes wavering, I can see them leffing their spoons drop, I cansee how betrayed and deceived they will feel. So nobody's eye is onus, they'll say. Have we got to look after ourselves, old, uneducatedand worn-out as we are? The only part anybody has devised for us isthis wretched earthly one, to be played out on a tiny star whollydependent on others, with nothing revolving round it. Our povertyhas no meaning: hunger is no trial of strength, it's merely not havingeaten: effort is no virtue, it's just bending and carrying. Can you seenow why I read into the Holy Congregations decree a noblemotherly compassion, a vast goodness of the soul?To this Galileo retorts:

*Delhi University, Delhi

Social Scientist, Vol. 20, No. 12, December 1992

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54 SOCIALSCIENTIST. . . Your Campagna peasants pay for the wars which therepresentative of the gentle Jesus is waging in Germany and Spain.Why does he make the earth the centre of the universe? So that theSee of St. Peter can be the centre of the earth! That's what it's allabout. You're right, it's not about the planets, it's about the peasantsof the Campagna.1A similar noble motherly compassion seems to move some of thosewho seek to stem the tide of the critique of the EuropeanEnlightenment emanating from the philosophical interpretations ofpostmodernist/poststructuralist theory. God may have been replaced

by the self-reflexive subject, but the urge to defend a strategic poweronce appropriated through the exploits and cunning of Enlightenment'reason' is not dissimilar to the motives of the Holy Congregation.However well-intentioned it may sometimes be, its origins includeamong other things an underlying Eurocentrism.It is the critical focus on the Enlightenment common to all theorieslabeled as postmodernist/poststructuralist, though they may divergefrom each other in many significant ways, which has drawn the ire ofGerman philosopher Jiirgen Habermas, who in his entire intellectualcareer has remained committed to drawing out the potential he isconvinced exists in the project of the Enlightenment for developing amore satisfying, enriching and rational organisation of society.The fact is that his faith in Enlightenment reason and the 'project ofmodernity', which he sees as identical with the project of theEnlightenment, seems somewhat misplaced not only in this age ofdecadent if not yet decaying capitalism, but even in the foundinggesture of the Enlightenment as philosophical legitimation in theprocess of the establishment of capitalism. Moreover, his inability tofind reason to take a position against US intervention in the Gulf in1991 appears not entirely unrelated to his defence of EuropeanEnlightenment and civilization vis-a-vis the non-European world.It is not the purpose of this paper to denigrate the contributions ofHabermas, particularly in view of the role he played in counteringapologist interpretations of Nazism.2 In these interpretations,conservative German historians attempted to make the pastacceptable by describing Nazism as an aberration and projectingsocialism as the main enemy against which the West should unite.Ernst Nolte, Habermas's main opponent in the now well-knownhistorians' debate, went so far as to define Nazism as a defensivereaction to the 'Asiatic' threat of Soviet Bolshevism. In Habermas'sown words: 'The Nazi crimes lose their singularity by being madecomprehensible as the answer to a Bolshevist threat of annihilation(that continues to exist today). Auschwitz is reduced to the format of atechnical innovation and is explained as an 'Asiatic' peril by an enemythat is still standing outside our gates.'3

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HABERMAS AND THE CRITIQUE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 55The historians' debate was sparked off by a political event. In May1985 German and American generals shook hands at the Bitburgmilitary cemetery which included among the interred fortyninemembers of the dreaded SS. This was meant to symbolise the laying torest of past enmity between Germany and the United States and ofGerman responsibility for Nazi crimes. Habermas saw the event asrepresentative of the 'Tendenzwende', the rightward shift in Germanpolitics in the eighties.It is in the context of this very Tendenzwende that Habermas seesthe impact of postmodernist thinking in German intellectual circles.Two aspects of the German response evidently disturb him: the assault

on Enlightenment reason and the cultural relativism threatening theuniversalist ideals of the German philosophical tradition. It is wellworth noting here that the critique of Enlightenment reason and itsuniversalising approach need not be seen as speaking for unreason or forcultural relativism; it could be far more useful and radical when seenas an analysis of a historical phenomenon which sought to usurp theexclusive right to speak in the name of reason and universalism. Theformer interpretive scheme remains caught in a framework of binaryoppositions, of epistemological dependence. Unfortunately, bothHabermas and the trends he sought to counter remain limited by such aframework in their perceptions and arguments.Habermas perhaps represents one of the most influentialarticulations of the defence of the Enlightenment and the 'project ofmodernity'. Though emerging as the most prominent descendant of theCritical Theory of the Frankfurt School, he significantly reversed theanalysis of the Enlightenment's failure offered by the previousgeneration in Adorno and Horkheimer's 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'which saw fascism as the logical consequence of the development ofEnlightenment reason. Beginning with a speech delivered in 1980while accepting the Adorno Prize entitled 'Die Moderne-einunvollendetes Projekt' (subsequently published as 'Modernity versusPostmodernity'),4 Habermas followed with a series of lecturespublished as a collection with the title 'The Philosophical Discourseof Modernity'. This collection of lectures, of which the first four wereoriginally delivered in March 1983 at the College de France in Paris,were aimed in particular at French poststructuralist thought. AsHabermas says in the Preface: 'The challenge from the neostructuralistcritique of reason defines the perspective from which I seek toreconstruct here, step by step, the philosophical discourse ofmodernity. 5 Habermas argues that the various theories of postmoder-nity had their ideological origins in a venerated tradition of irra-tionalist counter-Enlightenment coming down to its contemporary con-servative equivalents; Nietzsche and Heidegger were the forefathersof this tradition and fascism was one of its outgrowths.

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56 SOCIALSCIENTISTIt is the contention of this paper that Habermas's political

sensitivity and virulent reaction to the critique of the Enlightenmentinherent in various postmodernist/poststructuralist theories are linkedto his vantage point, his social and historical location-voluntarily orinvoluntarily assumed-while defining modernity and itsconsequences. The roots of his anger go back to the manner in which hedefines this dawn of a new era and the values and hopes for the futuredrawn from it which sustain his philosophical theories.In 'The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity', Habermas takesMax Weber as his starting point in defining modernity as beingintrinsically linked to a rationalism peculiar to the Occident whichset off a process of disenchantment, of a disintegration of religiousworld views, and led to the functional differentiation of the threerelatively autonomous spheres of science, morality and art, eachhaving its inner laws in its pursuit of truth, justice and authenticityrespectively and each evolving a specific rationality: cognitive-instrumental in the sphere of science, moral-practical in the sphere ofmorality, and aesthetic-expressive in the sphere of art. In Habermas'sview, it is this functional differentiation into independent spheres ofsocial activity, each of which develops according to its own innerdynamic and goals, that gave the West such an evolutionaryadvantage and explains its superiority over the rest of the world.6According to Habermas, Hegel was the first philosopher to havedeveloped a clear concept of modernity, to have postulated its intrinsicconnection to Occidental rationalism; from Hegel to Max Weber thisinherent connection remained self-evident. 'Postmodern' critics of theEnlightenment fell into two categories. Neo-conservative criticsdelinked modernity, or modernisation-as it had now come to becalled-from its original cultural roots in Western rationalism anddeclared the death of the Enlightenment; their critique was aimed notat the process of modernisation, but at the cultural self-understandingof modernity. The other category of critics, including Foucault andDerrida, appeared in a politically very different garb, namelyanarchist; while they accepted the link between modernity andWestern rationalism, their critique was aimed at modernity in itsentirety. Habermas designates the second group as youngconservatives. His thesis is that both these reactions to theEnlightenment and modernity cloak themselves as 'postmodern', bothpretend to have gone beyond the conceptual horizon linking modernityto Western rationalism, but both belong in fact to a venerable andpolitically dangerous tradition of counter-Enlightenment. His ownpolitical agenda consists in the defence of the still 'uncompletedproject of modernity'.In Habermas' own critique of modern capitalist society, he iscredited with having restored to Critical Theory the concept of crisis.7Yet, though he evolved his crisis theory in response to the student

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HABERMASAND THECRITIQUEOFTHEENLIGHTENMENT 57movements of the 60s and the economic crisis of the early 70s, it hasbeen pointed out that'. . . he never really attributes much of a role tosocial movements or struggles as factors of social change, and tends toengage in rather abstract theoretical analysis of crisis tendencies,rather than more concrete historical analysis'.8 Equally significant isthe fact that Habermas sees the nation state as the ideal unit ofanalysis, thus failing to take cognisance of the world economicrelations which keep contemporary capitalism alive.While characterising modem or late capitalist societies, Habermasdistinguishes between system and lifeworld. Crises in such societiesare the result of the overbearing interventions of system-integratingforces of money and power into the lifeworld. These system-integratingforces are countered by social-integrating forces which evolve in thelifeworld through a process of intersubjectivity, of communicativeaction.9 Such a social-integrating forces become effective when theyare backed by well-formed collective identities which have to havethe ability to undermine their particularism, absorb the normativecontent of modernity and become the standard-bearers of theEnlightenment's universalist vision of justice and morality. Habermasis of the opinion that so far only the nation state represented such acollective identity:Until now, the democratic, constitutional nation-state that emergedfrom the French Revolution was the only identity formationsuccessful on a world-historical scale that could unite these twomoments of the universal and particular without coercion. TheCommunist party has been unable to replace the identity of thenation-state. If not in the nation, in what other soil canuniversalistic value orientations today take root?10

For Habermas, Europe would be the true heir to the legacy ofOccidental rationalism, though not the Europe of Adenauer and deGaulle, of the Common Market and of a militarised NATO, not theEurope which equated happiness and emancipation with power andproduction and thereby called forth two hundred years of critique ofmodernity:

Modern Europe has created the spiritual presuppositions and thematerial foundations for a world in which this mentality has takenthe place of reason. That is the real heart of the critique of reasonsince Nietzsche. Who else but Europe could draw from its own tradi-tions the insight, the energy, the courage of vision-everythingthat would be necessary to strip from the (no longer metaphysical,but metabiological) premises of a blind compulsion to system main-tenance and system expansion their power to shape our mentality.11In an inordinate reaction to Derrida's methodological approach ofseeing philosophical texts as much as literary ones and applying

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58 SOCIAL SCIENTIST

literary-critical tools in their analysis, Habermas emphasizes thatphilosophy still continues to see its role 'as the defender of rationalityin the sense of the claim of reason endogenous to our form of life'(emphasis added).12 However, he suggests that all philosophicalinterpretations of modernity, whether in the Hegelian, Marxist orNietzschean tradition, have not been able to find a resolution to thedialectic of the Enlightenment, that is the domination of theinstrumental, repressive dimension of reason over its emancipatory,enlightening one as they have all remained caught within theproblematic of a philosophy of the subject. This is because theyignored the dimension of intersubjectivity as a site for consensusbuilding, as a site for the evolution of what he calls communicativereason, the fulfillment of which would be the fulfillment of the projectof modernity. Richard Wolin has pointed out that over a period oftime Habermas's theory has 'undergone different versions and gone bydifferent names: 'theory of communicative competence', 'consensustheory of truth', 'theory of universal pragmatics'. Common to allelaborations of the theory, however, is a conviction that the utopianideal of 'communication free from domination' is embodied in everyspeech-act in the sphere of ordinary language; that is, the telos ofordinary language, is the attainment of a free and unconstrainedagreelnent ('Verstandigung').13Habermas's critique of the Hegelian, Marxist and Nietzscheantraditions of philosophy is based on the validity of his theory ofintersubjectivity which in turn is based on the validity of hisphilosophy of language. Habermas extrapolates this philosophy fromhis understanding that the discourse of modernity was accompaniedfrom the very outset by a counter-discourse with which modernity hadto reckon and to which it constantly had to justify itself. Theinteraction between these two discourses was mediated by language. Itis in this sphere of interaction, and particularly as mediated byeveryday language, that he locates his concept of noncoercive inter-subjectivity and communicative action: it is here that the truth orvalidity claims put forward by different aspects of modernity aredecided upon and mutual understanding and consensus reached. Thisprocess of validating claims and evolving consensus is, according toHabermas, intrinsic to language use, making it the befitting environ-ment for reason, that is communicative reason, to accumulate over time.It follows from this that if modern society experiences crises, theycan be resolved in the sphere of intersubjectivity, through languageuse, through communicative action. Habermas evidently makes littleof the economic, social, political relations of power which form thecontext of and control over communication. Moreover, by imputing toordinary language a transcendental urge for communication free fromdomination, he himself seems to fall victim to a philosophy of thesubject, a subject which has an inherent communicative competence by

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HABERMASAND THECRITIQUEOFTHEENLIGHTENMENT 59virtue of speaking a language and thus moves along a pre-ordainedpath to the final pinnacle of complete communicative reason.One criticis has pointed out that this anonymous subject 'does notmerely remain an empirically fruitful research hypothesis, butassumes the role of a philosophical narrative of the formative historyof the subject of history. Much like Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit,reconstructions then begin to speak in the name of a fictional collective'we' from whose standpoint the story of history is told. This fictivesubject appears both as the subject of the past and of the future; it isempirical and normative at once. In Habermas' account too theempirical subject(s), as whose learning process the cultural evolution ofmodernity takes place, shifts its status, and this process becomes arepresentative tale in which 'we', the subjects of history, are todiscover ourselves.'14 The problem is which collective 'we' is meantand whose identity is to be discovered in this historical tale: '. . . Ofmen or of women? Of Jews or the Gentitles? Of Westerners or ofAfricans?'15The critique of the Enlightenment and of Enlightenment reason hasa long tradition going back to the very act of its founding. GermanRomanticism, which itself came into existence as the expression of theseparation of the sphere of art from those of science and morality, wascritical of modern society as it emerged after the French Revolutionand of what it felt was the one-sided nature of 'reason'. It sought tobreak down the barriers which it'felt 'reason' had erected between artand life. Yet it remained nostalgic and melancholic in its gesture,seeking to reconcile the social contradictions it was confronted with inutopian images of the past. Jochen Schulte-Sasse has defined it in thefollowing manner: 'Romanticism . . . is anti-capitalistic within itsbeing capitalistic; it is an (imaginary) moment of rest, a timelessmoment of fulfillment within the infinite displacement of fulfillmentin capitalism.'16 Romanticism remained caught in a fundamentalepistemological dependence on the very object of its critique.In 'The German Ideology',17 Marx's critique of the Young Hegeliansinability to make a comprehensive criticism of the Hegelian systemalso focuses on their epistemological dependence. They each take oneaspect of the Hegelian system and turn it against the whole system aswell as against aspects chosen by others. The mystification is not onlyin the answers but even in the questions. They do not differ from theOld Hegelians in their belief in the rule of a universal principle in theexisting world, they only differ in attacking this rule as usurpation.The Young Hegelians see all problems as products of consciousness anddemand changes in consciousness. They thus remain the staunchestconservatives.Marx shows how in a conception of history common to historiansparticularly since the 18th century, ideas were given an independentexistence, hiding their class interests behind a garb of universality and

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60 SOCIAL SCIENTISTrationality. History is thus seen as the development of the 'Idea', the'Concept' to its fulfillment. In like manner, speculative philosophyderives all relations of men from the conceptof man, man as conceived,the essence of man, Man. Thus Feuerbach, orall his criticisms of Hegelfrom a declaredly materialist point of view, develops the view thatthe being of a thing or a man is at the same time his essence, and thatthe mode of his life and activity is that in which this 'essence'expresses itself, feels itself satisfied. Feuerbach posits 'Man' insteadof 'real historical man', and 'Man' for him is really 'the German'.Speculative philosophy which saw history as the development of'ideas', of 'essences', of the 'world spirit' to fulfillment distortedhistory so that later history was made the goal of earlier history.Thus the eruptionof the FrenchRevolution was seen as the goal of thediscovery of America. For Marx, the transformation of history intoworld historyis no mere abstractactof the furthermovement in time ofthe 'world spirit',or of any other metaphysical spectre, but a result ofempirically verifiable facts such as the invention in England of amachine 'which deprives countless workers of bread in India andChina, and overturns the whole form of existence of these empires'.Such events arenot merely partof a continuous accumulativeprocessofhistory, they completely transform the circumstances in which theactivity of men takes place. For Marx, the task of the historian was toanalyse these transformations and to make visible the space andpossibilities of individual and collective action; knowledge of thesepossibilities would influence the motives and direction of action.What is improtant for Marx is the interpretationof society under theaspect of the possibilities of changing it. A philosophical andhistorical determinism attributed to Marx in some laterinterpretationscould not have been furtherfromhis understanding.In 'The Archaeology of Knowledge', Foucault attempts to uncoverthe principles and consequences of an epistemological mutation in thefield of historical knowledge, the first phase of which can be tracedback to Marx.This transformationwhich is still going on, signified ashift in the focus of historyaway from continuities to the phenomenonof rupture,of discontinuity: 'Discontinuitywas the stigma of temporaldislocation that it was the historian's task to remove from history. Ithas now become one of the basic tools of historicalanalysis.'19Thoughthis transformationoriginateas far back as Marx,it took a long time tohave much effect, and, particularly in the history of thought, it hasstill to be registered and reflected upon. Foucault explains this in thefollowing manner:

If the history of thought could remain the locus of uninterruptedcontinuities, if it could endlessly forge connexions that no analysiscould undo without abstraction, if it could weave, aroundeverything that men say and do, obscure synthesis that anticipate

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HABERMASAND THECRITIQUEOFTHEENLIGHTENMENT 61for him, prepare him, and lead him endlessly towards his future, itwould provide a privileged shelter for the sovereignty ofconsciousness. Continuous history is the indispensable correlative ofthe founding function of the subject: the guarantee that everythingthat has eluded him may be restored to him; the certainty thattime will disperse nothing without restoring it in a reconstitutedunity; the promise that one day the subject-in the form ofhistorical consciousness-will once again be able to appropriate, tobring back under his sway, all those things that are kept at adistance by difference, and find in them what might be called hisabode. Making historical analysis the discourse of the continuousand making human consciousness the original subject of all historicaldevelopment and all action are the two sides of the same system ofthought. In this system, time is conceived in terms of totalizationand revolutions are never more than moments of consciousness.In various forms, this theme has played a constant role since thenineteenth century: to preserve, against all decentrings, thesovereignty of the subject, and the twin figures of anthropology andhumanism. Against the decentring operated by Marx-by thehistorical analysis of the relations of production, economicdeterminations, and the class struggle-it gave place, towards theend of the nineteenth century, to the search for a total history, inwhich all the differences of a society might be reduced to a singleform, to the organization of a world-view, to the establishment of asystem of values, to a coherent type of civilization. To thedecentring operated by the Nietzschean genealogy, it opposed thesearch for an original foundation that would make rationality thetelos of mankind, and link the whole history of thought to thepreservation of this rationality, to the maintenance of thisteleology and to the ever necessary return to this foundation.20Habermas has been called a neo-Marxist; he himself claims to bring

together the two strands of what he calls Western Marxism. Anabstract idea of socialism still hovers at the end of his project ofmodernity, though he talks about it less and less. However, he himselfwould not disagree that his theoretical approach represents asignificant shift away from Marxism. Intervening in the so-calledHabermas-Lyotard debate, the American philosopher Richard Rortydetected in him a partner in the project of the defence of Westernparliamentary democracy and bluntly told him what he felt wastheoretically unnecessary to this project. But though in his lectures onthe Philosophical Discourse of Modernity his declared purpose is toshow how all past and most present day philosophers from Hegel,through Marx and Nietzsche, down to Foucault and Derrida remainensnared in the web of a philosophy of the subject, form which one canfree oneself only with the concept of communicative rationality, his

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62 SOCIAL SCIENTISTown theoretical elaborations appear not to be so far away from theYoung Hegelians in Marx's critique of Foucault's description of the'historian of ideas'.Habermas has already been accused of gender blindness.22 But itseems that this is not his only blindspot. All differences that mightdisturb his scheme of a project of emancipation which sees its foundingact in the Enlightenment, are either simply ignored or relegated to andthereby dissolved in a continuous, homogenized, bloodless flow ofaccumulating communicative rationality blissfully unaware of anythreats of interruption, of dislocation, or of rupture.Before concluding this paper, a belief look is called for atHabermas's interpretation of the realm of art in modernity and hisattempt to mobilise in this endeavour some theoretical propositions ofWalter Benjamin. In the context of an essay on Benjamin23 written in1972, Habermas reflects on the importance of art in the project ofemancipation. Habermas refers to Benjamin's analysis of the loss ofthe ritual character and aura of the work of art in the 'age of itsmechanical reproducibility'. This loss of aura surrounding the work ofart meant the loss of the illusion of the autonomy, of the authenticityof art. What differentiated modern art from traditional art was theconscious abandonment of this aura. The transcendent character of artwas destroyed and it revealed itself as a commodity like othercommodities.24 In his essay, Habermas focuses on the dispute betweenBenjamin and Adoro in the 1930s, comparing Benjamin's affirmation of'post-auratic' modern art against Adorno's concept of a hermetic,autonomous art as the sole refuge of the utopian potential of theEnlightenment. Habermas's argument against Adorno's position is thatit is too negative and exaggerated as it does not recognise anyemancipatory potential in works of mass culture. Yet he does not agreewith Benjamin either and sticks essentially to a concept of anautonomous sphere for art. His purpose it seems is to vest this spherewith an effective potential of the social and cultural values of theEnlightenment and modernity, not to leave it as a refuge of thesevalues for later discovery. The political thrust of Benjamin's concept ofa mass form of art which invaded and burst asunder the private andsolitary aesthetic experience did not fit his scheme of things.What Habermas appears to find useful in Benjamin is what he callsthe concept of 'redemptive criticism', the impulse for which he finds inBenjamin's 'Theses on the Philosophy of History'. According toHabermas, Benjamin's attempt was to redeem, to save, theemancipatory semantic potential of the experience of past generationswhich he saw concentrated in works of art. The 'Theses on thePhilosophy of History' turned the face of history away from the futuretowards the past and established an indebtedness, a responsibility ofthe present to avenge in its own acts the injustices of the past; the roleof criticism was to save the memory of these experiences of injustice

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I IABERMAS AND THE CRITIQUE OF TIE ENLIGHTENMENT 63

existing in works of art. Habermas has to concede that the politicalcontent of the 'Theses' was a critique of the 'Kautskyan reading ofprogress', a historicist linear concept of ever advancing progress whichhad become the hallmark of Social Democracy with its mostarticulate exponents in Germany and which found its logicalconsequence in the support to imperialist claims and militarism duringthe First World War. Yet he is exceedingly uncomfortable with this'antievolutionist conception of history'.25 In Habermas's view,Benjamin's concept of history failed to recognise the evolution andprogress made not only in productive forces and social wealth but evenin the spheres of legality and morality.26 However, in historicalconditions which do not allow for revolutions but for long-lastingprocesses of change, the concept of revolution itself has to betransformed into the constructing of a new subjectivity and it is herethat Benjamin's concept of 'redemptive criticism can play a role inconserving emancipatory semantic energies.27Clearly, this is a wilful reading of Benjamin. It mobilisesBenjamin's concept, divests it of its intended meaning and applies it toa vision of history and progress which Benjamin made the target of hisattack. Perhaps it can be attributed to Habermas's inadequateattention to the field of aesthetics and art in modernity. While in 'ThePhilosophical Discourse of Modernity', he devotes an entire excursus toDerrida's leveling of the genre distinction between philosophy andliterature, he declares in the 'Preface' that the theme is limited to thephilosophical discourse, and leaves out any treatment of modernism inart and literature. But perhaps his wilful reading of Benjamin can alsobe seen as another illustration of his basic philosophical scheme.To sum up, Habermas's theory of communicative action presupposesthe possibility of communication taking place in a free atmosphere. Itdoes not take cognisance of the social, economic and political conditionswhich divide the imagined participants of such communication. Itneutralises the power relations which control communication at global,continental and national levels. In effect, the theory seems to be asillusory a concept as that of the free market. Even if Habermas' visionof communicative rationality is a privilege restricted to beneficiariesin the advanced capitalist countries of the West-and the suspicionprevails that it is-, it still begs the question of the internal powerrelations characteristic of these countries.Modern Europe may have many achievements to its credit and nopurpose is served in demeaning them. But the costs of its modernitywere and continue to be paid both within and beyond its frontiers. Notheory which claims to investigate the possibilities of a more justorganisation of society can afford to ignore these costs and theexperiences of those who paid them.28 The theories which go by thename postmodern or poststructuralist may not be adequate to this task,they are also not immune to interpretation and misuse for conservative

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64 SOCIALSCIENTISTpolitical purposes, but the critical focus on the Enlightenment commonto them has undoubtedly made visible some of the complexities of thisproduct of 'Occidental rationalism' which contribute towardsexplaining its checkered path. The critique of the Enlightenmentprovides useful perspectives on the entire period of Habermas's still'uncompleted project of modernity', the period of the rise, establish-ment and globalisation of capitalism with its ever more complex formsof exploitation. In particular, the focus on language, the text, thedocument, as a site of the manoeuvres of 'reason' has opened up newways of looking at language, texts, documents. Whether such theorycan lay claim to being able to change the world, since the need forchange is implicit in the critique and also explicit in the statements ofseveral of its enunciators, has yet to be seen. Meanwhile, the results ofits analysis are available 'to whomever would like to use them intheir struggles against the forms of power they are trying to resist.'29

NOTESAND REFERENCES1. Bertolt Brecht:Lifeof Galileo, In Brecht,Plays:Three,1987, pp. 65-66.2. Robert C. Holub in his extremely sympathetic account of Habermas's work

published as Jurgen Habermas.Critic in the Public Sphere (London and NewYork 1991),has summed up the debate in the last chapterunder the heading'National Socialism and the Holocaust: the debate with the historians',pp. 162-189.3. Habermas,EineArt Schadensabwicklung,rankfurt1987,124.The majortexts ofthe debate have been collected in the volume 'Historikerstreit': DieDokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischenJudenvernichtung,Munich 1987.4. Jirgen Habermas, 'Modernity ersusPostmodernity', ew German Critique22(1981),pp. 3-14.5. Jurgen Habermas: The PhilosophicalDiscourseof Modernity.Twelve Lectures,Cambridgeand Oxford 1992,xix. The collection was first published in 1985 asDer philosophische iskurs der Modeme:ZwOlfVorlesungen, Frankfurt/Main.The Englishtranslationwas first publishedin 1987.6. Willem van Reijen: Miss Marx, Terminals and Grands Recits oder: KratztHabermas, oes nichtjuckt? in: DietmarKamperund Willem van Reijen(Hg.):Die unvollendeteVernunft:ModerneversusPostmoderne.fm 1987,pp. 548-549.7. See Douglas Kellner: Critical Theory,Marxism and Modernity, Baltimore,Maryland1989,p. 196.8. Ibid.,p. 200.9. Likeall members of the FrankfurtSchool,Habermasdistinguishes between twoforms of reason: one fostering emancipationand upholding the spirit of theEnlightenment,the other degenerating to instrumentalreason. He locates thedividing line between the two forms of reasonby making a distinctionbetween'work' and 'interaction',or 'communicativebehaviour';while 'work'representsinstrumental, goal-oriented reason, the field of 'interaction' is the locus ofevolving irttersubjectivity,f communicativerationality,of consensus,leading toemancipation and therefore of praxis. This higher consensual rationality isevolved through 'Discourse' which he defines in the following manner:'discourse . . .is a form of communication in which the participants do not

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HABERMAS AND THE CRITIQUE OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 65exchange information, do not direct or carry out action, nor do they have orcommunicate experiences; instead they search for arguments or offerjustifications. Discourse therefore requires the virtualizaton of constraints onaction. This is intended to render inoperative all motives except solely that of acooperative readiness to arrive at an understanding ... Solely the structure ofthis peculiarly unreal form of communication guarantees the possibility ofattaining a consensus discursively which can gain recognition a rational.'(Habermas, Theory and Practice, Boston 1973, 18-19]. Habermas' concept ofpraxis is dependent therefore on an 'apriori categorical distinction' betweenwork and interaction [Richard Bernstein: The Restructuring of Social andPolitical Theory. Philadelphia 1978, p. 223; quoted in: Wolf Heydebrand andBeverly Burris: The Limits of Praxis in Critical Theory; in: Judith Marcus andZoltan Tar (eds): Foundations of the Frankfurt School of Social Research. NewBrunswick, New Jessey 1984, 401-417]. According to Bernstein, Habermas's'typical strategy in criticizing previous thinkers is to show that they confusecategorically distinct levels of action . . . the validity of these criticisms isitself dependent on the acceptance of habermas's categorical distinctions. Thetables can be turned on Habermas by arguing that he seeks to introduce hard andfast distinctions where there is only continuity.' [ibid., pp. 220-21]10. Habermas, op.cit., pp. 346-366.11. Ibid., p. 367.12. Ibid., p. 409.13. Richard Wolin, 'Critical Theory and the Dialectic of Rationalism'. NewGerman Critique 41, 1987, 23-52.14. Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm and Utopia, a Study of the Foundations ofCritical Theory. New York 1986, pp. 330-331.15. Ibid., p. 407.16. Jochen Schulte-Sasse, Modernity and Modernism, Postmodernity andPostmodernism: Framing the issue'. 'Cultural Critique', 5, 1986-87, p. 11.17. Karl Marx, The German Ideology, Moscow 1976.18. Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, New York, 1972, pp. 11-12.19. Ibid., p. 8.20. Ibid., pp. 12-13.21. See Richard Rorty, 'Habermas and Lyotard on postmodernity', in 'PraxisInternational', 4, April 1984, 32-44. See also Willem van Reijen, 'Miss Marx,Terminals und Grand R&citsoder: Kratzt Habermas, wo es nicht juckt?' Op.cit.

22. See Nancy Fraser, What's Critical about Critical Theory? The Case ofHabermas and Gender, in Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Corell (eds), Feminismas Critique, Minneapolis, Minn., 1987, pp. 31-36; and Seyla Benhabib, TheGeneralized and the Concrete Other', in ibid., p. 76-95.23. Habermas, Bewufttmachende oder rettende Kritik-Die Aktualitat WalterBenjamins, in: Habermas, Kultur und Kritik,Frankfurt 1973, pp. 302-344.24. 'For the first time in world history, mechanical reproduction emancipates thework of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual. To an even greater degreethe work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility.From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints;to ask for the authentic' print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion ofauthenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function ofart is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on anotherpractice- politics.' Walter Benjamin; The Workof Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction', in Illuminations, New York 1969, p. 22425. Habermas, 'Bewuf3tmachende oder rettende Kritik-Die Aktualitat WalterBenjamins',op. cit., p. 33226. '. . . in der ubiquitat des Schuldzusammenhangs tauchen unerkennbar jeneEvolutionen un.ter, die, bei all ihrer fragwiirdigen Partialitat, nicht nur in der

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66 SOCIAL SCIENTISTdimension der Produktivkrafte und des gesellschaftlichen Reichtumsstatthaben, sondern sogar in der imension, in der die Unterscheidungenangesichts der Wucht der Repression unendlich schwierig sind: ich meineFortschritte, gewip prekare und vom Ruckfall permanent bedrohte, in denProdukten der Legalitat, wenn nicht gar in den formalen Strukturen derMoralitat.'Ibid., p. 342.27. Ibid.,p. 344.28. In an interview with the New Left Review, No. 151, May 1985, Habermasadmits to the possibility of Eurocentrism n his theoreticalapproach, withouthowever recognising it as a problem: 'NLR: Die gesamte Tradition derFrankfurter Schule hat sich auf die Analyse der entwickeltestenkapitalistischen Gesellschaften konzentriert und dabei den Kapitalismus alsglobales System auper Betracht gelassen. Haben, Ihrer Meinung nach,sozialismuskonzeptionen, wie sie wahrend der antiimperialistischen undantikapitalistischenKampfe in der Dritten Welt entwickelt wurden, Auswir-kungen auf die Ziele eines demokratischen Sozialismus in der entwickeltenkapitalistischen Welt? Und umgekehrt: Enthalt Ihre eigene Analyse desentwickelten Kapitalismusirgendeine Lehere fur die sozialistischen Krafteinder DrittenWelt?HABERMAS:ch bin versucht zu sagen:weder noch. Aber dasmag eine eurozentrisch beschrantkte Sicht sein.' (Reprinted in German inHabermas:Die Neue Uniibersichtlichkeit,Frankfurt/Main1985,pp. 255-256.29. Paul A. Bove, 'Discourse'.In: FrankLentricchiaand Tomas Mclaughlin (eds),Critical Termsfor Literary Study, Chicago and London, 1990, p. 62.