The Opinion System: Impasses of the Public Sphere from Hobbes to Habermas 9780823293094

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The Opinion System

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The Opinion System Impasses of the Public Sphere from Hobbes to Habermas

Kirk Wetters

fordham university press new york

2008

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Copyright 䉷 2008 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wetters, Kirk. The opinion system : impasses of the public sphere from Hobbes to Habermas / Kirk Wetters. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978–0-8232–2988–8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Public opinion. 2. Opinion (Philosophy) I. Title. HM1236.W48 2008 303.3’801—dc22 2008016403 Printed in the United States of America 10 09 08 5 4 3 2 1 First edition

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contents

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1

Introduction and Overview Excursus 1 Fama and Fatum in Virgil’s Aeneid

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Chapter 1 Manifestations of the Public Sphere in Christoph Martin Wieland

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Excursus 2 Nomos, Gnomae (the Council of War)

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Chapter 2 Representation and Opinion (Koselleck, Habermas, Derrida)

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Excursus 3 Politics and Belief (The Parable of the Sower)

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Chapter 3 The Opinion System and the Re-Formation of the Individual (Hobbes, Locke, Mendelssohn, Fichte, and Goethe)

123

Excursus 4 Polystrophon Gnoman (Pindar and Ho¨lderlin)

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Contents

Chapter 4 Lichtenberg’s ‘‘Opinions-System’’ (Meinungen-System)

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Afterword

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Notes

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Bibliography

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Index

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preface: the opinion machine Opinions are, with respect to the monstrous apparatus of social life, the equivalent of oil for machines: One would not stand in front of a turbine and pour oil all over it. Instead only a little is applied to the hidden niches and joints (Nieten und Fugen) whose locations must be known. w a l t e r b e n j a m i n , Einbahnstraße (One-Way Street)

‘‘Tankstelle’’ (Filling Station), the first aphorism of Walter Benjamin’s OneWay Street, highlights the changed role of opinion in modern societies ¨ berzeugung) and through a structuring opposition between conviction (U opinion (Meinung).1 Starting with the latter: the closing sentences of this short text name opinions as the oil in the machine of modern society. Rather than focusing on the machine itself, however, the center of Benjamin’s metaphor is the seemingly peripheral aspect of the oil, an easily overlooked substance without which the machine will grind to a halt. Like oil, opinions are instrumental to the proper function of the machine of modern society, but they also represent, according to the clear implication of the last sentence, a sphere of specialized technical competency. Like all machines, which require maintenance before they can function properly and unaided, the opinions of a society are a part of its tune-up; they can be manipulated and influenced to cut down on friction. The oil—applied perhaps by opinion leaders, including media, politicians, and intelligentsia—is vii

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not equivalent to the fuel that drives the machine, nor does it steer the machine, nor is it an aspect of the efficacy of the machine’s design. Identical neither with the superstructure nor with the base, this oil is purely instrumental to both; it invisibly allows for uninterrupted function and causes the spirit of the whole to prevail, as if by itself. The sources of this spirit remain specifically localizable, however, as zones of a technically specialized maintenance. This metaphor of opinion in the machine of society appears at the end of a text that begins with the idea of conviction, which the aphorism’s first sentence declares historically obsolete: ‘‘At the present moment (im Augenblick), the construction of life lies much more in the power (Gewalt) of facts than of convictions, and indeed under the power of a kind of fact that has never at any time or in any place served as the basis of conviction.’’2 In a world mostly determined by the normative power of the factual, convictions appear as epiphenomena, as mere opinions that fail to substantially reflect upon their own underlying determinants. Opinions, by contrast, are neither obsolete nor dispensable. This claim by itself would be a commonplace of democratic theory, but the function Benjamin ascribes to opinions is completely opposed to their democratic role. According to a conventional idea of democracy, opinions would be the judgments of the free and autonomous reason of sovereign subjects, and the sum of these individual opinions would represent the organic totality of a given collectivity. Benjamin, by contrast, supposes—as radical politics always must—that opinions grease the machinery of a mass society that generally strives to make its functions as predictable, determinate, and deterministic as possible. Opinions have an indispensable role within ‘‘the monstrous machine of social life,’’ but the idea that the opinions themselves may be free rather than instrumental is not considered at all. Benjamin’s functional model of opinion only makes sense with reference to a society that is fully mechanized and industrialized, in which even political functions proceed regularly. The machine metaphor thereby also suggests that opinion functions this way even in modern parliamentary democracies. Opinion appears to play the same role in all ‘‘modern’’ systems—therefore even democracies are total states that may begin to look uncomfortably like states of latent totalitarianism. If the machine is the common denominator of modern political systems, then such machines do

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not manufacture opinions as a product, but instead rely on them as a lubricant. Since opinion is a merely instrumental factor, however, the standard of democracy cannot be met. Though ‘‘public opinion’’ is often invoked in the name of democracy, the legitimacy and stability of modern democracies also depend on structures of constitutional and institutional authority. Nevertheless, the claim to be democracies at all can only be substantiated through an idea of rule based on public opinion. Parliamentary and constitutional forms thus provide the mechanical counterweight against the tyrannical potentials of a pure democracy—against the sovereign public opinion as much as against authoritarian rule (which typically operate in tandem). Against this background, the idea that opinion ultimately drives and directs the machine is only a retrospective legitimating fiction, meant to provide the final ground for constitutionalism and its institutions. But this setup is highly unstable; public opinion can just as easily delegitimate and conflict with the institutions that proclaim public opinion as their base. The idea that democratic form and parliamentary constitutionalism are at odds, and that there are dangers at both extremes, as Benjamin obliquely indicates, is a systematic lever—put to notoriously conservative ends—in the work of Carl Schmitt. Schmitt’s Verfassungslehre [Constitutional Theory], written in the late 1920s, at about the same time as Benjamin’s OneWay Street, comparably deplores the mechanization of politics in terms of a ‘‘process’’ of parliamentary ‘‘democracy.’’ Schmitt’s own idea of democracy is basically a populism that pits ‘‘the people’’ against the institutions that (falsely) claim to represent them. Thus, for Schmitt, parliamentary democracies are democracies only by virtue of their exclusion of the people, whose basis of authority is always nongovernmental and unrepresentable within the institutions of the state: It is precisely under democracy that the people (das Volk) are disallowed from becoming an official institutional authority (Beho¨rde) and a mere ‘‘organ’’ of the state. The people are always more than a reliably functioning position for dispensing with administrative duties; beyond its the instances and activities that the constitution explicitly provides for (such as the popular vote or poll), the people remains an essentially non-organized and non-formed quantity.3

Consequently, das Volk is conceived as the extrainstitutional and not-institutionalizable remainder of the state apparatus; even and especially parliamentary form cannot hope to explicitly include or represent it, and its claim

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to do so represents an unstable source of legitimation. What Schmitt calls ‘‘democracy’’ would therefore require a specific constitutional form, a form that would allow the formless and abjected body of the people to become determinate and, as Schmitt stresses, ‘‘immediately present’’ (unmittelbar anwesend). Since he starts from a premise of the institutional unrepresentability of the people, this emphasis on presence appears highly suspect. By comparing this ‘‘presence’’ of the people to that of a (presumably passive) audience at a theatrical performance, Schmitt makes the people into the mirror of the sovereign. He also importantly states that the people and its public opinion are ‘‘negatively determined concepts.’’ In modern social systems, this negative presence of the people means the disenfranchised masses; as an example, Schmitt names the Third Estate before the French Revolution and the industrial proletariat as examples of a political void (Nichts) that waits to become the new political center (Alles) and completely transform the political landscape. Democracy—according to the theoretical consequences of Schmitt’s analysis but against his probable political intentions at the time of writing—does not define a specific political form, but is coordinated to the revolutionary potential that inhabits all modern political organization. The postrevolutionary redefinition of the political in terms of the representation of, for, or by the people (instead of representation before the people, as Schmitt would prefer) will inevitably hypocritically produce and reproduce exclusions without providing an unassailable source of legitimacy that would be able to ward off and resolve conflicts. The defining characteristic of parliamentary form, according to this model, is paradoxically precisely its mobilization of democratic ideas toward antidemocratic ends, since the claim of ‘‘of, for, and by’’ may be able to temporarily exclude and neutralize the latent potentials of ‘‘the people’’ that it inevitably fails to represent. Thus, because this model can be plausibly read with reference to a ‘‘revolutionary’’ fascism, Schmitt’s famous conservatism looks more like a counterrevolutionary reiteration of the ideals of the revolution, but redirected toward what the Revolution displayed as a piece of the political theater, without regard for the ‘‘liberal’’ political ideals that the Revolution only ‘‘used’’ (in Schmitt’s reading) as an aspect of its motivation and justification. Schmitt’s idea of democracy is based on Rousseau’s distinction between the volonte´ ge´ne´rale and the volonte´ de tous. In precise analogy to Benjamin’s machine (which reads the general will as a result of strategically applied oil),

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Schmitt sees it the other way around, viewing the merely functional and institutional determinations of parliamentary form as hopeless contingencies relative to the volonte´ ge´ne´rale. To illustrate this point, he imagines the possibility of constant and instantaneous polling; even such a supersaturated ‘‘democracy,’’ he argues, would only be the perfect antidemocracy, the ultimate deferral of democracy: It could be imagined that one day, thanks to ingenious inventions, every individual might be able to use some kind of device to continually express his opinions on political questions without ever even leaving his home; this could be done in such a way that all of the opinions were centrally registered and automatically gauged, but it would still by no means be a particularly intensive form of democracy, but only the final evidence that the state and the public sphere had been completely privatized without remainder.4

The Internet has since turned this possibility into a virtual reality. Precisely in his desire to define democracy as a kind of transcendent (or transcendental) populism, Schmitt sees a fully automated democratic ‘‘machine’’ as the height of antidemocracy. By carrying the parliamentary logic of representation to its most extreme limit, Schmitt hopes to show what is lacking in its mode of publicity. Not only in Schmitt’s view, but also in any conceivable theorization of democratic form, it would never be the existence of the vote alone that defines democracy, but the quality of the public forum out of which the vote emerges. If Schmitt’s critique comes from the far right of his own era, and Benjamin’s from the left—and if the proximity to Rousseau is telling in either case—their shared diagnosis of an increasingly occulted yet completely overdetermined relation between the public and private is shared across the whole spectrum of postwar political theory. But the fear of privatization and the general diagnosis of the decline of the authentic publicity of the public sphere is perhaps best represented in Ju¨rgen Habermas’ early Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, which charts the historical failure of the revolutionary bourgeoisie to fully actualize the ideals of the Enlightenment that it championed. According to Habermas’ historical claim, the germinal public sphere of the late eighteenth century became increasingly co-opted by private economic interests and ‘‘public relations’’ (merely representational ‘‘publicity’’ in Schmitt’s sense). A few years before Habermas’ treatise, Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition had already established

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modernity’s distortion and privatization of its Greek and Roman political models. During the same period, Reinhart Koselleck (who, like Habermas, is discussed extensively in the present study) theorized the conceptual history of the modern era, and came to the conclusion that all major political conflicts of the postrevolutionary period were enabled and intensified by a new and highly accident-prone vocabulary of collective singulars, which allowed individuals to speak in the name of history, progress, and the like, thereby providing the lexical–conceptual oil that enabled the rise of competing ideologies and allowed private ends to masquerade as public necessities. Moving into the 1970s, the work of Michel Foucault also presupposes the decline of public power in its attempt to model the development of normative systems that fall outside positive law and the traditional institution of the state. Richard Sennett’s The Fall of Public Man comparably described the present era (Foucault’s ‘‘new Victorians’’) as a ‘‘tyranny of intimacy,’’ which he opposes to a more theatrical conception of the public sphere, in which both political action and individual self-actualization would be possible. Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer project has attempted to tie together many of these parallel currents to produce a comprehensive theory that amplifies Foucault’s interpretation of modernity as a metamorphosis of governmental power into a ‘‘bio-power’’ that transforms the sheer privacy of biological life and corporeal time—the ‘‘bare life’’ of individuals and populations—into the primary object of ‘‘public’’ administrative decrees. In effect, anything that happens at the level of inherited democratic forms tends to be increasingly overshadowed by decisions taken at the level of population management. If the extremely diverse political implications of these theories are momentarily bracketed, all still clearly attest to a massive transformation of the category of the political itself, in each case resulting in a deep threat to the underlying preconditions for ‘‘democracy’’ (even if the latter term is not itself uniformly conceived, and despite the fact that the threat itself can sometimes be reconceived as a new potential for autonomy, revolution, or liberation). On this basis, the name of Jacques Derrida can also be included, even though his work is in many ways heterogeneous to the theories sketched above. His short ‘‘Call it a Day for Democracy’’ is especially useful as a foil in the present context because it contains a more recent and differently motivated reiteration of Schmitt’s argument that public opinion and

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democracy always exist in a state of excess or exclusion relative to the political institutions that have claimed to represent them. Writing sixty years after Schmitt’s Constitutional Theory, right before the explosion of the Internet, Derrida perceives a dawning super-saturation of public opinion by media and manifold instances of representation, including extensive polling, but still concludes that the public opinion cannot be represented as such. Despite the quantitative increase in the possibility of representing opinions, the public opinion continues to lead a life of its own, excluded from all representations of it, beyond every mechanical or numerical effort to record it. Derrida thus agrees with Schmitt’s assessment of public opinion as a ‘‘negative determination,’’ but he gives it a much more precise and critical point by calling it the ‘‘god of a negative politology.’’5 But the most important difference between the two is that Derrida does not follow Schmitt’s attempt to recast the ‘‘negative determination’’ as an ‘‘immediate presence.’’ For Derrida, the inability of public opinion to be represented in any fixed form, forum, or institution implies that it can never be present, not even as a spectator before a feudal or absolutist court: ‘‘It [public opinion] would be opposed to non-democratic powers, but also to its own political representation. Such representation will never be adequate to it, for it breathes, deliberates and decides according to other rhythms.’’6 If, between Schmitt and Derrida, the negative determination thesis represents the mainstream of thinking on public opinion, then Habermas would stand as the most important exception. He argues that is possible to isolate specific forms of rational–critical public opinion within concrete institutions, and that this has in fact already been partially accomplished. Based on this supposition, his work is much more reformist than the mainstream of critical theory; he seeks to lay the foundations for the possibility of an ongoing process of institutional reform. Habermas diagnoses a contingent decline in the quality of the publicity of the public sphere (which implies that there is a possibility of correcting its deficiencies), whereas Derrida makes the more radical claim—based on a different idea of history—that the concept of public space is itself ‘‘out-dated.’’7 Habermas’ vision of a historical decline or misstep (relative to an idealized version of the literary public sphere of the pre-industrial era) has often been criticized, but more significant than his actual historiography is his exceptional willingness to champion parliamentary and procedural forms of representation, which are more often viewed as outdated and vestigial, either a stopgap remedy

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or a part of the problem. For Habermas, the political ascendancy of the bourgeoisie led it to break with its own political ideals, but these ideals themselves remained intact and their broken promises can still be fulfilled. Habermas’ emphasis on the possible salutary effects of realizable forms of institutional proceduralism may look like a form of resignation and political compromise, but in this respect he is not that different from Derrida or even Agamben, who are also not above selectively reasserting inherited ideas of the Enlightenment and liberalism. The situation of Habermas can be further illustrated by a contrast with Hannah Arendt, for whom the possibilities of the public sphere within the political status quo appear relatively more bleak. Habermas can conceive the possibility of an actually existing forum in which opinions might be exchanged without the improper influence of power and interest, but Arendt’s essay ‘‘Truth and Politics’’ virtually defines the political public sphere as the sphere of lies and misrepresentations (whose exponential increase in the modern era are also noted). She nevertheless holds on to the possibility of rational theoretical discourse, without which there would be no purpose for writing essays on politics to begin with. Confronted with a political sphere increasingly defined by interest and misinformation, Arendt is only able to stay hopeful because she believes that even political regimes that engage in the wholesale rewriting of historical facts must at some point come to terms with a reality before which they are completely powerless. But, while it is certainly possible that contemporary political narratives may sometimes unfold according to this model, the plot and outcome that provide the rationale for Arendt’s claim may still remain suspiciously Aristotelian and specifically tragic because the victory of ‘‘truth’’ over deception and misrepresentation only occurs at a horrendous and unjustifiable cost. At this point, I must cut short this introductory sketch on the general stakes of my project; in the introduction, however, I resume the discussion of the conceptual and historical underpinnings. In my study, I have tried to focus as much as possible on the history of the concept of opinion without getting caught up in its current impasses. The ongoing urgency of these considerations hardly needs underlining, so my objective has been to uncover the forgotten—or, more often, mistaken and taken for granted—conceptual infrastructure that informs current ideas and present political understandings. Particularly, in comparison with existing scholarly and colloquial understandings of the idea of opinion, I have

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sought to accomplish the relative novelty of substantially treating both the public and private dimensions of opinion in a single study. Initially, I had no expectations for the possible results of this juxtaposition; I simply found it strange that, rather than being taken as theoretically correlated concepts, the public and private opinion have more often been treated, if not as completely opposite concepts (in a tradition that stretches from Fichte to Habermas but begins much earlier), then as complementary or exclusive in a way that does not lend itself to simultaneous theorization. Habermas is also a good example for the second case. I have tried to avoid the excessive integration as well as the total separation of the public and private faces of opinion, but to give structure and conceptual clarity to my project, I have divided the chapters according to the private–public dichotomy; but I would stress that both aspects are continually at issue throughout. The first two chapters focus on the history of the concept of public opinion, chapter 1 in the period directly following the French Revolution (focusing on Christoph Martin Wieland) and chapter 2 in the twentieth century (with particular emphasis on Habermas, Koselleck, and Derrida). The last two chapters treat the liberal conceptualization of the private opinion as a right and a freedom; chapter 3 is centered around Locke, but also includes Moses Mendelssohn, Fichte, and Goethe; chapter 4 takes the results of chapter 3 as the basis for a longer case study on Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, whose work offers the most convincing model I have encountered for the development of a rational-critical private opinion (upon which a rational public opinion must ultimately be based). Though my four longer chapters focus on the concept of opinion in the modern era, the deficiencies of the existing scholarship led me to conclude that I should not entirely overlook opinion’s premodern precursors. These earlier models are often variously carried into the modern concepts, so I have chosen to highlight some of the historical continuities and discontinuities in four short conceptual excurses, which are interspersed between the four longer chapters. Each of these shorter essays precedes the chapter for which it is meant to provide conceptual support, but I have left the connections between them somewhat loose because I feel that the dangers of oversystematizing this material are greater than those of a more nonlinear presentation. I have placed a more extended outline of the arguments and structure of my study at the end of the introduction. But at this point I would like to

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preemptively indicate an important result of my juxtaposition of private and public opinion: they have an analogous structure. Both are ‘‘collective singulars,’’ used to represent unrepresentable collectivities as singular functions; the underlying diachronic collectivity that opinion synchronically represents would be thought in the case of private opinion and something like fashion or popular sentiment in the case of public opinion. What Habermas calls ‘‘rational-critical discourse’’ would belong to neither of these, but, as I read it, would instead attempt to ‘‘cap’’—sublate (aufheben)—the temporal difference of both within a fixed form. But such attempts may be exposed to the risks of all collective singulars. Rational-critical discourse will always be re-included in the temporal continuum that it had hoped to include within itself, and this capped temporality may not make ‘‘critical opinion’’ less representational—less opinionated—but actually more so. In closing, I would also like to preliminarily formulate the central question I have tried to pose throughout my study: how can existing political institutions—including media, literature, science, and the arts—be rethought or redesigned on the basis of a more accurate, more realistic conception of opinion? The existing conception, which posits representations of opinion above and against its heterogeneous and unrepresentable realities, has only had the effect of producing representative conflicts whose self-identifying demands only make the conflicts themselves all the more intractable.

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Introduction and Overview

The Origins of Private and Public Opinion Men are tormented not by things (pragmata) themselves, but by opinions (dogmata) about them. epictetus

The epigraph to Laurence Sterne’s Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy as well as to Herder’s philosophy of history, Epictetus’ innocent observation may also be a battle cry of radical relativism. The things themselves, the epigraph says, their order, natural order, or total lack of order, are not problematic as such. What is problematic is every human belief, every attempt to fix a particular order of things and assert it dogmatically, once and for all, as the order of things. The distinction between things and human representations of them—representations that sediment into dogmata—does not itself represent an alternative at all because the ubiquity of representation will always predominate over the ‘‘reality’’ of the things themselves.1 Ideas like this one, which breaks with inherited ideals based on an otherworldly source of transcendence as the stable ground of worldly dogmata, fit easily into familiar historicizations of mid-eighteenth-century thought. The sentence serves as an index, for instance, of the protest of a recently selfaware bourgeois intelligentsia, whose claims against the legitimacy of the 1

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old order consequently pronounced the arbitrariness of human social arrangements. But a definitive new order cannot exist under the relativist or even nihilist conditions declared in the sentence, since the total conversion to the idea that everything is opinion cannot provide a positive foundation for any kind of alternative order. The sentence merely proclaims the relativity of all orders. This claim further tends to suppose the historicization and historicism of every possible order, problematically including especially the present order. Such eighteenth-century historicism harmonizes with the conception of opinion that began to arise during the same period. The aggressive reassertion of the concept of opinion goes along with a historical relativism to which the classes that asserted it could not ultimately remain faithful. Sheer relativism shifted in the direction of the idea of historical progress, culminating in the idealist philosophy of history. A radicalized concept of opinion was thus pivotally reasserted toward the end of the Enlightenment, only to become marginalized again by new grand schemes. But opinion nevertheless managed to hold on to its place—as it still does, precariously—as one of the oldest and most fundamental categories of philosophy and politics.2 And, despite obvious political and conceptual difficulties, the idea of opinion also took on new and even greater significance in the period following the French Revolution. This new centrality is often associated with the rise of an economically powerful but politically excluded bourgeoisie, which struggled to establish their own rights and freedoms and to take control of the process of political decision-making, which remained in the hands of the inherited institutions of feudalism and, more recently, absolutism.3 Hobbes is most often named as the one whose work initiated or at least theorized this process, since he laid the groundwork for liberal systems based on the rights of property and security. Even if he also helped legitimize an absolutist version of sovereignty, he thereby also demoted the absolute claims of ‘‘belief’’ and ‘‘conscience,’’ with their implicit recourse to a transcendent sphere, to the apparent relativism of and worldliness of opinion.4 Hobbes disabled conscience’s claim to absolute authority, but, over the long term, this produced an intensive reinvestment in the concept of opinion. Such a shift is central to project of the sciences, which gave opinion the historically structured forms of hypothesis and precedent, and to modern democratic and liberal thought, which make the relative inviolability of

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‘‘private’’ individual opinions into the theoretical basis of modern democratic and representative systems. Liberalism will hypothesize the epistemologically autonomous individual as both the basis and result of the rights of property and opinion (with increasing emphasis on the latter). The beliefs of the individual, which Hobbes discounted, are re-empowered precisely as opinions, absolutely lacking in absolute authority or conclusive rationale. Only on this foundation are they able to found the liberal private sphere, which is reciprocally construed as the structural base of modern individualism, and the social energy released by this private individualism (following Habermas) grounds the possibility of dialogue and deliberation—‘‘communicative rationality’’—within a new political form that became more generally known by the name of ‘‘democracy.’’ The point becomes especially apparent if one turns to a thinker, already introduced in the preface, who was notoriously unsympathetic with the developments represented by the concept of opinion. Carl Schmitt, who is not alone in his analysis, speaks of a privatization that occurs as soon as economic understandings begin to increasingly inflect the political and juridical conception of the public sphere: Public life is expected to govern itself; it is supposed to be ruled through the public opinion (o¨ffentliche Meinung) of the public (Publikum)—that is by private persons. And public opinion is itself likewise ruled by a press that is also private property. Nothing in this system is representative [in Schmitt’s ‘‘Catholic’’ sense]; everything is a private matter. Viewed historically, ‘‘privatization’’ starts with what is most fundamental, with religion. The first right of the individual in the sense of the bourgeois social order was the freedom of religion.5

This thesis on privatization and economization6 of public life remains plausible within a broad inherited understanding7 that would also include many thinkers on the political left.8 The strength of this privatization hypothesis (which is also found in exactly the same form in Habermas’ Structural Transformation) lies in its ability to bridge the gap between the collective dimension of ‘‘public opinion’’ and its private aspect, which understands opinions as the nominally sacrosanct property of individuals. Schmitt’s ‘‘Constitutional Theory’’ (Verfassunglehre) claims—and Habermas follows him, giving the change a positive value without altering its structure—the privatization and depoliticization of opinion as the arcanum of modern democracy. For Schmitt, the institutionalized form of the secret ballot reveals the ‘‘privacy’’

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of individual opinions to be an empty formality because there is no legal sanction attached to revealing them. In fact they are meant to be revealed, but the vote, which is supposed to mediate the relation between individual thought and political action, actually voids this relation by positing a statistical configuration between them. So-called private opinions are political in their public disclosure, in their transformation into action. They must be revealed and somehow registered if they are to have any political significance, but for Schmitt voting is only the most minimal and bureaucratic form of this revelation.9 In Schmitt’s understanding, ‘‘private opinion,’’ the object of the freedom and right of opinion, is the precise correlate, historically as well as institutionally, of the public opinion. But the overwhelming tendency, stretching from Locke to Habermas and modern sociology, has been to make a sharp distinction between private opinions and the public opinion. This frequently leads to the exclusion or reduction of the private dimension in favor of the more obviously political concept of ‘‘public opinion.’’10 But Schmitt’s antiliberal insight does not view opinion, in whichever sense, as the basis of democratic politics or as a source of political rationality, but defines its modern integration in the public sphere as the precise locus of its depoliticization (i.e., modernity’s failed attempt to minimize and localize the sphere of political action). Rather than seeing the rise of bourgeois liberalism in terms of gains in freedom and autonomy, modern liberalism and capitalism only privatize all social and political functions beneath a universal economic law that is thoroughly entropic, ajuridical, and only productive of an endless and unpredictable process of fragmentation. Thus, between Schmitt and Habermas, privatization not only contains the possibility of a rationally founded public sphere, but also represents precisely the opposite: an ongoing source of schismatic potentials that are not only detrimental to inherited systems of order and authority, but also to the idea of Enlightenment. This diagnosis of the problem of modernity has been widely accepted, despite highly disparate valuations (which Schmitt and Habermas only exemplify here). But if both sides of this equation are admitted at once as two sides of the same coin, then this would represent a gain in the ability to understand the underlying problem in its real complexity. From Schmitt’s point of view, Epictetus’ words would not reflect a universal situation, but they came true in the modern era, producing a permanent vacuum of power and legitimacy. The Habermasian perspective, on

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the other hand, would reject the idea that the representations of discourse, rational–critical or not, may be more a part of the problem than of the solution. Schmitt polemically overstates the possibilities of representation—to the exclusion of opinion—to found realities, whereas Habermas overlooks the fact that there is no opinion without representation, no form of discourse that would be completely abstracted from representative and representational functions.11 Between these two unsatisfactory but typical alternatives, the relationship of opinion and representation remains open.

Habermas and the Sociological Tradition To explore the transitional moment in question—the beginning of modern politics—the chapters to follow will be centered in the last half of the eighteenth century. But this is only a vantage point—a perspective from which to view and specifically pursue claims for and representations of the autonomy of the individual and that of the public sphere. As has already been indicated, the most compelling and extensive work on these questions remains that of Ju¨rgen Habermas, particularly his early treatise, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. But, while it would not be fair to say that this book has been entirely forgotten, its reception has been delayed and hindered in several ways, and particularly by intrinsic failings of the work itself. If these ‘‘flaws,’’ which often also represent strengths, were reduced to a single point, it would be the tenacity with which Habermas defends the democratic ideal of ‘‘public discussion and debate’’ (o¨ffentliches Ra¨ssonement) as the norm of an authentic public opinion and public sphere. This conception founds—and is founded upon—the possibility of discursive reason; this ideal is then contrasted, more or less explicitly, with numerous actually existing forms and theorizations. Real-life instances of opinion that fall short of this ideal standard of reason and publicity are consigned to the status of nonpublic opinion (nicht-o¨ffentliche Meinung). Even though such an ideal of rational publicity was never concretely realized in history, Habermas emphatically asserts the possibility of nonhierarchical public deliberation and thus of rational governance. Such a system has never actually existed, but the self-understanding of the literary public sphere of the eighteenth century came the closest, and thus Habermas’ theoretical model is tied to the

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cognitive model of a specific historical situation. According to familiar criticisms of Habermas’ work (which must have made an impact on him, since his later work becomes more strictly theoretical), his method of connecting historical reality to theoretical norms tends to undermine the latter because of their loose derivation from an idealized and ultimately implausible historiography. These drawbacks of Structural Transformation can be excused, however, because the norm of ‘‘public reason’’ appears to be more critical than normative in its intents. The ideal of rational publicity, as far as it is able to be articulated at all, inevitably stands in stark contrast to the day-to-day operations of actually existing parliamentary democracies. The point of Habermas’ early thesis is not to design the ideal republic in the abstract, or the ideal norm of communication, but rather to show the disparity between a self-congratulatory status quo and the ideals that it claims to represent. In this sense, Habermas’ book is as pertinent as ever, if not more so. But this particular strength has been misunderstood or (more frequently) ignored by what can be generally called empirical sociology or ‘‘opinion research,’’ which, in Habermas’ understanding, are close to becoming the legitimating infrastructure for highly undemocratic ‘‘democracies.’’12 Especially those most pragmatically concerned with the statistical analysis of public-opinion data have missed the point that public deliberation itself must be more effectively institutionalized if opinions are to be meaningful or rational (instead of mere political representations).13 The idea that public opinion can simply be measured without regard for its specific discursive institutionalization has predominated despite Habermas’ stern implication at the beginning of the Structural Transformation (and on many other occasions) that this presumption of the a priori legitimacy of the public opinion must be methodologically overcome.14 From the viewpoint of a populist idea of democracy, Habermas’ idea of a structured public opinion may look like elitism, but his argument against opinion research would still stand because social structures and hierarchies will always be present but latent in opinion polling. The tendency of opinion research is to reduce these differences out of its results, thereby leveling and implicitly affirming them. The underlying disagreement between Habermas and many sociological perspectives (a difference that reappears as a conflict among the sociologists) is the result of different definitions of public opinion. Habermas bases

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his definition on the standard of whether and in what sense the public opinion is truly public. But Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, for example, models her idea of public opinion on Locke’s law of opinion, which takes the form essentially of peer pressure and social control. Habermas excludes Locke’s law as a private and unwritten norm, emphasizing that Locke also calls it the law of ‘‘private censure.’’ As a private law, the law of opinion is not directly available for deliberation and reform, and for this reason Habermas disqualifies its mode of public-ness.15 But for Noelle-Neumann, opinions, including the public opinion, are always a factor of social forces, which may encourage transgression or exercise normative power.16 Dismissive of a definition of public opinion that would be closer to Habermas’ ideal of public reason, Noelle-Neumann writes: What does this concept of public opinion [her own] offer to the practice of democracy? This public opinion is definitely not a source of wisdom which improves the government by its criticism. We have to give up this ideal, even if many political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers still cling to it, extolling ‘‘critical public opinion’’ or public opinion committed to public welfare. This kind of public opinion is an invention.17

It is a necessary invention, in Habermas’ view, as yet only partially realized. Noelle-Neumann does not say whether democracy itself must not on the same grounds also be dismissed as an invention, a fiction. The difficulty or even impossibility of producing a satisfactory definition of public opinion is familiar to everyone who has attempted it.18 Further, the split already described between Habermas and Noelle-Neumann can be understood as a more general discrepancy within the concept of public opinion itself, which the sociological and philosophical literature merely reflects. This divide falls between the inherited, sometimes latent, awareness of the Enlightenment’s understanding of ‘‘public reason’’ (which Habermas magnifies and deploys critically in his Structural Transformation) and the more behaviorist-anthropological schools of thought (such as that of Noelle-Neumann).19 The latter, at the opposite extreme from Habermas, is not primarily interested in the content of thoughts or ideas or opinions at all, but only in the form of their social constellations and dynamics. Society and institution are thus conceived as relatively powerless in the face of apparently universal constants of human social behavior, but despite the pessimism of such anthropological presuppositions, Noelle-Neumann’s ‘‘spiral

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of silence’’ (a theory of the social marginalization of dissenting opinions without regard for their validity) also clearly intends a critique of existing social and political forms. This divide between social and discursive conceptions of public opinion is paralleled in the distinction between public opinion and popular opinion, a split which, according to Kenneth Margerison, goes back to the origins of both concepts at the end of the eighteenth century: Popular opinion had its own history, which ran parallel to that of public opinion during the late eighteenth century. Generated by talk in the streets, markets and other public places rather than through the printed word, this popular opinion had a very down-to-earth character that reflected the interest in the affairs of state and a concern over the economic well-being of the general populace.20

Striking here, in contrast to the divergent modern understandings, is the fact that both kinds of opinion, even in their very definition, retain a primarily political valence and reflect ongoing political conflict. And both were, as Margerison emphasizes, variously attributed with the quality of reason, and they were actually in competition with each other in this regard: After the fall of the Bastille popular opinion battled public opinion for the role of the legitimate arbiter of truth. Popular and public opinion both claimed the right to pass judgment on the attitudes and actions of public figures. Both were stimulated by publicists who hoped to shape opinion at the very moment they claimed to speak for it. Both claimed to be based on reason. Public opinion, however, was formed by the literate public, which had sufficient education to reason collectively. Popular opinion, by contrast, was specifically held by the common people, whose education was distinctly limited and whose reasoning abilities were the product of natural instinct rather than wide and careful reading or reflected thought. Public opinion could only be found among the elite of the nation, whereas popular opinion was the domain of the masses.21

Margerison is right to spell out this crucial point, but his theorization ultimately falls short, to the extent that the distinction he proposes between public and popular opinion was always highly tenuous and mobile, and the possibility of drawing such a distinction at all was at best short-lived: already in 1790, writing from Paris, Johann Heinrich Campe used ‘‘o¨ffentliche Meinung (opinion publique)’’ to refer to the medium through which the intelligentsia or revolutionary avant-garde is able to exert influence on the people.22 Public opinion in this sense took shape when the authors of the

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literary public sphere stopped trying to convince each other and redirected their efforts toward the public at large. Like Campe, Georg Forster’s conception of public opinion from a few years later also does not reflect a difference between ‘‘popular’’ and ‘‘public,’’ but actively seeks to unify them. Christoph Martin Wieland’s seminal essay on public opinion (written in Germany at the end of the 1790s) is also ambiguous on this point, though its definition of public opinion leans toward what Margerison terms ‘‘popular.’’ Thus, after 1789, both Forster and Wieland (the topic of chapter 1) speak of public and popular opinion interchangeably, with the term ‘‘public opinion’’ arguably already serving as the master category. By overstating the distinction between public and popular opinion, Margerison fails to fully reflect how the terms themselves were already politicized within the context of the French Revolution. It therefore cannot be the case that the discursively shaped ‘‘public opinion’’ was able to assert and maintain its independence from its inchoate and irrational other, ‘‘popular opinion,’’ which Margerison imagines to be merely ‘‘naturally’’ and ‘‘instinctively’’ produced by the flood of the political situation and its circumstances: ‘‘Popular opinion—which, unlike public opinion, failed to be the independent, neutral arbiter of truth envisioned by enlightened eighteenth-century commentators—was simply a product of the desires and fears of the crowd.’’23 Surely he does not mean to imply that the public opinion, to the contrary, actually succeeded in becoming the ‘‘neutral arbiter of truth’’? In any case, the situation with these two vectors of ‘‘opinion’’—an unbelievably loaded term at the time—is much more complicated. As I try to show in chapter 1, public and popular opinion were defined within the same historical horizon, and both were construed (simultaneously, though not necessarily by the same people for the same political ends) as the final arbiter within the historical process. The fact that they were in competition for this role is not a minor theoretical complication, but represents an ongoing political conflict between various forms of institutionalized discourse and the ideal—itself presented discursively—of a latently populist ‘‘direct’’ democracy (which is often still imagined to be at work, subliminally, below the threshold of the official institutions). With this in mind, I return to a final difficulty of Habermas’ Structural Transformation: its strong reception has not been advanced by Habermas himself, who, in his later work, more or less abandoned the most radical aspects of his early thesis, opting to shore up his early text’s ‘‘weakness’’

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through a more strictly theoretical and ahistorical vindication of the concept of reason, theorized in terms of ‘‘communicative action.’’24 Fighting a potentially endless battle over the nature and status of language and communication, Habermas fell back to a defensive political position about the status of actually existing democracies. Rather than using the ideal of discursive reason (regardless of its real possibility) as a means of critique, the desire to defend the real possibility this ideal resulted in a qualified defense of the same systems that were initially criticized. Meanwhile, regarding the more radical and critical aspects of Structural Transformation, there has been a sense of hesitation, and not just on Habermas’ part. The most prominent theorists of the past decades have also tended to stop short of the most radical and aggressive critique of what is euphemistically called ‘‘actually existing’’ democracy. Everyone knows that these ‘‘democratic’’ systems fall far short of what they advertise, but, as Jacob Taubes and Jacques Derrida have implied,25 critiques of parliamentary democracy, regardless of their validity, can come from both the right and the left, rendering them politically ambiguous and essentially off-limits. Taking this a step further, it might be supposed that parliamentary critiques, regardless of their intent, tend to play into the hands of the right. Habermas has come close to actually making this point explicit,26 but it may also look like a kind of tacit resignation, or an excess of tact, when it comes to the critique of the fragile institutions that currently call themselves democracies. With this situation in mind, Habermas’ recent, often apologetic sounding theorizations may have a tactical justification; he is also not alone in this form of discretion. Something similar can probably be found, for instance, in Derridean deconstruction,27 and even theorists who see themselves as much more radical, such as Giorgio Agamben, may still—especially since the rise of the Bush administration—fall back to theses about the erosion of democracy,28 rather than entering into the rather more compromised and compromising question of whether and in what sense the ‘‘democracy’’ that is being eroded was even a democracy to begin with. To the specific charge of defeatism, Habermas offers a strange response, one that is at least meant to signal the fact that he has given some thought to his own position. In the preface to Between Facts and Norms, he writes: I have no illusions about the problems that our situation poses and the moods it evokes. But moods—and philosophies in a melancholic ‘‘mood’’—do not justify

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the defeatist surrender of the radical content of democratic ideals. If defeatism were justified, I would have had to choose a different literary genre, for example, the diary of a Hellenistic writer who merely documents, for subsequent generations, the unfulfilled promises of his waning culture.29

While distancing himself from Adorno’s ‘‘melancholy science’’ and Benjamin’s diagnosis of (Christian) history as a Baroque play of mourning (Trauerspiel), Habermas also sets himself apart from more ‘‘literary’’ approaches. By saying what he is not, however, he gives a significant insight into the motivation of his specific form of resignation: it is not so much that he is not a defeatist—the shadow of ‘‘declining culture’’ looms large in this paragraph—but that he chooses not to be one, opting not to isolate himself (in the sense of Noelle-Neumann’s ‘‘spiral of silence’’), not to relegate himself to the status of a chronicler of an epoch that is essentially over, which can only pass its insights on to the distant future. Habermas opts for negotiation with the ‘‘actually existing’’ status quo, in the attempt to put his own optimistic communicative theory into practice through his own works. The deliberative frameworks of existing systems, despite and because of their vast room for improvement, permit the pursuit of concrete reforms. Habermas emphasizes that his personal decision against literary defeatism is a matter of genre, and counter-defines the genre of the literary in terms of its defeatism. But it is just as possible to approach the situation differently. Following Habermas’ off-handed literary-theoretical claim, literature emerges precisely as the sphere of unfulfilled political promises that Habermas had championed in Structural Transformation. Literature represents a sphere that is uncompromised, as it were, by the pragmatics of a rhetorical-discursive mode that requires the author to offer positive and realistic solutions. From the literary perspective, the later Habermas avails himself of a reformist and conformist norm, which forces the public thinker to put a good face on bad business, whereas the literary posterity that Habermas dismisses clearly has a different public in mind. The later Habermas thus inscribes a methodological parting of the ways within his own project, causing him to partly turn away from the unfulfilled (and perhaps unfulfillable) promises of Structural Transformation, in favor of a not-just-communicative but also strategic negotiation with actually existing institutions. While attempting to learn from Habermas, but without accepting (or transvaluing) his equation of the literary with defeatism, my own approach

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mostly follows the literary path. The charge of defeatism runs both ways. Instead of a direct negotiation, my emphasis will be on past narratives, dialogues, and trains of thought, which never came to satisfactory resolutions in their own ‘‘present,’’ and which thus remain available to further elaboration and consideration. In the absence of stable and historically consistent answers, terms, or definitions, it would be theoretical vanity to posit one more definition or theory to finally resolve the matter once and for all. A literary-philological or ‘‘metaphorological’’ approach,30 on the other hand, seeks to explore existing and pre-existing paradigms in their complexity and in terms of their inexpress dynamics and potentials. Rather than systematically confronting every idea or every author with every other idea or author—effectively trying to cipher them all back through the horizon of a reified conception of what is contemporary—my understanding of a metaphorological method seeks to activate and re-activate ideas and contexts that may have been overlooked or historically mistaken as self-evident. Each text or author discussed thus represents a kind of essay, in the sense of an attempt, a tangent that touches on various open problems.31 The question, then, for which my work seeks alternate paradigms begins provisionally with Habermas, but also leaves him behind and tries to look behind him to rethink his problems without relying too much on his particular formatting of these problems. The stakes of the questions surrounding opinion have become overly familiar, and defamiliarization is therefore an important aspect of my larger undertaking. The literary reflections of ancient and ongoing problems are uniquely suited to this in their ability to repose old questions with renewed intensity, flexibility, and precision. A broad underlying question, for example, and a well-known one, is posed by literary forms’ specific orientation toward language: what if ‘‘communicative rationality’’ were not only subject to external threats (such as capitalism, technology, increasing societal complexity and social stratification, proliferating hierarchical administrative and bureaucratic forms, etc.)? In other words, what if language and ‘‘communicative reason’’ were intrinsically problematic? The desire not to formulate the problem in this way is of course understandable; rather than a universalizable medium of communication, language becomes the universal and ahistorical medium of the lack of miscommunication and the lack universality. It becomes the language of irreconcilability, undecidability, conflict, self-interest, solipsism, and so on.

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Both extremes can become pitfalls because they may represent uncritical wishful thinking and a kind of overgeneralization.

Chapter Outline and Summary of Central Arguments Between the numbered chapters, which deal primarily on the modern concept of opinion, I have interwoven shorter essays on conceptions of opinion inherited from antiquity. Because there is not a single origin or derivation for the modern idea of opinion, I have chosen to highlight cases that still retain a paradigmatic status within the discourse on opinion in the modern era (even if the older conceptions are often also covered over by the modern ones). These four conceptual paradigms for the idea of opinion in antiquity also correspond to contemporary significances, which can be organized according to the following rubrics: (1) fama (in Virgil)—public opinion, (2) nomos (in Herodotus)—cultural and conventional norms, (3) the parable of the sower (from the New Testament)—belief and conscience, and (4) gnomae (in Herodotus and Pindar)—individual intelligence and reason. In their common ability to retrospectively motivate actions and events, these four aspects all possess a historiographic function. Though all of these conceptions can be found throughout my study, each of the shorter conceptual excurses on the inheritance from antiquity is also meant to contrast with the longer chapter it immediately precedes. The book as a whole is thus structured as a fabric of superimpositions rather than as a single linear or chronological narrative. With this in mind, and to help with orientation, here is a compact outline of the four main chapters and their corresponding conceptual foci. Chapter 1 (Public opinion/ fama): the excursus on Virgil’s conception of fama develops a specific logic of public opinion. In Virgil, fama serves not only for the narrative rationalization of extended chains of events but also figures as a providential figure of posterity. This conception is picked up in the first chapter, which focuses on theorizations of the new concept of public opinion in the wake of the French Revolution. Christoph Martin Wieland’s orientation toward the spheres of the public and the popular made him one of the first to perceive the significance and implications of a dawning ‘‘structural transformation of the public sphere.’’ His analyses, in conjunction with those of Kant and Georg Forster from the same period, show

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that key elements of Virgil’s conceptualization are still intact in the modern concept of public opinion. Chapter 2 (Cultural or conventional norms / nomos): the Herodotean concept of nomos provides a model for those aspects of opinion that are transmitted—and at least partially determined—by culture and convention. This ancient concept, which attempts to account for the diversity of human customs and the lack of a single universal law, is roughly compatible with Locke’s law of opinion. After the Revolution, especially in the twentieth century, the seeming relativism and determinism of this conception begins to clash with the revolutionary radicalization of public opinion in its fama form. Wieland’s problem set, aggravated by the fact that opinion’s posterity effect did not work out as expected, leads artistic modernism to diagnose itself as a symptom of the failure (and eventual conflation) of both the conventional and the revolutionary models of public opinion. This backdrop helps to situate the works of Koselleck, Habermas, and Derrida, each of which represents a different negotiation of the problem of opinion and representation. In each case it is a question of a different configuration of the idea of nomos or the law of opinion. It may be possible to rationalize opinion into forms of positive law and public procedure (Habermas), or its irrational potentials may first come into their own under the conditions of modern media and technology (Derrida), or it may have been partially rationalized in a way that only counterproductively causes the public sphere to become increasing susceptibility to ideology (Koselleck). It is also important to note that, in this form, the three possibilities are not mutually exclusive. Chapter 3 (Belief and conscience): the idea of belief is paradigmatically represented in the Christian parable of the sower, which is read as a germinal theorization of the unstable dynamics of individual opinion. The parable also represents a model, more prescriptive than descriptive, for the spread and dissemination of opinions and beliefs. In the Christian version, the individualizing moment is connected to a question of salvation, whereas chapter 3 pursues the development of a liberal-secular concept of private individual opinions. Focusing especially on Moses Mendelssohn’s revisions of Locke, which attempt to exclude the dogmatic conception of belief from the public sphere, the concluding sections return to the crisis of opinion that re-erupts following the French Revolution (thereby substantially eclipsing Mendelssohn’s conception). In chapter 1, Kant and Wieland looked to public opinion as a kind of external posterity that could regulate the course of history,

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and Fichte comparably attempted to revitalize the internal forum of conscience (precisely against Mendelssohn’s intents) to try to reestablish some ground against the flood of opinion. Goethe, unconvinced by the Revolution’s claim to represent a total anthropological break, turns inward, looking for historical continuity in literature and narrative, which contain quasiuniversal inherited typologies that he hopes can reestablish communicative and ethical norms in the face of a chaos of opinions. Chapter 4 (Individual intelligence, reason or Vernunft): the Herodotean idea of gnomae conceptualizes a force that runs counter to a purely deterministic idea of culture, or nomos. This kind of strategic, situational, and political thought, which is framed by cultural norms without being entirely dictated by them, also corresponds with the modern concept of ‘‘private’’ opinions that are supposed to provide the basis for decision making. Moving from Herodotus to Friedrich Ho¨lderlin’s translation of a fragment of Pindar (contained in Book 1 of Plato’s Republic), this form of opinion is reconceived as a nonidentity, a kind of latent multiplicity that inhabits individual opinions (viewed from a diachronic-biographical perspective). This conception is put into practice in the fragments and aphorisms of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, whose so-called waste books demonstrate the possibility of thought, without a given public forum and not under the pressure of decision, to develop itself by itself and give itself form in writing. In particular, Lichtenberg shows that every opinion that is ‘‘held’’ is a merely represented opinion, a kind of hypostasis or, to use Koselleck’s term, a ‘‘collective singular.’’ Rather than identifying opinions as one’s ‘‘own,’’ for Lichtenberg thought is a polyphonic and irreducibly literary process. The institutions of political representation appear on this basis as fatally inverted because they are based on idealized (and potentially completely falsified) representations of opinion, which are highly restrictive and therefore run contrary to the individual’s own participatory interest in the process of thinking. Modern (democratic) institutions are primarily interested in opinion as a cipher of political allegiance or affiliation, and this can only have a chilling effect on everything that is called politics. The exercise of thought is thereby also marginalized to literary forms, which are often directed at a far future and at least are not exclusively concerned with the political realities and decisions of the present.

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excursus 1: fama and fatum in virgil’s aeneid

Fama, a Latin translation of the Greek doxa, carries many of the same meanings: fama is popular opinion based on commonly held beliefs; it is the reputation or esteem—the fame—in which a thing or a person is held; it is also rumor and gossip. All of these possible significances include the idea of a tacit but potentially false or irrational consensus; fama appears in this sense as an equivalent of what Locke called the ‘‘law of opinion’’ or the ‘‘law of fashion.’’ The idea of fama produces an imaginary and amorphous but still normatively and conformatively structured public. This phantom public sphere is projected and indefinitely personified as an impersonal and anonymous subject of judgment—‘‘one’’ or ‘‘they’’ in English, ‘‘man’’ in German and ‘‘on’’ in French—which serves as the implicit template or foil for the opinions of each individual within the imaginary collective and the collective imaginary.1 On the basis of these meanings, fama is often referenced as the premodern term that most closely corresponds to the modern idea of public opinion. Habermas’ Structural Transformation relies on this conceptual genealogy, but Kurt W. Back’s explanation is more revealing: Public opinion became something opposed to individual desires, but not necessarily bad, and it was still able to express a higher purpose. A metaphor for this is presented by Virgil in his description of the Goddess of Rumor (Aeneid, book 4). She was born by earth in hatred against the gods; she looks frightening, like a predatory bird, covered with feathers, under every feather an eye, and tongues to match or exceed the eyes. Thus she sees everything and keeps tongues wagging to create the popular mood. This is the metaphoric representation of the negative, feared side of public opinion. On the other hand, one has to remember that Rumor (or public opinion) represents here the will of the gods: it 16

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leads to the heartbreak of Dido and Aeneas, but also enables the fulfillment of Aeneas’ historic mission of the founding of Rome.2

This reading of Virgil does not hold up to a close reading of the Aeneid, but first, more globally, Back’s analysis implies (like Habermas’, when he refers to ‘‘reputation’’ as the most important inherited meaning of public opinion) that some form of rationalization or secularization has taken place in the modern era, which allows the ancient form of opinion (fama) to be distinguished our own. This implicit historical claim is evident in the terms themselves: ‘‘public opinion,’’ especially for Habermas, does only not refer to fickle fame of politicians or celebrities, and, to the extent that it does refer to representational attributes of public figures (such as popularity and approval ratings), public opinion is presumed to have some kind of rational basis. This conventional derivation, for example, would link authorized sources of information to informed judgments, which are in turn made into the objects of numerical measurement. But, while this rational aspect may distinguish public opinion from mere gossip (fama), which is not localizable or systematically derivable, it may also be possible to overstate this distinction by assuming that the ‘‘irrational’’ fama structure of premodern publics has been entirely overcome and replaced by new conceptions and the modern institutions of the public sphere.3 The so-called public sphere, even more than so-called public opinion, appears to optimistically and euphemistically deny its fama component; the idea of a public sphere lends the aura of reason to highly disparate political forms and forums, representational and situational instances. Despite the implication of the transparency and openness of a ‘‘public sphere,’’ the reality at any given moment may be closed and opaque, and the will of the public is as likely to reflect collective madness as collective reason.4 The distance, in any case, between the ancient fama and the modern public sphere is impossible to ascertain empirically. As long as opinions are tabulated as results, without regard for the process of opinion formation, the idea of a rationally structured public sphere can at best only serve as a kind of prescriptive norm or guideline for discourse ethics (the political function of which will always be that of a discourse morality, which excludes certain forms of discourse while privileging others). Back’s conception retroactively rationalizes the idea of public opinion by contrasting it with fama, and the same rationalization is performed again in

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Back’s interpretation of Virgil’s Aeneid. In a move that will prove to be highly typical for the modern concept of public opinion, Back forces a conceptual convergence between ‘‘fame’’ and ‘‘fate.’’ To this end, he radically simplifies the plot of the Aeneid. Back instrumentalizes Virgil’s Fama so that her perfidious efforts can be reintegrated within the fated foundation of Rome. In Virgil’s text, however, despite the fact that Fama appears to be incapable of substantially interfering with the course of Aeneas’ destiny (fatum), it is in no way clear that she is identical with fate or that these two forces collude for the sake of a common end. To the contrary, in a passage that Back himself references, Virgil explicitly states that Fama is driven by ire against the gods (ira inritata deorum) (IV:178); her appearance on the scene is an indirect result of a conflict between Juno (who seeks to thwart Aeneas’ fate) and Venus (Aeneas’ mother, who wants him to fulfill it): in Book I, Venus, fearing the manipulations of Juno, sends Amor to cause Dido to fall in love with Aeneas, so that she will host and support his refugee people (I:673–75). But this plan backfires as soon as Dido’s love for Aeneas causes him to become forgetful of his fated purpose. Fama’s role in the conflict thus remains highly ambiguous. The gods do not unanimously support Aeneas’ fate, but Virgil also emphasizes that the fatum is not debatable. Jupiter only ratifies and enforces the fatum, but even he is not simply identical with it (I:257–62). Also, from the retrospective position of Virgil’s epic narration, Aeneas’ fate possesses the irrevocable quality of a fait accompli, which causes the fatum to correspond with the irreversibility of time itself. Within the scope of these various dynamics, the goddess Fama seems like a free agent, a ghost in the machine of fate. She, like Dido, represents a detour on the way to the accomplishment of Aeneas’ fate, but it is virtually impossible to determine her allegiances: motivated by ‘‘anger against the gods,’’ she is not the singular agent of any of them; she is associated with the reputation (fama) of Dido, whose forgetfulness causes Aeneas to forget his mission—Dido ends up as an enemy of the Trojans, but Fama is the cause of her downfall and the motivator of the events that force Aeneas to leave Carthage. In this sense, Fama can in fact be said to work for Aeneas’ fate, but, this being the case, she could just as easily be banished from the story entirely, as she is merely a personified plot device,5 moving the story along in a way that need not involve any gods or goddesses: by bringing news of Dido’s new affair to Iarbas (Dido’s scorned suitor), who then brings the tryst to Jupiter’s attention, she causes the god to intervene in the interest

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of the fatum, which leads to Aeneas’ departure. But Fama brings Dido word of his plans (crucially, since this intervention no longer has a bearing on Aeneas’ fate) before he can tell her himself. At the end of Book IV, when Dido commits suicide in despair, Fama spreads the news of it among the people. The goddess Fama is caught between worldly and otherworldly strands of motivation. She personifies the motivating force in a chain of cause-andeffect, but as such she, like fate and the gods, begins to appear as a superfluous supplement within a chain of causation that could just as easily do without them. But this interpretation that pragmatically seeks narratively to rationalize and thereby do away with Fama’s mediating role, which sees her as only a trigger point in the inevitable unrolling of fate, is no more accurate than Back’s rationalization of Fama under the rule of fate. It may be true that, as a goddess, she is only a fortuitous personification, invented to move the plot along, but she is also the foundational concept for Virgil’s own narrative logic, in which the word, the concept, and the proper name of fama all play a decisive role.6 The Aeneid, as is well known, tells of the fame of Aeneas and may thereby have provided some ambivalent legitimation for the reign of Augustus Caesar. From this perspective, the concept of fama is the crux of the whole epic undertaking, and it is within this sphere that Fama—as Back also points out in a different sense—may appear as positive and negative. This Janus face can be most easily observed in the ambiguous semantics that allow fama to mean ‘‘rumor’’ and ‘‘gossip’’ as well as ‘‘reputation’’ and ‘‘fame.’’ This ambivalence could, of course, be stabilized by the assertion that the goddess Fama of Book IV only refers to the ‘‘Rumor’’ that destroys Dido’s fama, her reputation. This semantic distinction would be more convincing, however, if Virgil’s text—and especially Book IV—were not itself a complex reflection on the concept of fama in all of its senses.7 Virgil constantly emphasizes that without fame (perhaps including gossip and rumor), it would be impossible to say anything at all about Aeneas or about the goddess called Fama. Virgil describes her origins: ‘‘Mother earth, provoked to anger against the gods, brought her forth last, they say, as sister to Coeus and Enceladus [illam Terra parens, ira inritata deorum, / extremam, ut perhibent, Coeo Enceladoque sororem].’’ (IV:178–79, emphasis mine). The words ut perhibent, which are translated variously as ‘‘they say’’ (in the Harvard edition), ‘‘men say’’ (in the Penguin edition),8 ‘‘as it is told’’ (so erza¨hlt man, in the Reclam edition),

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and ‘‘as is said’’ (wie man sagt, in the German Tusculum edition),9 make it clear that Virgil is only passing on some gossip here, retelling a preexisting story of questionable veracity. In his own telling, he participates in the activity attributed to Fama; he clings to the potentially ‘‘fictive and false,’’ yet ‘‘heralds truth’’ (IV:188, translation modified); he relates ‘‘factual occurrences on the same plane (pariter) as things that never happened’’ (IV:190, translation based on the German Tusculum edition). If there were any remaining doubt that Virgil’s Fama is herself a rumor, then a short passage of Book III dispels it: here Virgil tells of the giant Enceladus, Fama’s older brother, who lies buried beneath Mount Aetna. The narration begins with the words fama est (‘‘the story runs’’ or ‘‘according to legend’’ [III:578]), and Fama herself, as a goddess or allegorical personification, is self-consciously revealed as a rumor, a fiction, a legend, or even a lie. Virgil’s famous narrative tick—‘‘mirabile dictu’’—shows the same thing. These words express wonder and incredulity at what is being told. They occur in the middle of the Fama narration (IV:182), but, significantly, also much earlier in the mouth of the lying Greek Sinon, who tricks the Trojans with his story of the wooden horse. Based on these examples, the words ‘‘mirabile dictu’’ represent the narrator’s effort to distance himself from the incredible stories that he tells, but this narratorial affect of incredulity may also serve as an affected rhetorical enticement to inspire the hearer or reader to swallow a tale that would otherwise be rejected. Virgil’s depiction of this dynamic reveals his critical cognizance of the unreliability of fama, even as he relies upon her to advance the suspension of disbelief and the overall persuasiveness of his narrative. Everything introduced by way of fama— which is to say everything in Virgil’s tale—is able, without specific confirmation or refutation, to float in a realm of mere possibility, surrounded by the legitimating aura of oral tradition and popular belief. When it comes to Aeneas’ fame, however, a subtly destabilizing effect results. The mythmaking gesture that accompanies Virgil’s narration of Aeneas’ fatum becomes ambivalent as soon as it is refracted through the concept of fama. The worldly indifference that Virgil maintains with respect to myths and legends also affects the fate of Aeneas. His fate, filtered through fama that tells of it, is only said to be the product of an inalterable divine commandment. There is no fatum without the fama that retrospectively interprets it as such, and even the existence of the gods themselves depends on such a fama. Virgil, therefore, in his personification of fama

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as the goddess Fama, decisively tips his hand in the direction of a highly disillusioned and secular understanding of the theopolitics of myth making. Like the nomos in Herodotus (discussed in Excursus 2), fama’s functions may include the rationalization, legitimation, transfiguration—and perhaps the reconciliation—of past events. With the help of fama, histories become myths at the moment they are cast as the ambiguous origins of present practices, norms, traditions, institutions, and social relations. But unlike Herodotus’ nomos, Virgil’s fama does not take the form of law (whether positive, natural, or divine) or culture (whether traditional, conventional, or postconventional). Fama and the myths she mediates do not come with any instructions for their practical implementation or application. Rather than offering a durable normative foundation, everything that fama founds is constantly subverted by ‘‘rumors’’ that jump into the breach of open situations. Especially telling in this regard is the effect that Aeneas’ fame has on Dido: the basis of his fame is his participation in the Trojan war, which he recounts in Book II, as well as his subsequent Odyssean voyages in Book III; this narration is the occasion for Dido’s doomed love, described in the first verses of Book IV. But even before all of this, Aeneas’ fame had preceded his arrival in Carthage. In Book I, in the temple of Juno, he finds images of the events of the Trojan war, which leads him to hope that the inhabitants will be hospitable; Dido, when she first speaks to Trojan exiles, says ‘‘Who could be ignorant of the race of Aeneas’ people, who of Troy’s town and her brave deeds and brave men, or of the fires of that great war?’’ (I:565–66). News, as they say, travels fast, and Aeneas’ fame is constantly outpacing him.10 Upon seeing his people’s hardships represented in the temple in Carthage, Aeneas is both disconcerted and consoled: ‘‘He stopped and weeping cried: ‘Is there any place, Achates, any land on earth that is not full of our sorrow? See, there is Priam! Here, too, virtue finds its due reward; here, too, are tears for misfortune and human sorrows pierce the heart. Dispel your fears; this fame will bring you some salvation’ [ feret haec aliquam tibi fama salutem]’’ (I:459– 63). These words imply that fama may have a telos different from than that of fate. The telling of historical fortune and especially misfortune—false and true, false as true—may be of some good, precisely in the telling itself, regardless of any other effects or side-effects, actions or inactions, legitimacy or illegitimacy, which may come out of it. According to this teleology,

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fama appears as a kind of autonomous historical purpose, with a quasiobjective character that does not discriminate between political opponents, winners and losers. She equally motivates and mediates both rises and falls, not out of a claim to historical objectivity but through a kind poetic objectivity to which the historian is also subject. Both are Fama’s scribes, passing on stories not according to truth or even plausibility, but according to the fama dynamics that exist within the politics of their own times. Such a system of literary posterity would always remain, like Fama and her effects, largely if not entirely unpredictable. She could never be assimilated to the structure of a law, a system, or a process, and, although perhaps influenced by cultural factors, she would never be identical with them, and she could never serve strictly etiological ends by permitting the objective attribution of causes. The opening apostrophe of the Aeneid (significantly after its opening declaration in the poet’s own name)—‘‘Tell me, O Muse, the cause [Musa, mihi causa memora]’’ (I:8)—can therefore only be read as irony. This apostrophe, which asks after the source of Juno’s anger, closes on an open question: ‘‘Can heavenly spirits cherish resentment so dire? [tantaene animis caelestibus irae?]’’ (I:11). The search for causes leads only to questions that are the opportunity for a narration that cannot reach—or cannot remember—the root cause. The ire of the gods, balanced by Fama’s anger against them, is mediated by a literary fama dictated by the openness of its origins and ends. Fama, conceived in literary narration as an endless, irrational and potentially groundless source of histories and counter-histories, emerges as an opportunistic form of language that constantly produces effects without causes. This does not exclude the possibility of rationally structured discourses, but neither do the latter exclude the former. The development of historically or institutionally conditioned forms of reason (in many senses) cannot substantially impact this kind of fama because she cannot be confined to their rules or excluded from their systems. And thus the question of literature and literary posterity are not, as is so often the case among both champions and detractors, merely a preserve or diversion, of little concern or relevance to the so-called real problems: as far as opinion and public opinion also obey the literary fama model, no amount of reasoned discourse and deliberation can brake her. In the so-called media and information age, a proliferation of interlocking discourses seems to only accelerate her progress,11 whereas literary fame, at least Virgil’s model of it, was meant to have

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the opposite effect. Literary representation slows her down and turns her against herself, like the frozen images Aeneas sees in the temple at Carthage. Such a ‘‘freezing’’—fama at a standstill—may also serve Caesar’s ends, but it does not only serve the canonical ends of making traditions static and stratified; it instead constantly reconnects them with the present in new ways. Caesar owes his existence to Fama, but she is not subject to him. Literature, which includes history, is the space within which worldly events and political actions achieve representation. Literature in this sense represents a second-order reflection on worldly fame and her antics; her representations are something other than the mere accumulation of fetishes or trophies to legitimate a given cult or culture. Instead of imagining his own poetic practice as a fixed cultural norm of a given world and epoch, Virgil’s idea of literature sees itself in its own terms, those of fama. The democratic potentials of this kind of literary fama are unrelated to mass political action, but fama in this sense is connected to the possibility of singular actions and thoughts to be recorded and passed on in an anti-foundational way that would forever exclude the possibility of their ever ‘‘coming true,’’ or being instituted or realized as something other than fama. By eschewing a legislative and executive agenda, literature takes fama marginally less seriously than does the rest of the world, and her worldly reign stands in contradiction with the widespread belief in the sacredness of ‘‘fame,’’ ‘‘reputation,’’ and ‘‘public opinion.’’ Opinion in the latter senses remains as a dominant myth of a self-proclaimed (but gullible) ‘‘modern world,’’ whereas Virgil’s reconception of mythic fate mediated by fama came much closer to the secular awareness of the contingency of both fame and fate.

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Manifestations of the Public Sphere in Christoph Martin Wieland

The Word Opinion Around 1800 The public opinion is a terrible court whose judgment can be escaped by no mortal power, no matter how great it may be or may appear to be. christoph martin wieland, Gespra¨che unter vier Augen [Private Conversations], (1798)

At the turn of the nineteenth century there was no word and no idea that was more awe-inspiring than the word opinion. Wieland’s words dramatically reflect this, but it should also be noted that they are not his own; he puts them in the mouth of a character in a dialogue. These words are not a declaration of Wieland’s own opinion, but are presented as a critically inflected echo of others’ words.1 The first recorded appearance of the term public opinion in the Revolutionary context is attributed to Jacques Necker, who described it in 1784 as an ‘‘invisible power,’’ which ‘‘without treasury, guard, or army, gives its laws to the city, the court, and even the palaces of kings.’’2 Necker’s definition does not entirely correspond to Wieland’s, but both locate the concept in the juridical sphere. Necker’s ‘‘opinion publique’’ is normative, ‘‘lawgiving’’ (comparable to Locke’s law of opinion), whereas Wieland’s definition gives it a more historically retrospective and specifically judicial orientation. Opinion, as ‘‘the court of public opinion’’ (an expression that 24

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remains common), is the highest earthly instance. Wieland figures it as a kind of extralegal sanction, which for this reason may also follow and extend the model of Locke’s law of opinion.3 Machiavelli’s understanding of the word opinione is also compatible with Locke’s, and provides an especially good foil for Wieland. For Machiavelli, opinion is not an attribute of the modern public sphere, but is synonymous with fama in the sense of reputation. ‘‘Public opinion’’ (opinione) is a coordinate of the ruler’s good name, his reputation: ‘‘The prince who succeeds in attaining the good opinion of his subjects will enjoy a high reputation, and it is difficult to conspire against or attack someone who is held in such high regard.’’4 For Machiavelli, the good opinion in which the ruler is held is the precondition of his political effectiveness. This ‘‘reputation,’’ as he calls it, provides an almost mystical protection from internal conspiracy and external enemies. Opinione in this sense becomes definitive of political legitimacy and the legitimate exercise of power in the modern era, regardless of governmental form. Slavko Splichal eloquently summarizes this, but overlooks the troubling fact that not only democracies, but also modern princes and dictators derive their legitimacy from public opinion: ‘‘While premodern [i.e. mediaeval] states legitimized their origins and development by insisting on the divine will, modern democracies refer largely to public opinion.’’5 The modern concepts of rule and legitimacy are based on opinion, and not only in democracies. Also, within the longer historical bracket defined by the ancient concept of nomos and modern law of opinion, the mediaeval concept of sovereignty by divine right appears as an historical exception. The modern concept of sovereignty is not the secularization of a (mediaeval) theological concept, but instead—from the standpoint of opinion—the idea of divine right looks like an attempt to augment a highly unstable nomos. ‘‘Political theology’’ in this sense refers to the theologization of an insufficiently sovereign nomos. This paradox of sovereignty applies to the modern era in its entirety, and perhaps even to the form of rule itself. Numerous dichotomies—perhaps especially nature–culture and state–society— would also become available for reinterpretation within this framework of the history of opinion. In short: regardless of the particulars of the system, few forms of rule are able to be legitimate without proving their legitimacy in justificatory discourses (which may erode as much as they support).6 Machiavelli’s concept of ‘‘public opinion’’ is consistent with a long line of political theory, but it is unlike democratically or contractually oriented

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theorists of later eras, because for Machiavelli opinione is not connected to any kind of universal reason. The only reason that matters is political raison d’e´tat, and ‘‘public opinion’’ therefore does not possess any epistemological validity. To the contrary, a good ruler will always succeed in misleading it, and for this reason opinione cannot function as an agent, subject, or catalyst of history. Machiavelli conceives opinion as a purely political-representational attribute beyond truth and falsehood. Under the control of a good ruler and coordinated to his public persona, opinion is supposed to occupy a passive and spectatorial position before the sovereign who acts before and upon the opinion of his subjects. Opinione is the limit and the medium of the sovereign’s absolute power. This understanding is also not unique to Machiavelli, but it always underwrites the possibility of a calculated exercise of political power. Even if public opinion is imagined as the seat of revolutionary popular sovereignty, as was the case during the French Revolution, it remains exposed to this same dynamic. It is prone to become the object of those who want to speak for it and in its name,7 and it cannot refer— especially not in the case popular sovereignty—to any particular forum or localizable sphere of articulation. Wieland’s description of a ‘‘court’’ of public opinion represents a specific step beyond the understandings he inherits, but it is not meant as a real counterdefinition of public opinion. In its context within a dialogue, his definition is a strategic exaggeration meant to diagnose the concept of public opinion as the foremost symptom of the political reconfigurations of the Revolution. Specifically, Wieland’s protagonist’s words underline an implicit reconnection of more or less secular categories, such as the law of opinion (which Locke had placed above divine law) and nomos (to which the gods themselves are at least conditionally subjected), to an implicitly Christian framework of the Last Judgment, apocalypse, and revelation. The court of public opinion, before which ‘‘all mortal powers’’ must appear, is the final judgment, and thus, going beyond Machiavelli’s understanding, it refers to more than just the present political predicament of the sovereign. It is hard to tell whether this conception of opinion represents the secularization of the Christian concept of the apocalypse into a kind of worldly posterity, or whether—in the other direction—Wieland means to show how the worldly concept of public opinion became sacralized by its contemporary political usages. The latter reading seems more convincing to me, but the two alternatives are not mutually exclusive: as Hans Blumenberg has shown, secularization is never a one-way street because ‘‘sacred’’ forms and institutions

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have no choice but to borrow from worldly or pagan spheres.8 The latter reading, critical of the status of public opinion as a secular concept, also has the asset of being counterintuitive, upsetting the historical narratives that would define modernity in terms of the progress of reason and secular thought. If public opinion is a figure of posterity and of posthumous legitimation above and beyond the immediate or apparent outcome, then its most extreme and canonical exemplifications would be Socrates (put to death by Athens but vindicated in Plato’s work) and Christ. Following these models, Luther and the Reformation also looks like a prime example of a revolutionary shift in opinion. On this basis, all implicit in Wieland’s definition, public opinion begins to be defined as a metahistorical concept, as a law of laws or nomos of nomoi. In this sense, public opinion becomes the final historical instance, the guarantee and the guiding force of all historical transformations and of history’s final teleological coherence. This role alone allows it to be personified with the attributes of divinity. But Wieland himself does not seem to have believed in such a theologically inflected concept of posterity. The form of the dialogue serves to produce critical distance, within which he can describe public opinion in drastic formulations, productive of memorable and emblematic ‘‘definitions.’’ Taken out of context, Wieland’s definitions are eminently quotable in a way that has allowed the critical intent of the dialogue form to be overlooked. The goal of the present chapter is thus to rearticulate the critical logic of Wieland’s literary strategy: maintaining discreet neutrality and without resorting to direct criticism, he reiterates and ironically exaggerates the rhetoric of public opinion so as to expose it as a new and virulent form of political theology.

Wieland on Public Opinion ¨ ffentliche Meinung, modeled after the French opinion publique, was a relaO tively new construction in Germany in the 1790s. Its newness and potential vagueness made it ripe for overuse and rhetorical abuse. This is undoubtedly the primary reason why Wieland decided to make it the topic of critical reflection in the ninth of his Gespra¨che unter vier Augen (Private Conversations).9 Despite the newness of the word, Wieland argues that the concept

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of public opinion is as old as civil rule itself. He thus begins his 1798 dia¨ ber die o¨ffentliche Meinung’’ (‘‘On Public Opinion’’) by suggestlogue, ‘‘U ing that ‘‘public opinion’’ is the same as ‘‘[der] allgemeine Volksglauben’’ (the general popular belief ) or, in Latin, the ‘‘consensus gentium’’ (31:309).10 Wieland thus proposes—a potentially inflammatory suggestion at the time—that public opinion may not be essentially related to democratic or even modern political form. Public opinion, if it exists at all (a serious question at the beginning of the dialogue), may be a rhetorical construct, used to retrospectively motivate and legitimate a particular historical transformation at the same time as it is used prospectively to justify specific behaviors and courses of action. It is thereby narratively posited and potentially personified as a historical force or actor, which is, however, never strictly present (in the present) or identifiable (with actual historical agents). Public opinion is cast as an underlying force, if not the force, in the motions of history, but it only manifests itself in rhetorical appropriations and historical rationalizations through which history is ‘‘made.’’ As a ‘‘force’’ by which historical events are rationalized, public opinion has no relation to political-constitutional form.11 The 1789 eruption of this force—which, unidentifiable and unverifiable, may have always been a different force—reveals it as anything but a form-giving force. Assuming it exists at all, and as long as it is taken at its word, it must be a revolutionary and de-constituting force, which can give rise to new constitutions without ever being unambiguously identifiable in a given chain of causation or narration.12 These fundamental theoretical problems and the heightened awareness of them that was typical of the Revolutionary era are the background for Wieland’s text on public opinion, in which he attempts to moderate the most radical understandings of the term as a ‘‘common spirit’’ or ‘‘general will.’’13 Wieland seeks to undo—or at least to mute—the revolutionary clamor surrounding the concept of public opinion. But his intervention cannot be said to have been successful: historically, the concept of opinion finds itself at a threshold beyond which it would be only an ideological mystification to speak about opinion, public or otherwise, in an emphatic sense. Wieland failed to give the term a rational basis, and the modernization of the term opinion in the course of the Revolution only had the effect of completely hollowing it out. Already in 1798 Wieland calls it a ‘‘highly

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ambiguous appellation’’ (vieldeutige Benennung) (31:309), and this assessment has not changed much since then. But this fundamental ambiguity has only seemed to only expand the applicability and apparent usefulness of the term.14 Wieland was one of the first to critically highlight this situation without making a systematic attempt to resolve the problem conceptually. For this reason his dialogue remains frustrating; it holds a mirror to the problem without offering an effective philosophical clarification of it. Habermas succinctly writes: ‘‘Wieland’s definitions offer nothing new.’’15 Though accurate in a sense, this assessment fails to register the fact that Wieland’s dialogue clearly never intended to produce philosophically coherent results, but was meant as a political intervention at a specific historical moment. With this in mind, Wieland’s text is successful in its mediation of various contemporary and inherited understandings in the context of postRevolutionary controversies.16 What Habermas fails to appreciate in Wieland’s apparent lack of novelty is the precisely historical significance of his dialogue.17 Wieland does not even attempt to define or redefine the novelty of public opinion (something better left to the revolutionaries). The singularity of the historical present is instead dialogically refracted through a matrix of inherited understandings. Much of what Wieland writes about opinion is therefore indeed rather commonplace, but he is able to bring together more or less standard conceptions with striking fluency. Though lacking in analytic clarity, Wieland’s gift for reformulating ideas lends them a kind of emblematic, proto- or archetypical status, which also explains why his text on public opinion continues to be often cited and unintentionally paraphrased.18 But such a latent reception does not mean that many people have taken the time to read Wieland’s dialogue carefully. To the contrary, the citations travel from text to text, causing the specific contexts of his dialogue to be all the more decisively forgotten. If Wieland’s text seems unoriginal, it is only because research into the field of public opinion and the public sphere in the past two hundred years has so often failed to go beyond his preliminary and merely provocative definitions. Thus, despite and because of its central failings, Wieland’s text on public opinion remains highly revealing. Rather than trying to intentionally propagate new definitions, he tries to put new wine in old bottles; his overall project is perhaps best described as an attempt to contain a literally epoch-making new political conception within older understandings. This strategy implies a certain undeniable conservatism, but in 1798 Wieland

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may also have been right to resist the most extravagant claims. For reasons I will show in the next section, the concept ‘‘public opinion’’ possessed an awesome explanatory power for the dawning revolutionary era. There was something new in the air, which determined the success of the new term as well as its ultimate failure to adequately define what it claimed to name. Wieland’s dialogue charts both of these dynamics from the moment of their inception, and he should not be faulted for not knowing what public opinion would become. Wieland’s attempt to discursively frame the problem was misunderstood and ignored, and public opinion, also unable to be scientifically systematized, went on to outgrow the Enlightenment’s ongoing aspiration—still advocated by Habermas—to give it a rational shape and a specific institutional locus. Against this backdrop, Wieland’s failures represent the disavowed shortcomings of every discourse that seeks to use the concept of opinion as if it were self-evident or able to be rigorously confined to a specialized conceptualization.

Georg Forster’s ‘‘Parisian Sketches’’ Georg Forster’s ‘‘Parisische Umrisse’’ represent the political precondition for Wieland’s much more skeptical dialogue on public opinion. Specifically, Forster’s sketches exemplify the revolutionary conception of opinion that Wieland’s dialogue sought to bracket. In his text, Forster, an eyewitness to the fallout of the Revolution in Paris, assumes the role of correspondent, writing as a loyal partisan of the ideals of the Revolution and trying to explain them to Germans. In this context, the public opinion emerges as the literal incarnation of the revolutionary spirit. But, like Wieland’s dialogue, Forster’s letters represent a complex masquerade: the ‘‘Sketches’’ probably do not reflect his own opinion at the time of writing, but stand as an attempt to produce an extreme representation of the most radical revolutionary ideas,19 which Forster depicts with such a fervent ad absurdum extremism that the sketches can be plausibly read as a covert critique or ambiguous parody of Revolutionary ideology. If his literary strategy shares something with Wieland’s, Forster’s epistolary form only represents one side of the conversation, making its representational strategy more difficult to decipher. The final intent of his design may never be fully ascertainable, but the sketches are in any case highly successful in their impersonation of the kind

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of character that Wieland wanted to engage in a more reasoned conversation. Writing in Paris in 1793, Forster had an unparalleled sense of the rupture that had taken place in the programs and prognoses of the Enlightenment. His text assumes the perspective of a participant in the Revolution who seeks to relate this experience to the outside world in the form of a series of fictionalized letters. His tone is euphoric as he describes the disappointment of the Enlightenment’s plans: ‘‘The Revolution has broken through all of the dams and surpassed every limit which all of the best heads had prescribed for her in their systems.’’20 The Revolution, indebted though it may be to the ideas of the Enlightenment, is now ‘‘headless’’ and beyond the control of specific individuals, systems, and theories. It has transgressed the ideas that generated it and has become autonomous of them. In contrast to Forster, Wieland’s dialogue looks like an attempt to re-inscribe these events within a continuous tradition. Wieland questions the novelty of public opinion and uncovers its conceptual predecessors, whereas Forster announces it as an absolute novum, a ‘‘natural phenomenon’’ (Naturerscheinung), ‘‘something completely other’’ (etwas ganz Anderes) (595). For Forster, public opinion is virtually synonymous with the Revolution: its laws are still unknown (595), but this apparent lawlessness—which seems to produce its own laws without prescribing them—makes opinion the exemplary phenomenon of the revolutionary state of exception. Because there is no higher force that can dictate to it, public opinion is the literal seat of popular sovereignty. Public opinion is the supreme executive and the final deciding instance. It lays down the law without ever being bound by its own prescriptions. And no critique of violence is possible where public opinion rules: ‘‘An injustice loses its quality of outrage, its violence and arbitrariness, as soon as the public opinion of the people (die o¨ffentliche Volksmeinung) is the arbiter that in the final instance unconditionally decides in accordance with the law of the necessity that provoked a given action or ordinance or measure’’ (597). According to this setup, the distinction between ‘‘justice’’ and ‘‘injustice’’ is suspended before the public opinion (and it is thus significant that Forster is still able to use the word injustice (Ungerechtigkeit) at all). The popular opinion may be the unlimited final arbiter, but that upon which it decides is the still decision or action of others. Vox popoli, vox dei, as they say, but both voices may ultimately stay silent: the public opinion, rather than taking a manifest decision, provides the latent and belated ratification

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for all prior decisions. Like the confusion of fama and fatum discussed in the case Virgil, public opinion appears to providentially make virtues out of necessities. It is governed by a law of necessity (Notwendigkeit) that always has the possibility of revealing itself as a contingency or a deception. As the driving force of a history destiny, teleological in a way that goes over the heads of all factual and empirical instances, public opinion also represents a compromise with and rationalization of whichever outcome factually occurs. Forster’s republican idealization of the connection between objective necessity and public opinion thus appears as a mere reflex to the performance of political power. In the fourth letter of his ‘‘Sketches,’’ this uncomfortable proximity between the revolutionary public opinion and a totalitarian state is clearly evident.21 This letter compares the Revolution to a ghost—an Irrlicht or a ‘‘mysterious apparition’’22—which, upon further examination, is only a swarm of fireflies. This analogy would be available for interpretations that are not specifically authorized by Forster, but the ghost is said to demonstrate the equality (both legal equality and in terms of reason) of all individuals before the Revolution. He goes so far as to demote individual actions that prove to be at odds with the presupposed teleological course of the Revolution to the status of ‘‘eccentricities’’ that will ultimately be corrected (615). Any ‘‘eccentricity’’ that acts against the public opinion is a mere aberration to the overpowering necessity of the Revolution. Forster’s literary persona, by contrast, who affirms the historical rationality of the Revolution from the outside and a posteriori, appears to stand alone, eccentric to what he describes. Thus, via an authorial mediation—as the one who speaks in its name but is not part of it—Forster proclaims the revolutionary public opinion as the immediate voice of reason. But this declared identity of ‘‘revolution,’’ ‘‘opinion,’’ and ‘‘reason’’ also exposes that which it declares as an arbitrary positing and an external rationalization, entirely beyond systematic causal comprehension. Forster’s entirely consequent next paragraph goes on to reiterate the unanimity of the public opinion and, going even further, portrays the ‘‘democratic’’ state under the rule of public opinion as a security-and-surveillance state: This activation of the powers of comprehension (due to the exigencies of the Revolution), which we owe to the democratic form of government and, emerging

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from the aforementioned homogeneousness (Gleichartigkeit) of the present generation, the security and permanence of the Republic can both be inferred with the greatest degree of probability. The principles of republican freedom have struck all the deeper roots with us everywhere, the more they have been simplified, thereby allowing them to be assimilated by those at all levels of understanding. In France there are at least five hundred thousand persons who keep watch over the ideas of every citizen and the presumptuousness of every public official. Who under these conditions would dare to even feign humility by bowing more deeply than the others? (615)

The falseness of the feudal court may be an implicit target of this passage, which Forster would like to see exorcised through this extreme model of authentic publicity, but a radicalized version of public opinion may actually end up emulating and surpassing it. The public sphere emerges here with absolute purity as a phenomenon of mass conspiracy and, implicitly, of mass decapitation: Gleichartigkeit is not just the Revolution’s precondition but also its telos. Public opinion, which Locke’s law of opinion had conceived as a latent normative force, is perfectly unified through the perfected uniformity of surveillance and terror. Under these conditions, public opinion tends toward a manifest, many-eyed surveillance of all over all. In such a total state, however, in which none may lift their heads, even the point of the surveillance is defeated to the extent that, at the limit of perfect and preemptive surveillance, there will no longer be anything left to see. This ‘‘perfection’’ of public opinion would thus return to an even more sublime form of latency in which the very form of law and all legal norms are sublated within the immediacy of the law of opinion. Like the emperor’s new clothes of the famous parable, the ultimate revolutionary manifestation of public opinion can only reveal itself invisibly, as the ultimate illusion.

Wieland’s ‘‘Conversations Under Four Eyes’’ The perplexing argumentative strategy of Wieland’s dialogue on public opinion can be partly explained by reading the preface that accompanies the collected dialogues: the 1798 introduction to the Gespra¨che unter vier Augen (literally ‘‘Conversations Under Four Eyes’’) foregrounds opinion’s problematic public aspect in a series of indications of the coercive conditions under which the private dialogues take place. More than private, the title

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qualifies them as intimate, and this intimacy also provides the rationale for the peculiar form or formlessness of the dialogues. Direct, decisive, ‘‘public’’ declarations are avoided as unbecoming to an intimate conversation, and for this reason it is difficult to locate anything that could be called the definitive expression of a fixed opinion. The fiction of a private, intimate, or even quasi-conspiratorial conversation shrouds the dialogues in a veil of provisionality that undermines the ability of the interlocutors to represent stable positions. The fictive private character of Wieland’s published conversations permits him to publicly model a mode of discourse that would normally never see the light of day. The dialogues’ public and overtly political content is also thereby politically shielded by the assertion of privacy. Wieland publicly mimes the nebulous form of private conversation; he guards the opinions expressed and disingenuously disqualifies their public aspect: Two friends, who believe themselves to be alone, do not worry about being misunderstood or falsely interpreted. Instead each speaks exactly as he thinks and has the assurance that his friend, even if he is not of the same opinion, or if he views the object of conversation from a different perspective or in a different light, will at least concede to him the same freedom of thought (Gedankenfreyheit) to which he also holds himself entitled.23

Wieland positions his text in a private sphere in which thoughts and opinions are ‘‘free’’ from the coercive pressure of public opinion, but his specific claim for the private character of the dialogues also makes them intrinsically public, and not only for the supplemental reason that they were later published. Private opinion and intimate conversation are—similarly to the argument of Habermas’ Structural Transformation, but with a drastic tonal difference—the unlocalizable extrainstitutional medium of public opinion. The public sphere proper, on the other hand, is represented in terms of the inauthenticity of ‘‘misunderstanding’’—accidental and intentional ‘‘misinterpretation.’’ The preconditions for freedom of opinion and of communicative rationality and thus of an authentic public opinion and public sphere are characterized after the Revolution as an unspoken contract between friends, an understanding based in friendship that guarantees the possibility of mutual understanding. This pact of friendship is depicted as a supplement to the social contract and extraneous to positive law. Friendship belongs to the pre-political sphere of the law of opinion, and everything said or done under the auspices of its contract may later prove to be politically

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illegitimate—as paranoid as it is autonomous and on the way to conspiracy and insurrection as much as toward consensus. ‘‘Freedom of thought’’ (Gedankenfreyheit) is the name of the reciprocal right that each interlocutor grants to the other. This mutual giving up of rights, in which each speaker gives up his unconditional right to be right, is presented by Wieland as the virtual precondition of private speech within civil society. A peculiar secretiveness thus accompanies and guarantees the very possibility of the direct, ‘‘sincere’’ discourse: each one grants to the other the right to which he holds himself entitled (wozu er sich selbst berechtigt ha¨lt), but his private right of opinion is liminally and immanently public because it is latently procedural and contractual. This system of formal equality, in which each recognizes the rights and property of the others as the limit of his own, is the liberal principle of civil society itself,24 applied within the spheres of knowledge and discourse. Knowledge in this sense, as opposed to a scientific model of the progressive advancement of truth, becomes privatized and subjectivized, and this form of subjective knowledge is additionally qualified as ‘‘opinion.’’ Such ‘‘knowledge’’ cannot be held to any standard of truth or correctness, but is instead merely held, perhaps ‘‘exchanged’’ or ‘‘debated,’’ but only within the confines of a Forsterian law of equality under which no one sticks his head above the others to assert a certain set of beliefs. In 1798 the private right of opinion appears as a tenuous guarantee of security, meant to defend the individual (or in this case the author) against false incrimination and persecution. It also seeks to secure the state against the public threat that individual words might otherwise carry: But even without this mutual consideration [inherent to the bond of friendship], the nature of a conversation ‘‘under four eyes’’ itself provides a certain security that cannot be found anywhere else, and which could hardly be greater even in a mere conversation with one’s self (Selbstgespra¨ch); and two interlocutors unfailing say many things that would either be unthinkable in the presence of a third, or else at least would not be so frankly and freely spoken.25

Wieland speaks of the security (eine gewisse Sicherheit) that is experienced in a conversation ‘‘under four eyes,’’ but his overall depiction is marked by unmistakable traces of paranoia. This insecurity is expressed perhaps the most vividly in the title itself, ‘‘Under Four Eyes’’: the idea of such an ‘‘eyecount’’ appears as a safeguard against all of the other unknown eyes that are

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not supposed to be watching. Counting eyes without reference to those who see through them further implies a kind of organic disintegration, a disjuncture between watchful eyes and speaking mouths. This kind divisibility and self-suspicion is further multiplied and internalized in the regression of ‘‘conversation’’ (Gespra¨ch) to ‘‘conversation with oneself’’ (Selbstgespra¨ch). The ‘‘certain security’’ of which Wieland speaks is therefore not a ‘‘certain security’’ but rather ‘‘a certain [meaning uncertain] security.’’ Such ‘‘security’’ is not secure at all but is at best a probable or possible security, a temporary, intimate, and intermittent security, which may also cause the conversation under four eyes to appear extrovert, ‘‘compulsive and indiscrete’’ (ru¨cksichtslos, unzuru¨ckhaltend) in its overall character. The paranoid side of Wieland’s idea of conversation becomes even more obvious in the next paragraph, which introduces the possibility of an eavesdropper who is listening in (ein Lauscher an der Wand). This listener, an unseen hearer, is a figure for the author (who, as it turns out, was hiding in the bushes), and thus the entire text of Wieland’s dialogues emerges under the sign of surveillance. The publication and publicity of the private exchange of opinions is thereby conceived as an unauthorized supplement. The author gives only a rather weak justification for breaching the privacy of the spoken conversations: unwritten conversations are not only politically threatening and threatened, they are fluid and impermanent, inherently subject to the fundamental structural threat of their dissolution ‘‘in the ocean . . . that has for millennia irretrievably devoured so much wisdom and foolishness without leaving even the slightest trace’’ (31:9). Intimate conversation is guaranteed to suffer this fate if its ‘‘airy veil’’ (luftige Hu¨lle) is not given the ‘‘lasting body’’ of written form.26 The violation of the privacy of conversation is thus justified by an invocation of posterity; only by proxy does the ‘‘author’’ assume responsibility for the content of his text: the authorial eavesdropper describes himself in the third person as the mere scribe and editor (Herausgeber) of the conversations. As an ear-witness, he alone can vouch for the good intentions of the two friends, and he declares his willingness to step in for them in the case that anyone should take offense at their opinions (seine . . . Freunde im Nothfall zu vertreten). He takes on this responsibility all the more willingly because he feels certain (da er sich versichert ha¨lt) that no unprejudiced reader will find anything in the conversations to make him wish that they had been not been published.

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The condition of the text’s publishability is circularly defined as ‘‘the public opinion itself’’ in the form of a posterity defined as the private–public assessment of readers. Within this idea of posterity, Wieland may believe that reason will rule by guaranteeing that whatever is forgotten deserves to be forgotten. But this ‘‘literary public sphere,’’ which determines what lasts and survives, is essentially determined, no matter how much Habermas might wish otherwise, by private and anonymous forces (somewhere between fama and a capitalistically structured market). In this preface, Wieland imagines the forces of posterity as reasonable, if not identical with reason itself, but there is no reason to think he actually believes it: the idea of a rational posterity may merely be a part of the fiction that explains the existence and publication of the dialogues. And in either case, Wieland’s interpretation deprives the public sphere of its transparency and ultimately also of its publicity. His posterity system is transparently based on the possibly disingenuous claim that the public opinion will always decide correctly in what it decides to remember. Fama is thereby again identified with fatum, and Wieland produces a large-scale providential version of infallibility of public opinion that Forster had proclaimed. This version of the public sphere, including and especially the published sphere, is governed by unrevealed reasons and remains a closed conversation under four eyes. In Wieland’s preface, Forster’s all-powerful fama is made flesh, and written texts are also claimed to unstably move—to follow the figure—by word of mouth: the condition for their public endurance is their popularity, which is itself shown to be a result, rightly or wrongly, of private factors. To the extent that the survival of all words is determined by latent and unrevealed factors—mere rumors inascertainably mixed with reasons—Wieland’s model of posterity makes the written word oral, mortal, and susceptible to the same dissolution and unreliability as speech in the ocean of time.27 This conception further allows the fama form of the ‘‘literary’’ word—which may include all words—to retain untimely and incalculable potentials, which, for better and worse, will never be entirely comprehended by rational or scientific discourse.

Wieland’s ‘‘On Public Opinion’’ Even in the literary and scholarly world, in which reputation and authority and therefore also party do not have quite so much influence, because this world does

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Manifestations of the Public Sphere not offer such great rewards or threaten such great punishments as in the political world—even in this world, as long as there are parties that tie people together, producing great quantities of writing and counting many good heads among them, it is ultimately not easy to tell how the nation or even the scholarly part of it judges a particular kind of philosophy or writing. It often appears that the awarded acclaim is general and uncontested, but disfavor and dissatisfaction are in fact silently brewing. So many critiques are made in secret against publicly praised books and authors that their continued dominance in the end only rests upon the reticence, laziness or fearfulness of those who think differently. ¨ ffentliche Meinung’’ ¨ ber die O c h r i s t i a n g a r v e , ‘‘U (On Public Opinion)’’ (322–323)

Wieland’s preface qualifies and shields the content of his dialogues, but this content was already ambiguous on its own, thanks to its dialogical form and the deliberate inconclusiveness of its staged result. Despite and because of these multiple strategies of indirectness, however, there is still a lot to be said about his dialogue on public opinion. Opinion once again emerges— assuming it is not just fama—as a sphere of normative and nonpublic social control, a meta-nomos of public opinion as posterity that remains structurally analogous with Forster’s extreme revolutionary conception as well as with Herodotus’ concept of nomos and Locke’s law of opinion (both discussed in later chapters). Such conceptualizations represent an overwhelming obstacle to the attempt, epitomized by Habermas but not restricted to him, to define the public sphere as truly public in the sense of universal participation in reasoned debates on topics of general concern. But Wieland, like Habermas (but without resorting to the explicit codification of the opinion process within identifiable legal-procedural norms), seeks to draw the public opinion out of its latency and mediality, bringing it out of its supposed self-evidence and into the open in a way that tends to expose the ideological motivation of any presumption of its sheer rationality or irrationality. The problem of the latency of public opinion (which doubles as a problem of its temporality) is addressed early in Wieland’s dialogue: of the two interlocutors in Wieland’s text, Egbert and Sinibald, it is Egbert who at first seems the most doubtful that the new term ‘‘public opinion’’ actually refers to a real entity. He doubts that there is any such thing as public opinion, and even Sinibald, who had been less apparently critical in his use the term,

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now admits that it is often a mere phantasm of language—a fiction, projection, or qualitas occulta: It would make me look foolish enough if it emerged on this occasion that I did not know any more about this matter than you do, and that I, like so many others, have believed in a public opinion, have spoken of it and ascribed to it who-knows-which magical powers, without thinking of anything definite at all, as one tends to do in the case of idioms that one imagines to be universally comprehensible despite the fact that, among of ten people, each of them imagines something different. In any event, the public opinion belongs among those things of which it is easier to say what they are not than what they are. (31:310)

This is first justification for the dialogue to follow: because of its opaqueness as well as its self-evidence, the new idea of public opinion demands critical analysis. Sinibald is called upon first to give an explanation of his understanding of the term. In his attempt at a positive definition, he designates it as ‘‘an opinion that has gradually taken root among an entire people (but primarily among those classes that make up the greater proportion whenever they work en masse), and has taken the upper hand to such an degree that it is encountered everywhere’’ (31:311–312). Public opinion is thus ‘‘popular opinion’’; it is a widespread norm of thought and behavior within a culture or society, which has no relation to a discursive process oriented toward the discovery of truth. Opinion is also determined—an indispensable aspect of its specifically modern character—as a phenomenon of masses and classes. But it is not a simple ‘‘majority opinion’’ in the sense that it would represent a measurable number of declared opinions. This kind of opinion predominates in latency; it is imagined as subliminal in its relation to the actual opinions of individuals. As an unconscious mass phenomenon, ubiquitous and omnipresent, it is an opinion that has, without anyone taking notice, taken possession of the majority of heads, and even in cases when this opinion does not dare to make itself heard, it nevertheless announces itself, like a beehive which will soon produce a swarm (der in kurzem schwa¨rmen wird), through an ever-increasing murmuring (Gemurmel). (31:311–312)

‘‘Unnoticed’’ (unvermerkt), invisible, and unspoken, in Sinibald’s words, public opinion represents a society’s ‘‘mood’’ (Stimmung) or ‘‘ground bass’’ (Grundton) (31:329). It sustains itself as a form of gossip or rumor, a fama

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after Virgil’s muster, a hum and an ever-increasing murmur that can never be localized to a single voice. This latent factor waits until some chance sets it off, so it can unexpectedly realize its (revolutionary) potentials: ‘‘At this point it only needs the accidental introduction of little air, and the whole thing will violently erupt, giving a new shape to whole continents’’ (31:312). But Egbert, and consequently Wieland, does not go along with this view of public opinion as a latent mass phenomenon. Egbert sees this definition as a deceptive mystification. There is no public opinion and no majority, he argues, except through the actions of individuals: ‘‘That which is said to be the public opinion is only the opinion and the desire of a small number of heads, whose purpose it is to make the people into the tool of their intentions’’ (31:312). According to Egbert’s (at this point) Machiavellian reasoning, the so-called public opinion is only the tool of private intentions.28 For him ‘‘public opinion’’ is a name for the sphere of lobbying, political machination, and fanaticism (31:313). He expresses the disillusionment of the Enlightenment, stating that those who think that they can fill the world with the light of their genius are only consoling themselves with a ‘‘complacent self-deception’’ (31:313). The intelligentsia, he argues, made up of ‘‘Voltairen and Rousseaus, Montesquieus and Malbys,’’ may write for centuries—forever—without the people taking any notice (31:313). Egbert thus articulates and amplifies a different latency, that of the Republic of Letters (that is, ‘‘rational-critical discourse’’). Common opinions and superstitions, which popular enlightenment (Volksaufkla¨rung) hopes to gradually correct, are pessimistically portrayed as completely entrenched and impenetrable. The ineffectual ideas of the Enlightenment are counterbalanced by a public opinion defined as public ignorance, again represented as a powder keg waiting to explode, a behemoth, a ‘‘monstrous snowball (that) becomes ever more terrible as it rolls forth’’ (31:314). Compared to Habermas, both speakers would fall on the side of historical pessimism, but Egbert’s anti-Enlightenment position goes further—too far for Sinibald. This difference of opinion leads to a disagreement that almost causes the conversation to end in hostility. It resumes, however, with the agreement to make a second attempt to define public opinion. Sinibald proposes that, like the intelligentsia (Aufkla¨rer), who have been provisionally excluded from the first definitions, the opposite extreme of ‘‘the sansculottes’’ also should not be counted, except as ‘‘secret internal enemies’’ of the state (31:318). Sinibald describes this impoverished class as ‘‘the scum,

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the sediment and the excrement of all of the other classes combined’’ (31:318). The ‘‘hopeless misery’’ (hoffnungsloses Elend) of this outcast class (described in a double sense as indispensable) will always lead them to make a common cause ‘‘with the declared enemies of all laws and civil order’’ (31:318). Poverty and stability are, in other words, not compatible in the long term, and if the sentiments of these drifters and bottom-feeders ever comes to stand for ‘‘the majority,’’ it will mean the end (and the utter indictment) of the civil order; the ability of the lowest class to voice its opinion means the onset of civil war. Egbert goes on to question the principles that motivate the exclusion of both the intelligentsia and the sans-culottes. Why, he asks, are only some members of a society considered representative of its opinion? This provokes Sinibald to revise his exclusions and present a new hypothesis: only a small minority among any given class may be able to raise themselves ‘‘above the narrow and foggy haze of their own estate’’ (31:321). This new definition does not depend on the degree of enlightenment or education of the public, nor upon the truth or error of its opinions. The individualistic consequences of this model are displaced by a reintroduction of the apparently hot topic of popular enlightenment (Volksaufkla¨rung). Egbert repeats his claim that errors and superstitions can never be fully suppressed (31:322); Sinibald reiterates his earlier position and asserts an exaggerated version of Enlightenment orthodoxy: in the course of epochs and numerous ‘‘revolutions’’ (in the cyclical sense of antiquity), error must eventually give way to truth (31:323). For Sinibald and the Enlightenment, therefore, in stark contrast with the Egbert’s more post-Revolutionary understanding of public opinion, opinion is not a revolutionary subject but only the object of revolutions. But Egbert, along the lines of Forster, would see the public opinion, if not as a kind of collective subjectivity, then at least as a revolutionary potential. In response to Sinibald’s efforts to portray opinion as the object of revolutions, Egbert presents a new definition of public opinion that removes it even further from the categories of the Enlightenment. At this point in the dialogue, following an unexplained reversal, the previously skeptical Egbert becomes a proponent of public opinion. He describes opinion as a common feeling, a sense of the collective good, of ‘‘things upon which all depend’’ (31:324). The miracle (Wunder) of the Reformation serves as the main example of how a common but unarticulated feeling, rather than a reasoned

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consensus or deliberate agreement, can lead to fundamental transformations and upheavals. Egbert sees the Reformation as the result of a provisional alliance based on an agreement in spirit; his evidence for this, which does not speak well for the hopes of the revolutionary public opinion, is that the spiritual coalition responsible for the Reformation ‘‘fell apart into a number of sects which began to persecute one another furiously as soon as they were allowed the time to perceive that they were of differing opinion about the content of their respective opinions or beliefs’’ (31:325). The underlying causal factor called ‘‘public opinion’’ is characterized as an affective alliance that masks fundamental differences of belief and opinion. According to this rather Hobbesian model of the Reformation, particular differences were made volatile by the achievement of the common goal, releasing the schismatic potentials of the free play of opinions. But within the modern state and civil society, Egbert continues, the public opinion has stabilized and normalized, balanced, as he puts it, between hope and despair. In constituted societies, public opinion is the common feeling of oppression, acknowledged or unacknowledged, and the corresponding desire for liberation (31:325–26). But Sinibald counters by completing the Hobbesian implications of Egbert’s model: the ‘‘common hope of liberation,’’ as the example of the Reformation suggests, is the mask of sheer particularism and a return to the war of all against all. The ‘‘public opinion’’ has no communal potential, but is only a factor of individual self-interest. ‘‘Public opinion,’’ in its revolutionary form, is defined by the collective anticipation of a state in which everyone is on their own. Each individual weighs the personal benefits or losses that may emerge ‘‘from the complete dissolution of the state’’ (31:327). In the Revolution, everyone is sovereign. For Sinibald, however, this revolutionary situation, from which Egbert had derived public opinion’s primary function, is the antithesis of public opinion, because genuine public opinion can only exist under conditions of relative security and stability. From here it is only a short step to conceive public opinion as the (latent) stabilizing force within the state: Sinibald adopts Egbert’s idea that opinion is poised between hope and despair, but he moderates these poles. On the one hand, there is ‘‘an indefinite yearning to have it better,’’ which is common to all people; this longing is said to motivate ‘‘a secret tendency toward change’’ (31:329). The counterweight to this progressive tendency is sheer inertia (Tra¨gheit) and the force of habit, combined with the fear of

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the unknown consequences of change. This force of habit is, claims Sinibald, the strongest (if not the only) foundation, ‘‘upon which the internal security of most states rests’’ (31:330). Habit is the foundation of national security, which, as its negative consequence, also makes slavery possible, in addition to every other inherited form of oppression. And this in turn implies (though Sinibald himself does not go quite so far) that the stability of a state says nothing about its degree of justice or injustice. Stability only indicates effective habituation; the unwritten law of ‘‘public opinion’’ is enforced through ‘‘the power of habit’’ (31:330). Sinibald avoids the troubling conclusion that ‘‘culture’’ (Kultur) itself may be founded upon violence, slavery, and oppression, but he does acknowledge the severe limitations of ‘‘culture’’ in the narrower sense of Bildung to substantially impact the cultural inheritances of violence and inequality. Such pessimism, if it appears in Wieland’s text at all, reveals his thinking to be implicitly at odds with the idea of Enlightenment, as well as with later historical master plans such as Romanticism or Idealism. Sinibald develops a dualistic understanding, according to which public opinion is shaped by the unconscious calculations of self-interest that produce either a latent progressivism or a latent conservatism. Egbert responds to the implicit but dire pessimism of this model: ‘‘You have . . . caused a terrible ray of light to fall upon the interior of our condition’’ (31:333). Egbert accuses Sinibald, who elsewhere seems to represent the Enlightenment, of an excessively transparent rationalization of the human condition. The problem with Sinibald’s thesis does not lie in its inaccuracy, but in its shameless depiction of the abjection and uncertainty of human existence. Sinibald has cynically exposed the naked truth of self-interest as definitive of every common interest. Egbert is blinded by Sinibald’s Hobbesian perspective and its incompatibility with the enlightened ideals he typically advocates. According to Egbert, Sinibald’s argument opens up a disturbing view of the state of (human) nature. Sinibald attempts to qualify his position: the Hobbesian infrastructure of society is, he asserts, only a kind of cognitive norm, an experimental control that makes it possible to perceive the efficacy of rights and laws. Analysis conducted in the remembrance of a lawless state of nature prevents us from being lulled into false security or being tormented by untimely fear and panic terror (Panischer Schrecken) (31:333). Consoled by our own apparent distance from the lawless state of nature—

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defined by lack of security with regard to ‘‘the theft of our civil rights, of our personal freedom, our honor, our life’’ (31:334)—this relative security makes us recognize that things can still get worse (31:334). This conception reconfigures the public opinion, which must also presuppose some kind of knowledge about the real state of things relative to a state of nature, and, on this basis, Sinibald again attempts to define public opinion (within civil society) as conservative and counterrevolutionary. This pushes Egbert back into revolutionary mode, immediately characterizing this interpretation as ‘‘tame’’ and ‘‘passive.’’ His additional statement that he accepts Sinibald’s definition ‘‘without quandary’’ can only be sarcasm (31:334). Sinibald doesn’t seem to notice and proceeds to sketch an even more idealistic conception of public opinion, which designates it as a force that always acts for the common good at every possible opportunity. The strange and providential opportunism of this position—‘‘as soon as the right instance appears . . . , as soon as the opportunity is there . . .’’ (31:334–35)—looks like evasiveness with respect to Egbert’s obvious skepticism. Sinibald invokes an uncertain set of future conditions, under which individuals may take uncompromised action for the collective good, but Egbert replies, again with sarcasm, that these ‘‘conditions’’ are identical with the moral and civic state that they presuppose: ‘‘assuming that the great majority in the state is not made up of beggars and bandits’’ (31:335). Because he went along with Sinibald’s excluded inclusion of the state of nature, according to which pure self-interest would rule without respect for rights of others, Egbert is forced to admit that public opinion in Sinibald’s sense—as the sublation (Aufhebung) of the state of nature—is the precondition of civil society and its limited possibility of ‘‘progress’’ in ‘‘the course of things’’ (31:335). Having gained or extorted this concession, Sinibald leaves Egbert entirely behind. He goes on to make a rhetorically stylized and programmatic plea for Enlightenment. The peculiar exaggeration and the placement of this speech within the dialogue make it doubtful that Sinibald’s words in any way reflect Wieland’s own opinion. Sinibald defines Enlightenment as the ‘‘progress of culture toward humanity’’ (Fortgange der Kultur zur Humanita¨t), which occurs whenever ‘‘culture is able to almost keep pace with abuses’’ (31:336). Culture ‘‘on the way to humanity’’ must compete to keep up with the injustices and abuses characteristic of the continuation of the state of nature within society. Culture competes, Sinibald claims, by correcting the

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doublespeak (Wortspiele) that allows unjust powers to hold sway by stamping ‘‘injustice as justice, justice as injustice’’ and by declaring ‘‘the dissemination of truth,’’ which unjust powers fear above all else, as a crime (31:337). Reason must be brought to light with the help of the arts (aller Musenku¨nste) (31:337) and introduced into the wider sphere of ‘‘culture’’ so it can achieve ‘‘the greatest possible popularity in every conceivable shape and appearance’’ (31:337). The project of ‘‘the popularization of reason’’ is formulated with painful explicitness, and does not hesitate to include a looming contradiction: the dissemination of the truth can only occur by way of untruth, in the ambiguous forms of art and metaphor, ‘‘in every conceivable shape and guise’’ (unter allen ersinnlichen Gestalten und Einkleidungen).29 ‘‘A number of corrected concepts and facts will then come into circulation’’ (31:337), he continues, and his hymn to reason culminates in an invocation of ‘‘the most irrefutable utterances of reason’’ (31:337). This personification of reason herself as a kind of allegorical figure can only be a parody or the reflection of Sinibald’s underlying desperation. He performs what he describes in an absurdly emphatic attempt to prophesy what he hopes to popularize. The accomplishment of this Sinibaldian Enlightenment is advertised as ‘‘a contented overview of the true constitution of all things human, . . . which alone can help lead us out of the labyrinth of life’’ (31:338); the key to achieving and universalizing this perspective is bringing it to ‘‘the middle classes’’ (31:338). Once Enlightenment reaches the middle class and continues to spread downward, the abuses of the rulers will no longer be tolerated, and social inequality will be automatically eliminated: ‘‘Why should it be surprising that . . . thousands and tens of thousands of voices are finally raised from all sides, loudly enough not to be overheard, against superstition, despotism and privileged lawlessness, which are the first causes of public misery?’’ (31:339). Consequently, for the second time in the dialogue, the ‘‘great majority’’ is not defined as the source of public opinion, but as an object of education. The true public opinion remains to be created (as it always does), but until then, it is identical with the project and progress of enlightenment. Despite Sinibald’s unconvincing advocacy of this utopian prospect, his brand of idealism continues to define the horizons of what is still called democracy. Egbert, however, pays little attention to the (minimal) theoretical content of Sinibald’s ideological perorations. All he notices is the strong rhetoric and enthusiasm, reflected in ‘‘a certain serious, forceful and often

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even exaggerated and caustic tone,’’ which appeals to him not because of what it preaches, but rather because of its practical potential to persuade others (31:340). And Sinibald as well, forgetful of his previous emphasis on the stabilizing nature of public opinion, now proclaims it as the legitimate child of the Revolution. The passage that follows marks a return to public opinion’s possibilities in a revolutionary context in which it can come into its own: And, at such a point in time, in which the spirit of a people long oppressed by aristocratic and monarchical despotism, begins to shake all of its chains and is about to tear them apart one by one—at such a time, should not the public opinion naturally assume a clearer form and finally let itself be so unmistakably known that only a practically inconceivable blindness could prevent the powerful from seeing that it is high time to strike out on different paths, if the catastrophe, which they themselves fear the most, is to be prevented. (31:341)

The public opinion, no longer a latent stabilizing force, takes on a more manifest and determinate shape on the eve of the Revolution, when it reveals itself and appears as a subject of autonomous action. It announces itself, before the Revolution, as a message to rulers; it is the handwriting on the wall. This conception leads back to the paradoxes and contradictions of Forster’s ‘‘Sketches,’’ which ‘‘reveal’’ public opinion, even at the height of its power, as a latent and invisible force. The revelation or ‘‘taking-shape’’ of public opinion in actions and decisions is no true revelation because its causal and instrumental role can only be asserted retrospectively, and the ‘‘handwriting on the wall’’ would likewise only be a prophecy, subject to interpretation, within a course of events that is interpreted as ‘‘fateful.’’ Egbert calls attention to this latency problem by defining the public opinion exclusively according to popularity (regardless of what it popularizes). Public opinion does not depend, he argues, upon source or authorship (‘‘whoever first gave rise to an opinion’’), nor upon the cogency of its rhetorical articulation (‘‘whoever knows how to best assert it’’), but rather upon the degree of its adequacy to the current political situation: ‘‘In order for it to earn the attribute of public, it must be appropriate to the spirit and current mood of the nation; such an opinion would be constituted in such a way that, as soon as it is uttered aloud and made known, it is found to be illuminating to the greater part of the same nation and is accepted by them with applause’’ (31:343). This peculiarly deterministic (and entirely unHabermasian) form of publicity does not conceive the realm of public things

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as a static or simply accessible set of contents, but instead views the public opinion and the public sphere as the result of an a priori predetermination of what can publicly appear at all. Under the conditions of the modern state, that which is able to appear in public can only be a reflection of the public. The public opinion decides, selects, and discriminates among the individual voices that it ratifies, the opinions that it permits to circulate and survive. Smaller publics could still exist as ‘‘states within the state’’ (addressed in ‘‘Problems of the Intelligentsia: Wieland’s ‘Secret of the Cosmopolitical Order’ ’’), but they would also be internally subject to this same dynamic, and their success would be determined by the larger horizon of a posterity ruled by public opinion. The voices of Sinibald and Egbert, which were difficult to differentiate from the beginning, start to become more confused, at least if one tries to read them as coherent positions that each speaker represents. The nebulousness of the characters reflects that of their opinions, and no systematic result emerges. For all of the disagreement between the speakers, Wieland fails (a failure that can also be read as a deliberate exemplification of the problem of opinion) to differentiate their perspectives coherently. In the end, the ‘‘conversation’’ (Gespra¨ch) may appear to revert to authorial ‘‘rumination’’ (Selbstgespra¨ch), or the dialogue’s unresolved dissonances may deliberately reflect the limitations of the two interlocutors. According to the latter reading, Wieland does not idealize his figures as the representatives of coherent viewpoints, but uses them to show the lifeworld realities of conversation. He does not, in any case, allow the reader to differentiate between two competing options: Sinibald and Egbert thus represent the extreme fallibility of argument and debate, even under the ideal conditions of a ‘‘conversation under four eyes’’ or Selbstgespra¨ch. Wieland does not abstract the arguments from the conversation in a way that would allow them to be depicted as fixed and delineated positions, and he is even further from actually designating any of these positions as his own. The interlocutors’ ‘‘positions,’’ though often bitterly opposed, appear largely opportunistic, mobile, and developing. On this basis, Wieland’s dialogue may not be able to coherently achieve its own rhetorical ends because the attempt to represent the lifeworld reality of conversation backfires, making it possible for Wieland’s own text to be mistaken for the pointless vacillation he represents. In the attempt to model something like a ‘‘productive exchange of ideas,’’ he

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ends up portraying the essentially solipsistic economy of opinion in a ‘‘conversation under four eyes.’’30 Sinibald continues with a summary of the revolutionary conception of the public opinion: public opinion decides in the state of exception (im Nothfalle, 31:343), except that the public, like Carl Schmitt’s sovereign, can by definition only decide for order: But as soon as the people is allowed to catch its breath and has returned from its excesses and paroxysms and has become heartily weary of the incessant conspiracies, proscriptions, denunciations and executions—in short of all of the revolutionary nuisance—now it yearns for security and quiet: Because the first thing that can be rightly qualified as a decided public opinion is the common conviction that nothing can bring the disintegrated state back to life in any form, except the submission to a government based on law and resolute allegiance to it. (31:344)

The resurrection of the state depends upon a decision in which the public and those who dictate to it—the dictators of the public opinion—concur to reestablish some kind of legal order. The collision of forces, for Sinibald, must reach a compromise to establish some kind of order, and the Revolution is thus bracketed as a mere exception, a passing phase that will not result in any truly revolutionary change. Egbert, who becomes quite withdrawn at the end of the dialogue, affirms Sinibald’s conception without noting its counterrevolutionary implications or its univocal determination in favor any arbitrary order. Nor does he note Sinibald’s Christological validation of the ‘‘resurrected’’ state, whose reestablishment marks ‘‘the true time of the beginning of a new order of things’’ (31:344). Using a veiled analogy between the revolutionary period and the time of Christ’s death and resurrection, Sinibald conflates restoration and revolution and binds them together in the idea of a new ‘‘true time’’—a new age and perhaps a new calendar. Egbert overlooks all of this only to lament that many states and rulers do not realize that it is to their advantage— ‘‘even out of mere self-interest and consideration for their own safety and self-preservation’’ (31:345)—to listen to and comply with the force of public opinion. Unfortunately the rulers often do not listen, but instead use their fear of public opinion as the excuse for crackdowns (thereby aggravating the situation). Or else they procrastinate, using adverse public opinion as a reason for delaying reform until such time as the authority and security of

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the state is more firmly established. Egbert, still noticeably more pessimistic than Sinibald, sees this as an impasse that can only be resolved by overthrowing oppressive regimes. Sincerely intended reforms are not to be expected, he says, ‘‘any more than the man in the moon’’ (31:346), as long as the old regime holds power. Sinibald has more hope for enlightened absolutism, and asserts that benevolent rulers can exist. This immediately becomes a matter of historical examples and precedents, which Sinibald would rather avoid, giving Egbert a feeling of vindication. The latter argues that so-called benevolent rulers are at best bureaucratic and procrastinating, pretending to be occupied with important affairs of state to avoid the sore subject of social inequality. Sinibald defends himself by invoking the massive changes and upheavals of the last years: the old historical standards no longer apply because despotism has now revealed its own intrinsic ‘‘deficit’’ (31:348). For Sinibald, the lesson of the Revolution is the bankruptcy of despotism, and he believes that others will have learned the same lesson, which will lead to a general recalculation of the state’s interest. Egbert replies that tyrannical means will remain sufficient to tyrannical ends for a long time because the calculations of tyrants are always shortsighted. Anything that has lasted can just as well continue to last, even if the bill comes due in future generations. Sinibald agrees that this is exactly the problem, but the obvious risks of tyrannical rule should be enough to bring about its end: ‘‘The error is only that this kind of calculation is so uncertain’’ (31:349). Sinibald presents the analogy of a poorly built house that will collapse on the next generation. If a state wishes to have any hopes for the future, Sinibald argues, its worldly ‘‘regents’’ will no longer build so shortsightedly. Only in view of humanity can justice and wisdom found states that will be able to endure. The popularization of precisely this conviction—that states must be governed in view of a long-term future rather than by short-sighted consumptive, revolutionary, or quasi-eschatological millenarianism—should be the goal of enlightenment. This change in the calculations is, argues Sinibald, ‘‘the only pure profit’’ that can be drawn from the events of the revolutionary period (31:349). This claim precedes the final exchanges of Wieland’s text and marks the limitations of Sinibald’s optimistic reading of history. He interprets the Revolution as a one-time-only event marking a fundamental and positive change in the strategies of power. But history would seem to have proved

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otherwise: rather than leading to a resolution, the revolutionary impasse only became aggravated in the course of time. Long-term planning may be just as destructive an ineffective as short-term consumption, while the ends and means of planning itself only became more complex, and the rule of self-interest went on to be fueled by industrial capitalism and its accompanying ideologies. Following the thesis of Koselleck (discussed in the next chapter): the fight became a fight over the plan for posterity, which, instead of establishing a long-term universal telos for Enlightenment, only raised the ideological stakes. Wieland’s dialogue only appears to offer a harmonious conclusion. The final exchanges are difficult to take at face value: Sinibald equates the voice of the people and the voice of reason and asserts that public law will follow accordingly. Public opinion thereby serves as the source and standard for all law and legitimacy. The universal law of reason will fuse itself with the highest law (of opinion), which will lead to a completely altered future, as the dialogue’s final words, spoken by Egbert, indicate. But the tone may still be that of disagreement: ‘‘It remains to be proven in the Nineteenth Century’’ (Das wird sich im neunzehnten Jahrhundert ausweisen) (31:351). Whether consoling optimism or muted sarcasm, the perspective of two centuries shifts them toward the latter. Taken neutrally, his words may mean ‘‘we shall see,’’ but they may also mean ‘‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’’ The dialogue’s final words can hardly represent a literal prognostication of what will happen in the coming century. They can only be understood as a moral admonishment and an invocation of the public opinion itself; the words will fulfill themselves only if they are heard and acted upon in a certain way. Wieland closes with a fiction whose ‘‘moral’’ is based on what should happen—assuming anyone reads the handwriting on the wall—regardless of whether it actually will. The final tone of the dialogue, to the degree that it can be ascertained, is thus plausibly one of resignation, and, on the other hand, attempts to convince readers and rulers that it is up to them to do better in the future. In this sense, Wieland does seem to believe that no political progress is possible except by way of the public opinion, but in his case this may be a cause for pessimism more than for optimism.

Parallels with Kant The decisive proof of the advancement of society through the transformation of opinion never emerged, but the paradoxes of rule remained.

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Wieland’s ‘‘conclusions’’ not only did not come true, they represent a parodic return to the ideas of the Enlightenment as expounded in Kant’s famous 1784 essay, ‘‘Was ist Aufkla¨rung?’’ (What is Enlightenment?). After the Revolution, in 1798, Sinibald reiterates and overstates Kant’s thesis by connecting reason and common sense (der allgemeine Menschenverstand) (31:350) with public opinion, but does not advocate any specific program for the enlightenment of public opinion. The dialogue’s conclusion thus falls behind its initial positions because public opinion is ultimately presumed to be a positive historical force that will take care of itself. Wieland’s figures are not alone in their lapse—regression or repression—which can perhaps be taken as an early warning of public opinion’s extreme susceptibility to ideology. Clearly adopting Kant’s terminology, Sinibald argues that Unmu¨ndigkeit (legal minority, voicelessness) and political exclusion will always remain, but it will only be immaturity ‘‘in the certain sense’’ (im gewissen Sinne) (31:350): whenever it comes to the weal or woe of the commonwealth, even the politically excluded will have ‘‘common sense’’ as their ‘‘guardian’’ (Vormund). Sinibald concludes that common sense (allgemeiner Menschenverstand) is identical with public opinion (o¨ffentliche Meinung), but Wieland’s staging of this final speech causes it to ring hollow. It is not only an obvious imitation, but also a parody of Kant. Even if it were possible to overlook the vagueness of the Sinibald’s final claims—which amount to the questionable platitude that the people know what is best for them—then his argument would still include a circularity by which public opinion dictates public opinion. This can be read as a mere tautology, or as an attempt to integrate the new and inflammatory concept of public opinion into a more docile and providential justification of what is and what happens. But Sinibald’s assertion that reason can and does rule automatically (thereby eliminating the need for the problematic historical detours required to bring any concrete enlightenment to actual subjects), despite its Kantian sound, flatly contradicts what Kant actually wrote. Sinibald thinks that enlightenment can rule immediately through the sentiments and self-interest of the majority, but for Kant the process of Enlightenment is gradual, dynamic, and mimetic, and though ‘‘the people’s way of thinking’’ (die Sinnesart des Volkes) certainly plays a role in this, Kant’s much-less-populist view takes the possibility of a wider dissemination of reason as the reflex of numerous forms of cultivation, originating from the interplay of the political and scholarly-critical public

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spheres.31 Sinibald’s conclusion, by contrast, does not even contain a minimal sense that a specific perspective and agenda are necessary if enlightenment is to occur, and his concluding invocation of the saving power of public opinion clearly read it as a providential force. The democraticegalitarian principles of the Revolution (often represented by Egbert) are supplanted by the fictive equality of everyone within a public opinion endowed with the voice of reason and understood as a providential force—the force of history itself—that can take care of itself without substantial social or governmental change. If this aspect of Sinibald’s final speech is clearly unsatisfactory, then this is not so much a result of its unresolved contradictions as due to its careless conflation of Enlightenment concepts with revolutionary ones. But another aspect of the conclusion of Wieland’s dialogue, which may be more productive, is the prognosticative element discussed at the end of the last section. In this sense—and regardless of how the final words are read—Wieland asserts the decisive cognitive value of the Revolution. This claim overlaps with the argumentation of Kant’s 1798 ‘‘Streit der Fakulta¨ten’’ (Conflict of the Faculties), which seeks to answer the old question of whether ‘‘the human race is engaged in a continual progression toward the better.’’32 Kant’s text is, as one would perhaps expect, more guarded (or at least differently guarded) than Wieland’s. Rather than making any concrete predictions about actual historical progress, Kant’s considerations pertain primarily to the role of prognostication itself in the making of history and the determination of the standards of historical progress. Specifically, Kant seeks to determine the condition of the possibility of historical progress as the preconditions for an a priori definition of history; this leads him to search for evidence within the human condition (predisposition, Anlage) as it has manifested itself in the world (356). Kant, like Wieland, looks to the French Revolution as his primary witness for the possibility of historical progress. But the evidence that Kant finds is not an aspect of actual events, nor does it take the form of a ‘‘lesson’’ based on specific successes or failures. The possibility of human progress in general is instead gauged by the public reaction to the Revolution. Kant conceives the ¨ ffentlichkeit) according to a theatrical analogy: the public ‘‘public arena’’ (O outside of France is a Publikum, an audience, and the possibility of historical progress reveals itself in the unselfish participation of this public:

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It is . . . the spectator’s way of thinking that gives itself away in public on the occasion of the spectacle of great transformations, which gives voice to a universal and yet unselfish identification with the players on the one side against those on the other, despite the fact that this display of partisanship could be extremely disadvantageous. (357, Kant’s emphasis)

The public affect called public opinion, by which the audience and the actors betray their participation in the grand play of world history, is decisive for Kant. The public opinion is not a representative of reason within history, but only its sheer unreasonable affect—contrary to the self-interest of the individual—make it a symptom and an index of historical progress. In a sharp break with the tradition represented by Wieland’s interlocutors, Kant defines true public opinion in the individual ability to identify beyond and against the reason dictated by self-interest. This disinterested view of the spectacle and the narrative of history is the anthropological a priori upon which all positive historical change depends. The unselfish sympathy of the spectators is a sign that politics are not only ruled by self-interest, but that other narratives are in play. The public opinion, for Kant, is not the reflection of the coercive collective force of private interests, nor is it produced by individual identification with the normative will of the majority. To the contrary, as a meaningful prognosticative element, public opinion must ‘‘give itself away,’’ betraying and exposing itself before the established norms of power and authority. Kant’s free public opinion betrays itself in a spontaneous display of solidarity, even to its own detriment, with the hopeful prospect of human progress. Kant emphasizes that this affective participation does not guarantee the how and when of actual progress; history will always be ruled by empirical exigencies (figured as a ‘‘roll of the dice’’), but public enthusiasm for the ideas of the Revolution provides an absolute guarantee because the idea of progress is demonstrably intrinsic to human nature (361). Kant’s breakthrough, compared to Wieland’s figuration of a Hobbesian inheritance, lies in his interpretation of opinion as a force that works against collective or general determinism: acting out of freedom, opinion determines the ends of humanity accordingly. Kant does not read public opinion in terms of its immediate influence on the outcome of the Revolution. For him, public opinion is construed upon a world-historical stage, and this stage, once constructed, is able to become, for the first time in the history of humanity, truly and eminently worldhistorical. In a strong break with the whole tradition of opinion (as well as

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with the tradition that dominated the next two centuries), opinion is no longer the internal force that holds communities together, nor is it a spurious causality that shapes political action and historical events. Instead it is a force that looks on, from the outside, necessarily external to the events, which provides a basis for their interpretation. This externalized public sphere and this model of history, to the extent that it gains influence, introduces a retrospective perspective within the present as a constant reminder (not without its own set of problems) that history is always made in view of posterity, in view of the reactions of outsiders and the long-term judgments of the world. Kant, in this regard similarly to Wieland, though for different reasons, sees the Revolution as a sign of the end of tyrannical rule as the form and symptom of political shortsightedness. If the ‘‘world’’ (Welt) can be recast as ‘‘posterity’’ (Nachwelt), its form of worldly transcendence can provide the norm in view of which political action is undertaken. Kant, unlike Sinibald, does not compromise his conception of Enlightenment to make it conform to an apparently more revolutionary form of pseudo-democratic populism. For Kant, enlightenment has no option but to move from the top down (von oben herab) (366): Programs for the education and betterment of the people must be designed, propagated, planned and implemented based on large-scale and long-term political aims. In this context, Kant also names (and substantially unmasks) the fateful figure of Providence (Vorsehung), which most often unwittingly underwrites virtually every theory of public opinion: ‘‘and thus the hope for progress is only to be expected from a wisdom that moves from the top down (which, when it is invisible, is called Providence)’’ (367).33 In these words, Kant reveals the mystical-theological foundation of conceptions of public opinion that imagine it as the highest instance or the ‘‘force’’ of history. Posterity, for Kant, represents an external instance, both later and greater, which is not identical to the ultimate instance; his idea of posterity is not completely removed from events, nor does it dictate them to the point of becoming virtually identical with them, nor is it totally invisible. Kant’s idea of Nachwelt is a public affect motivated by a disinterested sense of the common good but removed from the immediate sphere of action and decision. The spatiotemporal displacement, inserted as a delay within the overpowering immediacy of interest, is what defines this sphere as ‘‘public’’ (o¨ffentlich). States, nations, parties, and individuals are generally instances whose reason is governed by private self-interest, but Kant bases his theory of historical progress on the

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exceptional cases when this interest is betrayed in favor of the idea of a general good. This kind of posterity is not an idle fantasy, nor is it ineffective simply because it does not act or formally institute itself. It is a perpetual regulatory instance, a transhistorical measure and standard of progress, ‘‘an eternal norm’’ (eine ewige Norm) (364). Rather than basing his history on the progressive emergence from a lawless state of nature (as Wieland does), Kant’s norm is derived from a future ideal of human rights based on the human capacity (Anlage) of freedom. For better or worse, this has little or nothing to do with democracy, neither as a political-institutional setup, nor as a presumptive direct democracy based on the fiction that public opinion should (or in fact does) rule. Kant’s version of public opinion is an idea of posterity configured in world-historical and human-historical terms; it is the post-Revolutionary banishment of historical eschatology and revolutionary millenarianism. The latter formations must be left behind in favor of a different kind of future-oriented calculation. Public opinion, in this specifically de-theologized sense, puts the audience in the center stage of history, but without allowing this ‘‘public’’ to be figured as a collective actor or agent of history. Kant’s theorization thus means the end of the illusion of direct agency, including that of God, which marks humanity’s entrance into a period of accomplished secularization in which all political calculations must be performed before a horizon of worldly judgment.34 Despite its apparent advantages over other theorizations, Kant’s conception of public opinion as posterity shares certain of their drawbacks. First, as with Wieland, things seemingly did not turn out as Kant foresaw. The becoming-worldly of politics did not work out, and the instrumental illusions of decision, action, and interest only retrenched themselves. And, although not completely invisible, the regulatory function of posterity also never became convincingly transparent, and in any case, as Kant himself often admits, it remains acutely subject to contingencies and accidents. As an ‘‘eternal norm,’’ the precondition of history and historical transformation is itself entirely unhistorical and transhistorical, a latent factor that can never manifest or realize itself, only signaling its existence intermittently. And ‘‘enlightenment,’’ as a kind of autonomous historical claim for the spread of knowledge and reason, is secondary (as it also is in Wieland) to the education of self-styled decision-makers. ‘‘The people’’ are, in other words, no longer in need of enlightenment so much as their leaders (including everyone who is in a position to act on their interests).

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What became most problematic, however, was the partial success of new conceptions of public opinion as a regulative posterity. They succeeded, not in marginalizing dictators or in dampening hopes of overnight revolutions, but in leveling the field so self-proclaimed ‘‘enlighteners’’ were placed on the same footing—of ideology, power and propaganda—as those who were supposed to be the objects and opponents of enlightenment. The rise of public opinion, even in the form of a regulative posterity, thus marks the end of the Enlightenment, which succumbed to a relativism of its own making. Under the new system, which largely forgot Kant’s attempt to keep it secular, private opinions and actions are tried before the infinite—but still in some sense imaginary—court of public opinion in the form of posterity. But as long as there is no instance to regulate or control this posterity— figured as the highest earthly instance—then history may not be progressive, but only governed by fama. The counterrevolutionary pseudodemocratization of opinion only makes subjective knowledge ungraspable even to the speaking subject (who must constantly await posterity’s verdict, just like everyone else). Opinion becomes privatized and economized, relativized and mobilized, delocalized and decentralized, at the same time as it is made into the merely apparent determinant of an ungraspable totality called ‘‘public opinion’’ and ‘‘the public sphere,’’ and ‘‘history.’’ Hobbes relegated the conscience to a sphere of private interiority, and this is now pursued to its extreme, in effect privatizing all knowledge and publicizing it at the same time, under the name of opinion. This is the precondition for what Hannah Arendt has called ‘‘the chaos of opinions’’ and the rise of ideology.35

Problems of the Intelligentsia: Wieland’s ‘‘Secret of the Cosmopolitical Order’’ The preface to Wieland’s ‘‘Private Conversations’’ emphasizes the private and even secretive side of the modern public sphere; in the dialogue on public opinion, he pessimistically redefines the terms of private, political, lifeworld conversations so as to reveal such dialogues as both politically and communicatively insufficient. This perspective is decidedly postRevolutionary and presents a strong contrast with Wieland’s 1788 essay, ‘‘Das Geheimnis des Kosmopoliten-Ordens’’ (The Secret of the Cosmopolitan Order), which argues, at least on its surface, for a more naive and unproblematic view of the public sphere: ‘‘The time has come when nothing

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good need fear the light’’ (30:153). The public sphere of ideas is capable of regulating itself without the intervention of external (nonpublic) authority. This self-regulation of the public sphere is guaranteed by the integrity of its members: the ‘‘secret order’’ of the ‘‘cosmopolitans’’ or ‘‘citizens of the world’’ (Kosmopoliten or Weltbu¨rger) ensures that the public sphere will function as a rational system of posterity. The ‘‘secret’’ of this ‘‘order’’ is that they, unlike the Freemasons, have no ceremonies, no society, no secret handshakes, no arcana. The ‘‘secret’’ of the cosmopolitans, who lack the literal secrecy that would define them as a ‘‘secret order,’’ is that they have no secrets. Cosmopolitanism is a tacit sub- or supranational community of shared outlook (Gesinnung); the cosmopolitans represent an imaginary intelligentsia of political nonpartisans, who are anything but apathetic (30:174–78). The cosmopolitan order is the antithesis of secrecy and conspiracy; unlike secret societies, cosmopolitans are not bound by oaths and do not represent ‘‘a state within the state’’ (ein Staat im Staate) (30:165). The literal publicity of their ‘‘order’’—as a presupposed but informal consensus within the republic of letters—neutralizes its threat to the state: ‘‘Is not the tolerance (Duldung) that has been extended to secret societies itself the most striking evidence of how entirely unnecessary it is to pursue any praiseworthy end through secretive means?’’ (30:153). This is the explicit argument of the essay, but even here one may suspect—for example in the idea of ‘‘praise,’’ a symptom of fama’s role—that Wieland is motivated more by publicistic goals than by the desire to produce a really systematic justification. There is also an additional twist to the apparent optimism of his assessment: the cosmopolitan order really exists, he argues, but its sheer publicness means that it can only exist in a state of complete latency, which makes it even more secret than a literal secret order. The latent or dormant status of such a spiritual order (unbound by any letter) also makes it highly subject to misrepresentation. The ‘‘cosmopolitans’’ are, as a final consequence of the pure latency of their order, completely unrepresentable. This ‘‘group’’ never gathers but only subtends all forms, forums, and institutions. The cosmopolitans are individuals, representing only themselves, but for this reason they are heterogeneous to all forms of political and national affiliation. Wieland emphasizes that not everyone who calls himself a Kosmopolit is one, further confirming the suspicion that the group in question is literally nameless and unidentifiable. At the limit, everyone who represents himself

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as a cosmopolitan is not one. Whenever ‘‘cosmopolitans’’ come out of latency and try to identify and assert themselves as a literal organization, they misrepresent cosmopolitanism and misidentify themselves as members of the cosmopolitan order. To announce oneself as a cosmopolitan is to violate the order’s constitutive arcanum and unmask oneself as a merely selfproclaimed member. By this standard, Wieland’s own essay is in clear violation: The easiest and in my view also the most noble means . . . of putting an end to the sideshow of all present and future pseudo-cosmopolitans . . . is inarguably the decision that I—with the presupposed and unfailing approval of the entire order—have reached: To make everything known that previously constituted the secret of the order, to reveal it without any restraint and so earnestly and clearly that in the future it would be impossible for even the most simple child to ever confuse the genuine cosmopolitans with the inauthentic ones. (30:152)

The order only exists latently and not literally, which makes it possible for Wieland to constitute it a priori by presupposing his own ability to speak for and about it. In revealing this order, he disavows its existence as an order or nameable or isolable sect, but at the same time founds it as an order in a different sense: as a latent nonconstituted factor or unrevealed affinity at work within the existing social organization. Wieland’s attempt to simultaneously suspend and institute the order of the cosmopolitans tends to dissolve the order—as an order—entirely. Those who continue to assert that this order has an arcanum—that it is an order— reveal themselves as pseudo-cosmopolitans. Anyone who tries to preserve the mystery of this society instead of subjecting it to merciless demystification (Aufkla¨rung) is a fraud who misrepresents the order through the claim to represent it. In full awareness of the obvious paradoxes, Wieland speaks in the name of an unnamed and nonexistent ‘‘group’’ of indeterminate membership; by announcing its existence, he guarantees its nonexistence. The ‘‘secret’’ can be further explicated in the following formulas: There is no conspiracy; we do not conspire; in denying myself, I prove to you that I am who I say I am. In such formulations, Wieland deliberately plays both sides of the issue, speaking in the name of the cosmopolitan order despite the fact that, in so doing, he runs the risk of exposing himself as a pretender—and of exposing his ‘‘order’’ as a mere figure of speech. Wieland pretends to represent a nonexistent order to reveal (and at the same time to conceal) the secret that there is no secret. These contradictory

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maneuvers can be read as temporal figures of potentiality: Wieland speaks ‘‘counterfactually’’ for a latent order that exists only in a state of pure possibility, but, on this basis, the disavowed conspiracy may also potentially exist; it may subsist in the absence of active conspiring. The possibility is not ruled out, and is in fact suggested in Wieland’s title, that the ‘‘cosmopolitan order’’ that defines the public sphere is all the more secret for its lack of secrecy. The public invisibility (Unsichtbarkeit) (30:149) of this order always leaves the possibility open that the world may be willingly betrayed ‘‘with its eyes wide open’’ (mit sehenden Augen) (30:152) by false—or true— cosmopolitans. This version of cosmopolitical coercion and betrayal, through ‘‘public opinion’’ and ‘‘the public sphere,’’ contains the constitutive potential to become terribly misguided. Despite and because of the role of a selective publicity that always leaves the terms of the selection in the dark, the ‘‘cosmopolitan’’ neutralization of private threats to the state tends to totalize the state. This totalitarian possibility is given a particularly stark realization in Forster’s ‘‘Parisian Sketches,’’ but it is also inlaid in Wieland’s 1788 essay as a premonition. The fine line in question—the tenuousness of every attempt to define or prescribe the posterity of public opinion in terms of reason and human freedom—is somewhat less visible in the pre-Revolutionary text. Across this line, the public secret called ‘‘the voice of reason’’ (die Stimme der Vernunft) (30:174), which Wieland figures as a phantom secret society, becomes paranoid, coercive, and totalitarian. In 1788, Wieland interprets the cosmopolitan bond that underwrites the rationality of the public sphere in relatively benign and banal terms, as an unspecified natural tie or a kind of moral harmony. The more ominous vocabulary of a ‘‘secret order’’ is made harmless by the metaphorics of latent affinity: ‘‘The whole secret lies in a certain natural affinity and sympathy, that expresses itself in the whole universe between very similar beings’’ (30:166). At the end of the 1788 essay, Wieland also writes a glowing affirmation of the liberal state, the cornerstone of which is freedom of the press (despite the fact that he sees this freedom as a compromise relative to the more ideal and harmonious natural sympathy of cosmopolitans). The press emerges as a supplementary medium by which cosmopolitanism can become identical with the public sphere. The press must remain free if the cosmopolitans are to most effectively mediate their insights to the society at large. According to Wieland, the free press, like the cosmopolitans themselves, poses no

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threat to the state—at least no direct threat: cosmopolitanism’s state of potentiality is the condition of the possibility of its indirect participation in politics. Like the cosmopolitans who underwrite it, the republic of letters should not be counted as a threat to the state to the extent that it poses no explicit threats. If texts were to be condemned based on ‘‘inferences,’’ which depend upon [the censor’s] own way of conceiving things, on his particular opinion, his prejudices, the degree of his comprehension or incomprehension, of his knowledge or ignorance of the matter at hand, the accuracy or inaccuracy of his inner eye, the purity or corruption of his feeling and taste, then which book would be safe from condemnation? (30:191)

The only book, therefore, that can be declared to pose a threat is the one that openly declares its threats. But all other books—and especially the best ones, as Wieland emphasizes—may contain latent, indirect, accidental, or potential political dangers. The state’s best defense is therefore to cap and defuse direct actions with indirect and deferred ‘‘threats’’—opening and extending the sphere of potentiality so that a form of recourse or outlet is produced, in and as the public sphere, which will reduce the level of actual political conflict and thereby diminish the overall threat to the state. Under the conditions of mutual threat—with the state threatening the public sphere and vice versa—Wieland appears to take the side of the republic of letters, but he does so with the long-term stability absolutist state in mind. This conception of the public sphere makes it into the pretext or alibi of the state because the existence of a free press is merely a sign of the state’s good intentions: a well-meaning concession, an extension of the state with alternate means, a collusion between state and public sphere for the sake of mutual legitimation. On the other side, however, this defensive conception of the public sphere also implies the extension and attenuation of political conflict within a public sphere defined as the sphere of indefinite and delayed threats. The interest in stability thus institutes long-term unpredictability: like the censor’s possible reactions to texts, all of which may contain potential dangers—depending on how they are read—the extension of political conflict along textual and discursive fault lines of the public sphere may determine the seismic conditions of the post-Revolutionary world. In this sense, it would be important not to interpret the freedom of the press as a purely positive freedom, but instead to see it as the crucial counterweight within a delicate balance of representational imperatives (the validity and ultimate ends of which must also be up for discussion).

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excursus 2: nomos, gnomae (the council of war)

As a starting point for his etymological analyses of the German word Meinung (opinion), Jost Trier takes Herodotus, the father of history, as the father of opinion.1 For Trier, the most important context for the concept of opinion is not the competition of ideas in a public sphere, nor does his conception have any obvious connection to a fama that tenuously founds ‘‘truth’’ through rumor and reputation. Instead Trier envisions opinion as part of political decision-making and, more particularly, in the context of the scene of council. Mostly interested in the etymology of opinion, Trier does not directly address the difference (apparent in Herodotus, but not transparent) between Athenian democratic decision-making and the advice and counsel that Xerxes receives from his subordinates and confidantes. The latter scenario is Trier’s source for a paradigm of opinion as the basic unit within a public polling process pragmatically geared toward decision. Despite the narrowness of this focus, Trier’s etymological study subtextually suggests that the modern ideas of opinion polls and public opinion, though still connected to decision-making, are much more removed from and in many ways heterogeneous to the decision-making process as it was conceived in antiquity. Large populations are unable to decide in the same way as a small group does, and political decisions in Trier’s sense can only occur as the result of the deliberations of individuals invested with the power to act—or capable of taking control—in a given situation. In the etymology of the word opinion in various languages, Trier tries to isolate a primal and quasi-universal institutional context. Xerxes’ councilscene is the first station in an attempt to locate a semantic layer in several European languages that articulates this understanding. Trier begins with a general cross-cultural description of the institution of the council; one 61

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characteristic of the council as an institution is that opinions are always presented according to some kind of procedural order or hierarchy; they are not submitted anonymously, but orally and within the locus of individual competencies: ‘‘The opinions [stated in council] are not the opinions of just anybody, but of particular persons who have been summoned and are bearers of responsibility’’ (190). Trier emphasizes the forms of sequence and series (Reihenfolge, Reihendienst) and the circular round-form (Kreisform) that are inseparable from this practice. This conception leads to an etymological cluster that surrounds the word and idea of opinion: If we return now to our previous statement that the contribution of an opinion (Meinung) in a political-military meeting is a kind of rotating community service (Reihendienst), a service that is steered and directed by those who are polled (and thus it is also in a certain sense a munus [Lat. for ‘‘rotating duty’’]), then a very wide field is opened up. There is now the possibility of etymologically connecting the German meinen and Meinung to gemein [common], Gemeine, Gemeinde [commune, community] and to the Latin communis, communitas. The entire group, including munus, moenia [‘‘city wall’’], munire [‘‘to enforce’’], would thus be able to be traced back to the same base, namely to the root *moin-. (192)

I will forgo the full elaboration of Trier’s etymological hypothesis,2 and move directly to its consequence: opinion is a venerable, original, and potentially universal category of institution and administration, to be sharply distinguished from the meanings that would see it as a subjective or common judgment. For Trier, therefore, the Latin sententia is a better translation of opinion than are opinio or fama, and the Greek gnomae, Herodotus’ word for opinion in the context of council, correspondingly displaces doxa. These realignments within the semantic field cause opinion to be exclusively defined by the context of official forums that have the express purpose of registering individual views in order to reach a decision. Pragmatic and appealing as this kind of primal proceduralism may be, Herodotus proves to be a rather ambivalent source for such a paradigm. Trier himself is certainly aware of this: he leaves the ironic aspects of the story of Xerxes and Artemisia to speak for themselves, but he still he recounts more of this scene than would have been strictly necessary for his etymological argument. In particular, the universal effectiveness of this ‘‘universal procedure’’ could not be more questionable than in Xerxes’ council of war in VIII:67–69.3 The vote taken here is not binding, nor does

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this kind of polling of the generals count as a regular institution or custom of the Persians: it occurs only at the whim of the leader. He polls his subordinates, it seems, mostly for the sake of appearances or at best in a merely advisory capacity. Those who are asked for their opinions are also not presented as autonomous subjects of deliberation. With the exception of Artemisia, Herodotus does not even name them. They are mere yes-men, subordinates without autonomy who, out of fear, only say what they think Xerxes wants to hear. Artemisia, Herodotus’ countrywoman from Helicarnassus, who voluntarily joined Xerxes’ campaign (VII:99), alone speaks her mind (447). The other Persian generals vote to engage the Greeks at Salamis, but ‘‘the exception was Artemisia’’ (VIII:68), who argues: ‘‘spare your ships and do not fight at sea, for the Greeks are as far superior to your men in naval matters as men are to women’’ (522–23). Xerxes, though he is pleased rather than offended by Artemisia’s honest but insubordinate opinion, does not follow her advice and cedes to the opinion of the majority (apparently his own desire in any case) and suffers defeat at Salamis. Several observations can be made based on this purely formal instance of ‘‘democratic’’ decision-making under Xerxes’ absolute rule. First, and in opposition to the apparent argument of Trier’s essay, opinion’s formal integration within specific procedural structures does not guarantee its autonomy within a process of decision-making. The mere fact that a vote occurs, resulting in a majority opinion, ensures neither proper deliberation nor that the opinions themselves have not been prescribed by authority, nor does this polling process guarantee that the decision is the right one. Rather than being democratic, the Persian ‘‘decision’’ is reached as a fait accompli, ‘‘according to the royal nomos of aggression,’’ and the scene as a whole reveals, according to Rosaria Vignolo Munson, ‘‘how despotism impairs the capacity of individuals to participate in public matters.’’4 Munson further claims that within Herodotus’ narrative, Artemisia’s role among the Persians is the analog of Athenian exceptionalism among the Greeks (105–06). Seth Bernadete formulates this even more drastically, with specific attention to Artemisia’s aberrant behavior during the battle of Salamis (VIII:87–88): ‘‘Artemisia’s audacity is beyond law.’’5 Just as Artemisia is exceptional to such a degree that she cannot correspond to any given law, custom or tradition (nomos)—or must count as a law unto herself—Athens likewise owes its ascendancy among the Greeks (following the wars with Persia) to its exceptionality within the Greek nomos (exemplified in its most extreme form

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by Sparta). If Munson’s reading is correct, then Herodotus’s idea of Athenian democracy—isegorie, which is not only the right to vote but to speak and participate in politics6 —would, like Artemisia, not be governed by a fixed and definable nomos. According to this model, the Athenian democratic nomos would also not be an absence of nomos, but would instead be a nomos that perpetually thematizes itself and makes itself the object of progressive self-reflection. ‘‘Law’’ as nomos thus represents the difficulty that lies behind all official political institutions as Herodotus presents them. Nomos is the pre-political background of ‘‘custom’’ that may prevent democratic, procedural, or institutional forms from having any essential meaning that can transcend the given and determining nomoi of a people or nation. Nomos (as convention) may dictate gnomae (the opinion of the individual), including that of the dictatorial tyrant himself: Xerxes initially wants to diverge with the Persian nomos of expansion that he inherited from Cyrus, Cambyses and Darius, but then he has a dream, which he interprets as divine, that compels him to carry on the paternal nomos of conquest (VII:8–19). Nomos in this sense includes not just established customs, written and unwritten laws, but also something like the cultural unconscious of a given people, and it therefore represents the greatest determining force in the life and actions of individuals and groups: not only all behaviors, but all conscious decisions fall under its sway, and no political structure or executive authority can exist independent of nomos. Herodotus cites Pindar’s famous nomos panton basileus to this effect: ‘‘One can see [in the great variation and inflexibility in funeral customs, for example, cremation of bodies or the eating of the dead] what custom [nomos] can do, and Pindar, in my opinion, was right when he called it ‘king of all’ ’’ (III:38).7 Nomos in this sense is at least roughly comparable to what Locke called the ‘‘law of opinion,’’ even if the later philosopher motivates it in completely different ways. This law (nomos) represents the highest law for Herodotus, but this does not mean that nomoi are entirely inalterable. Nomoi change, but they are not predictably changeable or systematically producible. In Book I of the Histories alone, there are numerous examples: From that day the Argives, who were previously compelled by custom to wear their hair long, began to cut it short, and made it an offence against religion for any man to grow his hair and for any woman to wear gold, until Thyrae was

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recovered. The Spartans also adopted a new custom, but in precisely the opposite sense: they used not to grow their hair long, but from that time they began to do so. (I:82)

This inversion in the nomoi of the Spartans and Argives takes the form, on the one side, of a remembrance and, on the other, of differentiating marker between self and other, friend and enemy. The transformation of nomoi by force or propaganda is also not out of the question, as other examples indicate; it is possible to institute a lasting change in the nomoi of a people, to transform them, for example, from ‘‘warlike’’ to ‘‘effeminate’’ (I:155). Nomoi may also originate in exceptional circumstances, but they also have a chance of simply spreading: the Lydians are said, due to the hardships of famine and starvation, to have ‘‘invented the games which are now commonly played both by themselves and by the Greeks’’ (I:94). Oracles that give instruction for the ritual expiation of historical guilt are another source of nomoi (I:167). Finally, nomoi can be autoaffective: this has already been observed in a rather complex form in the Athenian nomos of democracy, which has the form of an ongoing exception—an exception that has become the rule. But a simpler case of a self-reflexive nomos is ‘‘No race is so ready to adopt foreign ways as the Persian’’ (I:135). The Persian nomos dictates the appropriation of the nomoi of others without its ever becoming diluted or undergoing any fundamental change within itself. The nomos of the Spartans has a different kind of self-reflexive character, which Demaratus explains to Xerxes in his efforts to convince the latter of the difficulty of attacking the Greeks. Xerxes laughs when Demaratus tells him that the Spartans will fight, regardless of inferior numbers and even if the rest of Greece submits (III:102). The Persian ruler cannot understand how this is possible, and he takes Demaratus’ ‘‘unpleasant truth’’ for ‘‘an empty boast,’’ arguing that Persians are equally capable of the kind of self-sacrificing bravery that Demaratus attributes to the Spartans (III:103). Demaratus responds: Fighting singly, they are as good as any, but fighting together they are the best soldiers in the world. They are free—yes—but not entirely free; for they have a master, and that master is Law (despotes nomos), which they fear much more than your subjects fear you. Whatever this master commands, they do; and his command never varies: it is never to retreat in battle, however great the odds, but always to remain in formation, and to conquer or die. (III:104)

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The invocation of a ‘‘despotic nomos’’ appears as an obvious variation on Pindar’s nomos basileus. In this context, the Spartan despotes nomos would represent an intensification of an attribute—of the ultimate and unquestionable authority—that was already characteristic of all nomoi. Nomoi are incontrovertible by definition under normal circumstances, but the Spartan nomos carries this one step further by making the invariant quality of all nomoi a part of the political authority structure itself. The Spartan nomos fulfills its ‘‘despotic’’ function not only in the larger field of custom, but precisely within the sphere of political authority and military decision-making. Nomos always plays a part in all individual and collective actions, but the Spartan nomos excels because governmental, political, and behavioral norms are internalized, eliminating the need for an actual despotic ruler. Real despots, on the other hand, as Demaratus’ warning implies (and Herodotus’ depiction of Xerxes amplifies), are fickle, selfish, and unpredictable in comparison to nomoi.8 Athenian isegorie depends on the institutional uniqueness and effectiveness of another kind of autoaffective nomos. The Athenian deliberations before the battle of Salamis largely pertain to the interpretation of oracles that provide the pretext for different courses of action. The pitfalls of decisionmaking based on oracles are well known: they do not give literal instructions, but make cryptic predictions that actively contribute to the course of things. The oracle must be interpreted to produce a legitimate course of action, but the possibility of this action precedes the oracle that appears to validate it. The debates surrounding the interpretation of oracles are therefore balanced between the pursuit of what appears as the best course of action and what appears as the course recommended by the oracle. Themistocles, for example, famously interprets an oracle—and did so correctly, as it turned out—that speaks of ‘‘divine Salamis’’ and ‘‘wooden walls’’ (VII:142–43). The success of his arguments, however, and the consequent outcome of the Athenian deliberations, is based on many of the same factors as Xerxes’ decision to fight at Salamis: in a given situation, presented with a given range of possible options, the outcome is mostly governed by what those in authority want to hear. In Themistocles’ case, this authority is simply called ‘‘the Athenians,’’ and, given that there was no viable alternative to his interpretation (except for total annihilation or exile), his plan of action (legitimated by his interpretation of the oracle) appears persuasive to the Athenians, who ‘‘found Themistocles’ explanation of the oracle preferable

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to that of the professional interpreters, who had not only tried to dissuade them from preparing to fight at sea but had been against offering opposition of any sort’’ (VII:143). Herodotus shows how political decision-making has a momentum of its own, dictated partly by the customs of a people—nomoi, which can determine both the structure of the decision-making process as well as its outcome—and partly by situational necessities. But a purely rational deliberative decision, a decision that would be pure logos without any influence of nomos, is not conceivable in Herodotus. The authority of logos, to the contrary, is that of retrospective narrative authority, and thus would be best exemplified in Herodotus’ own historiography: ‘‘My business is to retell what people have already told (legein ta legomena), but I am by no means bound to believe it—and that may be taken to apply to this book as a whole’’ (VII:152, translation modified). Reason is the basis and the result of the retrospective evidentiary calculations of a narrative process. Despite the broad similarities between Athenian and Persian paradigms of political decision-making, there are also differences: the Athenians’ decision is more uncentered because Themistocles, an outsider, is able to displace the authority of professional interpreters by putting the momentum of the situation behind him, and, perhaps more importantly, in the Athenian case the nomos does not have such a strong influence on the content of the decision. In comparison with the Persians, the Athenian nomos does not seem to intrinsically favor a particular course of action (except to the extent that it dictates self-preservation). Rather than allowing the content of decisions to be predetermined by a predisposition, the nomos of isegorie permits a more flexible situational analysis—potentially including elements of logos—that makes it significantly different from the Persian nomos of expansion, which seemingly permits no exception (to such a degree that even the interest in self-preservation cannot sway it). The situational alterability of nomoi is characteristic of Herodotus’ conception, but Athens raises this general attribute of nomoi to the level of its own particular political nomos, thereby maximizing the collective freedom of action.9 But even this system is not infallible: its decisions may also produce bad outcomes, and its emphasis on decentralized deliberation may make it more subject to manipulation—and simply to chance—and its successes may cause it to behave despotically toward other nations (emblematic in Themistocles’ use of deceit to get the other Greeks to go along with his plan), but this nomos—

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which constantly subjects the nomos of political decision to the nomos of a deliberative public opinion—nonetheless shows its potential effectiveness in Herodotus’ narrative. Nomoi and gnomai are a complementary pair: the nomos of a people includes its customs and laws, along with a whole network of cultural determinants, and for this reason it can strongly influence or even determine the actions of groups and individuals. In the latter case, that of the so-called group-think, the gnomae (opinion) of the individual would be wholly governed by the nomos (opinion) of the collective. But it is also possible, depending on the authority (Xerxes) or ingenuity (Artemisia, Themistocles) of individuals, that particular gnomai will emerge in specific situations as exceptions to rule of the nomos. The Athenian institution and nomos of isogorie in particular allows political decisions to be steered by gnomai. But isogorie alone—the sheer formality of Xerxes’ council of war—is no guarantee of an effective deliberative process. It may always be just a borrowed form, acquired and incorporated by the Persian nomos, which loses its meaning in translation. The origins of nomoi themselves, and the degree to which they may be transplantable—a compelling question to this day for everyone interested, for example, in what is termed ‘‘democratization’’—remain highly debatable.10 With regard to the question of origin, Sally Humphreys uncovers in Herodotus an ambivalent oscillation between nomoi that are conceived as ‘‘transcendent’’ and those that are merely norms produced by the ‘‘common opinion.’’11 Especially regarding religious practices, Humphreys walks a fine line between human origin and divine legitimation. Invoking Pindar’s nomos basileus, she sees nomoi as a part of a karmic or cosmic order by which violence—‘‘the most violent’’—is justified and integrated into a coherent whole to form the basis of traditions and practices. By this definition, nomos is characterized by another ambivalence: ‘‘custom’’ is the sublimation—and quite likely the perpetuation—of violence. But at the same time, taken as justice and supreme authority, ‘‘justifying the most violent,’’ nomos signifies the end of violence. Both Humphreys and Evans attempt to resolve the ambivalence of the concept of nomos by interpreting it as a category of historical explanation and rationalization. (This may only exacerbate the problem, however, since nomos would become both the cause and effect of mythos at the same time as it is identified with Herodotus’ interpretive logos.) In a formulation that

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unintentionally underscores nomos’ lack of rational foundation, Humphreys argues that it accounts for ‘‘an incalculable element in human behavior.’’12 Nomos is a regulative term of discourse, it gives ‘‘an answer, a place where the historian’s enquiry can stop.’’13 As a category of culture, nomos permits the attribution of causes (in the context of both myth and reason); it can justify epic sequences of events without ever interpreting them as chance: ‘‘Herodotus’ use of nomos as a category of historical explanation seems analogous [to Democritus’ theory of atoms]; it represents the point at which the predictable and the unpredictable join, a limit to the tracing of sequential connections.’’14 Writing in the same issue of Arethusa as Humphreys, James Redfield responds to her essay. He moves away from her explicitly historiographic and narratological considerations toward more far-reaching political consequences: ‘‘The government of law, in other words, is itself a custom, as is the government of men. . . . Greek custom . . . implies that the Greeks not only have their nomoi but think about them, and as they think about them they also talk about them.’’15 Between these two sentences the paradox of the democratic nomos is encapsulated: one one side, the nomoi that underpin the Athenian form of government are just as inaccessible— ‘‘not public,’’ as Habermas would say—to deliberation as all other nomoi; but, paradoxically, deliberative democratic form is also defined as the form in which nomoi are not only the basis of cultural practices, but in which these practices themselves include discussing and ‘‘thinking about’’ nomoi. Redfield further speculates that the Athenian nomos may define a specific context in which the ‘‘demystification of the world’’ can occur, but he draws a limit to this process by stating that ‘‘public debate presumes a framework of shared values which it itself cannot reach.’’16 In these words, he implicitly also argues for the limits of Enlightenment and the inevitable blind spots of every ‘‘culture’’ that interprets itself as ‘‘rational’’ or ‘‘postconventional.’’ The particular nomos of democracy and the corresponding rationalization of culture will never be able to jump over its own shadow and completely supplant the archaic nomoi (always plural) that preceded it. Absolute, universal, democratic authority is not on the historical horizon, and reason, such as it is, needs to plan accordingly.

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two

Representation and Opinion (Koselleck, Habermas, Derrida) ‘‘Hilft denn kein Beispiel der Geschichte mehr?’’ [Then no example of history can help us anymore?] g o e t h e , ‘‘Torquanto Tasso’’ (v. 3422)

‘‘Modernism’’ and the Underground of Opinion (Gu¨tersloh & Blei) [T]he verdict that resounds in ‘‘beautiful’’ is reached through lengthy litigation . . . and is finally a result of . . . fatigue. a l b e r t p a r i s g u¨ t e r s l o h , 1947, my translation

The long-term fallout of the revolutionary advent of public opinion, especially with regard to what is loosely called ‘‘the arts,’’ is nowhere more evident than in what is equally loosely called ‘‘modernism’’ (here exemplarily of the Viennese variety). The painter and novelist Albert Paris Gu¨tersloh, a pupil of Gustav Klimt, grew up in the center of this movement, but he belonged to its second generation; a step removed from Klimt, the fatherfigure, he was especially sensitive to the aging of modern art. As a latecomer in a short-lived movement, the tendencies of which made it susceptible to fall on the wrong side of the political upheavals of the decades to follow,1 Gu¨terlsoh, like Carl Schmitt or Stefan George, represents an extreme, and he was similarly politically compromised.2 There would be no limit to the number of figures that could be discussed in this context, but Gu¨tersloh and his friend Franz Blei represent a relatively unknown branch of modernism and also have the advantage of focusing explicitly on the problem of opinion and the public sphere. 70

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The relatively marginal place of art and literature in the modern public sphere is thematized throughout Gu¨tersloh’s work and writings; this problem is given a positive form in his specific attempts at its analysis, whereas his works address it negatively and by exclusion because they are conceived as a strategic opposition to popularity and opinion. The positive side manifests itself already in 1918, in his eulogy for Klimt, in which he at one point addresses his fellow artists in the voice of the dead master, paraphrasing the imperative that Klimt had given to artists: Hate compromise as I have hated it, and deify one-sidedness, the monotheistic principle of the artist, as I have deified it. To listen to people’s opinions is already a fall into polytheism. Because the person who gives you the good advice to concede and make a compromise, rather than demanding the impossible, he thinks himself wiser than God (who keeps eternally silent and does not give advice). Be on God’s side, be of His party, and thus do not give yourself advice either. Storm forward, storm after the voice of perfection that lives within you, and do not be troubled by the pangs of conscience about the inquisitorial coldness of your heart when a compromise falls into your hands and waits to be burned at the stake.3

This manifesto recommends the total rejection of opinions and advice, and attempts to trump a conventional and collective conscience with a more internal and individual one. (The tradition of the idea of conscience is the subject of chapter 3.) Gu¨tersloh theorizes works of art as monumental testaments to the singularity of the individual, produced from the furthest recesses (and internalized mimetic pressure) of the group dynamics of modern society. Klimt’s artistic project emerges in overtly prophetic terms: art, as apolitical as it may seem, represents a political endeavor, directed against ‘‘the demonic and perfidious intellectual atmosphere . . . which veils the globe’’ (12). With reference to what he calls the ‘‘time of the catacombs’’ (die Zeit der Katakomben),4 Gu¨tersloh defines ‘‘modern art’’ as the product of a spiritualintellectual ‘‘underground’’ movement; art is a point of resistance within the ‘‘spiral of silence,’’ and as such, artistic movements define themselves in the anticipation of a time to come. The creators of ‘‘modern’’ art interpret it as the means or symbol of future sociopolitical transformation. As sympathetic as this idea may or may not be, Gu¨terloh’s eulogy may also sound like fundamentalist motivational

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speech, the internal propaganda of a specific clique whose productions—the works themselves—have since been historically validated (canonized) by a variously critical and uncritical public opinion that often found the political component dispensable. Following the first bloom of Viennese modernism, which went on to fame, Gu¨tersloh’s career never entirely recovered; after a predictable flirt with National Socialism, he became an outsider to the postwar artistic world and to the international popularity that posterity had bestowed upon Klimt. In the final decades of his life, after the war, he was disillusioned enough to rethink the artistic idealism of his youth. His earlier solution—of absolute individualism and the pure autonomy of the authentic artist—had done nothing to alleviate the underlying problem, which the later Gu¨tersloh identifies with the words of ‘‘production and consumption.’’ To the extent that the ‘‘catacomb’’ strategy was unsuccessful, the reasons for this failure needed to be considered, and the later Gu¨terlsoh shows a more nuanced sense of social and historical origins of the crisis of modern art. In a public speech from 1947, he postulates the existence of a ‘‘chasm’’ (Kluft) between the consumers and producers of art.5 This discontinuity is also staged by his self-conscious address—‘‘ladies and gentlemen’’ (meine Damen und Herren)—which makes the chasm palpable between speaker and audience: ‘‘between us’’ (zwischen uns). Gu¨tersloh performs the possibility of even talking about or addressing this rift; he seeks to heighten the public’s awareness of it without compromising his own status as artist: When a visual artist, a poet or a musician today steps in front of the public, not with his own works but on his own behalf, when he, so to speak, steps down from the tower of his elevated manner of expression and gives himself over to the parterre of essayistic prose—which is always a fall, and a Fall, namely into direct speech and the direct expression of his opinion, which moreover has a number of honorable subsidiary branches, such as the social, the political, but which simply is not and may not be my own metier, because it is, obviously, supposed to be understood hic et nunc, now and here—Therefore, when such a one steps before the public as I do today, then it always appears as if he were standing before the mysterious demos, either to defend himself before it or to make an accusation against it, this demos that you yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, make up, as if he sought, like Jonas to the Ninivites, to bring them to insight, repentance and penance. (81, my translation)

It must be clear, even to those not familiar with Gu¨tersloh’s notoriously baroque style, that he has not entirely descended from the ‘‘tower’’ of literary expression. He uses a metaphor to interpret a presupposed distribution

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of roles: the artist’s prophetic warning falls on the deaf ears of a critical public, but even in the presence of such a rift between us, he asserts, it should still be possible to at least be recognize it from both sides. The ‘‘prophet’’ thereby enters into negotiations with his wayward ‘‘people’’ in a way that may—to the extent he remains in the tower—only repeat his failure to reach them. Returning to this problem in his closing words, Gu¨tersloh takes inventory of the rhetorical means employed in his speech and doubts that they will have been completely persuasive. But this is also a good thing because art—in comparison with other genres of communication—never exhausts its materiality in instrumentality: As an artist—because that is what I am, whether as a painter or as a writer—to speak to you in this way, and to be permitted to speak to you in this way, such that no empty phrases were used, no metaphors worn down by overuse, but which has instead combined functional observations, Platonic dialectics, anecdotes and psychology, argumenta ad hominem and other purer forms of argument, in order to sketch for you a picture of past and present conditions, so that finally perhaps a therapeutic method, even if only by way of allusions (Andeutungen), may be shown, you see, that is—activism. Only an example, however—vivant sequentes [for the life of those who come after us]. (88)

Gu¨tersloh ironically admits that he did not keep his promise to lower the tone of his speech. He rejects the idea that he should only talk about a problem of ‘‘modern’’ art and instead speaks from within it. In addition to the list of rhetorical figures and argumentational means—a ploy itself borrowed from Laurence Sterne—Gu¨tersloh hopes that he has shown (zeigen, andeuten) more than he can directly tell. Only apparently speaking in the present (hic et nunc) he indicates that his own example is directed toward subsequent times and lives. Two modes of understanding are thus contrasted: a figural, exemplary, analogical, and literary mode (defined by a deferral of meaning) and an immediately comprehensible, consumable, enjoyable, and pragmatic mode (defined by instrumentality). Gu¨tersloh means to resist art and life’s formulation according to a model of discourse and conversation that claims to give direct access to a shared universal (or universalizable, in Kant’s sensus communis) perception of phenomena. Gu¨terlsoh’s speech, in both form and content, presents a model for thinking about art that would avoid critical instrumentalization (in the truth or validity claims of individuals) by ‘‘consumers’’ and based on a logic of ‘‘effects and intentions’’ (Werken und Wollen) attributed to the artist as a person.

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This conception excludes the ‘‘catacomb’’ of high modernism, which is figured in quasi-eschatological terms but is factually instrumental in its intents, and Gu¨tersloh’s ‘‘activism’’ may resemble the ostensibly more politically apathetic and resigned standpoint of what would later be called postmodernism. The lack of a given and coherent cultural context for art gives it an evident lack of self-evidence, a dawning incomprehensibility that lead it to be received over the detour of shock and scandal. For Gu¨tersloh, Wagner and Manet were the watersheds within this transformation (86), but he does not blame the public for its lack of receptiveness, instead locating the problem in the excessive personalization of art, which has become the primary means of its comprehension. The desire to see a strict connection between the art and the artist, the ‘‘doer and the deed,’’ means (though Gu¨tersloh does not put it this way) the privatization of art and its packaging within a specific narrative construct. In the narrative of life and works, art is transformed from something abject and excluded into a positive social ideal. Captured within the economic forms of a capitalistically structured market and the political, institutional, and social structures of modern liberalism, art achieves its fame under the rule of opinion. For Gu¨tersloh this means that the art of others is just as private—closed and inaccessible—as their opinions and advice. The communist, communal, communitarian, and modernist ideal of art shipwrecked on the rule of opinion. Art was forced to appear ‘‘modern’’ before it could become ‘‘beautiful,’’ and the latter judgment—‘‘a product of fatigue’’—is only a compensatory function, a false immediacy meant to make up for the fact that works of art are excluded from socially meaningful contexts. But precisely this lack of presence, as Gu¨tersloh also argues, may be entirely essential to art as we know it. Predictably, the threshold of the modern epoch, the point when the old symbolic economy fell apart, is named as 1789 (82). Earlier in the century, before Gu¨tersloh, in 1911, Franz Blei already came to the same less-thanidealistic conclusion;6 Blei, Gu¨tersloh’s friend and frequent collaborator of the 1910’s and 1920’s, was an influential if quixotic editor, essayist, and literary publicist. He is credited as one of the earliest supporters of Franz Kafka, Robert Walser, and Robert Musil; he was also a prolific translator (of authors including Baudelaire, Zola, Gide, Hawthorne, Mencken, and Wilde) and edited a groundbreaking edition of the collected works of J. M. R. Lenz.7 In addition to the literature of his own time, Blei specialized in the eighteenth century; his perspective on this era combines nostalgia

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with emphatic critical disavowal. For him, the internal momentum of ancien re´gime was directly responsible for its dissolution, which in turn produced the literary-artistic, political, and cultural crises of later centuries. In 1924, in an extension of his 1911 thesis on the rococo, he asserts that of all historical epochs, the eighteenth century is the most distant to us: The Eighteenth Century suffers more than any other in the present estimation— perhaps due to a surplus of documentation—which perceives it as a bygone era that was completely consumed within its own time, to such a degree that this period appears more distant to us than any of those that came before it. We imagine the Revolution, to an extreme degree, as the definitive termination of the old and beginning of our supposedly completely new history, so that we are unable to perceive the particularities above the generalities, and thus we condense this era into a mere slogan and thereby dispense with it—whereby however we nevertheless still are essentially dealing with the same things and are still seeking answers to the same questions that the Eighteenth Century first asked.8

In a complex layering of continuity and discontinuity, Blei questions the revolutionary character of the Revolution while he posits it as a complete rupture precisely because it has been perceived as such. The belief in the Revolution overlooks historical continuities. For Blei, the Revolution was at best partial, but ‘‘we’’ nevertheless continue to treat it as finished whenever we define ourselves in opposition to the unfinished epoch characterized by enlightenment, absolutism and ‘‘rococo’’: ‘‘That era is thought of as superficial and external, because we appear to ourselves as deep and intensive’’ (154). In the middle of literary modernism, Blei diagnoses the disavowals of modern ‘‘culture’’ and its literary and artistic production. The ‘‘depth and intensity’’ that leads ‘‘modern’’ humans—and not just modernists, but also Romantics and postmoderns—to see themselves as their own absolute origin is denounced as a false subjectivism: ‘‘depth’’ is only the index of the absence of ‘‘binding forms of life’’ (154). Thanks to our disavowal of the eighteenth eentury, everything we call ‘‘modern’’ is only the ‘‘unwitting parody of that bygone era.’’ Rococo art, particularly music (the most accomplished and characteristic form of the period, in Blei’s estimation), is credited with unique ability to translate ‘‘demonic’’ social forces into beautiful forms: ‘‘this ‘superficial’ century, in its belief in the vis superba formae and with its talent for creating them, cultivated its surface all the more intensively, the more the forces from below began to stir, forces which called the

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forms of this life itself into question’’ (155). The subjective mastery of objective contradiction in aesthetic form lasted until the real underlying social tensions became overextended and expression came predominate over form. Whether the communist-Catholic (communitarian) Blei presented his theses in view of laudable political ends is debatable. But what is certain is that he had a strong awareness of the untenable historical position of the movement that is now generally referred to as modernism. The ongoing split between life and art, first instituted by the Enlightenment, is characterized by the inability of increasingly rationalized forms of social organization to produce coherent forms of life: ‘‘Instrumental reason is the ordering principle of present-day development, but, unofficially, all kinds of mysticism threatens to breach and inundate the beaver-dam’’ (156). According to Blei’s historical thesis, this tension caused the dissolution of the eighteenth century and remains as its legacy; he is able to identify it in a single word: ‘‘Public opinion, which was responsible for dissolving this culture, also created by it, and even today it tends toward democracy’’ (159). For Blei, ‘‘democracy’’ does not refer to the positive political ideal for which it is usually taken today; instead it means rampant populism, as a symptom of the breakdown of all concrete orders. According to his truly exemplary tirade: When there is no more spiritual law and no commandment that is valid for all, then everyone has an opinion and is judge and critic of everything. . . . Out of this decay of the old powers a new power took shape, the only one that reigns up to the present day: the public opinion. She cannot be grasped and called to account, she is there and vanishes, stiffly unmoving and always fleeing, ungraspably ubiquitous and nowhere to be found, formless and destructive to all form. . . . Bound to nothing, she binds everything. Her truth of today she calls lies tomorrow, her gods of today are tomorrow’s idols, her most respected talents tomorrow’s ridiculous fools. Her cult venerates infidelity, inconstancy, permanent betrayal. (169–70)

The ‘‘modern’’ democracy that Blei has in mind here is a kind of organized lawlessness. Such intentionally antidemocratic sentiments may be shocking to the modern political morality, but the characterization of public opinion—in a clear line with Wieland and Virgil—remains completely canonical. And, from the perspective of individuals who are dependant on public opinion (such as authors, artists, and politicians), the affirmation of the democracy of opinion only looks like flattery. Even in self-proclaimed democracies, public opinion is only as good as what it does, and anyone who

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opposes it, like Blei, has no choice but to rail against it. For him it is the characteristic form of ‘‘modern society.’’ Public opinion is the postconventional invalidation every binding tradition, the relativizing dissolution of every nomos. Transcending and transgressing the authority of the old conventions, public opinion does make up for it by rationalizing rule. In paradoxical figures such as ‘‘constant inconstancy,’’ it defines a distinctly new form, a kind of ubiquitous super-nomos that can include every exception under its absolute rule. There are no transgressions that cannot be excused and retrospectively claimed as a part of its plan, no laws that it cannot undermine. Blei personifies public opinion as a Fama-like deity. She is thereby figured as a historical actor and a legitimating posterity: rather than placing the historical cause, credit, or blame with the actions of individual agents, public opinion is conceived as the force that made the actions possible in the first place. Public opinion enacts the depersonalization and retrospective rationalization of actions and outcomes. Nothing ever done or said could have been done or said without public opinion as its accomplice. If public opinion works by depersonalizing, Blei’s personification of public opinion ironically parodies and inverts the characteristic gesture of postrevolutionary modernity to reveal its hollowness. If history is a court and public opinion is its highest instance, then public opinion is only a form of casuistry that levels all horizons and lets everyone off the hook. Blei attacks the idea of public opinion as a fallacy at the same time as he presupposes it as a historical fact. This is not a contradiction, since collective structures of legitimation and truth are founded on collective error more than on rational truth. The general tendency of the historical calculus based on public opinion is thus to neutralize individual agency and to relativize history’s moral dimension in the light of a basically well-meaning (but unfortunately fallible) public opinion. No one is at the helm: public opinion may be proclaimed as the highest law, but there are no limits to what it can potentially justify. The modern belief in history corresponds to the new religion of public opinion, the ‘‘cult’’ of modernity as Blei calls it, which allows and encourages the most extreme individualism and simultaneously depersonalizes its results on the collective horizon of a historical ‘‘process.’’ The modern individual emerges out of an erosion of individual responsibility. This is also Carl Schmitt’s claim in Roman Catholicism and Political Form, which was published in the same year as Blei’s essay. In this text,

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Schmitt argues that the fundamental category of public representation is always the person. The sovereign individual is thus always the author of public opinion (and not the other way around, as in the conception that Blei attacks): The idea of representation is dominated by the thought of personal authority to such a degree that both the one who represents and that which is represented must assert the quality of personal dignity. . . . Only a person can represent in an eminent sense, and indeed precisely an authoritarian person; ideas are also capable of representation, but as soon as they are represented, they are also personified.9

Schmitt’s idea of sovereignty asserts the necessity of restoring the theologically and juridically founded category of personal authority and responsibility to a conception of history as an automatic and impersonal process that takes place—rationally or irrationally—outside of the sphere of individual cognizance. In a depoliticized world,10 the political is no longer defined by a formal institutional foundation that could stand against the lawlessness of public opinion (whose so-called rationality, in Schmitt’s view, was a metaphorical loan from the dubious ‘‘laws’’ of a capitalistically structured market). Gu¨tersloh’s reflections are in line with this hypothesis and supplement it: he claims that art is trending in the opposite direction. Artistic ‘‘production’’ is increasingly defined by an exaggerated and externally imposed correspondence between ‘‘the doer and the deed.’’ This means that the spheres of art and literature, including everything one might want to call the literary public sphere, are become increasingly personalized—and internally politicized—during the era of the general ‘‘depoliticization’’ of society. This form of internally focused politicization (which interpreted itself as ‘‘autonomous’’ and ‘‘apolitical’’ with regard to the rest of society) corresponds to the opposition between public sphere of art and those of history and science. Whereas art became increasingly personalized, especially science was becoming increasingly anonymous, automatic, and impersonal. The arena of modern art (a weak facade for Blei, Schmitt, and Gu¨tersloh) thus appears as a displacement, a belated and latent competition, not only internally (among the artists themselves), but also against the impersonal reign of ‘‘history’’ and ‘‘society.’’ The authorial ideal of art hopes, according to the

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strategy of the ‘‘catacomb,’’ to eventually displace history and the unpredictable rule of opinion to restore a more ‘‘Catholic,’’ transcendently based universe in which representation (through and of authority) is again the rule. Gu¨tersloh’s 1947 speech, though essentially in agreement with Schmitt and Blei’s critique of modernity, represents a political counterargument to their implicit and explicit conservatism. For him, the modern personalization of art is an external imposition and a burden, an enforced conformism to the representational unity of ‘‘life and work’’ as a condition of popularity. Canonization on these terms ultimately serves the representational ends of the triumvirate of state, society, and history (under the broad sanction of public opinion). Whereas earlier, more idealistic forms of modernism— including Romanticism—had hoped to displace this unholy alliance, Gu¨tersloh falls back to the defensive position of artistic hermeticism (with a messianic more than utopian horizon) and thereby hopes to avoid the usual posterity effects. In short, the obvious failure of art to transform society leaves it isolated, simultaneously cast back upon itself and redirected toward a much more distant future. Schmitt’s argument, lacking the pragmatic orientation—and unmistakable desperation—of those directly concerned with the problem of modern art, is essentially polemical, and its ‘‘conservatism’’ appears dishonest (merely ‘‘political’’) because representation is only considered abstractly or in view of a reassertion of the oldest representational authorities (sovereign and pope). Blei, on the other hand, was acutely aware of the fact that the ‘‘catacomb’’ had already succeeded, more than a century earlier, in the advent of the Revolution: the Enlightenment had hollowed out the absolutist state from within and was unable to successfully replace it at the level of representation and authority. The question thus remained, which would continue to haunt the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: was the triumph of public opinion a singular epoch-making event, which could not simply be reversed or repeated in the same form? Or, assuming it were repeatable, what would prevent this repetition from leading to more of the same, to more and more ‘‘public opinion’’? Blei did not believe that it could be repeated because the earlier catacomb called ‘‘rococo’’ was still underway in a state of latency (165). The continuity of the catacomb—Enlightenment to Romanticism to modernism—had to be decisively broken before anything new could take shape. This conception precludes the Modernist imitation of the successful strategy of the Enlightenment from inside of this success;

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Blei derides such imitations, which unwittingly continue where they claim to make a break, but he does see a slight possibility of ‘‘opposition’’ to the ‘‘new spirit of the—waning—modern age.’’ This resistance is represented in a short list of ‘‘precursors’’ (Vorla¨ufer) of an age to come, but they do not belong to or define any single artistic or intellectual movement: ‘‘Chateaubriand, Keats, German Romanticism, Ho¨lderlin, Kierkegaard, Newman, Hello, Dostojewski, Nietzsche, Lagarde, Peguy, Rathenau, Scheler, Gu¨tersloh, Carl Schmitt’’ (170). It unclear whether these names identify a new ‘‘catacomb’’ (which may successfully displace the ongoing supremacy of the victorious eighteenth century) or whether they are merely the figures of ‘‘inner emigration’’ (die Emigration nach innen), which Blei calls ‘‘the only reaction against the spirit of the modern age that has so far made itself evident’’ (177). The lack of a resolution within this historical dilemma—its continuation for another hundred years—leads directly to the work of Reinhart Koselleck, who resumes Blei’s analysis in the Cold War era.

‘‘Indirect Politics’’ (Reinhart Koselleck) ‘‘History has overflowed the banks of tradition and inundated all boundaries.’’ r e i n h a r t k o s e l l e c k , Introduction to Kritik und Krise

Reinhart Koselleck’s strangely impassioned and intentionally provocative early work, Critique and Crisis, first published in German in 1959, has a certain affinity with Blei’s work on the eighteenth century.11 The two analyses, despite the intervening decades and all that transpired in them, share a similar intellectual atmosphere (which falls most easily under the proper name of Carl Schmitt), and their historical narratives are also in broad agreement. Blei declares the eighteenth-century institution of the literary salon a ‘‘state within a state,’’ which went on to become the hegemonic public opinion itself in all of its epochal significance (174). The concept of a ‘‘state within a state’’ is also crucial to Wieland’s ‘‘Secret of the Cosmopolitan Order,’’ which provides important evidence for Koselleck’s contention (80–81; 96–97) that the private sphere and secret societies of the eighteenth century eroded absolutism from within. Following Wieland, Koselleck takes the example of the Freemasons as structurally analogous to the growing literary public sphere and its project of critique. Together, these forms

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of private pressure managed to establish a state within a state that was indirectly responsible for undermining and finally unseating the absolutist authority. This ambiguity between the ‘‘private sphere’’ and the possibility of an accidental conspiracy went on to define the political possibilities of the modern era. For Koselleck, it is of great significance that the political coup set off by the eighteenth century intelligentsia was inadvertent, the unwitting result of a disenfranchised but critical public that was ‘‘hypocritically’’ unable to take responsibility for the political consequences of its ideas. The possibility of a fundamental transformation achieved by indirect and disavowed means is the result of procedural metaphors of trial and tribunal, applied to the ‘‘process’’ of history. In Koselleck’s reading, such figures inevitably accompany the self-stylization of the Enlightenment concept of ‘‘critique’’; he even pursues this connection into the etymology of the words critique and crisis, which ‘‘derive from the Greek krino: to differentiate, select, judge, decide.’’ The time of ‘‘crisis’’ is interpreted as a juridical figure and an apocalyptic anticipation of the Final Judgment (196–99; 103–104).12 For Koselleck, critique’s juridical, procedural, and theological inflections are reflected in the modern understanding of history itself—by way of the philosophy of history—which envisions ‘‘history’’ (as the totalized identity of made and recorded histories) as a grand tribunal. The consequences of this conception are still visible: George W. Bush and his administration, for example, always talk about history in this sense—for example, in the scandalous version of Hegelianism expressed by Bush’s comparison of the Iraq War to a ‘‘comma’’ in the book of history—to ward off criticism and justify their actions. It takes no special skill to unmask such assertions (which are always equally available to everyone), but Koselleck’s larger point is that history itself is structured this way as soon as it is conceived as an epic narrative that will provide a final etiology for the distribution of blame and credit. ‘‘History’’ represents a minimally secularized version of the religious idea of a final judgment. Koselleck further argues that the modern, procedurally inflected understanding of history is haunted by the difficulty of distinguishing self-deluding critics (who claim a political neutrality that their ideas refute) from the deliberate charlatans, who only use the critical apparatus as a means for legitimating their own political ends. The critics who seek to avoid their own responsibility displace and project political goals onto an impersonal figure of judgment—for example, ‘‘reason’’—whereas

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political actors constantly borrow and usurp this same figure for the purpose of validating their own immediate ends: ‘‘It was the particular delusion of philosophical reason [as far back as Bayle] to believe that its progressive quest for objectivity and neutrality could stealthily be transferred over to the reluctant world of politics’’ (93; 112). Mystified as to the political conditions for the realization of its own ends (and thus as to the nature of the ‘‘tribunal’’ called history), critique incessantly indebted itself to the futureoriented conception of history that it had conjured up: ‘‘Criticism transformed the future into a maelstrom that sucked out the present from under the feet of the critic’’ (90–91; 109). And, needless to say, not only critics were dragged into this vortex. If critique exhibits the disingenuous lack of a real political strategy for implementing its ideas, it fails to calculate its own indirect political consequences. It imagines itself contributing to a neutral ‘‘reason’’ that will take responsibility for what happens and provide the agency of historical transformation. After citing Diderot, who stresses the difference between the person and opinion, between (private) writer and (public) idea, Koselleck interprets this gap as a ‘‘depersonalization,’’ which allows critique to be conceived as an autonomous process to which individuals may contribute, but which is not defined by their contributions as individuals: ‘‘Critique has become so sovereign that it continues to rule even without the people or persons who initiated it. The depersonalization that the individual (die Person) suffers at the hands of emancipated critique finds its expression in the fact that the individual (die Person) becomes the functionary of critique’’ (96; 115). In contrast with Gu¨tersloh’s thesis that the realm of the aesthetic becomes increasingly personalized, enforcing a unity of author and work, the critical public sphere functions according to an ideal of depersonalization that is only interested in the validity of arguments (or, in the next step, in the number people who are convinced by them) and not with the identity—time, place, class, gender, and every other conceivable particularity—of the singular person who makes the argument. The most opaque aspect of Koselleck’s treatise is arguably his extreme distaste for this depersonalization, and in the years since he wrote Critique and Crisis, this fictive equality has itself been the object of significant criticism (with the summary result that the unrealistic ideal of discursive equality is still better than the alternative of fixed hierarchical authority). When

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speaking of the depersonalization of politics, Koselleck often uses the adjective ‘‘indirect,’’ which raises questions that help to explain his position: why are ‘‘indirect’’ (and moreover, inadvertent) politics inferior to the ‘‘direct’’ variety? If politics are not always ‘‘direct’’ in any case, what is at stake in the alternative? What is meant by the attribute of indirectness? For Koselleck, it refers to the overextension of the means–ends relation; ‘‘indirect’’ politics places its ends too far beyond its own reach, producing catastrophic shockwaves within the realm of means as soon as it comes to the question of implementation. The final sentence of Critique and Crisis thus unmistakably calls for a qualified return to political realism: ‘‘The indirect relationship to politics—utopianism, which after society’s secret closing of ranks against the absolute sovereign surfaced dialectically—changed in the hands of modern man into a politically unsecured loan. The French Revolution was the first instance of that loan being called in’’ (157; 186). The extended claim here is that the political credit drawn on the rationalist, utopian fantasies of a purportedly neutral critique creates an increasing potential for the extension and intensification of political conflicts. The indirectly political products of the literary public sphere, given the opportunity, may be transformed—as Wieland also argued in his ‘‘Secret of the Cosmopolitical Order’’—into direct political actions that will seek the more or less immediate realization of ideal ends. When Koselleck speaks of ‘‘indirect’’ politics, he charges critique with adding fuel to the fire because it does not consider the possible political consequences of utopian theory when it is instrumentalized as practical ideology. It is no coincidence that Critique and Crisis is an early product of the Cold War era. Despite its ostensible focus on the Enlightenment, Koselleck’s thesis explicitly intends to make a critical intervention within the crises of his own period: the ‘‘dualism’’ of a divided globe is interpreted as a conflict between two politically intensified and ‘‘pathogenic’’ (that is, ideologically distorted) utopianisms that became virulent when put to work by a politically excluded bourgeoisie and then extended and universalized to the proletariat and promised to countless others in a completely unregulated fashion: ‘‘Their common root lies in the Eighteenth Century.’’ It is ‘‘the antechamber to the present epoch, whose tensions have been increasingly exacerbated since the French Revolution, as the revolutionary process spreads extensively around the globe and intensively to all mankind’’ (1–2;

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5–6). The ideological charge of a derailed secularization thus explodes into worldwide conflict. In his later project of ‘‘conceptual history’’ (Begriffsgeschichte), Koselleck steps back somewhat from his radical and surprisingly venomous—if not completely paradoxical—attack on ‘‘critique’’ as the enabler of global civil war. Perhaps influenced by Habermas (who was himself influenced by Critique and Crisis), Koselleck’s 1972 introduction to the lexicon Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Fundamental Historical Concepts) emphasizes the ambivalence—and not just the vain hypocrisy—of ‘‘indirect politics.’’ But Koselleck does not relent from his overall claim that the political ideals and rights discourse initiated by the politically disenfranchised bourgeoisie of the eighteenth century are prone to ‘‘ideologization,’’ even if they were also able to positively inscribe a new political horizon within the possibilities of human experience. In any case, Koselleck’s conceptual history calls the enemy by a different name: the political naivete´ of the Enlightenment is no longer the culprit, but rather the increase in a vocabulary of ‘‘collective singulars.’’ By focusing on the instrumental role of language, Koselleck depersonalizes his own historiography; ‘‘collective singulars’’ refer to an ensemble of new terms and usages that emerge in the pre-Revolutionary period and help to give voice to a new conception of history and society through the representation of collective functions as a singular forces and overarching processes, which are linguistically figured as ideals—personified as entities and agents—to give coherence to complex transformations. The compactness of the 1972 version of this claim makes it worth citing in its entirety: A further criterion that allows the space of the beginning modern age to be segmented is the emerging susceptibility of many new expressions to ideologization. The loss of intuitively given categorizations for social givens and their associated terminology characterizes the experience of the modern era. The level of abstraction of many concepts thereby increases, and they are no longer able to keep up with the rapid pace of events or the transformation of social structures—or they are only able to do so precisely at the cost of increasing abstraction. In this period, collective singular constructions become numerous: Concrete ‘‘histories’’ become ‘‘history itself,’’ concrete individual freedoms become ‘‘freedom itself,’’ but these terms are always also in need of further specification with epithets such as ‘‘social,’’ ‘‘economic,’’ also ‘‘Christian’’ and ‘‘political’’ (in old as well as new senses), etc., in order to acquire concrete meaning.

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Such collective singular constructs are well suited, in the generality and ambiguity that is typical of them, to become blind and empty formulas that are widely applicable on all sides, depending on the particular interests, class and situation of the speaker, while also varying ideologically according to the background perspective of those involved, whether it be informed by economics, theology, politics or the philosophy of history. These specific occurrences, which conceptual history makes available, attest to a structural transformation, which increases the distance from life-spheres of relatively short duration, which would otherwise be subject to direct comprehension and evaluation; this increasing level of conceptual abstraction simultaneously posits new horizons of possible experience, but precisely at the cost of the susceptibility to ideologization. (Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, XVII–XVIII; my translation)

Even here, in the relatively compact formulations of the introduction to a dictionary, Koselleck does not fail to reveal a certain antipathy toward the ideologically suspect ‘‘collective singulars,’’ which are the result, if not the vehicle, of ‘‘indirect politics.’’ To be sure, he also gives credit to the ‘‘expanded horizons’’ that may become available through more theoretically abstract descriptors, but there can be no doubt that, at least when it comes to politics, Koselleck would rather see political calculations performed according to the traditional rational category of ‘‘interest,’’ dictated by real situations and necessities of the here and now, rather than based on the invocation of ideology-prone counterfactuals (in the form of rhetorically exploitable and distantly utopian collective singulars). In this conceptual historical account, Koselleck places the primary blame with three terms, ‘‘history,’’ ‘‘revolution,’’ and ‘‘progress,’’ which, functioning together, were able to be put to completely divergent political ends, depending on the political intentions of those who invoked them. These concepts lent legitimacy, albeit a highly unstable one, to everyone who spoke in their name, and collective singulars thus ultimately proved to be at odds with the broader collective interest of security and stability. Koselleck details this thesis in an essay, first published in 1967, on a topos attributed to Cicero: ‘‘Historia Magistra Vitae.’’13 The educational or instructive function of history, as the teacher or ‘‘schoolmistress’’ of life, represents a conception that is still recognizable in the modern world, even though it is obviously outmoded. Whereas Cicero’s topos views the historical past as a collection of lessons and examples, the modern era lacks the uniform transgenerational experiential grounding necessary to produce a

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fixed expectation of the parameters of historical possibility. Long-term historical continuity is the precondition of the idea that it is possible to learn from the past. Some kind of broadly comprehensible normative foundation must exist in the lifeworld, at least as a framework of possibilities, for the present to play itself out in more or less the same way—and according to the same rules—over many generations. In modernity, the ground of history itself started to move, Koselleck argues, producing an entirely new understanding of history, which comes to refer to the increasingly mobile frame in which histories take place. History comes to refer to the matrix of transformation and the conditions under which history can be made to begin with. This conception invalidates the older understanding of plural histories, which occur within a stable continuum that is perceived as essentially homogeneous and self-identical. The development of collective singular concepts was instrumental for modernity’s project of generalizing experience and giving it the appearance of systematicity: ‘‘Only once history had been conceived as a system was an epic unity possible that disclosed and established its internal coherence’’ (53; 35). The emphasis falls on establishment more than on disclosure: Koselleck refers to a ‘‘prophetic’’ model of history in the Kantian mode (discussed in chapter 1), which conceives it in terms of its future orientation and defines it as exclusively man-made. Rather than furthering human responsibility and foresight, however, in Koselleck’s analysis, this kind of future orientation made it possible to defer responsibility and ultimately to lay it at the feet of ‘‘history itself’’: ‘‘The collective singular . . . made it possible to ascribe to history the power latently residing within human events and suffering, a power that connected and motivated everything according to a secret or evident plan, a power toward which it was possible to feel responsible, or in whose name one could believe oneself to be acting’’ (54; 35). Encouraging a delusional participation in the world and its events, ‘‘indirect’’ action was mediated by the ‘‘epic’’ conception of a ‘‘historical’’ stage, and the collective singular history became the quintessence of modern self-understanding. Like Koselleck’s other work, ‘‘Historia magistra vitae’’ is highly critical of modernity’s habit of thinking, speaking, and acting in the collective singulars. This vocabulary promotes an ‘‘indirect’’ relation to the future that makes the providential idea of a historical plan—manmade or otherwise— excessively plausible: ‘‘The individual example lost its politico-didactic

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character, . . . but History as a totality places the person who claims to know it in a state of learning that is supposed to have a mediate influence on the future’’ (65; 41). Above and beyond the inherited matrix of traditional expectations, history becomes whatever it is supposed to be according to the one who claims to know it: it is reduced to a rhetorical slight of hand. Koselleck acknowledges that the Kantian future orientation can also be positively construed as ‘‘hope’’ (63; 40–41)—a projected future that provides the ethical norm for present actions—but in the end he remains aggressively disposed toward the ideological basis of collective singulars, the access to which became the political arcanum of the post-Revolutionary era. The claim to understand of history ‘‘as a totality’’ is only supposed to provide situational insight and guide political action, but it does not actually do so. The final consequences of Koselleck’s thesis on collective singulars, like his attack on the ‘‘hypocrisy of critique,’’ remain somewhat opaque, but there is no doubt that his work is completely at odds with optimistic narratives of the sheer or near accomplishment of the enlightened ends of social justice; in this sense his work may remain just as pertinent after the end of the Cold War. His archeological investigation of ‘‘fundamental historical concepts’’—especially those that have been the object of conflicting articulations in the context of historical conflict—strips them of the force and self-evidence necessary for their political instrumentalization. The bare assertion that these concepts have a history tends to render them politically ineffective because they are no longer presumed to speak to and through the presumed transparency, immediacy, and universality of ‘‘public opinion’’ (which is also a collective singular). As an unintended consequence of theoretical rationality, collective singulars emerge as supposedly self-evident ideological imperatives. Conceptual history is uniquely qualified to uncover this, as Koselleck states in the introduction to his lexicon: ‘‘The alienating effect of past experience may serve to sharpen our present awareness, which leads from historical clarification to political transparency [Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe]’’ (XIX). Thus, precisely through the awareness of historical and contextual differences within the most self-evident categories of contemporary and inherited political thought, it may in fact be possible to ‘‘learn something’’ from history and move in the direction of a more rational political practice. So far, modernity has been notoriously unsuccessful in the latter regard, and has instead, in Koselleck’s view, actually moved in the opposite direction. Rather than communicative rationality, the pathogenic language of the

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modern era has developed itself into an arsenal of phantasms, anthropomorphisms, and personifications—‘‘collective singulars’’—with which it is still completely enthralled but which it still ruthlessly manipulates for the sake of immediate political advantage. The underlying anthropology of conceptual history, which has a family resemblance to Hobbes, tends to interpret language first and foremost as political language, and therefore as the mere ‘‘indirect’’ extension of political conflict with different means. The collective singulars, simultaneously personifying and depersonalizing, conjure up the totalizing specter of the Leviathan, which haunts modernity in words such as ‘‘history,’’ ‘‘nation,’’ ‘‘people,’’ ‘‘progress,’’ ‘‘crisis,’’ ‘‘revolution,’’ ‘‘secularization,’’ and many more. But none of these conceptions, in their long-term or infinite teleology, manage to recognize the Leviathan as a ‘‘mortal god,’’ and they thus end up infinitely raising the stakes, thereby effectively excluding the possibility of rational mediation or external arbitration. Modernity’s lack of a universally recognized sovereign instance (other than the collective singulars themselves) makes nonviolent conflict resolution virtually impossible insofar as everything is always at stake. Koselleck’s theory represents the systematic critique of a heavily entrenched and institutionally validated system of political rhetoric, and he very nearly identifies its legitimating function with modern politics as such. He stages a fundamental assault on personified and anthropomorphic— latently theological—concepts that he sees as pervasive within (or even definitive of ) ‘‘the public sphere.’’ But one may still legitimately ask about the possibility of some ‘‘progress,’’ or at least of some progresses, and this, in a sense, is also the question of Ju¨rgen Habermas, whose work precisely complements and responds to that of Koselleck.

Two Versions of the Public Sphere: Habermas and Koselleck Koselleck exposes the ‘‘hypocrisy’’ and internal contradictions within the structure of the inner revolutions of the eighteenth century; the twentieth century still hoped for a similar revolution within the artistic and literary public spheres, which would be able to produce a whole new way of life that would this time be able to displace the unholy union of state and society. Koselleck shows that such movements fail most decisively in their success,

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which can occur only through ideological cooptation and political instrumentalization within the existing social order (dictated by opinion). Failure, on the other hand, as Gu¨tersloh saw it, means resignation to a postidealist version of modernism that turns all works—literature, art, philosophy, and theory—into torsos and fragments, the indecipherable relics of a future past. Koselleck’s work, like Blei’s, looks backward to the extent that the inherent dynamics of capitalism, liberalism, and technology can produce no paradigm shift that would be able to displace the vicious cycles of the present era. The thesis on ‘‘collective singulars’’ reveals the absence and impossibility of a true collective. Collective singulars supply the compensatory (political theological) function that makes up for the absence of a legitimate juridical order that could function without such rhetorical-ideological supplementation. Politically, this conception would require a global reinvestment in a Hobbesian (or even Machiavellian) conception of sovereignty that is neither historically probable, nor politically desirable, nor theoretically convincing. Koselleck’s own analysis (which could be supplemented with Marx’ ‘‘On the Jewish Question’’) shows that the fragile balance between public (sovereignty) and private (conscience) is the framework for the political ‘‘pathogenesis’’ of the modern world, which means that Hobbes’ foundation can provide no solutions. Habermas, on the other hand, attempts to avoid (critical) theory’s susceptibility to dysfunctional utopian politicization by articulating the formal, institutional, and pragmatic juridical-normative conditions of modern society as it is and as it might be without overextending the horizon too far beyond existing inherent potentials and justifications. This allows him to assume that ‘‘modernity’’ does in fact reflect a coherent, systematic, and achievable order, which to some degree remains to be realized, but which should not only be negatively characterized as a dissolution of binding cultural norms and institutional forms. Koselleck’s Critique and Crisis (1959) and Habermas’ Structural Transformation (1962) are often read as if they were compatible, but the political implications of the two theories could not be more different.14 Koselleck, following Carl Schmitt, focuses on politically dysfunctional, exceptional, and revolutionary moments, which are taken to reflect much deeper systemic failures, whereas the early Habermas addresses the normal situation of the ideal function of modern societies (with an emphasis on parliamentary democracy and juridical form). Even if his historical account of a

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‘‘structural transformation’’ has long been discounted as highly idealized,15 his later work reads as an attempted systematic theoretical recuperation of what his historical presentation had failed to prove: the real possibility of systems of communication, legislation, political decision-making, and nonviolent conflict resolution that would be rational, universalizable, and free of domination. The background assumption for all of this is that a public sphere of Kantian provenance is realizable within the framework of parliamentary democracy. The deeper question of the rational possibilities of communication itself is simultaneously validated, on the one hand, by analogy to the scientific-discursive orientation toward truth, and, on the other hand, by analogy to everyday ‘‘life-world’’ communication.16 With this in mind, the difference between Habermas and Koselleck can perhaps be best articulated in the latter’s argumentation based on the procedural metaphors (of trial and judgment), which function as the merely rhetorical assertion that there is or will be a ‘‘process’’ and ‘‘progress,’’ whereas the former seeks to articulate the genesis and function of a wide spectrum of actual procedural forms, from intimate conversation all the way to complex legal, juridical, institutional and administrative processes. Only in a relatively recent essay does Koselleck focus on the difference between law as a real social infrastructure and the rhetorical-ideological superstructures that rely on procedural metaphors. In ‘‘Geschichte, Recht und Gerechtigkeit’’ (History, Law and Justice), an essay first published in 1987, Koselleck produces arguments that seem to acknowledge the difference between Habermas’ method and his own. The existence of law is a historical fact, but history cannot be written without reference to the justice or injustice of historical events. The category of justice also pertains to the role of the historian who impartially—justly—records events as they transpired. According to Koselleck, Herodotus attempted to reveal the immanent justice of history, whereas Thucydides or Machiavelli would take the opposite approach by telling the story of might’s victory over right, which still negatively implies the need for justice in its factual absence. The negative characterization of the possibilities of justice in human history gives rise to a third form of historiography, exemplified by Augustine: worldly justice is lacking, but divine justice is posited as a transcendent final instance. In time, however, the transcendence of otherworldly salvation may become overextended in light of the manifest injustice of worldly events,

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which causes history to appear ‘‘absurd.’’ But even this most nontranscendent of all historiographies still implies a negative relation to justice. The final consequence of this troubled relation between history and justice is dialectical history, which turns history itself into a trial (Prozeß). When it comes to the political use and abuse of this method, Koselleck’ comes close to an outright condemnation: ‘‘The human subject is . . . thereby made into the object of a terrible imposition, which likewise also borders on the absurd.’’17 In the second part of his essay, Koselleck discusses the essential connection between history and justice in its implications for constitutional theory and the history of law. Although he concedes that the latter realms are able to establish a temporality that is different—‘‘slower’’—than other historical arenas, Koselleck still has no difficulty showing that law and institutional structures are themselves historical in the sense that they are subject to transformations, displaced repetitions, and contextually variable applications, understandings, and interpretations, which cause law and constitutions to be shaped by historical forces. On the side of transhistorical permanence, Koselleck writes: ‘‘Law, in order to be law, depends upon its repeated applicability. To this end, maximum formality is desirable, a kind of regularity that is able to comprehend varying specific instances’’ (352). But, although written laws, constitutions, and religious dogmas have a different relation to justice than narrative historical texts (because they have an iterative structure that strives for uniform applicability), they nevertheless ‘‘remain embedded in the general, political and socioeconomic history, as well as, more recently, the history of technology’’ (355). Thus, in a somewhat belated or perhaps oblique response to Habermas’ attempts to set up universal procedural norms as the basis of modern democratic societies, Koselleck asserts the inalterable influence of diachronic forces that transcend the synchronic normativity and consequent prescriptive idealism of Habermas’ procedural imperative for all communicative, juridical, and institutional forms. Like the eighteenth-century critics of Koselleck’s Critique and Crisis, Habermas’ universal procedural norm has a blind spot when it comes to history, whereas Koselleck’s idea of history is not difficult to discern among the four types of historiography he presents: he emphasizes ‘‘transformation’’ more than ‘‘structure’’—the transformation of structures rather than structural transformation—and the Hobbesian conservatism of

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his work is counterbalanced by his own adherence to the ‘‘modern’’ conception of history (characterized by revolutions, transformations, and irreducible diachronicity). Koselleck believes in an idea of history—‘‘history itself’’—that is emphatically nondialectical, and thus, according to his own typology, his work reflects the ‘‘absurdity’’ of history (its nonexistent relation to justice). A certain nihilism predominates in Koselleck’s anthropology: he knows that there can never be—and never was—a legally binding or ‘‘true’’ collective singular (the presupposition of which would be the precondition for Kantian and Habermasian communicative rationality). Only the temporary fictions of collectivity may mercifully delay the war of all against all just as they serve to periodically intensify it. According to a logic that could just as easily be inherited from Benjamin as from Schmitt, the conservative Koselleck is the flipside of an anarchist Koselleck. These conflicting tendencies are already observable in Critique and Crisis, particularly in the Koselleck’s intense aversion to Locke’s law of opinion. This Lockean formulation also marks a crucial point of intersection—and disagreement—between Koselleck and Habermas’ Structural Transformation: both authors use Locke as a scapegoat for their highly divergent conceptions. In Critique and Crisis, Hobbes is the origin of the dualism that made conscience a merely private affair—until it again erupted into the public sphere as a renewed attempt to enforce the supremacy of morality over politics—whereas Locke, missing Hobbes’ political point, is read by Koselleck as theoretically legitimating the will of the emergent bourgeois society against the Hobbesian state: With these distinctions (between Civil Law, Divine Law and the Law of Opinion), the relationship between the moral law and the law of the state as Hobbes had conceived it was already thoroughly revised. Locke’s separation of Divine and Civil Law granted a new legal status and validity to religions, while at the same time, in the course of the same separation, the laws of nature and the state (combined by Hobbes so as to vindicate the state) were sundered again. (42; 54)

Koselleck shows consistent irritation with what appears to him as Locke’s willful destruction of Hobbes’ concept of sovereignty: ‘‘It is no longer the sovereign who decides; it is the citizens who constitute the moral laws by their judgment, just as merchants determine the going rate’’ (42; 56). Alternately: ‘‘To his critics, Locke’s introduction of this law of private censure

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[that is, the law of opinion] seemed to open every door to license’’ (44; 56). And again: ‘‘By his interpretation of the philosophical law [the law of opinion], Locke gave a political charge to the interior of the human conscience which Hobbes had subordinated to state policy’’ (45; 58). Locke was, of course, not himself personally and directly responsible for the social transformations in question, even if it almost appears that way in Koselleck’s narration. At best, Locke gave a voice to the self-styled moral superiority of the disenfranchised bourgeoisie and thereby legitimated their political opposition to absolutism. This means that ‘‘civic morality becomes a public power’’ (47; 59), putting the pieces in place for a crisis of legitimacy that will become a never-ending wellspring of revolutions. Political exclusion is the precondition for an ‘‘indirect politics,’’ whose moral rightness serves as the advance validation for future political success that conceives itself as a form of direct democracy: ‘‘The judgments [of the law of opinion], which continually supersede one another, reflect the legality of a process in whose eyes all state law is already obsolete’’ (48; 60). The law of opinion represents a fictive democracy that factually reflects the anarchic breakdown of law and authority. From Habermas’ perspective, this would be a rather unfair characterization of a historical process that permitted the development of a specific form of law. It is, he would argue, not a question of the destruction of the rule of law as such, but—above all—the development of modern democratic parliamentary systems and the public sphere must not be identified with Locke’s law of opinion. The kind of law that Habermas has in mind is not a fictive democracy of the social, but has a concrete institutional form, imposed not by sheer authority, but whose validity is created by the participation of those who will be its subjects; such a legal-constitutional form would also never be permanently fixed, but subject to constant revision on the basis of subjects’ provisional and virtual recognition of it. Habermas thus invokes a whole history and a structure of political emancipation that was only possible within the parameters that Koselleck seems to sharply dismiss in Critique and Crisis.18 Habermas does not reduce the historical rise of society and the moral force that it asserts to a merely political force, but sees it as the source of rationally founded ideals that remain to be actualized. The fact that these ideals were—and are—often put to merely political ends does not limit their validity, since they also limit and undermine political hegemonies based on their insincere exploitation.

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When Habermas argues that the development of an autonomous society is the precondition for the institutions of political liberation, he follows Koselleck in his condemnation of Locke’s law of opinion, which is interpreted as a contentious or insufficient stage in the conceptualization of the role of opinion in society. Habermas writes: ‘‘Opinion’’ denoted the informal web of folkways whose indirect social control was more effective than formal censure under threat of ecclesiastical or governmental sanctions. Its law, therefore, was also called ‘‘Law of Private Censure.’’ To be sure, in contrast to the collective mores and customs that had emerged naturally, it already possessed that element of awareness that ‘‘opinion’’ now obtained in privatized religious faith and secularized morality. But nevertheless the expression ‘‘public opinion’’ was lacking here and not without reason. The law of opinion was by no means meant as a law of public opinion; for ‘‘opinion’’ neither arose in public discussion—it became binding instead ‘‘by a secret and tacit consent’’—nor was it applied in the same way to the laws of the state, because it was actually grounded in the ‘‘consent of private men who have not authority enough to make a law.’’ Finally, unlike public opinion, opinion was not tied to preconditions of education (and property); contributing to it, far from requiring participation in a process of critical debate, demanded nothing more than the simple uttering of precisely those ‘‘habits’’ of thought that later on public opinion would critically oppose as prejudices. (114–15; 91–92)

By saying what the law of opinion was not, Habermas makes it clear what public opinion is, according to his own theorization of what it should be; the past tense of the verbs, introduced by the translators Burger and Lawrence (whereas Habermas writes in the present tense), gives away a historical claim implicit in German text, but which needed to be insinuated covertly because it is clearly wrong: Habermas makes it appear that the law of opinion was historically superseded by public opinion on the modern political stage, whereas (at best) the two forms continued to coexist in the modern era, and (at worst) mere ‘‘opinion’’ remained the highest law (as Wieland suspected) and was in fact furthered by the growth of print and media culture. Between Habermas and Koselleck, it is a question of whether and to what degree Locke’s law of opinion stands as a modern reinvention of the Herodotean concept of nomos: not a law of ‘‘society’’ so much as of ‘‘culture’’; not a new historical form so much as the form within which historical and cultural difference themselves become relative. Locke places a limitation on the laws of the state, of God, nature and reason, because they are

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all subject to variations dictated by the law of opinion. Nomoi are not able to be simply replaced or usurped by other nomoi, but proliferate according a transformative logic that views all laws as historically relative and interdependent in their exclusivity. This interpretation of nomos is decisively postconventional, but it also recognizes that the pre-political sovereignty of nomos as custom and convention cannot be directly abolished by the decrees of reason (enlightened or otherwise). The ‘‘process of critical debate,’’ which may indeed have begun to assert itself as a new convention of discourse—and as the vehicle of a new political will to power of the disenfranchised bourgeoisie—could never simply replace the law of opinion but only alter or accompany it. Even Habermas’ analysis suggests this at the point where he alludes to public opinion’s entry requirements of education and property ownership. Against Locke’s claim that the law of opinion is the highest law, Habermas would need to establish that it does not exist at all, if his ideal of public reason is to be viable; as long as ‘‘convention’’ is the highest law—whose exceptions may become new conventions—the idea of a postconventional reason seems far-fetched and idealistic. The law of opinion cannot be excluded simply because it appears to have a weak validity claim (from a strictly rationalist perspective) and a weak legitimacy claim (because it is not a product of public rational-critical deliberation). Instead of actually refuting Locke’s conventionalist ‘‘law,’’ Habermas underhandedly presents the history of the concept of opinion as a conflict between a growing rational-discursive apparatus propagated by autonomously reasoning individuals and, on the other hand, opinion as a representational structure focused by collective practices and symbols to which individuals relate with relative obedience and unfreedom. The former conception originates, at least in modernity, with Bayle, and is the definition of critique as ‘‘the weighing of the pour et contre’’ (115; 92), a practice that for Habermas was able to attain the status of a public institution (which it was not in Bayle). Habermas conceives the noncritical, representational side of opinion in terms of inherited cultural prejudices, strictly the opposite and the object of critique, the occasion and starting point for critical dialogical reason. But the question—also at issue in chapter 3—is the end and ends of the critical reason of the individual: when and under what conditions does it remain rational, and when does it produce an ‘‘outcome,’’ an ‘‘interest,’’ or a result that reverts back to the merely representational formulae of opinion and prejudice?

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Habermas does not address this question, but simply excludes the law of opinion as a historically obsolete remnant of the ‘‘feudal’’ representative function of personal reputation: The Law of Opinion judged virtues and vices; virtue, indeed, was measured precisely in terms of public esteem. As the complete formulation, ‘‘Law of Opinion and Reputation,’’ shows, with Locke the original meaning of that which one represented in the opinion of others returned. On the other hand, this opinion was conspicuously cleansed of the unreliability of mere opining, of external and even deceptive mere appearance. (114; 91)

What appears to Habermas as a ‘‘conspicuous cleansing’’ reveals his misestimation of Locke’s system; as a philosopher, the products of opinion and reputation are as suspect to Locke as they are to Habermas, but the law of opinion, construed as the highest authority, is a release valve, necessary to account for difference. ‘‘Opinion’’ presumes a limited relativism that is the precondition of an enlightened critique that would also be tolerant of cultural and religious difference but does not explicitly contradict current social norms or the particular law of the land. Cultural differences—the variability of norms between different times and places—must be not only accounted for, they must be affirmed in a way that splits the difference between sheer relativism and pure intolerance, and Locke’s conventionalist formulation makes this possible. Opinion is the ‘‘highest law’’ for Locke, but this does not mean he is blind to its aberrant possibilities; the ‘‘law of opinion’’ is a lip service—an expensive one because Habermas was not the first to (deliberately) miss the point—to historical and political realities, but as such ‘‘the law of fashion’’ (as Locke also called it) reflects a moment of philosophical resignation before the power of habit and convention. Habermas, on the other hand, is guilty of the ‘‘cleansing’’ that he attributes to Locke: he advances a conception of opinion—and a theory of the political as such—that would radically forgo the categories of ‘‘representation’’ (Repra¨sentation) and ‘‘appearance’’ (Schein), and thus be truly secular. The possibility of such a rationalization—if it is not to be dismissed out of hand as philosophical hubris—depends on a disingenuous use of the concept of ‘‘representation,’’ which Carl Schmitt had designated, along with identity (Identita¨t), as an indispensable category of political organization. In the historical introduction of Structural Transformation, Habermas sketches ¨ ffentlichkeit) in the middle ages and characterthe concept of ‘‘publicity’’ (O izes the feudal public sphere as a sphere of representation, and cites conspicuously, not only from works on medieval history, but from the

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constitutional theory (Verfassungslehre) of Carl Schmitt. Habermas neglects the fact that latter does not speak of ‘‘representation’’ as a merely medieval phenomenon, but as a fundamental political concept that has only been disavowed and fallen out of favor in modernity.19 The passage in which Habermas tries to tailor Schmitt’s idea of representation is worth quoting at length: He [the medieval lord or king] displayed himself, presented himself as an embodiment of some sort of ‘‘higher’’ power. The concept of representation has been preserved down to the most recent constitutional theory, according to which representation can ‘‘occur only in public. . . . There is no representation that can be a ‘private’ matter.’’ Representation pretended to make something invisible visible in the public presence of the person of the lord: ‘‘. . . things that are lifeless, inferior, worthless or mean cannot be the subjects of representation. They lack the exalted sort of being suitable to being elevated into public status, that is, into existence. Words like excellence, highness, majesty, fame, dignity, and honor seek to characterize this peculiarity of beings capable of representation.’’ Representation in the sense in which the members of a national assembly represent a nation or a lawyer represents his clients had nothing to do with this publicity of representation inseparable from the lord’s concrete existence, which, as an ‘‘aura,’’ surrounded and endowed his authority. (20; 7)

Phrases like ‘‘pretended to’’ make it clear that Habermas does not mean to affirm the ‘‘recent constitutional theory’’ of Schmitt (who is only named in the endnotes), but he falls into the trap of trying to flatly refute Schmitt’s concept of representation with a thesis that selectively reads (and inverts) his Roman Catholicism and Political Form against his constitutional theory. Representation in Schmitt’s sense, politically suspect though it may be, cannot be so easily skirted: the ‘‘aura’’ of authority,20 ritual pomp and circumstance, are—even in the most generous analysis—far from unique to the feudal system. They comprehend a wide spectrum of theatrical (or, more precisely, performative) modes,21 such as vows and oaths, as well all publicity, public relations, photo ops, and the like. Not only performative speech and ‘‘rhetorical’’ speech in general, but political discourse in particular usually represents pregiven positions and reasons without critically reflecting on them in a way that would allow for progressive modification. Even more problematically, the foundation and implementation of law itself may only be conceivable through representational instances and ‘‘forces’’ that endow it with its authority.22 In the realm

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of political rhetoric specifically, Koselleck’s ‘‘collective singulars’’ are precisely representative functions in Schmitt’s sense because they allegorically stand in for, attribute agency to, and personify ‘‘historical’’ powers, such as ‘‘freedom’’ or ‘‘progress.’’ On this basis, Koselleck’s historical thesis on representation is exactly the opposite of Habermas’ and Schmitt’s: modernity is not the era of the decline of ‘‘representation,’’ nor is it the era of a misbegotten and contingent reintroduction of the idea of representation— ‘‘refeudalization’’—but rather the era of representation’s sublimation within the conceptual vocabulary of critique, philosophy, and politics. Habermas runs the risk, carried over from Schmitt, of differentiating too strictly between two typologies of discourse—‘‘reason’’ and ‘‘representation’’—that are never present in a state of purity,23 but are always overlapping, concentric, and simultaneous. Habermas’ refeudalization thesis, which diagnoses an illegitimate return to the obsolete principle of representation, is difficult to reconcile with his parallel assertion of reason’s universalizability in the political public sphere: The aura of personally represented authority reappears as an aspect of publicity; to this extent modern publicity indeed has affinity with feudal publicity. Public relations do not genuinely concern public opinion, but opinion in the sense of reputation. The public sphere becomes the court [Hof, not Gericht] before which public prestige can be displayed—rather than in which public critical debate is carried out. (239; 200–01)

Unable to deny the continuing existence of representation (and even its increase), Habermas is forced to discount it as a kind of epiphenomenon that has nothing to do with public opinion. This amounts to a practically and theoretically highly unstable claim that it is possible to closely—or at least more closely—approximate a truly democratic form within the context of modern mass democracy.24 Such an assertion may be justifiable because it raises the critical specter of ‘‘real’’ democracy against the bad conscience of actual ‘‘democracies,’’ but the theoretical opposition of ‘‘representation versus reason’’ represents a false alternative, an oversimplification which causes Habermas to err in the direction of a misleading idealism: at the limit, he expects and envisions nothing less than the complete depersonalization of politics and total individual autonomy. No ‘‘interests’’ may be ‘‘represented’’—only discussed in view of the best solution; there can be no political parties, no collective bargaining, and no interest or pressure

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groups—leaving nothing but sheer individualism.25 Within Habermas’ framework, it might be argued that such representational functions remain pedagogically necessary until universal individual autonomy becomes practically achievable (and the technology for the institutional expression of this autonomy has been implemented), but this would either enter into familiar and rather dire paradoxes of political (re)education, or else lapse into a defense of the status quo that Structural Transformation otherwise so vigorously attacks. (The possibility of ‘‘individual autonomy’’ also has something like an internal limit, but this is the topic of chapters 3 and 4.) Habermas’ work is not a theory so much as an ethical injunction, an imperative along the lines of Kant’s ‘‘Sapere aude!’’ This does not mean his work should be discarded, but it still needs to be much more relentlessly contextualized in a way that puts it at odds with its own apparent moderateness and shows it to represent an extreme claim relative both to the political status quo and to other understandings of the modern public sphere. The practical obstacles to the Habermasian project of the total depersonalization of politics are perhaps most evident in the case of art and literature, which represents—following the young Gu¨tersloh’s idealization of Klimt’s project—an exception to the wider public sphere; instead of allowing itself to be depersonalized, art tried to represent a form of radical individual autonomy that had been largely excluded from the social organization. This form of sheer autonomy—of the individual as much as of art—failed because it remained dependent on the political and historical currents of a totalized public sphere; to the extent that autonomy was realized, it came at such a high cost as to take the horizon of universality out of the picture. Against the conformist and collectivizing tendencies of the modern public sphere, artists sought to produce a new legitimacy, but such attempts to resist instrumentalization within the modern public sphere not only ran the risk of taking sides with every new political movement that came along, they also tended—even and especially in their successes—to become personalized within the representational economy of a political public sphere that had already, at least in theory, created its subjects as individuals, but had failed to provide them with a coherent form of individualized political agency. For this reason, modernist art exemplifies the tragedy of the modern public sphere: because this sphere enjoins its ‘‘citizens’’ to engage in autonomous critical reflection, it betrays them by only allowing for political participation in representational and representative,

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quantitatively reduced and anonymous forms.26 In this context even the Internet appears only as a new form of placation within a wider system of placations because it cannot alleviate the residual resentment produced by a system still based on a purely formal equality (while the established forms of social inequality remain essentially untouched). This situation continues to reproduce the structural preconditions for what Koselleck calls ‘‘indirect politics’’ (with all of its unpredictable but predictably devastating consequences), whereas the ‘‘representational’’ and ‘‘political’’ imperatives of art—even those of what is called ‘‘nonrepresentational’’ art—continue to stand as a politically impotent protest against the broken promise of modern life. Art and literature revealed themselves, in short, as the sublimated and proto-utopian—to a greater or lesser degree ‘‘delusional’’ or ‘‘hypocritical’’—attempts to repersonalize a public sphere, which, thanks to the ‘‘collective singular,’’ was already completely depersonalized, without therefore being more rational or just. Without peremptorily dismissing the possibility of Habermas’ rationalist conception of critical reason, it cannot be too emphatically reiterated how minimal are the outlets available to this form of reason within existing political and social structures (and quite possibly within all political and social structures). Recalling Herodotus, exemplary representations appear to be the norm of political organization, whereas critical reason is an exception of fairly limited scope. And, even more crucially, the latter can only attain political validity and become operative and legitimate by way of the former. But this fact, instead of making things too easy, may make them difficult to the point of futility, and thus Habermas’ more modest emphasis on the basic requirements of rational democratic form may be justifiable as a fallback.27 But his normatively oriented theory should not lead to confusion or complacency about the implacable aspects of the problem. In any case, the pretence of an accomplished secularization as the historical end of representational forms—in effect, the end of myth—is only one more myth and mystification, which, rather than producing positive normative effects, may be just as often invoked in the name of a dubious ‘‘democracy’’ within the completely nonsecular horizon of the collective singular.

In the Absence of a Historical Plan (Derrida) Habermas’ and Koselleck’s rejection of the law of opinion represents the exclusion of a recognized lifeworld social function (with a long historical

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pedigree) in favor of rationally founded authority. They differ only over the kind of raison that should rule. Both reject Locke’s law not on theoretical but on normative grounds, based on its political illegitimacy. That which many have conceived as the very font of legitimacy is thus declared illegitimate. In comparison, the Michel Foucault’s work appears as an attempt to describe, theorize, revise, update, and systematize Locke’s conception of extralegal social authority. Through the investigation of normative systems that lie beyond the specific jurisdiction of positive law, political rights, and state authority, the terrain of Foucault’s research overlaps with Locke’s law. Like Locke, Foucault tends to historicize it as a category of modern society, a ‘‘type of power [that] is susceptible of producing discourses of truth [which] in a society such as ours are endowed with such potent effects,’’ but also grants it a high degree of universality: ‘‘In a society such as ours, but basically in any society, there are manifold relations of power which permeate, characterize and constitute the social body, and these relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse.’’28 Like Virgil’s Fama, Foucault’s theorization of discursive power envisions it as semiautonomously productive of social practices, norms, and truths. Comparable to Locke, who calls the law of opinion ‘‘the highest law’’ (above divine and civil law), Foucault also designates this form of power as the indispensable precondition of all authority, law, right, and rights. As such, it is not only a supplementary power of discursive legitimation (ideology or ‘‘political theology’’), but also the mobile, quasi-transcendental foundation of both legitimacy and discourse. Certain tensions exist, of course, within and between Locke and Foucault: to what degree are the relations in question in fact discursively structured? And if they are not inherently discursive—or representational—then what is their mode of existence? How is it possible to draw conclusions about the nature of the force in question based purely on its effects? The differences in wording, between Foucault’s relativizing reference to the production of ‘‘discourses of truth’’ and Locke’s equally ironic designation of a ‘‘law’’ of opinion (or fashion), suggest something about the trajectory of Foucault’s historical narrative: the ‘‘law’’ of opinion is a compensation for the apparent lawlessness of historical and cultural variation. Nomos has the potential to legitimate anything and everything, including the most violent as well as the most absurd; its ‘‘truth’’ is discursively

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produced without producing any discourse of the truth. Foucault’s historical thesis therefore finds a deliberate colonization, extension, and economization of lax or informal systems of social control to produce ‘‘a society of normalization’’ (107), ‘‘a closely linked grid of disciplinary coercions whose purpose is in fact to assure the cohesion of this same social body’’ (106). Spoken in Schmitt’s lexicon, if the body politic (‘‘the people’’) of modern societies (or of any society) does not represent a concrete identity, this identity must be produced and reproduced—through representation—as the precondition of rule. In Foucault’s reading, this happens on its own, beyond the authority of the state and instituted powers. The changing discursive infrastructure of modern societies, combined with an increasing rational thematization of nomoi, causes ‘‘opinion,’’ ‘‘fashion,’’ ‘‘and convention’’ to be discursively opened up and proliferated as the vehicles for the production of ‘‘knowledge,’’ ‘‘truth,’’ ‘‘wealth,’’ and ‘‘information.’’ The seeming lawlessness of the law of opinion is historically transformed into the source of its own cohesion, and the rise of ‘‘society,’’ for Foucault, ultimately comes into conflict with the old model of sovereignty. The medieval principle of sovereignty in Habermas’ sense (based on representation and identity) is not thereby dissolved, but only displaced and discursively extended within a society that is more and more able to take over sovereignty’s representational functions. Compared to Koselleck, Foucault is less worried about the latent antagonism between society and sovereign, focusing instead on the ability of societies to discursively produce their own sovereign norms (nomoi). Even here, the ‘‘state within a state’’ model is still in effect, but Foucault pursues it into the increased micromanagement of individual and collective practices, which never reach the level of ‘‘hypocritical’’ selfawareness that Koselleck attributes to critique. Finally, the actual production of a discourse of ‘‘opinions’’—the bourgeois norm of ‘‘critical’’ reflection upon its own norms—would only be the leading edge of the transformation in question. According to Foucault’s hypothesis and its reflection in Locke, modernity recursively exploits the law of opinion in the disciplinary microorganization of every aspect of human life in society. Viewed from a point when this history had become apparent, the rationalization of the law of opinion must be nearing its completion (sublime and total surveillance) or its failure (in which case some remainders or insurmountable resistances should be in evidence). Following the latter hypothesis, Locke’s law, to the

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extent that it has not been exhausted by social normation29 and discursive rationalization, seems to point toward something other than the history that Foucault articulated. If, for example, the self-reflexive systems of normation and rationalization themselves were infected with ‘‘irrational,’’ unpredictable, and unmotivated twists, then the basic arbitrariness underlying Locke’s conception was never overcome, even in its ‘‘rationalization.’’ Systems may be produced and are sometimes even legitimated by knowledge, but because the disciplinary will to total education remains permeated by a fundamental uncertainty, the system will always have soft spots that leave openings for contestation and variance. This is still a part of Foucault’s understanding: the law of opinion can never achieve a one-to-one correspondence or identity with its object (the social body that the law is supposed to govern); it can never achieve the total application that would allow it to move from the sphere of law, custom, and convention to that of organic nature, being, and reason. Just as there was space within the civil and divine laws—space that opinion was able to fill—the law of opinion, even at the extreme of total surveillance and ‘‘social control,’’ cannot prevent its own transgression, but actually incites it. Opinion, now as fama, cannot produce the kind of enduring internal identity that would allow it to achieve the status of an unchangeable and inviolable law. This element of opinion that makes it a law—which resides at the level of the effects of all discursive ‘‘systems’’—only represents the ‘‘disciplinary’’ side of Foucault’s model. Opinion as a system of asystematic lawlessness is instead the object of deconstruction. ‘‘Call it a Day for Democracy,’’ the only text that Derrida wrote on the concept of public opinion, supports this hypothesis while displaying a surprising degree of overall compatibility with Habermas’ Structural Transformation. On the side of theoretical restraint, however, it would not be correct to declare that Derrida ‘‘discovered’’ the deconstructive moment of opinion or that deconstruction ‘‘is’’ opinion. The affinities between his description of public opinion and his general theorization of deconstruction are evident and rather unsurprising, especially given the chameleon-like quality of the idea of opinion, which endows it with a virtually limitless ability to reflect the theoretical assumptions that are brought to bear upon it. If read in this way, opinion’s function as a theoretical mirror is a sign of its total conceptual nullity, and this conclusion would have further consequences: if there is no opinion, then what remains is either a completely deterministic anthropology (on the side of a certain reason) or else a fatalistic one (on the side of unreason). If these extremes are

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rejected—for ethical reasons more than systematic ones—then the concept of opinion must be retained by default. Thus it is not the case that deconstruction ‘‘is’’ opinion or discovered its true form; instead, deconstruction sides with the most canonical versions of opinion against those that would try to reduce it out the equation. The ethical decision is thus differently located in deconstruction than in Habermas’ critical theory, and for this reason it does not entail a normative, prescriptive, and procedural ‘‘discourse ethics,’’ but rather the descriptive enumeration of the possible structures and functions of opinion. In Derrida’s model of deconstruction in and as opinion, he first attributes it with the doubly phantasmatic structure—‘‘the silhouette of a phantom’’ (84)—of diffe´rance. It is excluded from both presence and representation and is deferred to the counterfactual subjunctive: If it had a proper place (but this is the whole question), public opinion would be the forum for a permanent and transparent discussion. It would be opposed to non-democratic powers, but also to its own political representation. Such representation will never be adequate to it, for it breathes, deliberates and decides according to other rhythms. (85–86)

Opinion is always out of sync with the agents or delegates that claim to represent it. Following the paradoxical logic of unrepresentability traced in Wieland’s theory of cosmopolitanism, everyone who claims to speak for the public opinion—‘‘cites it, . . . makes it speak, ventriloquizes it . . .’’ (87)— betrays it. For Derrida, the exemplary ‘‘medium’’ of public opinion is the daily newspaper, which ‘‘produces the newness of this news as much as reports it’’; this medium of opinion ‘‘is no longer in our day what it was yesterday and from the beginnings of its history’’ (89). Derrida signals an ongoing transformation within the medium of public opinion itself, which was only fairly recently redefined by the medium of the daily newspaper, but which will soon be taken over by other media and their rhythms: At another speed, the day is announced, the day is coming, when the day reaches its end. The day is announced when the day (the visibility of the image and the publicity of the public, but also the unity of daily rhythm, but also the phenomenality of the political, its very essence) will no longer be the ratio essendi, the reason or ration of the telemetatheoretical effects that we just been speaking about (109).

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Derrida does not fully articulate this prognostication with regard to the specific transformations that he sees on the horizon. He characteristically does not wish to prematurely circumscribe the scope or consequences of future change, thereby also implying that such changes are still largely indeterminate, governed by a conception of futurity, which, to be a ‘‘future’’ at all, must to a greater or lesser degree escape the ability to comprehend it in advance. To an unsympathetic reader, this kind of guardedness may look like ‘‘playing it safe’’ on the one hand or apocalyptic mysticism on the other, but if Derrida is taken at the word of his systematic intentions, then he offers a limited guarantee that opinion and its constituent media will not be domesticated or predictably reproducible in the future any more than was the case in the past. Neither discursive rationality nor strategic political reason will be able to entirely control, dictate, or coerce opinion. Among the forces that may shape and expand but by no means determine the future of opinion are the variable potentials of new media and particularly the Internet (which barely existed at the time of Derrida’s essay).30 Comparable to, but in many ways more important than the future technological indeterminacy of opinion, are specific events or institutions that do not correspond to the regular rhythms of the daily news and ‘‘media.’’ This is the sphere from which ‘‘untimely developments that escape . . . [the media’s] grid of readability might one day take over without any resistance at all’’ (104); at issue is something like a blind spot in the modern public sphere, from which its unexpected future successes and failures will emerge. More concretely, although Derrida does not mention it, collective environmental dangers may fall into this category because they have the potential to fall on the wrong side of existing interests and cost–benefit analyses.31 Literature, the arts, and science are also spheres that—to a diminishing degree—may be capable of producing input that is heterogeneous to the daily market rhythms of the public sphere. Derrida does not seem to hold out much hope here, although he does acknowledge that the posterity of public opinion moves in mysterious ways: As for the future course of a work, the quality of ten readers, as we know, sometimes plays a more determining role than the immediate reality of ten thousand buyers. What would our great media machines do with Rimbaud or Lautre´amont, with Nietzsche or Proust, with a Kafka or a Joyce of 1989? They were saved by a handful of readers (a minimal listening audience), but what readers! (104)

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The passage conveys a resigned recognition of the historical reality of new censorship and its limitations, which are underscored in the next sentence: ‘‘Perhaps this analogy already suffers from anachronism—alas—for the intrinsic history of those episodes was no doubt linked to its outside and, whether one denies it or not, to a structure of ‘public space’ that is now outdated’’ (104). This sounds strangely like a lament for the literary milieu of high modernism, whose condition of possibility has expired, giving rise to a literary-academic public sphere that is no longer the public sphere, but now appears ‘‘quasi-private’’—a conversation under four eyes, ‘‘samizdat,’’ as Derrida puts it. He may thus seem perhaps too influenced by a nostalgia for the ‘‘limited edition’’ and an ‘‘underground’’ that, like Habermas’ version of the eighteenth century, never existed in such an idealized form. Derrida’s analysis also bears more than a passing resemblance to Wieland’s theory of cosmopolitanism: a community without community, ‘‘far from the court (cour)’’ (101), the increasing quasi-privacy of the literary public sphere is not a result of its literal secrecy but of the temporality of its textual-discursive orientation, which may still—even today—be able to exert the right kind of indirect influence at the right time to decisively affect the course of things. That which is ‘‘far from the court’’—the court of judgment and of the feudal lord—may yet reach representative prominence or be called upon to give testimony. The cosmopolitans thus continue to labor in private, in the catacombs, despite the fact that this ‘‘analogy’’ may be more of an anachronism than it ever was. Nevertheless, out of the depths of ‘‘our time,’’ a different time may still emerge, and Derrida aligns himself with this quasi-messianic hope, which, entirely worldly in its orientation, has therefore always been dashed in the past, even when it seems to have succeeded in producing epochal transformations far beyond the wildest hopes or intents of those who became known as the ‘‘doers of the deeds.’’ Deconstruction seeks to recognize the historical force of unplannable effects and unintended consequences within human affairs; the famous instability and uncertainty of opinion are only more traditional characterizations of the same historical affect. ‘‘Far from the court,’’ the provincialism of deconstruction lies in its alliance with modern (and modernist) literaryartistic projects that eschew the title and the access granted to the ‘‘court philosophers’’ (who hypocritically try to speak in a way that will command the respect of power). But deconstruction’s literary affect, depending on how it is understood, can also be denounced as a hypocritical claim to the

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moral high ground. On the other hand, the point of deconstruction may still be read as an attempt to redefine this moral base in formal terms according to the morphology of historical transformation that it theorizes and describes. In this sense, deconstruction ‘‘advocates’’ (though not before any nameable forum) a metamorphic model of history, generally accepted in the realm of the arts (where deliberate variations are put into play), but which appears threateningly irrational when conceived as a model of history as such. The law of opinion in its Derridean formulation thus does not have the stability of nomos, but follows the lawless permutations of fama: rather than viewing history from the perspective of synchronically conceived conventional norms, deconstruction’s law of opinion would be an infinite, impersonal, unpredictable, diachronic force—a force of diachronicity—an unfathomable drift within language (and especially in philosophy and philosophical concepts), culture, and every discourse that tries to define or determine its own sphere, once and for all, in language.32 Derrida’s concept of transformation asserts the anomy of nomoi (of which Herodotus was already aware) in a way that is compatible with Koselleck’s understanding of history. His theory of modernity is based on a more or less uniform transformation along the axis of the ‘‘collective singular,’’ whereas Derrida (much like Blumenberg, who argued against Koselleck on precisely this point) envisions a much more long-term and polycentric—strictly decentered— repurposing (Umbesetzung) of words and concepts, which cannot be totalized as a historical narrative, whether it be that of ‘‘epochs,’’ ‘‘modernity,’’ ‘‘secularization,’’ ‘‘collective singulars,’’ etc.33 Based on this specific predicament of conceptual vocabulary, deconstruction pursues a specific strategy: rather than presenting one more belated attempt ‘‘to get it right’’ (thereby operating under the illusion that it can put a stop to the back and forth of opinions), deconstruction seeks to retrace the historical-conceptual latencies out of which new opinions are unfolded, thereby undermining the unitary will to produce the ‘‘last word’’ and accelerating the entropic aspect of opinion by siding with it (in figures such as ‘‘incalculability,’’ ‘‘unknowability,’’ ‘‘undecidability,’’ etc.). Assuming that opinion’s lawlessness is less dangerous than the attempts to pin it down to an orthodoxy, deconstruction reads the formal and conceptual unity of philosophical texts (above all and exemplarily) and of all other texts and discursively coded ‘‘public’’ works (by extension) as the product of a

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normative intention rather than of some intrinsic textual or extratextual ‘‘nature’’ or pregiven ‘‘content.’’ The point of deconstructive reading, famously, is not to objectively reproduce or ‘‘interpret’’ texts according the more or less self-evident trajectories of hermeneutic desire, but rather to find the soft spots where the textual execution and the metatextual suppositions of intent fail to coincide within the text itself. This kind of applied deconstruction, which tries to catalyze the tendency of texts and discourses to ‘‘deconstruct themselves,’’ risks becoming a new mode of critique (precisely in the sense in which the verb ‘‘to deconstruct’’ has been adopted in the popular vernacular), and politically it may amount to a kind of stalling tactic, a deliberate interference in the practice of discursive legitimation with the aim of introducing a fundamental indecisiveness as to whether any given text or discourse can be taken as what it claims to be. The tradition of ‘‘reason’’ is likewise read, according to its political underground of ‘‘desire,’’ as the rationalization of opinion and interest. Under these conditions, however, it is impossible to substitute anything ‘‘positive,’’ ‘‘self-evident’’ or ‘‘unreflected’’ in place of the absence that cannot be ignored, but which can only be ignored. This makes deconstruction, especially from a culturally conservative perspective, virulently anarchic; the ground, as it were, is pulled out from under conservatism because that which was supposed to be ‘‘conserved’’ is shown to have a different status and meaning than those who championed it thought that it did. But, from deconstruction’s own standpoint it only rearticulates a state of affairs that has been known for a long time, though many have found it best to look the other way. Nothing is gained by making deconstruction responsible for a situation that preceded it. But the political impasse of deconstructive practice (in Derrida’s version of it) lies not in the euphoric anarchism of ‘‘free play’’ (with which it is often attributed), but in its lack of positive positioning before a status quo and a ‘‘tradition’’ (that is not a tradition in the way that it thinks that it is), which, in effect, have to be waited out (while hopefully rendering inoperative some of the most destructive potentials). Whereas Habermas falls back to an often conservative-looking defense of those aspects of the tradition that are worth saving, Derrida goes on the offense against the internal inconsistencies for the sake of a better tradition than the merely ‘‘traditional’’ one. But these approaches are not mutually exclusive, and in fact only make sense together.

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In the context of opinion—in an epoch in which history is made in the name of problems to solved and plans to be implemented—how does deconstruction’s claim for planlessness and unplannability finally play out? With both human and divine providence taken off the table by deconstruction, does history happen at the whim of ‘‘demonic’’ forces? Or does deconstruction, like Wieland in chapter 1, amount to an attempt to convince the powers that be to come to a different understanding of their powers?

The Irony of Critique In the preface to his ‘‘Private Conversations,’’ Wieland simultaneously mimes and ventriloquizes ‘‘the public opinion,’’ and in his dialogue on public opinion, one of the interlocutors gives voice to public opinion as ‘‘common sense’’ and simultaneously puts words into its mouth. Wieland thus betrays the figural basis of every discourse of public opinion, which draws its persuasive power from an economy of displacements and representations, metonymies and substitutions. Wieland’s political writings and the peculiarities of their form provide a potent early index of a situation, which is now most often either forgotten or bracketed in the interest of political pragmatism. Instead of presenting a history in which knowledge becomes progressively more ‘‘public,’’ and in which ‘‘public opinion’’ becomes more genuinely public and more rational as society becomes more open and democratized, Wieland’s Conversations attest to the opposite movement: modern democratic form causes individual opinions to become completely marginal, eclipsed, subterranean, latent, medial, intimate—inaccessible to knowledge and self-knowledge. Instead of becoming objects of rational discursive analysis and critical thematization, opinions are more often merely represented, just as individuals are inevitably enjoined to represent their opinions. The fictive frame with which Wieland surrounds his Conversations represents public opinion’s particular inaccessibility. The fictional setting of the dialogues implies that opinions can only be represented in a displaced form, second hand, as the opinions of others, thereby rejecting the imputation that it is possible to have one’s own opinion. Opinions, constitutively anonymous, are fictively extended to the minds of individuals who take them for their own, but who in fact can only think with reference to what they think

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that others think. By accepting the consequences of the public sphere’s figural base and miming its dilemmas, the literary form of Wieland’s dialogue represents the inaccessibility of a public sphere whose privileged mode of access is much more representational than discursive. ‘‘Literature’’ in this sense, as a meta-discursive form—as the representation of representation— refuses to fall for the ruse that requires the individual to take sides and be represented in a conflict whose basis is sheer hearsay. Because literature’s content is ‘‘public’’ but fails to conform to the intentional norms—the representation of a certain sincerity—that are the condition of entry to the political public sphere, it can be qualified as a semipublic sphere of indirect rhetoric. Rhetoric itself, in the sense of persuasion, is of course itself always to some degree indirect or mechanical, but literature would turn this indirectness into a specific rhetorical advantage in response to a political situation in which direct persuasion only makes the latency problem—of a discursive law that says that opinions must be represented—all the more virulent. ‘‘Direct’’ speech knows not what it does to the extent that it has convinced itself that it is in fact direct—while it in fact remains representative and also uncertain in terms of its success or ‘‘felicity’’ (in the sense of speech act theory). Even especially ‘‘direct’’ speech is subject to the indirect forums of posterity and public opinion, which cannot entirely preempted or superseded in advance. Literary speech, on the other hand, is ironic metarhetoric, which acknowledges and redoubles the systems of indirectness, mediation, and representation upon which the political discourse as well as the discourse on politics are founded. This thesis on literature is compatible with Koselleck’s idea of depersonalization: ‘‘Critique has become so sovereign that it is able extend the field of its domination beyond the actual persons who initiated it.’’34 Because critique failed to undermine the sovereignty of representation, literature moves to establish an alternate representational economy. By representing representation, literature strives for a different mode of depersonalization that may not fall within the paradigm of ‘‘a state within a state,’’ the dangers and futility of which both Blei and Koselleck discerned. According to this model, Koselleck sees literature in terms of the ‘‘hypocrisy of critique,’’ but he does not account for the specific difference that distinguishes literary representation (and the arts more generally) from critique: the former ‘‘depersonalize’’ themselves in the discontinuity between ‘‘the doer and the deed,’’ the alienation of ‘‘artist and work,’’ the difference between design

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and execution, between the concrete composition and the personality or opinion of its creator; in short, art highlights the difference between representation and opinion at the same time as it implies the representational status of opinions. Artists, as in the case of Klimt discussed above, have themselves been guilty of personalizing art by representing it as a mysterious continuity of life and work, but his pupil Gu¨tersloh eventually saw this as a mystification. This realization is probably the norm and not the exception, at least among artists, but the important point is that art as we know it, as Koselleck’s thesis surmised, exists—and has largely continued to exist—in a depersonalized space, and it has for the most part done so with greater coherence and fidelity than politically compromised ‘‘critique’’ or the heavily personalized and representational sphere of ‘‘politics.’’ The problem with critique, in other words—to revise Koselleck’s claim—is not that it was too depersonalized, but that it was still not depersonalized enough. Rather than a failed politics (as Koselleck reads it), critique was failed literature, which for this reason also turned out to be a failed politics. Literature, however, was never meant to ‘‘succeed’’ in the same sense. Whereas Habermas and a certain vein of critical theory continue to pursue the ‘‘hypocrisy of critique’’ to its bitter end while pretending that they are exempt from its paradoxes, Derridean deconstruction tries to learn the lesson of literature. But Koselleck could still be read as an opponent of both understandings: skeptical of ‘‘depersonalization’’ in all of its forms, for him neither art nor literature, neither critical theory nor deconstruction, may have found a solution to critique’s failures. For Koselleck, they all represent a ruse or device, a political maneuver of critique in competition with an absolutist state that was never really dethroned but which only constantly incorporates the rhetoric of its opponents. In Koselleck’s reading of the Enlightenment, literature (especially theater) is a moral institution whose ultimate intent is to displace an immoral state and replace it with a morally based counterinstitution. Koselleck would doubt that literature ever stopped conceiving itself as a moral institution and that it would be inherently less oppressive or coercive than the state against which it ‘‘competes’’ (according to opposite but complementary fictions that both sides are interested in maintaining). Wieland’s ‘‘secret’’ of the cosmopolitical order—which also provides the secret matrix of Koselleck’s thesis—uncovers a symbiotic relation between the literary public sphere and the absolutist state; literature and culture,

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even and especially when they become opponents of the state, represent the hidden infrastructure and ideological continuation of domination. ‘‘Culture’’—not as nomos but as a cultivated form of indirect legitimation—is simply the alibi of a state that only increases its power by conditionally allowing the existence of a public sphere. Wieland makes this claim very quietly, and perhaps not only to pacify authorities and censors. The literary public sphere, in its aspirations to legitimacy, may serve to legitimate that which it opposes, making it only one more mask of a critique whose insincere ‘‘criticism’’ is only the alibi of its own bad conscience as well as that of the state. This crisis of conscience, unequally divided between state and public sphere, reflects an internal crisis of legitimacy and is therefore a more likely source of revolutions than the critical arguments in and of themselves: Literature and critique were able to destabilize the state only to the extent that the state itself began to believe and participate in them. The possibility that the literary public sphere unwittingly plays a part in a public conspiracy that ends up destroying the legitimacy of the absolutist state is Koselleck’s hypothesis on the hypocrisy of critique. The additional possibility might also be entertained, however, while following the essentials of Koselleck’s argument, that literature introduces an additional and problematic wrinkle within this model: to the extent that literature reacts to exactly the same split that Koselleck tries to unfold, it acts at a different level of political awareness and according to a different plan. For Koselleck, literature manifests a dubious ‘‘apoliticality,’’ indirectly participating in political problems and merely extending them, keeping them hidden and thereby aggravating them. Koselleck himself, however, displays a barely concealed nostalgia for direct politics—real participation and enfranchisement of a kind that is without historical precedent—and from this perspective indirectness can only appear as a political deficiency, as a dangerous symptom of political disenfranchisement. Koselleck also exhibits this longing for ‘‘direct politics’’ in his attempt to secure the directness and purposefulness of so-called indirect politics. He finds direction even in the indirect, but, as my reading of Wieland demonstrates, this move can be reversed if literary indirectness is conceived as a mimesis of the fundamental and systemic indirectness of the political itself (whether it be defined in terms of the ‘‘representation’’ of ‘‘interests’’ or of ‘‘disinterested opinions,’’ ‘‘personalization and depersonalization,’’ ‘‘language, rhetoric, and speech-acts’’ or

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any other framework that might be proposed). Koselleck’s own text therefore, as apparently lucid and direct as it may appear in its critique of the disavowed political intentions of literature—critique, and the idealist philosophy of history—can itself still be read as critique and as literature. The point here is not to catch him in a ‘‘performative contradiction,’’ but to bring out an important implication of his own indirect participation in the very ‘‘hypocrisy’’ that he seeks to critique. Thus, contrary to Habermas’ critique of deconstruction’s ‘‘performative contradiction,’’35 Habermas himself misses the irony and refuses the quasi-literary status of all critique, political, and critical theory, which are only possible on the basis of a certain ‘‘hypocrisy’’ or performative contradiction. The posterity system that Wieland described remains in effect, and the knowing participation in it is what gives all texts, literary or otherwise (including Koselleck’s), their historical, literary, and political dimensions of a posterior pluralism, which abstracts them—even if only minimally—from the here and now of political interest and places them on the margins of politics. Looking beyond Derrida’s short text on public opinion, his Politics of Friendship represents a more extended effort to address the dilemmas of democracy and political action as a part of the re-theorization of a ‘‘democratic’’ posterity, which culminates in the plea for a new politics of indirectness. The indirectness of Derrida’s work causes it to resemble a latter-day version of Wieland’s ‘‘secret’’ of the cosmopolitical order. Wieland’s device of ‘‘the secret that there is no secret’’ has a precisely analogous function to Derrida’s chosen topos, which is also the mask of an arcanum: ‘‘O my friends, there is no friend.’’ Derrida also parallels Wieland because both authors seem to champion—quite directly if perhaps not entirely sincerely—the power of the indirect and latent within an institutional authority structure that appears absolute. Both positions may be viewed as ambiguous expressions of desperation and hope in the face of overpowering authority. But the historical difference between them is that the absolutist authority now calls itself ‘‘democracy,’’ which signals the total triumph of the Wieland’s ‘‘pseudo-cosmopolitans.’’ Derrida is thus left to radicalize Wieland’s paradox of their unrepresentability. By arguing for a ‘‘non-presentable’’ democracy to come (306), Derrida restores democracy and its absent foundation, public opinion, to their properly latent form: unidentifiable, unrecognizable, unquantifiable, unforeseeable. Proceeding without recourse to direct, organized, or institutional politics, Derrida’s version of the political may

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amount to a reversion to the status quo under the providential light (or bitter irony) of a certain uncertain ‘‘enlightenment’’ (Aufkla¨rung) (306). On the other hand, both Derrida and Wieland present a veiled awareness, under the name ‘‘Aufkla¨rung,’’ of the fragility and mutability of all institution and authority. This insight would have come as no surprise to Herodotus, but modernity seems to continually suffer from the idea that it will be able to put history behind it. By contrast, the deconstructive conception of an open future of indefinite perfectibility lends both Derrida and Wieland an activist subtext. The form of activism in question here—in view of an infinite posterity—will always involve a certain patience, but it may also prove more situationally flexible and less prone to the most extreme forms of resignation than are the latently utopian or deterministic alternatives.

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excursus 3: politics and belief (the parable of the sower)

One of the oldest and most influential models for the function of opinion— and, in comparison to Virgil or Herodotus, highly programmatic—comes from the Christian gospels. The parable of the sower appears in much the same form in Mark, Luke, and Matthew, where it presents not only a germinal theory of opinion, it does so in the context of much broader claims about revelation and dissemination, communication and politics. The gospels’ model of dissemination, which does not assert the ability of reason and truth to simply supersede superstition and error on the basis of reasoned discourse, is crucial to the conceptualization of a literary discourse. Like Virgil’s Fama, the Christian parable leaves a great deal of uncertainty—at the human level—about the status of what is heard, understood, and passed on, but this apparent lawlessness in the reception of the ‘‘good news’’ is retroactively justified at the level of divine providence—which was later interpreted as a doctrine of election—so that worldly ‘‘fame’’ is conflated with the plan of ‘‘fate.’’ Strikingly different, however, from other interpretations of worldly posterity as a kind of fate, the Christian version is not only about the remembrance of a specific legend or the survival of the word of the doctrine, but is intimately connected to the belief of individuals. The parable of the sower is a metaphor for the function of parables; it is a parable of parable, a metaphor of metaphor. It does not present Christ’s Word—contained in its own parabolic words—as a negotiation, a reasoned discourse, or a linear conversation, which comes to an end based on the quality of arguments. Instead it achieves its ends, a priori indeterminate, through unstable images, metaphors, and paradigms. The parable of the sower represents parables as seminal metaphors, concrete images whose 115

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specific potentials remain to be interpreted and unfolded by each individual and under shifting circumstances. One way of reducing this extreme indeterminacy of the meaning of parables is to understand them as a coded discourse; this reduction to a one-to-one relation between metaphor and meaning effectively encapsulates the parable and makes it accessible to dogma. This is Mark’s understanding when he claims that parables are the public form of a private and esoteric discourse whose true content is only given to the disciples: ‘‘To you [the disciples] has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside, everything comes in parables; in order that they may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand . . .’’ (Mark 4:11–12). Mark leaves it uncertain how the private version relates to the public version, but it looks like a late amendment, the introduction of an arcanum to stabilize the parables by asserting that they possess a single meaning governed by a certain group of interpreters. The parable itself claims that the powers of comprehension and incomprehension are attributes of the parabolic word in its dissemination, but in Mark (and also in Luke and Matthew, though somewhat less prominently) this understanding is supplemented with an added rationalization in the distinction between the esoteric content of the word and its exoteric form (which is not meant to be understood but only to be misunderstood). This split reduces the apparent lawlessness and irrationality of the process of dissemination described in the parable itself, and suggests that there is in fact a single underlying meaning or content—a doctrine—to which Christ’s parables refer: ‘‘With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples’’ (Mark 4:33–34). Assuming we take Mark at his word and understand parables as the popular form of a doctrine that to some extent remains to be revealed—‘‘For there is nothing hidden, except to be disclosed; nor is anything secret, except to come to light,’’ (Mark 4:22)—then the text of the gospel is itself positioned on the cusp of the problem. Mark claims to know the esoteric version even as he tells the exoteric version, and thus his text appears as the mediation of the external and internal forms of Jesus’ discourse. Mark claims, in effect, to present the parables with their authorized interpretation, but the form of the parable is clearly unable to be completely dissolved by its mediation in the disciple’s narrative. The authorized decoding does

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not stand instead of the parable as a substitute, but only supplements it, allowing the paradigmatic structure of the parable itself—its possibility of conveying both truth and falsehood—to stubbornly persist. Mark’s word, rather than dissolving the parable, remains subordinated to the paradigm of the parabolic Word; the ‘‘revealed’’ word of the gospel remains subject to the parable’s lack of final revelation, its structure of deferred and uncertain meanings. Revelation in the form of a parable—publicity in the form of a secret or an enigma—appears as the key to popular and political success, while the articulation of doctrine always comes later. The strategy of this hermeneutic speculation supposes that the parable will remain open to new contextualization, and its irreducible incomprehensibility will make it into the ideal object of ‘‘belief.’’ Belief is demanded precisely in the absence of a finality of knowledge or understanding. The parable continues to accrue interest to the extent that it is believed, which in turn creates more and more transformative potential, which would be less powerfully available to a system based only upon strict adherence to a dogma. Belief is intensified by a form of individual access that allows each one to believe in their own way: ‘‘And he said to them: Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. For those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away’’ (Mark 4:24–25). The measure of the system is incommensurability. The ‘‘content’’ of the word matters less than its emptiness and openness, its ability to be supplied with meaning by each of those who think that they may ‘‘have’’ and ‘‘hear.’’ A famous post-Enlightenment version of the parable appears in Ho¨lderlin’s fragmentary poem, ‘‘Patmos.’’ This version is worth briefly examining as an index of the state of the parabolic word around 1800: Es ist ein Wurf des Sa¨emanns, wenn er faßt Mit der Schaufel den Waizen, Und wirft, dem Klaren zu, ihn schwingend u¨ber die Tenne. Ihm fa¨llt die Schaale vor den Fu¨ßen, aber Ans Ende kommet das Korn, ¨ bel ists, wenn einiges Und nicht ein U Verloren gehet und von der Rede Verhallet der lebendige Laut, Denn go¨ttliches Werk auch gleichet dem unsern. Nicht alles will der Ho¨chste zumal.1

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The Parable of the Sower It is the sower’s throw, when he grasps The wheat with the shovel And throws, into the clear, tossing it over the threshing floor. The husk falls at his feet, but The grain arrives at the end, And it is not an evil, if something Gets lost and if in the discourse The living sound echoes away, Because divine work is like our own. The Highest One does not want everything at once.

The context here, as the poem’s title indicates, is still that of revelation, but the self-reflexive dimension is more strictly underlined than in the gospels: there is no reduction of the metaphorical image to its didactic meaning, and the gospels’ tendency to privilege the ‘‘good seed’’ that falls on fertile ground is also largely undone. In comparison to the gospel’s implicit and explicit analogy of word and seed, Ho¨lderlin’s version more clearly establishes the continuum of the word’s reception as that of its worldly posterity, which no longer borders on codification in doctrine or the assumption of an otherworldly controlling instance that will save the word by offering salvation to those who hear it. To the contrary, Ho¨lderlin emphasizes the analogy of the divine plan with human plans and nearly unites them in their common untimeliness and inability to reach a final resolution. In both cases, the throw is what is important, not where the seeds land or what happens to them after that. And, though Ho¨lderlin explicitly names the sower and thereby invokes the biblical context, his parable is not actually about a sower (the one who plants the seeds) but takes place on the ‘‘threshing floor.’’ According to Adelung’s dictionary, ‘‘in High German the word Tenne is most commonly used to designate the particular kind of leveled and pressed floor upon which grain is threshed.’’2 The parable of the sower is altered to become a parable of the thresher, but its topic still seems to be the same: like the biblical version, Ho¨lderlin’s parable of the sower is a parable of parables, a parable of discourse, which is now shifted away from the question of religious doctrine and toward a question of the status of the poetic word. Both parables are parables of the word and the ends of the word, but Ho¨lderlin’s version does not take root in a metaphor of organic processes (growing and bearing fruit), but recasts the biblical parable in view of a different telos. The instrumental and intentional difference between sowing

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and threshing means a separation—of the wheat from the proverbial chaff— that is no longer dependent on a divine agency that decides which seeds grow but upon human labor. But more than this labor, in another significant permutation of the gospels’ parable of the sower, it is the throw that matters and not the actual threshing. Decisively and deliberately breaking the metaphor, Ho¨lderlin takes it beyond the everyday activity it invokes. In the poem (but not in agriculture), the husks merely ‘‘fall away’’ and the grain ‘‘makes it to the end.’’ The husk (die Schale) is associated by assonance and internal rhyme with the ‘‘fading away’’ (verhallen) of ‘‘the living sound’’ (der lebendige Laut); the word for meaningless ‘‘noise’’ or ‘‘sound’’ (der Schall), though it does not occur in these lines, echoes between them. The sonics of the word, its resonances, are thus separated—though they keep sounding in the words of the poem—from the word itself, its ‘‘kernel,’’ which seems to refer either to its written character or its true meaning. Unlike Mark’s gospel, which claims to know this ‘‘kernel,’’ Ho¨lderlin explicitly states and performs the subjection of this ‘‘core meaning’’ to the kind of historical deferral that was already implicit in the gospels’ versions. Moreover, precisely this temporality of meaning was intended, was the paradoxical ‘‘true meaning’’ of the gospels: all revelation and all enlightenment have a temporal and intentional character, each time representing a new throw (ein Wurf ) and attempt (Entwurf ), which does not shoot directly at its ends, but rather casts a particular arc—dem Klaren zu—perhaps missing or overshooting the mark, but in any case does not think too much about the ‘‘fall.’’ The grain will arrive anyway, the poem providentially asserts, but this has to be taken on faith because there is no rational guarantee of the outcome. Does the parable of the sower represent a coherent and effective model for the spread of belief and the growth of opinion? With the increasing rationalization of society, do the rational uncertainty and potential theological overdetermination of this model still make sense? The answer is probably yes, but it now tends to be read in terms of the chances that ideas or opinions have in an unpredictable public sphere. W. Phillips Davison, for example, writes in 1958: A familiar allegory uses the analogy of seeds to illustrate the growth of ideas. The seeds are numbered in thousands, and are scattered over the landscape. Some fall on the rocks and fail to germinate. Others start to take root but die

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because they lack soil in sufficient depth or because they are smothered by fastergrowing weeds. Only a few fall on earth were the conditions are right for continued growth and multiplication.3

In comparison with the other versions, Davison’s contemporary retelling emphasizes the ‘‘competition’’ between ‘‘ideas.’’ In the gospels the word is not subject to competition: its truth is unaffected by the many who fail to hear it; those who do not hear it—however many they may be—were never meant to hear it. Ho¨lderlin also says nothing about whether the truth outcome is an effect of competition. The possibility must be taken into account that the idea of a ‘‘competition’’ of ideas—competing for space or for truth—may be a modern fiction that only loosely explains and retrospectively rationalizes (fatalizes) the function of the modern public sphere. To flesh out his competition hypothesis, Davison equips the parable with a new value spectrum. He speaks of ‘‘faster-growing’’ ideas that are like ‘‘weeds’’ that may impede the growth of the good seed. The background context for his conception seems to be supersaturated ‘‘marketplace of ideas,’’ but Davison does not follow the relativism of the latter understanding to the point of making all ideas equivalent in terms of value and function. This effort to avoid a relativistic reading forces Davison into an ‘‘environmental’’ conception that assumes the ‘‘conditions of growth and multiplication’’ exist as an objective precondition that can be influenced or altered, cultivated to promote the spread of good ideas. This would end up in a familiar line of thought: since good ideas cannot win on their own, someone who knows how to identify them must intervene, forcibly clearing the weeds and planting the good ideas by way of education, social planning, or—at the totalitarian limit—any means necessary. In Davison’s reading, the point of the parable in ‘‘Patmos’’ (and in the gospels) is entirely lost: the ‘‘throw’’ in particular—as the unplannable element that exceeds all institution, implementation, and cultivation—is completely gone, replaced by an imperative to garden and landscape. The gospels’ sowing, which Ho¨lderlin transformed into threshing and throwing, is rewritten by Davison as tilling and cultivating, but this shift in rhetoric may not reflect a real change, since every ‘‘agricultural program,’’ including the one Davison seems to have in mind, must still have the character of a ‘‘throw.’’ Every plan still takes its chances with the elements and remains subject to the political dynamics inherent to its vector. Every educational

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or ideological agenda will always contain such a vector within the structure of its own implementation and implementability, which means that no plan can predetermine the conditions of its success or the sphere of its effects. At the other extreme, the gospels read like a recipe for political agitation in the absence of any kind of a concrete plan. In this reading, the selfthematizing parable would only be an effective means of reaching an unforeseeable cross-section of ‘‘unbelievers’’ who are able to single themselves out through their desire to believe. Recent modernity, including postmodernity, would seem to represent both of extremes—overplanning and overmystification—in their most advanced and thriving forms: greater planning, in education for example, may lead only to greater unpredictability because education (in the sense of Bildung) still tends to be conceived as something that happens despite educational institutions and not because of them. Within this framework, the ‘‘plan’’ itself may produce more and more highly susceptible unbelievers wanting to believe in anything that will recognize their belief. This would ultimately mean—as much as democratic idealists may be unhappy to hear it—that the susceptibility to propaganda exists in a symbiotic relationship with systems of education that inevitably ask for something less than full commitment. And to ask for such a commitment, to selected state-sponsored precepts, would be at odds with the idea of democracy. In any case—for whatever reasons—the modern age has managed to produce a fertile soil in for all manner of beliefs to take root and become productive and destructive. In this context, literature would be the mode of language which, by virtue of its self-referential entry into the field of ‘‘competing’’ discourses, remains faithful to the ‘‘throw’’: neither content to be a kind of propaganda meant to induce convictions (or mere opinions), literature is also not oblivious to the larger field of discourses within which it poses itself. It is therefore not autonomous, but rather strictly dependent. It requires a kind of faith that it does not fulfill, which prevents it from being uniformly reducible to propaganda or argument. Literature’s ‘‘examples’’ and paradigms—its metaphors—are always ambiguous, always able to be rewritten with different meanings as counterexamples. Literary figuration resembles and includes both reasoned argument and the seductions of propaganda; however, unlike the latter, it only represents in a parabolic form that does not claim or grant access to its own definitive meaning, and thus does not demand belief. From

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the standpoint of reason, literature enters into the field of existing arguments at a different level reflection, arguing them in a different court and before a different judge. It throws ‘‘into the clear,’’ without attempting to reduce its own paradigms to any kind of final significance, in the hope that precisely this strategy will allow something to come out of it in the end.

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three

The Opinion System and the Re-Formation of the Individual (Hobbes, Locke, Mendelssohn, Fichte, and Goethe) In England just about everyone has his own opinion, but this does not mean that they all have different ones. g e o r g c h r i s t o p h l i c h t e n b e r g , Sudelbuch entry D19

Introduction Before the French Revolution, an ‘‘opinion-system’’—as Lichtenberg called it, and later Fichte, though in a different sense—had been developing in Europe for at least a century. The practical model for the system came from England, where this new ‘‘system’’ was generally viewed—perhaps even more so by those on the continent—as a positive contribution to the intellectual life of nations. The basis of the system was a cosmopolitan milieu, which extended the interest of the reading public to events transpiring beyond the sphere of their own everyday interests and concerns. Despite the enthusiastic participation in the discourses that sprang up, certain reservations and a strong curiosity can also be observed. Lichtenberg’s remark from the middle of the eighteenth century gives a sense of this, but even in 1710, in number 155 of Richard Steele’s The Tatler, under the pseudonym of Isaac Bickerstaff, Joseph Addison describes the social function and 123

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dysfunction of opinion.1 The anecdote is preceded by an epigraph from Horace, ‘‘Aliena Negotia curat / Excussus propriis’’ (‘‘He minds others’ concerns since he has lost his own’’), and tells of an industrious upholsterer who is also a ‘‘newsmonger’’: ‘‘He had a Wife and several Children; but was much more inquisitive to know what passes in Poland than in his own Family, and was in greater Pain and Anxiety of Mind for King Augustus’s Welfare than of his nearest Relations. He looked extremely thin in a Dearth of News.’’2 Thinking globally, the upholsterer loses touch with his local environment and personal responsibilities, and becomes a mere spectator and a expert gossip because he is more concerned with things beyond his control and completely unrelated to the concerns of his own life. The upholsterer represents a new type of gossip in information-addiction, which allows the addict—ear constantly to the ground, eyes on the paper—to behave as an of authority or cryptic oracle: ‘‘He back’d his Assertions with so many broken Hints, and such a Show of Depth and Wisdom, that we gave our selves up to his Opinions.’’3 The privatization of opinion—‘‘everyone has one,’’ as they say—appears as an indirect effect of the growth of a literate public. The public sphere conjured up by private opinions made the common good seem accessible, if only virtually, as a common concern, regardless of its actual relevance to those who perceived it, and despite the fact that they had no authority to do anything about it. Addison’s caricature shows that the opinion system, even in its earliest stages, was prone to a kind of compulsiveness that caused the printed word to become the object of a constant doubling and distortion in its oral appropriations and interpretations. The latter may have occurred as rational-critical reflections or as mere gossip, but they were, in either case, highly persuasive because the appearance of worldliness could be intersubjectively produced and reproduced according to a logic that was representational more than strictly rational. Knowledge was thus the next best thing to control, and it allowed for the appearance of control, which translated into actual control in many social settings. The ability to represent an understanding of current events allowed a qualified mastery of them to be rhetorically asserted, even and especially by those who were barely in control of their own lives. Addison’s skepticism thus appears at the moment when disinterested spectatorship—of precisely the kind Kant would theorize in his Conflict of the Faculties—and sheer curiosity threaten to dissolve the social fabric and alienate individuals from their lifeworld roles. But this alienation may also be interpreted as having an upside, to the extent that

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the lifeworld itself is transformed from a sphere of determinism to a mere contingency in comparison to the virtual world of the public sphere. This chapter traces the early justifications and doubts about the increasing prominence of individual opinions in society. The doubts and reservations are not only generally voiced, as in Addison, but appear precisely in the most influential theories of liberalism, particularly in Locke. Such doubts continued to haunt theories of liberalism, but only after the Revolution do they become a kind of despair. A system of intersubjective conflict resolution, which presupposed an equal and symmetrical relation between interlocutors, proved in a time of crisis to be both divisive and impotent, which led many to discount the liberal opinion system as irrelevant and at odds with stricter forms of social decorum. Goethe, for instance, discussed in this chapter’s final section, found the exchange of opinions counterproductive, and he continued to hold this opinion—albeit with heightened sophistication—as late as Wilhelm Meister’s Wanderjahre. For him, the polarization of opinions in the wake of the Revolution was destructive to the social fabric, whose cultivation had been the major achievement of the eighteenth century. In a letter of August 18, 1792, for example: ‘‘Whenever even two or three people come together, the same old song of pro and con can be heard, which has been droning on for the last four years, without the slightest variation on the same old vulgar themes.’’4 Goethe condemns the apparent futility of a discourse of decision—represented in the weighing of pros and cons—that has no institutional status or outlet.5 The discourse of opinions is rejected as a pseudo-discourse with no consequences; its conversations are idle because they do not occur within a format that would allow them to reach or at least contribute to a resolution. Suffering under the illusion of such a virtual horizon, differences of opinion will more likely be counterproductive, rupturing the social fabric, dividing friends and families, and extending the field of political conflict within society. The opinion system is thus the basis of cosmopolitan culture at the same time as it is the critical point within this culture, which, in the state of exception, can cause the entire system to unravel into civil unrest and, at the limit, civil war.

The Foundations of Discourse Leading up to Hobbes The work of Hobbes is often read as an earlier era’s response to the susceptibility of the ideas of opinion and belief to internal conflict and factionalism. In the eighteenth century, the potential for such violence was still

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known in theory, but Hobbes’ works were often thought to reflect a phase of historical development that had been overcome in the accomplishment of the Reformation. This view remained—and still remains—an ongoing fact of the relation between Hobbes’ work and later liberalisms. But before him there were other conceptions of opinion and dialogue, carried over from antiquity and the Middle Ages, which deserve mention: the ‘‘Socratic method,’’ for example, still serves, often implicitly, as a model by which agreement may be produced—or logically forced—in conversation. This ostensibly occurs through reasoning, but Plato’s dialogues are also contrived and composed theatrical and literary scenarios. The staged procedural form of the Platonic dialogues and their striking lack of realism is the result of a rhetorical-representational strategy of ‘‘leading questions,’’ which guides the dialogues to their seemingly inevitable conclusions. But these ‘‘logical’’ conclusions apparently did not exhaust the implications of the topics that they addressed; instead they left many possibilities for conceptual ‘‘redeployment’’ (Umbesetzung), as Hans Blumenberg would say. In this sense, Socrates’ questions were more fertile than Plato’s answers, especially in a literary form that depersonalized Plato’s truths in the person of Socrates, thereby masking and permanently displacing the structure of the dialogues’ advocacies. Regarding its representation of the exchange of opinions, the form of the Platonic dialogues also tends to raise more questions than it answers: if these dialogues are striking in their form, then what is the difference between a ‘‘formal’’ and ‘‘informal’’ conversation? What interests are served by this kind of formalization? What presuppositions, what degree of formality or formalism must be in place to constitute or produce a dialogue in the first place? Where do these conditions come from and who guarantees them? As a discourse theory, Plato’s philosophy produces such questions as its irritating residue, which later literary dialogues and lifeworld conversations tend to reiterate more than answer. Conversation as a form is either completely groundless, unable to be conceived as a universal form that would not appear particular and arbitrary, or else its grounds can only be conceived as artificial, theatrical, rhetorical, and contingent, which is to say extraneous to the reason or unreason of the conversation itself. The reason of conversation, its reasoned outcome, is thus dependent upon a system of formalities, against which reason may perhaps be able to exert some control, but this would never be guaranteed in advance.

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Following Plato, Aristotle’s Topoi (Topics) sought to establish a kind of formal taxonomy for the mechanics of discussion conceived as reasoned debate to reduce out the merely formal element and isolate the forms of reason. But for Aristotle it is not a question of conclusively resolving differences of opinion, but rather of testing preexisting opinions to establish their degree of likelihood. In Topica, ‘‘opinion’’ is a ‘‘generally accepted opinion,’’ transmitted by word of mouth and taken at face value, which provides the dialectician with the opportunity ‘‘to reason . . . about any problem set before us. . . . while sustaining an argument,’’ without ‘‘saying anything selfcontradictory.’’6 Dialogue in Aristotle is like a game or a sport, which occurs in the abstract, deliberately discounting the ‘‘sincerity’’ of the speaker in favor of a theoretical consideration of what is sayable and arguable. Specific rules apply and specialized training is required, and the discussions in question are at least ideally supposed to be motivated by the spirit of inquiry more than by the claims of conscience or contentiousness. The preconditions for the possibility of dialectical reasoning are thus rather extreme, and this becomes explicit in one of the treatise’s final paragraphs, which addresses the contextual limitations of reasoned discourse: ‘‘You ought not to discuss with everybody or exercise yourself against any casual person; for against some people argument is sure to deteriorate; for with a man who tries every means to seem to avoid defeat, you are justified in using every means to obtain your conclusion, but this is not a seemly proceeding.’’7 Without any reference to conscience or belief but only to a certain ego investment, Aristotle asserts that the culture of debate must remain fairly exclusive. There is no point in arguing against amateurs who are more interested in winning than in advancing reason. The categories of ‘‘belief’’ and ‘‘interest’’ are thus made inoperative in this idealized form of reasoning (which therefore has nothing to do with the exchange of opinions in the modern sense). In strict violation of Aristotle’s method, modern opinions are fixed ‘‘positions’’ held by the speakers, and this identification with their ‘‘own’’ position forces speakers to seek victory at all costs, in precisely the way that Aristotle says should be avoided. Disinterest is thus the condition of the possibility of the reasoned exchange of arguments, whereas opinion is not a category of neutrality or objectivity but—notoriously—of extreme interest. Aristotle conceived reasoned discourse as an abstract critique of the representations of the public opinion, whereas the modern conception

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of ‘‘private’’ opinions requires the individual to represent opinions as the objects of autoaffective identification. According to Edmund F. Byrne, the specifically modern understanding of opinion as a privative concept—as ‘‘mere opinion’’—originates with Thomas Aquinas, who extends Aristotle’s understanding to give it a specifically theological inflection. Thomas connects opinion to the finitude of human knowledge and existence, a conception that has remained canonical: For Thomas, probability is a qualificative of opinion, opinion is the object of dialectical argumentation, dialectical argumentation is man’s means of transcending his own ignorance, and the transcendence of ignorance is accomplished only in the beatific vision of the life beyond. For Thomas, in other words, it is by applying argumentative method to human opinions that one establishes or destroys their probability, and thus slowly moves beyond the merely probable towards that ultimate vantage point at which man participates according to his capacity in the divine omniscience.8

This conception of a ‘‘theotropic’’ dialectic continues to be at least partially reflected in later thinkers, even if it is secularized as ‘‘logotropic.’’ Locke, for example (as will be discussed in the next section), retains Aristotle’s and Thomas’ connection between opinion and probability, whereas Hobbes was famously even more extreme in his limitation of the possibilities of human knowledge and reason. For Hobbes, opinion was not an epistemological limit concept and the very medium of human knowledge (which it had been for Thomas and was again for Locke). Instead he followed Aristotle’s implication that private, held opinions could only be conceived in terms of irrational pathology, products of the passions more than of reason. Hobbes underlines this problem in the word opinion itself, which is interpreted as a polemical concept meant to justify a specific form of antiauthoritarian ideology: ‘‘Men give different names, to one and the same thing, from the difference of their own passions: As they that approve a private opinion call it Opinion; but they that mislike it, Haeresie: and yet haeresie signifies no more than private opinion; but has onely a greater tincture of choler.’’9 The difference of opinion does not reflect an objective difference of reason but only a private difference of passion. Opinions and the deliberations surrounding them are thereby also removed from the sphere of knowledge and rationality and displaced into the realm of practical reason, will, and ‘‘motivation.’’ For

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Hobbes, opinion is not theotropic—on the way to reason or God—but is only the pretext of passions and a private will to power (I:6, 127). In the next section of Leviathan, entitled ‘‘Of the Ends, or Resolutions of Discourse,’’ Hobbes reconsiders opinion as an element of discourse. ‘‘Discourse’’ itself is interpreted in terms of the desire for knowledge, and Hobbes thus attributes the practice of reasoning, including theoretical reason, with an infrastructure of passion. This conception—Socratic more than Platonic or Aristotelian—further implies that reason is never merely rational but always also political. (Koselleck’s Critique and Crisis, discussed in chapter 2, reasserts this principle against the rationalisms of the later Enlightenment.) To be sure, the description of the ‘‘desire of Knowledge,’’ which ‘‘exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnall Pleasure,’’ may not seem entirely unfavorable, but he critically undermines this estimation of reason (as the best or worst of the passions) by making it definitive of curiosity (I:6, 124). Curiosity may not be directly political, in contrast to the instrumentalization of reasons and opinions toward specific ends, but for Hobbes it is the ruling passion of theoretical discourse.10 But such theoretical curiosity, whenever it cannot actually achieve a definitive end in the object of its knowledge, must still come to an end for contingent reasons. Theoretical discourse reaches ‘‘at last an End, either by attaining or by giving over. And in the chain of Discourse, wheresoever it be interrupted, there is an End for that time’’ (I:7, 130). This distinction between completion and interruption contains an ambiguity, which Hobbes immediately addresses, about whether the discourse in question takes place with an actual interlocutor, or only internally, with oneself. Hobbes states that his definition of discourse includes both internal and external dialogues, and he thereby implicitly establishes the location of discourse as primarily in the mind of the individual: ‘‘If the Discourse be meerly Mental, it consisteth of thoughts that the thing will be, and will not be; or that it has been, and has not been, alternately. So that wheresoever you break off the chayn of a mans Discourse, you leave him in a Praesumption of it will be, or, it will not be; or it has been, or, has not been. All of which is Opinion’’ (I:7, 130). In the absence of a certain ending, in the case of interruption (which Hobbes implies is the most common case), what remains of discourse is opinion qualified as a ‘‘presumption,’’ the entire validity of which is conditioned by sheer inconclusiveness. Opinions, assuming they are not a sheer political means but are motivated by reason’s own desire, result from discourses that—for a variety

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of conceivable reasons—were suspended at a certain point. Hobbes thus internalizes Aristotle’s conception of a neutral reason, which for pragmatic reasons must stop without coming to an end, and the resulting representations are called opinions. The interruptions may be purely contingent, or they may be conditioned by the inconclusiveness of the matter itself, which forces a decision in the absence of a definitive conclusion: ‘‘The last Opinion in search of the truth of Past, and Future, is called the Judgment’’ (I:7, 131). Judgment means the forcible closure that produces an opinion. Judgment is the specific kind of interruption that is generated from within the deliberation itself, and all judgments, by definition, even judgments of truth (distinct from moral judgments on right and wrong), only give rise to opinions. ‘‘No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute knowledge of Fact’’ (I:7, 131) because even the most basic factual judgments are based on information provided by memory and the senses. All discursive knowledge is based on the internal inheritance of memory and based on unreliable perceptions, which can only provide a conditional basis for judgments. Science and discursive reasoning are thus conceived according to a syllogistic logic of consequence, which, performed correctly, is capable of producing coherent results, but which cannot ultimately secure its own basis. Hobbes’ reflections on the relation of opinion and conscience make it clear that this fundamental unfoundedness of all beliefs and judgments is not a neutral claim, but is meant to undermine the false claims of ‘‘conscience,’’ whose ‘‘reverenced name’’ is applied to heretical and schismatic opinions. Conscience in this sense is only another choleric appellation, a rhetorical maneuver on the part of those who ‘‘would have it seem unlawfull, to change or speak against’’ their private opinions (I:7, 132). Hobbes explains the basic invalidity of this kind of claim in the difference between believing someone and believing in a doctrine based on authority. Whereas faith and trust ‘‘can possibly be had in any person whatsoever, . . . they do not all believe the Doctrine of the Creed’’ (I:7, 133). This allows Hobbes to shift the quality of certain authority toward representative instances and away from the specific rational and irrational contents of ‘‘beliefs’’ and ‘‘arguments’’ themselves. To these ends, Hobbes erects a standard of legitimacy that is not based on reason or truth as absolutes, because they are ultimately inaccessible and therefore politically unstable. Discursive reasoning is conceived as an easily contestable medium in which everyone, depending on

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their unruly passions, comes to their own conclusions. To provide a more secure foundation, Hobbes introduces a conception of an instituted or invested authority, whose representations alone can stabilize the object of belief—not as a whom but that in which one is to believe—as a uniform ‘‘creed’’ or ‘‘doctrine.’’

Liberal Discourse Theory in the Eighteenth Century (Locke) After Hobbes, it is Locke who most directly and influentially—and much more extensively—considers the social conditions under which opinions may be exchanged. For the moment discounting the law of opinion (which has been disproportionately emphasized in the literature on public opinion), the wider importance of opinion in Locke’s epistemology is indicated in the title of the fourth and final chapter of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding: ‘‘Of Knowledge and Opinion.’’ In this attempt to propose a discursively formulated theory of knowledge, reason, and action, Locke cannot avoid speaking at length about opinion, which is first introduced in ‘‘Of Probability’’ (IV:xv); the arguments of this short section are pivotal for his conception of discursive reasoning. In comparison to Hobbes, Locke puts a more positive emphasis on opinion by spending more time on it, but he does not completely forsake Hobbes’ skepticism as to its normative validity. Locke downplays and delimits the pathological potentials of opinion without completely eliminating or denying them, and opinion thus remains—as this section will attempt to demonstrate—a highly unstable aspect of the politics of Locke’s Essay’s systematic epistemology. In IV:xv of the Essay, ‘‘Probability’’ refers to the relative appearance of truth or untruth based on ‘‘proofs whose connexion is not constant and immutable’’ (§1). ‘‘Probability is the likeliness to be true,’’ as Locke summarizes, and a probable proposition is thus necessarily accompanied by ‘‘arguments or proofs, to make it pass or be received for true’’ (§3). The grounds of probability can only be twofold: probable propositions are generated either by ‘‘the conformity of anything with our knowledge, observation, and experience,’’ or by ‘‘the testimony of others, vouching their observation and experience’’ (§4). Probable truths, in other words, can only be based on firstor second-hand experience, and are based, as in Hobbes’ more perfunctory account, on one’s trust of oneself—one’s senses, one’s memory—or in the

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testimony of others. In the case of the latter, considerations of reliability arise, which can be established based on the ‘‘number,’’ ‘‘integrity,’’ ‘‘skill,’’ intent (‘‘design’’) of witnesses, as well as on the ‘‘consistency’’ and ‘‘circumstance’’ of testimonies themselves and the possibility of their contradiction. As in Hobbes, the only means of bringing a probable proposition to its end—to produce a judgment (in Hobbes’ sense)—is to weigh the evidentiary pros and cons, ‘‘to examine all the grounds of probability . . . for or against’’ (§5). In the concluding paragraph (§6), after having neatly laid out this procedural method for assessing probabilities according to the model of a modern legal hearing, Locke offers a late qualification, a matter of some concern apparently. ‘‘Opinion’’ is now named, not as the result of the judgment, but as a disorderly force has not yet been systematically addressed: There is another [ground of probability], I confess, which though by itself ought to be no true ground of probability, yet it is often made use of for one, by which men most commonly regulate their assent, and upon which they pin more faith than anything else, and, that is, the opinion of others; though there cannot be a more dangerous thing to rely on, nor more likely to mislead one; since there is much more falsehood and error among men than truth and knowledge. (§6)

The opinion in this sense seriously complicates the equation. Rather than the result of a judgment, opinions are the shortcut to judgment; they are adopted from ‘‘others’’—by the law of opinion—without being doublechecked. ‘‘The opinions of others’’ are, Locke observes, made use of as a ground of probability, but they provide no stable grounds: ‘‘There could not be a more dangerous thing to rely on.’’ Though it is the last thing in which one would want to place any confidence, opinion is—if Locke’s sentence is taken at its word and not as hyperbole—that ‘‘upon which [men] pin more faith than anything else.’’ Opinion is the least deserving and most receiving of faith, and faith (following Locke’s later analysis in IV:xvii) does not belong to the sphere of reasoning, but of revelation, which is only supposed to apply to those matters over which reason has no jurisdiction because it cannot say anything probable one way or the other. Locke’s claim about opinion thus could not be more extreme: most faith, which should properly be given only to revelations authenticated by the exclusion of reason, is in fact put in the opinions of others. (This is logic reiterated in IV:xix, ‘‘On Enthusiasm.’’) Most faith is mere opinion—the

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illegitimate result of a false persuasion. Opinions, rather than being excluded from both faith and certainty—both revelation and reason—are the main source of faith and, consequently, of false belief and unfounded knowledge. Opinion, which would ideally be a neutral factor, the result of a reasoned assessment of pros and cons, experience and testimonies, is therefore (seemingly to Locke’s own surprise) the primary source of aberrant belief in the form of uncontrolled assent. Opinion therefore, as in Hobbes, is produced whenever the calculations of reason are broken off, but this may produce not only opinion as a provisional judgment, but also irrational faith and perhaps even all faith. This final consequence, of the identity of faith and opinion, is one that Locke would rather avoid, and he does so (like Hobbes) by tying authorized faith to institutionally invested authority. Following IV:xv, which represents a preliminary sketch of opinion’s dilemmas—its tendency to oscillate between faith and reason—Locke takes up the problem of ‘‘false assent’’ at length in ‘‘Of the Degrees of Assent’’ (IV:xvi). The stubborn belief in opinions is the result of their reliance on memory more than on proof and evidence. But memory is, as Hobbes pointed out, not perfectly reliable, even though the one who remembers will often assert otherwise. At this point, confessing his frustration, Locke states: I confess, in the opinions men have, and firmly stick to, in the world, their assent is not always from actual view of the reasons that at first prevailed with them: it being in many cases impossible, and in most very hard, even for those who have very admirable memories, to retain all the proofs, which upon a due examination, made them embrace that side of the question (IV:xvi:§1).

Opinions are ciphers for Locke, representative placeholders standing in for a labor of thought once accomplished (or broken off ). Speakers represent their opinions as ‘‘axioms’’ or ‘‘principles,’’ but they are derived, and this derivation is most often forgotten. In the extreme (as Locke describes in IV:xx:§8–§10), such unfounded principles may be ‘‘imbibed’’ and ‘‘insinuated’’ from a very young age. Opinions are sheer results whose basis in reasoned discourse, assuming it ever existed, may not be reproducible; they are the alibis of memory, overcompensations for conclusions that may have never been especially conclusive; they are formed in a process of sedimentation (‘‘settling’’ in Locke’s subsequent metaphorics), which prevents memory, if it could be honest with itself, from speaking its experience directly.

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Memory does not actually speak, but only testifies on the behalf of another—on behalf of itself as other: ‘‘[men] lay up the conclusion [i.e. their opinion] in their memories, as a truth they have discovered; and for the future they remain satisfied with the testimony of their memories’’ (§1). Opinions are deposited, held for future investment, gaining interest, but the reasons and experience that may or may not have founded opinion—in a weighing of pros and cons—are lost, elided, or displaced. This reliance upon memory is, as Locke states in §2, ‘‘unavoidable,’’ since it would never be possible to constantly reassess, re-enumerate, reiterate, and remember all of the reasons and proofs that go into each opinion. Memory is indispensable to probability judgments, and men are therefore persuaded of truths ‘‘whereof the proofs are not actually in their thoughts,’’ which leads Locke to two consequences: first, in the case of judgments that were calculated correctly (though the calculations themselves may have been forgotten), one would have to become a permanent self-skeptic, but pragmatically this would mean constant capitulation to everyone who claims to remember better or whose reasons are more freshly mustered. But the others are no better off, although they may pretend to be.11 The essence of opinion is thus the right of conditional refusal of the proofs of others. This implication is confirmed in IV:xx:§13–§14: ‘‘non persuadebis, etiamsi persuaseris [though I cannot answer, I will not yield].’’ The right of opinion in this sense is based on the possibility that, even if I do not know it now, there may yet be—or may have been—just as much proof for the contrary position. This would, in effect, consign opinion to a state of interminable stasis or deferral, and reason is forced, whenever it is contested or rejected, into a state of undecidability. The second and even more problematic set of consequences arises when the initial judgment was erroneous or improperly calculated. The problem in this case is not that memory was relied upon, but that the initial judgment was too hasty or not based on coherent reasons. Following the first set of consequences, judgment must often be deferred to avoid erroneous conclusions that come from haphazardly following the claims of others. Because of the fundamental uncertainty about the status of others’ claims, the same right of deferral must be granted even to opinions that may not be based on reason at all—but the deferral cannot go on forever, or else no opinions would devolve from the system in the first place. Based on the right of

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refusal, reasoned opinions, as opinions, cannot—or rather must not—be distinguished from irrational ones, which means that even the former cannot be legitimately spread. At this point in his own argument, in other words, Locke offers no means by which opinions can be passed on without a dangerous leap of faith. Each one must, rightly or wrongly, trust his or her own memory over the memory of others. The problem that Locke isolates lies in the structure of the opinionjudgment, which—right or wrong, based on reason or on error—tends to become self-affirming, self-evident, exclusive, and intolerant: ‘‘May we not find a great number (not to say the greatest part) of men, that think they have formed right judgments of several matters; and that for no other reason, but because they never thought otherwise?’’ (IV:xvi:§3). The actual process of judgment is circumvented by this autoaffirmation, which produces verdicts without trials. People think they judge correctly, when in fact ‘‘they never judged at all.’’ These pseudo-judgments are opinions in the strict sense (rigorously differentiated from actual probability judgments), which are unjustifiably held with ‘‘the greatest stiffness.’’ Opinions in this sense are literally prejudices: automatic judgments made in advance of any real judgment. This ‘‘fierce and firm’’ holding to ‘‘tenets’’ is incompatible with the probability judgment because the latter, as Locke emphasizes, is by definition incomplete and is therefore unable to claim the degree of certainty that opinion ascribes to itself. As long as a judgment is reached in accordance with known probabilities—according to individual experience and the testimony of third parties—‘‘latent proofs’’ cannot be rules out; one can never be certain that ‘‘there is no evidence behind, and yet unseen, which may cast probability on the other side, and outweigh all, that at present seems to preponderate with us.’’ The probability judgment is never finished, but the opinion-judgment is finished before it even gets started. In the former, following the metaphors of weighing and outweighing, the process of judgment can only be provisionally arrested—until some additional factors come and tip the scales. Opinion, on the other hand, is not provisional but preemptive. The persuasive limits of probability judgments can be put in perspectival terms: all the evidence cannot be seen and known at once, whereas the opinion-judgment can acknowledge no perspective but its own. But Locke clearly reads the self-certainty of opinion as a self-deception because the truth is—as it was in Thomas Aquinas—that humans can never attain ‘‘a clear and full view.’’

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Locke concludes §3 by rearticulating the fundamental impasse of his theorization: strictly speaking, all opinions are completely unjustifiable, but this does not lead Locke to a denunciation of opinion. Instead, he argues that opinions are—or have become—indispensable because ‘‘we are forced to determine ourselves on one side or other.’’ The introduction of force is perhaps surprising here, especially if, recalling Aristotle, opinions might just as easily be conceived as arbitrary and abstract points of inquiry and discussion, hypothetical, or impersonal utterances. In this tradition, opinions are totally depersonalized at the moment they are subjected to reason. For Aristotle, the discussion of opinions had a primarily epistemological function, and the precondition of discourse was that the opinions must not be ‘‘held’’ or ‘‘believed’’; opinions in this sense are mere commonplaces—topoi—that are subjected to rational scrutiny. The contrast with Locke could not be more extreme: for him, opinions are not the object of the discussion but its basis. The purpose of discourse is thus not limited to epistemo-critical inquiry (which requires personal distance), but is presupposed to have an ethical and moral dimension, which supersedes theoretical truth-seeking. For Locke, opinions are determinant of everyday ethics and praxis, and therefore they must be decided upon as soon as possible. The individual’s life, way of life, and actions depend on it: ‘‘The conduct of our lives, and the management of our great concerns, will not bear delay: for those depend, for the most part, on the determination of our judgement in points, wherein we are not capable of certain and demonstrative knowledge, and wherein it is necessary to embrace one side, or the other.’’ Opinion is attached to ethics in the wake of the Reformation and in the formation of modern bourgeois society because right thought and action have become questionable in a way that would have been unthinkable in antiquity. Up to the present day, the exchange of opinions retains an inherent ethical and reformative charge. Rather than being a part of a limited socioethical practice, dialogue begins to seriously question the norms and customs upon which it is based. The goal of dialogue—in the state of exception—is to decide upon an ethics that does not yet exist, but which can only arrive too late, assuming it arrives at all. In the modern world, opinions, though they are necessarily uncertain and belated, always bear concretely on being, doing, and acting. Ideally, there would not even be any possibility of hypocrisy when it comes to true opinions. Opinions are, or at least should be, ‘‘determining’’ in the strongest

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sense of the word—determinant prior to any opinion-based judgments that may follow. The ethical activity of the exchange of opinion (which always comes too late to change them because the opinions are already there) is a constant re-activation, an ongoing and incessant process of identification with and assimilation of one’s own experience. Opinions are, as the locus of an individual self-reformation, not subject to any external instance. In §4 therefore, after a brief recapitulation, Locke admits—as he must, so long as opinion and experience are so intimately intertwined—that opinions, as self-reformations, cannot be reformed or directly influenced by external authority. The essence of opinion is reform, but only as ethical self-reformation; this means that individual opinions are conceived as monads, inaccessible to authority and persuasion, including the authority of reason: ‘‘We cannot reasonably expect, that anyone should readily and obsequiously quit his own opinion, and embrace ours with a blind resignation to authority, which the understanding of man acknowledges not’’ (VI:xvi:§4). In absence of a unitary authority that would be able to control opinion, all are left under their own authority, their own reason or the lack thereof, and thus tolerance emerges as the only answer to the impasse created by the unavoidable and insurmountable differences of opinions: ‘‘It would, methinks, become all men to maintain peace, and the common offices of humanity, and friendship, in the diversity of opinions.’’ Discursive reason and conversation, in their most minimal and everyday forms, are thus made reasonable by default, as the result of a negative determination—the deus ex machina of tolerance, which occupies the same position in Locke’s system as sovereignty did in Hobbes’—introduced because of reason’s inability to solve its own problems. Though it is never stated, the model of conversation that lies behind Locke’s model is not, for example, a political council that must reach a decision on pragmatic grounds, but is more likely a discussion between friends of different faiths, each of whom wants to convince the other of their belief. In this context, Locke maintains, immediate assent should not be demanded or expected: ‘‘You must give him leave at his leisure, to go over the account again, and recalling what is out of his mind, to see on which side the advantage lies’’ (§4). Locke’s argument oscillates away from the immediate need to decide and toward the need to weigh and reflect.

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Opinions, always already decided, can only be revised in time. The automatic quality of opinion-judgments can be critically regulated and reformed if they can be relocated to the strict structure of the probability judgment, but the latter process is time-consuming, specialized,12 and is likely to remain indecisive. In both cases, however, in both opinion and probabilityjudgments, this structure of judgment (which now reveals itself to be one structure and not two) is determined by the fact that opinions are already there and the decision—the judgment—is virtually always already made, but at the same time it still remains to be revisited. The structure of the probability judgment is built on top of the opinion judgment and is temporally later than it. The relation between these two modes (which comprise a single model) depends upon the terms under which the initial opinion decision, once made, can be reevaluated. Opinions are always open to rational reconsideration according to their probability, but the terms of this reevaluation are not very favorable to changing others’ opinions: ‘‘How can we imagine that he should renounce those tenets, which time and custom have so settled in his mind, that he thinks of them as self-evident, and of unquestionable certainty?’’(§4). Individual opinions are always ultimately subject to custom and historical conditions, as well as to the law of opinion as nomos: the inherited framework that shapes individual experience. Locke grants reason some autonomy within this context because he believes the individual is free to critically revise and reform inherited opinion, but institution, tradition, and custom are still retained as limiting factors that prevent wholesale self-reformation in the name of reason. The ethical imperative to justly decide on one’s opinion is counterbalanced by the fact that a decision has already been made and a certain set of rules, though contingent, is already in place. But in IV:xx:§17, under the heading of ‘‘authority,’’ Locke specifically excludes authority from reason; it holds ‘‘in ignorance, or error, more people than all the other [causes] together.’’ In comparison to Hobbes and in light of the indispensable quality of authority, this represents a significant protest against ‘‘the highest law’’ of opinion as the most powerful source of conventional authority. Locke defines the basis of authority and legitimacy precisely as the authority of opinion: ‘‘the giving up our assent to the common received opinions, either to our friends, or party; neighborhood or country.’’ What might have become a plea for radical autonomy is actually only the first step toward a compromise that returns to Aquinas’ model: opinions of

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all times and places, scholarly and lay, have always been equally fraught with error, but the irremediably errant condition of humanity is not such a bad thing (§18), because most beliefs and opinions are neither opinions nor beliefs, but mere enthusiasm and obedience, completely outside of the sphere of judgment: ‘‘They are resolved to stick to a party, that education or interest has engaged them in; and there, like the common soldiers of an army, show their courage and warmth as their leaders direct, without ever examining or so much as knowing the cause they contend for.’’ The sociological reason of sheer subordination trumps individual reason when it comes to the possibility of group formation, but Locke here deviates from his earlier claims because the ignorant followers are not explicitly denounced or found to be in error, neither by extension of the faults of their leaders, nor by virtue of their own unreflected (false) assent. This shift in the tendency of the argument generously excuses the ignorance of followers whose lack of individualized reason limits their individual responsibility, but this concession has little impact on Locke’s ethical imperative, which remains decisively on the side of reason and responsibility. Authority as such is illegitimate, but Locke nevertheless attributes the unthinking followers, the majority, with a certain provisional reason—common sense?—despite the lack of a rational foundation. He concludes, by implication, that the normative force of the law of opinion is much greater than the transformative and reformative force of individual opinions. Despite reason’s inroads, the norm of nomos remains the authority of authority, and even the vast majority of ‘‘reason’’ in the world is not rational-critical and public, but is only the raison of interest and authority, which Kant designated in ‘‘What is Enlightenment?’’ as private reason. Locke writes: Thus men become professors of, and combatants for those opinions, they were never convinced of, nor proselytes to; no, nor ever so much as floating in their heads: And though one cannot say, there are fewer improbable or erroneous opinions in the world than there are, yet this is certain, there are fewer, that actually assent to them, and mistake them for truths, than is imagined. (Locke, Essay IV:xx:§18)

Having reasoned himself into a corner, Locke opts for cynical, political reason as the prevailing form of reason. Reason and reasoning become wittingly or unwittingly instrumentalized in the service of something or someone else. The positive side of this, strangely, is that few people actually

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believe their opinions (no matter how much they may claim to). Avoiding the more pessimistic conclusion that public reason is infected by a fundamental dishonesty, Locke sides with the efficacy of a conscience or a common sense that knows better. The dilemma, according to which both reasoning and unreason may be equally governed by a political-representational infrastructure, also applies to Locke’s own reasoning. His own situation—the situation of being compromised—was one that he understood firsthand. Locke thus stands as an example of what Koselleck called ‘‘hypocrisy’’ (see ‘‘Indirect Politics’’ in chapter 2), but he also tries to escape from it by including the problem of hypocrisy in his theory of the role of reasoning in discourse: ‘‘And though one cannot say, there are fewer improbable or erroneous opinions in the world than there are; yet this is certain, there are fewer, that actually assent to them, and mistake them for truths than is imagined’’ (xx:§18). Rather than a theory of false consciousness, Locke presents a theory of accommodation, which still leaves room for the sovereignty of conscience in the state of exception. But, at the limit, his distinction between knowing hypocrisy and unreasoning partisanship starts to break down: even the knowing hypocrite who instrumentalizes reason in the service of another—or even of an indeterminate Other—subordinates it to a political calculation that has nothing to do with the objective grounds of assent. Whether a scholarly ‘‘combatant’’ or a layman, the actual calculus of reasoned assent is absent, voided by a representational structure that ultimately plays into authority. Because we cannot expect and should not hope to be able to persuade others of our opinion, the entire discourse of reason transpires with uncomfortable disingenuousness. At this point Locke risks contradiction (of the ‘‘performative’’ variety of which Habermas accused Derrida) because he begins to undermine his own discourse, which seeks to persuade and is based on the persuasiveness of reasoning. Appealing to the everyday experience of the intractability opinions, Locke wants to convince his readers that it is unreasonable to expect anyone to change their opinion. He does not completely deny the possibility of discourse and dialogue, nor are individual opinions completely solipsistic, but the degree to which persuasion can function, as well as the speed of this function, are—and should be—severely limited in Locke’s view.

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An irrational but hopefully stable base is preferable, despite reason’s covert awareness—held close to the chest—that all authority is illegitimate. The compromise with authority happens through reason’s accommodation to law of opinion, whose highest authority is the antithesis and precondition of discursive reason. Every individual is literally compelled by the prevailing norms of thought and action, even if these norms may also, in a moment of crisis, become available to rational reconsideration; reason may simulate this crisis without being able to practically effect change. IV:xvi:§6 includes an anecdotal analogy of the larger problem: Where any particular thing, consonant to the case, comes attested by the concurrent reports of all that mention it, we receive it easily, and build as firmly upon it, as if it were certain knowledge; and we reason and act thereupon with as little doubt, as if it were perfect demonstration. Thus, if all Englishmen, who have occasion to mention it, should affirm, that it froze in England last winter, or that there were swallows seen there in the summer, I think a man could almost as little doubt of it, as that seven and four are eleven.

This example of the difference between empirical and rational truth refers to an earlier anecdote (IV:xv:§5), which reveals the instability of assent based on experience or hearsay: If I myself see a man walk on ice, it is past probability, ’tis knowledge, but if another tells me he saw a man in England in the midst of a sharp winter, walk upon water hardened with cold; this has so great conformity with what is usually observed to happen, that I am disposed by the nature of the thing itself to assent to it, unless some manifest suspicion attend the relation of the matter of fact. But if the same thing be told to one born between the tropics, who never saw nor heard of any such thing before, there the whole probability relies on testimony: and as the relators are more in number, and more in credit, and have no interest to speak contrary to the truth; so that matter of fact is like to find more or less belief. Though to a man, whose experience has been always quite contrary, and has never heard of anything like it, the most untainted credit of a witness will scarce be able to find belief.

The example shows that the prevailing opinion often exists in a state of complete self-evidence, unexamined by rational proofs—until such time as this received opinion is put to the test by some kind of exception. The law of opinion governs the ‘‘normal situation’’ in which sheer authority rules by virtue of its evidence, whereas reason represents its crisis and state of exception. Like the ice in Locke’s metaphor, all opinions are ‘‘frozen,’’ scabs or

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scars that cover psychic wounds, debts, and doubts. These opinions, which normally command complete faith, found a provisional solidity that is valid for the moment, but there is no telling when they may fail to correspond to reality and reveal unexamined depths that leave the autonomous subject afloat in the cold water of reason. Locke therefore, despite advocating tolerance as the highest reason for the resolution of political conflict, is not a ‘‘communicative’’ rationalist in Habermas’ sense.13 Also unlike Kant and Fichte (who are discussed elsewhere), for Locke procedural reason is not the ultimate normative, transcendental, or even metaphorical category. Locke’s view of reason makes him a realist because this conception has no possibility of becoming an autonomous category of historical transformation: reason is an ahistorical given, but only the interplay of individual opinions and the law of opinion are able to produce history, in which rational discourse, as applied and instrumental reason, may play a catalytic role without giving rise to a history of reason. On the other hand, Locke’s tendency to vindicate illegitimate authority may look like a relativist compromise, a means of covering over a rift in his own inclinations; it is a rift, so to speak, between a Catholic-communitarian and Protestant-liberal model. Locke seems to want to convince himself that a traditionalist mindset is inevitable and may not always be bad, even if it is always irrational. Tradition may be good, despite the fact that opinions taken on authority are essentially prejudices, because the alternative of people being too easily convinced—of people even believing that others could be very easily convinced—is violent ideological flux and civil war. Social stability is encouraged when individuals have relatively fixed opinions and expect the same of others, regardless of the truth of these opinions. But this relative stability depends not only on ‘‘relatively fixed opinions’’; everyone must also be convinced that the opinions of others are relatively fixed: a conversion economy of belief is the worst possible thing, much worse than passively held prejudices in Locke’s view, and thus IV:xvi:§4 concludes with an emphatic—but strangely resigned—ode to tolerance. What emerges thus falls far short of the kind of disingenuous celebration of difference (of opinion), which has become the norm in late liberal societies. For Locke tolerance is, first of all, not a positive virtue, but merely a necessary compromise—an unfortunate consequence of the diversity of opinions in the absence of certain truth and effective authority. Locke further indicates that the toleration of disagreement inherently tends toward

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silence and the withdrawal from the public and political spheres. The wise man, Locke says, has learned the wisdom of tolerance, but this wisdom leads to the original sin of the liberal–reformist–democratic form: nonparticipation and resignation with the way of the world. This resignation adopts a Socratic formula: knowing the limits of knowledge, knowing that one does not know, knowing that one’s knowledge is only an opinion, just like everyone else’s, there can no longer be any ethical basis from which to dictate to others or even to debate with them. Leading by example—a silent example and an exemplary silence—is the only way to promote tolerance. Its spread requires that all who hold opinions must confess to the creed of tolerance by admitting that their beliefs do not have enough basis to justify forcible propagation, and this means—at the limit—that one can just as easily do nothing at all: sheer inaction is the ultimate form of tolerance. The only belief that can be—must be—made universal is the belief in tolerance itself, but the practical content of this belief sets it apart from all of the others because the religion of tolerance, as a consequence of the opinion-system, can only be a religion that amounts to the refusal of active politics in favor of the vita contemplativa of exemplary self-betterment, an educational politics of self-education: The necessity of believing, without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves, than constrain others. At least those, who have not thoroughly examined to the bottom all their own tenets, must confess, they are unfit to prescribe to others; and are unreasonable in imposing that as a truth on other men’s belief, which they themselves have not searched into, nor weighed the arguments of probability, on which they should receive or reject it. Those who have fairly and truly examined, and are thereby got past doubt in all the doctrines they profess, and govern themselves by, would have a juster pretence to require others to follow them: but these are so few in number, and find so little reason to be magisterial in their opinions, that nothing insolent and imperious is to be expected from them: and there is reason to think, that if men were better instructed themselves, they would be less imposing on others. (IV:xvi:§4)

Those who would have ‘‘a juster pretence’’ to govern know better than to try, which means that the entire sphere of politics (in a conception that is still widespread) is governed by a in implicit contradiction: everyone who rules is a pretender, and government itself is pretence, that is, a charade—

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sheer illegitimate representation. The right to govern, which can only belong to those ‘‘who have thoroughly examined to the bottom all their own tenets,’’ belongs therefore essentially to no one. Even those who might ‘‘more justly pretend’’ to do so have no interest in doing so because the example of rule contradicts the example of tolerance. Government is conceded, therefore, according to its sociology, to the stupid, arrogant, pretentious, and intolerant. This paradox cannot be overcome by participation, but only through the slow exemplary process of tolerance, which, at the limit of Locke’s political teleology of subjective knowledge, would eventually indirectly supplant all government that is not self-government. Opinion in the world, however, ‘‘in this fleeting state of blindness and action we are in,’’ despite its schismatic potentials and susceptibility to intolerance, of which Locke was still acutely aware, will become the basis of modern social and political organization.

Meaning without Validity (Moses Mendelssohn) Moses Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem oder u¨ber religio¨se Macht und Judentum (Jerusalem, or On Religious Power and Judaism), published in 1883, and his work in general, have often been read in terms of a tension between Mendelssohn’s Jewish faith and philosophical reason. Depending on the commentator, this implicit opposition reaches a comfortable—or more likely uncomfortable—resolution.14 But in the context of the question of faith, opinion, and conscience, the importance of Mendelssohn’s text clearly appears as a reconsideration of the relation of church and state in the wake of Locke, Hobbes, and Spinoza (all of whom are named in the opening pages of Jerusalem).15 Jerusalem is therefore not primarily a private attempt to reconcile faith and reason, but stands as a decisive rethinking of the theory of the liberal state.16 Hobbes and Locke, as is well known, attempted to provide institutional and epistemological grounds for the reconciliation of Christian faith— Christian faiths—with reason. At the systematic level, these efforts were arguably no more successful than Mendelssohn’s, but they became canonical for the political organization of the modern world because they appeared to be reflected in actual social arrangements. Locke in particular resorted to

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opinion as an intermediary term between faith and reason; opinion is literally a private negotiation between these two categories. As shown in the preceding section, such negotiations always require an unstable suspension of existing beliefs, which are exposed to reason and may be revised to become new beliefs. According to this model, reason begins and ends in belief, whereas Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem argues, in effect, for the endlessness of reason without requiring any orthodoxy of belief. Even the ‘‘orthodoxy to one’s self’’ that Locke emphasizes in his Letter on Toleration is drastically reduced, and thus Jerusalem presents an alternate model for modern, rational, civil society that does not rely on a compulsory conception of ‘‘faith’’ or on a correspondingly identificatory and representational understanding of ‘‘opinion.’’17 David Sorkin writes: ‘‘Since Judaism prescribed actions rather than convictions, . . . it was entirely compatible with the state grounded in the separation of church and state, the state that Mendelssohn thought capable of recognizing the Jews as equal citizens.’’18 This is only half of the story because Mendelssohn did not recognize the concept of the separation of church and state in the form advocated by Hobbes and Locke. By conceiving a secular authority that cannot prescribe convictions (and therefore should not try), Mendelssohn formulates the question of conscience in a way that does not rely upon avowed or settled beliefs; in Mendelssohn’s definition, conscience resists such ‘‘settling’’ of one’s own opinion. Opinion in the latter sense is at best only provisional, a representation created for the sake of others or due to the need for a certain social conformity, and at worst this superficial identification with doctrines may be mandatory within the political organization of both churches and states. In this conception, Mendelssohn breaks with the liberal tradition of secularization represented by Hobbes and Locke: the former pathologized conscience and conviction as mere opinion, stripping them of their legitimacy and opening the way for a neutral secular authority, whereas Mendelssohn argues for the inalienability and inviolability of opinions in and as conviction, but for precisely this reason he also denies the right to the use of legal sanctions, violence, or other forms of coercion to produce assent. In comparison to Hobbes, Locke grants opinion a relatively higher status as the starting point for discourse and rational reevaluation of existing norms, but in the context of ethical and political decisions, fixed opinions—that is, beliefs—nevertheless predominate over discursive reasoning, drastically limiting the possibility of deliberatively based reform; by making the individual into the primary locus

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for the production of truth, Locke also partially reasserts the violently schismatic potentials of opinion and conscience that Hobbes had sought to authoritatively negate. Like Locke, Mendelssohn also sees the tenuousness of the intersubjective bridge of language and discourse, but he takes it much less pessimistically, in large part because, for him, this communication problem does not lead to radical individualism. Mendelssohn’s theory does not presuppose opinions in terms of a potential universal normative teleology or the self-reformative validity—‘‘each one orthodox to himself’’—that they had acquired in the context of Christian confessional schism, which leads him to a vastly different conception of the key terms of modern political organization. Jerusalem was not only a plea for Jewish emancipation like the one that Mendelssohn published in his preface to the translation of Menasseh Ben Israel’s Vindiciae Judaeorum (Defense of the Jews), nor can its argument be limited to Mendelssohn’s defense of the rationality of the Jewish religion and the legitimacy of his own religious convictions. Jerusalem is also not only a ‘‘defense of the Jews,’’ but an implicit condemnation of a Christianity that purports to have founded a rational and secular system of the division of church and state.19 If Mendelssohn’s attack on the Christian world of his time was not entirely overt, this is hardly surprising: in his era, it would have been unthinkable for him to publish an outright attack on Christianity in general or on its specific institutions. But what he did write gives grounds enough, in its juxtaposition of ‘‘Christian’’ and ‘‘Jewish’’ forms of political theology, to derive a critique, not only of the institutions of his own period, but of all modern governmental and social organization up to the present day. In the light of Jerusalem, in other words, Hobbes and Locke appear not as theorists of secular authority (for which they are still often taken), but provide legitimation for a Christian theocracy whose basic terms and understandings are implicitly mediated by an underlying prejudice that betrays itself in the conceptual vocabulary of belief and avowed faith. This diagnosis of a Christian theological prejudice within the institutions that still imagine themselves as civil and secular must have been even more obvious in Mendelssohn’s era, in the ‘‘secular’’ state’s denial of civil rights to the Jewish minority, a policy often supported even by figures associated with the Enlightenment.20 Thus, in light of the political situation of the time and based on Mendelssohn’s stated desire to counter the most famous modern theorizations of the liberal state, Jerusalem’s implicit and explicit recourse to the

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unifying normative power of the Jewish ceremonial law—which prescribes action and not belief—should not be too quickly dismissed as a kind of theocratic taint or the sign of nostalgia for pure origins.21 The role of ceremonial law is instead the symptom of Mendelssohn’s attempt to produce an alternate political theology, a retranslation of ‘‘sacred’’ into ‘‘secular’’ that would provide a better basis for what Locke called ‘‘tolerance’’: the nonviolent (or even productive) resolution of differences.22 One of the most central claims of both parts of Jerusalem is that the visible church must not have a political form or be governed by laws that function in the same way as civil laws. Churches may neither have the structure of a state, nor the rights of a state to impose sanctions.23 Religion, including the church that cultivates it, serves as the moral base without which a functional state cannot exist: ‘‘Blessed be the state which succeeds in governing the nation by education itself [by the means proper to religion], that is, by infusing the people with such morals and convictions as will of themselves tend to produce good actions conducive to the common weal, and need not be constantly urged on by the spur of the law’’ (110–111; 41).24 According to Mendelssohn’s design, which clearly represents an unachievable ideal, the state is the continuation of the church with different means; the church is primary, the first instrument of education, socialization, and transformation, whereas the state is consigned to clean up the failures of the church through the use of force and compulsion. Both church and state seek the same ends of effective socialization, but the latter cannot even exist without the former, and because their difference is formal rather than moral, there can be no ideological difference between them that would bring them into conflict. Thus, as Hamann also noted, Mendelssohn in a sense retains the Hobbesian concept of secular authority, but he sees it as a necessary evil, whereas religion is understood as the primary institution, defined by the fact that reason is both its means and its ends. For Mendelssohn, the educational imperative of ‘‘churches’’—once they have renounced the coercive ‘‘civil’’ means of positive law, sanctions, and oaths—makes them inherently compatible and indispensable to the state. This model would still problematically allow the state to retain the right of action against religions whose educational mission is thought to oppose the collective interest; one may also wonder what Mendelssohn would have made of the later history, which saw the state assuming the ‘‘ecclesiastical’’ role by

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providing mandatory public education—but without ever fully eliminating or displacing the traditional educational function of religion. In Mendelssohn’s sense, religion’s superiority and primacy in comparison to the state is defined by its nonviolent and noncoercive rational and pedagogical means. Both religion and state pursue the same ends, but the state is necessary only to the extent that religion has proven ineffective in rationally justifying its norms and producing consensual compliance. Positive law only compensates for the absence of order, and Mendelssohn presupposes the hopelessness of governance based exclusively on positive law. The ‘‘spur’’ of law, with its emphasis on a whole network of positive and negative sanctions—punishment and reward, fear and hope, deterrence and enticement—assumes the failure of morality as a product of human reason and nature. Locke’s ambivalent advocacy of a quasi-secular law of opinion, by contrast, produces an unascertainable and unattainable—but absolute— ethical demand of conformity to both convention and reason by turns. The validity of the law of opinion as Locke imagines it is also more than latently connected to the same retributive logic that founds both civil and divine law with the promise of punishment and reward, of salvation and damnation: ‘‘No man escapes the punishment of . . . censure and dislike, who offends against the fashion and opinion of the company he keeps, and would like to recommend himself to.’’25 Locke’s definition of the law of opinion— which unconvincingly tries to pass as an anthropology of its motivational structure—thus reads praise and blame as the social analogs of punishment and reward: ‘‘The measure of what is everywhere called and esteemed virtue and vice, is . . . approbation or dislike, praise or blame, which by a secret and tacit consent establishes itself in the several societies, tribes, and clubs of men in the world.’’26 Mendelssohn breaks with the underlying retributive rationale that, in the Christian world, had come to define all forms of human law—civil, divine, and opinion—and he rejects the idea that a rational normative system must always be based on a system sanctions. Such a conception presupposes an anthropology in which self-interest is the operative form of reason—or simply the most easily managed from a bureaucratic perspective—that becomes misidentified according to its supposed role within an ‘‘objective system.’’ The idea that humans can be best controlled by threats and promises is ubiquitous in Machiavelli, Hobbes (fear and hope), and Locke (punishment and reward, praise and blame), as well as in the basic presuppositions of

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modern legal systems. For Mendelssohn, law’s complex calculus of incentives, deterrents, and punishments only covers the moral bankruptcy of the underlying psychological assumptions: ‘‘Laws do not alter convictions; arbitrary punishments and rewards produce no principles, refine no morals. Fear and hope are no criteria of truth’’ (112; 43). This does not mean that societies can or should entirely do away with the state, but the necessity of civil law always reflects a failure in the cultivation—by churches and the state—of individuals’ rational apprehension and actualization of the necessity of self-sacrifice and generosity as the basis of their interpellation within communities.27 Based on a re-theorization of natural right, Mendelssohn develops new premises for the relation of church and state that is supported by an ethics, anthropology, and ontology whose foundational terms are giving and benevolence rather than selfishness, self-interest, and competition. Hamann for one disputes the success of this attempt (because it reinvests selfishness even more deeply in its reliance on the rationalistic phantasm of natural law), but Mendelssohn’s position—whose means Hamann contests more than its ends—deserves to be taken seriously in its direct opposition to Locke and Hobbes and to the whole tradition they represent, including the later conceptions of capitalism, which assert the agency of an ‘‘invisible hand’’ capable of producing order out of the chaos of individual desires. (Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations appeared in 1776, Jerusalem in 1783.) Mendelssohn summarizes his position in the exclamation: ‘‘What form of government is therefore advisable for the church? None!’’ (130; 62). This stands in direct opposition to the sentiment, for example, which appears and is implicitly refuted in Lessing’s ‘‘Nathan’’: ‘‘religion is also party’’ (Religion is auch Partei). For Mendelssohn, religion—religions—should not be defined or qualified by the political forms of partisanship—of opposition and competition, exclusion and inclusion, ban and excommunication, coercion and interest, oaths and allegiances28 —but instead by their operation within a pre-, sub-, and super-political sphere of moral instruction: ‘‘Its weapons are reasons and persuasion’’ (140; 73). What Kant calls ‘‘the public use of reason’’ in his ‘‘What is Enlightenment?’’ is identical with Mendelssohn’s idea of religion because the ‘‘pure means’’ of reason are not limited to religion, but would also ideally be those of the state and public sphere as well. (What Kant calls ‘‘private reason,’’ on the other hand, emerges in Mendelssohn as highly questionable, if not entirely illegitimate.) The state reserves the right to compel actions by force if public reason fails, but the

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religiousness of religion is defined by its use of persuasion rather than coercion to further the discursive cultivation of knowledge and ethical action. Religion propagates itself in only conversations but never in conversions; it is the ongoing experience of nonidentity rather than of forceful identification. Mendelssohn optimistically assumes that, like the individual, the state will be—or should be—governed by reason and generosity, but he can nevertheless be read to authorize a strong and potentially authoritarian civil state. Unfortunately, the state has the right to dictate legal norms unilaterally if noncoercive measures have failed. A related potential difficulty in Mendelssohn’s theory is that even reason may sometimes require the supplement of personal authority to promulgate its praxis: ‘‘Knowledge, reasoning, and persuasion alone can bring forth principles which, with the help of authority and example [Ansehen und Beyspiel], can pass into morals [Sitten]’’ (112; 43). But what Arkush translates as ‘‘authority’’ is Ansehen in German, which is a category of respect, esteem, and reputation, which is to say of the non-invested authority of the law of opinion, which may be motivated by an undisclosed form of reason—exemplary and traditional rather than strictly rational—but in any case does not possess extraordinary legal powers or a specific jurisdiction.29 Ansehen instead denotes a form of authority whose disciplinary or compulsory force engages the will (and potentially also the reason) of the one who is compelled. This kind of exemplary authority can still be interpreted as a kind of passive-aggressive violence, which would undermine the purity of Mendelssohn’s concept of ‘‘reason and persuasion,’’ but in this case, Ansehen’s representational mode should still be distinguished from authority as the absolute right to enforce obedience and conformity by whatever means necessary. Mendelssohn’s account of Ansehen is indirect and open-ended, processual but not procedural, geared toward the internalization of forms rather than external imitation or mere performance. In contrast with the force exerted by sworn oaths and avowed beliefs, this process flows in the opposite direction: neither beginning nor ending in belief, the force of Ansehen simply persists as an infinite claim within which reason and dialogue can exclusively take place. In addition to the possibility of (Habermasian) reservations about the centrality of representation in this model, Mendelssohn’s conception of reason and society is conceived hierarchically, since both church and state are

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founded on an educational paradigm that carries with it a metaphorical substructure of parental, paternal, and generational relations, which in the context of religion may also be inseparable from the relationship of master and disciple. But such potentially dubious material, quite prominent in Jerusalem’s second part (which emphasizes oral transmission and ceremonial law in the context of ‘‘original Judaism’’), is presented in a way that does not advocate these institutions as such, nor is it a matter of a ‘‘conservative’’ return to original forms; Mendelssohn instead uses these forms as analogs through which he tries to generate a general model of tradition, which would be more permeable to history and decidedly not fundamentalist. In ancient times, Mendelssohn asserts, doctrines and laws ‘‘were not connected to words or written characters which always remain the same, for all men and all times, amid all the revolutions of language, morals, manners, and conditions,’’ but ‘‘were entrusted to living, spiritual instruction, which can keep pace with all changes of time and circumstances, and can be varied according to a pupil’s needs, ability, and power of comprehension’’ (168; 102). Ideally, and unlike the universalism proclaimed by civil law, doctrine and ceremonial law would not represent one entrance through which all must pass and to which all must conform regardless of time and place. This form of law would instead be differently universal, open to the specificities of time, place, and individual. Thus doctrinal and ceremonial knowledge is always filtered by the changing reasons of oral instruction in such a way that the continuity of the tradition is assured as well as its ability to change and remain relevant over time. This conception of ceremonial law represents a much more general understanding of the unavoidable historicity of normative structures, which must be flexible if they are to be capable of simultaneously comprising the identity and the nonidentity of communities over time. Ceremonial law in this sense, including doctrine, cannot be understood in the form of positive or negative sanctions. The law is a commandment, open to action, knowledge, and interpretation; its validity does not depend on belief, disbelief, or faith of the individual, but includes them all: Among all the prescriptions and regulations of the Mosaic law, there is not a single one which says: You shall believe or not believe. They all say: You shall do or not do. Faith is not commanded, for it accepts no other commands than those that come to it by way of conviction. All the commandments of the divine law are addressed to man’s will, to his power to act. In fact, the word in the original

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language that is usually translated as faith actually means, in most cases, trust, confidence, and firm reliance on pledge and promise. Abraham trusted in the Eternal and it was accounted to him for piety (Gen. 15:6); The Israelites saw and trusted in the Eternal and in Moses, his servant (Ex. 14:31). Whenever it is a question of the eternal truths of reason, it does not say believe, but understand and know. (166; 100)

The law is to be followed, perhaps also in the sense of obeyed, but it can only address the individual’s assent as a transcendental given that is open to knowledge and understanding, but not to revision. A Christian counterposition might of course claim—as Hamann does—that this particular kind of givenness is impossible without some form of belief—belief in the giver that comes before the faith in what is given—but this argument can be resolved in Hobbes’ distinction between believing that and believing in: whereas the latter expresses an unlimited commitment—absolute and unwavering loyalty despite changes in situation and evidence—and creates the idea of an absolute authority, the former remains conditional and provisional. The latter can hear no reasons, but the former is, at least in Mendelssohn’s conception, permeated with reasoning and also with the possibility of doubt (that which the Christian conception of faith irrationally hopes to exclude or overcome by force). In Jerusalem, laws are divinely given, codified, and unchangeable, universal without the kind of top-down legalistic enforcement of conformity that is typical of Christianity: I believe that Judaism knows of no revealed religion in the sense in which Christians understand this term. The Israelites possess a divine legislation—laws, commandments, ordinances, rules of life, instruction in the will of God as to how they should conduct themselves in order to attain temporal and eternal felicity. Propositions of this kind were revealed to them by Moses in a miraculous and supernatural manner, but no doctrinal opinions, no saving truths, no universal propositions of reason. (137; 89–90)

The givenness of the law as law and commandment, as a prescriptive rendering of the norms of praxis and custom, represents a state of knowledge and consciousness, which addresses the individual at the level of assent and compliance without the belief or disbelief in the law ever entering into it. And, on the universal horizon of this law, no one is excluded, not even those who transgress this law or live in ignorance of it.

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The contrast with Christianity is evident in Mendelssohn’s reference to the exclusivity of ‘‘saving truths.’’ This difference is more specifically articulated in his contention that the vehicle of language—including philosophy with its ‘‘universal propositions of reason’’—is completely unsuited to cultivation of sincere convictions because the inner knowledge, the ‘‘belief’’ or sincerity of the individual cannot be reduced, captured, or guaranteed in words, not even in sworn affirmations, which only intensify the problem. The state has the right to compel actions through civil law, but neither church nor state may acquire by means of any contract ‘‘the slightest compulsory right over convictions (Gesinnungen).’’ Mendelssohn continues: In general, men’s convictions (Gesinnungen) pay no heed to benevolence, and are not amenable to any coercion. I cannot renounce any of my convictions, as a conviction, out of love for my neighbor; nor can I cede and relinquish to him, out of benevolence, any part of my own power of judgment. I am likewise in no position to arrogate to myself or in any way acquire a right over my neighbor’s convictions. The right to our own convictions is inalienable, and cannot pass from person to person; for it neither gives nor takes away any claim to property, goods and liberty. (129; 61)

Mendelssohn here compactly pleads for the autonomy, privacy, and inalienability of Gesinnungen. The German word is important: Gesinnung does not refer to ‘‘conviction’’ in the sense of something of which one is ‘‘convinced’’ or ‘‘persuaded,’’ nor does it refer to an individual judgment so much as to a system of judgments, an ‘‘individual outlook’’ as one might say in contemporary English. Also worth mentioning is frequent pairing of Gesinnung with the word Gesittung; if Gesinnung refers to the individual outlook, then Gesittung is cultivation, convention, and morality. Convictions (Gesinnungen) and opinions are thus not understood as abstract and singular beliefs that are simply ‘‘held’’ or ‘‘declared,’’ but as parts of a larger system that comprehends the whole life and lifeworld of the individual. This is also the reason for their inalienability: as part and parcel of the individuality of the individual, opinions themselves are compulsory because they correspond to the totality of individual experience, and external compulsions that do not go to the trouble of working within this system of cultural and experiential presets will either (1) be rejected, (2) remain superficial, (3) be received in some sense but still subordinated to the preexisting Gesinnungen or, (4) all of the above, which means that they will be rejected internally

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while being superficially accepted, thereby producing and promoting an ethically and psychologically problematic internal (private) split between what has been superficially accepted but is internally rejected. The system, in other words, whose basic model of faith is that of conversion, which forces its members to swear by beliefs, alienates individuals from their beliefs in a way that no longer allows for the coherence of outward practice and inner experience. In other words, Mendelssohn’s implicit critique of Christianity represents it as the systemic universalization of hypocrisy. The expectation of belief and the imperative to believe, even and especially in the absence of reason—to believe what one says and to say what one believes—which inhabits even the liberal conception of discourse and opinion starting with Locke, is denounced by Mendelssohn as a kind of selfcensorship, the proliferation of an impossible demand of self-conformity and ‘‘self-orthodoxy,’’ which undermines the true autonomy and privacy of thought. It is not doubt that is at issue here, Mendelssohn argues, but the virtual identity of ‘‘life and opinions’’ (of Gesinnung und Gesittung) which, if taken seriously, would mean that the process by which ethical principles are discussed, debated, deliberated, mediated, rationalized, and ‘‘translated’’ can only be infinite and interminable: With my best friend, whom I believed to be ever so much in accord with me, I very often failed to come to terms about certain truths of philosophy and religion. After a long dispute and altercation, it would sometimes emerge that we had each connected different ideas with the same words. Not infrequently, we thought alike, yet expressed ourselves differently; but just as often we believed ourselves to be in agreement when we were still very far apart in our thoughts. And yet neither of us was unpracticed in thinking; we were both used to dealing with abstract ideas, and it seemed to both of us that we were earnestly seeking the truth for its own sake rather than for the sake of simply being right. Nevertheless, our ideas had to rub against each other for a long time before they could be made to fit themselves to one another. (134–35; 67)

Even under the most ideal conditions and with a minimum of force, ‘‘mutual understanding’’—as it is often called today—is a long-term process, which may be partially achievable through effort and patience. The obstacle to understanding is not just ‘‘language’’ itself and as such, in its tendency to reduce processes to results, but also its infinite hermeneutic extension within the variable infrastructures of time, place and culture, habit and experience, all of which make it difficult to understand whether or not one

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has been understood, or whether one has only been understood on the other’s terms. The latter situation, in Mendelssohn’s terms, does not represent an understood understanding, but only a kind of reduction, a ‘‘translation’’ which, at the limit, is still a form of misunderstanding. Given this factual, habitual, and ‘‘natural’’ hermeneutic situation of the individual Gesinnung, it is not only illegitimate to try to legislate or otherwise produce beliefs de jure (by the force of law), even the attempt to do so—assuming it is not homicidal, suicidal, or genocidal—produces hypocritical schisms within individuals and consequently also within the society whose moral base is thereby undermined and brought into conflict with itself. But this foreseeable failure of fixed doctrinal beliefs and doctrinaire opinions to override the ethical infrastructure of Gesinnung und Gesittung is perhaps still the lesser evil compared to successful indoctrination, which leads to pure idolatry and fanaticism (whose overcompensations do not succeed in making them less hypocritical). Without digressing at length on Mendelssohn’s lengthy digression on the origins of language and the idolatrous possibilities of hieroglyphic signs and written language in general (104–17), I briefly present the results: this portion of Jerusalem is a theory of idolatry, the target of which can only be Christianity—Christianities—in their systematic but exclusive ‘‘tolerance’’ based on minimal forms of shared and avowed belief. Following the digression, Mendelssohn resumes his argument on ceremonial law: ‘‘Now I am in a position to explain more clearly my surmise about the purpose of the ceremonial law in Judaism’’ (183; 117). This law, which is done and not believed, is interpreted as an institutional check—a kind of counteridolatry—against the idolatry that Mendelssohn has analyzed in the case of abstract ideas (Koselleck’s ‘‘collective singulars’’): ‘‘We have seen how difficult it is to preserve the abstract ideas of religion among men by means of permanent signs. Images and hieroglyphics lead to superstition and idolatry, and our alphabetical mass production of texts makes man too speculative’’ (184; 118). This can be read as a condemnation of modernity since the beginning of writing, but it still represents a more moderate position than the one that Mendelssohn had expressed early, pertaining to ‘‘signs’’ that would include not only the written word but also images, metaphors, and representations. Doctrines as well, to which one is forced or encouraged to ascribe, can also be read as signs in this sense: ‘‘They saw the signs not as mere signs, but believed them to be the things themselves’’ (176; 111). In his analysis of idolatry, Mendelssohn also speaks

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about the error, which could easily be attributed to Christianity, of worshipping the ‘‘law-giver’’ instead of following the law (179; 113). But he also urges prudence because it may be difficult if not impossible for an outsider, one who is not raised within a given culture, to ascertain whether what appears to be idolatry may be not in fact ‘‘perhaps only script’’ (vielleicht nur Schrift) (179; 113). Mendelssohn’s earlier valuation of writing is thus reversed—because it is only writing but not a sign or an idol—to produce a fluid boundary between ‘‘text’’ as an open-ended conceptual and discursive function and its idolatrous and ‘‘ideological’’ reification. In Mendelssohn’s argument, the Jewish ceremonial law thus stands for a political form, which, as intensely representational as it may appear, in fact relies upon a minimum of representation and a maximum of sheer form and individual participation. Mendelssohn’s final polemic appears in Jerusalem’s penultimate paragraph, based on his theory of idolatry, which leaves little doubt that the Christian version of ‘‘rational’’ universalism was his main target all along. Thus he argues against the possibility of a ‘‘union of faiths’’ in a universal dogma: For supposing that people do come to terms with one another about the formula of faith to be introduced and established, that they devise symbols to which none of the religious parties now dominant in Europe could find any reason to object. What would thereby be accomplished? Shall we say that all of you [i.e. ‘‘you Christians’’] would think exactly alike about religious truths? Whoever has but the slightest conception of the nature of the human mind cannot be persuaded of this. The agreement, therefore, could lie only in the words, in the formula. (202; 137)

The unification of ‘‘Christian Europe,’’ which was only able to come to terms by employing a massive structure of avowal and disavowal, is denounced on the basis of its idolatrous ‘‘belief’’ in ‘‘formulas’’ and ‘‘symbols,’’ hollowed out of all meaning. The merely symbolic union of faiths only produces ‘‘universal hypocrisy’’ (allgemeine Gleißnerey) (202; 137). The white mythology of ‘‘modest and purified’’ words—that is, ‘‘sacred’’ words that present themselves as products of reason—will listen to neither dissent nor criticism (202; 138). Thus, regardless of the reasoning upon which such symbols and formulas may have been based, they are closed off to thought (a form of understanding that is always incomplete and ongoing), which

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means they are either tyrannical or they are empty idols that do not permit participatory access to individuals in the form of an opportunity to excise their own reason. This critique pertains not only to Christianity, but to the all of the compromise formations expressed in political language: a politics is necessary, according to the implicit demand of Mendelssohn’s critique, which does not address individuals in terms of their sheer identification or disidentification with whichever symbols and formulas—mere words, such as ‘‘God’’ or ‘‘Christ,’’ or collective singulars such as ‘‘freedom’’ or ‘‘democracy’’—but which instead addresses and integrates them at the level of thought and understanding. Only a society and a politics that is able to reconcile the latent structural opposition between the competing principles of autonomy and authority—Protestantism and Catholicism, liberalism and communitarianism—can be truly democratic, pluralistic, and tolerant. In contrast with Mendelssohn’s conception of divinely given ceremonial law, even civil laws of democratic provenance (which are not really under consideration in Jerusalem) would represent an illegitimate fusion of positive law and divine commandment. Unlike the civil law, which, in its ideal democratic form, is the result of a collective deliberation, ceremonial law receives the reasoned assent of the individual not at the level of ‘‘lawmaking’’ (because laws in this sense cannot be ‘‘made’’), but at the levels of action, practice, and understanding. Liberal democracy claims to partially rationalize the production of laws, but Mendelssohn’s reasoning implies that even the democratic demand that the individual identify with fixed opinions—further reduced to the identification with candidates who in turn represent ‘‘platforms’’—is still based on a system of the coercion of conscience that came to define all of western legal, political, and governmental form. No matter how democratic the law-making process may be, it in no way mitigates the coercive force and violence through which laws are necessarily imposed and applied upon individuals (for whom ignorance of the law is no excuse). Understood with reference to concept of nomos, Mendelssohn’s version of ceremonial law, which includes and structures morality and cultural norms, represents a case of the self-reflexivity nomoi (also demonstrated in Excursus 2). The nomos is rearticulated, thematized, and made available to reason in the form of ceremonial law. A rational view of custom thus would not conceive it as an automatic or self-evident state of being, nor as a kind of normative moral sanction in need of enforcement (as in

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Locke’s law of opinion), nor should they be conceived as a result of human fabrication (which only makes them a battlefield for the irrationality of human reason), nor even as the result of a mythic transgression (which still places them, as Walter Benjamin has argued, within a conception of law that is latently retributive). Ceremonial law represents a self-revelation of ‘‘culture’’ which can no longer be misidentified as a form of sheer nature. Mendelssohn turns to Judaism in an effort to heal the conflicts that he perceives, masked and sublimated, within Christian society. He develops a conception that would stand in opposition to the still prevailing ‘‘political theology’’ that not only sees a theological infrastructure at work in modern political concepts, but which is additionally aware—like Koselleck in chapter 2—of the potentially theological and idolatrous status of political concepts as such, without reference to their supposed origins in a process of secularization. Supplementing Mendelssohn with Koselleck, Christian political theology has clearly progressed in the intervening centuries because it no longer functions primarily by explicit signs—oaths taken and allegiances sworn—but based on implicit exclusions that come to seem self evident. The modern public sphere seeks, in other words, to excommunicate everything that does submit to a given symbolic order. In this capacity, as argued in chapter 1, public opinion became the executive, the enforcer of the political theological system against which Mendelssohn argues. The political ideal characteristic of his thinking is therefore decidedly not the production of a single fixed system of rationality that could perhaps someday pass as universal. The human mind and its language, he argues, are incompatible with such systems and their constant and ‘‘universal’’ truths (the historically changing comprehension of which belies their claim to systematic universality). Instead, the point of reason for Mendelssohn is not to produce reason or rationality, but rather to produce meaning (169; 102), which cannot be understood as exclusive or as the exclusive possession of given individuals or nations. This is the practical significance of Mendelssohn’s argument against the ecclesiastic right of excommunication. The further removed from or more adverse an individual is to a given thought or teaching, the more they represent the intended addressee of that teaching (141–42; 74–75). But this is not to say that those who are distant from any given teaching are irretrievably lost or damned (160–64; 94–97) because reason does not lie in a given or universally reproducible result, but in the process itself, which picks up and leaves off between individuals, across wide

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expanses of time and between cultures and religions, without ever being able to reach a conclusive judgment. No definitive judgment is possible, but, in opposition to Locke’s discourse ethics, this does not lead to an imperative to preemptively decide and take sides. If no judgment is rationally possible, then, rationally, the only option is to defer judgment and decide not to decide. The case must be closed for lack of evidence, both on the individual and historical levels, so humans can be freed from the tyranny of beliefs. The trial and the process of history must come to an end without reaching a conclusion or a decision. ‘‘Tolerance’’ can be expected neither by way of a competitive and potentially annihilating and apocalyptic rationality, nor through a process of ‘‘translation’’ that is based on the presupposition that everything can be reduced to a single reason. To the contrary, Mendelssohn argues: ‘‘to us, all words of Scripture, all of God’s commandments and prohibitions are fundamental’’ (168; 101). There is no quintessence to scripture, only commentary. This is not a fundamentalist claim, but, to the contrary, it unfounds all fundamentalisms, rationalisms, and essentialisms, which deliberately misunderstand the literary rationality of textual tradition and try to reduce it to a single meaning and a universal norm. Rather than producing ‘‘validity without meaning’’ (Geltung ohne Bedeutung), Mendelssohn’s concept of law represents ‘‘meaning without validity’’ (Bedeutung ohne Geltung).30 This ‘‘law’’ is a foundation of meaning and signification that provides no basis for its own enforcement through positive or negative sanctions based on a—always incomplete—‘‘normative’’ reading of the law. Mendelssohn believes that ceremonial law is the figure and the condition of ‘‘reason’’ itself because he believes natural law and natural religion are intrinsically compatible with the revealed law of Judaism. Reason is thus the foundation out of which the endless and manifold reasoning of individuals extends over time, but as such it can never be made into a finalized result or product of its own processes without inflicting intolerant violence upon itself. Finally, Mendelssohn’s idea of law could not be less legalistic. At the limit, ceremonial law would require that the books be closed upon a certain kind of legal reasoning and debate. This historical caesura is the precondition for genuine tolerance: It seems to me that in the course of so many centuries, and particularly in our own, which is so fond of writing, enough has been said and resaid in this matter

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[of religious confession]. Since the parties have nothing new to adduce, it is high time to close the books. Let him who has eyes see, let him who has reason examine, and live according to his conviction. What is the use of champions standing by the roadside and offering battle to every passerby? Too much talk about a matter does not render it any clearer, but rather obscures whatever faint appearance of truth there is. Take any proposition you please and talk, write or argue about it—for or against it—often and long enough, and you can be sure that it will continue to lose more and more of whatever evidence it may have possessed. Overmagnification of the detail impairs the overview of the whole. (156–89)

‘‘Closing the books’’ does not mean ending rational debate and discourse, but furthering it, individualizing and de-instrumentalizing and deproceduralizing it by allowing it to continue on its own terms without the pressure and duress of having to reach a decision or decide what one believes, and without the assumption that what appears to be good to one is valid for all. Unfortunately, however, the precondition for such a form of reason and discourse is a stable society and—to the extent that the society is not perfectly stable—a strong state that can keep order through the force of civil laws. The most ideal version of Mendelssohn’s theory thus tends to overlook the conditions under which such a vision of social tolerance can become possible in the first place. Or, on the other hand, perhaps the radicalizing tendencies of new idols only got ahead of Mendelssohn’s apparently ‘‘conservative’’—or at least ‘‘patient’’—version of Enlightenment. But the radicality of his own conception remains undiminished, and its practical virtue still lies in its indifference toward (and passive resistance against) the divisiveness of the belief in belief, which has produced unabated religious and ideological strife across the globe.

The Radicalization of Locke’s Liberal Individualism (Fichte) Based on reasoning that is similar and even identical to that of Locke or Mendelssohn, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, in critical polemics in support of the ideas of the French Revolution, seeks to topple not only the legitimacy of the state but also of a paternalistic society and replace them with the individual conscience. Locke’s version of rational-critical discourse had contained a note of radical individualism that he was unwilling to fully espouse;

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Fichte amplifies it. Mendelssohn, on the eve of the Revolution, adapted Locke’s system by dislocating it from the categories of belief and decision. Fichte, about a decade later, still relying Locke’s theorization, denounces the political status quo—a public sphere of Lockean provenance—as an opinion system. Locke’s analysis, only apparently descriptive, was supplemented by a prescriptive and programmatic conception of tolerance. Fichte, after the revolution, no longer prioritizes conscience in Mendelssohn’s sense but reemphasizes the fundamental and decisive rightness of conscience over mere opinion in a war of ideas based on an indirect analogy to scientific progress. Fichte severely critiques the opinion system, but this attack remains confined by and intensifies the inherited belief in belief that Mendelssohn had tried to undermine. Because Fichte remains intolerantly convinced of his own rightness, he also fails to resolve the latent contradictions of Locke’s prescriptivity. The individual conscience becomes the absolute, transcendental source of ethical knowledge, but Fichte heavily restricts its form and content, resulting in the tautological formalism and extreme individualism of a conscience that can only believe in itself. In his essay on the Revolution, Fichte validates a completely subjectcentered ethics, which at the limit will become a politics whose collective effect will even convert the rulers to its creed. Rulers will be subjected to a mobilized and rationalized law of opinion so that, rather than setting the fashion of the court, monarchs will be forced to follow the will of the people. The reliance on a variant of the law of opinion allows Fichte to ignore the precise dynamics of revolutionary transformation and the political realities of its implementation. But he polemically maintains that if Enlightenment (Aufkla¨rung) is to succeed, it cannot be only be instituted from above, but from the inside out. Enlightenment cannot be a merely academic pursuit of discussing classes. If it is to have any meaning, its principles and methods must be made exoteric and universal, and thus his text, despite its reliance on a totally individualistic conception of conscience, also contains an educational imperative that is at odds with the complete autonomy of conscience. Despite his criticism of the opinion system, Fichte’s rhetorical attitude is not resigned but polemical. There are no signs of distaste for a style of argument that tends toward violent invective. Unlike Locke, who saw heated debate as a dead end leading to intolerance, Fichte is an unbridled participant in the war of pro and contra; in the public sphere, he plays to win—to make his case persuasively using both reasoning and rhetoric. His

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critique of the opinion system thus appears hypocritical or at least doubleedged: he participates in the system he attacks, and he attacks it in a way that exemplifies its proper function. The juxtaposition of opinion and conscience, which appears in the introductory sections of his lengthy unfinished 1793 ‘‘Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urtheile des Publikums u¨ber die franzo¨sische Revolution’’ (Contribution to the Correction of the Public’s Judgments on the French Revolution),31 seeks by the force argumentation alone to regulate and reform the opinion system that he attacks. As the title implies, Fichte wants not only to correction of some judgments, but, more fundamentally, he also wants to correct their method of judgment, but unlike Mendelssohn, he does not want to see the opinion system itself as inherently problematic. Fichte’s youthful critique is thus not as fundamental as it appears: he plays by the rules of the opinion system as he understands them, trying to perform them as he thinks they should be performed, and for this reason he is all the more scathing toward what he sees as abuses. In short, he wants to reform the system of rational reform by reasserting its methodical base and excluding—excommunicating—those who do not play by the rules. Fichte defines opinions as ‘‘principles based on experience’’ (Erfahrungsgrundsa¨tze), which are designated as historically and culturally contingent, making them a highly unstable basis for judgment. Locke knew this already, but Fichte uses it a weapon against those who either cannot follow his reasoning or who are blinded by interest. He argues that the individual, shaped by contingent experiences, has no meta-perspective from which to judge historical events: ‘‘What has happened is a matter of knowledge and not of judgment’’ (209). The judgment of past events in any case always implies a norm, an ‘‘aught’’ (Sollen) according to which things could and should have been done differently. The fact that it was possible for past actions to have occurred in violation of this norm raises the suspicion that the retrospective norm is actually a false standard, not cognizant of the peculiarities of the singular situation or of the possibilities of human freedom of action (216). The retrospective norm must, in effect, suppose freedom, but as soon as it does so, its validity as a norm becomes questionable. The norm by which past actions are measured either does not exist or is itself historical and contingent: ‘‘From what source do they want to take this norm? Not from the action that is supposed to be judged by it, because the action should be judged based on the norm and not the norm based on the action. Should it

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then be taken from other free actions that are historically given and known to experience?’’ (216). This would mean, however, judging the free actions of others according to exemplary and experiential standards that are also relative and perhaps historically anachronistic. Fichte argues that, lacking a transcendental foundation, historical actions will always be judged according to unreliable empirical standards. To judge others’ past actions always means judging them according to norms to which the actors presumably did not have the same access (or else they would have acted differently). The partiality and relativity such judgments—which is commonly called historical or cultural perspective—is what makes them ‘‘opinion’’ (Meinung). But Fichte asserts that there is also an invariant, ahistorical, and transcendental component to subjectivity, which would be able to serve as a true guide for action and judgment. This is what he calls conscience, and he describes its phenomenology as follows: ‘‘The inquiry must proceed back to the original form of our spirit and not remain fixed upon the colors that are lent to it by accident or habit, either involuntarily through error or deliberately through the urge to dominate others’’ (220). Here, returning to the part of the self that precedes all experience, before the self itself, one finds—‘‘poking about in the darkness, . . . seeking the way with fingertips’’ (221)—conscience (das Gewissen), ‘‘the internal judge within us, the thoughts that together variously accuse and excuse’’ (219–20, Fichte’s emphasis). Conscience is the court of reason, the inner forum in which one debates with oneself. This inner zone of the authentic ego, free of all contingency, is also the only possible seat of a coherent judgment: ‘‘Whoever has not yet reached an accord with himself on this point [on the indispensable centrality of conscience], is not mature enough for the task at hand’’ (220–21). Before it is possible to judge actions, first it is necessary to come to an agreement with oneself and recognize conscience as the highest juridical instance.32 The conscience is supposedly above and beyond the contingency of opinion, but Fichte also problematically stipulates that conscience itself must be assented to and recognized. The origins of this assent can themselves only be discursive, which suggest that some form of conscience was already there before its recognition. If this were not the case, then the recognition of and assent to conscience would only be a nontranscendental result, historically contingent upon the play of opinions. The latter (nontranscendental) reading also cannot simply be ruled out. According to Fichte’s stated intention, however, the self-affirmation of conscience is a

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self-empowerment that provides a guarantee of the possibility of ethical truth free not only of contingency, but freed from the illegitimacy of ‘‘interest’’ (Interesse) and ‘‘force’’ (Gewalt). Instead of an external court of public opinion and posterity (as in chapter 1), Fichte posits the courtroom metaphor internally. Only the self can be sure of itself and competent to judge itself. Conscience vouches for the veracity of everything that is said and done, and conscientious participation defines the possibility of a functional public sphere. Fichte accuses those who participate in the public discourse without following their conscience of abusing the system. Rather than having opinions, they only represent opinions in the interest of egotistical and fundamentally conservative ends. The opinion system (Meinungssystem) for Fichte is currently defined by competing opinions, but if it is to function it must be limited to the advancement of truth. Only conscience can guarantee it, he believes, even if guaranteeing conscience proves difficult. He characterizes the perversion of the system through the denial of conscience as a great effort to prevent any rearrangement of one’s beloved little existence as it has always been, the lazy or aggressive egotism, the shy aversion before the truth or the violence with which one shuts one’s eyes to it when they produce illuminations against our will from the other point of view. These behaviors never betray themselves more obviously than when the discussion turns to such generally illuminating and politically relevant topics as the rights and duties of man. (205)

Conscience surpasses every form of self-interest; the existence of the ego is suspended before conscience and reconceived as the autobiographical organ of self-judgment. The acid test of conscience is ‘‘the rights and duties of man,’’ the ethical question of universal importance. Speaking on these issues, bad conscience reveals itself because it is unable to reform itself according to universal principles. By this standard Fichte produces a division within humanity between those who want what is best for humanity and those who only want what is best for themselves. The former is definitive of conscience, and only conscience has the legitimate authority to judge when it comes to universals. Everything else is just opinion. Despite the sovereign and transcendental role that Fichte ascribes to conscience, his description of the stubborn refusal to listen to it implies that it is anything but omnipotent. A priori conscience is sovereign, but in reality it may be easily drowned out and left unheeded. Conscience’s voice can

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be ignored, and there is no solution to this form of stubborn ignorance; Enlightenment has no ‘‘means of countering this evil. Whoever fears the truth (Wahrheit) as his enemy will always know how to preserve (verwahren) himself from it.’’ (205). In the face of the truth of conscience, error can always be preserved: Vor der Wahrheit la¨ßt es sich immer ver-wahren. Because it is so easy for conscience to go unheeded, Fichte must go to great lengths to show that it exists and to take its side; this often takes the form of an assertion of his own integrity and authenticity—he tries to guarantee to the reader that he has raised himself above the false, self-interested, and hypocritical opinion system. The voice of conscience must emerge from his own claims and how he makes them; it must make itself known through a particular style or method. Conscience (das Gewissen) expresses itself, as Fichte puts it, ‘‘in the tone of certainty (Gewißheit), because it is a kind of falseness to pretend to doubt where one has no doubts’’ (206). But this unstable wordplay, which seeks to assert the certainty and security of conscience, does not mean that what it says is certain, even though it is said or written with the tone of certainty: ‘‘From this [tone] it only follows that I am speaking with presence of mind and that I am not lying, but it does not follow, however, to say for this reason that I might not err. I can have no knowledge of this; all that I can know is that I did not seek to err’’ (206). The first half of the claim may be highly dubious, but Fichte in any case argues that the good conscience of writing can be ascertained by its compliance with a revised version of the Socratic paradox of knowing that one does not know. One must always hold on to the knowledge—despite the certainty of conscience that dictates the tone of certainty—that one might err; this means splitting the difference between opinion as belief and opinion as hypothesis. Fichte’s conception is geared toward an ethics of reform (and a reform of ethics), but for him the standard of ethics itself can only be found by the subordination of ethical imperatives to epistemological ones, and the hypothetical espousing of opinions is—even if one feels quite sure about it—the sign of good faith regarding knowledge. But it would also not be difficult to argue that the scientific structure of hypothesis precisely excludes belief. Fichte’s attempt to fuse them would then appear illegitimate, ultimately advocating a form of the dissimulation he was trying to banish (which could perhaps be further isolated as a general contradiction within the idea of opinion).

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Compared to Locke, Fichte is more radically reformist because ‘‘principles of experience’’ (Erfahrungsgrundsa¨tze) are supposed to be completely excluded as sources of truth. Fichte wants to be truly postconventional: custom and tradition are no longer relatively stable measures of enduring truths, but only the ‘‘occasion’’ (Veranlassung) of subjective self-actualization. Truth therefore, and consequently opinion as well, are not positive or fixed in Fichte, but medial. They are the medium of the self: ‘‘Even a divinely inspired gospel is not true to anyone who has not convinced himself of its truth’’ (206). It is not the position that is taken that makes up the truth of the opinion, nor the faith that is put in it, but, to the contrary, all positions are the mere occasion (Veranlassung) for the self-assurance of the self through its convictions. The posited ‘‘position’’ does not pose itself in a way that is only positive or affirmative: the subject’s positions are medial and instrumental. The opportunity of the self to test all given and not-yet-existing positions is the medium of conscience, which must prove itself and prove its existence in the opportunity of the self to think for itself (Selbstdenken): ‘‘Everyone shall judge for themselves.’’ (207). Fichte argues that the point of a good argument is not so much to expound the content of a particular position and to convince others of its truth, but to propagate the proper method of argumentation itself: ‘‘All of our teaching must have as its final goal the awakening of independent thought (Selbstdenken), or else we bring to our humanity’s dearest asset (die scho¨nste Gabe) a dangerous gift (gefa¨hrliches Geschenk)’’ (207). The alternative posed here, between ‘‘the dearest asset’’ (Gabe) and ‘‘a dangerous gift’’ (Geschenk), is further articulated at the end of the paragraph: ‘‘A writer should think before his readers and not for them’’ (207). The writer models thought, thinks before readers—in front of them—without thinking for them. Fichte thus advocates a mimetic system of posterity in which the form—of conscience and intellectual integrity—is to be transmitted, without sparing the recipient the labor of constantly rethinking the content of arguments. Writers, more than producing true arguments, must provide the means of transmitting a certain praxis of thought without inculcating or indoctrinating the reader with a fixed set of ends, contents, or truths. The course, history, and development of reason in this sense thus do not lead to fixed universal truths or results, but persist as an infinite process that must be carried on as a tradition from generation to generation.

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If this were easy to accomplish, then the rest of the Fichte’s discourse— and at the limit all discourse and thought in general—would become superfluous: if everyone were to agree on the form—of conscientious discourse, setting aside interest—then the problems of content—exemplary topics such as human rights—would be solved automatically. The precondition of human rights, for Fichte, is thus a functioning discursive and educational system, which would ensure, to the greatest extent possible, the exclusion of interest and violence. But the ‘‘dangerous gift,’’ the perversion of the opinion system, remains as an obstacle that Fichte’s ‘‘correction’’ (Berichtigung) hopes to remove. But the possibility of this correction could not be more uncertain: Fichte’s inner norm of conscience, like Kant’s ‘‘eternal norm,’’ may have a hard time manifesting itself among the contingencies of the historical world. There is no need to raise this as an objection against Fichte because he himself goes so far as to suggest that even the true ego dictated by conscience can be virtually erased by its opinions on ‘‘principles of experience’’ (Erfahrungsgrundsa¨tze). These principles, inadvertently adopted and essentially contingent, propagate themselves unconsciously, unaware of their own contingency, their own status as principles of experience: Without our being conscious of it, principles of experience have an influence upon the judgments that we pass, because we do not take them for principles of experience and not even for principles (Sa¨tze) that we have adopted out of fidelity to and belief in (auf Treu und Glauben) our own senses, but instead we take them for metaphysical (reingeistige) and eternally valid principles (212).

Unrecognized as principles of experience, the individual’s ethical base tends to go unnoticed and remains unformulated in any principles—Sa¨tze—at all. A paternalistic educational system is at least partly to blame. Social systems tend to spread conventionally valid pseudo-principles through authority figures—fathers or teachers (Va¨ter oder Lehrer) (212)—and these conventional principles are destructive to the autonomy of conscience. Inherited principles of experience are further endowed with the appearance of certainty because they seem to be reconfirmed everywhere in the world and experience. But this experience only externally validates the same contingent reason of the ‘‘fathers and teachers,’’ whose authority has spread their principles to everyone—to all action and judgment—as a kind of selffulfilling prophecy. Unquestioned and lacking the force of genuine and au¨ berzeugungen), principles of experience (like tonomous convictions (U

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Locke’s second-hand opinions) are confirmed everywhere, but only as a kind of mass solipsism: ‘‘Our belief in the reputation (Ansehen) of our teachers is supplemented by faith in the general consensus’’ (212). Fichte, breaking completely with the idea that the law of opinion might have some legitimacy, argues that independent thought (Selbstdenken) offers the only hope for truth or progress. The common sense of the majority, governed by a paternalistic law of opinion, will never be a product of reasoning, but only of sheer contingency, of arbitrarily and conventionally posited principles that have become pseudo-laws, customs transmitted by authority. Based on authority, opinions—‘‘principles of experience’’—only appear to be true, plausible, and probable. Whereas Locke conceived probability as the best hope of reason, for Fichte the mere appearance of truth (Wahrscheinlichkeit) is nothing less than the sign of utter falsehood: We ourselves invest our actions and judgments with [principles of experience], and with every new application they become more intimately unified with our ego (Ich) and become so infinitely intertwined with it as to be ineradicable, unless both were eradicated together. This is the origin of the universal opinion-system of the nations (das allgemeine Meinungssystem der Vo¨lker), the results of which are typically given out as utterances of common sense (des gesunden Menschenverstandes), a ‘‘common sense’’ which however also has its fashions, just as much as our waistcoats or haircuts. (212)

Fashion, peer pressure, common sense, consensus, the will of the majority: for Fichte these are all names and alibis for coercive authority. The law of opinion in Fichte’s sense exempts its subjects from the ‘‘labor of independent thought’’ (die Arbeit des Selbstdenkens), which would ideally circumscribe the intellectual autonomy of every individual. The ego (Ich), the entity that supposedly performs this labor of thought—supposed to be the seat of conscience—becomes intimately enmeshed with extraneous ‘‘principles of experience’’ that impede its independence. For conscience to have a chance, received opinions must be absolutely foreign and heterogeneous to the ego. Fichte wagers everything on this point, but he also concedes the possibility that the ego may be inseparable from the totality of its received opinions. These principles of experience, which seem to be magically reproduced and confirmed everywhere in each new experience, may be virtually identical with the ego, and whatever remains of the true self beneath its

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opinions cannot be abstracted from them. The elimination of an individual’s opinions would wipe out the ego along with them. It is unclear whether Fichte sees the ‘‘international opinion system’’—das Meinungssystem der Vo¨lker, the opinion system in its most pejorative sense—as an essentially dispensable social structure, from which the Ich can, with some effort of reason, disentangle itself. This interpretation is apparently the one that Fichte prefers, but he also makes it possible to interpret the opinion system as a psychological structure which, in some if not all cases, proves to be an a priori of thought and action that causes the particularity and integrity of the individual subject to be inextricably bound to the arbitrariness and contingency of its background and experiences. Either way, allowing for some deliberate uncertainty between these two conceptions, Fichte’s analyses are in many ways a throwback to a kind of Enlightenment that is primarily about bringing reason to the people through education. The populist, democratic, and post-Revolutionary interpretation of opinion, on the other hand, which holds that the common sense of the majority is reliable based either on its collective interest or its collective disinterest, but in any case without too much real education, is strongly rejected. Fichte’s efforts, for all of their energetic disputation, were apparently unsuccessful because the idea of public opinion largely triumphed over his conception of an energized individualism. Like Gu¨tersloh’s elegy to Klimt (cited in chapter 2), Fichte contests the validity of all mass truth and common sense. The locus of truth can only be found in individual subjects and their consciences, and thus, as in Locke and Mendelssohn, education and self-education remain the only pragmatically meaningful forms of Enlightenment. Fichte opposes the ‘‘political’’ Enlightenment that seeks its ends on the fast track of economic prosperity without the detour of enlightenment through education, and he can also be read as opposing a philosophy of history based on the fictive regulative instance of a rational posterity. Only education will work, and Fichte’s idea of education means teaching everyone about the nature of the opinion system itself. But the result of such an education, at the limit, would mean the dissolution of this system: Direct participation, debate, and deliberation would be displaced in this version of liberal theory—just as it was in Locke and Mendelssohn, despite the differences between them—by an exemplary and pedagogical structure that still aims at posterity and takes place within it.

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As direct and public participation in the opinion system appears more and more pointless, precisely this potential pointlessness must be occulted from the letter of ‘‘public’’ rational-discursive texts to avoid the appearance of ‘‘hypocrisy’’ or ‘‘performative contradiction.’’ Even more than Locke, Fichte runs the risk of deep self-contradiction. Locke, though he knows that the wise man does not to try to promulgate his opinions, presents his opinions in the context of a systematic theory, which he gives the philosophically sublimated title of ‘‘essay’’—attempt (Versuch). He says that the wise man tends to keep silent, but he is loquacious; he argues against proselytizing, but proselytizes in favor of tolerance. Fichte, with his even more individualist schema of independent thought (Selbstdenken), tries to prove it by participating as vigorously possible in the system itself; he attempts, as it were, to raise its standards. But each individual ego remains totally bound up in this system, and it is therefore unclear whether there are two different competing opinion systems—a good one and a bad one, a Protestant and a Catholic one, a reformist and a traditionalist one, an irrational and a rational one—or just a single international system (das Meinungssystem der Vo¨lker). Trying to initiate a tradition of reason by way of the public sphere, Fichte only participates in the system he wanted to displace. Fichte, like the liberal-enlightenment tradition and Locke before him, expresses—often with good reason—an intense fear of opinions as representations and simulacra, while intensively searching for a reliable source of truth and authenticity. Mendelssohn is an exception to this: he does not try to philosophically establish a transcendental base because Jewish ceremonial law fulfills the same function. But Fichte, following a Cartesian substructure, discovers the autonomous subject of independent thought as the transcendental base of modern society. This self is formulated as a ‘‘conscience’’ that must also self-reflexively believe in and recognize itself as conscience if it is to become a fully conscious historical agent. But conscience, as the transcendental linchpin, must still be externalized in history, which makes it only the flipside of public opinion conceived as rational posterity system. No meaningful public sphere without conscience; no conscience without the possibility of its having a public forum exclusive to it. The two figures— internal and external consciences—do not contradict one another but are complementary: there can be no external sign (if it is to be a meaningful and legible sign) that is not internally and authentically motivated. Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem, on the other hand, would object to such an internal and

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unavoidably forceful rationalization of self and society; he rejects the implicitly juridical-theological horizon of a posterity system based on procedural reason. For him—with no theological investment in the possibility of collective historical progress—the trial and inquisition of historical reason cannot be ended too soon. Mendelssohn sees conscience and convictions as truly private, confined to the mental processes of the individual without reference to any universal norm that might externally or belatedly validate them. Fichte’s attempt to be the Moses of a new orthodoxy of self-orthodoxy— of conscience—inevitably sinks back into the ideological flux that he had sought to overcome. His anti-institutional and anti-authoritarian program of a new tradition of reason itself needs to be instituted; the irrational form of the exchange of pro and contra—based on ‘‘principles of experience’’ more than on reason—is left unchanged; the public sphere is still a sphere of competing opinions, competing beliefs, competing interests, views and worldviews in view of a posterity that is itself at stake. Thus Fichte, whose ‘‘Correction’’ can be read as one of the most radical attempts to rethink the foundations of the opinion system outside of inherited forms of representation, ultimately either reverts to a representational model—such that the exemplarity of reason is more important than the reasons themselves—or fails to establish a form or forum within which conscience can be represented without succumbing to the logic of representation that it had sought to avoid. But Mendelssohn’s point was precisely to argue for the unrepresentability of conscience. If taken seriously, however, the consequences of this claim would lead entirely beyond the opinion-system.

The Circumvention of the Opinion System in Narration (Goethe) In Goethe’s 1794 Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten (Conversations of German Refugees), the destructiveness of the opinion system following the French Revolution is depicted and analyzed. As in the anecdote about the opinionated upholsterer in Addison and Steele, but much more virulently, the discourse of opinions is still defined as a conversation on ‘‘current’’ events that lie beyond the scope and everyday competency of individuals. Debates and disputes intensify to become conflicts and strife whenever the events in question are excessively proximate to the differences of belief that

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already exist within the community. The German refugees, driven out of their homes and across the Rhine by the Revolutionary army, are addressed by the news of the day as a kind of threatening noise: Unfortunately the pleasant enjoyment of this lovely area was often disturbed by the thunder of cannons, which were heard more or less clearly, depending on the shifting direction of the wind, in the distance. The great influx of daily news likewise made it impossible to avoid political discourse, in which the various viewpoints and opinions on both sides were expressed with great animation.33

The group’s sojourn, which might have been pleasant under other circumstances, is exposed to the sound of distant cannons carried by unpredictable winds. The refugees are comparably vulnerable to the latest news and its conversational aftershocks. In extraordinary circumstances—but also in ordinary ones—the exposure to news produces a feeling of impotence for which the assertion of opinions compulsively compensates. In comparison to Fichte or Kant, Goethe gives a different account of the idea of ‘‘interest.’’ Like Addison’s upholsterer, but more intensively, the overemphasis on opinion causes a dangerous collective neglect of more narrowly or traditionally conceived interests. These interests include not only the ‘‘objective’’ self-interest of class or situation, but are also defined by the psychological qualities of the individual, which are revealed especially in a state of crisis. The opinions of individuals, regardless of whether they correspond with an apparent class interest or contradict it, are completely overdetermined by the susceptibilities of the individual’s nature and way of thinking. The Conversations’ narrator does not depict opinions as the result of reasoned autonomous judgments but as reactive and in the service of the individual narcissism rather than in the objective interest of the collectivity. The Baroness von C. lectures the exiled community on this point, following an incident provoked by Karl’s revolutionary fervor, which has offended the Privy Council to such a degree that he and his wife were forced to leave. The Baroness admonishes everyone, especially Karl, to observe the rules of civility and, in effect, to keep their opinions to themselves: It would be foolish for me to seek to divert the interest that everyone has in the great events of the world whose victims we have ourselves unfortunately already become. I cannot change the viewpoints (Gesinnungen) that take shape and solidify themselves, striving for realization within each of you according to your ways of thinking (Denkweise), and it would be equally horrible for me to request that

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you not share these views. But I can nonetheless expect from the circle of people with whom I live that those who are like-minded (Gleichgesinnte) might quietly keep to themselves and converse pleasantly, each one saying what the other already thinks. In your private chambers, on strolls and wherever else like-thinking ¨ bereindenkende) may come together, you can open your hearts as much persons (U as you want, you can give support to this or that opinion (Meinung), yes, you may ¨ berzeuwith great animation enjoy the pleasures of a passionate conviction (U gung). But, children, in society let us not forget the time before these matters became a part our conversation: Remember how much we have otherwise been required to give up of our own individuality, and remember that everyone, for as long as there is a world at all, needs to at least externally restrain himself in order to be sociable. I call upon you, therefore, not in the name of virtue but in the name of common politeness (Ho¨flichkeit), to grant to me and to others in these moments the same thing that you would also have observed, from youth onward, toward everyone that you meet on the street. (137)

As in Hobbes, opinions are here once again products of a childish passion. They do not carry the explicit power of excommunication according to belief, but they are shown to exert a latent power of social exclusion. According to the Baroness, the group or society can only function as a society by restricting communication and constituting itself as a society of tact and discretion. At the limit, this means that the ‘‘society’’ that excludes the open airing of opinions is also a society of excommunication, in which the ‘‘spiral of silence’’ not only excludes and marginalizes a few, but is equally applied to all in the common interest of sociability. The Baroness thus speaks, in contrast to Fichte, for a return to the ‘‘courteous,’’ ‘‘courtly’’—ho¨flich— discourse of pre-Revolutionary society, ruled by a secret and tacit assent to the law of fashion. From Fichte’s perspective, by contrast, this would amount to a conformist suppression of differences for the sake of a conservative and paternalistic conception of social stability. In her attempt to forbid a revolutionary change in the rules of conversation and sociability, the Baroness stands in opposition to the political realities of her time (and of subsequent eras). Within polite society, the tactful avoidance of topics that might be hurtful to others, especially politics and religion, is a strict and basic requirement that the revolutionary fervor of a rights discourse has completely undermined. After the Revolution, sociability and conversation, including tolerance in Locke’s sense, are clearly based on the exclusion of everything inflammatory, especially issues touching on

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the status of the individual within the group, which call the group itself into question. The exchange of opinions, if it is to be peaceable, can only take place as autoaffective satisfaction—preaching to the converted—with everyone saying only ‘‘what the other is already thinking.’’ Such a monological dialogue is appropriate only to private conversation, where agreement can be guaranteed in advance, and even here it is only possible when likeminded interlocutors can agree to agree or disagree (thereby buffering differences of opinion within a preexisting relationship). In all other cases, it is best, just as it has always been, the Baroness says, to exercise tact and circumspection. The insufficiency of the Baroness’ admonishment is however demonstrated by the fact that Goethe’s Conversations does not follow the model prescribed by this literally repressive conception of sociability. In fact, contrary to the Baroness’ words and at the instigation of the old Priest, the group opts, as in Boccaccio’s Decamerone, to use the ‘‘diversion’’ (Unterhaltung) of storytelling to distract themselves from their more pressing and immediate concerns. Within an existing conflict of interest—between globally conceived opinions and local instability—narration appears as a diversionary tactic. The novelty of the short story (Novelle) is able to at least partially displace the novelty of the news. Supernatural tales, strange anecdotes, and erotic misadventures lead to morally instructive tales, and the progression culminates in the old Priest’s symbolic-allegorical Ma¨rchen (Fairy Tale), which is also the last word of Goethe’s composition. There is no return to the framing narrative of the refugees and their opinions, and thus the overall architecture of the Conversations takes shape by dissolving and transforming the strong and clearly partisan narrator of the opening— ‘‘In those unhappy days’’—into a plurality of voices and forms. The epic style of the omniscient narrator34 is first displaced by the Baroness’ admonishing voice of reason. But this standpoint and apparent moral center is also temporary: the Baroness herself fades from prominence, and the composition begins to include dramatic dialogues in which the characters speak for themselves. The diversion of storytelling produces further interruptions, discontinuities of style and voice. Prior to the long coda of the Fairy Tale, the old Priest assumes the position of authority that initially belonged to the narrator and the Baroness. In the Fairy Tale he has the last word, and he is the main source of moral and aesthetic judgments in the latter sections.

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This ensemble of diversionary tactics displaces the authoritative and opinionated tone of the opening pages, which first becomes intermittent and finally disappears, leaving space for imagination and more abstract forms of thought. This transformation may also implicitly take place within a reader who, under the conditions of political strife, is also likely to be prejudiced and opinionated. Thus, following the example of the characters and the narrator, the reader is also forced to replace opinion with imagination and interpretation. This turn toward literature and particularly storytelling resists the obvious interpretation that would see it as a retreat from the political to the aesthetic. The latter is conceived as a continuation of politics with different means; literature interrupts the political but resumes it at a different level. Nonfictional anecdotes and literary fictions contain all of the same contemporary issues and current events, but in a way that displaces their currentness in the direction of continuity, re-placing novelty in the context of inherited and ongoing problems. This mode of symbolizing novelty is preferable to the exchange of opinions because it displaces immediate interest and self-righteousness just enough to permit discussion and an exchange of views. The views themselves, forced to admit that they are only interpretations, may be insightful or revealing, but narrative frameworks are in any case both abstract enough and concrete enough to allow for theoretical reflection, which will hopefully prevent interlocutors from automatically reverting to fixed positions. But without the concluding Fairy Tale the overall point of the Conversations would be much more restorative than revolutionary because the shorter novellas and moral tales, by the nature of their subject-matter, tend to presuppose a given ethical structure of norms, gender, class, and generational roles, all of which thematize (albeit sometimes critically) the social structures of the ancien re´gime in a way that implicitly naturalizes and eternalizes its forms. The Fairy Tale, by contrast, represents an alternate morphology that is much more apocalyptic and potentially utopian in its horizons. In it, the face value of conventional symbolism is made unreliable: the snake, for instance, turns out to be a figure of sacrifice, and ‘‘gold’’ is not just a symbol for the universal currency of human exchange. Such symbolic shifts decisively underscore the contingency of all human orders and their susceptibility to historical transformation. The entire narrative of the

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Fairy Tale, if it can be reduced to a comprehensive formalization, is an endless catalysis of symbolic transformation. On this basis it is possible to draw some conclusions: the impasses of the opinion system necessitate literary circumvention, its literal circumlocution by way of increasingly indirect modes—implicitly allegorical narrative, fiction, finally symbol—which are much more genuinely participatory than the egocentric political exchange of opinions. Literature, Goethe implies, addresses all of the same underlying issues as the Revolution—freedom, conscience, justice, equality, history—but it does so in a more inclusive way. Literature opens up these issues, which—even in their designation as issues or even as themes—are susceptible ideological idolatry, and he exposes them to the specificities of the time and place of reading or telling, as well as to the vagaries of human understanding and misunderstanding. The resulting dilemmas and confusions not only help to pass the time, they are the very substance of life as constant discursive problem solving without solutions. Literature is the school of communicative action because literary (as opposed to conceptual) abstraction detaches individuals from their determinate partisan predispositions. In the words of the old priest: ‘‘Confusions and misunderstandings are the sources of the vita activa (des ta¨tigen Lebens) and of entertainment (diversion, conversation, Unterhaltung)’’ (186). A certain literary indirection and discretion makes it possible to take pleasure in the unavoidable realities of confusion, misunderstanding, and an ultimate lack of resolution. These are the qualities that literary form exemplifies and teaches by reminding its participants of the limitations of human explanatory power (and emancipatory possibility) whenever they are confronted with allegories of this fundamental inconclusiveness. The inconclusiveness of allegory, amplified in literature’s power of symbolization—as opposed to the allegorical resources of political ‘‘symbols’’ and the opinions of those who identify with them—produces a system of indeterminate correspondences that cannot be easily fetishized into meanings that are ‘‘owned’’ by individuals or groups. The story of the desk, which transpires late in the framing narrative of Goethe’s Conversations, provides a decisive example of the change in outlook and the sociability of the refugees. In short, a community of belief (in opinions) is transformed into a community of interpretation. The activity of storytelling heightens their sensitivity to questions that may not be immediately answerable, and this speculative predisposition is able to soften a harsh

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reality by making it into the opportunity for theoretical reflection. The story is as follows: a desk in the possession of the group breaks apart loudly at the moment when its twin is destroyed in a fire that consumes the family’s estate across the river. Coincidence, investigation of causes, and the interesting exceptionality of the event itself distract the group from the brute fact of the loss of property and belongings. Following this model, literature activates mental properties and freedoms before which physical property is completely secondary. Literature is the medium of selflessness (in the Goethean sense of Entsagung). It fills the imagination with limitless provisional orders, providences and correspondences, interpretations and doubts—superstitions essentially, but lacking the fullness of belief—which not only bring consolation in the face of loss, but also allow for a plurality of meanings behind the obvious face of events. The introduction of short stories (Novellen), inexplicable events that defy interpretation, reestablishes at least the semblance of reality’s controllability. Its novelties and unexpected occurrences are subjected to the same structure of reflection and interpretation as the narrated incidents, thereby at least marginally defraying the reality of reality, its tragic determinism and deadly facticity. The discourse of opinions, on the other hand, appears as a pathological, egotistical, and partiticularist claim to control, understand, and ultimately to normatively dictate to a reality that is, in fact, completely out of the control of the individual. Goethe argues for a world and a conception of politics in which representation and semblance (Schein) have a unique and privileged role that runs precisely counter to the function of conventional political symbolism. Like Mendelssohn, he argues for a tradition that grants individuals individualized access at a reflective and interpretive level, but without declaring any authority to be the sole source of validity claims. Only in language and in the confusions of language, removed from the immediate pressure and the illusion of decision, can individuals build their own illusions of a world that is not theirs by right or by inheritance but by understanding and creation. The three kings in the Fairy Tale, representing wisdom, semblance, and violence (Weisheit, Schein, und Gewalt), stand for fundamental political categories; they are crafted out of gold, silver, and iron respectively (215–16, 236). There is also an ominous fourth king, who is made up of a mixture of the three metals. This ‘‘mixed’’ king, representative of a confusion of orders, is purified of his gold in the end, and becomes ‘‘insignificant’’ (unscheinbar),

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collapsed, and formless, but he does not disappear. His share of wisdom is dispersed—transformed, ‘‘secularized’’—and what remains of him is covered up. The vestigial role of the fourth king implies that the apocalyptic end of an abominable fusion of powers—definitive of an unredeemed world—is still not a full redemption or rationalization of the old world. The final pages verify this in their description of a rapid sequence of transformations in which one mystery displaces another, in which the resolution of one crisis unfolds into a new one. Following the ceremonial institution of the utopian new order, the chaotic giant remains to be tamed (to become a massive sundial), and he is replaced by another kind of mass, ‘‘the people,’’ who idolatrously seek to rediscover the mysterious power of the fourth king. Unable to do so, at least for the moment, their greed causes them to tear themselves apart in the attempt to consume the gold that had been rendered from the fourth king. This also comes to an end, giving way to a kind of steady and perpetual flow of mere traffic, of visitors who ‘‘to this day’’ come to the temple (241). Following incessant transformations, this resulting neutral state lacks finality, and its utopian stasis appears temporary. Historical processes—depicted not in juridical and procedural terms but in terms metamorphoses and morphology—transpire in the form of catalyses, beyond the control and comprehension of individuals, even if the appearance of such a comprehension or comprehensibility is the essence of both political representation and literary wisdom, which know how to conceal and transform the violence and the normative power of whatever is factually given. Opinions must be shifted in the direction of sheer ‘‘appearance’’ (mere Schein) and literary (rather than political) ‘‘wisdom,’’ if they are not to become the representational pretexts for violent self-assertion.

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excursus 4: polystrophon gnoman ( p i n d a r a n d h o¨ l d e r l i n )

Pindar’s fragment 169, the source of the nomos basileus (discussed in the context of Herodotus), has been always an object of much discussion and interpretation, most recently and prominently in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer.1 My reading of Herodotus’ conception may complement existing readings, including Agamben’s, but at present I want to address another Pindar fragment of nearly equal fame, which pertains to the concept of opinion in the sense of gnomae (also discussed the Herodotus Excursus). This other Pindar fragment is cited in Book I of Plato’s Republic, its only known source.2 Plato quotes Pindar in a discussion of old age—specifically, of the value of having led a virtuous life—in comparison to the importance (or even necessity) of material wealth for a comfortable old age. Like the nomos basileus fragment, in the first decade of the nineteenth century Ho¨lderlin singled out this fragment preserved in Plato, making it into an object of translation and commentary. He gave the nomos fragment the title of ‘‘The Highest’’ (das Ho¨chste), whereas the ‘‘opinion’’ fragment from the Republic is called ‘‘Age’’ (das Alter), a title that clearly indicates Ho¨lderlin’s awareness of the fragment’s origin in Book I of the Republic.3 He translates and comments as follows: Das Alter Wer recht und heilig Das Leben zubringt, Su¨ß ihm das Herz erna¨hrend, Lang Leben machend, Begleitet die Hoffnung, die Am meisten Sterblichen Die vielgewandte Meinung regiert. 179

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Eines der scho¨nsten Bilder des Lebens, wie schuldlose Sitte das lebendige Herz erha¨lt, woraus Hoffnung kommet; die der Einfalt dann auch eine Blu¨the giebt, mit ihren mannigfaltigen Versuchen und den Sinn gewandt und so lang Leben machet, mit ihrer eilenden Weile. (op. cit., II:382)

In English, in my own translation (with alternatives marked in brackets): [The] Age. Whoever right and holy Spends his life, [and who], His heart sweetly nourishing him [and] Bringing [him] long life, Hope accompanies—which [among] Mortals most of all The ingenious [multitalented, well versed] opinion governs. [which is governed in most mortals by the ingenious opinion.] [which governs, among mortals above all, the ingenious opinion.] One of the most beautiful images of life, how faultless morals sustain the living heart [how the living heart receives/sustains faultless morals, how faultless morals receive/sustain the living heart], from which hope emerges; to which simplicity also gives its blossom, with its manifold efforts [experiments, attempts], and makes the sense [mind, meaning] adept and life so long, with their [their ⳱ life and meaning, its ⳱ simplicity] hasty whiling.

This context of Plato’s Republic makes it possible to consult a large number of translations of this fragment, a sampling that quickly (and unsurprisingly) reveals Ho¨lderlin’s translation to be rather exceptional. Of particular interest for the question of opinion are the words ‘‘polystrophon gnoman,’’ Ho¨lderlin’s ‘‘die vielgewandte Meinung’’ (the manifold opinion, the adaptable opinion). My analysis will focus on the possible significances of these words. One of the earliest German translations of this Pindar fragment is contained in sketches for a translation of Plato’s Republic by Moses Mendelssohn.4 He translates: Wer gerecht und heilig hinieden gelebt, den begleitet eine su¨sse erquickende und alterpflegende Hofnung die den Wankelmuth der Sterblichen am meisten regieret.5 Whoever has lived justly and piously in this world is accompanied by a sweet and refreshing caretaker in his old age: Hope, which mostly governs the inconstancy of mortals. (my translation)

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Rather than speaking of mortals with their ‘‘versatile opinion’’ (vielgewandte Meinung), Mendelssohn extrapolates in a Hobbesian direction—‘‘fear and hope’’—and arrives at ‘‘inconstancy’’ (Wankelmut). Mendelssohn reads a clear moral injunction in Pindar’s line, which may also be supportable based on the context in Plato: hope is the force that mostly governs the misguided and inconstant behavior of men; the beliefs, opinions, and behaviors of men are usually motivated by (false) hopes, except in the case of those who have lived a good life and reached old age with an untroubled conscience. For them, hope ‘‘accompanies’’ and ‘‘refreshes’’ their old age. Hope, a category of youth and innocence, is also the hope of rejuvenation for those who have outlived the age of inconstancy. Friedrich Schleiermacher translates the line: Wer nur gerecht und fromm das Leben verbracht hat, den die su¨ße das Herz schwellende Alterspflegerin Hoffnung geleitet, die zumeist der Sterblichen wandelreichen Sinn regiert.6 Whoever has spent his life with justice and piety is led by the sweet heart-swelling caretaker of old age, Hope, which mostly governs the ever-changing mind of mortals.

Schleiermacher mostly agrees with Mendelssohn. Among the numerous differences that can still be found, three particularly help to highlight the novelty of Ho¨lderlin’s version. (1) Whereas Ho¨lderlin and Mendelssohn write ‘‘begleitet’’ (accompanied by Hope), Schleiermacher chooses ‘‘geleitet’’ (led by Hope). ‘‘Accompanies’’ suggests a vaguer relation, in terms of precedence or causality. Instead of following hope’s lead (as in Schleiermacher), Ho¨lderlin implies that hope follows and attends the one who is just and pious. If hope thus refers to something like a clear conscience in old age, then it is not Hope that leads the way through life’s impasses: it is the result of a certain navigation of life (as Ho¨lderlin’s commentary also specifically states). In this sense then, counterintuitively, hope is not an attribute of youth but only the (occasional) companion of age. (2) Whose hope is it that is governed by the polystrophon gnoman? Ho¨lderlin writes ‘‘Am meisten Sterblichen,’’ which can mean ‘‘most mortals’’ and ‘‘most of the mortals,’’ but whereas Schleiermacher and Mendelssohn are unambiguous on this point, Ho¨lderlin’s translation additionally implies that ‘‘opinion’’ (die vielgewandte Meinung) governs mortals more than others, mortals above all, that is, mortals more than immortals or non-living beings. Hope is the nomos of all

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that lives and dies, perhaps even including animals. Ho¨lderlin’s commentary supports this understanding because it does not distinguish between different groups of mortals (either accompanied by hope or governed by uncertain opinion). This small detail reflects a massive (moral-theological) difference: rather than contrasting two types of mortals, Ho¨lderlin equates hope with opinion so these two categories are coordinated in the form of an identity rather than distinguished. (3) In his translation of the words polystrophon gnoman, Ho¨lderlin stands out in his choice of the word Meinung (opinion), whereas Schleiermacher uses Sinn (mind, sense), and Mendelssohn refers to human inconstancy. Ho¨lderlin’s translation of polystrophon as ‘‘vielgewandt’’ is relatively neutral, or even—despite and because of its more cryptic sound—positive. Schleiermacher’s wandelreich (fluctuating, everchanging), though not strictly pejorative, implies something quite different. Trying to express the difference in English, Ho¨lderlin could be translated as ‘‘the versatile opinion’’ and Schleiermacher as ‘‘the fickle sense.’’ Other translations of the fragment, including Mendelssohn’s, go even further than Schleiermacher in their negative rendering of the phrase.7 In comparison with other translations, Ho¨lderlin’s ‘‘die vielgewandte Meinung’’ names opinion with the definite article, ‘‘die vielgewandte Meinung,’’ and selects the more ambiguous adjective vielgewandt, which opens up an extended field of implications, applications, and associations. As an epithet, ‘‘vielgewandt’’ most clearly associates with the ‘‘clever’’ and ‘‘inventive’’ (erfindungsreich) Odysseus (as well as with figures like Themistocles and Artemisia discussed in Excursus 2). At the level of the word itself, Ho¨lderlin’s German viel- imitates the Greek prefix poly-, which can be mimicked in English mostly in neologisms and circumlocutions such as ‘‘(poly)versatile,’’ ‘‘(poly)applicable,’’ ‘‘(poly)expert,’’ ‘‘polymath,’’ ‘‘multiply adept.’’ Ho¨lderlin’s commentary glosses this semantic field and extends it in the phrase ‘‘und den Sinn gewandt . . . machet [and makes the mind adept].’’ The repetition of vielgewandt in gewandt (adept) leaves no doubt that Ho¨lderlin’s translation represents a deliberate departure from the prevalent understandings of Pindar’s sentence. In Ho¨lderlin’s reading, ‘‘Hope,’’ the product and companion of age, shapes and directs the development and formation of ‘‘opinion,’’ making it—in contrast to the tradition of opinion as rigid and inflexible—‘‘multiply adept,’’ ‘‘flexible.’’ This flexibility defines the essence and the potentials ‘‘of the mortal in distinction with all other beings.’’ Rather than producing a moralizing distinction between ‘‘the good

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life’’ (governed by hope) and its more commonly encountered alternative, Ho¨lderlin connects the concept of opinion to a peculiar concept of education—Bildung, though the word is not mentioned—based on a coupling of opinion and hope, which represent the matrix of the transformations that occur in a lifetime. Ho¨lderlin’s irritatingly polysemic translation leaves the attributes of opinion open while producing a specific figuration in the personification (prosopopeia) implied by the definite article. Die vielgewandte Meinung, especially coupled with the clear personification of Hope, turns Opinion into an allegorical figure, comparable for instance to the goddess Fama (Rumor) in Virgil. This anthropomorphic or poly(anthropo)morphic tendency of the word vielgewandt also resonates in the word gewandt itself, which, as well as suggesting human attributes of cleverness, also implies, in its nearness to Wandel and Verwandelung (change, transformation), that opinion is a kind of metamorphic cloak or garb, Gewand.8 Opinions, which may be ‘‘adopted,’’ thus appear as a kind of clothing, a variable or exchangeable surface, an aspect of the human chameleonism and opportunism. Franz Passow’s Greek–German dictionary gives further evidence of the extreme literalness of Ho¨lderlin’s translation.9 The meanings for strophae, for instance, in addition to ‘‘verse’’ (die Strophe), also include ‘‘turning, bending, veering back and forth, turning around, reversal’’ (das Drehen, Wenden, Hin- u. Herwenden, Umdrehen, Umkehren). Extended usages can carry implications of ‘‘facility, trickiness, cunning, intrigue’’ (Gewandtheit, Schlauheit, List, Ra¨nke). The noun strophos can refer to a rope, band, ribbon, or girdle, and polystrophia means ‘‘polystrophic,’’ a ‘‘multiple turning back and forth, of song or verse’’ (ein vielfaches sich Hin- u. Herwenden, vom Gesang); polystrophos is ‘‘much or often turned, wound or woven’’ (viel od. oft gedreht, gewunden, geflochten), ‘‘flexible, mobile, adept’’ (biegsam, beweglich, gewandt). Gewandt is itself a possible meaning of the Greek polystrophos, but Ho¨lderlin chooses the more ambiguous vielgewandt (poly-expert),’’ presumably in imitation of the Greek word’s construction. This translation also excludes the modern sense of an ‘‘expert opinion’’ because ‘‘poly-expertise’’ or ‘‘poly-aptitude’’ is exactly opposite of an ‘‘expert’’ opinion. The latter implies a completed state, whereas the ‘‘poly’’ (and Ho¨lderlin’s reading of it his commentary) refers to an ongoing multiplication and multiplicity that is anything but fixed or finished.

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Ho¨lderlin’s translation of gnoman as Meinung is also not a self-evident choice. Opinion, as ‘‘the prevailing or common opinion,’’ is doxa in Greek. The other translations cited above also suggest, in the choice of words like Sinn and Meinung, that gnoman in any case does not refer to a ‘‘public opinion,’’ but rather to a developmental aspect of the individual. The word gnoman also tends, according to its definition in Passow, toward speech and utterance; it is not so much an opinion that is held, but one that is spoken. According to Passow, gnoman is a single word that denotes both a specific insight and its spoken pronouncement. German synonyms include Kennzeichen, Beweis (characteristic, proof ), as well as Erkenntnis, Meinung (knowledge, opinion). But the verb gnomateuo can mean beurtheilen, ermessen, die Schatten auf der Sonnenuhr (gnomon) abmessen u. beurtheilen (to judge, measure, for example to ascertain the length of the shadow on the sundial (gnomon) and judge the time by it); gnomateuo also means ‘‘to state an opinion,’’ ein Urtheil, eine Sentenz aussprechen (to utter a judgment or sentence). The noun gnomon—which could be translated into Latin as norma—is comparably defined in a strangely receding series: (1) Kenner, Beurtheiler (the one who knows, judges), (2) Anzeiger, Zeiger an der Sonnenuhr . . . die Sonnenuhr selbst (indicator, index, dial on the sundial . . . the sundial itself ), (3) der Kennzahn, an dem man das Alter der Thiere erkennt (the identifying tooth by which one can tell the age of animals), and (4) Richtschnur, Maassstab (measuring tape or stick). All definitions betray the same discrepancy, especially apparent in the field of meanings pertaining to sundials. The semiotics of the gnom- reflect a confusion of the index (Zeiger), that which it indicates (das Gezeigte), and the judgment necessary for it to become legible. This collapse of sign and signified—of semiotics and hermeneutics—into a single mental function produces a poly- and catastrophic incommensurability within the indexical series—exemplified by the sundial, its gnomon, its shadow, the time (that which the shadow finally indicates)—and within the experiential knowledge of the one who claims to know—‘‘gnow’’—what the sundial says and how to read it.10 On the way toward knowledge and judgment, an extended indexical series is compressed into a single word asserting the homology of judgments and that which they judge. The last word of the gnom-words in Passow, gnomae (discussed in the Excursus on nomos in Herodotus), receives almost a page of entries. It can mean Sinnesart (die Art, wie man die Dinge ansieht), Sinn, Gemu¨thsstimmung (mentality [the way in which one views things], mind, sense, state of mind)

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as well as Erkenntniskraft, Erkenntnissvermo¨gen, Vernunft, Verstand, Geist (power of comprehension, the capacity of comprehension, reason, understanding, intelligence). Passow’s second entry presents another kaleidoscopic array of synonyms: das Erkannte, die Erkenntniss, erlangte Einsicht, Ansicht, Meinung, Urtheil, Ueberzeugung, Entschluss, Beschluss, Plan, Absicht (that which is comprehended, comprehension, recognition, successful insight, point of view, opinion, judgment, conviction, resolve, decision, plan, intention). Like gnoman, gnomae also refers to the stated opinion, the utterance, giving rise to more synonyms: Vorschlag, Antrag, Angabe, Bestimmung, Rath (suggestion, proposal, statement, instruction, advice). Passow’s third entry reads Sinn, Inhalt eines Satzes od. einer Schrift (meaning or content of a sentence or text). Gnomae thus does not refer to the self-identity of a sentence—what it says—but implies its meaning, its Meinung, that which the sentence intentionally ‘‘indicates.’’ The fourth entry offers Sentenz, Gnome, Spruch (sentence, gnome, saying), and the fifth and final entry lists gnomon, Kennzeichen (gnomon, index, characteristic). Regardless of the status of the definitions themselves—whether they represent philosophical truth or linguistic error—‘‘opinion’’ in these senses does not carry the negative implications that many Pindar translators have given it (thereby assimilating gnomae to ‘‘mere opinion,’’ a conception of Christian provenance expressing the limitation and fallibility of all human knowledge). By contrast, in Ho¨lderlin’s reading of Pindar, opinion is defined by the autonomous coherence of its own insight. As such it is truly internal, unavailable to any kind of external verification. Even madness, which may transgress nomoi, still operates according to its own gnoman, its own unconditionally valid method. Summarizing Passow, the gnomon is ‘‘the sign,’’ ‘‘the symptom,’’ the reliable or unreliable ‘‘indicator’’ or ‘‘index’’ for something else (as in physiognomy, which seeks to interpret the human nature and character based on its visible signs and characteristics). Instead of indicating or designating any thing, the dizzying registers the gnom-words suggest that the gnoman, the homology of judgment, more than saying something true or producing a reliable and rational index, is the mere opportunity—the oracle—for gnomae, for spoken assessments, including the actions and interpretations that cause the oracle’s gnomic utterance to come true and become retroactively converted to knowledge and reason. The gnoman, which may itself take the form of an utterance, is also an indicator that may say and indicate ‘‘much,’’

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without producing any given measure of where the former (the indexical sign) ceases and the latter (its active interpretation) begins. Thus Gnomonik, the art of reading sundials, becomes—crossing an unreadable border that escapes the symmetrical relation of the indicator and what it indicates— Gnomik, the production of oracular utterances. In the final instance, this means is that there is no gnomonics of gnomic pronouncements. Opinions in the latter sense, following their oracular structure, are not simply true, but are made true and become true according to a quasi-prophetic temporal infrastructure. Every attempt to interpret and conclusively reveal the significance of the ‘‘gnomes’’ that others’ opinions represent will always be in a state of excess or lack rather than identity, producing polystrophic proliferations, but no certainty. Every gnomonic interpretive effort also itself inevitably lapses into back into the gnomic, becoming just one more opinion on top of the one that it sought to read. In Ho¨lderlin’s translation and commentary, the gnomic structure of opinion does not refer primarily to the large-scale intersubjective cosmos of opinions and political deliberation, but instead concentrates on gnomae as a term of the individual’s self-relation. Passow’s synonyms support this understanding because they make no reference to a conception of opinion defined mostly by fallibility and limited subjectivity. In Ho¨lderlin’s reading of Pindar, opinion is an innately biographical category that is in no way subject to ‘‘objective’’ valuation or devaluation. It is not defined by a single fixed belief (or even a collection of them) that is held or avowed, but is instead—more internally and inalienably—the guiding flux of life and experience according to which thoughts and beliefs and actions are regulated and come into being. The title, ‘‘Das Alter,’’ thus takes on a double meaning: opinion is the inscrutable and relative measure of the age of the individual, and this same individual also lives (now intersubjectively and historically) in the age of opinion. The mutual unfolding of hope and opinion, described in both the translation and the commentary, makes life long; it is what extends itself through the length of life, however long it may be. A specific concept of history emerges from this confluence, and time, the ‘‘hurrying while’’ (die eilende Weile) with which the commentary closes, is what makes life last for as long as it lasts, at (or during) any age. In Ho¨lderlin’s reading, hope is not so much the source of a long life, as the source of the liveliness of life; hope animates because it plays its part in a temporal

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process that might simply be called ‘‘thought.’’ But this conception, uttered in the form of a gnomic fragment, breaks with every procedural or merely organic model of life, opinion, history, and thought, and thus hopes for a caesura between gnomae (as the unconditionally valid opinion of the individual) and the supreme objective authority of the collective nomos. Gnomae in Ho¨lderlin, differently than in Herodotus, ultimately operates in complete autonomy of nomos. The bare life of thought, if it can only be recognized, has no nomos, no measure except for that of its own ‘‘hurrying while,’’ its own eventful duration, its historical or biographical unfolding, and whatever may come out of it therefore cannot be told, retold, or explained in the terms of nomos and logos, culture and reason, but only as more and more opinion. The particular kind of Bildung at issue here also cannot be adequately grasped by any objective concept of Enlightenment (Aufkla¨rung). Instead, against the backdrop of the end of Enlightenment’s historical plausibility, and considering Ho¨lderlin’s own juxtaposition of Pindar’s nomos basileus and polystrophon gnoman, a basic modern political antinomy can be deciphered and sketched in the afterimage of its primal forms. The rule of nomos may perhaps be eclipsed by the ongoing (‘‘polystrophic’’) exception of gnomae. This optimistic, individualistic, and decidedly non-Christian reading of opinion—optimistic despite the fact that it lies at the limit of madness—is in some ways compatible, despite Mendelssohn’s Hobbesian reading of the Pindar fragment, with the concept of conscience developed in Jerusalem (and analyzed in chapter 3). But the key difference in Ho¨lderlin is that opinion (die vielgewandte Meinung) operates in complete indifference to inherited authority, social norms, and political form. Freedom of opinion in this sense is absolute, regardless of whatever rights it may be granted and its relation to others and the outside world. This conception may in turn be readable a kind of inward movement or resignation, but—regardless of the affective register—it is certainly a turning away from the public sphere’s claim to be the sole source of emancipatory potentials.

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four

Lichtenberg’s ‘‘Opinions-System’’ (Meinungen-System) If every person occupied his own planet, what might then become of philosophy? Nothing—It would be the same as it is now: The essence of an individual’s opinions is his philosophy. l i c h t e n b e r g , Sudelbu¨cher (Waste Books) C142

Introduction: Opinion Fragments Only after his death in 1799 did Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’s Sudelbu¨cher (Waste Books)1 enter the public sphere by way of posthumous publications. Among the extremely wide-ranging topics addressed in these private notebooks, Lichtenberg often writes about an ‘‘opinions-system’’ (MeinungenSystem), by which he means the individuals’ methods for reaching and retaining conclusions based on experience. This mode of data collection, more than coincidentally related to the form of the waste books themselves, is conceived as at least latently scientific in its structure—if not actively experimental—and is thus also implicitly anti-normative because the experiences to be tabulated and the ways of drawing conclusions from them could never be perfectly standardized according to a universal method.2 Lichtenberg’s Meinungen-System is the complement and opposite of Fichte’s ‘‘international opinion-system’’ [Meinungssystem der Vo¨lker], 188

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discussed in the previous chapter. Fichte understands the opinion system as an exclusively modern and quasi-conspiratorial phenomenon by which the eighteenth century public sphere turned against itself by excluding reason and replacing it with the conventional—and ultimately conservative—populism of public opinion. Fichte observed that, instead of a vehicle for progress, enlightenment, and equality, the published sphere was increasingly becoming a means of muting and ultimately drowning out the possibility of both revolution and reform. A flood of nonhierarchical discourse—mere ‘‘opinions’’—threatened to produce a new irrationalism, which Fichte seeks to halt in an appeal to the conscience of individuals, hoping that this innately human orientation toward truth will be able to quell the superficiality of opinions. A conscientious opinion system (in Fichte’s sense) requires internalization, which implies the methodical practice of an opinions system (in Lichtenberg’s sense). This is the only way for the individual to avoid the compulsive determinism of an opinion system that merely parrots the beliefs of others and instrumentalizes the system as a means for pursuing material or psychological ends. In light of these risks, everything depends on how the difference between the collective opinion system and the individual opinions system is articulated. Fichte conceived a totalized and totalizing opinion system (in functional and dysfunctional variants), within which the individual must in any case—if the system is to work at all—act and think according to extremely codified and formalized discursive norms. Lichtenberg’s idea of the individual opinions system leads him to much more rigorously investigate the possibilities of formalizing individual thought processes. Compared with Fichte, he is more specifically concerned with the individual’s specific ways of arranging and ordering and relating to existing facts, opinions, theories, and experience. But, like Fichte, Lichtenberg opposes the idea of a merely passive reception of opinions, but he also supposes that the acquisition of opinions always implies activity on the part of the individual, who actively arranges—or fundamentally rearranges—the given inputs that opinions represent as long as they are viewed in isolation. Lichtenberg thus breaks with the idea of an individual governed by a singular ‘‘own opinion.’’ The singularity of the individual’s opinions manifests itself in a plurality of opinions that may or may not be equally ‘‘held,’’ and which—in any case—only come into play as an ensemble within variable contexts. ‘‘Pure opinion versus opinion, or better: the opinions of one versus

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those of the other’’ (L205). Though he follows the agonistic structure of discourse that underwrote the exchange of opinions in Locke, Lichtenberg views every isolated opinion as a mere subopinion, and ‘‘opinion,’’ even within any given individual, is thus an irreducibly plurivocal and collective mass, which is only temporarily and opportunistically at the disposal of the ego. Opinions in this sense are highly mobile and consequently also imply a conception of politics that does not take opinion as constant function, but as an unknown quantity whose underlying determinants and ultimate meanings cannot be conclusively fixed or quantified. Even if modern and discursively oriented societies are governed by an opinion system in Fichte’s sense of media-generated conformism—whether it be a merely ‘‘socially’’ or transcendentally based system (either based on regulative posterity or on conscience’s internalized regulations)—the possibility of variable individual adoptions, comprehensions, and motivations within this more or less monolithically determined system will always imply at least a minimal degree of autoaffectivity, which will tend to undermine the ‘‘systematicity’’ of the system. From the point of view of the possibility of a totally homogeneous opinion system, the individual opinion represents an internal boundary of the system’s ability to be uniformly spread and understood. The constitution of a universal opinion system, in other words, will always be self-reflexively affected, even if nominally and marginally, by the singularity and occasionalism of actual opinions. The act of expressing an opinion, especially in writing, further implies a tact and a tactics—a psychology—that precede the first word, and this functional dimension of opinion, at the limit, can effectively void the content—the truth claim or validity claim—of the opinion declared. The voicing or, especially, the writing of individual opinions is always influenced by a functional preconceptualization of the opinion system from the side of the one who intends to participate in it. The form of the opinion system—precisely what remains to be determined in every written and spoken opinion—mutually determines thought’s possible forms and, moreover, the form of thought in writing. In his ‘‘Correction’’ of the thoughts on the French Revolution, Fichte speaks of ‘‘opinion-fragments.’’ The German word, Meinungsfragment, unambiguously relegates opinion to the status of the fragmentary and partial, but remains ambiguous as to whether this means that (1) each isolated opinion is a only fragment, or (2) the totality of the opinions of an individual is also fragmentary (with regard to the larger totality of truth), or (3) the form

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of the individual itself is that of a fragment. Opinion is in any case not accidentally tied to the form of the fragment, and this formal connection is actually amplified to become the form of subjectivity in general. The subject, determined as a subject of experience and of opinions, is an incomplete and fragmentary subject. Fichte speaks of this in an extended nominalization, a list and a dependent clause that becomes a subject without object: ‘‘The aversion toward all autonomous thought (Selbstdenken), the intellectual lassitude and the mental inability to follow even a short series of deductions, the prejudices and the contradictions that have spread themselves across the totality of our opinion-fragments (unsere ganzen Meinungsfragmente)—this is the one side’’ (205). In these words, Fichte characterizes the passive aversion to truth. Opinion fragments, as long as they remain in the passive state described, can only remain fragmentary; their mere addition or summation would never amount to a totality but only another fragment. These fragments, added up, are merely our opinion fragments; the contradictory invocation of a deficient totality—‘‘unsre ganzen Meinungsfragmente’’—implies that ‘‘we’’ in our total and collective incompleteness are ourselves no more than a fragmentary sum.3 The whole collection of fragments which ‘‘we’’ individually and collectively are, are thus designated, if not destined, to remain fragments. The individual, conceived as an opinion fragment and simultaneously as a collection of opinion fragments, cannot be the object of any synthesis or sublation within any projected totality (whether it be predicated as ‘‘discursive,’’ ‘‘rational-critical,’’ or merely ‘‘popular’’). How would Fichte respond to such this? He opposes the labor of ‘‘thinking for one’s self’’ (Selbstdenken) to the latent and manifest fragmentariness of opinions, and thus manages to preserve—in admittedly contradictory and merely prescriptive fashion—a telelogical impulse toward an idea of truth to be produced historically. This truth is not conceived, however, as a part of an inevitable or automatic process, but is only a possible result of the immanent conflicts of the political here-and-now. And this truth, which Fichte never doubts or relativizes, remains to be validated and instituted within a discursive system that does not exclude—and in fact requires—the real life-and-death conflict of individuals who are once again cast back upon their consciences as the source of an absolute that is necessarily missing from the discourse of opinion. These deficiencies in Fichte’s version of autonomous thought—which is at once too relative, too absolute, and not

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really autonomous—necessitates looking elsewhere for a better model of freedom of thought. Lichtenberg, without asserting the absolute autonomy of the ‘‘I,’’ represents an earlier model of independent thinking, which he, like Fichte—but much more rigorously—tried to deliberately exemplify in his own practice of writing and argumentation. The image of Lichtenberg as free thinker is a standard topos of his popular reception,4 not without reason, but reading the texts in which he actually analyzes the problem of free thinking will tend to complicate this reception and make it difficult to read him as an unproblematic (or tragic) hero of intellectual independence. In any case, regardless of the how one chooses to dramatize it, Lichtenberg is arguably modernity’s most central test case for the problem of individual autonomy within a discursively formatted opinion system. His envisioned rethinking of thinking cast him in the role of silent partner—because he was largely forgotten—in the work of figures like Nietzsche and Freud. Retrospectively, he was able to become a historical emblem of a post-Cartesian conception of successful subjectivity with a specific emphasis on the livability of the modern conception of the autonomous individual. As has been conclusively documented in recent decades,5 it is difficult to overstate Lichtenberg’s influence (even in absence of international fame and name recognition) on later philosophy and literature. But, without excessively validating this reception in direction or the other, the reason for it is certainly Lichtenberg’s position on the cusp of a particularly modern predicament; retrospectively, his encounter with the problem of the relation of individual, ‘‘private’’ life to popular, scholarly, and scientific public spheres seems to represent a different and perhaps more successful model than, for example, Wieland’s skeptical populism, Fichte’s individualism, or the rationalism of Kant’s ‘‘What is Enlightenment?’’ From the perspective of these more or less dominant models, it is hardly surprising that Lichtenberg’s response to the dilemmas of the public sphere has also undergone numerous repetitions and permutations in the intervening years. The purpose of the present chapter is not to deal with this later reception directly, but rather to look behind the various attempts at reformatting Lichtenberg’s insights, in order to reconsider his theorizations on their own terms. In the context developed in my preceding chapters, Lichtenberg’s writings on the epistemology of opinion reveal him to be well-informed and up-to-date on the problems of opinion. They critically reflect more than

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reiterate the party line of the Enlightenment (‘‘think for yourself!’’). As a natural scientist in the field of physics and astronomy, as well as a more popularly oriented scholar—writing at a time of increasing specialization under the pressure of competing disciplines—Lichtenberg held well-developed amateur opinions on literally everything. Between these two poles of popular and scientific universalism, esoteric and exoteric reason, he was well versed in the discursive pragmatics of both academic communication and popular literary genres such as the novel. He was thus ideally placed to observe and reflect upon the mechanics of a rapidly expanding and transforming public sphere. In summary, it is safe to say, as the present chapter will also show, that Lichtenberg was not entirely convinced that the public sphere of his era could be deemed a success at any of its levels.6 In terms of his specific theorizations, Lichtenberg was concerned with Locke’s unanswered questions and unresolved problems (discussed in chapter 3); both address the same impasses of the opinion system, which have plagued modernity from the beginning, and thus Lichtenberg’s iteration of them cannot simply be termed ‘‘an advance’’ or a ‘‘solution’’ that goes beyond the options that were already on the table. The very idea of an advance, moreover, itself presupposes the competitively structured teleological form of a collective singular—not universal—system of ‘‘truth,’’ ‘‘progress’’ and ‘‘posterity,’’ which is not applicable to Lichtenberg’s understanding. He is particularly unimpressed with the potential efficacy of a competitively structured posterity system in which the truth and the better argument will inevitably come out on top. Regarding the simpler formula that Locke gave to the problem—a pragmatics of how to deal with differences of opinion in one’s everyday lifeworld—Lichtenberg, typical for his era in these regards, adds the problem of a historical posterity and intensifies the unhappy compromise represented by the conceptual pair of tolerance and difference (of opinion). In the form of the Sudelbu¨cher, it is already clear that Lichtenberg’s relation to these questions differs from more strictly philosophical, prescriptive, or didactic authors. The aphoristic form of his thought is central here, even when his conclusions seem superficially congruent with the philosophical or enlightenment traditions. More than what he says, the form of Lichtenberg’s writing distinguishes him and makes him exemplary for specific countertraditions of and within the modern public sphere. For him—as was differently the case in Locke, Mendelssohn, Wieland, and Fichte—thought is generated, developed, and

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articulated in an internal dialogue with oneself, but Lichtenberg’s waste books attempt to capture and formalize this, putting it into practice as a new private form of writing. The method represented by the thought assemblies called ‘‘waste-books’’7 does not respond to the opinion system within the conventions of this system—thereby producing the contradictions and hypocrisies discussed in chapters 2 and 3—but enacts a new system that would be more appropriate to the kind of thought demanded by the modern public sphere. The result is a form of writing that corresponds to ‘‘conversing with one’s self’’ (Selbstgespra¨ch) and ‘‘thinking for one’s self’’ (Selbstdenken). Publicly, on the other hand, Lichtenberg, like everyone else—and possibly more so than many—understood published texts as a form of self-validation before a judging public and posterity, and his dissatisfaction with these efforts seems to be offset by the attempt, in his private writing, including letters, to further his thinking on his own outside of the public arena.8 From the perspective of the waste books, his published polemics look more like diversionary tactics: they are highly opinionated and often satirical, but, like Nietzsche (who would take this strategy to the limit), Lichtenberg’s published opinions typically betray a demonstratively counterexemplary and essentially insincere participation in the opinion-system.9 Rather than expounding an internally consistent system, position, or system of positions—and unable bring together the totalizing vision necessary to write a novel—Lichtenberg’s nonscientific publications tend to be reactive and polemical. But, unlike Fichte, whose polemics sought to ‘‘correct’’ the thoughts of the public to instruct it in a system of discourse that might actually work, Lichtenberg tended to push the system to a point of impasse or breakdown. In the ostentation of the fight for the last word—slightly more common in the youth of the public sphere—his performances, more than striving to annihilate his opponents and their arguments, implicitly question the efficacy of the system that is supposed to regulate the exchange of opinions. This specific exploitation of the ‘‘hypocrisy’’ or ‘‘performative contradiction’’ inherent in the system shows what he has in common with other thinkers, but his tactics nevertheless prove uniquely illuminating: Lichtenberg exposes scholarly polemics (along with the fictive posterity that reads and approves them) as a literary genre that is not ultimately governed by the weighing of reasons for the sake of reason.

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Think for Yourself I: Parallels with Fichte’s Ego The situation of the conscience-governed ego (Ich), whose tenuous transcendental status is subjected to rhetorical overcompensation in the preface to Fichte’s ‘‘Correction’’ of the opinions on the French Revolution, is comparably laid bare by Lichtenberg, including a similarly exaggerated reassertion of the ego and its place. In a Sudelbuch entry (B264) from November 1769, Lichtenberg writes: As a result of our early and frequently really excessive reading, whereby we receive so much material without being able to assimilate it, through which our memory becomes accustomed to managing the household for sensation and taste, a deep philosophy is often necessary to restore our feelings to their first state of innocence (Stand der Unschuld), to find one’s self out from under the rubble of foreign matter, to begin to feel for one’s self, to speak one’s self and I would almost like to say even just to exist at all (auch einmal selbst zu existieren). (Lichtenberg’s emphases)

The ‘‘state of innocence,’’ specified here as the state before one learns to read, is in the same position, structurally, as Fichte’s conscience. The state of innocence in Lichtenberg is the fundament of the ego that gets buried under too much indigestible text. As in Fichte, the ego’s very existence is threatened by opinions, the foreign matter of others’ thoughts and ideas. The sovereign ego can become lost, but, as in Fichte, it retains the possibility of finding its way out—finding its way in—and back to itself.10 This lifelong project of assimilating the rubble of learning is synonymous with Lichtenberg’s concept of autonomous thought (Selbstdenken): his ego cogito is constantly threatened by a kind of automatic function that does not think for itself,11 which is always on the verge of becoming an impersonal subject of cognition, merely the sum of others’ thoughts. Following the logic of this dilemma, the words ‘‘I think’’ (ich denke) may disingenuously posit a subject where there is actually is none. It would be better to say ‘‘it thinks’’ (es denkt) because the sum of the cogito may be nothing but the loose change of accumulated—alien and extrinsic— memories. Writing about this ‘‘it’’—the id or Es against which the ego must posit itsself—Lichtenberg produced his single most influential aphorism, K76, an undateable but probably late waste book entry, perhaps from 1793 or 1794:

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Wir werden uns gewisser Vorstellungen bewußt, die nicht von uns abha¨ngen; andere glauben, wir wenigstens hingen von uns ab; wo ist die Grenze? Wir kennen nur allein die Existenz unserer Empfindungen, Vorstellungen und Gedanken. Es denkt sollte man sagen, so wie man sagt: es blitzt. Zu sagen cogito is schon zuviel, so bald man es durch Ich denke u¨bersetzt. Das Ich anzunehmen, zu postulieren, ist praktisches Bedu¨rfnis. We become aware (bewußt) of certain ideas (Vorstellungen) that are independent of us; others believe that if nothing else we depend upon ourselves; how do we draw the line? We only know the existence of our sensations, ideas and thoughts alone. It would be better to say it thinks just as one says it’s storming (es blitzt, literally refers to the lightning strike). To say cogito is already too much, as soon as it is translated as I think. To assume the I, to postulate it, is a practical necessity. (Lichtenberg’s emphases)

Lichtenberg’s exegesis of the cogito, unlike the analyses of the earlier B264, seems less optimistic about the possibility of recovering the ‘‘I’’ from the ‘‘it.’’ In K76 he formulates it as a problem of the origin—Ursprung or Herkunft—of the ego.12 If ‘‘we’’ do not know the origin of our ‘‘own’’ thoughts, (pre)conceptions (Vorstellungen), and emotions—if we are not ourselves the complete origin of our thoughts—then we must be unsure about the status of the ‘‘I’’ that thinks that it thinks them. The ‘‘I,’’ rather than a positive entity (Setzung), is thus merely posited, postulated, and presupposed as the ¨ ber-Setzung) whose problematic origins result of an excessive translation (U are forgotten in the process. The ‘‘I’’ cannot be concretely posited, but is rather only a postulate assumed out of practical necessity. The ‘‘I’’ does not think itself nor does it think for itself, but it only carries on thoughts—others’ thoughts of known or unknown origin—and recursively thinks the thinkable without ever having any certainty of the ultimate ownership of these thoughts. The theory of cognition proposed here—nominally ‘‘Lichtenberg’s’’—does not recognize thought as an intellectual property. Every thinkable thought is necessarily thinkable not only by the self but by unknown others or, at the limit, by an unknown id (even if this thought is also always thought otherwise by these others). This id-based conception of thought causes the wider Enlightenment project of autonomous thought (Selbstdenken), which Lichtenberg is often taken to epitomize, to appear untenable. Thought is bound by its own internal and external genealogies—and is ultimately unable to be differentiated

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from them—and it travels according to a momentum inaccessible to a subject who is never able call its thoughts its own—only its own—and is therefore not an autonomous subject of thought but only its dependent object. This conception, written at exactly the same time as Fichte’s response to the Revolution, reaches beyond the latter’s ego-centrism by emphasizing the impersonal and merely ‘‘topical’’ component of the cogito. In his final decade, Lichtenberg appears to be at least marginally at home with the idea that the ego may not exist except as a fiction expressed by a shifter used to unreliably indicate an aggregation of contingent experiences and alien thoughts. Lichtenberg’s description of the ‘‘I’’ predicates it as a nonexistence that is not transvalued as a transcendental form or precondition, nor does he fall back to the Cartesian formula of self-reflexivity—the fact that I think at all and think that I know it—to cognitively ground ideas (Vorstellungen) for which the ‘‘I’’ is only a carrier. But Lichtenberg’s next step is to assume that these thoughts as contents, oriented and predisposed within the traditional and topical matrices from which they at least nominally originate, may become newly available to reappropriation and recombination by the activity of the ‘‘I,’’ which is redefined as the one who has ideas and also actively manipulates them, experiments with them, without entirely ruling them or being completely determined by them.13

Think for Yourself II: Autonomous Thought and the Fallibility of Memory Like Locke, Lichtenberg describes memory as an obstacle to the adequate grounding of opinions. Opinions are always without sufficient reason, based as they are upon reasons—between those that memory forgot and those not yet known—which are only ever virtually present. But Lichtenberg’s depiction of the problem of memory is more dynamic than Locke’s because the unnerving experience of memory lapses is autobiographically foregrounded: The gathering and constant reading of materials without any exercise of the ¨ bung der Kra¨fte) has the unpleasant effect, which I have noticed in faculties (U myself for many years (written 1788), that everything depends on memory and not on a system. It is for this reason that, during oral disputations, the best arguments do not occur to me as readily as when I am alone, or, more precisely, [in oral formulation] I have to invent what I already actually knew, but usually I

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realize that I knew it only when it is of no use to me to have known it. (H168, Lichtenberg’s emphases)

Memory in Lichtenberg’s experience is of dubious reliability. It fails when called upon, and its value is further undermined by an irritating untimeliness in what it remembers. Excessive reading is named again as the culprit: ‘‘Constant reading,’’ the disordered absorption of data, causes the memory to become unreliable, unless what is absorbed is also ordered and assimi¨ bung der Kra¨fte). lated by an equally constant ‘‘exercise of the faculties’’ (U This use of the intellectual powers, which may rehearse and internalize arguments alone (in the process of reading) or as a repeated public performance (such as teaching), seems to refer to some kind of processing of what is read. Within this conception, ‘‘intellectual practice’’ can also include writing (perhaps especially of waste books) as a part of the more general task of assimilating what one reads. But this kind of private topical localization, contextualization, and internal analysis proves insufficient to the adequate grounding of the numerous volumes consumed by scholars or other wellread persons. No matter how much Lichtenberg practices and improves his abilities, it seems that ‘‘reading’’ (consumption) still remains disproportionate to ‘‘writing’’ (and other forms of assimilation). The former constantly overshadows the latter as the ‘‘I’’ struggles to stay afloat in the It. The ¨ bung) of thought as a means of mastering both ‘‘practice’’ and ‘‘exercise’’ (U memory and masses of material thus appears, at best, as an idealized goal, something to be worked toward despite its ultimate unattainability. Lichtenberg, speaking of his own failures of assimilation, declares that memory itself, without the deliberate mnemonic assimilatory effort he calls ¨ bung, is entirely unsystematic. The problem is not only that memory forgets U (which would imply that the necessary data is simply absent), but what it willfully withholds: everything that has been learned is still there, kept somewhere but not directly accessible. Memory is not just unsystematic but asystematic and antisystematic; it fails deliberately, perversely, freely forsaking the speaker, the thinker, the writer, precisely in the moment of need—refusing his orders and forcing him to ‘‘invent what he already knows’’ before his ‘‘own’’ thoughts can be formulated. Opinions (Meinungen) in this sense are ‘‘made up’’ and invented, impromptu inventions produced under the pressures of the moment, whereas the real opinion of the subject—what it would really think if it had time to think about it—is withheld and perpetually

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deferred to a later moment, ‘‘when it is no longer of any use.’’ Allowing for a degree of exaggeration, Lichtenberg characterizes the reasoned discourse of ‘‘arguments’’ as either temporally (or perhaps only temporarily) obstructed, or, in the worst case, as a chaotic mix real and apparent arguments lacking the authoritative or systematic foundation necessary for their final evaluation and differentiation. Thought and opinion are governed by the specifically literary indecisiveness of a system of situational and rhetorical compensations, which would never be compatible with the production of fixed and finished positions, the calculated weighing of pros and cons. Even a younger Lichtenberg, whose injunctions to proceed rationally and methodically are often somewhat more severe—and even if the Sudelbu¨cher themselves are viewed as a kind of associative aid and mnemonic ordering device for the construction of future arguments—this ‘‘systematicity’’ will still never completely overcome the chaos of thought’s emergence from its disorderly and unsystematic origins. The name ‘‘waste book’’ and the autobiographical contingency of its form clearly testify to a certain (preordained) failure of this ‘‘system’’ as a method of mental ordering, and even if thought is able to partially overcome its obstacles in the process, the resulting conclusiveness and reason may more often than not—especially whenever ‘‘politics’’ come into play—be indistinguishable from a forced result, an argument of opportunity. Lichtenberg strives develop a rational system that would be able to avoid the rhetorical falsification of thought under the pressure of situation. But H168’s claim of memory’s asystematicity—its refusal of the systematic orders that the conscious mind seeks to impose on it—seems to contradict Lichtenberg’s earlier views.14 In F203, from September 1776, for instance, memory appears to represent a latent mental order that only needs to be manifested through the activity of the subject: The properly philosophical reader (der philosophische eigentliche Leser) does not just keep piling things up in his memory, as the glutton does in his belly, and on the other hand the memory-head (Geda¨chtnis-Kopf ) acquires a full belly more than a strong and healthy body; in the case of the former, everything that he reads and finds usable is, if I may say so, directed and distributed (zugefu¨hrt) within the system and the inner body, this here and the other over there (dieses hierhin und das dorthin), and the whole acquires strength.

Here Lichtenberg differentiates between a good opinions system and a bad one. The distinction occurs via an analogy between the ‘‘memory-glutton’’

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and the ‘‘philosophical reader.’’ Whereas the former merely stuffs itself and thoughtlessly acquires, accumulates, and perhaps retains, the latter is more selective in its diet and only takes on what it can assimilate and order. The German words zugefu¨hrt, dieses hierhin und das dorthin imply an biological, economic, or generally distributive metaphor, whose status as a metaphor is underlined by the words that introduce it, ‘‘if I may say so’’ (wenn ich so sagen darf ). In this model, selectivity and the reflective ordering of given inputs within given capacities is the key to autonomous thought; originality, on the other hand, is disqualified as a decisive criterion because it would always only be an egocentric subjectivism. But the precise basis for the selection is not elaborated beyond the single word usefulness (Brauchbarkeit), which would seem to represent a moment of uncontrollable subjective input within the system. Based on Lichtenberg’s own accumulative praxis in the Sudelbu¨cher, it is possible to additionally surmise that he does not mean the application or referencing of some namable or fixed external order, but only the following of whichever mental order preexists the new assimilation. This provisional ‘‘order’’ may be defined by passing interests, fleeting associations, and limited perspectives. The contradiction inherent to this conception of Brauchbarkeit lies in the fact that the instance that performs the ordering is presumably the same memory that is to be ordered. In the discrepancy between the performance of ordering that arises out of a preexisting order, the composition of waste books can only amount to a reproduction and accumulative repetition of memory’s own intrinsic disorder. The aspect of reproduction is crucial, however, because the minimal system of repetition—as a kind of ‘‘practice’’ or ‘‘drill’’—allows memory’s unsystematic and disorderly order to reproduce itself materially as a second order, a second order disorder. Such an Unordnung zweiter Ordnung defines the method of the waste book, which provides a place for thought’s disordered reproduction. In this conception, it would make no difference what is ordered or how it is ordered or on what basis, but simply that ordering takes place. Thought’s own inherently accidental ordering need only be minimally displaced to the second order of writing. Thoughts, memories, citations, reasons, and arguments are merely mustered and ordered to appear, and this minimal order is then a potential basis for future orderings and future reselections that will continue to constitute the main activity of autonomous thought.

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In H168, from 1788, where memory is pessimistically described as both unsystematic and unconsciously antisystematic, the possibility of a conscious systematic compensation is not explored. But, for this reason, such a supplement—invoked in the words ‘‘exercise of (mental) powers’’—appears all the more desirable; based on the analysis above, it seems that this ‘‘training’’ of Selbstdenken can take place and be given a form in fragmentary writing, which remains insufficient, however, because memory’s insufficiencies will still preponderate over the systematic supplement of writing. The waste book’s second order reproduction of thought remains a testament to failure and disorder. Lichtenberg’s understanding of what it means to write a Sudelbuch confirms this interpretation: in addition to ‘‘waste book,’’ one of his own English translations of Sudelbuch is ‘‘commonplace book’’ (D668); the latter is an apparent reference to the loci communes of the topical tradition. The ‘‘commonplace book’’ is a collection of topical variations, of thoughts and arguments pertaining to preestablished topoi. In fragment E46, Lichtenberg further qualifies this topical practice in an analogy to bookkeeping. Although this analogy appears to claim that the purpose of his Sudel system is to create order—with the Sudelbuch as the place where raw data is collected in anticipation of its final summation—the very need for such an arduous method of recording thought, on the way to its more or less final ordering, attests to a fundamental lack of order: ‘‘Only a book in which I write down everything just as I see it or as my thoughts give it to me (wie es mir meine Gedanken eingeben), only upon this basis can these [thoughts] be carried over and entered into another book in which the materials are more differentiated and ordered . . . [and] receive a fitting expression (einen ordentlichen Ausdruck erhalten).’’ The goal, in addition to the creation of order in a taxonomic or categorical sense, is to give thoughts a more ‘‘coherent formulation’’ through this iterative sorting process. In another implicit reference to a topical matrix from which thoughts originate, the exercise of formulating preexisting ideas requires the intervention of a subject (excluded from the sheer generation of thoughts) at the level of their improved expression. In describing his Sudel writing, Lichtenberg also notably avoids obvious formulations like ‘‘I record my thoughts.’’ He gives this conventional notion a more adequate expression when he says that he ‘‘enters each thought (into the Sudelbuch), just as his thoughts submit it to him.’’ The first step is a literal transcription, followed by efforts of reformulation, but the two

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steps will ultimately prove impossible to differentiate because the first thought—the raw data just as it is received—already comes in the form of a formulation (or else it would not be recordable). On this basis, Lichtenberg portrays writing and thinking as inseparable within an interminable process ¨ bertragung). Memory’s deficiencies of inter- and intralingual translation (U facilitate the process, revealing the ‘‘I’’ not as the one who thinks the thoughts, but only the one who thinks about them. The ‘‘I’’ does not think thoughts, but only receives them as their bookkeeper, copyist, or translator. The translational labor of formulation is also not guaranteed to succeed, but is rather guaranteed not to. The idea of ‘‘waste’’—Sudel—implies this certainty of failure (at least from the standpoint of a teleologically structured conception of success). The endless production of reformulations ultimately produces either byproducts or detritus, and even a standard based on sheer ‘‘productivity’’ would have to be suspended in Lichtenberg’s idea of reasoning. Thought as ‘‘product’’ (and especially as an end product) will always be marked by the formulative violence of its creation, its unavoidable artificiality and contingency. In other words, the formulation of thoughts has an inescapable aesthetic dimension that binds thought to merely conventional figurations that will always become overtaxed if they are taken for representatives of truth. The method of the waste books is systematic asystematicity: individual variants of particular loci and topoi are ordered and formulated—or simply ordered to appear—and are put in a more or less arbitrary place in a serial chronology. Such a practice, necessitated by the fact that the mind is patently incapable of high fidelity reproductions, bears witness to the chaos, debts, and lacks in the intellectual household. As the bookkeeping analogy also suggests, the waste book is a balancing of ledgers and a calculation of debts. Its endless translations are transfers, which, following the metaphor, attempt to work off an inherited debt. But there is no sign of a final accounting in sight. Rather than conceiving autonomous thought (Selbstdenken) as a kind of active self-assertion (Selbstbehauptung)—as both the conventional and Fichtean understandings would have it—Lichtenberg’s Selbstdenken occurs only within an economic frame necessitated by the fact that thoughts are always at least partially inherited from others, and their particular formulation depends upon a linguistic inheritance.15 The ego within this system is nominal and marginal, burdened by large and unknown debts, and the labor of autonomous thought is consequently conceived as a continual effort of

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variation and reformulation. The Sudelbuch implicitly includes a tabulation of the debts of thought (if it admits that there are debts at all), even if it does not always undertake a full philology of these debts at every moment. Iterative reformulation instead brings debts into play without canceling them or seriously attempting to work them off. Only by deferring the investigation of its own determinants and dependencies can autonomous thought preserve a degree of at least apparent freedom. The thoughts themselves remain latently dependent on whatever ‘‘it thinks,’’ whereas the subject of thought must actively decide what to do with them. The active element inevitably plays at least a small role, to the extent that thoughts, opinions, commonplaces, citations, and topoi are recorded or even remembered at all. Selection happens, even without the supplementary selective process of writing, which only attempts to materially reproduce the process. The waste book supplements memory’s preselection in the minimal form of sheer notation based on mere notability. Neither fully systematic nor fully systematizeable, this nascent—but more likely errant—system provides the individual with a foothold of self-reflection within an opinion system that is experienced as an inherited debt. But the resulting form of thought, by virtue of its inconclusiveness, stands at odds with the identificatory aspect of opinion. Fixed opinions that are ‘‘held’’ must dishonestly represent themselves as fully decided; thought in Lichtenberg’s sense is thereby arrested, and the individual concedes its autonomy to a conventional system of represented authority. In Lichtenberg as in Locke, the individual’s ideal praxis would be a conscious, ‘‘private’’ pseudo-systematization of its opinions. This merely apparent systematicity would hopefully be able resist the broader collective representational system as well as the equally unsystematic systems of other individuals. The overall function of the collective system thus does not depend on effective persuasion, but on every individual’s recognition that their own opinions (and by extension those of others) are false representations. There is no reason to give up one’s own opinions simply because the reasons of others seem convincing; the rule of the opinion system is not collective truth-seeking but strategic impasse, an artificially produced stalemate agreed upon in advance. According to this model, the autonomous thinker with an opinions system is a primarily defensive mode of knowing interaction within the wider system of opinion. What makes the autonomous thinker different is the ironic (Socratic) knowledge that his own opinions system—just like all of the others—is a pseudo- or proto-system. The

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categorical imperative of this (Lockean relativist) version of the opinion system would seek to generalize its ‘‘private’’ and defensive mode, whereas the scientific (Fichtean) version would still insist that a universal horizon of truth be maintained. In the difference between the two conceptions, the individual pseudo-systems, even if they are supposed to tolerate each other, would always latently remain in competition. Lichtenberg’s understanding of Selbstdenken seeks to defuse the competitive aspect by emphasizing the merely relative and unsystematic aspect of all systems; he reinterprets the Lockean version of the opinion system with a performative emphasis on the possibilities of its praxis. An individual’s system in Lichtenberg’s sense, if it were a genuine system and not a pseudosystem, would necessarily devolve to a ‘‘system of beliefs’’ and forsake its own definition as opinions system. Systems, like beliefs, believe in their universal systematic value and applicability,16 whereas an opinions system, in Lichtenberg’s sense, could therefore only qualify as sub- or pseudo-systematic. Locke had theorized tolerance essentially as a means of organizing competing belief systems, but Lichtenberg’s opinions system takes it a step further (back in the direction of Hobbes) by supposing that the system would never work unless individuals were able to recognize the provisional status of their knowledge and beliefs, effectively demoting them to the status of opinion. Despite his awareness of the residual competitive aspect of private opinions systems and the continuing overt competition between belief systems, Lichtenberg’s theorization of the individual’s opinions system as a part of his own performance of Selbstdenken show—at least in theory—that the competitiveness and pressure of the system are only superficial. If Lichtenberg nevertheless holds onto some universal horizons in his Sudel writing, his ‘‘systematic’’ aim is noncompetitive to such a degree that the very gestures that made it appear competitive are revealed as falsifications. Lichtenberg’s ideal of autonomous thought is largely practical in its orientation, but it retains a progressive, universal, and transformative horizon in its supposition that autonomous thought may eventually be able to come up with better norms (even if only within the life of the individual), a better organization for an ensemble of essentially provisional relations. The injunction that corresponds to this aspect—in the Sudelbu¨cher always a self-injunction, a ‘‘note to self’’—comprises the central systematic claim of Lichtenberg’s opinions system. In E46, in the introduction of his analogy between the

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bookkeeping and waste bookkeeping, he programmatically writes ‘‘Dieses verdient von den Gelehrten nachgeahmt zu werden [This (the bookkeeper’s log) is deserving of imitation by scholars].’’ Similar injunctions occur throughout the Sudelbu¨cher, enjoining in many cases, as in this one, to carry on a praxis that is already underway. It is a praxis deserving of imitation, but only as a particular system (in the limited sense of a temporary arrangement) whose practical value makes it worth passing on. The value in question is a mere use value for ‘‘scholars.’’ A system in this sense is only systematic in its appearance or by virtue of its effects; it is merely a relative ¨ bung), which makes no necessary claim to unipraxis, a kind of exercise (U versality, and by virtue of this understanding, the ‘‘system’’ in question withdraws itself from the universal competition between normatively structured systems—or else perhaps it reenters the competition at a new level of awareness or renunciation. Despite clear affinities to Locke, Lichtenberg much more rigorously distinguishes between opinions systems and belief systems. His conception of the individual’s opinions system, like Moses Mendelssohn’s Gesinnung, has nothing to do with belief. The Sudelbu¨cher themselves, whose underlying hyper-skeptical premise is the unreliability of the ego cogito, are—if this were not a contradiction in terms—a testament to faithlessness. But within the macrosystem of a society or a scientific apparatus, which proposes to base its decisions on the collective force of individual opinions, all individuals must hold to his or her own system, either ironically (if it is an opinions system) or systematically (if it is a belief system), but, in either case, the collective process founds its universality on the ignorance of such differences. For Lichtenberg, therefore, the belief in one’s opinions is ultimately at odds with the collective system’s refusal to distinguish. To believe in one’s system under these conditions—to believe that one’s ‘‘system’’ is a system—is not just to be a believer, but a fanatic (Schwa¨rmer), a systematic automaton possessed by a fatal lack of irony about one’s ‘‘own’’ position within a system that does not ultimately recognize beliefs as beliefs but only as opinions. This position, that of the individual, not only as the conduit of a universal system, but also as the antisystematic break within this system, is introduced in the short-circuit of memory’s scrambling effects. The individual is the asystematic margin from which the possibility of autonomy emerges, which is only methodical in its appearance. Functioning through the interplay of ‘‘I’’ and ‘‘It,’’ Selbstdenken is the point of indeterminacy, the

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nebulous passage in all strictly systematic aspirations. Only by way of this passage can autonomous thought designate the precarious—merely ‘‘postulated’’—place of individual freedom within the collective-universalist system of opinion.

Enthusiasm (Schwa¨rmerei) and Science There are no longer any emissaries of God. If he [the zealot who believes himself sent by God and able to speak in his name] has not sworn to your worldly logic, then kick him out of the house until further investigation. l i c h t e n b e r g , Sudelbu¨cher, F802

Lichtenberg’s opinions system is not—contrary to an enduring stylization and self-stylization of the Enlightenment—structured by the institutional victory of stronger reasons over weaker ones, a posterity principle of natural selection within the advancement of reason. His opinions system proposes, following and developing Locke, that the opinions of others should not believed, even if they may appear to have better reasons on their side. Lichtenberg, in this sense, espouses a credo of noncredulity, which since antiquity (and especially in the eighteenth century) was given the Horatian formula of nil admirari.17 But he diverges from Locke because Lichtenberg’s justification of right to reject others’ proofs does not derive from the authority of tradition (a stable but arbitrary base in Locke). If the authority of tradition and custom—the nomos of Herodotos, reformulated as Locke’s law of opinion—were unmasked as mere opinions, and if the order of things were therefore left up to the best arguments of reason alone, nothing but chaos would result. For Locke, the ethical matters in question cannot ultimately be decided by reason alone but only by the limited, provisional, and speculative weighing of probabilities. Confronted with this undecideability and the realities of his own time, Locke nominally but unconvincingly opts for the status quo. But the other extreme, the misguided imperative of a hyper-rational Enlightenment that believes that it can dictate all things according to reason, is decisively excluded because it would, as a result of reason’s limitations, only produce new superstitions in the name of reason. The German word for this chaos of reasons, suddenly made

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available to everyone, is Schwa¨rmerei, which became fashionable in the eighteenth century to describe overzealous pseudo-rationalisms. If all decisions, especially life decisions, were based on the fiat of whoever has the best reasons at the moment, this could only mean deciding too hastily based on the appearance of reason. Opinion appears in this context not as an instance of the competition between reasons, but of noncompetition, as the right of refusal in the competition of reasons, the right to postpone one’s decision, and the right to resign oneself to one’s own opinion despite overwhelming—but in the end only ‘‘probable’’—evidence to the contrary. Lichtenberg follows Locke’s conviction that one need not assent to everything that has the appearance of reason. But other factors come into play in Lichtenberg, including and especially the functionalist criterion of utility (Brauchbarkeit). For him the right of nonassent is not dictated by a recourse to the tradition, but, more radically, by the potentially nullity of the tradition as tradition—as a coherent and enduring system. The tradition, like the opinions systems it generates, can only be provisional. Tradition—a collective singular—can only appear and be passed on in a state of topical fragmentation that gives the individual room to think about it, in a sense within it, without being strictly determined by it. The right not to assent to the opinions of others is the right and the prerequisite of autonomous thought. There is no freedom of thought as long as individuals can be necessarily compelled by the reasons of others. Selbstdenken can only operate once the quality of belief has been factored out of inherited knowledge (at the limit: all knowledge). Autonomous thought presupposes disbelief. Lichtenberg specifically states the right of nonassent—of disbelief—in fragment D612, where he speaks of ‘‘the weak ones who have not already resolved the matter [on their own].’’ These individuals, which politicians call ‘‘undecided,’’ can be more easily persuaded by spurious argumentation, by the appearance of truth. They are easier to mislead ‘‘into the temptation of thinking otherwise’’ because their thinking is not adequately secured internally. Lichtenberg opposes these ‘‘weak ones’’ to those who assume ‘‘the duty of a man who is set in his ways’’ (die Pflicht eines jeden gesetzten Mannes; Lichtenberg’s emphasis). This ‘‘duty,’’ as Lichtenberg calls it, is to already know what one thinks so that one cannot be easily tempted to think otherwise. This may appear to sanction stubbornness, but, as in Locke, a conversion economy of opinion is much more dangerous, even if the possibility of unfounded prejudices is

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thereby admitted as a potential cost of individual autonomy. In Lichtenberg, this ‘‘settledness’’ is not only a prejudice, nor does it take its basis from the presupposed stability of tradition; instead it would ideally be merely a self-consciously heuristic, regulative position with the purpose of protecting the individual’s private system from the contagiousness of others’ systems. To the extent that all beliefs and opinions (including one’s ‘‘own’’) are thus filtered by thought, the prejudice of being set in one’s ways only amounts to a prejudice in favor of the individual’s own autonomy itself, its own settledness (Gesetztheit) with itself, as its inalienable right and its justification for exempting itself from the potentially tyrannical rule of apparent reasons. As everyone knows, such a defensive posture is still subject to abuse, especially when it reverts to sheer individual self-righteousness. With the refusal to acknowledge the reasons of others, autonomy—Selbstgesetztheit— can also mean the willingness to carry on the debate indefinitely according to the appearance of the strongest reason, but without any real outcome. The bracketing of reason and reasons in the name of opinion can turn into merely speculative reasoning and rationalization for its own sake or into the unwavering defense of a pre-established position. What was supposed to be autonomous (selbstgesetzt) thus becomes merely opinionated, a return to the repressed determinism at the level of discourse itself; in the defense against foreign determinations, the structure of the opinionated self becomes increasingly deterministic. Enthusiasm (Schwa¨rmerei) is one word for this second order conversion economy, produced by an opinion system that sought to rule out precisely this kind of unfreedom in the face of one’s own thoughts. In the case of Schwa¨rmerei, the private opinions system (formalized as an individualized pseudo-system and a regulative safeguard against premature capitulation to others’ opinions) begins to take its own systematicity too seriously, creating a kind of meta-sphere of pseudo-reasons in which any and every opinion can play itself out. Discourse, denying the need and ability to present absolute or even sufficient grounds, thereby loses its ground entirely. Lichtenberg felt an uncomfortable connection with the freaks and fanatics (Schwa¨rmer) of his era. This claim goes against prevailing images of Lichtenberg as a highly rational thinker at the forefront of the Enlightenment, but Wolfgang Schimpf has convincingly argued that Lichtenberg uses Schwa¨rmer in positive and neutral senses, and not just as a term of condemnation. Schimpf develops the divergent valences of the word in a contrast

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between Lichtenberg’s negative conception of ‘‘transcendent ventriloquism’’ (transcendente Ventriloquenz), bad Schwa¨rmerei ‘‘by which men can be made to believe that something said on earth came from heaven’’ (F665), and creative furor poeticus as a more positive kind of enthusiasm. Schimpf thus concludes that ‘‘fanatical thought (schwa¨rmerisches Denken) . . . was not entirely foreign to the nature of this natural scientist.’’18 The point of overlap between the fanatic and the scientist is that both operate according to imaginary ‘‘systems.’’ As Lichtenberg writes in his essay on physiognomy: ‘‘An enthusiastic observer, once he has become stuck within his own system without any hope of retreat, is always suspect.’’19 Everyone has a system, including and especially the fanatics, because they have wagered everything on their systems. They have identified with their system, identified with it as their own, with a level of ego investment that excludes the possibility of retreat (ohne Hoffnung zu einem Zuru¨ckzug). The possibility of revision or retreat from and within the system therefore is the decisive factor that differentiates fanatics from scientists. Any system that must at all costs be taken as a system—the system—is suspicious prima facie and lacks credibility. Such a system, no matter how good its reasons may be or appear, must always revert to a structure based on authoritative declarations and decrees. The desire to unequivocally assert fixed ends reveals the illegitimacy of the means, regardless of their apparent reason. For this reason, Lichtenberg concludes his sentence on the ‘‘system’’ of the Schwa¨rmer with the implication that they do not even really believe in their own system. They have been carried away by a certain instrumental effectiveness, specifically—in a witty variation of the saying that ‘‘hunger is the best cook’’—by desire and profit motive: ‘‘But hunger, especially in the society of crafty deception, is able to observe almost as well as it can cook.’’ Schwa¨rmerei is not interested in methodical or scientific observation; it is not concerned with reason but only with craft and cleverness (Klugheit), and therefore it observes only what is flattering to itself, just as poor cooking is flattered—overlooked—by hunger. The hunger for belief can be preyed upon, as it were, by the hunger for money, or for power or fame.20 ¨ ber die Schwa¨rmerei unserer Zeiten’’ (On Schwa¨rmeIn a later essay, ‘‘U rei in our Times), which originally appeared in the ‘‘Go¨ttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur’’ in 1783, Lichtenberg offers a somewhat different interpretation.21 The later essay seems to view the matter more from the point of view of the deceived than the deceivers, although this is a

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fine line, since, as Lichtenberg wrote of Lavater a few years later after meeting him in person, it is possible for a Schwa¨rmer to be deceiver and deceived at the same time. But this possibility is in overt contradiction with the instrumentalization thesis of the physiognomy essay. If the deceiver is deceived, then the motivation and the means–ends relation become confused and involuted. Speaking of Lavater, Lichtenberg writes to Johann Daniel Ramberg on July 3, 1786: ‘‘He means it all sincerely, and if he deceives, then he is a deceived deceiver (ein betrogener Betru¨ger)’’ (4:678).22 He is wellmeaning (er meint es ehrlich), which means that he merely means (meint) without any sense of his own ends, which is to say his intentions are harmless. Lichtenberg, who had been expecting to meet ‘‘a hotheaded, enthusiastic debater,’’ finds in Lavater nothing of the sort. In person Lavater was ‘‘an excellent head’’ (ein vortrefflicher Kopf ), who has only been sadly misguided in his life. In August 1786, again writing to Ramberg, Lichtenberg returns to the theme of Lavater’s honorable forthrightness (Ehrlichkeit) and his lack of adequate intellectual training, implying that the two go hand in hand: I believe with certainty that Lavater is an honorable man, who however takes his own head for the whole world, and every thought that ascends in it for a new planet. Had there only been people around him who had been kind enough (freundschaftlich) to point out to him that it was only fog (because he is really a very good listener), then something great might have become of him. But now it is too late. (IV:681)

Lavater is excessively impressed with the novelty of the products of his own mind. But this, according to fragment C142 (epigraph to this chapter), may be the general condition of everyone. Each person mentally dwells on their own planet, mistaking the cosmos of their own thoughts for the world: ‘‘If every human dwelled on his own planet, what would philosophy be then? Exactly the same thing it is now, the essence of an individual’s opinions is his philosophy.’’ From Lichtenberg’s planet, Lavater looks like a Lichtenberg without training, a Lichtenberg lacking his own methods of exploration. Lichtenberg sees an alienated image of himself in Lavater. The planet analogy can be plausibly read as a description of Lichtenberg himself, for whom every new linguistic formulation augments the thought world of his Sudelbu¨cher. Lichtenberg’s critical relation to zealots and fanatics (Schwa¨rmer) often seems to be inflected by a certain amount of bad conscience. He first gains

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respect for Lavater when he discovers that he is not a systematic and calculating zealot but a sincere if deceived deceiver. Lichtenberg identifies with Lavater’s thought worlds in accordance with his own view that thought systems are everything, but that they can never be systematic and absolute without at the same time being deceived and deceiving, disingenuous and coercive. The villainous duplicity and systematic fanaticism that Lichtenberg had expected to find in Lavater does not appear, apparently because the latter operates out of sheer opinion and invention (Meinung), without the resource of any real systematic logical or argumentative training. The point for Lichtenberg, which would be the positive aspect of a technical education in the school of reason, is to parse thought better, to sort through its nebulous regions, to recognize the fog (Nebel) as fog, without presuming that reason will ever be able to completely chart the terrain over which thought floats.23 In a much earlier essay, ‘‘Timorus’’ (1771), Lichtenberg makes a comparable claim. ‘‘Timorus’’ is a polemic on the problems of conversion in general, with particular critical attention to the case of two Jewish converts to Christianity in Go¨ttingen, whose motives for conversion had been called into question. The text presents the broad and perhaps overly elaborate argument that reason is never the decisive in conversions. But the more pointed claim is that private use of reason in the pursuit of personal and spiritual ends leads ‘‘straight to the devil.’’ In a witty reversal of more familiar claims about the moral dubiousness of the Enlightenment, Lichtenberg argues that irreligiosity, atheism, heathenism, tolerance of Jews, and all other supposed moral transgressions and failings of modernity and Enlightenment, are not the direct result of the Enlightenment per se or of its idea of reason. These ‘‘evils’’—it is not clear how seriously Lichtenberg takes them, since they are the evils named by his opponents—are instead produced whenever reason is appropriated by religion to pursue its ends (thereby violating the boundary between faith and reason from the other direction). The religious critics and opponents of the Enlightenment are thus themselves the cause of the harms that they attribute to the Enlightenment: These are the results of your cursed study of antiquity, of your secret histories of the heart, of your anatomy of the soul and physiology, of your subtle pedagogical systems, your mathematical doctrines of nature and your popular forms of expression, that we have now discovered a Northwest Passage to the devil (eine

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Nordwestliche Durchfahrt zum Teufel), by which every sheep-head in his night gown (Schafskopf in seinem Schlafrock) can find his own way there. Show me where our ancestors ever made such speeches as you make: They were more concerned with the labor of their own hands, but if they ever thought about religion or about us, then their motto was: tremble and worship, and not as now: think and investigate, and I would like to add: and go to the devil. (3:233).

The main emphasis of this passage, despite its complex inversions of perspective, is unmistakably critical of Protestant and Pietist religiosity; this is perhaps surprising, considering Lichtenberg’s typically critical views on Catholic Christianity. In part, I think that this inconsistency reflects his willingness to alter his positions and perspectives according to the argumentative needs of the moment, and it may also partly be a result of his generally unfavorable assessment of all organized religion.24 The specific impetus, however, lies in the strategy of turning his opponents’ arguments against them. What connects this passage with those on Schwa¨rmerei is the common claim that the indiscriminate ‘‘private’’ use, manipulation, and misapplication of most likely misunderstood principles and methods of reason leads to a chaos of opinions according to which there is no personal salvation but only a personal damnation. This chord is sounded again ten years later in the 1783 Schwa¨rmerei essay. At this time, some three years before meeting Lavater, Lichtenberg already seems to have a fairly specific and almost entirely negative idea of Schwa¨rmerei. But the Schwa¨rmer in the essay are like Lavater—and in precisely the same formulation—‘‘not zealous debaters, . . . not hot-heads.’’ Lichtenberg caricatures their intellectual profile, describing two fanatics of his acquaintance as ‘‘slow and quiet in their speech, calm individuals, whereby each has a look on his face like he is blessing the other, completely calm, but with an inner joy that can hardly be concealed, each believes with every response that he is putting the other out of his misery with a lethal blow (Gnadenstoß)’’ (3:416). Lichtenberg does not state the precise topic of this conversation, but a number of possibilities are mentioned. The most amusing, for instance: ‘‘I believe that one of them would have died the very next day, if it meant he had a hope of ending his life in the year 7777’’ (3:416). The Schwa¨rmer anecdotes of the essay refer to acquaintances of Lichtenberg’s youth, who serve as the models for an uproarious comedy yet to be written. These Schwa¨rmer were, in other words,

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Lichtenberg’s sometime friends, or at least acquaintances, and his comic condemnation thus bears a trace of guilt by association. Religion plus mismanaged reason is the formula of superstition, and this is an amazing source of comedy. The Schwa¨rmer are able to accomplish their ends using a semblance of reason, even if Lichtenberg can only observe reason’s apparent total absence: ‘‘The most amusing thing (das angenehmste) however, was when they sometimes differed in their opinions and tried to refute each other; false statements with false statements and daydreams with daydreams’’ (3:416, Lichtenberg’s emphasis). Schwa¨rmerei is not the end of opinion in false belief (Aberglaube), but rather the hypertrophy of opinion—as superstition—above and beyond belief. Contrary to Lessing’s hope that philosophy might be able to ease the matter through conceptual clarification, no Aufkla¨rung is possible under the circumstances Lichtenberg describes. Schwa¨rmer are immune to philosophical intervention because they are—as Lichtenberg would later say of Lavater—‘‘lost causes’’: If in such cases everything flowed from a single false premise but otherwise was produced by rational derivation, then there might have been hope of someday ripping out the nettle, but, as it is, every sentence of the hundreds that they had at hand, on its own, like the segments of a tapeworm, has attached itself to them, draining them of and consuming their reason. (3:418)

This image, an extreme variation on the topos of the thousand-tongued Fama from Virgil’s Aeneid, describes Schwa¨rmerei in quasi-clinical language as a mental illness. If fanaticism, as Lichtenberg describes it, is a pararational disorder, a parasitic form of reason, then it no longer makes sense to think of Schwa¨rmer as ‘‘motivated’’ by any particular ends. The paraformations of reason are not related to reason by any possible derivation. If they were, then they would be reasonable, even if they were also wrong because of their basis on false premises. Fanaticisms are pseudomorphoses of reason, and Schwa¨rmer are not possessed by ideology as much as by ‘‘pseudology,’’ a second-order reality that essentially plays by it own rules, without reference to any form of grounding. On this basis, the absolute authority of reason may become functionally and virtually indistinguishable with the absolute autonomy of unreason. In conversation, both share the argumentative characteristic of incontrovertibility—unconvertability—whether it be that of ‘‘the man who is set in his ways’’ (des gesetzten Mannes) or of the Schwa¨rmer (with whom there is no

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common basis of argument). Another violent image of the Schwa¨rmer depicts the permanence of their state: ‘‘They were, by the way, also unable to be converted (nicht zu bekehren), and I truly believe that it would be easier to give sight back to someone who had had both his eyes put out, than to give such a one reason’’ (3:418). Unconvertability, the rational virtue of the one who is ‘‘set’’ in his position, is also the vice of the fanatic. One could try to relativize this situation by arguing that in the end it all comes down to social, intellectual, and historical norms: The one who is ‘‘set in his ways’’ is simply representative of a more mainstream current. This would be Locke’s position, whose (collective) law of opinion in combination with the (private) right of non-assent to the opinions of others attempted to produce a safeguard against the conversion economy of opinion. But Lichtenberg excludes this reading: first, because his interpretation of autonomy as ‘‘settledness’’ (Gesetztheit) reaches its limit in the figure of the genius (discussed in the next section), who is the flipside of the Schwa¨rmer, but both are alike because they swim against the current of prevailing norms. Second, the relativist tendency of the law of opinion is put on hold by Lichtenberg’s idea of unconvertability, which functions, so to speak, as its own law (das Gesetz), which marginalizes and suspends both relativism and conformism (which go hand in hand under the law of opinion) in the interest of autonomy. Even more radically: if everyone ‘‘lives’’— metaphorically—on their own metaphorical planet, then the very idea of conversion becomes an absurdity. If life and thought are nothing but the ¨ bersetzung) and reoccupation (Umbesetzung) ongoing praxis of translation (U of preexisting thoughts (as topoi), then the resulting form (of theme and variation) will be incompatible with the idea of a total reversal (Umkehrung) or conversion (Bekehrung). The place of (con)-version (-kehrung and -setzung) is completely already pre-occupied (besetzt): this may lead to all manner of obsession (Besessenheit), but will never reach any ultimate conversion. For these reasons, Lichtenberg deems all conversions to be inauthentic, and this is also why he reverses the charge of hypocrisy, turning it against those who would question the reasons why individuals choose to convert. When it comes to conversion, everything is interior to such an extent that the exterior is free to do whatever it wants. Inconvertibility thus implies infinite and limitless convertibility. This is explicit in ‘‘Timorus,’’ in a passage where Lichtenberg defends the Jewish converts from the accusation that they only did it for the sausages:

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Supposing however (Gesetzt aber), . . . that the sausages neither opened their eyes to the proof, nor even served as the occasion that led them to see the light, but instead that the they were the sole motivation of their conversion, then why is this so horrifying? I do not see it. (3:231)

Lichtenberg picks up this train of thought again a few paragraphs later: ‘‘Conversion (Bekehren) [amounts to] the same thing as inversion (Umkehren), that is, the end A is to be brought around to where B used to be’’ (3:231). The A and B are, as Lichtenberg shows in his analysis, body and soul. Lichtenberg psychological thinking supposes the interdependence of the body and soul, which implies that the only way to bring about an effective conversion or to decisively change someone’s opinion is by physical intervention, in effect, by violence. The spiritual motivations for a conversion—if any—are unknowable even to the individual (and certainly to outsiders), and reason is thus essentially excluded from the equation (even if all manner of rationalization is possible). Looking at things pragmatically, reason tends toward some kind of more or less arbitrary ‘‘settledness,’’ which, at the limit, includes the pseudomorphosis of Schwa¨rmerei, but would never be able to supply adequate grounds for conversions. The rule of reason and reasons (including all para- and pseudo-reasons and rationalizations) is predisposed toward fixity, and thus ‘‘authentic’’ conversion—whatever it might be—cannot be known within these parameters; if conversion exists, it must be extrarational (as the Christian tradition also teaches, from Paul to Augustine to Petrarch and beyond). On the basis of this understanding of conversion—which lies beyond all human means, ends, and reasons—the guillotine appears to Lichtenberg as the ultimate conversion machine: ‘‘In past conversions, people tried to get rid of the opinion without actually touching the head; in France they now proceed more directly, removing the opinion along with the head’’ (K(2)155). The futility of conversion is implied by its impossibility, but rather than braking the conversion economy (as tolerance would demand), the apparent futility of conversion may only radicalize the problem. The French Revolution does not represent a fundamental change in this regard, but only an intensification. Even before the Revolution, in a fragment probably from the end of 1775, Lichtenberg’s underlying thesis was still the same: When one considers that the human being consists of body and soul, and that the latter possesses thousands of ways of creeping into the former and hiding

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itself there, whereas the former tries in vain to creep into the latter, for this reason, in my view, the way in which Charles V sought to enforce the interim is always the best way of propagating opinions. With a handful of soldiers it is possible to propagate much more truth in a country than with a handful of books, and the red religion has always appeared to me to reason in such psychological matters with a clarity that no others have been able to achieve. . . . And since man is half ape and half angel, and the ape always goes wherever the angel wants to go and vice versa, therefore it makes no difference which of the two sides receives the impact. Satellite and planet (Trabant und Haupt-Planet). A handful soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments. (E96)

These authoritarian consequences may be ominous, or at least cynical, but they also show that, even before the Revolution, Lichtenberg had no illusions—the general illusion of the Enlightenment described by Koselleck and discussed in my chapter 2—that reason will simply triumph and rule by itself automatically and without violence. By describing a continuum of mind and body, Lichtenberg also does not draw an essential distinction between means and ends. Reason is the battlefield as much as the actual battles are wars of reasons. Thus, more than ten years before the Revolution, Lichtenberg in a sense foresees the nexus of terror and ideology that would become definitive in the coming epoch. If unconvertibility is the norm and modus of the opinion system, then nonviolent ‘‘persuasion,’’ according to its systematic aim, contains the same violence and tendency toward annihilation as the more ‘‘direct’’ means of the guillotine. But Lichtenberg advocates neither the direct elimination of unorthodox opinions nor the more subtle and impractical attempts of Enlightenment reason to bring about the same ends. Whenever the unsystematic Schwa¨rmer come into conflict with the authority claims of systematic reason, Lichtenberg’s sympathies clearly reside with the former. Even his comical presentation of Schwa¨rmerei shows this. And more broadly, in the framework of the history of religion and its relation to reason, Lichtenberg appears as a defender of everything that the emergent (and latently Christian) Enlightenment orthodoxy of history would see as surpassed and obsolete. This position may be a result of his experience as a writer of Sudelbu¨cher, which gives him an intimate understanding of the limitations of the impulse toward the future systematic annihilation of past errors. He also does not seem to have much vested in the idea of historical progress: everything, including supposedly superior systems that have arisen in the

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past and which will continue to arise, will all always remain equally historically surpassable. ‘‘Better systems’’ are therefore not absolutely superior or of a fundamentally different order than systems that are judged to be simply wrong. Systems as such, for Lichtenberg, are only proto-systems and pseudo-systems, para-systems and post-systems, system shells or system corpses, and it is only as such that they are even epistemologically accessible. A universal system—a true system—if there ever were (to be) one, would be, according to this negative system theology, essentially unknowable.25 Only the relation, interrelation, relativity, and relativism of systems make it possible to even differentiate between them. The potential of both reason and Schwa¨rmerei to achieve its systematic ends by force of illegitimately prescriptive and even violent means was more apparent to Lichtenberg than it was to many of his contemporaries. He crucially does not differentiate between Schwa¨rmerei and the analogous threat posed by ‘‘legitimate’’ science and reason. Rather than distinguishing between the two, he tends to draw parallels. According to a parenthetical remark in the Schwa¨rmerei essay, one such parallel is the development of specialized vocabularies: ‘‘You see, everything has its own lingo (neologisms, Kunstwo¨rter).’’ The aspirations of an overtaxed systematicity can be recognized in its language, not only in the case of Schwa¨rmer, but also in all technical terms and jargon, of which Lichtenberg is always highly skeptical. This can perhaps be best observed, on the one hand, in his furious criticism of the new system of chemical nomenclatures and, at the other extreme, his dislike of much of the contemporary poetry and literature of his era. In the case of literature, Lichtenberg deplores the falsification of expression into stereotyped and conventional formulations. For him poetry, exactly like Sudelbuch writing, should be a place to experiment with new formulations, figures, and metaphors. Poetry has the right and privilege—so-called poetic license—to break with the formulaic and everyday use of language to hopefully discover new and better formulations. The vulgar and cliche´d ‘‘poetic’’ use of language is ultimately the main object of ridicule in Lichtenberg’s essay on Schwa¨rmerei. The conventions of poetic expression are no better than the conventional language people use to express they-know-not-what, ‘‘whenever one sees the people who are doing so very well (so recht wohl) whenever they find themselves among decent folk (unter guten Menschen), who become so light, so free in their heart (so leicht, so weit um die Brust) whenever they see Jupiter and all of the planets rolling

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by above them’’ (3:418). The point of this sarcastic characterization of the ‘‘appreciation’’ of nature is that the language of expression can take on a phantasmatic life of its own, becoming a kind of fetish that actually obscures the intent of expression, of saying something, of finding a more adequate name, metaphor, or description of reality. Naming—which is never ‘‘proper’’ for Lichtenberg—requires constant reformulation, renaming, and overnaming. Speaking means naming things in their quiddity, but this constant challenge to thought is forgotten and ignored as soon as the speaker resorts to prefabricated norms of expression, which in effect only express the expressions of others. In making this point, Lichtenberg also cites and varies a proverbial saying, thus ironically underscoring the severity of the dilemma: ‘‘the mouth runneth over with that of which the heart is not full’’ (3:417). The autonomy of normative reason expresses itself (regardless of its ultimate rationality) as a false—merely conventional—autonomy of language. Lichtenberg’s critique of this formalizing tendency of conventional language demands a constant recognition of the absence of a one-to-one relation between words and things. But words can themselves become things—purely instrumental self-affirming symbols—as soon as the difference is forgotten. The effective belief in the one-to-one relation leads to a confusion of words and things, producing a form of linguistic reification that imagines them as interchangeable, giving rise to a merely apparent autonomy that is in fact an autoaffective linguistic illusion that posits its own truth—the uncertain truth of a formula—in the place of an increasingly unrecognized and distorted reality. The point of language as language for Lichtenberg, as opposed to language as system, is to rupture its conventional and only apparently systematic veil by the constant metaphorical-analogical reconstellation of the possible relations that language expresses (and always tends to mistake and overspecify). In an early waste book entry, the objection to stereotyped idioms was supplemented with a programmatic admonishment: ‘‘Shakespeare frequently distinguishes himself in his expressions (in seinen Ausdru¨cken) by not so easily choosing metaphors that are already received in everyday life, such as for example the motivation (der Triebfeder), which G . . . , but instead selects an image, specially pertaining to precisely the matter at hand’’ (A84). The creation of new understandings (as well as the correlated possibility of ‘‘distinguishing one’s self’’) both depend on an existential analytic that leads to the production of new metaphors. This process of re-metaphorization is

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elsewhere described by Lichtenberg—in yet another new metaphor—as a dechanneling (Entkanalisierung) and rechanneling (Neukanalisierung) of language: ‘‘Whenever one uses an old word, it often moves along in the channel according to the understanding that the ABC-book has dug for it, but a metaphor makes a new channel for itself, and often breaks right through. ⬍the use of metaphor⬎ (Nutzen der Metaphern)’’ (F116).26 Neologism in itself is therefore not the problem, but rather paleonymy—except that new words may wear out even more quickly than old ones. In the idea of metaphor, Lichtenberg develops a parallel understanding of true science and true literature, both of which would be defined as a program of perpetual neologism. Lichtenberg’s resistance to Lavoisier’s new systematic nomenclature in the field of chemistry relies on the same argument as his attacks on merely conventional expressions in poetry. The decisive sentence of Lichtenberg’s protest against Lavoisier’s nomenclature appears in various formulations: ‘‘Hypotheses are recommendations, but names are decrees (Hypothesen sind Gutachten, aber Namen sind Dektrete)’’ (J(2)1692). Also, clearly with Lavoisier in mind: ‘‘The experiments (Versuche) are a work of genius, it is only the names that are a work of vanity (Eitelkeit)’’ (J(2)1700). And, in another note: ‘‘The manifesto-quality of nomenclatures (Das Manifestma¨ßige in der Nomenklatur)’’ (J(2)1714), and ‘‘what kind of an empty babble (Gerede) there would be in the world, if one sought to entirely change the names of things into their definitions!’’ (J(2)1806). The word or ‘‘name,’’ as Lichtenberg puts it in K19, should not contain its own definition, but should always be an arbitrary sign with the definition as a variable; collapsing this signifying structure into a fixed identity makes future change and revision difficult or impossible. For Lichtenberg, Lavoisier’s nomenclature attempts, in effect, to institute its theory at the level of language. Lichtenberg compares this hyper-rationalizing nomenclature of French chemistry to the politically motivated renaming of places that occurred after the French Revolution. ‘‘Hypotheses are recommendations, nomenclatures are mandates’’ (K20). According to Geoffrey Winthrop-Young’s thesis,27 Lichtenberg was an antireformist in scientific, literary, and political realms. In this reading, Lichtenberg believed in sticking to the old words and old forms. Though this may have a certain qualified accuracy, and it may have proven true in effect, Lichtenberg’s apparent antireformism and anti-Revolutionary stance is clearly not the result of a fundamental conservatism but of his radical

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conception of the metaphorical status of all language. It must also be emphasized that this understanding resists both the idea of language as a free play of signification (without reference empirical objects) and the tautological claim of scientific nomenclatures to totalize the process of signification within a posited identity of sign and signified. Beyond the technical aspects, Lichtenberg’s own self-stylization—which is in a sense all that matters when it comes to a superficial descriptor like ‘‘revolutionary’’ or ‘‘conservative’’—is radically and explicitly antiauthoritarian and Protestant (without necessarily being reformist). Lichtenberg writes, for example, in a fragment that appears in close proximity to the fragments on Lavoisier: ‘‘Fighting against authorities is all very well, if I am not mistaken the Catholics used this argument. And even if the Protestant doctrine were driven back within the walls of Wittenberg, I would nonetheless say that the protest. [that is, the Protestant religion] is still better’’ (J(2)1722). The abbreviation of the protestant religion to mere protest is important here because Lichtenberg appears willing to dispense with the actual religion and reduce it to its essence of universal protest. Protest as such represents an autonomous validity claim, regardless of what it protests against and regardless of its revolutionary or reformist success or failure. At the limit, this infinitization of protest makes ‘‘victorious’’ protest unthinkable: protest can only be a protest ad infinitum; it can only be legitimate and meaningful if it protests authority. As soon as it becomes an authority, it is no longer a protest. On this basis, Lichtenberg’s position against Lavoisier’s system of nomenclature may appear too dogmatic, too declarative, too sweeping. Perhaps he was himself seduced by a potentially false analogy between the various fields in which naming, nomenclature, and language reform played a role. Regardless, his emphatic resistance to strict nomenclatures in every form is consistently motivated by the desire to keep artificial terminologies from becoming completely identical with the things themselves (or completely divorced from them, so that the terms themselves becoming reified as things), which amounts to the same thing in either case. For Lichtenberg, in literature as in science, such a purity of reference amounts to nonreference, a mere illusion of reference, which he calls ‘‘nonsense’’ (Gerede)—pure system babble. He argues that ‘‘theories,’’ including the literature’s metaphorical models, must be as open as possible to metaphorical remodeling, whereas the attempt to decree a terminology as a closed system and a dead universal eternity is completely antiscientific. Lichtenberg seeks to safeguard the merely hypothetical status of theories against a prescriptive

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systematicity that would mistake hypotheses for applicable and actionable results. Lichtenberg’s ethical antisystem thus implies a hypothetical ban on every form of decisive institution and on every kind of application or enforcement (Durchsetzung) of norms (which are always only provisional, providing insufficient reason for forced propagation). Regardless of whether Lichtenberg’s actual applications of this principle in the fields of poetry, science, and politics were finally ‘‘correct’’—or whether they were only contrary to the retrospectively validated judgments of a teleologically structured posterity—is still open to debate. In any case, his antireformism is clearly not the result of a fundamental conservatism but of a critique of the possible basis of systematic reform. For Lichtenberg, the form of reform itself is essentially conservative because it is based on a systematic institution of fixed (terminological and expressive) structures, which have the effect of minimizing and precircumscribing future change and development. Such fully determinate systems also, perhaps most importantly for Lichtenberg, have the side effect of making autonomous thought impossible. If thought is defined by the individual’s ability to constantly and variously bridge heterogeneous analogical systems with new and hopefully better metaphors, then the institution of strict nomenclatures—fixed expressions of fixed relations—removes the individual from the equation. Lichtenberg sees this as a hyperauthoritarian feudalization of knowledge, which eliminates the individual as a free, ethical, and inventive subject and turns it into an entirely passive and impersonal systemic factor. Thus the Enlightenment’s hopes of universalizing freedom (of thought) by the expansion of science and education—the more it actually succeeds in accomplishing this program—may tend to progressively undermine itself. Categorical nomenclature, like totalitarian and revolutionary regimes, eliminates the individual and its opinion along with the possibility of a progress that would be progress beyond the present system or the present theory. Nomenclatures, words that are taken to unambiguously refer to things rather than serving as merely functional and provisional signs, can add fuel to a system of unstoppable and self-instituting pseudo-systems, which, like those of the Schwa¨rmer, have closed off their own hopes for revision and reevaluation. For Lichtenberg, the Revolution—both political and chemical—is not actually revolutionary but is already the counterrevolution and the counterreformation, at least in the objectives of its language politics. The Revolution was not a radical break—as his friend Georg Forster imagined—nor

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did it represent, as in Novalis’ reading of events, the hope of a new counterreformation that would finally be successful, but for Lichtenberg it was instead a prime example of the main stream of a history that is still and always has been essentially ‘‘catholic’’ in its basis in the ideas of belief and authority. It was against the intensification and sublimation of authority that Lichtenberg wished to register his individual protest, in full awareness of its futility. Lichtenberg protests, from a worldly rather than religious point of view, against what he sees as the increasing predominance of a posterity system whose arrival was greeted so enthusiastically by his contemporaries (with Moses Mendelssohn as a lone exception). Lichtenberg’s most emphatic utterance on this point appears in another fragment from Sudelbuch J; this text also noteworthy for its use of the word opinions (Meinungen) to disparagingly refer to what would otherwise be called theories: Opinions will follow opinions for as long as the world still stands, and therefore philosophical economy demands that the expenditure of this always fearful shift (Wechsel) be made as minimal as possible; this way however [presumably: through new nomenclatures like Lavoisier’s], with every change of opinion we are left with the whole useless terminological shell hanging around our necks (das ganze unnu¨tze Wo¨rter-Geha¨use). We already have a language though which we can make ourselves completely comprehensible! Don’t we want, after all of the endless exchanges (Wechsel), to come out smarter (klu¨ger) in the end? To pay attention to these attempts (Versuche)—to pay attention to these signs of the times (Zeichen der Zeit)—is indeed also philosophy, and that I also think that it will bring honor to take note of it already now, in the present [i.e. before the endless paradigmshifts of science have actually played themselves out]. If I were the only one, or even the first to remark on it, I would be much more proud of this of all of French chemistry. Posterity (die Nachwelt) will be more encumbered with such foolishness, when it discovers by necessity what can be foreseen now with a little philosophy. It must come down to it in the end. (Es muß am Ende dazu kommen.) Now perhaps there are only a few who do not let themselves be blinded, but in the end, when it is no longer be bearable, it will be everyone. I would rather that this opinion of mine should make it into posterity than anything else.—In the hundredth generation, they will have to take note of what we could have noticed already in the third—at least [I have made] a note of protest. For what can be impossible for the current (Strom) of the crowd? Hypotheses are recommendations, but names are decrees. (J(2)1691, Lichtenberg’s emphases)

How is it possible to read a text that asks for, invokes, manipulates, and partially preempts its own reception? How does one receive a text that

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speaks against the very posterity to which it also appeals as the organ of its own reception? One can, it seems, hardly read such a text—especially in an age when there are no emissaries from God anymore—that is shameless enough to attempt to receive its own reception in self-stylized prophetic fashion, denouncing posterity in the name of an impossible counterposterity. More simply, it could be mere resentment, or, to use a conventional metaphor: sour grapes. Another problem may be that Lichtenberg’s thesis here does not seem hypothetical enough. He claims to know the outcome in advance, which makes his ‘‘reception-theory’’ look more like a disgruntled ‘‘I told you so’’ before the fact of a history that can only come to the same conclusions after the fact. But did history actually ‘‘prove him right’’ as it proved itself wrong? This is probably still unclear, but Lichtenberg’s resentment is obvious enough—at least from the point of view of the posterity of a science that still believes that it has sufficiently secured and justified its basic terms and underlying models, including their revisability and correctability. On the other hand, in the larger scheme of things—as far as ‘‘science’’ is conceived here as only a small subsection of a larger historical scheme ruled by ‘‘opinions’’—it may be that Lichtenberg’s argument can be read to diagnose the same problematic interrelation of ‘‘structure, sign and play,’’ which Derrida also isolated several generations later.28 In this case, the ultimate verdict is definitely not in yet because whatever may finally emerge from the endless turnover in theories, systems, and disciplines—and whether or not anyone gets smarter in the end—will always remain to be seen. The millennial timeframe that Lichtenberg has in mind leaves room, and it is doubtful that the present perspective is more certain than his, but since the impasses that he foresaw are patently more extenuated, his individualized advocacy of a kind of system pluralism and theory pluralism (under the broad umbrella of ‘‘metaphor’’) may also be of increased relevance. In situating Lichtenberg’s prognostication, it is also important to view his comments within a subproject of Enlightenment philosophy, starting with Leibniz and Descartes, to produce a universal nomenclature with the scientific precision of mathematical symbols. Within this horizon, Blumenberg’s Metaphorology represents the first (rather late) attempt to systematize Lichtenberg’s early insight. Lichtenberg realizes, casting himself as Cassandra, that his argument is destined to be overlooked until it is too late. The protest is thus a mere and mute protest, but Lichtenberg is at least

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proud to have discovered it early, at precisely this time, near the end of his life at the end of the eighteenth century. Thus, in the inception phase of an epochal project, which attempts to design a system of science based on nomenclatures, Lichtenberg designates this project itself as an experiment (Versuch). Lavoisier’s system, among the first and most extreme efforts at strict terminologization, is ‘‘a sign of the times.’’ Itself an experiment, the ultimate results of the resultant terminologies can only be known through the trial and error of future generations. But Lichtenberg nevertheless claims that the results are already foreseeable. The endeavor of terminologization is a risky experiment because humanity itself is the final object of the experiment. As an experiment, terminologization also predefines the range of its own results without considering the wider sphere of its unintended consequences. This experiment—without any controls—is structurally analogous to the pseudo-rationalizations of the Schwa¨rmer; Lichtenberg sees the two as a part of the same history (not in opposition, which is still the more typical reading), which is why his own time may provide a unique vantage point for predicting their shared outcomes with the result that the scientific ‘‘success’’ of conceptual systems will be worse than their failures (in cases of Schwa¨rmerei). The terminological experiment will fail, especially in its success; this can be seen already in 1790, but its failure will make itself felt later on. Especially later in his life, Lichtenberg seems to become deeply concerned that the settledness of the individual (and also of the collective) will lead to a dead end, an end that is everywhere being aggressively pursued in the name of a false—futile, fatal, predetermined, unfree, and selffulfilling—systematic consistency. This kind of posited, positive consistency tends to reproduce itself, to endure regardless of its validity—despite whatever validity it may have—according to the ‘‘normative power of the factual.’’ Systematic consistency blindly creates, reproduces and maintains order, its own order (K(2)109, L11, J1160), regardless of the consequences. Fragment L11, arguing through the classical authority of a Cicero citation, represents a particularly compelling formulation of this point: It is sad when one finally arrives in one’s opinions at the situation of which Cicero (Quaestionem Tusculanarum Lib. 2) said: qui ceris destinatisque sententiis addicti et consecrati sunt, ut etiam, que non probat, cogantur defendere. (For this is suffered with impatience only by those who are, so to speak, sworn and sold to certain determinate and fixed points of view and through the resultant necessity

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are forced to defend positions that they do not want to support for the sake of being consequential.) (L11, translation based on the German)

This outcome within the mental life of the individual provides the model for Lichtenberg’s philosophy of history (and prognosticated history of philosophy). Everything that is fixed and decided is also exhausted and exhausting. Under these conditions, the labor of undoing these systems becomes a Herculean task of autonomous thought (addressed in the next section). Between the drive to systematization and the antisystematic impulses that also originate from the individual, Lichtenberg cannot finally decide whether total systematic reason will finally triumph over ‘‘eternal alternation.’’ But even his ‘‘protest’’ tends to emphasize the inevitability of the latter (despite the attempts of the former). It is also far from clear what ‘‘we’’ will become as a result of this two-sided dynamic. The fatal side, the side of systems, implies that a definitive answer can only come as a fait accompli after the fact. The other side adopts a view, perhaps most similar to that of Hamann among Lichtenberg’s contemporaries, of all rationalistsystematic intentions as only passing phases—all-too-human vanities. Also in the context of nomenclature, Lichtenberg writes ‘‘the nonsensical disappears on its own, and that which nature simply rejects does not grow back’’ (K21). But this sentence only inverts the fatalism while it suggests the conditions for the ultimate success of the experiment, but it is difficult to take this providential hope too seriously—at least not anymore—in a time when the infernal pseudo-systematic noise of opinions and theories, of competing rationalisms, fanaticisms, political theologies, metastasizing pseudomorphoses of ‘‘reason,’’ continues unabated. Despite his pessimism, Lichtenberg holds onto some hope—if only as a figure of thought meant to be operative in the very long term—which he hopes to install within and against the posterity system, as a possibility that Enlightenment and its dialectics will finally burn themselves out and leave behind a more livable conception of life. This hope, which comes dangerously close to a hope of deconstruction,29 bets on the actual underlying asystemacity of language and of the posterity system as well. The short rhyme cited at the top of ‘‘Timorus’’ condenses the point: Laßt den Teufel brummen, Er muß doch verstummen. (3:209) Let the devil buzz and hoot, In the end he must go mute.

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With the rise of science and reason, the labor of autonomous thought no longer takes place under the shadow of an oppressive tradition. The latter is freed up by Selbstdenken because it allows the tradition to be taken selectively and according to its usefulness, providing nourishment for thought as a limitless possibility of thinking or being differently in an era of increasing systemic conformism. What makes this Selbstdenken a melancholy science is thus also the condition of its possibility. Autonomous thought occurs within and under the shadow of systematic claims to authority, which are no longer held by any single tradition per se, but within concrete institutions and systematically reproduced discourses. From this perspective (more Koselleck than Habermas), the Enlightenment is not some bygone era of a blossoming public sphere of free discourse, but rather the moment of intensification of a shadow that reaches up to the present era. Discourse itself may proliferate here, but the proliferation itself proves nothing. The actual freedom of discourse and the freedom of the thoughts behind it are only a subordinate factor within the apparently ubiquitous (though in fact historically specific) opinion system. Within this system, as Lichtenberg was the first to point out, the relative freedom of discourse becomes more and more circumscribed by growing systemic and systematic constraints and compulsions, which figure and prefigure the content and dynamics of discourse itself through and through. In making the hypothesis the ultimate category of true science, Lichtenberg attempts to salvage something for sheer opinion, which, though it cannot really stop the advance of new absolutisms, might at least be able to hold its ground within them. He sides absolutely—even if only as a ‘‘protest’’—with the ongoing thinkability of thoughts over the final validity of the results.

Think for Yourself III: Genius and the Opinion System In closing I would like to recall one more time, that I do not wish to improve, nor to innovate, but merely to excuse (entschuldigen). l i c h t e n b e r g , ‘‘Speech of the Number Eight’’ (3:468)

Based on the virtuality that Lichtenberg presupposes of all human systems, all of which are ultimately only second order representations—in effect language, models, metaphors—the universalism of reason can at best

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be taken as an unenforceable cognitive ideal, while in reality everyone has their own particular ‘‘system.’’ Reason must remain equally out of reach for everyone, if it is not to become instrumentalized in the competition of reasons, and therefore Lichtenberg’s version of the collective opinion system, as the general and common intersubjective macrosystem, the economizer of individual opinions and beliefs, must also be an open system. This means that the final systematicity of the posterity system—or its lack thereof—will always remain to be seen. To the extent that posterity always circularly awaits its own verdict upon itself, it is not a closed or finished system, and history has not yet reached its end. Only posterity itself can prove whether there was a posterity system or not. It is only in this absence of the final judgment of a definitive posterity that actual posterities can formulate themselves, in the back and forth of opinions. What differentiates Lichtenberg from many of his contemporaries (and other thinkers of the modern era) is that his ‘‘system’’ lacks the expectation that it will prove to have been systematic and thus remains radically unguaranteed. ‘‘Systems’’ are only a human experiment, and every system, including this one—the one that tries to predicate the opinion system as system—is sheer opinion, an artificial and provisional representation. But the opinion system as posterity system must have some ability to structure and give outlet to the opinions of individuals, or else it would be completely out of line with its own concept. The ego, with its beliefs and opinions, must at least have the illusion of participation within some kind of collective (if not universal) horizon, without which thoughts would not even begin to be able to (oppositionally and occasionally) formulate themselves. As long as opinion and belief continue to differ amongst themselves—only nominally distinct—their ambiguity will continue to define an inner conflict between the systematic and the asystematic, which will also be reflected as an internal crisis within the collective system, which will thus always fall short of its ideal of systematic asystematicity. But it is thereby left open in terms of its possible or impossible systematicity. Belief cannot be fully expunged from opinion, just as the ‘‘I,’’ even once it has been recognized as a fiction—a collective singular and a merely practical postulate— still cannot be totally given up to the much more real and ubiquitous id (es). The ‘‘I’’ and its opinion—id’s opinion—will always be marked by the scar of individuation. According to fragment G(2)86, ‘‘the most healthy and

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beautiful, the most regularly constructed people are those who take everything in stride (sich alles gefallen lassen). As soon someone has an affliction, he also has his own opinion (eine eigne Meinung).’’ This aphorism inverts the opposition of passive and active, and reverses their conventional valuation. Passivity in one’s opinions, to the point of being completely imperturbable and having no opinion at all (sich alles gefallen lassen), does not look like a bad thing (if only it were possible), whereas the active and opinionated ego is interpreted as the psychological effect of a passively endured affliction (Gebrechen), which produces the misguided belief in one’s own opinion as a kind of resentment or compensation. The ego in its entirety and all of its activities are passive because it and its opinions are generated from a source that it has no access to or control over. ‘‘Health and beauty,’’ on the other hand—unmarred naturalness—are attributed to those who have no opinion and no ego at all, ‘‘who are amenable to everything’’ without ever identifying or individuating. This contrast is also implicitly coded as an opposition between opinion as masculine vice and ‘‘naturalness’’ as a feminine virtue. ‘‘Natural,’’ ‘‘feminine,’’ opinionless passivity is favored over egocentric masculine opinion (also essentially passive, but compensatory), which takes the form of an unjustified self-assertion, the overcompensation for an ‘‘affliction.’’ Lichtenberg locates this affliction in the place of the id: ‘‘It’’ is the failure of memory—which may also remember too much—and the resulting impotence in the face of an unsafe, unkind, and uncertain world. Both behavioral types can be equally characterized as passive and unfree, but Lichtenberg clearly idealizes the mode (figured as feminine) that lets everything pass over it. If such an attitude toward the world were possible—in the cosmos of literature, neither Job nor Faust would fit the bill, but perhaps Billy Budd—it would either be a pure semblance or pure undifferentiated id. Though Lichtenberg may imagine that he has met some people who approximate of this ideal condition, it is clear from the rest of his writing that this perfect and natural passivity is nothing but an ideal and does not reflect of his understanding of the actual operation of the opinion system. Because of the specific economies of memory and knowledge (presented above), being ‘‘amenable to everything’’ is not an option. Thus, in reality, everyone is practically bound to an ‘‘I’’ that is only really a postulate but is inevitably overstated and attributed with a phantom life of its own, as well as its ‘‘own’’ opinions.

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The inner systematicity of a system that is collectively ubiquitous (which does not allow belief to be entirely factored out) is coterminous with the pseudo-systematicity of the ‘‘I.’’ For Lichtenberg, the opinion system is supposed as both the problem and the solution, the place of the illegitimate self-assertion of the ‘‘I’’ and its suspension of this illegitimacy in the recognition of the provisionality of its own position and its origins. The ‘‘I’’ is inevitable, just as it is equally inevitable that it will end up holding some opinions, but because these opinions not uniquely its own, they must be met with irony rather than emphatic belief. In entry C194 (perhaps from January 1773), one of several in which Lichtenberg speaks of a fictive ultimate ‘‘council of humanity’’ (Rat der Menschen), he postulates such a suspension of belief as the minimal criterion of genius. The ‘‘usual mind’’ (der gewo¨hnliche Kopf ), on the other hand, ‘‘always conforms to the prevailing opinion and the prevailing fashion . . . he behaves passively (leidend) in everything.’’ In strong apparent contradiction with the ‘‘affliction’’ hypothesis, this sentence reaches the same judgment as Fichte—in only slightly less critical terms—by identifying opinion as a completely passive uncritical conformism. But Lichtenberg also advocates a positive, active conception of opinion, which, predictably and in a sense also conventionally, refuses to accommodate itself to opinion as a mere fashion or social norm. By actively resisting and disbelieving the opinions of others, one must make an effort avoid credulous participation. But this activity can formulate itself by a provisional negation and only within the confines of a psychological—egological and compensatory—passivity motivated by an underlying lack. C194 thus continues: ‘‘It is constantly occurring to the great genius (dem großen Genie fa¨llt u¨berall ein): could not this too be false? He never gives his vote (Stimme) with¨ berlegung).’’ Great genius or no, this is recognizably out consideration (U the same reformist and autoreformist model of autonomous thought advocated by Locke, which Lichtenberg gives a specifically topical orientation: ‘‘Could not even this system, including my ‘‘own’’ system, be false?’’ The genius’ relation to opinion, systematically antisystematic, can never come to rest, as is evident in the two words: ‘‘even this,’’ which stand for ad infinitum. Another central aspect here, easily overlooked, is that the matter of genius should arise at all in a consideration of the opinion system. Lichtenberg explains genius rather clinically, more or less sociologically, not as the external ‘‘in-spiration’’ of some sort of spirit (Genius), but instead links it to the

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opinion system. Defining genius in this way also has the advantage of applying the idea of genius (like the opinion system) very broadly, not just to the arts, but to all areas of human endeavor. From this perspective, genius stands for an alternate relation to systems in general; ‘‘genius’’ defines the preexisting possibility of all systems to be de- and resystematized, and ‘‘the genius’’ only actualizes this potential. This very circumspect approach to what is often taken for ‘‘originality’’ leads to an additional consequence: Lichtenberg coordinates the conceptually disparate terms of the ‘‘spontaneous idea’’ (Einfall) and ‘‘consideration’’ (Uberlegung), both of which characterize the intellectual praxis of the genius. This methodical coordination of the ad hoc with the reflective is also characteristic of the writing of Sudelbu¨cher. Inspiration and consideration combine to bring together incompatible habits of thought. Einfall, on the one hand, may tend to be trivial and contingent, dependent upon the accidental association of whatever it re¨ berlegung, by contrast, may tend to become ceives; the more measured U ponderous, overly captivated with its own attempts to come to terms with its objects and capture them within more or less prefabricated topical and philosophical understandings. This dilemma circumscribes the situation of the genius, to whom it constantly ‘‘occurs’’ that he must reconsider everything (and just not everything all at once, but everything individually, in its quiddity). Everything that is unconsidered and insufficiently considered, everything that is uncertain and possibly false in every discursive formation, constantly strikes the genius. But how does this kind of more or less negative skepticism produce genius and works of genius in any positive or productive sense? The skeptical method of genius opens up a space for reinvention in everything that had appeared to be fixed and systematic. The genius is thus characterized by a minimum of belief and minimal respect for authority (the decisive structuring factors for the reproduction of ‘‘systems’’). In relating to existing systems, the genius systematically disbelieves, thereby revealing the contingency of the existing system and opening the way for new systems. Genius is thus only secondarily an attribute of individuals or works. The works themselves and the lives of the ones who made them would always to some degree represent a new institution and a new system, whereas the primary aspect of genius lies in its possibility, its latency within all ‘‘systems’’ as their para-systemic a priori. A consequence of this—set in terms of a possible philosophy of history or of a ‘‘demystification’’ thesis in

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the style of Max Weber—would be that the more truly systematic life becomes (or is believed to have become), the less room there for geniuses. The genius experiences systems according to their ability to be rendered inoperative, to be neutralized and rethought.30 The potential of genius lies in its ability to initiate the shutdown of all systems and every authority claim; art only represents this. By way of this figure of genius, which defines the system of the relativization and corrosion of all possible systems, Lichtenberg also views the opinion system as (relatively) absolute. According to this conception he indeed views it as much more absolute than any particular opinions system or beliefs system of the individual. The absoluteness of the latter would be limited a priori by its particular—merely relative— systematicity within and as a variation of existing norms (which are also ‘‘systems’’ in Lichtenberg’s sense). The collective opinion system is a system of systems whose actual systematicity remains dubious or at least— necessarily and constitutively—undecided. Without the belief in one’s thoughts, in their truth, or in the possibility of their general validity, the only other possible measure of thought is functional utility, observable in the realm of its effects. Entry C194 continues with an explication of this functionalist model: ‘‘I knew a man of great talents whose entire opinions-system, just like his supply of furniture, distinguished itself by a particular order and functionality (Brauchbarkeit); he did not take anything into his house for which he did not see the use (Nutzen); to acquire something just because others had it was impossible for him.’’ Here, as in the analogy of eating and digestion discussed above, the individual’s opinions system is systematic to the extent that it represents a method of selective acquisition. This practice of bricolage is not original in any absolute sense, and its value is merely that of ‘‘usefulness,’’ ‘‘use,’’ and ‘‘applicability.’’ To follow the analogy: most individuals go around passively, mimetically, and reflexively—that is, methodically and systematically— acquiring mental white elephants, junk, objects for which they have no use, whereas the truly methodical thinker, the ‘‘genius,’’ knows to assess heterogeneous thoughts and make them work. The genius, so to speak, allows himself the luxury of using filters of his own design, rather than merely taking preexisting ‘‘systems’’ at face value. The emphasis on ‘‘usefulness’’ also marks a shift away from the initial terrain of Lichtenberg’s consideration: the standard of considered acquisition, ¨ berlegung, appears to have only though it seems to follow from the idea of U

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a minimal analogical connection to the method of the constant negation (Einfall), and the functionalist criterion of Brauchbarkeit is something else ¨ berlegung?—conceives again. The first step in the argument—Einfall or U the relation to the individual from the point of view of traditions; the ‘‘genius’’ is constantly receiving and in a sense inheriting all manner of input ¨ berlieferung), which may also serve as the constant, more or less acciden(U tal, occasion for the thought that this foreign matter should be fundamentally reconsidered. Here the individual finds itself in the dative case (dem großen Genie) as a passive recipient. But in the next step of utility, the same relation is recast in terms of individual practice, which includes specific reactions and activities that may be undertaken. Now the individual appears in the subject position, the nominative case, with the dative cast into a subordinate clause. Between these positions, Lichtenberg sketches a practical and linguistic aporia: two incompatible perspectives are delineated, juxtaposed, inverted, but the unifying transition between the two analogic streams remains obscure. As if aware of this latent rupture in his train of thought, Lichtenberg’s next sentence picks up the metaphor of the imaginary grand council (Rat), while continuing with his anecdote of ‘‘talented man’’: ‘‘He thought, it has been decided without me, that it should be thus, but perhaps it would have been decided differently if I had been there’’ (C194). This argumentative shift, which attempts to reconnect the divergent perspectives introduced, represents a provisional suspension of every posterity that is imagined as ubiquitous, overwhelming, and concretely systematic in its discursive effects. The personal presence of one individual might have changed everything. The idea of posterity itself must always be reconsidered according to its de-totalizing aspect and the criterion of ‘‘usefulness,’’ which can only be known retrospectively and perspectivally, ethically but not morally (at least not in the first instance). Usefulness always implies a particular time, place, and circumstance. Things may prove to be useful, but only from a certain perspective or according to a certain set of ends. The ends may be invalidated, which means that usefulness can only be a relative standard. More concretely, Lichtenberg writes in G(2)183: ‘‘The first American who discovered Columbus made an unfortunate discovery.’’ Functionalism is essentially mobile and tends to destabilize the functional presuppositions upon which systems are based.

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The criterion of ‘‘usefulness’’ represents the limited and specific opportunity of an ethical reevaluation of a presupposed means–ends relation. In a wider sense, the question of Brauchbarkeit poses the question of the usefulness of the tradition itself from within this tradition, but from the narrow standpoint of the individual who asks: what does it mean to me? From this angle of usefulness, the individual is virtually relocated to the standpoint of posterity. The impulse toward continual reconsideration from the perspective of individuals motivates a constant reconfiguration of possibilities. This is the only framework that can provide some stability against both the rampant individualism of the inconsiderate self-assertion of opinion and the self-propagating spread of received opinion. All past resolutions are thus invalidated and redesignated with respect to their lack of individual resolutions. The metaphor of the council, which functions as a form of irony, a mode of self-differentiation and self-distancing, is presented in the subjunctive, which allows the subject’s virtual participation in the council. The counterfactual invocation of this ‘‘council’’ makes evident its deferral and its literal nonexistence, thereby underscoring the virtuality of all democratic form, which must always ultimately—within the limits of life, death, and history—defer itself to a posterity system that can only be represented as a corporate body that patently does not exist and never will. But the individual subject is only responsible before the virtual democracy and not before any real one. This subject defines itself by the hypothetical right to suspend any and every systematic and systemic authority—by its right of nonacquisition of conventional norms and the opinions of others. What above all distinguishes Lichtenberg from other authors treated in the present study is his refusal to take the posterity system itself completely seriously. His idea of a regulative posterity is a patently fictive invention, which therefore above all does not claim that any actual posterities function democratically or that their particular judgments are in any way final; and they are certainly not the product of any necessary historical law or universal reason that drives things forward. Posterity for Lichtenberg—as system of systems or figure of figures—can only be supposed virtually from the side of the individual, or else it will tend to become tautologically self-positing, self-reproducing, finally deterministic and suicidal. Lichtenberg’s metahistorical hope, therefore, is that the virtual positions of hypothetical thought will sustain themselves above and beyond the violent impositions

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of the hyper-rationalist version of science and enlightenment that can dangerously overlap with other kinds of authoritarian truth systems. At the end of the Sudelbuch entry C194, Lichtenberg considers the unpromising possibility of a completely static posterity, which he sees as the end and completion of the Enlightenment—still a long way off—in an enlightenment that will never be characterized by the absolute rule of reason, but only by a relative degree of systematic completion. Like the individual who is set in his opinions, this historical end state is also described as ‘‘settled,’’ ‘‘set,’’ gesetzt: Let thanks be given to these men [the geniuses], who, from time to time anyway, are able to shake things up again, when they are beginning to settle; our world is still too young for this; we cannot yet become Chinese. If all nations were entirely separated from each other, then they might each perhaps arrive, though with different degrees of perfection, at the sinological standstill.

This image—so there is no confusion—has little or nothing to do with China, except perhaps in the most banal sense in which Eurocentric perceptions are nevertheless capable of producing countermodels to Europe’s own self-stylization. What Lichtenberg describes here is the possibility of the European Enlightenment to achieve a completely static end, to change from a history of progress to a self-identical, perpetual system. True perfection (Vollkommenheit) does not have various degrees (Stufen), unless the sentence is understood as referring to humanity’s essential inability to achieve any true or ultimate perfection. Even the ‘‘perfection’’ through the progress of reason would only produce a relative state; it might produce a new ‘‘culture,’’ but it would only be a utopia to the extent that it is blinded to itself. Perfection thus does not mean absolute perfection but can only refer to an apparent ‘‘perfection’’ whose disavowed reality is merely standstill (Stillstand). The precondition for this stasis is international isolation, which may also stand for intersubjective and intellectual isolation. The concept of the political in this sense, even as a merely internal self-differentiation, also presupposes external differences (of opinion) and instances of difference, including but not limited to enmity. Static perfection is only plausible as long as things are viewed in isolation. The nations, completely separated from each other, may look like individua (in the sense of Lichtenberg’s ‘‘planet theory’’), but, as in the case of individuals, these individua are also infinitely divisible and internally differentiated. Read in this way, the planet

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theory does not imply that individual instances are monads, solipsistically out of touch with their others and their surroundings, but, to the contrary, it only means that intersubjective (or international) interactions will never be able to completely dissolve the differences. Only in the very end—also only virtual, if the opinion system is allowed to propagate an image of itself as closed and self-sufficient—does something resembling complete isolation take place. This outcome would be the culmination of a false totality that has made itself real. Even the tendencies in this direction must be avoided, in Lichtenberg’s view, even if this means following a different idea of systematicity and going against the current of a certain literalism of reason. Everyone remains alone, even if this isolation also has the character of a relation. ‘‘Progress’’ in this sense, which can only occur as radical analogical epiphanies (Einfa¨lle) if it is to avoid systematic expansionism, depends on the analogical relation (not a relation of identity) between individual and nation. The opinion system depends, in other words, on the euro- but polycentric, uni- but plurivocal, mono- but polytheistic, and perhaps completely contradictory and unviable conception of a nations system; it depends on the idea of nation as a model of individual particularism, even after the dissolution of the idea of the nation as a concrete reality. ‘‘The nations’’ in Lichtenberg’s understanding are not ‘‘completely separated’’ from one another, and to this extent they never were ‘‘nations’’—in the strict sense of original natality—at all. The inseparable togetherness of individuals, like that of ‘‘nations’’ (according to Lichtenberg’s now outdated metaphorical model) produces rejuvenating effects in their representation of insuperable difference—even at a late date in history. The fictive unity of nations, like that the individual, is only a postulated, retrospectively instituted, and decreed unity, which in both cases may appear as a debit or handicap to the extent that its determinations are irreversible. This determinism according to the national model only holds until the borders are lifted, perspectives are freed up, and differences (including language difference) come into play. This kind of unregulatable metaphorical—and literal—border crossing opens every ‘‘closed’’ system to uncontrollable analogization, re-metaphorization, and retranslation, which has the potential to simultaneously destroy and rejuvenate the old systemic edifice. This desystematizing effect is history for Lichtenberg, not so much thanks to the systematic or antisystematic efforts of individuals but, even before the individuals, thanks to the blank spots, the possibilities, the futures, and the latencies left open within the

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systems themselves. In this form and within this conception, the ‘‘European’’ system itself may still have potential. What is at stake is also nothing less than the making—and breaking—of individual epochs. Only in this constant division and subdivision of everything that is apparently ‘‘individual’’ can the divisions and differences that occur in the course of interactions be retrospectively transformed from their ‘‘-centric’’ state of isolation and polarization to reveal factual interdependencies. Lichtenberg’s hypothesis contains the implicit possibility that epochs are broken not so much through ‘‘advancement’’ or a systematic ‘‘progress’’ or logical consequence (which would only continue and deepen the current epoch), as out of the systemic exhaustion of painting oneself into a corner. This state of exhaustion is where genius comes in, as the deus ex machina that can rediscover and sublimate the chaos, the nonsense, and the nihilism of every infernal system. Lichtenberg, far removed from any eschatological expectations, even in the post-Revolutionary era, thought that the world and the Enlightenment were too young to forcefully enter the era of its maturity and old age. In a text that also seems to pertain to the status of the Sudelbu¨cher themselves, he thus writes: One great usefulness of writing is also that the opinion of one person and that which he says can be passed on to posterity (die Nachwelt) unfalsified. The tradition (die Tradition) takes something from every mouth through which it flows and can finally represent a matter in such a way (endlich eine Sache so vorstellen) that it becomes unrecognizeable (unkenntlich). It is a translation every single time. (Es ¨ bersetzung.) (H(2)130) ist allemal eine U

These three sentences come the closest to formulating Lichtenberg’s view of posterity as well as of his own place within it. It is also a view, as he implies, that he would like to pass on. But he does not wish for his opinions to be systematically canonized in a fixed dogmatic form or monumental image, but hopes rather to be able to continue to speak to and through posterity, more or less directly. He speaks to and of a posterity without any guarantees about its future existence, its form, or the form of his own reception within it. Every sidelong glance at posterity as if there were a grandiose, transfiguring, or transcendent posterity—a Fama, a final authority, a pantheon, a canon, some form of personal reincarnation—would be insincere, though there is no doubt, as this fragment also reflects, that these questions

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also preoccupied Lichtenberg. But rather than playing by the rules of a posterity system already geared toward ‘‘literary’’ fame, thereby implicitly recognizing the authority of this system, Lichtenberg prefers to doubt precisely this idea of a systematic posterity by addressing it directly and ironically personifying it. He attempts to see through its actual possible functions without idealizing or seriously personifying it, actively operating upon and within this posterity without accepting it as an unavoidable form that necessarily prescribes and privileges specific (communicative) forms, forums, or conventions. Lichtenberg projects a posterity in which the names may be forgotten, but in which representations and ideas (Vorstellungen) necessarily pass through the ‘‘mouths’’ and minds of individuals. In this posterity, there are no representative models or precursors (Vorbilder) that would be carried on and reproduced as such. The representations of opinion—figured here in a metaphor that mixes spoken language and writing—do not have a representational function (for example, in the sense of Carl Schmitt); they do not represent a tradition, a transcendence, or an identity, which they would claim to make concrete and visible, but instead are defined by their distortive function, changing and misrecognizing whatever is passed on. Though they may attempt to posit and represent a limited transcendence (in the sense of ‘‘transcendent ventriloquism’’), this merely intentional claim has no power over the fact that the representations of opinion are spectral because as soon as the opinion moves beyond the individual ‘‘speaker,’’ either in writing or by way of fama, then this speaker—living or dead, but virtually dead—is no longer in control of the initial representational intent and only continues to ‘‘speak’’ (in time but not in view of the transcendence of time) by proxy. Lichtenberg’s Sudelbu¨cher are usually read as a private compendium, but based on H130 it may appear that he at least considered the possibility of their posthumous reception, and thus, even in the waste books, some kind of posterity is still there as a virtual interlocutor and the measure of his thoughts. If this fragment is read as an implicit description of Lichtenberg’s writing in the Sudelbu¨cher, this would read their form as a dislocation of opinion and history, pursuing their own dynamic of posterity to produce a specific consequence—to produce a metaphorical margin between orality and textuality. But, according to the fragment’s first claim, it is precisely writing in its great ‘‘utility’’ that is the privileged locus of opinion variations,

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ideas written as if spoken and recorded in a form that at least makes it possible for them to be passed on. The second part of the fragment introjects a finite teleology of meaning—‘‘finally’’ (endlich)—into the individual iterative particles (‘‘eines,’’ ‘‘allemal’’), so that the opinions systems that emerges from the memories of individuals may generate infinite microepochal histories. This is always something less or other than a stable institution or a predictable program, but it also may at least partially help to tame the conflictual, violent, and schismatic possibilities of a competitively conceived opinion system. Under Lichtenberg’s ‘‘system,’’ the specificity of the individual viewpoint, rather than being brought to bear representationally for the sake of dominating others, has a better chance of formulating itself in terms of its real individuality (outside of the ‘‘political’’ pressure to identify, join, or conform). This system is ultimately a completely entropic nonsystem, an institution of lawless distortion, disfiguration, refiguration, and reconfiguration, which may or may not have any real weight in dayto-day political reality. But lacking such a supplementary nonsystem, this ‘‘reality’’ will continue to betray its own purposes and work toward highly destructive ends. The potential for ideological exploitation is also included within this distortive moment, but it can only become virulent when it is accompanied by the habit of thought called belief. The success of institutions and ideas is defined by how individuals act within them, and there can be no institutional structure or form of social organization that can entirely compensate for the possible instrumentalization of individual thoughts and potentials. The pressures of this instrumentalization are, in effect, what Lichtenberg’s opinions system seeks to counterbalance.

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afterword

The following is less a comprehensive conclusion than a short list of principal findings; they represent desiderata—sketches for future work—more than results. Perhaps the most significant and unexpected insight to emerge in the course of writing this book was the specific parallelism or structural analogy of public and private opinion. Both are, to follow Reinhart Koselleck’s formalization (analyzed in chapter 2), collective singulars. In the case of public opinion, this may not be surprising, but Lichtenberg’s analysis of the ‘‘I,’’ the ego cogito that thinks ‘‘I think’’ (in chapter 4), comparably defines the word I as a verbally unified collectivity, whose unity is merely ‘‘postulated’’—created and asserted—in the word I itself, which claims to represent an entire temporal (dis)continuum of disparate thoughts and functions. If both the public opinion and private opinions can be thus accurately described as collective singulars, certain consequences follow: there is no representable ‘‘universal,’’ no collective, except by way of the representations of collective singulars, which, at the limit, the more they claim to represent an identity, always also increasingly represent falsifications and disavowals. This idea of the collective singular—not coincidentally coming from Koselleck—implicitly confronts Schmitt’s synthetic and top-down idea of representation with an analytic of metaphor in the style of Lichtenberg. Schmitt favors the possibility of strong representations to create, fabricate, and be the realities that they represent, whereas Lichtenberg’s idea of science implies a cognitive practice that would always resist and see through modes of representation that posit a single term in the place of ‘‘a whole scale of phenomena.’’ Koselleck’s argument, following Lichtenberg and Schmitt, is that latter’s idea of representation creates unforeseeable political 239

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backlashes because of the representations of collective singulars that produce a kind of identitarian compulsion (otherwise known as ‘‘ideology,’’ on the way to totalitarianism) that becomes completely detached from even a minimal ability to (rationally) gauge either individual or collective interest. In this light, it is important to reiterate Koselleck’s early claim, from Critique and Crisis in the context of the French Revolution, that public opinion, often taken for the basis of democracy, is also the medium and the substance of the total state. Within the general categories of ‘‘representation’’ and ‘‘metaphor,’’ it would remain necessary to initiate a more technical reexamination of other modes. In particular, the opposition of symbol and allegory, which I address in only a fairly nonspecialized way, could be resituated in this context, starting with the most canonical figures: Goethe, Benjamin, and de Man. The results of such an investigation might not be entirely predictable, but I would emphasize the underlying commonality of problem that all of these authors share, which may become more sharply defined in the context of representation as it comes out of Schmitt, Koselleck, and Habermas. Despite specific differences in definition and valuation to be found in various theorizations of allegory and symbol, these differences are always based on an implicit politics of representation, which remains to be made more explicit. The terminology alone is frequently unclear or easily misunderstood. For example, I read Schmitt’s theory of representation as a theory of the political symbol, but his analysis shows that symbolism in this sense is allegorical, since it relies on personified ideas (Koselleck’s collective singulars). These are not allegories in Benjamin’s sense, who—though this would remain to be verified—tends to connect the idea of the symbol with Schmitt’s idea of representation (an artificiality posing as nature or being) whereas Benjamin’s idea of allegory emphasizes the materiality of actual representations, which cannot be synthesized into a fixed symbolic order. Thus, in Goethe’s Conversations of German Refugees (discussed in chapter 3), Karl is completely enamored of and enraptured with the personified goddess of liberty—a representation and a collective singular in the senses of Schmitt and Koselleck—but without the mediation of any specific representation or allegorical figuration (which would have the potential to interrupt mystical immediacy). What Koselleck calls ‘‘collective singulars,’’ the instruments of political symbolism, would be voided allegories for Benjamin; this difference can be seen in Benjamin’s ‘‘angel of history,’’ which refers to a specific

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image and attempts to counter the vague generality of the collective singular History with the specificity of a concrete representation. In summary, I would emphasize that symbol-allegory opposition itself is difficult to generalize, but entirely depends on how it is meant in the specific context. In Conversations of German Refugees, for example (which also may not be entirely typical for Goethe’s later theorizations), symbol and allegory do not appear as a strict opposition, but as moments on a continuum: Karl’s love of the collective singular Liberty stands at the far end of allegory (representation in Schmitt’s sense), whereas the old priest’s Fairy Tale is at the other end, but the middle ground of narrative and storytelling are somewhere in between, implicitly allegorical (in the sense of an x that ‘‘stands for’’ a variable y without the latter being identifiable with or strictly derivable from the former). But opening onto the endless vista of the symbol, and even in the social function of storytelling, Goethe’s ideal of representation does not tend toward political activism but toward ‘‘renunciation’’ (Entsagung) in the specific sense of consolation. Trying to stand against forms of representation that will only increase the violence of a violent reality, Goethe’s idea of the symbol plays out—as a part of an always implicit morphological system— above and beyond the specifics of history, political upheaval, change, and progress. Taken in this wider context of representation, Carl Schmitt’s thesis on the ‘‘decline’’ of representation in the modern era—with the Roman Catholic Church as its last vestige, the ‘‘representation of representation’’—is at odds with all of the others, with the notable exception of Habermas, who makes the inverse counterclaim that modernity should be driven to reduce the principle of representation (even if there has been some unmistakable backsliding). As I have argued in chapter 2, Schmitt’s thesis on representation—which is not only inaccurate, but disingenuous and deliberately misleading—is taken at face value by Habermas, who also should have known better because the increase of representation in the sense of ‘‘ideology’’ had been evident to critical theory, including and especially the generation of Habermas’ teachers, since even before the French Revolution. Thus Schmitt’s thesis on representation is useful for its ability to give terms to the problem, but as a theory it is and remains only a red herring. In this context, the revisitation of Hans Blumenberg’s work on secularization and myth seems increasingly important to me, especially in the Englishspeaking world. Blumenberg’s Goethean conception of myth resituates the problem of representation as a system of compensatory and ultimately

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consoling functions. But this system also has the innate potential to overcompensate and take on a life of its own in completely unpredictable ways. Even modernity’s apparent increase in technical know-how and empirical stability does not deter such overcompensations, but instead feeds them and gives them room. Particularly in the light of a looming global environmental catastrophe, the ‘‘absolutism’’ of reality becomes all the more apparent, while myth’s mechanisms of rationalization—at the limit: denial and disavowal— kick into overdrive. Just as my study does not include a technical analysis of the concepts of allegory and symbol, the figure of irony could also be given a more substantial theorization. My use of the term is above all meant to reflect a terminological shift away from the much more negative ideas of ‘‘hypocrisy’’ (Koselleck) and ‘‘performative contradiction’’ (Habermas), which have been applied to comparable phenomena. In my analysis, I have tried to show how discourse—and more specifically critique—never enters the ‘‘public sphere’’ in a completely impersonal and objective way. Critique, but implicitly and especially writing in general, is always marked by multiple uncertainties at the level of the presuppositions about the conditions under which public participation can occur and produce effects. Without taking this to the length of Koselleck’s Critique and Crisis, which speaks of the ‘‘hypocrisy of critique,’’ and against Habermas (who implicitly wants to enforce the Fichtean distinction between authentic discourses based on truth-seeking within a horizon of potential agreement and inauthentic discourses that engage in the ‘‘performative contradiction’’ of putting this horizon into question inside of the discourse of truth itself ), what I call ‘‘irony’’ refers to texts’ critical reflection of the lack of an evident instrumental or teleological orientation of a public sphere, which can never be unambiguously reduced to an objective process of truth finding (which occurs, at best, in a dependent subsection of the public sphere). In short, the more a critical or discursive text—including, at the limit, speech and action—reflects and tries to defend itself against the uncertain status of the sphere of its own reception, the more ‘‘ironic’’ or ‘‘literary’’ the text will become. Self-proclaimed ‘‘theories’’ cannot simply decree their way out of this situation, but only deepen it by affecting the objectivity of their own discourse. In effect, this means a reversal of Koselleck’s ‘‘hypocrisy of critique’’ thesis: hypocritical discourses would be defined as those that imagine the field of their reception as fixed and determinate, or worse, as the object of prescriptive norms that are to

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be derived from the discourse itself and imposed upon a public sphere that is supposed to define itself in the terms of the theory (and not the other way around). Such normatively intended theories are, following Lichtenberg, mere opinions—dangerously hypertrophied opinions—which can become virulent in the moment that they try to carry themselves out and impose themselves by persuasion, compelled imitation, or decree. Lichtenberg’s phenomenology of opinion argues against the implicit universal-normative moment contained in all opinions and every theorization. Against this systematic drive to complete and fulfill its representations, Lichtenberg traces the irreducible plurality of opinions, which, like thoughts, are never really present but can only be re-presented. This irreducibly representational form of opinion makes it more appropriate to literary than to rationalcritical representation because the latter will always tend to disavow the tentative and represented quality of opinions, whereas the former underscores their provisionality. Lichtenberg also emphasizes that whenever opinions enter into posterity in the form of arguments (which are then inherited in the context of ongoing problems), they do so not according to a strictly linear rationality—stronger arguments replacing weaker ones—but according to the ‘‘literary’’ discontinuity of topoi, whereby the ‘‘new’’ displaces the ‘‘old’’ without replacing it. The tradition, including that of reason, is not fixed, but is defined by a structure of theme and variation, history and context, which means that old opinions do not simply become obsolete, but come to mean new things and present new possibilities over time. The development of these possibilities depends more on the activities of individuals than on collective structures and institutions; the latter may represent incentives or disincentives, opportunities or obstacles, but they cannot substitute for the specific practice of individuals. This reference to some kind of cultural practice does not primarily define the condition of the possibility of reasoned discourse in terms of a culture of ‘‘conversation’’ (Gespra¨ch)—which can mean everything to everyone and lead to anything— but upon an ethics of inner discourse (Selbstgespra¨ch). According to this argument—common to Wieland, Mendelssohn and Lichtenberg—such an ongoing and perpetual conversation with one’s self (Selbstgespra¨ch) is imperative, or else opinions will be too quickly reduced to fixed and representative points within a closed system. The difficulties, paradoxes—and the even impossibility—of actually instituting and promoting such an ethic cannot

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be underestimated. All systems—even and especially academic and scholarly research—are slanted in the other direction, toward representative systematization. The practice at issue here also cannot be reduced or enforced as a universal method or promoted as self-help—the self is the last thing it helps—nor can it be represented as doctrine or a set of principles. Following these exclusions, the learning of ‘‘inner dialogue’’ can only be very preliminarily connected to the experience of reading and writing, of representation and the composition of representational forms. This does not mean intrumentalizing literary and artistic works in the interest of some kind of an educational agenda, but, more complicatedly, instrumentalizing them to display the failure of instrumentalization. It means breaking down the barriers that try to secure the ‘‘meaning’’ of different modes of representation within self-contained spheres of significance. The representational practice in question cannot be sustained by the sheer recourse to any single sphere, whether it be called ‘‘literature,’’ ‘‘visual culture,’’ ‘‘communication,’’ ‘‘the Internet,’’ etc. ‘‘Inner dialogue’’ can only be sustained between various methods, forms, modes, genres, and systems; it also requires the presence of larger discursive and historical frames—arguments, unsolved problems, and unanswered questions—without whose competing traditions, models, narratives, and master narratives, the discursive quality of the present is forgotten and no longer able to provide the opportunity for inner conversations. In closing: just as I have tried to read historical texts in the context of their own time but with attention to the imperatives of the present, likewise my work must in the same sense be a product of its time but also legible within a shifting temporal and hermeneutic continuum. The idea for this project came to me in the late 1990s, before September 11 and the Iraq War, but these recent events have increasingly found their way into my work and given it its impetus. This largely implicit engagement may also prevent this study on opinion from being only a return to the controversies of the eighties and nineties—displaced but not resolved—which are often reduced to a theory debate between deconstruction and critical theory, Derrida and Habermas. While I have tried to make it clear where I stand on this, I have also tried to lengthen the problem historically, and deepen it in the specific instance of public opinion, which is a borderline concept for Habermas because he makes it into the object of critical limitation (in the attempt to isolate rational-critical public opinion from the more canonical

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understandings), while deconstruction has certain affinity to the more irreducibly irrational aspects of opinion. But one should not make the mistake of assuming that deconstruction’s attempts to take opinion’s latent and systemic irrationalism seriously means that it is itself somehow in collusion with it. More broadly, returning to contemporary global politics, the past ten years have seen the usefulness of the concept of ‘‘democracy’’ itself sorely threatened to such a degree that the ends pursued by way of this term are— more than ever—on the verge of completely effacing the complexities and contradictions of the term itself. From this perspective, the works of both Habermas and Derrida remain indispensable. The latter has worked to secure the term against those who would instrumentalize it as a self-evident descriptor of existing institutional arrangements or as the watchword of every kind of political adventurism. Habermas, on the other hand—even in a simplistic reading as a plea for open government, responsible media, and the superior possibilities of negotiation over armed conflict and political symbolism—can only have a salutary effect in the environment produced by a White House whose representational politics seem to be taken from the worst reading of the worst pages of Carl Schmitt. But, more than reading Habermas or Derrida, one can only hope that the colossal blunders of the past years will speak for themselves before the global consequences deepen to an even more catastrophic degree.

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notes

preface: the opinion machine

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Benjamin, Einbahnstraße, 83–148. Ibid., 85. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 242; my translation. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 245–46. Derrida, ‘‘Call it a Day for Democracy,’’ 88. Ibid., 85–86. Ibid., 104.

introduction and overview

1. This Platonic insight is the basis of Walter Lippmann’s 1922 thesis, Public Opinion. Lippmann defines opinions as ‘‘the pictures in our heads,’’ and public opinion is the political sphere in which these varying pictures are disseminated, altered, and come into conflict. 2. For more general background, see the first pages to Niklas Luhmann’s article on public opinion, ‘‘Die Beobachtung der Beobachter.’’ ¨ ffentlichkeit und Geheimnis. 3. Cf. Ho¨lscher, O 4. The most important reading of this point is probably still that of Reinhart Koselleck in Kritik und Krise. 5. Schmitt, Ro¨mischer Katholizismus und politische Form (hereafter Ro¨mischer Katholizismus), 47 (my translation). 6. Setting aside Schmitt and Koselleck in favor of Hegel: ‘‘This [the subjective moment of opinion, Meinung] is an especially essential moment of our time, in which people rarely anymore can be drawn into an affiliation through trust and authority, but instead dedicate their participatory activity as a result of their own comprehension, of their independent conviction and ‘what they hold to be the case’ (Dafu¨rhalten)’’ (Hegel, Vorlesungen u¨ber die Philosophie der Geschichte, 37 [my translation]). Compared to Schmitt, Hegel views the dissolution of the Catholic principle of authority less pessimistically, but the possibility 247

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of fragmentation along the fault lines of opinion also does not escape him. In the introduction to the Philosophy of Right, he seeks to exclude opinion from philosophy and thus writes that those who claim to get lost in ‘‘infinitely varying opinions [unendlich verschiedenen Meinungen] cannot see the forest for the trees’’ (Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, 14–15, my translation). 7. Most central, perhaps, is the analysis contained in the first part of Karl Marx’ ‘‘Zur Judenfrage.’’ 8. A symptom of the political difficulties surrounding the investigation of the category of opinion can be seen in the common aversions to it, on the right and the left. Schmitt’s text on Catholicism and political form, though conceived from the right, is opposed to market capitalism as a universal means of social organization. This view, espoused by Schmitt, may equally provide the political justification for a socialist agenda. Like Max Weber and Walter Benjamin, Schmitt sees modern capitalism as a deeply Protestant formation. Schmitt’s Catholic orientation and his openly critical attitude toward modern democratic form nevertheless make him more clearly culturally conservative than other eminent critics of modernity. Another option for understanding the ambivalences in Schmitt’s work can be found in the hypothesis of Nicolaus Sombart’s Die deutschen Ma¨nner und ihre Feinde. According to Sombart, Schmitt’s thinking was nourished by the most radical thought currents of his period, but he ultimately sublimated and inverted his own anarchistic leanings in the interest of fascist ideology. 9. Schmitt, Verfassungslehre, 246. Also, for a helpful sketch of the aporias of democratic theory and practice between Rousseau and Schmitt, see Preuss, ‘‘Was heißt radikale Demokratie heute?’’ 10. Habermas, though he has defined the public sphere in terms of the opinions of private individuals, emphasizes a derivation from the Latin fama and disingenuously reconnects this dubiousness of ‘‘gossip’’ to the epistemological ¨ ffentlichkeit [hereafter uncertainty of private opinions (Strukturwandel der O Strukturwandel], 112). Kosellek’s thesis on the ‘‘collective singular’’ is also relevant here for its description of the ways collective concepts are anthropomorphized and attributed with agency; the term ‘‘history’’ (Geschichte) is Koselleck’s best example (‘‘Historia Magistra Vitae’’). 11. Regarding the status of literature in the problem of representation, literature and art would be meta-functions, representations of representation, which could possibly destabilize representational claims to stand for some thing else, some reality or some transcendence other than itself. Cf. Hamacher, ‘‘Das Beben der Darstellung,’’ 236. 12. See, for example, Lewis, Constructing Public Opinion. Lewis’ book focuses on (and to some extent attempts to bridge) the gap between polling and nonnumerical forms of inquiry. The book’s title is a good representation of its argument: opinion polls are instruments of power, mechanisms of political cohesion and legitimacy. See also Riesman, ‘‘The Meaning of Opinion.’’ Riesman

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contends that polls can serve their purpose if the ‘‘latent [social and psychological] meaning’’ of pollees’ responses is calculated into the results. But the idea of ‘‘latent response,’’ as a kind of monstrous ambiguity of motivation within pollees’ manifest responses, may also represent an insurmountable hermeneutic dilemma. 13. Cf. Bourdieu, ‘‘Public Opinion Does Not Exist.’’ Bourdieu, like Lewis, emphasizes that ‘‘the state of opinion at any given moment is a system of forces . . . and that there is nothing more inadequate than a percentage to represent the state of opinion’’ (125). Opinion polls thus facilitate the concealment of power, and ‘‘the electoral system is an instrument whose very logic tends to attenuate conflicts and differences, and thus naturally tends to be conservative’’ (125). 14. Habermas, Strukturwandel, 13. 15. The communitarian movement can be viewed, by contrast, as an attempt to extra-legally strengthen extra-legal bonds. Such a social transformation of social relations means guiding and reforming ‘‘the law of opinion.’’ This desire to immediately transform the body politic in its immediacy would be roughly compatible with Carl Schmitt’s critiques of legal positivism. Communitarianism, contra Habermas, typically doubts the efficacy of discourse and deliberation, which are seen as conflictual and extraneous to lived life. Cf. Schmitt, Legalita¨t und Legitimita¨t; Selznick, The Communitarian Persuasion; Lehman, Autonomy and Order. 16. Working with a similar concept of public opinion, Davison’s ‘‘The Public Opinion Process’’ suggests the story of the emperor’s new clothes as a model for the function of public opinion. While few would deny the existence of such mass phenomena, it would be rather pessimistic to assert them as the paradigm of the political as such. 17. Noelle-Neumann, ‘‘Public Opinion and the Classical Tradition.’’ 18. See Lazarsfeld, ‘‘Public Opinion and the Classical Tradition.’’ Emphasizing the ‘‘mysterious and intangible character’’ of public opinion for early authors, Lazarsfeld attempts what Hans Blumenberg would call a ‘‘terminologization’’ of the inherited and ‘‘classical’’ meanings of ‘‘public opinion’’ (41–43). 19. All authors who deal with opinion encounter this split, but Habermas represents an extreme. He is, however, not alone in his reliance on an Enlightenment-ideal to set the norms of public discourse. The German sociologist ¨ ffentlichen Meinung, for instance, operates with Ferdinand To¨nnies’ Kritik der O a concept of public opinion that supposes a kind of discursive common ground at the center of difference. Also Hans Speier’s ‘‘The Rise of Public Opinion’’ invokes a liberal and civically motivated understanding of opinion. The first and most famous text in this tradition is Kant’s ‘‘Was ist Aufkla¨rung?’’ (What is Enlightenment?). 20. Margerison, Pamphlets & Public Opinion, 160. 21. Ibid.

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¨ ffentlichkeit und Geheimnis, 106. 22. Ho¨lscher, O 23. Margerison, Pamphlets & Public Opinion, 161–62. 24. There is no shortage of discussion on this shift in Habermas’ work. For a good summary, see Scheuerman, ‘‘Between Radicalism and Resignation.’’ Also, as an example of attempts to compensate for Habermas’ lack of radicality, see Shabani, Democracy, Power, and Legitimacy. 25. Derrida, ‘‘Call it a Day for Democracy,’’ 96, and Taubes, Ad Carl Schmitt, 49. Taubes argues that idolizing something called democracy out of the fear of something worse will fail even as a defensive strategy. He also speaks of the left’s fascination, including Habermas and the Frankfurt School, with Carl Schmitt. Aside from Taubes, the literature on the topic of Habermas and Schmitt has become quite substantial: Becker, Die Parlamentarismuskritik; ¨ ffentlichkeit und Parlamentarismus. Schu¨le, Die Parlamentarismuskritik; Ja¨ger, O These works all confirm a substantial Schmitt-reception in Habermas. Taubes declares the Habermas work to be a compulsive, traumatically induced rejection of Schmitt. 26. Habermas, ‘‘The Horrors of Autonomy,’’ 138. 27. Derrida, ‘‘Call it a Day for Democracy,’’ 95–96. This short essay is as close as Derrida ever came (at least on the surface) to Habermas’ territory of the history of the public sphere. By contrast, in the idea of a democracy ‘‘to come,’’ which is the centerpiece of the Politics of Friendship, Derrida may seem to skirt the realities of ‘‘actually existing’’ democracies in favor of an extrainstitutional figure of posterity. 28. Agamben, State of Exception. 29. Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, xliii. 30. Blumenberg, Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie. Blumenberg’s idea of ‘‘metaphorology’’—despite deliberate and accidental deviations on my part—is a good characterization of my methods. His work, by showing the ultimate impossibility of completely purifying concepts of their metaphorical coloration, provides justification for the literary-historical investigation of concretely historical and political problems. 31. The potential productiveness of this approach has not gone unnoticed, even within the field of opinion research. Kurt W. Back’s ‘‘Metaphors for Public Opinion in Literature’’ concludes that a concept opinion can only be articulated through its metaphorical resonances (280). fama and fatum in virgil’s aeneid

1. Cf. Ries, Geru¨cht, Gerede, o¨ffentliche Meinung. Ries explores the function of rumor, anonymous sources, and public opinion in the historiography and etiology of Tacitus. 2. Back, ‘‘Metaphors for Public Opinion in Literature,’’ 282–83. 3. Adorno argues that the historical emergence of the concept of publicity ¨ ffentlichkeit) only makes sense as a polemical concept of the ascendant bour(O geoisie, which sought to fight the ‘‘cabinet politics of absolutism.’’ The political

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decision-making process was the main object, but this narrow intent was eclipsed by the rise of a more generalized and primarily market-driven ‘‘sphere’’ of publicity structured by representational forms that are not public in the nar¨ ffentlichkeit,’’ rower sense that Adorno indicates (‘‘Meinungsforschung und O 533). 4. The successes of To¨nnies and Habermas are in large part responsible for the relative domestication of the concept of public opinion in the later twentieth century. The simultaneous growth of empirical opinion research did not necessarily support the ‘‘rational’’ character of public opinion, but instead, in the absence of effective deliberative procedural institutions for structuring and rationalizing opinion, polling only amplified and legitimated fama. This flipside of Habermas’ rationalization narrative was perceived quite early by Wilhelm Bauer in his Die o¨ffentliche Meinung in der Weltgeschichte. Bauer’s massive volume begins with a reproduction of a 1507 illustration of Petrarch’s Trionfi, the allegorical ‘‘triumph of the Fama,’’ followed by an image of the ‘‘orator in the French Revolution’’ (David, ‘‘Oath in the Ballroom’’) and culminates in a photo of a political speaker addressing endless masses in front of the Reichtstag in Berlin in 1919 (1–3). Bauer includes lynching and witch-burning in his catalogue of the historical manifestations of public opinion. He argues that absolutism’s concession to public opinion in the form of a free press, radiating outward from France in the nineteenth century, enabled the traditional authorities to regain control of opinion’s revolutionary potentials and bring it back in line with the ideas and institutions of a nominally reformed absolutism (322). In the nineteenth century, reactionary nationalism was able to assert itself in the place of revolutionary public opinion (‘‘Meinung, Wahn, Gesellschaft,’’ 588). Adorno opposes opinion to ‘‘critical thought,’’ the subjective method that infinitely strives toward ‘‘the liquidation of opinion.’’ 5. This reading is advocated in the annotations to the German Reclam edition of the Aeneid: Virgil, Aeneis: 3. und 4. Buch, 167. 6. I owe many insights to Thomas Schestag’s seminar on ‘‘Fame, Gossip and Chatter’’ (Ruhm, Geru¨cht, Geschwa¨tz), Frankfurt am Main, Summer, 2001. In ‘‘Discreta,’’ an unpublished essay on the role of language in Virgil’s epic, Schestag argues that the proper name Fama must be read in the context of the wider semantic function of the word fama (10–11). 7. In Book I, Aeneas makes an early reference to his own fame: ‘‘I am loyal Aeneas . . . ; my fame is known to the heavens above [sum pius Aeneas, . . . fama super aethera notus]’’ (I:377, 378); in Book V, Virgil refers to the unnamed attendees of the games between the Sicilians and Trojans: ‘‘and many more, whose fame is hidden in darkness [multi praeterea, quos fama obscura recondit]’’ (V:302). The first of these examples makes it clear that fama (fame, renown) is a particular and essential attribute of ‘‘pious’’ Aeneas; his fame always precedes him. The second example shows that fama is the precondition that allows Virgil himself to name heroes and tell of their deeds. Additionally, from Book XII,

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this time in the sense of ‘‘rumor’’: ‘‘From here the woeful rumor spreads throughout the town [hinc totam infelix volgatur fama per urbem]’’ (XII:608). Here, although the goddess Fama makes no appearance, rumor still functions the same way. Unless otherwise noted, translations are taken from Virgil, Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I-VI. 8. Virgil, The Aeneid. 9. Virgil, Aeneis. 10. In VII:105, for example, Fama spreads word of Aeneas’ arrival in Italy. With respect to his fama and consequently also to his fatum, he appears two have ‘‘two bodies’’: The corpus mysticum of his fame transpires over his head and beyond the sphere of his own will. This hero is distinguished by passivity, a ‘‘piousness’’ that allows him to identify with his fate. Cf. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies. 11. The Virgilian Fama has lost none of her power under technologically altered conditions, to say nothing of the deliberate manufacture or marketing of rumor. ‘‘Up to the minute’’ news casting has become a fama phenomenon to such a degree that the truth, if it emerges, only deflates the interest produced by sheer sensation and speculation. manifestations of the public sphere

1. Unless otherwise noted, all Wieland citations are taken from the Go¨schen edition of 1799 and refer to its volume and page numbers; translations are my own. ¨ ffentliche Meinung,’’ 210. Labuhn defines public opin2. Cf. Labuhn, ‘‘O ion in the sense of Necker as ‘‘a kind of executive organ of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s volonte´ ge´ne´rale’’ (210, my translation). 3. Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II:28:§5–§13. Locke’s concept is central to many aspects of the present investigation. The introduction provides an overview of its contemporary reception; Excursus 2 two lays the groundwork for reading the law of opinion as a modern version of the nomos basileus; chapter 2 analyzes the reasons for Habermas’ and Koselleck’s rejection of Locke’s law; chapter 3 focuses on Locke’s epistemology of private opinion, and chapter 4 examines Lichtenberg’s attempt to revise Locke’s model and put it into practice. 4. Machiavelli, Principe XIX, 142. 5. Splichal, ‘‘Defining Public Opinion,’’ 13. Splichal’s essay is the best recent English-language overview of the concept of public opinion in the history of ideas. 6. For more extensive analysis of this point, see my article ‘‘The Rule of the Norm and the Political Theology of ‘Real Life’ in Carl Schmitt and Giorgio Agamben,’’ Diacritics 36.1 (Spring, 2006), 31–46. 7. The most recent book-length discussion of the role of public opinion in the French Revolution is Jon Cowans’ aptly titled volume: To Speak for the People. Cowans extends the thesis of Keith Baker, ‘‘Public Opinion as a Political

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Invention.’’ See also Baker, ‘‘Defining the Public Sphere in EighteenthCentury France.’’ Countering definitions of public opinion as ‘‘a more-or-less measurable sociological phenomenon,’’ Cowans calls it ‘‘a political construct that orators use to secure authority’’ (2). 8. Blumenberg, Legitimita¨t der Neuzeit. 9. Wieland’s dialogue was predated by texts of Georg Forster and Chris¨ ber tian Garve; the latter essay bears the same name as Wieland’s dialogue: ‘‘U die o¨ffentliche Meinung’’ (1795). Garve is more directly critical of the idea of public opinion than Forster or Wieland; his style is also more transparent and philosophical. Garve importantly denounces public opinion as a qualitas occulta of historical explanation and agency (295). 10. The term ‘‘public opinion’’ may have been new, but Wieland’s interest in it was not. That which the term designates goes back at least as far as the first version of his novel Agathon (1766). See, for example, Book 7, chapter 6, entitled: ‘‘Agathon comes to Athens and dedicates himself to the Republic (a test case of the peculiar nature of the strange wind that Horace called the aura popularis)’’ (my translation). In Agathon, opinion is a fickle and unreliable goddess, whereas in Wieland’s later dialogue—perhaps under the influence of Kant’s ‘‘What is Enlightenment?’’—public opinion has a wider and more ambiguous function. 11. Cf. Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden. Kant conceives the impossibility of direct democracy in terms of a paradoxical identity of the people with itself (207). Whereas the rhetoric of public opinion phantasmatically posits such an identity beyond the actual institutions of government, Kant argues that democracy is extraneous to political organization because it allows for no formal separation of powers. 12. Cf. Benjamin, ‘‘Zur Kritik der Gewalt.’’ In the end of the essay (202– 03), Benjamin emphasizes the retrospective nature of every attempt to name the manifestations of violence, especially those that appear as revolutionary interruptions of cyclical ‘‘ups and downs.’’ Such revolutionary violence that marks the dawning of a new historical epoch is never ‘‘assured’’ as such. Its existence always remains questionable. Benjamin’s invocation of the crowd (die Menge) also indicates that the moral unity of the people as a mass represents a possible conceptualization of such a paralegal manifestation of just violence, but it is also equally possible that this crowd was just a mob and not an agent of divine justice at all. 13. Georg Forster’s use of ‘‘public opinion’’ is an important counterexample for Wieland’s. Forster understands it as a kind of ‘‘collective spirit’’ (Gemeingeist), in the context of a problem of cosmopolitanism developed by Wieland in an essay discussed below. For Forster, Germany’s intelligentsia had been unable to establish a broader cosmopolitanism sensibility, which meant that ¨ ber die there was no public opinion in Germany in the 1790s. See Forster, ‘‘U ¨ Offentliche Meinung,’’ 365.

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14. Wieland’s judgment is echoed in Davison, ‘‘Public Opinion.’’ The introductory paragraph of this article speaks of the ‘‘frustration’’ of ‘‘efforts to define the term precisely’’ (13:188). 15. Habermas, Strukterwandel, 126. 16. Even though Habermas’ work is certainly at least partly responsible for a Wieland renaissance in Germany in the past decades, recent scholarship does not necessarily support the readings and conclusions of Habermas’ Structural Transformation. Wieland’s rehabilitation (which did not always happen for the right reasons) was underway even before Habermas hit the scene, but the latter’s theories catalyzed a number of groundbreaking interpretations. To summarize a few of the most significant findings: (1) Wieland’s work and his novels in particular are no longer seen as ‘‘precursors’’ to the Bildungsroman and Weimar Classicism, but are instead read as representing an independent literary project. (2) Wieland’s work, which had long appeared deficient in its haphazard mixture of literary, philosophical and political interests, is now appreciated for its interdisciplinarity. (3) Traditional reservations toward Wieland’s ‘‘vacillation’’ now tend to be reread as strengths. (4) His ‘‘archeological’’ approach is compatible with many contemporary styles of analysis. Cf. Tschapke, Anmutige Vernunft; Erhart, Entzweiung und Selbstaufkla¨rung; and Budde, Aufkla¨rung als Dialog. 17. Cf. Benjamin, ‘‘Christoph Martin Wieland.’’ According to Benjamin’s short 1933 essay, written in celebration of the bicentennial of Wieland’s birth, ‘‘Wieland’s historical embeddedness (Einbettung) is essential.’’ (II.1:395). Benjamin attributes Wieland’s relative unpopularity to the oversights of a modernist literary sensibility and emphasizes Wieland’s tendency to write ‘‘ad hominem or, more accurately, ad populum’’ (401). 18. Even Habermas, despite his disparaging remarks, includes lengthy citations from Wieland’s dialogue in the footnotes to Structural Transformation. 19. The secondary literature rightly reads Forster’s text as a kind of exercise in perspective, an effort to provoke outsiders—Germans in this case—to see the Revolution from the inside. I would be tempted to go further and read the ‘‘Sketches’’ as a kind of hyperorthodox iteration of Revolutionary ideology meant to reveal the internal inconsistencies and the great costs of carrying such thinking to its limit. Cf. Grosser, ‘‘Die Bedeutung Georg Forsters als Kulturvermittler im Zeitalter der Franzo¨sischen Revolution’’; Gilli, ‘‘Forster und Frankreich’’; Dumont, ‘‘Georg Forster als Demokrat.’’ 20. Forster, ‘‘Sketches,’’ 10:594. 21. In Kritik und Krise, Reinhart Koselleck has also argued, from a reading of Rousseau and the example of the French Revolution, that ‘‘public opinion’’ in the sense of volonte´ ge´ne´rale is only the flipside of dictatorship. The one who is able to successfully claim to represent the general will is the dictator (Kritik und Krise, 136–139). 22. Forster, ‘‘Sketches,’’ 10:614. 23. Wieland, Gespra¨che unter vier Augen (hereafter Gespra¨che), 31:7.

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24. If tolerance is to prevail, the scene of conversation must be the site of a latent but intensive proceduralism beyond the power of the state to directly guarantee, enforce, or prevent. In the words of Habermas: ‘‘Within a democratic community whose citizens reciprocally grant one another equal rights, no room is left for an authority allowed to one-sidedly determine the boundaries of what is to be tolerated.’’ Cited from Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, 41. 25. Wieland, Gespra¨che, 31:8. 26. It is impossible to read Wieland’s preface without noting certain parallels to claims of Derridean deconstruction. Wieland’s concept of public opinion is not phonocentric, but gives an almost exclusive privilege to the superior publicity of the written word. It is also not logocentric, since opinions fall by definition within the conceptual sphere of doxa or fama (which are at best ambiguous or transitional in their relation to logos and ratio). For Wieland, the private, individual opinion is a point of deferral that causes all opinions, written and spoken, to be structurally but not literally oral by virtue of their transitional and preliminary status. 27. Cf. Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation. In the chapter called ‘‘Plural Speech,’’ Blanchot analyzes opinion as a form of rumor; it is ‘‘a caricature of essential relation, if only because it is a system organized on the basis of the press and pressure, the broadcast media and centers of propaganda that turn an active power into the passivity that is its essence’’ (20). 28. This argument is also heavily emphasized in Garve’s essay on public opinion (322), though he also acknowledges that there may be a public opinion that goes beyond the obvious attempts to manipulate and manufacture it. 29. Cf. Blumenberg, Paradigmen zu einer Metaphorologie, on the metaphorics of the ‘‘naked’’ truth, whose semantic implication of a sacral sphere are at odds with the philosophical-systematic project of Aufkla¨rung (61). 30. Cf. Schaeffer, ‘‘Chr. M. Wielands Beitrag zur Revolutionsdebatte in der Endfassung seines Romans ‘Die Geschichte das Agathon’ (1794),’’ 323–29; and Fink, ‘‘Wieland und die Franzo¨sische Revolution,’’ 5–38. Glancing at the secondary literature, Wieland’s dialogues are rarely taken very seriously, and assessments of them are mixed. The advantage of the dialogue form may be easier to perceive in Agathon, where philosophical claims, unoriginal or anachronistic though they may be, can be flexibly recast in terms of particular biographical contexts and shifting political exigencies. The genre of Wieland’s dialogues is in any case decidedly not that of the philosophical dialogue, nor (as is also implied in Agathon) are they mere ‘‘conversations’’ (Gespra¨che), nor soliloquies, but are conceived as ‘‘internal dialogues’’ (Selbstgespra¨che). This designation also accounts for their lack of dramatic tension. ‘‘Even such a fine man of the world as Horace was not ashamed to admit that he often had the habit of speaking to himself.’’ Cited from Geschichte des Agathon, 68; my translation. 31. Kant, ‘‘Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufkla¨rung?’’ 61. 32. Kant, ‘‘Erneuerete Frage: Ob das menschliche Geschlecht im besta¨ndigen Fortschreiten zum Besseren sei?’’ 351–68; my translation.

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Notes to pages 54–62

33. The negative condition for progress, which Kant mentions repeatedly, is the absence of war, which always represents an automatic setback to human advancement. 34. Hans Blumenberg’s Legitimita¨t der Neuzeit doubts whether this change can be brought about and whether it should be called ‘‘secularization’’ (which implies the historical continuity and dependency of the secular and the sacred). For Blumenberg, the modern era can only be justified as a complete break with inherited theological categories. Regarding the modern concept of history, he believes that the idea of ‘‘an immanent final goal’’ must be taken off the table, because as long as a specific telos is up for grabs, then ‘‘all who think they know what it is’’ would be legitimated ‘‘in using everyone else . . . as a mere means’’ (45). Despite his polemics against Koselleck, Blumenberg’s underlying argument is the same: both agree that all specific teleologies of progress (that is, utopianisms) can lead to a fatal political instrumentalization of the present. But Blumenberg defends the idea of infinite progress from Koselleck’s charge that it is a secularized eschatology. An infinite progress excludes ‘‘every absolute claim,’’ and thus it is ‘‘the only regulative that can make history humanly bearable’’ (45). 35. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 306, 468–79. nomos, gnomae in herodotus’ histories

1. Trier, ‘‘Meinung und Umfrage,’’ 189–201; all translations are my own. 2. Trier’s essay represents the state of the art on the etymology of the German word Meinung as well as a significant departure from earlier etymologies. Grimm and Adelung give a sense of the older semantic field. The root mein- is often associated with the first person possessive pronoun (mein); the word Meineid, which Trier reads differently, contains mein in a meaning that is no longer in use: ‘‘verbrechen, frevel’’ (Grimm, Deutsches Wo¨rterbuch, 12:1912. Adelung’s Grammatisch-kritisches Wo¨rterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart states that the ‘‘proper meaning’’ of meinen is ‘‘extremely antiquated’’ and that the word only persists in a ‘‘figural meaning’’ (III:159–61). Adelung thinks that this shift occurred when original meanings, pertaining to physical actions and deeds, were carried over to mental significances; the word mahnen, explicitly disqualified by Trier, is Adelung’s main example. In a supplemental note, Adelung also suggests that meinen may be connected to ‘‘das Hauptwort Min, welches das Gemu¨th bedeutet, Engl. Mind, Schwed. Mon, Isla¨nd. Mune, und sehr sichtbar mit dem Lat. Mens und Griech. menos u¨bereint kommt; woraus zugleich das hohe Alter dieses Wortes erhellet. S. auch Miene.’’ Earlier in the entry: ‘‘S. auch Minne.’’ Trier validates this, reading Minne (‘‘love’’) as a political love of country or community; Heidegger also emphasizes: ‘‘Wohl mit recht bringt man das Wort ‘Meinung’ in den Bezug zu ‘Minne’ ’’ (Heidegger, ‘‘Andenken,’’ 124). 3. Herodotus, The Histories, 522–523; unless otherwise noted, citations refer to this volume.

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4. Munson, ‘‘Artemisia in Herodotus,’’ 96. 5. Bernadete, Herodotean Inquiries, 189. Bernadete’s book is dedicated to Leo Strauss. 6. Munson, ‘‘Artemisia in Herodotus,’’ 97. 7. The full translation of Pindar’s fragment reads: ‘‘Nomos the king of all, of mortals and immortals, guides and justifies the most violent act with its supreme hand’’ (Humphreys, ‘‘Law, Custom and Culture in Herodotus,’’ 213). See also Evans, ‘‘Despotes Nomos.’’ 8. ‘‘[Xerxes] could not understand that common opinion, which is custom and law, is more effective than private recognition’’ (Bernadete, Herodotean Inquiries, 190). 9. It should be noted, at least in passing, that this understanding of isegorie runs counter to commonplace ideas about the relative advantages of democracy versus monarchy. 10. A reading of the possibilities of democratization in Herodotus would begin by reiterating the familiar but not always fully appreciated idea that there is no democracy without ‘‘democratic culture.’’ Second, such a reading might emphasize the tendency of democracies to become hegemonic without producing hegemonies of democracy. Third, isogorie would have to be disqualified as a political principle that lacks a contemporary equivalent (even if moments of it may persist). Fourth—a serious problem for the project of Enlightenment—the wholesale transformation of nomoi may require extreme violence (without any guarantee of the ultimate effectiveness). 11. Humphreys, ‘‘Law, Custom and Culture in Herodotus,’’ 214. 12. Ibid., 219; cf. Evans, ‘‘Despotes Nomos,’’ 153. 13. Humphreys, ‘‘Law, Custom and Culture in Herodotus,’’ 219. 14. Ibid., 220. 15. Redfield, ‘‘Commentary on Humphreys and Raaflaub,’’ 252. 16. Ibid., 253. representation and opinion

1. Gu¨tersloh is only illustrative of the problem of opinion, but the wider dynamics of modernism of which he was a part are well documented. Cf. Jauss, ‘‘Der literarische Prozess des Modernismus von Rousseau bis Adorno.’’ Jauss summarizes the danger that a self-stylized artistic avant-garde (elitist because it has not yet managed to become populist) will end up bringing up the rear as soon as it attaches itself to actual political movements (268). 2. Cf. Eisenhauer, Der Literat. Eisenhauer’s treatment of Gu¨tersloh is uniquely harsh. A concise and less aggressive summary can be found in Du¨cker, ‘‘ ‘Es lebe der Kommunismus und die katholische Kirche,’’ 58–61. 3. Gu¨tersloh, ‘‘Grabrede auf Gustav Klimt,’’ 12. 4. Franz Blei also writes of his literary-political project as a ‘‘politics of the catacombs’’ (Briefe an Carl Schmitt, 1917–1933, 32). On the concept of the catacomb, see also Du¨cker, 57.

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5. Gu¨tersloh, ‘‘Vortrag,’’ 81–88. 6. Blei, Das Rokoko: Variationen u¨ber ein Thema, introduction. 7. It is remarkable the degree to which Blei’s taste corresponds to the modernist canon as it established itself; one can only wonder how much he contributed to the shaping of this canon. The best recent work, which approaches Blei’s various engagements primarily from the perspective of cultural studies, is that of Mitterbauer, Die Netzwerke des Franz Blei. See also Blei, ‘‘Der Blei,’’ 25. 8. Blei, ‘‘Die rationalistische Landschaft,’’ 153. 9. Schmitt, Ro¨mischer Katholizismus, 35–36. 10. Cf. Schmitt, ‘‘Das Zeitalter der Neutralisierungen und Entpolitisierungen.’’ 11. My translations are based on the English version: Reinhart Koselleck, Critique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 1988; citations refer to the German edition followed by the English. 12. Cf. Koselleck, ‘‘Some Questions Regarding the Conceptual History of ‘Crisis.’ ’’ 13. Koselleck, ‘‘Historia Magistra Vitae.’’ Translations are based on the English edition, Futures Past; citations refer to the German, followed by the English. 14. Many years later, the English translations of the two books also appeared almost simultaneously. Koselleck’s Critique and Crisis came out in 1988, just one year before Structural Transformation. By this time, the intensive AngloAmerican reception of Habermas’ later work had produced a renewed interest in his early work and a market for related texts. Both books were published as a part of the same MIT Press series, edited by Thomas McCarthy. ¨ ffentlichkeit und Parlamentarismus, 15. See for example Wolfgang Ja¨ger, O 23–31. 16. For an excellent summary of the shift that occurs between Habermas’ early and late work, see Craig Calhoun’s introduction to the collection, Habermas and the Public Sphere. Habermas’ controversial reliance on ‘‘lifeworld’’ communication as the normative basis for his theory of communicative action is perhaps most clearly expressed in interviews: ‘‘Struggling with the difficulties of understanding, people must, step by step, widen their original perspectives and ultimately bring them together. And they can succeed in such a ‘fusion of horizons’ by virtue of their peculiar capacity to take up the roles of ‘speaker’ and ‘hearer.’ Taking up these roles in a dialogue, they engage in a fundamental symmetry, which, at bottom, all speech situations require’’ (Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror, 37). 17. Koselleck, ‘‘Geschichte, Recht und Gerechtigkeit,’’ 346; my translation. 18. The conventional narrative of emancipation and enfranchisement is not as easy to locate in Koselleck as in Habermas, though both pursue it broadly as a question. For Koselleck, the lack of direct recourse necessitates ‘‘indirect’’ and often violent means; without social emancipation, formal political enfranchisement remains a laudable but insufficient measure. Cf. Koselleck, ‘‘The Limits

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of Emancipation.’’ At the limit, emancipation implies the human emancipation from both nature and society (261); never accomplished or accomplishable, a radical idea of emancipation means the ongoing transgression of limits. For Koselleck as for Habermas, though differently, emancipation defines history; it is ‘‘the fundamental category for all conceivable histories’’ (261). 19. This is the explicit thesis of Schmitt’s Roman Catholicism and Political Form. 20. As a reminiscence of Benjamin, Habermas’ word ‘‘aura’’ is the source of an irritation that I cannot pursue in the present context. Cf. Benjamin, ‘‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarket.’’ A kind of ‘‘demystification’’ or ‘‘secularization’’ would seem to be at issue here, but it does not necessarily imply an increase in ‘‘reason.’’ 21. Cf. Diderot, ‘‘Paradoxe sur le come´dien.’’ Diderot presents a model of dialogue and discourse that could not be more at odds with Habermas’ idea of ‘‘communicative action’’: to engage in the world through language, opinions must be acted out, causing authentic engagement to be constantly thwarted by the merely representational artificiality of active language as acting. 22. Cf. Derrida, ‘‘Force of Law.’’ Derrida’s text starts from Pascal’s suspicion that ‘‘custom’’ (coutume) may be the ‘‘mystical foundation of authority’’ (937–39). Derrida’s reading of Benjamin’s ‘‘Critique of Violence’’ demonstrates law’s inherent dependence on the force (performative and executive) of representation: ‘‘The very emergence of justice and law . . . implies a performative force, which is always an interpretive force . . . the operation that consists of founding, inaugurating, justifying law (droit), making law, would consist of a coup de force, of a performative and therefore interpretive violence . . .’’ (941). 23. Schmitt does not oppose ‘‘representation’’ to ‘‘discursive reason’’ as Habermas does, because for him representation is itself a rational principle— though not in Habermas’ sense. Schmitt’s master categories are ‘‘representation’’ and ‘‘identity,’’ which attempt to grasp the difference between immediacy and mediation in every structure of political authority. Paradoxically, in the individual as in the collective, identity—and difference—can only be produced and manifested through representation. 24. Though my critique here focuses on Habermas’ early work, his later work represents a continuation and intensification of precisely those points that are the most problematic in his early work. This continuity has been aptly characterized by Christopher Norris, ‘‘Deconstruction, Postmodernism and Philosophy,’’ 112. Without reopening the acts on Habermas and Derrida, as Norris does, the ‘philosopher’s problem’ lies in an unwarranted trust in the esoteric definability of concepts in the context of an exoteric (‘public’) reality determined by historical chances and political conflict. Leaving Derrida aside, Hans Blumenberg’s Metaphorology, from the same decade as Structural Transformation, would be a perhaps more measured example of philosophy’s tendency to critique its own status (a tendency that Habermas rejects). 25. Habermas’ allergy to the problem of representation never diminished, as can be seen in his reaction to Michael Warner’s paper, ‘‘The Mass Public

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and the Mass Subject.’’ By way of Ernst Kantorowicz, Claude Lefort, and J. G. Ballard, Warner compellingly argues for the predominance of representation in a market-oriented public sphere with minimal rational-discursive outlets; in the ‘‘Concluding Remarks,’’ Habermas calls Warner’s ideas ‘‘stimulating’’ and ‘‘refreshing’’ (465) but disqualifies his analysis of ‘‘an expressivist, somehow aesthetic, need for self-representation in public space’’ (465–66). 26. Cf. Bu¨rger, ‘‘Institution Literatur und Modernisierungsprozeß.’’ ‘‘The bourgeois subject that demands autonomy for itself is a result of the process of modernization’’ (23, my translation). 27. Cf. McCarthy, ‘‘Die politische Philosophie und das Problem der Rasse.’’ McCarthy repurposes elements of Habermas’ later work, in conjunction with elements taken from Foucault, to overcome the shortcomings of liberal political theory, which McCarthy sees as turning a blind eye to real political exclusions in favor of an idealization of formal objective conditions. 28. Foucault, ‘‘Two Lectures,’’ 93. 29. The neologism ‘‘normation,’’ which I adopt based on Giorgio Agamben’s Italian normazione, does not mean the same thing as the more familiar English word ‘‘normalization.’’ Whereas the latter refers to the return to a state of ‘‘normality’’ following its interruption, normazione designates the process by which the norms and its normality—nomoi—come into being in the first place. Cf. Wetters, ‘‘The Rule of the Norm.’’ 30. Cf. Bohman, ‘‘Expanding dialogue.’’ Bohman, despite his studied twosidedness, ties his hopes to an optimistic Habermasian paradigm. The Internet is slightly beyond the scope of my present work, but a few speed-bumps to Internet euphoria are still in order: (1) The Internet does not necessarily counteract the continuing and intensifying dominance a few ideological channels governed by specific interests and agendas. (2) The editorial and representational disposition of bloggers leads them to ‘‘air’’ opinions and create sensations, but they are typically excluded from formal decision-making. (3) Internet activism may be counterproductive because it produces virtual ‘‘states within the state’’ that have little impact upon and in fact depend on (4) global governmental and corporate infrastructures that are increasingly ruled by the arcana of information (or ‘‘intelligence’’), on the one hand, and unregulated, private decision-making on the other. 31. The hope for unification before a common enemy or a common goal, which Hannah Arendt, for example, held out for space exploration, has just as often led in the opposite direction. In Structural Transformation, Habermas even went so far as to imply that the standoff of the Cold War could be the source of an imperative toward rationalization (277; 235). He thereby sees the silver lining in what Koselleck called a ‘‘global civil war,’’ and he might even have been right, if there were any indication that the global civil war ever ended. 32. Cf. Habermas, Der Philosophische Diskurs der Moderne; and Habemas, Glauben und Wissen. Based on supposed effectiveness of everyday lifeworld conventions of discursive problem-solving, Habermas seeks to exempt his theory

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of communicative action from the entropy of a ‘‘literary’’ model of history and discourse. Everything hinges on his characterization of this lifeworld, which represents a hypostasized ‘‘nature’’ for him, comparable to the ‘‘philosophies of origin’’ that he wants to see in Derrida and Heidegger. The concept of the ‘‘everyday’’ would qualify as a collective singular in Koselleck’s sense, but Maurice Blanchot’s ‘‘Everyday Speech’’ in his Infinite Conversation offers the most pregnantly anti-Habermasian position: ‘‘The everyday is then the medium in which . . . alienations, fetishisms, and reifications produce their effects’’ (244). For Habermas, the role of literary criticism, like philosophy and religion, is to translate from specialized and esoteric fields into an exoteric field of discourse. Much of literary criticism, however, rejects this popularizing role and does precisely the opposite, obstructing reductive ‘‘translations’’ and impeding the facile cooptation of traditions in the name of whichever political agenda. 33. Cf. Derrida, ‘‘Structure, Sign and Play.’’ Many of the oppositions and antagonisms within the philosophy and theory of the last fifty years—or of the last four hundred—pertain to the status of reason in history (with the word ‘‘secularization’’ as a belated master category). Whether in the guise of a ‘‘dialectic of Enlightenment’’ or of ‘‘structure, sign and play,’’ a substantial branch of ‘‘modernist’’ and ‘‘postmodernist’’ theory contests the validity and univocality of such a historical narrative. For Derrida, the real historical rupture occurs—not at any particular time—with the ability to think the ‘‘structurality of structure,’’ the disillusioning realization that the ‘‘process of signification’’ was being continually undermined by ‘‘a sort of nonlocus in which an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play.’’ The Derridean law of opinion reveals itself in ‘‘the absence of the transcendental signified,’’ which ‘‘extends the domain and the play of signification infinitely’’ (280). Derrida’s observation of ‘‘sign-substitutions’’ at the level of the signifier may be read as complementing Hans Blumenberg’s idea of Umbesetzung (the metaphorical refashioning of inherited concepts at the level of the signified). See also Derrida, ‘‘White Mythology.’’ 34. Koselleck, Critique and Crisis, 96; 115. 35. Cf. Du¨ttmann, Zwischen den Kulturen, esp. 10–51: 28–29, 88–91. Du¨ttmann, a careful reader and student of both Habermas and Derrida, rejects the former’s famous critiques of the latter for reasons that remain valid and decisive. politics and belief (the parable of the sower)

1. Unless otherwise noted, all Ho¨lderlin citations are taken from the Hanser edition; translations are my own. 2. Adelung, Grammatisch-kritisches Wo¨rterbuch, IV: 555; my translation and emphasis. 3. Davison, ‘‘The Public Opinion Process,’’ 93.

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the opinion system and the re-formation of the individual

1. Erin Mackie, ed., The Commerce of Everyday Life. 2. Addison, The Tatler no. 155, 58–59. 3. Ibid., 60. 4. Cited from Claude David, ‘‘Goethe und die Franzo¨sische Revolution,’’ 68; my translation. 5. Cf. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism. More than anyone else, Arendt is responsible for pursuing the question of opinion’s status within concrete institutional forms. Basic freedoms, including and especially the freedom of opinion, only have meaning in the context of civil society. For those who are excluded, ‘‘outside the pale of law,’’ ‘‘their freedom of opinion is a fool’s freedom, for nothing they think matters anyhow’’ (296). This point is obvious at the limit of a total loss of rights, but, within civil society itself, the exclusion of opinions is more often relative than absolute. According to Arendt, the relation of human rights to civil rights—with the right of opinion ambiguously belonging to both—is the greatest unresolved problem of modern states (279). 6. Aristotle, Topica, I:1. 7. Ibid., VIII:xiv 8. Byrne, Probability and Opinion, 55. 9. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan I:11, 165. 10. Hans Blumenberg’s thesis in ‘‘Der Prozeß der theoretischen Neugierde’’ (The Process of Theoretical Curiosity) states that the loosening of religious interdictions against curiosity made new transgressions and emancipations possible, as well as a return to the questions of antiquity, which gave rise to the autonomous development scientific knowledge (Legitimita¨t der Neuzeit, 263–528). 11. Cf. Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration. The ‘‘Letter’’ is a political theological treatise on the problem of simulation and pretence. Supposing true Christianity to lie on the side of toleration, Locke excludes much of what is done in the name of religion as a mere ‘‘pretence of Religion.’’ Making tolerance into the exemplary—the only—Christian virtue and emphasizing pretence, Locke risks turning Christianity into an intrinsically schismatic religion, simultaneously the best and worst of all religions (25, 33, 35, 50–51). Just as the semblance of religion is the essence of hypocritical irreligion, Christianity’s tendency to ‘‘pretence’’ makes it a form of latent Satanism, which would mean the end of religion as a collective phenomenon: Locke’s letter consistently reconceives ‘‘orthodoxy’’ as a self-reflexive category of individual autonomy—‘‘for every one is Orthodox to himself’’ (23, 32, 42)—rather than of obedience and subordination. This is the formula for the necessity of tolerance as well as the precondition for absolute intolerance. 12. In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV:xx:§2, Locke emphasizes that discursive rationality will never be within reach of most people; §3

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raises the obvious objection, however: ‘‘What shall become of these who want [proofs]?’’ who live in ‘‘unavoidable ignorance of those things, which are of greatest importance to them[?]’’ The answer, which attempts to resist its own tendency toward relativism, relies on the (unnamed) law of opinion—the authority of nomos—to justify the uncritical participation in ‘‘culture.’’ 13. Reason, according to Essay IV:xvii, defines the possibility of connecting ideas within a coherent creation. But more revealing is the justification, in the Letter Concerning Toleration, for the intolerance of atheism (op. cit., 51). For Locke, atheism means the utter rejection of all forms of knowledge and authority, including the coherence of reason. Philosophically, atheism represents the most extreme form of a ‘‘performative contradiction’’: It dissolves the reason without which it could not represent any coherent claims to—or against— authority. 14. For an overview of the findings in this direction, see the review of David Sorkin’s Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment by Allan Arkush. 15. Cf. Goetschel, ‘‘An Alternative Universalism.’’ Goetschel’s recent work in many ways sets the precedent for my own. He offers a sympathetic reading of Mendelssohn’s still modern attempt to rethink the basic categories of civil society. 16. Cf. Arkush, Moses Mendelssohn and the Enlightenment. I would resist Arkush’s reading of Jerusalem as an ‘‘interpretation of Judaism’’ or a ‘‘philosophy of Judaism’’ (xiv). Especially Jerusalem is only nominally Jewish in its challenge to the tradition of political philosophy. 17. Much recent work on Mendelssohn reads Jerusalem, in one way or another, in terms of the superiority of Judaism’s ability to exemplify secular virtues such as freedom, pluralism, and tolerance. Cf. Librett, The Rhetoric of Cultural Dialogue; Hilfrich, ‘‘Lebendige Schrift’’; Berghahn, Moses Mendelssohns ‘‘Jerusalem.’’ Relying on contemporary theorizations and contextualizations, all three authors assert Mendelssohn’s relevance to contemporary political philosophy and critical theory. Hilfrich goes the furthest in her polemic against the reading of Mendelssohn as a marginal figure whose contribution is merely ‘‘historical’’ (18–19). 18. Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn, 145. 19. Jerusalem’s criticisms of Christianity have not gone unnoticed, starting dramatically with Hamann, but many commentators have preferred to overlook the polemical point. See for example Sorkin, Moses Mendelssohn (137), and Alexander Altmann, in his introduction to the English translation of Jerusalem, which tends to trivialize the critical aspect by seeing it as a result of Mendelssohn’s anger at being confronted with the possibility of a contradiction between Judaism and reason (Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, 12). 20. A particularly telling case is that of Johann David Michaelis, the famous Go¨ttingen ‘‘Orientalist’’ and specialist in Judaism and Mosaic Law, documented by Lo¨wenbru¨ck, Judenfeindlichkeit im Zeitalter der Aufkla¨rung. Michaelis’ work

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represents a shift from older, religiously based forms of antisemitism to national and racial conceptions (206–07). 21. See for example Allan Arkush, ‘‘Moses Mendelssohn and the Religious Enlightenment,’’ who argues that ‘‘liberty of conscience . . . would seem to be . . . irreconcilable with the Bible’s authoritarian communitarianism’’ (182). 22. Following Blumenberg (Legitimita¨t der Neuzeit) and Habermas (Glauben und Wissen), secularization is translation (originally referring to the transfer of ecclesiastical property to the state). But translation can also be a source of problems, as Blumenberg has emphasized but Habermas has downplayed. Following the former, the transfer in of ideas does not occur as a linear and remainderless ¨ bersetzung) also implies a functional ‘‘reprocess because every ‘‘translation’’ (U deployment’’ (Umbesetzung). Mendelssohn does not simply translate into a system whose claim to the neutrality and reason can go unquestioned; he does not translate Judaism into an existing presupposition of the secular, but creates an entirely new version of it. 23. Cf. Hamann, ‘‘Golgotha und Scheblimini.’’ Hamann proliferates arguments against Jerusalem, but I would single out his insistence on the superficiality of all institutional transformations and reformations. He asserts the fundamental illegitimacy of worldly institutions, but does not deny them their coercive character: ‘‘— A kingdom not of this world. . . because all public institutions invested with merely human authority cannot possibly stand next to a divine legislation. . .’’ (314). Hamann’s christological conception of an otherworldly form of law, lacking both sovereignty (head) and executive power (hands), casts all reformism and enlightenment in the shade of salvation history. A representative but not exhaustive summary of Hamann’s arguments can be found in Berghahn (256–73), who reads them as a polemic against Mendelssohn’s rationalism more than against his Judaism. Hamann’s antisemitism is pursued by Petra and Uwe Nettelbeck, ‘‘Vier Fußnoten.’’ 24. Mendelssohn, ‘‘Jerusalem.’’ Allan Arkush’s English translation is quoted throughout, with occasional modifications; German pagination precedes the English. 25. Locke, Essay II:28:§12; my emphasis. 26. Ibid., §10; my emphasis. 27. Allan Arkush argues that Mendelssohn sought ‘‘the best of both worlds’’ between liberalism and communitarianism and managed to avoid the ‘‘worst excesses’’ of both (Moses Mendelssohn, 121). In a decisive variation on Arkush, Peter Fenves reads Jerusalem as a theory of the endlessness of opinion, which Mendelssohn not only constates but performs (Fenves, ‘‘Language on a Holy Day’’). Fenves draws a parallel between Mendelssohn’s discursive strategy and his interpretation of ceremonial law, which is read as an analog of literary language, ‘‘fluid in its meaningfulness. . . . interrupted so as to present indirectly what infinitely recedes from representation’’ (96). Hilfrich also emphasizes the literary open-endedness of Mendelssohn’s text (‘‘Lebendige Schrift,’’178), which

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prevents its reduction to doxa or dogma. As a point of contrast, however, Hamann did not think Mendelssohn was ‘‘literary’’ enough. The argument is a familiar one, which extends to Hermann Cohen and beyond, holding that Mendelssohn downplayed messianism in his emphasis on law. In this context, Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer marks out an extreme position, arguing in effect that the modern concept of law—law without messianism—represents the original sin of the modern world. 28. Hamann pushes Mendelssohn’s arguments to their most radical form. He speaks, for example of ‘‘an adulterous philosophy’’ (‘‘Golgotha und Scheblimini,’’ 316), which makes life impossible by undermining the internal forms of commitment that oaths only externalize. Based on Hamann’s reading, the oath is only a symbol of commitment’s compulsory force. He thus argues— not entirely as a negative consequence—that Mendelssohn’s philosophy destroys the conception of the subject as a self-identity that entails faithfulness to oneself. Hamann and Mendelssohn differ over the latter’s discovery of a decentered subjectivity; the former believes that belief is all that holds the subject together and gives it a minimal form that philosophical reason cannot simply veto. 29. Ansehen in Mendelssohn is a category of probability in Locke’s sense: many facts that lie beyond one’s own experience must be preliminarily accepted ‘‘auf Glauben und Ansehen [on trust and reputation]’’ (159; 93). 30. Following Giorgio Agamben’s analysis in Homo Sacer §4, Geltung ohne Bedeutung is the formula of law as excommunication, the sovereign ban. It makes sense that Mendelssohn, the opponent of excommunication, would invert this formula. The difficult remaining question, however, is whether the elimination of the incentive-based and retributive calculations of Geltung might not ultimately increase the authority of the state by default, whenever it inevitably oversteps its Mendelssohnian mandate of cleaning up the failures of the ‘‘church’’ (as secular pedagogical institution) while claiming no pedagogical function for itself. Modern states typically rely on an ambivalent mixture of pedagogical, theological, and directly utilitarian self-justifications, for example in the case of incarceration, which, at least in the United States, opportunistically relies on the incompatible claims of deterrence, rehabilitation, punishment, and the defense of society. The last of these, the only one which Mendelssohn makes unconditionally definitive of the state’s role, has emerged as the exemplary rationale of (extra-legal) state power in the modern era, according to theorists like Foucault and Agamben, who have not hesitated to denounce the potential extreme dangers of this form of political reasoning. 31. Fichte, Beitrag zur Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums u¨ber die franzo¨sische Revolution (1793/94), 204; my translations throughout. 32. On the problem of recognition (Anerkennung), its inherent tendency to split into two temporalities—descriptive confirmation and prescriptive imperative—see Du¨ttmann’s Zwischen den Kulturen. This split can also be reread as

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Notes to pages 172–88

the (temporal) difference between a singular (inner) experiential reality and its recognized and represented identities. 33. Goethe, Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten, 130; translations mine. 34. Cf. Gailus, ‘‘Poetics of Containment.’’ Gailus provides an excellent analysis of the role of genre in Goethe’s politics of communication. polystrophon gnoman in ho¨ lderin’s pindar-fragments

1. Agamben, Homo Sacer, §2. 2. Bloom, ed., The Republic of Plato, I:331a. 3. For further background and a more extended interpretation of all of Ho¨lderlin’s Pindar fragments, Fink’s Pindarfragmente, while not completely exhaustive, remains the most important study of these texts. The question of what Ho¨lderlin and Pindar may have meant by ‘‘opinion’’ is not directly addressed by Fink. 4. The context of Ho¨lderlin leads me to focus on German translations, but Allan Bloom’s version is noteworthy because it is closer to Ho¨lderlin’s than any of the German translations I consulted: ‘‘Whoever lives a just and holy life / Sweet hope accompanies, / Fostering his heart, a nurse of his old age, / Hope which most of all pilots / The ever-turning opinion of mortals’’ (6–7). 5. Mendelssohn, ‘‘Platon: aus Polteia I,’’ 207–10. 6. Platon, Politeia, trans. Schleiermacher, 33–34. 7. Other German translations confirm the exceptionality of Ho¨lderlin’s: Platon, Staatschriften, trans. Andrea, 13; Platon, Der Staat, trans. Appelt, 6; Platon, Der Staat, trans. Kru¨ger, 72. 8. An additional striking instance of clothing and covering metaphorics in Ho¨lderlin appears in the fragment, ‘‘Im Walde,’’ from the Stuttgarter Folioheft: ‘‘Aber in Hu¨tten wohnet der Mensch, und hu¨llet / sich ein ins verscha¨mte Gewand, denn inniger / ist achtsamer auch und daß er bewahre den Geist, / wie die Priesterin die himmlische Flamme, / diß ist sein Verstand’’ (I: 265). This fragment famously calls language ‘‘der Gu¨ter gefa¨hrlichstes [the most dangerous of goods].’’ 9. Passow, Handwo¨rterbuch der griechischen Sprache. 10. The connection between ‘‘know’’ and ‘‘gno-’’ is confirmed by the Oxford English Dictionary: the verb ‘‘know’’ belongs to the same cluster of meanings as gnomae: ‘‘to perceive . . . as identical . . . to recognize . . . to identify . . . to distinguish.’’ lichtenberg’s ‘‘opinions-system’’

1. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Schriften und Briefe, op. cit. Citations refer to Promies’ numbering of Lichtenberg’s Sudelbu¨cher (‘‘Waste Books’’); translations are mine.

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2. Lichtenberg’s aphoristic writing has often been compared to the form of the hypothesis. Cf. Scho¨ne, Aufkla¨rung aus dem Geist der Experimentalphysik; and Rapic, ‘‘ ‘Man muß mit Ideen experimentieren.’ ’’ From the perspective of opinion, however, it may be possible to overstate the connection to science, which too often serves as an explanatory catchall. As I show in this chapter, Lichtenberg’s idea of opinion shaped his understanding hypotheses, and opinions are in any case different from hypotheses because the former do not allow for a system by which proofs and facts may be made convincing. Opinions as ‘‘principles of experience’’ belong to a layer of impersonal determination, including history and custom, which cannot become an object of experimentation in a strictly scientific sense but are only ‘‘probable’’ (in Locke’s sense). The scientific reading of Lichtenberg tends to inadvertently (and falsely) glorify his work by attaching it to the intellectual authority of modern science. But Lichtenberg strenuously fought to resist the transformation of science into a system of represented authority. His idea of opinion brings him into conflict with scientific systems that violate their own permanently hypothetical status; this situation is discussed in the penultimate section of the present chapter. 3. The fragmentary form of opinion is also characteristic of the Platonic understanding of doxa. In Symposium, Diotima presents an analogy between love and opinion. Reading the analogy in reverse, opinion, like love, is dictated by a dynamic of surplus and lack, possession and desire, being and becoming (202a–04a). 4. On the one side, Lichtenberg is often read in terms of the sheer imperative to think for oneself. The somewhat less-common alternative reading emphasizes the impersonal side of his thought and writing, for example K76—perhaps the most influential of all—which reformulates the Cartesian cogito (‘‘ich denke’’) in terms of an id: ‘‘es denkt’’ (discussed in the next section). Cf. Vierhaus, ‘‘Lichtenberg und seine Zeit,’’ 35. 5. The recent work of Martin Stingelin has shown Lichtenberg’s farreaching impact on later generations of authors. See ‘‘ ‘Meinungen und Fische.’ ’’ Also noteworthy is Stingelin’s editorial work in the appendix to his monograph on Lichtenberg and Nietzsche; allusions and citations are collected, as well as Nietzsche’s marginal notes and underlining in his copy of Lichtenberg’s works (‘‘Unsere ganze Philosophie ist Berichtigung des Sprachgebrauchs’’). See also, on Wittgenstein, Merkel, ‘‘ ‘Denk nicht!, sondern schau!’ ’’ For a largely anecdotal but helpful influence study, see Lamping, Lichtenbergs literarisches Nachleben. 6. Cf. Baasner, Lichtenberg. Lichtenberg’s ambivalent relation to the opinion system can be seen in his admiration of figures like Copernicus and Newton, whose heroic status in the history of the sciences contrasts unfavorably with the anonymous collaborative efforts that were increasingly the norm in Lichtenberg’s time. Baasner places too much emphasis on Lichtenberg’s desire to see the ‘‘big picture,’’ which would be able to unify the disparate sources of human knowledge and experience, but he is right that this kind of universalism was also a part of Lichtenberg’s horizons.

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Notes to pages 194–97

7. For a detailed analysis of the formal aspects of the waste books, see Campe, ‘‘Lichtenbergs Gehirnlandschaften.’’ 8. Cf. Canetti’s Lichtenberg aphorism in Die Provinz des Menschen, which highlights Lichtenberg’s ‘‘lightness’’ and ‘‘light’’ (Licht) in contrast with the self-conscious earnestness and opacity of philosophical, theoretical, and academic discourse: ‘‘He does not avoid theories, but for him every theory is an occasion for ideas (Einfa¨lle). He can play with systems without getting entangled in them. He can brush away the heaviest things like a mote of dust from his coat. The lightness of his movement makes the reader light also. Everything is taken seriously with him, but not overly so. A scholarliness (Gelehrsamkeit) as light as light (so leicht wie Licht)’’ (263, my translation). 9. This does not mean that Lichtenberg’s texts lack strong arguments. To the contrary, his most famous polemic (against Lavater’s physiognomy) has endured because it is both highly persuasive (at the level of argumentation) and highly entertaining. Lichtenberg’s polemics against Johann Heinrich Voss’ epoch-making translation of Homer’s Odyssey are in many ways similar, but are complicated by their escalation and greater residual uncertainty about who was actually right. Both Lichtenberg and Voss pursue the conflict to the bitter end of pointlessness, but perhaps for different reasons. In any case, Lichtenberg remains witty, whereas Voss entertains by his pedantic insistence on point-bypoint refutations. The primary texts of this squabble, as well as many of the surrounding letters have been published in Petra and Uwe Nettlebeck’s ‘‘French Fried Potatoes.’’ 10. In an adjacent entry, B267, Lichtenberg writes: ‘‘I do not know if that man really had that expression on his face, which one might call an inward turning of the eyes of the mind, and which is in every case a sign of the genius.’’ 11. This particular problem is developed at more length in B321, where it is a question of how to reach the ‘‘natural man’’ beneath the ‘‘artificial man’’ who is overdetermined by culture, ‘‘fashion,’’ ‘‘habit,’’ and ‘‘prejudices.’’ Like ¨ ber das Marionettentheater’’ (On Marionette Theater), it seems that Kleist’s ‘‘U the natural can only be reached by a heightened artificiality, the self-conscious artifice of self-reflection—more accurately self-refraction—through which the subject is constituted in writing. 12. Despite numerous differences and variations conditioned by the form of the Sudelbuch, Lichtenberg’s question of the origin of the I spans his entire career. In the very early A9, for instance, he writes: ‘‘As difficult as it is to say the origin of things that occur within us, how would things go if we then wanted to bring something about in the things that are outside of us?’’ 13. This is a paraphrase of the thesis of Goldmann’s ‘‘Lesen, Schreiben und das topische Denken bei Georg Christoph Lichtenberg.’’ In J1075, citing Bacon, Lichtenberg spells out the connection between a topical conception of thought and its impersonal status as opinion: ‘‘Quae in natura fundata sunt, crescunt et augentur: quae autem in opinione, variantur, non augentur [Those

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things produced by nature both grow and increase; those however that are produced by imagination (opinione) transform themselves without increasing].’’ 14. The absence of ‘‘intellectual falsification’’ in Lichtenberg’s Sudelbu¨cher—the absence of self-censorship in the interest of consistency—makes them difficult to read as a system. Their peculiar ‘‘authenticity’’ simultaneously defines their distance from the law of noncontradiction. As long as this formal condition is taken seriously, it is difficult to make general declarations about early, middle, or late periods of Lichtenberg’s work. The standard of personal integrity and self-identity implicit in such literary-critical periodizations reflects a presupposed consistency of opinion as an outward standard, in effect a mask. The internalization of this externalization, the identification with and belief in one’s own opinions, is demanded by an opinion system that canonizes its successes (not limited to artists), whereas the waste book exposes this demand as arbitrary and merely conventional. 15. Economic analogies occur frequently in Lichtenberg’s reflections on opinion: Mit Meinungen handeln (to trade in opinions), for example, occurs around 1770 (B284) and is carried over in the very late L974. The latter protests the academic habit of ‘‘trafficking in the opinions of others.’’ This might seem to describe Lichtenberg’s own practice, but he clarifies: ‘‘Truly it is a disgrace of human nature, when one believes that in order to have an opinion, one must know the opinions that others have held.’’ Without denying the topical genesis of all thoughts, Lichtenberg objects to the kind of academic gatekeeping that would make the knowledge of these genealogies into an entry requirement. He rejects an idea of opinion that would only allow ‘‘authorities’’ and ‘‘experts’’ to have a say. This system against which Lichtenberg argues became the rule, but for him—as is also more or less still the case—opinions by definition must be based on limited knowledge. 16. On the universality presupposed in the concept of the system—or at least its ‘‘claim to universality and consistency’’—see Schmidt-Biggemann, Topica Universalis, XIV, and also 29–66 (‘‘Methode und System’’). 17. Wieland’s translation of the relevant passage from Horace’s ‘‘Epistles’’ reads ‘‘Das erste, Freund, wo nicht das einzige, / das glu¨cklich machen kann, / ist nichts bewundern [The first thing, my friend, if not the only thing / that can bring happiness / is to admire nothing].’’ Wieland, perhaps the eighteenth century’s greatest proponent of this axiom, writes in Agathon, in defense of the plausibility of his narration: ‘‘To be excessively astonished by such a natural coincidence would be in our estimation a great sin against the nil admirari, which cannot be praised enough, and in which, according to the opinion of those who are experienced and knowledgeable in human affairs, the authentic, great secret of wisdom lies hidden, which defines the true adept’’ (461–62). An obvious risk here is that of the excessive admiration of the nil admirari itself. 18. Schimpf, ‘‘ ‘Transcendentale Ventriloquenz’ oder ‘Furor poeticus’?’’; my translation.

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¨ ber Physiognomik,’’ 3:262. 19. Lichtenberg, ‘‘U ¨ 20. Cf. Lessing, ‘‘Uber eine zeitige Aufgabe.’’ In this 1776 text on Schwa¨rmerei, Lessing uses etymology to make a similar point: ‘‘Schwa¨rmer, Schwa¨rmerei comes from the noun ‘swarm’ and the verb ‘to swarm’ (Schwarm, schwa¨rmen); the desire to swarm is therefore the proper sign of the Schwa¨rmer’’ (303, my translation). Like Lichtenberg, Lessing claims that Schwa¨rmer can be known and differentiated by their means and ends. By their fruits you will know them: ‘‘According to the intentions that cause the Schwa¨rmer to happily join the swarm, and according to the means he employs in so doing, can be derived the various classes of Schwa¨rmer’’ (303). Lessing’s additional insight is that even philosophers, wits, and ‘‘Lucian spirits’’ (who operate by ridicule) also seek to create a swarm, even as they make fun of Schwa¨rmer (304). Everyone who participates in the public sphere is a potential Schwa¨rmer, and Schwa¨rmerei appears as a vicious cycle because ‘‘Scha¨rmerei can only be combated through Schwa¨rmerei’’ (304). The philosopher who sees this will avoid the public sphere, attempting ‘‘nothing at all’’ against Schwa¨rmerei, but instead simply ‘‘goes his own way.’’ This results in the private and more or less academic task of ‘‘clarifying the concepts upon which Schwa¨rmerei depends’’ (304). 21. Lichtenberg, ‘‘Prof. Lichtenbergs Antwort auf das Sendschreiben eines Ungennanten u¨ber die Schwa¨merei in unserer Zeiten,’’ 3:414–26. 22. The phrase ‘‘betrayed betrayer’’ was made famous by Lessing’s ‘‘Nathan.’’ 23. Cf. Luhmann, Soziale Systeme. After speaking of the ‘‘fog (Nebel) . . . of indeterminable, inelaborable complexity,’’ Luhmann expands the analogy to provide for an aerial perspective allowing for the unification of the disparateness of a history defined by competing disciplinary and ideological systems (12–13). Luhmann wants to restore a universal perspective that was already mostly eclipsed by the end of the eighteenth century. But for Lichtenberg the nebulousness produced by uncontrollable systemic and theoretical variation is not the problem. He supposes it to be the essence of science, which is scientific only because it eschews its own normative, prescriptive, and terminological enforcement—more self-fulfilling prophecy than science—which is the condition of its fully realized ‘‘systematicity.’’ 24. J651 is representative of Lichtenberg’s thinking on both Catholicism and Christianity: ‘‘I believe it could be proven with geometric precision, presupposing that the new Testament contains the complete doctrines of Christianity, that the Catholic religion would unfortunately not qualify to the name of Christian. Whether any of the Protestant religions would do so entirely I will leave undecided. It would be possible to wager a million to one, were the question put before a group of the most reasonable men of all nations, that the decision would fall out as follows: The Catholic religion is Christian just as little as modern Italian is ancient Latin. The fact that the Christian religion is actually not the ruling religion anywhere in Europe today, but that there may be people

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here and there who may possess it but who cannot proclaim it very loudly because they fear even their acts might be taken for inauthentic as soon as it were known that their opinions were not those of the accepted doctrines. May they all drink from it, says the New Testament.’’ 25. ‘‘Theories are artificial systems that always have their worth in the absence of a natural one’’ (J(2)1774). Schmidt-Biggemann’s work on the history of the concept of the system leads him to the similar conclusion that systems’ claims to universal applicability, consistency, and competency is also their limitation because ‘‘this static quality . . . serves to effect the particularity of universal systems behind their own backs (where changes continue to occur, which systems with their claim of universal competency are unable to register precisely because of their universal claim)’’ ( Topica Universalis, XVIII). 26. The Sudelbu¨cher spend a lot of time on language problems, frequently in conjunction with polemics against systems. For example, C278: ‘‘What Bacon says about the harmfulness of systems might be said of every single word. Many words which express entire classes of beings, or all of the steps of an entire ladder, are used as individua as if they were a single step.’’ In C209: ‘‘The famous Bacon of Verulam has already said and we have found it to be true, that not much more will be discovered in a science as soon as it has been brought into the form of a system.’’ Systematization has an essentially deterrent and prophylactic relation to the advancement of knowledge, which for Lichtenberg only occurs though discovery and invention. C209 continues: ‘‘Perhaps one would be able to help those given to excessive drink, were one to submit this entire science to the fetters of a system and thereby obstruct rapid progress. I think that the number of great drinkers and geniuses would significantly decrease as soon as one began to reason about the rules, as we have sufficiently seen in other sciences. Where there are no rules there are also no incompetents.’’ 27. Winthrop-Young, ‘‘Terminology and Terror.’’ 28. Derrida, ‘‘Structure, Sign and Play.’’ 29. A literary and theological genealogy of this prominent figure of thought—which is not a figure of the coming of the messiah so much as of selfdestructive nothingness of ‘‘evil’’—might start with Luke 8:32–36 (where Jesus casts demons out of a man and into swine, which run to drown themselves). Dostoevski’s Demons uses this passage as its epigraph, but more recently W. G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn gives it a different spin, reading the story as a rationalization that requires the pigs to be scapegoated and sacrificed. 30. According to an alternate figuration, the genius would be the nil (Null) within every system, functionally equivalent to the zero in the decimal system, the sheer placeholder and universal ground. Cf. Lichtenberg, ‘‘Rede der Ziffer 8 am ju¨ngsten Tage des 1798ten Jahres im großen Rat der Ziffern gehalten.’’

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Absolutism, Wieland on, 49 Accommodation, Locke on, 140–41 Activity, Lichtenberg on, 228 Addison, Joseph, 123–24 Adorno, Theodor, 11, 250n3 Aeneid (Virgil), 16–23 Aesthetics: Goethe on, 175; Lichtenberg on, 202 Agamben, Giorgio, xii, 10, 179 Alienation: Mendelssohn on, 154; opinion system and, 124–25 Allegory, 240–42; Goethe and, 174, 176; Ho¨lderlin and, 183; Koselleck and, 98; Virgil and, 20; Wieland and, 45 Analogy: Derrida and, 106; Forster and, 32; Kant and, 52; Lichtenberg and, 199–202, 204–5, 210; Wieland and, 48. See also Metaphors Appearance, Habermas on, 96 Arendt, Hannah, xi–xii, xiv, 56, 262n5 Aristotle, 127–28, 136 Arkush, Allan, 264n27 Arts, 110–11; Derrida on, 103–9; Gu¨tersloh and Blei on, 70–80; Habermas on, 99 Assimilation, Lichtenberg on, 198 Athens: decision making of, 61–69; exceptionalism of, 62–64 Augustine of Hippo, 90 Authority: Fichte on, 167–68; Gu¨tersloh on, 79; Locke on, 137–38, 141–42; Mendelssohn on, 147, 150 Autonomy: Fichte on, 167, 170; Gu¨tersloh on, 78; Habermas on, 94, 99;

Lichtenberg on, 192, 197–206, 214, 221; Locke on, 138; Mendelssohn on, 153 Baasner, Rainer, 267n6 Back, Kurt W., 16–18 Bauer, Wilhelm, 251n4 Bayle, Pierre, 95 Belief: Aristotle on, 127; Fichte on, 161; Goethe on, 176–77; Hobbes on, 2, 130, 152; Ho¨lderlin on, 119; Lichtenberg on, 204–5, 229, 238; Locke on, 132–33, 143; Mendelssohn on, 144–45, 151–52; parable of sower on, 115–22; Wieland on, 42 Ben Israel, Menasseh, 146 Benjamin, Walter, vii–viii, 11, 158, 240–41 Bernadete, Seth, 63 Blanchot, Maurice, 255n27 Blei, Franz, 70–80 Bloom, Allan, 266n4 Blumenberg, Hans, 26–27, 126, 223, 241–42, 250n30, 256n34 Bohman, James, 260n30 Bourdieu, Pierre, 249n13 Bricolage, Lichtenberg and, 231 Bush administration, 10, 82 Byrne, Edmund F., 128 Campe, Johann Heinrich, 8 Capitalism, Mendelssohn and, 149

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Catacomb metaphor: Blei on, 79–80; Derrida and, 106; Gu¨tersloh on, 71– 72, 74, 79 Ceremonial law, Mendelssohn on, 147, 151–52, 155–60 Chaos: Arendt on, 56. See also Schwa¨rmerei Christianity: gospels, 115–22; Lichtenberg on, 212; Mendelssohn on, 146 Cicero, 85, 224–25 Class, Wieland on, 41, 45 Coercion: Fichte on, 164, 168; Locke on, 136; Mendelssohn on, 153, 155, 157; Wieland on, 33 Cognition, Lichtenberg on, 196 Cold War, Koselleck and, 83 Collective singulars: Koselleck on, xii, 84–88, 92; Mendelssohn and, 155; public-private relationship and, xvi, 239–40 Commonplace book. See Sudelbu¨cher Common sense: Fichte on, 168; Locke on, 139; Wieland on, 51 Communication, Mendelssohn on, 146 Communicative action, 10 Communicative rationality, 3, 12 Communitarian movement, 249n15 Community, Herodotus on, 62 Competition of ideas: Davison on, 120; Lichtenberg on, 203–4, 207 Conceptual history, Koselleck on, 84–85, 87–88 Conflict resolution: Koselleck on, 88, 90; opinion system and, 125 Conscience: Fichte on, 160–71; Hobbes on, 2, 130–31; Lichtenberg on, 195; Locke on, 140; Mendelssohn on, 145 Conservatism: Derrida and, 108; Wieland on, 28–30 Conspiracy, Koselleck on, 81 Consumption, Lichtenberg on, 198 Conversation, 243; Goethe on, 171–78; Locke on, 137; Plato and, 126; Wieland on, 47 Conversion, Lichtenberg on, 211, 213–15 Conviction: Benjamin on, vii–viii; Mendelssohn on, 153–54. See also belief

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Cosmopolitanism: definition of, 57–58; Derrida on, 106; and opinion system, 123; Wieland on, 56–60, 111–12 Councils: Herodotus on, 61–62; Lichtenberg on, 229, 232–33 Courtroom metaphors: Fichte and, 164; Koselleck and, 81, 90 Critique (critical discourse; critical theory), 244–45; definition of, 95; Derrida and, 108; Fichte on, 161–62; Forster on, 30; Koselleck on, 80–88; Lichtenberg on, 221; Mendelssohn on, 146–47; Wieland on, 39, 109–14. See also Rational-critical discourse Culture: Habermas on, 96; Wieland on, 43–45, 112 Curiousity, Hobbes on, 129 Custom: Fichte on, 166; Herodotus on, 64; Locke on, 138; Mendelssohn on, 157–58

Davison, W. Phillips, 119–21 Decision making, Herodotus on, 61–69 Deconstruction, 10, 103–9, 244–45 Defeatism, Habermas on, 10–11 Definitions of public opinion, 7–9; Fichte on, 162; Habermas on, 6–7, 94; Kant on, 53; Lichtenberg on, 190; Trier on, 61–62 Democracy: Blei on, 76; Derrida on, 113–14; fama and, 23; Forster on, 32–33; Habermas on, 98; Herodotus and, 63; machine metaphor and, viii–xi; Schmitt on, 3–4; term, 245 Depersonalization: Blei on, 77; critique and, 110–11; Koselleck on, 82–83; Locke on, 136 Depth, Blei on, 75 Derrida, Jacques, xii–xiii, 10, 100–9, 113– 14, 244–45 Diachronic forces: Derrida on, 107; Koselleck on, 91–92 Dialogue: Aristotle on, 127; Locke on, 136. See also Selbstgespra¨ch Diderot, Denis, 82, 259n21 Diffe´rance, and opinion, 104

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Index Disbelief, Lichtenberg on, 207 Discourse: Fichte on, 167; foundations of, 125–31; Hobbes on, 129–30; Lichtenberg on, 208, 226; Locke and, 131–44; Mendelssohn on, 146 Discursive reason: Habermas on, 5, 10; Hobbes on, 130–31; Lichtenberg on, 199; Locke on, 137. See also Rationalcritical discourse

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 160–71, 188–89, 195 Forster, Georg, 9, 30–33, 221 Foucault, Michel, xii, 101–3 Fragments, Lichtenberg on, 190–91 Freedom of opinion, 262n5; Hobbes on, 3; Ho¨lderlin on, 187; Wieland on, 94 Freedom of press, Wieland on, 59–60 Freedom of thought, Wieland on, 34–35 Friendship, Wieland on, 34

Economics: Lichtenberg on, 202; Schmitt on, 3–4 Education: Fichte on, 161, 167–69; Foucault on, 103; Ho¨lderlin on, 183, 187; Kant on, 54; Koselleck on, 85–86; Locke on, 143; Mendelssohn on, 147–48; parable of sower and, 121 Ego, 239; Fichte on, 168–69; Lichtenberg on, 195–97, 202, 229 Ego cogito, 195, 205, 239 Eighteenth century, 1–2; Blei on, 75–76; Koselleck on, 83–84; liberal discourse theory in, 131–44 Enlightenment: Fichte on, 161, 169; Forster on, 31; Kant on, 51, 54; Koselleck on, 80–81; Lichtenberg on, 193, 211, 234; Wieland on, 41, 43–45 Enthusiasm: Locke on, 139. See also Schwa¨rmerei Epictetus, 1 Error, Fichte on, 164–65 Ethics: Fichte on, 161, 165; Goethe on, 175; Lichtenberg on, 221; Locke on, 136–37, 139 Exclusion: Fichte on, 162; Goethe on, 173; Mendelssohn on, 158; Wieland on, 41 Experience, Fichte on, 166

Garve, Christian, 37–38 Genius, Lichtenberg on, 226–38 Gesinnung, Mendelssohn on, 153–54 Gnomae: in Herodotus, 61–69; in Pindar and Ho¨lderlin, 179–87 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 70, 125, 171–78, 240 Gospels, 115–22 Gossip: fama as, 16–17, 19–20; Wieland on, 39–40 Government, Locke on, 143–44 Guillotine, Lichtenberg on, 215 Gu¨tersloh, Albert Paris, 70–80 Habermas, Ju¨rgen, xiii–xiv, xvi, 241, 244–45; and fama, 16; and Koselleck, 84, 88–100; on public-private relationship, xi–xii, 4–5; and sociological tradition, 5–13; and Wieland, 29 Habit: Lichtenberg on, 238; Wieland on, 42–43 Hamann, Johann Georg, 147, 149, 152 Hearsay, Locke on, 141 Hegel, G. W. F., 247n6 Herodotus, 61–69, 90 Hilfrich, Carola, 264n27 History: Benjamin on, 240–41; Derrida on, 107; Fichte on, 162–63; Habermas on, xiii; Kant on, 51–55; Koselleck on, 81–82, 84–87, 91–92; Lichtenberg on, 216–17, 225, 235–36; Locke on, 142; Virgil and, 21–22; Wieland on, 49–50 Hobbes, Thomas, 2, 128–31; on belief, 152; Koselleck on, 92; Mendelssohn and, 144–45; precursors to, 125–28

Fact: Fichte on, 162; Habermas on, 10; Hobbes on, 130 Faith. See belief Fama, 16–23; definition of, 16 Fashion, xvi Fatum, 16–23 Fenves, Peter, 264n27

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Ho¨lderlin, Friedrich, 117–20, 179–87 Hope: Derrida and, 105–6; Ho¨lderlin on, 181–82; Koselleck on, 87; Lichtenberg on, 225; Mendelssohn on, 180–81 Horace, 124 Human nature, Wieland on, 43–44 Human rights, Fichte on, 167 Humphreys, Sally, 68–69 Hypocrisy: of critique, 110, 112; and irony, 242; Lichtenberg on, 194, 214; Locke and, 140; Mendelssohn on, 154–56 Hypothesis, Lichtenberg on, 226

Kant, Immanuel, 50–56 Klimt, Gustav, 70–71 Knowledge, Locke on, 131 Koselleck, Reinhart, xii, 80–100, 111–13, 239–40 Language, 12; Goethe on, 177; Koselleck on, 87–88; Lichtenberg on, 217–22; Mendelssohn on, 146, 153–55, 157; Wieland on, 39, 110 Latency of public opinion: Derrida on, 113–14; Wieland on, 38–40, 46 Lavater, Johann Kasper, 210–11, 213 Lavoisier, Antoine-Laurent de, 219–21, 224 Law: Foucault on, 103; Habermas on, 93, 97–98; Koselleck on, 90–92; Mendelssohn on, 147–52, 155–60 Law of necessity, Forster on, 32 Law of opinion: Derrida on, 107; Habermas on, 93–96; Herodotus on, 64–65; Koselleck on, 92–93; Lichtenberg on, 214; Locke on, 141, 148; Noelle-Neumann on, 7; Virgil on, 16 Legitimacy: Foucault on, 101; Hobbes on, 130; Locke on, 138; public opinion and, 25 Lessing, G. E., 149 Lewis, Justin, 248n12 Liberalism, 2–3; Fichte on, 160–71; Locke and, 131–44; Wieland on, 59 Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph, 123, 188– 238, 243 Lippmann, Walter, 247n1 Literary public sphere: Derrida on, 106; Habermas on, 5–6; Koselleck on, 80–81; Wieland on, 112 Literature, 11–12; Derrida and, 103–9; Forster and, 30, 32; Goethe and, 171–78; Gu¨tersloh and, 71; Habermas and, 11, 99; Koselleck and, 112; Lichtenberg and, 217–18; parable of sower and, 115–22; Plato and, 126; Virgil and, 16–23; Wieland and, 33–37 Locke, John, 131–44; Foucault and, 101–3; Lichtenberg and, 193; Mendelssohn and, 144–46, 148. See also Law of opinion

Id, Lichtenberg on, 196–97, 227 Identity, Schmitt on, 96 Ideology: Arendt on, 56; Koselleck on, 84–85, 240 Idolatry, Mendelssohn on, 155–56 Independent thought. See Selbstdenken Indirect politics, Koselleck on, 80–88, 93 Individualism: Fichte on, 160–71; Gu¨tersloh on, 71; Lichtenberg on, 188–238; re-formation of, 123–78; Schmitt on, 77–78; Wieland on, 40, 42 Individuation, Lichtenberg on, 227–28 Innocence, Lichtenberg on, 195 Intelligentsia, Wieland on, 56–60 Interest: Aristotle on, 127; Fichte on, 164; Goethe on, 172, 174; Locke on, 139; Wieland on, 42–43 Internal dialogue. See Selbstgespra¨ch International opinion system, Fichte on, 169 Internet: Derrida and, 105; and polling, xi Irony, 242–43; Blei and, 77; Gu¨tersloh and, 73; Herodotus and, 62; Koselleck and, 113; Lichtenberg and, 203–4, 233, 237; Locke and, 101; Wieland and, 109–14 Isegorie, 64–65 Isolation, Lichtenberg on, 234–35 Judaism, Mendelssohn on, 144–60 Judgment: Fichte on, 162–63; Hobbes on, 130; Locke on, 132, 134–35, 138; Mendelssohn on, 159 Justice, Koselleck on, 90–91

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Index Logos, Herodotus on, 67 Luhmann, Niklas, 270n23

Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth, 7–8 Nomenclature, Lichtenberg on, 219–21, 223–25 Nomos: in Herodotus, 61–69; Locke on, 139; Mendelssohn on, 157–58; Wieland on, 26 Norm(s): Fichte on, 162–63, 167, 189; Foucault on, 102; Habermas on, 91; Kant on, 55; Wieland on, 39, 43 Normation, 103; term, 260n29 Norris, Christopher, 259n24 Novalis, 222 Novelty, Forster on, 31

Machiavelli, Niccolo`, 25–26, 90 Machine metaphor, vii–xvi Margerison, Kenneth, 8–9 Mark, gospel of, 115–22 McCarthy, Thomas, 260n27 Meaning, Mendelssohn on, 144–60 Media, Derrida on, 104–5 Meinung. See Opinion(s) Memory: Lichtenberg on, 197–206; Locke on, 133–34 Mendelssohn, Moses, 144–60, 180–81 Metaphors, 240–41; Back on, 16–17; Blumenberg and, 223, 250n30; catacombs, 71–72, 74, 79–80, 106; courtroom, 81, 90, 164; Fichte and, 164; Gu¨tersloh and, 72–73; Koselleck and, 81; Lichtenberg and, 199–200, 218–20, 232–33, 236–37; Locke and, 135, 141–42; machine, vii–xvi; Mendelssohn and, 155; method of, 12; parable of sower, 115–22 Michaelis, Johann David, 263n20 Mirabile dictu, 20 Modernism, 70–80; crisis of, 72; definition of, 71 Modernity: Derrida on, 106–7; Habermas on, 89; Mendelssohn on, 155 Munson, Rosaria Vignolo, 63 Myths, 100; Blumenberg on, 241–42; Herodotus on, 68; Virgil and, 20–21

¨ ffentliche Meinung. See Public opinion O Opinion(s): Aquinas on, 128; Aristotle on, 127; Forster on, 30–33; Gu¨tersloh on, 74; Habermas on, 94, 96; Herodotus on, 61–69; Hobbes on, 128–30; Lichtenberg on, 192–93, 222, 243; Locke on, 131–33, 136; Machiavelli on, 25–26; as machine, vii–xvi; Mendelssohn on, 145–46; Pindar on, 179–87; representation and, 70–114; term, 9, 24–27, 61–62, 128; underground of, 70–80. See also freedom of opinion; law of opinion; origins of opinion Opinions-system, Lightenberg on, 188–238 Opinion system, 123–78; definition of, 123; Fichte on, 161, 164; Goethe on, 171–78 Oracles, 65–67 Order, Lichtenberg on, 200 Originality, Lichtenberg on, 230 Origins of opinion, 1–15; Goethe on, 172–73; Herodotus on, 68; Ho¨lderlin on, 186; Lichtenberg on, 188, 196, 201–2; Locke on, 131–35

Narration: Goethe on, 171–78; Gu¨tersloh and, 73; Herodotus and, 61–69; Koselleck on, 90; Lichtenberg and, 233; parable of sower and, 116–17; Virgil and, 16–23 Nations system, Lichtenberg on, 234–35 Naturalness, Lichtenberg on, 228 Necessity, law of, Forster on, 32 Necker, Jacques, 24 Negative determination thesis, Derrida on, xiii Nietzsche, Friedrich, 194

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Parables, of sower, 115–22 Paranoia, Wieland and, 35–36 Parliamentary democracies: Habermas on, xiii, 90, 93; machine metaphor and, viii–xi. See also Democracy Passion: Goethe on, 173; Hobbes on, 129

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Passivity, Lichtenberg on, 228 Passow, Franz, 183–86 Performative contradiction, 113, 170, 194, 242 Persian decision making, 61–69 Personification, 19–21, 45, 77, 88, 183 Persuasion: Lichtenberg on, 216; Locke on, 140; Mendelssohn on, 150 Pessimism, Wieland on, 40, 43 Pindar, 64, 179–87 Planet analogy, Lichtenberg on, 188, 210, 214, 216–17, 234–35 Plato, 126, 179 Political reason, Locke on, 139–40 Political theology: definition of, 25; Foucault on, 101; Mendelssohn on, 146– 47, 158; Wieland on, 24–60 Politics: Gu¨tersloh on, 71; indirect, Koselleck on, 80–88, 93; Mendelssohn on, 157; parable of sower on, 115–22; transformation of, xii–xiii Polling: Derrida on, xiii; Habermas on, 6; Herodotus on, 61, 63; Schmitt on, xi Polystrophon gnoman, 179–87 Popular opinion: Forster on, 31; versus public opinion, 8–9; Virgil on, 16; Wieland on, 39 Posterity: Derrida on, 105; Fichte on, 166; Ho¨lderlin on, 118; Kant on, 54–55; Lichtenberg on, 193, 222, 227, 232–34, 236–37; Virgil and, 22; Wieland on, 36–37 Postmodernism, 74, 121, 261n33 Prejudice, Locke on, 135 Press, freedom of, Wieland on, 59–60 Privacy: Mendelssohn on, 153; Wieland on, 34, 56–60 Private opinion: Aquinas on, 128; origins of, 1–15; Schmitt on, 4; Wieland on, 34 Private reason, Mendelssohn on, 149 Private sphere: Koselleck on, 80–81; Wieland on, 34 Privatization, 124; Gu¨tersloh on, 74; Schmitt on, 3–4 Probability, Locke on, 131–32, 135

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Proceduralism: Habermas on, 91, 104; Koselleck on, 81, 90; Locke on, 132 Processing, Lichtenberg on, 198 Progress: Koselleck on, 85; Lichtenberg on, 216–17, 235 Property rights, 3 Publicity: Habermas on, 96–97; parable of sower and, 117; Wieland on, 46–47 Public opinion: Blei on, 76–77, 79; and democracy, ix; Derrida on, xiii, 103–9; Forster on, 33; Kant on, 52–55; Machiavelli on, 25–26; origins of, 1–15; versus popular opinion, 8–9; Wieland on, 24, 27–30, 37–50. See also definitions of public opinion; latency of public opinion Public-private relationship, xvi, 239–45; Habermas on, xi–xii; Koselleck on, 89; parable of sower and, 116; Schmitt on, 3–5 Public space, Derrida on, xiii Public sphere: versus fama, 17; Forster on, 33; Habermas on, xiv; Kant on, 54; Koselleck on, 88–100; Wieland on, 24–60. See also Literary public sphere Rational-critical discourse, 243; Aristotle on, 127–28; Habermas on, xvi, 90, 95; Mendelssohn on, 159–60; Wieland on, 40. See also Discursive reason Rationalization, Foucault on, 102 Reading, Lichtenberg on, 197–98 Reason: Aristotle on, 127; Blei on, 76; Derrida and, 108; versus fama, 17; Fichte on, 166; Forster on, 32; Habermas on, 98–99; Hobbes on, 129; Kant on, 51; Koselleck on, 82; Lichtenberg on, 211, 213, 216, 225–27; Locke on, 139–42; Machiavelli on, 26; Mendelssohn on, 145, 149–50, 156, 158–59; Wieland on, 37–38, 45 Redfield, James, 69 Refeudalization thesis, Habermas on, 98 Reflection, Lichtenberg on, 200 Reform (Reformation): Fichte on, 162, 165–66; Habermas on, xiii; Lichtenberg on, 219–21, 229; Locke on, 137; Wieland on, 41–42

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Index Refusal, right of: Lichtenberg on, 207; Locke on, 134 Relativism, 1–2; Kant and, 56 Religion: Lichtenberg on, 211, 213–15, 220; Mendelssohn on, 144–60; Schmitt on, 3 Representation, 110–11, 240–42; Derrida on, 104; Fichte on, 170–71; Foucault on, 102; Goethe on, 177; Gu¨tersloh on, 79; Habermas on, 96; Locke on, 140; and opinion, 70–114; Schmitt on, 78 Reputation. See Public opinion Resignation, Locke on, 143 Revolution: Blei on, 75; Forster on, 30–31; Goethe on, 175–76, 178; Kant on, 52–54; Koselleck on, 85; Lichtenberg on, 221–22; Wieland on, 28, 41–42, 44, 46, 48–50, 52 Rhetoric: Fichte and, 161–62; Hobbes and, 130; Lichtenberg and, 193–94, 233; Wieland and, 46, 110 Riesman, David, 248n12 Right of refusal: Lichtenberg on, 207; Locke on, 134 Rococo, Blei on, 75 Romanticism, Gu¨tersloh on, 79 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, x–xi Rumor, 16–17, 19

Selbstgespra¨ch (internal dialogue), 243–44; Hobbes on, 129; Lichtenberg on, 194; Wieland on, 36, 47 Selectivity, Lichtenberg and, 200, 203, 231–32 Selflessness, Goethe on, 177 Sennett, Richard, xii Separation of church and state, Mendelssohn on, 147, 149–51 Settledness: Lichtenberg on, 214, 224– 25, 234; Mendelssohn on, 145 Silence: Gu¨tersloh on, 71; Locke on, 143; spiral of, 7–8 Skepticism, Lichtenberg on, 230–31 Smith, Adam, 149 Society: Foucault on, 102; Goethe on, 173. See also Stability Sociological tradition, 5–13 Socratic method, 126 Sorkin, David, 145 Sovereignty: Foucault on, 102; Koselleck on, 92; public opinion and, 25; Schmitt on, 78; Wieland on, 42 Sower, parable of, 115–22 Speier, Hans, 249n19 Spiral of silence, 7–8, 173 Splichal, Slavko, 25 Stability: Locke on, 142; Wieland on, 42– 43, 46, 60 State: Mendelssohn on, 144–60; Wieland on, 48, 60 State within state: Foucault on, 102; Koselleck on, 81 Steele, Richard, 123 Stingelin, Martin, 267n5 Storytelling. See Narration Subjectivity, Lichtenberg on, 192 Sudelbu¨cher (Lichtenberg), 188–238; method of, 200, 202; term, 199 Superstition: Lichtenberg on, 213; Wieland on, 41 Surveillance: Forster on, 33; Foucault on, 102; Wieland on, 36 Symbolism, 240–41; Goethe on, 175–76 Systematicity: Foucault on, 103; Koselleck on, 86; Lichtenberg on, 190, 198–

Schimpf, Wolfgang, 208–9 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 181 Schmitt, Carl, 3–5, 77–79, 240–42; on democracy, ix–x, xi; on representation, 96–97 Schwa¨rmerei: characteristics of, 212; Lichtenberg on, 205–26; term, 208–9 Science, 2–3; Fichte on, 165; Lichtenberg on, 193, 206–26 Secrets: Koselleck on, 80–81; Wieland on, 56–60, 111–12 Secularization, 100; Mendelssohn on, 147; Wieland on, 26–27 Security, Wieland on, 35–36, 42, 44 Selbstdenken (independent thought): Fichte on, 166, 168; Lichtenberg on, 191–92, 194–206, 226–38

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99, 203, 205, 209, 217–18, 225, 231, 238. See also Opinion system

Understanding, Mendelssohn on, 154– 55, 157 Universalism: Lichtenberg on, 226–27; Mendelssohn on, 156, 158 Utility, Lichtenberg on, 207, 231–33 Utopia: Goethe on, 175, 178; Koselleck on, 83; Wieland on, 45

Taubes, Jacob, 10, 250n25 Thomas Aquinas, 128 Thought, xvi; freedom of, Wieland on, 34–35; systems of, Lichtenberg on, 211. See also Selbstdenken Thucydides, 90 Tolerance: Lichtenberg on, 193; Locke on, 137, 142–44; Mendelssohn on, 159 To¨nnies, Ferdinand, 249n19 Totalitarianism: Koselleck on, 240; Wieland on, 49, 59 Tradition: Fichte on, 166; Goethe on, 177; Lichtenberg on, 207, 226, 236; Locke on, 142; Mendelssohn on, 151; sociological, 5–13 Translation: Lichtenberg on, 196, 202, 236; Mendelssohn on, 155, 159 Trier, Jost, 61–69

Viennese modernism, 70–80 Virgil, 16–23 Volonte´ ge´ne´rale, x–xi Voss, Johann Heinrich, 268n9

Warner, Michael, 259n25 Waste Books. See Sudelbu¨cher Wieland, Christoph Martin, 9, 24–60, 109–14; and Kant, 50–56 Winthrop-Young, Geoffrey, 219 Writing: Lichtenberg and, 237–38; Mendelssohn on, 156. See also Narration

Umbesetzung, 107, 126, 214, 261n33

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