Concise and accurate, I’d say.
Thank you sir. Compliments are always appreciated.
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With this post, I wanted to emphasize that you succeeded in “selling me this book.”
I’ve started reading it. I’m doing it slowly: 2-3 pages every evening. The general idea is clear. The theses are honest and clear.
At the same time, I’d like to discuss it a little. I realize I’ve gotten off topic, but nevertheless:
My notes:
- Adorno says: thinking tends to impose totality
but he himself:
generalsize this as a universal property of thinking,
thereby making a totalizing statement about thinking as such:
“All thinking totalizes,” he declares, but this is already a totalizing statement. Thus, critiquing the totality of thinking by totalizing thinking itself seems self-defeating.
In my opinion, for a critique of totality to be valid, it must claim generalized validity; but it is precisely this claim that reproduces the totality it critiques.
- Occam’s Razor. Up to the point I’ve read, I haven’t encountered a single fresh thought: some from the constructivists, some from Hegel’s critique, some from Nietzsche, some from Gadamer. Perhaps my own totalistic thinking, which identifies the new as the familiar, is at work…
But still. I’ll be honest, the book is good and makes you think (even if it does make you think about the familiar again).
I think I’ll finish it.
Welcome, Astorre! It’s good to have someone else join us. So I assume you’re in the prologue or introduction, is that right? We’re currently in the next section after the introduction: Part I: Relationship to Ontology.
I’m sure you could catch up. If you’re not aware, the reading group started last year on the old site, and those posts are archived here. We started with a book of his lectures, then moved on to Negative Dialectics itself at this point.
I’ll think about this and respond some time. I think he actually anticipates the problem somewhere, either in Negative Dialectics itself or in the lectures.
This is the subsection “Antagonistic Whole” Here he writes (I’ll present it in the understandable sense, because it’s a translation of a translation):
“…If truth is not understood in advance, then dialectical steps lose their motivation…”
So it turns out that truth is understood each time in advance (let’s call it intuition or feeling). And what’s more, it turns out that this intuition is also determined (by culture or language or any number of things).
And, damn it, I agree with him. After all, that’s how it usually happens: a solution is like a spark! You simply unravel it later. But this is only at first glance, and since we’re “trying to philosophize” here, I want to ask: is this always the case?
Well, in chess, yes. I’ll tell you how it works for me. I solve 20 tactical problems a day. As a result, “observational knowledge” develops, and when something similar to my observations arises in a real game, I sense: “Something must be here,” and then I use logic as a handmaiden to intuition. As a result, I either find or don’t find logical confirmation of my intuition.
But chess is a closed system. The variables don’t change (the knight always moves the same way). But in real life, things can be different.
For an analyst, this is a very practical scheme. But for a Holist, it can be quite different. Such a person may not bother with excessive dialectics—and for that, their decisions are no less useful (from a pragmatic perspective, of course). They can be coherent. They can correspond to reality. And they are also no less “duty-bound,” from a deontological perspective.
So isn’t Adorno falling into his own “Totality” trap here?
I want to continue to be Adorno’s “harmful reader.” I want to disagree, because, apparently, this is precisely his method.
In this chapter, “The Concept Unraveled,” he writes:
“Understanding the constitutive character of the non-conceptual… nullifies the compulsion of identity.”
Adorno is essentially saying: if you realize that in your decision or in your feeling about something there is something that defies all words (non-conceptual), then the concept itself (whatever you call it) ceases to be a dictator. It becomes simply temporary clothing for this feeling.
The important thing here: the concept does not have a being in itself! It is simply clothing to grasp meaning now.
It follows that any intuition is alive as long as it is alive in this time, in this context, within this logic, in this society, and at this level of world exploration.
Let’s assume.
Thus, it turns out that I can constitute reality as a certain construct as long as that construct “holds tension.”
This holding of tension. This is what Adorno wants from me when philosophizing.
Don’t slide into resolution—otherwise it’s totality; don’t slide into conflict—otherwise it’s war.
Very cleverly observed. Not exactly a novelty, but a good optic.
However, by the way. It’s worth noting that when I’m outside of “philosophical immersion,” but simply in ordinary life, I, like everyone else (even the best of us), find this extremely difficult: it’s often easier to roll along the rails. So I ask: when exactly should I activate this skill or filter?
Is it possible to remain in a “disenchanted concept” forever? (Husserl wrote that it’s impossible: even a scientist remains a scientist only in his own field and only in a moment of contemplation (something like that))
And just thought I’d add to that.
So Adorno is again demanding totality (which he dislikes so much)?
What exactly: to be totally in a state of nonstop criticism of concepts themselves. Is that what he’s asking for?
Bro, I’d rather end up in a mental hospital than pull this off.
I think, that for Adorno, a concept is a property of society. And society has substantial existence, so the concept is an aspect of a being in itself, society.
Intuition though, is the property of a subject. This means that there is a gap, a separation, or mediation between concept and intuition. The two therefore cannot have immediate interaction, or an immediate relation one to the other.
I don’t believe this is true. On the one side intuition would be guiding you, on the other side rational concepts would be your guide. Perhaps, in very mundane situations, like an extremely monotonous job, you’d simply roll along according to the concepts (trained habits), but in most active situations one must strike a balance between following known principles, and allowing intuition to be the guide. This is a fundamental feature of the way that universal principles cannot adequately circumscribe the particulars of the circumstances.
I don’t see how you make this conclusion. It appears like you are saying that Adorno is demanding something other than totality. But since your experience tells you that all you can give is totality, you conclude that he must be demanding totality. If it is impossible for you to give what the person is demanding, don’t try to make it appear like the person is demanding that which you can give.
Looks like a fair interpretation to me.
When you’re doing some serious thinking, otherwise roll along the rails if you want an easier life. You can be a critic of modernity while you load a dishwasher; you can condemn the private ownership of the means of production while you manage the finances and workforce of your cotton mill (Ermen & Engels).
Adorno is of course not doing self-help, moreover he sees no direct “application” of his theoretical philosophy to social praxis.
This is one of the most common criticisms of Adorno, that he is guilty of performative contradiction, or hypocrisy. Adorno is aware of the danger, and he seems to lean into it, sometimes making quite outrageously exaggerated statements. It’s an aspect of the paradoxical nature of philosophy that the whole book is in a sense aimed at uncovering: concepts are absolutely necessary for comprehending the non-conceptual, and yet they don’t work very well. Adorno cannot avoid making general statements, even while criticizing the tendency of philosophy to generalize everything too much. His methodological solution is to always be negative, never to claim to be building a system, and always to be using concepts, categories, universals etc. just to reveal the cracks in the world as it is.
To strengthen this defence: we have to be careful not to conflate general claims with totalization. Adorno does the former but not the latter. He uses concepts without assuming that they exhaust the object, and without attempting to bring the objects into a complete and closed system. He has no choice but to use identity in his thinking—none of us do—but he means to use it in a self-aware fashion. This is exactly what holding the contradictions open means: so that we never forget about the non-identical.
Also note that Adorno’s critique is immanent, not transcendent. He can make general claims without taking a position above his own milieu. More specifically, he can test the claims of Western rationality from within Western rationality without applying any higher criteria. Reason is enough to convict itself.
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How I came to this conclusion was described in more detail in the previous message.
I understand your approach, and it’s quite in line with Adorno’s. But here’s the question:
Doesn’t Adorno provide a kind of “indulgence” for generalization for those who read him? After all, it turns out you have the right to generalize if you consciously criticize it.
A simple example: a thief who steals, but convinces himself that stealing is bad and criticizes the institution of theft itself.
But recall the distinction between generalization and totalization. Adorno is more like the thief who steals from the organized criminals who maintain large-scale operations of theft.
Yes, but the applicability of my criticism is not lessened by this. In that post, you say the following:
What I pointed out is that for Adorno subjective intuition is distinct from the objective concept which is a property of culture. Furthermore, there is a gap of mediation between these two, so there is no immediate relationship between them. Therefore it is incorrect to say that any intuition is “determined” by “culture or language or any number of things” like that. And this gap of indeterminacy renders your charge of totalitarianism as inapplicable.
To address specifically what you presented, I believe you misrepresent Adorno with your quote:
What is actually said is:
The truth, which in the idealistic dialectic drives past every particularity as something false in its one-sidedness, would be that of the whole; if it were not already thought out, then the dialectical steps would lose their motivation and direction. Against this one must counter that the object of intellectual experience would itself be the antagonistic system, something utterly real, and not just by virtue of its mediation to the cognizing subject which rediscovers itself therein.
Notice that he is criticizing the idealistic dialectic here, the identity philosophy which produces the “antagonistic system”. The second part of the quote describes how, under your stated premise, the conceptual system must be “something utterly real”, idealism. If we continue we see how this renders the subject itself as negated, fundamentally unknowable, and irrelevant, because society is “the objective determinant of the Spirit”. Idealism frames this as something positive but it actually leaves the subject as unknowable and disempowered.
The next paragraph then begins with what this reveals:
The system is not that of the absolute Spirit, but of the most conditioned of those who have it at their disposal, and cannot even know how much it is their own.
The degree of unintelligibility of the subject is so extreme, that even those subjects who are conditioned so as to have the objective Spirit (society itself) at their disposal, cannot even know this themselves. The subject is an unknowable tool of “the absolute Spirit”.
So your statement, conclusion and charge against Adorno, is actually based in a description of the consequences of the idealist dialectic which he is criticizing, not something he is affirming as the correct approach.
Yes, I initially understood that this chapter was about a critique of idealism. But what am I saying? I’m saying this: from within a system of thought, even critique itself becomes total. Any concept, even one uttered by a critic, is also total. It’s just a different level of totalization. He says “philosophy totalizes”—and that, too, is a total statement. That’s what I’m getting at.
Thus, an endless cycle of self-reflection arises. This is useful in some areas, and I don’t dispute that. But it guarantees practically nothing and protects against nothing: it’s simply a critique of “totality” from the perspective of someone who understands “totality.”
From this, I conclude that criticism or negative thinking doesn’t provide any special advantage or indulgence. An Adorno fan simply becomes adept at deconstruction, but so what if the deconstruction itself turns out to be total?
I realize that you may already understand where I’m coming from, but I’d like to add that we can see how Adorno thinks about this issue from the logic he applies to a different domain: relativism. He is against relativism, but he is also against the common and famous criticism of relativism, namely that it commits a performative contradiction. This is from the introduction:
The popular argument … that relativism presupposes an absolute, namely its own validity and thus contradicts itself, is wretched. It confuses the general negation of a principle with its own ascent to an affirmation, without consideration of the specific difference of the positional value of both.
— ND, Against Relativism
I am quite certain that he applied the same logic to his own position with regard to his categorical, general, and universal statements: his statements are “general negations of a principle” (determinate negations), not affirmations of positive doctrine.
I’m only at the beginning of the book, of course; later on, I might also adjust my initial intuition.
In this sense, if Adorno is a serious, self-reflective thief, then I’m just a petty pickpocket in a criminal neighborhood.
However, I’m more than certain that completely following Adorno’s method would provoke criticism from the author himself: after all, that’s how we create an idol, isn’t it?
For now, let’s continue. At the very least, it’s a very interesting book, as I mentioned earlier.
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Yes, however, the task of this group is not to follow him but rather to understand him. Or, to follow him insofar as we need to do so to understand him.
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I think that Adorno acknowledges the thing which you are concerned about Astorre. He acknowledges that it is inevitable that philosophy will have contradiction inherent within. And, he acknowledges that he is often accused of doing the very thing that he is critical of. But I think that the specific contradiction (or hypocrisy) which you are concerned with, is misplaced.
I don’t think that this is the case. He says that a specific type of philosophy totalizes. This type is the idealist dialectics of identity philosophy, which inevitably works by creating a system. And that type he criticizes.
I really don’t see how it’s possible for deconstruction to be total.
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I think that concern comes out in the later Frankfurt thinkers. The one I am most familiar with is Honneth, and he resolves this with a pivot back to Hegel, although I’m not sure if it’s entirely successful.
The problem of performative contradiction comes in matters of degree. A criticism to the effect of:
“Adorno is critical of domination, but he is not critical of the ontological framework that makes domination the only thing reason can do. He accepts the Enlightenment story about reason [and man] for his diagnosis while trying to escape its consequences. However, he cannot escape entirely because they are being implicitly assumed as premises.”
The charge here being that what holds up the method is a sort of stealth, unacknowledged identity thinking and rigidity. That would, if substantiated, I think hit harder than an appeal to the problem of negativity (which is foreshadowed by Hegel and addressed by Habermas). On that view, what is presented asprincipled incompletion (presumably a sign of intellectual honesty) ends up (probably unknowingly) being a consequence of a specific and moreover contestable set of metaphysical commitments (that are perhaps inherited rather than chosen, which seems worse from the perspective of “critical philosophy”).
Could that be made to stick? IDK, I’ve mostly looked at Adorno to understand his successor Honneth, who I am quite fond of, but who might be vulnerable here.
I will say though that one of the key insights, the inexhaustibility of beings, leads to almost opposite conclusions under opposing metaphysical and anthropological assumptions. You can see this in opposed attitudes towards form as either received, participatory gift or a dominating imposition. This is a metaphysical distinction, but one that I think tends to get buried because addressing it often lies in anthropology.
I’ve also seen Adorno’s approach to art compared to Jacobi and Schleiermacher (Hegel’s Third Position), and to the extent this fits it seems to me that the Third Position (including how Hegel critiques it) shows some of the limits of Enlightenment anthropology. (A more particular example).
Yes, excellent. But I wouldn’t want to stop there. I go further and say: life is expansion. Breathing is expansion. Every thought (even negative) is a conquest.
This is how that very “becoming” occurs (we discussed this last year).
Life itself is a “crime without justification.” Adorno’s logic, in any case, operates with a specific intention—to prevent what happened in the 20th century. He saw the solution in introspection, constant self-reflection. But that didn’t happen (as we see from today’s examples). Moreover, even those of our contemporaries who continue to commit mischief are simply saying, “Well, I’m not Hitler.” They’ve adopted Adorno’s language: “I don’t totalize, I constantly reflect, so I can do it,” although in essence, these are still the same totalizers, just the next iteration.
ND I.I., Protest Against Reification
He begins with more description of the way in which “the ontologies” are reactionary, not merely ideologically but as if expressing fascist domination in the form of thought.
Then it’s on to reification:
The philosophical need has passed over imperceptibly from one of substantive matter [Sachgehalt] and solidity into one of evading the reification of the Spirit which was carried out by society and categorically dictated by its members, through a metaphysics which condemns such reification, delimiting it through the appeal to an original which cannot be lost, and thereby does so little harm to it as ontology does to the scientific bustle.
Part of the “ontological need” that the first half of Part I is examining is a need to resist “the reification of the Spirit” that has happened in modernity. Heidegger’s response to this need was “a metaphysics which condemns such reification, delimiting it through the appeal to an original which cannot be lost, and thereby does so little harm to it as ontology does to the scientific bustle.” In other words, Heidegger goes to find what he thinks is safe from reification rather than tackling it head-on. As a protest against reification, Hedidegger therefore has no teeth. It’s a gesture, which represents itself as satisfying the need without really doing so.
In the absence of the old hierarchies and spiritual certainties that cannot be openly or seriously praised any more, there is only the recourse to being:
Nothing remains of the compromised eternal values except confidence in the sanctity of being, whose essence is prior to everything thingly.
The actual reified world is considered not worth changing:
For the sake of its contemptible inauthenticity in view of thingly being, which is supposed to be dynamic in itself, to “occur”, the reified world is considered unworthy, as it were, of transformation; the critique of relativism is exorbitantly raised into the denunciation of the progressive rationality of Western thought, including subjective reason.
So alongside the continuation, virtually uncritiqued, of the reified world, we have the denunciation of “progressive rationality of Western thought, including subjective reason”. The result is Heidegger condemns the critical rational power of the subject while leaving reification untouched. Reification, which in its social reality is part of the same process of excessive subjectivization that he notices, is considered beneath contempt, while subjective reason and therefore also critical rationality come in for all the criticism.
The paragraph that begins, “The reduction of the object to mere material”, describes exactly how reification and subjectivization are correlated. I won’t unpack it; others are welcome to do so.
Next bit:
Only, Heidegger’s critique of reification summarily charges the reflecting and realizing intellect of what has its origin in reality, which is itself reified along with its world of experience. What the Spirit does, is not the fault of its irreverent presumptuousness, but it gives back, what it is compelled to by the context of reality, in which it itself forms only a moment.
If Heidegger really wanted to critique reification and subjectivization, he’d critique the forms they take at the societal level, which imposes itself on individuals. Those individuals are not to blame.
To slide back reification into being and the history of being, thereby mourning as fate and consecrating what self-reflection and the praxis it can spark would perhaps like to change, is solely untruth.
Heidegger treats reification as destiny rather than as something caused by contingent conditions that could be changed.
Next Adorno credits Heidegger for understanding that …
the dualism of the inner and outer, of subject and object, of essence and appearance, of concept and fact are not absolute.
But Heidegger’s reconciliation of those dualisms …
is projected onto the irretrievable origin and thereby the dualism itself, against which the whole was conceived, is hardened contrary to the reconciling impulse.
Since the origin is irretrievable, there can be no reconciliation after all and the dualisms—which for Adorno lie at the root of, or are part and parcel of, the contradictions that characterize the damaged life of modernity—become permanent.
Thus:
The dirge over the forgetfulness of being is the sabotage of reconciliation; the mythic impenetrable history of being, in which hope still clings, denies this. Its fatality is to be broken through as the context of deception.
Thus the lament for the loss of the meaning of being, since it represents itself as the only possible reconciliation of those bad dualisms, functions to sabotage all efforts at actual reconciliation.
Incidentally, as we near the end of “The Ontological Need” and the beginning of the more detailed immanent critique of Heidegger in “Being and Existence”, I thought I’d brush up on my Heidegger by reading Richard Polt’s Heidegger: An Introduction and William Blattner’s Heidegger’s ‘Being and Time’: A Reader’s Guide—or at least parts of them. I’ve partially read them before and can recommend them. If anyone wants to read them but is unable to access them, PM me.
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