La Vopa, Sobre Habermas y Koselleck

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Conceiving a Public: Ideas and Society in Eighteenth-Century EuropeCritique and Crisis: Enlightenment and the Pathogenesis of Modern Society by ReinhartKoselleck; The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category ofBourgeois Society by Jurgen Habermas; Thomas Burger; Frederick Lawrence; Jack R. Censer;Gail W. O'BrienReview by: Anthony J. La VopaThe Journal of Modern History, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Mar., 1992), pp. 79-116Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2124716 .

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ReviewArticleConceiving a Public:Ideas and Society inEighteenth-CenturyEurope*Anthony J. La VopaNorth Carolina State UniversityTostudents f eighteenth-centuryurope here s somethingoddlyfamiliaraboutrecentevents in the Soviet Union and its formersatellites. We recognize theappeals o the "public"as a collectiveconscienceandto "publicopinion"as therecordof its judgments;he faith n openness,or "publicity,"as thehigh road oreform; hepoliticallycharged ensureof governmentn the languagesof fictionandphilosophy.Were t not forthe obviousdifferencesbetween he EastBloc andtheancien regime, we mightbe tempted o regard lasnost as a telescopedreplayof an eighteenth-centurycript.It was in eighteenth-century urope,andparticularlyn England,France,andtheGerman tates, thatthe "public"firstassumeda recognizablymodern hapeand becamea powerful deologicalconstruct.Thatconstructwas a characteristicproduct of the Enlightenment,and it marked one of the critical zones ofintersectionbetween Enlightenment iscourse and a broadrangeof socioeco-nomic andinstitutional hanges. Toappreciate he semantic hift, one needonlyconsiderhowthemeaningof "opinion"changedas it waspairedwith"public."As late as themid-eighteenthentury,"opinion" usuallyconnoted he ficklenessand the narrow particularismof prejudice, in contrast to the unchanginguniversality f truth.By the endof thecentury,however,opinion n its "public"guisewas endowedwith a rational bjectivityopposed o the blindadherencehattraditional uthority ommanded.Publicopinionwas the authoritativeudgmentof a collectiveconscience,the rulingof a tribunal o whicheven the state wassubject.1

* The worksreviewed in this essay are ReinhartKoselleck, CritiqueandCrisis:Enlightenmentand the Pathogenesis of ModernSociety (1959; English trans., Cambridge,Mass.: MIT Press,1988), pp. x + 204; andJurgenHabermas,TheStructuralTransformation f the Public Sphere:An Inquiryinto a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger,with the assistanceofFrederick Lawrence (1962; reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989), pp. xix + 301. Aspecial word of thanks is due JackR. Censer and Gail W. O'Brien, who provided neededcriticism and encouragement n the initial draftingof the essay. The research and writingweremadepossible by a fellowship at the WoodrowWilson InternationalCenterfor Scholars andbya grantfrom the AmericanPhilosophical Society.

1 See, esp., Lucian Holscher, Offentlichkeitund Geheimnis: Eine begriffsgeschichtlicheUntersuchung zur Entstehung der Offentlichkeitin der fruhen Neuzeit (Stuttgart, 1979),pp. 81-117, and "Offentlichkeit," in GeschichtlicheGrundbegriffe:Historisches Lexikonzur[Journal of ModernHistory 64 (March 1992): 79-116]? 1992 by The Universityof Chicago. 0022-2801/92/6401-0004$01.00All rightsreserved.

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80 La VopaEighteenth-centurybservers were quick to remark hat the public was amysterious, not to say miraculous,phenomenon.Somehow myriad personaljudgments,each formedautonomouslywithinthe inner sanctumof conscience,

cohered nto a collective will with a credibleclaim to rationalobjectivity.Thepublicwill confronted he state as a social entity, a civil society asserting tsindependence rom state tutelage;but its moralauthority estedon a metasocialclaim to transcendhe particularity f any and all social divisionsand interests.This transcendencemade the public nherentlyuniversal;and yet the promiseofuniversalitycoexisted with the assumptionthat an entire society could berepresented,rediblyand indeed authoritatively,y one or anotherof its parts.As printbecame he primarymedium or the creation f a public,the paradoxesmultiplied.Publiccommunicationromised o makean entiresocietytransparentto itself, but its typicalforms were the solitaryacts of readingandwriting.Likethe oratorsof the ancientpolis, modem authorswere expectedto forgea publicconsensus;but they faced a mass of readers"who [were] neverassembledas awhole, and whoseexpressionas a whole [was]never heard."2Preciselybecausethe public consensuswas "invisible," it was easily abused. "Friendsof theRevolution,"ChristianGarveobserved n the immediateaftermath f the Terror,"takerefuge npublicopinionas aQualitasocculta hatcanexplain verything-oras a higherpowerthat can excuse everything."3The two most imaginativeand thought-provokingooks on the emergenceofthe modempublic-Reinhart Koselleck'sKritik und Krise and JurgenHaber-mas's Strukturwandeler Offentlichkeit-haverecentlyreceivedEnglish ransla-tions.4They exploreparadoxesn the constructtself as it emerged n the course

politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and ReinhartKoselleck(Stuttgart,1978), 4:413-67; WolfgangKroger,Das Publikumals Richter:Lessingunddie "kleinerenRespondenten" mFragmentenstreit Nendeln/Liechtenstein,1979);EricWalter,"L'affaireLa Banfe et le concept d'opinion publique," in Le journalisme d'Ancien Re'gime:Questionsetpropositions, ed. PierreRetat (Lyon, 1982), pp. 361-92; MonaOzouf, "L'opinionpublique," in The Political Culture of the Old Regime,.ed. Keith Michael Baker,The FrenchRevolutionandthe Creationof a Modem PoliticalCulture,vol. 1 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 419-34;KeithMichael Baker, "Politics and Public Opinionunderthe Old Regime: Some Reflections,"in Press and Politics in Pre-RevolutionaryFrance, ed. Jack R. Censer and JeremyD. Popkin(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987), pp. 204-46; Daniel Gordon, " 'Public Opinion' and theCivilizing Process in France:The Exampleof Morellet," Eighteenth-Century tudies22, no. 3(Spring 1989): 303-28; Edoardo Tortarolo," 'OpinionPublique'tra antico regime et rivoluz-ione francese: Contributoa un vocabolariostorico della politica settecentesca,"RivistaStoricaItaliana 102, no. 1 (1990): 5-23.2 This observation was made by Johann Christoph Adelung in the third volume of hisWorterbuch, s quoted in H6lscher, Offentlichkeitund Geheimnis, p. 88.3 Quotedin ibid., p. 113.4 Scholars are indebtedto the MIT Press for publishingtranslationsof these and manyotherseminal Germanworks in its series Studies in ContemporaryGermanSocial Thought,editedbyThomas McCarthy. The introductionsby Victor Gourevitch (Critiqueand Crisis) and ThomasMcCarthy(StructuralTransformation) dentify theoretical ssues concisely, though they may bedisappointing o scholars interested n the contexts in which these books were writtenand theirsignificancefor historicalresearch.Both Thomas Burgerand the translator f Critiqueand Crisis(who ought to have been named) had to contend with the reified abstractionsand convolutedsyntax of academic German. It would probablybe unreasonable to expect the results to be



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Conceiving a Public 81of the eighteenth enturyand in thesocial andinstitutional rocesses hatexplainits emergence.Bothbookshavebecomestandarditations n eighteenth-centurystudies,but untilrecentlyneitherhad received he criticalscrutiny t deserved.AFrench ranslation f Strukturwandelid not appearuntil 1978, and KritikundKrise was not available n Frenchuntil a year later.Aside from the languagebarrier, he books had also attracted ittle attention n Francebecause theirphilosophicalpreoccupations nd their approacheso ideology cut against thegrainof thereigningAnnalesSchoolparadigm.Only in recentyears,in thewakeof the debate provokedby FranqoisFuret's reinterpretationf the FrenchRevolution,have FrenchscholarsdiscoveredCritiqueand Crisis.As forHabermas, hebulging iterature n his contributionso CriticalTheoryhardlyacknowledgeshis initial exercise in historicalsociology in StructuralTransformation,hough t was arguably he critical irststep in his developmentas a theorist.5Historianshavefoundhis conceptof "representativeublicness"especiallyuseful; but therehas been little attention o how this element,or anyother,fits intothe largerstructure f his argument.The new Englishtranslationswill surely help remedy this neglect. Even inEnglish,however, heseproducts f GermanWissenschaftmaystrike eadersmoreas philosophicalmeditations,or as ideologically nspiredpolemics,than as his-toricalmonographs.Both reflect he politicalpreoccupationsf the 1950s,thoughfromopposite ndsof the deological pectrum.Andbothremindusthat,untilquiterecently,Kantianphilosophyand its nineteenth-centuryffshootswere central oGermanmodes of historicalandsociologicalexplanation.ThoughCritiqueandCrisisbecame a broad-rangingntellectualhistory,beginningwith HobbesandLocke andendingwith RaynalandPaine, Koselleck hadoriginally ntended oinvestigate he "politicalfunction"of Kant'sCritiques. t was in the preface otheCritique f PureReason 1781) thatKoselleck ound he culminating xpressionof the Enlightenment'sdeal of publiccriticism pp. 1, 121).6InStructuralTransformation nglands the "model case" andGermanyagswell behind t; butHabermas's onceptualhinge was thephilosophical iscourseextending romKant(who gave "the idea of the bourgeoispublicsphere"itsreadableas well as clearby Englishstandards.Butone wishes that thetranslation f CritiqueandCrisis had been less faithful to Koselleck's syntax; German constructionsdesigned to conveyparadoxes ometimes become contortedEnglish. And it is regrettablehat Koselleck'sBurger(aswell as StaatsburgerandBurgerlicherMensch) becomes simply "citizen," while Burgertum srenderedas "bourgeoisie" andburgerlichas "bourgeois." On the complexitiesof this semanticfield, see the translator'snote in StructuralTransformation,p. xv.

S The importance of Strukturwandel or Habermas'ssubsequentthinking is acknowledged,albeitverybriefly,in DavidIngram,Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason (New Haven,Conn.,1987), pp. 4-5; ThomasA. McCarthy,The Critical Theory of JurgenHabermas (Cambridge,Mass., 1978), pp. 11-12, 381-83; Rick Roderick,Habermas and the Foundationsof CriticalTheory (New York, 1986), pp. 42-43.6 This aspect of Kant's thoughthas received renewed attention in John ChristianLaursen,"The Subversive Kant: The Vocabularyof 'Public' and 'Publicity,'" Political Theory 14(November 1986): 584-603, and "Scepticism and Intellectual Freedom: The PhilosophicalFoundationsof Kant's Politics of Publicity,"History of Political Thought 10, no. 3 (Autumn1989):439-55; OnoraO'Neill, "The Public Use of Reason," in her Constructionsof Reason:Explorationsof Kant's Practical Philosophy (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 28-50.



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82 La Vopa"theoretically ully developed form") to Hegel and Marx (who exposed itsideologicaldistortions) pp. 102-29).7This reviewwill explain he theoretical gendas hat nformCritique nd CrisisandStructuralTransformation,houghwithdue solicitude or readers otat homein the German hilosophicalradition nd n any case more nterestedn historicalimplications han n philosophicalpremises.The review will also approach othbooks as historicaldocumentsn their own right. With a distanceof thirty-oddyears,we are na position o appreciate ow theideological limateof thepostwareraat once enrichedand limitedtheirscholarship.My focus, however,will be on the continuingrelevance of these books toeighteenth-centurytudies. KoselleckandHabermas sedthe eighteenth-centuryconstruction f a "public" as a prismto directlight onto an entirerangeofsubjects-and these still commandour attention. Should we think of theEnlightenment s an integralpart of the Old Regimeor as a movementpittedsquarely gainstOld Regimecorporate aluesand "absolutist" inesof authority?Canthe Enlightenmentn Franceand the German tatesbe said to have mounteda "political" opposition to absolutism? Critique and Crisis and StructuralTransformation ere pathbreaking ecause, in the very ways they posed suchquestions, they conceived of the Enlightenmentas a social as well as anintellectualmovement. Each charted new territory n our explorationof therelationship etweennew ideas and social change.8Koselleck akesus into the milieusof Enlightenment sociability,"particularlyby pryingopenthe closed doors of freemasonry.Habermas racesthe growthofa printmarketand a readingpublic,and he finds bothgroundedn the family'snew role as a nest of intimacyand a unit of consumption. n both cases weconfront he taskof identifyingan emerging"bourgeois" society, thoughfromradicallydifferentangles. Andthattaskin turnrequiresa close look at the kindof society andpolity implied n eighteenth-centuryonceptionsof a public.Didsuchconceptionspoint to a democraticuture,or at least to an egalitarian ne?Did they justify new forms of exclusiveauthority nd powerfor a modernizingelite? Behind hepromiseof consensuswe findtensionsbetweenuniversality ndexclusiveness,opennessand closure. The tensionspointto a historical econfig-urationof class relationsand, no less revealingly, o a historicalredefinition fgender roles.9

7 See also Habermas's"Publizitatals PrinzipderVermittlung on Politik und Moral(Kant),"in Materialien zu Kants Rechtsphilosophie, ed. Zwi Batscha (Frankfurtam Main, 1976),pp. 175-90.8 The implicationsof Haberinas'sargument or the historiographyof the French Revolutionwill receiverelatively ittle attention n this essay. The subjecthas beenably exploredin BenjaminNathans,"Habermas's'Public Sphere' in the Eraof the FrenchRevolution,"French HistoricalStudies 16, no. 3 (Spring 1990): 620-44.9 Even if limited to the above themes, a completebibliographywould be enormous.My ruleof thumbhas been to limit citations to the most relevant books and articlespublished n the lasttwo decades.



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Conceivinga Public 83Critique nd Crisis beganas a dissertation tHeidelberg,acceptedn 1954. Astheconflictsbetween henew superpowersardenedntotheColdWar,Koselleckwas struck by the binary opposition between their "utopian" scenariosfor

progress, each refusing to recognize the other as a legitimate opponentbut"liv[ing] by thatother's maginedreaction" pp. 5-6).10 This was the perspec-tive of a young German cholarwitnessingthe bifurcation f his nation in theideologicalstand-offbetween American-style apitalistdemocracyand Soviet-style communism.Ironically, he other agenda Koselleckrecalls in his preface to the Englishedition-the need to explain historically the "Utopian self-exaltation" innazism-had a less distinctly Germanpoint of departure p. 1). Koselleckproceededrom heassumption, yno means imited o WestGerman cholarship,thatfascism and communismwere the two sides of the same totalitarian oin,mirroringach other ntheircontemptuousismissalof mere"politics"tojustifyone-partydictatorship.Accounting or the Nazi horrorwas obviouslyan urgenttask n the early 1950s,butKoselleck'sdiagnosisof totalitarianismad probablybeenshapedas powerfullyby his imageof the Marxist-Leninistanguard arty.To Koselleckthe essence of modemtotalitarian ideology" in all its varietieswas anexclusivelymoralvision, self-deluding n its blindness o its own politicalwill to power and self-righteous n its refusal to grant moral legitimacyto"political" alternatives.The ascendancyof ideologyin this sense explained hepermanenttateof "crisis" or "civil war" thatcharacterizedmodernity.LikeJ. L. Talmon,Kosellecksought he genesisof this pathology n the Enlightenmentand ound ts first ull-blownmanifestation-theone thatpointedunmistakablyothe totalitarian orrorsof this century-in the Jacobin deology of the FrenchRevolution.11WhereasTalmonattributed totalitarianmomentum o the under-lying logic of Enlightenment hought, however, Koselleck found the samemomentum merging romthe relationship etweenthe state andsociety in oldregime Europe.This contextual xplanationook theform of an ironicnarrative,withits pointof departuren thereligiousstrifethatplaguedEurope n the sixteenthandearlyseventeenth enturies.To end the religious"civil war" the seventeenth-centurystateclaimed oritselfa "supra-religious"nd"rationalistic"urisdiction,where"politics could unfoldregardlessof moral considerations."Hobbesspelledoutthe mostfatefulconsequence f this "absolutist" onceptof statesovereignty:hesplittingof the self intothe "public" (or outward)obedienceof the subjectandthe "private"exerciseof conscience.It was fromthe "private nnerspace"thatthe publiccriticismof the Enlightenmentmanated pp. 23-40).In the course of the eighteenthcentury the private enclaves constitutedthemselvesas the tribunal f publicopinion-the collective conscience o whichthe statewas morallyaccountable. n England he emergenceof a criticalpublic

10Seealsotheprefaceo ReinhartKoselleck,Kritik ndKrise:EineStudie urPathogenesisderburgerlichenWelt Suhrkampaschenbuch,973), pp. ix-xi, whereKoselleck elateshisinterpretationf theEnlightenmento morerecentdevelopmentsn globalconflict.1 J. L. Talmon,TheOrigins f TotalitarianemocracyNew York,1960).



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84 La Vopawas entirely compatible with the politics of the post-1688 regime. On theContinent,criticismcollided head-onwith absolutismand had to contain tselfwithin the private enclaves of the Enlightenment's ourgeois and aristocraticelites. The resultwas the pathological"moraldualism"that wouldcharacterizemodem ideology. Convincedof his own moralinnocence, the rationalist riticcondemnedan amoral,calculating,power-hungry tate and made the abuse ofpower identicalwith its veryexercise. Koselleck tracesthe developmentof thisdualism,withits hypocritical politicsby indirection,"rom ts late seventeenth-centuryemergence n the thoughtof PierreBayle to its culminationn Kant'sCritiques.He finds the symptomswritlargein continentalreemasonry,with itscult of secrecy,and n thesecretorderof Illuminati oundedby AdamWeishaupt,a young Bavarianprofessor,n 1776 and suppressed ineyears later.If masonicsecrecy was a shield against the absolutiststate, it was also aninstrument f self-deception.Secrecywas emblematic f the fact thatEnlighten-ment criticism, n its condemnation f politics from a positionof pristinemoralinnocence,blinded tself to its own political motives andambitions-and hencethe ultimate secret was its own lack of "self-insight" (pp. 118-19). Thecorollaryof secrecywas the Enlightenment's hilosophyof history,whichwascentral o the thoughtof, amongothers, TurgotandRaynalandfoundvisionaryexpressionin Weishaupt'splans for the Illuminati.A "utopian" vision ofprogress, his philosophy ustifiedbehind-the-scenes lanningby the select fewwho understood he courseof historybut at the same time absolved hemof theneed to accept responsibility for political decisions. Its posture of moralinnocence,combinedwith its assumptionof historical nevitability,veiled thepoliticalnatureof thecrisisengulfing he OldRegime-and, in its veryfailure oconfront he politicalreality, t made the crisis all the moreintense.In 1789 the crisisexploded nto revolution."Allparties,"Koselleckobservesin a note on Francein the early 1790s, "became the victim of a mutuallyintensifyingand compulsoryresort to ideology which has characterized hemodemage ever since" (p. 151).12 Theabsolutistdichotomybetween hepublicand theprivate, hepoliticalandthe moral,had ended one kind of civil warbuthaddrivencontinentalEuropenexorably owardanother.A historicalprocess hatbeganwiththe extrusion f "the private nner pace"frompoliticsendedwiththetotalpoliticaloccupationof thatspace.Deprivedof a politicaloutlet,thecriticalconscienceof theEnlightenment oliticizedeverythingn the nameof morality. tdid so-and here is the finalirony-because, in its dialecticalconfrontation ithabsolutistpolitics, it could not confront ts own politicalwill to power.Hisprotestationso thecontrary,Koselleckhad drawnupan indictment.Asidefrom he obviouspresenceof Hobbes, herewere alsostrong chos of MachiavelliandBurke n his thesis. But the most obviousinspirationwas the "decisionist"

12 Koselleck's footnotes warrant arefulreading.Aside fromoffering strikingformulationsofhis argument (some of which ought to have been in the text), they record his hermeneuticalencounterswith a wide rangeof seventeenth-andeighteenth-centuryexts. Theyexhibit the sameconcernwith continuities andchanges in contextualmeaningthatwould informhis lateragendafor a "historyof concepts" (Begriffsgeschichte).



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Conceiving a Public 85theoryof Carl Schmitt,the jurist and political philosopherwho had providedaseductive ustification or the transition rom the WeimarRepublic o Nazi dicta-torship.3 It was notsimply hatKoselleckhadborrowedheconceptof "civil war"fromSchmitt. n his Der Leviathan,Schmitthad argued hat he "reservation" f"inner"freedomof conscience n Hobbes'sconceptof sovereigntyhadcontainedthe "seeds of death" (Todeskeim)or absolutism, he first"great breach or themodem iberalism" hatwould reverse he absolutist elationship etweenpublicandprivate.It was this basic plot line, with its ironicdenouement, hatKoselleckelaborated.Healsosharpenedhefocus. WhereasSchmitt aw "thesecret"as oneof severaldimensionsof the "innerreservation,"Koselleckmade t theparadig-matic symptomof the Enlightenment's athology.Schmitt's"carriers or thedevelopment f [the]innerreservation" ncluded,alongwithfreemasonry, rot-estantsects and,in a language esonatingwithracistconspiracy heory, he "rest-less" (and "liberal") spiritand "unerring nstinct"of the Jew. 4 To Koselleckfreemasonry epresentednentirelynew socialphenomenon, ssentiallydifferentfrom sectarianism; ndhe had no sympathywith Schmitt'sdilutedbut still poi-sonousanti-Semitism.Habermas ouncedon Koselleck'sdebtto Schmittn his reviewof Critique ndCrisis. The implicationof Schmitt'sthought,he observed,was that civil warcouldnowbe overcomeonly "in the formof the totalitariantate."15Habermas'spoint may do justice to Schmitt's ntellectual areer,but it rides roughshod verKoselleck'sview of totalitarianisms a pathologyof the Rightas well as the Left.On one level Critiqueand Crisiscan be read as the modem liberal'sdefense ofpolitics against the metapolitics-or, perhapsbetter, the antipolitics-of allvarietiesof totalitariandeology.Koselleck'spointis that the only way to avoidcivil waris to acceptthe realityof political nterestsand conflictsand to remainaware hatall theplayersaremakinga bid for power.And yet Critique nd Crisisis also an attackon the secular ustifications or individual reedom(includingfreedomof conscience)to which modem liberalism races ts origins. Koselleckfound totalitarianismootednot in a reactionagainstEnlightenment ationalismbutin the Enlightenmenttself. Is the implication hatthe injectionof moralityinto politics inevitablyacquiresa totalitarianmomentum?f one accepts Kosel-leck's versionof the dialecticbetween absolutismandEnlightenment riticism,

13 Schmittno longer held a university position after the war, but he remaineda prolificandhighly controversial author. In the preface to the first edition of Kritik und Krise (1959),Koselleck thankedSchmitt,who (in Koselleck's words) "posed questions [to him] in conversa-tions and helped seek answers." See also Keith Tribe's informative biographical sketch inReinhartKoselleck, FuturesPast: On the Semantics f HistoricalTime,trans. Keith Tribe(Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp. vii-xvii. For a judicious assessment of Schmitt's thoughtandcareer,see JosephW. Bendersky,Carl Schmitt,Theorist or the Reich (Princeton, N.J., 1983).

14 CarlSchmitt,DerLeviathann der Staatslehre esThomasHobbes: innundFehlschlageinespolitischen Symbols (Hamburg, 1938), pp. 82-93. On Schmitt'sopportunisticadoptionofanti-Semitism n responseto attacksfrom within the Nazi regime, see Bendersky, pp. 226-42.15 JurgenHabermas,"Zur Kritik an der Geschichtsphilosophie R. Koselleck, H. Kesting),"in his Kulturund Kritik: VerstreuteAufsatze (Frankfurtam Main, 1973), p. 363. Despite itssimplisticconflation of Koselleck's "political anthropology"with Schmitt's, this is a trenchantcritiqueof Kritik undKrise.



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86 La Vopahow is the emergenceof a pluralisticconcept of political contestation o beexplained?The readerhas to supplyhis own answers.Despite its elusive politicalagenda,and in partbecause of it, CritiqueandCrisisoffereda strikinglyoriginalalternative o theconventionalwisdom of the1950s. On both sides of the Atlantic, scholarswere busy tracingGermany'sdeviationrom heEnglishandFrenchpaths o a moderniberal ociety andpolity.One of the culturalmarkers or this Sonderwegwas the retreat nto apolitical"inwardness"by eighteenth-century ermanntellectuals. n Koselleck'scom-parative rameworkherewas nothingexceptionalaboutGerman nnerlichkeit;the same apparently politicalposturecharacterizedhe thoughtof the FrenchEnlightenment,ndindeed t was typicalof Enlightenmentriticismas a whole.Whereasotherscombedthe Enlightenmentor anticipations f modernpolitical"isms,"he was struckby thepervasiveness f anavowedlyunpoliticaldealism.Unlikemanyof hiscolleagues n theGerman istorical uild,however,he did notaccept hat dealismon itsownterms.Hisindictmentwasframed oremindus thata principledejection f politics s itselfapoliticalact and hat t caninvolvea lackof self-awarenesswithdirepoliticalconsequences.Though ts selectionof authors ndtexts now seemsquiteconventional,not tosay old-fashioned,Critiqueand Crisis rested on the audaciousclaim to havediscovered"the unity of the Enlightenment s it happened n the absolutiststate." Othereighteenth-centuryuthors,Koselleck noted, could easily havebeen substituted or the dozen or so he had singled out (pp. 8-9). He found"unity," one suspects,becausehe projectedbackwardand outward rom hisverdicton Kant's CriticalPhilosophy.The entireargumentcan be read as arefutationof Kant'sfamousessay on "theory" and "practice"(1793), whichhadas one of its subtitles"AgainstHobbes." In the face of Kant'sappealto apriori moral norms, Koselleck was vindicatingwhat he saw as Hobbes'sunflinching ealism.6In the light of more recentresearch, Koselleck's confidentdiscoveryof aunitaryEnlightenmenteemsnaive. Thehistorical onsciousnessof the Enlight-enment n FranceandtheGerman tatescannotbe reduced o a "utopian"visionof universalprogress. Faith in progresshad its counterpoint n a persistentpessimismabout the directionof change and in that fascinationwith culturalspecificity hatwouldcharacterizeineteenth-centuryistoricism.7 TheLutheranAufkldarerf the Germanstates did not emulatethe Frenchphilosophes' waragainst 'infame; heircautiousreformism,aimedat rationalizingheestablishedchurches romwithin,typifies hemoderation f a distinctlyProtestant arietyof

16 ImmanuelKant, "On theCommonSaying:'This maybe true n theory,but it does notapplyin practice,' " in Kant'sPolitical Writings,ed. Hans Reiss and trans.H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge,1977), pp. 61-92.17 See, esp., Peter Hanns Reill, The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism(Berkeley, 1975); Hans Erich B6deker, George G. Iggers, JonathanB. Knudsen, and Peter H.Reill, eds., Aufkldrungund Geschichte:Studien zur deutschenGeschichtswissenschaftm 18.Jahrhundert Gottingen, 1986).



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Conceivinga Public 87Enlightenment.18When we takesoundings nto the undercurrents, e findstillanothervariety of Enlightenments r, perhapsbetterin this case, of counter-Enlightenments,with social and political colorationsthat make the standardgalaxyof philosophesseemverytameindeed. 9And yet Critiqueand Crisis seems prescient from this distance, since itidentified ssues that still demandour attention.Subsequent esearchhas vindi-cated Koselleck's focus on the masonic movement.Whetherone considers heproliferation f local lodges, or the impressivegrowthin membership,or thesocial profile of the members, t is clear that by mid-century reemasonry adbecome themost widespread nd inclusiveformof the new sociabilityon whichthe French and GermanEnlightenmentswere grounded. As eclectic as itsideologybecame,freemasonry suallyremained ommitted o the moral deals ofEnlightenmentationalism.How then do we explain ts relianceon secrecy,bothas a protectivewall against the "profane" outside world and as an orderingprinciple or the lodges' internal itualsandhierarchies? oes the cult of thesecretnotstand nblatant ontradictiono theprinciple f openness,of "publicity,"hatthe Enlightenment osed againstabsolutistandcorporate oncealment? s not thelodge, as a crypto-public, case of the Enlightenment iolating ts own ideals?Koselleck's ndictment ffectivelydramatizedhis issue butgaveit a one-sidedresolution.ToKoselleck hetragic ronyof thesecretwas that, n posinga barrieragainstabsolutistntrusions, t also allowedthe "private"subject o exercisehisconsciencecritically withoutaccepting political responsibility.The Enlighten-ment's "cloak of moral innocence and political absence" became its veil ofself-deception(pp. 70-97). This charge of "hypocrisy" substitutesa moralcategory or contextualanalysis. It fails to take into accountthat the resorttosecrecy becamean object of controversyn Enlightenment iscourse.The controversy as a longhistory,and in Germany t clearly ntensified n thewake of the Bavariangovernment's xposure of the Illuminati'sconspiratorialplansin the mid-1780s. Even at that latedate some observers till foundvirtue,or at leastpracticaladvantage,n masonicsecrecy;but to others he principleof

18 Roy Porter and MikulaasTeich, eds., The-Enlightenment n National Contexts (London,1981). On the distinctive characteristics f the GermanProtestantEnlightenment,see also Reill;FranklinKopitsch, ed., Aufkldrung,Absolutismusund Burgertumin Deutschland (Munich,1976);JonathanB. Knudsen, JustusMoser and the GermanEnlightenment Cambridge,1986);AnthonyJ. La Vopa, Grace, Talent,and Merit: Poor Students,Clerical Careers, and Profes-sional Ideology in Eighteenth-CenturyGermany (Cambridge, 1988).19 MargaretC. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment:Pantheists, Freemasons, and Republicans(London, 1981), focuses on the religious dissidents and publisherswho formed the "radicalunderside" of Dutch freemasonry.On the Frenchlawyerswho used highly publicized trials toflail the Establishment,see DarleneGay Levy, The Ideas and Career of Simon-Nicolas-HenriLinguet (Urbana, Ill., 1980); SaraMaza, "Le tribunalde la nation: Les memoiresjudiciairesetl'opinion publique a la fin de l'Ancien R6gime," Annales42 (1987): 73-90; Jean Starobinski,"La Chaire,la Tribune, e Barreau," n Les Lieux de Memoire,ed. PierreNora,vol. 2:LaNation(Paris, 1986). Robert Darnton,"The High Enlightenment ndtheLow-Life of Literature,"n hisTheLiteraryUndergroundof the OldRegime (Cambridge,Mass., 1982), pp. 1-40, reconstructsthe mentalityof the denizens of Paris's "Grub Street" on the eve of the Revolution.



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88 La Vopapublicitymade suchsecrecybothindefensibleandobsolete.Therewereparalleldebatesaboutanonymousandpseudonymous ublication:while some regardedtheseexpedientsas perfectly egitimate ormsof self-defense,otherscondemnedthemas hypocritical iolationsof principle, ikelyto erodeauthors' redibility.20The point is that there was a perceivedtensionbetweencritical opennessandsecrecy n Enlightenmentiscourse,andthat t points o a level of self-awareness,perhaps ven of self-insight,thatKoselleckignored. A thorough xploration fthat ensionwould tell us a greatdeal about he ambitions ndthe inhibitionshatwere shapingemergingconceptsof a public.In anothersense, though, Critiqueand Crisis anticipatedour more recentunderstandingf the publicandpublicopinionas Enlightenmentdeals. We nowknow that, thanksto religious and constitutional ontroversies romthe 1750sonward,the FrenchHigh Enlightenment eveloped n a contextof increasinglyopen opposition to the Crown. Against this backdropKoselleck's view of"criticism"as a pretension o moral innocence in the face of politics seemssimplistic;t was thepoliticalthrustof criticism,afterall, thatforcedthe Crownitself to enterthe arenaof politicalcontestation, ven though t denied the veryexistenceof thatarena n principle.And yet the appeals o the tribunal f "thepublic" reveal a profoundambivalence,a simultaneousplunging into andshrinkingromthe modernpoliticalarena hatwas beginning o takeshape. Thesacredcenter-the monarchy-was beingstripped f its auraand was losing itspower o controlpublicmeanings,but the public oomedas theconsensual enterof a secularorder n themaking.Evenas criticsof theCrownassumedanopenlyconfrontationalosture, hey soughtto dispelthe specterof open dissensionandconflictwiththeirnew ideal of a unitaryandtranscendent ublicconscience.Whatneeds furtherhistoricalexplanations not a hypocritical tance,vulner-able to exposureon its own terms,but a tension-ridden osturereflecting hecomplexitiesof its context. Koselleck's insight-that Enlightenmentriticismcould notconfront ts ownpoliticalmotivesand mplications-identifiedone sideof the tension. The Frenchconcept of "public opinion," Keith Baker hasconcluded,projected"a politics withoutpolitics"; in correctingKoselleck'sone-sided ndictment,Bakerconfirmedhis insight.21

20 See, e.g., EberhardWeis, "Der Illuminatenorden1776-1786): UnterbesondererBeruck-sichtigung der Fragen seiner sozialen Zusammensetzung,seiner politischer Ziele und seinerFortexistenznach 1786," in AufklarungundGeheimgesellschaften:Zurpolitischen FunktionundSozialstruktur er Freimaurerlogen m 18. Jahrhundert,ed. Helmut Reinalter(Munich, 1989),pp. 94-96; ManfredAgethen, Geheimbundund Utopie:Illuminaten,Freimaurerund deutscheSpataufklarungMunich, 1984), pp. 127-33; Rudolf Vierhaus, "Aufklarungund Freimaurereiin Deutschland," in Das Vergangeneund die Geschichte, ed. Rudolf von Thadden, Gert vonPistohlkors,and HellmuthWeiss (G6ttingen, 1973), pp. 32-33. Vierhausremindsus that therelationshipbetween the Enlightenmentand freemasonrywas one of "affinity,"not identity.

21 Baker,"Politics and PublicOpinionunderthe Old Regime" (n. 1 above), p. 246. See alsoOzouf (n. 1 above);andJeffreyW. Merrick,TheDesacralizationof theFrenchMonarchy n theEighteenthCentury (Baton Rouge, La., 1990), which emphasizes the role of the governmentitself, theparlements, and intrareligiousconflict in desacralizingthe monarchy.



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Conceiving a Public 89

If Koselleckhad simplygeneralized bout he Enlightenmentroma small andarbitraryampleof thinkers,his book would not continue o sendripples hrougheighteenth-centurytudies. Critiqueand Crisis was seminalabove all in pointingthe way to a new understandingf the Enlightenment s a socialmovement.Asarchaicas it mayat firstseem, Koselleck'sview of Enlightenmentriticismas amodeof "bourgeois"self-assertion id notimplya crudely eductionist pproachto ideas as rationalizationsor class interests.Insteadhe saw criticismgroundedin a new kind of social communicationor, in current parlance, in a new"sociability," xtending o thearistocracy utgivenits ethosby an educatedandpropertiedbourgeoisie.Here againfreemasonry,or all its fondness for occultritualsandfeverish mysticism, typified a largertrend; t belonged in the samemilieu as theacademies, he literary ocieties, the clubs, and thecoffeehouses.22What s striking romthis distance, though,is that the promiseexceeded theexecution.As innovativeas Koselleck's methodologywas, it had to conform othe terms of his indictment.Intent on reconstructinghe frameworkn which"moral dualism"hademerged, Koselleck assumeda strictdichotomybetweenthe public sphereof theabsolutist tate and theprivatespace formedby thenewsocial milieus. The groupswho constituted he "new elite," he argued,hadvarying nterestsbutshared"the fate of beingunable o find an adequateplacewithinthe AbsolutistState's existinginstitutions" pp. 62-66). In fact, though,Koselleckhad not definedabsolutism y reference o its institutional tructure, reven by reference o its official ideology.He hadsimply equated he absolutiststatewithHobbes's theoretical ustificationor its claimsto sovereignty.Koselleck'sdichotomy ends o dissolveunder loserscrutiny.Thebureaucraticapparatusf the new statedeveloped n partial usionwiththe elites at the summitof the corporatehierarchy.Absolutistauthorityand power flowed downwardthrough he court and its networksof aristocraticamilies; througha corpsofbourgeoisadministrative nd judicial officials (many of its families recentlyennobled); hroughthe universities hat trainedthem; throughthe establishedchurchand tsclericalhierarchy;hroughocaloffice-holders. twas precisely hismultitiered ervice elite, more or less directly implicated n the workingsof"absolutism,"that formed the centerof gravityfor the Enlightenment's ewsociability.By andlargethe new socialspaces,masonic odges prominent mongthem,wereoccupiedby the groupswhoconstitutedhestate.If theywereprivateretreats romabsolutism, hey were also its informalextensions.

22 On the new "sociability," see esp. Richardvan Dulmen, "Die Aufklarungsgesellschaftenin Deutschland als Forschungsproblem,"Francia 5 (1977): 251-75, and Die GesellschaftderAufkldrer:Zur burgerlichenEmanzipationund aufkldrischenKulturin Deutschland (Frankfurtam Main, 1986); UlrichIm Hof, Das geselligeJahrhundert:GesellschaftundGesellschaften mZeitalterderAufklarung Munich, 1982);EtienneFrancois,ed., Sociabiliteet socie6te ourgeoiseen France, en Allemagneet en Swisse, 1750-1850: Geselligkeit,Vereinswesenund burgerlicheGesellschaftin Frankreich,Deutschland und der Schweiz, 1750-1850 (Paris, 1986).



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90 La VopaIt is hardlysurprising,hen, thatin the face of absolutism he Enlightenmentassumedan inherentlyambivalentposition, combiningcriticaldetachment ndsymbioticdentification. heambivalences conveyedwithrarenuance n DanielRoche'ssynthesesof hisresearch ntheFrenchprovincial cademies.Mostof theprovincialacademieswere virtually exclusive domains of the service elite,includingits clerical and aristocraticbranches(ca. 20 percent of the entiremembership,ncludinghonorarymembers,wereclergymen,andca. 37 percentwere noblemen).These institutions nteredthe eighteenthcentury as embodi-ments of absolutism's"modernizeddeologicaljustification"exemplifying a"politics of the public welfare and of monarchicalservice" in their veryinsistenceon excludingpolitical (as well as religious)dissension.Beneaththisconformistsurface, the academiesincubatedan alternativemode of politicaldiscourse,basedon "egalitarian"procedures.On the eve of theRevolution heywerepulledbetweentheirnewly assumedrole as guides of popular"opinion"and theirassignedmissionas a "directing lass," the "ideologicalmanifestationof enlightenedabsolutism."23UnliketheFrenchacademies,whichwerepublic nstitutionsponsoredby theCrown and responsive to its expectations, masonic lodges were intent onconstructing ndsealingoff a privatespace. The lodges also hada broaderanddeeper ocialreach,usually ncludingat least a minority f commercial atriciansand, less often, artisansand shopkeepersromthe lower bourgeoisranks.Butwith the exception of some lodges in commercialmetropolises, FrenchandGermanfreemasonrywas dominatedby the same service elite that virtuallymonopolized he Frenchacademies.24This mixedelite clearly neededa refugefromtheintricate eckingorders, herigidformalism,andtheincessantntrigues

23 Daniel Roche, "Die 'Soci6t6s de pensee' und die aufgeklartenElitendes 18. Jahrhundertsin Frankreich,"in Sozialgeschichteder Aufklarung in Frankreich, vol. 1, ed. Hans UlrichGumbrecht,Rolf Reichardt,and ThomasSchleich, (Munich, 1981), pp. 77-115, and "Acad6-mies et politiqueau siecle des lumieres: Les enjeux pratiquesde l'immortalite," in Baker, ed.(n. 1 above), pp. 331-44. See also the portrait of Jean-SylvanBailly in George ArmstrongKelly, Victims,Authority,and the Terror:TheParallelDeaths of d'Orle'ans,Custine,Bailly, andMalesherbes ChapelHill, N.C., 1982), pp. 149-210, 288-90.24 Im Hof, pp. 163-225, is a succinctintroductiono eighteenth-centuryreemasonry.Roche,"Die 'Soci6t6sde pens6e' und die aufgeklartenElitendes 18. Jahrhundertsn Frankreich,"usesa sampling of Frenchlodges to provide a thoroughanalysis of their social composition, withattentionto local variations in the structureof the educatedand propertied elite. In the courttowns of the territorial states and ecclesiastical principalitiesof western and southwesternGermany, t was oftenthe courtnobility(or indeed the princehimself!)who organizedthe lodge,thoughbourgeoisofficials were included(see WinfriedDotzauer,"FreimaurergesellschaftenmRheingebiet:Die Anfange der Freimaurereim Westendes Alten Reiches," in FreimaurerundGeheimbunde m 18. Jahrhundert n Mitteleuropa, ed. HelmutReinalter[Frankfurtam Main,1983], pp. 140-76). On the social composition of Central European lodges, see WinfriedDotzauer, "ZurSozialstruktur erFreimaurern Deutschland m 18. Jahrhundert," p. 109-49;and Eva Huber,"Zur Sozialstruktur erWienerFreimaurerlogenm JosephinischenJahrzehnt,"pp. 173-87, both in Reinalter,ed., AufklarungundGeheimgesellschaften.Forgeneral observa-tionson thesocial structure f Englishfreemasonry, ee Jacob, TheRadicalEnlightenmentn. 19above). MargaretC. Jacob's Living the Enlightenment:Freemasonryin 18th-CenturyEurope(New York, 1992) appeared oo late to be considered in this essay.



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Conceivinga Public 91of theirpublicworlds.It is all the morestriking, hen, that n the wayit filled thatneed through reemasonryhe elite continuedo identifywith absolutism. mplicitin the principled xclusionof all political (as well as confessional)controversyfromthe lodge wasa condemnation f courtfactionalism nd ts cabals.And yet,in its very rejection of the behind-the-scenes eality of absolutistpolitics,freemasonryconfirmed absolutist ideology. The lodges, like the academies,idealizedthemselvesas microcosmsof the consensual,conflict-freeworld overwhichabsolutismaspired o reign.In its dense contextualism,and in the subtlety of its conclusions,NorbertSchindler'sanalysisof German reemasonry ffers strikingparallels o Roche'swork. Schindler emindsus thatour fascinationwith masonicsecrecy shouldbecomplementedwith attentionto the public posture that the lodges, like theacademies,assumed n ceremoniesand festivities. Focusingon the Johannisfeststagedby the Bayreuthodge in 1753, he reconstructshe dialecticof "integra-tion" and "exclusion" (Ausgrenzung)n freemasonry'srelationship o the"profaneworld,"includingabsolutism.Preciselybecausemasonic estivals, ontheirmost obvious symbolic evel, revealeda natural mpulseto assimilate nto,and to borrowprestige rom,the "representativeublicness"of the court,theirsubtext ouldbe "a subtlemoral ecture."Theyprojected n alternativeocourtlyhierarchymplicitly, n the distinctiveways ceremonial ormswere appropriated,rather han n explicitmoralcensure.In thisapproachecrecybecamecritical o freemasonry s the instrumentf asubtledialectic, and not as the expressionof Koselleck's dichotomybetweenmoralityand politics.Onlywhen we appreciateheefficacyof an "exerciseandroutinizationhroughbehavioral ractice"do we comprehendwhy freemasonrywas able "to integratento the traditional ultureand, from withinit, to set inmotion that relativelyunbroken, ong-term learning process from which theemergingbourgeoisculturefinally profited.'5 Schindler'sunderlyingmethod-ological pointis thattheritualsof masonicbrotherhoodannotbe understoodnterns of the rationalargumentation nd the "cognitive learningprocess" thatpreoccupy conventionalintellectualhistory. Ironically, the point applies toKoselleck,despitehis concemn ith the social milieusof Enlightenmentriticism.Koselleck nferredmeaning rom-or, perhapsbetter, mposedmeaningon-thesheer fact of masonicsecrecy, finding n it a heightened xpressionof the same

25 Norbert Schindler, "Freimaurerkulturm 18. Jahrhundert:Zur sozialen Funktion desGeheimnissesin der entstehendenburgerlichenGesellschaft," in Klassen und Kultur:Sozialan-thropologischePerspektiven n der Geschichtsschreibung, d. Robert M. Berdahl et al. (Frank-furt am Main, 1982), pp. 206-11. See also NorbertSchindler, "Aufkldarungnd GeheimnisimIlluminatenorden,"n GeheimeGesellschaften,ed. PeterChristianLudz, Wolfenbutteler tudienzur Aufklarung,vol. 5/1 (Heidelberg, 1979), pp. 203-29, and "Der Geheimbundder Illumi-naten:Aufklarung,Geheimnis und Politik," in Reinalter,ed., Freimaurer und Geheimbunde m18. Jahrhundert n Mitteleuropa, pp. 284-318. Schindler'sapproachhas been eclectic, but hehas been particularlyconcernedwith advancinga Germantraditionof historicalsociology. Seeesp. ErnestManheim,AufkldarungndoffenlicheMeinung:StudienzurSoziologieder Offentlich-keit im 18. Jahrhundert,ed. NorbertSchindler(1933; reprint, Stuttgart, 1979), which containsa wealth of ideas abouteighteenth-century ociabilityand public communication.



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92 La Vopapurist ensureof absolutism hatseemed o pervadehe Enlightenment's rogram-matic rhetoric.Shiftingour focus to the ethosembodied n masonicsociability,Schindler einserts ecrecy ntoa field of symbolicpractices.The cult of secrecywas, fromone angle, a kindof emulation,borrowing n the awe attached o thearcanumof absolutist tatecraft nd on the glitterof court entertainments ithapenchant or self-mystification nd concealment.For that very reason, secrecycould also be a "frictionless"way of walling off an alternative ocial space,where he "social imagination" ould be "unbounded" ndthemixedelite couldbe socialized nto a recognizablymodernbourgeois thos of moralself-disciplineand self-cultivation.26This is whyAdamWeishaupt's lanto supercedereemasonrywith the orderofIlluminati,as puerile as it was, has a larger significance.Weishaupt's uriousbrainchild epresents, n a heightenedand often caricaturedorm, the tensionbetween critical detachmentand symbiotic identification hat characterizedEnlightenmentociabilityas a whole. Unlikefreemasonry,Weishaupt'srderwasto be a genuinelysecret society,keepingits very existence concealed.Carryingthe hermeticaspectsof masonic nitiation o anextreme,Weishaupt lsoplannedto make his recruitsthe object of an invisible tutelageon the path to self-enlightenment.Internalsecrecy would create a pedagogical utopia, and itsproductswouldin turnbe the leaven for universalmoralenlightenment.27Weishaupt ad concludedthatenlightenment ould not be spreadsimplybyindividual xample,as freemasons till assumed.But the significanceof his shiftto a collectivestrategy houldnot be exaggerated.The 600-oddIlluminatiweredrawn verwhelminglyromthe aristocratic ndbourgeoisbranches f the serviceelite. Their mission as productsof Weishaupt's nvisible pedagogy was, inKoselleck'sapt phrase,"the indirect,silent occupation f the State"-a processin which heabsolutisttatewouldbe "absorbedrom he nside"byits ownperson-nel (pp. 91-95). Schindler dds hat his strategy, ven asitexpressed convictionof moral uperiorityo absolutist olitics, projected an administrative-elitetopiaof the officialdomgatheredn the vestibulesof power."28Theobjectivewas notto replaceabsolutism,buttopurify t morallyandthereby ive it a new legitimacy.

There remains the issue of the relationshipbetween freemasonrytself (asopposedto the Illuminati)and revolutionarydeology.Did not the fictionalorartificial quality abricatedwithin helodgewallspreparehewayfor the Jacobinideologyof politicaldemocracy?Was not the "democratic" mpulse n freema-26

Schindler,"Freimaurerkulturm 18. Jahrhundert,"pp. 211-16.27 There was an official investigationin Bavaria,and it provokedboth apologias by some ofthe order's faithful and exposes by disillusioned members. As a result, the order is far betterdocumented than freemasonry.A sample of the documentationis included in Richard vanDuilmen,Der Geheimbundder Illuminaten:Darstellung, Analyse, Dokumentation StuttgartandBad-Cannstatt, 1975). See also Agethen (n. 20 above); Schindler, "Der Geheimbund derIlluminaten";Weis (n. 20 above); Michael W. Fischer,Die Aufklarungund ihr Gegenteil:DieRolle der Geheimbunde n Wissenschaftund Politik (Berlin, 1982).28 Schindler,"DerGeheimbund erIlluminaten," p. 300-302. See alsoAgethen,pp. 295-303.



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Conceivinga Public 93sonrya proto-totalitariannversionof absolutism,at once negatingand mirroringabsolutistsovereignty? t was above all in this sense that Kosellecksaw theRevolutionas the culmination f one era and theplunge nto another.Conceivedin an argumentwith Kant, Koselleck's indictmenthad foundits most dramaticproof n Rousseau's onceptof the generalwill. Rousseau's earch or "the unityof moralityandpolitics" had endedwiththe "total state," a formof democracy"under constantpressure o create ideology." The Revolutionhad sucked allparties ntothe ideologicalmaelstrom; uthisprimeexhibitwas theJacobinparty,with its Rousseauian deology of unconditional nd unmediatedpopularsover-eignty (pp. 162-67).29This lineage will be recognizable o anyone familiar with Fran9oisFuret'sPenser a RevolutionFranVaise,publishednearly wo decadesafterCritiqueandCrisis. FuretadaptedAugustinCochin's politicallychargedapproacho prerev-olutionary"societies of thought,"and he does not seem to have realized thatKoselleck who alsodrewon Cochin'swork)had alreadypointed heway.But hesharedwith Kosellecka teleologicalperspective hatmade the Enlightenment's"democraticsociability," particularlyn its masonic form, the progenitorofmodem totalitariandemocracy.30The new sociability generateda new and"confused" conceptof "opinion." In the vortex of the Revolution, opinionbecame he "imaginary bsolutepower" of "puredemocracy"- thefictionwithwhichthe Jacobindictatorshipustifiedthe Terror.31Again freemasonry ecomesthe focal point for a verdict on the ideologicalsignificanceof Enlightenment ociability.Leavingaside the treacherous erm"democracy" or a moment,we can at least ask whether herewas an egalitariandimension o the new sociabilityand the conceptof a publicit generated.Sincetheseventeenth entury, cholarsandgensde lettreshadimagineda "republicofscholars"(ora "republicof letters")in which communicationwould be freeof

29 JeremyPopkin kindly allowed me to read his unpublishedpaper, "The Conceptof PublicOpinion n the Historiography f the FrenchRevolution:A Critique,"which arguespersuasivelyforthecentralityof a Rousseauianmodel in Koselleck's analysisof theeighteenth-century ublic,as in Furet's.

30 On the eve of the Revolution, Koselleck argued, French freemasons saw themselves as'citizens of Masonic democracy' " (Critiqueand Crisis, p. 80). Still anothervariationon thefreemasonry-revolutionary deology lineage, with particular attention to the Illuminati, isJamesH. Billington, Fire in the Mindsof Men: Originsof the RevolutionaryFaith (New York,1980), esp. pp. 92-99.31 FrangoisFuret,Interpreting he French Revolution,trans. ElborgForster 1978; translation,Cambridge,1981), esp. pp. 37-52. See also RanHalevi, Les loges ma,conniques ans la Franced'Ancien Re'gime:Aux origines de la sociabilite' de'mocratiqueParis, 1984), p. 1, and "Les

origines intellectuelles de la Revolution Frangaise:de la magonnerie au Jacobinisme," inFrangois,ed. (n. 22 above), p. 195. Citing Koselleck as well as Furet, Halevi finds in Frenchfreemasonrythe "embryonic forms" of "a social praxis that Jacobin France will push to itsextremepoint" though he also concedesthatwe haveyet to define the relationshipbetween themasonic "system of disponible values" and "the social grouping t was intended o model." Forsobering contrasts to this approach, see Pierre Chevallier,Histoire de la franco-ma,onneriefran,caise, vol. 1: La ma,connerie:cole de l'egalite6,1725-1799 (Paris, 1974), esp. pp. 293-305; LenardR. Berlanstein,TheBarristersof Toulouse n the EighteenthCentury 1740-1 793)(Baltimoreand London, 1975), pp. 123-26.



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94 La Vopathe termsof authority nddeference,poweranddependence,hatpervaded ocialrelations n the corporatehierarchyof the Old Regime. In this sociallyneutralzoneintellectual roperty,ike landedpropertynclassicalrepublicanism, ssuredequalityof citizenship.The sheercogency of ideas-regardless of thesocial rankandpowerof theiradvocates-would yield a consensus.Inthe eighteenth enturythis ideal extended its appeal to a wider social field-a proto-publicbindingscholarly nstitutionstheacademies, heuniversities, tc.) andliterary ircles tothe educatedstratawho formeda new audiencefor "useful" scholarshipandbelleslettres.One of its social loci in Francewas the salon,wherenew norms orpolite conversationormed n reaction o thepolitesseof the court. As formalasit mightappear o us, salonreparteewasseen as arelatively galitarian ltemativeto the courtlyobsessionwithrank.32

Freemasonrywas distinguished y the self-consciousnesswithwhich it madethe new principleof communication entral o its ethos of "brotherhood" nd"friendship."The"republic"of theideal odge wasanalogous o theidealpublic(or republic)constitutedby printcommunication.Authorand readercould beequalcitizensbecauseprint, as an impersonalmedium,abstractedheirrelation-ship fromthe hierarchicalerms of any specificsocial setting. The paradoxicalappealof masonicbrotherhood as that, in theobviouslycontrived ettingof thelodge, thesamedomination-freexchangecould assumesocial andevenpersonalforms.To recall a leitmotivof the era, lodge memberswere bondedhorizontallyby theirpure"humanity."Thiselementof masonic deologycan fairly be calledegalitarian, houghnotwithoutconsiderable ualification.The popular lasseswereeffectivelyexcludedby explicit social restrictionsor, more often, by an implicit expectationofrespectability ombined with the need for connectionsand the means to payadmission ees. If theritualization f masonicbrotherhood as designed o bridgesocialchasms,it also insuredagainst he kindsof informal ontactacross socialboundarieshatmightbe all too intimate.In any case, masonicsociabilitywas,afterall, a fictionor a game confined o anartificially egregated one. Thefictionwas viable preciselybecause the participantsput it behind them when theyreenteredocialreality.When theseobviousinconsistencies ndlimitationshavebeenacknowledged,however,the fact remains hatfreemasonrywas committedto bringing together noblemenand educated and propertiedcommoners onentirelynew terms of interaction. t was not simplythatin principle he lodgesignoredthe legal privilegesattached o rank.Theirmemberswere expected totranscend he corporate dentities-the self-definitions n terms of distinctivelinguisticstyles, tastes,andmoralcodes-that legal inequalitydemarcated.In the 1770s and 1780s freemasonsoccasionallydescribed his "republican"ethos as "democratic."33Whencontemporary istorians haracterize he inner

32 See, e.g., H6lscher, Offentlichkeitund Geheimnis(n. I above), pp. 92-95; van Duilmen,"Die Aufkldrungsgesellschaftenin Deutschland als Forschungsproblem" (n. 22 above),pp. 256-57; Im Hof (n. 22 above), pp. 216-17. The new ideal of salon conversationand itspolitical implicationsare exploredinsightfullyin Gordon (n. 1 above).33 See, e.g., Helmut Reinalter, "Freimaurereiund Demokratie im 18. Jahrhundert," nReinalter,ed., Aufkldrungund Geheimgesellschaftenn. 20 above), pp. 43-46.



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Conceivinga Public 95workingsof freemasonry s democratic,however,the word unavoidably arriesthe freightof politicalmeanings hathaveattached o it since the Revolution.Itmay be besidethe point, of course, that reemasonry id not commit tself to anypolitical alternative o absolutism.Freemasonrywas not an incipientpoliticalpartywith its ownprogram,but its visionof a new moralorderdidhavepoliticalimplications.Were hoseimplications emocratic?f theissueis ever to be resolved,we willhave to bring o centerstage a question hat s usuallyrelegated o the historyofeducation.How wasknowledge o be distributed ocially?To put it anotherway,how was access to knowledge obe structured?nEnlightenment iscourse,virtue(i.e., moralexcellence) was pairedwith knowledgerather han with pedigreeorinheritedproperty.The implicationwas that education, n the broadestsense,legitimated he exercise of power. In the meritocratic ersion of this pairing,everyone s, in principle,equallyentitled o highlyvaluedknowledge, houghdefacto disadvantages-lack of the requisitewealth or of the requisiteculturalpatrimony-severelyrestrict he access of the great majority.The meritocraticideal may be said to justify modern ocialinequality,but it does so in a waythathas provedentirelycompatiblewith Westerndemocraticpolitics. But therewasanotherway of drawing he triangleof virtue, knowledge,andpower-one thatmarkeda profoundly paternalisticand blatantly antidemocraticmpulse inEnlightenment iscourse. An enlightenedelite not only claimed the right toeducate the masses on its own terms; it also reserved for itself a "higher"knowledge hatwas too dangerous o disseminate roadly,andit sought o insureagainstbroaddissemination f thatknowledge hrough ormalcontrols.Themeritocraticdeal was a powerfulbondingagentforthe aristocrats ndtheeducatedand propertied ommonersbrought ogether n Enlightenmentociabil-ity. As the new ethos helped fuse these elites, its ideal of enlightenedself-cultivationandself-disciplinealso marked heirnew sense of distance rom thecrudityand violence,thesuperstition nd "enthusiasm," f plebeianculture.34tis from this perspective hat"popular nlightenment" ecamea high priorityonthe reformagendasof the Frenchand GermanEnlightenments.What kind ofeducationwould tameplebeianculture,andindeedharness t to therequirementsof a progressiveorder,withoutweakeningtraditional onstraintson popularbehavior?The standard olutionwasto administer safe dose of enlightenment-onethatwouldpurifybutnoteradicate raditional eligiousbeliefsandthatwouldavoida dangerousnflation f popular xpectations y limiting he lowerorders o"useful"knowledgeof directrelevance n their nherited ccupational pheres.35

34 See esp. HarryC. Payne, "Elite versus PopularMentalityin the EighteenthCentury," nStudiesin Eighteenth-CenturyCulture, ed. Roseann Runte (Madison, Wis., 1979), 8:3-32.35 See, e.g., GerhardSauder," 'VerhiiltnismassigeAufkldarung'-Zurburgerlichen deologieam Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts,"ahrbuchderJean-Paul-Gesellschaft (1974): 102-26; EckhartHellmuth, "Aufklarung und Pressefreiheit: Zur Debatte der Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaftwahrendder Jahre 1783 und 1784," Zeitschrift ur historischeForschung 9 (1982): 315-35;WernerSchneider, Die wahre Aufklarung:Zum Selbstverstdndnisder deutschen Aufkldrung(FreiburgandMunich, 1974). ForFrenchvariationson the same theme, see Harvey Chisick, TheLimitsof Reformin the Enlightenment:Attitudes oward the Educationof the Lower Classes in



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96 La VopaThis strategyandits axiomaticassumption-thatknowledgemust be distributedproportionally nd at a safe pace, underthe tutelarycontrol of an enlightenedelite-underlay the conventionaldistinctionbetweenan educatedpublicand theuneducatedmass. The mission of an academy,d'Alembertobserved,was to be"[an] organof reasonby duty and of prudenceby estate." It wouldnotprovoke"the multitude"by "throwing he truthbrusquelynto (its) midst."36Whendisgruntledodge members ndoutsidecriticsattacked he exclusivenessof masonic secrecy, their grievance was that an invidious distinction, a linedividing he deservingand the unworthy,was being drawn hrough he educatedpublic. Seenwithinthe framework f the larger ociety,masonicsecrecywas anunintended aricature f the Enlightenment'sutelary,quasi-hermeticmpulse.The hermetic radition ssumedan attenuatedormin theeffort to insure hat,ina revelationcarefullystaggeredover generations,masonicknowledge wouldenlighten the profaneworld without blindingit. Weishaupt's trategyfor theIlluminatiwas a characteristicallyxtremevarianton this vision of enlightenedprogress.The new orderwas to be, among other things, a kind of multidisci-plinaryacademydevoted o discovering,preserving,andgradually isseminatingnew truths.Forthe core insights,Weishaupt rewon the materialist sychologyof Helvetiusand otherFrenchphilosophes.In his naively provincialvision, thiscommonplacediomof theFrenchEnlightenmentormed he kernelof thesecret,oracularwisdom to which initiates would ascend. Its corrosive attack on theauthorityof traditionalreligion-the feature that made it so suitable forWeishaupt'sdealofamorally utonomousanguard-made t seemtoodangerousfor massconsumptionn the foreseeable uture.37Freemasonry as a safeexperimentndomination-freeommunication,ince itwas confined o a select brotherhood ndconductedn quasi-hermetic ithdrawalfrom theprofanemass. At leastuntilthe 1780swe finda parallelduality n thelodges' internal rganization,hough t generated nobvious ensionandprovokedchargesof inconsistency.n the FrenchandGerman"systems,"incontrasto theEnglish variety, he progress n knowledgeand virtuewas an intricatelygradedascentto masonic secrets.The "grades"(levels of initiation) tood in curiousjuxtapositiono the"dignities" (thehierarchy f electedofficers),andtherewererecurrentffortsto harmonize hemwithelaborate onstitutionaltructures.n thedignities,leadership ook the form of a representative ody, accountable o itselectorate;n the grades,leadershipmeanta guidingauthority,meritingunques-tioningobedienceby virtueof its superior nlightenment.38Eighteenth-Century rance (Princeton, N.J., 1981); HarTyC. Payne, The Philosophesand thePeople (New Haven, Conn., 1976).36 Roche, "Academieset politique au siecle des lumieres" (n. 23 above), p. 340.37 See esp. Agethen n. 20 above), pp. 133-87; vanDulmen,"Die AufldarungsgesellschaftennDeutschland ls Forschungsproblem,"p. 264-65; Fischer n. 27 above), pp. 215-38.38 Especially lucid on the mix of egalitarianand elitist impulses in freemasonry s WolfgangHardtwig, "EliteanspruchundGeheimnisin denGeheimgesellschaftendes 18. Jahrhunderts,"nReinalter, ed., Aufklarungund Geheimgesellschaften,pp. 63-86. The conflicts among theGerman odges areexploredin detailin LudwigHammermayer,Der Wilhelmsbader reimaurer-Konventvon 1782: EinHohe- undWendepunktn der Geschichteder deutschenundeuropaischen



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Conceivinga Public 97Once again Weishauptand his acolytes, in their aspiration o supercedefreemasonry,eightened neof its inherentensions.Forthe Illuminatusheroadto self-educationwas mappedby superiorswhom he did not know, andwhoseintervention asinvisible.39Theexposureof this invisibleempireby the Bavariangovernment rovokedanexamination f conscienceamongGermanreemasons.Wastherenot a laughable ontradiction etween heirown tutelaryhierarchieswith their implicationthat truth was a carefully guardedprivilege and aninstrument f manipulation-andthe ideal of personalautonomyand interper-sonal equality hat masonicbrotherhoodwas supposed o embody?CanJacobinism e said to havegrownoutof the masoniccrypto-public?-and,if so, whereexactlydoes the continuityie?40Theissue is stillfarfromresolution,andthat s in partbecause t hingeson a priorquestion-one FuretposedaproposCochin.If the masonicethos did give riseto a radicallydemocraticdeology,whydid it do so in Franceand not elsewhere?This particulariliationremains o bedemonstrated. dmittedlyheconcernwith reconstituting unitary onsensus-with dispellingthe specterof open contestationbetween conflicting nterests-thatbecameobsessive n Jacobinism an alsobe found n freemasonry,s in otherformsof Enlightenmentociability.But are we justified n puttinga democraticlabel on the masonicversionof thisunitarydeal?We cannotsimplypointto the

Geheimgesellschaften Heidelberg, 1980). For an explicit corrective to Furet's argument,seeGerardGayot, "Les relationsde pouvoirdans la franco-maconnerierancaise, 1750-1850," inFrangois,ed. (n. 22 above), pp. 203-13; GerardGayot, ed., La franc-maConnerieran!aise:Texteset pratiques (XVJIIe-XIXeiecles) (Paris, 1980). In Gayot's view, freemasonry's nternalhierarchiesreproduced he hierarchicalprinciplesof the old regime;this oversimplifiesmasonicelitism and overlooks its modernfeatures.

39 It is striking that Adolph von Knigge protestedagainst Weishaupt'sdespotic system ofsubordinationwithin the order; but, like Weishaupt,he assumed that "only so much [of theorder'swisdom] would have been communicated o the world as would have seemed useful ineach era, with regardto the need for and the degree of enlightenment" (quoted in Agethen,p. 184).40 Ironically, recent monographicresearch has told us much more about freemasonryinEngland, the Netherlands,and the German states than about the French variety. Jacob (TheRadical Enlightenment[n. 19 above]) focuses on a group of refugees and publishersin theNetherlandsand emphasizes their heady mix of pantheismand republicanism.But Jacob alsodrawsa sharpcontrastbetweenher small cohortof radicalsand"official" masonry,and she linksthe radicals to the militantlyanti-Christianbut not republican)thoughtof d'Holbach's coterierather hanto the "gutterRousseauism"thatcontributed o Jacobin ideology. See also Alan C.Kors,D'Holbach'sCircle: AnEnlightenmentn Paris (Princeton,N.J., 1977), whichemphasizesthat d'Holbach and his "circle" were comfortably integratedinto le monde and that theirphilosophicalassaulton Christianityshould not be mistaken for social or political radicalism.Also relevant is researchon the relationshipbetween freemasonryand Jacobinismin CentralEurope,as exemplifiedin Helmut Reinalter,ed., Jakobinerin Mitteleuropa(Innsbruck,1977).Reinalter (n. 33 above), pp. 50-51, concludes that in Central Europe there was a "tightconnection" between Jacobinismand freemasonry, hough in the latter the "understandingofdemocracy" was "moral" rather than "political." The connection becomes problematic,however,when one recalls thatthe greatmajorityof CentralEuropean reemasonsdid notbecomeJacobins.In any case it is doubtful thatReinalter'sJacobinswere democratic n the same senseas their namesakes.On the need to maintaina strictdefinitionof Jacobinism,see Vierhaus n. 20above), p. 37.



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98 La Vopafact thatmasonicand Jacobin deology converge in justifyinga monopoly ofpower(or at least of "imaginary"power)by a smallelite. The issue is not theeffectbut thelogic of justification. acobinism, fterall, contradictedreemason-ry'selitistdirigismenotonlywith its commitmento popular overeigntybutalsowith its tendency o equaterepublicanvirtuewith the natural implicityof theuneducated. t upturned, n otherwords, the meritocratic deal and its socialdistributionof power. As the Jacobins' internal war on "conspiracy" and"aristocracy"gainedmomentum, he institutionsof Enlightenmentociabilitybecamehighly vulnerable argets.There could be no secrecy,and indeedverylittleprivacy, n theJacobinvisionof a completely ransparentodypolitic.4'If a straight ine connectsthe republicof the lodge to theRepublicof Virtue,the transition romtheone to theotherrequired dramaticeap. Morelikely wewill have to explain a wrenchingnversionof values.

LikeKoselleck,Habermasonceivedof historical nalysisas anexploration fpathogenesis; ut, as a second-generationractitioner f the Frankfurt chool'sCriticalTheory,he judged the Cold Warenvironmentof the 1950s from aradicallydifferentperspective.Drawingon his mentors'eclectic neo-Marxismandneo-Freudianism, abermasoughtto explainthehegemonicascendancy fthemodern"culture ndustry"withina long-termhistoryof structuralhange.42Hence in his diagnosisthe ideologicalsyndromewas not thatrational riticismhad degenerated nto utopianfanaticismbut that moderncapitalistsocietiesprecluded he verypossibilityof seriouscriticism.With the rise of commercial-izedmassculture,publiccommunicationadbecomea narcotic,and t seemedtoseepintoeverynookandcrannyof privateas well as public ife. By the late 1950stheUnitedStates, the mostadvanced onsumer ociety,seemedto haveenteredacompletelyanaesthetized tate; and the FederalRepublic, on the crest of itseconomicmiracle,seemedreadyandeagerto follow. WhenHabermashought fthetotalitarianuture,he saw anendlessseaof suburbanomes. Their nhabitantsstaredout at him vacantlyfrom the "floodlitprivacy"of consumerism.Theyspenta good dealof their"leisure" timebeinginundated,n bovineisolation,bycommercials n the boobtube.StructuralTransformationas been incorporated iecemeal nto the historicalliterature; ven in eighteenth-centurytudies, where its impact has been most

41 Furet'sreworkingof Cochin's argument s dubious, but his analysis of Jacobinideologyremainsilluminating.See also Nathans(n. 1 above), pp. 640-42; Jack R. Censer, Prelude toPower: The Parisian Radical Press, 1789-1791 (Baltimore, 1976); Kelly (n. 23 above), esp.pp. 18-23, 281-98; LynnHunt,Politics, Culture,andClass in the FrenchRevolution Berkeleyand Los Angeles, 1984); Carol Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue:The LanguageofPolitics in the French Revolution(Ithaca,N.Y., 1986); BrianC. J. Singer,Society,Theoryandthe FrenchRevolution:Studies n theRevolutionary maginary(New York, 1986). Also relevantis GaryKates, The "CercleSocial," theGirondins,and the FrenchRevolution(Princeton,N.J.,1985), pp. 89-92, which emphasizes the differences between the secrecy and elitism of OldRegime freemasonryand the democratic deology developed duringthe Revolution.42 Especiallyrelevant is Max Horkheimerand TheodorAdorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment,trans. JohnCumming(1944; reprint,New York, 1972), pp. 120-67.



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Conceiving a Public 99dramatic, herehas been little appreciation f the sweep and the intricacyof itsargument.43 abermas ad readCritiqueandCrisis, andit mayhaveencouragedhim to elaboratehis own ironic varianton the historicaldialectic betweenthepublicandthe private.In his version,as in Koselleck's, the publicemerged romthe private;but it was the expanding capitalist sphere of "commodityandinformation xchange," and not the fracturedandscapeof religiousbelief, thatacquired a new public status under the aegis of the absolutist state. Themercantilist olicies of the earlymodemera demarcatedhis sphereas theprivate"addressee"of publicauthority nd,in so doing, gaveit a newpublicrelevance.The result was a momentous shift in the meaning of "publicness" and"publicity." n thepublicsphere ormedby the absolutist tate and thecorporatehierarchy n which it rested, the functionof publicitywas to exhibitthe politicalauthority hatadhered o corporate tatus.The social worldof the princelycourt,displaying tself beforea mass of excluded spectators,epitomized his "repre-sentativepublicness."By aiming o stimulate apitalist nitiative,andby relyingon detailedregulation o do so, the mercantilist tate createda public thatwouldbecomecriticalof its own interventionism.Withtheriseof a literarymarketanda bourgeois eadingpublicfromthe late seventeenth enturyonward, heprivatesocietyof market xchange ormed tselfinto anetwork f publiccommunication,generated ts own "universal" moral standards hroughthe communicativeprocess, and eventually applied those standards riticallyto the state and itspolicies. The "addressee"of state authoritybecame its "adversary" Kontra-henten),the tribunalo which it was morallyaccountable.StructuralTransformationirectsour attentiono anunderlyingocialchangethatKoselleckhad gnored.AdaptingHannahArendt'sperspectiven TheHumanCondition,Habermas rounded he emergenceof a criticalpublicin a startlingrevaluation f the "private" household.44The ideal citizen of the Greek polisexercisedhis freedomn public ife by virtueof his statusas householdpatriarch,but the household tself-the worldof the women, children,and slaves-was theprivate phereof necessity,governedby the unbending mperatives f biologicaland social reproduction.As an expandingmarketexchange "burst out of theconfinesof the householdeconomy,"a new family type-the bourgeois"conju-gal family"differentiated itself from both materialproductionand socialreproductionby virtue of its relative independence. Commodityexchangedetacheddomestic ife fromtheverticalhierarchies f thecorporatetructurendatthesametimegave it a new measure f autonomy is-A-vis he state.Whathadbeen thenetherworldof coercionbecamean "intimate"retreat f "saturated ndfree interiority" p. 28).As illusoryas the bourgeoiscult of domesticitymay havebeen, its "public-oriented subjectivity" yielded a moral ideal-an ideal of purely "human"freedom and self-realization-with claims to universaland hence to public

43 A lucid synopsis and critiqueof StructuralTransformations Peter Uwe Hohendahl,TheInstitution of Criticism (Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1982), pp. 247-49. For a trenchantreformulation of Habermas's argument about the literary public, see Terry Eagleton, TheFunctionof Criticism:From "TheSpectator"to Post-StructuralismLondon, 1984).4Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition(Chicago, 1958), esp. pp. 22-78.



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100 La Vopaapplicability.The ideal originally enteredand shapedpublic communicationthrough heliterarymarket nd ts newfictionalgenre,the novel. As the worldofbourgeoisdomesticityreflectedon itself, its values informed ictionand in turnacquired uthority s rationalnorms nthepublicdiscussionof fiction.In Englandthe nextstagewas alreadyunderway y the earlyeighteenth entury;he "publicof literaryreasoning"was developinginto a "politically reasoningpublic,"structuredrounda nationalrepresentativeody andofficially recognizedas its"discussionpartner."In its failureto unmask tself, Koselleckhad charged,the eighteenth-centuryconceptof acriticalpublichadbeen self-contradictory. hat truckHabermaswastheconsistency,and ndeedthe credibility, f the same concept.The demand hatgovernment e accountableo publicopinionwas groundedn, and egitimated y,two eminentlyKantian xioms.Judgment ouldbe rational ndhenceauthoritativeonly when it was formed n and throughpublicdiscussion;and suchdiscussion,if it was to yield conclusionsof universal pplicability, adto be in principle pento all.45Howhad this classic "liberal"model of the bourgeoispublic spheredegener-ated into the "sham public" of the twentiethcentury?By the mid-nineteenthcenturyt wasapparenthat he prerequisitesf property ndeducation ffectivelydisqualified he greatmass of the population.As the masses were drawn ntopolitics, the tensionbetweenabstractnclusivenessandde facto closurebecameablatantcontradiction;iberals ike Mill andTocqueville, earing hata democra-tizedpublicopinionwouldbethe instrument f "compulsionoward onformity,"soughtto concentrate uthorityn more or less esotericpublics. Fromthe 1870sonward,with the rise of large-scalecorporate apitalism, he structuralontextchangeddrastically.Therewere now obvious conflicts of interestamongsocialgroups,andtheyhad to be mediatedby the "social-welfare tate"as well as bynew corporate nterprises.Penetrated y public and quasi-publicbureaucracies,thefamilyexchanged ts genuineprivacy-the kind on which theautonomyof acriticalpublic had rested-for an illusory privacyas a passive consumerofservices.The rise of the culturendustry-firstwith mass-circulation ewspapersandperiodicals, henwith the electronicmedia-completed this transformationand "hollowed out" the substanceof the classic public.The originallycriticalfunctionof publicitybecamea "manipulative"unction,and the public sphere,in this travestyof itself, became a vast platformfor advertisingand publicrelations.While the "scope" of the publicsphere"is expandingmpressively,"Habermasobserved, "its function has become progressivelyinsignificant"(p. 4).Nearly hirtyyearsafter ts appearance, tructuralTransformationtill readsasa trenchant ritiqueof our commercialized ultureand its publicity ndustry.Thecritiquehasbecomeall themorerelevant, n fact, as politicalpackaginghasbeen

45 Ironically, he conceptof a "public sphere" that Habermas oundin the eighteenthcenturywas more Kantian than Koselleck's, despite the latter's starting point in Kant's Critiques.Toappreciatethe difference, cf. Habermas's discussion of Rousseau (StructuralTransformation,pp. 96-99) with Koselleck's (Critiqueand Crisis, pp. 162-67).



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Conceivinga Public 101reduced o soundbitesand photo opportunities.The issue here,however, s thepersuasivenessf Habermas's istoricalargument. nStructuralTransformation,as in Critiqueand Crisis, the historicalcenterof gravity s eighteenth-centuryEurope.To Habermas he classic public that emerged in England and, lessdramatically,n France and the Germanstates markeda unique momentincollective self-awareness.Fromits summit we could appreciatehow steep theslide into our currentnarcotic tatehad been.It was this perspective hat drewthe fireof Germancriticsin the 1960s and1970s. While liberalsfaultedHabermas'seftist utopianism,Marxists rom theNew Left regrettedhis failure to expose the classic bourgeoispublic as anideologicalcamouflageor classhegemony.Both sidesfoundhim guiltyof elitistnostalgia,andthatverdictwas notentirelyoff the mark.46LikeAdornoandotherFrankfurt choolluminaries, heyoung Habermas ombined wo personae.Onewas the leftist critic, unmaskingbourgeoishegemony with an eclectic but un-compromising eo-Marxism.Theotherwas the academicmandarinwho, for allhis skepticismabout hepretensions f "high" culture,remained ttachedo theliteraryand philosophical radition n which he had been reared.From bothstandpoints,he commercializedmassculture f his own eraseemedcontemptible;butthe artifactsof the classic bourgeoispublicwereanothermatter.Habermasacknowledged hat the internalstructureof the property-owningbourgeois amilyreflected ts subordinationo coercive market orces.Nonethe-less, he insisted,the new ideals of personalautonomyand self-cultivation weresurelymore thanjust ideology."Bourgeois domesticintimacyhad producedacredibleand hence efficacious llusionof individual reedom-one which, in its"transcendence"of the constraints mmanent n social reality,revealed"theelementof truth hatraisedbourgeois deologyabove ideology itself" (pp. 46-48).47Theexpressions f this transcendentalue-this capacity o evokea purelyhuman deal, with potentiallyuniversalapplication-includedRousseau'sPourHeloise, Kant's CriticalPhilosophy,and the literaryclassicismof Goethe andSchiller.If the leftist critic approached anonicaltexts with an eye for their"bourgeois"self-delusions, he academicmandarintill revered hemas monu-mentsto the authoritative alueof highculture.48Nostalgiaaside, Habermashad a methodological easonfor surroundingheclassicpublicwith an auraof sanctity. f he hadsimplytakenhis cue fromKant,he wouldhaveconstructedn a priorimodelof rational iscussionandwouldhavepilloriedhe "sham"modempublic nthe lightof its standards. uttothis studentof Adomosucha purely"transcendent"ritiquewouldhavebeenas self-deludingas a merely"immanent"one. The dialecticalchallengewas to fuse immanenceand transcendence.Habermas oughtto achieve this fusion with the genuinely

46 Hohendahl,pp. 250-68, convenientlysummarizes iberalas well as Marxistcriticisms. Onthe Germanpolitical background,see ibid., pp. 30-39.47 As Habermasacknowledged,Max Horkheimerhad attributed his dualityto the bourgeoisfamily (ibid., p. 48, n. 48).48 Habermas'sreverence becamequiteexplicit when he contrasted he readingsocieties of thelate eighteenthcentuiry nd modem book clubs (StructuralTransformation,pp. 165-67).



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102 La Vopahistorical ociology hat s rarely ound ntheworkof hisFrankfurt choolmentors.If therewas any escape from the soporificembraceof the culture ndustry, t layin recovering he emancipatory otential f anactualhistoricalmoment,albeitonethatKant'sCriticalPhilosophy adrecordedwithunique larity.Bourgeois ulturewas to be confrontedwith its own vision of transcendence,which lay in its ownself-generated orms.4

La Vopa, Sobre Habermas y Koselleck

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