Ernst Behler Irony and the Discourse of Modernity 1990 1

Seattle and London

Irony and theDiscourse of Modernity

ERNST BEHLER

UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS

Copyright © 1990by the University of Washington PressPrinted in the United States of America

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Behler, Ernst, 1928-Irony and the discourse of modernity I Ernst Behler.p. em.

ISBN 0-295-96998-9 (alk. paper)1. Irony in literature. 2. Modernism (Literature)

3. Postmodernisrn (Literature) 1. Title.PN56. 165B44 1990809' .918-dc20

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4·

Preface Vll

Contents

Abbreviations IX

1. Modernism and Postmodernismin Contemporary Thought 3

2. The Rise of Literary Modernismin the Romantic Age 37

3. Irony in the Ancientand the Modern World 73

4. Irony and Self-Referentiality I II

Index of Names 15'

IX

Abbreviations

The followingabbreviations are used in the text.

AMT Charles de Saint-Evremond, On Ancient and ModernTragedy, in The Works of M. de Saini-Euremond (Lon-don. 1928). available in Scott Elledge and DonaldSchier, eds., The Continental Model (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1970). 123-3°.

AWS August Wilhelm Schlegel. Kruische Ausgabe seiner VOT-

lesungen, ed. Ernst Behler with the collaboration ofFrank jolles, 6 vols. (Paderbor-n-Munchen: Schon-ingh, 1989--).

BP Blaise Pascal, Oeuvres completes (Paris: Callimard,1956).

CI Seren Kierkegaard. The Concept of Irony with ConstantReference to Socrates, trans. Lee M. Capel (New YOI-k:Harper and Row, 1965).

CIS Richard Rorty, Contingency. Irony, and Solidarity (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

CRF Madame de Stael, Considerations su.r LaRevolution fran-~aise,ed. Jacques Godechot (Paris: Tallendier, 1983).

D Jacques Derrida, "Differance,' in Speech and Phenom-ena and Other Essays on Husserts Theory of Signs, trans.David B. Allison and Newton Garver (Evanston:Northwestern University Pl"eSS, 1973), 129-60.

x Abbreviations

DAM Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle, A Digression on theAncients and the Moderns, in The Continental Model. ed.Scott Elledge and Donald Schier (Ithaca: CorneJl Uni-versity Press, 1970), 358-70.

DM Jilrgen Habermas, The PhilosophicalDiscount of Mo-dernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick Lawrence(Cambridge: MIT Press, '987).

DP John Dryden, "An Essay of Dramatic Poetry," in Es-says ofJohnDryden, ed. W. P. Ker (New York: Russelland Russell, 1961), vol. 1,64-126.

E Encyclopedie au dictionnaire raisonne des Sciences, des Artset desMetiers, par une Societe de Gens de Leures, 35 vols.and 3 vols. (Geneva: Pellet, '777).

EM Jacques Derrida, "The Ends of Man," in Margins ofPhilosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The Universityof Chicago Press, Ig82), 10g-36.

FN\

Friedrich Nietzsche, Kritische Studienausgabe, ed. Gior-gio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, 15 vols. (Berlin: deGruyter, 1980).

When possible, the following Nietzsche translationswere used:

BT Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Trag-edy and the Case afWagner, trans. WalterKaufmann (New York: RandomHouse, 1967).

DB Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans.R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1982).

FS

Friedrich Schlegel. Kritische Ausgabe seiner Werhe,ed. Ernst Behler with the collaboration of Jean-Jacques Anstett. Hans Eichner, and other specialists.35 vols. (Paderborn-Milnchen: SchOningh, 1958-).

Translations were taken, when available, from the fol-lowing edition:

GE

GM

GS

HH

TJ

UM

FS

LF

Abbreoiauons Xl

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyorui Good andEvil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (NewYork: Random House, 1966).

Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogyof Morals: Ecce Homo, trans. WalterKaufmann and R. j. Hollingdale (NewYork: Random House, 1969).

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science,trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York:Random House, 1974).

Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All TooHuman. A Book for Free Spirits, trans.R. j. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1986).

Friedrich Nietzsche, TWiligh'o[lheJdo/5:The Anti-Christ, trans. R. J. Hollingdale(New York: Penguin Books, 1968).

Friedrich Nietzsche, Untimely Medita-tions, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press,1986).

Friedrich Schlegel, Lucinde and theFragments, trans. Peter Firchow (Min-neapolis: University of MinnesotaPress, 1971).

XII Abbreviations

GWFH Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Werke in 20 Bdmden(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft,

'986).

R

fII. Richard Rorty, "Habermas and Lyotard on Postmo-demity," Praxis International 4 (1984): 32-44.

SSP

fiN Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, trans. David FarrellKrell and others, 4 vols. (San Francisco: Harper andRow, '979-85). SW

M Jurgen Habermas, "Modernity-An IncompleteProject," trans. Seyla Ben-Habib, in Hal Foster, ed.,The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture (PortTownsend: Bay Press, 1983),3-15.

TA

DC Jacques Derrida, Of Crammalology, trans. GayatriChakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: The Johns HopkinsUniversity Press, 1974).

OL Madame de Stael, De La luurasure consideree dans sesrapports avec les institutions scciales, ed. Paul vanTieghem (Geneva and Paris: Droz, '959).

PAM Charles Perrault, Parallele des Anciens et des Modernesen ce qui regarde les arts et les sciences,ed. Hans RobertJau~ (Munich: Kindler, 1964).

PC jean-Franl,;ois Lyotard, The Poumodem Condition: AReport on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington andBrian Massumi, foreword by Fredric Jameson (Min-neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1979).

QC JOrgen Habermas, "Questions and Counter-ques,tions,' in Richard j. Bernstein, ed., Habermas andModernity (Camhridge: MIT Press, 1986), '92-216.

Abbreviations XlIl

R David Hume, Of the Rise and the Progress of the Arts andthe Sciences, in Essays, Literary, Moral and Political (Lon-don: Ward, Lock, and Co., n.d.}, 63-79·

SSP Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in theDiscourse of the Human Sciences," in Writing and Dif-ference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The University ofChicago Press, 1978), 278--gg·

SW Heinrich Heine, Samtliche Werke, ed. Klaus Briegleb(Munich: Hanser, 1971).

TA Jacques Derrida, D'un ton apocalyptique adopte naguereen phiiosophie (Paris: Editions Galilee, 1983).

&

- - - ------~-----

1

Modernism and Postmodernismin Contemporary Thought

Among the dominant themes in today's critical and philo-sophical debate, the question of what constitutes the particu-lar status of our modernity seems to gain in scope and interestalmost every day. The literature on the designation of variousmodernities, the roots of our own modernity, epochal breaks,or change of paradigms in our mode of knowledge is con-stantly growing. All this reflects, of course, our own historicalposition at the end of the twentieth century. The quest, how-ever, for what is modern and the search for the specific fea-tures of modernism are as old as the modern age itself as itoriginated with Bacon and Descartes. A self-reflective con-sciousness of time combined with a need for self-assuranceaccompany the modern age through all its phases, and thisquite naturally. For being modern means essentially a depar-ture from exemplary models of the past, a decentering ofhabitual ways of viewing the world, and the necessity for pm-ducing normative standards out of oneself. This is combinedwith an opening to the future which has the necessary resultthat the moment of a new beginning constituting modernitywill incessantly produce itself again and again.

These considerations have come forth since the late seven-teenth century in a certain type of semi philosophical, semi-literary writing that thematizes the topic of modernity andsimultaneously exhibits its problematic nature. For writingabout modernity, especially one's own, is an act that inevitablyengenders history and relegates modernity to the past. Nodirect way of writing can escape from this paradox. As the

3

4 Modernism and Postmodernism in Contemporary Thought

most extreme expression of time, modernity is like an endlessfuse cord that keepsconsuming itself. Regarding this inher-ent paradox, Nietzsche wrote, "Being is only an uniriter-rupted has-been, a thing that lives by negating, consumingand contradicting itself.", With only a seemingly differenttwistof thought, Foucaultdeclared it to be the task of philos-ophy to explain todayand that which weare today.Vet he alsorecommended doing this without declaring today as the mo-ment of the greatest damnation or the daybreak of the dawn-ing sun and added, "No, it is a day like every other day orrather a day never preciselylike the others.'"

1

It is from these considerations that the notion of the post-modern, of postmodernity, has originated-a notion that be-cause of its enhanced paradoxical structure has become a realannoyance to some of my colleagues in the humanities. Theprefix post seems to suggest-as in postcapitalist, poststructuf-alist, postfeminist, or postnuclear-a New period, another ep-

och after a former one, a relief, so to speak, from the past,and, because of a lack of a new designation, contents itselfwith canceling out the previous system without completelydeleting it. Vet in the caseof postmodern, this does not work,because modern is already the most advanced period desig-nation and cannot be outdone. Postmodernity therefore re-veals itself as an ironic notion communicating indirectly. byway of circumlocution, configuration, and bafflement. the

. I. ,:.ried~ich.Nie~sche,"On the Uses and Disadvantages of History forLl:e, 10 Fnedn~h Ntet7.S~he,~ntimely Meditations, trans.R.J. Hollingdale (Cam-bridge:.Cambridge U~lVerSity Press, (983), 61..2. Michel Foucault, "Urn welcben Preis sagt die Vernunft die Wahrheit?-Em Gesprach," Spuren-Zeitschrift fur Kunst wnd Gesellschaft nos. 1-2 (1983):7-

Modernism and Postmodernism in Contemporary Thought 5

necessityand impossibility of discussing the status of moder-nity in a straightforward and meaningful manner. Postmo-dernity, in its twisted posture, seems to be the awareness ofthis paradox, and consequently of the status of modernity, ina somersaulting fashion.This seems to be at least the most general connotation of

the term in many of today's writings. From here, postmoder-nity appears to be that attitude in which the problems, ques-tions, and issues of modernity accumulate in an unheard-ofway, which explains the constant references to forerunners,to anticipations of postmodernism in previous centuries, towriters such as Nietzsche or Diderot. Postmodernism is nei-ther an overcoming of modernity nor a new epoch, but acritical continuation of modernism which is itself both cri-tique and criticism. Criticism now turns against itself, andpostmodernism thereby becomes a radicalized, intensifiedversion of modernism, as would seem to be implied througha certain nuance in the prefix post. A comparison of postmod-ern ism to the notion of avant-garde seems to confirm thisimpression, because avant-garde clearly gives us the idea ofoutdoing, of advancing, of a future-oriented innovation,whereas the retrospective attitude of postrnodernism seems torelate to the past, if only through self-criticism and self-doubt.

Yet with equal reason, we can see postmodernism as thatsituation in which all the ideals of modernity have come totheir exhaustion, that phase which claims to have experiencedthe end of metaphysics, the end of philosophy, and the end ofman. We should be careful, however, not to construe theseevents as the beginning of a new period, as unavoidable as itmay seem for us to think in such categories. For if postmod-ernism opened an entirely new phase of intellectual history,of antimodernism or the accomplished transgression of mod-ernism, it would continue the innovative trend of modernity,

7


something which seems to be precluded by the paradoxicalconfiguration of its name. One good way of expressing thisfeature would be to say that the postmodernist mind is just asskeptical about the historical designation of epochs as it isabout structural unification in terms of system.

From this latter perspective, postmodernism is the rejectionof any totalized conception of truth in the sense of globalphilosophies of history, all-embracing systems of meaning, oruniform foundations of knowledge. What motivates the post-modern mentality instead can be described as a radical plu-ralism of thought and opinion, without the presumption,however, that such a state of plurality and openness will everbe fully realized. What is certain in the given situation is het-erogeneity in discourse and fallibility in theory formation.Historically speaking, postrnoder nism is an alignment withNietzsche's perspectivism and the refusal of Hegelianism, ofHegel's equation of truth with totality, as well as of his entireteleology. Another way of describing postmodernism wouldbe through semiotics, by saying that in our society the rela-tionship between signifier and signified is no longer intact. inthat signs do not refer to something signified, a pregivenentity, but always to other signs. We thus never reach the truemeaning of things, but only other signs, interpretations ofother signs. interpretations of interpretations, and we movealong in an endless chain of signification.

We could try to say that postmodernism protects the posi-tion of the other side, that of the nonsystem, of the woman,the suppressed minority, although we would soon discoverthat any accusatory criticism combined with rectifying ten-dencies in the style of ideology critique Or even in the oldtradition of liberalism would run COunter to the antisysternaticand atotalitar-ian drive in postrnodernist thinking. Such a cri-tique would eventually be seen as a sign of the reemerging


system and of superimposed value structures. It would simi-larly be questionable to claim that the tradition of modernthought fr~m Kierkegaard to Sartre, existentialism in otherwords, already articulated the groundlessness and finitudewhich became decisive in postmodernism. This would be afalse canon because groundlessness and infinitude are expe-rienced in existentialism as a deficiency. whereas in postmod-ernism this experience is one of 'joyful wisdom," of "gayascienzia." Postmodernism affirms the "anything goes thatworks" device in a cheerful mood of self-deprecation andparody. Writing is the main activity of postmodernism. But towrite on postmodernism in the form of a handbook or anencyclopedic article would be self-deception.

It would of course be fatuous to restrict the posunodernistmood to theory and philosophy without recognizing similartrends in other areas of life. Architecture is, if not the originof this movement, then one of its most cons piCLIOus expres-sions. Fredric Jameson has shown that contemporary archi-tectural trends in the arrangement of OUf cities or individualbuildings counteract fundamental concerns of the modernand rationalist mentality. In their tendency toward the meresurface, the epidermis, the skin, and by eliminating any"depth dimension" (for instance, in Los Angeles), these ar-chitectural trends offset traditional models of building char-acteristic of the modern phase, such as the dialectical modelof essence and appearance, the psychoanalytical model of la-tent and manifest, the existentialist model of authenticity andnonauthenticity, the Marxist model of alienation and recon-ciliation, and the semiotic model of signifier and signified.s

3· Fredricjameson, "Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logicof Late Cap-italism,"New Left Review 146 (july/August 1984): 53-92. See also Hal Foster,ed., The Anti-Aesihetic: Essays on Postnmdern Culture (Port Townsend: BayPress,

8 Modernism and Postmodernismin ContemporaryThought

~

In the more general sphere of aesthetic life and aestheticreduction, these trends find their correspondence In anxrension of art to mass society and mass culture. In a nowfamous image. Adorno once illustrated the modern notion ofan elitist autonomy of art with Odysseus's voyage through therealm of the Sirens.s Tied to the mast of his boat, he couldlisten to the seductive singing of the nymphs withoutsuccumbing to their attempt to lure him into death, while hisdeafened sailors oared him through the dangerous zone.This is at least one aspect of this image. In the postmodernrelationship to art, the separation of classes is supposedlyovercome. The price for this accomplishment, however, is aleveling of art to the standards of a mass culture, anabsorption of art by the vulgarity of life. Art is no longer therealm of otherness, no longer able to hold a mirror, to pointa finger. One especially striking example of this developmentis the museum and the hedonistic use of the museum inpostmodernist practice. Originally an institution, a templefor the preservation and exhibition of art objects thatotherwise would not have survived, the museum has becomea postmodernist architectural building surrounded by shopsand restaurants where objects of exhibition are evaluatedaccording to economic standards. Computerized data informabout the showability of the museum's possessions andregulate their acquisition and sale.s Conversely, and again inaccordance with the anything-goes device, purpose-oriented

1983); and Heinrich Klotz, ed., Pcsimodern Visions: Drawings, Paintings, andModeL~by Conternporary ArchitecL~(New York: Abbeville Press, 1985).4· Max Horkhei?"er and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment,

trans. Jo~n Cumming (NewYork; Herder and Herder, 1972), 32-34.5- Christa Burger, "Das Verschwinden der Kunst: Die Postmoder-ne-De-

baue in den USA," in Postmodeme: Alltag, Allegori.e umi Avantgarde, ed. Christaand Peter Burger (Frankfurt. Suhrkamp, Ig87), 48-49-

Modernism and Postmodernismin Contemporary Thought 9

"activities based entirely on profit, such as advertising, assumethe lofty l'art pour l'art attitude of complete purposelessness.This populist image of postmodernism is interwoven withcomplex theoretical and philosophical issues. They havecome forth in a body of texts marked by an intensifiedcritique of reason and rationality, a bewildering questioningof those values and norms which have governed the COurseof modern history.

Yet it remains doubtful whether postmodernism has oneparticular style of expression or one particular area where thepostmodern attitude can be seen in its true identity. Non-identity, oscillating otherness, seems to be the postmodernmode of expression, and the realm of existence for the post-modern mode is precisely there where it presently is not. Forphilosophers, the postmodern style appears to be morestrictly given in literature and critical theory than in philoso-phy, for literary critics more in architecture, for specialists inarchitecture perhaps in advertising, and so on. Prototypes oflpostmodernism are hard to locate and always outdone bysomething else. Poststructuralism is outdone by deconstruc-ltion and deconstruction by what is called the new historicism. IFor writers in the postmodern style, the evasiveness of theirsubject matter goes hand in hand with a certain superficialityor even dilettantism in their expertise, a certain "poor philol-ogy," a transgression of limits.Postmodern lectures are taped,postrnodern texts are photocopied, and postmodern writingsare put onto the word processor.

2

jean-Fran£.?}s LY~he.e.ostmodem ..C.IJndi1i.O.n.;..A.fI.gp.orton Knowledgeof '979 is the theoretical text most directly con-


cerned with these issues." As is obvious from its title, thewnung is not meant to be an event in itself or an originalmoment in the evolution of postmodernism, but poses as acomment on a pregiven situation, as a report to the Council ofUniversities of the government of Quebec on a researchproject devoted to the "condition of knowledge in the mosthighly developed societies." /rhe-text isasummary of" what

rmrs IIaptn"fred iT1"th1"')Jasro-&ade under the headings of post-~tructuralism, detonw:.y.c;.tiQll.Jnd criti 1!S..0f meta hysics.Yet Lyo a"fiI also coins the terms and concepts which haveguided or challenged the discussion of these events ever since.The most prominent among them is the term postmodernitself, occurring right at the beginning: "Our working hypoth-esis is that the status of knowledge is altered as societies enterwhat is known as the postindustrial age and cultures enterwhat is known as the postmodern age" (PC, 3). By using,however, the paradoxical notion of postmodern with the ca-sual connotation of postindustrial, and by introducing in thecontext of a report the contemporary crisis of knowledge as a"crisis of narratives," the text is a full-blown postmodern phe-nomenon itself, with all the ironic postures and configura-tions required for this style.

Lyotard's characterization of postmodernism has variousaspects, the most direct of which is perhaps the idea Of atr«nsforrnarion of kl1c?wled~ven a "mercantiJization ofkno~ledge" (PC, 26). The issue is that of a fundamentalchange in the conception of knowledge that has essentiallyaffected its nature. The c~'iterion of knowledge in the post-

6. Jean-Fran(,;oi~ Lyotard,The Pestmoderri Condition: A Report on Knowledge,tra~lS.Geo[~ Benn.mgL~nand ~rian Massumi, foreword by Fredric Jameson(Mlnne~polls: UIllVCI'SllYof Minnesota Press, 1979). References to this textare deSignated pc.

Modernism and Postmodemism in Contemporary Thought 11

modern phase is translatability into computer language, intoquantities of information (PC, 23), whereby the old ideal of Iknowledge as a formation of the mind and the personalitydies out and is replaced by a conception of knowledge interms of suppliers and users, of commodity producers andconsumers (PC, 24)· Knowledge becomes a major stake in theworldwide competition for power (PC, 26). Another way ofdescribing this state of knowledge would be to say that post-modernism is the departure from any totalizing attempt ofreasoning, from any ultimate foundation of truth.The most famous formulation of this diagnosis is Lyotard's

remark that in postmodernism one no longer believes in"metanar-ratives." Metanarratives are those comprehensive aswell as foundational discourses in which all details of knowl-edge and human activity find ultimate sense and meaning.Examples of such metadiscourses or meta narratives are thegrand antique, medieval, or rational philosophies, Platonism,for instance, or the great religions of humanity, the utopias ofa final unity, reconciliation, and harmony. Lyotard distin-guishes between meta narratives of a mythological and of arational nature and even attributes different periods in thehistory of humanity to them. In the premodern world, one Ijustified one's culture through narrations of a mythological 0

religious character and founded all institutions, social anpolitical practices, laws, ethics, and manners of thinking on abelief in these metanarratives. The modern period beganwhen these founding narratives were no longer mythical orreligious, but became rational and philosophical, and secureda meaningful procedure not through a god or a heroic law-giver, but through the authority of reason. Although rationalin their manner of argumentation, they were still narrativesbecause they gave meaning through a projected odyssey witha redemptive type of foundation such as the acquisition of


freedom, progressive emancipation, the all-round humanpersonality, or accomplished socialism and welfare. All hu-man realities found a firm basis in these ideas. Good examplesof these metanarratives of a rational and modern order arefor Lyotard the dialectics of spirit, the emancipation of therational or the working subject. the hermeneutics of meaning,or the creation of wealth through capitalist techno-science. Ina certain way, Hegel's dialectics of spirit contains all thesenarratives and can therefore be considered the quintessenceof speculative modernity.

Postmodernism, in a word then, is incredulity in the face ofsuch universal metanarratives. They have not been refutedbut simply become outworn; they no longer fulfill their func-tion of bestowing sense and meaning upon human activities.They also no lon~er serve as a foundation for the discourse ofthe individual sciences, which instead follow their own rulesand break up the one grand metadiscourse into myriads ofindividual languages, of language games and language rulesin the respective scientifi texts. Lyotard likes to condensethis feature by using abermas' notion of a "crisis of legiti-mation," of a crumbling legitimacy of authority, but he ex-pands the notion far beyond any state, government, or in-stitutionalized power to a generalized fading away of alloverriding authority and legitimacy. For what the classicalmetanarratives did can very well be characterized as a legiti-mizing of all particular forms of knowledge, of all individualscientific discourses, those of justice as well as those of truth(PC, 33)· After these metadiscourses have been dismissed byincredulity, the question of the legitimacy of knowledgecomes up again in a different manner (PC, 112) and certainlycannot be resolved by another form of totalization, by theinvention of a new metadiscourse (PC, 109).

Lyotard considers individual language systems as they exist

Modernism and Postmodernismin Contemporary Thought 13

in the individual sciences to be the type of relationship nec-essary for the existence of society(PC, 56) and, in reference toWittgenstein, likes to call these discourses language games.He thereby emphasizes the pragmatic aspect in their differentways of enunciation and their inherent rules, but also, what isperhaps more important, the "agonistic" character in andamong these games (PC, 41). Rules have no legitimacy inthemselves and rest on agreement, on consensus among theplayers. Yet, as in a game of chess, each new move creates anew situation (PC, 40).

We should be careful, however, not to construe Lyotard'sreport on knowledge in the postmodern stage and his thesisof a breakup of one great metanarrative into a multiplicity ofindividual language games as the new metadiscourse of thepostmodern period. He expressly denies any originality ortruth value for his account and considers it to be of hypothet-ical character at best, of strategic value with regard to thepoint in question, that is, capable of emphasizing certain as-pects (PC, 31). Similarly, we should not think about theseperiods of premodern, modern, and postmodern as havingdatable ruptures or definite epochal breaks, because theircontents and styles overlap in terms of time. The premoderntype of mythical and religious legitimation can linger on intothe postmodern period just as postmodern scepticism can befound among writers of the premodern age. The premodern,modern, and postmodern modes of legitimation and delegit-imation depicted by Lyotard are perhaps best viewed as idealtypes. They have, however, also a clearly historical connota-tion, in that they dominate periods of history. Of special in-terest in this regard is the relationship between the modernand the postmodern styles. Lyotard maintains that the post-modern manner of thinking does not situate itself after oragainst the modern, but is enclosed in it, although in hidden


fashion. To think about history in a straightforward line isentirely modern, as demonstrated by Christianity, Cartesian-ism, and Jacobinism. The disappearance of the term "avant-garde" with its military flavor is an indication of the witheringaway of modernity, because this term is an expression of thatold-fashioned modernity at which we are now able to smile.'In a speech of Ig80 with the programmatic title "Moder-

nity-An Incomplete Projcct.?s which is now already histori-cal but has had several follow-ups in subsequent writings,Jilrgen Habermas attempted to rescue modernity from itspostmodernist detractors. He clearly took postmodernity asantimodernity, as an attempt that sacrifices "the tradition ofmodernity in order to make room for a new historicism" (M,3), an "anarchistic intention of blowing up the continuum ofhistory," and a "rebelling against all that iSJ2?rmative" (M, 5).Although this text focused on the "aesthetic modernity" ofdadaists and surrealists in the "Cafe Voltaire" (M, 5), Haber-mas also ventured into the broader aspects of modernism asbased on three autonomous spheres of reason (science. mo-rality, and art), three realms with an "inner logic" and a va-lidity of their own: cognitive-instrume'ntal, moral-practical,and aesthetic-expressive rationality (M, g). Whereas enlight-ened philosophers of the late eighteenth century distin-guished these different types of legitimizing reason for theenrichrnenr of life, the twentieth century has shattered thisoptimism by abandoning the autonomy of these segments to

7· S~me of these ideas are taken up and further developed in Jean-FranC;OISLyotard, Le poslmoderne expliqui aux enfants (Paris: Les Editions deMinuit, 1986).

8. Jilrgen Habermas, "Modernity-An Incomplete Project," trans. SeylaBel~-Habib, in Foster, The Anti-Aesthetic, 3-15. References to this text aredesignated M. For further discussions of the topic see RichardJ. Bernstein,ed., Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986).

Modernism and Postmodernismin Contemporary Thought '5

specialistsand thereby separating them from everyday com-munication.

This is for Habermas the crisis of modernity in its mostglobal aspect. His attitude toward this basic problem, how-ever, is obvious from his rhetorical question, "should we try tohold on to the intentions of the Enlightenment, feeble as theymay be, or should we declare the entire project of modernitya lost cause?" (M, 9). The answer is of course a rejection ofthepostmodernists' "false negation of culture" (M, 11) and amaintenance of "communicative rationality," of "reproduc-tion and transmission of valuesand norms" (M, 8) in Haber-mas's sense. More directly, he says: "I think that instead ofgiving up modernity and its project as a lost cause, we shouldlearn from the mistakes of those extravagant programs whichhave tried to negate modernity" (M, 12). In a rhetorical movehard to comprehend, however, Habermas labels all postrnod-ern critics of the modern type of rationality as "neoconserva-tives" (M, 6-7), and with a revealing myopia characterizes theFrench critics, all of his own generation if not considerablyolder, as "young conservatives," and describes them as a linethat "leads from Georges Bataille via Michel Foucault to

Jacques Derrida." They claim, according to Habermas, "rev-elations of a decentered subjectivity emancipated from theimperatives of work and usefulness, and with t.his experiencethey step outside the modern world" (M, '4). As Habermassees it, these writers juxtapose with instrumental reason "aprinciple only accessible through evocation, be it the will topower or sovereignity, Being or the Dionysiac force of thepoetical" (M, 14).

This image of irrationalism isof course just as questionableas the equation of postmodernism with conservatism. On thecontrary, it is Habet-mas's critique of postmodernism and itsfoundationalist drive that showsa spontaneous alliancewith a

•

[6 Modernism and Postmodernism in Contemporary Thought

traditionalist, conservative fundamentalism of basic valuesand basic norms. Lyotard's response to Habermas, therefore,is entitled Postmodernism for Children and presents itself as acollection of letters put together by editors who want to pro-tect the author against the "reproach of irrationalism. neocon-servatism, intellectual terrorism, simple-minded liberalism,nihilism, and cynism."9 On the whole, the letters suggest thatwe seem to have entered a "phase of slackening." Many symp-toms indicate this, as for instance. the writings of a thinker ofrepute (that is, Habermas) who wants to defend the uncom-pleted project of modernity against neoconservatives byopening the way to a unity of experience. In his later writings,especially in The DifJerend, >0 Lyotard moves away from anyattempt to construe postmodernism as a completely new man-ner of life and thought and eliminates any traces of a pro-gressive. revolutionary. utopian, or anarchistic, that is. mod-ern conception of postmodernism that his earlier writingsmight still bear."

3The main thing Habermas did in response to the postmod-

ern critique of reason and rationality was to construe a newmetanarrative of emancipatory reason which attempts to setthings right and also to assign the French critics their proper

9- Lyotard, Le poumodeme explique aux enfents, 3. The first section, "An-sw~rin.gthe Question: WhatIs Postmodernism>'' is included in English trans-lation In Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 71-82.

10. jean-Francois Lyotard, Le differend (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit,1983). See also his "Grundlagenkrise," Neue Helle fur Phiiosophie 26 (1986):1-33·

11: See ,especially jean-Francois Lyotard, Derive a parti,· de Marx et Freud(Pans: Union generale des editions, 1973), and the concept of "desirevolu-non" in that text.

h


position. He admits that it wasmainly the challenge from theother side of the Rhine that motivated him to reconstruct the"philosophical discourse of modernity" in a book of the sametitle.» In this new rnetanarrative, Habermas mobilizes theentirety of modern philosophy from a Germano-centeredperspective. The heroes of this epic are Kant, Hegel, Marx,and Habermas. Their detractors form the "line" from theromantics to Nietzsche, Mallarrne, Dadaists, Foucault, andDerrida. Horkheimer and Adorno played into their handsbut distinguished themselves from totalized scepticism byadopting from Walter Benjamin an attitude called "hopelesshope." MaxWeber's theme of an independent logic of valuespheres such as science, morality. and art provides the struc-ture of this tale, and its content is the relentless drive forself-assurance on the part of modernity.The beginning in this journey of the modern spirit is Kant,

who "installed reason in the supreme seat of judgment beforewhich anything that made a claim to validity had to bejusti-fied" (DM, 18). Through his three critiques, Kant subdividedreason into the faculties of theoretical reason (Critique oj PureReason), practical reason (Critique oj Practical Reason), and aes-thetic judgment (Critique oj Judgment) and thereby establishedspecial courts for the three cultural spheres of philosophy andmetaphysics, morality and Jaw, and aesthetics and poetics.Such a division grounded all these three spheres in rationalfoundations of their Own. Vet Kant did not perceive thesedifferentiations as completely different tracks without any re-lationship to one another, as "dirernptions." He thereforeonly introduced the modern spirit, which for Habermas is

12. jnrgen Habermas, The Philosopltual Discourse of Modernil)1; Twelve Lee-lures, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987). Referencesto this text are designated DM.


I

IiI

inspired by the need for a deeper foundation, an "ideal in-trinsic form," that is entirely derived from the spirit of rno-dernity and not imposed upon it from outside (DM, 19-20).

We must therefore turn to Hegel, who in reality was the firstto raise the detachment of modernity from founding andexternal norms to the levels of a philosophical problem (DM,16). With him the need for "self-reassurance of modernity"comes to such ahead that it becomes the "fundamental problemof his own philosophy"(DM, 16). Hegel discovered the prin-ciple of modernity as a "structure of self-relation," a full de-ployment of all human potentialities, and called this principlesubjectivity (DM, ] 6).

In the principle of subjectivity, all autonomous spheres ofthe modern world appear to be gathered in a focal point.However, Hegel's concept of "absolute knowledge" remainsencircled in subjectivityand no longer permits a critique ofsubjectivity from any external position (DM, 34). Hegel's no-tion of the absolute has the advantage of comprehendingmodernity in terms of its own principle (DM, 36), but thissolution does not completely satisfy because the critique ofsubjectivity (modernity) can be carried out "only within theframework of the philosophy of the subject" (DM, 41). Suchphilosophizing obliteratesthe intrinsic tensions of modernityand does not fullymeet the need for self-assurance. The un-rest and movement of modernity therefore explode this con-cept at the moment of its conception (DM, 4]).

Hegel's disciplesfreed the critique of modernity from theburden of the Hegelianconcept of reason (DM, 53), but main-tained the task of a self-assurance of modernity (DM, 58).Marx transformed the concept of reflection to the concept ofproduction and replaced self-consciousness with labor (DM,59)· With Nietzscheand his followers, a new discourse entersthe scene, no longer willing to hold on to the principle of


reason in the critique of modernity, but taking critique out ofthe hands of reason and striking "the subjective genitive fromthe phrase 'critique of reason'" (DM, 59). From now on,whichever name philosophy assumes in this tradition-fun-damental ontology (Heidegger), critique or negative dialectics(Adorno), deconstruction (Derrida), or genealogy (Foucault)-these pseudonyms for Habermas are only "the cloak for ascantily concealed end of philosophy" (DM, 53). With its pro-fessed "antihumanism," this tradition constitutes the "realchallenge" for Habermas and his discourse of modernity. Be-fore Habermas can investigate "what lies hidden behind theradical gestures of this challenge," however, he has to conducta closer inspection of the type of antireason represented byhis father figures, Horkheimer and Adorno.

Such an examination appears all the more important be-cause the contemporary French interpretation of Nietzschehas brought about moods and attitudes confusingly similar tothose conjured up by Horkheimer and Adorno, and Haber-mas would like "to forestall this confusion" (DM, 106).Whatappears to be the particu lar mark ofthese two representativesof the Frankfurt School in contrast to their French COunter-parts in the critique of reason is their use of Benjamin's "hopeof the hopeless," or their own "now paradoxical labor of con-ceptualization" (DM, 106). To put it in different terms, theyrealized only too well the injuries caused by "instrurnen-talized" reason, the coercion of systematized conceptualthought, and the pretensions of utopian reconciliations. Yetthey maintained Hegelian wholeness and integrity in thestructural patterns of their thought by lamenting its absenceand unrealizability as a lack, a loss,a deficiency and not, as inpoststructuralisr and postmodern thought, as the appropriatehuman condition. They suffered from this situation and in-creased t.heir suffering by insisting on a critique of reason

7


through reason, and by not giving in to a preratiorial, supra~rational, or transsubjective, but in any event irrational, lapseinto myth as Nietzscheand his French followers have doneaccording to Habermas.The resistance to myth is so strong for Horkheirner and

Adorno, Habermas claims, that it forms a central motif intheir critique of the Enlightenment." Asa matter of fact, thiscritique can be summarized as the "thesis of a secret complic-ity" of myth and enlightenment, in that "myth is already en-lightenment" and "enlightenment reverts to mythology" (DM,107). The prime example of this "entwinernent" is Homer'sOdyssey, interpreted by Horkheimer and Adorno as the"primal history of subjectivity" (DM, 108), the epic anticipa-tion of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. This "myth of origin"depicts the double meaning of emancipation, of "springingfrom," namely, "a shudder at being uprooted and a sigh ofrelief at escaping."The "cunning of Odysseus"represents themodern mentalityof buying off the curse of vengeful powersby offering vicariousvictims (DM, 108).The song of the Si-rens recalls for Odysseusa "happiness onceguaranteed by the'fluctuating interrelationship with nature,''' but he has thisexperience only"asone who already knowshimself in chains"(DM, 109). Similarly, the process of enlightenment in themodern age has not resulted in liberation, but in a worldupon which rests "thecurse of demonic reification and deadlyisolation." The permanent sign of the Enlightenment forHorkheimer and Adorno is "domination over an objectifiedexternal nature and a repressed internal nature" (DM, 110).In less image-laden language we could say that for Hork-

heimer and Adorno, the result of the Enlightenment for thesciences is an instrumentalized type of reason solely based on

I I. I

I .

J 3· See Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment.


technical utility; for morality and law, ethical scepticism un-able to distinguish morality from immorality; and for aesthet-ics, mass culture that fuses art with entertainment (DM, 111-

12). Altogether, reason is stripped of all "validity claim andassimilated to sheer power" (DM, 112). For Habermas, how-ever, Horkheimer and Adorno's "critique of instrumentalreason" isan amazing leveling of cultural modernity that doesnot do justice to what Weber had called its "stubborn differ-entiation of value spheres" (DM, 112). Habermas refers to the"specific theoretical dynamic that continually pushes the sci-ences," the "universalistic foundations of law and morality" indemocratic will formation as wellas in individual identity for-mation, and the "productivity and explosive power of basicaesthetic experiences" (DM, 113). The Dialectic of the Enlight-enment is therefore an "odd book," the "blackest book" byHorkheimer and Adorno, and "we no longer share thismood, this attitude" (DM, 106). Considering the desolateemptiness of emancipation depicted by these authors, thereader, Habermas claims, correctly gets the feeling that thisleveling presentation "failed to notice essential characteristicsof cultural modernity" (DM, 1'4).

To illustrate Horkheimer and Adorno's extremism, Hab-ermas concentrates on a single aspect in their critique of rea-son, namely, ideology critique. Since Marx, ideology critiquehas continued the process of the enlightenment and self-assurance of modernity by unmasking remnant mythologicalcomponents in theoretical constructs supposedly free fromany ensnarement in myth (DM, 115). Ideology critique hadbeen especially successful in uncovering the "inadmissiblemixture of power and validity" and for the first time hadmade enlightened reason entirely reflective, that is, a perfor-mance on its Own products-theories (DM, 116). Ideologycritique had never been entirely negative about its subject


matters but wasable to decipher in misused ideas "a piece ofextant reason hidden from itself," or in other words, "surplusforces of productivity" (DM, 117-18). With Horkheirner andespecially Adorno, ideology critique attained a "second-orderof reflectiveness" and turned against its own foundations(DM, 116). Critique became total and retained nothing itcould refer to as a standard. Adorno was fully aware of the"performative contradiction inherent in a totalized critique,"bur.also convinced that we have to remain in its circle (DM

J

llg).

One option for a "critique that attacks the presuppositionsof its own validity" is what Habermas considers to be Nietz-sche's and Foucault'sdoctrine of the will to power. In itsregressiveness, this option breaks out of the horizon of mo-dernity and is bottomless as theory, because of the suspensionof any distinction between power claims and truth claims(DM, 127). Horkheimer and Adorno's option was to shuntheory and to "practicedeterminate negation on an ad hocbasis,"standing firmagainst any fusion of reason and powerin an "uninhibited scepticism" (DM, 128-2g). Habet-mas'sOwnsolution, as he argued against Horkheimer and Adorno,"is to leave at leastone rational criterion intact for their ex-planation of the corruption of all rational criteria" (DM, 127).This criterion is to be found in the "communicating commu-nity of researchers," in a "mediating kind of thinking," in"argumentative discourse,"and is essentially "the unforcedforce of the better argument" (DM, 130). It is hard to com-prehend, however, how this principle of communicative, ar-gumentative discourseescapes the "totalized"critique of basicstandards, norms, and values that Habermas deplores so viv-idly. By holding on to this principle of criticism and by de-claring one argument "better" than the other, Habermasseems to break off critical discourse and to posit himself and

Modernism and P ostmodernism in Contemporary Thought 23

his followers into the position of those who simply know bet-ter or, to borrow words from Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit,into the community of those who know themselves to be theknowing ones. 14

4To summarize the dispute, we could say that Habermas

makes a desperate effort to reaffirm the modern position ofrational enlightenment and progress, whereas Lyotard hascrossed the bridge to a postmodern phase in which such con-cerns are simply smiled at. This is basically how Richard Rortysees the positions of the two parties. Habermas is holding onto the metanarrative of emancipation, branding scepticism ofabsolutes as relativism, whereas Lyotard is quite happy withrelativism, historicism, and the narratives of the smaller sort,seeing no necessity to ground them in an absolute foundation.Rorty says: "To accuse postmodernism of relativism is to tryto put a metanarrative in the postmodern's mouth. One willdo this if one identifies 'holding a philosophical position' withhaving a metanarrative available. If we insist on such a defi-nition of 'philosophy,' then postmodernism is post-philosoph-ical. But it would be better to change the definition.".sYet Rorty by no means takes his own position simply on the

side of Lyotard's sceptical postmodernism. He distances him-self equally from both Haberrnas's totalitarian foundational-ism and Lyotard's elusive cynicism. Instead, he maintains amatter-of-fact pragmatism of small solutions and relative de-cisions which can, however, be seen as a new and interesting

14· G. w. F. Hegel, Phen01nenolog)' of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1977),4°9.

15· Richard Rorty, "Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism," The Journal ofPhilosophy 80 (1983): 589.

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24 Modernism and Postmodernism in ContemjJormy Thought

configuration of the postmoder n stance. What he objects to inthe new French narrative told by Foucault, Lyotard, and thelike is not so much the naive image of science implied in thesetexts (HL, 33),,6 or a secret, hidden fascination with the Ger-man tale about the "self-assurance" of modern society (HL,39), but a complete detachment from any human and socialconcern, the attitude of supposedly dispassionate observa-tion, writing without a human face, the lack of formulas using"we" in these texts, and the absence of any rhetoric of eman-cipation in this style (HL, 40). This is a "remoteness" for Rortywhich is reminiscent of the "conservative who pours cold wa-ter on hopes for reform, who affects to look at the problemsof his fenow-citizens with the eye of the future historian" (HL,41). Whereas Habermas appears to be inspired by founda-tionalist fervor, these French texts emanate a "dryness" whichis too aloof from any type of "concrete social engineering."Rorty certainly agrees with Lyotard that "studies of the com-municative competence of a transhistoricaJ subject are of littleuse in reinforcing OUf sense of identification with our com-munity," but he still insists on "the importance of that sense"(HL, 41).

With regard to Haber mas's demand for "communicativecompetence" as the one valid standard for rational critiqueafter all other standards have broken down, Rorty thinks thatthis does not really solve the problem. According to him,"there is no way for [he citizens of Brave New World to worktheir way out from their happy slavery by theory," since ev-erything they sense as rational or as "undistorted communi-cation" will already be in accordance with their desires. Rortysays, "There is no way for us to prove to ourselves that we are

16.. Richard Rony, "Habermas and Lyorard on Postmodernity," Praxis In-ler7Ullwruzl4 (1984): 32-44- References to this text are designated I-lL.

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not happy slaves of this sort, any more than to prove that ourlife is not a dream" (HL, 35). He is particularly amused byHabermas's belief in the "internal theoretical dynamic" of the•sciences that supposedly propels them "beyond the creationof technologically exploitable knowledge," which he sees notso much as "theoretical dynamic" but as "social practice,"something to be derived from the "social virtues of the Eu-ropean bourgeoisie" or simply from "theoretical curiosity."That viewwould take away from science the false appearanceof an "ahistorical teleology" and make modern science lookmore like "something which a certain group of human beingsinvented in the same sense in which these same people can besaid to have invented Protestantism, parliamentary govern-ment, and Romantic poetry" (HL, 36).As to the three cultural spheres of science, morality, and art

and the need for their unification in a common ground, Rortythinks that these are artificial problems created by takingKant and Hegel too seriously. Once one has started this divi-sion, however, the overcoming of the split will haunt one asthe "fundamental philosophical problem" and result in "anendless series of reductionisr and anti-reductionist moves": •

Reducrionists will try to make everything scientific ("positiv-ism"),or political (Lenin), or aesthetic (Baudelaire, Nietzsche).Anti-reductionists will show what such attem pts leave out. Tobe a philosopher of the "modern" sort is precisely to be un-willing either to let these spheres simply co-exist uncompeti-lively, or to reduce the other two to the remaining one. Mod-ern philosophy has consisted in forever realigning them,squeezing them together, and forcing them apart again. But itis not clear that these efforts have done the modern age muchgood (or, for that matter, harm).(HL, 37)

As is obvious from these observations, Rorty puts Haber-mas into the modern camp and attributes to himself a post-


modern position. His postmodernism, however, goes beyondmere scepticism toward metanarratives and extends to prac-tical attitudes in the art of living and thinking, such as theo-retical curiosity or an "intellectual analogue of civic virtue-tolerance, irony, and a willingness to let spheres of cultureflourish without worrying too much about their 'commonground,''' and so on (HL, 38). He thinks that Habermas "isscratching where it does not itch" (HL, 34), and that his storyof modern philosophy is "both too pessimisticand too Ger-man" (HL, 38-39). Rortywould arrange the story of the mod-ern age in a different way and construe it, for example, as"successive attempts to shake off the sort of ahistorical struc-ture exemplified by Kant's division of culture into three'value-spheres'" (HL, 39)· Yet he would alsorefrain from tell-ing his story the French way, in the dry manner Foucault andLyotard are relating it, that is, completely detached from anyinterest in humanity and any identity with OUf community(HL, 40--41).

Rorty's type of storycould just as well assume the shape ofa combination of the two narratives. This story would notunmask in the German manner a "power called 'ideology' inthe name of something not created by power called 'validity'or 'emancipation,'" but would simply explain in the Frenchmanner "who was currently getting and using power for whatpurposes." But unlike the French narrative, Rorty's storywould also suggest how sorlie other people might get powerand "use it for other purposes" (HL, 41-42). The value of"undistorted Icommunication" would clearly be recognized,but the need for a "theory of cOlnmunicative competence asbackup" could be dismissed(HL, 41). Another way of arrang-ing the story for Rortywould be to minimize the importanceof the "canonical sequenceof philosophers from Descartes to

Nietzsche" and to consider this tradition as a "distraction

Modernism and Postmodernism in Conternporarv Thought 27

from the history of concrete social engineering which madethe contemporary North Atlantic culture what it is now."Rorty also suggests creating "a new canon" based on an"awareness of new social and religious and institutional pos-sibilities" instead of "developing a new dialectical twist inmetaphysics and epistemology" (HL, 41). "That would be away of splitting the difference between Habermas and Lyo-tard, of having things both ways," he says. "We could agreewith Lyotard that we need no more metanarratives, but withHabermas that we need less dryness" (HL, 41). Yet Rorty'spostmodernism comes forth best in terms of John Dewey'sphilosophy, in taking seriously "Dewey's suggestion that theway to re-enchant the world, to bring back what religion gaveour forefathers, is to stick to the concrete" (HL, 42), and heconcludes, "Those who want beautiful social harmonies wanta postmodernist form of social life, in which society as a wholeasserts itself without bothering to ground itself" (HL, 43).

In his response to this criticism, Habermas did not go muchbeyond the position he had already taken, and while recog-nizing the "pluralization of diverging discourses" in the mod-ern age (QC, 192),'7 he held on to the "unity of reason, evenif only in a procedural sense," and to a "transcending validityclaim that goes beyond merely local contexts" (QC, 193). Dif-ferences in opinion are expressed in the expectation of "fu-ture resolutions" (QC, '94). Basic for Habermas in these ar-gumentations is the distinction "between valid and sociallyaccepted views, between good arguments and those which aremerely successful for a certain audience at a certain lime"(QC, 194)· To take a position of yes or no is more for him thanto acknowledge the "claims of merely influential ideas" (QC,

17· Jiirgen Habermas, "Questions and Ccumerquestions," in Bernstein,Habemms and Modernity, 192-216. Referencesto this text are designated QC.

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28 Modernism and Postmodernism in Contempomry Thought

195)· There is, rather, a basic interest for philosophy, forphilosophy's role as "guardian of reason," to see social prac-tices of justification "as more than just such practices" (QC,'95)' While preserving for philosophy the "possibility ofspeaking of rationality in the singular," Haberrnas also wantsa "concept of communicative rationality" that does not fallprey to the "totalizing and self-referential critique of reason"in the postmodern manner, be this "via Heidegger to Det-r-ida" or "via Bataille to Foucault." He finds this type of ratio-nality in the "everyday practice of communication" (QC, 196)and believes that "the socially integrative powers of the reli-gious tradition shaken by enlightenment can find an equiva-lent in the unifying, consensus-creating power of reason"(QC, 197).

Viewed from the radical critique of reason in the postmod-ern manner, these arguments are of Course more desirabili-ties, or what Habermas considers to be desirabilities, thandemonstrative truths. To give these thoughts more profile,however, we should add that Habermas's "unifying, consen-sus-creating power of reason" is not to be taken in the senseof a stable, ideal, transcendental, or in any other way identi-fiable and objectifiahle principle of metaphysics of presence.Communicative reason manifests itself through basic differ-ences among jthe communicating partners, through endlessargumentatiotls and counter-argumentations, and leads to noenduring, everlasting result. The consensus-creating powerof reason, in other words, constantly creates itself and is neverfully realized. With its claim to validity, communicative reasontranscends the present, but this transcendence is never abso-lutely accomplished and permanently renews itself. The pres-ence of truth is indefinitely deferred. Yet in spite of all thesedelays and postponements, we are not yet out of Hegelianism.Reason and truth remain the centering ground and deter-


mine social discourse structurally and historically. With thismodel of thought, Habermas reaffirms and continues the"project of modernity" while leaving the territory of postmo-dernity to Rorty and others, not without warning, however,that this is a dangerous philosophical zone of performativecontradictions and self-referential traps.

5Other proponents of postmodernism see the end of mo-

dernity in organic images of aging, decay, and natural death.Jean Baudrillard describes the process as one of an immenseloss of meaning leading to complete indifference, in a statewhere an obese growth of the same has replaced the innova-tive elan toward the new. "We are truly in a beyond," Baud-rillard says:

The imagination is in power, likewise the enlightenment andthe intelligence, and we are experiencing now or in the nearfuture the perfection of the social. Everything has been ac-complished, the heaven of utopia has come down to earth, andwhat once stood out in a shining perspective, now appears ascatastrophe in slow motion. Wealready sense the fatal tasteofthe material paradise. And transparency, in the age of alien-ation an expression of the ideal order, is fulfilled today in theform of a homogeneous and terrorist space.:"

Gianni Vattimo sees the "end of modernity" In more aca-demic manner as an "ontological decay," an erosion of prin-ciples such as subject, being, or truth. He attempts to providean art of living for the late-modern and postmodern types ofexistence which have left behind any recourse to finality andpresence, as far postponed as these consolations might ever

18. Jean Baudriilard, Les strategies fatales (Paris: Grassel, 1983),85.

30 Modernism and Pas/modernism in Contemporary Thought

be, The inspiration for this manner of existence derives froma very personally appropriated Nietzsche in the style of Hu-man, All Too Human or a Heidegger understood as initiationinto death.is

Although he does not use terms such as modernism andpostmodernism, because of their determining, binding char-acter, the style of postmodern writing and the reflective,ironic mode of postmodern thinking is performed at its bestin the texts of JacquesDerrida. Here, the end of modernity,or better, the infinite transgression of modernity, is not de-clared by a statement but enacted through performative writ-ing and communicated indirectly. Casual remarks such as thefollowing are the most direct statements on postmodernismby Derrida, but altogether atypical for his style: "If modern-ism distinguishes itself through a striving for absolute domi-nation, postmodernism is perhaps the statement or experi-ence of its end, the end of this plan for dorninarion.vseHowever, one should always keep in mind that pluralism,polysemy, and difference are for Derrida no loss of unity(past history), nor a momentary lack of coherence to be over-come (future), but the character of Iinguisticityitself (pres-ent), and therefore attributable to all periods in history. Thephenomenon of postmodernism is thereby raised to a trulytheoretical and philosophicalleve!, and the critique of reason,the decisive mark of postmodernism. is carried out, not froma temporary perspective or some disciplinary point of view,but as a genuine philosophical task.Among the various texts by Derrida, none is perhaps more

19· Gian~i Vat?mo, At di til soggetto (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1985) and La finedella modenuta (Milano: Feltrinelh, (985).

20. Jacques Derrida and Eva Meyer, "Labyrinth und Archi/Textur," in DasAbenteuer der Ideen: Architekllll"und Philosophie seu del" industrieuen Revolution(Berlin: Austellungskatalog, 1984),94-106.

Modernism and Posunodemism in Contemporary Thought 3 1

exemplary for his style of postmodern writing and postrnod-ern thought than the small composition, Of a Recently AdoptedApocalyptic Tone in Philosophy." The text cannot be reduced tothe postmodern debate but certainly articulates aspects of it,although in an entirely indirect, casual manner. It is Derrida'sresponse, his ironic account of and disarming contribution toa colloquium devoted to his work, more precisely, to his po-sition concerning "the ends of man.">«The end of man is a prominent theine in contemporary

thought and closely connected with the death of the subject,the disappearance of subjectivity as the last grounding prin-ciple of modernity in its desire for self-assurance. What ap-peared to be the final basis of our structures of knowledge,moral, social, and political activities, and aesthetic creations aswell as enjoyments, that is, human reality, transcendental sub-jectivity, becomes involved in a bewildering sort of question-ing and appears to be predetermined by supraindividual andtranssubjective constellations of power. These predetermina-tions devaluate the seemingly primary principle of subjectiv-ity to a completely secondary entity, an incidental effect in thediscursive formation of epochs, a predetermined glance at theworld which is codified by preestablished sequences in themobile system of signs, discourses. institutions, and canons.The critical doubt that the human level might not be theultimate reality for evaluations of a broader scope goes handin hand with the Nietzschean impulse to leave behind the"anthropomorphic" point of view and to transcend merelyhumanistically based value judgments in the style of the "hu-

2 I. Jacques Derrida, D'un: ton aPQcalyplique adopee naguere en philosophie(Paris: Editions Galilee, 1983). Translations are my own. References to thistext are designated TA.22. Les [ins de l'homme a -partir du travail de Jacques Derrida: Colloque de Cbisy,

23 j1J,illet~2aoiu 1g80 (Paris: Editions Galilee, 1981).

32 Modernism and Pastmodernism in Contemporary Thought

man, all too human," It is from such considerations thatFoucault formulated at the end of The Order of Things hisfamous phrase about the erasing of man who disappears "likea face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea.t'-s No othertopic of postmodern thought has aroused more indignationthan this proclamation of the end of man.In a subtle configuration of the two meanings of the word

end, goal and death, Derrida suggests through his title "TheEnds of Man" that it might very well be the end (goal, desti-nation, aim, term) of man to reach his end, and this again ina multiplicity of senses: his completion, his telos, his self-over-coming, his abolition, extinction, and death.v Who coulddeny this ultimate task? Some of the greatest philosophers ofthe modern age, Hegel, Husser!, Heidegger, not to mentionNietzsche, were deeply immersed in this thought but alsodemonstrated the inachievability of such an enterprise. thenecessity and impossibility of thinking and experiencing the"end" of man. The thinking of limit and the thinking of goalalways get in each other's way in such fundamental thoughtand reveal the more basic fact that the "name of man hasalways been inscribed in metaphysics between these two ends"(EM, 123). Indeed, Derrida continues, the end of man in thisdouble-edged sense, has "since always" been prescribed "inthe thinking and the language of Being" in the West, and "thisprescription has never done anything but modulate the equiv-ocality of the end, in the play of telos and death" (EM, 134). Tobring this interplay to its full fruition, Derrida suggests read-ing the sequence in the following way by taking all words in all

23· Michel Foucault, TheOrderof Things: An Archaeologyof the Human Sci-ences (New York: Random House, 1973), 387.

24· Jacques. Derrida, "The Ends of Man," in Margins of Philosophy, trans.Alan Bass (.Chlcago: The University of Chicago Press, '982), 1Og----36. Refer-ences to this text are designated EM.


their senses: "the end of man is the thinking of Being, man isthe end of the thinking of Being, the end of man is the end ofthe thinking of Being." As an afterthought he adds: "Man,since always, is his proper end, that is, the end of his proper.Being, since always, is its proper end, that is, the end of itsproper" (EM, 134)·This double-edged position concerning the ends of man

motivated the conference on the same theme, and when Derr-ida gavea speech entitled Of a Recently Adopted Apocalyptic Tonein Philosophy, he had to raise his irony of telos and tlumaios toeven higher powers, now including his own apocalyptic-eschatological tone of philosophy.se In its title the text is aparody of Kant's essay of 1796,"Of a Recently Adopted Su-perior Tone in Philosophy," where Kant protests against writ-ers in philosophy who departed from the logical and demon-strative type of reasoning and claimed to have access to t.ruththrough a supernatural kind of revelation, through an "es-chatologicalmystagogy." Authors whom Kant had particularlyin mind were Schlosser and Jacobi. Schlosser, known for hismysticism and visionary enthusiasm, had received the name of"the new German Orpheus" from his contemporaries, and wasreferred to as "the ominous voiceof the orphic sage."'· Jacobiwas notorious for his opposition to the speculative manner ofreasoning in the style of transcendental idealism. Since heattempted to supplement philosophical speculation with animmediate revelation within the inner self. a direct and un-mediated access to truth through personal intimation, his phi-losophy, in an an tici pation of Kierkegaard, became known as

25. See Derrida, D'un Lon apocal:yptiqu~, and The Ends of Man.26. Friedrich Schlegel in his reviews of Schlosser, StJUlien ZUI" Philosophie

und Theologie, in Kritisctie Friedrich Schlegel Ausgabe, ed. Ernst Behler (Pader-born-Munchen: Schoningh, 1975), vol. 8, 3, 33·


the "philosophy of the leap," the philosophy of the salta,which for some, of course, was a salto mortale into the abyss ofdivinity."?

It was against these authors and also against anyone else inhis time who embroidered philosophy with poetry and non-rational argumentations that Kant assumed the attitude ofrational enlightenment, of the "police in the realm of thesciences" (TA, 31),and warned against the castration, the an-nihilation, and the death of all true philosophy through suchtransgressions (TA, 21).Writers such as Schlosser and Jacobiput themselves outsideof the community of human beings byconsidering themselves as privileged, as an elite, and in pos-session of some mysterious secret which they alone are able toreveal (TA, 28-2g). These authors confront the "voice of rea-son" with the "voiceof an oracle" (TA, 30). They believe thatwork is useless in philosophyand that it wouldsuffice to lendan ear to an oracle inside oneself (TA, 32). Borrowing therevelatory vocabulary used by his adversaries, Kant charac-terizes them as "approaching the goddess of wisdom so closelythat they perceive the rustling of her robe," or as "making theveil of Isis so thin that one can surmise under it the goddess"(TA,44)·Without pointing itout continuously, Derrida indicates suf-

ficiently that what Kant has to say about the "mystagogues"and the death of philosophy in-his time can easily be appliedto Our contemporary writers on postmodernity. In a certainway, Den-ida mimes Kant's text, but he also parodies it andthereby transforms, deforms it (TA, 17).On the one hand, he

~7· Friedrich HeinrichJacobi, "Open Letter to Fichte, 1799," and "OnFaith an~ Kn?wledge in Response lO Schelling and Hegel," trans. Diana I.Behler, In Pht{Qsophy of German Idealism, ed. Ernst Behler (New York: Con-unuum, 1982), 119-57.

Modernism and Postmodernism in Contempomry Thought 35

seems to assume the attitude Drone who warns us in the nameof rational enlightenment against the death of all true philos-ophy, but on the other, he castsgrave doubts on the credibil-ity of such an endeavor. These doubts arise even from thegeneral framework in which this story is presented, the En-lightenment. We are immediately reminded that the entirestructure of the Enlightenment, of the siecle des lumieres, restson attempts to reveal or uncover, and that the great monu-ment of the Enlightenment, the Encycloplidie, has as its fron-tispiece an engraving depicting the unveiling of truth. Wemight even think that a project as serious as that of the self-assurance of modernity might result from a desire as frivo-lous as the lifting of the veilof Iris. Derrida does not go intothese broader aspects but stayswith Kant and points out thatthe voice of trembling astonishment, otherwise criticized asthe secret of mystagogues, also animates Kant's moral law(TA, 36), that his entire discourse, perhaps every discourse, islocated on either side, that of the Enlightenment and that ofmystagogy, and that this also applies to our own modernity(TA, 53).Like Kant, Derrida seems to assume the task of demystify-

ing the grandseigneurial tone of an approaching end and tomaintain the vigilant attitude of rational enlightenment. Heseems to be inspired by a "desire of clarity and revelation todemystify or, if you prefer, to deconstruct the apocalypticdiscourse itself, and together with it, everything that specu-lates about vision, imminence of the end, theophany, parou-sia, and finaljudgment" (TA, 64--U5).Yet such deconstructionhas to mobilize a great number and variety of interpretativedevices and never functions without a second step, which inthis case,gets involved in the finest particularities of the apoc-alyptic tone itself (TA, 66). Concentrating on St. John'S Apoc-alypse, the prototype of any apocalyptical discourse, Derrida

I!

36 Modernism and Postmodemism in Contemporary Thought

discovers one essential feature of such texts: "One no longerknowsvery wellwhoin the Apocalypse lends hisvoice and toneto someone else, one no longer knows very well who addresseswhat to whom" (TA, 77). It is by no means certain that thehuman being is the "terminal of this endless computer." How-ever, the question arises whether this "angelic structure," thisreference to other references without decidable origin anddestination, is not the scene .of writing in general. Derridaasks, "Is the apocalypticnot a transcendental condition ofevery discourse, even of every experience, of every mark or ofevery trace?" (TA, 77-78). The task of demystifying therebyreveals itself as twofold.On the one hand, it is a task in thestyleof the Enlightenment and as such without limits (TA, 81).On the other, demystification in the style of deconstructionremains open to features in the apocalyptic discourse thattranscend the realm of ontological, grammatical, linguistic, orsemantic knowledge (TA, 93).This realm opens up, for instance, in the apocalyptic

"Come" (erkhou, veni) which neither comes from nor ad-dresses itself to an identifiable, verifiable, decidable, or deriv-able determination. And it is here that we gather the "truth"about the apocalypse:"an apocalypse without apocalypse; anapocalypse without vision, without truth, without revelation,dispatches (because the 'Come' is plural in itself), addresseswithout message and destination, without decidable sender orreceiver ... " (TA, 95).To put it more pointedly, there is nochance for a type of thinking that wants to reveal a final truthin a final discourse.of revelation. But what about the "truth"of this truth, the "truth" about the apocalypse?It is preciselyhere, at the breaching of the limits of communication, thatpostmodern thinking and writing begin to operate throughcircumlocution, indirectness, configuration, and ironic com-munication.

2

The Rise of Literary Modernismin the Romantic Age

The spirit of modernity appears to be inseparable from theidea of scientific progress forcefully instituted in the seven-teenth century by Bacon, Descartes, and Pascal. For Bacon,such inventions and discoveries in the realm of the mechan-ical arts as gunpowder, the compass, and the art of printinghad brought about so many changes in the horizon of theearth that the present had advanced to a position which incomparison to the ancients was new. Since the present couldnot legitimately be derived from the tradition, the authorityof the tradition was suspended, making truth a daughter oftime and not of authority.' As can be noticed, the spirit ofmodernity originally implied a strong expression of self-manifestation against the overwhelming and preponderantauthority of the ancients. This self-assurance, however, suc-ceeded first and most easily in the sciences.When Pascal wrote the Preface to his treatise on empty

space in 1647, he had already left behind his early venerationof the ancients and readily abandoned such scientific princi-ples as the horror vacui, the fear of emptiness, when evidenceand experiment convinced him.s He no longer considered theresults of the ancients as goals of his study but as means 10overcome the past, and he believed that scientific knowledge

L Francis Bacon, Novum Organon, ed. Thomas Fowler (Oxford: Claren-don Press, 1899).

2. Blaise Pascal, Oeuvres completes (Paris: Gallimard, 1956). References tothis text are designated BP.

37

38 The Rise of Literary Modernism in the Romantic Age

was susceptible to constant growth and infinite perfection(BP, 532-34). Yet the idea of progress and perfectibility ar-ticulated in this treatise only relates to the sciences in the strictsense of the term as they are based on reason and experiment(geometry, arithmetic,music, physics, and medicine), and notto those investigations that have recourse to memory and au-thority (history, geography, jurisprudence, linguistics, andtheology). Whereas knowledge of this latter type of investiga-tion is limited and can be perfected. the sciences can contin-uously be augmented and are perfectible without limit (BP,529-31). It was onlywith regard to the sciences that Pascalenjoyed an ascendancy over the ancients and assured his con-temporaries: "OUf view is more extended ... we see morethan they" (BP, 532).The restriction of progress and modernity was even more

pronounced with regard to the arts, to literature and poetry,to the products of the imagination and subjectsof taste. Pro-gression and perfectibilityremained the privilege of philoso-phy, the sciences, and technology and were excluded fromthe realm of the arts. Not until late in the eighteenth centurydid the ideas of progression and perfectibility enter the aes-thetic domain. With regard to the historical status of the sci-ences and the arts, the realms of reason and imagination,European classicism and the Enlightenment show a charac-teristic antagonism. The sciences appeared to be involved inan interminable progression, whereas the arts were thoughtof as always returning in cyclical motion to that position ofcorrect standards and appropriate norms from which theyhad departed in periods of decay and barbarism.The obvious philosophical principle for this assumption

was the belief that philosophy and the sciencesare as infiniteas truth and nature, whereas poetry and the arts have a cer-tain point of perfection, determined by man's invariable na-

The Rise of Literary Modernism in the Romantic Age 39

ture, beyond which they cannot go. In this sense, we read inthe Encycloped-ie,"The fundamental rules of taste are the samein all ages because they derive from invariable attributes ofthe human mind.t'a Not until this principle was abandonedand the arts, like the sciences, were included in a process ofinfinite progression, can we speak of modernity in the fullsense of the term and realize all the consequences and prob-lems which this new situation involved.

It therefore appears plausible to draw the historical demar-cation line for a fully developed sense of modernism at thatperiod in Western history when, at the beginning of the ro-mantic age and toward the end of the eighteenth century,poetry, literature, and the arts were for the first time in hu-man history seen in a process of constant progression. Thisappears to be the most decisive suspension of the classicaldoctrine and the most impressive manifestation of the mod-ern consciousness. Whereas the classical concept of a cyclicalmovement in literary history and in art history limited theproduction of poetry to an unsurpassable point of perfection,the notion of perfectibility set the course of poetry free forever new creations. As one can easily realize, all decisive fea-tures of the new concept of poetry are intimately related tothe notion of infinite perfectibility: the view of poetry as acreative instead of an imitative expression, the poet's geniusand imagination, and the suspension of a hierarchical systemof genres for the sake of a historically changing and develop-ing one. Even the reader's act of understanding literature

3- EncyclopM,ie ou dictumnaire raisonne des Sciences, des Arts es des Mel'iers, parune Societe de Gens de Leures (Geneva: Pellet, 1777), voL 2, 608-11.

40 The Rise oj Litemry Modernism in tlie Romantic Age

became involved in the process of infinite perfectibility. Thisdecisive step took place in various European nations at aboutthe same time. Now the struggle between the ancients and themoderns appeared to havebeen won in poetry also in favor ofthe moderns, and the age of modernity seemed to have trulybegun.Many events in other realms of human history seem to

corroborate this caesura. The most obvious is the French Rev-olution of 1789, which constitutes a crucial turning point inEurope's social and politicallife and is intimately linked withthe inception of romanticism, a movement of fundamentalchange in literature and a radical break with the classicisttradition. For many critics, romanticism is only another ex-pression of that radicalupheaval occurring toward the end ofthe eighteenth centuryof which the French Revolution is themost conspicuous manifestation in the realm of politics andsociety. Philosophy could be added as further evidence for anentirely new orientation at this time. Kant, in the Preface tothe second edition of hisCritique oj Pure Reason of 1787, char-acterized the new manner of philosophical speculation intro-duced by him as a Copernican turn in philosophy, namely, asa switch of perspective from the objects of perception to theperceiving subject» Students of his doctrine soon declaredKant's innovation a revolution in philosophy and saw in histhought a correspondence to the French Revolution, a differ-ent expression of the general upheaval characterizing theirtime. The late eighteenth century thus appears to be markedby at least three revolutions. that is, in politics, in literature,and in philosophy, whichin each case overcamean old order,an ancient regime, for a modern state of affairs.I

I

I

4· Immanuel Kant, Philosophical Writings, ed. Ernst Behler, foreword byRene Wellek (New York:Continuum, 1986),6-7.


Yet there is a fundamental resistance on the part of therepresentatives of the arts and of poetry to take their posi-tions unreservedly on the side of modernity. We notice a sim-ilar reluctance on the part of the historian to come to a clear-cut period designation of modernism. Even with so manyindications and contemporary testimonies for an epochalbreak, weencounter a basic hesitancy to give the beginning ofmodernism a precise date. On the one hand, we feel inclinedto postpone the true appearance of modernism until a time ofan even fuller expression of its nature. Following this incli-nation, we move up the date of a beginning of modernismfrom the seventeenth century, its scientific manifestation, tothe end of the eighteenth, to modern revolutions in differentspheres of life; from there to the end of the nineteenth cen-tury, to the awakening of an increased critique and self-crit-icism of the modern mind; and then perhaps to OUf ownposition toward the end of the twentieth century when therise of a "postrnodern" attitude can very well be interpreted asthe culmination of the modern spirit. In an opposite ten-dency, however, we are disposed to advance the beginning ofmodernism to ever earlier periods. If we recognize the ap-pearance of a modern attitude in the new scientific self-con-sciousness of European rationalism, we could cite with equalreason the Reformation for such a new beginning, or theinnovation brought about by the Renaissance, even the escha-tologicalexpectations connected with the year 1200, or maybethe departure from the ancient world through the rise ofChristianity.Skepticism toward neat datings of epochal breaks is also

nourished by the experience of a lack of correspondenceamong all the cultural spheres in such events. What we en-counter in history is rather adiscontinuity and plurality amongdevelopments in different realms of life such as science,reli-


gion, philosophy, politics, literature, and the arts. It is with allthese sceptical reservations that the attempt will be made to

look at one particular phase and one particular sphere in thedevelopment of the modern mentality more closely: roman-ticism, more specifically. in the sphere of literature and criticaltheory. The ambivalent attitude toward modernism and mo-dernity seems to appear in literature and critical thought moreacutely than in any other of the cultural branches.

2

The first signs of a reversal in the enormous preponderanceof the classical Greeks and Romans over the modern Euro-peans in the realms of literature, poetry, and artistic creationcan be noticed in the so-called querelle des ancienset des modemes,the famous quarrel between the ancients and the moderns,between the proponents of classical art and the advocates of amodern style. This was a prominent critical debate in seven-teenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, conducted mostly inFrance and England, later also in Germany, and truly funda-mental for the formation of a modern consciousness and apronounced sense ofliterary modernity. Inspired by the great-ness of the Age of Louis XIV and the excellence of its poetsRacine and Corneille, or convinced of the unique dramatictalent of Shakespeare, critics such as Saint-Evremond andPerrault, or Dryden, Pope, and Johnson, attempted to shakeoff the overwhelming weight of the classical Greek and Romanmodels and give the modern age ;elf-confidence and the rightto have its Own style. Now people attempted to demonstratethat the modern age had not only grown beyond Aristotle'sPhysics but had also created artistic beauties unknown to thephilosopher's Poetics.Now the ideas of progression and per-fectibility, utilized so far mainly in philosophy and the sciences,


were also considered for poetry and the arts. However, incontrast to the sciences, for which the idea of progress was awell-established category at that time, the realm of literatureand the arts or that of imagination and taste remained deter-mined by the notion of an unchangeable human nature untilfar into the eighteenth century.This ambiguous feeling is obvious even among the propo-

nents of the moderns in this quarrel and seems to express abasic resistance among literary authors and literary critics tobeing outspokenly and deliberately promodern. A promodernattitude appeared to imply an anti-ancient or anticlassicalstance, and spokesmen for the modern attitude attempted tocircumvent this impression by giving their argument a con-figurative structure. a double meaning, and an ambiguousexpression. Fontenelle is a case in point for this double-edgedmodernity. In A Digression on the Ancients and the Moderns of1688, he claims that the whole question of the preeminence ofthe ancients and moderns boilsdown "to knowing whether thetrees whichused to be seen in the countryside were taller thanthose of today" and thinks that "if our trees are as tall as thoseof former times, then we can equal Homer, Plato, and Demos-thenes" (DAM, 358).5 For if the ancients were in a more ad-vantageous position than we, he argues, then "brains in thosedays werebetter arranged,"just as trees would have been tallerand more beautiful. In reality, however, "nature has at handa certain claywhich is always the same." Yet while centuries donot put "any natural differences among men," different cli-mates do, as well as other exterior circu mstances, and this isobvious in the different characters of nations (DAM, 360).

5· Bernard Le Bouvier de Foruenelle, A Dig-tess-ion on the Ancients and theModerns, in The ContinenlalModel, ed. Scott Elledge and Donald Schier{lthaca:Cornell University Press, 1970). References to this text are designated DAM.

44 The Rise of LiteraryModernism in the Romantic Age

In contrast to the sciences and philosophy, eloquence andpoetry require only a limited number of ideas for Fontenelleand depend primarilyon the imagination. Perfection in thesearts can therefore beachieved "in a few centuries" (DAM, 363).Once we have decided that the ancients havereached the pointof perfection and cannot be surpassed, however, we should notconclude from there that "they cannot be equaled" (DAM,365). Such equality, however, is not easy to measure. TheGreeks when compared to the Romans seem inferior, just asthe Romans are more modern compared to the Greeks (DAM,364). Humanity appears as a living being that will never age(DAM, 366-67). Oneday, Fontenelle argues, his own time, theAge of Louis XIV,willbecome contemporary with the Greeksand the Romans, that is, ancient (DAM, 368).If the great menof this century had charitable feelings toward posterity, herecommends, "they would warn later ages not to admire themtoo much" (DAM, 369). Fontenelle, in other words, althougha modern, is convinced of a basic equality existing between theancients and the moderns (DAM, 360) and says:"I should like[0 paint Nature with scales in her hand, like Justice, to indicatehow she weighs and measures out almost equallywhatever shedistributes among men, happiness, talent, the advantages anddisadvantages of different social stations, the facilities anddifficulties associatedwith the things ofthe mind" (DAM, 368).

The best example of such refined and complex modernismin the English versionof the quarrel between the ancients andthe moderns is perhaps Dryden'S Essay oj Dramatic Poesy (1668,revised in 1684).6 Four witty and civilized interlocutors, whiledrifting down the river Thames in a barge, engage in a criticaldiscussion which soon focuses on the difference between the

6. Essays of John Dryden, ed. W. P. Ker (New York: Russell and Russell,1961). References to this text are designated DP.

c


ancients and the moderns in the field of drama and includesnot only the French theater but also the development of Eng-lish drama from Beaumont, Fletcher, and Jonson toShakespeare. Among the discussion partners we soon discoverthe voiceof Dryden (Neander). He sees in Shakespeare's dra-mas a new spirit of literature no longer based on rules anddecorum but on fullness oflife, humor, passion, and "wit,"andpraises Shakespeare as "the Homer, or father of our dramaticpoets." Vet when they land at Somerset Stairs and the fourfriends come to shore, they have not agreed on anything, buteverybody has had his say and reply and shown his opennessto opposite arguments. Dryden later emphasized the sceptical,ironic mood animating this conversation by referring to themanner of argumentation in Plato's dialogues. He said, "Mywhole discourse was sceptical, according to that way of rea-soning which was used by Socrates, Plato, and all the Aca-demics of old," and he added, "You see it is a dialogue sus-tained bypersons of several opinions, all of them left doubtful,to be determined by the readers in general" (DP, 124).The feeling of superiority over the ancients can more easily

be discovered among critics in the field of tragedy. Perrault,for instance, gave unreserved preference to the tragedies ofCorneille and Racine over those of the Greeks. The ancients,he argued, knew the seven planets and the great number ofthe fixed stars, as his own timedid, but not the satellitesof theplanets or the great number of the small stars discoveredsince (PAM 2:29-30).7 Similarly, they knew "the passions ofthe soul, but not the affinity of small affections and smallcircumstances which accompany them." As anatomy had dis-

7· Charles Perrault. Parallele de,' Anciens et des Modernes en cc qui regarde lesarts and les sciences, ed. Hans Robert Jau~ (Munich: Kindler, 1964).Refer-ences to this text are designated PAM.

II


covered new facts about the human heart that had escapedthe knowledge of the ancients, so moral knowledgehad cometo include inclinations, aversions, desires, and disgusts ofwhich the ancients had no idea. Perrault believed it was pos-sible to point out in the works of the authors of his time-intheir moral treatises, their tragedies, their novels, and theirrhetorical-writings-thousands of delicate sentiments entirelyabsent in the ancients(PAM, 2:30-3')'

This is a basic line of argumentation in seventeenth-centurycriticism intimately related to the literary discourse of moder-nity. Saint-Evremond, perhaps the most outspoken partisanof the moderns in this debate about tragedy, declared in hisOf Ancient and Modern Tragedy (1672) that Aristotle's Poeticswasas outdated ashisPhysics. Just as Descartesand Gassendihad discovered truths that were unknown toAristotle, so Cor-neille had created "beauties for the stage of which Aristotlewasignorant" (AMT, 17' ).8 He believed that if the best worksof antiquity in this genre-Oedipus Rex, for example-weretranslated into Frenchwith the same force as the original, wewould realize "that nothing in the world wouldappear to usmore cruel, more opposed to the true sentiments mankindought to have" (AMT, 182). Fontenelle maintained in his Di-gression on the Ancients and the Moderns of 1688 that the bestworks of Sophocles,Euripides, or Aristophanes would notstand up to the tragediesand comedies of the Age of LouisXI~ and that "nothing so limits progress, nothing narrowsthe mind so much as excessive admiration of the ancients"(DAM, 368--69). Even Boileau, the leading partisan of the

I

8. Charles de Saim-Evremond. Oeuvres en prose, ed. Rene Ternois (Paris:Didier, 1969), vol. 4, 170-84. The translation is taken from Pierre Des-maizeauz, The Works of M. de Saint-Evremond (London, 1928), available inScott Elledge and DonaldSchier, eds., The Continental Model (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1970), 123-30. References to this text are designated AMT.


ancients, admitted that the Age of Louis XIV had seen inno-vations in dramatic art unknown to Aristotle, but he askedPerrault, his main adversary in this dispute, rhetorically,whether he could deny "that it is from Livy, from Dio Cassius,from Plutarch, from Lucan, and Seneca that M. de Corneilletook his finest touches," or "that it is Sophocles and Euripideswho made M. de Racine," or "that it is in Plautus and Terencethat Moliere learned the greatest niceties of his art."9The belief in a distinct superiority of French classical trag-

edy increased considerably during the eighteenth century. Inhis Dissertation on Ancient and Modern Tragedy of 1748, Voltairedeclared that it would reveal a great lack of judgment if onedid not realize "how much the French stage surpasses theGreek by virtue of the art of performance, by invention, andby countless particular beauties." By substituting history forGreek mythology and by introducing politics, ambition, jeal-ousy, and the passions of love as dominant elements in thetheater, French tragedy achieved a much more truthful imi-tation of nature for Voltaire. III Another important distinctionbetween ancient and modern tragedy can be found in Di-derot's Encyclopedia of 1751-72. Taking up an idea alreadydeveloped in Fontenelle's Reilexions on Poetics (1742), the au-thor of the article on tragedy classifies the genre according totwo different sources of misfortune, one outside of ourselvesand the other internal (E, 33:840)." Ancient tragedy is de-scribed as based exclusively on extraneous causes: "destiny,

g. Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux, Oeuvres completes (Paris: Gallimard, 1966).The translations are taken from Boileau, Selected Criticism, trans. Ernest Dil-worth (Indianapolis: The Library of Liberal ArLS, 1965), 55-

10. Published as preface to his tragedy Semiramis (1748). Quoted fromOeuvres completes de Voltaire (Kehl: De l'Imprimerie de la Societe LiueraireTypographique, 1785), vol. 3, 357-g1.

II. ElIcycloptdie (Geneva: Pellet, 1772), vol. 33, where the article is aurib-uted to jean-Francois Marmontel. References to this text ar~ designated E.

48 The Rise of LiteraryModernism in theRomantic Age

the anger of the gods or their will without any motivation-ina word, fate" (E, 33:841). In the modern system, tragedy is nolonger a picture of the calamities of the human being as aslave of fate, but of his own passions. The nucleus of tragicaction has been placed in the human heart. This at least is thecase of the modern tragedy created by Corneille. After therenaissance of letters, it was he who discovered a new sourceof tragic events sharply different from the fabulous history towhich Greek tragedy was bound. And with this discovery,"modern Europe recognized the type of tragedy that was itsown" (E, 33:845).

Yet even those who clearly assumed the superiority of themoderns over the ancients in literature and poetry refused toapply the ideas of progress and perfectibility to this realm.The reason for their reluctance was simply that they nolonger saw themselves as part of the great flowering of liter-ature and the arts which had marked the Age of Louis XIV,but already on the side of a descent from this point of per-fection. The cause for this decline, however, was attributed to"the growth of reason at the expense of imagination.t' o Per-rault realized this development with the thought, pleasant tohim, "that there are not likely many things to be envied fromthose who will come after us" (PAM, 1:99). Voltaire called theAge?f LouisXIV the "age of genius," in comparison to which"the present century merely reasons about genius.vs Diderotsaw himself as a poet for whom philosophy had cut the stringsof his lyre. '4 In the Salon of '767, he wrote: "The old roads

12. See on this Rene Wellek,"The Price of Progress in Eighteenth-Cen-tury Reflections on Literature," Studies on Volta,ire and the Eighteenth Century151-55 (1976), 2265-84_

13· Voltaire, "Defensedu siecle de Louis XIV," Oeuvw completes, ed. LouisMoland, 52 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1877-85), vol. 28, 338.

14· Frans Hemsterhuis, Leure sur l'homme et ses rap-ports: Avec le commentaire


are occupied by sublime models which one despairs of equal-ling. One writes poetics; one invents new genres; one becomessingular, bizarre, rnannered.r'-e Such considerations were ac-companied by speculations about the origin of language ac-cording to which the first stages in an imagined genesis oflanguage were concrete, metaphorical, and poetic, but thefollowingones coloriess, artificial, abstract, and philosophical.The wittiest and most playful treatment of the subject is

perhaps David Hume's essay of 1755, Of the Rise and theProgress of the Arts and the Sciences.,6 In this discussion ofprogress, Hume links the arts with the sciences and ironicallyintends to raise their communal status from a merely naturaland cyclicaldevelopment to one of reason and progression.He couches this intention in the question of whether it is from"chance" or from "causes" that the rise and the progress ofthe arts and the sciences can be derived, implying of coursethat "what is owing to chance" is incomprehensible and nat-ural, whereas "what proceeds from causes" is reasonable andintelligible. The seemingly firm basis for the progress andperfectibility of the arts and the sciences established by Humeevaporates, however, as soon as such progress is inspectedmore closely.This becomes apparent in the four principles ofhis essay formulated as "observations." His first observation is"That it isimpossible for the arts and sciences to arise, at first,among any people, unless that people enjoy the blessing of afree government" (R, 66). The next observation strengthensthis point and states "That nothing is more favourable to the

inedit de Diderot, ed. Georges May (New Haven: Yale University Press,'964),8S'

15· Denis Diderot, Salon (1767), ed. Jean Sznec and Jean Adhernar, 3(1767) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), vol. 3. 336.

16. David Hume, Essays, LiteTa1Y,Moral and Political (London: Ward, Lock,and Co., n.d.}, 63-79. References to this text are designated R.

,


rise of politeness and learning, than a number of neighbour-ing and independent states, connected together by commerceand policy" (R, 68). The third, however, encounters somedifficulty in the uniformity of progress, in that "a republic ismost favourable to the growth of the sciences,and a civilizedmonarchy to that of the polite arts" (R, 71). The fourth, fi-nally, formulates the impasse progress and progressivity runinto and announces "That when the arts and sciences came toperfection in any state, from that moment they naturally orrather necessarily decline, and seldom or never revive in thatnation, where they formerly flourished" (R, 78).

3It therefore appears to be obvious that an entirely new

concept of poetry and a fundamentally new sense of moder-nity had to emerge when the classical model of literary cre-ation was overcome and replaced by a notion of poetry in-volved in a process of infinite progression. This decisive steptook pLace in various European nations at about the same timeand marks the beginning of romanticism. Applying infiniteperfectibility to the arts, these writers created an entirely newqoncept of the literary text participating in the progress ofideas and standing in the liveliest exchange with social life inwhich literature participates. Indeed, if we were to describethe specific character of that literary modernity which mani-fested itself toward the end of the eighteenth century in Eu-ropean romanticism, we would presumably come to the con-clusion that it was the readiness to assume for art, particularlyfor poetry, an unlimited changeability and mutability.

Infinite perfectibility is also an expression of the reaction to

the French Revolutionof these early romantics. In this sensethe idea of an infinite perfectibility appears in their writings

TheRise of Literary Modernismin the Romantic Age 5'

as a somewhat confused explanation, a bewildered exclama-tion, or an apologetic response uttered by those who hadinvested all their expectations in the Revolution, were startledby its unforeseen course, and nowattempted to make senseofa sequence of events that seemed to contradict perfectibility.In a curious twist, the idea that had been a motivating forcefor the revolutionary consciousness was put at the end, post-poned as the last consolation or justification, since the Revo-lution failed or appeared to have failed. This attitude isclosely connected with the attempt to consider the FrenchRevolution a lost cause but to rescue its treasure, the libera-tion of humanity, through means other than political ones,and perhaps also more efficient and lasting than politicalones. This transformation of the Revolution into a universaland philosophical emancipation of humanity is a dominantattempt by the romantics in all European countries of thattime and explains basic features of the literary modernitymanifesting itself in the romantic age. Here we are at thebeginning of critical reflections about the French Revolutionwhich constitute perhaps the most important response to thisevent. These reflections are inseparable from the spirit ofmodernity as it arose during the romantic age and from thenotion of an infinite perfectibility of the human race. Yetthisnotion is quite distinct from its particular expression duringthe eighteenth century. Infinite perfectibility and the experi-ence of modernism were at that time combined with a feelingof loss,with melancholy, irony, and regret, with an attitude of"in spite of," that is, with sentiments contradicting the confi-dent expectations of the Enlightenment but forming an inte-gral part of the romantic mentality.

As far as the outbreak of the Revolution is concerned, Ma-dame de Stael, although still very young at that time, wasperhaps better positioned than anybody else for disentan-


gling the various causesof this event, Her mostdirect accountof it certainly is her Considerations of the French Revolution, '7 butin a broader sense her entire oeuvre can be regarded as aresponse -to the Revolution. The text, however, that in themost immediate senseattempts to provide a perspective for acomprehension of the Revolution is her On Literature of 1800,which indeed has as its central theme the perfectibility of thehuman mind. IS In spite of all its obvious shortcomings inhistorical scholarship, the book is quite revolutionary in itsprogram and in this regard corresponds to the event forwhich it formulates an answer. To view literature from theperspective of perfectibilitywas without any doubt a decisivesuspension of the classical doctrine and an impressive mani-festation of the forthcoming romantic revolution. With thistheory. Madame de Stael had not only declared herself apartisan of the moderns in the quarrel between the ancientsand the moderns, but also revealed essential new features inthe appreciation of modern literature. These consisted in acultivation of the gentler passions of the soul, a more subtleknowledge of the intricaciesof the human heart, the esteemof women in human relationships, and a profound interac-tion of literature withthe philosophy and socialinstitutions ofits time. If one compared the authors of the seventeenth cen-tury, mostly occupiedwith "les plaisirs de l'esprit" (OL, 271),

to those of the eighteenth, Madame de Stael thought, onecould see an anticipation of the great change which politicalfreedom could produce in literature, and the question would

17- Madame de Stael,Considerations sur In Revolutionfra1U;aise, ed. JacquesOodechot (Paris: Tallandier, 1983). References to this text are designatedCRF.18. Madame de Steel, De la litterature consulirie dans ses rapports avec les

institutions sociales. ed.,Paul van Tieghem (Geneva and Paris: Droz, 1959).References to this text are designated OL.

d


come to mind: "But what power could talent acquire within agovernment where the mind is a real force?" (OL, 288).It is precisely on this question that the second part of On

Literature concentrates. After having introduced the FrenchRevolution "as a new era in the intellectual world," Madamede Stael pursues the problem of what "the character of theliterature of a great nation, an enlightened nation, whereliberty and political equality are established and morals are inaccordance with its institutions" would be (OL, 291). To bemore precise, Madame de Stael fully realized that as "thevulgarity of language, of manners, of opinions" testify, theRevolution had in many regards brought about a retrograda-tion of taste and reason (OL, 293). As far as the terror isconcerned, she suggests considering this horrible time "ascompletely outside of the circle which the events of life cir-cumscribe, as a monstrous phenomenon which nothing reg-ular either explains or produces" (OL, 293). Her Considerationsof the French Revolution depicts the crimes of that time in imageswhich have become famous. Concerning the period followingthe proscription of the Cironde, 3' May '793, she writes, "Itseems as if one descends like Dante from circle to circle evermore deeply into hell," and says about the reign of terror ingeneral, "The facts become confused in this epoch, and onefears not being able to enter such a history without having theimagination preserve ineffaceable traces of blood" (CRF, 303).What frightened her most in remembering these events wasperhaps not so much that eighty people were executed dailyfor a period of about twenty months, but that all the while, theinhahitants of Paris pursued their daily routines as if nothingwere happening, so that "all the insipid ness and all the frivolityof life continued alongside the most somber furies" (CRF,306-7). Yet, perfectibility in literature and philosophy cannotin the long run be impeded by these events. Madame de Stael

54 The Rise of LiteraryModernism in theRomanticAge

says, "The new progresses in literature and philosophy whichI will indicate continue the system of perfectibility, the marchof which I have traced since the Greeks" (OL, 294).

Madame de Stael's On Literature seems to be the first delin-eation of perfectibility and modernity in the domain of litera-ture with all the consequences such a theory implies. Yet if weconcentrate on the accomplishments gained through literaryperfectibility and described by Madame de Stael as the acqui-sition of a new sensibility and a more thorough knowledge ofthe human heart, we realize a profoundly ambiguous appre-dation of that literary modernity which is now arising. Forthese accomplishments consist in features such as "the fear ofdeath, the yearning for life, the devotion without limit" (OL,150). Ancient poetry, to use the later distinctions betweenclassicism and romanticism, is that of a full identity with itself,or self-presence, perfect integrality, and a harmonious displayof poetic power and joy in life. Modern poetry is that oflonging, nonidentity, otherness, reflection, dissimulation, andmelancholy.:o With regard to a more recent period of litera-ture, French classicism, Madame de Stael admits that the Ageof Louis XIV was "the most remarkable of all in literature,"and the author who had reached the highest point of perfec-tion was undoubtedly Racine (OL, 224). Racine's and Fenelon'saesthetic qualities could not be surpassed. To be sure, Voltairecombined the grace of the previous century with the philos-ophy of his own and knew how "to embellish the charm of thespirit with all those truths from which one did not yet think anapplication possible" (OL, 281). This was by no means anunconditional praise of literary modernity, however, but

19· Madame de Stael,De l'Allemagne: Nouvelle edition par fa Conuesse Jean dePange avec te conCOUTS de Simone Balaye. 2 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1958-60), vol.2,211-15,

4


rather an admission that the time for the pure beauty ofclassicism was gone. When her adversaries reproached Ma-dame de Stael for having violated the principles of classicismby applying the notion of perfectibility to poetry, she repliedthat her subject had not been that which belongs purely to thearts of the imagination, but the art of literature includingreflection and philosophy, and that one could never deter-mine an end where thought would stop COL, 9-10).In a now famous study, Jean Starobinski saw one of the

secret bonds between Madame de Stael's life and her oeuvre,her own character and that of her heroines, in a profoundambiguity and double evaluation as far as their involvementin life was concerned. On the one hand, out of an innerrichness, there is the overflowing desire to dissipate and tocommunicate in an expansive, future-oriented movement,but on the other, there is the reciprocal "feeling of incom-pleteness" resulting in resignation and melancholy.w This isnot the occasion for following Starobinski into his subtle anal-yses of Madame de Stael's writings from the points of view of"suicide moral" and "rnorte-vivante," as enticing as this ap-proach might appear for an interpretation of her conceptionsof literary classicism and modernism. But one can sayan thisbasis that double reaction and double evaluation characterizenot only Madame de Stael's fictional writings, but also hertheory of writing as it is centered in her belief in perfectibilityand modernity in literature.

The early representatives of English romanncism, themembers of the Lake School, responded to the French Rev-

20. Jean Starobinski, "Suicide et melancclie chez Mme de Stael," in Ma-dame de Staifi ell'EuTOpe: Colloque de CIJppel(Paris: Klincksieck, 1970),242-52,

56 The Rise of LiteraryModermsm in the Romantic Age

olution with genuine enthusiasm. In the sixth book of ThePrelude, describing his first trip to France in the summer of1790 with his friend Robert Jones, Wordsworth rejoiced onthe first anniversary of the Revolution in the experience of atime "when joy of one isjoy of tens of millions"(6:346)." Heand his friend were drawn into the general emotion of fra-ternity because, as Wordsworth said, "We bore a name Hon-our'd in France, the name of Englishmen" (6:408). Many peo-ple felt that Francewascatching up with England's "gloriousrevolution" of 1688 and heading for a constitutional monar-chy. There are several books and articles of the time thatclaimed to grasp the "spirit of the age," allcoming to the sameconclusion, namely, that the literary innovations of that pe-riod received their main stimulus from the French Revolu-tion. This applies especiallyto the years prior to the turn fromthe eighteenth to the nineteenth century. According toWilliam Hazlitt, the entire Lake School of poetry "had itsorigin in the French Revolution, or rather in those sentimentsand opinions which produced the Revolution." He consid-ered Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads as mirroring "the revolu-tionary movement of our age" and said about its author, "thepolitical changes of the day were the model on which heformed and conducted his poetical experiments.t'-»This feeling wasoriginally kindled by the notion of infinite

perfectibility as promulgated in Godwin's Enquiry ConcerningPolitical Justice. Vetthe revolutionary spirit in English roman-ticism was strongly connected with a religious perspective.Some of the English romantics were Unitarians or Dissidents,

2 I. William Wordsworth, The Prelude, ed. Stephen Parrish (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1977). References to this poem are given directly in the text.

22. William Hazlitt, "The Spirit of the Age," in WilliamHazliU: The CollectedWorks, ed. A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover (London: Dent, 1902), vol. 4, 271.


and Wordsworth and Coleridge were preparing for the clergybefore the turn of the century. The renovation of the earthand the regeneration of the human race assumed Christian orbiblical dimensions and were often expressed in visionary,apocalyptic, or mythical images reminiscent of Blake's TheFrench Revolution of 1791 and Milton's prophetic attitudes.This is still obvious in Coleridge's visionary poem The Destinyof Nations (1796), depicting "The Progress of Liberty"through the "vision of the Maid of Orleans."> Wordsworthconcluded the Descriptive Sketches of 1793 with the prophecy ofa new earth emerging from apocalyptic fires and a return toa golden age." When, with the beginning of the Reign ofTerror, the public mood in England suddenly shifted, God-win, according to Hazlitt, "sunk below the horizon" and thereputation of his Enquiry along with him." Coleridge tried towater down his early revolutionary fervor and later com-pletely dissociated himself from this attitude. Wordsworthtried to justify the terror with world historical considerations,and in A Letter to the Bishop of Llandaff argued with revolution-ary logic against the bishop, Dr. Richard Watson, who hadsupported the Revolution in its early days but publicly re-canted after the execution of Louis XVI: "What! have you solittle knowledge of the nature of man as to be ignorant, thata time of revolution is not the season oftrue Liberty. Alas!theobstinacy and perversion of men is such that she is too oftenobliged to borrow the very arms of despotism to overthrowhim, and in order to reign in peace must establish herself in

23. The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. E. H. Cole-ridge (Oxford: Clarendon, 1912), vol. 1, 131-24. William Wordsworth, Poetical Works, ed. F. Selincourt and H. Darbishire,

5 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940-49), vol. 1,42-91-25. Hazlitt, The Collected WorJu, vol. 4, 201.


violence.t'v'' As he formulated it later in The Prelude, Words-worth did not lay the hlame for the Reign of Terror at thedoor of the Revolution itself but on

a reservoir of guiltAnd ignorance, fill'd up from age to age,That could no longer hold its loathsome charge,But burst and spread in deluge through the land.

(10:437-4°)

Yet Hazlitt's observation about the origin of early Englishromantic poetry in the sentiments and opinions produced bythe French Revolution holds true even for the period afterthis revolutionary fervor had disappeared and vanished un-der the impact of the Reign of Terror and the disappointingsubsequent course of the Revolution. As M. H. Abrams hasshown, the great romantic poems "were written not in themood of revolutionary exaltation but in the later mood ofrevolutionary tlisillusionment and despair.':» The revolution-ary theme in English romanticism thereby assumed a pro-foundly poetic nature, a genuinely lyrical expression. Afterthe apocalyptic expectations for a general renewal of man andnature had been shattered, the poetic mind attempted to pre-serve the lost treasure of the Revolution by shaping it as hopefor universal regeneration, or the poetic mind shifted froman abstract anticipation of apocalyptic change in the history ofmankind to the reality of hope for the everyday life of theindividual, as in Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads and other po-etry written after his estrangement from the French Revolu-

26. The Selected Prose and Poetry of Wrmlsworth, ed. Geoffrey H. Hartman(New York: Meridian, 1980),43-44.27· M. H. Abrams, "English Romanticism: The Spirit of the Age," in Ro-

manticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism, ed. Harold Bloom (New York:Norton, 1970), 91-119.

TheRise of Literary Modernismin the Romantic Age 59

tion, in 1794. This lyrical mood, in its withdrawal from acelebration of the French Revolution but maintenance ofhope for a general redemption of humanity, seems to corre-spond to the double-edged affirmation of perfectibility andliterary modernity in European romanticism in the sense ofboth scepticismtoward any achievable final goal and belief inthe pursuit of such a goal. Another way Wordsworth main-tained the theme of the French Revolution in spite of his laterscepticism toward it was to integrate this event, as well as hisearly participation in it, with his autobiography. Here again,a subtle double gesture is exercised with regard to a period oflife which has become problematical but still maintains itsexistence in the framework of autobiography. Although atthe time of the composition of The Prelude, consideration ofhis revolutionary phase was for Wordsworth, as he put it, alook on "painful things," he nevertheless considered this pe-riod important for himself and integrated it with the autobio-graphical structure of the "growth of a poet's mind," therebyaffirming it in the context of his life.

5If we wanted to determine the special style of the new po-

etic and critical discourse brought about by the early romanticauthors, we would have to abandon the dominance of onesingle principle (reason, creative imagination, structure, prog-ress, perfectibility, and so forth) and stress the counteractivemovement of several tendencies (affirmation and scepticism,enthusiasm and melancholy) as the characteristic mark oftheir discourse. With regard to the modernity of the romanticattitude, we would have to add that it implies a critique of anystraightforward type of modernism, of a modernism thatlacks self-critical assessment of its own position and an aware-ness of the deficiencies it implies.


I

Friedrich Schlegel is perhaps the best representative forsuch self-reflective modernism in German romanticism. In afragment written in 1798, hardly a page long, he character-ized his concept of modern or, as he preferred to say, roman-tic poetry and, like Madame de Stael, demanded that thispoetry be "in touch with philosophy and rhetoric" and inter-act with life making "poetry lively and sociable, and life andsociety poetical" (FS, 2:182-83; LF, 175).'8 The fusion ofpoetry and philosophy also has for Schlegel the meaning of a"poetic reflection," inseparable from the creative process, an-imating the entire poetic work, and blending the author'sartistic creation with his critical, theoretical discourse. Such areflection is of course infinite and can be exponentiated toever higher powers and multiplied as "in an endless series ofmirrors" (FS, 2: 182-83; LF, 175). Previous types of poetry are"finished and are now capable of being fully analyzed," Schle-gel maintained, obviously referring to the classical and clas-sicist kinds of poetry. Modern poetry, however, is in a per-man eo t state of becoming, and he adds that this "in fact, is itsreal essence: that it should forever be becoming and never beperfected." Modern or romantic poetry "can be exhausted byno theory and only a divinatory criticism would dare try tocharacterize its ideal" (FS, 2:182-83; LF, 175).This infinite becoming, irreducible to a knowable principle

with regard to beginning and end, seems to express Schlegel'snotion of history most concisely and also best represents thestate of an accomplished modernity, fully conscious of its sep-

28. Friedrich Schlegel, Kriusche Ausgabe senier Werke, ed. Ernst Behler withthe collaboration of Jean-JacquesAnstett, Hans Eichner, and other special-ists, 35 vols. (Paderb'orn-Miinchen:Schoningh, 1958-). References to thistext are designated FS. Translations are taken, when available, fromFriedrich Schlegel, Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow (Minne-apolis: University of MinnesotaPress, '971), and are designated LE.

TheRise of Literary Modernism in the Romantic Age 61

aration from classical perfection and equally distant from anyutopian goal of accomplishment. Schlegel illustrated his self-reflective modernism in a great variety of ways, one of whichwas his frequent use of formulas such as "not yet" or "as longas." Thus, he justifies fragmentary writing "as long as" wehave not yet established the completed system of knowledge,or he demands iron y "as long as in oral or written dialogueswe philosophize not yet fully in systematic fashion" (F5,2:152). In a similar argumentation, philosophy is in need of"genial inspirations" and "products of wit" because it is not yetentirely systematic. This will change, Schlegel assures us, oncewe move on to a safe methodology (F5, 2:200; LF, 192). Yet,as we realize at this point, the words "as long as" and "not yet"do not designate a transitoriness to be overcome by accom-plished knowledge or a temporary deficiency, hut the actualstale of our knowledge, its permanent form. Schlegel said:"One can only become a philosopher, not be one. As soon asone believes oneself to be a philosopher, one stops becomingone" (F5, 2:173; LF, 167).Yet Schlegel's position can hardly be characterized as sheer

scepticism about any achievable goal, since he not only main-tains the validity of limited, circumscribed structures ofknowledge, but also considers systematic totality and coher-ence as a necessary, however unattainable goal. In one of hisfragments he said: "It is equally fatal for the mind to have asystem and to have none. One will simply have to decide tocombine the two" (F5, 2: '73; LF, 167). This double obligationof having a system and having none is entirely in line with thefragment quoted earlier about the unending and theoreticallyinexhaustible course of romantic poetry. On the one hand, notheory, no system will be able to grasp the unpredictable mani-foldness of poetry; on the other, a divinatory criticism willalways be tempted to characterize its ideal.

r


Looked at from the standpoint of the quarrel between theancients and the moderns, this status of modernity certainlyindicates a victory of the moderns over the ancients, in that noclassical standard any longer determines the course of mod-ern poetry in its future-oriented direction. The price to bepaid for this independence, however, is the relegation of purebeauty and perfection to a past age of classical harmony andthe ascription of alienation; imperfection, and deficiency tothe status of modernity. Modernism in this view appears as apost-classical age in which the classical structures of self-pos-session and identity are lost. However, the modern age ap-pears as yearning for a lost harmony and mourning a unitythat belongs to the past. And in this sense of a mournfulgrieving for losses and deficiencies, we could still speak of alingering dominance of the ancients over the moderns or, inmore theoretical terms, of a delay in the full manifestation ofthe modern consciousness or the consciousness of modernity.Such considerations certainly motivated the feeling of mo-

dernity during the romantic age and are typical of the type ofhumanism that developed in Germany during the age ofGoethe. Classical Greece was projected as an image of idealperfection to which the modern age related in unsatisfiedlonging. This humanism, like the humanism of the Renais-sance, attempted a rebirth of human culture through thesources of classical antiquity. In contrast to the humanism ofthe Renaissance and European classicism, however, the hu-

,

manism of the age of Goethe more or less bypassed Romanantiquity and related directly to the Greeks. Greek culture--in poetry, literature, the arts, rhetoric, philosophy, and polit-icallife-became a medium for self-recognition and could notsimply be shaken off in a modernist posture. A more complexanswer with regard to the classical age had to be developed,which finally found expression in the demand for an inter-


action, a dialectical interrelationship between classicism andromanticism (modernism) as pronounced by Friedrich Schle-gel along with his brother.

[0 this view, classicism and modernism enter into a rela-tionship of close interaction, into a dialectical rapport lackingin the previous treatments of the quarrel between the ancientsand the moderns. In paradoxical formulation we could saythat the most advanced type of modernity is the one thatstands in the liveliest interaction with classical Greece. Truemodernity does not separate itself from true classicism,butmaintains a vivid relationship with the ancient world. Badmodernity J one could say, is a mere separation from classi-cism, a mere progression. Genuine modernity has an equalrelationship to classicism and is in a dynamic competition withthat world. One cannot restore the classical age by returningto a past historical time, however perfect that age might havebeen. Instead, one must produce a timely effort. What themoderns should seek is not the restitution of classicalmythol-ogy, but the creation of a contemporary, up-to-date "newmythology," not the rejuvenation of the Homeric epic, but thecreation of the modern novel as an expression of subjectivetranscendental poetry.

In this interaction of modernism and classicism, however,the world of the ancients still maintains dominance over themoderns, and Schlegel's construction of modernism, entirelyopen-ended toward the future ("infinite becoming"), appearsto be regulated by the assumption of an absolute classicism.Indeed, he seems to have thought about the Greek world interms of an unsurpassed exemplariness and maintained indifferent contexts that Greek poetry was "a general naturalhistory of beauty and art" (F5, 23:188, 204), that it containedfor all ages "valid and legislativeperceptions" (F5, "318), andthat its characteristic was "the most vigorous, pure, distinct,


, II

simple, and complete reproduction of general human nature"(FS, 1:276). With regard to the theory of poetry, he thoughtthat Greek poetry offered "for all original concepts of tasteand art a complete collection of examples all of which wereamazingly useful for the theoretical system, as if formativenature had condescended to anticipate the desires of reasonin its search for knowledge" (FS, 1:307). The formations ofthis world "do not seem to have been made or generated, butexisted eternally or originated by themselves" because they donot call forth "the slightest reminiscence of work, art, andwant" (FS, 1:2g8).Correspondingly, Schlegel speaks about the individual

works of Greek poetry in superlatives like "pure beauty," "un-pretentious perfe,erion," or "singular majesty" that seems toexist only for itself (FS, 1:2g8). In a more theoretical formu-lation he describes the character of these works as "per-fection" (FS, 1:2g8), as a structured identity with itself in thesense of a complete harmony with itself (FS, 1:2g6). Schlegelwas convinced that Greek poetry had reached this "lost limit ofnatural formation," this "highest peak of free beauty." "Golden ageis the name for this state," he said and added: "Although thispleasure granted by the works of the golden age of Greek artpermits one addition, it is yet without interference andwant----{;omplete and self-sufficient. I don't know a more appro-priate name for this height than 'the highest beauty'" (FS,1:287). For this image of absolute classicism and perfect ex-emplariness, he added as a last touch: "Prototype of art andtaste" (FS, 1:288).The only disturbing element in this characterization of ab-

solute beauty consists in the phrase "although ... permits oneaddition." With that phrase, Schlegel's construction of an ab-solute classicism takes a definite turn toward modernity. Forif one follows the meaning of these words, one will soon en-


counter characteristics of Greek beauty, indeed, all beauty,which in the last analysis render impossible any concept ofclassicismor a golden age and reduce them to borderlineconcepts, or ironic metaphors at best. The "addition" Schlegelhas in mind in this particular instance reads: "By no means abeauty above which nothing more beautiful can be thought,but the accomplished paradigm of the unattainable idea be-coming here fully visible" (FS, I :287-88). He continues: "Artis infinitely perfectible, and an absolute maximum is impos-sible in its continuous development: but no doubt a contin-gent, relative maximum exists" (FS, 1:287-88). A work of art,in other words, can only be an example "demonstrating theabsolute goal of art as visiblyas possible in a concrete work ofart" (FS, 1:293). Among these examples, the works of thegolden age of Greek poetry certainly occupy a high rank.They are the "peak of the naturalformation of beautiful art" andtherefore for all ages "the high prototype for artful progression"(FS, ] :293). This does not alter the fact, however, that theseaccomplishments are not an absolute goal, not occurring inany time and in any history, but only a maximum of classicalformation, that is, a "relative maximum" (FS, 1:634).The classical aesthetics of a complete identity and harmo-

niouslyorganized structure of the work of art is consequentlyreplaced by a type of artistic creation which exhibits noniden-tity, dissimulation, otherness, and difference. In the realm ofliterature, this results from the medium of poetry, language,as wellas from its «organ," the imagination, which renders itsproducts much more "corruptible" as well as "perfectible"than any other art (FS, 1:265, 294). This fragile, incompletecharacter of poetry becomes obvious in its tendency to "cancelthe progression and laws of rationally thinking reason, and totransplant us once again into the beautiful confusion of theimagination, into the original chaos of human nature" (FS,

e


2:319).The imaginationalone, by no means reason, is capablefor Schlegel of embracing the abundance of life in all its per-plexing, mysterious, and odd appearances. The imagination,however, is not capable of fully rendering this life of theimagination. The attempt at complete communication is ship-wrecked and transforms itself into indirect, ironic communi-cation (FS, 2:334), a constant alternation of "self-creation"and "self-destruction" (FS, 2:t 72). The desired poetry be-comes a "poetry of poetry" integrating with its creative pro-cess the '': .rtistic reflection and beautiful self-mirroring" ofthe artist and therefore isalways and at the sametime "poetryand the poetry of poetry" (FS, 2: 204).

6

Friedrich Schlegel formulated the reflective and self-reflective character of poetry first in the medium of history.Just as there is no final goal for the infinite becoming ofpoetry and no utopian state where we would land and speaknothing but beautiful language, there is no perfect beginningfor poetry in a golden age of pure innocence and naivete.Classical Greece, if one would like to maintain this image as amodel of perfection, is moved from the beginning of Euro-pean poetry to the unattainable end of history,but even for a"divinatory criticism," it would be impossible "to characterizeits ideal" (IS, 2: 183;LF, 175).As Schlegel appeased absolute

J,.. expectations from the future with formulas like "not yet" or"as long as," we could apply the phrase "alwaysalready" withequal effect to our past.Weshould be careful, however, not todeduce from this viewof history any type of indolent indif-ference, because Schlegelpronounced himselfquite stronglyagainst the kinds of historicalcriticism whichhe classified asthe "postulate of vulgarity"and the "axiom of the average."

•

The Rise of Litemry Modernism in the Romantic Age 67

He said about these attitudes: "Postulate of vulgarity: every-thing great, good, and beautiful is improbable because it isextraordinary and, at the very least, suspicious. The axiom ofthe average: as we and our surroundings are, so must it havebeen always and everywhere because that, after all, is so verynatural" (F5, 2:149; LF, 145).Schlegel consequently rejected the Greek myth according

to which Orpheus constituted the beginning of Greek poetry.Such an image seemed to imply that poetry had come downfrom heaven in all its splendor and integrity and only laterassumed fragmentation and difference from itself (F5, 1:406-10). For him, the "oldest document" arising out of thenight of antiquity was Homeric poetry, but the search into theorigin of these poems will get us lost in a retrograding st.age-shifting of ever earlier beginnings (F5, 1 :397). Schlegel alsoexpressed t.he self-transcending character of poetry in struc-tural terms and characterized romantic poetry because of theclose interaction of the poet with his work, as "transcendentalpoetry," that is, poetry representing "the producer along withit.sproduct." (F5, 2:204; LF, 195).Since total communicat.ion isimpossible, poetry transforms itself into indirect communica-tion, into saying it otherwise, by spacing and temporalizing.The imagination t.herefore finds it.s necessary correspon-dence in irony, in ironic construct.ion (F5, 2 :334).August Wilhelm Schlegel focused on these structural as-

pects of poetry and related them more directly than any othercritic of his time to the nature of language and poet.ic diction.He liked t.o chastise art philosophers like Kant, who out ofcomplete ignorance in matters of poetic COInposition, attrib-uted the poetic effect to some supernatural interference,some "je ne sais quoi," and in their philosophical construc-tions drew a strong dividing line between genius and taste orbetween t.heimagination and reason. Schlegel suggest.ed fore-


I

I

going the "foreign force" in favor of expanding the notions ofgenius or imagination by including reason, reflection, cri-tique, and self-criticism among them (AWS, 1:14-33)·'9 Hesaid: "I fear that this unnameable is nothing but the recog-nized insufficiency of language to make fully adequate aninner intuition because language only has arbitrary signswhich reason attempts to appropriate as much as possible.This illuminates the necessity of not treating the language ofpoetry solely as an instrument of reason" (AWS, 1: 16). Therewas also no original state of poetry from which our poetry hadfallen, but poetry, like all of our activities, takes place entirelyon this side of the fall (AWS, 1:254). Referring to the lateeighteenth-century distinction between "natural beauty" and"art beauty" meant to ascertain the derivative character of artin comparison to nature, Schlegel claims that for his romantictheory, art beauty is definitely the "first-born" sister and thatone would speak of beauty in nature only once the artisticdrive had beco/me active (AWS, 1: 256-57)·The particular modern thrust in these conceptions of poe-

try, however, can perhaps best be illustrated through Nietz-sche. As a matter of fact, Nietzsche took up some of thesenotions directly from the Schlegels, especially their discussionof Euripides. The question most directly connected with thesetopics was that o~ the beginning of rnodernism.sv AugustWilhelm Schlegel considered it one of his brother's greatestcritical merits in the field of classics to have been the first inthe modern age to discern the immeasurable distance sepa-

29. August Wilhelm Schlegel, Kritische Ausgabe seiner Vorlesungen, ed. ErnstBehler with the collaborationof Frank Jolles, 6 vols.(Paderborn-Muchen:Schoningh, 1989-). References to this text are designated AWS.go. See Ernst Behler, "A.W. Schlegel and the Nineteenth-Century Dam-

natw of Euripides," in The Nineteenth-Century Rediscovery of Euripides, ed.William M. Calder. Greek-Roman and Byzantine Studies 27 (1986): 335-67.

TheRise of Literary Modernism in the Romantic Age 69

rating Euripides from Aeschylus and Sophocles. FriedrichSchlegel thereby revived an attitude the Greeks themselveshad assumed toward the poet (AWS, 1:747-48). His assess-ment of Euripides was based on a genetic view of Greek lit-erature in its development from epic to lyric and dramaticpoetry, from Homer to Pindar and Sophodes, and during thedramatic age, from harsh greatness (Aeschylus) to highbeauty (Sophocles) and luxuriant decay (Euripides). ThroughA. W. Schlegel's influential writings, this image of Greek lit-erature became dominant throughout the nineteenth centuryand eventually found its most radical expression in Nietz-sche's The Birth of Tragedy of 1872. Against this background,Euripides can be viewed in two ways. From the vantage of astubborn classicism, he can be seen as the detractor of classicaltragedy who through innovations such as prologues, theabandonment of the idea of fate, the isolation of the chorusfrom the action, arbitrariness in the treatment of myth. over-abundant usage of the trochaic tetrameter, and so on, hadunbalanced the beautiful harmony of the old drama andbrought about an "insurrection of the individual parts againstthe whole" (AWS, 1:749). Heine interpreted A. W.Schlegel'scritique as that of a classicist pedant who had the habit of"always whipping the back of a younger poet with the laurel-branch of an older one.",> The other way of viewing Eurip-ides wasto say: "In his idea, his genius, and his art, everythingelse is available in the greatest profusion; only congruity, law-fulness is lacking. With vigor and ease, he knows how to moveus, to tease us, to penetrate us into the marrow of the soul,and to excite us through the richest variety. Passion, its riseand fall, especially its vehement outbursts, he portrays incom-

31. Heinrich Heine, Samdiche Werke, ed. Klaus Briegleb (Munchen:Hanser, 1971), vol. 3,415.

~---------

70 The Rise oj Literary Modernism in the Romantic Age

parably" (FS, 1:61). This was Friedrich Schlegel's image ofEuripides, and here mod emily looked into its own face.Nietzsche shared to a certain degree the pedantic view of a

stubborn classicism. In his The Birth aJTragedy, Euripides haslost almost all of the "luxuriant" attractions he still displayedin the writings of the Schlegel brothers and appears as a meredecline from the height of classical beauty. To make this de-cline all the more compelling, Nietzsche advanced the apex oftragic poetry from Sophocles, the model of the Schlegelbrothers, to Aeschylus. Nietzsche's critique of aesthetic mod-ernism, as exemplified in Euripides, had thus become muchharsher. It was the infusion of reason, of consciousness,reflection, criticism, of philosophy that had destroyed thebeaut.y of the classical t.ragedy. Euripides was t.he first drama-tist of a "conscious aesthetics" (FN, 1:539)," and around himt.here is "a peculiarly broken shimmer, t.ypical of modernartists." His "almost un-Greek aesthetic character" is bestsummarized by the notion of "Socratisrn," because Euripides'principle, "Everyt.hing has to be conscious to be beautiful,"parallels Socrates' statement, "Everyt.hing has t.obe consciousto be good." Nietzsche said, "Euripides is the poet of Socrat.icrationalism" (FN, I :540). This is perhaps t.heshortest formulafor literary modernism.And yet, when pressed for the origin of this "aesthetic

Socratism" or aesthetic modernism, Nietzsche comes to ananswer amazingly close to the Schlegels'. The principles of a"conscious aesthetics" were, first of all, not invented bySocrates or Euripides but resulted from t.he "historical gap"

32. Friedrich Nietzsche, Kruische Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli andMazzino Montinari, 15 vcls. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980). References to thistext are designated FN. When available, the translation is taken fromFriedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, trans. WalterKaufmann (New York:Random House, 1967).

The Rise of Litermy Modernism in the Romantic Age 71

between the Athenian public and classical tragedy (FN, i :

537). Socratisrn in the sense of a conscious, self-reflective ac-tivity, is not only "older than Socrates" but also an elementthat evolvesinherently from art itself and does not need to beimplanted from an outside force such as philosophy. It orig-inates with dialectics, dialogue, and language, whichwere alllacking in the oldest forms of tragedy. Dialogue and dialec-tics, however, necessarily lead to argument, contest, dispute,and set a process in motion which culminates in the "chess-like" type of drama represented by Euripides (FN, "546).The symptoms of "decay" are therefore noticeable long be-fore Euripides, already in Sophocles (FN, 1:548), maybe inthe dialogicalform of drama itself, even in chorus and dance.Nietzsche's construction of a division between classicismandmodernism takes the same retrograding direction of ever ear-lier beginnings that was noticeable in the theory of the Schle-gel brothers. Properly speaking, we are dealing with processesnot really signifiable by historical figures and not represent-able in historical terms. Euripideism and Socratism appearlike immense driving-wheels of a motion that is pre-Socraticas wellas post-Socratic and spreads its impact over posterity"like a shadow that keeps growing in the evening sun" (FN,

"97,635)·

t.-l _

:3Irony in the Ancient

and the Modern World

Irony is inseparable from the evolution of the moden,con-sciousness. In one respect, irony is a traditional subject, as oldas human speech, codified in manuals, defined in its struc-ture, but as unexciting as these scholastic topics are. In an-other regard, however, irony is virtually identical with thatself-reflective style of poetry that became accentuated duringthe romantic age, and it is a decisive mark of literary moder-nity. In a move typical of romantic thought, however, ironywas then turned around and discovered in works of literaturewhere it had never before been surmised and thus becamealmost coextensive with literature itself. There is generalagreement that this decisive extension of irony to a basiccrit-ical term took place toward the end of the eighteenth century yand coincided with the formation of the romantic theory ofliterature. Until then, irony had been understood mostlyas afigure of speech, firmly established and registered in rhetoric.We can even specify this turning point much more preciselyby referring to a fragment written in 1797 by Friedrich Schle-gel and expressing, to all appearances, the new feature ofirony for the first time.

The fragment begins with the statement, "Philosophy is thetrue homeland of irony, which one would like to define aslogicalbeauty" (FS, 2: 152, no. 42; LF, 148)'-obviously refer-

I. Friedrich Schlegel, Kriusche Ausgabe seiner Werhe, ed. Ernst Behler withthe collaboration of Jean-Jacques Anstett, Hans Eichner, and other special-ists, 35 vols. (Paderbor-n-Munchen: Schcningh, 1958--). References to this

73

74 Irony in the Ancient and the M adem World

ring to Socratic irony as the first manifestation of the ironicmood in the West. Schlegelgoes on to say that there is also a"rhetorical species of irony," which "sparingly used, has anexcellent effect, especiallyin polemics" (FS, 2:I52, no. 42; LF,148). This phrase of the fragment apparently relates to thedominant usage of irony from Cicero to Swiftand Voltaire asa rhetorical device or figure of speech that isgood in polemics

'-because it attacks indirectly and not in a vulgar way. Yet com-pared to the philosophicaltype of irony, to the "sublime ur-banity of the Socratic muse," this rhetorical kind is morepompous. There isone possibility, however, of approachingand equaling the loftySocratic style of irony, and that is inpoetry. for this purpose, however, poetry should not restrictirony to "isolated ironical passages, as rhetoric does," but beironic tqroughout, as Socrates was in his dialogues. As a mat-ter of fact, Schlegel continues, there is a poetry that accom-plishes precisely this task: "There are ancient and modernpoems that are pervaded by the divine breath of ironythroughout and informed by a truly transcendental buffoon-ery. Internally: the mood that surveys everything and risesinfinitely abpve all limitations, even above its own art, virtue,or genius; externally, in its execution: the mimic style of amoderately gifted Italian buffo" (FS, 2:I52, no. 42; LF, 148).

In another fragment of the same year, Schlegel describesthe ironic mood of Socratesmore fully and indicateshow suchirony should animate poetic works. This irony is an "involun-

text are designated FS. Translations are taken, when available. fromFriedrich Schlegel, Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow (Minne-apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971). On Schlegel's notion of ironyand its historical context see Ernst 'Behler, "The Theory of Irony in GermanRomanticism," in Rcmasuic Irony, ed. Frederick Garber (Budapest: Kiado,1988), 43-81. For an interpretationof this topic from the point of view of anintersubjective dialectic of consensus see Gary Handwerk, Irony and Ethics inNarrauoe: From Schlegel to Lacan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

[TOnyin the Ancient and the Modern World 75

tary and yet completely deliberate dissimulation" (FS, 2:160,no. 108;LF, 155) impossible to convey because for one "whohasn't got it, it will remain a riddle even after it is openlyconfessed." In such an ironic performance, "everythingshould be playful and serious, guilelessly open and deeplyhidden." This irony originates from both naivete and reflec-tion, nature and art, and is the "conjunction of a perfectlyinstinctive and perfectly conscious philosophy." The mostcompact statements about this kind of irony occur in the mid-dle of the fragment and read: "It contains and arouses afeeling of the indissoluble antagonism between the absoluteand the relative, between the impossibility and the necessityofcomplete communication. It is the freest of all licenses, for byits means one transcends oneself; and yet it is the most lawful,for it is absolutely necessary" (FS, 2:160, no. 108; LF, l56).These fewquotes already indicate the close link between thenew notion o,f irony and the consciousness of literary moder-nity that marked the beginning of romanticism.

1

When Schlegel decided to term the mood which permeatescertain works by Boccaccio, Cervantes, Sterne, and Goetheironic, he caused indeed a fundamental change in Westerncritical thought. The authorsjust mentioned would have beensomewhat astonished to hear him interpret their literary cre-ations asdisplaying irony-to saynothing of Shakespeare andother older models of the ironic style. For until Schlegel,irony had retained its classicalmeaning as a figure of speech,and the only reason why we today do not find anything re-markable in Schlegel's formulations is that his usage of theterm took root and became established. Until then, far intothe eighteenth century, the word irony had kept its strict and

76 Irony in theAncient and the Modern World

consistent connotation of an established form of speech orcommunication which could be reduced to the simple for-mula: "a figure of speech by which one wants to convey theopposite of what one says." This is a quote from the FrenchEncyclopedia of 1765 and contains the essence of the defi-nitions of irony found in numerous handbooks of variousEuropean literatures as they had developed from older man-uals of rhetoric concerning the art of public speaking andpersuasion.

If in the schernatized structure of classical rhetoric we wereto seek the place for irony, we would find it first in the columnof the tropes, that is, among indirect modes of speech (in-cluding metaphor, allegory, metalepsis, and hyperbaton); andsecond under the rubric of figures of speech, that is, of par-ticular verbal constructions (including question, anticipation.hesitation, consultation, apostrophe, illustration, feigned re-gret, and intimation). The most basic characteristic of allforms of classical irony is always that the intention of thespeaker is opposed to what he actually says, that we under-stand the contrary of what he expresses in his speech. Weshould perhaps add to this description that according to an-cient opinion, in order to distinguish irony from mere lying,the entire tenor of speaking, including intonation, emphasis.and gesture, was supposed to help reveal the real or intendedmeaning. Irony is mostly discussed by the classical rhetori-cians in the context of peculiar idiosyncrasies of style. Aris-totle mentions irony in the third book of his Rhetoric, which isdevoted to style, and presents it as a "mockery of oneself":"Some of the forms befit a gentleman, and some do not; ironybefits him more than does buffoonery. The jests of the iron-

2. Encyctopedie ou dictionnaire raiscnne des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers, parune SocieU de Gens de Leures (Geneva: Pellet, 1777), vol. 19,86.

Irony in the Ancient and the Modem World 77

ical man are at his own expense; the buffoon excites laughter.at others." From other passages of his works, especially hisEthics, we know that Aristotle conceived of irony as a nobleself-deprecation. "Irony is the contrary of boastful exaggera-tion," he said; "it is a self-deprecating concealment of one'spowers and possessions-it shows better taste to deprecatethan to exaggerate one's virtues.?»

Cicero, who introduced the term into the Latin world andrendered it as "dissimulation" ("ea dissimulatio, quam Graecieirimeia vocant"),» discussed irony in his work On the Orator inconnection with figures of speech. He defined irony as sayingone thing and meaning another, explaining that it had a verygreat influence on the minds of the audience and was ex-tremely entertaining if it was presented in a conversationalrather than declamatory tone." Finally, Quintilian assignedirony its position among the tropes and figures discussed inthe eighth and ninth books of his Oratorical Education, whereits basiccharacteristic is that the intention of the speaker dif-fers from what he actually says, that we understand the con-trary of what he expresses in speech ("in utroque enim coo-trarium ei quod dicitur intelligendum est").' In addition tothese two formal modes of irony, however, Quintilian men-tions a third which transcends the scope of mere rhetoric, orwhat Schlegel would call single ironic instances, and relates to

the whole manner of existence of a person. Quintilian refersdirectly to Socrates, whose entire life had an ironic coloring

3· Aristotle Rhet. 3· 1 8. J 419b7. English translation by Lane Cooper (NewYork:Appleton, 1932), 240. Aristotle is quoted from Aristotelis Opera: EdiditAcademia Borussica (reprint, Darmstadt:Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,1960).4. Aristotle Etli. Nic. 2.7.1 I08a19'-23,4.13.1127a20-26.5. CiceroAcad. Pro 2.5.15.6. CiceroDe or. 2.67.27°.7· Quintilian Inst. or., 9.2.44.

,

Irony in the A ncient and the Modern World

because he assumed the role of an ignorant human being lostin wonder at the wisdom of orhers.sAs this observation indicates, Quintilian, as well as Cicero

and other rhetoricians, regarded Socrates as the master ofirony, the eiron. Originally, however, the words eirimeia andeiri5n had a low and vulgar connotation, even to the extent ofbeing an invective. We come across these terms in Aristo-phanes' comedies, in which the ironist is placed among liars,shysters, pettifoggers, hypocrites, and charlatans-in otherwords, with deceivers.s Plato was the first to present Socratesas an ironic interlocutor who by understating his talents in hisfamous pose of ignorance. embarrassed his partner and si-multaneously led him into the proper train of thought. Withthe Platonic Socrates, the attitude of the ironist was freedfrom the burlesque coarseness of classical comedy and ap-peared >yith that refined, human, and humorous self-depre-cation that made Socrates the paragon of the teacher.Yet even in Plato's dialogues, where the attitude of Socratic

irony is so obviously present, the term irony itself still retainsits derogatory cast in the sense of hoax and hypocrisy and assuch, evinces the Sophist attitude of intellectual deceptionand false pretension. In his Republic, for example, Plato de-picts the scene in which Socrates deliberates, in characteristicfashion, on lthe concept of dikaiosuni, that is, justice. At acrucial poin in the discussion, his conversational partnerThrasymachus explodes, requesting Socrates to desist fromhis eternal questioning and refuting and finally to come outwith a direct statement and reveal his own opinion. Againassuming his stance of ignorance. Socrates replies that it isutterly difficult to discover justice and they should have pity

8. Quintilian l-ast. or. 9.246.g_ Aristophanes Nubes 443-

Irony in the Ancient and the Modern World 79

rather than scorn for him. At this point, Thrasymachus burstsout: "ByHeracles! Here again is the well-known dissimulationof Socrates! I have told these others beforehand that youwould not answer, but take refuge in dissimulation." TheGreek term rendered here by dissimulation is of courseeirimeia, irony (337a).10

From many other instances in Plato's dialogues we knowthat the pretended ignorance of Socrates was considered bymany of his contemporaries as chicanery J scorn, or deceptiveescapism, all of which made him deserve the epithet eiron.Only through Aristotle did the word irony assume that re-fined and urbane tinge marking the character of "Socraticirony." This significant change in meaning can be detected inAristotle's Nicomachian Ethics, where eirtmeia and alaumeia, un-derstatement and boastfulness, are discussed as modes of de-viation from truth. Aristotle, however, held the opinion thatirony deviates from truth not for the sake of one's own ad-vantage, but out of a dislike for bombast and to spare othersfrom feelings of inferiority. Irony was therefore a fine andnoble form. The prototype of this genuine irony was to befound in Socrates. and with this reference irony received itsclassical expression.ll Some of the other few instances inwhich Aristotle mentions irony also reveal a Socratic image.In hisPhysiognomy, Aristotle describes the ironist as possessinggreater age and having wrinklesaround his eyes reflecting acritical power of judgment." In his History of Animals, Aris-

10. Plato is quoted from the edition Platon: Oeuvres completes, ed. Guil-laume Bude (reprint, Paris: Les Belles Leures, 1953). References to thisedition are given with the counting according to Stephan us, a counting usedin most editions or Plato.

11. Aristotle Eth. Nic. 4.13.127b22-26.12. AristotlePhys. 3.808a27.

80 Irony in the Ancient and the Modern World

totle considers eyebrowsrising upward toward the temples asmarks of the mocker and ironist. '3

These physiognomical features which predestined Socratesas the master of irony can also be discovered in Plato's writ-ings about the philosopher. This aspect of Socrates comesforth in the Symposium in the speech delivered in Socrates'honor by Alcibiades when he compares Socrates with theSileni, those carved figurines with satyrlike and grotesqueimages on the exterior, but pure gold inside.This is obviouslya reference to the contrast between the philosopher's outerappearance, his protruding lips, paunch, and stub nose, andhis personal rank and intellectual quality. This contrast canalso be seen as a form of ironic dissimulation, as a "mask," andhas become a famous and continuous theme in Europeanliterature. Toward his fellow citizens, Socrates assumes themask of one who tends to appreciate handsome young menand convivial symposia,who is to all appearances universallyignorant and unfit for any practical activity. But once beneaththe surface, we discover that he is above the attractions ofphysical beauty aswellas those of wealth and popular esteem,and that he possessesan unparalleled degree of self-control.Using the Greek term eironeia for this type of dissimulation,Alcibiades explains to his drinking companions: "He spendshis whole life pretending and playing with people, and Idoubl whether anyone has ever seen the treasures which arerevealed when he grows serious and exposeswhat he keepsinside" (216d).

2

Schlegel obviouslyhad all these different elements in mindwhen in 1797 he portrayed Socratic irony, intending to utilize

13. Aristotle Hist. Animal. L491b17.


this model for an understanding of literature' and poetry. Atthat time he was deeply impressed by Goethe's novel WilhelmMeister, which had just been completed (1796) and becamefamous through Schlegel's review for the "irony hoveringabove the entire work" (FS, 2: 137). In one of his notebooksSchlegel wrote: "Meister = ironic poetry as Socrates = ironicphilosophy because it is the poetry of poetry" (FS, 18:24,no.75), that is, self-conscious and self-reflective poetry. He wasalso aware that Socratic irony had been extinguished in theclassicist tradition of the an poetica by a glossy and formaldevice of rhetorical irony that followed established rules and,in its firm strictures of truth-oriented relations, constitutedalmost the opposite of what Socratic irony once had been.Although in rhetorical irony the intention of the speaker iscontrary to what he actually says,rules insure that we actuallyunderstand the intended meaning. This irony is based oncomplete agreement, perfect understanding between speakerand listener, and an absolute notion of truth.

A good illustration of the transition from the classicalcon-cept of rhetorical irony to that type of romantic irony whichSchlegel had in mind can be found in Thomas Mann's TheMagic Mountain. Thomas Mann was an authority on mattersof irony, not only through his literary practice, but also intheory, and liked to blend historical-critical disquisitions withhis fiction. The following piece, part of one of the endlessdiscussionsbetween the Italian Settembrini and the engineerHans Castorp in a Swiss sanatorium, is a good example of thistechnique. It begins when the Italian retorts to a remark byCastorp:

"Oh heavens, irony! Guard yourself, Engineer> from the sortof irony that thrives up here: Guard yourself altogether fromtaking on this mental attitude! Where irony is not a direct andclassical device of oratory, not for a moment equivocal to a

I

I

I

I


healthy mind, it makes for depravity, it becomes a drawback to

civilization, an unclean traffic with the forces of reaction, avice. As the atmosphere in which we live is obviously veryfavorable to such miasmic growth, I may hope, or rather, Imust fear, that you understand my meanmg.?«

Schlegel's position can be exactly characterized as replacingthat "direct and classical device of oratory not for a momentequivocal to a healthy mind" with a different type of ironycharacterized in Mann's text in ironic fashion as "slovenly,anarchic, and vicious." In orie respect, this is the most moderntype of irony coincidingwith a heretofore nonexistent style ofliterary modernity. Vet in another regard, this is the oldesttype of irony in theWest,deriving from Socratesand Platonicdialogues.In varying formulations, Schlegel attempted to rescue the

Socratic-Platonic irony of a configurative, indeterminable,self-transcending process of thinking and writing and to in-tegrate it with the modern style of self-reflection and self-consciousness as the decisive mark of literary modernity. Inhis late lectures aboutPhilosophy of Language and Word (1829),he characterized irony as the "astonishment of the thinkingmind about itself which often dissolves into a gentle smile"and "beneath a cheerful surface" incorporates "a deeply hid-den sense, another higher meaning, and often the most sub-lime seriousness" (FS, 10:353). In Plato's presentation of thisthoroughly dramatic development of thought, Schlegel sawthe dialogue form asso essentially dominant "that even if weeliminated the titlesand names of persons, all addresses andresponses, and the entire dialogue format as well, andstressed only the inner thread of thoughts in their cohesion

14. Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (NewYork: Vintage, 1969),220.

d


and progression-the whole would still remain a dialogue inwhich each answer calls forth a newquestion and whichin thealternating flow of speech and counter-speech, or rather ofthought and counter-thought, moves forth in livelyfashion"(FS, 10:35).The "alternating flow of speech and counter-speech. or

rather of thought and counter-thought," seems to constitutean essential aspect in Schlegel's view of an ironic configura-tion of thought or writing. We should be careful, however,not to construe this movement in dialectical or Hegelian man-ner as a goal-oriented, teleological process, but to considerinstead a bottomless sliding as its main feature. Again refer-ring to Plato's manner ~f writing, Schlegel in his Lessing'sThoughtsand Opinions (1804) described this character of mod-ern prose with the image of an infinite trajectory:

A denial of some current prejudice or whatever else can ef-fectively surmount innate lethargy constitutes the beginning;thereupon the thread of thought moves imperceptibly for-ward in constant interconnection until the surprised spectator,after that thread abruptly breaksoff or dissolves in itself, sud-denly finds himself confronted with a goal he had not at allexpected: before him an unlimited wide view. but upon look-ing backat the path he has traversedand the spiral of conver-sation distinctly before him. he realizes that this was only afragment of an infinite cycle. (FSJ 3:50)

Schlegel's most famous formulations for the alternatingflow of speech and counter-speech or thought and COunter-thought are hismanifold paraphrases of a constant alternationof affirmation and negation, of exuberant emergence fromoneself and self-critical retreat intooneself, of enthusiasm andscepticism in fragments from before the turn of the century.These phrases are all but different formulations for his theoryof "poetic reflection" and "transcendental poetry," whichco-

84 Irony in the Ancient and the Modem World

incides with his notion of irony often rendered as a "constantalternation of self-creation and self-destruction" (FS 2:172,no. 5'; LF, 167). A similar and r-ecut-rent formulation of thesame phenomenon is the phrase "to the point of irony," or "tothe point of continuously fluctuating between self-creationand self-destruction" (FS 2:172, no. 5'; 2)7, no. 305; LF, 167,205). This is the point of the highest perfection for Schlegel,that is, of a perfection which is conscious of its own imper-fection by inscribing this feature into its own text. Another andperhaps better wayof formulating the counter-movement ofself-creation and self-destruction inherent in the status of "tothe point of irony" would be to say that this is by no means adeficiency but rather the highest level we can reach, and in anaesthetic consideration, also one of charm and grace.In his early writingson Greek poetry, Schlegelrepresented

the counter-movement of self-creation and self-destruction asa self-inflicting movement against a primordial Dionysian ec-stasy and said, "The most intense passion is eager to wounditself, if only to act and to discharge its excessivepower" (FSI :403). One of his favorite examples for such actiorl was theparabasis of classical comedy, that is, the sometimes capricious,frivolous addresses of the poet through the chorus and thecoryphaeus to the audience that constituted a total disruptionof the play. ~n a fragment from '797, Schlegelsayssummarily,"Irony is a permanentparabasis" (FS 18:85, no. 668),'5 takingthe emergence of the author from his work in the broadestsense and relating it to ancient and modern literature in all itsgenres. With specific reference to the comic exuberance ex-hibited through parabasis in the comedies by Aristophanes,Schlegel said: "This self-infliction is not ineptitude, but de-liberate impetousness, overflowing vitality, and often has not

15. Schlegel uses the less usual term "parekbasis."


a bad effect, indeed stimulates the effect, since it cannot totallydestroy the illusion. The most intense agility of lifemust act,even destroy; if it does not find an external object, it reactsagainst a beloved one, against itself, against its own creation.This agility then injures in order to excite, not to destroy" (FSI :30).In the medium of modern literature, Schlegel describedthe ironic mood in Goethe's WilhelmMeister by referring to theauthor's "air of dignity and self-possession, smiling at itself,"or to the occurrence of the most prosaic scenes in the middleof the poetic mood, and adds, "One should not let oneself befooled when the poet treats persons and events in an easy andlofty mood, when he mentions his hero almost never withoutirony, and when he seems to smile down from the heights ofhis spirit upon his master work, as if this were not for him themost solemn seriousness" (FS 2: 133).

3

Within the field of philosophy, Schlegel's irony attempts tobring to our attention the "inexhaustible plenitude and man i-foldnessof the highest subjectsof knowledge" (FS 13:207)andto unmask the "idol of the highly praised omniscience" (FS13:208).With this critique, however, Schlegel provoked thatcontemporary philosopher who like no one else beforeclaimed to have access to "absolute knowledge" and indeedconsidered irony the greatest challenge to his own position-Hegel. In an extremely sharp polemic, certainly constitutingone of the main intellectual events of the romantic age, Hegelsingled out Friedrich Schlegelas the "father of irony" and the"most prominent ironic personality" (GWFH II :233),6in the

16. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Werke in 20 Bcnden. (Frankfurt: Suhr-

-=


modern age and chastised irony as annihilating scepticism, asirresponsible arbitrariness, as the apex of isolated subjectivityseparating itself from the unifying substance (CWFH 7:278).'7In his lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel criticized the artistic aspectsof that irony "invented by Herr Friedrich von Schlegel" as a"divine ingenuity for which everything and anything is noth-ing but an insignificant creation, unrelated to the free creator,who feels himself rid of his products once and for all becausehe can just as well create as annihilate them" (CWFH '3:95).Of particular importance in this regard is Hegel's critique

of irony. ironic consciousness, and Schegel's theory in his Phe-nomenology of Spirit of 1807. To be sure, Schlegel's name doesnot occur once in this text, but in a now famous investigationof 1924, Emanuel Hirsch established that the concluding pas-sage of the part on morality dealing with conscience is anencoded critique of philosophers contemporary with Hegel.isThe section on the "moral view of the world" (CWFH3:464-94)'9 refers to Kant, whereas the following sectionstake on the representatives of the romantic generation one byone: "moral ingenuity" related to Jacobi, "absolute certaintyof oneself" to Fichte, the "beautiful soul" to Novalis, "dissem-blance" to Schlriermacher, the "heart of stone" to Holderlin,and the "avow\,d evil" to Friedrich Schlegel. In the figure of

kamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, 1986). References to this text are desig-nated GWFH.17· This expression is not a literal quote from Hegel, who usually says

"apex of subjectivity recognizingitself as the ultimate" (GWFH 7=278), but acompilation by Ono Poggeler which very well expresses the line of thought inHegel's philosophy of law. See Otto Poggeler, Hegels Krilik der Romantik(Bonn: Bouvier, 1956),66.18. Emanuel Hirsch, "Die Beisetzung del' Romantiker in Hegels Ph a-

nomenologie," in Materi.alien zu Hegeis Phanomenologie des Geutes, ed. HansFriedrich Fulda and Dieter Henrich (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979), 245-75.19· Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1977),365-74.


"forgiveness,"however, Hegel depicted his own position rec-onciling the split of consciousness into "beautiful soul" and"dissemblance." Taken together, aUof these figures manifesta progression, an enhancement of self-consciousness, one af-ter the other. The culmination of this process is that "recon-ciling yes"which unites all particular forms of certainty and is"God manifested in the midst of those who know themselvesin the form of pure knowledge" (GWFH 3:494).

If the position of the avowed evil actually representsFriedrich Schlegel, this strange hierarchy expresses an ex-tremely high regard for irony. All previous forms of con-sciousnessare not yet fully consciousof themselves. They arediffuse manifestations, based on illusions, and lacking the lastmental awareness of themselves. The form of evil conscious-ness, however, has the function of driving conscience to itslast consequence by avowing evil in the statement "It is I"(GWFH 3:490). For Hegel, 111isis "the highest revolt of themind conscious of itself." According to the Hegelian princi-ples of dialectic, however, this highest form of negativity pre-ciselymotivates the "activity of the idea" and is thereby essen-tial for the reconciling yes (GWFH 3:492). Yet seen in itself,the evil stage of consciousness is the purest negativity, thespirit that always negates, the apex of isolated subjectivityseparating itself from the unifying substance.

Although such encoded texts always maintain a certain in-determinateness as far as hisjorical points of reference areconcerned, Hegel's other writings, especially his Philosophy ofLaw, make it sufficiently obviousthat he had Schlegel in mindwhen he depicted the position of "absolute evil" in the Phe-nomenology of Spirit. For these texts relate such assumptionsdirectly to irony and Schlegel (GWFH 7:279-80). They makethese references, however, no longer in apocalyptic- imagesbut in direct polemics and are often not free from strong

c


animosity and outbursts of hatred (GWFH t8:461). In Hegel'sPhilosophy of Law, for instance, Schlegel's ironyis "not only theevil, that is, the entirelygeneral evil in itself,but also adds theform of evil, subjectivity,vanity, by proclaiming to know itselfas the vanity of all content, and to know itself in this knowl-edge as the absolute" (GWFH 7'279). As a participant in He-gel's"Berlin lectures, Kierkegaard observed "that "on everyoccasion" Hegel seized the opportunity to speak up againstirony and scolded Schlegel and his disciples as "incorrigibleand stubborn sinners." Kierkegaard said: "Hegel always dis-cussed them in the most disparaging manner; indeed Hegellooks down with intense scorn and disdain at these 'superiorpersons,' as he often callsthem .... But the fact that Hegel hasbecome infuriated with the form of irony nearest to his ownposition has naturally distorted his concept of the concept.And if the reader seldom gets a discussion, Schlegel, on theother hand, alwaysgets a drubbing" (CI, 282).'0The proximity of Schlegel's irony to Hegel's own position

noticed by Kierkegaard seems to relate to Hegelian dialectic,which also appears to be animated by a constant yes and no,a permanent construction and suspension, an alternation ofself-creation and self-destruction, an inherent "negativity."Some of the most recent interpretations of Hegel today in-deed tend to link Hegelvery closely with the romantic theoryof FriedJ.ich Schlegel," although Schlegel's irony certainly

20. Seren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference toSocrates, trans. Lee M.Capel (NewYork: Harper and Row,1965). Referencesto this text are designated CI.2I. QUo Poggeler, "Crenzen der Brauchbarkeit des deutschen Romantik-

Begriffs," in Romantikin Deuucnland, ed. Richard Brinkmann (Stuttgart: Metz-ler, 1978), 341-54; Otto Pcggeler, "Ist Hegel Schlegel?" in Frankfurt aber istder Nabel dieser Erde, ed. Christoph Jamme and Ouo Poggeler (Stuttgart:Kleu-Cotta, 1982),325-48; Rudiger Bubner, "Zur dialekuschen Bedeutung

.. ----_ .. -~~


lacks the teleology and goal-oriented drive of Hegel's dia-lectical thought process. The entire structure of Hegelianthought appears to be oriented toward some kind of landingor arriving in a completed philosophy, a system, providingthe ground for the perfected philosophy of law and the per-fected human society, the State, the unifying substance. Tokeep the opposite tendencies of Schlegel and Hegel apart,one should characterize this as a relationship of two funda-mentally contradictory types of knowledge that cannot bereduced to a common ground and therefore form a completeand unresolvable opposition. The Hegelian type of knowl-edge claims a total intellectual comprehension of the in-terpretation of the finite and the infinite. Schlegel insists thatthis relationship can never be reduced to a structure or adialecticcomprehensible by finite knowledge, but constitutesan infinite process graspable only in aspects. To relate thesediscourses of the early nineteenth century more to our man-ner of thinking, we could alsosay that in Hegel and Schlegelrespectively, we encounter models of thought, forms ofknowledge, and modes of philosophical certitude that corre-spond to the entirely different discourses of structuralismand poststructuralism of hermeneutics and deconstruction inour time.

Yet even if we insist on a fundamental difference betweenHegel and Schlegel, we come across irony in the center ofHegel's own philosophy. In his lectures on The History of Phi-losophy, Hegel, as usual, engages in enraged diatribes againstirony, negating this attitude as mere play with everything,which dissolves all higher and divine truth into nothingness,into ordinariness, and so on (GWFH 18:460--61). At this

romantischer Iron ie," in Die Aktualitdt der Friihromanlik, ed. Ernst Behler andJochen Horisch (Paderborn: Schcningh, 1987), 85-95.

J_

go Irony in the A ncient and the Mcdern World

point, however, all of a sudden, Hegel draws a parallel be-tween irony and dialecticsby saying in one single parenthesis,"All dialectic respectseverything that should be respected asif it were respected, lets the inner destruction generate onit-universal ironyof the world" (GWFH 18:460). Heine andKierkegaard, who attended Hegel's lectures, took notice ofthis remarkable incident. Kierkegaard tried to explain thisirony using the world-historical individual, the tragic hero ofworld history. Sucb a hero has to bring about a new level ofhistorical reality by displacing the old order, but is bound toan actuality that will equally become subject to change (Cl,276-77)· Kierkegaard thought that Hegelhad quite correctlydescribed this "universal irony of the world": "Inasmuch aseach particular historical actuality is but a moment in theactualization of the Idea, it bears within itself the seeds of itsown destruction" (Cl, 279). Indeed, Hegelhimself had madethe tragic fate of the "world-historical individualities" a cen-tral theme of his lectures on the Philosophy of History (GWFH12:45-50).

Yet more preciselyspeaking, it is not somuch the dialecticaland world historical destruction of noble individualities assuch which createsirony, but rather the eye, the observation,the consciousness of the one who views this destruction as anecessary concomitant and precondition of world historicaldevelopment and of life in general. It is first of all the phi-losopher's, Hegel's, consciousness that is ironic because heobserves the dialectical evolution of world history whichmoves on through contradictions and out of necessity de-stroys forms of life, so that other, higher forms can emerge.Hegel sensed ironyin this dialectical consideration accordingto which existing historical forms appear as both firmly re-spected and yet at the same time subject to necessary destruc-tion. In a second consideration, however, Hegel was, of


course, convinced that this entire process was governed byreason and meaning and that the world spirit moved on, de-spite all destruction, "exalted and glorified" (GWFH 12:98).This consciousness of a higher meaningfulness increased theirony on the part of the philosopher in a certain way,espe-cially since the agents on the world historical stage did notshare this overall view and quite often appeared duped by ahigher destiny.What about irony, however, if the conviction of an overrid-

ing meaningfulness is fading? The first to anticipate thisproblem was perhaps Benjamin Constant, who in 1790 toyedwith the idea "that God, i.e., the author of us and our sur-roundings, died before having finished his work ... thateverything now finds itself made for a goal which no longerexists, and that we especially feel destined for something ofwhich we ourselves have not the slightest idea.?» Constantadvanced this speculation in a letter which was not publisheduntil the beginning of our century and could hardly haveoccasioned the rise of topics such as world-historical irony,God's irony, and universal irony of the world as they nowdeveloped on an anti-Hegelian foundation and from the po-sition of God's death. It was Heine who articulated thesethemes in a deliberately ironic context. In his The Book LE

GRAND of 1826, for instance, he describes the world as the

22. Gustave Rudler-, La jeunesse de Benjamin Constant (Paris: Colin, 1909),377

dream of an intoxicated God who has stolen away surrepti-tiously from the carousing assembly of the Gods and lain downto sleepon a lonely star and does not know himself that he alsocreates everything he dreams, and dream images take shape,often madly lurid, but harmoniously sensible-the Iliad, Plato,the battle of Marathon, Moses, the Medicean Venus, the Strass-

92 Irony in theAncient and theModern World

burg cathedral, the French Revolution, Hegel, steamships, etc.are excellent individual ideas in this creativedivine dream. Yetit won't be long before the God will awakenand rub his sleepyeyes and smilel-and OUT world will have vanished into nothing,indeed, will have never existed. (SW 2:253)23

It is in this context that Heine uses terms such as "God'sirony" and the "irony of the world," and refers to the "ironyof the great poet of the world stage up there." He calls God the"Aristophanes of heaven':' the "author of the universe," whohas "admixed to allscenes of horror in this life a good dose ofmerriment," or he isof the opinion that "Our good Lord is stillyet,a better ironist than Mr. Tieck" (SW 2:424, 522, 282;3:427). Contrary to Hegel, Heine's notionof "God's irony" and"irony of the world" results from the disappearance of theconviction of reasonable order in this world and derives fromthat "great rupture through the world" whichhas "torn asun-der the world, right through the middle," but also goes rightthrough the center of the heart of the poet, which, like the"center of the world," has been "badly torn asunder" (SW3:304). "Once the world was whole," Heine says, "in antiquityand the Middle Ages,and in spite of all apparent fights therewas still a unity of the world, and there were whole poets. Wewillhonor these poetsand derive delight from them; yet everyimitation Of their wholeness is a lie-a lie discovered by everysane eye and then necessarily subject to disdain" (SW 3:304).

4It was Nietzsche, however, who drew the most radical con-

sequences from these discussions of a universal irony of theworld. In one instance he even referred to the term with its

23. Heinrich Heine, Semuiche Werke, ed. KlausBriegleb (Munich: Hanser,1971). References to this text are designated Sw.


Hegelian flavor, when he attempted to describe his own atti-tude in entirely classical terms, but then inadvertently addeda decidedly modern ingredient to it, saying: "amor fati [loveofmy fate] is my innermost nature. But this does not precludemy loveof irony, even world-historical irony" (FN 6:363; GM,324)." Yet Nietzsche usually avoided the term irony, whichfor his taste had too much romanticism in it, and preferredthe classical notion of dissimulation which he translated as"mask."In his unpublished fragments, for instance, Nietzscheregarded the "increases in dissimulation" as indices of an as-cending order of rank among beings: "In the organic world,dissimulation appears to be Jacking; in the organic, cunningbegins; plants are already masters in that. The highest humanbeings like Caesar, Napoleon (Stendhal's word about him),[are] the same as the higher races (Italians), the Greeks (Odys-seus) [in this regard]; slyness belongs to the essence in theelevation of the human being" (FN 8: 10, '59).

In the few instances where we come across the term inNietzsche's writings, irony has mostly a negative connotation.The early text On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life(1874),for instance, depicts irony as the attitude of "practical

24· Friedrich Nietzsche, Kriiisdu Suunenousgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli andMazzino Montinari, l5 vols. (Berlin: de Cruyter, Ig80). References to thisedition are designated FN. When possible, the following translations wereutilized: Friedrich Nietzsche, TheBirth ofTmgedy and the Case of Wagner, trans.Walter Kaufmann (New York, Random House, 1967); Friedrich Nietzsche,Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1986); Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J HollingdaJe(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Friedrich Nietzsche, TheGay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974);Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (NewYork: Random House, 1966); FriedrichNietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals:Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Ran-dom House, 1969); Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols: The Anti-Christ,trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin Books, 1968).

I I

pessimists," of historical scholarship in the sense of deja vu,without any regard for the future. The "ironic existence" andthe "type of ironicself-awareness" that cometo light here have"indeed a kind of inborn gray-hairedness" and manifestthemselves in "senileoccupations," those of "looking back, ofreckoning up, of closing accounts, of seeking consolationthrough remembering what has been, in short, historical cul-ture" (FN 1:303; UM, 101). Combined withsuch a retrospec-tive attitude wasthe premonition that the future had little instore in which one could really rejoice, and thus people livedon with the feeling:"If only the ground willgo on bearing us!And if it ceases to bear us, that too is very well." Nietzscheadds, "that is their feeling and thus they live an ironic exis-tence" (FN 1:302; UM, 100). He admits that everything hu-man requires the "ironic consideration" as far as its "genesis"is concerned, but this is precisely the reason why irony is sosuperfluous in the world for him (FN 2:210; HH, 120). Ha-bituation to irony spoilsthe character according to Nietzsche:"in the end one comesto resemble a snapping dog which haslearned how to laugh but forgotten how to bite" (FN 2: 260;HH, 146--47).Historically speaking, the origin of irony was the "age of

Socrates," that is, a life "among men of fatigued instincts,among the conservatives of ancient Athens who let themselvesgo-'toward hJppiness,' as they said; towardpleasure, as theyacted-and who allthe while still mouthed the ancient pomp-ous words to whichtheir lives no longer gavethem any right."In this world, irony was needed, Nietzsche said: "irony mayhave been required for greatness of soul, that Socratic sarcas-tic assurance of the old physician and plebeianwho cut ruth-lesslyinto his own flesh, as he did into the flesh and heart ofthe 'noble,' with a look that said clearly enough: 'Don't dis-semble in front of me! Here-we are equal'" (FN 5: 146; CE,



138).Irony was also operative in the modern age as a neces-sity for existence. Nietzsche found it in the "morality of me-diocrity," a morality that spoke of "measure and dignity andduty and neighbor love" whilepursuing only the continuationand propagation of its own type. Such a morality, he thought,"will find it difficult to conceal its irony" (FN 5:217; CE, 212).

Altogether, irony appeared to Nietzsche as one of the manyforms of life that represented decadence. Irony was theshoulder-shrugging on the part of the scholar "who seesnoth-ing in philosophy but a seriesof refuted systems and a prodigaleffort that 'does nobody any good'" (FN 5: 130; CE, 122).

Irony is that 'jesuitism of mediocrity which instinctivelyworks at the annihilation of the uncommon man and tries tobreak every bent bow or, preferably, to unbend it" (EN 5:134;CE, 126).The ironist is a "person who no longer curses andscolds," who no longer knows how to affirm and to negate(EN 5"35; CE, 126). Yes and no go against his taste. Instead,he likesto maintain a "noble abstinence" by repeating "Mon-taigne's 'What do I know?' or Socrates' 'I know that I knownothing!' Or: 'here I don't trust myself, here no door is opento me!'Or: 'Even if one wereopen, why enter right away?'Or:'What use are all rash hypotheses? Entertaining no hypothe-ses at all might well be part of good taste. Must you insist onimmediately straightening what is crooked? on fillingup ev-ery hole with oakum? Isn't there time? Doesn't time havetime?0 you devilish brood, are you incapable of waiting? Theuncertain has its charms, too; the sphinx, too, is a Circe;Circe, too, was a philosopher'" (EN 5:137-38; CE, 12g-30).As alwayswhen Nietzsche touches upon subjects of deca-

dence, however, his straightforward evaluations begin to shiftand soon let us notice his predilection for such phenomena.The last quote cited was taken from his aphorism on scepti-cism. This aphorism moves on to describe contemporary


France, which for Nietzsche "now really shows its culturalsuperiority over Europe by being the school and display of allcharms of scepticism," In similar fashion, France has alwayspossessed "a masterly skill at converting even the most calam-itous turns of its spirit into something attractive and seduc-tive" (FN 5"39; CE, 130-31). Decadence now appears in afavorable light. The aphorism, in turn, is only one of a wholeseries inspired by Baudelaire, French romanticism, and sym~bolism, all closely related to Nietzsche's treatment of irony."For that investigation, however, we have to transcend therestrictions set by the word irony.One good access point to the complex configuration of irony

in Nietzsche's writings. often presented as an art of living, anars vitae, a savoirvivre, is the theme of the mask as he unfoldedit in the sections "The Free Spirit" and "What Is Noble?" fromBeyond Good and Evil. That this topic relates to the classicalnotions of dissimulatio and eironeia is indicated by the impres-sion that the most prominent aphorism on the mask, no. 40 ofBeyond Good and Evil, seems to pick up the Socratic image ofthe Silenus, although the name of Socrates does not occur inthe text. Nietzsche says in this aphorism: "I could imagine thata human being who had to guard something precious andvulnerable might roll through life, rude and round as an oldgreen wine ca~kwith heavy hoops: the refinement of his shamewould want it that way" (FN 5:58; GE, 51).This contrast is oneof the main points in the discussion-as are shame, avoidanceof openn'lss, and nakedness-and stimulates the question of

25· See on this Karl Pestalozzi, "Nietzsches Baudelaire-Rezeption," in Nieu-sche-Studien 7 (1978): 158--78; and Mazzino Montinari, "Nietzsches Ausein-andersetzung mit der franzosischen Liter-atur des 19.jahrhunderts," in Nietz-sche Mute: Die Rezepuon semes Werkes nach 1968, Amherster Kolloquium 15, ed.Sigrid Bauschinger, Susan L. Cocalis, and Sara Lennox (Bern: Franke, 1988),'37-48.


whether "nothing less than the opposite" might be the "properdisguise for the shame of a god" (FN 5:57; GE, 50). Withregard to human actions, Nietzsche continues: "There areoccurrences of such a delicate nature that one does well tocover them up with some rudeness to conceal them; there areactionsofJove and extravagant generosity after whichnothingis more advisable than to take a stick and give any eyewitnessa sound thrashing: that would muddle his memory. Someknowhow to muddle and abuse their own memory in orderto have their revenge at least against this only witness:shameis inventive" (FN 5:57-58; GE, 50-51).Toward the end of the aphorism Nietzsche concentrates on

the communicative actions of such a "concealed" human be-ing who "instinctively needs speech for silence and for burialin silence." Such a person is "inexhaustible in his evasion ofcommunication" and obviously "wants and sees to it that amask of him roams in his placethrough the hearts and headsof his friends." Here we realize that the original referencepoints of semblance and truth, appearance and reality, con-cealment and shame are lost and cannot be reconstituted.Indeed, Nietzsche continues with regard to the desire for amaskon the part of the human being: "And supposing he didnot want it, he would still realizesome day that in spiteof thata maskof him is there-and that iswell. Every profound spiritneeds a mask: even more, around every profound spirit amask is growing continually, owing to the constantly false,namely shallow, interpretation of every word, every step, ev-ery sign of life he gives" (FN 5:58; GE, 51).Another form of masking and "one of the most refined

disguises" is Epicureanism or "acertain ostentatious courageof taste which takes suffering casually and resists everythingsad and profound" (FN 5:225-26; GE, 220-21). Other people"employ cheerfulness because they are misunderstood on its

98 Irony in the Ancient and the Modem World

account-they want to be misunderstood" (FN 5:226; CE,220). Science is another disguise which creates "a cheerfulappearance," and those who employ sciencedo so "becausebeing scientific suggests that a human being is superficial-they want to seduceothers to this false inference" (FN 5:226;CE, 220-21). Free and insolent minds want to conceal thatthey are broken hearts (Hamlet, Galiani), and sometimes"even foolishness is the mask for an unblessed all-too-certainknowledge." From all this follows for Nietzsche that it is "acharacteristic of more refined humanity to respect 'the mask'and not to indulge in psychology and curiosity in the wrongplace" (FN 5:226; CE, 221).As a "hermit," Nietzsche also did not believe that any phi-

losopher «ever expressed his real and ultimate opinions inbooks" and indeed doubted "whether a philosopher couldpossibly have 'ultimateand real' opinions" (FN 5:234; CE, 229).Perhaps such a philosopher writes books precisely to concealwhat he harbors, so that one wonders "whether behind everyone of his caves there is not, must not be, another deepercave-a more comprehensive, stranger, richer world beyondthe surface, an abysmallydeep ground behind every ground,under every attempt to furnish 'grounds'" (FN 5:234; CE,229)·The conclusionto which we are driven by such consid-erations appears to be: "Every philosophy also conceals a phi-losophy; every opinion is also a hide-out, every word also amask" (FN 5:234).Yet here again, it belongs to the marks ofa refined style of humanity and philosophizing to respect themask of the philosopher and not to indulge in skepticalthoughts such as: "There is something arbitrary in his stop-ping here to lookbackand to look around, in his not diggingdeeper here but laying his spade aside; there is also some-thing suspicious about it" (FN 5:234; CE, 229).Such a will to truth at any price belongs to a youthful state

•


of philosophizing which assaults "men and things in this man-ner with Yes and No." This is the "worst of tastes, the taste forthe unconditional," and one needs to be cruelly fooled andabused by this taste before one learns the "art of nuances;"puts "a little art into one's feelings." and "risks trying evenwhat is artificial-as the real artists of life do" (FN 5:49; CE,43)· "No," Nietzsche says in his preface to The Cay Science,"this bad taste, this will to truth, to truth 'at any price,' thisyouthful madness in the love of truth, have lost their charmfor us: for that we are too experienced, too serious, toomerry, too burned, too profound. We no longer believe thattruth remains truth when the veils are withdrawn; we havelived too much to believe this. Today we consider it a matterof decency not to wish to see everything naked, or to bepresent at everything, or to understand and 'know' every-thing" (FN 3:352; CE, 38).Wecould go on to show the relevance of the mask to Nietz-

sche's own existence, his life as a double, a Doppelganger (FN6:266; GM, 225), or to style: "long, difficult, hard, dangerousthoughts and the tempo of the gallop and the very best, mostcapricious humor" (FN 5:47; CE, 40-41). However, it alreadyseems sufficiently evident that ironic dissimulation, configu-rative thinking and writing, double-edged communication,and artistry of living and philosophizing were his response to

the universal irony of the world. l'iietzsche took up this topicwhen, in The Cay Science, he raised the question of "whatwould happen if everything upon which our ultimate convic-tions rest would become incredible, if nothing should prove tobe divine any more unless it were error, blindness, the lie-ifGod himself should prove to be our most enduring lie?" (FN3:577; CS, 283).

From this vantage point. Nietzsche was not certain whether"wanting not to allow oneself to be deceived" was really "less


harmful, less dangerous, less calamitous" than allowing one-self to be deceived,"whether the greater advantage is on theside of the unconditionallymistrustful or the unconditionallytrusting" (FN 3:575-76; GS, 280--81). His answer to this di-lemma was the admonition: "Let us be on our guard!" as hedeveloped it in an aphorism with the same title. This apho-rism takes its pointof departure from the realization that the"total character of the world, however, is in all eternitychaos-in the sensenot of a lack of necessitybut of a lack oforder, arrangement, form, beauty, wisdom, and whateverother names there are for our aesthetic anthropomorphisms"(FN 3:468; GS, 168). To assume a "world of truth" that issupposed to have "its equivalent and its measure in humanthought and human valuations" and couldbe "mastered com-pletely and forever with the aid of our square little reason"was for Nietzsche "crudity and naivete, assuming that it is notmental illness, an idiocy"(FN 3:625; GS, 335). Such a world is"not a fact, but an imaginative fabrication and elaboration ona sum of rpeagerobservations; such a world is 'in flux' assomething becoming,but as an ever alternating falsity whichwill never approximate truth: because-there is no 'truth"(FN 12: 114)· To assume, however, that Nietzsche had re-duced this "wholemarvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguityof existence" (FN 3:373; GS, 76) to a monisticprinciple suchas the will to poweror to the complementary interrelationshipof will to power and eternal recurrence would certainly fanshort of his rich deployment of the universal irony of theworld.

5It is indeed a widely shared opinion, even among his ene-

mies, that Nietzschewas the "turntable" for the postmodern

.


period. moving around the course and direction of modernintellectual history. The main evidence for this view is hisradicalized critique of reason, truth, morality, religion, and allthe ordering principles on which Western thought relied.This crucial position can just as well be attributed to Nietz-sche's manner of writing, his ironic affiliation of truth andillusion, mask and authenticity, life and decadence. Severalmodern authors borrowed their irony directly from Nietzscheand admitted this frankly. We have only to think of AndreGide, Thomas Mann, and Robert Musil. Thomas Mannopenly declared that the event which Nietzsche constituted inhis life bears the single name of"irony."26 In spite of the closeproximity to Nietzsche among the writers who would considerthemselves as candidates for postmodernism, however, theylack such a clear alliance with irony. This reluctance aboutirony and avoidance of the word could already be noticed inNietzsche and in his case certainly had something to do withthe anti-romantic campaign he believed himself to be con-ducting. In postrnodernist writing, however, the shunning ofirony seems to be related to the prominent position of ironyin the modern intellectual world, its concomitant relationshipto reason, and its mitigating function amidst a general ratio-nalism. Irony seems to have compromised itself through thisalliance and therefore appears unfit for describing the post-modern mood, although there is perhaps no better word forthis complex phenomenon.

Paul de Man seems to be the only exception to this attitude.He described his theory of literature clearly in terms of ironyand came to a position which equated irony with any type oftext. De Man never considered himself a postmodern critic,

26. Thomas Mann. Reflections ufa Nonpolitical Man, trans. Walter D. Morris(New York: Ungar, 1983), 13.

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I

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however, but this can perhaps be attributed to the fact thatthis term was not yet in vogue at the time of his writing orsimply explained by the observation that hardly any writerwould apply this term to himself. Yet the entire structure ofde Man's thought, especially his convictionsabout the figura-tive character of language and the resulting polysemy ofmeaning in every human expression, perfectly qualifies himfor such a status, not to speak of the application of his ideasby his students, whose techniques of "undoing a reading" or"letting the text fall back upon itself" have become stereo-types of postmodern criticism.

One reason for the prominence of irony in de Man's writ-ings may simply havebeen the new criticism.Just as irony hadbeen the "principle of structure" in literary works for some ofthe new critics (e.g.,Cleanth Brooks), irony was for de Manthe principle of disrupture in a literary text.Whereas the newcriticism saw irony, ambiguity, and paradox as forging to-gether the multiplicity and variety of a poetic work to anorganic whole of integrality, harmony, complete identity withitself, and self-presence, de Man conceived of irony in termsof a discrepancy between sign and meaning, a lack of coher-ence among the parts of a work, a self-destructive ability onthe part of literature to articulate its own fictionality, and aninability to escapelfrom a situation that has become unbear-able. Irony practicallycoincides with his notion of deconstruc-tion, his interpretative techniques according to the mottos ofBlindness and Insight and Allegories of Reading.De Man also delved into the historical evolution of irony as

a characteristic of modern consciousness from FriedrichSchlegel to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche with its French corre-spondence in Baudelaire's On the Essence of Laughter. Alreadyin the essay on "The Rhetoric of Temporality" (1969), de Mancomes close to his later version of "radicalirony" ("you can't


be a 'little bit ironic'")« when he describes the "absoluteirony" which, in his opinion, all these authors have ap-proached in terms of a consciousness of madness, a conscious-ness of non-consciousness, the end of consciousness.w Thisirony is no longer a trope, not even "the trope of tropes," hutthe innermost essence of literature for de Man: a rupture, aninterruption, a disruption of language which makes it impos-sible for the author to master his text and for the reader toregister unambiguous reading protocols. The problems withthis concept of irony are that it brings us back to the class-rooms of literary criticism and rhetoric and that it is exclu-sively preoccupied with the gloomy sides of writing in thesense of restriction, inhibition, and incapability. De Man'sirony practically coincides with every linguistic articulationand is, so to speak, an involuntary by-product of language.For Schlegel too, irony was involuntary, yet at the same limeabsolutely deliberate and conscious (FS 2:160; LF, '55). Inde Man's conception, irony loses all ambiguity in the sense ofdeliberate structuring on the part of the author and in thisdull generality even appears to be diffused.The heart of the problem is certainly that it is practically

impossible to write about post-Nietzschean irony without be-ing too narrow, or without openly contradicting oneself if oneattempts to move beyond the limits of a simple yes or no. Asin the case of Nietzsche, this type of irony is best conveyed inaction, through performance, a kind of writing which in themood of a joyful wisdom employs the logic of play and therules of a game. This is perhaps best accomplished in the

27- Robert Moynihan, "Interview with Paul de Man: Introduction byJ. HillisMiller," Yale Review 73 (lg83-84-): 579·28. Paul de Man, "The Rhetoric of Temporality," in Blindness and Insight,

ad ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 216.

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writings of Jacques Derrida. His texts, from this formal pointof view, appear as a congenial contemporary correspondenceto the tradition of irony in the modern period. Derrida tooavoids the word irony, at least he does not accord any prom-inence to it in his writings. The closest we get to his concept ofirony is perhaps in his discussion of the "dissimulation of thewoven texture" at the beginning of Plato', Pharmacy. "A text isnot a text," Derrida says in that instance, "unless it hides fromthe first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composi-tion and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover,forever imperceptible. Its laws and rules are not, however,harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that theycan never be booked, in the present, into anything that couldrigorously be called a perccption.t'-s The text among Derr-i-da's writings, however, that could be considered the mostdirect continuation of the discourse of irony in the style of ourtime and that unfolds a structure similar to that of universalirony in previous discussions, is his essay on Differance of1968.30In contrast to Schlegel's and Hegel's dialectical style of af-

firmation and negation and Nietzsche's vitalistic antagonismof life and decadence, this text is cast in the medium of struc-turalism, of formal, differential, semiological functioning,and the concept of difference is directly derived from thatformal tradition. By combining this discourse with the meta-physical or antimetaphysical discourses of Nietzsche, Freud,and Heidegger, Derrida gives the semiological discussion of

aq. Jacques Derrida, Plato's Pharmacy, in Dissemnuuion; trans. BarbaraJohnson (Chicago: The Universityof Chicago Press, Ig81), 6g.go. Jacques Den-ida, "Differance," in Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays

on Husseri's Theory oJSigns, trans. David B. Allison and Newton Garver (Evan-ston: Northwestern UniversityPress, 1973), 12g-60. References to this textare designated D.

hony in the Ancient and the Modern World 105

"difference" new momentum. Taken in this broad sense,however, Derrida's notion of difference seems to suggest aphilosophical counterposition to the metaphysics of presenceand identity as it has dominated Western thought since itsorigin. Yet such an approach would fundamentally miscon-strue difference and differential thinking from the outset asan alternative to presence, as a mere upsetting of the previoussystem,or simply as an opposition to it. Such a relationship ofdifference to presence and identity would finally remainwithin"the realm of the systemand only create a new identityand presence in reverse of the former. The task is rather toexhibit difference not as an opponent but as an inhabitant ofany structure of identity, not as the atomization but as thefunctioning of structure, not as a deprivation or suspension ofmeaning but as the mode of existence of meaning. A similarmodel of thought can be seen in the principle of negativityinherently operative in Hegelian dialectic or in Schlegel'sirony. To appreciate fully the functioning of all such opera-tions, one has to leave behind the negative connotations thatour language unavoidably attributes to phenomena such asnegativity and difference in relationship to presence andidentity, as well as any chronological or teleological type ofrelationship in the sense of prior and posterior among them.Derrida's thinking about difference is directly inspired by

Saussure's theory of language. Language, in Saussure's con-ception, is a system of signs in which the relationship of thesignstowhat they signify-for example, of words to things, ofsounds to ideas-is not natural, "ontic," or in any other wayunavoidable, but "arbitrary." The signs of language, in otherwords, are not autonomous entities in themselves, but ele-ments of a system, and they are not positively determinedthrough their content, but negatively through their differ-encesfrom other elements of the system. They are that which

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the others are not. Language, in this regard, is not a system ofidentities, but one of differences. This principle of a deter-mination through differences became the decisive aspect offormal and differential functioning in semiotics and the guid-ing principle of modern structuralism. For Derrida, however,these modern attempts to think of the mere "structurality ofstructure" as a structure simply in its function and withoutanything outside of it did not fully accomplish their goal andeventually took recourse to an extrastructural ground onwhich one centered the display of differences." Saussure, forinstance, gave the expressive substance, the human voice, aprivileged position, and Levi-Strauss assigned archaic andnatural societies a special status. In a more general way, wecan see the entire course of occidental metaphysics as succes-sive performances of centering structures and take the vari-ous names given to these centers as chapters in the history ofmetaphysics: the world of ideas, God, transcendental con-sciousness, and so on (SSP, 279-80). Derrida's own attemptcould indeed be described, at least partly, as an avoidance ofsuch grounding or as thinking of structure purely as a func-tion, an operation, a display of difference in an infinite ex-change of signs or in an unrestricted economy.

The notion of difference seems to point in this direction,and deconstructive enterprises such as the decentering ofstructures, t~e upsetting of taxonomies, or the reversal ofmeaning and signification appear to exemplify this intention.Yet Derrida's inspirations are by no means only structuralistones and have aside from "spacing" and "temporalizing" a

31. See on this Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Dis-course of the Human Sciences,"in Writing and Diffenmce, trans. Alan Bass(Chicago:The Universityof Chicago Press, 1978), 278-g4. References to thistext are designated SSP.

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Irony in the Ancieniand the Modem World 107

number of distancing and dissociating techniques differenti-ating his attempt from the conception of a closed, controlla-ble, systematized, or "structured" set of signs. To emphasizethis multiple thinking of difference, Derrida mentions rightat the beginning of his essay on Difference and several timesduring the course of the text that difference is a theme inwhich the "most characteristic feature of our 'epoch" (D,135-36) can be thought out, in which we can see "the junc-ture-rather than the summation-of what has been mostdecisively inscribed in the thought of what is convenientlycalled our 'epoch'" (D, 130). He also says that our "epoch" canbe characterized "as the delimitation of ontology (of pres-ence)" (D, 153). As instances of this thinking in terms of dif-ference, Derrida cites besides "Saussure's principle of semio-logical difference": the "difference of forces in Nietzsche,"the "possibility of facilitation [frayage, Bahnung], impressionand delayed effect in Freud," the "irreducibility of the traceof the other in Levinas," and the "ontic-on tologiral differencein Heidegger" (D, 153). These names and topics indicate thatthe transgression of the occidental metaphysics of presence isnot only at work in the new linguistics and semiotics of struc-turalism, but in the historical, philosophical, and psychoana-lytical discourses of our time as well and that this transgres-sion, this overcoming of the constrictions of the tradition,might very well be considered the mark of our epoch.In his essay on Levi-Strauss of about the same time (1966),

Derrida laid out a similar image of the tendency of the epochas a moving away from a centering ground, the unifying andordering principle of traditional metaphysics. If we askedwhen this decentering occurred, Derrida argues in that text,it would be somewhat naive to refer to a particular "event," adoctrine, or an author as the most visible mark of this break,because this Occurrence is no doubt part of the totality of an

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108 hony in theAncient and the Modern World

era, perhaps our own, but has "always already" proclaimeditself and begun to work. Nevertheless, if we still insisted onchoosing a few names, just as an indication, and recalled"those authors in whose discourse this occurrence has keptmost closely to its most radical formulation," we doubtlesslywould come to the followingthree names.Wewould cite Nietz-sche's "critique of metaphysics, the critique of the concepts ofBeing and truth, for which were substituted the concepts ofplay, interpretation, and sign (sign without present truth)."Second, we would have to' cite Freud's "critique of self-pres-ence, that is, the critique of consciousness, of the subject. ofself-identity and of self-proximity or self-possession." Andthird, we would citeHeidegger's "destruction of metaphysics,of onto-theology, of the determination of Being as presence"(SSP, 280).

Derrrda's notion of a surpassing of metaphysics, however,requires the same cautionary attitude as his structuralist con-cept of difference in relationship to presenceand identity andis in the' last analysisonly another expression of the samephenomenon, but in historical formulation. This surpassingor transformation of metaphysics rests on subtle distinctionsof closure and end. What is comprised in the transgression ofa closure-end of metaphysics, end of philosophy, end ofman-can endure indefinitely. The transgression in the senseof closure does not land or arrive in a beyondof metaphysics,but in the grasp of metaphysics can go on endlessly, just aswith regard to the beginning of this movement, we have no-ticed that it has "alwaysalready" proclaimed itself and begunto work.

Vet beyond the structuralist model of difference in relationto identity and the historical image of a transgression of themetaphysics of presence, there is still a third way of tracingout difference, which relates to the semantic aspects of signi-

hany in the Ancientand theModern World 109

fying differential functions in language, in philosophical dis-course, and in writing. Strictly speaking, we are moving hereinto a zone which our language actually does not permit us toarticulate. Almost all of the words and concepts used to de-scribe difference, and especiallysuch terms as interval, divid-ing, retention. and pretention, rest on the metaphysics ofidentity and self-presence which Derrida attempts to dislo-cate, to decenter, and to deconstruct. Difference thereby ap-pears to be the most stringent example of the "impossibilityand necessity of complete communication" which Schlegellisted among the characteristics of irony. This linguistic in-disposition, if we call it provisionally by this negative name, isfor Derrida only another sign of difference. Language,looked at from this perspective, is not derived from a speak-ing subject and is not a determinable function of this subject,but this subject is inscribed in language, is a function of lan-guage, conforms to the deployment of difference, and is partof the game.

Derrida is fully conscious that he is caught up in a circle asfar as the task of designating difference is concerned and thathe will never be able to transcend the thinking of presenceand identity because his language will not permit him to dothat. Yet he considers it as absurd to renounce the concepts ofmetaphysics if one is engaged in shaking metaphysics. "Wehave no language-no syntax and no lexicon-which is for-eign to this history." Derrida says: "we can pronounce not asingle deconstructive proposition which has not already hadto slipinto the form, the logic,and the implicit postulations ofprecisely what it seeks to contest." We could not even pro-nounce the word "sign" without maintaining OUf complicitywith metaphysics because sign always means "sign of" andthereby reestablishes the metaphysics of presence it wants toupset. These concepts are by no means isolated elements or


independent atoms but integrated with a syntax and a system.Borrowing one of them conjures up the entirety of metaphys-ics (SSP, 280-81). This is the position ofa bind, a double bind,requiring a double play, a double gesticulation. And it is withthese techniques that Derrida's writings accomplish a contin-uation and reformulationof irony in the modern discourse.

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4Irony and Self-Referentiality

In general, and independent of any specification accordingto historical time, the most crucial issues of irony reside in thearea of self-conscious saying and writing and concern theproblems of linguistic articulation, communication, and un-derstanding in regard to truth. The ironic manner of expres-sion can be described as attempting to transcend the restric-tions of normal discourse and straightforward speech bymaking the ineffable articulate, at least indirectly, through agreat number of verbal strategies, and accomplishing whatlies beyond the reach of direct communication. This attitude,however, automatically constitutes an offense to common rea-son and understanding-an offense not necessarily intendedby the ironist but somehow involuntarily connected with hisclaim and almost regularly taken as such by the public.Socrateswas the first example for that constellation.

The implicit critique of reason and rationality in ironiccommunication likewise provoked very severe criticism in themodern age. Hegel not only criticized irony as vanity anddestructiveness, but even mobilized the apocalypse to depictthis attitude as the final incarnation of evil, the beast from theabyss.The opposition to Nietzscheis operative not somuch incriticaland polemical workswritten against his philosophy asin decisive reductions of his thought, in eliminating the richambiguities and infinite reflection from his text, in levelingout his multiple style to that of a habitual philosopher, the"last metaphysician," who professed square doctrines such asthe will.topower as the ultimate result of his thinking. In thecase of Derrida, the reaction is not so much manifest in a

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practice-oriented Marxist type of critique as in the herme-neutic indignation about the loss of continuity, agreementacross borders, and unambiguous consent among discussionpartners which is replaced by a discontinuous, fragmentary,and ironic mode of communication.The particular reproach in which this critique is phrased is

that of a performative self-referential contradiction necessar-ily implied in any totalized critique of reason and philosophy:one cannot criticize reason arid philosophy in an absolutemanner without pulling away the basis from underneath thiscritique. without disavowing this critique, which is itself anexpression of reason and rationality. As one easily realizes,this reproach is directed not only against the deconstructivemanner of criticizing reason and metaphysics but against theentire sceptical-ironical discourse of modernity as well. Char-acteristically enough, the ironic discourse itself, because of itshighly self-reflective character, practices critical, deprecatingobservations'of a self-referential nature as a constantly recur-ring technique. It has a particular predilection for toying withantinomies and self-contradictions imposed upon us by ourbeing inscribed in language, by the subterranean determina-tion imposed upon us through language. A self-critical aware-ness of our linguistic embeddedness has indeed been a char-acteristic mark 4£ modernity since the romantic age andreached a new intensity with Nietzsche.' The three authorschosen as representatives of this discourse, Schlegel, Nietz-sche, and Derrida, thematize the self-referential implicationsof their irony in their own text and through such reflections

1. See on this Constantin Behler, "Humboldt's 'radikale Reflexion tiberdie Sprache' im Lichteder Foucauhschen Diskursanalyse,"in Deutsche Viertel-jahresschrift 63 (1989), 1-24; Josef Simon, "Grammatik und Wahrheit,"Nietzsche-Studien 1 (1972): \-27.

Irony and Self-Referentiality

accomplish that which Schlegel circumscribed as the "irony ofirony" (FS 2:369).' After having deduced, with all possiblerigor, the will to power as the ultimate reality, Nietzsche asksmockingly, "Supposing that this is only an interpretation-and you will be eager enough to make this objection?-well,so much the better" (FN 5:37; CE, 30-31) .s Derrida's reflec-tions on an involuntary complicity of deconstruction withmetaphysics have to be seen from a similar perspective.

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Turning to difference and Derrida's essay on Difftrance4more specifically, we should first of all notice that the verb todiffer has two distinct meanings in French (differer) as well asin Latin (differre)-to differ and to defer-and can therefore

2. Friedrich Schlegel, Kritische Ausgabe seiner Werke, ed. Ernst Behler withthe collaboration of Jean-Jacques Anstett, Hans Eichner, and other special-ists, 35 vols. (Paderborn-Munchen: Schoningh, 1958-). References lO thisedition are designated FS. Translations are taken, when available, fromFriedrich Schlegel, Lucinde and the Fragments, trans. Peter Firchow(Minne-apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 197I), designated FS.3· Friedrich Nietzsche, Kruisdu Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and

MazainoMontinari, 15 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1980). References to thisedition are designated FN. When possible, the following translations wereutilized:Friedrich Nietzsche, The BirUIa/Tragedy and the Case of Wagner, trans.Walter Kaufmann (New York, Random House, 1967); Friedrich Nietzsche,Untim.ely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1986); Friedrich Nietzsche,Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Friedrich Nietzsche, TheGay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1974);Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyorui Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufmann (NewYork: Random House, 1966); Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals:Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (NewYork: Ran-dom House, 1969); Friedrich Nietzsche,Twilight of the Idols: The Anti-Christ,trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin Books, 1968).4· Jacques Den-ida, "Differance," in Jacques Derrida, Speech and Phenom-

ena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison andNewton Garver (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 12g--60.References to this text are designated D.


indicate difference in two basically distinct connotations: "Onthe one hand, it indicates difference as distinction. inequality,or discernibility; on the other, it expresses the interposition ofdelay, the interval of a spacing and te>nporalizingthat puts offuntil 'later' what is presently denied, the possible that is pres-ently impossible" (D, 129). Using the letter a from the presentparticiple of "differante," Derrida builds a noun with a visible,yet inaudible spelling error, "diffirance," that is supposed torefer to differing in both senses "as spacingltemporalizingand as a movement that structures every dissociation," that is,to difference as postponement and to difference as distinction(D, 129-30, 136-37). The a in the title and the followingusage of the monstrous word is therefore no printing error,but a deliberate infusion by Derrida to make difference differmore from itself than it normally does (D, 129).

Such a creation, however, is "neither a word nor a concept"(D, 130). Attempting to sketch out the nature of differanceand its multiple structure, we discover that its essence "cannotbe exposed," since we can expose only that which at a certainmoment can be represented as present, as "the truth of apresent or the presence of a present" (D, 134). Differance.however, has "neither existence nor essence" and cannot evenbe defined in the sense of negative theology, indeed it is "ir-reducible to every ontological or theological-onto-theologi-cal-reappropriation" and instead "opens up the very spacein which onto-theology-philosophy-produces its systemand history" (D, 134-35). Given the a-logical structure of dif-ferance, the phenomenon also does not permit any order ofdiscourse, of procedure, in developing its content in a rea-sonable sequence and no longer allows "the line of logico-philosophical speech," not even that of "logico-empiricalspeech." What remains beyond these alternatives of a regularphilosophical approach, however, is the activity of play, and


one way of outlining the potentialities of differance is indeedthrough insisting on the semiotic dimensions in the notion ofplay.

In classical semiotics the playful character in the function-ing of signs is extinguished by the "authority of presence."Signs are mere substitutes for things and thereby of a second-ary and provisional character. The sign is secondary, since itis "second after an original and lost presence," and provi-sional "with respect to its final and missing presence" (D, 138).On the basis of Saussure's new linguistics. however, Derridacan say: "Every concept is necessarily and essentially inscribedin a chain or a system, within which it refers to another and to

other concepts, by the systematic play of differences" (D, '40).

Differance, in this regard, is the play of differences, the"movement of play." The effects in this play or the produc-tions of it are not the result of a "subject or substance, a thingin general, or a being that is somewhere present and itselfescapes the play of difference." They are rather "traces" thatcannot be taken out of their context, cannot be isolated fromthe interplay of differance (D, 14').When these effects appear "on the stage of presence," they

are always related to something other than themselves. Suchan effect, such a trace "retains the mark of a past element andalready lets itself be hollowed out by the mark of its relationto a future element" (D, 142). Its presence is therefore con-stituted in relation "to what it is not, to what it absolutely isnot" (D, 142-43). In order to take full cognizance of the in-terplay of differences at work here, we should not miscon-strue past and future as a "modified present" nor overlookthe "interval" separating the present from the past as well asfrom the future. This interval also divides "the present initself" and divides "along with the present, everything thatcan be conceived on its basis, that is, every being-in partie-

Irony and Self-Referentiaiity

ular, for our metaphysicallanguage, the substance or subject"(D, 143). In brief, the present has to be seen, in the perspec-tive of differance, "as a 'primordial' and irreducibly nonsim-ple, and therefore in the strict sense, non primordial synthesisof traces, retentions, and protensions" (D, 143). Differance inno case can be derived "from a being-present, one capable ofbeing something, a force, a state, or power in the world, towhich we could give all kinds of names: a what, or beingpresent as a subject, a who" (D, 145).

We thus come to a notion of differance without origin.without archil (D, 145-46). At an earlier point,we had realizedthat according to the requirements of differance, the relation-ship of originality and derivation cannot be assumed betweenthe subject and its language, that language isnot a function ofthe speaking subject,and that the subject israther inscribed inlanguage. This elimination of origin, of archil has to be main-tained with regard to everything in semiologyand down toevery concept of sign "that retains any metaphysical presup-positions incompatiblewith the theme of differance" (D, 146).Vet the question remains whether the subject, before it en-

ters the sphere of differences through speaking and signify-ing, does not enjoy a presence and self-presence "in a silentand intuitive

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consciousness" (D. 146). Consciousness. prior tospeech and signs, then would grant us "self-presence, a self-perception of presence," the status of a "living present" (D,147)· "This privilege,"Derrida says, "is the ether of metaphys-ics, the very element of our thought insofar as it is caught upin the language of metaphysics." In our century, however, itwasHusser! who,withthe project of transcendental phenom-enology, focused on this topic most directly and investigatedthe structures of pure consciousness most rigorously. In orderto deconstruct this position, one would have to show thatpresence and specificallyconsciousness ("the being-next-to-


itselfof consciousness") are definitely not the "absolutely ma-trical form of being" but a "determination," an "effect," thatis,an effect within a system"whichis no longerthat of presencebut that of differance.' Derrida adds to the formulation of thistask that the system of presence is so tight that merely todesignate this proposal "is to continue to operate according tothe vocabulary of that very thing to be de-limited" (D, 147).

Here one should notice, however, that Derrida himself at-tempted to carry out this task in an early investigation partic-ularly devoted to Husserl, transcendental phenomenology,and pure consciousness.s The main point in Derrida's owncritique of Husserl is that the basic principle of transcendentalphenomenology, that is, spaceless and timeless self-represen-tation of meaning in a "living present," is shipwrecked becauseof the figurative character of language, the "stream of con-sciousness"and "inner time," and all the relationships to anon-present implied in these experiences: that of a non-iden-tity inscribed into the present as well as that of death writteninto life. We should add, however, that the conception of atranscendental consciousness independent of language, time,and the "life world" had become highly problematical forHusserl himself. Indeed, one major thrust in Derrida's critiqueof Husserl is to point out discrepancies between the old meta-physical dream of pure self-presence and the actual resultsobtained through Husser!'s phenomenological investigations.

At this point in mapping out differance, Derrida leaves thesemiologicaldiscourse and turns to Nietzsche and Freud who"questioned the self-assured attitude of consciousness" and intheir own ways came to the conception of differance in regardto consciousness through completely different types of philo-

5· La voix et le phenOTT1£,!e of 1967. See the translation listed in footnote 4,above.

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sophical argumentation (D, 148). Nietzscheaccomplished thisturn through his "activeinterpretation" of the "evasions andruses of anything disguised," his replacement of "truth as apresentation of the thing itself in its presence"by "an incessantdeciphering" (D, 149).The result of Nietzsche'sinterminabledeciphering or infinite interpretation is "a cipher withouttruth, or at least a systemof ciphers that is not dominated bytruth values" (D, 149)·Differance, in the caseof Nietzsche, isthe" 'active' (in movement)discord of the different forces andof the differences between forces which Nietzscheopposes tothe entire system of metaphysical grammar, wherever thatsystem controls culture, philosophy, and science" (D, 149).With Freud, the questioning of che primacyof presence as

consciousness assumes the particular twistof a "questioning ofthe authority of consciousness." The two different meaningsof difference embodied in differance, difference as distinctionand as delay, are "tied together in Freudian theory" as isobvious in, Freud's concepts of trace, facilitation. breaching,memory, inscription, uncensored talking, and deferring (D,149-50). Derrida concentrates on the particular notion ofdetour (Aufschub) asFreud developed it in hisBeyand the Plea-Sure Principle and according to which the ego's instinct of self-preservation motivatesa momentary replacement of the plea-sure principle oy the reality principle. "This latter principle,"Freud argues, "does not abandon the intention of ultimatelyobtaining pleasure, but it nevertheless demands and carriesinto effect the postponement of satisfaction, the abandonmentof a number of possibilitiesof gaining satisfaction and thetemporary toleration of unpleasure as a step on the long in-direct road (Aufschub) to pleasure" (D, 150)6Wecan of course

6. Sigmund Freud, "Jenseitsdes Lustprinzips," in Sigmund Freud, Studi-enausgabe (Frankfurt: FischerTaschenbuch, 1982). vol. 3, 219-20.


alsoseethe model of delay, of postponement, in the movementof life protecting itself through the deferment of death, or inthe activity of memory, even in the operation of culture, andcome to similar manifestations of differance in a Freudiancontext on the basis of Freud's structural model of the psyche.

Yet under no circumstances should we interpret Freud'seconomic movement of differance in the sense of Hegeliandialectics according to which the deferred presence will al-ways be recovered. and which "amounts to an investment thatonly temporarily and without any loss delays the presentationof presence" (D, 151). Hegel's system is one of a "restrictedeconomy" that has "nothing to do with an unrestricted ex-penditure, with death. with being exposed to nonsense,"whereas the unreserved thinking of differance in the style ofFreud is a "game where whoever loses wins and where onewins and loses at the same time" (D, 151). Freud's unconsciousis not "a hidden, virtual, and potential self-presence," not "amandating subject" that sits somewhere, not "a simple dialec-tical complication of the present," but "radical alterity," thatis. "a 'past' that has never been nor will ever be present" and"where 'future' wiU never be produced or reproduced in theform of presence" (D, 152).

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Being and beings. As Heidegger had maintained since theappearance of Being and Time (1927), the distinction betweenBeing, as the ground of all beings, and the varietyof beings hadbeen the most general and universal presupposition of occi-dental metaphysics, yet was never questioned in its assump-tions. All the metaphysicaledifices of Western thought hadbeen built on this foundation, but it wasso shaky, accordingto Heidegger, that all buildings resting on it appeared to bebrittle. The most questionable aspect of this ontological dif-ference between Beingand beings for Heidegger was that thenotion of Being resulting from this difference necessarily re-mains so vague and abstract that only the mostgeneral thingscan be predicated about Being (HN 4"57).7 Being, in otherwords, instead of being thought, became excluded from ourthinking and wasinvolved in a process of oblivion and for-gotten ness of suchboundless nature "that the very forgotten-ness is sucked into its own vortex" (HN 4"93).This is for Heidegger the most crucial event in the Occi-

dent, in the face of which he expressed his bewildermentthroughout his long writing career in an ever-varying fash-ion: "In the historyof Western thought, from its inception,the Being of beingshas indeed been thought, but the truth ofBeing as Being remains unthought; not only is such truthdenied I as possible experience for thinking, but Westernthought, as metaphysics,expressly though unwittingly con-ceals the occurrence of this refusal" (HN 3,,8g-g0). Ifwe didnot conceal this refusal, we would have to admit that thefoundations on whichwe continue to build one form of meta-physics after another "are no foundation at all" (HN 40163).

7· Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, trans. David Farrell Krell and others,4 vols. (San Francisco: Harper and Row. 1979-85). References to this text aredesignated HN.

Irony and Self-Referentiatity

Closelyconnected with this emphasis on the "ontological dif-ference" in Western thought is for Heidegger the task of acritical removal of all the compounds of thought resultingfrom it. This project is first outlined in Being and Time with thetitle of a "phenomenological destruction of the history of on-tology," a destruction of metaphysics.s In this attempt, Hei-degger's project is directly related to Derrida's deconstructionof metaphysics. In both cases,the critique of metaphysicsdoesnot at all imply the sense of a destruction and abolition of ourtradition, but of an unbuilding, a taking apart and layingbareof the foundations upon which our thought is erected.Derrida repeatedly paid tribute to Heidegger for his inno-

vation in critical thought about metaphysics and emphasizedthat his own endeavor would not have been possible "withoutthe opening of Heidegger's questions," and first of all, not"without the attention to what Heidegger calls the differencebetween Being and beings, the ontico-ontological differencesuch as, in a way, it remains unthought by philosophy." Be-cause of his proximity to the Heideggerian critique of meta-physics,however, Derrida nevertheless attempted "to locate inHeidegger's text-which, no more than any other, is not ho-mogeneous, continuous, everywhere equal to the greatestforce and to all the consequences of its questions-the signs ofa belonging to metaphysics, or to what he calls ontotheology."And among these "holds" of metaphysics over Heidegger, "theultimate determination of difference as the ontico-ontologicaldifference" appeared to Derrida "in a strange way, to be in thegrasp of metaphysics.?s

8. Martin Heidegger, Sein u.nd Zeit. 15111 Edition with the Author'sMarginalNotes (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1979), 19-27·

g. Jacques Den-ida, "Implications," in Positions, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago:The University of Chicago Press, Ig81), 9-10.

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To expose thiscrucial aspect in the critique of metaphysicsmore fully, weshould add that Heidegger developed the no-tion of an oblivion, a forgottenness of being in two basicforms, structural and historical. The first is carried out fromthe basis of phenomenology, of transcendental hermeneutics,and consists in the "analysis of existence" (Dasein) whichmarks the early work, especially Being and Time. This planchanged, however, and led to a turning point (Kehre) inHeidegger's thought because he progressively realized thatphenomenology, transcendentalism, and hermeneutics them-selves belong to "the history of ontology and are thus by nomeans capable of 'destroying' or undoing that history."» Thisis why the projectof a destruction of metaphysics was carriedout in terms of what Heidegger called a history of Being asmetaphysics. The history of Being as metaphysics seemed topermit a position outside of history, a position without self-referentiality. Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche are the mostdecisive texts on this theme.From this point of view, the designation of Being as the

truth of beings is "essentially historical" and "always demandsa humankind through which it is enjoyed, grounded, com-municated, and thus safeguarded" (HN 3,,87). This is notbecause human history proceeds during the course of time,nor because of the actively developing and progressive char-acter in the h1istoryof mankind, its movement in the sense ofan enlightened emancipation, but because "a humankind ineach case acceptsthe decision regarding itsallotted manner ofbeing in the midstof the truth of beings," because a human-kind "is transposed (sent) into metaphysics," and because"metaphysics alone is able to ground an epoch insofar as it

10. Martin Heidegger, The End of Philosophy, trans.with an introduction byJoan Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), ix.


establishes and maintains a humankind in a truth concerningbeings as such and as a whole" (HN 3: 187). The historicaloccurrence of truth always requires from within such a hu-mankind a particular thinker (Plato,Descartes, Leibniz,Kant,Hegel, Nietzsche) who is called upon, accepts truth's preser-vation, and continues the way in which "the unitary essence ofmetaphysics unfolds and reconstitutes itself again and again"(HN 3:187-88). As is obvious, it is this later theme of a historyof heing that links Heidegger with the postmodern end-of-philosophy discussion most directly. Derrida's image ofHeidegger, however, attempts to keep the multifaceted char-acter and always ambiguous attitude of the entire Heidegge-rian discourse in mind.

For the present purpose it willsuffice to depict withonly afew strokes the main stations in Heidegger's history of Beingas metaphysics.At the beginning of Western history withPar-menides, for example, the auxiliary verb "to be" (einai) be-came a noun, "Being" (to einai), and thereby a concept. The

'"most decisivestep in this development occurred when Platodistinguished this Being as the ground and fou ndation of allbeings. Plato'sdistinction of the Being of beings (ontos on, Seindes Seienden) is precisely the ontological difference whichHeidegger considers as crucial for the course of occidentalmetaphysics. All its implications in the sense of a prior and alater, a primary and a secondary, a ground and its surface,and also the division of being into two realms, two worlds, arealready inscribed in this original distinction. Plato had deter-mined the truth of Being as idea and specified it with thenotion of agathon, the capable, of "what is suitable, what isgood for something and itself, makes something worthwhile"(HN 4: 169).The idea of value is implied in this conception.From nowon, occidental metaphysicsis idealism and Platon-ism, and even its earlier forms now appear as "pre-Platonic

I I


philosophy" (N 4:164).By determining the Being of beings asidea and ascribing to it the qualities of the good, the well-born, the high-stationed in life, Plato introduced a valoriza-tion into the ontological difference with all the implied dis-criminations of spirit versus matter, soul versus body, speechversus writing, and so on.Faced with the division into Being and beings, philosophi-

cal preoccupation focused more and more on the question"What is Being?"in the sense of something present, objectifi-able, ascertainable, manageable, and the question about Be-ing as Being (to on he on, Sein als Sein) became silent. Thesuppression of Beingfor the sake of something tangible wenthand in hand with the self-empowering of the subject as thesource of perception, the ground and master for the scientificand technological domination of Being. Descartes and Kanttransformed Plato's idea to human perception and madetranscendental subjectivity the condition of possibility for be-ings. The fateful thmking of subjectivity took hold in theWest, humanizing and anthropomorphizing everything. Fi-nally, Hegel and Nietzsche intensified the notion of humansubjectivity (animal ratwnale) according to its two compo-nents-Hegel by making rationalitas in its speculative-dialec-tical form the determining principle and Nietzsche by declar-ing brutalitas and bestialitas the absolute essence of subjectivity(HN 4: 148). With the progressive loss of Being, the forgot-tenness of Being,this process is now heading toward the endof philosophy, the end of the old world,and a total immersionin the technology and cybernetics of the "American age."In certain instances, Heidegger depicts a distant goal for

humanity in the senseof a reversal of the traditional questionabout the Beingof beings to that of the "truth of Being" (HN3:191). He himselfattempted to promote this trend by takingrecourse to the poetic language of Holderlin, the thought of


the pre-Socratics, or his own sibylline usage of words-allproviding examples of a language that had not been per-verted by the dominion of beings over Being and therebyoffering some hope for a finalword which would denominateBeing and be wedded to Being. Yet this remained forHeidegger the "farthest goal" of history, infinitely removedfrom the "demonstrable events and circumstances of thepresent age," and belonged "to the historical remoteness ofanother history" (HN 3:191), a different age of the world.During the long interval between these ages, people willcon-tinue to think "metaphysically" and to fabricate "systemsofmetaphysics." Heidegger usually depicts this transitional pe-riod in gloomy terms as a time of leveling and flatteningout." Yet even in these dark moods, Heidegger's thoughtremained oriented, structurally and historically, toward a"clearing," a final word for the truth of Being as the Being asBeing.

One can safely say that with this thinking of a Beingwhichremains unavailable and totallyunknowable, yet determinesevery structure of thought and poetic diction, Heidegger pro-vided that pattern of a delayed and never fully realizablepresence that is operative in post-Hegelian hermeneutics andcommunication theory. This is by no means the unlimitedexpenditure type of differance that Derrida is pursuing butstill a cunning, ruseful type of restricted economy, of limitedthinking-a thinking that has only stepped out of the stric-tures of dialectics and postponed the guaranteed finalsuccessof Hegelianism. This model of thought is operative in every"dialogical" type of thinking and understanding, in every

11. Especially in Martin Heidegger, "The End of Philosophy and the Taskof Thinking," in On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York:Harper and Row, 1972), 57-58.

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form of hermeneutics and the human or social sciences thattakes incompletion, failure, disruption as"structural elementsof historical experience" by declaring these phenomenameaningful parts of a larger whole, links in a chain, stepstoward self-fulfillment.This model of thought, in other words,does not yet twist us

out of Hegelianism. Its pattern can best be described withterms such as progressive coherence, gradual integration, ge-netic wholeness, enlarging of context. or ongoing continuity.This view of difference is determined bymeaning and mean-ingfulness throughout, even if meaning is obscured in thepast, does not fullyoccur in the present, and will not attainself-presence in the future. But the idea ofa total congruity ora complete relationship of all historical phenomena is alwaysoperative in this manner of thinking. If one wanted to con-trast this holistic thinking of difference, modeled afterHeidegger's ontologicaldifference, withDerrida's differance,one would have to use phrases like "discontinuous restructur-ing" for the latter and employ a model of thought that isbased neither on a prospective nor a retrospective foundationof truth, that readilyadmits lack of coherence and congruity,radical unpredictability, and incomprehensibility, however,not as deficiencies but as the factual form of our knowledge."

3

Yet, as his recurring impact upon OUf time manifests,Heidegger cannot be categorized and dismissed that easily.Through special strategies of double gesticulation, his

12. See on this ErnstBehler, "Deconstruction versus Hermeneutics: Derri-da and Gadamer on Text and Interpretation," in Southern Humanities Review21 (1983): 201-23.


thought escapes unilateral definition and is often a step aheadof the interpreter. As far as meaning and lack of meaningwithin the structure of ontological difference and the ensuinghistory of Being as metaphysics is concerned, Heidegger'slater writings present some baffling versions. They usuallyOccur when he attempts to think "in Greek fashion" and givesfamiliar concepts an interesting new twist. Forgottenness issuch an instance because, thought of in the Greek way, it hasnot only the active meaning of having forgotten ("I have for-gotten my umbrella") but also the passive one of an occur-rence, a fate. Forgottenness of Being in this subtle sense is adestiny occurring to us because Being has withdrawn and isconcealing itself. '3 Although the concealment of Being is stillbased on the model of presence and dearing, it describes theabsence of Being not as a result of human failure and histor-ical condition, but as a structural relationship of absence.

Concealment can also be thought of "in Greek fashion" andit then manifests a disarming double gesture of concealing andrevealing. Limit (peras) is another paradigm of Greek thinking,if one emphasizes not only that where something ends, butsimultaneously, that in which something originates, in whichsomething stands and is shaped in its particular form andmade present as the same. '4 With such modes of thinking,Heidegger anticipates Derrida's conception of phenomenasuch as "trace," that is, genuine forms of differance. Suchmodels of thought also remind us of the fact that deconstruc-tive thinking is not a mere negation of meaning and system butthat fine line of thinking in between presence and absence,

13· Martin Heidegger, "Zur Seinsfrage," in MaTlin Heidegger, Wegmarken(Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1967),243.

14· Martin Heidegger, Parmenides, ed. Manfred S. Frings (Frankfurt Klos-rermann, 1982).

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system and nonsystem, order and chaos, revealing and con-cealing. In this sense, Friedrich Schlegel said: "It is equallyfatal for the mind to have a system, and to have none. Onewill simply have to decide to combine the two" (FS 2:173).

A similar double aspect is conveyed by Heidegger's notionof Western metaphysics as progressive nihilism and his con-ception of the "utterly completed, perfect nihilism as the ful-fillment of nihilism proper" (HN 4:203). At first glance,nihilism indicates failure, omission, lack, and defeat. By con-struing the highest possibility and the total perfection ofmetaphysics as an absolute manifestation of nihilism, how-ever, and as the complete devaluation of all values so fardeclared as values, Heidegger's thought assumes its charac-teristic shape. At the beginning of occidental metaphysicsstands Plato's declaration of the highest form of Being asheavenly ideas, at the end the revelation of Being as vitalforces here on earth, as will to power, involved in a senselessreoccurrence of the same. That is the inner law of metaphys-ical thinking, its irreversible course. Nihilism,properly speak-ing. is therefore much more than the outcome, the result, theend of the history of metaphysics. Nihilism is not merely a"doctrine or an opinion," not the simple "dissolution of ev-erything into mere nothingness," but the process of devalu-ating those highest values which in the history of metaphysicswere declared, one after the other, as the truth of Being andthen lost their capacity to shape history (HN 3:203).

This process is not one "historical occurrence among manyothers," but rather "the fundamental event of occidental his-tory, ~vhich has been sustained and guided by metaphysics"and drives in its last act to a complete "revaluation of previousvalues" (HN 3:203).Nihilism is the "lawfulness of this historicoccurrence, its 'logic" (HN 3: 205). Nihilism for Heideggerdoes not propel us into mere nothingness, but its "true es-


sence lies in its affirmative manner of liberation" (HN 3:204)."Perfection of nihilism" islastlynothing but another name forperfection of metaphysics, in that nihilism and metaphysicsare congruent for Heidegger. Nihilism is the most decisiveaspect in the history of Being as metaphysics. '5 Because ofthis interrelationship, Heidegger, as perhaps no one beforehim, was able to think of the previous history of Westernmetaphysics as a unified whole. One will have to add, how-ever, that the figures in Heidegger's history of Beingas meta-physics are little more than colorless abstracts and that thethoughts of the great philosophers are reduced not only tohistory, but worse, to a scheme.Derrida is fully aware of this ambiguity in Heidegger and

attempts to protect and maintain it more than any other ofHeidegger's contemporary readers. Already in Of Grammatol-ogy he saw Heidegger's philosophy at once contained in andtransgressing the metaphysicsof presence. "The verymomentof transgression sometimes holds it back short of the limit," hesaid (DC, 22). ,6 By limiting the sense of Being to presence,Heidegger remained within the dominion of Western meta-physicsfor Derrida; by questioning the origin of that domi-nation, however, Heidegger came to a questioning of whatconstitutes our history. Heidegger brings this up when in hiswritingOn the Question of Being, he has the word Beingcrossedout in his text: s)if;r 17 "That mark of deletion," Derrida says,"is not, however, a 'merely negative symbol.' That deletion isthe final writing of an epoch. Under its strokes the presence

. of a transcendental signified is effaced while still remaining

15· Especially in Heidegger, Nietzsche, vol. 4. European Nihilism.16. Jacques Der-rida, Of Granuna/ol0lrY, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). References to thistext are designated OG.17. See Heidegger-, "Zur Seinsfrage."

129


legible" (OG, 23). Such hesitation of thought is not "inco-herence," Derrida continues, but a "trembling proper to allpost-Hegelian attempts and to this passage between twoepochs" (OG, 24).

This is why in Diffirance Derrida sees no "simple answer" tothe question of whether Heidegger's thought is still an "in-trametaphysical effect of differance" or the "deployment ofdifferance" (D, 153).Wecould say that Heidegger's ontologicaldifference between Being and beings and the disappearanceof the truth of Beingisonly a partial aspectof differance, thatdifferartce is a more comprehensive, more all-pervasive modelof thought than ontologicaldifference, or to use the historicalwayef putting it, thatdifferarrce is '''older' than the ontologicaldifference or the truth of Being" (D, 154).Yet nobody knewbetter about the "epochality'' of his history of Being as meta-physics than Heidegger, and Derrida himself insists that "wemust stay within the difficulty of this passage"and "repeat thispassage in a rigorous reading of metaphysics wherever meta-physics serves as the norm of Western speech,and not only inthe texts of 'the history of Western philosophy'" (D, 154).

A more basic point concerning Heidegger isbrought up byDerrida with the question: "How do weconceiveof the outsideof a text?" (D, 158).This does not refer only to the epochalityof occiden tal metaphysics and to the problem of how "weconceive of what stands opposed to the text of Western meta-physics" (D'lI58). This question relates to the much morefundamenta attempt at going "beyond the history of Being,beyond our language as well, and beyond everything that canbe named by it" (D, 157).This attempt wasthe motivating forceof metaphysics and its successive efforts to denominate thetruth of Being, and to ground the structurality of structure ina principle outside of it, or to transcend the rules of the game.Heidegger had been the most eloquent critic of these meta-


physicalattempts but stillconceived of an outside of the textthrough his nostalgia and hope for the "marriage betweenspeech and Being in the unique word, in the finallypropername" (D, 160). For Derrida, however, consequently, there isno "outside of a text" ("it n'y a pas de hors text" lOG, 158]), andthere "will be no unique name, not even the name of Being."Yet this situation must be taken "without nostalgia," Derridainsists:"that is, it must be conceived outside the myth of thepurely maternal or paternal language belonging to the lostfatherland of thought. On the contrary, we must affirm it-inthe sense that Nietzsche brings affirmation into play-with acertain laughter and a certain dance" (D, 159).

Formulating the same thought in contrast to the structur-alist mode of thinking, Derrida distinguishes between the"saddened, negative, nostalgic,guilty, Rousseauistic sideof thethinking of play," that of "broken immediacy," and the "Nietz-schean affirmation" of play, that is, "the joyous affirmation ofthe play of the world and of the innocence of becoming, theaffirmation of a world of signs without fault, without trutlh,and without origin which is offered an active interpretation"(SSP, 292). ,8 The activity of this affirmation and interpreta-tion consists precisely in determining "the noncenter other-wise than as loss of center." In its security about play andself-assuredness about playing, this affirmation "also surren-ders itself to genetic indetermination, to the seminal adventureof the trace" (SSP, 292)-an adventure that is proclaimingitself "under the species of the nonspecies, in the formless,mute, infant, and terrifying form of monstrosity" (SSP, 293).

18. Jacques Der rida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of theHuman Sciences," in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: TheUniversity of Chicago Press, 1978). References to this text are designatedSSP.


4Yet in spite of all this self-conscious reflectiveness and self-

referential awareness in the subversion of inherited struc-tures, the most fundamental charge against this discourse incontemporary thought is that of an implied self-contradictionin criticizing truth and philosophy: "The totalizing self-cri-tique of reason gets caught in a per formative contradiction,since subject-centered reason can be convicted of being au-thoritarian in nature only by having recourse to its own tools"(DM, 185). '9 This isa quote from Habermas, one of the maincritics of the deconstruction of reason and metaphysics. It ismost directly pronounced against Adorno's critique of theEnlightenment, but equally addressed to Schlegel, Nietzsche,and Derrida. Indeed, Habermas sees a direct line of develop-ment in the destruction of reason from Schlegel to Nietzscheand Derrida. Adorno and Heidegger occupyspecial positionson this way. Adorno resolutely "practices determinate nega-tion unremittingly, even though it has lostany foothold in thecategorical network of Hegelian logic" (DM, 186). Heidegger,in contrast, "flees from this paradox to the luminous heightsof an esoteric, specialdiscourse, which absolves itself of therestrictions of discursive speech generally and is immunizedby vagueness against any specific objections" (DM, 185). Allthe other critiques of deconstructive thought and ironic dis-course-relapse intomyth and religion, escape into literatureand poetry, politicaldisinterest, social aloofness, lack of prac-tice-e-follow from this basic critique.

19· Jiirgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse afModernity, trans. Fred-erick Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987). References to this text aredesignated DM. For a critique of Habermas's presentation of Nietzsche as areturn to the archaic and a relapse into myth, see DavidE.Wellbery, "Nietz-sche-Art-Postmodernism: A Reply to Jiirgen Habermas," Stanford Italian Re-view (J986), 77-100.


Nietzsche is considered the "turntable" for this develop-ment according to Haberrnas, since he is the first in history torenounce a renewed revisionof the concept of reason and"bidsfarewell to the dialectic of enlightenment" (DM, 86). Herejected the very "achievements of modernity," that "fromwhich the modern age drew its pride and self-consciousness,"that is, subjective freedom realized in society (DM, 83), inorder "to gain a foothold in myth as the other of reason" (DM,86). With Nietzsche, "modernity loses its single status" andmerely constitutes "a last epoch in the far-reaching history ofa rationalization initiated by the dissolution of archaic life andthe collapse of myth" (DM, 87). A utopian attitude now fo-cuses on the "god who is coming, n and a "religious festivalbecome work of art" is supposed to bridge the modern agewith the archaic (DM, 87).

For Haberrnas, however, Nietzsche was by no means orig-inal in his "Dionysian treatment of history" (DM, g2). Histhesis about the origin of the tragic chorus in the rites ofDionysus derives "from a context that was already well devel-oped in early romanticism" (DM, g2), and the idea of a newmythology is just as much of "romantic provenance" as the"recourse to Dionysus as the god who is coming" (DM, 88).

Habermas finds the expectation of a new mythology to re-place philosophy in Schelling and in other texts from the turnof the eighteenth century, but especially in Friedrich Schlegel(DM, 88-8g). Schlegel indeed published a Speech on Mythologyin 1800 demanding the creation of a "focal point, such asmythology was for the ancients" (FS 2:3] 2). Habermas un-derstands this demand as postulating an absolute position ofpoetry above reason, a "becoming aesthetic of ideas that aresupposed to be joined in this way with the interests of thepeople" (DM, go), a surrendering to the "world of the pri-mordial forces of myth" (DM, go-g]), a return into the "pri-

]33


mordial chaos of human nature" (DM, go; KFSA 2:319), a"messianic temporalizing of what for Schelling was a well-founded historical expectation" (DM, go), and altogether anincreased valuation of "Dionysus, the driven god of frenzy, ofmadness, and of ceaseless transformations" (DM, 91). Toleave no doubt as to the position from whichhe argues, Hab-errnas adds polemically:"The difference from Hegel is obvi-ous-not speculative reason, but poetry alone can, as soon asit becomes public in the form of a new mythology, replace theunifying power of religion" .(DM, 89).Whereas the romantic recourse to Dionysus served as a

bywayto the fulfillmentof Christian promisesannulled by theReformation and the Enlightenment (DM, 92), Habermasclaims, Nietzsche cleansed the Dionysian of such romanticelements and enhanced it to the absolute self-oblivion of sub-jectivity in a blissfulecstasy. Only when all "categories of in-telligent doing and thinking are upset, the norms of daily lifehave broken down," and "the illusions of habitual normalityhave collapsed" (DM, 93), can the modern human being ex-pect from the new mythology "a kind of redemption thateliminates all mediations" (DM, 94). Only then do we reach"reason's absolute other," that is, experiences that are dis-placed back into the archaic realm-"experiences of self-dis-closure of a decentered subjectivity, liberated from all con-straintsl of cognition and purposive activity,all imperatives ofutility and morality" (DM, 94).

From now on, however, the Nietzsche of Habermas beginsto resemble more and more a specter. Without any concernfor textulal evidence, Habermas depicts him as a pragmaticepistemologist who denied any difference between true andfalse, good and evil,and reduced such distinctions to "pref-erences for what serveslife and for the noble" (DM, 95). The"transsubjective will to power is manifested in the ebb and

•


flowof an anonymous processof subjugation" (DM, 95), andthe dominion of "subject-centered reason" in the modern ageis seen as "the result and expression of a perversion of the willto power" (DM, 95), as nihilism. Nietzsche attempted to givemeaning to the nihilism of his time by supposedly declaring itas "the night of the remoteness of the gods, in which theproximity of the absent god is proclaimed." Yet he could not"legitimize" the criteria of his aesthetic judgments because hehad transposed them into the archaic and did not recognizethem as a "moment of reason" (DM, 96).

These disclosures of power theories undertaken for thesake of the aesthetic, the "gateway to the Dionysian," consti-tute for Haber mas Nietzsche's particular "dilemma of a self-enclosed critique of reason that has become total" (DM, 96).Habermas believes that Nietzsche could muster "no clarityabout what it means to pursue a critique of ideology thatattacks its own foundations" (DM, 96), a "totalized, self-con-suming critique of ideology" (DM, 97). The two poles, reasonand its other, do not stand in a dialectical relationship to eachother, mutually negating and thereby enhancing each other,but in a relationship of "mutual repugnance and exclusion."Reason is "delivered over to the dynamics of withdrawal andretreat, of expulsion and proscription," whereas "self-reflec-tion is sealed off from the other of reason" (DM, 103). Hab-ermas's final verdict on Nietzsche is: "His theory of powercannot satisfy the claim to scientific objectivity and, at thesame time, put into effect the program of a total and henceself-referential critique of reason that also affects the truth oftheoretical propositions" (DM, 104-5).

Whereas the self-referential contradiction in the case ofNietzsche is derived from an assumed theory of power for thesake of a Dionysian aestheticism, Derrida's self-contradictionis construed from an alleged, yet futile search for an arche-

•

'35

Irony and Self-RefeTentiality

writing on the part of the French philosopher-an arche-writing which has been lost and of whichwe find only tracesin a strange, obliterated, Kafkaesque shape (DM, 164). Theincreasing degree of subject-centered reason, of the categor-icalnetwork of Hegelianlogic, of a dialecticof enlightenment,and of modernity from Schlegel to Nietzscheand Derrida isobviously accompanied for Habermas by an increase in self-contradiction which, with Der rida, now comes to a newheight. Yet the special trait in Haberrnas's image of Derridaderives from his assertion that the latter's "program of a scrip-ture scholarship withclaims to a critique of metaphysics" hasan alleged religious inspiration, is "nourished from religioussources" (DM, 165).Derrida's thought of an "arche-writingprior to all identifiableinscriptions" (DM, 179)is seen by Hab-ermas as the "remembrance of the messianism of Jewish mys-ticism and of the abandoned but well-circumscribed placeonce assumed by the God of the Old Testament" (DM, 167),more precisely, the Torah in its inexhaustibility (DM, 182)and the "mystical concept of tradition as an ever delayed eventof revelation" (DM, 183).This notion of an arche-writing drives Derrida back behind

Heidegger (DM, 183),according to Habermas. He character-izes Derrida's attempt as "going beyond the ontological dif-

Iference and Being to the difference proper to writing, whichputs an origin already set in motion [Heidegger's Being] yetone level deeper" (DM, 181). Arche-writing, in other words,"takes on the role of a subjectless generator of structures," ofstructures without an author (DM, 180).Yet Habermas re-gards Derrida's distinction from Heidegger as "insignificant"(DM, 18 i ) because Derrida "does not shake loose of the in-tentions of a first philosophy"and "lands atanempty, formula-like avowal of some indeterminate authority." The only dif-ference between the two philosophers is that in Derrida's case

Irony and Self-Referentiality 137

this is"not the authority of a Being that has heen distorted bybeings, but the authority of a no longer holy scripture, of ascripture that is in exile, wandering about, estranged from itsown meaning, a scripture that testarnentarily documents theabsenceof the holy" (DM, 181).The other main objection Habermas raises against Derrida

also relates to the alleged self-referential contradiction andconcerns the "leveling of genre distinction between literatureand philosophy" in deconstructive theory (DM, 185).Derridaand his followers abolished the borderlines between philoso-phy and literature, as Habermas sees it, in order to escape the"consistency requirements" of scientific discourse. Derridathereby "undercuts" the problem of self-referentiality andmakesit irrelevant; he simplyattempts to "clear away the on-tologicalscaffolding erected by philosophy in the course of itssubject-centered history of reason" (DM, 188-89). Vethe doesthis not "analytically, in the sense of identifying hidden pre-suppositions or implications," as one usually does, but "by acritiqueof style, in that he finds something like indirect com-munications, by which the text itself denies its manifest con-tent, in the rhetorical surplus of meaning inherent in theliterary strata of texts that present themselves as non-literary"(DM, 189).What is bothering Habermas, however, is that Derrida ap-

plies this reading technique not only to texts by Kafka,joyce,and Celan, but also to those of Husserl, Saussure, and Rous-seau, and interprets them "against the explicit interpretationsof their authors" (DM, 189).The goal of this strategyappearsto be obvious to Habermas: "As soon as we take the literarycharacter of Nietzsche's writings seriously, the suitableness ofhis critique of reason has to be assessed in accord with thestandards of rhetorical successand not those of logicalcon-sistency"(DM, 188). Yet Haberrnas is of the opinion that such


a procedure is legitimate only "if the philosophical text is intruth a literary one-if one can demonstrate that the genre dis-tinction between philosophy and literature dissolves uponcloser examination" (DM, 189). The positiveresult of such anexamination would apparently constitute a dangerous andfrightening situation for Habermas because it would lead toan upgrading of literary criticism to a critique of metaphysicsand would grant literarycriticism, horribiie dictu, the status ofa "procedure that takes on an almost world-historical missionwith its overcoming of the thinking of the metaphysics ofpresence and of the age of logocentrism" (DM, 191-92). Toavoid such minglingof departments and academic disciplines,Habermas devotes the rest of his Derrida critique to an elab-oration of the distinctiveness and exclusiveness of poeticspeech.To reduce the discussion partner's importance and eventu-

ally exclude him from the solution of the problem, therebysilencing him, is the most typical gesture for this type of con-sensus-finding through communication, especially if theother side stands in opposition to or is not easily accommo-dated by the intended purpose. This attitude can already benoticed in Haberrnas's treatment of Friedrich Schlegel who,because of his Speech on Mythology, is put down as an irratio-nalist of the poetic sort. In reality, however, the Speech onMytholJgy is part of a larger text, the Dialogue on Poetry, de-picting a group of animated and witty conversational partnerswho discuss possibilitiesof how "to bring poetry the closest tothel highest possiblepoetry at all on earth" (FS 2:286). Fourformal presentations are made outlining different ap-proaches to this goal,one of which is the Speech on Mythology.We can assume with good reason that the entire text at-

tempts to convey an image of the Jena group of early Germanromanticism and that each conversational partner enacts a

Irony and Self-Referenlialily 139

certain role in this scene. If this assumption is correct or evenacceptable, however, the speaker for the new mythology isprobably the philosopher Schelling because of Schelling's ownhistorical preoccupation with the theme and because of a cer-tain rashness and impetuosity in his style ("I will go right tothe point. ... " [ES 2:312]). In this case the Speech on Mythologywould not only constitute a programmatic. apodictic state-ment on the necessity of a new mythology and the desire tocreate one, but would also incorporate Schlegel's critical as-sessment of such a project in a highly conscious though en-tirely indirect manner of communication.1n the last analysis, however, the Speech on Mythology re-

mains Schlegel's own text in spite of all this framing. distanc-ing, and configuring, and it matters little whether Schlegelattributed the postulate of a new mythology to Schelling, him-self, or to an entirely fictitious figure named Lothario. Whatmatters, however, is the structuring of the text, namely, theintegration of a highly self-critical and self-conscious attitudeabout mythology with a writing on mythology, that is, irony,self-creation and self-destruction. Vet all these sophisticatedmodes of communication are ignored in Habermas's readingof the Speech on Mythology, and the text is reduced to astraightforward statement by Schlegel. Not even its characteras speech, as a rhetorical expression indicated in the title, isnoticed. Hegel called Schlegel by all sorts of names and con-sidered him to be insolent, vain, destructive, and not reallyinterested in the real concerns of humanity. Vet Hegel wouldnever have characterized Schlegel as unreflective, as conceiv-ing of poetry as "cleansed of assdciauons with theoretical andpractical reason," as opening "the door to the world of theprimordial forces of myth" (DM, 90--91). Even a restrictedreading of the Speech on Mythology outside of any contextshould come to the discovery that Schlegel did not conceive of


the new mythology in terms of a relapse into myth but assomething "forged from the deepest depth of the mind," asthe "most artful of all works of art" (FS 2:312).

The neglect of styleand of the "literary" mode of commu-nication must lead to disastrous results in Haberrnas's critiqueof Nietzsche, for whom the structuring of a text, the serious-ness of the mise en scene, was a primary requirement for intel-lectuality, for writing. Haber-mas's reading of Nietzsche in-deed leads to the .assumption of a ruthless Renaissanceaestheticism in the style of "Nothing is true, everything ispermitted." The active interdependence among all of Nietz-sche's statements is totally ignored. Nietzsche is reduced tosomeone who had "no clarity about what it means to pursuea critique of ideology that attacks its own foundations" (DM,96)-as if an ideology critique that does not attack its ownfoundations were necessarily superior. The problem with thiskind of argumentation is that whoever does not conform to acertain trend of philosophizing, here a revised Hegelianism,is excluded from philosophical discourse and declared a ro-mantic, a proto fascist, a Jewish mystic, or an American liter-ary critic. A radicalized or "totalized" critique of reason ap-pears to be prohibited because of the offense by such acritique against basicrules and conventions of "philosophical"argumentation. So coercion-free communication begins withcoercion to accept these norms.

5Rorty sees no problem with a totalized critique of reason

and philosophy and would at the most question its usefulness.He also has no objection to breaking down the borderlinesbetween philosophy and literature and considers such depart-mentalizations simply habits, which, however, often carry


along wrong hierarchical concepts of knowledge. For him, theinvention of romantic poetry was an event just as important inthe modern world as any comparable innovation in the realmof the sciences and philosophy. Of the' two types of philoso-phy, Kant and Hegel, Habermas and Lyotard, truth-orientedand interpretation-oriented thinking, decentering and dis-semi native thought, which he likes to playoff against eachother, Rorty seems to favor the latter because of its higherlevel of reflection and self-criticism. "The first likes to presentitself as a straightforward, down-to-earth, scientific attempt toget things right," he says:

The second needs to present itself obliquely, with the help ofas many foreign words and as much allusiveness and narne-dropping as possible. Neo-Kantian philosophers likePutnam,Strawson, and Rawls have arguments and theses which areconnected to Kant's by a fairly straightforward seriesof "pu-rifying" transformations, transformations which are thoughtto give clearer and clearer views of the persistent problems.For the non-Kantian philosophers, there are no persistentproblems-save perhaps the existence of Kantians. Non-Kant-ian philosophers like Heidegger and Derrida are emblematicfigures who not only do not solve problems, they do not havearguments and theses. They are connected with their prede-cessors not by common subjectsor methods but in the "familyresemblance" way in which latecomers in a sequence of corn-mentators on commentators are connected with older mem-bers of the same sequence.»

In a recent book, Rorty presents these two types of philos-ophers with the names of "metaphysicians" and "ironists.">'

20. RichardRorty, "Philosophyas a Kind of Writing:An Essayon Derri-da," in Consequences of Pmgmalism (Minneapolis: University of MinnesotaPress,1982), 92-93.

2 J. Richard Rorty, r;ontingency, Irons, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1989). References to this text are designated CIS.


The tradition of "ironist philosophy" began with the earlyHegel and continued with Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida(CIS, 78), whereas metaphysical philosophy is an attempt at"grounding" one's beliefs and presenting them as proven, astruth. Such a ground can be as shaky as Habermas's commu-nication theory and still qualify the proponent as a metaphy-sician (CIS, 82). It is the intention that counts. Ironists, incontrast, do not believein grounds. They rename and rede-fine problems instead and engage in endless metonymies.Rorty's canon of ironist philosophy is almost identical to the

one in our text. Instead of Friedrich Schlegel,he includes theearly Hegel of the Ph.enomenology of Spirit, but the real differ-ence is Heidegger, who in the present study appears as anironist only in certain borderline cases such as his thinking "inGreek fashion." This difference is of importance for the un-derstanding of ironyand should therefore be explained rightaway. Rorty knowsof course that Heidegger "spent a lot oftime being scornful of the aestheticist, pragmatist, Iightmind-edness of the ironist'': "He thought of them as dilettantishclatterers who lackedthe high seriousness of the great meta-physicians-their specialrelation to Being.As a Schwarzwaldredneck, he had an ingrained dislike of the North Germancosmopolitan mandarins. As a philosopher, he viewed the riseof the ironist intellectuals-many of them Jews-as symptom-atic of the degeneracy of what he called 'the age of the worldpicture'" (CIS, lll-12).

Looked at from the perspective of the history of Being asmetaphysics, the age of irony would have begun for Heideg-ger with the demise of metaphysics in the Occident, with theclosure of the "epoch,"around the end of the Second WorldWar, although he never described this development in termsof irony. This is a period of a general flattening out, of dis-belief, of the degeneration of philosophy into anthropology


and psychology, of its transformation into the individual sci-ences, of cybernetics and the computer. It is a period of acompletely indeterminable length before a new age of theworld can begiri.v- We could also call it the postmodern age,because many post modern features correspond precisely toHeidegger's descriptions of the state of affairs after all "es-sential possibilities of metaphysics are exhausted" in the Occi-dent (N 4: 148). Yet Heidegger never wanted simply to brushoff metaphysics as the ironist does in Rorty's description, butmaintained a most solemn memory (Andenken) of it and stillattempted to say the ultimate word by uttering Holder-lin'sverses or the fragments by the pre-Socratics. This solemn,hymnical, spellbound attitude appears to be the opposite ofirony and seems to exclude Heidegger from the ironic dis-course of modernity.The reason that Rorty includes Heidegger among the great

ironists of our time is not so much his occasional twisting ofwords and concepts, which thereby assume a self-referentialdeprecation of his own position, but rather a special notionof irony or of ironist theory based on the idea "that some-thing (history, Western man, metaphysics-something largeenough to have a destiny) has exhausted its possibilities" (CIS,LOl). For Rorty, the ironist assumes the role of "the last phi-losopher" (CIS, 106) and treats all the former ones as meta-physicians (CIS, 110). The ironist knows that there is no truthand that the role of philosophy now has to be played entirelydifferently.The special point in Rorty's new discussion of metaphysi-

cians and ironists is, however, that he puts the two to the testof pragmatism and asks what they are worth in terms of social

22. Martin Heidegger, The End o/Philosophy, trans. with an introduction byJoan Stambaugh (New York: Harperand Row, 1973).


engineering, liberal politics, and human solidarity. His testturns out to be bad for both, but worse for the ironist. Hab-errnas, for instance, sees the function of metaphysical philos-ophy as supplying "some social glue which will replace reli-gious belief" and finds it in the "universality" of humanrationality (CIS, 83). This is a good intention, but is based onthe "ludicrous" assumption for Rorty that liberal societies arebound together by philosophical beliefs (CIS, 86). "Absence ofmetaphysics" is by no means politically dangerous, as onemight assume, no more than atheism weakened "liberal soci-eties" as people feared in the nineteenth century. On thecontrary, it "strengthened them" (CIS, 85). Rorty easily dis-misses Habermas's fear that "ironist thinking which runsfrom Hegel through Foucault and Derrida" is destructive ofsocial hope. He rather sees "this line of thought as largelyirrelevant to public life and to political questions," making thepoint: "Ironist theorists like Hegel, Nietzsche, Derrida andFoucault seem to me to be invaluable in OUf attempt to forma private self-image, but pretty well useless when it comes topolitics" (CIS, 83).

In pursuing this point more closely, Rorty asks questionssuch as whether ironism is "compatible with a sense of humansolidarity" (CIS, 87), with a "universalistic ethics" (CIS, 88), orwith hope (CIS, 91) and always comes to a negative resultcombined with the feeling that "there is something rightabout the suspicion which ironism arouses" (CIS, 89). Onewould readily admit in the intellectual climate of today, heargues, I that public rhetoric in a "liberal culture" should be"nominalist and historicist," that is, nonmetaphysical, and oneshould consider this "both possible and desirable." Yet onewould hardly go on "to claim that there could be or ought tobe a culture whose public rhetoric is ironist" (CIS, 87). Rorty'sideal candidate for public rhetoric in a liberal culture would


be a "common-sensically nominalist and historicist" language(CIS, 87) that would produce "a kind of straightforward, un-self-conscious, transparent prose-precisely the kindof proseno self-creating ironist wants to write" (CIS, 89). Philosophy,in the increasingly self-conscious culture of today, "has be-come more important for the pursuit of private perfectionrather than of any social task" (CIS, 94) and should thereforenot be asked "to do a job which it cannot do, and which itdefines itself as unable to do" (CIS, 94).Another good candidate for promoting human solidarity

and the liberal cause of hope and political utility is poetry andliterature, especially the novel (CIS, 94, 96). Ethnographicdescriptions and other "non-theoretical literary genres" arealso suited for this task because of their direct impact. Wethereby come to a strong division, a "split," as Rorty says,between the private and the public sector, theory and prac-tice, literature and philosophy. Philosophy, especially in itscontemporary sophisticated status of theory and irony, is as-signed to the private realm, whereas the public domain ishanded over to common sense and literature. In formertimes, while still pursuing the project of modernity during theperiod of philosophy as metaphysics, one had hoped "to bringtogether our private and our public lives by showing us thatself-discovery and political utility could be united" (CIS, 120).

Now we should "stop trying to combine self-creation and pol-itics, especially if we are liberals" because the political part ofa liberal ironist's final vocabulary "will never integrate withthe rest of that vocabulary" (CIS, 120).

6

The epitome of irony in this end-of-philosophy style is forRorty, consequently, one kinel of writing practiced by Derri-

145

I

I'Irony and Self-ReJerentiality

da. Rorty does not, however, refer so much to the poststruc-turalist and post-Heideggerian Derrida whom we have dis-cussed in previous sections. For in these early texts there isstill too much talk of "infrastructures," of "undercutting," of"conditions of possibility,"of "presence as absence," in otherwords, of very metaphysical sounding notions. These texts atleast lend themselves to such readings and inspire researchprojects on grammatology or epochal distinctions in the senseof "the end of the book and the beginning of writing." Rortyturns to later writings such as The Truth in Painting (1978),Glas (1g81), but especially The Postcard (lg80), and to the sec-tion "Envois" of the latter.ss in which interconnective thoughtprocesses are abandoned for the sake of freely spinning fan-tasies. According toRorty, Derrida now gives "free rein to thetrains of associations," and such daydreaming is in Rorty'sview "the end product of ironist theorizing" (CIS, 125).Derrida's alleged retreat into "private fantasy" is for Rorty

also "the only solution to the self-referential problem whichsuch theorizing encounters, the problem of how to distanceone's predecessors without doing exactly what one has repu-diated them for doing" (CIS, 125). Rorty says: "So I takeDerrida's importance to lie in having had the courage to giveup the attempt to unite the private and the public, to stoptrying to bring together a quest for private autonomy, and anattempt at public resonance and utility. He privatizes the sub-lime, having learned from the fate of his predecessors thatthe public can never be more than beautiful" (CIS, 125).Derrida thereby brings to conclusion a philosophical trendbeginning with Hegel which had been haunted by everdeeper layers of foundation in its deconstructive drive. At

23· Jacques Derrida, The Postcard, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: The Univer-sity of Chicago Press, 1987), 1-257.


least, this philosophical movement had been interpreted fromoutside as forever coming up with always new and pro-founder grounds for being: Hegel with reason, Nietzschewith the will to power, Heidegger with Being, and Derridawith an arche-writing. Rorty comments:

I am claiming that Derrida, in "Envois," has written a 'kind ofbook which nobody had ever thought of before. He has donefor the history of philosophy what Proust did for his own lifestory: He has played all the authority figures, and all the de-scriptions of himself which these figures might be imagined asgiving, off against each other, with the result that the verynotion of "authority" loses application in reference to his work.He has achieved autonomy in the same way that Proustachieved autonomy: neither Remembrance of Things Past nor"Envois' fits within any conceptual scheme previously used toevaluate novels or philosophical treatises. He has avoidedHeideggerian nostalgia in the same way that Proust avoidedsentimental nostalgia-by incessantly recontextualizing what-ever memory brings back. Both he and Proust have extendedthe bounds of possibility. (CIS, '37)

We could just as well say that in this view Derrida has trans-gressed the realm of irony circumscribed earlier as walkingthe fine line inbetween system and non system, chaos and or-

der, self-creation and self-destruction-never succumbing tothe one or to the other. Rorty offers us clear-cut divisionsbetween the private and the public, reserving sophisticatedtheory for the personal and thumb-rule decisions for the so-cial realm, and eliminating irony-not only from the politicalbut also from the individual sphere if the latter is seen inaccomplished isolation. For what makes Hegel, Heidegger,and Derrida ironic, beyond Rorty's concept of "ironism" inthe end-of-philosophy sense, is precisely that they never dis-entangle themselves from the entwining of metaphysics, thatthey never land in a value-free beyond, that they never hit

'48 Ironyand Self-Refermualus

rock-bottom but remain in the zone of the inbetween. Rorty'snotions of a full arrival or a complete separation, his thinkingin ideal types of the truly practical and the genuinely theo-retical appear to be "terribly metaphysical" and extremelyclose to Habermas only with inverted evaluations. Derridaappears like someone who threw away the ladder of decon-struction after he had arrived in the promised land of free-spinning writing without a trace of interconnectedness amonghis thoughts. Ironic writing has this trend as one essentialelement, that of self-destruction, but never constitutes itselfwithout the opposite, self-creation. The interrelationship be-tween the two is so intense that we do not know which is thedestructive and which is the constructive part. This writingwith two hands is not only exercised in one and the same textbut also proceeds alternately and alternatively. Consequently,and with the rigor of a writing that is, in Schlegel's words,entirely involuntary and yet completely deliberate, perfectlyinstinctive and perfectlyconscious, Derrida takes up the prob-lem of responsibility in one of his very "latest"texts, even thatof political responsibility."

In this context, but also in others and especially in that ofpostmodernism, it appears highly significant that the threestar-witnesses for the discourse of modernity and irony as themain istructural principle of that discourse, Schlegel, Nietz-sche, and Derrida, do not see irony in a developmentalscheme as the last accomplishment of a late epoch, but assignit a much more fundamental function. One could even doubt,with good reason, that Schlegel, Nietzsche, and Derrida actu-ally believed in the origin of a modern period distinguishingus from the rest of the world. In the quote about the rupture

24· Jacques Derrida, "Likethe Sound of the Sea Deep within a Shell: Paulde Man's War," Critical Inquiry 14 (1988)~590-625.

Irony and Self-Referentiality 149

or disrupture which marked our epoch, Derrida added thatthis rupture had "always already begun to proclaim itself andbegun to work" (SSP, 280). Nietzsche used the term"modern" almost exclusively in deprecatory manner. AndSchlegel, when pressed to give a date for the beginning of themodern age, first mentioned Euripides. soon added Socrates,and then shifted to Pythagoras because he was for him theone who for the first time thought about the entirety of thewhole world from the principle of one single idea. What theseexamples suggest is that for Schlegel, Nietzsche, and Derridaa radical type of reflective thinking was not the prerogative ofan epoch but an eternal mark of man. If they had to date thepostmodern period, and they are great authorities in mattersof irony and the postmodern, they would have given an amaz-ingly early date and let it coincide with the origin of man or,if there is no such origin, with the eternal transgression ofman.

This does not exclude a sense for history. However, if wehad to locate the ironies of Schlegel, Nietzsche, and Derridain any historical context, we would have to choose classicalGreece and, strangely enough, Plato's Academy. This appearsto be strange because Nietzsche and Derrida, not Schlegel, arehighly critical of Plato: Nietzsche by proclaiming Plato as theoriginator of the metaphysics of two worlds, which implied adefamation of our world and made Christianity "Platonismfor the people" (FN 5:12); and Derrida by considering Platothe father of logocentrism and phonocentrism with all theimplied binary discriminations of spirit versus matter, soulversus body, speech versus writing, man versus woman.And yet, all three saw Plato also as the prototype of a phi-

losopher whom, had they believed in a postmodern era, theycould have very well prescribed for that time as a model. In atext that became the source for one of the most influential


Plato receptions in modern history, Schlegelwrote: "Plato,although he very wellhad a philosophy, had yet no system,just as philosophy itselfis altogether more a search, a strivingfor science than science itself. And this is especially the casewith that of Plato. He never completed his thought. Thiscontinuously endeavoring movement of his mind for per-fected knowledge and understanding of the highest, this con-stant becoming, shaping, and developing of his ideas, he at-tempted to write down artistically in dialogues" (FS 11:120).

Nietzsche considered it the most revealing feature about Platothat a copy of Aristophanes was discovered under the pillowof his deathbed. "Howcould he have endured life," Nietzscheexclaimed, "Greek life, to which he said no, without Aris-tophanes!" (FN 5:47; CE, 41). And in Derrida's reading ofPlato as the king of logocentrism with his sun-filled voice whocondemned the arts, play, rhetoric, writing, and myth, theGreek philosopher does all this in a text, the very essence ofwhich consists of art, play, rhetoric, performative writing, andmythical accounts. Plato's text can justly be considered theprototype for Derrida's own predilection for the dissimula-tion of the woven texture; it is indeed the text par excellence forhim, and also a textwhichhas been misread for millennia andhas always new discoveries in store once we open it.vs WhenHeidegger declared Plato the originator of occidental meta-physics, he made the Greek philosopher, to a certain degree,the inaugurator of the modern age. Derrida, in his decon-structive reading, shows the contradictory overabundance inPlato and thereby makeshim the initiator of the postmodernepoch-if there were such a thing.

25· Jacques Derrida, "Plato's Pharmacy," in Dissemination, trans. BarbaraJohnson (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Ig81), 61-17 I.

Index of Names

Abrams, M. H" 58Adhernar, Jean, 49"Adorno, Theodor W" 8,17,19.20,

21,22,132

Aeschylus, 6g. 70Allison, David n., ix, 1040,11311

Anstett, Jean-Jacques, xi, 60n, 73n,1130

Aristophanes, 46, 78, 84, 92, 150Aristotle, 42, 46, 76, 77n, 78, 79-80

Burger, Christa, 8nBurger, Peter, 8n

Caesar, 93Calder, William M., 680Capel, Lee M., ixCelan, Paul, 137Cervantes, Miguel de, 75Cicero, 74, 77. 78Coleridge, E. H., 5711Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 57Colli, Giorgio, x, 70n, 9311,I 'gilConstant, Benjamin, 91Corneille, Pierre, 42, 45, 46, 48

Bacon, Francis, 3, 37Balaye, Simone, 54"Bass, Alan, x , xiii, 3211, 10611, 121n,

13111,1460Bataille, George, 15. 28Baudelaire, Charles, 25, 102, 147Baudrillard, Jean, 29Beaumont, Francis, 45Behler, Constantin, 11211Behler, Diana, 34"Behler, Ernst, ix, xi, 33n, 34n, 4011,60n, 6811, 7311,74", Bqn, 1rgn,126n

Ben-Habib, Seyia, xii, 1411Benjamin, Walter, 17, 19Bennington, Geoff, xii, IOnBernstein. Richard J., xii, 14", 2711Blake, William, 57Bloom, Harold, 58nBoccaccio,Giovanni, 75Bcileau-Despreaux, Nicolas, 46,

47nBrieglcb, Klaus, xiii, 69", 92nBrooks, Cleanth, 102

Hubner, Rudiger, 88n

Dame, Alighieri, 53Darbishire, H., 5711de Man, Paul, 101-3, l48nDemosthenes, 43Den-ida, Jacques, ix, x, xii, xiii, 15,17, Ig, 28, 30-36, 1°4-10, 112,113-19, 121,123,125,127,129-31, 132,136-37,141,142,144, 146-48, 149-50

Descartes, Rene, 3, 26, 37, 46, 123,"4

Desrnaizeauz, Pierre, 46nDewey, John, 27Diderot, Denis, 5, 47, 48-49Dillworth, Ernest, 47nDio Cassius, 47Dionysus, 15, 84, 133-35Dryden, John, x , 42, 44-45

Eichner, Hans, xi, 60n, 7311,IlgnElledge, Scotl, ix, x, 43n, 46n

Index of Names

Epicure, 97Euripides, 46, 47, 6g-71

Fenelon, Francois, 54Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 86Firchow, Peter, ix, 6011,74n, 113"Fletcher, John, 45Fontenelle, Bernard le Bouvier de,

ix, 43-44, 46, 47Foster, Hal, xii, 711Foucault. Michel, 4, 15, n, 19, 22,24. 26, 28, 32, 144

Fowler, Thomas, 3711Freud, Sigmund, 104, 107, 108,117-19

Frings, Manfred S., 127nFulda, Friedrich, 86n

Oaliani, Abbe, 98Garber, Frederick, 74nGarver, Newton, ix, 1°411,liS"Gassendi, Pierre, 46Gide, Andre, 101

Olover, Arnold, 560Codechot, Jacques, ix, 5211Godwin, William, 57Goethe. Johann Wolfgang von, 62,75,8,,85

Haberrnas. J urgen, X, xii, J 2,14-16, 17-23, 24, 25, 26,27-29, '32-4°, '42, '44, 148

Hamlet, 98Handwerk, Gary, 7411Hazlitt, William, 56, 57n, 58Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,xii,6, 12, 17, 18, Ig, 20, 23, 25,28,32, 85-g2, 104, II J, 119,123,124, 126,134, 139, '41,142, 144, 146, 147

Heidegger, Martin, xii, 19,28,30,32,1°4,1°7,108, 11g-31, 132,136,141, 142-43,147,150

Heine, Heinrich, xiii, 6g, go,gl---g2

Hemsterhuk, Frans, 480Henrich, Dieter, 86nHirsch, Emmanuel, 86Holderlin, Friedrich, 86, 124,'43

Hollingdale, R. J., x, ix, 411, 93",1I3n

Homer, 20, 43, 45, 69Horisch, jochen, 8gnHorkheimer, Max, 8n, 17, 19-22H ume, David, xiii, 49-50Husser], Edmund, 32, 116--17. 137

Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 33, 3411,86

jameson, Fredric, xii, 7, IonJamme, Christoph, 88njaul3, Hans-Robert, xii, 4511John, Saint, 36johnson, Barbara, 104n, 150njohnson, Samuel, 42Jolles, Frank, ix, 68njones, Robert, 56Jonson, Ben, 45Joyce, James, 137

Kafka, Franz, 137Kant, Immanuel, 17.25,33,34,35,4°,67,86,123,124.141

Kaufmann, Walter. x, xi, 70n, 9311,11311

Kef, W. P., x, 4411Kierkegaard, Sorell, ix, 7, 33, 88,90, 102

Klotz, Heinrich, 8nKrell, David F., xii, 120n

Lawrence, Frederick, x, 17n,13211

Leibniz, Gottlieb Wilhelm. 123Lenin, Vladimir, 25Levi-Strauss, Claude, 1°7Livius, Titus, 47Lowe-Perter, H. T., 8211Lucanus,47

Pope, Alexander, 42Pythagoras, 149

Index oj Names

Quiruilian, 77~78

Racine, Jean Baptiste, 42, 45, 47,54

Rorty, Richard, ix, xii, 23-27, 29,140-48

Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 131, 137Rudler, Gustave, 91n

Saint-Evremond, Charles de, ixn,42,46

Sartre, Jean Paul, 7Saussure, Ferdinand de, 105-6,

107, 115, 137Schelling, Friedrich WilhelmJoseph, l34, 139

Schier, Donald, ix, x, 4311,46nSchlegel, August Wilhelm, ix,67--<i9, 70, 7'

Schlegel, Friedrich, x, 3311,60-67,7°,73-75, Tl- 8<H1" 8,-89,102, 109, 1°4,1°9,112,128,132, 133,136,138-40,142,148-5°

Schleierrnacher, Friedrich Daniel,86

Schlosser, Johann Georg, 33-34Selincourt, F., 57nSeneca, 47Shakespeare, William, 42, 45, 75Simon, Josef, II:mSocrates, 45, 71, 73, 74-75, 77-81,8,-83, 94, 95, 96, '49

Sophocles, 46, 47, 69, 70, 71Spivak, Gayatri Chakravony, xii,

12~n ..Srael, Madame Germaine de, IX,xii,45-55

Stambaugh, Joan, 12211,125n, 143nStarobinski, Jean, 55Stendhal (Marie Henri Beyle), 93Sterne, Lawrence, 75

Lyctard. jeau Francois, xii, 9-14,16,23,24,26,27, 141

Mallarrne, Stephane, 17Mann, Thomas, 81-82, 101Marmontel, jean-Francois, 47nMarx, Karl, 17, 18, 21Massumi, Brian, xii, 100Meyer, Eva, 30nMiller, A. V., 230, 86nMiller, J. Hillis, 103nMi\ton,John,57Moland, Louis, 48nMoliere, 47Mcnunari, Mazzino, x, 70n, 93n,

9611,11311Morris, Walter D., 10 1n

Moses, 91Moynihan, Robert, J Ogl1

Musil, Robert, 101

Napoleon, 93Nietzsche, Friedrich, x, xi, 4, 5, 6,17,18,20,22,25, 26,3°,31,32,69,70-71,92-100, 101-2,103, 104. 107, 108, Ill, 112,J 17, 118, 123, 13211, 142, 144,147, '48, 149-50

Navalis (Friederich von Harden-burgh), 86

Odysseus, 8, 20, 93

Pange, Comtesse Jean de, 5411Parmenides, 123Parrish, Stephen, 56nPascal, Blaise. ix, 37-38Perrault, Charles, xii, 42,45-46,48Pestalozzi, Karl, 96nPindar,6gPlautus,47Plato, 43, 45, 78-'79, 82-83, 9',123-24, 149-5°

Plutarch, 47Poggeler, Duo, 8611, 88n

'54

Swift, Jonathan, 74Sznec, Jean, 49n

Terence, 47Ternois, Rene, 46nTieck, Ludwig, 92Tieghem, Paul van, xii, 52n

Vauimo, Gianni, 29-30Voltaire, 47, 48, 54, 74

Index of Names

Waller, A. R., 56nWeber, Max, 17, 21Wellbery. David E., 131.!'nWellek, Rene, 40n, 48nWittgenstein, Ludwig, 13,'47

Wordsworth, William, 56-57,58-59

Yeats,William Butler, 147

Ernst Behler Irony and the Discourse of Modernity 1990 1

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