Such of his linguistic peers as happen to be present nod approvingly

This is a rather annoying article, and the treatment of Montaigne about a quarter of the way through is either uncharitable or outright dishonest, but it's this bit that finally moves me to post about it:

Die moderne Gesellschaft ist etwas für Erwachsene, die ihr Leben in die eigenen Hände genommen haben und auf eigenen Füßen stehen können, die selber bestimmen, was und wohin sie wollen, ohne daß irgendeine Instanz ihnen »den Weg bezeichnen« oder sie »vor Irrwegen warnen« muß. Der Verlust eines gesellschaftlich übergreifenden und verpflichtenden Sinns ist ein Gewinn an individueller Freiheit, wie es auch der Verlust der Gemeinschaft ist. Alle Versuche, Sinn und Gemeinschaft wieder herzustellen, unter welchem Namen auch immer, führen notwendig zur Unfreiheit.

(roughly: "modern society is something for adults who have taken their lives into their own hands and can stand on their own feet, who determine for themselves what they want without any authority having to "show them the way" or "warn them from the wrong way". The loss of a general and binding meaning is a gain in individual freedom, as is the loss of the  community.  All attempts to produce meaning and community again, under what name soever, necessarily lead to lack of freedom."  Rendering "Sinn" as "meaning" is probably not very clear; basically he's talking about disreënchantment.)

I believe that the author is writing in his own voice here, though it's not extremely clear that he is, since it follows hard on a few sentences in which he is clearly not writing in propria persona.  But what he's saying here does fit with what seem to be his other views, so.  It's just striking to see so frank an expression of such extreme and extremely implausible atomism.  (It also seems reminiscent of Sartre, a comparison which Kohlhammer would probably not welcome.)

What would it even be to determine completely by oneself what one wants, without anything providing the slightest guidance?  I suppose that he's not saying something quite as extreme as that, as chance whims with which one finds oneself could provide some structure.  Though how would you even know what to make of them? And, of course, what he's describing is a sort of general meaning-giving framework, in terms of which he judges others for, for instance, wanting to amend it (not free enough!).  (Taylor talks about this sort of phenomenon—a framework's denial of its own frameworkhood—a bit in, yes, Sources of the Self.)

The final claim about being unfree is just endlessly confused and symptomatic of Kohlhammer's tendency to smear important distinctions together whenever it suits him.  There's the unfreedom of oppressive laws, and the unfreedom of a rhyme scheme (you just can't do whatever you please, if you're writing a Petrarchan sonnet).  He obviously means political unfreedom, but he doesn't really have an argument to that effect.  It is of course true that such frameworks foreclose on certain possibilities.  But insofar as the argument is that that's bad because it reduces freedom, and as it's not clear to me that absolute untrammeled freedom even makes sense (some possibilities have to be foreclosed on in advance or you couldn't find your way at all), he ought to do some work to establish that possibilities will necessarily be foreclosed on in a pernicious way—which he doesn't do.  But actually any detailed argument about his own position isn't really possible, since the article is mainly on the attack, and somewhat all over the place (modern intellectuals pine for the days when life meant something, and that's why they hate whaling).

Comments

[germanidealist]

Nice translation!