NOTES: Habermas- Modernity: An Unfinished Project
I
a. The 1980 Venice Biennial allowed architects to enter in the show.
b. Habermas sees this as a ‘avante-garde in the reverse fronts’. In this he means that the Biennial broke with Modernist tradtion by expanding the venue to other “artistic” fields.
c. A German newspaper critic- “Postmodernity definitely presents itself as Antimodernity.” Habermas describes this as an example of the ‘emotional current’ of our times.
II
a. “From the Ancients to the Moderns” prefaces his definitions of these historical eras.
b. He bases his definition of Modern from Hans Robert Jauss.
c. Modern has the Latin root “modernus”. Its etymology derives from the adverb of manner, “now, at the moment” plus ernus, meaning “present.” Only later did modernus shift to mean “new”. [from: http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=344]
d. Used for the first time in the 5th centry in order to disginuish the present, which has become officaly Christian, rooting from Roman and pagan past.
e. “With varying content, the term ‘modern’ again and again expresses the conciouness of an epoch that relates itself to past of antiquity, in order to view itself as a result of a transition from the old to the new.”
III
a. Some writers restrict modernity to the Rennisanc, but Habermas sees this as too historically narrow because people considered themselves modern ealier in the 12th and 17th centrys.
b. The term modern at these times was about a “renewed relationship with the ancients”.
c. This antiquity was considered as a type of modle to be recovered through different modes of imitation.
IV
a. These ideas were dissolved during the French Enlightenment. The change was inspired by modern science in the “infinite progress of knowlage and in the infinite advance towards social and moral betterment.”
b. The romantic modernists opposed antique ideals of the classists, which formed into the ‘radicalized conciousness of modernity’ which completely turned its back on any form of specific historical ties.
c. This type of modernism makes the abstract binary opposition between traditon/present.
d. Habermas claims we are still contemporaries of this aethtic.
e. “Of course, whatever can surive time has always been considred to be classic. But the emphatically modern document no longer borrows this power of being classic from the authority of the past epoch; instead, a modern work becomes a classic because it has once ben authentically modern.”
f. Habermas claims that the relation between “modern” ans “classic” has completely lost iany fixed historical reference.
THE DISIPLINE OF AESTHETIC MODERNITY
V
a. Modernity assumes clear contours of the work of Baudelaire.
b. “Aethetic modernity is characterized by attitudes which find a common focus in a changed conciouness of time.”
c. The vangarde and avant-garde express these ideas.
d. “The avant-garde understands itself as invading unknown territory, exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, shocking encounters, conquering an as yet unoccupied future.”
e. By being forward looking and joining the ‘cult of the new’, the avant-garde are exhalting (boosting the status) of the present.
f. This value emphasizes the ephemeral moment, the transitory and elusive. Yet it is a depiction of a stable present.
VI
a. Therfore, historical memory is replaced by a strong attraction to the present, the avant-garde are on a heroic pursuit.
b. This is an ‘anarchistic’ approach to the continueum/narrative of history, meaning, that modernism is revolting against the normalizing and conforming aspects of using traditional values in influencing the present.
c. With this break from the past, the present that is depicted in modernism is a entirely new rupture in representing current times. In turn, the image of the present is entirely new and foreign when compared to the traditional way of looking at reality; this profanes the past and causes and air of nervousness.
d. Habermas accuses the avant-garde to have become addicted to profaning the past and the horrors it creates.
e. Yet, on the other hand the time conciouness of the avant-garde is not simply ahistorical’, but totally against any totalizing representation of history. The spirt of the avant-garde is to use the past in a different way, to reappropiate it.
VII
a. Habermas calls the relationship modernity has with history a posthistorical attitude. This is inspired by Benjamin’s Thesis on the Philsophy of History.
b. In referencing the French Revolution, there was a spirt of citing ancient Rome in the revolutionary process. Benjamin parelles this to the way current fashions are influnenced by past dress aethetics.
c. “Fashion has a scent of what is current, whenever this moves within the thicket of what was once.”
d. Jetztzeit- Now Time, the present as a moment of revelation.
VIII
a. This spirt is nomore, it has faded since the 1970’s.
b. Paz: The avant-garde of 1967 are just repeating gestures from the avant-garde of 1917.
c. This is noted at the ‘farwell’ of modernity, Habermas uses the word “failure”.
IX
a. Cites Daniel Bell’s The Cultrual Contradictions of Capitalism, in this he claims that the past split between society and culture have merged in the wake of modernism.
b. Modernism culture has penetrated in the values of everyday life, the demand for an unlimited self-realization, authentic self-experience and the subjectivisism of hyperstiumulated sensitivity.
c. Indulviduals then become hedonistic, claiming that people become immoral (substituting concencus over moral discourse) loose a purposive, rational conduct of life and loose work disapline.
d. LIBERTINISM becomes a dominat ideology.
e. “Culture in its modern form stirs up hatred agasint the conventions and virtues of everyday life, which has become rationalized under the pressures of economic and administrative imperatives.”
X
a. “Although the avant-garde is still considered to be explanding, it is supposedly no longer creative. Modernism is dominat but dead.”
b. Bells believes that only regligous faith tied to tradtion will bring indulviduals clear identities and existencial security.
XI
a. Ad hominem- (Latin: "argument to the man", "argument against the man") consists of replying to an argument or factual claim by attacking or appealing to a characteristic or belief of the person making the argument or claim, rather than by addressing the substance of the argument or producing evidence against the claim. The process of proving or disproving the claims is thereby subverted, and the argumentum ad hominem works to change the subject.
b. Bell’s argument is faulty because he blames cultural events as the provokers of hedonism.
c. “The neoconservative doctrine blurs the relationship between the welcomed process of social modernization on the one hand, and the lamentated cultural development on the other.”
d. Therefore the neoconservative is ignoring the influence of economic and social causes for this social altered attitude.
e. Habermas claims that culuture only very indirectly and in a mediated fashion influences this social attitude.
XII
a. This neoconservatives dicontent with society is not soley based on modernist intellectuals, but on the process of societal modernization.
b. Communicative rationality- Adhering to the task of passing on cultural tradtion, of social integration and socialization.
c. When there is discontent with modern times, it orgins from the fact that there lies a contradtion/s within the values of the cultural tradation that was passed to the contemporaries. Since the times change, these ideologies must be updated and reformed to best represent the current zeitgeist (spirit of the times). Therefore, cultural tradtions are contigent to their times, and cannot be taken as a stable entity.
THE PROJECT OF ENLIGHTENMENT
XIII
a. Max Weber: characterized cultural modernity as the seperation of 3 atonomoous spheres- science, morality, and art.
b. This came about because the in the 18th century, the “unified world-views of religion and metaphysics fell apart.”
c. Culture splinted into many seperate domains in which ‘special experts’ dealt with the problems and concerns related specifically to that field.
d. This is a professionalized treatment of culture.
e. These specialists gain the authority to be more adept of being logical in these particular ways than other people.
f. This then creates a widening gap between the culture of experts and the larger public.
g. “With cultural rationalization of this sort, the threat increases that the life-world, whose traditional substance has already been devalued, will become more and more impoverished.”
XIV
a. The project of Modernity formulated in the 18th centrury by Elightenment philosophies with the effort to develop objective science, universalize morality and law, and autonomous art according to its inner logic.
b. The overall goal was to create a rational organization of everyday social life.
c. There was the ‘extravagant expectation’ that the arts and sciences would promote not only control of nature, but enrich everyday life for all. THE 20TH CENTURY SHATTEED THIS OPTIMISISM.
FALSE PROGRAMS OF THE NEGATION OF CULTURE
XV
a.