Comunicación y emancipación. Reflexiones sobre el «giro lingüístico» de la Teoría Crítica

Noy availablePartiendo de las raíces hegelianas del pensamiento marxista, el autor intenta demostrar el reduccionismo implícito en el concepto marxiano de «praxis» con respecto a la dimensión simbólica de la acción humana, así como sus consecuencias epistemológicas y políticas. Como alternativa, defiende una reformulación de los supuestos básicos del materialismo histórico en términos teórico- comunicativos

Über Musik und Sprache: Variationen und Ergänzungen

In the first part of this essay, the relationship between music and language is discussed from two different points of view that simultaneously reveal two different dimensions of understanding music. Referring to Nelson Goodman, particularly to his term »metaphorical exemplification«, the possible meaning of a »language of music« is outlined. The »understanding« of this language is analogous to the (nonverbal) understanding of gestures, expressions, moods, atmospheres etc., and therefore akin to an understanding of meaning that does not require words. The understanding of musical art works, however, is not the understanding of a context of meaning (Sinnzusammenhang), since the means of creating musical coherence – such as repetition and variation, the game of identity and difference – are different from the means that create a context of meaning in verbal languages. Music’s affinity to language is at once music’s distance from language. The idea of understanding music must therefore be different from, or more than, the wordless understanding of gestural or expressive figures. Musical listening can rather be grasped as the re-enactment of an enigmatic interpenetration of sound, structure, and meaning, the understanding of which, among others, requires verbal explication. These forms of explication do not stand for a resolution of the enigma but, due to their interminability, sustain it. The second part of the essay demonstrates that the semiotic model of the understanding of music not only falls short due to its failure to accommodate musical coherence, but also because it blocks out areas of musical meaning that are only comprehensible structurally, and not necessarily amenable to wordless re-enactment. These areas include the crisis of the subject in new music (dating back to the late Beethoven), demonstrating a peculiar proximity between music and philosophy. This context connects music to a question of truth that not only refers to individual works, but also to the question of what art and music as an art form can mean today. One answer to this question, which has troubled modern art since the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, is suggested at the end of this essay in reference to Jacques Rancière: the tension between the autonomy of art and its dissolution of boundaries has become art’s condition of existence

Models of Freedom in the Contemporary World

Treba li pojam slobode tumačiti polazeći s točke gledišta pojedinca ili s točke gledišta zajednice? Ovisno o odgovoru na ovo pitanje mogu se razlikovati »individualističke« i »kolektivističke« ili »komunalističke« političke teorije. Premda se, prema shvaćanju autora teksta, dva navedena poimanja slobode uzajamno nadopunjuju — tekst razmatra njihovo suprotstavljanje u formi dileme radikalni individualizam ili radikalni komunalizam. Individualističke teorije, koje polaze od pojedinca kao izdvojenog i samostalnog, slobodu shvaćanja kao »negativnu« — omeđenu općim zakonom koji osigurava prava i slobode za svakoga. S druge strane, komunalističke teorije naglašavaju »normativni« karakter slobode, tematizujući specifičan način putem koga akteri unutar društva uopće dolaze do odluke što žele činiti. Smatrajući da su antropološke i epistemološke pretpostavke komunalizma, koji započinje sa Aristotelom, a u modernoj teoriji biva obnovljen od strane Hegela, dakako ispravnije od onih individualističke tradicije (Hobs, Kant, prosvetiteljstvo, romantizam, Nozik...), Wellmer razmatra način na koji se Hegelovi komunistički stavovi obnavljaju kod Marksa i Tokvila. Saglašavajući se sa Tokvilom da sferu »negativne slobode« i pozitivne opće slobode nije moguće jednoznačno razdvojiti, kao i sa stavom da sloboda može postojati tek kao oblik etičkog života odnosno komunalne prakse utjelotvorene u karakter, običaje i moralne osjećaje građana — autor ipak još jednom razmatra radikalnu dilemu individualizam/komunalizam inkarniranu u suprotstavljanju Habermasa i Nozieka. Razmatrajući odnos »negativne slobode«, »pozitivnih prava« i »opće volje« Wellmer utvrđuje da opredjeljivanje u sporu zavisi i od mogućnosti zasnivanja pojma komunalne ili diskurzivne racionalnosti — koja bi trebalo da zahvati normativnu strukturu »modernog konsenzusa« i pruži normativni sadržaj suvremenih koncepcija slobode. Nasuprot Habermasu, koji mu je inače blizak, Wellmer zaključuje da se Sloboda i Razum u savremenom svijetu ne podudaraju — unatoč tome što je zahtjevanje slobode racionalni zahtjev, a svrha negativne slobode: racionalna, komunalna sloboda.Should the concept of freedom be interpreted from the point of view of the community? Depending on the answer to this question one distinguishes »individualist« and »collectivist« or »communalist« political theories. Although, according to the author\u27s view, the two presented conceptions of freedom complement one another, in the text he analyses their opposition in the form of the dilemma: radical individualism or radical communalism. Individualist theories, which start off from the detached and independent individual, conceive freedom as »negative« — restricted by the universal law which ensures rights and freedom for everyone. On the other hand, communalist theories emphasize the »normative« character of freedom, thematizing the specific means used by the actors within a society, first of all, in reaching the decision concerning what they wish to do. Regarding the anthropological and episthemologica! presuppositions of communalism, originating with Aristotles, and in modem theory revived by Hegel, as certainly more proper than those of the individualist tradition (Hobbes, Kant, Enlightenment, Romanticism, Nozick...), Wellmer analyses how Hegel’s communalist views are revived in the works of Marx and Toqueville. Agreeing with Toqueville that the spheres of »negative freedom« and positive universal freedom cannot be unambiguously divided, as well as with the view that freedom can exist only as a form of ethical life, in other words, of communal practice embodied in the character, customs and moral feelings of citizens — the author, however, once again analyses the radical dilemma individualism/communalism incarnated in the opposition of Habermas towards Nozick. Considering the relation among »negative freedom«, »positive rights« and »universal will«, Wellmer establishes that commitment in the dispute depends also on the possibility of thinking out the concept of communal or discursive rationality — which should extend to the normative structure of the »modern consensus« and provide the normative content for contemporary concepts of freedom. In contrast to Habermas, to whom he is otherwise closely related in thought, Wellmer concludes that Freedom and Reason in the contemporary world do not correspond — despite the fact that the demand for freedom is a rational one, and that the aim of negative freedom is — rational, communal freedom

Derechos humanos y democracia

En este magnífico ensayo, Albrecht Wellmer —sin duda uno de los filósofos más importantes de la actualidad— se enfrenta al problema de la universalidad de las normas de convivencia interpersonal. Su posición se aleja tanto del universalismo de Habermas como del decisionismo de Carl Schmitt. Con el primero, considera que los derechos y deberes ciudadanos exigen justificaciones democráticas rigurosas. Contra él admite la tesis schmittiana —que analiza con detalle— según la cual hay un momento no reglable inherente a la génesis de toda legalidad, un «poder soberano» ineludible que depende del acto performativo de decisión y que no puede ser eliminado del campo de juego de la política, de la justificación misma de las reglas políticas. Rebasando a Schmitt (que consideraba que una sociedad civil mundial significaría el fin de la política), intenta mostrar que la universalidad normativa, en un mundo globalizado, es, a pesar de todo, posible. Wellmer afirma, como cauce de ésta uno quizás infinito: un círculo práctico-hermenéutico entre instancias universales y particulares, como la norma y la aplicación o los derechos universales y los derechos civiles. Dicho círculo no es vacío, sino productivo, pero nos obliga a aceptar la finitud de la democracia y la idea de una justicia que siempre está en germen

Sprechen durch Musik im Komponieren der Gegenwart: Podiumsdiskussion mit Clemens Gadenstätter, Susanne Kogler, Albrecht Wellmer, Diskussionsleitung: Jörn Peter Hiekel

Commenting on a performance of two musical works that were played as the starting point for this discussion – Anton Webern’s Drei kleine Stücke (1914) for violoncello and piano op. 11 and Helmut Lachenmann’s Ein Kinderspiel (1980) for piano – Jörn Peter Hiekel observes that speaking about music and speaking through music particularly condition one another in new music. Both Webern and Lachenmann, by different compositional means, condense familiar musical gestures until they turn into a »language of their own«. In Lachenmann’s work, which refers to well-known children songs, this process is closely connected to what Albrecht Wellmer has called »wordliness« (Welthaltigkeit). More generally, the serialist »rebellion against music’s resemblance to language« (Adorno) shows a paradoxical twist towards sedimentation in the form of a new emerging language, as Clemens Gadenstätter explains with reference to Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Gruppen (1955–56). In new music musical idioms have been thoroughly destabilized yet always re-contextualized within established formulae. The panellists agree on a notion of both language and music that is not conceived as a closed system, but rather a network of relations transformed in time. Hence no distinct boundary can be drawn between syntax and semantics in music, nor is there any musical language that communicates a universal meaning (despite Joseph Haydn’s claim to the contrary). In addition – as anecdotes from Luigi Nono and Helmut Lachenmann document – the ambiguity of musical meaning is also relevant for composers who might be (favourably) surprised by unorthodox performances of their works that seemingly contradict the composers’ intentions, but in fact contribute to unfolding the multiplicity of meanings in a work

Equal consideration of all – an aporetic project?

The article considers the relationships among three arguments that purport to establish the intrinsically contradictory or paradoxical nature of the modern project aiming at the equal consideration of all. The claim that the inevitable historical insertion of universal-egalitarian norms leads to always particular and untransparent interpretations of grammatically universal norms may be combined with the claim that the logic of determination of political communities tends to generate exclusions. The combination of these two claims lends specific force to the third argument according to which equal consideration perpetually requires the non-egalitarian project of understanding (excluded) individuals on their own terms. Hence, taking off from a recent debate between Christoph Menke and Jürgen Habermas, I argue that the former is right to diagnose an aporetic self-reflection in egalitarian universalism, while agreeing with the latter about the indispensability of deliberative democratic frameworks for the defence of both egalitarian and non-egalitarian norms