8 The Counter8. The Counter-Enlightenment

In contrast with the spirit of the Enlightenment, the Romantic ision percei ed the orld as a nitar

Enlightenment

Romantic vision perceived the world as a unitary organism rather than an atomistic machine, exalted

the ineffability of inspiration rather than the enlightenment of reason and affirmed theenlightenment of reason, and affirmed the

inexhaustible drama of human life rather than the calm predictability of static abstractions.

Tarnas pp 365 67-Tarnas, pp. 365-67.

Existentialism: The SufferingExistentialism: The Suffering Individual

As the twentieth century advanced, modern consciousnessfound itself caught up in an intensely contradictory processof simultaneous expansion and contraction. Extraordinaryintellectual and psychological sophistication wasaccompanied by a debilitating sense of anomie and

l imalaise… The anguish and alienation of twentieth century life were brought to full articulation as the existentialist addressedthe most fundamental, naked concerns of human existence-suffering and death, loneliness and dread, guilt, conflict,spiritual emptiness and ontological insecurity, the void of b l t l i l t t th f iabsolute values or universal contexts, the sense of cosmic

absurdity, the frailty of human reason, the tragic impasseof the human condition. Tarnas pp 388 389

Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra -Tarnas, pp. 388-389. Spake Zarathustra

Emergence of Modern Psychoanalysis

What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? …. Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?continually closing in on us? –Friedrich Nietzsche

That an unconscious part of the psyche exerts decisive

Sigmund Freud

That an unconscious part of the psyche exerts decisive influence over human perception, cognition, and behavior was an idea long developing in Western thought, but it was Freud who effectively brought it into the foreground ofFreud who effectively brought it into the foreground of modern intellectual concern […] psychoanalysis represented the third wounding blow to man’s naive pride and self love the first being Copernicus’s heliocentricand self-love, the first being Copernicus s heliocentric theory, and the second being Darwin’s theory of evolution. – Tarnas, p. 422.

Emergence of Modern Psychoanalysis

For on the one hand, psychoanalysis served as a virtual epiphany for the early twentieth century mind as it brought to light the archaeological depths of the psyche, disclosed the g g p p y ,intelligibility of dreams, fantasy and psychopathological symptoms […]Freud thereby represented a brilliant culmination of the Enlightenment project bringing even the

Sigmund Freud

culmination of the Enlightenment project bringing even the human unconscious under the light of rational investigation. Yet on the other hand, Freud radically undermined the entire Enlightenment project by his revelation that below or beyondEnlightenment project by his revelation that below or beyond the rational mind existed an overwhelmingly potent repository of non-rational forces which did not readily submit either to rational analysis or to conscious manipulation –either to rational analysis or to conscious manipulation. Tarnas, p. 328.

Cultural Modernism Ever since the mid- 19th century, the culture of modernity has been characterized by a volatile relationship between high art & mass culture [ ]relationship between high art & mass culture […] Modernism constituted itself through a conscious strategy of exclusion, an anxiety of contamination by its other: an increasingly consuming and engulfingits other: an increasingly consuming and engulfing mass culture. -Huyssen, p. vii.

Franz Marc

The most sustained attack on aestheticist notions of the self-sufficiency of high culture in this century resulted from the clash of the earlythis century resulted from the clash of the early modernist autonomy aesthetic with the revolutionary politics arising in Russia and Germany out of WW1 and with the rapidlyGermany out of WW1, and with the rapidly accelerating modernization of life in the big cities of the early 20th century. This attack goes by the name of historical avant-gardeby the name of historical avant garde.

Vasily Kadinsky: White

Crisis the Pathologies ofCrisis the Pathologies of Modernity

“For as Freud revealed the personal unconscious, Marx exposed the social unconscious.”

The scientific liberation from theological dogma and animistic superstition was thus accompanied by a new sense of human When Zarathustra was

alone however he said p p yalienation from a world that no longer responded to human values, nor offered a redeeming context within which could be understood the larger issues of human existence.

alone, however , he said to his heart: "Could it be possible! This old saint in the forest hath not yet heard of it that God is

Not only was God exposed as a primitive infantile projection, but the conscious human ego itself with its prize virtue the

heard of it, that God isdead!" -Friedrich Nietzsche

g phuman reason […] was now dethroned. -Tarnas, pp. 326- 29.

Crisis the Pathologies of Modernity: Nietzsche

Nietzsche in whom “nihilism became conscious for the first Nietzsche, in whom nihilism became conscious for the first time”, who had foreseen the cataclysm that would befall European civilization in the twentieth century, realized within himself the epochal crisis that would finally come when the p ymodern mind became conscious of its destruction of the metaphysical world, [namely] “the death of God”. –Tarnas, p. 411.

The great overriding impulse defining Western man since the Renaissance- the quest for independence, self-determination,

d i di id li h d i d d b h h id l li iand individualism-had indeed brought those ideals to reality in many lives; yet it had also eventuated in a world where individual spontaneity and freedom were increasingly smothered, not just in theory by a reductionist scientism but in practice by thein theory by a reductionist scientism, but in practice by the ubiquitous collectivity and conformism of mass societies. -Tarnas p. 388.

Crisis the Pathologies of gModernity: Weber & Lukacs

“For of the last stage of this cultural development, it mightg p , gtruly be said: Specialists without spirit, sensualists withoutheart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved” –Max Weber

Max Weber

And so also the great sociologist Max Webber who saw the ineluctable

As a new crisis broke upon the Webber, who saw the ineluctable consequences of the modern mind’s disenchantment of the world, saw the yawning void of relativism left by

world, with Germany once again at the center, antifascist intellectuals could not help but ponder where G lt h d yawning void of relativism left by

modernity’s dissolution of traditional world views, and saw that modern reason…had in fact created an iron cage of bureaucratic

German culture had gone wrong. Lukacs was especially concerned with this question […] because he believed that imperialism and fact created an iron cage of bureaucratic

rationality that permeated every aspect of modern existence.-Tarnas, p. 412.

believed that imperialism and fascism were logical extensions of capitalism. -Anchor p 280Anchor, p. 280.

Crisis the Pathologies of Modernity:Crisis the Pathologies of Modernity: Horkheimer & Adorno

“Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”

All Mass culture which finds itself under a monopoly is

“Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric”-Theodore Adorno

All Mass culture which finds itself under a monopoly is Identical…and the hangman shows no interest in hiding this, violence strengthens it, and its brutality becomes reality.Horkheimer & Adorno, Dialektik der

Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus

Auefklaerung

Popular culture is akin to a factory producing Standardized cultural goods- through film radio and Magazines- to manipulate the masses into passivity

Horkheimer (L) & Adorno (R)

g p p y[…]Culture industries may cultivate false needs; that is, needs created and satisfied by capitalism. -Horkheimer & Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklaerung

Horkheimer (L) & Adorno (R)

Contemporary Analysis: p y yHabermas & Foucault

Taken together, the works of Jurgen Habermas andMichel Foucault highlight an essential tension inmodernity. This is the tension between the normativeand the real between what should be done and what isand the real, between what should be done and what isactually done. Understanding this tension is crucial tounderstanding modern democracy, what it is and whatit could be.

Michel Foucault-Flyvbjerg , p. 210.

Generally, conflicts have been viewed as dangerous, corrosive and potentially d t ti f i l d d th f i d f b i t i d d l d Thi idestructive of social order and therefore in need of being contained and resolved. This view seems to cover Habermas's outlook on conflict, which is understandable given Germany's, and Habermas's, experience with Nazism, World War II and their after-effects. There is mounting evidence, however, that social conflicts produce themselves the valuable ties that hold modernevidence, however, that social conflicts produce themselves the valuable ties that hold modern democratic societies together and provide them with the strength and cohesion they need; that social conflicts are the true pillars of democratic societies. Governments and societies that suppress conflict do so at their own peril. Fl bj 228Flyvbjerg , p. 228.

The Counter-EnlightenmentThe Counter-Enlightenment Summary

Beginning with German Romanticism , the counter-enlightenment personified modern man’s alienation and disenchantment from himself and the world in which he liveddisenchantment from himself and the world in which he lived.

As evident in the works of Nietzsche this era brought about unprecedented changes in the role of the modern man, seeing that God was now deadthat God was now dead.

Freud radically undermined the entire Enlightenment project by his revelation that below or beyond the rational mind existed an overwhelmingly potent repository of non rational forces whichoverwhelmingly potent repository of non-rational forces which did not readily submit either to rational analysis or to conscious manipulation, and in comparison with which man’s conscious ego was a frail and fragile epiphenomenonego was a frail and fragile epiphenomenon. -Tarnas, p. 328.

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