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Habermas, Benjamin, and Rescuing Critique
December 14, 2003
In his essay, "Walter Benjamin: Consciousness-Raising or Rescuing Critique," Habermas argues that critique for Benjamin is not ideological (such as Marcuse's critique), but rather that it is based on a theory of experience and seeks to rescue a forgotten past. Here, I examine this analysis by focusing on three interrelated issues. First, I discuss the difference between ideological critique and rescuing critique by following Habermas in his contrast between Benjamin and Marcuse. Second, I focus on the tension that the loss of aura in art and life which perplexed Benjamin. I believe Habermas is correct in arguing for both the lack of ideological critique in Benjamin and in the ambiguity expressed by Benjamin over the loss of aura.
However, I think Habermas may be wrong in his claim that Benjamin eventually dismisses the esoteric in favor of the exoteric, that is, the individual knowledge/experience in favor of the public knowledge/experience, and that is the focus of the third section. My concerns center on the theory of experience and the insight of dialectical images---images which are "phenomena of consciousness" not "transposed into consciousness" (152) from some externality. I see two potential problems. It is not clear to me that Habermas has an adequate grasp of what esoteric individual experience is according to Benjamin, nor is it clear that the Habermasian dismissal of communicating the esoteric to others is justified. Here Habermas could tackle the notion of indirect communication to prevent him from asserting that Benjamin "break[s] with esotericism" (145).
Ideology vs. a Rescued Past
Habermas uses key differences with respect to art between Marcuse and Benjamin to begin his argument that Benjamin does not engage in ideological critique. In the overcoming of art as autonomous (the ritualized "beautiful illusion" of happiness and fulfillment which such art conceals), Marcuse demands a transformation of culture based on true human needs and true progress. Marcuse sees the overcoming of autonomous art as the result of an idea, as the success of an evaluation aimed at liberation. This evaluation is affirmative and contains hope for such transformation. Benjamin instead just gives a description of the decline of autonomous art and presents us with a non-affirmative account of the "failed" (134) in history which always haunts the present. This description is suggestive of critique in itself since it presents memories of an unbearable past of suffering and loss. For Benjamin, there is a secret agreement between past generations and present generations which is the "weak messianic power" which presents the present with a claim from the past (Benjamin, "Thesis on the Philosophy of History", 254).
Most importantly, according to Habermas, is the fact that Benjamin sees "the dissolution of autonomous art as the result of an upheaval in techniques of production" (135). Photography and film replace painting and enable mass production of art. This mass production sacrifices uniqueness for accuracy and repeatability. Benjamin favors the new techniques of production because of the loss of aura of the object which can be reproduced easily and is presented to the masses with a higher degree of accuracy to reality. Yet Benjamin is also weary of the potential for a loss of meaning with the lack of aura. He mobilizes his critique based on rescuing the past against the "myth resting within modernity, which is expressed in positivism's faith in progress" (142-143). This ambivalence toward progress is expressed clearly in his ambivalence toward the loss of aura.
The Destruction of the Aura
Habermas contrasts Benjamin and Adorno to show the ambiguity of the former's position to the loss of aura and autonomous art. According to Habermas, Adorno seeks to maintain an esoteric quality to art instead of risking a false overcoming of aura. Adorno had a strong distaste for mass, popular art which is accessible to everyone. This leads Adorno, to ironically and implicitly endorse "isolated reading and contemplative listening" (141), two staples of bourgeois attitudes toward art.
Benjamin has a more complex attitude. According to Habermas, he seeks an exoteric rescue of art which brings it to the masses in the hope that the enjoyment of art can be "instructive and critical" (132). The cultic spell of art is broken by new techniques of producing art allowing mass enjoyment. At the same time this hope is countered by art's liquidation and commodification as unique creations are lost in the drive for profit.
According to Habermas this ambiguity can be overcome by separating "the cultic moment in the notion of auratic appearance from the universal moments" (144). Solitary enjoyment and the cultic esoteric spell are replaced by the exoteric experience of illumination which all may have access to. The collapse of aura raises the potential for happiness and universal fulfillment. Here Habermas refers to Benjamin's use of secular illumination as opposed to religious illumination. Everyone apparently can realize the mystery and impenetrability of the everyday world. Secular illumination is exoteric "for which solitary ecstasy could at most serve as a primer" (145).
Secular Esotericism vs. Religious Exotericism
Habermas discusses Benjamin's theory of experience again, but instead of elaborating more fully on the nature of the experience of remembering an unbearable past full of human suffering, he claims that Benjamin's theory of experience is grounded in his mimetic theory of language. "It is unimaginable to him that words are related to reality accidentally" (146). What is expressed linguistically is "the as-yet-uninterrupted connection of the human organism with surrounding nature" (147) which releases a semantic potential to humanize the world based on human needs (this is the secular aspect of the weak messianic promise to the past). The spell of esotericism prevented the expression of correspondences and similarities with the surrounding world and other humans past and present. This secular illumination is what Benjamin called "divine" as it breaks myth "while preserving and setting free its richness" (148).
However, this divinity seems to still be a secret communication with the past which is the content of the "dialectical image" (152). It seems to me that Habermas paints a picture which completely distinguishes the esoteric from the exoteric in a way which I would doubt Benjamin would endorse. I imagine that the esoteric experience of the past which engages the individual in an exercise for redeeming the failed past is still crucial (or should be) for Benjamin's theory of experience. The importance of the mimetic theory of language cannot be overlooked, I realize, because a communication and communion with the external is necessary, but the loss of the esoteric which seems to be implied by Habermas causes me some concern. Habermas acknowledges that Benjamin defended the more complex modes of experience of people living close to nature, madmen, seers, and artists" (143), people who seem to be on the fringes and not necessarily engaged in the exoteric public. He also states that the fear of myth's disappearance without some replacing liberation troubled Benjamin. The loss of aura presents the possibility of a loss of individual experience, and such a loss could lead to the terror of a "meaningless emancipation" in which a human having an expanded discourse and exoteric relations would be "robbed of the light in which [he or she] is incapable of interpreting [his or her life] as something good" (158).
I am not aware of how Habermas really views the relation between the esoteric and the exoteric. He notes that the mystic's "experience as well as its transmission is esoteric" (145). Is it necessary that the transmission be directly translatable to the public? What about the benefit of indirect communication which allows the individual to express to others something which treats the other as an individual and not as a part of some public being?
If a critique based on rescuing a forgotten past is possible, I do not see it likely that the individual who remembers the unbearable failures and who has his or her own secret relation to the "semantic potential" of the past can be left out for the benefit of mass understanding. I believe the ambiguity that Benjamin expresses toward the loss of aura shows this and indicates that Habermas may be wrong in claiming that Benjamin abandons the esoteric.