The Idealist Embarrassment: Observations on Marxist Aesthetics

Author(s): Hans Robert Jauss and Peter Heath

Source: New Literary History , Autumn, 1975, Vol. 7, No. 1, Critical Challenges: The
Bellagio Symposium (Autumn, 1975), pp. 191-208
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/468285

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 The Idealist Embarrassment: Observations
on Marxist Aesthetics*

Hans Robert Jauss

I. The Ideality of Greek Art

But the difficulty is not in grasping the idea that

Greek art and epos are bound up with certain forms
of social development. It lies rather in understand-
ing why they still constitute for us a source of
aesthetic enjoyment and in certain respects prevail
as the standard and model beyond attainment.
(Marx's Grundrisse, tr. D. McLellan [London,
1971], P. 45)
T IS surely no mere accident that this question concludes the draft
of the "Einleitung zur Kritik der politischen Okonomie" of 1857,
which was published not by Marx himself, but only posthumously in
1903 from his manuscript remains. This late publication is responsible
for the fact that Marxist aesthetics received its first orientation not from a
new understanding of antiquity or a coming to terms with the "classical
heritage," but from the Sickingen Debates, an exchange of letters about
the tragedy of the contradiction between the revolutionary Idea and class
consciousness. The narrowing of the aesthetic issue to a particular prob-
lem of postclassical tragedy becomes only too obvious if we recall that
the Okonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte of I844 first saw the light
of day after an even longer time lag, in 1932. The categories there de-
veloped-the appropriation of Nature, the formation of the senses,
history as labor or "the emergence of Nature for man," alienation brought
about by the category of having, society as the true "resurrection of
nature"-could have given to Marxist aesthetics, which for decades had
engaged in scholastic exegeses of the reflection dogma, a new level of dis-
cussion which would doubtless have saved it also from its notorious
incomprehension of modern art.
The belated reception of the aesthetic approaches of the young Marx
significantly enlivened aesthetic discussion in the Marxist camp. And
here it is precisely the relics of idealism in the materialist aesthetics which
are glossed over as an embarrassment, but also employed to render
opinions legitimate. To reduce matters to a provocative formula, the
state of this discussion might be epitomized by the question whether a

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 192 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

materialist aesthetic must

a central core of idealism.
Marx's high esteem for Greek art, which allows him, half a century
after the "Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes" had ended in his-
toricism, to be enrolled among the admirers of the Greek ideal, be-
queaths a number of difficulties to a materialist aesthetic. It breaches
the principle of the prior economic determination of all artistic produc-
tion and confers on the relation of substructure and superstructure a
nonsimultaneity of the necessarily simultaneous, which already fore-
shadows the later metaphorical monstrosities of an "activity of the super-
structure." It compels the recognition that the art of a distant past
can provide enjoyment independently of the material conditions of
its origin as well as of the material needs of its later readers and
spectators. And it makes it impossible to overlook the embarrassment
that in sum the art of a slave-owning society should also still rank
as a "standard and model beyond attainment" for an emancipated man-
kind. Marx's own answer by no means gets rid of these difficulties. That
an "eternal charm" should be exerted by the "childhood of human
society, where it obtained its most beautiful development," could
scarcely have been formulated otherwise by Schiller. It is in line with
Freud's theory of the recognition of a Golden Age imprinted beforehand
in childhood, and finds a noteworthy echo in Proust's saying: "Les vrais
paradis sont les paradis qu'on a perdu" (Marx: "an age that will never
return").
After many orthodox attempts to dissolve this idealist embarrassment
convincingly into a materialist dialectic, which, as R. Bubner has shown
recently, have not been successful, an interesting attempt has now at
length been made from the neo-Marxist angle to concede an idealistic
and utopian concept of art to Marx.1 However, a surprising conclusion
is drawn. 0. K. Werckmeister seeks to derive the essential difference
between the art of the Greeks and all later artistic productioni from
Marx's insight that the former could be perfect precisely because it was
not determined by an unfree order of society: "thus it provides a sort
of Archimedean point, from which later ideological art production must
be condemned as alienated from its nature. In an extreme judgment of
this sort, Marx has described capitalist production in toto as hostile to
art. When he pronounces the reason for this to be man's alienation
from Nature in capitalism, he presupposes the idealist conception of
an art which apprehends the essence of Nature."2 For the utopian
future as well as the classical past, Werckmeister has discovered the
Archimedean point in a Marxian passage about Raphael from the
Deutsche Ideologie (1846), which describes art in a Communist society
as a free activity set loose from all dependence on the division of labor.3
Werckmeister not only thinks that he has thus secured a framework for
materialist aesthetic within the philosophy of history, in which "all the

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THE IDEALIST EMBARRASSMENT 193

European art of past history appear

He likewise considers the contradiction in Marx between the idealist
utopian and the historically determinist conceptions of art to be thereby
purified: apart from its idealist beginning and utopian end, art is no
more than one form of ideology among others. As such it is reduced
to the object of historico-empirical inquiry, which for Werckmeiste
means a critique of ideology: "So far as art is concerned, there ca
be no aesthetics. It would fall under Marx and Engels' negative counter-
concept to empirical historical experience, the concept of abstraction"
(P-. 7)-
If we follow this interpretation, Marx becomes the executor of the
Hegelian thesis of the end of art, and Werckmeister the executor of the
end of aesthetics. But finally a materialist philosophy of art, thus carried
to its most extreme consequences, unwittingly saws off the branch on
which it thought it was still sitting. For Werckmeister fails to see that
a materialist history of art which reduces the whole range of aesthetic
problems to a mere critique of ideology can itself no longer give any
specific reason for its interest in art of the past, and therefore falls
back-by no accident-into an empirical historicism,4 or more precisely
into antiquarianism under materialist auspices. To the extent that the
Werckmeister brand of experiential science which he refines into critique
of ideology is successful in unmasking the "appearance of its indepen-
dence" in all artistic production as a pure ideological delusion, artistic
works, precisely in their "specific effects,"5 that is (as K. Kosik formu-
lates it), in their dialectic of genesis and validity, or more accurately
in their peculiar capacity to assume concrete form as the witness of an
age and to survive that age,6 must become for this science an enigmatic
abstraction. The enjoyment one may derive from using an ideological
critique for unmasking is surely an answer only for the select few to
Marx's question, namely, why the art of the past-and certainly not
Greek art alone, as Marx the admirer of Balzac again testifies-can still
afford us enjoyment. Why, after all, should the current ruling class enlist
the arts in the service of its interests, if the work of art possesses only the
obscuring function of a beautiful illusion, and not also the power of
shaping history and achieving a social effect as well, which a total
suspicion of ideology may certainly disavow, but cannot banish from the
world?

O. K. Werckmeister's excessively ingenious exegesis of Marx stands at

that extreme pole of a materialist aesthetic which can accord to art in
present-day society, as in its past, a function scarcely larger than did
Plato in his ideal state or Rousseau in his ideal democracy. From the same
texts, Herbert Marcuse, who represents the opposite pole of Marxist
aesthetics, has attributed to art the highest function in the emancipatory
and even revolutionary development of society. His answer to Marx's
question is that art of the past still provides enjoyment, because it

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194 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

transforms existing reality

liberation, and because it app
sibility through its aesthetic fo
as illusion: as an unreal world
cisely in this transfiguration
character. And transcends it,
fantasy, but toward a univer
Werckmeister was the Archime
that all artistic production sinc
ideologies, appears in Marcuse
ialism: the transcendence of
If Marcuse's aesthetic theory
definition of beauty as the s
(cf. p. IIo), it can nonetheless
as it seeks to set up the "subv
pressive forces of tradition,
71) against the blunted sens
current "counter-revolution"
are stabilized and of the pre
ing to Marcuse, by virtue of
nonviolent, nondomineering
over, or even awaken, the need
This rediscovery of the imp
terialist aesthetics out of the
from an earlier standpoint of
Charakter der Kultur" of 19
corruption in every attitude
leisure, and was ready to con
experience only in a utopian fu
The reversion to the Okonom
from which Marcuse takes th
subversive potential of sensib
frees the materialist aesthetic f
class consciousness. The Brec
flights did little more than sha
of the artistic medium, seems
comparison. Whereas the aesthe
Muka'ovsk (1936) had long ag
tion of the work as an aest
an "empty function" organizing
Lukaics debate continued for
of reflection, partisanship, can
thing "modern." It was only t
which, though by no means
created the possibility of also j

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THE IDEALIST EMBARRASSMENT 195

and transcendent artistic form, ana

guage between substructure and su
continue to wonder why it proved
aesthetics than for Karl Marx in hi
to admit that for its aesthetic, diale
say 'needs') idealism as an element o
to draw conclusions from it.8

II. The Work of Art as Possible Paradigm

of Nonalienated Labor

The practical construction of an objective world,

the manipulation of inorganic nature, is the con-
firmation of man as a conscious species-being, i.e.
a being who treats the species as his own being or
himself as a species-being. Of course, animals also
produce. They construct nests, dwellings, as in the
case of bees, beavers, ants, etc. But they only pro-
duce what is strictly necessary for themselves or
their young. They produce only in a single direc-
tion, while man produces universally. They pro-
duce only under the compulsion of direct physical
needs, while man produces when he is free from
physical need and only truly produces in freedom
from such need. Animals produce only themselves,
while man reproduces the whole of nature. The
products of animal production belong directly to
their physical bodies, while man is free in face of
his product. Animals construct only in accordance
with the standards and needs of the species to
which they belong, while man knows how to pro-
duce in accordance with the standards of every
species and knows how to apply the appropriate
standard to the object. Thus man constructs also
in accordance with the laws of beauty. (Karl
Marx, Early Writings, tr. T. B. Bottomore [New
York, 19641, pp. 127-28)

It seems to be important to start from the fact that the concept of

"beauty" in the young Marx appears in a context that is primarily of
significance for the history of the concept of "labor." In the Okonomisch-
philosophische Manuskripte of I844 the concept of "labor" notoriously
reaches the peak of its dignity: whereas in the ancient beginnings of its
history it designated the lowest level of human activity (the alienated
existence of the unfree), it now names man's highest claim to make
Nature into his own work: "The human significance of nature only exists

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196 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

for social man, because only in this case

the basis of his existence for others a
[It is then] a vital element of human real
of man" (p. 202) is, as the "veritable r
at once the password for a new unders
it with reference to Hegel's Phenomen
human history, in the act of genesis of h
of man .... History itself is a real part of
ment of nature into man" (p. i64). It m
Droysen, in his historical writings of alm
of world history as the "labor of the hum
a reversal of the Aristotelian hierarchy
the primacy of poiesis: "Labor as man'
precedence over political action and t
thus putting objective doing above co
pointed out by J. Habermas.11 Already in
Manuskripte, as a matter of fact, categor
tion occupy only a marginal position in t
propriation. They are nevertheless arti
celebrated remarks about the relation o
species-relationship man's relation to n
man" [p. I54]), but also in a discussion o
human senses: not only are need and
character" there, but the "senses and m
"become my own appropriation" (p. I6
attempts to postulate that aesthetic expe
have not, to my knowledge, been taken
explicit form).
Let us now return to the question of
the production of beauty by labor, seen
Marx proceeds here from the distincti
latter "produce only themselves, whil
nature." In contrast to all other organ
activity is labor, and thus not consciou
distinguished. If it is labor, therefore,
mediates between man and Nature, su
mediation is nevertheless viewed from th
"free from physical need." What is con
the species-being is not just a product
first and foremost the capacity to go
new and thus social needs, and to prod
human activity also differs from that of
in that man is capable of creating a
is, unlike the animal, of appropriatin
inclusive way" (p. I59) and not just on
practical creation of a world is represe

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THE IDEALIST EMBARRASSMENT 197

which disappeared from later Marxist

replaced by the concept of imitation an
appropriation of Nature. Every obj
object, whether it be mediated by the s
in the O*konomisch-philosophische M
human reality"; the process whereby
sence" is thus also an appropriation of
production "appears as his work and h
-even to the image of duplication ("fo
merely intellectually, as in consciousnes
and he sees his own reflection in a w
I28])-definitions to be found in Hegel
title "The Artwork is a Creation of H
example: "The objects of Nature ex
once for all. Man, on the contrary, as m
start with, an object of Nature as oth
and no less truly, he exists for himself;
present to his imagination and thought,
power of self-realization is he actuall
in Hegel's aesthetics, man attains thi
theoretically (Marx: "no longer . . . m
sciousness"), but also through practica
by reference to the "Universal dema
man does all this, in order that he ma
world of its stubborn alienation from himself-and in order that he
may enjoy in the configuration of objective fact an external reality simp
of himself" (p. 42).
This agreement with the idea of the universal demand from which
according to Hegel, art is brought forth, is bound altogether to beco
an idealist embarrassment for a materialist aesthetic when Marx evidentl
interprets the practical creation of an objective world according to t
paradigm of the production of works of art: "Animals construct only
accordance with the standards and needs of the species to which th
belong, while man knows how to produce in accordance with the sta
dards of every species and knows how to apply the appropriate standa
to the object. Thus man constructs also in accordance with the laws
beauty." With the concept of constructing according to laws of beaut
Marx has obviously chosen to abide by the verbal usage of the classic
theory of natural beauty. Hence this key passage is difficult for a mater
ist aesthetic to take into account. For "the appropriate standard" wh
man the producer is to apply to every object can hardly be drawn fr
his material as such (unless we wish to polish up the medieval doctri
of the inherent beauty that God has concealed in all created things, a
which the artist has only to elicit). But how is the "appropriate standard"
of every object related to the "laws of beauty"? Such "laws of beauty
can hardly be prescribed here by Nature, let alone reside in the material,

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198 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

unless Marx can be found to have

gether naive Platonism.
These difficulties have not, how
theory of the German Democrat
use of the materialistically dubiou
Philosophisches Warterbuch of G
only serves to set up aesthetics as t
man," but to establish further that
tion not only to his own creation
relation is also said to include the f
are inherent to labor," as is show
beginnings of human culture. Th
thetics," had no cause to fear that h
of the young Marx would be held
principle that man creates accor
dorsed as orthodox at the highest
also includes the deliberate shapi
'the laws of beauty' (Decree of th
Republic of 30 November 1967)"
gratulate both the Philosophisch
of the German Democratic Repu
glad to know how it is to be recon
and historical materialism that m
of labor, should be able to constr
The young Marx himself did not
glance at his sketch of history in
skripte of 1844-
Here we find unfolded an implic
forth in the context of a polemic a
cisely, against reducing man und
The sense of possession is here sa
the other physical and mental se
an all-inclusive appropriation of
man's complete self-enjoyment (w
ing itself, humanly considered, i
[p. 159]). It remains obscure here w
into-use of things, should not als
priation. Since Marx connects the
category of having, the question ar
of history, this alienation is supp
ceded by a primitive stage at whic
use of things, could still be a po
According to the text of The Ger
tion came with the form of the
and intellectual labor and thus p
ment ("that .. . enjoyment and la

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THE IDEALIST EMBARRASSMENT 199

devolve on different individuals")

theory and practice, and also brou
-already in the shape here of the
power of others." According to the t
Manuskripte, the threshold is so p
poverty of all things must have been
if we adhere to the statement: "Th
this absolute poverty in order to
wealth" (p. 16o). Does this dialectic
Marx hesitated to proclaim aliena
or fall from grace in history as the m
In this text, the end of alienation
ginning: "The supersession of private
emancipation of all the human qua
pation because these qualities and s
subjective as well as the objective
that Marcuse based his interpretat
that a new dimension of history
formal abolition of private property
alienation of the senses, that is, by a
86f.). The only thing I fail to und
of human senses and human quali
throughout the long history of ali
time to come, will be set in motio
the abolition of private property.
sequent observation that "The cult
of all previous history" (p. 161). Th
emancipatory process of human hi
to go on, despite alienation through
The aporia between the category
progressive appropriation of Natu
Marx's 1844 views and attributing to
a "having" which does not lapse in
not man's relation to art, indeed, per
(if we may be allowed to interpret t
Marx with the aid of Pauline theo
said that in the case of the work of
(cf. introductory quotation). This i
work is to be regarded as "man's
an alien power opposed to him" (G
true of the recipients, inasmuch as n
character" most manifestly (Early
experience. Thus the work of art
alienated labor which could uphol
sense-changing receptivity in per
would explain the unsupported st

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 200 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

the Philosophisches
that "aesthetic princ
ever, my thesis of t
does not remove the i
structing according
dispensable compone
deprive art of the hi
young Marx.

III. The Dialectic of Production and Consumption,

"Art Object" and a "Public Appreciative of Beauty"

Production not only supplies the want with ma-

terial, but supplies the material with a want. When
consumption emerges from its first stage of natural
crudeness and directness-and its continuation in
that state would in itself be the result of a produc-
tion still remaining in a state of natural crudeness-
it is itself, as a desire, mediated by its object. The
want for it which consumption experiences is
created by its perception of the product. The object
of art, as well as any other product, creates an
artistic public, appreciative of beauty. Production
thus produces not only an object for the subject,
but also a subject for the object.
Production thus produces consumption: first, by
furnishing the latter with material; second, by
determining the manner of consumption; third, by
creating in consumers a want for its products as
objects of consumption. It thus produces the object,
the manner and the desire for consumption. In the
same manner, consumption creates the disposition
of the producer by setting him up as an aim and
by stimulating wants. (Marx's Grundrisse, pp. 25-
26)
Not by accident is a theory of literary reception one of the most recent
achievements of Marxist aesthetics. Karl R. Mandelkow recently
examined the history of the theory of literary reception in the German
Democratic Republic, which until the present has largely been the
history of the obstacles placed in its way.14 According to Mandelkow it
was a writer, Christa Wolf, who in 1956 first expressed the hope "that
the effect of the work of art will be one of the criteria of a Marxist
aesthetic yet to be created." This hope apparently was not realized by
1968, as another writer, Giinter de Beuyn, attests in his novel Buridans
Esel through the voice of a pert librarian. In the meantime, however, in

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THE IDEALIST EMBARRASSMENT 201

1965, Georg Lukaics spo

receptive experience, a
periodical Der Bibliothek
table deficiency in Marx
the problem of literary ef
perceiving subject to the
the tradition of classical
even more orthodox than
ments-to preserve the aut
part of emancipated rec
forward did not simply
for the cultural politics
flow: "Research on effect
ture based on the primac
vestigating the mechanism
identification, the better
basis of this knowledge."
practice of authoritarian
search on literary effect
necessarily felt particular
ship when the latter beg
accords to the reader an ac
ing (Sinn) of the works a
function of literature. I
of the text to the possib
the condition, on the sid
effect. However, this sor
effect brings with it the danger of-to use Benjamin's expression-
'making the public into a party.' But this and nothing else is the actual
challenge which the aesthetics of reception offers Marxist literary
theory." 16 Since 1970, a group of scholars centered around Robert
Weimann, Manfred Naumann, and Claus Triiger has answered this
challenge from a higher level of argumentation. The dialogue which
has been carried on since then has focused on clarifying the issues of
production and consumption, effect and reception, tradition and selection.
In spite of all differences, a common interest exists in research into the
question of how literature can again be understood in its communicative
function and thus as a force which shapes history. My last contribution
to this debate17 was followed by M. Naumann's Gesellschaft-Literatur-
Lesen: Literaturrezeption in theoretischer Sicht (Berlin and Weimar,
1973). This is the first German attempt at a materialist theory of literary
reception worth mentioning, even if it ignores-to its own detriment--
nearly everything (or has to ignore nearly everything?) which the
Prague School achieved likewise along materialist lines. A famous passage
from Marx from the Einleitung zur Kritik der politischen Okonomie
(1857), interpreted here afresh, serves to legitimize the new theory. The

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 202 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

authors draw from M

art object and public
receptive predetermi
to have overcome th
bourgeois aesthetic of
"structure of reader
"horizon of expectat
dialectic of productio
How will it cope with
in this context in reg
of art?

Manfred Naumann, the author of the introductory article which

lays the foundation for further discussion is able to appeal to the above-
cited observations of Marx for the "discovery" that production and recep-
tion of literature are but two sides of a dialectical process that is nothing
more than "a special case of the general dialectic of appropriation"
(pp. 86f.). In fact it seems only logical to apply the postulated categories
of production and consumption to mental activities as well, which in
Marx fall under the concept of labor as appropriation of Nature anyway.
Naumann very aptly reproduces Marx's position of 1857, insomuch as
he expounds his (and my) thesis that the work of art needs a reader
in order to become a real work in the following terms: "For since
production is directed towards appropriating not just merely 'natural
matters', but natural matter in a form that men can use, the product
proves good and is a 'real' product 'not as objectified activity, but only
as an object for the active subject.' As 'objectified activity' the product
is a product 'in possibility' only. It becomes one 'in actuality' only as an
object 'for the active subject', i.e., in consumption. It is here that it
first receives the 'finishing touch' and is completed" (p. 84). So far, so
good. But the hidden seeds of future trouble are overlooked. The trouble
is that the art object could hardly elicit a need that was initially quite
absent in a public which the art object first has to create if beauty is to
be given only the function of copying in a materialistic way. The aesthetic
paradigm in Marx's dialectic of production and consumption implies
that the beautiful has a transcendent ("idealist") function. But that is not
all: Marx elevates the public, which as "active subject" of consumption
"creates the want as the inward object, the purpose of production"
(Marx's Grundrisse, p. 26), into a factor which is once again active in a
comprehensive process which goes beyond the limits of the static imagery
of substructure and superstructure. Regardless of how one interprets the
passage of 1857 that is used to justify the new materialist theory of
literary reception, it is manifestly at odds with all theories of reflection
and more particularly with the principle which Naumann apostrophizes in
a later passage: "the principle, basic to any materialist theory of art, that
even the ideal which appears in art is 'nothing else but the material, trans-
formed and translated in the human head', that even those 'concepts in

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THE IDEALIST EMBARRASSMENT 203

our heads' that have a function in the construction of works of art are
'copies of real things' " (p. 39). For if the beautiful art object elicits
a new and not yet existing need, it can hardly be a copy of things which
are already materially present at the same time, any more than the "laws
of beauty" can be drawn from that which is already materially presen
For the Marx of I844, these are the laws according to which man, unlik
the merely self-producing animal, creates ("reproduces the whole of
nature"), inasmuch as he "knows how to apply the appropriate standar
to the object in every case"; and they can scarcely be derived from already
present material to which, though we scarcely know how, a standard must
first be applied, so that "nature appears as his work and his reality" t
man through his aesthetic activity.
It may be mentioned in passing that on pages 24ff., Naumann entirel
fails to notice the contradiction between the young Marx's position,
which conceives of art as an appropriation of Nature and as a mediu
for educating the senses, and the Leninist theory of reflection. The id
of art as a paradigm for labor (plus the possibility which Marx did no
exploit of being a paradigm for nonalienated labor), as an equally
original mode of appropriation or reproduction of Nature, bestows on
the product of artistic labor no less than of material labor a rank that
is no longer metaphysically subordinate to a higher, intellectual form
of being. The later Marxist-Leninist epistemology, on the other hand,
which views the artistic product as a copy of real things or a transla-
tion of the material into the ideal (p. 26), falls back involuntarily, in its
view of art, into a materialistic Platonism, insofar as it subordinates the
art product, qua copy, to the product of material labor, and thus accords
it merely a third place behind economic truth. Naumann nowhere ven-
tures to tell us what is relative about the "relative autonomy of art" (p.
30) and whether this relative autonomy removes art from the suspicion
of ideology (on p. 31 he is even so kind as to grant the propertied classes
struggling for dominance "a maximum of relative truth concerning social
existence") .
It is comforting to learn that in the developed socialist society of the
German Democratic Republic "reading is gradually becoming a 'habit
of life' for the majority of people" (p. 13). A certain mistrust as to
whether the socialist reader is in fact mature enough seems to be deeply
rooted in Naumann's mind, however. This becomes apparent when,
polemicizing against Roland Barthes and myself, he goes so far as to
make the following assertion: the revolutionary author who writes realis-
tically "not only wishes the reading of his work to liberate the reader
'from adaptations, prejudices and constraints, by compelling him to a new
perception of things'; he wishes it to compel him to perceive things cor-
rectly" (p. 74). D. Schlennstedt's attack on the theory of Wolfgang
Iser is along the same lines: "By opening a search for meaning Iser's
theory sees the reader's freedom as guaranteed, in wavering indeterminacy
it sees a poetic goal. We wish to maintain, on the contrary, that the plu-

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204 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

ralistic defense against manip

verse side of this manipulation
in abolishing the circumstanc
an expression of them, a suppo
tingency. An aesthetic linked
determinacy" (p. 373). The
(Rezeptionsvorgabe) at presen
cases we are not dealing with
tion to the party line).
Manfred Naumann's theoreti
as clearly as could be wished
unmistakably proclaims: tha
reception is primarily intere
of receptive activity." There
terminateness of the receivin
subject" of the receiving acti
"implied reader" and the "pu
this aspect is construed as an
354: "If we try to convert th
model of reception, we have t
sciousness"). Naumann likewise
call the work's property of guid
(Rezeptionsvorgabe). We use t
given work predetermines its r
which expresses the functions
its nature" (p. 35).
In Naumann's theoretical exp
which describe the process o
(receptive predetermination)
of reception, p. 91), and which
considering that my book a
would definitely be possible t
is repeatedly evident here th
of an interaction of the two sy
or horizon of literary expect
gabe), and the system of inte
life-world on the other hand. H
no special, socially conditione
code of interpretation. When
"that a work's receptive pred
realized in quite different w
these "quite different ways" in
he lacks Vodicka's concept of
parent where he speaks of socia
and evaluate literary works bef
(p. 90). When Naumann obser

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THE IDEALIST EMBARRASSMENT 205

resents not only an end-point, but a

production" (p. 37), all he can find to
tion obviously remains the predomi
get along without the "concept of a
stands out as a notably Platonic eleme
he frames the distinction,18 that the
the reader's angle, whereas the concep
work (p. 87), the mediation betwee
"by the evaluating relationship wh
toward the work when he receives
ceive "dialectically" that this "necessit
work, but may be equally determin
influences reception, as is also app
"Some works, by virtue of their ob
to come to terms with them repeat
majority, for the same reasons cau
of reception after a certain time"
theory lacks the concept of concre
pattern of reception endorsed by a lit
convergence of the two horizons-the
and the "horizon of expectation" of
speaks of "social modes of reception
functions" or "concrete embodime
connected with the literary process of
are entirely lacking on the side of
as though receptive predetermin
conditioned by language or genre [p
tion of the work by a universal rea
expect codes of understanding specific
The example of a receptive predete
stedt, Brecht's poem "Der Rauch," con
Marxist reception theory. The success
way differs from an analysis of ap
would have to be performed on the
interpretation would be even more su
pectation of the species "lyrical poem,
lyrical laconicism were taken into ac
side always remains an idealized im
and the latter-in marked contrast t
different modes of interpretatio
granted, indeed, that the labor of in
can lead to "quite special results in
shapes" (p. 369). But at no point
results; instead, it reconstructs an obs
with whom, Brecht implies, the reade
At the end, indeed, the question i

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206 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

the lyrical subject objectively

him depends on the nearness or
is evoked and also on specifi
nearness or remoteness to "h
intersubjective category of th
standing) is not reflected on
titude" of a socialist reader is p
approach to Nature. This wo
tioned horizon of reception "
(p. 375), would have had to b
a contrast to the concept of re
a Marxist theory of reception w
"is related to the changing c
vidual situation of the reader"
In the end, therefore, the elev
in the process of literary prod
proclaimed, remains within lim
phorical. An exhaustive pursuit
ian dialectic of production an
sequence that even a material
formative functions of art ("Pr
for the subject, but a subject
"production forms the actual
dominating factor" (Marx's G
rather implies for him that
active subject, that is, a "fac
reversal might well be better e
duction. For Marx says of th
of the producer to his produc
one, and the return of the p
relations to other individual
of it" (ibid.). If there is a ch
one's work this will be most
least alienated worker, in inter
consumer. This emerges from
dividual produces a certain a
consuming it; but he returns
dividual. Consumption thus ap
He who would appeal to the
of the early Marx must be awa
aesthetic he seeks, necessarily
spoken idealistic premises at
suppresses these premises as a
part of the "inheritance,"
without them if it wishes to

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THE IDEALIST EMBARRASSMENT 207

periods or even the class-transcendent c

face of man's alienation under the rule
activity freed from dependence on t
of the aesthetic education of the senses;
consumer not simply as the victim of m
"active subject," and thus to acknowl
solidarizing, socially formative force
bourgeois aesthetic cannot get along w
wishes to understand the past and po
art in history and in society instead of
torical and social processes, and if it
embarrassing fact that every work of a
both to liberate possibilities and needs w
to camouflage ruling interests. If the
ognized, a new point of departure for
tween "bourgeois" and "Marxist" li
won. I also have in mind a long-over
the field of politics a clear-cut distinc
cannot be overlooked, between a "bour
In the field of philosophy there may be
theory of cognition. But in the field
opposition labelled in this manner
unverifiable or purely ideological, thank
understanding, which in its nonviolen
"subversive" effectiveness again an
jurisdiction and domination by society's
UNIVERSITY OF CONSTANCE
(Translated by Peter Heath)

NOTES

The following discussion is based on the results of a seminar on "Theories

and Critique of Marxist Aesthetics" which I conducted in the Fachbereich Litera-
turwissenschaft at the University of Constance in the summer of 1974. I am in-
debted for considerable stimulation to the members of the seminar, especially
Lothar Struss and Burkhart Steinwachs, and to discussions in a Heidelberg collo-
quium on questions of philosophic aesthetics (28-30 June 1974) and following my
lecture at the University of Munich (18 Dec. 1974). The third chapter was
published in the anthology Rezeptionsiisthetik: Theorie und Praxis, ed. R. Warning
(Munich, 1975)-
I R. Bubner, Neue Hefte fiir Philosophie, 5 (i973), 38-73.
2 O. K. Werckmeister, Ideologie und Kunst bei Marx (Frankfurt, 1974), PP-
I4-I5-
3 "Raphael, as much as any other artist, was determined by the technical
advances in art made before him, by the organization of society and the division
of labor in his locality, and finally by the division of labor in all the countries with
which his locality had intercourse. . . . In any case, with a communist organization

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 208 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

of society, there disappears the

narrowness, which arises entirely
of the artist to some definite a
sculptor, etc., the very name of h
his professional development an
munist society there are no pai
among other activities" (The Ge
PP. 442-43).
4 "It translates the seeming tru
for contemporary culture, back
purposes of those who produced
5 How Werckmeister proposes t
to the "specific effects" of wor
(ibid., p. 3I).
6 K. Kosik (Die Dialektik des K
more justice to the fragmentar
serves: "Attention is concentrat
ancient art, but on interpreting
linkage of art and ideas in histor
Kosik develops his dialectic bet
interaction of work and mankin
and universal, which takes shape i
7 Herbert Marcuse, Counterrev
8 Ibid., p. 9.
9 Marx, Early Writings, p. 157.
Io Wording due to E. Steinwachs, in his contribution to the aforementioned
seminar.

I Jiirgen Habermas, Technik und Wissenschaft als 'Ideologie' (Frankfurt, 1968),

PP. 9-47.
12 8th corrected ed. (Berlin, 1972), p. 121.
13 In criticism of Marcuse's (meanwhile revised) thesis of the affirmative
character of culture, I have elsewhere questioned why his three-stage historico-
philosophical aesthetic specifically misconstrues the genuinely socially realized
achievements of aesthetic practice, which often run counter to philosophical
idealism and the affirmative culture (see "Negativitit und Identifikation-
Versuch zur Theorie der isthetischen Erfahrung," my contribution to Positionen
der Negativitdt, Poetik und Hermeneutik VI (Munich, 1975).
I4 "Rezeptions~isthetik und marxistische Literaturtheorie," Historizitiit in Sprach-
und Literaturwissenschaft-Vortriige und Berichte der Stuttgarter Germanis-
tentagung 1972, ed. W. Miiller-Seidel (Munich, 1974), PP- 379-88.
I5 Mandelkow's summary, ibid., p. 381.
I6 Ibid., p. 384.
I7 "Die Partialitdit der rezeptionsdisthetischen Methode," R. Warning, Rezeptions-
iisthetik.
I8 As I did before him-and in almost the very words employed in my "Die
Partialitdit der rezeptionsisthetischen Methode" (to appear in Yale French Studies).
19 Cf. p. 358, where only global reference is made to norms obtained from
the literary heritage, and p. 366, where not a word is said about the difference
between Goethe's and Brecht's varieties of laconicism.

20 Cf. p. 366: "repeat his activity as our activity"; p. 378: "Perspectives

through which he 'sees' the things represented."
21 In this context, see also my "Negativitit und Identifikation."

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