Book reviews -- The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism, Poststructuralism by Richard Wolin

Comparative Literature, Summer 1995 by Holub, Robert C

THE TERMS OR CULTURAL CRITICISM: THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL, EXISTENTIALISM, POSTSTRUCTURALISM.

By Richard Wolin. New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. xxv, 256 p.

In this volume Richard Wolin discusses in sovereign and trenchant fashion a number of the most important topics and persons in twentieth-century intellectual history. Consisting of an introduction and nine essays, five of which have appeared previously, The Terms of Cultural Criticism provides needed insights into and criticism of theoretical directions that have influenced contemporary considerations of social and cultural theory. Wolin has divided the book into the three areas cited in the subtitle, and the variety of topics he treats under these headings--from analyses of Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory and Carl Schmitt's political writings in the twenties and thirties to discussions of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's "Weberian Marxism," Richard Rorty's pragmatic antifoundationalism, and Jacques Derrida's deconstruction--could easily lead us to presume that there is no unifying point in this collection of essays. This presumption would be false, however. What unifies the variety of themes and issues is Wolin's insistence that each theory and theorist be accountable for political positions. Whether Wolin is dealing with Horkheimer, Sartre, Heidegger, or Foucault, his main concern is the manner in which thought intervenes in and engages with social reality. Following Adorno's recommendation, Wolin opts for "immanent criticism," but at the same time his critique never loses sight of the context in which writing, publication, and reception occur.

Wolin's own theoretical sympathies lie with the Frankfurt School, but he is not uncritical in his observations on their project. This is evident from the first section of his book, where each of three chapters deals with an aspect of the "Legacy of the Frankfurt School." He lauds the original project of Critical Theory especially as it was articulated during the thirties in seminal essays by Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse, but has misgivings about the directions that emerged during the 1940s and the postwar era when Adorno supplanted Horkheimer as the school's intellectual leader. What attracts Wolin to the early views of Horkheimer and Marcuse is the notion that "philosophical rationalism might serve as basis for the renewal of critique" (p. 27); and it is precisely the diminished role of rationality in critique that Wolin finds in the era dominated by Adorno. Beginning with the Dialectic of Enlightenment, reason itself is viewed more as part of the problem in Western societies than as part of the solution to their ills. The Frankfurt School's shift in intellectual mentorship from Marx to Nietzsche also signals a move away from the original "interdisciplinary materialism" to an abstract "philosophical esoterics" associated with Negative Dialectics and Aesthetic Theory (p. 61). In the transition Wolin detects the tendency to ignore important differences in social systems--for example between fascism, liberal democracy, and bureaucratic socialism--and to substitute for a progressive notion of historical development a perspective that envisions only decline and degeneration. Indeed, Wolin seeks to return Critical Theory to its original program by providing a "redemptive critique" of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory. In lieu of Adorno's esoteric and exclusory notion of modernism, Wolin suggests an exoteric conception of cultural production that would encompass non-elitist works of art and would open emancipatory aesthetic experience to a general public (pp. 62-79).

The middle section of this book takes up topics from Germany and France under the title of "Political Existentialism." The occasion for Chapter 4 is the disturbing reappraisal of the work of Carl Schmitt in the Anglophone world. In a penetrating analysis of Schmitt's work in the 1920s and 30s Wolin demonstrates that his advocacy of National Socialism was neither coincidental nor totally opportunistic, and that the recent re-evaluation of his political philosophy is the result of an ahistorical and somewhat naive reading. In the following chapter Wolin deciphers the meaning of "Weberian Marxism" as Merleau-Ponty's way of mediating between his initial phenomenological position associated with "the philosophy of ambiguity" and a dialectical method that fosters political progress. In Chapter 6 Wolin traces the paths of Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger as they found their philosophically similar projects confronted with the realities of World War II and its aftermath. While Heidegger retreats into a quasi-mystical, anti-humanist realm of Seinsgeschiek, Seinsverlassenheit, and Seinsvergessenheit that homogenizes all historical phenomena, Sartre embraces a politicized existential humanism that champions an ethos of engagement and solidarity.

The final third of the book treats contemporary theorists, each of whom is subjected to critical scrutiny on the basis of his explicit or implicit political valence. In a particularly harsh critique of Richard Rorty's neo-pragmatism, Wolin argues that Rorty, whose philosophy is directed against superannuated metaphysical opponents, performs a neo-conservative function on the American cultural landscape. Rorty's antifoundational position, which itself cannot be maintained without recourse to the absolute claims it denounces, leads to a relativist (and, as Wolin notes, oxymoronic) "pragmatic morality" that affirms the ethnocentrism of the status quo. Rorty's views are thus appropriate for the "shallow narcissism" of the postmodern era; his is a "'have a nice day' philosophy" (p. 158), or, more politically phrased, the philosophy appropriate to the cynical age of NATO (p. 164). Wolin remarks that Rorty's vision of an individual without center and without ethical fiber recalls Musil's man without qualities, but Rorty's contemporary version, no longer the object of satire, has become "a respectable role model" (p. 163). The views of Michel Foucault fare only slightly better under Wolin's critical scalpel. Although Wolin finds parallels between Foucault's thought and Critical Theory, and although he believes that Foucault's position before his death indicates a shift to a more favorable reception of the Enlightenment, he criticizes his "functionalist definition of power" and his lack of appreciation for formal advances in political freedom. Ultimately, Wolin asserts, Foucault never overcame a futile search for normative grounding in the "other" of reason, and his aesthetic voluntarism, derived from Nietzsche and apparent in the final two volumes of The History of Sexuality, is the unfortunate consequence of this search. Rejecting appeals to rationality, Foucault, like many of his poststructuralist cohorts, embraces ethical positions based on aesthetic decisionism. Finally, Wolin examines the ambiguous and elusive political positions found in the work of Jacques Derrida. Despite some sympathy with Derrida's self-proclaimed interventionist and materialist position, Wolin uncovers Derrida's proximity to a totalized neo-Heideggerian paradigm that is incapable of dealing with essential political and social distinctions.