The Condition of Postmodernity 13 - autonomous learning

18 The passage from modernity to postmodernityPlate 1.4 The boulevard art of Paris, attacking the modernist destruction ofthe ancient urban fabric: a cartoon by J. F. Batellier in 'Sans Retour, NiConsigne'Prophetic words and a prophetic conception this, on the part ofboth Schumpeter and Stein, in the years before the greatest event inlightenment reason a privileged status in the definition of the eternal·and immutable essence of human nature. To the degree that NietzscheModernity and modernismbe automatic lly presupposed, then the modern artist had a creativerole to play in defining the essence of humanity. If 'creative destruction'was an essential condition of modernity, then perhaps the artistas individual 1ad a heroc role to play (even if the consequencesmight be tragIc). The artIst, argued Frank Lloyd Wright - one ofthe gr : a est of all modernist a . c?tects - must not only comprehendthe spmt of hIS age but also mltlate the process of changing it.We here encounter one of the more intriguing, but to many deeplytroubling, aspects to modernism's history. For when Rousseau replacedDescartes's famous maxim 'I think therefore I exist,' with 'Ifeel therefore I exist,' he signalled a radical shift from a rational andinstmentalist t ? a more consciously aesthetic strategy for realizingEnhghtenm e t alms. At about the same time, Kant, too, recognized.that aesthetIC Jldgement .had to be construed as distinct from practicalreason (oral Judgement) and understanding (scientific knowledge),and that It formed a necessary th . ? ugh problematic bridge betweenthe two. The explora lOn of aesthetics as a separate realm of cognitionwas very much an eIghteenth-century affair. It arose in part out ofthe need to come to terms with the immense variety of culturalartefacts, produced under very different social conditions whichincre sing trade and culturaḷ contact revealed. Did Min vases,GrecIan urns, and Dresden chma all express some common sentimentof eauty? But it ls arose out f the sheer difficulty of translatingnh ghtenment pn? 1 pIes of rational and scientific understandingm . . o moral and p ohtIcal pnnclples appropriate for action. It was intothIs gap that Ietzsche was later to insert his powerful message withsuch devastatmg effect, that art and aesthetic sentiments had thepower to g ? eyond good or evil. The pursuit of aesthetic experiencecapitalism's history of creative destruction - World War II.By the beginning of the twentieth century, and particularly afterNietzsche's intervention, it was no longer possible to accord En-as an end m Itself became, of course, the hallmark of the romanticmovement (as ex : mplifie? b { ', say, Shelley and Byron). It generated,.that wave of radIcal subJeCtiVISm,' of 'un trammelled individualism 'and of 'search for individual self-realization' which in Daniel Bell : s(1978) view, has long put modernist cultural behaiour and artisticprac ices funda entally at odds with the protestant ethic. Hedonismhad led the way in placing aesthetics above science, rationality, and fits Ill, accordmg to Bell, with the saving and investment whichpolitics, so the exploration of aesthetic experience - 'beyond good u pposedly nourish capitalism. Whatever view we take of Bell's thesis,and evil' _ became a powerful means to establish a new mythology t IS surel y tru that the romantics paved the way for active aestheticas to what the eternal and the immutable might be about in the midstof all the ephemerality, fragmentation, and patent chaos of modernlife. This gave a new role, and a new impetus, to cultural modernism.Artists, writers, architects, composers, poets, thinkers, and philosophershad a very special position within this new conception ofthe modernist project. If the 'eternal and immutable' could no longermterventIons m cultural and political life. Such interventions wereanticipated by writers such as Condorcet and Saint-Simon. The latterinsisted, for example, that,It is v: e, artist , who will serve you as avant-garde. What a mostbeautiful destmy for the arts, that of exercising over society a19