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Although unable to escape the entanglement in which it was trapped in prehistory, that thinking* is nevertheless capable of recognizing the logic of either/or, of consequence and antinomy, by means of which it emanci- pated itself radically from nature, as that same nature, unreconciled and self-estranged. Precisely by virtue of its irresistible logic, thought, in whose compulsive mechanism nature is reflected and perpetuated, also reflects itself as a nature oblivious of itself, as a mechanism of compulsion. Of course, mental representation is only an instrument. In thought, human beings distance themselves from nature in order to arrange it in such a way that it can be mastered. Like the material tool which, as a thing, is held fast as that thing in different situations and thereby separates the world, as something chaotic, multiple, and disparate, from that which is known, single, and identical, so the concept is the idea-tool which fits into things at the very point from which one can take hold of them. Thought thus becomes illusory whenever it seeks to deny its function of separating, dis- tancing, and objectifying. All mystical union remains a deception, the impotently inward trace of the forfeited revolution. But while enlighten- ment is right in opposing any hypostatization of utopia and in dispassion- ately denouncing power as division, the split between subject and object, which it will not allow to be bridged, becomes the index of the untruth both of itself and of truth.* The proscribing of superstition has always sig- nified not only the progress of domination but its exposure. Enlight- enment is more than enlightenment, it is nature made audible in its estrangement. In mind s self-recognition as nature divided from itself, nature, as in prehistory, is calling to itself, but no longer directly by its sup- posed name, which, in the guise of mana, means omnipotence, but as something blind and mutilated. In the mastery of nature, without which mind does not exist, enslavement to nature persists. By modestly confess- ing itself to be power and thus being taken back into nature, mind rids itself of the very claim to mastery which had enslaved it to nature. Although humanity may be unable to interrupt its flight away from neces- 32 The Concept of Enlightenment sity and into progress and civilization without forfeiting knowledge itself, at least it no longer mistakes the ramparts it has constructed against neces- sity, the institutions and practices of domination which have always rebounded against society from the subjugation of nature, for guarantors of the coming freedom. Each advance of civilization has renewed not only mastery but also the prospect of its alleviation. However, while real histo- ry is woven from real suffering, which certainly does not diminish in pro- portion to the increase in the means of abolishing it, the fulfillment of that prospect depends on the concept. For not only does the concept, as sci- ence, distance human beings from nature, but, as the self-reflection of thought which, in the form of science, remains fettered to the blind eco- nomic tendency it enables the distance which perpetuates injustice to be measured. Through this remembrance of nature within the subject, a remembrance which contains the unrecognized truth of all culture, enlightenment is opposed in principle to power, and even in the time of Vanini the call to hold back enlightenment was uttered less from fear of exact science than from hatred of licentious thought, which had escaped the spell of nature by confessing itself to be nature s own dread of itself. The priests have always avenged mana on any exponent of enlightenment who propitiated mana by showing fear before the frightening entity which bore that name, and in their hubris the augurs of enlightenment were at one with the priests. Enlightenment in its bourgeois form had given itself up to its positivist moment long before Turgot and d Alembert. It was never immune to confusing freedom with the business of self-preserva- tion. The suspension of the concept, whether done in the name of progress or of culture, which had both long since formed a secret alliance against truth, gave free rein to the lie. In a world which merely verified recorded evidence and preserved thought, debased to the achievement of great minds, as a kind of superannuated headline, the lie was no longer distin- guishable from a truth neutralized as cultural heritage. But to recognize power even within thought itself as unreconciled nature would be to relax the necessity which even socialism, in a conces- sion to reactionary common sense, prematurely confirmed as eternal.* In declaring necessity the sole basis of the future and banishing mind, in the best idealist fashion, to the far pinnacle of the superstructure, socialism clung all too desperately to the heritage of bourgeois philosophy. The rela- tionship of necessity to the realm of freedom was therefore treated as The Concept of Enlightenment 33 merely quantitative, mechanical, while nature, posited as wholly alien, as in the earliest mythology, became totalitarian, absorbing socialism along with freedom. By sacrificing thought, which in its reified form as mathe- matics, machinery, organization, avenges itself on a humanity forgetful of it, enlightenment forfeited its own realization. By subjecting everything particular to its discipline, it left the uncomprehended whole free to re- bound as mastery over things against the life and consciousness of human beings. But a true praxis capable of overturning the status quo depends on theory s refusal to yield to the oblivion in which society allows thought to ossify. It is not the material preconditions of fulfillment, unfettered tech- nology* as such, which make fulfillment uncertain. That is the argument of sociologists who are trying to devise yet another antidote, even a col- lectivist one, in order control that antidote.36 The fault lies in a social con- text which induces blindness. The mythical scientific respect of peoples for the given reality, which they themselves constantly create, finally becomes itself a positive fact, a fortress before which even the revolution- ary imagination feels shamed as utopianism, and degenerates to a compli- ant trust in the objective tendency of history. As the instrument of this adaptation, as a mere assemblage of means, enlightenment is as destruc- tive as its Romantic enemies claim. It will only fulfill itself if it forswears its last complicity with them and dares to abolish the false absolute, the principle of blind power. The spirit of such unyielding theory would be [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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