Autumn 1999
Volume 26, Number 1

Although it is evidently not his intent, given the political place of art and literature he wishes to preserve, Brenkman can at times come close to making the same mistake as Habermas. Habermas collapses the sensus communis aestheticus into the sensus communis logicus. I mean by this collapse to indicate Habermas's presupposition that the conflict of the faculties can be overcome by reference to the order to reason. As is well known, Habermas argues that we can overcome the "dark side" of the Enlightenment through an overarching concept of communicative reason. Kant himself did not accept that there could be such a rational resolution of the conflict between the faculties; certainly the Kant of the Third Critique does not think so. Just how much of a Habermasian Brenkman is remains an open question in this essay, but I would argue that any collapse of the sensus communis aestheticus into the sensus communis logicus runs afoul of Brenkman's own defense of the role of the aesthetic and of reflective judgment in a democratic culture.7 More importantly, the reading that I give to the relationship between Kant's Third Critique and a defense of enlightenment humanism can help us to beware of the hubris of the Enlightenment. This hubris has often, and to my mind rightfully, been critiqued as inseparable from the imperial domination of the West. Yet we can reject this conceptualization of the Enlightenment and still embrace a more humble standpoint of enlightenment as a continual process of reflective judgment.

7. For an excellent discussion of how and why Habermas wrongfully collapses the sensus communis aestheticus into the sensus communis logicus, see Cascardi, "Communication and Transformation: Aesthetics and Politics in Habermas and Arendt," Consequences of Enlightenment, pp. 132Ð74.

Drucilla Cornell is professor of law, political science, and women's studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of numerous books, includng At the Heart of Freedom and The Imaginary Domain. She has also edited and coedited several books, including Feminism and Pornography (forthcoming) and Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice (with Michel Rosenfeld and David G. Carlson).