From Modernism to Postmodernism Anthology

From Modernism to Postmodernlsm: An Anthology LawrenceE. Cahoone

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BLACKWELLPHILOSOPHYANTHOLOGI ES Eachvolumein this outstandingseriesprovidesan authoritativeand comprehensivecollectionof the essentialprimary readingsfrom philosopl'y'smain fieldsof study.Designedto complementthe BlackwellCompanions to F'hilosophy series,eachvolumerepresents an unparalleledresourcein its own right, and will providethe idealplatformfor courseuse. 1 Cottingham: WesternPhilosophy: An Anthology 2 Cahoone:FromModernismto Postmodernism: An Anthology 3 LaFollette:Ethicsin Practice: An Anthology 4 Coodin and Pettit: Contemporary/ PoliticalPhilosophy:An Anthologl, 5 Eze:African Philosaphy:An Anthologlr 6 McNeill and Feldman:ContinentalPhilosophy: An Anthollgy 7 Kim and Sosa:Metaphysics: An Anthology 8 Lycan:Mind andCognition: An Anthology(secondedition) 9 Kuhseand Singer:Bioethics: An Anthology 10 Cumminsand Cummins:Minds,Brains,andCompufers: An Anthology Forthcoming: 1 1 Sosaand Kim: Epistentalogy: An Anthology 12 Patterson Philosophyof Law:An Anthology

For my son, HarrisonBaetenCahoone

Copyright @ Blackwell PublishersLtd, 1996 Selection and editorial matter O Lawrence Cahoone. 1996 The right of Lawrence Cahooneto be identified as author of this work hLasbeen assertedin accordancewith the Copyright, Designsand PatentsAct 1988. First published1996 Reprinted 1996 (twice), 1997, 1998,2000 Blackwell PublishersInc 350 Main Street Malden, Massachusetts02148, USA Blackwell PublishersLtd 108 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 I JF, UK All rights reserved.Except for the quotation of short passagesfor the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publicationmay be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or by any means,electnonic, mechanical,photocopying,recordingor otherwise,without the prior permission of the publisher. Except in the United Statesof America, this book is sold subjectto the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise,be lent, re-sold,hired out, or otherwisecirculatedwithout the publisher'sprior consentin any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is publishedand without a similar condition including this condition being imposedon the subsequentpurchaser. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data From modernismto postmodernism:an anthology/[compiledby] LawrenceE. Cahoone. p. cm. Includes bibliographical referencesand index. ISBN l-55786-602-3 - rSBN l-55786-603-l (pbk) l. Postmodernism.I. Cahoone.LawrenceE.. 1954-. B 8 3t . 2 . P . 6 7 7 1 9 9 5 9 5 -r I 5 8 3 149-dc.20 CIP British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP cataloguerecord for this book is availablefrom the British Library Typesetin 10.5 on 12.5pt Photina by Pure Tech India Ltd, Pondicherry Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall This book is printed on acid-freepaper

Contents Preface

IX

Acknowledgments

XI

Introduction

and its Critics P a r t I M o d e r nC i v i l i z a t i o n From Meditationson First Philosophy ReneDescartes From "Discourseon the Sciencesand the ArtS" lean-lacquesRousseau 3 "An Answer to the Question:What is Enlightenment?" ImrnanuelKqnt on the Revolutionin France From Reflections EdmundBurke From Sketch for an HistoricalPicture of the Progressof the Human Mind Marquis de Condorcet "AbsoluteFreedomand Terror" GeorgWiIheIm FriedrichHegel "Bourgeoisand Proletarians" KarI Marx and FriedrichEngels "The Madman" "The Natural HistorYof Morals" of Morals From The GenealogA Power From The Wiil to F riedrich L'{ietzsche

ro2 ro4 L20 130

Contents

P ar t l l M o d e r ni t y R e a l i z e d From "The Painterof Modern Life" CharlesBaudelaire 10 From "How to MakeOur IdeasClear" CharlesS. Peirce

136

r45

11 From TheProtestantEthic and the Spirit of Capitalism From "Scienceas a Vocation" Max Weber

r57 r69

12 From Coursein GeneralLinguistics Ferdinandde Sauss ure 1 3 "The Founding and Manifestoof Futurism" Filippo TommasoMarinetti I 4 "Lecture on Ethics" From TractatusLogico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein

777

15 From Towardsa l{ew Architecture Le Corbusier 16 From Civilizationand its Discontents SigmundFreud T 7 "The Crowd Phenomenon" lose Ortegay Gasset 1 8 From The Crisis of EuropeanSciences and Transcendental Phenomenology EdmundHusserl 1 9 From Dialecticof Enlightenment Max Horkheimerand TheodorAdorno 2 0 From "Existentialism " lean-PaulSartre

185 191 198

20a 212 2L9

226 243 259

P a r tl l l P o s t m o d e r n i s m a n d t h e R e v a l u a t i oonf Modernity 2 I "Letter on Humanism"

274

Martin Heidegger

2 2 "The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions"

309

Thomas Kuhn

2 3 From Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture Robert Venturi VI

325

Contents 2 4 "The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing"

336

lacquesDerrida 2 5 "Nietzsche,Genealogy,History" From "Truth and Power" Michel Foucault

360 379

2 6 "POSTmodernISM:A Paracritical Bibliography"

382

lhab Hassan

2 7 From Anti-Oedipus:Capitalismand Schizophrenia

40L

GiIIesDeleuzeand F elix Guattari

2 8 From The Comingof Post-IndustrialSociety

423

DanielBrII

2 9 From SymbolicExchangeand Death

437

lean Baudrillard

3 0 "The Sex Which is Not One" Lucelrigaray 3 1 "The Death of Modern Architecture" From What Is Post-Modernism? Charleslencks 3 2 From The PostmodernCondition:A Reporton Knowledge Lyotard lean-Franqois

3 3 From Erring: A PostmodernAltheologA 34

35 36 37

38

Mark C. Taylor "The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life and the Concept of a Tradition" AlasdairMaclntyre From "The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" Fredriclameson "solidarity or Objectivity?" RichardRorty "An Alternative Way out of the Philosophy of the Reason" Subject:Communicativeversus Subject-Centered Habermas Itirgen From "From Feminist Empiricismto Feminist Standpoint Epistemologies" Sandra Harding

3 9 "The Cartesian Masculinization of Thought"

46L 469 47r 481 5L4

534 556 573

589

6L7 638

Susan Bordo

40 From The Reenchantmentof Science

665

David RaA Griffin vLr

Contents 4L "Towards a PostmodernPedagogy" Henry A. Giroux 42 From "Modern China and the PostmodernWest" David HaII SelectBibliography lndex

vlll

687 698 7TL 719

Preface The problem with introducing students to any discussion of postmodernism is not merely the notorious difficulties of the meaning of the term. It is that most students do not adequately understand what is "modern," what it is whose obsolescencethe term "postmodern" presumably announces. Any discussion of postmodernism assumes a great deal of knowledge about modernism, or modernity, or the modern world, and how it has been interpreted. It is senselessto try to teach students about the sophisticated methods of contemporary postmodernists without lirst teaching them the tradition from which these methods are a departure. Yet current anthologies of postmodernism generally ignore history and collect only contemporary essays;indeed, usually essays representing only a narrow range of philosophical perspectives.The purpose of the present volume is to examine both modernism and postmodernism by presenting prominent philosophical components of, and sociological theories about, modernity as background for the various writers involved in the debate over postmodernism. Its aim is, in short, to put postmodernism in context. Certainly this is a task to which no anthology can be'adequate,yet some attempt in that direction is, I believe, better than none. In making the selections I have tried to balance a number of preferences for: writers who formulate positions, rather than comment on them; substantive,rather than minimal, selections;selectionsthat are historically connected to each other; and pieces that engender a deeper understanding of the philosophical basis for postmodernism, rather than those that are more superlicially relevant to postmodern themes. The last of these has led me to omit some well-known essaysthat explicitly express or comment on postmodernism, but remain inscrutable unless the reader already has a deeper familiarity with the author's perspective, a familiarity I hope my selections will better provide. So the volume aims at philosophical understanding rather than a hit parade of recent cultural politics. The selections are arranged chronologically. Every step has been taken to make the volume user-friendly. Author's notes appear at the end of each selection.Editor's annotations to historical IX

Preface references and technical terms appear at the foot of the page. Headnotes introduce each selectedauthor. Referencesto the selectedworks on the first page of each selection indicate whether the relevant textual subdivision (book, essay, chapter, section) appears whole or in part. A select bibliography is included. This volume would not exist but for the vision and encouragement of stephan chambers of Blackwell. Steven smith of Blackwell has ushered the book admirably into print. Judy Marshall's careful copy-editing has saved me from numerous embarrassments.A semester sabbatical from Boston university gave me the time to turn a skeletal list of selectionsinto a flesh and blood book. Margaret Rosewas helpful and encouraging in my search for early uses of the term "postmodern." The staff of the Department of Philosophy at Boston university, carolyn Evans and Sara Martin, have helped to make my professional life these past years not onry more productive, but more human. During the planning and composition of the volume, Jeffrey Jampel and especially Deborah Hirschland have been of invaluable help to me.

Acknowledgments The editor and the publisher wish to acknowledge with thanks the permission to reprint from the following previously published material: Ren6 Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Elizabeth Haldane and G.R.T. Ross,in ThePhilosophicalWorks of Descartes,vol. I (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press,7975), Meditations One and Two, pp. 144-57' Reprinted with the permission of CambridgeUniversity Press. and the Arts, Part One, in fean-|acquesRousseau,Discourseon the Sciences The Basic Political Writings of lean-JacquesRousseau,trans. Donald Cress (Indianapolis:Hackett, 1987) pp. 3-10. Reprintedby permissionof Hackett Publishing Company. Immanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question:What is Enlightenment?" in Kant's Political Writings, trans. H.B. Nisbet, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I97O), pp. 54-60. @ Cambridge University Press 1970. Reprinted with the permission of CambridgeUniversity Press and the editor. Edmund Burke, Reflectionson the Revolutionin France, ed. J.G.A. Pocock (Indianapolis:Hackett, 1987), pp. 12-19, 25-6, 29-3I, 5I-2, 76-7, 216-18. Reprinted by permission of Hackett Publishing Company. Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, Sketchfor an Historical Picture of the Progressof the Human Mind, trans. June Barraclough (New York: Hyperion, rpt. of 1955 Noonday Press edition), "The Ninth Stage: From Descartes to the Foundation of the French Republic," pp. 124-37. Reprinted with acknowledgment to Hyperion Press. of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, PhenomenologA (Oxford:Oxford UniversityPress,I977), pp. 355-63, paragraphs582-95. O Oxford University Press I977. Reprinted by permissionof Oxford University Press. Karl Marx with Friedrich Engels,"Bourgeoisand Proletarians," SectionOne of Manifestoof the CommunistParty, trans. SamuelMoore, in Robert Tucker,

XI

Acknowledgments TheMarx-EngelsReader(New York: Norton, 7928), pp. 473-83. Reprinted with acknowledgment to W.W. Norton & Company. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science,Part Three, Sec. 125, trans. with commentary by Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, l9T4), pp. 181-2. Copyright @ 1974 by Random House, Inc. Beyond Good and Evil, trans. with commentary by Walter Kaufmann (New york: Random House, 1989), Part Five: "The Natural History of Morals," Sec.186-203, pp.97-178. Copyright A 1966 by Random House, Inc. The Genealogyof Morals, trans. by Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale (New york: Random House, 1989), Sec.24-28, pp.148-63. Copyright @ 196T by Random House,Inc. TheWiII to Power,ed. Walter Kaufmann, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R. f. Hollingdale (New York: Random House, 1967), para. 1067, pp. 449-50. Copyright @ 7962 by Random House, Inc. All four selectionsreprinted by permission of Random House, Inc. charles Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life," trans. Jonathan Mayne, copyright @, in The Painter of Modern Life and Other Essays(London: Phaidon, 1964), sec. 3-4, pp. 5-15. Reprinted by permission of phaidon PressLtd, in accordancewith the information given on the imprint page of the book. charles s. Peirce, "How to Make our ldeas clear," co]lectedpapersof chartes sand.ers Peirce,ed. charles Hartshorne and paul weiss (cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), vol. v, para. 394-4O2, pp. 252-60, and para. 405-10, pp. 265-TL Copyright @ 7934, 1935 by the president and Fellows of Harvard college. Reprinted by permission of Harvard university Press. Max weber, "Author's Introduction" to The protestant Ethic and the spirit of Capitalism,trans. Talcott Parsons(New york: Scribner,1958), pp. 13-31. copyright o 1958 charles scribner'ssons. Introduction copyright @ rgz6 GeorgeAllen & unwin (Publishers)Ltd. Reprinted with permissionof simon and Schuster from the Macmillan college text. "science as a vocation," in From Max Weber: Essaysin Sociology,trans. and ed. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 138-40, 743-9, 155-6. Copyright @ Oxford University press 1946. Reprintedby permission of Oxford University Press. Ferdinand de saussure, course in GeneralLinguistics,trans. wade Baskin (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), Part One, chapter 1, pp. 65-70, and Part Two, chapter 4, pp. I2O-2. Reprinted by permission of McGraw-Hill, Inc. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism," trans. R.w. Flint and Arthur w. coppotelli, in Marinetti: selectedwritings, ed. R.W. Flint (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 7972). Copyright O xii

Acknowledgments 1971,, 7972 by Farrar, straus & Giroux, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, [nc. Ludwig wittgenstein, "Lecture on Ethics," The PhilosophicalReview, 74, no. 1, fanuary 1965, pp.3-12. Reprinted with acknowledgmentto The trans. D.F. Pears and PhilosophicalRsview. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 1961) para. 6.53Paul, B.F. McGuinness(London: Routledgeand Kegan Ltd, 1961' Reprinted 6.57, pp. 73-4. CopyrightO Routledge& Kegan Paul by permission of Routledge. Le Corbusier, Towardsa New Architecture,trans. Frederick Etchells (New York: Dover, 1986), pp. 1-8, 29-3I, 47-64. Reprinted with acknowledgment to Dover Publications' Sigmund Freud, Civilizationand its Discontents,trans. from the German by and 7, pp' 64-8O' fames Strachey(New York: Norton, 1961), chapters6 by AIix strachey. 1989 copyright o 1961 by fames Strachey,renewed Reprinted by permission of W.W' Norton & Company, Inc' I, The RevoltoJ fose ortega y Gasset,"The crowd Phenomenon," chapter 'the Masses,trans. from the spanish by Anthony Kerrigan, ed. Kenneth Moore (Notre Dame,Ind.: Universityof Notre DamePress,1985)' pp' 3-10' copyright o 1985 W.W. Norton & Company,Inc. Reprintedby permission of W.W. Norton & ComPanY,Inc. PhenoEdmund Husserl, The Crisisof EuropeanSciencesand'Transcendental Press, university menology,trans. David carr (Evanston: Northwestern pp' 48-59' lgTO), Part One, sec. 3-5, pp'7-1-4 and Part Two, sec' 9h-91' copyright o by Northwestern university Press.Reprinted by permission of Northwestern UniversitY Press. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment,trans. pp.23-9, and pp' 81-93' ]ohn Cumming (New York: Seabury, 1972), company. Reprinted by Publishing copyright @ 1gg3 The Continuum permission of The Continuum Publishing Company. in Existentialfean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism," trans. Bernard Frechtman pp' and pp' 15-24, ism and.Human Emotions(New York: Citadel, 1935)' 46-51. Copyright @ 1957, r985 by PhilosophicalLibrary, tnc. Published by arrangement with Carol Publishing Group. Martin Heidegger, "Letter on Humanism," from David Farrell Krell (ed.), Martin Heidegger:Ba,sicwritings, trans. Frank A. capazzi, with J. Glenn Gray and David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper and Row, 1977)' pp. 193-242. English translation copyright @ 1977 by Harper & Row, Publishers, [nc. General Introductions and Introductions to each selection copyright o Lg77 by David Farrell Krell. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers,Inc. xtu

Acknowledgments Thomas Kuhn, Thestructure of ScientificRevolutions(chicago: University of chicago Press, 1962), chapter IX, "The Nature and Necessityof scienlilic Revolutions," pp. 92-170. copyright a 1962, rg70 the university of chicago. Reprinted by permission of university of chicago press. Robert venturi, complexity and contradiction in Architecture (New york: Museum of Modern Art, 1966) pp. 16-1 7, 23-5, 3g-41, gg, and IO2_4. copyright o rhe Museum of Modern Art, 1966, 1977. Reprinted by permission of The Museum of Modern Art. Jacques Derrida, "The End of the Book and the Beginning of writing," chapter 7, of Grammatology,trans. Gayatri chakravorty spivak (Baltimore: fohns Hopkins university Press,rgz4), pp. 6-26. Reprinted by permission of lohns Hopkins University Press. Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche,Genealogy,History," trans. from the French by Donald Bouchard and sherry simon, in Language,counter-Memory,practise: selectedEssaysand rnterviews,ed. Donald Bouchard (Ithaca, Ny: cornell university Press,1977), pp. 139-64. copyright @ 1977 by cornell university. used by permission of the publisher, cornell university press. ,,Truth and Power," trans. colin Gordon, in powerlKnowledge:selected lnterviewsand other writings 7972-77, ed. colin Gordon(New york: pantheon, 1972),pp. 131-3. Text copyright@ 1972, r975, 1976, 1g77 by Michel Foucault. collection copyright @ 1980 by The Harvester press. Reprinted by permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House,Inc. Ihab Hassan, "PoSTmodernISM:A paracritical Bibliography," in paracriticisms;sevenspeculationsof the Times (urbana: university of lllinois press, 1975), pp' 39-59. copyright @ r97s by the Board of Trusteesof the university of lllinois. used with permissionof the author and the universitv of lllinois Press. Gilles Deleuze and F6lix Guattari, Anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia trans. Helen Lane, Mark Seem, and Robert Hurley (New york: viking Penguin, 1977), chapter 1: Introduction, pp. 1-g and 22-35. Translation copyright @ 1977 by viking Penguin, a division of penguin Books USA Inc., English language translation. used by permission of viking penguin, a division of Penguin Books usA Inc., and by permission of Athlone press of London. Daniel Bell, The coming of Post-rndustrialsociety (New york: Basic Books, 1976), "Foreword: 7976," pp. ix-xxii. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books.copyright @ L973 by Daniel Bell. Foreword copyright o 1976 by Daniel Bell. Reprinted by permissionof BasicBooks,a division of Harpercollins Publishers,Inc. Jean Baudrillard, symbolic Exchangeand Death, trans. Iain H. Grant (London: Sage,1993), chapter 1, pp. 6-12; from chapter 2, pp. 50, 55-61, xiv

Acknowledgments 70-6. Bnglish translation copyright @ Sage Publications 1993. Introduction and Bibliography copyright O Mike Gane 1993. Originally published as L'rlchangesymboliqueet Ia mort, copyright @ Editions Gallimard, Paris, I976. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd' Luce lrigaray, "The sex which is Not one", trans. claudia Reeder,in Naw FrenchFeminisms,ed. Elaine Marks and Isabelle de Courtivron (New York: Schoken, 1981), pp.99-106. Copyright o 1980 by the university of MassachusettsPress. Reprinted by permission of University of Massachusetts Press. Architecture(New York: Rizzoli, CharlesJencks,TheLanguageof Post-Mod.ern 1984), Part One, "The Death of Modern Architecture," PP.9-10. Reprinted by permission of Rizzoli of New York. what Is Post-Modernism?(London: Academy Editions,1936), chapter 2, pp' 14-20, and chapter 7, pp' 57-9' Reprinted by permission of Academy Group Ltd. Report on Knowledge, |ean-Frangois Lyotard, The Postmoderncondition: A University (Minneapolis: lruor. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi and 14, 11, to of Minnesota Press, 1984), Introduction and sections 9 pp. xxiii-xxv, 3l-47, 64-7. Originally published in France as La condition pistmod,ern:rapport sur Ie slvoir, copyright @ 1979 by Les Editions de ivlinuit, Paris. English translation and foreword copyright O 1984 by the University of Minnesota. Reprinted by permission of the University of Minnesota, and by the kind permission of Manchester University Press. Mark Taylor, Erring: A PostmodernAltheology (chicago: university of chicagoPress,1984), pp. 6-13, 703-7,115-20. Copyrighto 1984 by the University of Chicago. Reprinted by permission of University of Chicago Press. Alisdair MaclntYre, "The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life and the Conceptof a Tradition," chapter 15 of,After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), PP' 204-25 . Copyright C 19 84 (Revised Edition) by the University of Notre Dame Press.Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the author' Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism,Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalor, The cultural Logic of Late Capitalism ism," chapter 1 of Postmodernism, (Durham: Duke UniversityPress,1991), pp' l-6, 32-8,45-51 and 54' Reprinted by permission of Duke University Press' Richard Rorty, "solidarity or Objectivity" in fohn Rajchman and Cornel West, post-AnalgticPhilosophy(New York: columbia university Press, 1985). Copyright @ 1985 Columbia University Press.Reprinted by permission of Columbia University Press,CambridgeUniversity Press,and the author. ftirgen Habermas, Philosophical Discourseof Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence(Cambridge:MIT Press,1987), chapter l1' pp' 294-326' TransXV

Acknowledgments lation copyright e 1987 by the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology. Original publication copyright C 19 8 5 Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Federal Republic of Germany. Reprinted by permission of MIT press and the author. sandra Harding, "From Feminist Empiricism to Feminist standpoint Epistemologies,"chapter 6 of her Thescienceeuestionin Feminism(Ithaca, Ny: cornell university Press,1986), pp. 141-61. copyright o 1996 by cornell university. Published in England by open university press of London in 1986. Reprinted by permissionof cornell university press, open university Press,and the author. susan Bordo, "The cartesian Masculinization of Thought," chapter 6 of The Flight to objectivity: Essayson cartesianism and culture (Albany: state university of New York press, l98T), pp.97-11g. copyright @ 19gz state university of New York. Reprinted by permissionof state university of New York Pressand the author. David Ray Griffin, "lntroduction: The Reenchantment of science," in his edited volume, The Reenchantment of science(Albany: state university of New York Press, 1988), SectionsOne and Three, pp. 2-g and 22_3O. copyright @ 1988 State university of New york. Reprinted by permission of State University of New york press. Henry A. Giroux, "Towards a postmodern pedagogy," section of the Introduction to Postmodernism,Feminism, and cultural politics (Albany: state university of New York press, 1991), pp. 45-55. copyright @ lggl state University of New york. Reprinted by permission of State universitv of New York Press. David Hall, "Modern china and the postmodern west," in culture and. Modernity: East-west Philosophicperspectives,edited by Eliot Deutsch (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, press 1991), pp. 57-62. Copyright @ the university of Hawaii 1991. Reprinted by permissionof university of Hawaii Pressand the author. The publishers apologize for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in the next edition or reprint of this book.

XVI

Introduction The term "postmodern" has in the last decade become an increasingly popular label for something about the end of the,twentieth century. It also refers to a contemporary intellectual movement, or rather, a not very happy family of intellectual movements. But as it often happens, dysfunctional families are the most interesting ones. The members of the postmodern family not only express conflicting views, but are interested in barely overlapping subject matters: art, communications media, history, economics, politics, ethics, cosmology, theology, methodology, literature, education. Some of the most important members of the family refuse to be called by the family name. And there are distant relations who deny that they are related at all. Philosophical opinion regarding the postmodernfamily is deeply divided. For some, postmodernism connotes the final escapefrom the stultifying legacy of modern European theology, metaphysics,authoritarianism, colonialism, racism, and domination. To others it representsthe attempt by disgruntled left-wing intellectuals to destroy Western civilization. To yet others it labels a goofy collection of hermetically obscure writers who are really talking about nothing at all. All three reactions are misguided. Certainly the term "postmodern," like any slogan widely used, has been attached to so many different kinds of intellectual, social, and artistic phenomena that it can be subjectedto easy ridicule as hopelesslyambiguous or empty. This shows only that it is a mistake to seek a single, essential meaning applicable to all the term's instances. As one of the inspirers of postmodernism would say, the members of the postmodern clan resembleeach other in the overlapping way that family members do; two members may share the same eye color, one of these may have the same ears as a third, the third may have the same hair color as a fourth, and so on. More important than discovering an essentialcommonality is recognizingthat there are some important new developmentsin the world that deserveexamination, that "postmodern" labels some of them, and that there are some very important works, raising deep questions, written by people labelled "postmodernists." Neither

Introduction membersof the family, nor their critics, ought to be too concernedwith the label. Theoretical labels are nothing to be feared, they have a purpose as long as they are thought's servant, rather than its master. postmodernism deservescareful, sober scrutiny, devoid of trendy enthusiasm, indignant condemnation, or reactionary fear. Its appearanceis unlikely either to save the Western world or destroy it. when most philosophers use the word "postmodernism" they mean to refer to a movement that developedin France in the 1960s, more precisely called "poststructuralism," along with subsequent and related developments. They have in mind that this movement denies the possibility of objective knowledge of the real world, "univocal" (single or primary) meaning of words and texts, the unity of the human self, the cogency of the distinctions between rational inquiry and political action, literal and metaphorical meaning, science and art, and even the possibility of truth itself. Simply put, they regard it as rejecting most of the fundamental intellectual pillars of modern western civilization. They may further associate this rejection with political movements like multiculturalism and feminism, which sometimesregard the rejectednotions as the ideology of a privileged sexual, ethnic and economic group, and aim to undermine establishededucational and political authorities and transfer their power to the previously disenfranchised. This view is neither entirely right nor entirely wrong. There certainly are writers who make the philosophical denials listed above, and there is a connection between some of them and the political aims of feminists and multiculturalists. But not everyonewho engagesin the postmoderncritique of truth or meaning can be politically characterized;and not all feminists or multiculturalists could accept all that goes under the name of postmodernism. Postmodernism,multiculturalism, and feminism representoverlapping but different intellectual tendencies. At a minimum, postmodernism regards certain important principles, methods, or ideas characteristic of modern western culture as obsoleteor illegitimate. In this sense,postmodernismis the latest wave in the critique of the Enlightenment, the critique of the cultural principles characteristic of modern society that trace their legacy to the eighteenth century, a critique that has been going on since that time. Modernity has been criticizing itself all its life. Some postmodernistsexplicitly make the historical claim that modernity is or ought to be at an end. others never speak of "the modern" or "modernism" at all, but instead criticize certain principles that most philosopherswould regard as essentialto the modern world. Some call for the rejection of modernity, while some only question it, problematize it, without implying that there is any alternative. Facing all this diversity, the sincere observer of the debate may be understandably confused. The present volume will try to lift some of the )

lntroduction confusion by putting philosophical postmodernismin context, or rather in severalcontexts.The aim is to arm the reader with most of the background that is necessaryto participate in the current debate over postmodernism among philosophers.That means knowing something about: modernism, or the characteristic doctrines of modern philosophy that postmodernism is criticizing; the wide variety of criticisms of modern thought that are current today, of which postmodernismis only one; and postmodernism as it is expressedin a number of fields - architecture, literature, sociology- not just philosophy. The effect of this contextualization will be to render postmodernismless mysterious and less frightening, which may also make it lessexciting. Whether the last effect is for good or ill will be up to the reader.

The History of Postmodernism The term "postmodern," understood as distinguishing the contemporary scene from the modern, seems first to have been used in 1917 by the German philosopher Rudolf Pannwitz to describe the "nihilism" of twentieth-century Western culture, a theme he took from Friedrich Nietzsche.l It appearedagain in the work of the Spanishliterary critic Federicode Onis in 1934 to refer to the backlash against literary modernism.2It was taken up in two very different ways in English in 1939: by the theologian Bernard Iddings Bell, to mean the recognition of the failure of secular modernism and a return to religion;3 and by the historian Arnold Toynbee to mean the post-World War I rise of mass society, in which the working classsurpassesthe capitalist classin importance.4It then most prominently appeared in literary criticism in the 1950s and 1960s, referring to the reaction against aesthetic modernism, and in the 1970s was pressedinto the same use in architecture. In philosophy it came in the 1980s to refer primarily to French poststructuralist philosophy, and secondarily to a general reaction against modern rationalism, utopianism, and what came to be called "foundationalism," the attempt to establishthe foundations of knowledge and judgment, an attempt that had been a preoccupation of philosophy since Ren6 Descartes in the seventeenth century (although arguably since Plato). At the same time, the term was adoptedin the social sciencesto indicate a new approach to methodology, and even served this purpose,although more controversially,in the natural sciences.sIt became linked to the concept of "post-industrialism," the notion that advanced industrial societieswere in the post-World War II period radically changing their earlier industrial character. Eventually, the word burst into popular attention through journalists who have used it for everything from rock

Introduction videos to the demographicsof Los Angeles to the whole cultural style and mood of the 1990s. Despite the divergence among these usages of "postmodern" one could find some commonality centering on: a recognition of pluralism and indeterminacy in the world that modern or modernist thought had evidently sought to disavow, hence a renunciation of intellectual hopes for simplicity, completeness,and certainty; a new focus on representation or images or information or cultural signs as occupying a dominant position in social life; and an acceptanceof play and fictionalization in cultural fields that had earlier sought a serious, realist truth. This is a vague commonality, to be sure. In order to gain some finer resolution in our picture, let us focus on the development of the most famous strain of postmodernism in philosophy. For this we must travel to France. In the 1960s philosophyin France underwent a major change. A new group of young intellectuals emergedwho were not only deeply critical of the French academicand political establishment- a rebelliousnessnot new in French intellectual circles - but also critical of the very forms of radical philosophy that had given the establishment headaches in the past, primarily, Marxism and existentialism,and to some extent phenomenology and psychoanalysisas well.6 Marxism, existentialism and phenomenology had been, perhaps awkwardly, combined by the great French philosophers of the middle of the century, especially Jean-Paul sartre and Maurice Merleau-ponty, along with a dash of Freudian psychoanalysis.Theseintellectual movements had pictured the individual human subject or consciousnessas alienated in contemporary society, estranged from his or her authentic modes of experience and being - whether the source of that estrangement was capitalism (for Marxism), the scientific naturalism pervading modern western culture (for phenomenology), excessivelyrepressivesocial mores (for Freud), bureaucratically organizedsocial life and mass culture (for existentialism), or religion (for all of them). Methodologically, they rejected the belief that the study of humanity could be modeled on or reduced to the physical sciences,hence they avoided behaviorism and naturalism. unlike physics, chemistry, or biology the human sciencesmust understand the experience,the first person point of view, of their objectsof study: they are concerned not merely with facts but with the meaningof facts for human subjects.TTo diagnosecontemporary alienation they produced an historical analysis of how human society and the human self develop over time, in order to seehow and why modern civilization had gone wrong. what was needed, it seemed, was a return to the true, or authentic, or free, or integrated human self as the center of lived experience.This meant not an abandonment of modern industry, technology, and secularism, but some reconstruction of society (for Marx), or of moral culture (for Freud), or of 4

Introduction our openness to the vicissitudes of our own authentic experience (for phenomenology and existentialism). Now, Marxism, existentialism, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis never ruled the academic roost in France or anywhere else. They representedthe major theoretical opposition to the status quo in the first half of the century. Young intellectuals dissatisfiedwith the neo-Scholastic,rationalistic, theologically or scientifically oriented forms of thought dominant in the academy - forms of thought which seemedwell-suited to endorsing current institutional and political authority - tended to see these movements as the main alternatives. In the post-World War II period they constituted a major intellectual subculture in Europe,gradually influencing American thought as well. The new French philosophers of the 1960s - the most influential of whom were Gilles Deleuze,facques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and feanFrangois Lyotard - also wanted to light the political and academic establishment. But their approach was different from that of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. They had been schooledby another theoretical movement, structuralism, developedearlier by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussureand championed after the war by the anthropologist Claude L6vi-Strauss. Structuralism rejected the focus on the self and its historical development that had characterizedMarxism, existentialism, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis. The social or human sciences,like anthropology, linguistics, and philosophy, neededto focus instead on the super-individual structures of language, ritual, and kinship which make the individual what he or she is. Simply put, it is not the self that createsculture, but culture that creates the self. The study of abstract relations within systems or "codes" of cultural signs (words, family relations, etc,) is the key to understanding human existence.Structuralism seemedto offer the student of humanity a way of avoiding reduction to the natural sciences,while yet retaining objective,scientificmethods, unlike the apparently subiectiveorientation of phenomenology, existentialism, and psychoanalysis.At the same time, it also implied that nothing is "authentic," that there is no fundamental, originary nature of the human self against which we could judge a culture. The new philosophers of the 1960s accepted structuralism's refusal to worship at the altar of the self. But they rejected its scientilic pretensions. They saw deep self-reflexive philosophical problems in the attempt by human beings to be l'objective" about themselves.They applied the structural-cultural analysis of human phenomena to the human sciencesthemselves,which are, after all, human cultural constructions. Hence they are best named "poststructuralists." The import of their work appearedradical indeed. They seemedto announce the end of rational inquiry into truth, the illusory nature of any unified sell the impossibility of clear and unequivocal meaning, the illegitimacy of Western civilization, and the

I

Introduction oppressivenature of all modern institutions. They appeared critically to undermine any and all positive philosophical and political positions, to exhibit hidden paradoxesand modes of social domination operating within all products of reason. Whether they were really as radical as they appearedis less clear, as we shall see.In the 1960s and 1920s. however. their critique had a patently political meaning. It servedto undermine the claims to legitimacy by academic authorities and the State, and was connected to the critique of western imperialism and racism, especially during American involvement in Indochina, and eventually to the feminist critique of male power. Simultaneously,in British and American philosophy, where phenomenology, existentialism,Marxism and psychoanalysishad been far lessinfluential, a related albeit quieter change was taking place. Logical empiricism, also called positivism, which had by mid-century swept asidethe indigenous American pragmatist philosophical tradition (of charles sanders Peirce,william James,GeorgeHerbert Mead, fosiah Royce, and John Dewey) as well as English idealism and empiricism (e.g. of F.H. Bradley and John stuart Mill, respectively),believedthat a systematization of human knowledge was possiblebasedin the certainties of modern logic combined with a scientific explanation of "sense data." philosophy had traditionally been hoodwinked by a failure to employ a perfectly clear, logical, "ideal language," which the new advances in rogic - rooted in Gottlob Frege's BegrifJsschnlf(or "concept notation," 1879) and Bertrand Russell'sand Alfred North whitehead's attempt to reduce mathematics to logic in their PrincipiaMathematica(\9ro-13) - had made possible.Ludwig wittgenstein's attempt to undercut traditional philosophy by distinguishing all that could be said clearly from what is "nonsense" in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) had a powerful effect. philosophy was to shed its metaphysical musings and ethical pretensions and concern itself with logic, the clarification of science'smethod and results, and the dismissalof traditional philosophical questions through a careful analysis of linguistic errors. Positivism was only one of a wide variety of philosophical movements of the lirst half of the twentieth century that attacked the very possibility of philosophical inquiry into the ultimate nature of reality, the existenceof God, the meaning of existence. But subsequentphilosophers of language, logic, and sciencehad begun to cast doubt on the adequacy of the positivist picture. A complete and consistent logic complex enough to include arithmetic was shown by Kurt G
Introduction more to be porous: there seemedno way to say what we sense without already using some yet unverified theoretical language in order to say it. But this implies that verification in a strict senseis impossible,since any statement of "fact" (sense experience) must presuppose the theoretical perspectiveit might seemto verify. Wittgenstein's own later philosophy (in his PhilosophicalInvestigations,1953) suggestedthat the very attempt to discover the foundations of knowledge was as senselessas that of speculative metaphysics.Even scienceitself, the model of knowledge for so many British and American philosophers, came to be seen as partly non-systematic, hence perhaps partly non-rational, in its development.By no means did most Bngtish and American philosophersfeel kinship with the French poststructuralists,but by the 1960s they were becoming equally dubious about the canonical aims of modern philosophy and the ultimate hopes of rational inquiry. This led to a widespreadattempt to pursue philosophical aims without recourse to foundations (what I call "nonfoundationalism"). On both sides of the Atlantic the study of language and, in effect, culture, was supersedingthe study of the previously alleged sourceof culture in logic, in nature, or in the self.8 Meanwhile, outsideof philosophy,new tendenciesin art, Iiterature, music, and especiallyarchitecture were critically supersedingmovements that had earlier been consideredradical. Through the first half of the century a new art and literature that would eventually be called "modernist" had seemed to critique the bourgeois, capitalist social order that carried the economic load of modernity. Dissonant and atonal music, impressionism'surrealism, and expressionismin painting, literary realism, the stream of consciousness novel, to name only a few developments,seemedto open the imagination to a subjective world of experience ignored by the official cultures of societies that were in a schizophrenicrush to modernize technologically and economically, to absorb the natural scientific view of the world, while yet trying to hold onto traditional religious imagery and morality. Often in leaguewith the philosophies of alienated subjectivity (phenomenology,existentialism, Marxism, psychoanalysis), they became identifiect with an "oppositionist," "avant-garde" subculture. This may seem odd in the case of architecture, since modernist architecture embracedthe new technologiesof construction and eventually became the official architecture of the advanced industrial world. Nevertheless,its radically "truthful," de-ornamented style - for which, in Mies van der Rohe's famous slogan, "Less is more" - had been intended to counter what it regarded as the ollicial culture's refusal to recognize the reality of modern industrial life, and was supported by utopian, egalitarian social theory. (Ironically, its official adoption was to be echoed by apparently more oppositionist forms of modernist art; modernist painting and sculpture eventually came to grace the lobbies of corporate headquartersand the plazasof government institutions')

lntroduction By the time of the 1960s, a new generation of writers, painters, and architects began to react against modernism. The ,,end" of modernism in literature was recognizedas early as the 1950s by Irving Howe and in the 1960s by Leslie Fiedler.eLiterary irony and camp seemedto capture the sensibility of the time more than the seriousnessof the modernist search for the alienated soul and the essenceof reality. This period saw the developmentof art which seeminglyrenounced unity of styie for pastiche and which in some casesthreatened to break down the veiy notion of art writing that embraced eclecticism and laughed at (or with?) alienation rather than complaining of it, and music that eschewedemotional themes and celebratedchaos and discontinuity (e.g. in the work of John cage). The idea of an avant-garde, of art as the most serious and truthful of cultural occupations,was increasingly abandoned,most famously by pop Art in the work of Andy warhol. The heroic distinction between trigtr ana low, fine and commercial art, the truth-seeking modern avant-garde and the superIicial, hedonistic marketplace was being abandoned in an anti-heroic embrace of pop culture. It was in the most socially consequential of arts, architecture, that postmodernismhad its most widespreadinfluence in the 1960s and 1920s. The groundwork had been laid in 1961 by Jane Jacobs'sdevastating book, The Death and Life of Great American cities.to jacobs lashed out at the orthodox urban reform movement of the day, in which modernism had been joined with welfare state policy to create vast ,,single use" housing complexesfor the poor. She exposedthe virtually anti-urban, anti-human impulsesof this allegedhumanitarian policy, whose abstract grids undercut the social mechanisms by which urban neighborhoods hai traditionally maintained themselvesas viable communities. Then in 1966 in his com_ plexity and Contradictionin ArchitectureRobert Venturi insisted that architectural communication requires not simplicity but complexity and even contradiction. To the modernist slogan, "Less is more," Venturi replied: "Less is a bore." In the decade to come both the modernist style and the idea of social reform through uniform, technocratic, top-down solutions increasingly fell out of favor. Not to mention that society was undergoing other radical changes: the end of the last vestiges of European colonialism after world wai II, the development of mass communications and a media culture in the advanced industrial countries, the rapid modernization of much of the non_ western world, and the shrinking of the globe by international marketing, telecommunications, and intercontinental missiles. In many western nations there was a significant delegitimation of authority. iocial theorists claimed that someof these changeswere indicative of a tiansition to a new "post-industrial" society, in which the production and control of information, rather than materials, would be the hallmark of economic life. Most 8

Introduction famously formulated by Daniel Bell, this thesis implied that the forms of social, political, and cultural order characteristic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the era in which industrialism triumphantly reconstructed life for most Western human beings,would no longer hold.rr There was then the political explosion of students virutally around the world, culminating in 1968: in the USA, Paris, Prague, and China (towards different ends, to be sure). The revolt against authority among the young educated, or about-to-be-educated,classeswas profound. It was in this highly charged university setting, within an increasingly complex social context, that postmodernism in the strictest sense was born in France among some younger professors.The attack of Parisian students on the French government, on the university that was literally one of its branches, on capitalism, and on the American war in South East Asia, all seemedto resonate with the poststructuralist critique of Reason and Authority. But the moment passed: the war ended, the universities placated the students,and the real world of money, power and geo-politicscontinued much as before. For a decade or more after 1968 poststructuralism's influence outside of France remained limited to comparative literature departments and philosophical circles already devoted to European philosophy. The term "postmodern" gradually came into expandeduse in the 1970s. Ihab Hassan,who would becomeone of postmodernism'smost well-known spokesmen,connected literary, philosophical, and social trends under the term in 1977.12 Charles Jencks applied it to architecture in 7975.13 Postmodernism as a cultural phenomenon was attacked by Daniel Bell in 1976.14 In the late 1970s, three books galvanized postmodernism as a movement: fencks's TheLanguageof Post-ModernArchitecture(1977); leanFrangois Lyotard's La Conditionpostmoderne:rapport sur Ie savoir (1979; English translation: The PostmodernCondition: A Report on Knowledge, 1984); and Richard Rorty's Philosophgand the Mirror of Nature(1979). The last, while not discussingpostmodernismper se, argued that the developments of post-HeideggerianEuropean philosophy and post-Wittgensteinian analytic philosophy were converging on a kind of pragmatic antifoundationalism. Rorty thereby became an American representativeof postmodernism, albeit in pragmatic garb. It was partly through Rorty's influence that in the 1980s postmodernism came to have a meaning for most American philosophers, and not just architectural and literary critics. Simultaneously the term came into general use as a label for the current era, our own fin de siicle (end of century) mood. Of course, postmodernism is not the only philosophical ism to rebel against the status quo since the 1960s. More prominent in Western society as a whole has been the desire to turn back the clock, to respond to the problems of modern society and culture with a partial return to or reincorporation of earlier, traditional cultural forms. This "premodernism"

Introduction can be seen in the widespreadpolitical conservatismof the 1980s, the call for moral regeneration, for a return to community and religion, and in an extreme form, in religious fundamentalism (most famously, Islamic and christian). In political theory, communitarianism and other forms of "neo-liberalism" have accusedmodern liberal individualism of undermining the fabric of society. At the same time, other intellectuals have sought to defend the modern legacy of rationalism and liberal individualism through reinterpreting it. usually limiting the traditional philosophical search for ultimate certainty, these (using my own term) "promodernists" have tried to reinvigorate the modern tradition, rather than either returning to the premodern past or leaping into the postmodern future. one other factor in the development of postmodernism since the early r97os deservesspecialmention: the decline of Marxism. The new left of the 1960s, and some of the new French philosophers, reinterpreted their Marxism through Freud and Ferdinand de Saussure,and so had already begun to shake off Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy. But a deeper disenchantment can be traced to the 1973 publication of the first volume of Alexander Solzhenitsyn'sThe GulagArchipelago,a monumental recounting of Stalinist atrocities in the soviet union. After this, it was no longer possiblefor people of the left to look to the soviet union as a free society in any sense.The western European and North American professoriatebecame increasingly unsympathetic with Marxism and to some extent with socialism oue. tt next decade. This coincided with the popular turn to the right in many" Western societiesduring the 1980s. The result of this change was profound, and not limited to yet another swing in the pendulum of popular opinion between the demand for a freer market and the demand for greater government control over the market. Marxism had provided a philosophy of history that served for a sizable segment of the secularizedwestern intelligentsia as a worldly religion, a particularly potent fulfillment of that great modern hope in progress,what christopher Lasch called the "one and only Heaven."ls For many irreligious intellectuals,the hope for a utopian socialistfuture gave badly needed significance to a life lived after the "death of god." The loss of this hope struck a sizable portion of this group much as the loss of religion had already struck traditional society: lacking a historical telos or goal, it seemed that the world had become centerlessand pointless once again. Postmodernism, a wayward stepchild of Marxism, is in this sense a generation's realization that it is orphaned. Thus ends our brief lesson in recent history. But, as postmodernists would insist, how postmodernism developed and what it meansare two separatequestions.In order to examine the meaning of postmodernism,we must first understand what it is whose decline postmodernismannounces. We must gain some understanding of what is meant by modernity. IO

Introduction

2

What is Modern?

The term "modern," derived from the Latin modo,simply means "of today" or what is current, as distinguishedfrom earlier times. It has been used in various periods and places to distinguish contemporary from traditional ways, and in principle can refer to any sphere of life. It is still used in this local, contextually determined way; hence when someonespeaksof "modern English" or of "modern dance" it does not imply that the historical period of "modern English" and "modern dance" are the same.They are, in effect, two totally different "moderns"; the use of the term modern merely distinguishesrecent English from Middle and Old English, or a twentiethcentury dance style from ballet. ,,Modernity" on the other hand, has a relatively lixed reference in contemporary intellectual discussion. It refers to the new civilization developedin Europe and North America over the last severalcenturies and fully evident by the early twentieth century. "Modernity" implies that this civilization is modern in the strong sense that it is unique in human history. Exactly what makes this civilization unique is to some extent uncontroversial. Everyone admits that Europe and North America developed a new, powerful technique for the study of nature, as well as new machine technologiesand modes of industrial production that have led to an unprecedented rise in material living standards. tt is this form of "modernity" that is today describedas "modernization" or simply "development" in the non-Western world. This modern Western civilization is generally characterizedas well by other traits, such as capitalism, a largely secular culture, liberal democracy, individualism, rationalism, humanism' However, whether fhesetraits are unique in human history is controversial. Many historical societieshave had relatively free markets, have respected individuality, engaged in rational planning and rational inquiry, regarded at least part of social life as largely secular or profane, and so on. As a package, the modern Western combination of science,technology, industry, free market, liberal democracy, etc., certainly is unique in human history, but whether each of the elements separatelyconsideredis unique is less clear. This makes the more precisedelinition of modernity - beyond science,technology, industry, and high living standards- rather difficult. One may be tempted to say, "Who cares about the non-technological components of modernity? What makes modernity modern is machines, industrialization, advanced living standards; the rest is unimportant." But here the American sociologistPeter Berger asks the right question: are we simply ancient Egyptiansin airplanes?That is, is the sole important shift in modernity a differencein the tools that human beings use, rather than a differencein the human beings themselves,their worldview, their senseof 11

Introduction self?If only the tools matter, then the sole significant differencebetween a contemporary corporate executiveriding in a Boeing 74T and an astrologer in the Pharoah's court is the 747. This would imply that the modernization of undevelopedcountries is a purely technical affair, having nothing to do with culture and psychology. But, as the complex cultural and social problems arising from modernization have shown, this is not the case.The differencebetween executive and astrologer lies not only in the airplane, but in the human mind, or in what might be the same thing, human culture. But because minds and cultures are harder to understand and specify than airplanes, this recognition makes the specification of what makes modernity modern endlesslycontroversial. The positive self-imagemodern western culture has often given to itself, a picture born in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, is of a civilization founded on scientific knowledge of the world and rational knowledge of value, which places the highest premium on individual human life and freedom, and believesthat such freedom and rationality will lead to social progressthrough virtuous, self-controlledwork, creating a better material, political, and intellectual life for all. This combination of science,reason, individuality, freedom, truth, and social progress has, however, been questionedand criticized by many. Some critics seemodernity instead as a movement of ethnic and class domination, European imperialism, anthropocentrism, the destruction of nature, the dissolution of community and tradition, the rise of alienation, the death of individuality in bureau..u"y. More benign critics have argued skeptically that modernity cannot achieve what it hopes, e.g. that objective truth or freedom is unavailable, or that modernity's gains are balanced by losses,and that there is no alternative either to modernity or to its discontents.This is not the place to debate the relative truth of these claims; nevertheless,it can at least be said that while there is some truth in each of them, the whole truth is more complex. More than any other topic, the evaluation of modernity brings to mind the story of the elephant and the blind men, each of whom graspedone part of the elephant - trunk, side, tail, leg, ear, tusk - leading to an interminable argument about their utterly dissimilar, fantastic conclusionsregarding the beast- "It's a snake," "No, a wall," "No, a rope," ,,No,a tree," ,,No,a fan," "No, a spear." contemporary theorists often take one part of modernity to be the whole. The debate is complicatedby the question of the historical parametersof modernity. The reason is that the location of the historical starting point of modernity dependson what one regards as modernity's essentialfeature. Did modernity in the west begin in the sixteenth century with the Protestant reformation, the rejection of the universal power of the Roman catholic church, and the development of a humanistic skepticism epitomized by Erasmus and Montaigne? or was it in the seventeenthcenturv I2

lntroduction with the scientific revolution of Galileo, Harvey, Hobbes,Descartes,Boyle, Leibniz, and Newton? Or with the republican political theories and revolutions of the United States and France in the eighteenth century? What about the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century? Very interesting theories have argued for each ofthese theses,and for yet others, and much can be learned about the piecesof the pazzlefrom them. There is no way to resolvethis issue,but fortunately, also no need to resolveit. The primary question for a philosopher is not, when did modernity begin? but: what is the nature, the destiny, and the validity of this new way of life? It is enough to know that some new form of human society evolved in Europe and North America, fully evident by, say, I9I4, whose various pieceshad fallen into place gradually over several centuries. If our primary interest lies in diagnosing the illnessesof the present, the onset of the diseaseis relegated to secondary signilicance. The term "modernism" is used in a famously ambiguous way. It can refer to the philosophy or culture of the modern period as a whole, as in the title of the present volume. It can also refer to a much more historically circumscribedmovement in the arts during the period 1850 to 1950. As mentioned above, this period saw unprecedentedexperimentation in the arts: in painting, from the realism of GustaveCourbet and the impressionism of ClaudeMonet to the abstractexpressionismof JacksonPollack; in literature, the abandonment of objective nalrative in Virginia Woolf and James]oyce' and of idealizedtreatment of subjectmatter in Ernest Hemingway; in music, Arnold Schdnberg's and Alban Berg's atonality, and Igor Stravinsky's dissonanceand non-thematic structure, to name but a few examples. In architecture,the modernism of Le Corbusier,Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and walter Gropius has played a particularly important role. At any rate, one way of understanding the relation of the terms "modern," "modernity," and "modernism" is that aesthetic modernism is a form of art characteristic of high or actualizedor late modernity, that is, of that period in which social, economic, and cultural life in the widest sense were revolutionized by modernity. By no means does this imply that modernist art endorses modernization,or simply expressesthe aims of modernity. But it doesmean that modernist art is scarcely thinkable outside the context of the modernized societyof the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Social modernity is the home of modernist art, even where that art rebels against it.

W h a t P o s t m o d e r n i s mM e a n s It is difficutt some would say, impossible to summ arize what postmodernism means, not only because there is much disagreement among 13

lntroduction writers labelled postmodern, but also becausesome postmodernistswould deny having any doctrines or theories at alr. perhaps the very idea of a summary is antithetical to postmodernism.still, understanding must begin somewhere, and there is no good alternative to listing: Iirst, the most famous themes or ideas that appear in most postmodernist work; second, the different kinds of claims that postmodernistsmake; and last, some of the issuesthat divide postmodernists. Five prominent postmodern themes can be distinguished;four are objects of its criticism, and one constitutes its positive method. postmodernism typically criticizes: presenceor presentation (versus representation and construction), origin (versus phenomena), unity (versus plurality), and transcendence of norms (versus their immanence). It typically off.r, uo analysis of phenomena through constitutiveotherness. Presencerefers to the quality of immediate experience and to the objects thereby immediately "presented." what is directly, immediately given in experiencehas traditionally been contrasted both with representation,the sphere of linguistic signs and concepts, and construction, the products of human invention, hence whatever is mediated by the human factor. so, for example, perception or sensation or sensedata have been considered,at various times, as immediate conduits for reality, more reliable or certain than mental contents subsequently modified, represented,and altered by thought or language. Postmodernismquestions and sometimesrejects this distinction. [t denies that anything is "immediately present," hence inde_ pendent of signs, language, interpretation, disagreement, etc. In some cases,it argues that presentation actually presupposesrepresentation.Thus Derrida literally denies that there is such a thing as ,,perception,"that is, an immediate, transparent reception of the given. The denial of presenceoccasionallyleadspostmoderniststo substitute the analysis of representations of a thing for discussion of the thing. For example, in a debate over wh"ther to use intelligence tests in a local school system, a postmodernist might produce a long analysis of how the term ,,intelligence" has been used by the test's proponents,implying that the object or referent of the term "intelligence" is never present to us, so it is the historv of those representationsand their political use which is really at issue.Thl critique of presence is sometimes expressedby saying that, ,,There is nothing outside the text." This need not mean that there is no real world, but that we only encounter real referents through texts, representations, mediation. we can never say what is independent of all saying. origin is the notion of the source of whatever is under consideration, a return to which is often consideredthe aim of rational inquiry. Inquiry into origins is an attempt to seebehind or beyond phenomena to their ultimate foundation. For modern philosophiesof the self (e.g. existenialism,psychoanalysis, phenomenology, even Marxism), the attempt to discover the 74

Introduction origin of the self is the road to authenticity. Postmodernismin the strict sensedenies any such possibility.r6It denies the possibility of returning to, recapturing, or even representing the origin, source, or any deeper reality behind phenomena, and casts doubt on or even denies its existence.In a sense, postmodernism is intentionally superficial, not through eschewing rigorous analysis, but by regarding the surface of things, the phenomena, as not requiring a reference to anything deeper or more fundamental. Nietzsche'sclaim that the ancient Greekswere superficial "out of profundity" could be a postmodern slogan. The saying, "Every author is a dead author," is an example of the denial of origin, becauseit denies that the meaning of a text can be "authoritatively" revealed through referenceto authorial intentions. An author's intentions are no more relevant to understanding the text than any other set of considerations;they are not the "origin" of the text and so have no "privilege" over other factors. Virtually in every kind of intellectual endeavor, postmodernism tries to show that what others have regarded as a unity, a single, integral existence or concept, is plural. This is to some extent a reflection of structuralism, which understood cultural elements - words, meanings, experiences, human selves, societies- as constituted by relations to other elements. Since such relations are inevitably plural, the individual in question is plural as well. Everything is constituted by relations to other things, hence nothing is simple, immediate, or totally present, and no analysis of anything can be complete or final. For example, a text can be read in an indelinitely large number of ways, none of which provides the complete or true meaning. The human self is not a simple unity, hierarchically S a multiplicity of forces or composed, solid, self-controlled; rather it Iis I have selves,than a self. that say to true more be would elements.It is crucial to postmodernism. norms of The denial of the transcendence Norms such as truth, goodness,beauty, rationality, are no longer regarded as independent of the processesthey serve to govern or judge, but are rather products of and immanent in those processes.For example, where most philosophers might use the idea of justice to judge a social order, postmodernismregards that idea as itself the product of the social relations that it servesto judge; that is, the idea was created at a certain time and place, to serve certain interests, and is dependenton a certain intellectual and social context, etc. This greatly complicates any claims about the justice of social relations. It is in effectthe rejection of idealism, and of any dualism which asserts that some things (e.g. norms) are independent of nature or semiosis(sign-production) or experienceor social interests. The concept "good" and the act of calling something good are not independent of the things we want to call "good." This leads postmoderniststo respond to the normative claims of others by displaying the processesof thought, writing, negotiation, and power which produced those very normative 15

Introduction claims. It does not mean that postmodernists fail to make their own normative claims, but that they unleash a form of critical analysis which makes all normative claims problematic, including their own. Lastly, there is a characteristic strategy of many forms of postmodernism, which is the complex application of the four themes just mentioned. The strategy is to use the idea of constitutiveothernessin analyzing any cultural entity. what appear to be cultural units - human beings,words, meanings, ideas, philosophical systems,social organizations - are maintained in their apparent unity only through an active processof exclusion, opposition, and hierarchization. other phenomena or units must be representedas foreign or "other" through representing a hierarchical dualism in which the unit is "privileged" or favored, and the other is devalued in some way. For example, in examining social systems characterized by class or ethnic division, postmodernists will discover that the privileged groups must actively produce and maintain their position by representing or picturing themselves- in thought, in literature, in law, in art - as not having the properties ascribed to the under-privileged groups, and must represent those groups as lacking the propertiesof the privileged groups. In a human psyche, the self may feel compelled to represent itself as excluding sexual or aggressivefeelings, which, however, cannot simply be obliterated, and so must be ascribedto chance situations, to idiosyncratic events (e.g. ,,I was not myself that day"), etc. In a philosophical system, a dualism like that between "reality" and "appearance" involves the construction of a kind of waste basket into which phenomena that the system does not want to sanctify with the privileged term "real" can be tossed(mere ,,appearances"). only in this way can the pristine integrity of the idealizedor privileged term be maintained.rT Metaphorically, this can be expressedby saying that it is the inargins that constitute the text. Apparent unities are constituted by repressing their dependencyon and relations to others. consequently, the informed analyst will attend to the apparently excluded or "marginalized" elements of any system or text. Postmodernists, especially in literary studies, turn their attention away from the well-known, openly announced themes in a text toward the seldom mentioned, the virtually absent, the implicitly or explicitly devalued. For presence is constituted by absence, the real is constituted by appearance,the ideal by the mundane. This appliesnot only to the stated messageor theme of a text, but to its style as well. Linguistit tropes, such as metaphors, which other readers may take as secondary or peripheral to the meaning of a text, are read by postmodernistsas crucial to the constitution of the text's privileged theme. sometimes implicit and sometimes explicit in this kind of analysis through constitutive othernessis the claim that the processof exclusion or repressionis false, unstable, and/or immoral: false in that it is mendacious. 76

Introduction a lie; unstable in that the repression must sooner or later be admitted, forcing an acceptance of the excluded factors into the representation of the privileged unit; immoral when it takes the form of social oppression. Every text is built on some kind of exclusion or repression, hence it belies itself and, when read carefully, undermines its own message.Once we become aware of the constitutive otherness in the text, we see that the text itself, despite its own intentions, alerts us to the dependence of the privileged theme on the marginalized element. The repressed eventually returns to haunt us. Social disenfranchisement,marginalization of sexual and racial groups, is the moral and political case of this pattern. Some poshnodernists wish to remove such repression, while others, seeing in that wish a longing for an impossible authenticity, admit that there is no escapefrom repression and hope only to render repressive forces more diverse and fluid, so that none becomes monopolistic and hence excessively onerous. Regarding the types of postmodernism, while no categorization can be adequate to capture the diversity among postmodernists, a three-part classiffcation can make most of this material easier to digest. The categories are not mutually exclusive, they are intentionally overlapping. They merely indicate the kinds of aims that can be embodied by writing called postmodern. Historical postmodernism argues that the social and/or political and/or cultural organization of modernity has changed fundamentally, so that we now face a novel world. This is simply the basic historical claim of poshnodernism, or better, it is postmodernism as an historical claim. Modernity is at an end, or is undergoing a deep transformation. This claim can be applied to any kind of subject matter, social, cultural, artistic, or theoretical. It need not make any normative claims, that is, it need not say that modernity was wrong. Methodologicalpostmodernism rejects the possibility of establishing the foundations, hence the ultimate reliability, of knowledge understood as valid in a realist sense, that is, knowledge claimed to represent the true, independent "real" nature of its objects. It shows that traditional philosophical distinctions between real and ideal, objective and subjective, reality and appearance, fact and theory, are problematic. It does this on the basis of criticizing either traditional theories of knowledge and linguistic meaning, or the human interests evident in the construction of these distinctions. Methodological postmodernism is antirealist - claiming that knowledge is made valid not by its relation to its objects, but by its relation to our pragmatic interests, our communal perspectives,our needs, our rhetoric, and so on - and/or antifoundationalist - undercutting the philosophical attempt to justify realism. Some forms of methodological postmodernism appear to undermine the very possibility of rational inquiry, by subjecting the very notions of "truth," "rationality," and "meaning" to

L7

Introduction critique. Methodologicalpostmodernismis purely negative, that is, it claims or shows the inadequacy or problematic nature of other forms of writing and talking and theorizing, but does not explicitly offer an alternative. Positive postmodernism is a positive reinterpretation of any phenomenon on the basis of the foregoing methodologicalcritique. It may reconceivethe self, or God, or nature, or knowledge, or society,or art, or anything, given the critique of unity, origin, presence,etc. This category refers to writing that applies general postmodern themes to particular subject matters in order to offer a new vision or understanding of them. It offers an alternative. There are several important issues that divide writers associatedwith postmodernism.First, implicit in the categorizationabove, one must recognize whether any allegedpostmodernistis: (a) merely making the historical claim that modern ideas and methods are being supersededor abandoned in the present age; (b) questioning the validity of modern methods without making any explicit claims about their falsity or suggesting that they be abandoned; or (c) claiming the inadequacy of the modern methods and inviting us to abandon them in favor of something else. Some of the thinkers labelled postmodern are wrongly accused of rejecting modern philosophy and society,when in fact they are only questioning them, albeit radically, or only reporting their obsolescence,without suggesting that modernity be exchanged for some alternative. For example, while Jacques Derrida has been interpreted as undermining all of western thought, Derrida specificallystates that there is no alternative to "logocentrism," or the traditional foundationalism of the west: it cannot be abandoned.If this is true, then Derrida's critique, and other forms of methodologicalpostmodernism, begin to look similar to various forms of skepticism familiar within the western tradition (e.g. of the ancient Greek sextus Empiricus and the eighteenth-century ScotsmanDavid Hume). As a result there is a tension betweenmethodologicalpostmodernismand various positive applications of postmodernism.The most extreme case is that some selflabelled postmodernistsare speculativemetaphysicianswho use elements of the postmodern critique to reformulate fundamental conceptions of God and the universe. This task is in principle anathema to poststructuralism and antifoundationalism, and hence to much of what goes under the name "postmodernism."But the speculatorshave as much right to the name as anyone, and they clearly do base their work on some notions shared with other postmodernists.Still, they avoid those elements of methodological postmodernismwhich effectively undermine any speculative project. Second, while postmodernism may seem antithetical to any attempt to recapture the past, this is not always true. For example, while most postmodernists in philosophy or social theory would have nothing in common with those who wish to reincorporate elementsof tradition, such 18

lntroduction a return is precisely what architectural postmodernismmeans. The postmodern architect often incorporates ornamentation that modernism had banished into an otherwise modernist setting. But notice that this is not premodernismpure and simple; rather it is a kind of pluralism. Architectural postmodernism uses premodern elements within a whole that is anything but traditional. Synthesizing,juxtaposing, and ironically commenting on traditions is nof traditional. To be a traditionalist or premodernist is to be faithful to one tradition, not all traditions. To respect and sample from all traditions is precisely to be modern and cosmopolitan, not traditional. Traditionalism is no more compatible with a plurality of traditions than monogamy is compatible with a plurality of sexual partners. Nevertheless, postmodernism may often exhibit similarities to premodernism, since they share the same enemy. Third, there is the question of the political implications of postmodernism. Its most well-known political manifestation is the attempt to make contemporary culture acknowledge and respond to "difference," or "otherness," under the names of.feminism, a vastly influential intellectual movement, and multiculturalism, which as a program has been primarily a phenomenon in the field of education. Both of these movements overlap with postmodernism, so that some feminists and some multiculturalists are postmodernistswhile others are not. Most poststructuralists,feminists, and multiculturalists are associated with the left. But others are not, like Richard Rorty, who has labelled himself a "postmodernist bourgeois liberal." Indeed, some critics from the left have criticized postmodernism for just this, that it opens the way to reactionary forces or to an acquiescence in the status quo, by undermining the modernist justifications for leftist political reform. Hence fiirgen Habermas once called the French poststructuralists the "Young Conservatives."l8There is nothing confusing about this diversity; it is arguable that postmodernismby itself need not lead in any particular political direction. Its political usefulnesslies in criticizing any establishedauthority.

4 P u t t i n g P o s t m o d e r n i s mi n C o n t e x t This volume is structured chronologically around three phases in the developmentof the modern West's philosophical evaluation of itself. Part I presentsthe reader with a very small selectionof some of the most influential statements of modernity from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, as well as some of the most famous criticisms of that evolving culture. Throughout thesecenturies most human beingsin Europe and North America continued to live and think as they had for the 19

Introduction thousand years preceding: in small towns and agricultural communities, imagining the world in more or less religious terms, uninfluenced by the scientific and secular ideas emerging in educated circles in the great cities. It was not until the republican political revolutions of the eighteenth century that modern ideas had widespreadconcrete effect. But even then, daily life for most people continued relatively unchanged until almost the twentieth century. Each new element of modern thought was opposedby cultural inertia, political and religious leaders,and by various intellectuals, several of whom are included here. It is crucial to understand that what we have called modernity was always under attack. Postmodernismis only the newest wave of such criticism. The final reading of this section is from Friedrich Nietzsche,the pre-twentieth-century philosopher who is the most influential for postmodernism.re Part II presents the critical analysis of modern art, society, and philosophy that came with the triumph of modernity, the full establishmentof a society unique in human history. It is in this period, roughly from 1860 to 1950, that western modernity ceasesto be a primarily intellectual and political phenomenon and dramatically remakes the everyday socio-economic world in which average people live. It is also the period in which western modernity becomesthe dominant geo-politicalforce in the world. This actualization of modernity provoked a new reaction from intellectuals and artists, instigating a debate over bourgeois values and mass culture, and provoking an unprecedentedperiod of aesthetic and intellectual experimentation. The artistic modernism that resulted is both a critique of bourgeois modernity and an expressionof it. A number of writers in this period are crucial for the latter developmentof postmodernism. The selectionsin Part III are from the post-world war II period. They include: the most prominent writers identified with postmodernism since the 1960s; some of their important immediate predecessors;a number of critics of modernity who share some postmodern themes but are not postmodernists;and several influential critics of postmodernism.The section thus brings together many of the prominent voices in the contemporary debate over postmodernism,both pro and con. The volume's selectionsare ordered chronologically. Editor's notes, referenced by lower case roman numerals, are at the bottom of the page; all author's notes, referenced by Arabic numerals, appear as endnotes. My additions to the author's endnotes are in square brackets; any other additions to the text in square brackets, unless otherwise noted, are the translators', or in rare casesa former editor's. The referenceat the foot of the first page of each selection makes it clear what works of the author's have been selected,the word 'from' there indicating that only a part of the relevant subdivision (book, essay, chapter, section) has been selected. Omitted material is indicated in the text by ellipses. 20

l lntroduction It may be well to conclude this introduction with a general comment about the validity of postmodernism.Some philosophers dismiss postmodernism for using intentionally elusive rhetoric, in part to avoid self-contradiction. If, they say, postmodernistsliterally and explicitly undermine truth, objectivity, and the univocal meanings of words, then this would undermine their own writing as well. That is, postmodern texts would undercut their own possibility of having a cogent meaning and of being true. Postmodernistswould then be in the position of denying the validity of their own denials. To avoid this self-contradiction, the critics continue, postmodernistswrite in a coy or ironic fashion, unwilling to make explicit methodological or philosophical claims. Hence they dodge criticism by a subterfugeunbefitting an inquirer. Rhetorical flourishes on both sides notwithstanding, postmodernism raises crucial questions to which philosophy is bound by its own commitments to respond. The charge of self-contradiction is an important one; nevertheless,it is a purely negative argument that does nothing to blunt the criticisms postmodernismmakes of traditional inquiry. The sometimes obscurerhetorical strategiesof postmodernismmake senseif one acceptsits critique of such inquiry. To say then that the postmoderncritique is invalid because the kind of theory it produces does not meet the standards of traditional or normal inquiry is a rather weak counter-attack. It .saysin effect that whatever critique does not advance the interests of traditional inquiry is invalid. The same charge was made against the very patron saint of philosophy, Socrates, whose infernal questioning, it was said, led to nothing positive and practical, undermined socially important beliefs, and could not justify itself exceptfor his eccentric claim to be on a mission from God (in Plato's Apology).So, while the threat of self-contradictiondoesraise a serious problem for postmodernism,one that would prevent postmodernism from regarding itself as valid in the way traditional philosophieshope to be, that fact does nothing to show that normal inquiry is immune to its critique. Postmodernism raises a serious challenge which cannot be so easily dismissed.Whether it is right, is, of course, another matter, and one that is up to the reader to decide'

Notes Kultur (Nuernberg:Hans 1 SeeRudolf Pannwitz, Die Krisis d,erBuropaeischen the term was usedevenearlier that Carl,1917), p. 6a, It hasbeensuggested the 1870s; however,my painter in by the British |ohn Watkins Chapman presentdiscussionI in the Also, inconclusive. effortsto verify this have been shall ignore the differencebetween the employmentof "postmodern" and "post-modern." 2I

I n t r o du c t i o n See Federico de Onis, Antologia de Ia Poesia espaftola e hispanoamericana: 1882-1932 (Madrid, 1934), pp. xviii-xix. For the best historical discussionof the term, and the best bibliographical account of postmodernismin general, see Margaret Rose's The Post-Modernand the Post-lnd,ustrial:A Critical Analysis (Cambridge;CambridgeUniversity Press,1991). 3 Bernard Iddings BeIl, Religion For Living: A Bookfor Postmodernists(London: The Religious Book Club, 1939). I thank Margaret Rose for bringing this referenceto my attention. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (London: Oxford University press, 1939), vol. V, p. 43. Toynbee referred to postmodernismagain in vol. V[I, published 1 9 5 4 ,p . 3 3 8 . See for example, Pauline Marie Rosenau's Post-Modernism and the sociar sciences:lnsights, Inroails, and. rntrusions (Princeton, Nf: princeton university Press, 1992), and David Griffin's The Reenchantment ol science(Albany: State University Pressof New York, 1988). While the term "phenomenology" has been used by severalphilosophers(e.g. Hegel and Peirce), here it refers to the study of how the world we know is constituted within and through the sheer lived experience of human consciousnessprior to any scientific or cultural learning. created by the German Edmund Husserl (1859-193s), it becameextremely influential in France. For the story of the French reception of phenomenology,and the rise of postmodernism in France, see vincent Descombes, Modern French philosophy, trans. L' Schott-Foxand J.M.Harding (New york cambridge university press, 19so). Marxism, under some interpretations, is an exception to this trend. some, emphasizing Marx's historical determinism, have aspired to the model of the sciences,while others, more concerned with individualism and alienation (sometimescalled "western Marxists"), have rejectedpretensionsto scientific methodology. Not that these aims disappearedentirely. Indeed, the search for a naturalistic basis for language and thought through the use of advancesin the study of artificial intelligence and linguistics has become an increasingly powerful philosophical program in recent years, under the name of "cognitive science." But here too, the direction of movement is away from the self of phenomenology, existentialism, and psychoanalysis,and toward super-individual structures. For cognitive science,as opposedto structuralism and poststructuralism, those structures are neural and/or logical rather than cultural. see Irving Howe, "Mass society and postmodern Fiction ," in The Declineof the New (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, I97O), pp. I9O-207, and Leslie Fiedler, "The New Mutants," in The collected Essays of LesrieFiedler, vol. II (New York: Stein and Day, 1971-), pp. 379-99. 1 0 |ane Jacobs, The Death and Lifu of Great American cities (New york: Vintage, 1961). 1l See Daniel Bell, The coming of Post-lndustrial society: A venture in social Forecasting(New York: Basic Books, 7973). His book was immediately preceded by Alan Touraine's rather different The Post-lndustrial Society,trans. LeonardF.X. Mayhew (New York: Random House,1971; original, 1969). The

22

Introduction

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concept of post-industrial society is, however, at least as old as 1914 and Arthur f. Penty's and Ananda K. Coomaraswamy's Essays in Post-lndustria' Iism: A Symposiumof ProphecyConcerningthe Future of Society(London: l9I4). Penty attributed the invention of the term to Coomaraswamy. Their book is now virtually unavailable, but according to Roger Lipsey's account in his Coomaraswamy:His Life and Work (Princeton, Nf: Princeton University Press, 19 7 7), Coomaraswamy'spost-industrialismwas a straightforward premodernism, in which he hoped for and foresaw the end of industrialism and a return to village life. of Orpheus:Toward.a PostmodernLiterature SeeIhab Hassan,TheDismemberment (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971). The term had already been used by loseph Hudnut in the 1940s to mean extreme- or ultra-modern architecture. See his "The Post-Modern House," ArchitecturalRecord,97 (May 1945), pp. 70-5. Charles|encks was the first to use the word to mean the end or transformation of modernism. See Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictionsof Capitalism(New York: Basic Books, 1976), especiallypp. 51-5. See Christopher Lasch, The True and OnIy Heaven:Progressand its Critics (New York: Norton, 1991). I must add here my posthumous appreciation for Professor Lasch's having many years ago taken seriously the work of a graduate student that he had never met, and responding sensitively and intelligently. I use the qualification ("in the strict sense")becausesome thinkers associated with postmodernism do call for such a return, and this call usually serves a political purpose.But it is not clear how such a call is compatible with other postmodern themes. This postmodern strategy is, as alluded to above, not entirely new; it was implicit in the dialectical method of the great German philosopher G.W.F. H e s e l( I 7 7 O - 1 8 3 1 ) . SeeJiirgen Habermas,"Modernity versus Postmodernity,"New GermanCritique (Winter 1981),No. 22, p. 10. I have placed Nietzsche in this first period rather than the second for thematic reasons.The world Nietzschecritically analyzedis not the recent world of mass culture and modern industry, but the Western tradition of idealism, Christianity, and Romanticism, all of which predatethe period of what I am calling the realization of modernitv.

23

Part I Modern Civtltzationand its Critics

It is impossibleto recount the dramatic changes that stimulated European modernity; certainly the voyages of discovery of the fifteenth century, the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, and the scientific revolution of the seventeenth,to name but a few, had a profound effect on the European mind. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries momentum began to gather behind a new view of.the world, which would eventually a new world.,the modern world of industry and businessand cities "r*t. and cosmopolitanism and republicanism, where the rhythm of life was to be increasingly dictated by machines rather than by nature, where the Rights of Man would replacethe Divine Right of Kings, where the merchant would displace the landed aristocrat, where cities would become home to pragmatic strangers who had left their local communities, where beliefs *".. i.rr..usingly to be generated from the printing press,the laboratory, and the street, rather than from parents, princes or pulpit. It meant the beginning of an accelerating process of change whereby modes of living trrat naa atteredlittle in over a thousand years would eventually be turned upside down. Philosophically, the novelty of the age centered on the idea of reason' The seventeenthand eighteenth centuries in the West are often referred to as the "Age of Reason,"with the latter century called the "Enlightenment"' Enlightened intellectuals believed above all that humans more or less universally possessa faculty called "reason," less a body of truths than a capacity and a method for grasping them, perhaps endowed us by God as the essence of humanity; that reason, independent of the dictates of tradition and authority, is the ultimate and legitimate earthly judge of truth, beauty, moral goodnessand political order; that this reason is at war with ignorance and superstition; that its exercise by the individual is to be encouraged;and that the meaning of human existenceis in some measure to be fulfilled by using reason to grasp a larger share of truth and to reconstruct human society, materially and politically all this is largely a product of certain great minds of the seventeenth century, and first suffused lhroughout larger segments of society in the political changes of the eighteenth century. This is the legacy of the Enlightenment, the simple, profound, unquestioned conviction that Reason, Freedom, and Progress

27

naturally imply one another, a conviction which we have ever since imbibed as if with our mother's milk. This is so even if we have come to find the milk sour, and demanded a more varied diet, as some European intellectuals did almost from the start. European modernity was never without critics from within its own house. The impression that a universal naive acceptance of Enlightenment rationalism dominated early modernity, to be upset only by the sophistication of the twentieth century, is the result of historical ignorance. It was always plain to anyone with eyes and mind that modernity meant the exchange of one kind of life for another, hence a very real loss: community, tradition, religion, familiar political authority, customs and manners were all at the very least to be transformed, if not utterly displaced.This sense of loss was reflectedby some of the greatest thinkers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In our brief selection,just as Descartes,condorcet, and Kant are formulating and celebrating the new rationality, Rousseau and Burke are warning against it. Then in the nineteenth century, some of the most powerful criticisms of modern life will be made by Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. But however much they criticize modernity in some respects, they are entangled in it in others. Such is forever the fate of the critics of modernity, who opposea force so encompassingthat even its enemiesmust borrow its power to light against it.

28

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Meditation I Of the things which may be brought within the sphereof the doubtful. It is now some years since I detectedhow many were the false beliefsthat I had from my earliest youth admitted as true, and how doubtful was everything I had since constructed on this basis; and from that time I was convinced that I must once for all seriously undertake to rid myself of all the opinions which I had formerly accepted,and commenceto build anew from the foundation, if I wanted to establish any firm and permanent structure in the sciences.But as this enterpriseappearedto be a very great one, I waited until I had attained an age so mature that I could not hope that at any later date I should be better fitted to execute my design. This reason causedme to delay so long that I should feel that I was doing wrong

Ren6 Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (f641), trans. Elizabeth Haldane and vol. I (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity G.R.T.Ross,in The PhilosophicalWorks of Descartes, Press,1975), MeditationsOne and Two, pp. 144-57.

29

Ren6Descartes were I to occupy in deliberation the time that yet remains to me for action. To-day, then, since very opportunely for the plan I have in view I have delivered my mind from every care [and am happily agitated by no passions]i and since I have procured for myself an assured leisure in a peaceableretirement, I shall at last seriously and freely addressmyself to the general upheaval of all my former opinions. Now for this object it is not necessarythat I should show that all of these are false- I shall perhaps never arrive at this end. But inasmuch as reason already persuadesme that I ought no less carefully to withhold my assent from matters which are not entirely certain and indubitable than from those which appear to me manifestly to be false,if I am able to lind in each one some reason to doubt, this will su{ficeto justify my rejecting the whole. And for that end it will not be requisite that I should examine each in particular, which would be an endlessundertaking; for owing to the fact that the destruction of the foundations of necessity brings with it the downfall of the rest of the edifice,I shall only in the first place attack those principles upon which all my former opinions rested. All that up to the present time I have acceptedas most true and certain I have learned either from the sensesor through the senses;but it is sometimesproved to me that these sensesare deceptive,and it is wiser not to trust entirely to any thing by which we have once been deceived. But it may be that although the sensessometimesdeceiveus concerning things which are hardly perceptible,or very far away, there are yet many others to be met with as to which we cannot reasonably have any doubt, although we recognisethem by their means. For example, there is the llact that I am here, seatedby the fire, attired in a dressing gown, having this paper in my hands and other similar matters. And how could I deny that these hands and this body are mine, were it not perhaps that I compare myself to certain persons,devoid of sense,whose cerebellaare so troubled and clouded by the violent vapours of black bile, that [hey constantly assure us that they think they are kings when they are really quite poor, or that they are clothed in purple when they are really without covering, or who imagine that they have an earthenware head or are nothing but pumpkins or are made of glass.But they are mad, and I should not be any the less insane were I to follow examplesso extravargant. At the same time I must remember that I am a man, and that consequently I am in the habit of sleeping, and in my dreams representing to myself the same things or sometimes even less probable things, than do those who are insane in their waking moments. How often has it happened ' Passages in square brackets are from a French translation of the Meditations which Descartes himself corrected, and which the translators frorn the Latin text have included for the sake of their greater clarity.

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Meditationson FirstPhilosophy to me that in the night I dreamt that I found myself in this particular place, that I was dressedand seated near the fire, whilst in reality I was lying undressedin bedl At this moment it does indeed seemto me that it is with eyes awake that I am looking at this paper; that this head which I move is not asleep,that it is deliberately and of set purpose that I extend my hand and perceive it; what happens in sleep does not appear so clear nor so distinct as does all this. But in thinking over this I remind myself that on many occasionsI have in sleep been deceivedby similar illusions, and in dwelling carefully on this reflection I see so manifestly that there are no certain indications by which we may clearly distinguish wakefulnessfrom sleep that I am lost in astonishment. And my astonishment is such that it is almost capable of persuading me that I now dream. Now let us assumethat we are asleepand that all these particulars, e.g. that we open our eyes, shake our head, extend our hands, and so on, are but false delusions; and let us reflect that possibly neither our hands nor our whole body are such as they appear to us to be. At the same time we must at least confess that the things which are represented to us in sleep are like painted representations which can only have been formed as the counterparts of something real and true, and that in this way those general things at least, i.e. eyes, a head, hands, and a whole body, are not imaginary things, but things really existent. For, as a matter of fact, painters, even when they study with the greatest skill to represent sirens and satyrs by forms the most strange and extraordinary cannot give them natures which are entirely new, but merely make a certain medley of the membersof different animals; or if their imagination is extravagant enough to invent something so novel that nothing similar has ever before been seen, and that then their work represents a thing purely fictitious and absolutely false, it is certain all the same that the colours of which this is composed are necessarilyreal. And for the same reason, although these general things, to wit, [a body], eyes,a head, hands, and such like, may be imaginary, we are bound at the same time to confessthat there are at least some other objectsyet more simple and more universal, which are real and true; and of these just in the same way as with certain real colours, all these images of things which dwell in our thoughts, whether true and real or false and fantastic, are formed. To such a class of things pertains corporeal nature in general, and its extension,iithe figure of extended things, their quantity or magnitude and number, as also the place in which they are, the time which measurestheir duration, and so on. That is possiblywhy our reasoning is not unjust when we conclude from this that Physics, Astronomy, Medicine and all other scienceswhich have ii "Extension" means the space the thing takes up, i.e. its size or volume.

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Ren6Descartes as their end the consideration of composite things, are very dubious and uncertain; but that Arithmetic, Geometry and other sciences of that kind which only treat of things that are very simple and very general, without taking great trouble to ascertain whether they are actually existent or not, contain some measure of certainty and an element of the indubitable. For whether I am awake or asleep, two and three together always form live, and the square can never have more than four sides,and it does not seem possible that truths so clear and apparent can be suspected of any falsity [or uncertainty]. Nevertheless I have long had lixed in my mind the belief that an all-powerful God existed by whom I have been created such as I am. But how do I know that He has not brought it to pass that there is no earth, no heaven, no extendedbody, no magnitude, no place, and that nevertheless [I possessthe perceptionsof all these things and that] they seemto me to exist just exactly as I now see them? And, besides, as I sometimes imagine that others deceive themselves in the things which they think they know best, how do I know that I am not deceivedevery time that I add two and three, or count the sidesof a square, or judge of things yet simpler, if anything simpler can be imagined?But possibly God has not desiredthat I should be thus deceived,for He is said to be supremely good. If, however, it is contrary to His goodnessto have made me such that I constantly deceive myself, it would also appear to be contrary to His goodnessto permit me to be sometimesdeceived,and neverthelessI cannot doubt that He does permit this. There may indeed be those who would prefer to deny the existence of a God so powerful, rather than believe that all other things are uncertain. But let us not opposethem for the present, and grant that all that is here said of a God is a fable; neverthelessin whatever way they supposethat I have arrived at the state of being that I have reached - whether they attribute it to fate or to accident, or make out that it is by a continual successionof antecedents,or by some other method - since to err and deceive oneself is a defect, it is clear that the greater will be the probability of my being so imperfect as to deceive myself ever, as is the Author to whom they assign my origin the less powerful. To these reasons I have certainly nothing to reply, but at the end I feel constrained to confessthat there is nothing in all that I formerly believedto be true, of which I cannot in some measure doubt, and that not merely through want of thought or through levity, but for reasons which are very powerful and maturely considered so that henceforth I ought not the less carefully to refrain from giving credence to these opinions than to that which is manifestly false, if I desire to arrive at any certainty [in the sciences]. But it is not suflicient to have made these remarks, we must also be careful to keep them in mind. For these ancient and commonlv held 32

Meditationson FirstPhilosophy opinions still revert frequently to my mind, long and familiar custom having given them the right to occupy my mind against my inclination and rendered them almost masters of my belief; nor will I ever lose the habit of deferring to them or of placing my confidencein them, so long as I consider them as they really are, i.e. opinions in some measure doubtful, as I have just shown, and at the same time highly probable, so that there is much more reason to believe in than to deny them. That is why I consider that I shall not be acting amiss, if, taking of set purpose a contrary belief, I allow myself to be deceived,and for a certain time pretend that all these opinions are entirely false and imaginary, until at last, having thus balanced my former prejudices with my latter [so that they cannot divert my opinions more to one side than to the other], my judgment will no longer be dominated by bad usage or turned away from the right knowledge of the truth. For I am assured that there can be neither peril nor error in this course, and that I cannot at present yield too much to distrust, since I am not considering the question of action, but only of knowledge. I shall then suppose, not that God who is supremely good and the fountain of huth, but some evil genius not lesspowerful than deceitful,has employed his whole energies in deceiving me; I shall consider that the heavens, the earth, colours, Iigures, sound, and all other external things are nought but the illusions and dreams of which this genius has availed himself in order to lay traps for my credulity; I shall consider myself as having no hands, no eyes, no flesh, no blood, nor any senses,yet falsely believing myself to possessall these things; I shall remain obstinately attached to this idea, and if by this means it is not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of any truth, I may at least do what is in my power [i.e. suspendmy judgment], and with firm purpose avoid giving credenceto any false thing, or being imposedupon by this arch deceiver,however powerful and deceptivehe may be. But this task is a laborious one, and insensibly a certain lassitude leads me into the course of my ordinary life. And just as a captive who in sleep enjoys an imaginary liberty, when he begins to suspectthat his liberty is but a dream, fears to awaken, and conspireswith these agreeableillusions that the deceptionmay be prolonged,so insensibly of my own accord I fall back into my former opinions, and I dread awakening from this slumber, lest the laborious wakefulnesswhich would follow the tranquillity of this reposeshould have to be spent not in daylight, but in the excessivedarkness of the difficulties which have just been discussed.

Meditation II OJ the Nature of the Human Mind; and that it is more easily known than the Boily.

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Ren6 Descartes The Meditation of yesterday filled my mind with so many doubts that it is no longer in my power to forget them. And yet I do not seein what manner I can resolve them; and, just as if I had all of a sudden fallen into very deep water, I am so disconcertedthat I can neither make certain of setting my feet on the bottom, nor can I swim and so support myself on the surface.I shall neverthelessmake an effort and follow anew the same path as that on which I yesterday entered, i.e. I shall proceed by setting aside all that in which the least doubt could be supposed to exist, just as if I had discoveredthat it was absolutely false; and I shall ever follow in this road until I have met with something which is certain, or at least, if I can do nothing else, until I have learned for certain that there is nothing in the world that is certain. Archimedes, in order that he might draw the terrestrial globe out of its place, and transport it elsewhere,demandedonly that one point should be fixed and immoveable; in the same way I shall have the right to conceivehigh hopes if I am happy enough to discoverone thing only which is certain and indubitable.iii I suppose,then, that all the things that I see are false; I persuademyself that nothing has ever existed of all that my fallacious memory represents to me. I consider that I possessno senses;I imagine that body, Iigure, extension, movement and place are but the fictions of my mind. What, then, can be esteemedas true? Perhapsnothing at all, unless that there is nothing in the world that is certain. But how can I know there is not something different from those things that I have just considered, of which one cannot have the slightest doubt? Is there not some God, or some other being by whatever name we call it, who puts these reflectionsinto my mind? That is not necessary,for is it not possiblethat I am capableof producing them myself?I myself, am I not at least something?But I have already denied that I had sensesand body. Yet I hesitate,for what follows from that? Am I so dependenton body and sensesthat I cannot exist without these? But I was persuadedthat there was nothing in all the world, that there was no heaven, no earth, that there were no minds, nor any bodies: was I not then likewise persuadedthat I did not exist?Not at all; of a surety I myself did exist since I persuaded myself of something [or merely because I thought of something]. But there is some deceiver or other, very powerful and very cunning, who ever employs his ingenuity in deceiving me. Then without doubt I exist also if he deceivesme, and let him deceiveme as much as he will, he can never cause me to be nothing so long as I think that I am something. So that after having reflected well and carefully examined

iii Greek mathematician Archimedes (287-212 BC) boasted that with a lever long enough and the right place to stand, he could move the Earth.

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Meditationson FirstPhilosophy all things, we must come to the delinite conclusion that this proposition: I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time that I pronounce it, or that I mentally conceive it. But t do not yet know clearly enough what I am, I who am certain that I am; and hence I must be careful to see that I do not imprudently take some other object in place of myself, and thus that I do not go astray in respect of this knowledge that I hold to be the most certain and most evident of all that I have formerly learned. That is why I shall now consider anew what I believed myself to be before I embarked upon these last reflections;and of my former opinions I shall withdraw all that might even in a small degreebe invalidated by the reasons which I have just brought forward, in order that there may be nothing at all left beyond what is absolutely certain and indubitable. What then did I formerly believe myself to be? Undoubtedly I believed myself to be a man. But what is a man? Shall I say a reasonableanimal? Certainly not; for then I should have to inquire what an animal is, and what is reasonable;and thus from a single question I should insensibly fall into an inlinitude of others more diflicult; and I should not wish to waste the little time and leisure remaining to me in trying to unravel subtleties like these. But I shall rather stop here to consider the thoughts which of themselvesspring up in my mind, and which were not inspired by anything beyond my own nature alone when I applied myself to the considerationof my being. In the first place, then, I considered myself as having a face, hands, arms, and all that system of members composedof bones and flesh as seen in a corpsewhich I designatedby the name of body. In addition to this I consideredthat I was nourished, that I walked, that I felt, and that I thought, and I referred all these actions to the soul: but I did not stop to consider what the soul was, or if I did stop, I imagined that it was something extremely rare and subtle like a wind, a flame, or an ether, which was spread throughout my grosser parts. As to body I had nq manner of doubt about its nature, but thought I had a very clear knowledge of it; and if I had desired to explain it according to the notions that I had then formed of it, I should have describedit thus: By the body I understand all that which can be defined by a certain figure: something which can be conlined in a certain place, and which can lill a given space in such a way that every other body will be excluded from it; which can be perceivedeither by touch, or by sight, or by hearing, or by taste, or by smell: which can be moved in many ways not, in truth, by itself, but by something which is foreign to it, by which it is touched [and from which it receivesimpressions]:for to have the power of self-movement,as also of feeling or of thinking, I did not consider to appertain to the nature of body: on the contrary, I was rather astonished to find that faculties similar to them existed in some bodies. 35

Ren6Descartes But what am I, now that I supposethat there is a certain genius which is extremely powerful, and, if I may say so, malicious, who employs all his powers in deceiving me? Can I affirm that I possessthe least of all those things which I have just said pertain to the nature of body? I pause to consider,I revolve all these things in my mind, and I find none of which I can say that it pertains to me. It would be tedious to stop to enumerate them. Let us passto the attributes of soul and seeif there is any one which is in me? What of nutrition or walking [the first mentioned]?But if it is so that I have no body it is also true that I can neither walk nor take nourishment. Another attribute is sensation.But one cannot feel without body, and besidesI have thought I perceivedmany things during sleepthat I recognisedin my waking moments as not having been experiencedat all. What of thinking? I find here that thought is an attribute that belongs to me; it alone cannot be separatedfrom me. I am, I exist, that is certain. But how often? Just when I think; for it might possibly be the case if I ceased entirely to think, that I should likewise ceasealtogether to exist. I do not now admit anything which is not necessarilytrue: to speakaccurately I am not more than a thing which thinks, that is to say a mind or a soul, or an understanding, or a reason, which are terms whose significance was formerly unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing and really exist; but what thing? I have answered: a thing which thinks. And what more? I shall exercisemy imagination [in order to see if I am not something more]. I am not a collection of members which we call the human body: I am not a subtle air distributed through these members, I am not a wind, a fire, a vapour, a breath, nor anything at all which I can imagine or conceive;becauseI have assumedthat all these were nothing. Without changing that supposition I find that I only leave myself certain of the fact that I am somewhat. But perhaps it is true that these same things which I supposedwere non-existent becausethey are unknown to me, are really not different from the self which I know. I am not sure about this, I shall not dispute about it now; I can only give judgment on things that are known to me. I know that I exist, and I inquire what I am, I whom I know to exist. But it is very certain that the knowledge of my existence taken in its precisesignificancedoes not dependon things whose existence is not yet known to me; consequentlyit does not dependon those which I can feign in imagination. And indeed the very term feign in imagination proves to me my error, for I really do this if I image myself a something, since to imagine is nothing else than to contemplatethe figure or image of a corporeal thing. But I already know for certain that I am, and that it may be that all these images, and, speaking generally, atl things that relate to the nature of body are nothing but dreams [and chimeras]. For this reason I see clearly that I have as little reason to say, 'I shall stimulate my imagination in order to know more distinctly what I am,' than if I were to 36

Meditationson FirstPhilosophy 'I

say, am now awake, and I perceive somewhat that is real and true: but because I do not yet perceive it distinctly enough, I shall go to sleep of express purpose, so that my dreams may represent the perception with greatesttruth and evidence.'And, thus, I know for certain that nothing of all that I can understand by means of my imagination belongs to this knowledge which I have of myself, and that it is necessaryto recall the mind from this mode of thought with the utmost diligence in order that it may be able to know its own nature with perfect distinctness. But what then am I? A thing which thinks. What is a thing which thinks? It is a thing which doubts, understands,conceives,affirms, denies, wills refuses,which also imagines and feels. Certainly it is no small matter if all these things pertain to my nature. But why should they not so pertain? Am I not that being who now doubts nearly everything, who nevertheless understands certain things, who affirms that one only is true, who deniesall the others, who desiresto know more, is aversefrom being deceived,who imagines many things, sometimes indeed despite his will, and who perceives many likewise, as by the intervention of the bodily organs? Is there nothing in all this which is as true as it is certain that I exist, even though I should always sleep and though he who has given me being employedall his ingenuity in deceiving me? Is there likewise any one of these attributes which can be distinguished from my thought, or which might be said to be separatedfrom myself?For it is so evident of itself that it is I who doubts, who understands,and who desires,that there is no reason here to add anything to explain it. And I have certainly the power of imagining likewise; for although it may happen (as I formerly supposed)that none of the things which I imagine are true, neverthelessthis power of imagining doesnot ceaseto be really in use, and it forms part of my thought. Finally, I am the samewho feels,that is to say, who perceivescertain things, as by the organs of sense,since in truth I see light, I hear noise, I feel heat. But it will be said that these phenomena are false and that I am dreaming. Let it be so; still it is at least quite certain that it seemsto me that I see light, that I hear noise and that I feel heat. That cannot be false; properly speaking it is what is in me called feeling; and used in this precisesensethat is no other thing than thinking. From this time I begin to know what I am with a little more clearness and distinction than before; but neverthelessit still seems to me, and I cannot prevent myself from thinking, that corporeal things, whose images are framed by thought, which are tested by the senses,are much more distinctly known than that obscure part of me which does not come under the imagination. Although really it is very strange to say that I know and understand more distinctly these things whose existence seems to me dubious, which are unknown to me, and which do not belong to me, than others of the truth of which I am convinced. which are known to me and 37

Ren6Descartes which pertain to my real nature, in a word, than myself. But I see clearly how the case stands:my mind loves to wander, and cannot yet suffer itself to be retained within the just limits of truth. Very good, let us once more give it the freestrein, so that, when afterwardswe seizethe proper occasion for pulling up, it may the more easily be regulated and controlled. Let us begin by considering the commonest matters, those which we believeto be the most distinctly comprehended,to wit, the bodieswhich we touch and see; not indeed bodies in general, for these general ideas are usually a little more confused,but let us consider one body in particular. Let us take, for example, this piece of wax: it has been taken quite freshly from the hive, and it has not yet lost the sweetnessof the honey which it contains; it still retains somewhat of the odour of the flowers from which it has been culled; its colour, its ligure, its sizeare apparent; it is hard, cold, easily handled, and if you strike it with the finger, it will emit a sound. Finally all the things which are requisite to cause us distinctly to recognise a body, are met with in it. But notice that while I speak and approach the fire what remained of the taste is exhaled, the smell evaporates,the colour alters, the figure is destroyed,the sizeincreases,it becomesliquid, it heats, scarcely can one handle it, and when one strikes it, no sound is emitted. Does the same wax remain after this change? We must confess that it remains, none would judge otherwise. What then did I know so distinctly in this piece of wax? It could certainly be nothing of all that the senses brought to my notice, since all these things which fall under taste, smell, sight, touch, and hearing, are found to be changed, and yet the same wax remains. Perhaps it was what I now think, viz. that this wax was not that sweetnessof honey, nor that agreeablescent of flowers, nor that particular whiteness,nor that figure, nor that sound, but simply a body which a little while before appearedto me as perceptibleunder these forms, and which is now perceptibleunder others. But what, precisely,is it that I imagine when I form such conceptions?Let us attentively consider this, and, abstracting from all that doesnot belong to the wax, let us seewhat remains. Certainly nothing remains excepting a certain extended thing which is flexible and movable. But what is the meaning of flexible and movable?Is it not that I imagine that this piece of wax being round is capable of becoming square and of passing from a square to a triangular figure? No, certainly it is not that, since I imagine it admits of an infinitude of similar changes, and I neverthelessdo not know how to compassthe infinitude by my imagination, and consequently this conception which I have of the wax is not brought about by the faculty of imagination. What now is this extension? Is it not also unknown? For it becomesgreater when the wax is melted, greater when it is boiled, and greater still when the heat increases;and I should not conceive [clearly] according to truth what wax is, if I did not 38

Meditationson FirstPhilosophy think that even this piece that we are considering is capable of receiving more variations in extension than I have ever imagined. We must then grant that I could not even understand through the imagination what this piece of wax is, and that it is my mind alone which perceivesit. I say this piece of wax in particular, for as to wax in general it is yet clearer. But what is this piece of wax which cannot be understood exceptingby the [understanding or] mind? It is certainly the samethat I see,touch, imagine, and finally it is the same which I have always believed it to be from the beginning. But what must particularly be observedis that its perception is neither an act of vision, nor of touch, nor of imagination, and has never been such although it may have appearedformerly to be so, but only an intuition of the mind, which may be imperfect and confused as it was formerly, or clear and distinct as it is at present, according as my attention is more or lessdirected to the elementswhich are found in it, and of which it is composed. Yet in the meantime I am greatly astonishedwhen I consider [the great feeblenessof mind] and its proneness to fall [insensibly] into error; for although without giving expressionto my thoughts I consider all this in my own mind, words often impede me and I am almost deceivedby the terms of ordinary language. For we say that we see the same wax, if it is present, and not that we simply judge that it is the same from its having the same colour and figure. From this I should concludethat I knew the wax by means of vision and not simply by the intuition of the mind; unless by chance I remember that, when looking from a window and saying I seemen who pass in the street, I really do not seethem, but infer that what I seeis men, just as I say that I see wax. And yet what do I see from the window but hats and coats which may cover automatic machines? Yet I judge these to be men. And similarly solely by the faculty of judgment which rests in my mind, I comprehend that which I believed I saw with my eyes. A man who makes it his aim to raise his knowledge above the common should be ashamed to derive the occasion for doubting from the forms of speechinvented by the vulgar; I prefer to pass on and consider whether I had a more evident and perfect conception of what the wax was when I Iirst perceived it, and when I believed I knew it by means of the external sensesor at least by the common senseas it is called, that is to say by the imaginative faculty, or whether my present conception is clearer now that I have most carefully examined what it is, and in what way it can be known. It would certainly be absurd to doubt as to this. For what was there in this lirst perception which was distinct? What was there which might not as well have been perceived by any of the animals? But when I distinguish the wax from its external forms, and when, just as if I had taken from it its vestments, I consider it quite naked, it is certain that although 39

Ren6Descartes some error may still be found in my judgment, I can neverthelessnot perceive it thus without a human mind. But finally what shall I say of this mind, that is, of myself, for up to this point I do not admit in myself anything but mind? What then, I who seem to perceive this piece of wax so distinctly, do I not know myself, not only with much more truth and certainty, but also with much more distinctness and clearness?For if I judge that the wax is or exists from the fact that I seeit, it certainly follows much more clearly that I am or that I exist myself from the fact that I see it. For it may be that what I see is not really wax, it may also be that I do not possesseyes with which to see anything; but it cannot be that when I see, or (for I no longer take account of the distinction) when I think I see,that I myself who think am nought. So if I judge that the wax exists from the fact that I touch it, the same thing will follow, to wit, that I am; and if I judge that my imagination, or some other cause,whatever it is, persuadesme that the wax exists,I shall still conclude the same. And what I have here remarked of wax may be applied to all other things which are external to me [and which are met with outside of me]. And further, if the [notion or] perception of wax has seemedto me clearer and more distinct, not only after the sight or the touch, but also after many other causeshave rendered it quite manifest to me, with how much more [evidence] and distinctnessmust it be said that I now know myself, since all the reasonswhich contribute to the knowledge of wax, or any other body whatever, are yet better proofs of the nature of my mind! And there are so many other things in the mind itself which may contribute to the elucidation of its nature, that those which dependon body such as these just mentioned, hardly merit being taken into account. But finally here I am, having insensibly reverted to the point I desired, for, since it is now manifest to me that even bodies are not properly speakingknown by the sensesor by the faculty of imagination, but by the understanding only, and since they are not known from the fact that they are seen or touched, but only becausethey are understood, I see clearly that there is nothing which is easier for me to know than my mind. But becauseit is difficult to rid oneselfso promptly of an opinion to which one was accustomedfor so long, it will be well that I should halt a little at this point, so that by the length of my meditation I may more deeply imprint on my memory this new knowledge.

chaptertwo "Discourseon the Sciences and the Arts" Rousseau Jean-Jacques

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We are deceivedby the appearanceof right.l Has the restoration of the sciences and the arts contributed to the purilication of mores, or to their corruption? That is what is to be examined. Which side should t take in this question?The one, gentlemen, that is appropriate to an honest man who knows nothing and who thinks no less of himself for it.

fean-JacquesRousseau, Part One ofDiscourseon the Sciencesanil the Arts, inThe Basic Political Writings of lean-lacques Rousseau, trans. Donald Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987, pp. 3-10. I Horace, On the Art of Poetry,v, 25.

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Rousseau Jean-Jacques It will be difficult, I feel, to adapt what I have to say to the tribunal before which I appear.How can I dare to blame the sciencesbeforeone of Europe's most learned societies,praise ignorance in a famous Academy, and reconcile contempt for study with respectfor the truly learned?I have seenthese points of conflict, and they have not daunted me. I am not abusing science, I told myself; I am defending virtue before virtuous men. Integrity is even dearer to good men than erudition is to the studious. What then have I to fear? The enlightenment of the assemblythat listens to me? I admit it; but this is owing to the composition of the discourseand not to the sentiment of the speaker.Fair-minded sovereignshave never hesitated to pass judgments against themselvesin disputes whose outcomes are uncertain; and the position most advantageous for a just cause is to have to defend oneself against an upright and enlightened opponent who is judge in his own case. To this motive which heartens me is joined another which determines me, namely that, having upheld, according to my natural light, the side of truth, whatever my success,there is a prize which I cannot fail to receive; I will find it within the depths of my heart. It is a grand and beautiful sight to seeman emergesomehow from nothing by his own efforts; dissipate, by the light of his reason, the shadows in which nature had envelopedhim; rise above himself; soar by means of his mind into the heavenly regions; traverse, like the sun, the vast expanseof the universe with giant steps;and, what is even grander and more difficult, return to himself in order to study man and know his nature, his duties, and his end. All of these marvels have been revived in the past few generations. Europe had relapsedinto the barbarism of the first ages.A few centuries ago the peoplesof that part of the world, who today live such enlightened lives, lived in a state worse than ignorance. some nondescript scientific jargon, even more contemptible than ignorance, had usurped the name of knowledge, and posed a nearly invincible obstacleto its return. A revolution was neededto bring men back to common sense;it finally came from the least expectedquarter. It was the stupid Moslem, the eternal scourgeof letters, who caused them to be reborn among us. The fall of the throne of constantinopleii brought into Italy the debris of ancient Greece.France in turn was enriched by these precious spoils. soon the sciencesfollowed letters. To the art of writing was joined the art of thinking - a sequenceof events that may seem strange, but which perhaps is only too natural. And

" The capital of the Byzantine (formerly the Eastern Roman) Empire fell to the Turks in 1453.

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" D i s c o u r s eo n t h e S c i e n c e sa n d t h e A r t s "

the chief advantage of commerce with the Muses began to be felt, namely, that of making men more sociableby inspiring in them the desire to please one another with works worthy of their mutual approval. The mind has its needs,as does the body. The needs of the latter are the foundations of society; the needsof the former make it pleasant. While the government and the laws see to the safety and well-being of assembled men, the sciences,letters and the arts, less despotic and perhaps more powerful, spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains with which they are burdened, stifle in them the senseof that original liberty for which they seemto have been born, make them love their slavery, and turn them into what is called civilized peoples.Need raised up thrones; the sciencesand the arts have strengthenedthem. Earthly powers, love talents and protect those who cultivate themll Civilizedpeoples,cultivate them! Happy slaves, you owe them that delicate and refined taste on which you pride yourselves;that sweetnessof character and that urbanity in mores which make relationships among you so cordial and easy; in a word, the appearances of all the virtues without having any. By this sort of civility, all the more agreeableas it puts on fewer airs, Athens and Rome once distinguishedthemselvesin the much vaunted days of their magnificence and splendor. By it our century and our nation will doubtlessly surpass all times and all peoples.A philosophic tone without pedantry, manners natural yet engaging, equally removed from Teutonic rusticity as from Italian pantomine. These are the fruits of the taste acquired by good schooling and perfectedin social interaction. How sweet it would be to live among us, if outer appearanceswere always the likenessof the heart's dispositions,if decencywere virtue, if our maxims served as our rules, if true philosophy were inseparablefrom the title of philosopher! But so many qualities are all too rarely found in combination, and virtue seldom goes forth in such great pomp. Expensive finery can betoken a wealthy man, and elegance a man of taste. The healthy and robust man is recognized by other signs. It is in the rustic clothing of the fieldworker and not underneath the gilding of the courtier that one will find bodily strength and vigor. Finery is no lessalien to virtue, which is the strength and vigor of the soul. The good man is an athlete who enjoys competing in the nude. He is contemptuous of all those vile ornaments which would impair the use of his strength, most of which were invented merely to conceal some deformity. Before art had fashioned our manners and taught our passionsto speak an affectedlanguage, our mores were rustic but natural, and, differences in behavior heralded, at first glance, differences of character. At base, human nature was no better, but men found their safety in the easewith which they saw through each other, and that advantage, which we no longer value, spared them many vices. 43

Rousseau Jean-Jacques Today, when more subtle inquiries and a more refined taste have reduced the art of pleasingto establishedrules, a vile and deceitful uniformity reigns in our mores, and all minds seem to have been cast in the same mold. Without ceasing, politenessmakes demands, propriety gives orders; without ceasing,common customs are followed, never one's own lights. One no longer dares to seem what one really is; and in this perpetual constraint, the men who make up this herd we call society will, if placed in the same circumstances,do all the same things unless stronger motives deter them. Thus no one will ever really know those with whom he is dealing. Hence in order to know one's friend, it would be necessaryto wait for critical occasions, that is, to wait until it is too late, since it is for these very occasionsthat it would have been essentialto know him. What a retinue of vices must attend this incertitude! No more sincere friendships,no more real esteem,no more well-founded confidence.Suspicions, offenses,fears, coldness,reserve, hatred, betrayal will unceasingly hide under that uniform and deceitful veil of politeness,under that much vaunted urbanity that we owe to the enlightenment of our century. The name of the master of the universe will no longer be profaned with oaths; rather it will be insulted with blasphemieswithout our scrupulous ears being offended by them. No one will boast of his own merit, but will disparage that of others. No one will crudely wrong his enemy, but will skillfully slander him. National hatreds will die out, but so will love of country. Scornedignorance will be replacedby a dangerous pyrrhonism.iii some excesseswill be forbidden, some vices held in dishonor, but others will be adorned with the name of virtues. one must either have them or affect them. Let those who wish extoll the sobriety of the wise men of the present. For my part, I see in it merely a refinement of intemperance as unworthy of my praise as their artful simplicity.2 such is the purity that our mores have acquired. Thus have we become decent men. It is for letters, the sciences,and the arts to claim their part in so wholesome an achievement. I will add but one thought: an inhabitant of some distant lands who sought to form an idea of Buropean mores on the basis of the state of the sciencesamong us, the perfection of our arts, the seemlinessof our theatrical performances,the civilized quality of our manners, the affability of our speech,our perpetual displays of goodwill, and that tumultuous competition of men of every age and circumstance who, from morning to night, seemintent on being obliging to one another; that foreigner, I say, would guess our mores to be exactly the opposite of what they are. Where there is no effect,there is no cause to seekout. But here the effect is certain, the depravation real, and our souls have become corrupted in iii An ancient school of skeptical philosophers.

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"Discourseon the Sciencesand the Arts" proportion as our sciencesand our arts have advanced toward perfection. Will it be said that this is a misfortune peculiar to our age?No, gentlemen, the evils causedby our vain curiosity are as old as the world. The daily rise and fall of the ocean'swaters have not been more unvaryingly subjectedto the star which provides us with light during the night, than has the fate of mores and integrity been to the progressof the sciencesand the arts. Virtue has been seentaking flight in proportion as their light rose on our horizon, and the same phenomenon has been observedin all times and in all places. Consider Egypt, that first school of the universe, that climate so fertile beneath a brazen sky, that famous country from which Sesostrisi'departed long ago to conquer the world. She became the mother of philosophy and the fine arts, and soon thereafter was conquered by Cambyses,"then by Greeks,Romans, Arabs, and finally Turks. Consider Greece, formerly populated by heroes who twice conquered Asia, once at Troy and once on their own home ground. Nascent letters had not yet brought corruption into the hearts of her inhabitants; but the progress of the arts, the dissolution of mores and the Macedonian's yoke followed closely upon one another; and Greece,ever learned, ever voluptuous, and ever the slave,experiencednothing in her revolutions but changes of masters. AII the eloquence of Demosthenescould never revive a body which luxury and the arts had enervateC. It is at the time of the likes of Ennius and Terence"ithat Rome, founded by a shepherd and made famous by fieldworkers,began to degenerate.But after the likes of Ovid, Catullus, Martial,uiiand that crowd of obscenewriters whose names alone offend modesty, Rome, formerly the temple of virtue, became the theater of crime, the disgrace of nations, and the plaything of barbarians. Finally, that capital of the world falls under the yoke which she had imposedon so many peoples,and the day of her fall was the eve of the day when one of her citizenswas given the title of Arbiter of Good Taste.uiii What shall I say about that capital of the Eastern Empire, which, by virtue of its location, seemeddestinedto be the capital of the entire world, that refuge of the sciencesand the arts banished from the rest of Europe more perhaps out of wisdom than barbarism. All that is most shameful about debauchery and corruption; blackestin betrayals,assassinations,and A Iegendary pharoah. King of Persia in 6th century BC. Quintus Ennius (239-c. r70 BC) was the father of Roman poetry, and Publius Terentius Afer (c. 190-c. 159 BC) was a Roman playwright. Publius Ovidus Naso (93 BC-l8AD) was one of the greatest Roman writers. Caius Valerius Catullus (c. 84-<. 54 BC) was a famous Roman lyric poet' Marcus Valerius Martialis (c. 40-c. 104 AD) was a Roman satirist. Tacitus claims that the Roman Emperor Nero made the idler Petronius (d. 66 AL) "Arbiter of Good Taste."

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Rousseau Jean-Jacques poisons; most atrocious in the coexistenceof every sort of crime: that is what constitutes the fabric of the history of Constantinople. That is the pure source whence radiatesto us the enlightenment on which our century prides itself. But why seek in remote times proofs of a truth for which we have existing evidence before our eyes?In Asia there is an immense country where acknowledgementin the field of letters leads to the highest officesof the state. If the sciencespurified mores, if they taught men to shed their blood for their country, if they enlivenedtheir courage,the peoplesof China should be wise, free and invincible. But if there is not a single vice that does not have mastery over them; not a single crime that is unfamiliar to them; if neither the enlightenment of the ministers, nor the allegedwisdom of the laws, nor the multitude of the inhabitants of that vast empire have been able to shield her from the yoke of the ignorant and coarse Tartar, what purpose has all her learned men served?What benelit has been derived from the honors bestowedupon them? Could it be to be peopledby slaves and wicked men? Contrast these scenes with that of the mores of the small number of peopleswho, protected against this contagion of vain knowledge, have by their virtues brought about their own happiness and the model for other nations. Such were the lirst Persians,a singular nation in which virtue was learned just as scienceis among us, which subjugated Asia so easily, and which alone has enjoyed the distinction of having the history of its institutions taken for a philosophical novel.i' Such were the scythians, about whom we have been left such magnificent praises. Such were the Germans,whose simplicity, innocence,and virtues a pen - weary of tracing the crimes and atrocities of an educated,opulent and voluptuous peoplefound relief in depicting. such had been Rome herself in the times of her poverty and ignorance. such, finally, has that rustic nation shown herself to this day - so vaunted for her courage which adversity could not overthrow, and for her faithfulness which example could not corrupt.3 It is not out of stupidity that these people have preferred other forms of exerciseto those of the mind. They were not unaware of the fact that in other lands idle men spent their lives debating about the sovereign good, about vice and about virtue; and that arrogant reasoners,bestowing on themselvesthe highest praises,grouped other peoplesunder the contemptuous name of barbarians. However, they considered their mores and learned to disdain their teaching.a Could I forget that it was in the very bosom of Greecethat there was seen to arise that city as famous for her happy ignorance as for the wisdom of her laws, that republic of demi-gods rather than men, so superior to '. Probably Xenophon's (430-354 BC) Education of Cgrus.

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"Discourseon the Sciencesand the Arts" humanity did their virtues seem? O Sparta! Eternal shame to a vain doctrine! While the vices, led by the fine arts, intruded themselvestogether into Athens, while a tyrant there gathered so carefully the works of the prince of poets,* you drove out from your walls the arts and artists, the sciencesand scientists. The event confirmed this difference.Athens became the abode of civility and good taste, the country of orators and philosophy. The eleganceof her buildings paralleled that of the language. Marble and canvas, animated by the hands of the most capable masters, were to be seen everywhere. From Athens came those astonishing works that will serve as models in every corrupt age. The picture of Lacedaemonis less brilliant. "There,'' said the other peoples, "men are born virtuous, and the very air of the country seemsto inspire virtue." Nothing of her inhabitants is left to us except the memory of their heroic actions. Are such monuments worth lessto us than the curious marbles that Athens has left us? Some wise men, it is true, had resistedthe general torrent and protected themselvesfrom vice in the abode of the Muses.But listen to the judgment that the lirst and unhappiest of them made of the learned men and artists of his time. "I have," he says, "examined the poets, and I view them as peoplewhose talent makes an impression on them and on others who claim to be wise, who are taken to be such, and who are nothing of the sort. "From poets," continues Socrates,"I moved on to artists. No one knew lessabout the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed some especially fine secrets. Still, I perceived that their condition is no better than that of the poets, and that they are both laboring under the same prejudice. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they view themselves as the wisest of men. To my way of thinking, this presumption has completely tarnished their knowledge.From this it follows that, as I put myself in the place of the oracle and ask myself whether I would prefer to be what I am or what they are, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing, I answered myself and God: I want to remain what I am. "We do not know - neither the sophists,nor the poets, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I - what is the true, the good, and the beautiful. But there is this difference between us: that although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something, I, however, if I know nothing, at least am not in doubt about it. Thus all that superiority in wisdom accorded me by the oracle, reduces to being convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know."

' Pisistratus (c. 6O5-527 BC) allegedly directed the collection of Homer's works.

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Rousseau Jean-Jacques Here then is the wisest of men in the judgment of the gods, and the most learned of Athenians in the opinion of all Greece,Socrates,speaking in praise of ignorance! Does anyone believe that, were he to be reborn among us, our learned men and our artists would make him change his mind? No, gentlemen, this just man would continue to hold our vain sciences in contempt. He would not aid in the enlargement of that mass of books which inundate us from every quarter, and the only precept he would leave is the one left to his disciples and to our descendants:the example and the memory of his virtue. Thus is it noble to teach men! Socrateshad begun in Athens, Cato"ithe Elder continued in Rome to rail against those artful and subtle Greeks who seducedthe virtue and enervated the courage of his fellow citizens. But the sciences,the arts, and dialectic prevailed once again. Rome was filled with philosophers and orators; military discipline was neglected, agriculture scorned, sects embraced, and the homeland forgotten. The sacred names of liberty, disinterestedness,obedienceto the laws were replaced by the names of Epicurus, Zeno, Arcesilaus.*ii"Ever since learned men have begun to appear in our midst," their own philosopherssaid, "good men have vanished." Until then the Romans had been content to practice virtue; all was lost when they began to study it. o Fabricius!*iitwhat would your great soul have thought, if, had it been your misfortune to be returned to life, you had seen the pompous countenance of that Rome saved by your arm and honored more by your good name than by all her conquests?"Gods!" you would have said, ,,what has becomeof those thatched roofs and those rustic hearths where moderation and virtue once dwelt? what fatal splendor has followed upon Roman simplicity? what is this strange speech?what are these effeminatemores? what is the meaning of these statues, these paintings, these buildings? Fools, what have you done? You, the masters of nations, have you made yourselvesthe slavesof the frivolous men you conquered?Do rhetoricians govern you? was it to enrich architects,painters, sculptors, and actors that you soaked Greeceand Asia with your blood? Are the spoils of carthage the prey of a flute player? Romans make haste to tear down these amphitheaters;shatter these marbles; burn these paintingsi drive out these slaves who subjugate you and whose fatal arts corrupt you. Let others achieve notoriety by vain talents; the only talent worthy of Rome is that of conquering the world and making virtue reign in it. when cineas"t' took *' Marcus Porcius cato "the Elder" (243-1 49 Bc) was a highly respected Roman general and statesman, famous for simplicity of virtue. Epicurus (34I-270 BC), founder of EpicureanismiZeno of Citium (336-264 BC), founder of Stoicism; and Arcesilaus (316-241 BC), a famous Skeptic. Caius Fabricius Luscinus (d. 250 BC) was a great Roman general. An ambassadorof the Thessalianking Pyrrhus.

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"Discourseon the Sciencesand the Arts" our Senatefor an assemblyof kings, he was dazzledneither by vain pomp nor by studied elegance.There he did not hear that frivolous eloquence,the focus of study and delight of futile men. What then did Cineasseethat was so majestic?O citizens! He saw a sight which neither your riches nor all your arts could ever display; the most beautiful sight ever to have appeared under the heavens,the assemblyof two hundred virtuous men, worthy of commanding in Rome and of governing the earth." But let us leap over the distance of place and time and see what has happened in our countries and before our eyes; or rather, let us set aside odious pictures that offend our delicate sensibilities,and spare ourselves the trouble of repeating the same things under different names. [t was not in vain that I summoned the shade of Fabricius; and what did I make that great man say that I could not have placed in the mouth of Louis XII or Henry tV? Among us, it is true, socrates would not have drunk the hemlock; but he would have drunk from a cup more bitter still: the insulting ridicule and scorn that are a hundred times worse than death. That is how luxury, dissolution and slavery have at all times been the punishment for the arrogant efforts that we have made to leave the happy igootuo.. where eternal wisdom had placed us. The heavy veil with which she had coveredall her operationsseemedto give us sufficient warning that she had not destined us for vain inquiries. But is there even one of her lessonsfrom which we have learned to profit, or which we have neglected with impunity? Peoples,know then once and for all that nature wanted to protect you from sciencejust as a mother wrests a dangerousweapon from the hands of her child; that all the secretsshe hides from you are so many evils from which she is protecting you, and that the difficulty you find in teaching yourselves is not the Ieast of her kindnesses.Men are perverse; they would be even worse if they had had the misfortune of being born learned. How humiliating are these reflections for humanity! How mortified our pride must be! what! could probity be the daughter of ignorance? science and virtue incompatible? what consequences might not be drawn from these prejudices?But to reconcile these apparent points of conflict, one need merely examine at close range the vanity and the emptiness of those proud titles which overpower us and which we so gratuitously bestow upon human knowledge. Let us then consider the sciences and the arts in themselves. Let us see what must result from their progress;and let us no longer hesitate to be in agreement on all the points where our reasoning will be found to be in accord with historical inductions.

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J e a n - J a c q u eRso u s s e a u Notes Princes always view with pleasure the spread, among their subjects, of the taste for pleasant arts and luxuries not resulting in the exporting of money. For, in addition to nurturing in them that pettinessof soul so appropriate to servitude,they know very well that all the needsthe populaceimposeson itself are so many chains which burden it. Alexander, wishing to keep the Ichthyophagi in a state of dependency,forced them to renounce fishing and to eat foods common to other peoples.And the savagesof America who go totally naked and who live off the fruit of their hunting have never been tamed. Indeed, what yoke could be imposed upon men who need nothing? "I love," saysMontaigne, "to debateand discuss,but only with a few men and for my own sake. For I find it an especiallyunworthy professionfor a man of honor to serve as a spectacleto the great and shamelesslyparade one's mind and one's prattling." It is the professionof all our wits, save one. I dare not speakof those happy nations which do not know even by name the vices that we have so much trouble repressing, those savagesin America whose simple and natural polity Montaigne unhesitatingly prefersnot only to Plato's Laws but even to everything philosophy could ever imagine as most perfect for the government of peoples.He cites a number of examplesthat are striking for someonewho would know how to admire them. "What!" he says, "why they don't wear pants!" Montaigne, "Of Cannibals," Essays,Book I, c h a p t e r3 1 . will someonehonestly tell me what opinion the Athenians themseivesmust have held regarding eloquence,when they were so fastidious about banning it from that upright tribunal whose judgments the gods themselves did not appeal?What did the Romans think of medicine, when they banished it from their republic? And when a remnant of humanity led the spanish to forbid their lawyers to enter America, what idea must they have had of jurisprudence?could it not be said that they believed that by this single act they had made reparation for all the evils they had brought upon those unfortunate Indians?

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chapterthree "An Answerto the Ouestion: What is Enlightenment?" lmmanuel Kant

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Enlightenmentis man's emergence from his self-incurredimmaturity. lmma' turitg is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurredif its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapereaude!' Have courage to use your own understanding! Lazinessand cowardice are the reasons why such a large proportion of men, even when nature has long emancipated them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes),ii neverthelessgladly remain immature for life. For the same reasons,it is all too easy for others to set themselvesup as their guardians. It is so convenient to be immature! If I have a book to have

lmmanuel Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?" tn Kant's Political Writings, trans. H. B. Nisbet, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge lJniversity Press I97O), pp.54-60. ' From Horace, literally, "Dare to be wise." ii "Those who have come of age by virtue of nature."

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lmmanueK l ant understanding in place of me, a spiritual adviser to have a consciencefor me, a doctor to judge my diet for me, and so on, I need not make any efforts at all. I need not think, so long as I can pay; others will soon enough take the tiresome job over for me. The guardians who have kindly taken upon themselvesthe work of supervisionwill soon seeto it that by far the largest part of mankind (including the entire fair sex) should consider the step forward to maturity not only as difficult but also as highly dangerous. Having lirst infatuated their domesticatedanimals, and carefully prevented the docile creatures from daring to take a single step without the leadingstrings to which they are tied, they next show them the danger which threatens them if they try to walk unaided. Now this danger is not in fact so very great, for they would certainly learn to walk eventually after a few falls. But an example of this kind is intimidating, and usually frightens them off from further attempts. Thus it is difficult for each separateindividual to work his way out of the immaturity which has become almost second nature to him. He has even grown fond of it and is really incapable for the time being of using his own understanding, because he was never allowed to make the attempt. Dogmas and formulas, those mechanical instruments for rational use (or rather misuse) of his natural endowments, are the ball and chain of his permanent immaturity. And if anyone did throw them off, he would still be uncertain about jumping over even the narrowest of trenches,for he would be unaccustomed to free movement of this kind. Thus only a few, by cultivating their own minds, have succeededin freeing themselves from immaturity and in continuing boldly on their way. There is more chance of an entire public enlightening itself. This is indeed almost inevitable, if only the public concernedis left in freedom.For there will always be a few who think for themselves,even among those appointed as guardians of the common mass. Such guardians, once they have themselvesthrown off the yoke of immaturity, will disseminatethe spirit of rational respect for personal value and for the duty of all men to think for themselves. The remarkable thing about this is that if the public, which was previously put under this yoke by the guardians, is suitably stirred up by some of the latter who are incapable of enlightenment, it may subsequently compel the guardians themselves to remain under the yoke. For it is very harmful to propagate prejudices, because they finally avenge themselves on the very people who first encouraged them (or whose predecessorsdid so). Thus a public can only achieve enlightenment slowly. A revolution may well put an end to autocratic despotismand to rapacious or power-seekingoppression,but it will never produce a true reform in ways of thinking. tnstead, new prejudices, like the ones they replaced,will serye as a leash to control the great unthinking mass. 52

"An Answerto the Ouestion:What is Enlightenment?" For enlightenment of this kind, all that is needed is freedom.And the freedom in question is the most innocuous form of all-freedom to make public useof one's reason in all matters. But I hear on all sidesthe cry: Don't argue!The officer says: Don't argue, get on parade! The tax-official: Don't argue, pay! The clergyman: Don't argue, believe! (Only one ruler in the world say* Argue as much as you like and about whatever you like, but obeyl)iiiAll this means restrictions on freedom everywhere. But which sort of restriction prevents enlightenment, and which, instead of hindering it, can actually promote it? t reply: The public use of man's reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men; the private use of reason may quite often be very narrowly restricted, however, without undue hindrance to the progressof enlightenment. But by the public use of one's own reason I mean that use which anyone may make of it as a man of learningaddressingthe entire readingpublic. What I term the private use of reason is that which a person may make of it in a particular civil post or oflice with which he is entrusted' Now in some affairs which affect the interests of the commonwealth, we require a certain mechanism whereby somemembersof the commonwealth must behave purely passively, so that they may, by an artificial common agreement, be employed by the government for public ends (or at least deterred from vitiating them). It is, of course, impermissible to argue in such cases;obedienceis imperative. But in so far as this or that individual who acts as part of the machine also considershimself as a member of a complete commonwealth or even of cosmopolitan society, and thence as a man of learning who may through his writings address a public in the truest senseof the word, he may indeed argue without harming the affairs in which he is employed for some of the time in a passivecapacity. Thus it would be very harmful if an officer receiving an order from his superiors were to quibble openly, while on duty, about the appropriateness or usefulnessof the order in question. He must simply obey. But he cannot reasonably be banned from making observationsas a man of learning on the errors in the military service, and from submitting these to his public for judgement. The citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes imposed upon him; presumptuous criticisms of such taxes, where someoneis called upon to pay them, may be punished as an outrage which could lead to general insubordination. Nonetheless,the same citizendoesnot contravene his civil obligations if, as a learned individual, he publicly voices his thoughts on the impropriety or even injustice of such fiscal measures.In the same way, a clergyman is bound to instruct his pupils and his congregation in accordancewith the doctrines of the church he serves,for he was employed by it on that condition. But as a scholar, he is completely free as well as iii Frederick II, also called "the Great" (1712-86), King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786'

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l m m a n u e lK a n t obliged to impart to the public all his carefully considered,well-intentioned thoughts on the mistaken aspectsof those doctrines, and to offer suggestions for a better arrangement of religious and ecclesiasticalaffairs. And there is nothing in this which need trouble the conscience.For what he teaches in pursuit of his duties as an active servant of the church is presentedby him as something which he is not empoweredto teach at his own discretion, but which he is employed to expound in a prescribed manner and in someoneelse'sname. He will say: our church teachesthis or that, and these are the arguments it uses. He then extracts as much practical value as possiblefor his congregation from preceptsto which he would not himself subscribe with full conviction, but which he can neverthelessundertake to expound, since it is not in fact wholly impossible that they may contain truth. At all events, nothing opposedto the essence of religion is present in such doctrines. For if the clergyman thought he could find anything of this sort in them, he would not be able to carry out his official duties in good conscience,and would have to resign. Thus the use which someone employed as a teacher makes of his reason in the presenceof his congregation is purely private, since a congregation, however large it is, is never any more than a domestic gathering. In view of this, he is not and cannot be free as a priest, since he is acting on a commission imposed from outside. conversely, as a scholar addressingthe real public (i.e. the world at large) through his writings, the clergyman making public use of his reason enjoys unlimited freedom to use his own reason and to speakin his own person. For to maintain that the guardians of the people in spiritual matters should themselvesbe immature, is an absurdity which amounts to making absurditiespermanent. But should not a societyof clergymen, for example an ecclesiasticalsynod or a venerablepresbytery (as the Dutch call it), be entitled to commit itself by oath to a certain unalterable set of doctrines, in order to secure for all time a constant guardianship over each of its members, and through them over the people?I reply that this is quite impossible.A contract of this kind, concluded with a view to preventing all further enlightenment of mankind for ever, is absolutely null and void, even if it is rati{ied by the supreme power, by Imperial Dietstuand the most solemn peace treaties. one age cannot enter into an alliance on oath to put the next age in a position where it would be impossible for it to extend and correct its knowledge, particularly on such important matters, or to make any progress whatsoever in enlightenment. This would be a crime against human nature, whose original destiny lies preciselyin such progress.Later generationsare thus perfectly entitled to dismiss these agreements as unauthorised and criminal. To test whether any particular measure can be agreedupon as a t' A diet is a legislative assembly.

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"An Answerto the Ouestion:What is Enlightenment?" law for a people,we need only ask whether a peoplecould well impose such a law upon itself. This might well be possiblefor a specifiedshort period as a means of introducing a certain order, pending, as it were, a better solution. This would also mean that each citizen, particularly the clergyman, would be given a free hand as a scholar to comment publicly, i.e. in his writings, on the inadequaciesof current institutions. Meanwhile, the newly establishedorder would continue to exist, until public insight into the nature of such matters had progressedand proved itself to the point where, by general consent (if not unanimously), a proposal could be submitted to the crown. This would seekto protect the congregationswho had, for instance, agreed to alter their religious establishment in accordance with their own notions of what higher insight is, but it would not try to obstruct those who wanted to let things remain as before. But it is absolutely impermissibleto agree,even for a single lifetime, to a permanent religious constitution which no-one might publicly question.For this would virtually nullify a phase in man's upward progress,thus making it fruitless and even detrimental to subsequentgenerations. A man may for his own person, and even then only for a limited period, postpone enlightening himself in matters he ought to know about. But to renounce such enlightenment completely, whether for his own person or even more so for later generations, means violating and trampling underfoot the sacred rights of mankind. But something which a people may not even impose upon itself can still less be imposed on it by a monarch; for his legislative authority depends precisely upon his uniting the collective will of the people in his own. So long as be sees to it that all true or imagined improvements are compatible with the civil order, he can otherwise leave his subjectsto do whatever they find necessaryfor this salvation, which is none of his business.But it is his businessto stop anyone forcibly hindering others from working as best they can to define and promote their salvation' It indeed detracts from his majesty if he interferes in these affairs by subjecting the writings in which his subjects attempt to clarify their religious ideas to governmental supervision. This applies if he does so acting upon his own exalted opinions - in which case he exposeshimself to the reproach: Caesarnon est supra Grammaticos'- but much more so if he demeanshis high authority so far as to support the spiritual despotism of a few tyrants within his state against the rest of his subjects. If it is now asked whether we at present live in an enlightenedage, the answer is: No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment.As things are at present, we still have a long way to go before men as a whole can be in a position (or can even be put into a position) of using their own understanding confidently and well in religious matters, without outside u "Caesaris not above the grammarians."

l m m a n u e lK a n t guidance. But we do have distinct indications that the way is now being cleared for them to work freely in this direction, and that the obstaclesto universal enlightenment, to man's emergencefrom his self-incurredimmaturity, are gradually becoming fewer. In this respect our age is the age of enlightenment, the century, of Frederick,"i A prince who does not regard it as beneath him to say that he considers it his duty, in religious matters, not to prescribeanything to his people,but to allow them completefreedom, a prince who thus even declinesto accept the presumptuous title of tolerant,is himself enlightened. He deservesto be praised by a grateful present and posterity as the man who first liberated mankind from immaturity (as far as government is concerned), and who left all men free to use their own reason in all matters of conscience.Under his rule, ecclesiasticaldignitaries, notwithstanding their official duties, may in their capacity as scholarsfreely and publicly submit to the judgement of the world their verdicts and opinions, even if these deviate here and there from orthodox doctrine. This applies even more to all others who are not restricted by any official duties. This spirit of freedom is also spreading abroad, even where it has to struggle with outward obstaclesimposed by governments which misunderstand their own function. For such governments can now witness a shining example of how freedom may exist without in the least jeopardising public concord and the unity of the commonwealth. Men will of their own accord gradually work their way out of barbarism so long as artificial measuresare not deliberately adopted to keep them in it. I have portrayed matters of religion as the focal point of enlightenment, i.e. of man's emergencefrom his self-incurred immaturity. This is firstly becauseour rulers have no interest in assuming the role of guardians over their subjectsso far as the arts and sciencesare concerned,and secondly, because religious immaturity is the most pernicious and dishonourable variety of all. But the attitude of mind of a head of state who favours freedom in the arts and sciencesextends even further, for he realisesthat there is no danger even to his legislationif he allows his subjectsto make public use of their own reason and to put before the public their thoughts on better ways of drawing up laws, even if this entails forthright criticism of the current legislation. we have before us a brilliant example of this kind, in which no monarch has yet surpassedthe one to whom we now pay tribute. But only a ruler who is himself enlightened and has no fear of phantoms, yet who likewise has at hand a well-disciplined and numerous army to guarantee public security, may say what no republic would dare to say: Argue as much as Aou like and about whateverAou like, but obey!This reveals ui Again, Frederick the Great.

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'An Answerto the Ouestion:What is Enlightenment?" to us a strange and unexpectedpattern in human affairs (such as we shall always find if we consider them in the widest sense, in which nearly everything is paradoxical). A high degree of civil freedom seems advantageous to a people's intellectualfreedom, yet it also sets up insuperable barriers to it. Conversely,a lesserdegree of civil freedom gives intellectual freedom enough room to expand to its fullest extent. Thus once the germ on which nature has lavished most care - man's inclination and vocation to think freely - has developedwithin this hard shell, it gradually reacts upon the mentality of the people,who thus gradually becomeincreasingly able to act freely. Eventually, it even influences the principles of governments, which find that they can themselvesprofit by treating man, who is more than a machine,in a manner appropriate to his dignity.l

Notes I read today on the 30th September in Biisching's WdchentlicheNachrichtenof 13th September a notice concerning this month's Berlinische Monatsschrift. The notice mentions Mendelssohn's answer to the same question as that which I have answered.I have not yet seen this journal, otherwise I should have held back the above reflections. I let them stand only as a means of finding out by comparison how far the thoughts of two individuals may coincide by chance. [MosesMendelssohn(1729-86) published an essay,"uber d,ieFrage:was heisstAufkkirung?"("On the Question:What is Enlightenment")' in 1784.1

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chapterfour Reflectionson the Revolutionin France EdmundBurke

But I may say of our preacher "utinam nugis tota iIIa dedissettempora saevitiae".i- All things in this his fulminating bull are not of so innoxious a tendency. His doctrines affect our constitution in its vital parts. He tells the Revolution Society in this political sermon that this Majesty "is almost the only lawful king in the world becausethe only one who owes his crown

From Edmund Burke, Relecfionson the Revolutionin France,ed. J. G. A. Pocock (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987). A selection of unmarked sections,in each case separatedby space in the text: pp. I2-I9, 25-6, 29-37, 5l-2, 76-7, 216-18. i "Would that he had devoted to trifles all the time he spent in violence." fuvenal, Satires, ry, 150-1. The preacher is Dr Richard Price.

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R e fl e c t i o n so n t h e R e v o l u t i o n

F rance

to the choiceof his people". As to the kings of the world, all of whom (except one) this archpontiff of the rights of men, with all the plenitude and with more than the boldnessof the papal deposingpower in its meridian fervor of the twelfth century, puts into one sweepingclause of ban and anathema and proclaims usurpers by circles of longitude and latitude, over the whole globe, it behooves them to consider how they admit into their territories these apostolic missionaries who are to tell their subjects they are not lawful kings. That is their concern. It is ours, as a domesticinterest of some moment, seriously to consider the solidity of the only principle upon which these gentlemen acknowledgea king of Great Britain to be entitled to their allegiance. This doctrine, as applied to the prince now on the British throne, either is nonsense and therefore neither true nor false, or it affirms a most unfounded, dangerous,illegal, and unconstitutional position. According to this spiritual doctor of politics, if his Majesty does not owe his crown to the choice of his people, he is no lawful king. Now nothing can be more untrue than that the crown of this kingdom is so held by his Majesty. Therefore, if you follow their rule, the king of Great Britain, who most certainly does not owe his high office to any form of popular election, is in no respect better than the rest of the gang of usurpers who reign, or rather rob, all over the face of this our miserableworld without any sort of right or title to the allegiance of their people. The policy of this general doctrine, so qualified, is evident enough. The propagators of this political gospel are in hopes that their abstract principle (their principle that a popular choice is necessaryto the legal existenceof the sovereign magistracy) would be overlooked, whilst the king of Great Britain was not affectedby it. tn the meantime the ears of their congregations would be gradually habituated to it, as if it were a first principle admitted without dispute. For the present it would only operate as a theory, pickled in the preserving juices of pulpit eloquence,and laid by for future u.se.Cond,oet possim.ilBy this policy, whilst our government compon7quaemox depromere in its favor, to which it has no claim, the a reservation with is soothed with all governments,so far as opinion is in common has security which it security, is taken away. Thus these politicians proceed whilst little notice is taken of their doctrines; but when they come to be examined upon the plain meaning of their words and the direct tendency of their doctrines, then equivocations and slippery constructions come into play. when they say the king owes his crown to the choice of his people and is therefore the only lawful sovereignin the world, they will perhaps tell us they mean to say no more have been called to the throne by than that some of the king's predecessors ii "I concoct and compound what soon I may bring forth." Horace, Epistles'I' I' 12.

E d m u n dB u r k e some sort of choice, and therefore he owes his crown to the choice of his people.Thus, by a miserable subterfuge,they hope to render their proposition safe by rendering it nugatory. They are welcome to the asylum they seek for their offense,since they take refuge in their folly. For if you admit this interpretation, how does their idea of election differ from our idea of inheritance? And how does the settlement of the crown in the Brunswick line derived from Jamesthe First come to legalizeour monarchy rather than that of any of the neighboring countries? At some time or other, to be sure, all the beginners of dynasties were chosen by those who called them to govern. There is ground enough for the opinion that all the kingdoms of Europe were, at a remote period, elective, with more or fewer limitations in the objectsof choice. But whatever kings might have been here or elsewherea thousand years ago, or in whatever manner the ruling dynastiesof England or France may have begun, the king of Great Britain is, at this day, king by a fixed rule of successionaccording to the laws of his country; and whilst the legal conditions of the compact of sovereigntyare performedby him (as they are performed), he holds his crown in contempt of the choice of the Revolution Society, who have not a single vote for a king amongst them, either individually or collectively,though I make no doubt they would soon erect themselvesinto an electoral college if things were ripe to give effect to their claim. His Majesty's heirs and successors,each in his time and order, will come to the crown with the same contempt of their choice with which his Majesty has succeededto that he wears. Whatever may be the successof evasion in explaining away the gross error of fact, which supposes that his Majesty (though he holds it in concurrence with the wishes) owes his crown to the choice of his people,yet nothing can evade their full explicit declaration concerning the principle of a right in the people to choose; which right is directly maintained and tenaciously adhered to. All the oblique insinuations concerning election bottom in this proposition and are referable to it. Lest the foundation of the king's exclusive legal title should pass for a mere rant of adulatory freedom, the political divineiii proceeds dogmatically to assert that, by the principles of the Revolution, the people of England have acquired three fundamental rights, all which, with him, compose one system and lie together in one short sentence, namely, that we have acquired a right: 1 to choose our own governors. 2 to cashier them for misconduct. 3 to frame a government for ourselves. iii Dr Price.

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Reflectionson the Revolutionin France This new and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights, though made in the name of the whole people,belongsto those gentlemen and their faction only. The body of the people of England have no share in it. They utterly disclaim it. They will resist the practical assertion of it with their lives and fortunes. They are bound to do so by the laws of their country made at the time of that very Revolution which is appealedto in favor of the fictitious rights claimed by the Society which abusesits name. Thesegentlemen of the Old Jewry, in all their reasoningson the Revolution of 1688,t" have a revolution which happenedin England about forty years before and the late French revolution, so much before their eyes and in their hearts that they are constantly confounding all the three together. It is necessarythat we should separatewhat they confound. We must recall their erring fancies to the acts of the Revolution which we revere, for the discoveryof its true principles.If the principlesof the Revolution of 1688 are anywhere to be found, it is in the statute called the Declarationof Right.In that most wise, sober, and considerate declaration, drawn up by great lawyers and great statesmen,and not by warm and inexperiencedenthusiasts, not one word is said, nor one suggestionmade, of a general right "to choose our own governors,to cashier them for misconduct, and to form a government for ourselves." This Declaration of Right (the act of the 1st of William and Mary, sess. 2, ct,..2) is the cornerstone of our constitution as reinforced, explained, improved, and in its fundamental principles for ever settled' It is called, "An Act for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject, and for settling the successionof the crown." You will observe that these rights and this successionare declaredin one body and bound indissolubly together' A few years after this period, a secondopportunity offeredfor assertinga right of election to the crown. On the prospectof a total failure of issuefrom King William, and from the Princess,afterwards Queen Anne, the consideration of the settlement of the crown and of a further security for the liberties of the people again came before the legislature. Did they this second time make any provision for legalizing the crown on the spurious revolution principles of the Old Jewry? No. They followed the principles which prevailed in the Declaration of Right, indicating with more precision the persons who were to inherit in the Protestant line. This act also incorporated,by the same policy, our liberties and an hereditary succession in the same act. Instead of a right to choose our own governors, they iu Dr Price's lecture was delivered in the Old Jewry, a district of London. In the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, Parliament successfully ousted Catholic |ames II and installed William IIL Burke approved this revolution as having reinstated the traditional rights of Parliament which fames had threatened.

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E d m u n dB u r k e declared that the succession in that line (the Protestant line drawn from lames the First), was absolutely necessary "for the peace, quiet, and security of the realm," and that it was equally urgent on them "to maintain a certainty in the succession thereof, to which the subjectsmay safely have recourse for their protection." Both these acts, in which are heard the unerring, unambiguous oracles of revolution policy, instead of countenancing the delusive, gipsy predictions of a "right to choose our governors," prove to a demonstration how totally adversethe wisdom of the nation was from turning a case of necessityinto a rule of law. Unquestionably, there was at the Revolution, in the person of King William, a small and a temporary deviation from the strict order of a regular hereditary succession;but it is against all genuine principles of jurisprudence to draw a principle from a law made in a special case and regarding an individual person. Privilegiumnon transit in exemplum.'If ever there was a time favorable for establishing the principle that a king of popular choice was the only legal king, without all doubt it was at the Revolution. Its not being done at that time is a proof that the nation was of opinion it ought not to be done at any time. There is no person so completely ignorant of our history as not to know that the majority in parliament of both parties were so little disposedto anything resembling that principle that at first they were determined to place the vacant crown, not on the head of the Prince of orange, but on that of his wife Mary, daughter of King James, the eldest born of the issue of that king, which they acknowledged as undoubtedly his. It would be to repeat a very trite story, to recall to your memory all those circumstances which demonstrated that their accepting King william was not properly achoice; but to all those who did not wish, in effect,to recall King Jamesor to deluge their country in blood and again to bring their religion, laws, and liberties into the peril they had just escaped,it was an act of necessity,in the strictest moral sensein which necessitycan be taken. In the very act in which for a time, and in a single case, parriament departed from the strict order of inheritance in favor of a prince who, though not next, was, however, very near in the line of succession,it is curious to observehow Lord Somers,who drew the bill called the Declaration of Right, has comported himself on that delicate occasion.It is curious to observewith what addressthis temporary solution of continuity is kept from the eye, whilst all that could be found in this act of necessity to countenance the idea of an hereditary successionis brought forward, and fostered, and made the most of, by this great man and by the legislature who followed him. Quitting the dry, imperative style of an act of parliament, he makes the Lords and Commons fall to a pious, legislative " "A privilege does not become a precedent."

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Reflectionson the Revolutionin France ejaculation and declare that they consider it "as a marvellous providence and merciful goodnessof God to this nation to preservetheir said Majesties' royal personsmost happily to reign over us on the throneof their ancestors, for which, from the bottom of their hearts, they return their humblest thanks and praises." - The legislature plainly had in view the act of recognition of the lirst of Queen Elizabeth,chap. 3rd, and of that of James the First, chap. 1st, both acts strongly declaratory of the inheritable nature of the crown; and in many parts they follow, with a nearly literal precision, the words and even the form of thanksgiving which is found in these old declaratory statutes. The two Houses,in the act of King William, did not thank God that they had found a fair opportunity to assert a right to choose their own governors,much lessto make an election the only lawful title to the crown. Their having been in a condition to avoid the very appearanceof it, as much as possible,was by them consideredas a providential escape.They threw a politic, well-wrought veil over every circumstance tending to weaken the rights which in the meliorated order of successionthey meant to perpetuate,or which might furnish a precedentfor any future departure from what they had then settled forever. Accordingly, that they might not relax the nerves of their monarchy, and that they might preserve a close conformity to the practice of their ancestors,as it appearedin the declaratory statutes of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth,in the next clause they vest, by recognition, in their Majesties aII ttre Iegal prerogatives of the crown, declaring "that in them they are most fully, rightfully, and entirely invested,incorporated, united, and annexed." In the clause which follows, for preventing questions by reason of any pretended titles to the crown, they declare (observing also in this the traditionary language, along with the traditionary policy of the nation, and repeating as from a rubric the language of the preceding acts of Elizabeth and James,) that on the preserving "a certainty in the succnssloNthereof, the unity, peace, and tranquillity of this nation doth, under God, wholly depend." They knew that a doubtful title of succession would but too much resemblean election, and that an election would be utterly destructive of the "unity, peace, and tranquillity of this nation," which they thought to be considerations of some moment. To provide for these objects and, therefore, to exclude for ever the Old fewry doctrine of "a right to choose our own governors," they follow with a clause containing a most solemn pledge,taken from the precedingact of Queen Elizabeth,as solemn a pledge as ever was or can be given in favor of an hereditary succession,and as solemn a renunciation as could be made of the principles by this Society imputed to them: The Lords spiritual and temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of all the people aforesaid,most humbly and faithfully submit their heirs and posteritiesfor everi and do faithfully promise that themselves, 63

E d m u n dB u r k e they will stand to maintain, and defend their said Majesties,and also the Iimitation of the crown, herein specified and contained, to the utmost of their powers,etc. etc. So far is it from being true that we acquired a right by the Revolution to elect our kings that, if we had possessed it before,the English nation did at that time most solemnly renounce and abdicate it, for themselvesand for all their posterity forever. Thesegentlemen may value themselvesas much as they pleaseon their whig'i principles, but I never desire to be thought a better whig than Lord Somers, or to understand the principles of the Revolution better than those by whom it was brought about, or to read in the Declaration of Right any mysteries unknown to those whose penetrating style has engraved in our ordinances,and in our hearts, the words and spirit of that immortal law. It is true that, aided with the powers derived from force and opportunity, the nation was at that time, in some sense,free to take what course it pleasedfor filling the throne, but only free to do so upon the same grounds on which they might have wholly abolished their monarchy and every other part of their constitution. However, they did not think such bold changes within their commission.It is indeed difficult, perhaps impossible, to give limits to the mere abstractcompetenceof the supremepower, such as was exercised by parliament at that time, but the limits of a moral competencesubjecting, even in powers more indisputably sovereign,occasional will to permanent reason and to the steady maxims of faith, justice, and fixed fundamental policy, are perfectly intelligible and perfectly binding upon those who exerciseany authority, under any name or under any title, in the state. The House of Lords, for instance, is not morally competent to dissolve the House of commons, no, nor even to dissorve itself, nor to abdicate,if it would, its portion in the legislature of the kingdom. Though a king may abdicate for his own person, he cannot abdicate for the monarchy. By as strong, or by a stronger reason, the House of commons cannot renounce its share of authority. The engagement and pact of society,which generally goesby the name of the constitution, forbids such invasion and such surrender. The constituent parts of a state are obliged to hold their public faith with each other and with all those who derive any serious interest under their engagements,as much as the whole state is bound to keep its faith with separatecommunities. otherwise competence and power would soon be confounded and no law be left but the will of a prevailing force. on this principle the successionof the crown has always been what it now is, an hereditary successionby law; in the old line it was a successionby the common law; in the new, by the statute law operating "i The Whigs were the party that advocated the removal of James II from the English throne in 1688. They were opposedby the Tories.

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Reflectionson the Revolutionin France on the principles of the common law, not changing the substance, but regulating the mode and describing the persons.Both these descriptionsof law are of the same force and are derived from an equal authority emanating from the common agreementand original compact of the state, and as such are equally binding on king communi sponsionereipublicae,"ii and people, too, as long as the terms are observedand they continue the same body politic. I should have consideredall this as no more than a sort of flippant, vain discourse, in which, as in an unsavory fume, several persons suffer the spirit of liberty to evaporate,if it were not plainly in support of the idea and a part of the scheme of "cashiering kings for misconduct." In that light it is worth some observation. Kings, in one sense,are undoubtedly the servants of the people because their power has no other rational end than that of the general advantage; but it is not true that they are, in the ordinary sense(by our constitution, at least), anything like servants; the essenceof whose situation is to obey the commands of some other and to be removable at pleasure.But the king of Great Britain obeys no other person; all other persons are individually, and collectively too, under him and owe to him a legal obedience.The law, which knows neither to flatter nor to insult, calls this high magistrate not our servant, as this humble divine calls him, but "our sovereignLord the king"; and we, on our parts, have learned to speak only the primitive language of the law, and not the confused jargon of their Babylonian pulpits.'iii As he is not to obey us, but as we are to obey the law in him, our constitution has made no sort of provision toward rendering him, as a servant, in any degree responsible.Our constitution knows nothing of a magistrate like the lusticia of Aragon,i* nor of any court legally appointed, nor of any processlegally settled, for submitting the king to the responsibility belonging to all servants. In this he is not distinguished from the Commons and the Lords, who, in their several public capacities,can never be called to an account for their conduct, although the Revolution Society chooses to assert, in direct opposition to one of the wisest and most beautiful parts of our constitution, that "a king is no more than the first to it." servant of the public, created by it, and responsible Ill would our ancestors at the Revolution have deservedtheir {ame for wisdom if they had found no security for their freedom but in rendering their government feeble in its operations, and precarious in its tenure; if vii oBy the common volition of the Commonwealth." uiii Perhaps a reference to the confusion of tongues preceding the fall of the Tower of Babel in the Hebrew Bible. t' Chief magistrate of Arag6n, an historical autonomous region of Spain.

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E d m u n dB u r k e they had been able to contrive no better remedy against arbitrary power than civil confusion. Let these gentlemen state who that representative public is to whom they will affirm the king, as a servant, to be responsible. It will then be time enough for me to produce to them the positive statute law which affirms that he is not. You will observethat from Magna Charta to the Declaration of Right it has been the uniform policy of our constitution to claim and assertour liberties as an entailed inheritancederived to us from our forefathers, and to be transmitted to our posterity - as an estatespeciallybelonging to the people of this kingdom, without any referencewhatever to any other more general or prior right. By this means our constitution preservesa unity in so great a diversity of its parts. We have an inheritable crown, an inheritable peerage, and a House of Commons and a people inheriting privileges, franchises,and liberties from a long line of ancestors. This policy appearsto me to be the result of profound reflection, or rather the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without reflection, and above it. A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfishtemper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.Besides,the peopleof England well know that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure principle of conservation and a sure principle of transmission, without at all excluding a principle of improvement. It leaves acquisition free, but it secures what it acquires. whatever advantagesare obtained by a state proceedingon these maxims are locked fast as in a sort of family settlement, grasped as in a kind of mortmain" forever. By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of providence are handed down to us, and from us, in the same course and order. our political systemis placed in a just correspondenceand symmetry with the order of the world and with the mode of existencedecreedto a permanent body composedof transitory parts, wherein, by the disposition of a stupendouswisdom, molding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old or middle-aged or young, but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression. Thus, by preserving the method of nature in the conduct of the state, in what we improve we are never wholly new; in what we retain we are never wholly obsolete.By adhering in this manner and on those principles to our forefathers, we are guided not by the superstition of antiquarians, ' Literally "deadhand," a legal means making possessionperpetual in a corporation.

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Reflectionson the Revolutionin France but by the spirit of philosophic analogy. In this choice of inheritance we have given to our frame of polity the image of a relation in blood, binding up the constitution of our country with our dearestdomestic ties, adopting our fundamental laws into the bosom of our family affections, keeping inseparable and cherishing with the warmth of all their combined and mutually reflectedcharities our state, our hearths, our sepulchres,and our altars. Through the same plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful instincts to fortify the fallible and feeblecontrivancesof our reason,we have derived several other, and those no small, benefitsfrom considering our liberties in the light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the presenceof canonized forefathers,the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess,is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomesa noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect.It has a pedigreeand illustrating ancestors.It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. It has its gallery of portraits, its monumental inscriptions, its records, evidences,and titles. We procure reverenceto our civil institutions on the principle upon which nature teachesus to revere individual men: on account of their age and on account of those from whom they are descended.All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preservea rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations,our breats rather than our inventions, for the great conservatoriesand magazinesof our rights and privileges. Far am I from denying in theory, full as far is my heart from withholding in practice (if I were of power to give or to withhold) the real rights of men. In denying their false claims of right, I do not mean to injure those which are real, and are such as their pretended rights would totally destroy. If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence;and law itself is only beneficenceacting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to do justice, as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in public function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassingupon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations 67

E d m u n dB u r k e of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights, but not to equal things. He that has but five shillings in the partnership has as good a right to it as he that has five hundred pounds has to his larger proportion. But he has not a right to an equal dividend in the product of the joint stock; and as to the share of power, authority, and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention. If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptionsof constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judiciar, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can ana man claim under the conventionsof civil society rights which do not so much as supposeits existence- rights which are absolutelyrepugnantto it? one of the first motives to civil society,and which becomesone of its fundamental rules, is that no man shouldbe judge in his own cause.By this each person has at once divested himself of the lirst fundamental right of unconvenanted man, that is, to judge for himself and to assert his own cause.He abdicatesall right to be his own governor. He inclusively, in a great measure, abandons the right of self-defense,the lirst law of nature. Men cannot enjoy the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state together. That he may obtain justice, he gives up his right of determining what it is in points the most essential to him. That he may secure some liberty, he makes a surrender in trust of the whole of it. You see,sir, that in this enlightened age I am bold enough to confessthat we are generally men of untaught feelings,that, instead of casting away all our old prejudices,we cherish them to a very considerabledegree,and, to take more shame to ourselves,we cherish them becausethey are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. we are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, becausewe suspectthat this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselvesof the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.Many of our men of speculation, instead of exploding general prejudices, employ their sagacity to discoverthe latent wisdom which prevails in them. If they find what they seek, and they seldom fail, they think it more wise to continue the prejudice, with the reason involved, than to cast away the coat of prejudice and to leave nothing but the naked reason; because prejudice, with its reason, has a motive to give action to that reason, and an affectionwhich will give it permanence.prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engagesthe mind in a steady course of 68

Reflectionson the Revolutionin France wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision skeptical, puzzled,and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomesa part of his nature. The effects of the incapacity shown by the popular leaders in all the great members of the commonwealth are to be covered with the "all-atoning name" of liberty. In some people I see great Iiberty indeed; in many, if not in the most, an oppressive,degrading servitude.But what is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possibleevils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. Those who know what virtuous liberty is cannot bear to seeit disgracedby incapable heads on account of their having high-sounding words in their mouths. Grand, swelling sentiments of liberty I am sure I do not despise.They warm the heart; they enlarge and liberalize our minds; they animate our courage in a time of conflict. old as I am, I read the line raptures of Lucan and Corneille with pleasure."iNeither do t wholly condemn the little arts and devices of popularity. They facilitate the carrying of many points of moment; they keep the people together; they refresh the mind in its exertions; and they diffuse occasionalgaiety over the severebrow of moral freedom. Every politician ought to sacrifice to the graces, and to join compliance with reason. But in such an undertaking as that in France, all these subsidiary sentiments and artifices are of little avail. To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power, teach obedience,and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessaryto guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to fotm a free government,that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious,powerful, and combining mind. This I do not lind in those who take the lead in the National Assembly. Perhaps they are not so miserably deficient as they appear. I rather believe it. It would put them below the common level of human understanding. But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators,the instruments, not the guides, of the people. tf any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited and delined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitorswho will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicionswill be raised of his fidelity to his cause.Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards, and compromise as the 'i Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (AD 39-65), a Roman who wrote a famous historical epic poem, and Pierre Corneille (1606-84), father of French classicaltragic drama.

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E d m u n dB u r k e prudence of traitors, until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper and moderate,on some occasions,the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines and establishing powers that will afterwards defeatany sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed. But am I so unreasonableas to see nothing at all that deservescommendation in the indefatigable labors of this Assembly?I do not deny that, among an inlinite number of acts of violence and folly, some good may have been done. They who destroy everything certainly will remove some grievance. They who make everything new have a chance that they may establishsomething beneficial.To give them credit for what they have done in virtue of the authority they have usurped, or which can excusethem in the crimes by which that authority has been acquired, it must appear that the same things could not have been accomplishedwithout producing such a revolution. Most assuredly they might, becausealmost every one of the regulations made by them which is not very equivocal was either in the cession of the king, voluntarily made at the meeting of the states, or in the concurrent instructions to the orders. some usages have been abolishedon just grounds, but they were such that if they had stood as they were to all eternity, they would little detract from the happiness and prosperity of any state. The improvements of the National Assemblv are superficial,their errors fundamental. whatever they are, I wish my countrymen rather to recommend to our neighbours the example of the British constitution than to take models from them for the improvement of our own. In the former, they have got an invaluable treasure. They are not, I think, without some causes of apprehension and complaint, but these they do not owe to their constitution but to their own conduct. I think our happy situation owing to our constitution, but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly, owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations as well as to what we have altered or superadded.our people will find employment enough for a truly patriotic, free, and independent spirit in guarding what they possessfrom violation. I would not exclude alteration neither, but even when I changed, it should be to preserve.I should be led to my remedy by a great grievance.In what I did, I should follow the example of our ancestors.I would make the reparation as nearly as possible in the style of the building. A politic caution, a guarded circumspection,a moral rather than a complexional timidity were among the ruling principles of our forefathers in their most decided conduct. Not being illuminated with the light of which the gentlemen of France tell us they have got so abundant a share, they acted under a strong 70

Reflectionson the Revolutionin France impression of the ignorance and fallibility of mankind' He that had made them thus fallible rewarded them for having in their conduct attended to their nature. Let us imitate their caution if we wish to deservetheir fortune or to retain their bequests.Let us add, if we please,but let us preservewhat they have left; and, standing on the firm ground of the British constitution, let us be satisfiedto admire rather than attempt to follow in their desperate flights the aeronauts of France. I have told you candidly my sentiments. I think they are not likely to alter yours. I do not know that they ought. You are young; you cannot guide but must follow the fortune of your country. But hereafter they may be of some use to you, in somefuture form which your commonwealth may take. [n the present it can hardly remain; but before its final settlement it may be obliged to pass, as one of our poets says, "through great varieties of untried being",*" and in all its transmigrations to be purified by fire and blood. I have little to recommend my opinions but long observation and much impartiality. They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness;and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life. They come from one almost the whole of whose public exertion has been a struggle for the liberty of others; from one in whose breast no anger, durable or vehement, has ever been kindled but by what he considered as tyranny; and who snatches from his share in the endeavorswhich are used by good men to discredit opulent oppressionthe hours he has employed on your affairs; and who in so doing persuades himself he has not departedfrom his usual office; they come from one who desires honors, distinctions, and emoluments but little, and who expects them not at all; who has no contempt for fame, and no fear of obloquy; who shuns contention, though he will hazard an opinion; from one who wishes to preserve consistency, but who would preserve consistency by varying his means to secure the unity of his end, and, when the equipoise of the vesselin which he sails may be endangeredby overloading it upon one side, is desirous of carrying the small weight of his reasons to that which may preserveits equipoise.

xii Addison, Cato, Act V, scene i.

chapterflve Sketchfor an HistoricalPictureof the Progressof the Human Mind Vlarquis de Condorcet

We have watched man's reason being slowly formed by the natural progress of civilization; we have watched superstition seize upon it and corrupt it, and tyranny degrade and deaden the minds of men under the burden of misery and fear. one nation alone escapesthe two-fold influence of tyranny and superstition. From that happy land where freedom had only recently kindled the torch of genius, the mind of man, releasedfrom the leading-strings of its infancy, advanceswith firm stepstowards the truth.iBut this triumph soon encouragestyranny to return, followed by its faithful companion superstition, and the whole of mankind is plunged once more into darkness,which

Marie ]ean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet, Sketchfor an Historical Picture of the Progressof the Human Mind, trans. |une Barraclough (New York; Hyperion, rpt of 1955 Noonday Pressedn), from "The Ninth Stage: From Descartes to the Foundation of the French Republic," pp. 124-37. i "That huppy land" is presumably France.

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Progressof the Human Mind seemsas if it must last for ever. Yet, little by little, day breaks again; eyes long condemned to darkness catch a glimpse of the light and close again, then slowly become accustomed to it, and at last gaze on it without flinching; once again genius dares to walk abroad on the earth, from which fanaticism and barbarism had exiled it. We have already seenreason lift her chains, shake herselffree from some of them, and, all the time regaining strength, prepare for and advance the moment of her liberation. It remains for us to study the stagein which she finally succeedsin breaking these chains, and when, still compelledto drag their vestigesbehind her, she frees herself from them one by one; when at last she can go forward unhindered, and the only