Li Huijuan: Critical Paths to "Civilization" in the Frankfurt School

The Frankfurt School, renowned for its critical theory, formed a "constellation" composed of various modes of critique. Within this constellation, the critique of "civilization" runs through the entire body of work, manifesting primarily through the three paths of dialectics, psychoanalysis, and intersubjectivity. Researching the Frankfurt School’s paths of "civilization" critique and its deficiencies possesses a certain academic significance for expanding the study of foreign Marxism in China.

The Dialectical Path of the Critique of "Civilization"

Within the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer and Adorno jointly pioneered the dialectical path of the critique of "civilization." In their view, "in dialectical thinking, every thing is what it is, and at the same time transforms into what it is not." What Dialectic of Enlightenment critiques is precisely the transformation of civilization into "what it is not." Their focus is on the development of human civilization; by generalizing the concept of Enlightenment, they discuss the developmental trajectory of humanity from barbarism to civilization, and then from civilization back to barbarism. By examining the relationship between Enlightenment and myth, and Enlightenment and dominance, within the "process of the collapse of contemporary bourgeois civilization," Horkheimer and Adorno reveal a logic of reversal where Enlightenment step-by-step lapses back into myth and step-by-step becomes a new form of dominance.

Horkheimer and Adorno defined the program of Enlightenment as "disenchanting nature and replacing local myths with knowledge," and it was the realization of this very program that created bourgeois civilization. As the subjective power of man increased, the world of myth was shattered, and reason replaced the sacred image of God; however, reason itself became a new sacred image, and humanity fell once more into a new myth. The regression of Enlightenment into myth also meant that bourgeois civilization became a new mythical world. In this world, "myth has been secularized," and fetishism is the greatest myth of secularization. Thus, the critique of civilization ultimately turned into a critique of commodity fetishism.

In the regression from civilization toward barbarism, Enlightenment not only became a new myth but, moreover, became a form of dominance, ensuring that this regression brought disaster to humanity. For Horkheimer and Adorno, the spirit of Enlightenment is the spiritual essence of human society entering civilization—that is, "liberation from fear and the establishment of autonomy." The opening of Dialectic of Enlightenment takes Bacon’s "knowledge is power" as the theme of Enlightenment and further explains that the bourgeoisie has converted knowledge into technology, thereby making power [N1] a form of authority; the "truth" of bourgeois civilization is that "technology is power." "Knowledge does not content itself with showing people the truth; it only 'operates.'" Enlightenment as a "dominating force" seeks to command all things, specifically through "acting upon human existence and consciousness." Consequently, Enlightenment has led not only the fate of nature and man but the entirety of human civilization into a self-inflicted disaster. This disaster manifests not only in the degeneration of Enlightenment reason into instrumental reason—which, through the logic of numbers, spreads from the realm of production to the realm of mass culture, becoming the "Enlightenment of mass deception"—but also in the collusion between Enlightenment reason and totalitarianism. This eventually led to the emergence of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the most extreme manifestation of identity consciousness in reality. Human civilization was thus completely shrouded in disaster, moving toward its own opposite.

The Psychoanalytic Path of the Critique of "Civilization"

The psychoanalytic path is another route for the critique of "civilization" pioneered by the first generation of Frankfurt School scholars. Marcuse, a representative pioneer of this path, began with the relationship between civilization and instinct to critique the civilization of advanced industrial society. This critique relied primarily on psychoanalytic theory. Marcuse explicitly stated that Eros and Civilization "aims to contribute to the philosophy of psychoanalysis rather than to psychoanalysis itself." In this sense, Marcuse transformed psychological categories into political issues. Psychoanalytic theory was introduced into social critical theory, becoming a general diagnosis of the era, questioning the legitimacy and rationality of advanced industrial civilization by critiquing the combination of progress and servitude within it.

In Freud’s work, civilization and instinct are in conflict because the whole of modern civilization is represented by bourgeois civilization, which is a civilization "oriented toward toil" based on the reality principle. Marcuse, however, argued from the choice between instinct and civilization in the course of progress that the pursuit of civilization is a practical need for people. In his view, the reason people sacrifice the instinctive pursuit of happiness for the pursuit of civilization is not because they do not want happiness, but because with the development of production and technology, living conditions have improved, allowing people to obtain more satisfaction and lead better lives. The problem arising in the present era is that the acceleration of progress is linked with the intensification of unfreedom, and this has become a universal phenomenon across the entire industrial civilized world.

The shift from the pleasure principle to the reality principle marks the developmental journey from instinct to civilization. Within this transition, repression exists. However, this is "basic repression." According to Marcuse, the problem lies not with basic repression but with "surplus repression." Surplus repression follows the performance principle, which serves as the "prevailing historical form of the reality principle." It is precisely because of the prevalence of the performance principle that, at the "moment when it seems people could establish a truly free world," the "most effective conquest and destruction of man by man" occurs. This moment, which Marcuse calls the "summit of civilization," is the moment when the reasons why "those original people" accepted dominance—such as scarcity and toil—have disappeared. Yet at this very moment, accompanied by the progress of human civilization and the development of science and technology, what people see is the performance principle’s repression of human instinct and its restriction of freedom; freedom and servitude are naturally combined. Based on these considerations, Marcuse focused on the levels of survival and existence to discuss the issue of liberation. Since economic and political methods could no longer awaken people to seek social liberation, he resorted to psychological factors to examine their influence on the development of human civilization, hoping to find the possibility of establishing true freedom by reversing the direction of progress from a repressive civilization to a non-repressive one.

The Intersubjective Path of the Critique of "Civilization"

Unlike the first-generation Frankfurt School scholars who critiqued "civilization" by starting from the opposition and divergence between barbarism/instinct and civilization, Habermas’s exploration of civilization begins from the inside. He focuses on the problem of modernity, which is a problem generated within and accompanied by the development of European civilization. To explore its destiny is, in fact, to explore the destiny of civilization. Habermas adopts an intersubjective path for the critique of "civilization": "the normative content of modernity can only be read under the sign of intersubjectivity." Through this path, he attempts to reconstruct the Enlightenment, which had collapsed in the hands of Horkheimer and Adorno, thereby finding a path to transcend modern civilization.

Hegel took the freedom of subjectivity as the principle of modern society. In modern society, the freedom of subjectivity is mainly reflected at the transcendental level, while at the empirical level, human freedom is still subject to domination. Man as a subject is a dual existence of both transcendental and empirical subjects; the freedom of the transcendental subject and the unfreedom of the empirical subject exist within the same process. How to bridge the chasm between the two is the question Habermas ponders. Habermas entrusts the solution of this problem to intersubjectivity, emphasizing that an individual "can only become a subject capable of language and action by integrating into an intersubjectively shared life-world." He attempts to use the intersubjective paradigm—which differs from the subject-object paradigm of traditional consciousness philosophy—to complete the "unfinished project" of modernity.

In the process of completing modernity, Habermas, through an examination of organized capitalist society, views the crisis of legitimation (which is closely related to intersubjectivity) as the specific crisis of this society. "Overcoming the crisis means the liberation of the subject caught in the crisis." Liberating the subject in crisis requires realization through dialogue and communication. These are the two core elements related to intersubjectivity, and the realization of both requires recourse to language as "doing things with words." Language is not only a requirement for dialogue between subjects but, more importantly, a requirement for communication between subjects. Habermas used his discourse ethics to construct an "ideal speech situation," providing the possibility for mutual understanding and communication between the subjects of the life-world composed of culture, society, and the individual.

When discussing the critique of ontology, Adorno said, "it is not a matter of judging this ontology from on high, but of understanding it out of its own problematic needs and critiquing it immanently." This applies equally to the critique of the Frankfurt School’s critique of "civilization." The triple paths of the Frankfurt School’s critique of "civilization" highlight the relationships between civilization and barbarism, civilization and instinct, and civilization and modernity. They critique the price humanity has paid for modern civilization and the disasters it has brought, searching for a way to reverse the direction of modern civilization and the possibility of constructing a new civilization. However, due to the limitations of their own theories, this critique remains stuck in absolute negation and opposition, while their constructions are too idealistic and removed from reality. In this sense, to launch a genuine critique of modern civilization, we still need to return to Marx’s critique of political economy. The gradual distancing from Marx’s critique of political economy shown by the Frankfurt School in its developmental process may be the fundamental reason for the deficiencies in their critique of "civilization."

(Author’s affiliation: Center for Basic Theoretical Research in Philosophy, Jilin University) Online Editor: Zhang Jian Source: Guangming Daily, February 25, 2021, Page 5