摘要：What is the state of consciousness of modernity presently like? Is modernity as out of date as is claimed by neoconservatism in general and the postmodernists in particular? Neoconservatists accuse modern culture of undermining the ethical foundations of social life. The author shows that neoconservatism does not understand the relation between culture and society, and that it ascribes to cultural modernity the pathological syndromes (hedonism, narcissism, loss of identity) which are, in fact, the product of capitalist modernisation of economy and society. Through money and power, the systemic imperatives of market economy and of the bureaucratic state gravely endanger the world of life and the process of cultural reproduction and social integration. Thus, it is solely through distinction between societal and cultural modernisation that one can also understand the pathological effects resulting from the sphere of culture itself. While societal modernisation is characterised by a growing autonomy of purposefully rational activity (in market economy and administration), which leads to colonisation of the world of life, cultural modernisation is marked by an increasing differentiation of cultural value spheres (science, morality, art) based on varied aspirations to validity (truth, rightness, authenticity) and by a differentiation of structures of rationality (cognitiveinstrumental, moral-practical, aesthetic). Conservative critics of the aporiae of modern culture reject the entire project of modernity, advocating either a return to pre-modernism, or a step forward into postmodernity, or else mere anti- modernity (philosophers such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, Bataille, Foucault, Derrida). In contrast to them, the author sees the potentials of modernity in the protection and development of the sphere of communicational rationality against the systemic imperatives of economy and of the state, in the reestablishment of links between the spheres of science, morality and art, and in connecting the corresponding expert cultures with the communicational practice of the world of life. Thus perceived, modernity is still an unfinished project, which encompasses historical emancipatory potentials only as a differentiated reactive linkage of modern culture with everyday practice, only if societal modernisation can also be steered down other non-capitalist paths, if the world of life can develop out of itself institutions limited by the dynamics of the economic and administrative system.
关键词：cultural and social modernity; differentiated rationality; systemic imperatives; world of life; conservatism; postmodernity; Adorno; Kant
