Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-x24gv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-06T20:31:34.828Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Enlightenment as Process: Milton and Habermas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Donald L. Guss
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Reason as the medium of truth and freedom—though suppressed, the idea returns; it is presumed by our very participation in discourse. Its opponents say that only practices are real. But, as Milton and Habermas know, reason is itself a practice. Milton's “free and lawful debate at all times … of what opinion soever” recognizes interestedness, perspectivity, and struggle; Habermas's unconstrained communication is a never-achieved goal (an “ideal”) regulating discursive practices here and now. Both writers recognize that meanings are cultural, social, and existential, that knowledge cannot be separated from interests; but they do not therefore stand outside praxis rhapsodizing about struggle and contingency. Instead, they seek to move toward social freedom and individual autonomy through reason-able communication—that ongoing search for unforced agreement which is our usual and best alternative to violence, our usual and best way to find meaning in the world, in our selves, and in one another.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 106 , Issue 5 , October 1991 , pp. 1156 - 1169
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1991

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Aers, David, and Kress, Gunther “Historical Process, Individuals and Communities in Milton's Areopagitica.” Literature, Language and Society in England, 1580-1680. By Aers et al. Dublin: Gill, 1981. 152–15.Google Scholar
Barker, Francis The Tremulous Private Body: Essays on Subjection. London: Methuen, 1984.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory. New York: Columbia UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla. “The Utopian Dimension in Communicative Ethics.” New German Critique 35 (1985): 83–96.10.2307/488201CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernstein, Richard J “Introduction.” Habermas and Modernity. Ed. Bernstein. Cambridge: MIT P, 1985. 1–32.Google Scholar
Blum, Abbe “The Author's Authority: Areopagitica and the Labour of Licensing.” Nyquist and Ferguson 74–96.10.4324/9780429029493-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culler, Jonathan “Habermas and Norms of Language.” Framing the Sign: Criticism and Its Institutions. Oxford: Blackwell, 1988. 185–200.Google Scholar
Dewey, John Reconstructions in Philosophy. New York: NAL, 1950.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley “Driving from the Letter: Truth and Indeterminacy in Milton's Areopagitica.” Nyquist and Ferguson 234–23.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley. “Reason in The Reason of Church Government.” Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature. Berkeley: U of California P, 1972. 265–302.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews. Ed. Dews, Peter. London: New Left, 1986.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. Communication and the Evolution of Society. Trans. McCarthy, Thomas. Boston: Beacon, 1979.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. “The Dialectics of Rationalization: An Interview with Jurgen Habermas.” By Axel Honneth et al. Telos 49 (1981): 5–31.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. “The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Rereading The Dialectic of Enlightenment.” New German Critique 26 (1982): 13–30.10.2307/488023CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. “The Hermeneutic Claim to Universality.” Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy and Critique. Ed. Bleicher, Josef. London: Routledge, 1980. 181–211.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. “Justice and Solidarity: On the Discussion concerning ‘Stage 6.’” Philosophical Forum 21 (1990): 32–52.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. Knowledge and Human Interests. Trans. Shapiro, Jeremy J. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Eng.: Polity, 1978.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Trans. McCarthy, Thomas. Boston: Beacon, 1987. Vol. 2 of The Theory of Communicative Action. 2 vols.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Trans. Lawrence, Frederick. Cambridge: MIT P, 1987.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. Philosophical-Political Profiles. Trans. Lawrence, Fred. Cambridge: MIT P, 1969.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Trans. McCarthy, Thomas. Boston: Beacon, 1984. Vol. 1 of The Theory of Communicative Action. 2 vols.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. “A Reply to My Critics.” Habermas: Critical Debates. Ed. John, B. Thompson and David Held. Cambridge: MIT P, 1982. 219–21.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Trans. Burger, Thomas. Cambridge: MIT P, 1989.Google Scholar
Hernadi, Paul “Doing, Making, Meaning: Toward a Theory of Verbal Practice.” PMLA 103 (1988): 749–74.10.2307/462514CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingram, David Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason. New Haven: Yale UP, 1987.Google Scholar
Kahn, Victoria “Habermas, Machiavelli, and the Humanist Critique of Ideology.” PMLA 105 (1990): 464–46.10.2307/462895CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendrick, Christopher “Ethics and the Orator in Areopagitica.” ELH 50 (1983): 655–65.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-François The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Trans. Bennington, Geoff and Massumi, Brian. Theory and History of Literature 10. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Thomas The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas. Cambridge: MIT P, 1978.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Thomas. “Private Irony and Public Decency: Richard Rorty's New Pragmatism.” Critical Inquiry 16 (1990): 355–35.10.1086/448537CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, Thomas. “A Theory of Communicative Competence (1973).” Critical Sociology: Selected Readings. Ed. Connerton, Paul. Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1976. 470–47.Google Scholar
Milton, John Complete Prose Works. Ed. Wolfe, Don M. et al. 8 vols. New Haven: Yale UP, 1953-80.Google Scholar
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Complete Poems and Major Prose. Ed. Hughes, Merritt Y. Indianapolis: Odyssey, 1957.Google Scholar
Munch, Richard Understanding Modernity: Toward a New Perspective Going beyond Durkheim and Weber. London: Routledge, 1988.Google Scholar
Nyquist, Mary “The Genesis of Gendered Subjectivity in the Divorce Tracts and in Paradise Lost.” Nyquist and Ferguson 99–127.Google Scholar
Nyquist, Mary, and Ferguson, Margaret W., eds Re-membering Milton: Essays on the Texts and Traditions. New York: Methuen, 1987.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Ed. Taylor, George H. New York: Columbia UP, 1986.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard Consequences of Pragmatism (Essays: 1972-80). Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989.10.1017/CBO9780511804397CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rorty, Richard. “Habermas and Lyotard on Postmodernity.” Praxis International 4.1 (1984). Rpt. in Habermas and Modernity. Ed. Richard, J. Bernstein. Cambridge: MIT P, 1985. 161–16.Google Scholar
Skinner, Quentin “Habermas's Reformation.” New York Review of Books 7 Oct. 1982: 35–38.Google Scholar
Smith, Barbara Herrnstein Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Wade, Ira O Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971.10.1515/9781400873012CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, Max From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Trans. and Ed. Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright. New York: Oxford UP, 1946.Google Scholar
West, Cornel The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1989.10.1007/978-1-349-20415-1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, George Hunt The Radical Reformation. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962.Google Scholar