ND I.II., Volte
EDIT: I originally titled this post incorrectly as “Question of Being”. As it is, what follows begins with “Volte” and then briefly has a look at the “Question of Being” section.
NOTE ON TRANSLATION: Adorno is using Sein for being as such, and Seiendes for particular beings or entities. Redmond translates the latter as the/an existent. I flip between using being and existent for the latter but it should be clear in context.
I read the section backwards, starting with the last paragraph:
The entire construction of the ontological difference is a Potemkin village.
By reducing everything individually existent to its concept, that of the ontic, what makes it into the existent, in contrast to the concept, consequently disappears. The formal general-conceptual structure of the talk of the ontic and all its equivalents takes the place of the content of that concept, which is heterogenous to what is conceptual. What makes this possible is the fact that the concept of the existent – therein not at all dissimilar from Heidegger’s celebrated one of being – is the same one which encompasses the purely and simply non-conceptual, circumscribing what does not exhaust itself in the concept, without however ever expressing its difference from what is encompassed.
The concept of the existent is itself conceptual and can thus only circumscribe its non-conceptual content. This distinction is not openly expressed in the concept, and this allows Heidegger to abstract from the non-conceptual content to produce the general category of the ontic.
This means that both the ontic and the ontological are conceptual. But Heidegger represents the ontological difference as one between conceptual and non-conceptual realms, whereas in fact both have equally abandoned the non-conceptual.
The last line is a good one:
The ontological difference is removed by virtue of the conceptualization of what is non-conceptual into non-conceptuality.
Rather than merely forgetting the non-conceptual, Heidegger actively obliterates it by thoroughly conceptualizing it: the concept of the ontic is effectively the concept of non-conceptuality. The ontological difference is meant to be a distinction between beings and being, but with the category of the ontic, we are left with no beings at all.
This is a Potemkin village because the ontological difference is not as fundamental a difference as it seems.
The crucial part of the previous paragraph is when he writes:
Heidegger’s triumph over other, less canny ontologies is the ontologization of the ontic. That no being is without the existent, is reduced to the form, that the being of the existent belongs to the essence of being.
A dialectical approach would embrace being’s mediation with beings, but Heidegger cannot bring being down to Earth like that, so does something else instead: he reduces beings to modes of being.
ND I.II., Question of Being
I didn’t closely read all of this section, but I found this interesting:
As Husserl before him, Heidegger unthinkingly bows to desiderata of thinking placed next to each other, which, in the history of the metaphysics which he put out of circulation in all too sovereign a fashion, proved to be incompatible: to the pure, that which is free of all empirical admixture and hence absolutely valid, and to the immediate, the purely given, irrefutable because it lacks the conceptual supplement.
Adorno is suggesting that Heidegger inherited a basic contradiction inherent in Husserl’s phenomenology, namely the attempt to satisfy two incompatible demands in a single concept: for a priori validity, and for the immediate given. Husserl tried to do this with consciousness; Heidegger does it with an empty, indeterminate concept, that of being.