140 Habermas: An intellectual biography
Habermas concluded his Adorno Prize lecture on a cryptic note
that seems to refer to the political constellation of political parties two
years before die We n d e. He spoke of an “alliance of postmodernists
with premodernists,” conceding that these were rough ideal-types:
I fear that the ideas of antimodernity, together with an additional
touch of premodernity, are becoming popular in the circles of
alternative culture. When one observes the transformations of
consciousness within political parties in Germany, a new ideologi-
cal shift becomes visible. And this is the alliance of postmodernists
with premodernists.^17
To what political trends did this coded speech refer? As we have
seen, 1980 was the year the Greens first emerged on the national
stage. The first statement about “antimodern” sentiments gaining
in the alternative scene appears to refer to the antigrowth politics of
the new Green Party, the founding of which Habermas had opposed
on the grounds that they would not weather well the transition from
social movement to political party.^18 By the coming alliance of “post-
modernists with premodernists” in the sphere of party politics, he
appears to anticipate the coming alliance of the FDP (“postmod-
ernists” because of their economic liberalism) and the CDU (“pre-
modernists” because of their cultural traditionalism about moral
values). Although Habermas has rejected this interpretation – “No,
I consider it impossible to map [unmittelbar abzubilden] theoretical
positions directly onto party-political ones”^19 – in the absence of an
alternative account, this one seems to do it justice.
Moreover, a lengthy interview Habermas gave to Axel Honneth
in the summer of 1981 reinforces this interpretation, enhancing
the impression we have of the fundamental interconnectedness of
his philosophical work on the modernity concept (and the closely
linked social-theoretical concept of rationalization in Max Weber’s
sense) with his political concerns about the rise of intellectual neo-
conservatism. In the 1981 interview he indicated that his interest
in working on the concept of modernity stemmed from the grow-
ing impact of “neoconservatives” on German public debate since(^17) John Torpey, “Introduction: Habermas and the Historians,” in New German
Critique 44 (Spring-Summer 1988 ), 14.
(^18) Honneth et al.,“Dialektik,” in Die Neue Unübersichtlichkeit (Frankfurt/
Main: Suhrkamp, 1985; DNU hereafter), 250.
(^19) Author’s private correspondence with Habermas, June 7, 2005.