art. titus suck-the social representation of taste (subr)

Bourgeois Class Position and the Esthetic Representation of Class Interest: The SocialDetermination of TasteAuthor(s): Titus SuckSource: MLN, Vol. 102, No. 5, Comparative Literature (Dec., 1987), pp. 1090-1121Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2905313 .

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Bourgeois Class Position and the Esthetic Representation of Class

Interest: The Social Determination of Taste

Titus Suck

Esthetization describes an understanding of esthetics as interested and linked to class interests which are, however, denied by the cultural practices of which esthetics is a part. The following analyses will show how the emerging bourgeoisie represented its social interests esthetically. It will be shown how these interests are esthetized by being expressed within the confines of a cultural identity, determined by Kultur in Germany and civilisation in France.1

Both practices define the social identity and self-consciousness of an upwardly mobile bourgeoisie, but they also erase the relation between class interest, upward mobility, and the esthetic, artistic, and philosophical articulations of the bourgeoisie. This understanding of culture as a socially disinterested, neutral, and unpoli- tical sphere of activities is invited by habitus. According to Bour- dieu, habitus incorporates the social, economic, educational, and cultural resources of a class and systematically externalizes them in various practices, which in return structure those practices.2 The cultural practices of Kultur and civilisation function precisely in this way. They are practices which are structured by a cultivated habitus typical of the conditions of existence of the German and French bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century. Both practices are thus socially interested. They are a function of the class position and ambitions of a bourgeoisie which is obliged to articulate its


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vision of the social world in cultural, philosophical, and literary terms because it does not yet control the spheres of political and economic power.

Civilisation and Kultur denote cultural practices which reflect the differing social conditions under which the bourgeoisie emerged in Germany and France. The difference concerns the specific cultural relation to the dominant aristocratic class, its institutions and the court, and the social vision resulting from it. The concept of civilisation must be understood within the context of the French reformist movement of the physiocrats. They conceived of the economic process in society as a closed structure in which government should not arbitrarily intervene. The economy is seen as autonomous social sphere following its own, natural laws (i.e., reason), and its development is intimately related to the demographic and ethical course of society. In essence, the physiocrats argue the institutional separation of the economic from the political sphere, and the enlightened control over the economy by specialists familiar with its dynamics and free from the whims of the political moment. Such a division of government ultimately is thought to improve the common weal and to lead to a better, more efficient, more natural and hence more reasonable form of government. These ideas are shared by a reform-minded section of the French aristocracy and upwardly mobile bourgeois groups, especially public officials who did not belong to the "noblesse de robe" and who recognized the negative impact of the mercantilist restrictions on an expanding economy. The notion of civilisation thus aims at an internal refraining of power in the 'Ancien Regime' which would preserve its institutional structure and better integrate a rising, modern bourgeoisie. It reflects the latter's presence and savvy in the political process as well as the continuity with the values of "politesse," "honnetet6," and "civilitC" characteristic of the court society in the seventeenth century. The new element in the notion of civilisation is the thought that society needs to be per- fected. Thus it introduces both the concept of progress and merit. The homme civilise thus is an expression of a synthesis between older and new social ideals, a symbiosis between a new, economically active bourgeoisie and an enlightened aristocracy, which is itself characteristic of the historically flexible relation between bourgeoisie and dominant aristocracy in France.3

The practice of Kultur, on the other hand, shows different deter- minations. Above all it shows no continuity with aristocratic values,


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and expresses the specifically bourgeois sensibilities and culture of a rising, by and large university-educated intelligentsia.

Das, wodurch sich diese mittelstandische Intelligenz des 18. Jahr- hunderts legitimiert, was ihr Selbstbewusstsein, ihren Stolz begrundet, liegt jenseits von Wirtschaft und Politik: in dem, was man gerade des- wegen im Deutschen "Das rein Geistige" nennt, in der Ebene des Buches, in Wissenschaft, Religion, Kunst, Philosophie und in der inneren Bereicherung, der "Bildung" des Einzelnen, vorwiegend durch das Medium des Buches, in der Personlichkeit. Dem entspricht es, dass die Parolen, in denen dieses Selbstbewusstsein der deutschen Intelli- genzschicht zum Ausdruck kommt, Parolen wie "Bildung" oder "Kultur," eine starke Tendenz zeigen, zwischen Leistungen auf den genannten Gebieten, zwischen diesem rein Geistigen, als dem eigentlich Wertvollen, und dem Politischen, Wirtschaftlichen, Gesellschaftlichen einen starken Strich zu siehen, ganz im Gegensatz zu den Parolen des aufsteigenden Burgertums in Frankreich und England.4

The practice of Kultur, has a distinct national as well as a class dimension. Its origins can be traced back to the language societies of the seventeeth century where noblemen cultivated the vernacular of the bourgeoisie while commoners played a subordinate role in them. The emphasis on the German language and on middle class values such as sincerity, simplicity, truthfulness, etc., is all the more striking and indicates a transgression of a purely feudal horizon towards a broader, national consensus. This national element becomes a constant feature in the practice of Kultur. While Kultur implies a shift of the social ideal from rank and privilege to merit, intellectual and artistic achievement, it also emphasizes the national aspect in manners, literature, and the arts. Furthermore, it reflects the historical isolation of a German intelligentsia which is not only geographically dispersed but also generally excluded from careers in the civil service. The liberal professions are still in an embryonic state, and heavily regulated by the state. A career in the clergy is one of the few socially acceptable options to this burgher class, yet is is financially no less precarious than a university career proper. Finally, the writing intelligentsia's public is con- siderably smaller than in France, and it is also wooed by the com- petition from abroad.5 Given this socio-economic situation and the less than revolutionary nature of the German enlightenment, it is not surprising that Kultur shapes a basically para-political consciousness and practice. It almost never implies a critique of the political privileges of the aristocracy. Instead, it criticizes its


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manners, conventions and seemingly superficial worldliness which, of course, tends to exclude the bourgeois from social ex- changes of all kinds. While the critique of the new aristocratic French ideal of the homme civilise is implicit in the concept of Kultur, it also rationalizes in a peculiar manner the chances of this bourgeoisie to gain social recognition. Part of this attempt is the definition of an enlightened ideal of "Bildung" in terms of merit. Thus, Werther asks in his diary entry of January 8, 1772: "Was das fur Menschen sind, deren ganze Seele auf dem Ceremoniel ruht, deren Dichten und Trachten Jahre lang dahin geht, wie sie um einen Stuhl weiter bey Tische sich einschieben konnen."6

Kultur and civilisation thus express different relations of an upwardly mobile bourgeoisie to a dominant aristocracy and its chances of attaining a dominant position. But both practices articulate the social aspirations of the bourgeoisie in cultural terms. They are intrinsic part of the typically bourgeois split between interest and disinterest, the economic sphere and the non-economic sphere of the family and culture.

La bourgeoisie, cessant de faire de toute l'existence, a la fawon de l'aris- tocratie de cour, une parade continue, a constitu6 l'opposition du payant et du gratuit, de l'interesse et du desinteresse sous la forme de l'opposition qui la characterise en propre selon Weber, entre le lieu de travail et le lieu de residence, les jours ouvres et les jours feries, l'ex- terieur (masculin) et l'interieur (feminin), les affaires et le sentiment, l'industrie et l'art, le monde de la necessite economique et le monde de la liberte artistique arrache, par le pouvoir economique aL cette necessite.7

Such a split separates the bourgeoisie from the aristocracy. More- over, in the eighteenth century, bourgeois society is characterized as a private sphere opposed to a public sphere which comprehends the sphere of state and court, i.e., the aristocractic world.

As Habermas shows in his model of "publicity" (Offentlichkeit), these spheres not only oppose but also communicate with each other.8 The institutional link between them is established through a public which was originally literary and, later on, developed into a political public. Kultur and civilisation are practices which took shape precisely within the boundaries of this public discourse, which ultimately determined the forms and content of the esthetic and literary articulations of those practices.

According to Habermas, "publicity" is an institution of the private sphere in both its literary and political forms. Its task was to


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reconcile the specific needs and interests of bourgeois society with those of the state and court.

Im privaten Bereich ist auch die eigentliche "Offentlichkeit" einbe- griffen; denn sie ist eine Offentlichkeit von Privatleuten. Innerhalb des den Privatleuten vorbehaltenen Bereichs unterscheiden wir deshalb Privatsphare und Offentlichkeit. Die Privatsphare umfasst die burgerliche Gesellschaft im engeren Sinne, also den Bereich des Warenver- kehrs und der gesellschaftlichen Arbeit; die Familie mit ihrer Intims- phare ist darin eingebettet. Die politische Offentlichkeit geht aus der literarischen hervor; sie vermittelt durch offentliche Meinung den Staat mit den Bedurfnissen der Gesellschaft.9

The literary public is not yet a truly autonomous bourgeois public, since it develops in more or less close contact with a courtly aristocracy. Its institutions, the salon in France, and the Tisch- and Sprach- geselischaften in Germany, constitute a forum where bourgeois and aristocrat meet in a politically neutral sphere.10 While the salon is more open toward the political sphere than the German reading clubs, it is socially no less exclusive. The salon differs from the clubs insofar as it is clearly an institution of the transition from a courtly to a more urban culture where aristocratic and bourgeois values merge. The salon thus assumes "the earlier protective and promotional function of the court," and "offers authors and artists commissions, stimulation, and access to a selected public. Thus the salons serve as a breeding ground of literary demand, and as a clearing house and market for the products of free-lance writers."11 In short, the salon is an institution of the cultural repro- duction and consecration of what becomes later known as high culture. Contrary to the coffee-house, it is still a very formal institution to which access is gained as much through privilege and protection as through talent. The majority of intellectuals and writers was excluded from the salon, and "as de Tocqueville ob- served, it was the erratic opening up of mobility, not the absence of it, that produced social tension."12 Ultimately, the salon is the playing ground of a new meritocracy, an enlightened bourgeoisie and reformist aristocracy, which redefines the dominant cultural values in the sense of civilisation.

The German reading clubs, on the other hand, while showing a social blend similar to the salon, remain different. Their public consists mostly of learned men, academically educated local nota- bilities-the embryo of the liberal professions-, students, and oc-


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casionally even women. In Berlin, some of the most respected clubs play a central role in the emancipation and assimilation of the enlightened Jewish intelligentsia into society. This liberal Jewish bourgeoisie develops a less parochial sociability than most of the clubs; it is cosmopolitan and does not exclude women.13 While these clubs resemble the French salon they are still distinctly different because of their almost complete isolation from the political sphere. Their function is to further critical discussions among private persons. Before it turns into a political public, this predom- inantly literary public is engaged in a process of self-enlightenment, in an exchange of ideas as to the meaning of privacy.'4 Dis- cussions of and about literature thus are catalysts for the formation of a genuinely bourgeois cultural identity. In this process, the ideal of a genuine humanity, and a rationalist, ultimately ethical society emerges.

As Schulte-Sasse has pointed out, the literary public had political underpinnings from the beginning insofar as it was the forum where a small, bourgeois intellectual elite developed a system of ethical values and beliefs which was conceived as the cornerstone of a new society and which was to be spread by means of literature.15 Sulzer, for example, declared in his Allgemeiner Theorie der Schdnen Kinste that the ultimate purpose of the belles lettres is to provide sensations: "Ihre unmittelbare WiIrkung ist, Empfin- dungen im psychologischen Sinn zu erweken; ihr Endzwek aber geht auf moralische Empfindungen, wodurch der Mensch seinen sittlichen Werth bekommt."'16 Literature is thus a vehicle of a peda- gogical program by means of which an enlightened intelligentsia sought to reach the bourgeois and to impose a new system of ethical and cultural values. "Dichtung klart die Staatsbdrger auf, indem sie 'Liebe, Freundschaft, Dankbarkeit, Mitleiden, Gerech- tigkeit, kurz alle die menschlichen Tugenden welche ihren Sitz in dem Herzen haben, und nur so viel werth sind, als sie gefuhlt werden,' als offentliche Verhaltensweisen festigt."17 Love, friendship, compassion, and justice are the new social virtues. These virtues, however, have their social origin in the historically new experience of privacy and its psychology, which is formed in the bourgeois nuclear family.'8

The basic self-perception of the family is that the relations between its members appear to exist outside of any social and economic constraints. Family relationships appear to be freely chosen, economically disinterested, founded on love, and their only ptur-


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pose consists in developing virtues and abilities which characterize the man of Kultur. "Die drei Momente der Freiwilligkeit, der Lie- besgemeinschaft und der Bildung schliessen sich zu einem Be- griffe der Humanitat zusammen,"19 whose cell is the family.

But although the family is perceived as independent of the sphere of production and the market, in reality it depends on it. The private status of the bourgeois comprehends two aspects: "Als Privatmann ist der Burgerliche beides in einem: Eigentiimer uiber Giter und Personen sowie Mensch unter Menschen, bourgeois und homme."20 Habermas argues the seemingly autonomous sphere of the family represents the relative economic autonomy of the bourgeois. As the economic power and influence of the bourgeois increase, the members of his family, especially his wife and children, are freed from the need to work for a living: "Le pouvoir 6conomique est d'abord un pouvoir de mettre la necessit6 'a la distance."21 The self-representation of the bourgeois as family man and as man in general, and the strong emphasis on the virtues of love, compassion, and justice, are not simply ideology. They are systematic expressions of the bourgeoisie's conditions of existence as they are incorporated and translated into practice by habitus.

The literary public remained, even where its members ad- dressed economic and administrative questions (cf. Gottsched and his friends), a form of publicity "in dem sich die Subjektivitat klein-familial-intimer Herkunft mit sich uber sich selbst verstan- digt."22 The literary public was not a political public because it was not sufficiently developed to be able to function as an institutional counterpart to the state and its administration. Especially in the early phase of the Enlightenment, the activities of the literary public remained limited to an often-secret process of self-enlightenment among the bourgeoisie.

In describing the social function of the literary public, Ha- bermas indirectly defines the function, form, and content of literature. Both form and content are a function of literature as a vehicle of the bourgeois self-enlightenment. This understanding of literature indicates a change of cultural paradigm from aristocratic to bourgeois art. Peter Burger elaborates this change by using the categories of reception, production, and purpose of art.23

Aristocratic art, Burger shows, is to a courtly society what religious art is to the life and ceremonies of the religious community. Its ultimate purpose consists in celebrating the court, the king, and the life style of the aristocracy. Representing an exclusive commu-


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nity and its values, aristocratic art logically requires a collective reception. Purpose and reception thus converge in the collective cele- bration of a life style. Although it is no longer an exclusively aristocratic audience, the audience of the French classical theater, for example, recognizes itself in Racine's plays. The entire apparatus of theatrical rules, bienseances and Aristotelian unities, serve only one purpose: to maintain and to assure self-recognition.24

Bourgeois art differs from aristocratic art even though both are individually produced. Literature as a specific art form evolves in the private sphere and is determined by it. The literary text is des- tined to be read in private, and its contents reflect a genuinely bourgeois experience of the world. The literary text articulates the self-consciousness and sensibilities of the private individual. Its predominant literary form in the eighteenth century is therefore the psychological and epistolary novel. In writing letters, the bourgeois individual discovers, explores, and communicates his emotions and impressions. Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther is a famous example of this genre.

In his letters, Werther speaks of his impressions, his feelings and his love for Lotte. His characteristically bourgeois consciousness expresses itself precisely where he emphasizes emotions and feelings, his sentimental education and love for nature. This sensibility is merely the underside of Werther's occasionally outspoken critique of social conventions, especially of aristocratic manners and behavior, and of the social inferiority of the bourgeois:

Man kann vom Vortheile der Regeln viel sagen, ohngefahr was man zum Lobe der burgerlichen Gesellschaft sagen kann. Ein Mensch, der sich nach ihnen bildet, wird nie etwas abgeschmacktes und schlechtes hervorbringen, wie einer der durch Gesezze und Wohistand modeln lasst, nie ein unertraglicher Nachbar, nie ein merkwurdiger B6sewicht werden kann; dagegen wird aber auch alle Regel, man rede was man wolle, das wahre Geftihl von Natur und den wahren Ausdruck der- selben zerstoren.25

The genuine expression of feelings and nature is contrasted with a highly regulated society where human relations are not "natural," i.e., spontaneous, but rather formalized. These relations are perceived as superficial and codified relations which prevent Werther from socializing with aristocrats.26 Werther's sensibility is clearly a function of a private self-consciousness, and when evicted from the Duke's dinner party, he retreats to nature and to his reading of


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Homer: "Ich machte der vornehmen Gesellschaft mein Compli- ment, gieng ... fuhr nach M., um dort vom Hugel die Sonne un- tergehen zu sehen, und dabey in meinem Homer ... zu lesen."27 Werther's consciousness of himself is constituted through intro- spection and self-reflection in the private and solitary act of reading. Nature and literary text are refuges of privacy. To the extent to which nature reappears in the literary text as an object of contemplation, the dividing line between them is blurred: literature becomes a formalized nature. The bourgeois who perceives himself as man is part of nature and recognizes himself in its rep- resentations. The well-known Klopstock scene illustrates this point.

After a thunderstorm, Lotte and Werther approach a window and, as she contemplates the landscape, Lotte expresses her feelings by referring to Klopstock.28 Lotte's and Werther's understanding of both nature and themselves develops through the literary medium. Theirs is a spiritual and genuine union of souls which contrasts sharply with the ritualized communication and behavior of the aristocrats. Furthermore, this reference to Klopstock presupposes an educated contemporary reader, i.e., the literary public, and allows him to identify with Lotte and Werther. Goethe's novel becomes a medium for its reader just as Klopstock's work did for Werther and Lotte. The lines between physical and represented nature, between reader and fictional character, and between reality and fiction, begin to fade. This process is further reinforced by an authorial voice hidden behind the persona of an editor who posthumously arranges Werther's letters and occasionally intervenes in the narrative. Ultimately, the relations between author, reader, and fictional character come to constitute a psychological reality which substitutes for a given, concrete social reality.29 Through total identification and the emotions which it stirs up, fiction conveys a sense of a society based on values which are fundamentally different from those underlying the aristocratic society. The literary text thus objectifies the bourgeois' perception of himself as a private individual. It does so by celebrating friendship, love, education, nature, and the family. It represents an intimate, private world seemingly detached from any economically interested reality.

In Werther, nature and natural behavior describe already the vanguard point of a bourgeois consciousness which begins to experience the problematics of the dichotomies of the bourgeois world.



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Nature is not only the viewpoint from which the dominant aristocracy can be criticized, but also the rapidly growing economic fractions of the bourgeoisie. Such a critique, however, implies that the notion of a homogeneous bourgeois public has been abandoned. In other words, the potential conflict of interest between those who pursue commercial interests in the book market and those who consider books and the book market as simple means to reach and educate the bourgeois, had to become visible. This conflict became visible to the extent to which the book market grew and offered the possibilities for a literary production determined by commercial interests, and catering to the largest audience. The educational interests of the enlightened bourgeois intelligentsia thus conflicted with bourgeois profit interests.30

In his preface to Siebenkds, Jean Paul describes this conflict, and characterizes the bourgeois public as divided into three different groups: "Ich untersuchte namlich am Ofen das Publikum und be- fand, dass ich solches, wie den Menschen, in drei Teile zerlegen konnte-ins Kauf-, ins Lese-und ins Kunstpublikum."3I The first group consists of businessmen; the second group, the reading public, consists of young or leisured people who seek to amuse themselves and who shun difficult reading; and the third group comprises the few artists who have taste.32

Jean Paul thus describes an institutional and social division within bourgeois society at the end of the eighteenth century. The conflict between an economically oriented bourgeoisie and bourgeois intelligentsia is grasped as a difference of taste, and of op- posing value systems and beliefs. In essence, the humanistic values of familiarite which originally expressed the bourgeois opposition to the aristocracy, now articulate an internal class conflict. It is the kind of conflict between money and love which is represented in the bourgeois Trauerspiel.33

From the beginning, the bourgeois public constitutes itself as a reading public.34 As such, it distinguishes itself from the aristocratic and semi-aristocratic theater public such as the one analyzed by Auerbach as La cour et la ville.35 But towards the end of the eighteenth century, this reading public is no longer unified. It is no longer a critical, reasoning public, but largely a consumer public. This means, in turn, that the small group of intellectuals and artists is increasingly isolated. The changing concept of taste, and its reduction to a pure esthetic judgment, represent these de- velopments esthetically.


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According to Burger, bourgeois art represents a genuinely bourgeois subjectivity while still maintaining a certain continuity with aristocratic notions of value and taste.36 Originally an aristocratic notion, taste always implies the distinction between noble and vulgar forms, manners and behavior.

Before the eighteenth century, Gombrich notices, critics be- lieved that "certain forms or modes are 'really' vulgar, because they please the low, while others are inherently noble, because only a developed taste can appreciate them."37 In the eighteenth century, taste became one of the central issues in the debates of the literary public. These debates challenged the notion that taste is a function of one's class position, and defined taste as a property of human nature and the basis of a natural, civilized and enlightened society. Slightly different conceptions of taste emerged from these discussions in France and in Germany, and formed the axis of the practices of civilisation and Kultur. Taste thus came to express the bourgeois cultural identity, and especially that of the bourgeois intelligentsia. The conception of taste thus represents esthetically the relation of the bourgeoisie to the dominant aristocracy. Taste is able to articulate bourgeois self-understanding precisely because it describes an ideal which is seemingly independent of social class and economically disinterested. Taste expresses an ethical relation to the social world and therefore becomes the perfect means for an ascendant bourgeoisie to express and to realize its social aspirations.

This social ideal of taste is described in Gracian's El Discreto (1646). Taste distinguishes the cultivated and educated person:

This ideal of gusto is the starting point for Gracian's ideal of social education. His ideal of the educated man (of the discreto) is that, as an hombre en su punto, he achieves the proper freedom of distance from all things of life and society, so that he is able to make distinctions and choices consciously and from a superior position....

This ideal of social Bildung seems to emerge everywhere in the wake of absolutism and its suppression of the hereditary aristocracy. Thus the history of the idea of taste follows the history of absolutism from Spain to France and England and is closely bound up with the ante- cedents of the third estate. Taste is not only the ideal created by the new society, but we see this ideal of "good taste" producing what was subse- quently called "good society." Its criteria are no longer birth and rank but simply the shared nature of itsjudgments or, rather its capacity to rise above the narrowness of interest and private predilections to the title of judgment.38 (emphasis added)


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This ideal of Bildung (cultivation) is the basis of the French theater public in the seventeenth century. It consists mainly of the court, factions of an urban aristocracy, and a small bourgeois faction characterized by a strong tendency toward "Klassenflucht und zur Stabilisierung des Verm6gens."39 A commonly shared ideal of taste and Bildung, and of honnetete', makes possible the contact and communication between those two social classes; to some extent it even allowed the urban bourgeoisie to be assimilated by aristocratic society. Since this bourgeoisie had achieved economic security and no longer depended on its productivity, it was able to concentrate on pursuing an ideal of social cultivation. Gadamer's freedom of "distance from all things of life" is above all freedom from necessity. One's ability to become an honne'te homme clearly presupposes a high socio-economic status which is assured either by the bourgeoisie's acquired wealth or by the aristocracy's royal privileges. Honne^tete' looks as if it were an ideal independent of social class, birth, and rank, because it conceives the honne~te homme as an ethical being:

Es ist sogar bezeichnend fur die honn&etNt dass sie nicht nur von allem Standischen, sondern uberhaupt von allen jeweils gegebenen lebens- massigen Bindungen absieht. Jeder konnte sie erwerben, der auf seine innere und aussere Pflege im Geiste der Zeit Sorgfalt zu verwenden willens und fahig war, und das Resultat war eben dieses: dass der Be- treffende von jeder besonderen Qualitat gereinigt wurde, nicht mehr Zugehoriger eines Standes, eines Berufes, eines Bekenntnisses war, sondern ben honnete homme.40

Honne'tete' only appears to erase the distinctions between the estates. In reality, social differences are expressed as differences in taste.41 They appear to result from an individual's will and effort, or the lack thereof to become an honne^te homme, and are hence perceived as ethical differences. But even as honne^te homme, the bourgeois is not equal to the aristocrat. The ethical code of se con- naitre inscribes the social distance between them and regulates their contact. As can be seen in Moliere's comedies, the judgment, "il se m6connait," always means that a bourgeois has violated the rules of honne^tete'. Although the bourgeois is permitted to mingle with aristocratic society, he must respect its code; he is allowed to criticize it neither verbally nor through his behavior. In this respect, the theater public differs from a genuinely literary public. The mere worldly conversation could not yet be replaced by cri-


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tique and discussion as in the salon of the eighteenth century.42 Honnetete defines an aristocratic ideal of taste, and the judgment of taste is not subjective, analytical, and reflective, but rather spontaneous.43 Its validity is assured by the social solidarity and consensus of the aristocracy, which constitute the "empirical universality, the complete unanimity of the judgment of others" upon which taste depends.44

This ideal of Bildung and of cultural identity which rests upon the nature of the judgments and taste shared by a group remains important for the bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century. As its social basis broadens, the bourgeoisie gradually transforms and ad- justs the notion of taste so as to express its self-perception of the bourgeois as homme. But it does so without ever really breaking its social consensus with the aristocracy until the revolution in 1789.45 The ideal of the honnete homme is gradually transformed into the cultural ideal of the homme civilise, which is further developed in the notion of civilisation. Elias characterizes civilisation as a social ideal which still absorbs many aristocratic courtly values. But under the influence of the social, economic, and philosophical criticism of an enlightened public, civilisation comes to define more than an ideal of manners and behavior. Civilisation describes the process of an internal colonization and reform of all social, political, and economic institutions. The bottom line of this colonization is the vision of a more rational society:

In den Handen des aufsteigenden Mittelstandes, im Munde der Re- formbewegung erweitern sich die Vorstellungen vom dem, was dazuge- hort, um eine Gesellschaft zu einer zivilisierten Gesellschaft zu machen. Die Zivilisierung des Staates, der Verfassung, der Erziehung und damit breiterer Schichten des Volkes, die Befreiung von alledem, was noch barbarisch oder vernunftwidrig an den bestehenden Zustanden ist, ob es nun die Gerichtsstrafen sind oder die standischen Schranken des Burgertums oder die Barrieren, die eine freiere Entfaltung des Handels verhindern, diese Zivilisierung muss der Sitten-Verfeinerung und der Befriedung des Landes im Inneren durch die Konige folgen.46

This model of a more civilized and rational society expresses the social and political ambitions of the rising bourgeoisie. However, these class interests are not directly articulated but rather esthetized; the need to civilize society is couched in terms which stress the reasonable and natural character of such a society. A civilized society is considered rational and natural because it claims to be a


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society where the assumption that there is a common human nature is realized in praxis. Bourgeois class interests thus figure as the universal interests of society.

As the ideal of honne^tete' is modified and replaced by that of civilisation, the conception of taste also changes. The synthetic judgment of taste becomes a quasi-analytical judgment whose validity no longer rests merely on the unanimous judgment of a given community and its savoir-vivre, but on deductive reason itself. This serves to distinguish the judgment of taste from prejudice. The Cartesians, among them Crousaz, even conceived taste as a form of the judgment of reason: "le bon gouct nous fait d'abord estimer par sentiment ce que la raison aurait approuv6, apres qu'elle se serait donn6 le temps de l'examiner assez pour en juger par des id6es justes."47 The principal achievement of this approach is that the judgment of taste is no longer restricted to a privileged social group because reason is considered a property of the human mind. The socially founded, normative character of taste begins to fade. Instead, good taste is founded in nature, i.e., in universal reason. Taste therefore is an innate capacity, next to one's reasoning capacities.

Du Bos implicitly uses this assumption of an innate taste is his Rfflexions critiques. He argues that sentiment, an innate sensory apparatus, registers the different sensations and feelings of pleasure or displeasure evoked by an esthetic object.48 On the basis of these sensations, a judgment is formed. Furthermore, a gouit de compa- raison enables an audience to evaluate and to compare works of art. Hence the quality of the work depends on the degree of pleasure which it evokes. The selective distance, which characterized the judgment of the honnete homme is abandoned. Du Bos's conception of taste no longer clearly defines good taste as based on the social conventions of the aristocracy. The radical social implications of Du Bos's understanding of taste could have potentially disrupted the existing social consensus, as can be seen in the critique by the Marquis d'Argens:

Le systeme general de M. 1'abbe du Bos souffre quelques difficultes. I1 pretend qu'on juge mieux des ouvrages d'esprit par le sentiment, que par la raison, et par les connaissances qu'on peut avoir acquises par 1'etude. Cette opinion me paroit sujette at de grands inconvenients; et c'est soumettre les tragedies de Racine, et les pieces de Moliere a1 la decision de tous les bourgeois les plus ignorans: c'est rendre le people maitre du sort des meilleures pieces. L'experience nous a cependant


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montr6 que la Phedre de Racine, que le Misanthrope de Moliere ne plurent point par le sentiment a la multitude; et que ce furent les veri- tables connoisseurs, qui jugent des choses par la connaissance des regles; qui soutinrent ces chef-d'oeuvres contre le mauvais gouit de ceux qui ne jugent que par le sentiment.49

Sentiment is perceived as bad taste because it gives to the common man, to the people in general, the right to judge a work of art without having the necessary knowledge to do so. Classical taste, however, although a spontaneous and pre-reflective judgment, is an informed, educated judgment.50 Only as such can it claim to rise to the status of a disinterested judgment which transcends personal predilections and interests. From this point of view, Du Bos's judgment must be an interested judgment, precisely because it evaluates a sensation of pleasure.

The Marquis's criticism also shows how the classical ideal of taste begins to be modified. The ideal of the honne'te homme who is intimately familiar with rules such as bienseance and vraisemblance and for whom "comprendre 6quivaut 'a 'bien voir'," begins to merge with an ideal of erudition.5' The Marquis's connoisseur combines a traditional worldliness with knowledge that has been acquired through a formal, scholarly education. Cautioning against the implications of Du Bos's theory, the Marquis thus walks a fine line between including the educated bourgeois in the good society while excluding the people.

This new relation between "mondain" and "docte" signifies the growing social importance of the bourgeois intelligentsia as the avant-garde of its class. Its rational, logical discourse and ability to make informed, analytical judgments becomes increasingly important. "Le go uit acquiert une dimension de plus en plus rationelle 'a m6sure que l'on s'6loigne du classicisme," says Jean Pierre Dense, analyzing this trend in a text by Frain de Tremblay.52 Through a reasoning process, through constant discussion among themselves, and with an enlightened aristocracy in the salons, the French bourgeoisie develops its identity and also the political, social, and economic visions which ultimately lead to the revolution. The acquisi- tion, development, and advancement of knowledge is a major form of the bourgeoisie's investment in its own social ascent.

The intellectual and analytical dimension of taste is predominant in Diderot's article on the "Beau."53 Contrary to the sensualist school, Diderot concentrates on the nature of the object to be eval- uated and judged by standards of taste. This object is the beautiful


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object, and beauty is defined as "tout ce qui contient en soi de quoi reveiller dans mon entendement l'idee de rapports."54 Although Diderot goes to some length to explain his concept and theory of the "perception des rapports," it remains rather vague and prob- lematic.55 It suffices for our purposes to point out that such "relations" describe certain qualities in nature, an object or a person, which are perceived as harmonious and ordered when compared to other objects. These qualities are real and not imaginary, although they may be more or less clearly perceived: "Quand je dis qu'un etre est beau par les rapports qu'on y remarque, je ne parle point des rapports intellectuels ou fictifs que notre imagination y transporte, mais des rapports reels qui y sont & que notre entendement y remarque par le secours de nos sens."56 Differences of taste stem from differing abilities to discern these "relations." For Diderot, the judgment of taste depends on knowledge and education, both social Bildung and formal instruction: "Tous convien- nent qu'il y a un beau, qu'il est le resultat des rapports apercus: mais selon qu'on a plus ou moins de connaissances, d'experience, d'habitude de juger, de mediter, de voir, plus d'etendue naturelle dans l'esprit, on dit qu'un objet est pauvre ou riche, confus ou rempli, mesquin ou charge."57

Good taste is sophisticated taste; the more knowledgeable a person is, the more complete will be his perception of the "relations" and thereby of nature, or rather of belle nature: "Le beau qui resulte de la perception d'un seul rapport est moindre ordinaire- ment que celui qui resulte de la perception de plusieurs rapports."58 Like Voltaire, Diderot believes in the perfectibility of taste, and such perfection ultimately is a sign of one's civilisation, i.e., one's culture. Those who cannot attain the knowledge and education needed to develop such complex perceptions perceive nature imperfectly. Since their taste is not founded in nature, they are not merely excluded from the "good society," but relegated to the status of an anti-nature; in short, they are not part of civilized society. Their taste is not natural and therefore vulgar. According to Diderot, certain forms, expressions, colors, and attitudes are inherently vulgar because they are in use among the uneducated, "les paysans, ou les gens dont la profession, les emplois, le carac- tere nous sont odieux ou meprisables."59 Good taste, the ability to perceive beauty, constitutes itself in opposition to bad taste, and expresses itself socially in a life style which transcends the world of peasants, of labor and necessity. Furthermore, good taste is essen-


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tially taste in the arts. This distinction, implicit in Diderot's focus on nature as la belle nature is made explicit by Voltaire who consequently attributes to the arts a propaedeutic function in the civi- lizing process.60 This conception of taste articulates both the private, economically disinterested subjectivity of the bourgeois as homme, and his aristocratic pretension to a dominant social position:

Cette pretention aristocratique a moins de chances qu'aucune autre d'etre contestee puisque la relation de la disposition "pure" et "desin- teressee" aux conditions qui la rendent possible, c'est-A-dire aux conditions materielles d'existences les plus rares parce que les plus affran- chies de la necessite economique, a toutes les chances de passer ina- per~ue, le privilege le plus classant ayant ainsi le privilege d'apparaitre comme le plus fonde en nature.61

The debate over taste in eighteenth-century France reflects this aristocratic pretension in that taste remains indebted to an essen- tially courtly-aristocratic ideal of worldliness and elegance which merges with the idea of natural taste. Where taste is founded on a perception of nature, as in Diderot, good taste expresses nature itself. Consequently, to show good taste is to represent nature. The bourgeois can thus claim a dominant position simply because of what he represents and is in his own view, pure nature in the guise of man-the bourgeois as homme.

The history of the reception of taste in Germany reveals a different relation of power between aristocracy and bourgeoisie. The esthetic debates are carried on by a literary public which elaborates a notion of taste consistent with its practice of Kultur. Central to this notion of taste is the attempt to determine it as a vehicle of general reason, which converts it into an element of enlightened social utopia. Reason, Adorno argues, "als das transzendentale Uberindividuelle Ich enthalt die Idee eines freien Zusammen- lebens der Menschen, in dem sie zum allgemeinen Subjekt sich organisieren."62 But this ideal of a genuine humanity founded upon reason is ambiguous. It generalizes the class-determined self-perception of the bourgeois as a private person and man. At the same time, the ideal effaces the economic status and power of the bourgeois upon which this vision of Humanitat rests.

The reception of taste in Germany begins with Konig's "Unter- suchungen von dem guten Geschmack" (1727). Konig conceives taste as a natural, cognitive ability and a faculty of the intellect. As


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a function of reason, taste is no longer bound up with social privileges and conventions. Judgments of taste are universal and their only criterion is "richtige Ubereinstimmung unserer Gedanken und Handlungen mit der Natur und wahren Vernunft."63 It depends neither on time, place, nor on differences between people and customs.

Gottsched develops the emancipatory potential of the formula "Geschmack des Verstandes" and argues that differences in taste are due to different processes of socialization and education. Inas- much as social differences between the estates are differences of taste, Gottsched intends to overcome them by education:

So wenig einem eine gesunde, dem anderen eine verderbte Vernunft angeboren ist; so wenig ist solches auch bei dem Geschmacke zu ver- muthen. Die Fahigkeit eines neugebohrnen Kindes ist zu allem gleich- gultig. Man kann aus ihm machen was man will. Man erziehe es unter den Bauern, es wird baurisch denken und reden; unter den Burgern, es wird burgerlich urtheilen; unter Soldaten, es wird kriegerische Dinge im Kopf haben; unter Gelehrten, es wird nach Art studirter Leute ver- nunfteln und grubeln; bey Hofe, es wird sich vor lauter Lustbarkeiten und Regierungssachen Chimaren erdenken.A

Taste is not yet merely an esthetic judgment; its object is more than the work of art. Good taste depends on an education based upon reason and is furthered through the "Gebrauch der ge- sunden Vernunft."65 Gottsched perceives taste mainly as "undeut- lich urteilender Verstand"66; the judgment of taste is not yet a clear and distinct judgment, for it is based on mere sensations and impressions. For taste to claim the status of a clear judgment, it must be informed and educated. In short, it needs to be guided by knowledge about the world and nature; it presupposes education. In fact, the judgment of taste is for Gottsched an exercise of the judgment of reason.

Gottsched maintains Leibniz's theory of a preestablished harmony between res cogitans and res extensae.67 Hence his notion that nature is organized according to the logical principles of reason. Nature is therefore identical with reason, and represents it as an ideal of perfection and harmony in the realm of sensual perception. Since the work of art, for example, is supposed to represent nature, the judgment of taste bearing on the work of art is a judgment of nature. Given the correlation between res cogitans and res extensae, taste must find beautiful that which the judgment of


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reason has found to be true. Therefore, esthetic judgment is still subsumed under a general judgment of reason bearing on all forms of social life:

Die Schonheit eines kunstlichen Werkes, beruht nicht auf einem leeren Dunkel; sondern sie hat ihren festen und nothwendigen Grund in der Natur der Dinge. Gott hat alles nach Zahl, Mass und Gewichte ge- schaffen. Die natdrlichen Dinge sind an sich selber schon: und wenn also die Kunst auch was schdnes hervorbringen will, so muss sie dem Muster der Natur nachahmen. Das genaue Verhaltnis, die Ordnung und das richtige Ebenmass aller Theile, daraus ein Ding besteht, ist die Quelle aller Schonheit, Die Nachahmung der vollkommenen Natur, kann also einem kunstlichen Werke die Vollkommenheit geben, da- durch es dem Verstande gefallig und angenehm wird....68

To recognize true nature, taste must be formed and educated. This is, among others, the task of the Sprach- and Tischgesell- schaften, the institutions of the literary public. Since Gottsched's conception of taste, however, grants everyone a judgment, it always contains an anti-feudal and anti-aristocratic thrust. As a function of reason, taste expresses the bourgeois ambition to par- ticipate in political processes and exert power. Ultimately, the education of taste implies the vision of a free society, a community where everyone rises above his personal interests in the name of reason and thus becomes man.

Since the judgment of taste implies a true perception of nature, the judge himself figures as nature. According to the thesis of preestablished harmony, his taste recognizes as beautiful what his intellect has found to be true. The judgment of taste thus recon- ciles the universal and the particular, the individual and the social. This identity is the source of the bourgeois' revolutionary consciousness per se. His particular class interest is thus represented esthetically and appears as universal interest rather than as that of a class. Interest is esthetized and no longer appears as such. The political consequences of this esthetization have been pointed out by Willms:

Die burgerliche Emanzipation begann als die Emanzipation des Men- schen als solchen: jedenfalls wurde sie so gedacht. Das Geheimnis des burgerlich revolutionaren Bewusstseins ist, dass es nicht partikular war, seine Allgemeinheit legitimierte ihm ebenso die Liquidierung der al- tern Feudalitat wie den spateren kolonialistischen und imperialistischen Ausgriff.69


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In the course of the esthetic debate of the 1740s and 1750s, the social implications of taste are revoked. Taste is increasingly transformed into a merely esthetic category, and it defines a feeling for art or Kunstgefiihl. The artist's and art critic's judgment thus come to replace that of the layman. Critical objections are raised against the layman's judgment and taste.

Georg Friedrich Meier, for example, argues that poetry is simply not made for the common man, whose taste is mediocre at best: "Der gemeine Mann besitzt so wenige Krafte, Geschmack und Einsicht, dass er kaum vermogend ist, die mittelmassigen poe- tischen Gedanken zu schmecken."70 To allow every layman an esthetic judgment would therefore negatively influence the development of taste and the arts. A feeling for art is not identical with common sense. The esthetic object is constituted outside the realm of normal experience and therefore needs to be judged according to a different, higher standard: "Die hochste Poesie ist eine Sprache der Gotter, und schwinget sich so hoch uber die gewdhn- lichen Begriffe, dass sie uber den Horizont der meisten Leute geht."7' Furthermore, Meier argues, it is almost a sign of good poetry that it is not readily intelligible but requires a rigorous intellectual effort to be understood. Taste as a feeling for art is opposed not only to the worldly ideal of taste that is associated with the aristocracy, but also opposes any kind of carnal or physical pleasure and the experience of the common man. Good taste is anti-hedonistic and ascetic because art, the object of taste, is constituted in a sphere which transcends any economic, physical, or ma- terial reality. The world of art is accessible only to those who know how to establish an ascetic relation to the world:

Viele deutsche Dichter sind gar zu bequem. Wenn sie ein Gedicht lesen wollen, lassen sie sich einen Coffee kochen, zunden eine Pfeife Tobak an, und wollen sich vom Dencken ausruhen. Indem sie nun ein vortref- fliches Gedicht in diesem Zustande lesen wollen, so muissten sie, wenn sie es verstehen wolten, ihren Coffee erkalten, und ihre Pfeifen aus- gehen lassen. Da sie aber ihr Geld nicht umsonst wollen ausgegeben haben, so verachten sie dergleichen Gedichte, und opfern die Kiutzelung ihres geistlichen Geschmacks dem Gefihle des korperlichen auf, und verg- nugen sich bloss an schlechten und mittelmassigen Gedancken, die sie einsehen konnen, ohne dass es ihnen Muhe kostet.72

Good taste is determined as "goutt de la reflexion" as opposed to a "goutt des sens," and its principle "n'est autre chose qu'un refus


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ou, mieux, un degoutt, degoutt des objets imposant a la jouissance et dego ut du go ut grossier et vulgaire qui se complait dans cette jouissance imposee."73 This antagonism characterizes Lessing's notion of art criticism. Lessing repudiates the spontaneous esthetic judgment based on mere impressions and sensations. He argues that deductive reasoning ought to be the basis of esthetic judgments: "Schluisse, die er [der Kunstrichter] aus seinen Empfin- dungen, . . . gezogen und auf die Grundbegriffe des Vollkom- menen und Schdnen zuruckgefuhrt hat."74 The judgment of taste is reflective and purifies the immediate sensual impulses and pleasure provided by sensation. Reflection seemingly erases all traces of man's biological nature in his judgment. It constitutes esthetic pleasure and taste as ascetic. Taste becomes the emblem of one's ability to maintain an ethical relation with the world, i.e., to control one's biological nature, needs, and sensations. Taste thus appears not only as pure but also as a standard of moral excellence and virtue which in turn projects an image of freedom. The bourgeois who is able to dominate his biological nature appears as free and autonomous: hence the status of his judgment is a disinterested one.

Mendelssohn already foreshadowed this notion of taste as a pure, disinterested judgment by trying to ground it in "idealischer Schonheit." He argues that nature is not beautiful in all its aspects but only as a whole. Unable to perceive it as a whole, the artist is to limit himself to representing only nature's beautiful aspects so as to give an impression of its "idealischer Schonheit."75 In order to represent this ideal, which is the source of taste, he is therefore obliged to transcend nature in its commoner aspects: "Der Kuinstler muss sich also uiber die gemeine Natur erheben, und weil die Nachbil- dung der Schonheit sein einziger Endzweck ist, so steht es ihm frey, dieselbe allenthalben in seinen Werken zu concentriren, damit sie uns starker riihre" (emphasis added).76 The artist is held to represent an ideal of beauty which is found in nature. But his representation must distance and prohibit any naive perception of nature and reality lest it not fulfill its function: to touch an audience and awaken its emotions and feelings. In Mendelssohn's theory of affects (Affektenlehre), a certain emotionalization of an audience is necessary and leads ultimately to catharsis. The ability to rise above the naive perception of nature and to perceive the ideal of beauty is experienced as an ethical act. Taste which is rooted in "idealischer Sch6nheit" thus becomes ideal taste and a propaedeutic of


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virtue. Art is its vehicle and the artist its agent. In short, art is not simply representational but rather educational. The idea of education through catharsis became the basis for Lessing's theory of drama which evolved from the correspondence between Lessing, Mendelssohn, and Nicolai.77

Mendelssohn's conception of ideal taste anticipates Kant's formalization of taste as a pure esthetic judgment. According to Kant, the judgment of taste is a subjective one without any epistemolog- ical significance.78 It is a pure esthetic judgment because it ab- stracts completely from empirical nature, function and form of the objects which it considers beautiful.79 "In it nothing is known of the objects which are judged beautiful, but it is stated only that a priori there is a feeling of pleasure connected with them in the subjective consciousness."80 Given Kant's definition of the beautiful "als eines Gegenstandes des Wohlgefallens ohne alles Interesse," the judgment of taste must be universal:

Denn das, wovon Jemand sich bewusst ist, dass das Wohlgefallen an demselben bei ihm selbst ohne alles Interesse sei, das kann derselbe nicht anders, also so beurtheilen, dass es einen Grund des Wohlge- fallens fur Jedermann enthalten musse. Denn da es sich nicht auf ir- gend eine Neigung des Subjects ... grundet, sondern da der Urthei- lende sich in Ansehung des Wohlgefallens, welches er dem Gegen- stande widmet, vollig frei fuhit; so kann er keine Privatbedingungen als Grunde des Wohlgefallens auffinden ... und muss es daher als in demjenigen begrundet ansehen, was er auch bei jeden Anderen vor- aussetzen kann; folglich muss er glauben Grund zu haben, Jedermann ein ahnliches Wohlgefallen zuzumuthen.8'

But such disinterested pleasure is inevitably formal and ascetic. It is pleasure purged of subjective sensual, physical, and affective re- flexes. The pure esthetic judgment of taste is reflective, though not logical.

This opposition between affective, sensual pleasure and ascetic, intellectual pleasure contains a social distinction. The distinction between gou't de la reflexion and gou't des sens (Bourdieu) expresses the opposition between the cultivated bourgeois, the man of Kultur, and the common man: "Der Geschmack ist jederzeit noch barbarisch wo er der Beimischung der Reize und Riihrungen zum Wohlgefallen bedarf, ja wohl diese gar zum Maasstabe seines Bei- falls macht."82 The conception of pure taste as a disinterested


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judgment is itself interested. Admitting only highly formal, subli- mated and basically empty forms of pleasure, taste negates all physical and sensual pleasure. By denying the instincts and physical, biological nature, taste endorses an image of man as an ethical being. In fact, the bourgeois as man and ethical being constitutes himself precisely by claiming this difference from nature. Bour- dieu explains this ethical asceticism as a function of the bourgeois pretension to a dominant social position.

Plaisir ascetique, plaisir vain qui enferme en lui-meme le renoncement au plaisir, plaisir epure du plaisir, le plaisir pur est predispose a devenir un symbole d'excellence morale et l'oeuvre d'art un test de superiorite 6thique, une mesure indiscutable de la capacite de sublimation qui d&- finit l'homme vraiment humain: l'enjeu du discours esthetique, et de l'im- position d'une definition du proprement humain qu'il vise a realizer, n'est autre chose en definitive que le monopole de l'humanite ... L'opposition entre les gouts de nature et les gouts de liberte introduit une relation qui est celle du corps et de l'ame, entre ceux qui ne sont que nature et ceux qui affirment dans leur capacite de dominer leur propre nature biologique leur pretention legitime a dominer la nature sociale.83

The ability to make a disinterested, esthetic judgment distinguishes the cultivated bourgeois not only from the common man, but also from the nobleman's self-indulgent life-style. Taste, Kant argues, is a function of Kultur: "Da aber der Geschmack im Grunde ein Beurteilungsvermogen der Versinnlichung sittlicher Ideen ... [ist] so leuchtet ein, das die wahre Propadeutik zur Grundung des Geschmacks die Entwickelung sittlicher Ideen und die Kultur des moralischen Gefuhls sei."84

Where ethical ideas-in Kant's terms, the sociability appropriate to humanity-and the cultivation of moral sensibility are com- bined, Kultur becomes the basis of a cultural identity. The pure esthetic judgment of taste expresses this identity, and thereby the bourgeoisie's opposition to the aristocracy. The ascetic nature of this identity is to be explained by the socio-economic situation of the German bourgeoisie as a dominated class with limited possibilities of attaining dominant social positions.

Due to the absence of a nation state, among other factors, the economic development in Germany lags behind that of France and England. Trade and industry were largely underdeveloped, which meant that the German bourgeoisie acquired little wealth. Fur- thermore, the barriers between aristocracy and bourgeoisie were


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virtually insurmountable. There was practically no chance for an upwardly mobile bourgeois to become assimilated by the aristocracy and to rise to a position of political influence.85 Given the political stability of the existing power structures, the bourgeoisie had to accept the "antinomische Scheidung von Besonderheit und Allgemeinheit, von Politisch-Offentlichem und Menschlich-Pri- vatem, von Beruf und geistig-weltanschaulicher Zugehdrigheit."86 Unable to turn its political judgments into reality, the bourgeoisie rationalizes its social ambitions by elaborating an ascetic ethics and esthetics:

Cette esthetique pure est bien la rationalisation d'un ethos; aussi Ooign6 de la concupiscence que de la conspicuous consumption, le plaisir pur, c'est-A-dire totalement epure de tout interet sensible ou sensuel en meme temps que parfaitement affranchie de tout interet social et mondain, s'oppose aussi bien a la jouissance raffinee et altruiste de l'homme de cour qu'a lajouissance brute et grossieere du peuple.87

Since it lacks the capital, both economic and social, the bourgeoisie is incapable of any form of conspicuous consumption. Virtue is its only means of distinguishing itself. It justifies its social pretensions by projecting an image of ethical superiority: a pure esthetics in the sphere of cultural production and a "protestant" work ethic in the sphere of economic production. Led by its intellectual faction, the bourgeoisie, which is excluded from the realm of social and political power, turns to culture and develops its self-consciousness and ethics in the practice of Kultur: "Die Idee der Moralitat," wrote Kant in 1784, "geh6rt noch zur Kultur."88 This idea of morality is contained and represented precisely in the pure esthetic judgment of taste.

Kant's radical formalization of the judgment of taste corre- sponds to the political and social isolation of the emerging bourgeoisie in Germany. Independent of "all such subjective, private conditions as attractiveness and emotion" and "the result of the free play of all our cognitive powers,"89 taste is a universal and, as it were, autonomous judgment. In its universality, the esthetic judgment represents the radically private self-perception of the bourgeois; it is a function of his social position and the aspirations associated with it.

This autonomization of taste, which reduces it first to a feeling for art and then formalizes it as a pure esthetic judgment, thereby


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shifting the emphasis from an enjoyment of the senses to a moral feeling, anticipates the thesis of the autonomy of art.

Schiller advances this thesis in his letter Uber die aesthetische Erzie- hung des Menschen. In his tenth letter, he points out that there is no necessary identity between esthetic and political culture.90 In order to transcend this gap, Schiller "transformed the transcendental idea of taste into a moral demand and formulated it as an impera- tive: adopt an esthetic attitude to things."9' This esthetic attitude results from cultivating a play impulse which establishes harmony between a form and matter impulse: "nur die Einheit der Realitat mit der Form, der Zufalligkeit mit der Notwendigkeit, des Leidens mit der Freiheit (vollendet) den Begriff der Menschheit."92 The goal of esthetic cultivation is thus to realize the goal of humanity. But in his sixteenth letter, Schiller argues that this harmony between reality and form remains an idea.93 In other words, a genuinely esthetic attitude constitutes itself as different from reality. The ideal of humanity is realized not in reality, but rather "in dem Reiche asthetischen Scheins, wird das Ideal der Gleichheit erftllt, ... welches der Schwarmer so gern dem Wesen nach realisiert sehen m6chte."94 As esthetic appearance, art contrasts with reality and it becomes its transfiguration. This is a new development which, as Gadamer points out, has important consequences:

For now art, as the art of beautiful appearance, was contrasted with practical reality and understood in terms of this contrast. Instead of art and nature complementing each other, as had always seemed to be the case, they were contrasted as appearance and reality. Traditionally it is the purpose of "art," which embraces all the conscious transformation of nature for use by humans, to complete its supplementing and ful- filling activity within the areas given and left free by nature. And "les beaux arts," as long as they are seen in this framework, are a perfecting of reality and not an external masking, veiling or transfiguration of it. But if the contrast between reality and appearance determines the concept of art, this breaks up the inclusive framework of nature. Art becomes a standpoint of its own and establishes its own autonomous claim to supremacy.95 (emphasis added)

This thesis of the autonomy for art also reflects an extra-esthetic, social development, and redefines the relation of the artist to society. The political and social isolation of the German bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century also isolated its intelligentsia. It was not only geographically dispersed and set apart, but the rigid



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separation between public and private spheres, aristocracy and bourgeoisie, also minimized its social function.96 Unlike its French counterpart, the German bourgeoisie was as a whole politically in- experienced and therefore not predisposed to develop a strong political consciousness. Finally, as the bourgeoisie grew economically stronger and as the eighteenth-century social model of publicity began to disintegrate, the bourgeois intelligentsia found itself in a situation of social decline. The growing book market and its division into spheres of serious literary and merely entertaining, trivial and consumer-oriented production deprived the bourgeois intelligentsia of its readership. Furthermore, it also had to com- pete with foreign intellectuals in a market which was ten times smaller than in France. Lacking an audience and declasse by university education, ill-adjusted to the manners of High Society, excluded from the more prestigious posts in the civil service, faced with severe restrictions in the only embryonally existent liberal professions, an objective shortage of jobs and a growing popula- tion, a young, upwardly mobile intellectual elite responds to this crisis with the autonomization of art.97 This esthetic response goes together with sharp criticism of the mercantile and positivist spirit of the times which indicates a class-conflict inside the bourgeoisie between its established, economically oriented fractions and a large segment of its intellectuals:

Der Nutzen ist das grosse Idol der Zeit, dem alle Krafte fronen und alle Talente huldigen sollen. Auf dieser groben Waage hat das geistige Ver- dienst der Kunst kein Gewicht, und, aller Aufmunterung beraubt, verschwindet sie von dem larmenden Markt des Jahrhunderts. Selbst der philosophische Untersuchungsgeist entreisst der Einbildungskraft eine Provinz nach der anderen, und die Grenzen der Kunst verengen sich, je mehr die Wissenschaft ihre Schranken erweitert.98

Schiller's remark is by no means original or new. Similar criticism had been voiced throughout the preceding decades. Rous- seau in Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750), Adam Ferguson in Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), Adam Smith in his The Wealth of Nations (1776), and notably Wordsworth in the preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1798) tend to find thoroughgoing fault with the contemporary world, and share a vision of a simpler, quasi pre-social state of nature. The esthetic trend is toward the pure, the simple and even the journey into the remote and eventually the fantastic. This and the autonomy of art ultimately constitute the


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core of German esthetic Romanticism much more so than in France where intellectuals and artists appear less isolated; the pathological element in the writer's relation to his class and society does not fully come into view until the Empire. But romantic inte- riority is not so much the overcoming of classicism as is often said, but rather the dialectic counterpart of the sociability characteristic of enlightened culture. While the classicist and neo-classicist esthetics of most of the 18th century always has the public, the audience in mind, the new emerging esthetic doctrines are tendentially solipsistic and hermetic. Furthermore, the political events of the 1790s profoundly changed the image of the public into "the prime object of fear, the people." Indeed, romanticism can be seen as the collective effort to "reconstitute the arts without the people . . . in the post-revolutionary decade."99 The romantic emphasis on the writer, on his self-expression and particular creative imagination, is ultimately an ideological representation of this as well as of the positionally antagonistic relation to the bourgeois.

University of California, Santa Cruz

NOTES

1 Norbert Elias, Uber den Prozess der Zivilisation, Soziogenetische und Psychogene- tische Untersuchungen, vol. 1, 8th ed. (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981).

2 Pierre Bourdieu, La Distinction: Critique Social du jugement (Paris: Editions du Minuit, 1979), 190 ff.

3 On this complex adaption of nobility and bourgeoisie, see Guy Chaussinand- Nogaret, The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: From Feudalism to Enlighten- ment, trans. William Doyle (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1985), pp. 11-22.

4 Chaussinand-Nogaret, 32.

5 Cf. Henri Brunschwig, Enlightenment and Romanticism in Eighteenth-Century Prussia, trans. Frank Jellinek (London, Chicago: Chicago UP, 1974), chs. 7-10.

6 Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Der junge Goethe, vol. 4, Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gesprdche, ed. Ernst Beutler (Zurich: Artemis, 1953), 328.

7 Bourdieu, La Distinction, 58. 8 Jurgen Habermas, Strukturwandel der 6ffentlichkeit, Untersuchungen einer Kate-

gorie der burgerlichen Gesellschaft, 12th ed. (Darmstadt/Neuwied: Luchter- hand, 1981).

9 Habermas, 45-46. 10 In Germany, this contract is much more restricted than in France if it existed at

all. As Habermas points out, the early institutions of publicity often had the character of secret associations. The members of the public remained among themselves. Lessing refers to this situation when saying in "Ernst und Falk" that bourgeois society originated from Free Masonry. (Habermas, 48-53, n. 18).


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11 Karl Mannheim, Essays on the Sociology of Culture, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge and Kegan, 1962), p. 137.

12 Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge: Har- vard UP, 1982), p. 22.

13 Brunschwig, 38-40, 262-265. 14 Habermas, 44. 15 Jochen Schulte-Sasse, "Das Konzept burgerlich literarischer Offentlichkeit und

die historischen Grunde seines Zerfalls," in Aufkldrung und literarische Offentlich- keit, ed. Christa Burger, Peter Burger, and Jochen Schulte-Sasse (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1980), p. 95 and passim.

16 Johann Georg Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der sch6nen Kiunste (Leipzig: n.p., 1792-1794), 2:54.

17 Jochen Schulte-Sasse, "Einleitung: Kritische-rationale und literarische Offent- lichkeit," in Aufkldrung und literarische Offentlichkeit, p. 20.

18 Habermas, 60-66. 19 Habermas, 64. 20 Habermas, 74. 21 Bourdieu, La Distinction, 58. 22 Habermas, 69. 23 Peter Burger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, trans. Michael Shaw, vol. 4 of Theory and

History of Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 47-49 24 Anne Ubersfeld, "Le Jeu des Classiques," in Les Voies de la creation the'trale

(Paris: CNRS, 1978), 6:179-192. 25 Goethe, Derjunge Goethe, 277. 26 Werther's letter of March 15, 1772, illustrates these social relations. However,

Werther is clearly not in favor of abolishing all social barriers between the estates: "Was mich am meisten neckt, sind die fatalen burgerlichen Verhaltnisse. Zwar weiss ich so gut als einer, wie nothig der Unterschied zwieschen dan Standen ist, wie viel Vortheile er mir selbst verschafft, nur soll er mir nicht eben grad im Wege stehen." (Goethe, Derjunge Goethe, 327).

27 Goethe, Derjunge Goethe, 333. 28 Goethe, Derjunge Goethe, 284. 29 Habermas, 68. 30 Schulte-Sasse, "Das Konzept," 99. Schulte-Sasse argues:

Die literarisch-volkspadagogischen Bemuhungen der Aufklarung sind zu einem kaum uberschatzenden Teil Voraussetzung der raschen Kapitali- sierung des Buchmarktes, so dass die Bewegung letztlich ihren eigenen Zer- fall herbeigefuhrt hat. Denn die Aufklarung hat den latenten Widerspruch zwischen ihren idealistisch-padagogischen und ihren wirtschaftlichen Inter- essen nicht wahrgenommen; sie hat in der Doppelexistenz des Buches als Ware und als Geist kein Problem gesehen. In dem Masse, in dem der Markt diesen Widerspruch verscharfte, mussten burgerliche Interessen als unter- schiedlich und konfliktauslosend erfahren werden. Dies aber bedeutete a) den Zerfall ... der homogenen burgerlichen Offentlichkeit sowie, b) den nunmehr naheliegenden Missbrauch der neuen literarischen Wirkungs- mittel ... im Sinne kommerzieller Interessen und damit ein Ende der Kop- pelung unbewusster Beeinflussung offentlicher Verhaltensweisen durch Li- teratur an eine diesen Vorgang uberwachende kritisch-rationale Offentlich- keit und an eine Lektureweise, in die das Gesprach uber Literatureerlebnisse integriert war.



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31 Jean Paul, Ehestand, Tod und Hochzeit des Armenadvokaten F. St. Siebenkds im Reichsmarktflecken Kuhschnappel, vol. 131.1 of Deutsch Nationalliteratur, ed. Paul Herrlich (Berlin, Stuttgart: Speeman, n.d.), p. 192.

32 Paul, 193. 33 The ideal of the family as a quasi-autonomous and intimately private sphere is a

perception imposed by habitus. Relations in the bourgeois family remain power-relations, a fact which becomes evident when economic interests collide with sentimental interests (Schiller's Kabale und Liebe represents this conflict as class conflict). In fact, marriages were largely determined by economic interests, and the woman and her children were always dependent on the earning power of the man in the family. The entire status of the family as an intimate, private sphere is a fiction. But this fiction is well-founded in the economic power of the bourgeoisie; cf. Habermas, 64-65.

34 Habermas, ch. 2, pp. 55-69. 35 Erich Auerbach, "La Cour et la Ville," in Vier Untersuchunger zur Geschichte der

franzbsischen Bildung (Bern: Franke, 1951), pp. 12-48. 36 Burger, 48. 37 Ernst H. Gombrich, Meditations on a Hobby-Horse (New York: Phaidon Pub-

lishers, 1963), p. 18. 38 Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans, and ed. Garrett Barden and

John Cummings (New York: Crossroad, 1982), p. 34. 39 Auerbach, "La Cour et la Ville," 44. 40 Auerbach, 44. 41 Bourdieu, La Distinction, 73. 42 Habermas, 46. 43 Bohours' definition of taste explicates these aspects:

Le gofit est un sentiment naturel qui tient a lame, et qui est independant de toutes les sciences qu'on peut acquerir; le gofit n'est autre chose qu'un certain rapport qui se trouve entre l'esprit et les objets qu'on lui presente; enfin, le bon gouit est le premier mouvement, ou pour ainsi dire, une espee distinct de la droite raison qui l'entraine avec rapidite et qui la conduit plus sfirement que tous les raisonnements qu'on pourrait faire.

Cominique Bohours, La Maniere de bien penser dans le ouvrages d'esprit (Paris: n.p., 1687), pp. 446-467.

44 Gadamer, 34. That the judgment, of taste is indeed based upon rather strict social conventions demonstrates Laurent Bordelon's explanation of the founda- tion of taste:

La coutfime fait les bienseances et les bienseances font ce qui plait; et ainsi notre gofit qui trouve bon ce qui est, selon la bienseance, et qui trouve mauvais ce qui est contre, se regle donc par la coutume.

Laurent Bordelon, Remarques ou reflexions critiques, morales et historiques (Paris: n.p., 1690), p. 60.

45 Elias, 43-44. 46 Elias, 60f. 47 J. P. Crousaz, Traite du Beau (Amsterdam: n.p., 1724), p. 170. 48 Since sentiment is for Dubos the sense which is touched by the work of art, it is

the sense which can judge the work of art; reason "dois se soumettre au jugement que le sentiment prononce." Sentiment is a sixth sense which is innate:


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C'est ce sixieme sens qui est en nous, sans que nous voyons ses organes. C'est la portion de nous memes quijuge sur l'impression qu'elle ressent, et qui ... prononce, sans consulter la regle et le compas. C'est enfin ce qu'on appelle le sentiment. Le coeur s'agite de lui meme et par un mouvement qui precede toute deliberation ... Le coeur est fait, il est organise pour cela. Son opera- tion previent donc tous les raisonnements.

Jean Baptiste, Rfflexions Critiques sur la poesie et la peinture, vol. II (Utrecht: n.p., 1932), pp 178-179.

49 "Memoires secrets de la Republique des lettres MDCCXLVIV", vol. VII, p. 156, in Herbert Dieckmann, Studien zur Europaischen Aufklarung (Munchen: Fink, 1974), p. 301.

50 Jean Pierre Dens characterizes classical taste in the following way: "pour les classiques le gouit ne peut d'aucune maniere se reduire a la sensation qui l'a provoquee ni etre concu comme un simple instinct; il exige en plus une faculte capable de le diriger en lui imposant un ordre de valeurs. Le gofit consiste en un sentiment eduquq par la raison." Jean Pierre Dens, L'Honnete Homme et la critique du gouit: Esthetique et societe au XVIIe siecle (Lexington, KY: French Forum, 1981), p. 98.

51 Dens, 99. 52 Dens, 100. 53 Denis Diderot, "Beau," in Encyclope'die II of Oeuvres Completes, ed. J. Lought and

J. Proust (Paris: Hermann, 1976), pp. 135-17 1. 54 Diderot, 156. 55 On Diderot's notion of "rapports," see Jacques Chouillet, La Formation des ide'es

esthetiques de Diderot 1 745-63 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1973), ch. V:2, pp. 289-323. 56 Diderot, 162. 57 Diderot, 165. 58 Diderot. 59 Diderot, 170. 60 Voltaire writes in his article on taste in the Encyclopedie that bad taste in the arts

is "to be insensitive to la belle nature," and claims that "Man molds and educates his taste in art much more than his sensual taste." Sensual taste is considered lesser because it cannot be improved. Good taste in the arts, however, is a matter of "practice and reflection," and bad taste can be corrected because it is often due to a "flaw of the mind." And "Good taste develops gradually in a nation that has hitherto lacked it because, little by little, men come under the influence of good artists." (Diderot, d'Alembert, Encyclope'ia-Selections, trans. Nelly S. Hoyt and Thomas Cassirer (New York: Bob Merrill, 1965), pp. 337-39.

61 Bourdieu, La Distinction, 59. 62 Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklarung, in Adorno:

Gesammelte Schriften III, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1981) 102.

63 Johann Ulrich Konig, "Untersuchungen von dem guten Geschmack in der Dicht- und Redekunst," in Vom Laienurteil zum Kunstgefihl, ed. Alexander von Bormann (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1974), p. 21.

64 Johann Christoph Gottsched, "Vom guten Geschmack eines Poeten," in Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst, 4th ed. (1751; rpt., Darmstadt: Wissenschafliche Buchgemeinschaft, 1962), ?13.

65 Gottsched, ?15. 66 Gottsched, ?9.



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67 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, "Principes de la Nature et de la Grace Fondes en Raison: Essais de Theodicee," in Die philosophischen Schriften, vol. 6, ed. C. J. Gerhardt (1885; rpt. Hildesheim: Olms, 1978).

68 Gottsched, ?20. 69 Bernard Willms, Revolution und Protest oder Glanz und Elend des biurgerlichen Sub-

jekts (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1979), p. 9 f. 70 George Friedrich Meier, "Von einigen Ursachen des verdorbenen Geschmacks

bei den Deutschen," in Vom Laienurteil zum Kunstgefihl, ed. Alexander von Bor- mann (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1974), p. 97.

71 Meier, 98. 72 Meier, 98. 73 Bourdieu, La Distinction, 569. 74 Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, "Der Rezensent braucht nicht besser machen zu

konnen, was er tadelt," in Vom Laienurteil, p. 137. 75 Moses Mendelssohn, "Betrachtungen uber die Quellen und die Verbindungen

der schonen Kunste und Wissenschaften," in Vom Laienurteil, pp. 140-142. 76 Mendelssohn, 142. 77 On Mendelssohn's "Affektenlehre" and the theory of drama, see Jochen

Schulte-Sasse, Kommentare und Analysen zum "Briefwechsel uiber das Trauerspiel" (Lessing, Mendelssohn, Nicolai) Munich: Winkler, 1972).

78 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, vol. 7 of Samtliche Werke, ed. G. Harten- stein (Leipzig: Voss, 1867), ?1.

79 Kant, ?14. 80 Gadamer, 40. 81 Kant, Kritik der Urteilkraft, ?6. 82 Kant, ?13. 83 Bourdieu, La Distinction, 573. 84 Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, ?60. Kant expresses the same idea in the preceding

passage where he says, Die Propadeutik zu aller schonen Kunst, sofern es auf den hochsten Grad ihrer Vollkommenheit angelegt ist, scheint nicht in Vorschriften, sondern in der Cultur der Gemuthskrafte durch diejenigen Vorkenntnisse zu liegen, welche man humaniora nennt; vermuthlich weil Humanitat einerseits das allgemeine Theilnehmungsgefthl, andereseits das Vermogen, sich innigst und allgemein mittheilen zu konnen bedeutet.

85 On the situation of the German bourgeoisie in the eighteenth century, cf. Elias, 24, 31-35; or, for a different emphasis, cf. Hans J. Haferkorn, "Zur Entstehung der burgerlich-literarischen Intelligenz," in Deutsches Biirgertum und literarische Intelligenz 1750-1800, Literaturwissenschaft und Sozialwissenschaft 3, ed. Bernd Lutz (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1974), pp. 176-190.

86 Haferkorn, 182. 87 Bourdieu, La Distinction, 576. 88 Immanuel Kant, "Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltburgerlicher Ab-

sicht," in Vermischte Schriften (pp. 222-240), vol. 1 of Gesammelte Werke (Leipzig: Insel, 1921), p. 234.

89 See Gadamer, 41. 90 Friedrich Schiller, Uber die dsthetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von

Briefen, in Text, Materialien, Kommentar, ed. Wolfgang Dusing (Munchen: Hanser, 1981), pp. 38-39.



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91 Gadamer, 73. 92 Schiller, 55. 93 Schiller, 59. 94 Schiller, 109. 95 Gadamer, 74. 96 On the effect of the geographical isolation of the German bourgeois intelli-

gentsia, cf. Goethe's letter to Eckermann of 5 May 1827, in Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Goethes Gesprache mit Eckermann, in vol. 14 of Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gesprache, ed. Ernst Beutler (Zurich: Artemis, 1953), 14:12.

97 Brunschwig extensively documents the social crisis of the Prussian bourgeoisie and especially of its intellectual avantgarde, and argues that Romanticism has its sociological origins in this crisis.

98 Schiller, 12. 99 Marilyn Butler, Romantics, Rebels & Reactionaries: English Literature and its Back-

ground 1760-1830 (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1981), p. 38.



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