Enlightment trash, Part One

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Enlightment trash

A short essay

The German-jewish philosopher and Marxist Ernst Bloch ("Principle Hope") 
wrote a book in the early thirties called "Erbschaft dieser Zeit" 
("Inheritance of this time"); as far as I know this book was published one 
year before the Nazis came on power. In this book Bloch created a neologism 
which he called "Aufklaericht" - untranslatable, but it means something like 
"enlightment trash". 
The book was published in the same year as the "mastermind" of the 
conservative revolution, Ernst Juenger, published his "Der Arbeiter. Ursprung 
und Gestalt" ("The worker. Origin and Gestalt") and Walter Benjamin his "Das 
Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit" ("The work of 
art in the age of its technical reproduction"). Bloch's book has a lot of 
similarities with the other two books, but this is not the subject of this 
essay.

The English translation "enlightment" for "Aufklaerung" has its own 
difficulties, the meaning of the two words is not simply the same. In German 
"Aufklaerung" doesn't mean only a special period of European philosophy or 
the beginning of a new era but also is often used in every-day-life. We also 
know the expression "Aufklaerung von Verbrechen" (crime detection) or 
"sexuelle Aufklaerung" (sex education) but do you know "enlightment of 
crimes" or "sexual enlightment"?  

Because Aufklaerung (in its original meaning "the weather gets clearer", "the 
sky clears up" etc., also in German) is a multi-functional word in German you 
must be very careful when you use it in philosophical or scientific contexts. 
The sub-meanings of every-day-life are still in it if you use it 
philosophically, with the consequence that you can produce a lot of 
misunderstandings and disturbances.

For Kant in his three criticisms Aufklaerung means the unity of "Verstand" 
and "Vernunft" - for both there's only the English word "reason" (French: 
raison). But in German "Verstand" and "Vernunft" are not the same. "Vernunft" 
is the general pre-condition ("Bedingung der Moeglichkeit") of perception and 
cognition, it belongs to the "transcendental subject". "Verstand" 
incorporates the categories of "Vernunft", like time, space, causality a. s. 
o., it's - so to say - the pre-condition of the "empirical part" of "reason". 
"Vernunft" is "theoretical reason", "Verstand" "practical reason". 

My thesis is now that this difference between the two "powers of reason" 
mirrors exactly the difference between "modernism" and "pomo". The 
"synthetische Apperzeption" (synthetical apperception) as a Kantian category 
belongs only to the Vernunft, it's the "God in us", the a priori-subject of 
all entities (like history, subjectivity, identity a. s. o.), the Verstand is 
that what we all can know ("common sense", so to say), the Wittgenstein 
verdict "What we cannot speak about, we must be silent" is a consequence of 
this. Verstand is the "deconstruction" of Vernunft, and already Kant's 
analysis inherent.

The "limits of reason" are - in Kantian categories - the limits of the 
Verstand, not the limits of the Vernunft. The Vernunft is a "block box" for 
us, as reality, our "Ding an sich". the "Big Other" in the terms of Lacan. 
The Verstand can only show us his own limitations, and self-reference and 
self-doubting, the "hermeneutic circle" are the consequences of this, the 
paradox movement of the "infinite regress", the unlimited search for 
limitations.

The Hegelian version of this paradox movement of "hermeneutic circle" and 
"infinite regress" is called dialectics, and dialectics is inherent the 
promise that this endless movement will come to an end ("absoluter Geist"). 
Marx later called it communism.

But there must be added another thing. The ability/the competence to use your 
own Verstand Kant calls "Vermoegen". But the word "Vermoegen" also has in 
German a double-meaning: on the one hand "ability/competence", but on the 
other "property/fortune". And Kant exactly knew who has no such "Vermoegen": 
for example mentally disabled persons, children and - women. Those who have 
no property don't have competence, too. It's a very, very male and bourgeois 
Verstand Kant described.

Enough for today, the second part will follow tomorrow - or in a few days. 

Good night.
Kurt-Werner Pörtner