Philosophy in the times of late modernity: Reflections on György Márkus's Culture, Science, Society

In: Thesis eleven: critical theory and historical sociology, Band 126, Heft 1, S. 7-18

Abstract

It is a central claim of György Márkus's philosophy of (modern) culture that the Enlightenment project ended up in deep, apparently irresolvable antinomies. But, unlike the majority of 'postmodern' thinkers, Márkus insists that the commitments of the Enlightenment cannot and should not be given up. This tension between the failure of the Enlightenment to produce a society of free and equal persons, each leading their lives autonomously, drawing on the resources of rational high culture, and the impossibility and undesirability of the abandonment of the commitments of the Enlightenment finds an expression in what Márkus calls 'the antinomies of late modernity'. This paper offers an interpretation of Márkus's conception; it identifies a certain ambiguity in Márkus's use of the term 'antinomies' (a wobbling among three different senses as 'pairs of opposites', 'conflicts of values' and 'conceptual incoherence'), and suggests that Márkus's ambition is compatible with maintaining the first two but is failed by the third one which should, therefore, be abandoned.