Über die Peripetien der Zivilisation

BREUER, Stefan, 1988. Über die Peripetien der Zivilisation. In: Helmut KÖNIG (Hrsg.), Politische Psychologie heute [online]. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. S. 411–432. [Zugriff am: 21 August 2024]. ISBN 978-3-322-88765-8. doi

Ever since the authors of The Dialectic of Enlightenment forty years ago considered the possibility of a "return of enlightened civilization to Barbarism" (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1947, 11), there has been a growing number of voices within the traditionally non-progressive left who no longer consider this possible. The decline of morality, the brutalization of everyday life, the growing willingness to settle conflicts with violence have made the concept of civilization, which once shaped the West's self-image, more questionable than ever. Richard Sennett, for example, notes a general tendency toward increasing "uncivilization," manifested in a loss of distance, self-centeredness, and a "tyranny of intimacy" that permeates all social relations (Sennett, 1983, 299). Neil Postman speaks of the "decline of civility" and a "general disregard for the rules and rituals that govern social interaction in the public sphere" (Postman, 1983, 151). Another much-discussed book even speaks of a "dying civilization" (Lasch, 1986, 261). Ulrich Beck sees modern society on the way to becoming a "risk society," "on the volcano of civilization" (Beck, 1986, 23).

Whether these diagnoses are correct will surely only be proven in careful empirical studies. Until then, however, and perhaps in preparation for such studies, it may be useful to take a look at the presentation of the concept of civilization in the most thorough study of the subject to date: Norbert Elias's book "On the Process of Civilization. In the following, I will first outline the main arguments of this book and then present some objections that have arisen today, almost half a century after the publication of the first edition. Finally, I will discuss the question of whether the concept of civilization in the version given by Elias is a concept that adequately reflects the problems of modern society.

Elias's investigation begins with a consideration of the history of concepts. The first observation is that civilization means something different in the German-speaking world than it does in Western Europe, namely in France and England. While the term is used there to describe economic, social, political, and intellectual progress as a whole, it has only a limited meaning in German. Here, civilization is a secondary value, a quality that refers only to the exterior, the surface of existence. On the other hand, the formation of the interior, the progress in the spiritual and mental realm, is designated by the term "culture". What in other Western countries appears to be a unified and continuous movement is thus divided in Germany into two different dimensions, which sometimes become opposite poles. An important principle of German ideology until the "Ideas of 1914" was that the West had only civilization, while the Germans had achieved culture.

The fact that Elias decides to treat the German version as an exception and not to pursue it further is due to his ideas about the tasks to be accomplished in social development. These ideas are clearly influenced by 19th century sociology, especially Comte and Spencer. Like them, Elias sees social development as part of a general evolution that includes organic, inorganic, and supra-organic development and is determined by the interplay of differentiation and integration. Like them, Elias identifies the differentiation of functions with the "economic division of labor" and the coordinating and integrating institutions with the state.[1] Elias does not see a hierarchy between these two dimensions. For him, they are in principle equally important phenomena, each representing different aspects of one and the same substrate – society. However, since he attributes the ability to control the functional processes "to a certain degree" (1971, 47) to the integrating instances, the focus of his theory shifts strongly to the level of integration, to the emergence and development of those institutions that have a particularly high control potential – the political central instances or, as Elias formulates it with Weber: the monopoly organizations of physical force.

In this preliminary decision on the analytical level lies the root of the regulative idea of Elias's theory of civilization, the "assumption… that the construction of 'civilized' behavior is most closely connected with the organization of Western societies in the form of 'states'" (I, LXXVI). The more advanced the formation of the state in a given area, the more advanced the process of civilization; the less developed the centralization, the less developed the mores, the more incomplete "that levelling and approximation of social norms (…) which is characteristic of this whole process of civilization" (II, 433). For this reason, Germany, which has not experienced any progress in the development of its central state institutions since the late Middle Ages, is less suitable for the study of the process of civilization than, for example, France, where these institutions have been continuously strengthened.

Elias divides the expansion of the central state in France into three phases. The first phase coincides with the creation of the courts of chivalry at the beginning of the High Middle Ages, which replaced the previous integration by combat with a more peaceful and stable integration. This "knightly-courtly" order was followed in the 16th century by the second stage, the "courtly-absolutist society," which was still based on the social structure of the medieval estates, but which brought about a change on the political level by concentrating physical power in a monopoly authority. The old warrior elite is now demilitarized and transformed into a court nobility, which in turn allows the formation of longer and more complex chains of interdependence at the social and economic level. Functional differentiation accelerates, giving rise to new elites based on profession and productive performance, which in turn seek to participate in the decisions of the supreme coordinating and regulatory authority.

After the intermediate stage of an "extended courtly society" in which courtly-aristocratic and courtly-bourgeois circles interacted, the third and final stage emerged: the bourgeois nation-state. In this state, the division of functions and general interdependence had reached a previously unimaginable density. At the same time, networking had progressed to the point where private monopolization of the opportunities associated with the central position could no longer be sustained. The private monopoly of the individual, Elias writes, is socialized and becomes "a function of the interdependent human network as a whole," a "public" monopoly (II, 157). Moreover, the beginnings of a fourth and final phase of the overall development are already visible:

"One sees the first outlines of a worldwide system of tension of confederations of states, of state units of various kinds, preliminary stages of struggles for the elimination and domination of the whole earth, the prerequisite for the formation of an earthly monopoly of power, of a central political institute of the earth, and thus also for its pacification" (II, 452).

To the stages of centralization outlined here, Elias now assigns various behavioral models or schemes that embody the subjective manifestations of this process. The polycentric structure of the Middle Ages corresponds to the scheme of "courtoisie" that developed at the great feudal courts of the knights (I, 79, 136; II, 96ff., 109ff., 354ff.). Its characteristics are: a certain moderation of the emotions, an – admittedly still very limited – valorization of those who did not have the means of violence at their disposal (above all women), the development of courtly manners that regulate sociable behavior at the table, in games or in tournaments, the orientation towards knightly virtues, as propagated above all by the Church (miles christianus ideal), but also by secular poetry (Arthurian epic).

But while this scheme remains external to the individual and quickly loses its effect outside the interactional center of the court, social control intensifies with the transition to a monocentric configuration based on the monopoly of violence. The merely intermittent "courtoisie", which covered only a small part of the knightly existence, is now replaced by a new scheme of affect regulation, which Elias, following the moral writings of Erasmus, della Casa, La Salle, and others, calls "civilite" (I, 65ff., 89f., 136f.). In this phase, the nobility, whose position of power had been shaken by political, social, and economic developments, sought to maintain its place at the top of the social hierarchy by increasing the use of strategies of distinction. A strict code of behavior emerged that increasingly encompassed the entire habitus. Domestic interaction, especially eating and conversation, became highly ritualized, as Elias vividly demonstrates with the story of the knife and fork ritual. Clothing is consciously used as a means of distinction and prestige, as are gestures and linguistic expression. Questions of good manners and taste become issues that can determine one's place in the hierarchy. Tact, delicacy, and style become forms on which social survival may depend. Observing oneself and others reaches an unprecedented intensity, "psychological warfare" becomes an indispensable weapon in the competition for prestige.

According to Elias, however, this new scheme of affect modeling, which is much stricter than "courtoisie," is not yet very firmly anchored in the psychostructure. The taboos and rituals of courtly life confront the individual as clearly defined imperatives that cause him to constantly control his affects and impulses. However, this is done primarily through conscious self-control, psychoanalytically speaking, through ego performances (Vowinckel, 1983, 196). The courtier, as we read in Castiglione, must balance his various abilities so that he becomes a kind of perfect synthesis of the arts; he must, as in Gracian, consciously tame his passions, not to kill them but to satisfy them at the appropriate moment (ibid., 95). Thus, social control continues to take place primarily through the mediation of the ego, which adapts to the constraints of the social environment, but by no means submits to them completely. It remains external to the individual and "does not yet function as an automatic self-compulsion, as a habit that functions up to a certain limit even when the person is alone; rather, one always first imposes a renunciation of instinct and a restraint on another, and more consciously for social reasons. And the nature of the restraint and its degree correspond to the social position of the person or persons on whom it is imposed" (I,186). In the "bourgeois" stage, social interdependence is already strong enough to force the individual to adapt, but not yet strong enough to negate the individual as such and transform him into a "traffic junction of the general" (Horkheimerl-Adorno).

The scheme of "civilization," which replaced "civilite" in the second half of the 18th century, went much further in this direction (I, 47ff.). Supported by the reform groups of the ancien régime – the enlightened nobility, the civil service, and the upper strata of the bourgeoisie – this scheme aimed at universalizing and stabilizing the moral refinement and rationality already achieved with the "civilite". Universalization means the extension of reason to the laws and institutions of the country, as well as to the customs of the entire nation. Elias speaks of a "fusion of the behavior of the functional upper classes with that of the rising lower classes" (II, 346) and compares this process to that of colonization. While in the nineteenth century the non-European world was subjugated and assimilated to Western patterns of thought and behavior, the lower and middle classes in the West had previously been subjugated and assimilated to the norms of the upper classes (II, 341, 350, 420f.).

Stabilization means the consolidation of civilized forms of behavior into an "armor" that surrounds the entire personality and each of its expressions (I, 332). This is done through a conditioning that begins in early childhood and works to develop in the individual "as a kind of relay station for social norms, an automatic self-control of the drives in the sense of the respective social schemes and models, a 'reason,' a differentiated and more stable 'super-ego,' and that part of the restrained drives and inclinations no longer come directly to his consciousness" (II, 329). In this sense, the super-ego in bourgeois society fulfills the control functions that were still reserved for the ego in courtly society.

Elias does not recognize the differences between these two forms of control. However, in the context of his construction of a continuous process of civilization, he interprets their succession primarily as an increase in social and psychological integration through a deepening of control mechanisms. Those constraints that in the scheme of the "courtoisie" and the "civilite" often functioned only as external barriers, as external coercion, are now internalized, with the prospect that external coercion will thus become increasingly dispensable and finally disappear altogether (1983, 123 f.). Elias does not reveal how this new form of self-control, which is of course only conceivable once pacification has been achieved on a global level, could come about. However, it seems to him as certain that developments are heading in this direction as the trend toward overcoming the bourgeois nation-state. Once the tensions between states have been eliminated, according to the final passage of the book on civilization, which is reminiscent of Kant's vision of "perpetual peace," the regulation of social relations can be limited to what is purely factually necessary, and the tensions and contradictions within people themselves can also be alleviated. Only then will we no longer need the exception.