Habermas and aesthetics: the limits of Communicative Reason

While Habermas´s philosophy of communicative action is well-known among philosophers and social scientists, his aesthetics - that is, his views on art, literature, and culture - has received little attention. In his study, Pieter Duvenage fills this gap and shows that Habermas´s work on aesthetics, far from being marginal to his core concerns, is central to understanding and evaluating Habermas´s entire theoretical enterprise.Duvenage proceeds by reconstructing Habermas´s aesthetics in terms of two phases. In the first phase of his intellectual career Habermas follows an open-ended model which emphasizes the communicative and societal relevance of art. In the second phase, which correlates with his linguistic turn in the 1970s, the idea of a communicative aesthetics is worked out in terms of a theory of rationality. In this process Habermas assigns aesthetic rationality to a more restricted place within his overall model of communicative rationality. This position, the fate of aesthetics, is further elaborated in his debate with postmodern thinkers.In the last part of the study Duvenage offers a critical perspective on the role of aesthetics in Habermas´s work and proposes possible alternatives. Here he plays Habermas´s early writings on aesthetics, which viewed art as material force for public illumination, against his more mature writings, which narrowly revolve around art as a form of subjective expression. Duvenage shows that Habermas´s later work offers a third, albeit undeveloped, alternative that suggests a convergence of the two.This book should be of interest to scholars of Habermas, critical theory, aesthetics, German and French philosophy, cultural and media studies, as well as anyone interested in modern art and its relation to modernity.
Contents: Chapter 1. Habermas and Aesthetics: The First Phase 1.1 Initial influences and themes in Habermas´s work 1.2 The public sphere and the role of art 1.3 The decline of the public sphere 1.4 Towards a normative and rational public sphere 1.5 An aesthetics of redemption: Habermas´s Benjamin essay 1.6 Habermas´s early reflections on aesthetics Chapter 2 Habermas and the Legacy of Aesthetics in Critical Theory 2.1 The initial research programme of Critical Theory 2.2 Society as the result of instrumental reason 2.3 Adorno: instrumental reason and aesthetics 2.4 The outer circle and the Benjaminian alternative 2.5 Summary Chapter 3 Habermas and Aesthetics: The Second Phase 3.1 The theory of communicative action and rationality 3.2 The theory of societal rationalization 3.3 The aesthetic implications of communicative reason 3.4 Three case studies: Schiller, Hegel and Heine 3.5 Recapitulation: Habermas and the fate of aesthetics Chapter 4 The Second Phase Continues:The Postmodern Challenge 4.1 Nietzsche´s aesthetic anti-discourse of modernity 4.2 Art and ontology: Heidegger 4.3 On philosophy and literature: Derrida 4.4 Postmodernity and genealogy: Bataille and Foucault 4.5 A postmodern critique of Habermas´s aesthetics 4.6 Summary Chapter 5 Critical Perspectives on Habermas´s Aesthetics 5.1 The role of aesthetics in communicative reason 5.2 Habermas and the de-linguistification of (inner) nature 5.3 The role of aesthetics in social rationalization 5.4 Reading Adorno after Habermas 5.5 Critical summary Chapter 6 The Reciprocity of World Disclosure and Discursive Language 6.1 Truth as aesthetic world disclosure: Heidegger 6.2 Truth as rational discursiveness: Habermas 6.3 The road beyond: art as communicative experience 6.4 The political and moral implications of world disclosure.