- Florian Maiwald
- Jun 26
- 6 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Unsustainable: The End of the Emancipatory Subject? – Remarks on Blühdorn’s Unhaltbarkeit
Florian Maiwald
26 June 2025
In his latest and highly recommendable book Unhaltbarkeit (engl.: Unsustainability), sociologist Ingolfur Blühdorn puts forward the provocative thesis that the ever-worsening ecological crisis, with which the world is confronted today, cannot simply be kept in check by an emancipatory subject that views this crisis as an expression of the freedom-restricting parameters of global capitalism. Rather, according to Blühdorn’s provocative thesis, part of the crises prevalent today (above all the ecological crisis) is itself attributable to the very idea of an emancipatory (autonomous) subject. Blühdorn develops this idea against the backdrop of the assumption that today’s Western societies are marked by a double form of unsustainability (Unhaltbarkeit): On the one hand, there is the most obvious form of unsustainability—the ever-increasing exploitation of ecological resources and the escalating climate crisis, along with the interdependent social and economic consequences.
While this form of unsustainability may be obvious – and rightly so, as it represents a near consensus in progressive circles – Blühdorn undoubtedly strikes a nerve among many progressives with the second form of unsustainability he identifies: according to Blühdorn, today’s ecological and social upheavals are not solely due to the contradictions of the capitalist system itself, but also to what Blühdorn calls the “eco-emancipatory project” (öko-emanzipatorisches Projekt) - that is, precisely the normative guidelines that have shaped much of the social and ecological movements since the 1970s are not the solution, but part of the current predicament.
In this way, Blühdorn attacks nothing less, to return to the beginning of the present discussion, than the very notion of an emancipatory subject itself.
It is not particularly problematic that Blühdorn’s argument can only be outlined in broad strokes here – for the present discussion, what is most relevant is what Blühdorn refers to as the dialectic of emancipation. According to Blühdorn, in the best tradition of critical theory, the emancipatory subject is characterized by a constitutive form of internal tension, which one might also express in Freudian terms as discontent.
Already in the autonomous subject as characterized by Kant, the emancipatory claim becomes evident: to position oneself critically in relation to existing structures of domination by means of the authority of one’s own law-giving reason[1].
Due to a perversion of this original Kantian ideal of autonomy, the discontent of the modern emancipatory subject can be precisely grasped according to Blühdorn – here, in Blühdorn’s own words:
“Kant’s concept of enlightenment and maturity—the ‘classical understanding’ of emancipation—was, of course, always only a regulative ideal, which in the course of history was repeatedly reinterpreted according to the prevailing historical conditions. In this process, the Kantian reference of autonomy to the transcendental reason shared by all human beings, as well as the idea of the transcendental subject that ultimately underlies Kant’s notion of autonomy, lost significance. Instead, under changing socio-economic conditions, historically specific understandings of emancipation and the emancipatory project developed [2].”
If, for Marx, it was the proletarian subject that was able to critically position itself against the servitude of capitalist relations of domination, in Blühdorn’s analysis of post-industrial society, it is the notion of a subject oriented toward individual self-realization (today all too visible in identity-political discourses) that seeks to distinguish itself from collective norms.
The crux of Blühdorn’s argument lies in the fact that the principle of the double unsustainability of modern society leads to the conclusion that the very positing of an emancipatory subject is problematic from the outset, as it is already laden with normative assumptions. This can be illustrated, not least, against the backdrop of the circumstance that what Blühdorn calls the “eco-emancipatory project” presupposes a collective political will to act. Put in another and more pointed way: the norms of the modern emancipatory project (the autonomy and liberation of the individual) stand in stark normative and practical contradiction to the efforts that would be necessary if one truly wished to overcome the current ecological crisis[3].
On this point, once again Blühdorn:
“It is precisely in eco-emancipatory thinking that duty, self-limitation, responsibility, and the moral-rationalist imperatives have, of course, continued to play an important role. The Kantian tradition retained great significance here, as it concerned the collective self-determination—and self-limitation—of citizens, society, and ultimately global society, in accordance with overarching ecological reason and ecological imperatives [4].”
Blühdorn, however, adds:
“At the same time, the component of personal self-realization was also very prominent in eco-emancipatory thinking. This striving was rooted in the romantic tradition of discovering (self-discovery) and practically unfolding an innermost, authentic, essential self, which is considered to be inherent in every individual and entitled to develop into a unique personality and identity. In this project, the focus was precisely not on subordination to principles of the universal or the acceptance of authorities, but rather on the unfolding of what is individually particular and unique [5].”
This tension between the individual and the universal, between the demand for individual self-limitation and the claim to individual self-realization, is, according to Blühdorn, constitutive for the unsustainability of the eco-emancipatory project. There is no doubt that Blühdorn is right in observing that the emancipatory conceptions of the Enlightenment already entail normative implications that are not conducive to today’s forms of crisis management.
Nevertheless, Blühdorn overlooks a central characteristic that has always been inherent to emancipatory forms of subjectivity from the outset: the fact of self-reflexivity. It is precisely the discrepancy between the abstract and the concrete that propels the inner dynamic of emancipatory forms of subjectivity itself. This can be illustrated particularly well using Balibar’s concept of “equaliberty” (égaliberté), according to which the fundamental normative coordinates of liberalism (freedom and equality) often stand in a fundamental discrepancy with the actually prevailing institutional arrangements[6]. Precisely this discontent – so the thesis proposed here – is characteristic of the emancipatory subject. Put differently: the socialist promise of greater freedom can only be understood against the backdrop of the failed normative ideals of liberalism – yet at the same time, it remains dependent on these very ideals, since their failure would not be possible without the normative positing of these ideals themselves.
Adorno once aptly expressed this in Negative Dialectics through the concept of human freedom. In light of the never-ending discrepancy between the universal – the ideal of fully realized human freedom – and the particular – the way in which the ideal of freedom is (or is not) realized in empirically tangible reality – Adorno concludes that it is inherently necessary for the concept of freedom itself to end up in an endless form of self-contradiction.
“The concept of freedom lags behind itself as soon as we apply it empirically. It is not what it says, then. But because it must always be also the concept of what it covers, it is to be confronted with what it covers. Such confrontation forces it to contradict itself [7].”
The non-correspondence between concept and reality is ultimately not only constitutive for the contradictory nature inherent in the concept of freedom. Rather, the contradiction between claim (concept) and reality is constitutive for the emancipatory subject itself. To put it differently – applied to the argument being developed here: without the discrepancy between empirical reality and the respective ideals, to which this reality stands in stark contrast, the discontent of the emancipatory subject would ultimately be inconceivable.
Hence, the emancipatory subject cannot exist without a constitutive form of – to use a Freudian term – discontent. This discontent can, in turn, be traced back to the fact that ideal and reality often stand in stark discrepancy to one another.
Expressed another way and formulated in terms of the concretion of the given: it is only the freedom-restricting effects of the capitalist economic system that make it clearly apparent that the freedom which this system continually claims to uphold ultimately fails in the face of reality. An increasingly authoritarian capitalism in the style of Trump represents just one of the most recent examples in a long series.
Applying these thoughts to Blühdorn’s arguments, a similar consideration could be made: accordingly, the salvation of the eco-emancipatory project might lie precisely in the fact that the emancipatory subject becomes aware of the discrepancy highlighted above by Blühdorn – that true self-realization is only possible through a return to the Kantian subject of reason, by aligning the collective dimension (which is necessary to overcome the ecological crisis) with the individual. To put it more concretely: the form of discontent inherent in emancipatory forms of subjectivity may lead to a revision of one’s own normative coordinates, without abandoning the emancipatory project itself.
Footnotes:
Cf. Blühdorn, 2024, 287ff. https://www.suhrkamp.de/buch/ingolfur-bluehdorn-unhaltbarkeit-t-9783518128084.
Ibid., 287. Translated from German to English – as are all the following quotations from Blühdorn’s book.
Cf. Ibid., 289.
Ibid., 290.
Ibid., 290-291.
Cf. Rooksby, 2012, 495. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41714354?seq=1
Cf. Adorno, 1973, 151. https://platypus1917.org/wp-content/uploads/adorno_negativedialectics.pdf.
Florian Maiwald is a German philosopher and research associate at the University of Bonn. He holds a PhD in Philosophy. His latest book Regressive Illusions is forthcoming in December 5.
