Habermas and Aesthetics The Limits of Communicative Reason

by Duvenage, Pieter

• ISBN13: 9780745631202
• ISBN10: 0745631207
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-08-29
• Publisher: Polity

Summary

While Habermas 's philosophy of communicative action is well known among philosophers and social scientists, his aesthetics - that is, his views on art, literature, and culture - has received little attention. In his important new study, Pieter Duvenage fills this gap and shows that Habermas 's work on aesthetics, far from being marginal to his core concerns, is central to understanding and evaluating his entire theoretical enterprise.Duvenage reconstructs Habermas 's aesthetics in terms of two intellectual phases. In the first, Habermas follows an open -ended model which emphasizes the communicative and societal relevance of art. In the second, which correlates with his linguistic turn in the 1970s, the idea of a communicative aesthetics is worked out in terms of a theory of rationality. In this process Habermas assigns aesthetic rationality to a more restricted place within his overall model of communicative rationality. This position, the fate of aesthetics, is further elaborated in his debate with postmodern thinkers. In the last part of the study Duvenage offers a critical perspective on the role of aesthetics in Habermas 's work and proposes possible alternatives. He contrasts Habermas 's early writings on aesthetics, which viewed art as a material force for public illumination, with his more mature writings, which narrowly revolve around art as a form of subjective expression. Duvenage shows that Habermas 's later work offers a third, albeit undeveloped, alternative that suggests a convergence of these two views.This book, which exhibits tremendous range and scholarship, will interest scholars of Habermas, Critical Theory, aesthetics, German and French philosophy, cultural and media studies, and those interested in modern art and its relation to modernity

Author Biography

Pieter Duvenage is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at Rand Afrikaans University, South Africa.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	1	(7)
1 Habermas and Aesthetics: The First Phase	8	(22)
1.1 Initial influences and themes in Habermas's work	9	(2)
1.2 The public sphere and the role of art	11	(4)
1.3 The decline of the public sphere	15	(3)
1.4 Towards a normative and rational public sphere	18	(4)
1.5 An aesthetics of redemption: Habermas's Benjamin essay	22	(5)
1.6 Habermas's early reflections on aesthetics	27	(3)
2 Habermas and the Legacy of Aesthetics in Critical Theory	30	(21)
2.1 The initial research programme of Critical Theory	31	(5)
2.2 Society as the result of instrumental reason	36	(4)
2.3 Adorno: instrumental reason and aesthetics	40	(5)
2.4 The outer circle and the Benjaminian alternative	45	(4)
2.5 Summary	49	(2)
3 Habermas and Aesthetics: The Second Phase	51	(24)
3.1 The theory of communicative action and rationality	52	(3)
3.2 The theory of societal rationalization	55	(3)
3.3 The aesthetic implications of communicative reason	58	(8)
3.4 Three case studies: Schiller, Hegel and Heine	66	(6)
3.5 Recapitulation: Habermas and the fate of aesthetics	72	(3)
4 The Second Phase Continues: The Postmodern Challenge	75	(21)
4.1 Nietzsche's aesthetic anti-discourse of modernity	76	(3)
4.2 Art and ontology: Heidegger	79	(2)
4.3 On philosophy and literature: Derrida	81	(5)
4.4 Postmodernity and genealogy: Bataille and Foucault	86	(3)
4.5 A postmodern critique of Habermas's aesthetics	89	(4)
4.6 Summary	93	(3)
5 Critical Perspectives on Habermas's Aesthetics	96	(24)
5.1 The role of aesthetics in communicative reason	97	(3)
5.2 Habermas and the de-linguistification of (inner) nature	100	(4)
5.3 The role of aesthetics in social rationalization	104	(7)
5.4 Reading Adorno after Habermas	111	(6)
5.5 Critical summary	117	(3)
6 The Reciprocity of World Disclosure and Discursive Language	120	(22)
6.1 Truth as aesthetic world disclosure: Heidegger	121	(6)
6.2 Truth as rational discursiveness: Habermas	127	(6)
6.3 The road beyond: art as communicative experience	133	(4)
6.4 The political and moral implications of world disclosure	137	(5)
Notes	142	(39)
Bibliography	181	(18)
Index	199