The
following are verbatim-notes from Reinhart Koselleck’s exceptional work Critique and Crisis: The Pathogenesis of
Modern Society. Here, Koselleck traces how enlightenment thought led to
a clear-cut duality between the moral or private realm and that of the
political or public in the second, with a philosophical preponderance of the
former. It is such a predominance of the former, Koselleck contends, that led
to the deeply ideological, dogmatic, evangelical and revolutionary qualities
that characterise the political fabric of ‘modernity’ broadly; i.e. in the
shift from the predominance of rational, civic, public political epistemology, to that of universalist, private, moralisation void of politics itself. In
these verbatim-notes, Koselleck explores the very categories of ‘Critique’ and
‘Crises’ as conceptual phenomena.[1]
An interesting question concerns the manner in which Koselleck grasps criticism as ‘the art of judgement’, and, by extension of this, the extent to which this is intertwined or distinct from hermeneutics as the art of interpretation. Another interesting note concerns certain linguistic-usage overlaps. In the first case, with the distinction between politics and morality itself, my thinking was drawn to the bifurcation of modern political thought made by Michael Oakeshott across his work, towards (a) civic association, and (b) enterprise association, coordinating with their respective moral discourses. Secondly, as far as investigating judgement is concerned, there does indeed appear to be some overlap between Koselleck here and Hannah Arendt in her essay Thinking and Moral Considerations, not to mention her Lectures on Kant. In the case of the latter, this prompts one to ask the extent to which the shadow of Kant is once again present in a reflexive critique of critical judgement itself.
pp. 103-104
“Does the Absolutist State
still rule? Or has the new society been victorious? That is the question that
arises here. The indirect stance no longer suffices. The critical process is
coming to an end. A decision is unavoidable but has not yet been arrived at.
The crisis is manifest it lies hidden in the criticism. But a closer
examination of this relationship calls for an analysis of the critical process
itself. It is inherent in the concept of criticism that through it a separation
takes place. Criticism is the art of judging; its function calls for testing a
given circumstance for its validity or truth, its rightness or beauty, so as to
arrive at a judgement based on the insight won, a judgement that extends to
persons as well. In the course of criticism the true is separated from the
false, the genuine from the spurious, the beautiful from the ugly, right from
wrong. 'Criticism' [Footnote 15 – Laid out below] is the art of judging, and
the discrimination connected with it on the basis of this its general meaning
(which it already had in the eighteenth century) is obviously connected with
the then prevalent dualistic worldview. This connection can be found in some of
the critical documents. To understand the peculiar political significance of
criticism in the eighteenth century it is necessary to show the evolution of
the critical factor in its conflicting relationship with the State, and then to
pursue the gradual development and the growing claim of the critical factor on
this State. Such a procedure makes, at the same time, for a temporal
classification.
Footnote 15
The word 'criticism' (French critique, German Kritik) and the word 'crisis' (French ‘crise’, German Krise), both derive from the Greek κρίνω: to differentiate, select, judge, decide; Med.: to take measure, dispute, fight. (The same root, cri-, is found in the Latin ‘cerno’ and cribrum, Fr. crible: sieve). The Greek usage of κρίνω and κρίσις generally, even if not originally, referred to jurisprudence and the judicial system. 'Crisis' meant discrimination and dispute, but also decision, in the sense of final judgement or appraisal, which today falls into the category of criticism. In Greek, a single concept encompassed today's distinctive meanings of 'subjective' criticism and 'objective' crisis. As judgement, trial and general tribunal, the word κρίσις was used forensically. Thus 'pro and con' were originally contained in the word 'crisis' and the decision was also implicit. When the judge's decision specifically is meant, the term ἀρκή κριτική carries the sense of creating order, as Aristotle used it (Pol. 1253a; 1275a, b; 1326b). The sovereign and legal order of a community depends on the just decision of the judge. Only he who participates in the office of judge (ἀρκή) is a citizen. The adjectival form κριτικός dating back to Plato refers to this ability and art of judging, of decision-making and arriving at a judgement and, more generally, of the weighing of pro and con, to the 'critical' activity of judgement.
The Septuagint also uses the word κρίσις in the
sense of the administration of justice and law, which the ruler is called upon
to protect and create (Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, ed. G.
Kittel, 2nd edn, Stuttgart, 1950). Through the covenant with Israel God proved
that He was the true Lord and Judge; in John the word κρίσις takes on the
meaning of the Last Judgement. The temporal structure of this judgement, which
through Christ's appearance anticipated the still outstanding decision and already
is experienced in the conscience of the believers, this meaning in secularised
form, would become the accepted one in the eighteenth century. 'Crisis' would
not be generally used. The expression 'criticism', of judging, of arriving at a
judgement, became prevalent, while 'crisis' in the Greek sense of legal order,
or in the Christian sense of Judgment Day, disappeared. Based on Hippocrates
and Galen's use of the term ἡ κριτικὴ ἡμέρα, Latin also largely restricted the
term 'crisis' to medical usage. The Encyclopédie considers this translation an
historical fact of the past: 'Galian teaches us that this word crisis is a bar
term adopted by physicians and that it signifies, properly speaking, a
judgment' (essay on 'Crisis '). In Latin the crisis of a disease and the
medical diagnosis are related concepts, while the concept of crisis is limited
to the field of medicine. ('A medicis dicitur subita morbi mutatio novumque
indicium, ex quo judicari potest, quid aegro futurum sits' - “By physicians it
is said that a sudden change in the disease, and a new indication, from which
it may be judged, what will happen to the patient” - ; Forcinelli and
Furlanetto, Lexicon totius Latinitatis, Patavii, 1940.) Cf. Augustine 6 conf.
I: 'Critica accessio morbi est, ex quo de sanitate aut morte aegrotantis
judicium ferri potest' - “It is the critical approach to the disease, from
which a judgment can be made as to the health or death of the patient” -
However, the critic is also as already in the Greek a grammatical and art critic.
In the Middle Ages the term 'crisis' was limited to medical usage, designating
the crucial stage of a disease in which a decision had to be made but had not
yet been reached. This is the sense in which the term is still used today.
'Criticism' however has moved away from the originally
corresponding word 'crisis' and continues to refer to the art of judging and to
discrimination, without implying the weightiness of a decision inherent in the
theological, legal or medical sense of crisis. The adverbial and adjectival
form 'critical' is of a different order, depending on whether it is used in the
modifying sense of crisis or criticism. In 1702 an Englishman (Eng. Theophrast
5, quoted in Murray, A New English Dictionary) wrote: 'How strangely some words
lose their primitive sense! By a ‘Critick’, was originally understood a good
judge; with us nowadays it signifies no more than a Fault finder'; and Collier,
in The Great Historical, Geographical, Genealogical and Political Dictionary (2nd
edn, London, 1701) speaks of the presumptuous 'criticks' who made themselves
suspect equally to all princes and learned men, Protestants as well as
Catholics; in punishment they generally met a violent or ignominious death.
Zedler, who stood in the humanist tradition, in his Grosses
vollständiges Universal-Lexicon (Halle and Leipzig, 1733) still assigns the
same meaning to 'crisis' and 'critic'. Critic means 'judgement' and 'crisis'
means 'judgement, reason, thought, therefore one says man has no Crisis, that
is, he cannot judge anything'. However, Zedler also gives as the most common
meaning of crisis the crucial turning point in a disease, and oddly enough only
in the sense of a turning point on the road to recovery. "Today one calls
crisis that curative effect of nature through which the substance of the
disease... is expelled from the body and the body is thereby freed from its
decline and disease.' While Zedler was not yet familiar with the 'critic', his
article on 'Critic' uncovers one of the roots of the hypocrisy to which
eighteenth- century criticism had degenerated: 'Because criticism indirectly,
though not through its direct activity, contributes greatly to true wisdom,
still it has happened that the minds that apply themselves to it by taking its
indirect effect as direct have fallen prey to great haughtiness, and this
includes the office of judge that they have arrogated to themselves.... This
encompasses the theme of the century.”
pp. 104-105
“In England and France the word group associated with the concept of
criticism was incorporated into the national languages from the Latin around
1600.16 The terms critique and 'criticism' (and also 'criticks') established
themselves in the seventeenth century. What was meant by them was the art of
objective evaluation particularly of ancient texts, but also of literature and
art, as well as of nations and individuals. The term was initially used by the
Humanists; it incorporated the meaning of judgement and learned scholarship,
and when the philological approach was expanded to Holy Scripture, this process
too was called 'criticism'. One could be critical and Christian at the same
time; the critical non-believer was set apart by the sobriquet 'criticaster'.”
p. 118
“The King as ruler by divine right appears almost modest alongside the
judge of mankind who replaced him, the critic who believed that, like God on
Judgement Day, he had the right to subject the universe to his verdict.”
[1] Reinhart Koselleck (1988) Critique and Crisis: The Pathogenesis of
Modern Society. Oxford: Berg.