The wisdom of prometheus: Kant, Marx, and Holderlin on politics, disappointment, and the limits of modernity

Journal/Book: Polity. 1999; 31: Whitmore Hall, Amherst, MA 01003, USA. Northeastern Pol Science Assn. 537-559.

Abstract: While disappointment is a shared feature of our condition as mortal creatures subject to experiences of failure and frustration, these experiences, especially as they relate to politics, have taken on a significance in the modem period that they did not have in previous epochs. The profoundly future-oriented and activist disposition of modernity, exemplified in the writings of thinkers as politically disparate as Kant and Marx, confers an unparalleled importance on the political undertaking as an undertaking from which we can take our leave only with great difficulty. For these moderns, disappointment with politics can be nothing less than disappointment with ourselves and with our powers as makers of history; it poses a serious threat to the future-oriented energies on which modernity bases its understanding of itself. For Holderlin, in contrast, the experience of disappoint ment is significant precisely because it destabilizes the self-understanding of modernity; it exposes the illusion of self-sufficiency to which modem conceptions of politics and action are prone. Holderlin's Hyperion illuminates an alternative conception of political action in which the moment of limitation is just as crucial to the development of human powers as the moment of its overcoming.

Note: Article Michaelis L, Mt Allison Univ, Dept Polit Sci, 144 Main St, Sackville, NB E4L 1A7, CANADA

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