Philosophy and Ethics in Germany

Up until the end of the twentieth century, philosophy had, at best, nothing but contempt for popular culture. Pop was largely ignored, being seen as mass culture for people with the mental age of a child. Before it could study such trivial things as rock, punk and rap music, advertising, film and television, philosophy first had to get off its high horse of German aesthetic idealism. As Thomas Hecken explains in an interview for Goethe.de, philosophy has found a number of ways to access popular culture now that it has stopped criticizing it on principle.

Professor Hecken, what do you mean when you talk about popular culture, and why should philosophers engage with it?

Popular culture can encompass everything from Andy Warhol to Lady Gaga, James Bond to Jean-Luc Godard, McDonalds to Gucci. What they all have in common is the fact that they rate superficial aspects more highly than supposed depth, produce synthetic images, give technological artificiality priority over natural beauty and attribute great value to that which is purely decorative. Clearly philosophy does not have to pay any attention to popular culture, yet this comes at the price of not being able to play an active role in contemporary society.

Whereas popular culture is youthful and fleeting, philosophy represents discourse that has been kept alive for centuries. What connects the two?

Philosophy, especially social philosophy, has at least provided many of the key terms which have long defined the way people talk about popular culture: mass, (sub-)culture, superficial. The most direct connection nowadays lies not in the fact that a number of authors have made it onto the bestseller lists with self-help books, eco-guides and moral primers. What is more important is that Nietzsche’s dislike of depth and aesthetic disinterest have shaped a brand of – anti-hermeneutic – philosophy for which both Warhol and Foucault can equally serve as role models.

“Even an uneducated person has aesthetic experiences”

American art critics and philosophers began studying popular culture more than a decade ago. Why is it taking German philosophers so long to catch up? And which particular mode of access is practised here?

In Germany, philosophy is closely related to humanistic education, aesthetics and art, that is to say to disciplines which reject that which is merely attractive and appealing in favour of idealized or strict form. No path leads from Kant to the Sex Pistols. If there is to be a particular German mode of access to popular culture at all nowadays, then this presumably can only be Adorno’s mission to identify those pop artefacts which object to that which is general, to a specific formula and to self-constraint. Admittedly, Adorno did not believe that such things could still be found in an era of cultural industry hegemony; on the other hand, Adorno did, of course, appreciate the Marx Brothers.

What can philosophy achieve that other disciplines such as sociology or musicology cannot?

As a philosophical discipline which reflects on sensuality and superficiality, aesthetics must necessarily supplement sociological, functional analyses and scientific analyses of form. And even when it can no longer be a question of defining, from a privileged philosophical viewpoint, the value or lack of value of a work of art, a philosophical conceptual history can serve one well by showing which different terms were used to talk pop culture phenomena up or down.

Reconciling philosophy with democracy

To what extent did philosophy itself have to change in order to be able to view objects such as tin cans, comics, television series and pop songs as works of art and debate on them?

Just as American pragmatism did before it, philosophy had to reconcile itself with democracy, or, more precisely, with the view that even an uneducated person has aesthetic experiences. What is more – as Anglo-American analytical philosophy proves – it was forced to abandon the idea that philosophers can only perform their work properly if they spend their time poring over canonized or avant-garde works.

Popular culture and commerce are most closely interwoven. The Frankfurt School took an extremely critical stance on pop culture phenomena. In its eyes, pop music cannot be viewed as a spontaneous artistic expression from below, but as a seduction of the masses from above. Why do you not believe that popular culture contributes to blinding the masses?

Do I not? Although it is true that I do not use words like “blinding”, I have no trust whatsoever in the artistic expression of the “masses”. What appears more important to me, however, is the fact that nationalism, which is far more dangerous, is both an elite and a mass phenomenon – and the fact that such nationalism thrives largely independently of popular culture.

Pop music as a vehicle for commerce

For some time now, right-wing groups have been using rock music to ensnare young people. Is the critical potential of pop music exhausted?

During the course of its history, pop music has only rarely been regarded as left-wing, and has far more often been seen as capitalistic seduction and a vehicle for escape to personal or commercialized worlds of leisure. What is more, what was once viewed as the left-wing aspect of music – its strong hedonistic element, its youthful desire for change – is nowadays seen rather as its underlying liberal character. As soon as (educated) middle-class conservatism no longer counts for anything in the right-wing scene, pop – or rather rock – music can then of course be exploited by the right-wing extremists as an appropriate expression of unruly behaviour, provided that the pleasant and sensual elements of the music give way to soft aggressive aspects. Thus the critical potential of pop music can only be regarded as exhausted by those who previously hugely overestimated it.