PRAGOTI

In the various strands of the Radical Enlightenment the principle theme is the question of the crisis: we have the crises of the sciences, of reason, of modernity, etc. But, of course, Murzban Jal points out that in these renderings there is no crisis of capitalism. So it follows for the alternative Enlightenment, since something is indeed rotten in the state of the Enlightenment, the subject of history cannot be a class subject. The theme of the crisis of the sciences is now expressed in the crisis of Marxism. The proletariat cannot be the subject of history. And yet there has to be the subject. The tragic hero of Romanticism comes marching in. What Romanticism wants is not the negation of capitalism, but negation of all reality. The Romantics cannot be the revolutionaries, but only the tragic heros, who like Goethe’s Faust, are dragged to hell. There they take residence like Adorno, waiting for the missing messiah to come.