Counter-intelligence

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term counter -enlightenment (also counter-enlightenment ) describes the ideological counter-movement against the historical-philosophical phenomenon of the enlightenment . Alternatively, the terms restoration or reaction are used. In a scientific sense, the term is sometimes used for the thinking of early Romanticism such as Adam Müller , Meinrad Widmann or Lorenz Westenrieder, or also for the political theology of Saint-Martin or Joseph de Maistre .

In addition, the term is also used polemically, whereby an unclearly formulated accusation of irrationalism or reactionary thinking is raised. It is repeatedly applied to the literary work of Ernst Jünger and Botho Strauss , and Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault were also reputed to be counter-enlightenmentists.

Since the directions that see themselves as heirs of the Enlightenment are definitely in conflict with one another, this occasionally leads to ideological puzzles . Hermann Lübbe, for example, introduced the term counter-enlightenment polemically against the 1968 movement at universities and stated in 1972: “The most important element of our ideological political situation is the development of a culture of counter-enlightenment. Universities and editorial offices have become centers of political certainty of salvation, know-it-alls superior to reality, penetrating moralism and zealous intolerance. "This criticism of the representatives of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School is understood under the motto" Philosophy as Enlightenment "and wants to warn against the neo-Marxist counter-Enlightenment:" Processes of the counter-enlightenment are processes of increasing compulsion to confess and expanding criticism prohibitions. ”In the following polemical dispute, the term was now directed against Lübbe and his concept of the bourgeois civil religion : His engagement against the Frankfurt School is itself bourgeois counter-enlightenment.

See also

literature

  • Wolfgang Albrecht: What was Counter-Enlightenment? Strategies and argumentation of German opponents of the Enlightenment around 1800 , in: Dieter Fratzke / Wolfgang Albrecht (Eds.), Femininity drafts and women in Lessing's work. Enlightenment and counter-enlightenment to 1800 , Kamenz 1997, pp. 195–229.
  • Graeme Garrard: Counter-Enlightenments. From the Eighteenth Century to the Present , London / New York 2006.
  • Rolf Haaser: Late Enlightenment and Counter Enlightenment. Conditions and effects of the religious, political and aesthetic culture of debate in Gießen between 1770 and 1830, Darmstadt 1997.
  • Theo Jung: Counter-Enlightenment: a term between Enlightenment and the present , in: Dietmar J. Wenzel (Hrsg.), Perspektiven der Aufklerung. Between Myth and Reality , Munich 2012, pp. 87–100.
  • Theo Jung: Multiple Counter-Enlightenments: The Genealogy of a Polemics from the Eighteenth Century to the Present , in: Martin L. Davies (ed.): Thinking about the Enlightenment: Modernity and Its Ramifications , London 2016, 209–226.
  • Mark Lilla: What is Counter-Enlightenment? , in: Joseph Mali / Robert Wokler (eds.), Isaiah Berlin's Counter-Enlightenment , Philadelphia 2003, pp. 1–11.
  • Didier Masseau: Les ennemis des philosophes. L'antiphilosophie au temps des Lumières , Paris 2000.
  • Hermann Lübbe : Enlightenment and counter-enlightenment , in: Michael Zöller (Ed.), Enlightenment today. Conditions of our freedom , Zurich 1980, pp. 11–27.
  • Darrin M. McMahon: Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity , Oxford 2001.
  • Jochen Schmidt (Ed.): Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment in European Literature, Philosophy and Politics from Antiquity to the Present , Frankfurt a. M. 1989.
  • Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann : Political Theology of the Counter-Enlightenment. Saint-Martin, De Maistre, Kleuker, Baader , Berlin 2004.
  • Horst Seferens: “People from the day after tomorrow and from the day before yesterday”. Ernst Jünger's Iconography of the Counter-Enlightenment and the German Right after 1945 , 1998.
  • Zeev Sternhell : The Anti-Enlightenment Tradition , New Haven 2010.
  • Christoph Weiß (Ed. In collaboration with Wolfgang Albrecht): From "Obscuranten" and "Eudaemonists": Counter-Enlightenment, conservative and anti-revolutionary publicists in the late 18th century , Röhrig Universitätsverlag, St. Ingbert 1999, 2nd edition, ISBN 978-3- 86110-121-5 .