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Markus The Paradoxical Unit of Culture
Markus The Paradoxical Unit of Culture
CULTURE
The Arts and the Sciences
Gyrgy Markus
ABSTRACT The two main domains of high culture the arts and the sciences
seem to be completely different, simply unrelated. Is there any sense then in
talking about culture in the singular as a unity? A positive answer to this
question presupposes that there is a single conceptual scheme, in terms of
which it is possible to articulate both the underlying similarities and the basic
differences between these domains. This article argues that at least in respect
of classical modernity there is such a framework: the normatively conceived
Author-Work-Recipient relation. It allows the disclosure of the paradoxical unity
of culture: its two main realms are constituted as polar opposites and thus as
strictly complementary. Through such an organization, culture could fulfil an
affirmative, compensatory role. At the same time however, it also allowed
culture to acquire the character of social critique, a function realized through
the antagonistically opposed projects of Enlightenment and Romanticism
projects whose illusions are now evident.
KEYWORDS Author-Work-Recipient compensation critique Enlightenment nation Romanticism tradition
First some introductory remarks, just to clarify the topic of this article.
Culture is used here not in its broad, anthropological sense, in which it is
usually contrasted with nature, but exclusively in the meaning of high
culture as opposed to low or mass culture. In this sense culture encompasses the domains of the arts, the sciences, and what vaguely can be called
the humanities, occupying an ill-defined, intermediary position between the
first two (and with which I shall not specifically deal in this article).
Such a composition of culture is remarkable first of all in view of what
it does not contain religion. The process of secularization constitutive of
Thesis Eleven, Number 75, November 2003: 724
SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Copyright 2003 SAGE Publications and Thesis Eleven Co-op Ltd
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modernity certainly did not lead to unbelief becoming the dominant attitude
in society. Secularization led, not to the disappearance, but to the privatization of religion. With this transformation into a matter of private beliefs,
religion lost its earlier central cultural role.
As these remarks indicate, the concept of culture to be discussed is of
relatively recent origin, its emergence was, of course, the outcome of
complex and long term processes. Broadly however, one can point to the
late 18th century as the period in which the new concept of culture acquired
stable content. This is the terminus a quo for the discussion to follow. It has,
however, also a terminus ad quem, that with an equal degree of arbitrariness can be fixed at the end of the Second World War. So the subject of
this article is a matter of the past: classical modern culture, a shocking
oxymoron.
I
I would like to address here a single question whether it is meaningful and legitimate to talk about culture in the singular, whether there is any
kind of unity that connects the different domains of the sciences and the arts.
From Kant through Hegel, up to the later representatives of a German Kulturphilosophie, a positive answer to such a general question would have been
almost self-evident. This belief in the unity of culture however, disappeared
in the early decades of the 20th century, together with the social stratum, the
Kulturbrgertum, for whom such a unity was at least an ideal and perhaps
also an experience. What motivates me to raise the question are some
present-day observations and experiences, strange similarities in the contemporary situation of the two great cultural domains: science and art.
Their now completely unrelated discourses have long been characterized by
the same unresolved dispute between the normatively oriented essentialistinternalist and the empirically oriented relativist-externalist approaches.
These opposed approaches give irreconcilable answers to the seemingly
simple question: what makes something belong to science, or to be art? Even
the recent science wars are closely mirrored by the culture wars in the arts.
Today we hear equally often prognoses of an end of art and of an end of
science. The list of such analogies can be easily continued: the well-known
slogan of the death of the author in literary theory finds its parallel in the
reflexivist approach in science studies, with its advocacy of a new, multivocal form of science writing. Is there perhaps some deeper and hidden connection between these two very different domains of practices, a unity that
we have lost sight of, and of which we are forcefully reminded now that it
actually may be disintegrating?
Of course, a positive answer to this question makes sense only if one
can propose a single conceptual scheme, in terms of which it is possible to
articulate both the basic similarities and the no less fundamental differences
of these domains. My contention is, at least for the classical modern period,
that there is such a framework. Namely, whatever belongs to the realm of
culture must be conceived as fulfilling one of the functional roles defined by
the relation Author-Work-Recipient, and thus being related in a specific, normatively demanded way to persons or objects embodying one of its terms.
It is in terms of this relation the cultural relation that the common characteristics necessarily shared by all forms of cultural practices can be articulated
and demarcated from utilitarian-technical activities. For the outcomes of these
activities are artefacts, not works in the sense intended here. They may have
a maker, but not an author. They are there for users/consumers, not recipients. The constitutive terms of this relation receive particular and different
determinations for each domain of culture, according to the normative
requirements and expectations that authors, works and recipients are
supposed to satisfy in each specific field. These normative roles, however,
do not prescriptively determine the actual character of these practices nor
the effective evaluative criteria of their results. They are (in Kantian terminology) not of constitutive, but only of regulative character. They only
indicate delimiting conditions that ought to be met if something is to be
regarded as pertaining to the general realm and to a particular domain of
culture. In this sense however, they orient both the reception of the works
of culture and, indirectly, their production as well.
On the basis of this cultural relation, the common features of all cultural
practices can be designated by the terms objectivation, idealization,
autonomy and novelty.
Culture is first of all a realm of works, i.e. objectivations. Many premodern societies distinguished a group of activities to which a particular
spiritual significance and excellence were ascribed. These activities were
understood and valued in terms of their contribution to the formation of a
particular mental habitus and the corresponding conduct of their practitioners. Culture in the modern sense however, is primarily conceived not
as an edifying but as a productive activity. The significance attributed to
cultural practices is based on the value of what they produce objectivations
that are publicly accessible, transmittable and detached from the comportment of those who produced them. In fact, as culture develops, its cultivating role declines. For there is a sense true, a merely negative one in
which todays culture is radically autonomous: it is nobodys culture, no-one
can master it even in the bare outlines of its whole compass.
Cultural objectivations are sometimes stagings of public events or
performances, but usually they are objects of particular kinds: texts, paintings, buildings, etc. These objects are regarded as culturally significant only
because they are conceived as vehicles and embodiments of some ideal
complex of meanings. These meanings are posited as inherent in these
objects, but in no way reducible to the material properties or the elementary,
direct significance of these things. What the practice of science truly
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produces are not short-lived scientific texts, but ideal constructs experiments, hypotheses, theories, paradigms. A musical work of art is not identical either with its score or with any of its actual performances, though only
its fixation as a score and its realization through performances sustain its
existence as a work of art. This distinction between the actual objectivation
and its ideal meaning is present also in autographic arts (painting, sculpture),
even though in these cases no practical differentiation can be made between
objectivation and meaning. Cultural modernity developed a whole vocabulary to articulate this difference copy, reproduction, quotation, translation,
adaptation, arrangement, replication of an experiment, etc.
As embodied meaning-complexes, works of culture are regarded as
intrinsically valuable. They are valuable not in view of some external end,
but of norms and standards immanent to these practices themselves. As such
they are regarded as valuable not only for those who may need them for
some relevant purpose, but in principle valuable for everyone, though in fact
it is only a minority who take an active interest in them. This does not mean
that they cannot promote some external end, such as fulfilling a social
function only that it is conceived as the consequence, not the criterion of
their intrinsic value. This is the positive meaning of the autonomy of culture.
This autonomy is not only an ideal claim made on behalf of these practices,
it has a wide, general social acceptance.
Lastly, to have cultural significance the objectivation in question must
be original (arts) or novel (science). The making of a material object of utility
is only a single moment in the repetitive cycle of modern industrial production. A mere act of reproduction does not, however, pertain to the sphere of
culture. Cultural practices are conceived not simply as productive, but as
creative acts. Such a requirement, however, has a determinate meaning only
if there is a stable background against which something can be judged to be
novel in relevant ways. This adds a further determination to the concept of
the work. To be recognized as a work of culture the objectivation must in
some systematic way be integrated into an appropriately constituted tradition
that it then expands, changes or challenges. The work both stabilizes and
destabilizes the tradition, in the context of which it alone exists. Radical
temporalization and historization are thus constitutive of cultural modernity. Cultural practices manifest a consistent tendency towards an ever
greater acceleration of the tempo of innovation. In their development the
sciences and the arts approximate more and more to a state of permanent
revolution.
These shared characteristics exemplify the internal coherence of our
conceptual scheme, the Author-Work-Recipient relation. A Work is an objectified meaning-complex. As such it is to be understood as the result of intentional activity that must be attributed to a subject. This is the Author not
necessarily the actual maker of the object, but the one who can be considered
as the originator of the meaning realized in a uniquely determined fashion
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in the Work. Since this meaning must be novel, the Author is to be conceived
as creator, inventor or first discoverer.
The Work is posited as valuable in itself. It is an objectivation for others
not for specific persons in view of their particular needs or purposes, but
for anonymous others, the Recipients. It belongs to the public sphere, in principle accessible to everyone. Only this allows works of culture to be
systematically novel their recognition does not depend on meeting the
imperative demands or expectations of particular persons, i.e. traditional
patrons. And since the Work is an objectified meaning-complex, the proper
relation of the Recipient to it is understanding, interpretation, appreciation
and critical evaluation. The practical relation of a consumer/user to an
artefact, i.e. its consumption/use, results sooner or later in the destruction of
the purposeful form that gave it its relative value. In the case of works of
culture, alternatively, it is only the appropriate relation of recipients that
preserves and sustains them as culturally significant. In its absence they
become mere historical documents.
Our cultural relation includes not only the common features shared by
the diverse forms of cultural practices and their creations. The cultural
relation also allows us to articulate the fundamental differences between its
main domains. However paradoxical it may seem, it is not their common
characteristics but primarily the differences between them that confer an
essential unity upon culture. Cultures most important and determining
domains, the arts and the sciences, are systematically constituted and
endowed with characteristics that make them polar opposites. Culture has an
abiding structure, stable at least for one and a half centuries, its main domains
are to be conceived as standing in a relation of strict complementarity.
Let us begin with art. In the aesthetic domain the relation of the work
to its author a relation that in general we characterized through the concept
of intention becomes specified as expression. The work of art in its meaningfulness is to be comprehended as the generally significant, yet unique
manifestation of an original and incomparable creative subjectivity. The aesthetically relevant authorial intention cannot be simply identified with the
explicitly stated views and purposes of the author. Nor are the significations
commonly associated with what (if anything) the work represents directly
relevant here. For it is not what the work brings to presence (its content),
but the way it expresses and makes it present, its form in the broadest
meaning of this term, that makes it aesthetically significant. Form primarily
constitutes the meaning of the work. This meaning is retroactively attributed
to its author, as the expression (perhaps an unconscious one) of his/her personality and unique vision of the world.
Such a rather vacuous notion of authorial intention is not particularly
useful for exegetical or explanatory purposes. Its genuine accomplishment
lies elsewhere it firmly situates the significance of an artwork in the sphere
of subjectivity. Subjectivity is most intimately connected with what makes
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It is, however, only one of its aspects. The very idea of originality, as
indicated, presupposes a particularly constituted tradition against which
something can be novel. The two fundamental characteristics of tradition in
art are that it is living and effective, and that its compass constantly expands.
The whole range of aesthetic heritage is living in the sense that it is continuously accessible, both for the recipient and, as an imaginative resource,
for practice as well. The art of the past (all forms and kinds of art) has been
musealized. This provides an historical legitimation for the boundless
varieties of individual tastes that have become a signature of personality. At
the same time it contributes to the dissolution of all fixed standards of aesthetic evaluation, even more generally, of the boundaries of art.
This is the case because the compass of aesthetic tradition constantly
grows. Whether one labels it as a sign of the incredible openness of modernity or of its insatiable cultural imperialism, the history of modern art is
also that of the recovery and absorption of forgotten or alien aesthetic pasts
and this process is still going on. It certainly results in a growth of artistic
freedom. Tradition now lacks what it was always meant to be a binding
force for contemporary practice. But as the power of tradition dissipates, its
weight constantly increases. Hence the need to create something novel
against its immense wealth and variety, in which, so it seems, everything has
already been tried out. Innovation not only accelerates, its drive becomes
ever more radical, transgressing the boundaries of art as they are conceived
by the recipient public.
This acceleration and radicalization of the production of novelty,
however, only contributes to the expansion of the musealized tradition which
spurs it on. As the temporal distance between the outdated old and the radically new becomes ever shorter, the life-span of the new, in which it still
counts as novel, of contemporary relevance, diminishes too. The more radical
the novelty, the more rapidly it becomes musealized. The more artistic
practice seems to approximate to the state of permanent revolution, the more
the artwork of the future turns immediately into the artwork of the past. Its
novelty proves to be just the fading memory of how original it appeared to
be just an historical instant ago.
Let us now compare, in the most schematic way, this cultural constitution of the domain of art with that of the modern sciences. I shall restrict
my remarks to the most significant and paradigmatic field of scientific
research, the experimental sciences of nature, and here primarily the very
idea of experiment.
To speak about authorial intention with regard to an experiment may
seem rather odd. Nevertheless it is just the explicit statement of such an intention that transforms the mixture of material, social, and cognitive activities in
a laboratory into a scientifically relevant experiment. The results of the experiment must be made public through reporting. The author very often a
persona ficta, since multiple authorship is very common in science is
assumed to be the one who designed and directed the conduct of the
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experiment and is automatically identified with the writer of the experimental report. In this latter role he/she must clearly relate the methods and
the results of the experiment to the actual state of research in the field and
indicate explicitly in what sense they are new. This alone confers a meaning
on the experiment in the sense of scientific relevance. And it is truly an intention, something subjective a meaning merely claimed. As regards the
establishment of what the results really mean, the author has no specific
authority in comparison with the other members of the research community.
They can accept, reinterpret or reject his claim. For while the experimental
results must be novel, they cannot be unique they must be replicable. Only
reproducibility in the appropriate circumstances confers upon the experiment
its cultural significance, the discovery of new facts about nature. The author
first made this discovery, but he made it by being a competent member of
the research community. He/she figures in the report as the reliable performer of methodologically certified operations, the accurate recorder of their
outcomes and the capable interpreter of such data in accordance with
accepted methods of analysis. In respect of their cognitive authority, there is
a complete symmetry between the positions of the author and that of the
adequate recipients.
The interchangeability of the roles of author and recipient is made
possible by the depersonalization of the authorial voice and its role in
science. The textual objectivization that transforms the happenings and
doings in a laboratory into an experiment simultaneously transforms a local,
complex, and messy history into an objective general description. The report
should mention only typified physical objects and materials, codified procedures, and events belonging to recognized classes of physical occurrences.
It does not say who did what and when, but what occurs under replicable
conditions. Even the general structure of such a paper is regulated it is to
consist of an established sequence of appropriate sections. One could say
that the textual objectivations of experimental science reduce the role of
literary form to the minimum possible, in order to foreground their referential, factual content.
This interchangeability of the author and recipient has of course also
another precondition the very narrow definition of the adequate recipients.
The addressee in science is certainly anonymous (publications are not
addressed and accessible to particular persons only), but the circle of readers
recognized as competent is narrowly drawn. It is essentially restricted to the
members of the particular research community. This does not mean that this
circle is closed. Depending upon the broader theoretical implications of an
experiment, members of the wider disciplinary, or even scientific community
may legitimately take an active role in the discussion of the acceptability of
the authorial claim. In the case of the general or even the interested public
however, the opinion of its members is in principle considered as incompetent and irrelevant in these matters. In fact to present such a claim to a
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of research in the relevant area. Each paper draws in this way a boundary
between what it now makes the past what is, or assumed to be, known
and its own contribution, that is, what it offers as addition, modification or
refutation in respect of this pre-existent corpus of knowledge. Science is thus
not only in a process of constant change, it advances. It is culturally constituted as progress towards its objective truth.
This form of constituting the effective tradition is in a sense necessitated by the very progress and acceleration of science. The short life-span of
some scientific result or idea in its textual presentation is at least partly due
to the fact that such texts have a built-in obsolescence. The experimental
apparatuses they mention have in the meantime disappeared from the laboratories, the results presented by them do not satisfy contemporary standards
of accuracy, the theoretical concepts they employ may have been refined or
revised, etc. To be able to use them the scientist would need some working
knowledge of the history of his/her discipline. Such knowledge, however,
does not pertain to his/her required competence.
That this knowledge does not need to be part of this competence is
rendered possible by another constitutive feature of the practice of natural
sciences. It proceeds usually on the basis of a widely shared background
consensus among its practitioners. Disputes are endemic in experimental
sciences, but they are usually resolved in a short time by the research community consensually accepting or rejecting the contentious claim, though one
can almost always argue (and some crazy outsiders usually do) that there
are no strictly compelling epistemic reasons for such a decision. It is estimated that disputes which really occupy the scientific community usually do
not last longer than ten years. Science is constantly advancing, because it
constantly normalises and stabilises its state. It can approximate to the state
of permanent revolution, because it succeeds in transforming what was completely unexpected and unthinkable yesterday into what is simply evident
today.
From the viewpoint of the principles regulating the Author-WorkRecipient relation, the arts and the sciences (at least the experimental sciences
of nature) are constructed as possessing directly opposed characteristics. This
direct opposition is reflected in the fundamental differences in the institutional mechanisms through which their practices are integrated into the
broader society. To put it simply works of art are legally and economically
constructed as private property which is at the same time a common good
(in the economic sense). Scientific knowledge, as the genuine product of
science, is treated as a common good, the appropriate employment of which
can legitimately give rise to a particular form of private property.
In the domain of art, it is not only the physical object, of which the
author is usually (though not necessarily) the maker, but also the unique ideal
object, of which he/she is the creator, that is constituted as his/her private
intellectual property defined as copyright. The author as its holder has the
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the impoverished and starving martyrs of their calling, neopatronage is necessary, since total marketisation would slowly but inevitably price their works
out of the reach of a broader public, thereby undermining the cultural
markets themselves.
There is thus a remarkable fit between the cultural constitution and the
legal-economic institutionalization of artistic practices. This should not be
understood as implying a unidirectional causal dependence of the cultural
upon the social, or the reverse. In fact the institution of copyright originally
had nothing to do with securing the rights of authors. It was motivated by
considerations of effective censorship and by the necessity to regulate the
competition between proliferating printing houses. It acquired its contemporary sense as the result of struggles in which writers played a prominent
part. And they could play such a role because they were already accepted
as public figures owing to their cultural status and prestige. Yet institutionalization did not simply codify pre-existent cultural roles and
meanings. One point seems to be of particular significance; the distinction
between form and content, fundamental to the modern understanding of art,
was, to my knowledge, first clearly formulated in the legal sphere. In the
English disputes concerning the meaning and scope of copyright, a conceptual discrimination was made between the ideas expressed in a literary work,
that constitute common property, and their expression. The style and sentiment (Blackstone), peculiar to each original work and its author, were
deemed the sole proper object of copyright.
The institutionalization of science could not be accomplished through
mechanisms effective in the domain of art. For style and sentiment are just
what should not distinguish scientific publications. Science is all about
content. Its contents are posited as facts, which by definition belong to the
public domain. The scientist-author is, of course, holder of copyright, his
writing and results cannot be published without his consent, they cannot be
plagiarized. And many scientific publishers are profit-oriented enterprises,
just as scientific publications in general are commodities. All this has,
however, little relevance to the way scientific activities are sustained and integrated into a broader social context.
Authorship plays a fundamental role in the organization of science. But
not because it constitutes an entitlement to a commodifiable private property,
but because it is the ground upon which recognition and reputation among
scientists peers depends. Recognition, at least ideally, determines the actual
rewards of the individual promotion, tenure, awards, etc. This organization
of scientific activities is, or at least was possible, because in the period concerned forms of neopatronage provided the link between the practices of
pure science and its broader environment. Agencies of the state and nonprofit oriented private academic institutions generally funded pure research.
This distinguished it from applied science. The organizations of applied
sciences were usually created and supported by large industrial firms with a
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view to a longer term financial return. Profit was made possible by the legal
institutions of patent.
Scientific knowledge belongs to the public realm anyone can use it
for his/her legitimate purposes. When, however, the use of such knowledge
results in a new invention capable of industrial application and of potential
usefulness for others, it can be patented, i.e. turned for a limited period into
the marketable intellectual property of the inventing person or institution.
Thus while experimental natural science, from its very inception, was primarily legitimated through its immense technical-practical fecundity, science
proper, pure science was simultaneously sharply divorced from the practical
realization of its usefulness, which was conceived as mere application. The
two follow distinct socio-economic logics. The social system of artistic practices is organized through market mechanisms supplemented by forms of
neopatronage. Science as a social system functions through the complementarity of two distinct principles of organization pure science through neopatronage and applied science through the market, the two are strictly kept
apart. No doubt, such a separation was always only an ideal, but the
problems it posed only came to the fore in our time.
II
Cultural modernity had an enduring structure which confers upon it a
unity, but of a rather paradoxical kind. It was not a unity based on some
dominant constituent pervading and constraining all other practices. Nor was
it founded on a persisting process of mutual adaptation among its diverse
elements through an accommodating syncretism. Unity was based upon the
fact that the two most significant domains of this culture were constituted,
both categorically and institutionally, as polar opposites. How is this particular form of structuration to be explained? Does it serve some particular
function, a function pertaining to culture as such, as an autonomous sphere
and unity? One possible answer to this question is articulated by the idea of
compensation.
The background to this idea is the familiar diagnosis of the antinomies
of modernity. Modernitys dynamics, on the one hand, destroyed the organic
communities of the past and transformed the unrestrained freedom of
atomised individuals into the highest value alone capable of conferring
meaning upon life. On the other hand, this very same process made the
originally embedded spheres of social interaction into independent, selfsteering systems with their own, uncontrollable logics of development, to
which individuals are subjected. By destroying their personal integrity, this
process ultimately transformed individuals into unresisting objects of impersonal social influences. The cult of the personality and massification are the
two sides of the same process.
Culture itself is, first of all, a part of such a society; it is one of its
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autonomous spheres. It is, however, a quite particular sphere: the oppositional dualism of its most prominent constituents also reflects the antinomistic
nature of modernity itself. And since culture consists of meaning-creating
practices, its dualism both expresses this antinomy and endows it with
meaning. In particular, since cultures two great domains are constituted as
complementary opposites, each of them can function as a form of compensation for the threatening onesidedness of the principle raised to an intrinsic value by its other.
The central role played by science in the development of modern
societies tends to surround it with a halo of objective necessity and rationality. This is however, only a side-effect of a science that became monofunctional. The importance of science to technical development as an
enabling condition of the whole contradictory dynamics of modernity means
that it can also be made responsible for all modernitys defects and ills. Here
the arts precisely owing to their defunctionalization can take over the
general function of compensation. Art is the sphere of compensation par
excellence in modernity.
In this disenchanted world that has been robbed of the metaphysical
dignity of perfection, art offers a counter-world of re-enchantment, of
humanly created beauty. When everything has been transformed into an
always replaceable, disposable object, works of art offer the encounter with
what is unique and irreplaceable in its otherness. Moreover, in a world that
has transformed human beings themselves into interchangeable executors of
standardized roles, art freed of predetermined functions represents the
sphere of unrestrained freedom of creativity, or at least of choice. It is here
that the individual can experience, in all its diverse modalities, the true enjoyment of the self, an enjoyment that can be pure, since it is only imaginary.
Of course, this notion of compensation hovers somehow between the
false surrogate and the genuine remedy. But whatever the evaluation, the
ascription of such a function to the arts, or to culture in general, presents
them primarily in the role of stabilising, affirmative powers, sublimated
safety-valves enabling individuals to live somehow with modernitys fundamental contradictions.
There is, however, an elementary objection that all such conceptualisations must face. High culture has always been the culture of a relatively
small, usually privileged minority. How can it play the role of a compensatory safety-valve, when it is irrelevant to the majority which primarily bears
the burden of the contradictions and defects of modernity?
I think this is a misplaced objection. It does not take into account the
difference between the actual circle of recipients of culture, on the one hand,
and its reach and social resonance, on the other, i.e. the difference between
its genuine public and its publicity. The latter has always been significantly
broader then the former. This presence of a heroised culture in broad social
consciousness is closely related to its role in the constitution of that other
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practice and methods of science, both the means to and also, in its general
dissemination, the end of the transformation of society. It aimed at the realization of a truly democratic public, whose autonomous members would
regain control over their life and could participate equally in decisions concerning the common affairs of their society. Science is the model of such a
social organization, the living proof of its enormous benefits, and scientific
progress can contribute substantively to the creation of the conditions of its
realization. The point, of course, is not to make everyone an expert in some
kind of science, but to rationalize everyday life and thinking. By making the
universal rules and procedures of rational discourse and decision-making also
empirically universal in their social spread and practical applicability, each
individual will be enabled to think on his/her own.
For Romanticism, on the other hand, it was the arts alone that could
serve as the cultural vehicle and model of the desired transformation. Its
project aimed at the willed recreation of the lost organic community which
was sustained by the living force of a shared tradition, ungroundable in its
uniqueness and capable of conferring meaning upon life. Only as members
of such a community can individuals live a self-fulfilling life. Art is the great
example of the possibility of such an original repetition, the creation of a
completely new tradition that reconfirms and refounds what has always been
valid. The point, of course, is not to make everyone an artist or connoisseur,
but to aestheticise everyday life and conduct. The great imaginative and
emotional appeal of art makes it also capable of effectively contributing to
this end through the creation of a new mythology.
The dispute and struggles of these two ideological tendencies accompanied and permeated the whole history of cultural modernity. It was primarily the humanities that provided the two ideological tendencies with the
ever-renewed formulations of their basic ideas understandably, since one
of the basic functions of the humanities is the self-reflexive interpretation of
culture itself. And they found their spokespersons in the figure of the
engaged intellectuals, who owed both their autonomy and their public
presence to their recognized achievements in some domain of culture and
used it for committed intervention in public affairs.
It was due to such a refraction through opposed ideological prisms that
self-reflection upon culture acquired the character of critique. Cultural
critique was first of all a critique of the depraved state of culture. But it
necessarily aimed at a broader target as well: the existing social arrangements.
Since both Enlightenment and Romanticism aimed at regaining the lifeorienting power of culture, they were necessarily critical of societies whose
structuring principles denied culture such a role, simply by virtue of the fact
that they restricted its direct reach to a small minority. For Enlightenment the
problem lies in the fact that modern societies never truly overcome the past,
with which they promised to break. Their functioning and development is
still governed by a blind spontaneity, because they re-established even if
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