I am asking this seriously. I saw on another thread Jamal talking of a famous Adorno’s book “Negative Dialectics”.
Dialectics is the dynamics of the negative; it is the structural, negative relation to oneself that drives the concept forward.
Therefore, “Negative Dialectics” is an absolute pleonasm. It is as flat and meaningless as talking about “Wet Hydraulics.”
So, I am left with only two logical hypotheses regarding Adorno’s intellect:
The “Blonde” Hypothesis: The man simply did not understand what dialectics actually is, and genuinely thought he was adding a profound new concept to the word.
The Pedantic Hypothesis: He knew perfectly well it was a pleonasm, but he used it anyway as a pedantic intellectual posture to show off his sophisticated Hegelian “despair” to his post-war audience.
Your two options do not appear to be mutually exclusive. He may have been indulging in pedantic intellectual posture to show off his sophisticated Hegelian “despair” to his post-war audience, while also adding a profound new concept to the world.
He knew that. He notes that people want to put the synthesis on a pedestal and forget that it’s actually just one phase of an intellectual experience.
Hegel appears to have done that with the Absolute. Heidegger did it with Dasein. The result is that the philosopher enters a static domain of ideals, and denies the significance of the rest of the dialectical scene.
That turns out to be a good way to become sunk deep in delusions and subsequently blindsided by the failure of that ideal domain to match up to events on the ground. We were supposed to be getting heaven on earth as prophesied by Marx. We got an unprecedented case of Hell by way of the Third Reich.
I found that getting Adorno required that I dip into post Nazi Germany, specifically what was happening with intellectuals of that period.
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I think we need to read a whole text of an author before we can theorize a hypothesis about their philosophy, and even more so about their character.
The way you speak here seems like it could dismiss any philosopher. Usually what’s been missed is the most charitable interpretation we can plausibly assign (or, further than that, even if it’s not plausible it may be possible, which is important since our notions of plausibility are deeply limited)
I don’t understand. What does “blonde” have to do with anything here? I really like a natural blonde ale, but are you suggesting Adorno developed a new use for the word?
I don’t think everyone needs to read the whole text before coming to a view, but you do need to read more than the title. @MCogito has read the title and launched an attack on that basis. This is anti-philosophical in the extreme, so I’m closing it.