Our Enlightened Barbarian Modernity: And The Project Of A Critical Theory Of Culture

Oratiereeks The twentieth century has made us familiar with the idea that Enlightenment, Modernity and barbarism as a unity is by no means a contradiction in terms. In his lecture Früchtl wants to revisit this topic in an attempt to answer the following questions: (1) Which principle has facilitated this simultaneously repellent and attractive idea? (2) What fundamentally conceivable relationships exist between Enlightenment and barbarism? And, directly connected to this point: which relationship should we be more aware of today than ever before? (3) What role is played by culture, particularly popular culture, and philosophy in this constellation? Josef Früchtl (1954) is professor of Philosophy of Art and Culture at the University of Amsterdam and head of the Department of Philosophy at the same university. Our Enlightened Barbarian Modernity and the Project of a Critical Theory of Culture Our Enlightened Barbarian Modernity and the Project of a Critical Theory of Culture Faculty of Humanities oratiereeks Fruchtl FGW.indd 1-2 Process CyanProcess CyanProcess MagentaProcess MagentaProcess YellowProcess YellowProcess BlackPANTONE BlackPANTONE 661 UWhite UWhite 26-06-2008 13:43:57 Our Enlightened Barbarian Modernity and the Project of a Critical Theory of Culture Vossiuspers UvA is an imprint of Amsterdam University Press. This edition is established under the auspices of the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Cover design: Nauta & Haagen, Oss Lay-out: JAPES, Amsterdam Cover illustration: Carmen Freudenthal, Amsterdam ISBN 978 90 5629 520 2 © Vossiuspers UvA, Amsterdam, 2007 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of this book. Our Enlightened Barbarian Modernity and the Project of a Critical Theory of Culture Inaugural Lecture delivered on the appointment to the Chair of Philosophy of Art and Culture at the University of Amsterdam on Friday 22 Februari 2008 by Josef Früchtl Mevrouw de Rector Magnificus, Mevrouw de decaan, Geachte collega’s, Gewaardeerde toehoorders, When the prospect of taking over the Chair of Philosophy of Art and Culture at the University of Amsterdam became reality, I reacted by doing what I always tend to do in a new situation (if there is enough time): read books. This time about Amsterdam and the Netherlands. I already had a picture of the country in my mind, of course, a montage of a variety of images, stories and snippets of information. For example, only one place came anywhere close to ‘swinging London’ for my generation in the early 1970s, and that was Amsterdam. And then the World Cup in Germany in 1974 and that phenomenal football team. But embarking on a new business venture means needing to know more. It was the summer of 2004 and Geert Mak’s De eeuw van mijn vader had just been translated into German, so I decided to start by reading that, as well as Een kleine geschiedenis van Amsterdam. The latter contains some great little expressions, such as Amsterdam being ‘a little nation inside a larger one’. The same had been said of New York. Another phrase I was already familiar with was the happy exclamation: ‘De hemel zij geprezen dat ik in Amsterdam woon, en niet in Nederland’, from Harry Mulisch’s novel De ontdekking van de hemel. But De eeuw van mijn vader appealed to me even more. From the outset I was drawn to the method employed so well in this book, namely to illustrate a general point by exemplifying it in an individual context, to illustrate the history of an entire century by relating the story of a single family. Didacticians l