Abstract

In the first part of this essay I sum up the theoretical genesis and foundations of Márkus’s theory of culture as a theory of modernity. Central to the high culture of modernity, defined in terms of the future-oriented creation of the new, is the structure of authorship, work, and reception that pertains across the sciences, philosophy, the humanities, and the arts. In the second part I question the scope of the concept in relation to the arts and philosophy in the present and point to the inconsistency internal to Márkus’s conception that manifests itself in his neglect of the Romantic tradition in philosophy from Schelling to Heidegger, despite the integral role that the opposition between Enlightenment and Romanticism plays in his theory of cultural modernity.