Critical Theory developed in response to the specific historical developments of twentieth-century Europe: war and revolution, the transformation of Communism into Stalinism, and the rise of Nazi Germany. Combining the legacy of German philosophical idealism with the tradition of critics of idealism—Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Marx, and Nietzsche—Critical Theory also built on the emergent social theory, especially Weber’s analysis of modernity and his one overriding theme, bureaucratization. For Weber, creative innovations that transform social life and that take shape especially through religious genius as charismatic prophecy succumb to the dead weight of the world: however animating the idea, however compelling the vision, its spirit flags, worn down by the inertia of life. This decline transpires, tragically, as a consequence of the efforts to implement the ideals: first comes the prophecy, then comes its management, which finally snuffs it out. This deadly logic of bureaucratization marks the fate of both capitalism and socialism; it is the institutional form of rationalization. Indeed, modernity faces two alternative threats: the stultifying embrace of bureaucratic rationalization and its opposite, the seductive irrationalism that promises fulfillment but only makes matters worse. The pessimism stereotypically associated with Adorno derives significantly from Weber’s bleak vision, the choice between charismatic dictators and anemic bureaucrats, while reserving a very small and unstable position for an objective thoughtfulness—where reason and values might momentarily coincide.
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This talk was presented at the 2009 Telos Conference. A few months ago at the German Studies Association Conference, the well-known leftist historian Geoff Eley opened his keynote address with a blistering attack on Theodor Adorno in 1968. In a mocking tone, he repeatedly referred to Adorno as “Teddy,” which elicited the expected sarcastic laughter from the audience. Eley’s purpose was to transform the memory of the 1968 student revolt from that of “failure” to that of the “great hope” for true democracy that was squandered by the SPD and other institutions. And Eley gave the Frankfurt School a prime position among those institutions inhibiting the radical student path to true democracy. As a symbolic example, Eley reiterated how Adorno had had his graduate student Hans-Jürgen Krahl, a prominent SDS leader, arrested and tried for occupying a building. Having stigmatized Adorno—personally, ethically, and politically—Eley then moved to the more substantive issue of Adorno’s split with Marcuse over an array of 1960s domestic and international positions. Basically, Adorno had defended the West German status quo, including Germany’s alignment with the United States’ anti-communist crusade. It was a position reinforced by Adorno’s sincere concern that the student movement might evolve into fascism. In Eley’s account, by July 1968, this fracture culminated in a full-scale “witch hunt” against Marcuse, in which Max Horkheimer now joined. In the mind of Marcuse and Eley, the students represented a new, necessary form, of “militant democracy” of the streets against the stagnant, inherently oppressive, Adorno-Horkheimer form of institutionalized parliamentary democracy. This talk was presented at the 2009 Telos Conference. In what follows, I summarize a fragmentary political theology, written from a British perspective, but one that opens itself out to Continental and North American intellectual influences, as well as to global concerns. It was once said to me, by the late Texan theologian John Clayton, in Lancaster, that he had finally worked out what was “weird” about me: “Most of us, John, are trying to combine German theology with Anglo-Saxon philosophy. A few trendy people go for Continental philosophy as well. But you’re doing the opposite—with utter perversity you’re trying to combine British theology (of all things!) with Continental philosophy—and what is worse, with French stuff!” When the United States sits down with Ahmadenijad, the conversation may revolve around footwear, as the Guardian reports: When the Iraqi journalist, Muntazar al-Zaidi, hurled his shoes at the then-US president, George Bush, in December, Iranian officials declared him a hero and hailed his gesture as a mark of Islamic courage. They were presumably less impressed this week when Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was similarly targeted during a visit to the north-western city of Urumiye. David Pan’s essay “The Sovereignty of the Individual in Ernst Jünger’s The Worker“ appeared in Telos 144 in the fall of 2008. Elke Van der Steen asks him some questions. Elke Van der Steen: The form of subjectivity Jünger proposed, one that is free of the relativism of culture and the assumption of universal reason, and which is embedded in a human relationship to violence, can be relevantly applied to current situations of terrorism. Two particular ideas discussed in greater length in your essay seem particularly applicable. The first has to do with the preservation of the individual’s sovereignty by linking private experiences with violence to group affirmation, and the second involves the paradoxical disdain for the dissemination of a universal reason and culture, while embarking on a national mobilization of violence. An earlier version of this talk was presented at the 2009 Telos Conference. In a little-noticed coincidence, President Dmitry Medvedev and the then Democratic presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama delivered major foreign policy speeches in the summer of 2008 in Berlin. Notwithstanding important differences, both recognized the flaws of the prevailing international system and emphasized the need for a new global order that transcends narrow national self-interest and addresses common security threats. Crucially, President Medvedev and Senator Obama each vowed to strengthen U.S.-Russian ties and to build broader alliances. |
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