Reading group: Negative Dialectics by Theodor Adorno

Praxis, delayed for the foreseeable future, is no longer the court of appeals against self-satisfied speculation, but for the most part the pretext under which executives strangulate that critical thought as idle which a transforming praxis most needs.

Obviously, the target here is Marxism, but it's interesting here to considered Adorno's differences with Hegel and how they might spring from early understandings of "praxis" in terms of philosophical/contemplative exercises and "philosophy as a way of life." At least, if we take more theological treatments of Hegel, or Magee's "Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition" (to be fair, we should take that one with a grain of salt, but it's interesting) seriously, this could be one of the contributing factors in the dominance of necessity and identity (through the "true infinite").

There is an interesting "sociology of philosophy" question of how praxis across epochs affects an understanding of the "intelligible" and "identity," including Adorno's particular view of philosophical experience pace the German idealists.

I am a big fan of a later of the Frankfurt's thinkers, Axel Honneth, so I will try to follow along. I also share Adorno's dismay for the tendency in Hegel to wash out particularly and for his thought to serve as an apologia for everything in "providential history," although I'm more amenable to "the actual is the rational and the rational is the actual" of "properly understood."I am not sure if critiques on this front are always fair to the best parts of Hegel, but they certainly seem to be fair critiques of parts he included in his texts—his worse inclinations perhaps (sort of akin the charge of Spinozist pantheism, which he always vehemently denied, but which there is plenty of evidence for).

Hegel, on of Adorno's big sources, is very much an Aristotlian in key ways, and I think it's worth noting that Adorno's focus on non-identity really does seem to make him a "materialist" in the Aristotlian sense, since it is matter which is the principle of unintelligibility and potency in things (although he cannot embrace the Aristotlian idea of matter as essentially nothing [what sheer being reveals itself to be in the Logic!] at the limit—in some ways then non-identity might retain more of the Kantian noumenal).

I am hoping Adorno might help me with a critique of Hegel. I have begun to suspect that, because he starts without the true (good) infinite already actual it not only fails to actually be a true infinite, but radically destabilizes his whole outlook, opening it up to this sort of critique. This aspect of Hegel is essentially an inversion of the past philosophy he borrows from. There, the "emanations" of the Absolute are "lower" and "after," and I think the inversion might be broken and also leads towards the totalitarian providential aspects Adorno is famous for critiquing.

BTW, is Marjorie Taylor Green right and they force fifth graders to read this!?!?

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I have begun to suspect that, because he starts without the true (good) infinite already actual it not only fails to actually be a true infinite, but radically destabilizes his whole outlook

If you think of actuality as the infinite's Other, then it's an outpouring down into actuality, and then a return journey to the infinite.

Reply to frank

Yes, that's a very good point. I think that's something like what Robert Wallace would say of his version of Hegel.

Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus
:up: It would fit with Aristotle's finitism.

In the opening lines of the prologue, we're told that we've inherited a tradition that says dialectics leads to something positive. An example would be this:

A: masculinity
not-A: femininity
synthesis: gender

You can see how masculinity gets its meaning (ultimately) as the negation of femininity, and vice versa. They're two parts of a whole. For instance, imagine you're on a spaceship with all men. They have a device they use to create people and they've been travelling for millennia, so there's no femininity in their world at all. What does "masculinity" mean to them? Since there's nothing to compare it to, it doesn't mean anything. All they have is humanity, even though from our point of view, they're male.

So it's not just the positive traits of a thing, such as masculinity, that lend it meaning. It's also the presence of its opposite. This would appear to be pervasively true: that rationality depends on oppositions. Ultimately, you are the negation of everything that's not you. This insight goes back to Plato, and is present in the cyclical argument in Phaedo.

For Hegel, Gender is the concept. It's made up of an opposition: male and female. But we can also see dialectic as a kind of journey. For instance:

A. Everything is united
B. Everything is discrete

This is an ancient opposition that played out in Greek philosophy. The tradition Adorno mentioned suggests to us that this opposition has to be resolved in a synthesis, and in fact, that synthesis is part of the mystical domain Hegel was introduced to by Franz von Baader.

Adorno suggests that the teleology present here blew up during the Enlightenment. We're going to have a better world by way of reason. This is particularly interesting to me, because there are fairly recent writers who have rejected this teleology, but not because of the Holocaust.

If anyone would want to correct my way of understanding the prolog, please do.

Reply to frank Based on SEP, something like Hegelian dialectic, or just that, appears to be Adorno's target.

I am not sure if Adorno is saying teleology failed in enlightenment. I am speculating, but perhaps he may argue that the "teleology" (or point of arrival) of Enlightenment is self-destruction (have you ever spent a really long time thinking about something, it's exhausting). Maybe telos' relation to enlightenment is discussed in DoE.

Yeah, I think he wants to maintain the negatives that appear to result in synthesis as "determinate" or unqualified or unsynthesized, rather than saying that those negatives are committed to any kind of teleological function. In fact, a telos to negatives would mean the sort of positive affirmation that Adorno wishes to deny, or "negate."

I am equating telos with synthesis, but I guess they could be disparate concepts.

Why those negatives constitute a dialectic is not clear, but maybe that's the point, the recognition of negatives in their negativity is to negate the dialectic itself.

Quoting NotAristotle

Based on SEP, something like Hegelian dialectic, or just that, appears to be Adorno's target.

I also turned to the SEP after a while. It looks like he's going to take a deep dive into German Idealism.

We start with the Lectures on Negative Dialectics (LND), which is based on recordings of Adorno's lectures in 1965-66, just after he'd completed the six-year task of writing the book. The lectures took place at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt. Unfortunately it looks like there were no extant recordings or transcripts for lectures 11 to 25, so we only have some notes for those. Even so, I think the first ten work as a nice introduction to ND, not least because they're much less condensed and difficult than his formal writings.


Geist

First, a reminder at the outset (largely for me) to keep in mind the translator's note. When the translation has "spiritual," the word Adorno is using is geistig, in the same way as used by Hegel.

The fact is that the term Geist falls somewhere between the available English words — spirit, mind, intellect — with all of which it also overlaps.

Editor's foreword

Most of the foreword is written from the standpoint of a familiarity with Adorno's theoretical philosophy and is therefore not very useful to us at this point. It focuses on three things:

1. Negative dialectics as advocating and exemplifying subjective philosophical/intellectual/spiritual experience, as opposed to (or as well as) a methodology

2. The attempt, with negative dialectics, to give "fair treatment" to the sphere of the non-conceptual, that in the world which exceeds our concepts, which Adorno believes is the proper concern of philosophy.

3. The method of constellations, designed to get around a huge problem produced by (2) above, namely that in giving fair treatment to the sphere of the non-conceptual, philosophy has no choice but to operate with concepts.

These will make more sense down the line, so I won't dwell on them now.


LND, Lecture 1

Adorno opens the lecture with a tribute to the recently deceased Christian philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich, revealing that Tillich had effectively saved Adorno's life by approving his Habilitation thesis in 1931, which allowed him to get a job at Oxford and thereby secure an exit visa to leave Germany in 1934, before the Nazis closed in. For us, this is not particularly relevant to negative dialectics, but it's much more than a mere personal tidbit, since it supplies some crucial biographical context for the development of his thinking, particularly the thinking that led to Dialectic of Enlightenment.

He begins the lecture proper by saying that due to time constraints he has decided to use his book, Negative Dialectics, as the material for the lectures, rather than create a course with its own dedicated material consisting of the results of his research. In the guise of a preliminary pedagogical remark, this is a clever way of introducing negative dialectics, making the case for a certain kind of philosophical practice:

[quote=p.4]I am very aware that objections may be raised to this procedure, in particular those of a positivist cast of mind will be quick to argue that as a university teacher my duty is to produce nothing but completed, cogent and watertight results. I shall not pretend to make a virtue of necessity, but I do believe that this view does not properly fit our understanding of the nature of philosophy; that philosophy is thought in a perpetual state of motion; and that, as Hegel, the great founder of dialectics, has pointed out, in philosophy the process is as important as the result; that, as he asserts in the famous passage in the Phenomenology, process and result are actually one and the same thing.[/quote]

The students are urged not to expect finished results, but rather, I would say, to share in that intellectual experience which is both the method and the content of his philosophy.

(Incidentally, Adorno in these lectures often addresses himself to the "positivists" in his audience, and seems to make reference to their various non-philosophical specialisms. This leads me to believe that the lectures were attended by, I'm guessing, postgraduate sociologists and psychologists, rather than just or even primarily philosophy students.)

He states the plan for the lecture course:

[quote=p.5]I should like to introduce you to the concept of negative dialectics as such. I should like then to move on to negative dialectics in the light of certain critical considerations drawn from the present state of philosophy.[/quote]

This brings him to considerations of justification by methodology, anticipating a question in the minds of his listeners and readers: "how does he actually arrive at this?" Related to the distinction of process vs. result, Adorno expresses here a scepticism about the familiar distinction of method vs. content:

[quote=p.5]I maintain that so-called methodological questions are themselves dependent upon questions of content.[/quote]

We might come back to this issue as we go through the lectures, but in a nutshell, Adorno criticizes philosophical method "in the precise sense," e.g., that of Descartes in his Discourse on the Method, as an attempt to force the world into a pre-established, abstract conceptual schema. As ready-made methodology applied to the matter at hand, it sees what it expects to see, because in its original formation it has been (a) abstracted too much from the real world and (b) ossified by its formalization. Not only that, but it elevates the rational subject, the philosopher, to the status of an arbitrating, neutral overseer. In contrast, dialectical thought emphasizes the entwinement of method and content, and of subject and object, thus of the philosopher and the world (hence the need, incidentally, for what is known in critical theory as immanent critique, critique as an inside job).

Moving on, next we get a simple definition: negative dialectics...

[quote=p.6]sets out to be a dialectics not of identity but of non-identity.[/quote]

I am not well-versed in Hegel, so I feel like making some small effort to answer the general question, what is dialectics, before looking at Adorno's explanation, and before looking at his own kind of dialectics and thus the question, what is non-identity?


What is dialectics?

Adorno warns us against the popular triadic formulation of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, which came from Fichte and which Hegel did not embrace wholeheartedly ("we sometimes see this form used in a way that degrades it to a lifeless schema" — Phenomenology of Spirit, §50). This warning is not only for the reason that the formulation is not very Hegelian, but also because to the extent that it is Hegelian, it emphasizes (I think) exactly the thing about Hegel that Adorno doesn't like: the neat wrapping up of contradictions in a positive synthesis (in negative dialectics, synthesis is downgraded).

And because I'm not familiar with it, I'm also going to avoid the formulation that Hegel does use, in the Encyclopedia Logic, i.e., abstract-dialectical-speculative. Hegelians reading this are welcome to go into that.

So, here goes. Dialectics is a way of thinking that actively traces the contradictions and movements within concepts and things, and avoids freezing them into definitions and treating things as fixed and complete. Dialectics is the way of thinking that recognizes — or put differently, the dialectic is — the process characterized by the instability of concepts and objects, in which concepts and objects are not graspable in their finality but are transformed through an inner, or immanent, mediation between their contradictory aspects.

An example, from the materialist end of the Hegelian spectrum, is capitalism. Dialectical thinking helps us see that capitalism is not a fixed, natural, eternal state of affairs, but is a moment (meaning a phase or a part) of a dialectical process, a dynamic phase in something ongoing.

And generating the dynamism of this process are contradictions. A couple of examples: the drive for profit has created the unprecedented means to meet human needs on a massive scale, but precisely that drive prevents production from being directed to satisfying those human needs; the freedom of the market, i.e., freedom of choice and the freedom to trade, is based on compulsion: most people have no choice but to sell their labour to survive.

Note the way that this account emphasizes mutual and immanent dependency: it is not that capitalism has created the means to meet human needs on a massive scale despite the profit motive; and it is not that the market is a domain of freedom despite compulsion.

It might be objected that dialectical thinking is not in fact required for all this. You don't have to be a dialectician to be an economic historian who understands the historical nature of capitalism, or to believe that society evolves. But it's notable that the historical nature of socioeconomic structures was not much appreciated prior to Hegel and Marx — or when it was, it was viewed in Enlightenment fashion as simple linear Progress. And this indicates the lasting value of dialectics: it's only dialectical thinking which is always on the alert, always sensitive to the existence, in the here and now, of tensions and potentials that can go unrecognized.

EDIT (I somehow lost this bit when I first posted it):

It follows that there are conventionally acceptable frozen concepts in use right now which dialectical thinking could usefully call into doubt. An example that springs to mind is consciousness. In a lot of philosophy, from the early moderns right up to present day analytic philosophy, consciousness is treated as a fixed property of individuals — perhaps with a locus in the brain — whereas if we take a dialectical approach we might think of it as socially embedded, as substantially a feature or product of the mediation between self and other instead of a product of the brain.

I won't elaborate on that any further, since what I'm trying to show right now is just that dialectical thought might still be useful, and might even remain the best way of thinking philosophically — and that it's not just an obsolete step in knowledge's forward march.


Why must everything be a matter of contradictions?

Another objection, which Adorno actually addresses on page 7 and 8, is that these tensions, conflicts, and discrepancies are not really contradictions, that calling them contradictions is at best metaphorical, and at worst the artifact of a fault in one's conceptual scheme, one's logic, or one's choice of language — and finally, that they can be dissolved just by framing things differently. Adorno is strongly motivated to convey to the audience that dialectics is definitely not merely figurative, suggestive, faulty, illogical, or a bewitchment of language, but really means what it says, logically and rigorously.

On page 7 he illustrates the meaning of contradiction in the concept using the example of freedom. The predicative statement "A is B" functions as an identity statement, A = B [what, generally?]:

Freedom = Self-determination as ensured by the constitution

But the concept of self-determination as defined in such a constitution doesn't capture everything that freedom is:

[quote=p.7]the concept of freedom contains a pointer to something that goes well beyond those specific freedoms, without our necessarily realizing what this additional element amounts to.[/quote]

He doesn't say what this something is, but we can guess: a life unmarked by coercion and compulsion in general, the ability to experience love and pleasure and beauty every day, the chance to exercise one's creativity and thereby to flourish. These are not covered by legal self-determination, thus the A = B identity statement is false, and in fact A ? B, thus we arrive at a contradiction in the concept of freedom.

What matters is that traditionally in logic one strives to get rid of contradictions, but in dialectics one faces up to them. It can't be denied that contradictions can be ironed out, but do we really want to do that? Dialectics says no, definitely not.

That Adorno quotation there also makes me think of Wittgenstein's family resemblances and the idea of open concepts. I don't know if it's worth going into that.

Anyway, what do you think? Is it the case that Hegel and Adorno are saying, generally, that a predicative judgment is actually an identity statement in disguise? I doubt this, since it seems to me obviously false and certainly controversial, but the way Adorno lays it out makes it look like the relevant concept of contradiction depends on this claim.


Part and whole

Another way of framing dialectics is in reference to the interdependence of the part and the whole (or particular and universal), which is an important (or the only?) site of contradiction, where the object is in tension with the concept. Dialectical thinking seeks to view the phenomenon as a manifestation of something larger, and thus seeks to go beyond the phenomenon to an expansive concept or system of concepts — but without leaving the phenomenon behind. To be known, the phenomenon cannot be apprehended alone (a dead specimen) and equally cannot be seen as a mere manifestation of something higher, as if all that mattered was this subsumption — but must also be seen anew in its double aspect as a manifestation and at the same time as living and active individual, living and active through its very participation in the whole.


The twofold structure of contradiction

Adorno says that the concept of contradiction has a twofold meaning:

1. The contradictory nature of the concept and the resulting contradiction between the concept and the thing to which it refers.

2. The contradictory nature of the thing itself — for Adorno's purposes, antagonistic society. [hide=*]The second meaning is not the "On the other hand" on page 7, but follows the "However, that is only one side of the matter" on page 8. This fits with the twofold meaning as set out in the notes.[/hide]

This brings him to the question: why does this "disharmony" exist? He gives a striking answer:

[quote=p.9]To put it in a nutshell, in both cases we are dealing with the principle of mastery, the mastery of nature, which spreads its influence, which continues in the mastery of men by other men and which finds its mental reflex in the principle of identity, by which I mean the intrinsic aspiration of all mind to turn every alterity that is introduced to it or that it encounters into something like itself and in this way to draw it into its own sphere of influence.[/quote]

This is probably now straying away from dialectics as such and towards specifically negative dialectics. Anyway, I'll end it here, and maybe in another post I'll take a stab, without straying beyond the first lecture, at that second question, specific to Adorno's philosophy of negative dialectics: what is non-identity?

Meanwhile, feel free to post about lecture 1 or about what I've said so far. But I'm in no rush.

@Count Timothy von Icarus, @frank: Welcome aboard. It'll be a while before we get to ND itself so I'll hold off commenting on the prologue and introduction.

Quoting Jamal

Dialectics is a way of thinking that actively traces the contradictions and movements within concepts and things, and avoids freezing them into definitions and treating things as fixed and complete.

@Joshs can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think by concept, we mean an overarching category. So we have the idea expressed by the word up. But this idea is not yet a concept. The concept is vertical direction, made up of the opposition between up and down. What makes vertical direction a concept is that its parts have no meaning except relative to one another. Ultimately, up is the direction that is not down, and vice versa.

With a lot of logic, we just follow along with intellectual necessity. Dialectic is not like this. It's a little startling to grasp that all the things you think of as having some kind of... positiveness, concreteness, weight, substance.. it's hard to pick the word that describes it. But it's that you always thought a word like masculinity gets its meaning from the things that are unique to masculinity. This would be a positive definition. When you see that it's actually one face of a two-sided coin, that it can't exist independently of that coin, it's like you've fallen into an idealist world. In other words, understanding dialectics should be accompanied by an "Oh shit!"

Quoting Jamal

I won't elaborate on that any further, since what I'm trying to show right now is just that dialectical thought might still be useful, and might even remain the best way of thinking philosophically — and that it's not just an obsolete step in knowledge's forward march.

If it's the best way of thinking philosophically, then it's true philosophy, and will never be obsolete so long as there are human beings.

I'll do what I can to keep up with the reading, but that's a lot of material. So I'm happy that you're in no rush.

Reply to frank I think I concur with your gist, but...

Quoting frank

When you see that it's actually one face of a two-sided coin, that it can't exist independently of that coin, it's like you've fallen into an idealist world. In other words, understanding dialectics should be accompanied by an "Oh shit!"

Marx, Adorno, Zizek, Malabou, Pippin and Brandom seem to have been able to go through that "oh shit!" moment without falling into idealism. We can ditch that, don't you think?

(Unless you just mean, not that you become an idealist, but that you fall into the world of Hegel and the German idealists)

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

If it's the best way of thinking philosophically, then it's true philosophy, and will never be obsolete so long as there are human beings.

But it's not obvious to me that so long as there are human beings, there will be true philosophy. But even if it does follow, maybe what matters more is whether such thinking prevails.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I'll do what I can to keep up with the reading, but that's a lot of material. So I'm happy that you're in no rush.

Great :smile:

I'd be interested to see others' thoughts on the objection that Adorno attempts to respond to: Why must everything be a matter of contradictions? In my example of market freedom quoted below — the market is a domain of freedom and the market is a domain of coercion — the contradiction can be dissolved by a re-framing that contains qualifications, and in a Left-wing manner too:

The market is a domain of freedom for these people and a domain of coercion for those people. No contradiction.

(Like, a zoo is not necessarily contradictory just because it allows people to walk in and out of its territory at will but doesn't allow the penguins to do the same)

I'll attempt my own answer. What has often mattered for Marxian dialectical thinkers (I'd hope there are non-Marxian examples too) is the critique of ideology, i.e., of the set of ideas that dominate in society. Like liberalism. Liberalism, roughly speaking, maintains that the market just is a domain of freedom simpliciter, since legally it is equally free to anyone, and how you make use of that freedom to secure your income is up to you, and wage-work is a contractual arrangement made between two free and equal parties, everyone is equal before the law, and so on. Liberalism has to do this because, roughly speaking, it denies that liberal-democratic capitalist society is essentially class-based or structured according to the relations of production.

So what's happening here is that you refuse to allow the contradiction to be dissolved because you are taking the liberals at their word to expose their contradictory ideology. However, I guess this suggests that the contradiciton is only in the ideas, not in capitalist reality itself, and it occurs to me that this is an old debate in Marxism that I wouldn't want to get bogged down in — though I would like to see what people think about the status of contradictions. It's important for the reading because Adorno maintains that the contradicitons are indeed in reality, not only in concepts.

Quoting Jamal

A couple of examples: the drive for profit has created the unprecedented means to meet human needs on a massive scale, but precisely that drive prevents production from being directed to satisfying those human needs; the freedom of the market, i.e., freedom of choice and the freedom to trade, is based on compulsion: most people have no choice but to sell their labour to survive.

Note the way that this account emphasizes mutual and immanent dependency: it is not that capitalism has created the means to meet human needs on a massive scale despite the profit motive; and it is not that the market is a domain of freedom despite compulsion.

Quoting Jamal

Marx, Adorno, Zizek, Malabou, Pippin and Brandom seem to have been able to go through that "oh shit!" moment without falling into idealism. We can ditch that, don't you think?

Yes. But when Adorno talks about materiality, he's talking about the unintelligible or the unidentified. He's not talking about rocks.

Reply to frank

I think I see what you mean. Adorno doesn’t like idealism because it’s too arrogant, presuming an identity between subject and object, not because he denies a subject-object intertwinement (which, however, is non-totalizing).

Quoting Jamal

Adorno doesn’t like idealism because it’s too arrogant, presuming an identity between subject and object, not because he denies a subject-object intertwinement (which, however, is non-totalizing).

I agree. The path that led me to that feeling of being in a world of ideas would have eventually shown me that I don't have it all figured out (as Hegel seemed to). I just needed to follow it further.

In a way, materialism is about being open to what I don't know yet, don't grasp yet. It's about allowing the process of understanding to be forever open ended.

Reply to frank

That’s suitably dialectical, and agreeable.

Quoting Jamal

As for the lectures, copies of LND are widely available, but let me know if you have trouble locating one.

I've been searching, but haven't found anything free online yet, and it's an expensive book.

Quoting Jamal

Why must everything be a matter of contradictions?

From what I've read in a free sampling of LND, his idea of "contradiction" is not really conventional. It seems more like difference, or contradicting in the sense that not-same negates sameness.

It is that the concept of contradiction will play a central role here, more
particularly, the contradiction in things themselves, contradiction in
the concept, not contradiction between concepts. At the same time –
and I am sure that you will not fail to see that this is in a certain
sense the transposition or development of a Hegelian motif – the
concept of contradiction has a twofold meaning. On the one hand,
as I have already intimated, we shall be concerned with the contradictory
nature of the concept. What this means is that the concept enters
into contradiction with the thing to which it refers.

So he goes on to explain this difference between concept, as a sort of whole (perhaps a type), and the individuals or particulars which are named by the concept. There is a specified sameness which each particular has, which forms the concept, by abstraction, and since the concept does not include every aspect of each individual, it is in that sense less than the individual. However, at the same time, the concept mysteriously has something more than that abstracted value, which extends beyond that entire set of individuals, and this is what provides it with the potential to be applied indefinitely. I believe that his is the basis of that "contradictory nature of the concept". It is at the same time less than each individual thing, but also more than all the individual things.

When a B is defined as an A, it is always also different from and more than the A, the
concept under which it is subsumed by way of a predicative judge
ment. On the other hand, however, in a sense every concept is at the
same time more than the characteristics that are subsumed under it.

Here is another important aspect of his outlook:

I shall not pretend to make a virtue of necessity, but I do believe that this view
does not properly fit our understanding of the nature of philosophy;
that philosophy is thought in a perpetual state of motion; and
that, as Hegel, the great founder of dialectics, has pointed out, in
philosophy the process is as important as the result; that, as he asserts
in the famous passage in the Phenomenology, process and result are
actually one and the same thing.

...

...I do not recognize the usual distinction between method and content...

I believe that it is important to note this position, because it denies the assumed separation between the means and the end. In one sense, the appearance that teleology is avoided can be created this way, by saying all is process, and there is no desire for conclusion. However, it's just an appearance, as the end is now the means, so priority is placed on perfecting the method. In this way, it may be possible to come as close as possible to avoiding prejudice, by having no preconceived goal to influence the direction of the process.

It's interesting that he positions Hegel as the founder of dialectics rather than Plato. It appears to me, like what Adorno is offering is a dialectics more closely related to Plato's than Hegel's. He dismisses "synthesis" completely, and focuses on a deconstruction of the concept. It may be characterized as deconstructionist. This is very similar to the Platonic dialectical method. Plato took varying definitions of the same term to break down the assumed concept, and expose contradiction within the supposed "concept", demonstrating its weaknesses. it is a skeptical method.

Reply to Jamal

Thank you for your effort and commitment to advancing Adorno’s philosophical project. While my familiarity with his works is still limited, I greatly appreciate his influential anti-fascist and anti-oppressive positions.

Quoting Jamal

Dialectics is a way of thinking that actively traces the contradictions and movements within concepts and things, and avoids freezing them into definitions and treating things as fixed and complete. Dialectics is the way of thinking that recognizes — or put differently, the dialectic is — the process characterized by the instability of concepts and objects, in which concepts and objects are not graspable in their finality but are transformed through an inner, or immanent, mediation between their contradictory aspects.

Quoting Jamal

I'd be interested to see others' thoughts on the objection that Adorno attempts to respond to: Why must everything be a matter of contradictions? In my example of market freedom quoted below — the market is a domain of freedom and the market is a domain of coercion — the contradiction can be dissolved by a re-framing that contains qualifications, and in a Left-wing manner too:
The market is a domain of freedom for these people and a domain of coercion for those people. No contradiction.

It would be benefitial to explore how the thorough method of employing contradictions aligns with the focus on non-identity. Your definition of negative dialectics emphasizes a process of mediation between contradictory aspects. As a result, the opposites should dissolve their identity through a different form of difference that both preserves their appearance and displaces them. But what can prevent here the emergence of another form of identity? For Žižek, the Marxist method of maintaining oppositions has come to represent a form of ideological presumption. “The 'progressive' tradition also bears witness to numerous attempts to conceive (sexual, class) antagonism as the coexistence of two opposed positive entities: from a certain kind of 'dogmatic' Marxism that posits 'their' bourgeois science and 'our' proletarian science side by side, to a certain kind of feminism that posits masculine discourse and
feminine discourse or 'writing' side by side. Far from being 'too extreme', these attempts are, on the contrary, not extreme enough: they presuppose as their position of enunciation a third neutral medium within which the two poles coexist; that is to say, they back down on the consequences of the fact that there is no point of convergence, no neutral ground shared by the two antagonistic sexual or class positions” ( Zizek, ‘Mapping ideology’, p 23)
It is precisely the implicit neutral position that creates a blind spot, enabling the return of identity and sustaining an ideological function. Žižek’s solution is to relate the mediating process to a different form of Otherness, one that cannot serve as an anchoring point for defining the subject’s identity. Regarding your example of the market situation, it suggests that the same people could simultaneously exercise their freedom in some respects while being affected by coercion in others."

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Having started the introduction but with no specific quotations in mind, my impression is that "contradiction of concept" may also refer to the tension between the thing and the noetic thing/concept. That is, a concept at the same time is and is not that that it conceptualizes.

Or, thought, that is to say negation, concretizes itself so that the thing is what it is to the mind, thereby negating, in a sense, the real individual thing and replacing it with a conceptual/mental object. Concretion?

Just a hypothesis so far.

Reply to Number2018

Thank you for your contribution, Number. I'm not sure how to answer until I know more, and I'm not familiar with Žižek's critique. My suspicion is that either Žižek is wrong, or you are wrong in using Žižek to critique Adorno. It remains to be demonstrated that Adorno does what you or Žižek says he does rather than doing the cool radical thing that Žižek thinks he is doing himself. On the face of it, what Žižek seeks to do doesn't seem far from what I see as Adorno's goal, though one can seriously doubt that the latter's thinking leads anywhere good, politically. But the idea that Adorno ends up on neutral ground doesn't really fit with how I read his Dialectic of Enlightenment and Minima Moralia, where (arguably) we see negative dialectics in action.

But basically it's too early for me to get into those debates, and maybe you're right.

Quoting Number2018

It is precisely the implicit neutral position that creates a blind spot, enabling the return of identity and sustaining an ideological function. Žižek’s solution is to relate the mediating process to a different form of Otherness, one that cannot serve as an anchoring point for defining the subject’s identity. Regarding your example of the market situation, it suggests that the same people could simultaneously exercise their freedom in some respects while being affected by coercion in others."

Interestingly, I think this part of your Žižekian critique of Adorno is actually a pretty good defence of Adorno, because it goes some way to answering my sceptical doubt about Adorno's position (which I imagine is shared by Žižek) that reality itself is contradictory, that the contradictions are not just in and between the concepts that are applied to it. My reframing, to remove the contradiction, was hasty and thoughtless; as you point out, things are more complex, and (I want to put it stronger than this but I'm not sure how) we need to keep ourselves open to the existence of contradictions. Because that is how we actually experience the world. (that's a bit better)

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Your interpretations look good to me MU.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

It's interesting that he positions Hegel as the founder of dialectics rather than Plato. It appears to me, like what Adorno is offering is a dialectics more closely related to Plato's than Hegel's. He dismisses "synthesis" completely, and focuses on a deconstruction of the concept. It may be characterized as deconstructionist. This is very similar to the Platonic dialectical method. Plato took varying definitions of the same term to break down the assumed concept, and expose contradiction within the supposed "concept", demonstrating its weaknesses. it is a skeptical method.

That's quite interesting. I forgot to go back to Plato when I was describing dialectics. When I last read the Republic, last year, it actually helped to think of it in more Hegelian terms, along the lines of this:

[quote=Hegel, Science of Logic]It is in this dialectic as it is here understood, that is, in the grasping of opposites in their unity or of the positive in the negative, that speculative thought consists.[/quote]

Applied to up and down, light and shadow, knowledge and opinion, to name a few of Plato's polarities, we're able to see that Plato is not often simply saying one is bad and the other is good, or similar.

Anyway, your idea that Adorno is more Platonic in his dialectics than he is Hegelian is interesting. I guess you're referring to the Socratic method in the more dialectical of the dialogues, i.e., the earlier ones that end in aporia. Yeah, that's a good observation I think. Just as Adorno aims to preserve the contradictions, Socrates exposes the contradictions in his interlocutors' opinions, and just leaves it there, without a synthesis.

So maybe we can say, not that Adorno was a Platonic post-Hegelian, but that he was a Socratic one.

Quoting Jamal

So maybe we can say, not that Adorno was a Platonic post-Hegelian, but that he was a Socratic one.

I'm fine with that, but I generally look at what you call "the Socratic method" as the Platonic method. This is how Socrates is portrayed in Plato's dialogues, so this method is really indicative of Plato's thought process.

It's very good to separate the Platonic method (Platonic dialectics) from Platonism, because the latter has developed a meaning in modern usage which is actually in contradiction with what Plato expressed. "Platonism" is commonly understood as the conception of eternal unchanging ideas. But this is exactly the concept which Plato subjected to skepticism, with what you call the Socratic method. Following Plato, you'll see that Aristotle continued with a full refutation of Pythagorean idealism (my name for what is now called "Platonism"), by applying the concept of potential, and he also started on a reconstruction, a sort of synthesis where potential, as "matter", plays a very important role. Classical Neo-Platonists on the other hand attempted to cling to the vestigials of Pythagoreanism, forcing "matter" into the world of mysticism.

Also, I think for context, it would very useful to understand the ancient notion of contradiction. This is a logical principle expressed by Parmenides as the difference between being and not being. Being and not being are understood not in an absolute sense, as we are prone to think of these, but in a qualitative sense as "B is A", and "B is not A". This is the way that the ancients understood change, as a thing moving from being what it is, to not being what it was. So change was understood as active contradiction, supported by a temporal separation between the contrary states.

It wasn't until Aristotle's work, that the principles of predication were firmly established. Aristotle defined the separation between subject and predicate. This allowed that the subject could maintain its identity as "B", and contradiction was relegated to its predicates, "is A", "is not A". In this way, a thing, with its identity as itself, could never evolve into not being itself, because what changes, or moves between contradictories, is the thing's properties. Hegel subjected this idea "identity" to skepticism, doubting the need to assume an underlying subject which maintains its identity as itself. This forces us back to reconsider the pre-Socratic notion, that the entirety of a thing's being is negated at each moment of change.

Hegel, Science of Logic:It is in this dialectic as it is here understood, that is, in the grasping of opposites in their unity or of the positive in the negative, that speculative thought consists.

I don't think "contradiction" is a good word for it. It's an inextricably bound opposition. It's the yin-yang symbol.

Quoting Jamal

The market is a domain of freedom for these people and a domain of coercion for those people. No contradiction.

Right . It's not a contradiction. It's that we understand the concept of freedom by comparing it to its negation: a lack of freedom. It's just like Merleau-Ponty's dot. You know about the black dot because of the white background it contrasts with. The existence of the black dot is dependent on its background.

Most things are like that. We know what freedom is because we're contrasting it with a background of un-freedom. Where we find that un-freedom in the world depends on our agendas.

Quoting Jamal

We start with the Lectures on Negative Dialectics (LND), which is based on recordings of Adorno's lectures in 1965-66, just after he'd completed the six-year task of writing the book. The lectures took place at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt. Unfortunately it looks like there were no extant recordings or transcripts for lectures 11 to 25, so we only have some notes for those. Even so, I think the first ten work as a nice introduction to ND, not least because they're much less condensed and difficult than his formal writings.

Caught up to LND Lecture 2. I'm fine with just doing the first 10 then hopping over. The SEP and LND offer some exciting reasons to keep going -- not least of which is that by hearing him contrast himself to Hegel it gives me a better feel for Hegel (and, in these first bits I've read, it appears we share a suspicion of Hegel's claims to the Absolute Method, so Adorno's treatment of dialectics is easier for me to swallow)

Reply to Jamal What I'm latching onto at the moment is the bit where Adorno says he is de-emphasizing the role of synthesis in the dialectical process, and..."one motif of such a negative dialectics is to try to find out why I resist the concept of synthesis so strongly"

I'm not sure that everything must be contradiction, but rather there are positive uses for a dialectics rather than it being what is often thought: a fanciful way of talking that can be reduced to a logic of identity.

The capitalist example rings true to me -- people who don't own property and have to sell their labor to live don't have the same material interests as those who own property and hire people in order to direct their labor for exploitation. Master and Slave from Hegel is another example that makes sense to me of the dialectical relationship -- both defining and being in conflict with one another.

Quoting Moliere

What I'm latching onto at the moment is the bit where Adorno says he is de-emphasizing the role of synthesis in the dialectical process, and..."one motif of such a negative dialectics is to try to find out why I resist the concept of synthesis so strongly"

Yeah it’s interestingly odd that he openly states that a motif — maybe we can say a theme — of his philosophy is working out why he hates synthesis so much, as if it's a journey of self-discovery. As if his personal antipathy to synthesis is a clue to what's bad about it.

So the way I see it, synthesis represents the positive, hence Adorno's negative dialectics — though he has other reasons for opposing positivity too, with different senses of positivity in mind. In one of the lectures, as I recall (I read bits a couple of years ago) he seems to criticize the ordinary everyday sort of annoying attitude that today is called "toxic positivity". He's not above an opposition to that sort of popular cultural phenomenon, and I've been thinking about that part of his critique in the context of my interest in optimism vs hope, etc.

Quoting Moliere

The capitalist example rings true to me -- people who don't own property and have to sell their labor to live don't have the same material interests as those who own property and hire people in order to direct their labor for exploitation. Master and Slave from Hegel is another example that makes sense to me of the dialectical relationship -- both defining and being in conflict with one another.

I also really liked Adorno's example of nuclear weapons:

the ability of our society to withstand crises, an ability that is generally held to be one of its finest achievements, is directly linked to the growth in its potential for technological self-destruction.

Quoting Moliere

I'm not sure that everything must be contradiction

But contradictions are absolutely central, and he emphasizes that he doesn’t just mean discrepancies (nor, we can assume, does he just mean tensions, antagonisms, or inextricably bound oppositions (in @frank’s words), so that’s why I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of the contradiction concept.

So, going back to a question of mine...

Quoting Jamal

Is it the case that Hegel and Adorno are saying, generally, that a predicative judgment is actually an identity statement in disguise?

Adorno does seem to say that logic treats predicative judgments as if they were extensions of the law of identity, as if we could go straight from ?x, x = x to A = B, and formal logic couldn’t tell the difference. But we know that formal logic does not in fact allow this, so what's going on?

The answer has to be that he's not claiming that this confusion occurs within formal logic itself. What he's saying is that in philosophical and scientific thought — and perhaps also in, say, law, military strategy, and business administration — insofar as they lay claim to logical rigour, there is a tendency to collapse the distinction. So predicative judgments come to be treated as if they were identity statements, and whatever resists full identity is experienced as contradiction. We saw this with his freedom example.

This leads back to the questions: (1) Are dialectical contradictions actual contradictions? (2) Are the contradictions in concepts only or both in concepts and also in the reality that the concepts are about? At least it’s clear what Adorno believes (yes and both).

Quoting Jamal

o the way I see it, synthesis represents the positive, hence Adorno's negative dialectics

I wonder if it's because synthesis seems to offer a final answer: as if we've arrived at the Real out of the darkness of shifting meaning. But even the idea of synthesis has an opposite. And the Absolute, which represents final unity, also has to be conceived against a backdrop of disunity. The method never ends.

Quoting Jamal

But contradictions are absolutely central, and he emphasizes that he doesn’t just mean discrepancies (nor, we can assume, does he just mean tensions, antagonisms, or inextricably bound oppositions (in frank’s words), so that’s why I’ve been trying to get to the bottom of the contradiction concept.

If that's true, we aren't really talking about Hegel. Hegel's logic isn't about contradiction per se. It's about oppositions. But I think there are parts of Marx (where he's talking about supply and demand?) that have been taken by some to be an exercise in dialectic, but on closer examination, it's not. It's just an inverse relationship.

Quoting frank

I wonder if it's because synthesis seems to offer a final answer: as if we've arrived at the Real out of the darkness of shifting meaning. But even the idea of synthesis has an opposite. And the Absolute, which represents final unity, also has to be conceived against a backdrop of disunity. The method never ends.

Yes, and some would accuse Adorno of misinterpreting Hegel at this juncture.

Quoting frank

If that's true, we aren't really talking about Hegel. Hegel's logic isn't about contradiction per se. It's about oppositions.

Yes, point taken, but we’re talking about lecture 1, where he makes out like it’s more about contradiction than anything else.

Reply to Jamal Yes.

There's only one thing that I can't let go of -- I think that judgments of the form "A is B, A = B" are the identity statements, but I'm not sure that Adorno's claiming that all predicative judgments are secretly of this form.

But yes to everything else. Just rereading the paragraph where he's talking about this:

.Any such predicative judgement that A is B, that A = B, contains a highly emphatic claim...etc.

So I read the subject of the sentence as all judgments of the form A is B, rather than stating that all judgments fit the form.

But this is very minor. I find your interpretation helpful in reviewing the lecture, and find no qualms in it.

Reply to Jamal
Ok. I think later in Negative Dialectics he tries to work through examples. Maybe that will clarify it for me. Do you speak German?

Reply to Moliere

I’m still a bit confused about that too. I think it’s because he kind of rushes through it impatiently. But maybe we are just getting hung up on something minor.

Otherwise :cool:

Quoting frank

Do you speak German?

No, and please, no more of these frankisms (random questions with mysterious hidden motivations).

Quoting Jamal

No, and please, no more of these frankisms (random questions with mysterious hidden motivations).

I thought maybe you could read the lecture in German and talk about the translation. I would suspect the translation before deciding that Adorno didn't understand dialect.

Reply to frank

I see what you mean, good point :up:

I’m just going to have to remember to compare translations or check the original when we get stuck.

Reply to Jamal Yeh, fair enough.

Also, more thoughts on the same subject --

I'm wondering to what extent Adorno is distinguishing himself from Hegel and Kant's conception of logic, and whether or not his negative dialectics would be read in a sort of the logic of objects sense, or propositional logic, or what-have-you.

For instance here I'm thinking about how for Kant the form of a judgment is--

I think = "X", where "X" is of the form "A is B", which themselves are governed by the categories in some fashion. So when we have "I think"red balloon float"" what we mean, logically, is "I think there is an object which is red" and "I think there is an object which is a balloon" and "I think there is an object which floats" and "I think these are all the very same object" (EDIT: Just to give an idea of what I'm thinking through -- the forms of thought and how we render them into sentences here and how Adorno means what he means)

And how we now have Adorno's rendition of Hegel as well as his own account of himself to compare all this with -- getting a sense for "What do we include in the category "logic"?"

EDIT: FWIW, I'm not satisfied with that at all. I remain interested because these are the things I find hard to articulate.

Reply to Moliere

That might be a big topic! I might say something about it tomorrow.

Quoting Jamal

Yeah it’s interestingly odd that he openly states that a motif — maybe we can say a theme — of his philosophy is working out why he hates synthesis so much, as if it's a journey of self-discovery. As if his personal antipathy to synthesis is a clue to what's bad about it.

Heh. If the translation is giving the right meaning I'd quote it as an example of how philosophy is often a work on the self, even when directed to other ends and not emphasizing that.

Quoting Jamal

I also really liked Adorno's example of nuclear weapons:

I was hesitant but upon rethinking I can see it with respect to international relations -- them's with nukes get more power so countries want nukes in order to have power and these are the very things which would make the pursuit of power pointless -- because we'll all die.

Reply to Jamal Cool. If not no worries -- I think it's a huge topic that I return to all the time and then get lost in. :D

Reply to frank eh, I can read German well enough to check for trolling, but I have no faith in myself beyond that. I'd just be guessing based on my understanding of the English I think. (Once upon a time I made a mistake with respect to spot checking -- not that the other translation is wrong, just started to notice how the Pluhar translation has a particular interpretation which doesn't match the others -- not in drastic ways, only on those points where people start saying what Kant *really* meant lol)

Reply to Jamal Quoting Jamal

what Žižek seeks to do doesn't seem far from what I see as Adorno's goal, though one can seriously doubt that the latter's thinking leads anywhere good, politically. But the idea that Adorno ends up on neutral ground doesn't really fit with how I read his Dialectic of Enlightenment and Minima Moralia, where (arguably) we see negative dialectics in action.

Likely, there was a double misunderstanding: first, I misunderstood your interpretation of the example of the market situation as an illustration of Adorno’s notion of contradiction. And second, you misinterpreted my quote from “Mapping Ideology” as Zizek’s attempt to criticize Adorno. His target was Orthodox Marxism as well as Althusser’s structural Marxism. And I think that you are right and Zizek is
quite close to Adorno.

Quoting Jamal

reality itself is contradictory, that the contradictions are not just in and between the concepts that are applied to it. Things are more complex, and (I want to put it stronger than this but I'm not sure how) we need to keep ourselves open to the existence of contradictions. Because that is how we actually experience the world. (that's a bit better)

I agree with your last point and will try to elaborate on it. Likely, Adorno’s notion of contradiction is unseparated from his approach to non-identity, which is not a concept itself, but a major domain
of contradiction’s application. Let me bring a quote from Henry Pickford article on Adorno.
article

"Under current conditions the only way for philosophy to give priority to the object is dialectically, Adorno argues. He describes dialectics as the attempt to recognize the nonidentity between thought and the object while carrying out the project of conceptual identification. Dialectics is “the consistent consciousness of nonidentity,” and contradiction, its central category, is “the nonidentical under the aspect of identity.” Thought itself forces this emphasis on contradiction upon us, he says. To think is to identify, and thought can achieve truth only by identifying. So the semblance (Schein) of total identity lives within thought itself, mingled with thought’s truth (Wahrheit). The only way to break through the semblance of total identity is immanently, using the concept. Accordingly, everything that is qualitatively different and that resists conceptualization will show up as a contradiction. “The contradiction is the nonidentical under the aspect of [conceptual] identity; the primacy of the principle of contradiction in dialectics tests the heterogeneous according to unitary thought [Einheitsdenken]. By colliding with its own boundary [Grenze], unitary thought surpasses itself. Dialectics is the consistent consciousness of nonidentity.”
If I understand this quote correctly, the domain of non-identity refers to a complex sphere of (non)relations between our conceptual schemes and the world. The vast complexity of reality eludes our intellectual efforts. However, what is contradictory is not reality itself, but the ongoing disarray and imbalance between our actual experience, our sense of things, and the totality of our intellectual apparatus.

Reply to Number2018
I think the contradiction he's talking about is that we treat something like the Absolute as a substantial thing (substantial in the Aristotelian sense, as an independent thing).

But we can show that the Absolute isn't independent after all. We conceive if it against a background of disunity, the non-Absolute. This situation generalizes.

"It collides with its own boundary". He's saying it as poetically as he possibly can.

The meaning of "non-identity", and the importance of "contradiction" is presented on page 8. Simply put, "A=B" seems to imply that A is identical with B, as an identity statement. However, evidence indicates that B is not A. This demonstrates that identity in this form is actually a "coercion" of logic, where we are coerced to accept A=B as identity. If we do not accept this coercion, then A=B as identity, is viewed as self-contradictory itself. Such resistance to this coercion is also characterized as contradiction, allowing the law of non-contradiction to be applied in support of the coercion. Therefore, we accept one or the other, and deny the one not accepted, as contradictory. But either way, contradiction is the base of our thinking. One concept of "contradiction" contradicts the other so that the two oppose each other. The view of "non-identity", I conclude, is the view that sees the identity claim of "A=B" as self-contradicting.

Now you may well say, this discrepancy is not necessarily a
contradiction. But I believe that it offers us a first insight into the necessity
of dialectical thinking. Any such predicative judgement that A is B,
that A = B, contains a highly emphatic claim. It is implied, firstly,
that A and B are truly identical. Their non-identity not only does not
become manifest; if it does manifest itself, then according to the
traditional rules of logic, predicative logic, that identity is disputed. Or
else we say: the proposition A = B is self-contradictory because our
experience and our perception tell us that B is not A. Thus because
the forms of our logic practise this coercion on identity, whatever
resists this coercion necessarily assumes the character of a contradiction.
If, therefore, as I observed at the outset, the concept of contradiction
plays such a central role in a negative dialectics, the explanation
for it is to be found in the structure of logical thought itself, which
is defined by many logicians (though not in the way it operates in the
various current trends in mathematical logic) by the validity of the
law of contradiction. And what this means then is that everything
that contradicts itself is to be excluded from logic – and, in fact,
everything that does not fit in with this positing of identity does
contradict itself. Thus the fact that our entire logic and hence our
entire thinking is built upon this concept of contradiction or its denial
is what justifies us in treating the concept of contradiction as a central
concept in a dialectics, and in subjecting it to further analysis.

He ends the lecture with a question about his use of "negative" as a defining term of his dialectics:

Given that the concept of dialectics contains the element
of negativity precisely because of the presence of contradiction, does
this not mean that every dialectics is a negative dialectics and that
my introduction of the word ‘negative’ is a kind of tautology?

He outlines the issues derived from Hegel, how thought itself acts to negate, seeming to imply that the subject needs to negate itself, but the question is left to be fully answered at a later time.

LND, Lecture 1 (continued)

I hope nobody minds these mini-essays; they help me to get to grips with the reading, and I hope to respond to others later.

I want to look at identity and nonidentity. They're so central to Adorno's philosophy, and he starts using the terms at the very beginning of the lecture course, but as far as I can see he never really defines them.

Negative dialectics...

[quote=p.6]sets out to be a dialectics not of identity but of non-identity. We are concerned here with a philosophical project that does not presuppose the identity of being and thought, nor does it culminate in that identity. Instead it will attempt to articulate the very opposite, namely the divergence of concept and thing, subject and object, and their unreconciled state.[/quote]

I think of identity in two ways:

(a) Subject-object identity: identity between the concept and the thing, the prioritization of the subject and the loss of aspects of reality in the act of conceptualization. This is what Adorno is referring to as the identity of being and thought, but there's another side to it...

(b) Object-object identity: identity between the objects brought under the concept, the flattening out of difference, the loss of thisness.

Different commentators vary in their focus. Brian O'Connor goes for subject-object:

[quote=Brian O'Connor, Adorno, p.200]identity: A misunderstanding of the relationship between subject and object in which the concepts or systems of concepts of a subject (person, philosopher, scientist, etc.) are taken to be identical with the object. This misunderstanding is not primarily philosophical: it is determined by the prevailing form of social reason (instrumental reason) which is geared towards ‘the domination of nature’.[/quote]

Alison Stone goes for object-object first and then links it back to subject-object:

[quote=Alison Stone, "Adorno and Logic"]When I conceptualize something as an instance of a kind, I see it as identical to all other instances of the same kind. This means that conceptual thinking gives me no knowledge about what is unique in a thing, for example, about what is special about this dog as distinct from all other dogs. Having no access to what is unique, conceptual thinking sees it only as an instance of a kind. In that sense, one “identifies” things with the universal kinds under which one takes them to fall.[/quote]

(Incidentally @Moliere, that essay by Alison Stone is quite interesting for placing Adorno in the context of logic in connection with Kant and Hegel)

It probably works like this: subject-object identity is the primary source of the problem, and object-object identity is a consequence. In other words, our cognitive hubris leads to the erasure of difference among things in the world.

When Adorno makes a distinction between presupposition and culmination in saying that negative dialects is "a philosophical project that does not presuppose the identity of being and thought, nor does it culminate in that identity," there is more to it than meets the eye. I think it presumes the following breakdown of subject-object identity:

1. Epistemological identity: thought can fully capture what it is that the thought is about. The idea behind this is an expected identity, an expectation that reality can be reduced to a concept.

2. Ontological identity: if being is no more than thought then reality is made of thought and we have metaphysical idealism, and that's where Hegel goes. If one cannot think the object, know it, attain objectivity concerning it, without concepts, and concepts capture being completely, according to (1), then objectivity and truth are conceptual through and through. It's a short step from there to the claim that thought is not just a medium but is rather the unfolding of reality itself. Reality is itself entirely conceptual, the real is the rational.

(BTW, my very un-Adornian architectonic, with breakdowns, numbered lists, bullet-points etc., is just an aid to thinking rather than an attempt to uncover the secret structure of Adorno's philosophy, so don't take it too seriously)

But what about that "short step"? On reflection, it's not really such a short a step from conceptual mediation to full-on idealism. Is it important to understand Hegel's justification? I'm thinking not, but in any case we know that Adorno is against it.

But that's not all he's against: he's against (1) as well. In some ways he prefers to stick with Kant, to keep in mind the limits of thought; after all, I've said a few times recently that Adorno's philosophy demonstrates humility in the face of reality. But where he differs from Kant, I'm thinking, is that he believes it's possible, not to bridge the phenomena-noumena gap like Hegel, but to stand by the edge, gazing across in wonder to the other side — and to stay there, not walk away as Kant does. This is sounding mystical, but I think Adorno will deny it is, since what it will amount to is a way of making space for the nonidentical in conceptual reflection after all.

So, going back to his statement that negative dialectics neither presupposes not culminates in identity, we can see that he is not just against the metaphysical idealist conclusion (the culmination) but is also against the epistemological premise (presupposition). The problem of identity thinking starts early, and is a problem even when it doesn't lead to full-on metaphysical idealism (especially when, as it turns out).

In what I've been saying, I seem to be equating the nonidentical with things in themselves. Is that right, I wonder?

Well, not exactly, because the nonidentical is present in experience, featuring importantly in our lives; the nonidentical comes along with the objects of experience rather than being left behind in the noumenal realm, even if it remains unshaped by the understanding (an impossible situation for Kant). Another way of saying this is that unlike things in themselves, the nonidentical does not remain unavoidably indeterminate. I guess this casts some doubt on my metaphor of gazing across the gap.

Anyway, what's so bad about identity?

• The administered society: Bureaucratic systems reduce individuals to case files and numbers. Individuals are treated according to general rules or categories, regardless of their unique characteristics and situations.
• Mass culture: Entertainment is formulaic rather than allowing for genuine artistic novelty. Sameness under the guise of variety and freedom of choice.
• Enlightenment and scientific rationality: Science often treats the world as fully intelligible through quantification and classification. What cannot be measured or conceptualized is dismissed as irrelevant or even non-existent. This is the expectation I was talking about, the confidence that the concept can exhaust the object. I wrote something about that in reference to wolf-packs in the "Magical powers" thread a couple of years ago.
• Stereotyping and prejudice: Individuals are treated merely as representatives of group identities — race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation — and their unique features are ignored. Individuals are collapsed into presumed essences. Note that as a critique this works against aspects of Left-wing thought as well as Right.
• Philosophical systems: Hegel, despite the dialectical subtlety that impresses Adorno so much, finally prioritizes his totalizing system, in which contradictions are ultimately resolved on the side of the subject.
• The economy: This is especially significant for Adorno and from what I've read he uses it as a model of identity thinking quite often. In capitalist exchange, unique objects are reduced to abstract equivalents, i.e., money. The particular is subsumed under the general category of commodity, erasing qualitative differences for the sake of exchangeability. Everything becomes fungible and is otherwise devalued.

So identity thinking is everywhere.

[quote=Blackwell Companion to Adorno, p.470]According to Adorno, the most fundamental form of ideology, serving perhaps as a kind of meta?theory of ideology, is identity itself[/quote]

So identity thinking for Adorno is the basic template for ideology. Identity is the primitive or underlying form of these variously bad ways of thinking (and of treating people).

With all of that, we can see why nonidentity is at the centre of Adorno's philosophy. It is what resists all that identity thinking that produces suffering, oppression, and the flattening of life.

Well, I've spent a lot of time looking at identity, and that pretty much works as a negative definition of nonidentity.

But here's another couple of useful definitions:

[quote=Brian O'Connor, Adorno]nonidentity: What concepts or systems of concepts do not capture in an object is its irreducible particularity. In any act of conceptualization, therefore, there will be nonidentity because there can be no final identity between concepts and the object. The nonidentical properties of an object are not indeterminate (in the manner of Kant’s thing-in-itself ). They are what actually constitute the object’s ‘own identity’ though they are elusive to concepts.[/quote]

[quote=Blackwell Companion to Adorno, p.145]The nonidentical are dissonant particular qualities of our material and ideological world that resist categories, push against containers, and rebel against smooth logics and harmonious equations.[/quote]

[quote=Alison Stone, "Adorno and Logic"]However, it is possible in principle to recognize that things are never simply identical to these kinds (or to the other instances of a given kind) but always have a unique side as well. Adorno does not assert that things are wholly unique. He believes that things can be brought under concepts. But falling under concepts is not all there is to things. Each thing is also unique; this aspect of things is the “nonidentical” element in them – that element by virtue of which things are identical neither to the kinds they embody nor to other instances of those kinds.[/quote]

One minor puzzle: what about the nonconceptual? Nonidentical and nonconceptual point in the same general direction, and they overlap, but to what degree do they have the same extension? The nonidentical is specifically whatever resists and eludes conceptual capture, whereas the nonconceptual seems to be a more neutral term, pointing to a posited (for methodological or linguistic convenience) mind-independent reality, or the objective pole of the subject-object opposition, treated as if prior to conceptualization (there is an uninterpreted reality, at least notionally).

There must be a pretty close parallel: to identify, to make identical in thought — this is a way of describing conceptualization. So what escapes this, the nonidentical, is at the same time the nonconceptual.

That'll do.

Quoting Moliere

I'm wondering to what extent Adorno is distinguishing himself from Hegel and Kant's conception of logic, and whether or not his negative dialectics would be read in a sort of the logic of objects sense, or propositional logic, or what-have-you.

This will be a crazy simplification, but I always find within myself an impatient desire to deal with this topic once and for all, as if I have a sense that it's not that important (I'm not for a moment questioning your interest in it, btw). My intuition is that it's kind of a red herring. I think that for all three of these philosophers, formal logic, which Kant called general logic, is basic, uninteresting, and mostly uncontroversial. But when they talk about logic they use the term more expansively. When K and H in particular talk about it they're talking about how reason actually operates within their systems, and H in particular pushes against general logic by refusing to go along with Kant's identification of the antinomies in the transcendental dialectic as logical failures, but rather regarding them as examples of some higher kind of "logic" (dialectics)

Adorno does something similar: he is looking for a logic, or better put, a rationality, that is better than mere formal logic. I mean, not as a replacement but as an essential supplement. (I think he also wants to just ignore the developments of logic from Frege onwards, probably thinking of them as either irrelevant or else as examples of instrumental rationality).

I tend to think the concerns about Hegel's violations of formal logic are exaggerated or misguided, but I'm sure there is a lot more to say about it.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The meaning of "non-identity", and the importance of "contradiction" is presented on page 8. Simply put, "A=B" seems to imply that A is identical with B, as an identity statement. However, evidence indicates that B is not A. This demonstrates that identity in this form is actually a "coercion" of logic, where we are coerced to accept A=B as identity. If we do not accept this coercion, then A=B as identity, is viewed as self-contradictory itself. Such resistance to this coercion is also characterized as contradiction, allowing the law of non-contradiction to be applied in support of the coercion. Therefore, we accept one or the other, and deny the one not accepted, as contradictory. But either way, contradiction is the base of our thinking. One concept of "contradiction" contradicts the other so that the two oppose each other. The view of "non-identity", I conclude, is the view that sees the identity claim of "A=B" as self-contradicting.

Nicely put!

Quoting Number2018

If I understand this quote correctly, the domain of non-identity refers to a complex sphere of (non)relations between our conceptual schemes and the world. The vast complexity of reality eludes our intellectual efforts.

Yes, but note that Adorno thinks the role of philosophy is to make that intellectual effort after all, only without extinguishing the complexity, difference, uniqueness, etc.

Quoting Number2018

However, what is contradictory is not reality itself, but the ongoing disarray and imbalance between our actual experience, our sense of things, and the totality of our intellectual apparatus.

Makes sense, but I'm still confused about it. Certainly, Adorno is explicit that contradicitons are in reality itself.

Quoting Jamal

I think of identity in two ways:

(a) Subject-object identity: identity between the concept and the thing, the prioritization of the subject and the loss of aspects of reality in the act of conceptualization. This is what Adorno is referring to as the identity of being and thought, but there's another side to it...

(b) Object-object identity: identity between the objects brought under the concept, the flattening out of difference, the loss of thisness.

I think we need to differentiate between "identity" as it is used in first order logic or predicate logic, and "identity" as it occurs in Aristotle's law of identity.

The law of identity states that a thing is the same as itself. This places identity within the thing itself, as a form of object-object identity, recognizing the uniqueness of the particular thing, as the thing's identity. This is a relationship which a thing has only with itself, it is the same as itself. In logic, a thing's "identity" is something we assign to the thing.

There is actually a huge difference between these two, because first order logic then takes "identity" to mean "equal to". So in logic there may be two distinct things which share the "same" identity by being equal to each other, while the law of identity restricts "same" to a relation which one thing has only to itself. It may be argued that sameness by the law of identity is a special type of equality, an equality relation which a thing has only with itself, but it's really meaningless to say that a thing is equal to itself, when what is meant is "same". The difference between "equal" and "same" appears to be paramount in the proposed dialectics.

In common practise, this difference is the difference between "same type", and "same" in an absolute sense. So you and I can be said to have the same car (similar make, model, colour), but we do not actually drive the same car in an absolute sense. One sense of "same" bases identity, or sameness in the type, the other bases sameness in the thing itself. The sense of "same" used by modern logicians is qualified or restricted for the purpose of the logical procedure, so that it really means same in a specific way which is designed for, and relevant to that procedure, the differences being dismissed as differences which do not make a difference. This is really a meaning of similar.

Adorno's "non-identity" appears to be a rejection of the form of identity employed by logicians, the one which is really equality, being a specified similarity. We see that a multitude of objects subsumed under the same concept are deemed as the same by virtue of that concept, and Adorno denies this sameness with the term "non-identity". However, he has not, at this point, denied that distinct things have a true identity within themselves, as dictated by the law of identity. So "non-identity" does not negate the law of identity in its traditional form, it negates identity in the logical form, as equality.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Adorno's "non-identity" appears to be a rejection of the form of identity employed by logicians, the one which is really equality, being a specified similarity. We see that a multitude of objects subsumed under the same concept are deemed as the same by virtue of that concept, and Adorno denies this sameness with the term "non-identity". However, he has not, at this point, denied that distinct things have a true identity within themselves, as dictated by the law of identity. So "non-identity" does not negate the law of identity in its traditional form, it negates identity in the logical form, as equality.

I think this fits with my understanding. And it’s not a rejection of identity as used by logicians so much as an accusation that predication is tantamount to such identity. I was reading about this difficult issue earlier today. How do we interpret Adorno’s insistence that predicative judgments imply identities, i.e., that bringing two things under the same concept amounts to equating them? So far I’ve had to settle with the view that there is such a tendency — but Adorno’s claim is stronger.

Quoting Jamal

My intuition is that it's kind of a red herring. I think that for all three of these philosophers, formal logic, which Kant called general logic, is basic, uninteresting, and mostly uncontroversial. But when they talk about logic they use the term more expansively. When K and H in particular talk about it they're talking about how reason actually operates within their systems, and H in particular pushes against general logic by refusing to go along with Kant's identification of the antinomies in the transcendental dialectic as logical failures, but rather regarding them as examples of some higher kind of "logic" (dialectics)

Adorno does something similar: he is looking for a logic, or better put, a rationality, that is better than mere formal logic. I mean, not as a replacement but as an essential supplement. (I think he also wants to just ignore the developments of logic from Frege onwards, probably thinking of them as either irrelevant or else as examples of instrumental rationality).

That makes lots of sense to me.

Quoting Jamal

I tend to think the concerns about Hegel's violations of formal logic are exaggerated or misguided, but I'm sure there is a lot more to say about it.

It's also something of a hobby-horse of mine.

[s]What I would not say is that interesting uses of contradiction, even if they don't fit some formal definition of contradiction, do not -- unto itself -- undermine a philosophy.[/s] Too many negations -- what I'd say is one can use contradiction in interesting ways without at the same time undermining your philosophy. The "formal" concerns arise, but may not be interesting or relevant.

And I can see just treating the topic with respect to the reading group as a side-thread -- for purposes of this thread the questions about formalization of logic and dialectics, while an interesting question, is not what's being pursued here. For Adorno there is no such bar to hop over, and here he is demonstrating his method on his own terms.

Quoting Jamal

I hope nobody minds these mini-essays; they help me to get to grips with the reading, and I hope to respond to others later.

I love them! Since this is new material for me I don't feel able to put my thoughts into structures or find relevant resources to bounce off of so it's very helpful.

Quoting Jamal

Yes, but note that Adorno thinks the role of philosophy is to make that intellectual effort after all, only without extinguishing the complexity, difference, uniqueness, etc.

An example of someone who does this is Schopenhauer. After observing that subject and object are two poles of one concept (along with cause and effect), he posits a One whose will pervades the universe, and all else is sort of illusory. That view extinguishes the things we value the most.

edit: although I wouldn't say Schopenhauer was wrong, just incomplete.

Quoting Moliere

what I'd say is one can use contradiction in interesting ways without at the same time undermining your philosophy. The "formal" concerns arise, but may not be interesting or relevant.

Yes indeed. The issue for me has always been to decide whether, when Adorno and Zizek and Marx come out with their arresting paradoxes, it’s just the dialectical style, as in a form of rhetoric, or if it’s just a great way of thinking, as in a method — or if they’re saying the world is really paradoxical and contradictory.

Reply to frank

I suppose you’re right. But then, Adorno was pretty much saying that every philosopher had imposed their concepts extinguishingly on the world.

Quoting Moliere

I love them! Since this is new material for me I don't feel able to put my thoughts into structures or find relevant resources to bounce off of so it's very helpful.

Thank you, I’m glad to hear it. I just hope I can maintain the energy.

Reply to Jamal We assigned ourselves a lot, and from someone whose done the same in the past and failed I'm guessing being gentle with ourselves will get us to the end -- bursts of energy and some quiet isn't bad, and with one another to motivate us to go along I'm sure we'll finish this one.

Reply to Moliere

:up: :strong:

Quoting Jamal

suppose you’re right. But then, Adorno was pretty much saying that every philosopher had imposed their concepts extinguishingly on the world.

Even British empiricists? How?

Reply to frank

Even them, I think. I don’t know off the top of my head.

Reply to Jamal Quoting Jamal

However, what is contradictory is not reality itself, but the ongoing disarray and imbalance between our actual experience, our sense of things, and the totality of our intellectual apparatus.
— Number2018

Makes sense, but I'm still confused about it. Certainly, Adorno is explicit that contradicitons are in reality itself.

Could you provide the exact quote from Negative Dialectics? Allow me to refer you to the following quote:
"Not every experience that appears as primary can be denied point-blank. If conscious experience were utterly lacking in what
Kierkegaard defended as naïveté, thought would be unsure of itself, would do what the establishment expects of it, and would become still more naïve. Even terms such as “original experience,” terms compromised by phenomenology and neo-ontology, denote a truth while pompously doing it harm. Unless resistance to the façade stirs spontaneously, heedless of its own dependencies, thought and activity are dull copies. Whichever part of the object exceeds the definitions imposed on it by thinking will face the subject, first of all, as immediacy; and again, where the subject feels altogether sure of itself—in primary experience—it will be least subjective The most subjective, the immediate datum, eludes the subject’s intervention. Yet such immediate consciousness is neither continuously maintainable nor downright positive; for consciousness is at the same time the universal medium and cannot jump across its shadow." (p.39)

Adorno explicitly points out the existence of a gap between 'a part of the object' and 'the definitions imposed on it by thinking.' This fissure has been mediated by 'the most subjective, immediate datum, that eludes the subject’s intervention.' Doesn’t this domain of our immediate experience constitute the locus of non-identity and become the primary instance of contradiction?

Quoting Number2018

Could you provide the exact quote from Negative Dialectics?

We're reading the lectures at the moment, haven't got to ND itself. In lecture 1:

[quote=p.9]I believe that these considerations will suffice for the moment to show you how we are compelled from the vantage point of objective reality to apply the concept of contradiction, not simply as the contradiction between two unrelated objects, but as an immanent contradiction, a contradiction in the object itself.[/quote]

In the notes for the lecture it's laid out like this:

[quote=p.1]Basic conception: structure of contradiction, in a twofold sense:

(1) the contradictory nature of the concept, i.e. the concept in contradiction to the thing to which it refers

[...]

(2) the contradictory character of reality: model: antagonistic society.[/quote]

Quoting Number2018

Adorno explicitly points out the existence of a gap between 'a part of the object' and 'the definitions imposed on it by thinking.'

On the face of it, that's consistent with the claim that reality is contradictory.

This is a blurb from the Adorno entry in the SEP.


"In contrast to the “scientific dualism” of word and thing, formal logic and inference, Adorno calls for an explicitly “aesthetic” method of “configurative language”: “a dialectically intertwined and explicatively indissoluable unity of concept and thing” (ibid., 38) which makes disclosive truth possible. In Negative Dialectics he captures this idea with the claim that “In dialectics … the rhetorical element is on the side of content” (1966a [1973, 41]). Recent scholarship has attempted to bring Adorno’s thinking about language (and rationality) into critical discussion with certain Wittgensteinian, pragmatist, and neo-Hegelian strains of anglophone philosophy (Demmerling
1994;"

It sounds a lot like Russell/early-Witt where the world is "all that is the case" which indicates unity of true propositions and world, or content and thing. I'm guessing that we're supposed to have ejected ontological commitments prior to reading Adorno. We're ontological anti-realists.

Quoting Jamal

How do we interpret Adorno’s insistence that predicative judgments imply identities, i.e., that bringing two things under the same concept amounts to equating them? So far I’ve had to settle with the view that there is such a tendency — but Adorno’s claim is stronger.

Yes, I have difficulty with this as well. In simple predication, "A is B" signifies a subject and a predicate. In no way is the subject identical to the predicate. However, the predication may be taken as an identity statement in the sense that it could function to help identify which objects correspond with the named subject, A. In another sense we might identify a named object A, as being of the type or classification of B. We'd say "A is a B". This is a stronger sense of identity.

What I think, is that when Adorno mentions "predicative judgements", he is referring to predicate logic, or "first order logic". If I understand correctly, predicate logic allows objects to be classed together according to predicates, as a set, and this establishes an equality between the individual objects. So for example, if we name something A only if the thing has property B, then all As have B. This allows us to say "if A then B", and there is an equality established amongst all the things named A by that relation to B. For that specific purpose then, all things named A are the same, identical, in the sense that B is implied.

The deeper issue, which I believe Adorno will address, is that equating things is this way is not truly giving the things an identity because the equality is based on the predicate, and proper identity is assigned to the object itself. So when a logician asserts that this type of equality is identity, that is a pretense. And if it is necessary to accept this form of equality as identity, in order to make the logical procedure, that is what he called logical coercion.

p.9:I believe that these considerations will suffice for the moment to show you how we are compelled from the vantage point of objective reality to apply the concept of contradiction, not simply as the contradiction between two unrelated objects, but as an immanent contradiction, a contradiction in the object itself.

This I believe could constitute a challenge to the law of identity itself. If contradiction inheres within the object itself, this would seem to imply that the object could have no identity. But he does not clarify what he means in this statement, and the ancients allowed contradictory predications so long as they are not at the same time. This is how change was understood, a negation of the property, a property come form its contrary. That requires temporal extension.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This I believe could constitute a challenge to the law of identity itself. If contradiction inheres within the object itself, this would seem to imply that the object could have no identity. But he does not clarify what he means in this statement, and the ancients allowed contradictory predications so long as they are not at the same time. This is how change was understood, a negation of the property, a property come form its contrary. That requires temporal extension.

Well, he does immediately give the prime example he has in mind of what "the object" is: antagonistic society. And despite our worries about formal logic and predication vs identity (and your concern about identity vs equality), it doesn't seem far-fetched to say that society is contradictory at least in some sense (and he gives examples).

Although it's tempting to say no, it's just that the concepts we apply to society contradict with it (like the freedom example), he wants to say that the contradiction is actually in the object, society itself, because, I think, for material reasons there are immanent social antagonisms and they cannot be dissolved by reframing. The logical move to dissolve the contradiction (like I did here) obscures the antagonism and does violence to what's really going on.

But the fact that I used "antagonisms" a couple of times there, instead of "contradictions", gets to the root of the problem. And indeed, I think some modern Hegelians prefer to use that kind of language (antagonisms, tensions, conflicts), abandoning the idea that logical contradictions reside in the object. I expect we can come back to this issue after we've seen him operate, and after he addresses it in ND itself.

There's a useful section in Espen Hammer's book, Adorno's Modernism (the section "Predication, identification, and truth" in chapter 4, which can be read online here), which concludes with Hammer's own assessment:

Although no a priori “logics” dictates that such a tendency should emerge, modern agents are prone to use concepts in overly subsumptive ways, focusing on universality and generality while downplaying, and in some cases bracketing, the conceptualized particular. They do this not because the nature of language forces them to do so, but, rather, because social and economic pressures are such that quantification, orientation towards exchange value, commodification, calculation, and so forth, are being privileged (both epistemically and in cruder social and everyday terms) over attention to the particular (at least for its own sake).

In other words, Adorno is wrong to claim that logic and language themselves are responsible for the coerciveness of identity thinking. He is right that thinking in modernity leads to the extinguishing of valuable particularity, but he is wrong about the ultimate cause; the cause is not an inherent tendency in logic and language, but is something to do with social and economic pressures.

That strikes me immediately as eminently reasonable and common-sensical — but Adorno would say we should be on guard against common sense. It has to be said that Hammer seems generally a lot less sympathetic to Adorno than other commentators, so I'm not taking his as the final word on the topic — after all, we want to apply the principle of hermeneutic charity at all times in this reading.

EDIT: So what I'm thinking now is that I'm quite happy to accept a twofold structure of contradiction, with the caveat that the contradictions in the object are more like antagonisms than true contradictions. And that raises the question as to whether it really matters, as Adorno seems to say it does, if we drop the idea of logical contradiction when talking about the object (reality, society).

Quoting Jamal

Well, he does immediately give the prime example he has in mind of what "the object" is: antagonistic society. And despite our worries about formal logic and predication vs identity (and your concern about identity vs equality), it doesn't seem far-fetched to say that society is contradictory at least in some sense (and he gives examples).

I have a short, and hopefully concise, reply to make to this, and then we can leave the subject until it resurfaces. In my opinion, "society" refers to a concept rather than an object. I believe Aristotle imposed the law of identity as a means for distinguishing objects from concepts. An object has an identity, a concept does not. This allowed him to create a separation between material things, as primary substance, and the "mathematical objects" of Platonism which are not substantial. A material thing constitutes "primary substance", and there are no material things which words like "society" and "freedom" refer to. They are lacking in substance and are purely conceptual.

Notice, that the law of identity, as I present it, provides the basis for the Identity logic which Adorno rejects. If it is an object it has an identity, and vise versa, and this constitutes the secondary sense of "identity" as the logical identity, of what it means to be an object, to have this predication, "identity". After Hegel denied the usefulness of the law of identity, we have many logicians who blur the category distinction between object and concept. But this creates difficulty in determining when and where the law of identity is applicable. Along with this, the applicability of the other two laws, contradiction and excluded middle are questionable, as demonstrated by Peirce. Further, without grounding truth in primary substance (material object) the applicability of different types of logic, like modal logic and fuzzy logic for example, is not well disciplined. That I believe, is the principal issue involved with blurring the category separation between object and concept, unclear rules for the applicability of different logic types.

Quoting Jamal

In other words, Adorno is wrong to claim that logic and language themselves are responsible for the coerciveness of identity thinking. He is right that thinking in modernity leads to the extinguishing of valuable particularity, but he is wrong about the ultimate cause; the cause is not an inherent tendency in logic and language, but is something to do with social and economic pressures.

I agree with this, and the "social and economic pressures" could be generalized as a rapidly changing world with evolving knowledge and social conditions. However, I believe that we must take "the coerciveness of identity thinking" from the very top, or very bottom depending on how you look at it to understand it properly. At the very bottom is the law of identity and the strict category distinction between object and concept. The coerciveness is analogous to an ethical principle. In a rapidly changing world, new situations and circumstances arise which extend far beyond the applicability of the old rules, and we need to adapt quickly. Efficiency generally guides us, but what principles distinguish good ends from bad ends, or truth from falsity? This is the inevitable result of refusing the division between method and result, or process and content. Emphasis is placed on getting the job done without due consideration as to what is being done. We are left with a hole where "truth" or "good" used to be.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

In my opinion, "society" refers to a concept rather than an object.

In my opinion, which I believe I share with Adorno, when we talk about society we are not talking about a concept, therefore “society” doesn’t refer to a concept. Sure, it’s not a bundle of moderately sized dry goods (paraphrasing Austin), but it’s something real with an objective structure all the same. What matters to Adorno is the subject-object polarity, with the philosopher or whoever as the subject and, most relevantly, society or a part or aspect of society as the object.

Otherwise…

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with this

I just want to point out that what you’re agreeing with here is not my own position but is my rewording of Espen Hammer’s position.

(I agree it’s best to revisit this topic down the line; I’m not sure what else to say about it)

Quoting Jamal

But the fact that I used "antagonisms" a couple of times there, instead of "contradictions", gets to the root of the problem. And indeed, I think some modern Hegelians prefer to use that kind of language (antagonisms, tensions, conflicts), abandoning the idea that logical contradictions reside in the object. I expect we can come back to this issue after we've seen him operate, and after he addresses it in ND itself.

That paragraph is particularly perspicuous.

Quoting Jamal

...the cause is not an inherent tendency in logic and language, but is something to do with social and economic pressures.

Indeed.

Addenda: I left this thread and went to Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus, where I found what is apparently a case in point of the approach that is seen as problematic. So we read 'A ball would be round because it is called "round," as opposed to being called round because it is round.' At issue is the problem of why the ball might be grouped with other round things. But here I can't shake off the view that Adorno might mistakenly be regarding identity (a=a) as much the same as predication.

This is another introduction to Negative Dialectics by Susan Buck-Morss.

Reply to frank

It's brilliant, but I definitely wouldn't call it an introduction. It traces Adorno's thinking through his interactions with Walter Benjamin, Lukacs, Brecht, etc.

Quoting Jamal

It's brilliant, but I definitely wouldn't call it an introduction. It traces Adorno's thinking through his interactions with Walter Benjamin, Lukacs, Brecht, etc.

Maybe background would be a better word then. One of Adorno's preoccupations was with the difference between the concept of the thing and an example of the thing in the wild. Imagine that your mind is trying to hold the world in its hands, but the world is like sand and some of it always slips through your mind's fingers. I want to know why that was so important to Adorno.

Reply to Banno

:up:

But I'm giving Adorno the benefit of the doubt at this stage.

Reply to Jamal As am I. I'm interested becasue of ethical concerns, and the appeal of respect for the suffering of particular beings that are "crushed" by universalising systems... from Habermas; together with the explicit move toward escaping systematisation by refusing the closure of synthesis. But I'm biting my tongue.

Quoting Jamal

In my opinion, which I believe I share with Adorno, when we talk about society we are not talking about a concept, therefore “society” doesn’t refer to a concept. Sure, it’s not a bundle of moderately sized dry goods (paraphrasing Austin), but it’s something real with an objective structure all the same. What matters to Adorno is the subject-object polarity, with the philosopher or whoever as the subject and, most relevantly, society or a part or aspect of society as the object.

That you, Adorno, and others believe that "society" refers to an object, rather than to a concept, because it is something real with "an objective structure", does not really prove that this is the truth. Platonists believe that numbers and other mathematical concepts are objects. But the fact that these concepts have what can be called "an objective structure" does not justify the claim that these concepts are objects. This is because there is much ambiguity in the meaning of "objective", and we would need a clear definition of "object", and base "objective" on that definition, to make that judgement without a likelihood of equivocation.

This is where the law of identity plays a role. We can define "object" as something that has an identity which inheres within itself, rather than the identity which we assign to it, and this excludes artificially created axiomatic concepts from being objects. If however, we deny the applicability of the law of identity, as Hegel did, and take up a position of "non-identity", then what will serve as the means for distinguishing objects from concepts? And if contradiction is seen to inhere within concepts, then it will also be seen to inhere within objects, if we do not apply the principle that an object is a type of thing which has an identity and obeys the law of non-contradiction.

Anyway, I'm more than happy to drop this digression and continue with the reading. I'm interested to see where he is leading us.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

That you, Adorno, and others believe that "society" refers to an object, rather than to a concept, because it is something real with "an objective structure", does not really prove that this is the truth.

Yes, I just took a first stab at making it apparent. But if you're looking for a refutation of idealism in Adorno you might be disappointed.

But consider: it is the case that I live in an organized group of people, and that the way this group is organized has effects on me, providing opportunities for and imposing limits on my actions. Since it is so important, it is one of the things I think about, one of the things I reason about with concepts.

Some philosophers might say that money, government, and society are not things, even are not real, variously because those purported objects do not have physical properties, are socially constructed, are unstable chunks of discourse, are secretly the names of mental constructs, and so on. Mereological nihilists will even say there are no composite objects at all.

I don't intend to refute those philosophers — some of those positions are probably consistent with mine anyway. The point is that individual human beings live in the context of groups that have effects on those individuals and which are also affected by them — and which those individuals can think about, making society an object of thought experienced as something beyond their thoughts, and thus an object.

Most importantly for Adorno, what we think about does not become thereby exhausted by our thought, i.e., it is more than conceptual. It's true that he hasn't refuted idealism, and he won't try. He will try to give you his picture of the world. This will happen through a kind of persuasion.

Insisting that society is not an object seems to miss the point — but it's possible I did not understand you.

EDIT: Important to note though that while we are treating society as an object in this bare, abstract fashion, Adorno is very much against reification and hypostatization, so there is some interesting complexity here.

Reply to Banno

:cool:

So that leads me to frame Adorno's project in the following way. Real things don't quite fit our mental categories, but we cannot just deal with this using different categories, because all conceptualization involves abstraction, generalization, and exclusion, so different concepts will just obscure resistant particularity in different ways. Thus the problem is deep in conceptualization itself, and only a new way of thinking, amounting to a new way of using concepts — one that is always negative, that is, declining to shout "YES" and sit back with satisfaction at having matched reality or reached a synthesis — can give space to particularity and to the richness and messiness of the real world.

Without knowing much about the method of constellations that he will introduce later, from what I can glean it's something like very deliberately using clusters of partially successful concepts, no doubt always flexible and shifting. Is that along the lines of Zizek's use of parallax, I wonder?

But wouldn't that count as a positive answer to the problem of identity thinking? :chin:

Reply to Jamal Excellent.

A version for those of a more analytic persuasion, b y way of checking my understanding:

Reality always exceeds the concepts we apply to it, in such a way that no concept, however refined, can say all there is to say. Changing concepts doesn’t solve this, because any alternate concepts will also miss saying something... So we have to acknowledge this, accepting the messiness of the real world.

How we do that, remains to be seen.

Reply to Banno

Looks good.

So making it analytic basically involves saying the same thing but without the rhetorical flourishes and excessive Latinate verbiage? :wink:

Reply to Jamal Well... :smirk:

Quoting Banno

Reality always exceeds the concepts we apply to it, in such a way that no concept, however refined, can all there is to say.

Maybe it's this;

We know our concepts are limited because the world surprises us, disappoints us, goes all to hell in ways that our theories didn't predict. In this is a kind of materialism. The evidence for materialism is on-going suffering.

So if we spent time poking our heads out of old concepts like a turtle from its shell, would we discover solutions to suffering that we were oblivious to?

Quoting Jamal

But consider: it is the case that I live in an organized group of people, and that the way this group is organized has effects on me, providing opportunities for and imposing limits on my actions. Since it is so important, it is one of the things I think about, one of the things I reason about with concepts.

The issue which brought us to this disagreement is the epistemological implications of one's ontological judgement, as to what qualifies as "an object". If I allow that an organized group of people is an object, simply because that group is important to me, though it may well be the case that some members of that group believe X is good or true, while others believe X is bad or false, then we allow that contradiction inheres within that object. At this point, we forfeit the identity principle, i.e. the law of identity, which states that an object has an identity, and along with that forfeiture we lose the applicability of the law of non-contradiction.

The point being that by doing this, we no longer have as a tool, the principle by which we distinguish which type of existents the fundamental laws of logic are applicable to, and which type are not, therefore we lose the rule by which those laws are applied, inviting arbitrary exceptions. We allow that contradiction inheres within objects, therefore objects do not necessarily have an identity.

Consider a dual meaning of "object", one being a unified body of material substance, and the other being a goal, or end. I think you'll agree that these two are very different meanings, and to mix them up would be equivocation. Now think about the "organized group of people", and how this is "important" to you. The use of "important" indicates that this is a goal based meaning of "object", rather than a material substance based meaning of "object". Further, we can see that all value (in this word's most general sense) based "objects", extending through ethics, money, mathematics, etc., are grounded in the goal, or end, meaning of "object", rather than the material substance meaning.

So we find that contradiction readily inheres within goals, intentions, and ends, "objects" in this sense. An individual attempts to rectify such contradictions in deliberating on actions. Now the question is, do we want to annihilate the distinction between the two types of objects, allow that contradiction may inhere in all objects, and forfeit the applicability of the fundamental laws of logic. That might involve a complete denial of epistemological principles. Or, can we maintain some sort of rules as to where these laws are applicable, and not, as Peirce attempted. I'm interested to see how Adorno might proceed with his negative dialectics.

This little quote clears a couple of things up for me. It explains why Adorno backed away from supporting any sort of political activism. It affirms that he was an ontological anti-realist, and he would have sympathized with surrealism. I put the extra line spaces in:

Quoting Buck-Morss

Adorno's position did have an inner logic based on
his intellectual experiences, which by 1931 had convinced him of three things:

that any philosophy, and Marxism was certainly no exception, lost its legitimacy
when it overstepped the boundaries of material experience and claimed metaphysical knowledge (this had been the lesson of Cornelius's neo-Kantianism);

that the criterion of truth was rational rather than pragmatic, and hence theory
could not be subordinated to political or revolutionary goals;

and that avant·garde art, even when as with Schonberg's music it had no consciously political intent, could be progressive rather than simply bourgeois decadence, that it was
not mere ideology, but, at least potentially, a form of enlightenment as well .

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

I don't know what to say about all that MU. Your notion of concepts and objects seems incommensurable with mine, such that we're talking past each other. I'm ready to move past it, but I'll be interested to see if your questions are answered later on.

Quoting frank

This little quote clears a couple of things up for me. It explains why Adorno backed away from supporting any sort of political activism. It affirms that he was an ontological anti-realist, and he would have sympathized with surrealism.

I don't think the quotation explains his reluctance to support political activism, I don't think it affirms that he was an ontological antirealist, and I don't think he was an antirealist.

EDIT: Actually I suppose the idea that theory ought to be independent of praxis was at the root of his scepticism towards activism — but it doesn't explain his opposition to the concrete form that activism took in the sixties, i.e., why exactly he did not think much of the student protesters around 1968.

LND, Lecture 1 (continued)

I'll briefly look at one more thing in lecture 1. It's the passage where he puts his cards on the table:

[quote=p.9]But I have the best of intentions about showing you that the factors that define reality as antagonistic are the same factors as those which constrain mind, i.e. the concept, and force it into its intrinsic contradictions. To put it in a nutshell, in both cases we are dealing with the principle of mastery, the mastery of nature, which spreads its influence, which continues in the mastery of men by other men and which finds its mental reflex in the principle of identity, by which I mean the intrinsic aspiration of all mind to turn every alterity that is introduced to it or that it encounters into something like itself and in this way to draw it into its own sphere of influence.[/quote]

In other words, both in thought (the concept) and in society (the object), contradiction stems from or reveals the drive to master nature, which becomes also the drive to master people. This is because mastery as enacted in the world is reflected mentally in the principle of identity, which is the drive to make everything like oneself or subject to oneself.

So in ND he is reiterating and generalizing what he and Horkheimer were saying almost twenty years before in Dialectic of Enlightenment:

It is the identity of mind and its correlative, the unity of nature, which subdues the abundance of qualities.

[quote=Dialectic of Enlightenment, "The Concept of Enlightenment"]The generality of the ideas developed by discursive logic, power in the sphere of the concept, is built on the foundation of power in reality.[/quote]

In that earlier work, the target is enlightenment, but in ND he is looking deeper, so as so find a method or model of thinking. I won't say more about it at this stage but it's good to keep in mind.

Quoting Jamal

but it doesn't explain his opposition to the concrete form that activism took in the sixties, i.e., why exactly he did not think much of the student protesters around 1968.

Buck-Morss says that was the same opposition he'd always had. The Frankfurt group began to doubt Marx regarding the power of the proletariat to transform the world when Hitler came to power. When the war started, that belief was entirely gone. Adorno had never believed Marx was right though.

Reply to frank

I think it’s precisely because they had ceased to believe the proletariat was the revolutionary class that they — Marcuse, most notably — had such hope in the students. But Adorno didn’t share that hope.

Otherwise yeah.

Reply to Jamal
Right. Adorno had never believed we can use philosophy to predict historical events, so the only part of Marxism that interested him was the part that was transmitted through Lukacs.

Lukacs was basically saying the mind-body problem originates in the separation between labor and product that takes place when a commodity takes on exchange value. In other words, the abstraction we call money is the source of the mind-body problem.

I mean, we know that everywhere the concept of money went, mathematics blossomed. Math needs that boost of abstraction to get off the ground. I think Lukacs may have been right. Adorno was definitely convinced.

Quoting Jamal

Your notion of concepts and objects seems incommensurable with mine, such that we're talking past each other.

Yes I noticed this. We employ different principles for categorization.

Quoting Jamal

In other words, both in thought (the concept) and in society (the object), contradiction stems from or reveals the drive to master nature, which becomes also the drive to master people.

I interpret that passage like this. In the case of "reality", nature is constrained by the laws of nature. In the case of thought, mind is constrained by the principle of identity.

With reference to what I said earlier, about the problem with conflating "process and result", "method and content", we have no principles here to help us judge whether this process called "mastery", is good or not.

Further, we ought to be skeptical of Adorno's representation when he says that these constraints "force it into its intrinsic contradictions". It may actually be the case that these constraints act to exclude contradictions which are already immanent. If "contradiction" becomes the basis for a judgement of bad, then this becomes a very important question, concerning the described mastery.

Quoting Jamal

I don't think it affirms that he was an ontological antirealist, and I don't think he was an antirealist.

I went back looking for where I may have been mistaken. Ontological anti-realism is skepticism about ontology. One formulation would be to say we just don't have the God's-eye-view necessary to determine whether the world is made of mind-stuff or non-mind-stuff.

Through his life, Adorno was along the lines of a phenomenologist. In the 1920s he was surrounded by people who were giving up altogether on reason as a path to truth. For some Marxists, reason was tainted. Adorno rejected both of these lines of thought, but still ended up as, well, an ontological anti-realist. All knowledge is "within the bounds of experience."

Interesting thread, Reply to Jamal. I am relatively new to Adorno. I looked at Wikipedia, Britannica, IEP, SEP, and read the SEP section on Negative Dialectics. His project reminds me a lot of Erich Przywara's Analogia Entis, for Przywara was also of German descent, born fourteen years before Adorno and dying 13 years after him. One can actually see in all sorts of German thinkers of that era the identification of the evils of fascism with excessive and overly programmatic intellectual certitude.

I will go read the first lecture before trying to say anything more substantial.

Reply to frank

I see. Well, if the belief that any philosophy loses its legitimacy when it oversteps the boundaries of material experience and claims metaphysical knowledge makes you an ontological antirealist, then I guess you're right. He is against ontology insofar as it aims for an ultimate answer, an unhistorical, un-socially-mediated truth about what the world is made of at bottom, which is a project doomed to failure.

On the other hand, he does aim to "prioritize the object" and he is a kind of materialist. The world of experience is not entirely amenable to concepts, and it's unpredictable, because there is more to it than the subject puts into it, even though there's a subject-object reciprocity.

Reply to Leontiskos

I'm used to thinking it was just the Frankfurt School who reacted like that so it's interesting to learn there were many others. On the other hand, Adorno seemed to be thinking along those lines pretty early, before fascism got into power in Germany.

Quoting Leontiskos

I will go read the first lecture before trying to say anything more substantial.

The more the merrier.

Quoting Jamal

On the other hand, he does aim to "prioritize the object" and he is a kind of materialist. The world of experience is not entirely amenable to concepts, and it's unpredictable, because there is more to it than the subject puts into it, even though there's a subject-object reciprocity.

True. The idealism that bugged him is the alienation of the subject to the object. That shows up in two places: in Kant (as the thing-in-itself problem), and in Marx's ideas about a commodity's exchange value (which means a commodity's value has become abstract for the sake of exchange, rather than use.) Adorno become convinced that these two cases of it are linked, and that what Marx outlined (in the first chapter of Kapital) is the real source of the Kantian thing-in-itself problem. In fact, for Adorno, it goes beyond being a feature of bourgeois culture (as it was for Lukacs), and becomes an organizing feature of human consciousness.

Also for Adorno, history unfolds similarly to music: the present moment has a sense of momentum as it arises out of the past, and the future takes shape according to the inner logic of the cultural story that's being played out. This is his belief in the unity of form and content. The "form" part is like the composition itself, the notes on paper. The content is a unique playing of that composition. Adorno says the orchestra never purely expresses the notes of the form, but rather the whole thing proceeds just like any events in time: arising from the past, and constrained by meaning to fall forward. It's almost like he's saying every musical production is like jazz in a way, with the form as a touchstone. Human history is like jazz.

LND, Lecture 2

At the end of the first lecture Adorno distinguishes negative dialectics from idealist dialectics (exemplified by Hegel) and also from dialectical materialism, the official philosophy of the Soviet Union and its friends. But he anticipates an objection: what justifies the label "negative" to this distinct strand of dialectics, since all dialectical philosophy is importantly negative anyway, in that it proceeds by contradiction and critique:

[quote=p.11]thought itself – and thought is tied to subjectivity – is negativity, and to that extent negativity, and especially dialectical thinking, is negative dialectics from the outset.[/quote]

The second lecture aims to answer this objection by explaining the unique way in which negative dialectics is negative. Adorno does this by (a) comparing his philosophy to Hegel's, showing how it negates the latter's positivity, and (b) describing some of the other relevant meanings of negativity.

The editors have given this lecture the title "The negation of negation," which is the Hegelian move that Adorno is criticizing in (a). I got a bit lost in Adorno's Hegelian excursions but I get it now.


The negation of the negation is positive (Hegel)

Adorno puts it like this:

[quote=p.14]You must be mindful of the fact that you once learnt in arithmetic that a minus number times a minus number yields a plus, or, in other words, that the negation of negation is the positive, the affirmative. This is in fact one of the general assumptions underlying the Hegelian philosophy.[/quote]

Personally I don't really see the need for this analogy, since the idea of double negation in logic and ordinary language is simple enough: "It's not the case that I am not wearing a hat" (negation of negation) means that I am wearing a hat (positive).

Anyway, negative dialectics is different from Hegelian dialectics in that the negation of the negation does not result in a positive. It is not an "affirmation," as it is in Hegel's synthesis or sublation, where contradictions are reconciled and there is progress to a higher stage.

Adorno goes on to describe how the negation of the negation works in Hegel. I'll quote him and then put it into my own words:

[quote=p.14]
The idea that he develops repeatedly as early as the Phenomenology, admittedly with a somewhat different emphasis, and then above all in the Philosophy of Right, in the very crude form in which I have explained it to you – this idea is that the subject, which as thinking subject criticizes given institutions, represents in the first instance the emancipation of the spirit. And, as the emancipation of the spirit, it rep- resents the decisive transition from its mere being-in-itself to a being-for-itself. In other words, the stage that has been reached here is one in which spirit confronts objective realities, social realities, as an autonomous, critical thing, and this stage is recognized as being necessary. But Hegel goes on to reproach spirit for restricting itself in the process, for being itself narrow-minded. This is because it elevates one aspect of spirit in its abstractness to the status of sole truth. It fails to recognize that this abstract subjectivity, which is itself based on the model of Kant’s practical reason and, to a certain extent, on Fichte’s subjective concept of free action – that this subjectivity is a mere aspect that has turned itself into an absolute; it overlooks the fact that it owes its own substance, its forms, its very existence to the objective forms and existence of society; and that it actually only becomes conscious of itself by conceiving of the seemingly alien and even repressive institutions as being like itself, by comprehending them as subjective and perceiving them in their necessity. Here we see one of the crucial turning points of Hegel’s philosophy, not to say one of its decisive tricks. It consists in the idea that subjectivity which merely exists for itself, in other words, a critical, abstract, negative subjectivity – and here we see the entrance of an essential notion of negativity – that this subjectivity must negate itself, that it must become conscious of its own limitations in order to be able to transcend itself and enter into the positive side of its negation, namely into the institutions of society, the state, the objective and, ultimately, absolute spirit.
[/quote]

In other words, the progressive thinker as subject stands against their social context, criticizing the institutions of the status quo, and in such a negative stance represents the emancipation of the spirit (think of Enlightenment thinkers criticizing monarchy). But this negation of institutions, this so-called abstract freedom or abstract subjectivity, is one-sided and unbalanced: it forgets that the ability to critique institutions is itself a product of institutions (like universities). Therefore another negation is required, the negation of the original critical stance, leading to a reconciliation in which the subject's freedom is no longer abstract but is mediated by institutions (parliament limits the power of the monarchy). This last stage is the positive outcome of the process.

In Hegel's philosophy, being-in-itself is unreflective existence, whereas being-for-itself is subjectivity that is self-aware and asserting its independence.

So the Hegelian scheme looks like this:

1. Being-in-itself: Monarchy as historically necessary

2. Being-for-itself: Critique arises from monarchy's contradictions

3. Sublation (Aufhebung): Institutions are reformed through their own negation (e.g., constitutionalism, preserving monarchy while taking on Enlightenment criticism)

I think this is the basic form of the dialectic, and it involves determinate negation (which might just refer to stage 2, I'm not sure). The process can also be represented with thesis-antithesis-synthesis, but the risk of that model is that it suggests external conflict, where in fact Hegel's emphasis is on internal antagonism, unravelling from within.


Adorno's critique

Adorno congratulates Hegel for pointing out that stage 2 is one of self-deception: no man is an island, the subject is a product of "the institution" (which here can refer to any identifiable social structure, like a social class, and not just official ones). The critical subject is not independent of what they are criticizing.

[quote=p.16]Human beings are in fact ???? ???????ó?, ‘political animals’, in the sense that they can only survive by virtue of society and social institutions to which, as autonomous and critical subjectivity, they stand opposed. And with his criticism of the illusion that what is closest to us, namely our own self and its consciousness, is in fact the first and fundamental reality, Hegel has – and this is something we must emphasize – made a decisive contribution to our understanding of society and the relationship of individual to society. Without this Hegelian insight, a theory of society as we understand it today would not really have been possible. – So what I am saying is that he destroyed the illusion of the subject's being-in-itself and showed that the subject is itself an aspect of social objectivity.[/quote]

Adorno, who studied the Critique of Pure Reason with a private tutor around the age of 16 or 17, had taken on board Kant's "Refutation of Idealism"—which says that the existence of the external world is a necessary condition for self-awareness over time—and he identifies a similar thrust in Hegel, who advances beyond Kant by socializing and historicizing that subjectivity.

Adorno thinks this is great, but the problem is that Hegel is too uncritical of the reformed institutions. The dialectical movement resolves in the institutions, giving them the upper hand, as if the self-asserting subjectivity, so-called abstract freedom, represented a wayward child who had to be brought to heel.

Adorno sees this as oppressive or at the very least potentially and actually so, because it can result not in a properly mediated freedom but a regression of the subject back to the state of unfreedom:

[quote=p.16]However – and this is precisely the point at which criticism of Hegel has to begin if we are to justify the formulation of a negative dialectics – we must ask this question: is this objectivity which we have shown to be a necessary condition and which subsumes abstract subjectivity in fact the higher factor? Does it not rather remain precisely what Hegel reproached it with being in his youth, namely pure externality, the coercive collective? Does not the retreat to this supposedly higher authority signify the regression of the subject, which had earlier won its freedom only with great efforts, with infinite pains?[/quote]

He gives the sad example of Lukacs, one of Adorno's intellectual heroes, who, in a feat of doublethink, denied the correctness of his own position in criticizing the institution of the Communist Party, of which he was a member—while at the same time knowing that his position was better than theirs. Thus he sided with objectivity against his own subjectivity. This was the "coercive collective" in action.

[quote=p.17]I believe that I do not have to spell out for you the implications of such a statement. It would imply simply that, with the assistance of the dialectic, whatever has greater success, whatever comes to prevail, to be generally accepted, has a higher degree of truth than the consciousness that can see through its fraudulent nature. In actual fact, ideology in the Eastern bloc is largely determined by this idea. A further implication is that mind would amputate itself, that it would abdicate its own freedom and simply adapt to the needs of the big battalions. To accept such a course of action does not appear possible to me.[/quote]

So this is why, for Adorno, the negation of the negation does not automatically result in a positive, in an affirmation, in anything we ought to be affirming.

In the rest of the lecture, he leaves behind the Hegelian stuff and defines negativity in other, more intuitive, ways, most notably the idea of "abstract positivity," which I believe can be related to the contemporary concepts of toxic positivity and cruel optimism. I may cover that in another post.

Reply to Jamal Just to add: for Hegel, the experience of freedom can only happen in a social situation. We give one another freedom:

Quoting SEP article on Hegel's Philosophy of Right (PR)

The key point, for Hegel, is that only the free will of an individual can ground the free will of another (Stillman 1980). Something is mine when mutually recognized as my possession by another. This is the first appearance of right where the activity of my free will in taking possession is free, and not mere arbitrariness. It is this agreement between two individuals forming a kind of contract which is so important for Hegel. This is because mutual recognition becomes a vehicle for how we can develop further a more concrete understanding of freedom as right in the world. If such recognition was under threat, this would unsettle how we can ground our free will in a free will of another.

That article also notes that there are some who read Hegel and ditch the mysticism that it's couched in. I'm sure @Count Timothy von Icarus will see that Adorno's explanation of Hegel (in your quote) has Neoplatonic undercurrents. We don't need to explore that, (unless we do need to).

Quoting frank

Just to add: for Hegel, the experience of freedom can only happen in a social situation. We give one another freedom

Yes, Adorno makes that point explicitly in the lecture. Maybe I wasn't clear.

Quoting frank

That article also notes that there are some who read Hegel and ditch the mysticism that it's couched in.

Surely that describes all Hegelians these days?

Quoting Jamal

Yes, Adorno makes that point explicitly in the lecture. Maybe I wasn't clear.

You drew attention to the fact that self awareness is dependent on being in a social arena. I don't think you mentioned the part about how freedom requires intersubjectivity, so that as Hegel's narrative progresses, freedom disappears. In other words, if the Proletariat actually turned into what Marx thought it would, there wouldn't be any freedom. Are we on the same page there?

Quoting Jamal

Surely that describes all Hegelians these days?

No.

Quoting SEP

In contrast, the metaphysical reading counters that anti-metaphysical interpretations take a one-sided approach to Hegel’s work (Beiser 2005, Goodfield 2009, Rosen 1984, Taylor 1975, Thompson 2018). Hegel conceived his PR to be a part of a wider system. Isolating any one text from its wider context may appear to inoculate any such reading from metaphysical claims elsewhere in Hegel’s system. However, only a reading that grasps the full metaphysical foundations of his thought will do justice to his self-understanding (Houlgate 2005).

Quoting frank

Are we on the same page there?

I don't know, because I have no opinion on the disappearance of freedom as Hegel's narrative progresses. I'll keep it in mind though :up:

Quoting frank

No.

By "ditch the mysticism" I took you to mean a rejection of the mysticism among those who embrace his philosophy otherwise. Your more recent quotation from SEP shows only (setting aside concerns about mystical vs metaphysical) that interpeters of Hegel interpret Hegel's philosophy as mystical, and I'm not arguing with that.

Reply to Jamal
Cool. How do you think Adorno understood Hegel's use of the term "absolute spirit" in this quote?

p.14:Here we see one of the crucial turning points of Hegel’s philosophy, not to say one of its decisive tricks. It consists in the idea that subjectivity which merely exists for itself, in other words, a critical, abstract, negative subjectivity – and here we see the entrance of an essential notion of negativity – that this subjectivity must negate itself, that it must become conscious of its own limitations in order to be able to transcend itself and enter into the positive side of its negation, namely into the institutions of society, the state, the objective and, ultimately, absolute spirit.

Reply to frank

I don't know, what do you think?

Reply to Jamal
I guess we could first look at what Hegel meant by it. I agree with this guy:


Quoting Glenn Magee

Given the evidence for Hegel’s place in the Hermetic tradition, it seems surprising that so few Hegel scholars acknowledge it. The topic is often dismissed as unimportant or uninteresting (it is neither). Usually, it is treated as relevant only to Hegel’s youth (which is false). Surely one reason for this attitude is disciplinary specialization. Few scholars of the history of philosophy ever study Hermetic thinkers. Another reason is the recent tendency among influential Hegel scholars to argue that it is wrong-headed to treat Hegel as having any serious interest in metaphysics or theology at all, let alone the sort of exotic metaphysics and theology that we find in Hermeticism. This is the so-called “non-metaphysical reading” of Hegel. As Cyril O'Regan has pointed out, it goes hand in hand with an “anti-theological” reading. For instance, David Kolb writes, “I want most of all to preclude the idea that Hegel provides a cosmology including the discovery of a wondrous new superentity, a cosmic self or a world soul or a supermind.” But this is exactly what Hegel does.

The phrase “non-metaphysical reading” seems to have originated with Klaus Hartmann who, in his influential 1972 article “Hegel: A NonMetaphysical View,” identified Hegel’s system as a “hermeneutic of categories.” Other well-known proponents of Hartmann’s approach include Kenley Royce Dove, William Maker, Terry Pinkard, and Richard Dien Winfield.

The non-metaphysical/anti-theological reading relies on ignoring or explaining away the many frankly metaphysical, cosmological, theological, and theosophical passages in Hegel’s writings and lectures. Thus the non-metaphysical reading is less an interpretation of Hegel than a revision. Its advocates sometimes admit this — Hartmann, for instance — but more often than not they offer their “reading” in opposition to other interpretations of what Hegel meant. It is, furthermore, no accident that the same authors finish out their “interpretation” by tacking a left-wing politics onto Hegel, for they are, in fact, the intellectual heirs of the nineteenth-century “Young Hegelians” who also gave non-metaphysical, anti-theological “interpretations” of Hegel. The non-metaphysical reading is simply Hegel shorn of everything offensive to the modern, secular, liberal mind. This does not, however, imply that I am offering an alternative “right Hegelian” reading of Hegel. I am simply reading Hegel. In so doing, I hope to contribute to the “nonpartisan, historical and textual analysis” of Hegel’s thought called for by Louis Dupré.

Such a reading, I am convinced, places Hegel’s philosophy squarely in the tradition of classical metaphysics. In this view, I am in accord with the broadly “ontotheological” interpretation of Hegel offered by Martin Heidegger, who coined the term, and by such scholars as Walterjaeschke, Emil Fackenheim, Cyril O'Regan, Malcolm Clark, Albert Chapelle, Claude Bruaire, and Iwan Iljin. “Ontotheology” refers to the equation of Being, God, and logos. Hegel’s account of the Absolute is structurally identical to Aristotle’s account of Being as Substance (ousia): it is the most real, independent, and self-sufficient thing that is. Hegel identifies the Absolute with God, and does so both in his public statements (his books and lectures) and in his private notes — and with a straight face, without winking at us. Hegel does not offer the categories of his Logic as mere “hermeneutic devices” but as eternal forms, moments or aspects of the Divine Mind (Absolute Idea). He treats nature as “expressing” the divine ideas in imperfect form. He speaks of a “World Soul” and uses it to explain how dowsing and animal magnetism work. He structures his entire philosophy around the Christian Trinity, and claims that with Christianity the “principle” of speculative philosophy was revealed to mankind.” He tells us — again with a straight face — that the state is God on earth.

I see no reason not to take Hegel at his word on any of this. I am interested only in what Hegel thought, not in what he ought to have thought. To be sure, Hegel’s appropriation of classical metaphysics and Christianity is transformative; Hegel is no ordinary believer. But his metaphysical and religious commitments are not exoteric. He believes that his Absolute and World Soul, and so forth, are real beings; they are just not real in the sense in which traditional, pious “picture-thinking” conceives of them. If Hegel departs from the metaphysical tradition in anything, it is in dispensing with its false modesty. Hegel does not claim to be merely searching for truth. He claims that he has found it.

Reply to frank

Cool, thanks.

Quoting Jamal

Cool, thanks.

:up: As for what Adorno made of it, I'm still trying to formulate that. He spent a lot of time sunk deep in the quasi-mystical. He tried to learn Hebrew because one of his friends became an expert in Jewish Kabbalah. But what I notice from Buck-Morss's outline is that while others around him are tipping over into lunacy, he keeps his head. For Adorno, truth is about facts. Hegel would have said we only ever encounter partial-truths. The final truth would reside in the Absolute (sort of).

I think when he describes the descent of the spirit into human life (which is what that lecture portion you quoted is about), he's describing what Marxists around him believed. He's explaining what's wrong with the picture the Marxists are embracing. The reason Lukacs stifled himself was this belief that they were cruising into this great mystical reunification between the subject and the object, between humanity and the Absolute. God was waking up and looking out onto a human world. That's what the Proletariat was supposed to be. This isn't just about emancipation. In fact, as Adorno shows, it's not about emancipation at all. This is a religious vision. Adorno wasn't buying it.

What did he really believe about the universe? I think he would have said we need to temper the drive to answer questions like that.

Quoting Kracauer, History, p.207

- Adorno's unfettered dialectics ... eliminates ontology altogether. His rejection of any
ontological stipulation in favor of an infinite dialectics which penetrates
all concrete things. and entities seems inseparable from a certain arbitrariness, an absence of content and direction ...

I think this is a typical reaction by those averse to dropping ontology. It seems to leave one floating on air?

Reply to frank

I think Magee's particular thesis is too maximalist, in part because much of what he designates as "Hermetic" is also a part of the broader medieval tradition Hegel was familiar with, or the Patristics he was exposed to as a theology student. However, it's nonetheless an important point. Gary Dorian makes a similar case in "Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit" and so does Robert M. Wallace in his work (plenty of others too).

I still recommend Pinkard's "Hegel's Naturalism" sometimes because it's a good introduction and I think the deflated Hegel is easier for people to wrap their minds around. However, it's ironic that Pinkard uses Hegel's "Aristotlianism" to deflate him, since it presupposes the modern analytic deflationary readings of Aristotle to make sense.

I feel like "mysticism" is not the best term here though. Really what bothers modern sensibilities is just metaphysics and the transcendent in general. Philosophy need not appeal to any sort of mystical experience to fall afoul of this bias in contemporary thought (particularly analytical thought). Which I feel is unfortunate. I think "anti-metaphysics" tends to actually just assume a very particular sort of metaphysics, and then this position essentially just "cheats" on justifying itself by pretending it is "just the skeptical, agnostic position."

It's interesting to think about how to frame this sort of move (which is very common in contemporary philosophy) in dialectical terms. The basic move is "we must be properly skeptical and will just bracket this confusing question and move on," with this "bracketing" actually just resulting in adopting a particular metaphysics (e.g. nominalism, materialism, etc.)

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

I feel like "mysticism" is not the best term here though. Really what bothers modern sensibilities is just metaphysics and the transcendent in general. Philosophy need not appeal to any sort of mystical experience to fall afoul of this bias in contemporary thought (particularly analytical thought). Which I feel is unfortunate. I think "anti-metaphysics" tends to actually just assume a very particular sort of metaphysics, and then this position essentially just "cheats" on justifying itself by pretending it is "just the skeptical, agnostic position."

Well said.

Quoting Jamal

In other words, the progressive thinker as subject stands against their social context, criticizing the institutions of the status quo, and in such a negative stance represents the emancipation of the spirit (think of Enlightenment thinkers criticizing monarchy). But this negation of institutions, this so-called abstract freedom or abstract subjectivity, is one-sided and unbalanced: it forgets that the ability to critique institutions is itself a product of institutions (like universities). Therefore another negation is required, the negation of the original critical stance, leading to a reconciliation in which the subject's freedom is no longer abstract but is mediated by institutions (parliament limits the power of the monarchy). This last stage is the positive outcome of the process.

I interpret this negation of the negation in the following way. The rebellious subject sees the institutions of society as restrictive and infringements on freedom, and therefore acts to negate the validity of them. An example of this is when I argued that "society" is not a proper object, but a concept. That would be a step toward negating the validity of those institutions. But Hegel implies that this gets the subject nowhere, because the subject is actually dependent on these institutions, so it ends up rebounding back upon the subject requiring a negation of one's own negation. Therefore the subject is forced to negate that negation for one's own support.

Now, Adorno says that this is a feature consistent throughout most of Hegel, but also points out that there was a time when Hegel did not accept this principle.

[quote=p15]
Now it is quite remarkable, a historical fact, and one that is perhaps
of key importance for what I wish to explain to you today, that this
negation of the negation that is then postulated as a positive is a
notion that the young Hegel sharply criticizes in essays which Nohl
published with the title of Early Theological Writings.6 In their central
thrust these youthful essays amount to an attack on positivity, in
particular on positive religion, positive theology, in which the subject
is not ‘at home’ [bei sich] and in which this theology confronts him
as being something alien and reified. And since it is reified and external
and particular, it cannot be the absolute that religious categories
claim it to be. Moreover, this is an idea that Hegel does not repudiate
or abandon later on; he merely reinterprets it. In general, he
abandoned or rejected very few of his ideas. What he mainly did was to
change their emphasis, albeit sometimes in a way that turned them
into their opposites. [/quote]

Further, there is another possible conclusion, to this issue with the institutions of society. This is the approach described by Plato in The Symposium. In this dialogue the student is being educated on the principles of "love". The student learns to see that institutions are beautiful. This requires no denial or affirmation of any specific institution, only a recognition that each, in its own way, has beauty. And there is no possible reason for them all to be beautiful other than the fact that they participate in the Idea of Beauty.

I believe that in the Platonic approach the double negation is averted, by averting the first negation. Through the teachings of love, the primary desire to negate the institutions is averted by demonstrating the natural beauty of an institution as artificial, a form of art. And when the subject proceeds to inquire how is it possible that an institution, which is fundamentally an infringement on one's freedom, could be beautiful, the person is lead to the reality of the Idea, which transcends all such things. Hegel posits the Idea as prior to, and transcending the state and its institutions, but gets there in a faulty way, so this position is unsupported.

Another topic which comes up in the second lecture is Hegel's distinction between "being-in-itself" and "being-for-itself" (p14). To me, the former represents a passive being, while the latter represents an intentionally active being. I believe that this distinction will help us to understand the sense of "negative" which Adorno is attempting to circumscribe. In a way "No" is at the heart of morality, as the capacity to resist acting on temptations. And this type of negativity, known as will power, is not quite the same as a simple opposition to yes. It's more like the means by which deliberation is capacitated.

This resisting action, which is like the skeptic's "suspending judgement", which allows clear thinking, is the reason I believe he associates negative dialectics with critical thinking:

[quote=p20] I would suggest that
the two terms – critical theory and negative dialectics17 – have the
same meaning. Perhaps, to be more precise, with the sole difference
that critical theory really signifies only the subjective side of thought,
that is to say, theory, while negative dialectics signifies not only that
aspect of thought but also the reality that is affected by it. [/quote]

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Good interpretations, and worded better than mine :up:

Reply to Jamal Nothing to add yet, just reporting in to say I'm caught up. Everyone's essays and reflections are helping to read along. EDIT: (not much to say yet other than it looks like Lecture 3 is a continuation of the argument from Lecture 2, and neat to see him further differentiating himself from Hegel. I'm still in "absorb" mode)

Quoting Jamal

Good interpretations, and worded better than mine :up:

Thank you. I'm going to take a look at the senses of "negative" referred to. I'm intrigued by the way that "negative" is associated with bad, and "positive" is associated with good, almost to the point of a necessary relation in common usage, yet "no" is not necessarily associated with bad, nor is "yes" necessarily associated with good.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah it's interesting. It almost looks like he's chosen the evaluative descriptor, "negative," as a nay-saying gesture, which an uncharitable person might think is hardly better than the yay-saying he criticizes (or thinks is stupid).

Quoting Moliere

I'm still in "absorb" mode

:cool:

I'm in regurgitation of partly digested philosophical material mode.

Reply to Jamal Well I appreciate it cuz it's helping me.

Much easier to start a new thinker with some easier to digest thoughts than the thinker himself.

So, he goes through a bunch of meanings for "positive" and distinguishes two principal uses, "positive" in the sense of good, and positive in the sense of what is posited, or postulated as actual fact. The latter is the sense associated with positivism, and he warns about a sort of equivocation whereby the word "positive" in positivism has connotations from the other meaning, good, approvable, and ideal.

I will add that there is another sense of "positive" which sort of bridges between those two principle senses, it is the sense of a sort of certitude about what is the actual fact. "I am positive that I put the file in the folder, therefore unless someone removed it, it must be there." This appears to signify the positive attitude which Adorno's negative dialectics is opposed to, as a sort of Socratic skepticism. In analogy, the positivists are to Adorno, like the sophists were to Plato.

‘[quote=p18-19] For this reason,
therefore, we might say, putting it in dialectical terms, that what
appears as the positive is essentially the negative, i.e. the thing that
the negation of negation is to be criticized.
And that is the motive, the essential motive, for
the conception and nomenclature of a negative dialectic.[/quote]

So he describes his negative dialectics as a form of critical theory which goes beyond conventional critical theory, by affecting not only the way that we think, but also the way that we act. By affecting the way that we act, it has an affect on reality itself. This proposition we can reflect back on Hegel's distinction between "being-in-itself" as passive critical thought, and "being-for-itself" as active negative dialectics.

[quote=19-20]In this context, I remember very well a junior seminar
I gave with Paul Tillich shortly before the outbreak of the Third
Reich. A participant spoke out very sharply on one occasion against
the idea of the meaning of existence. She said life did not seem very
meaningful to her and she didn’t know whether it had a meaning.
The very voluble Nazi contingent became very excited by this and
scraped the floor noisily with their feet. Now, I do not wish to maintain
that this Nazi foot-shuffling proves or refutes anything in particular,
but I do find it highly significant. I would say it is a touchstone
for the relation of thinking to freedom. It raises the question whether
thought can bear the idea that a given reality is meaningless and that
mind is unable to orientate itself; or whether the intellect has become
so enfeebled that it finds itself paralysed by the idea that all is not
well with the world. It is for this reason in my view that the theoretical
notion of a positivity that represents the sum of all negativities is
no longer possible – unless philosophy wishes to live up to its reputation
of worldly innocence, something it always deserves most when
it attempts to become overly familiar with the world and to ascribe
a positive meaning to it.[/quote]

He then proceeds to dismiss the positivist interpretations of Hegel, which I interpret as addressing them as a sort of misinterpretation. They are misinterpretations because they focus on a part, but not the whole of Hegel's work. This thinking, which accepts a part as the whole leads to that positivist notion which he rejects, that the sum of all negatives produces something positive. Further, he explains how dialectics must address the primary question of the hypostasis of mind, which is very appealing to the philosophical mind which apprehends it.

[quote=20-21]We shall see that the thesis of the identity of concept
and thing is in general the vital nerve of idealist thought, and indeed
traditional thought in general. Furthermore, this assertion of the
identity of concept and thing is inextricably intertwined with the
structure of reality itself. And negative dialectics as critique means
above all criticism of precisely this claim to identity – a claim that
cannot of course be tested on every single object in a kind of bad
infinity, but which certainly can be applied to the essential structures
the negation of negation confronting philosophy either directly
or as mediated through the themes of philosophy.
Furthermore, dialectics as critique implies the
criticism of any hypostasization of the mind as the primary thing, the
thing that underpins everything else.[/quote]

The lecture is concluded by assertions that he adheres firmly to Hegelian principles.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Adorno knew the guy who invented the term reification. The negation of the negation is a reification. Remembering that is what negative dialectics is about.

Reply to frank
What is it a reification of, "society"?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover
No. We'd have to start by explaining what's meant by negation of the negation. It's Hegel.

Reply to frank
And so... Where's the reification?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover
The resolution of conflict. It's not a static thing.

Reply to frank
OK, but objects are not static things either. So how do you draw the conclusion of reification?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover
The average object is a reification isn't it?

Reply to frank
Yes, but that "it's not a static thing" does not imply that it's not an object. Objects are not necessarily static things, so how is reification implicated?.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover
Dialectics seems to leave everything in a shadowy state. Every property seems to contain it's opposite. We could interpret Hegel as suggesting that we reach the truth by way of synthesis. A higher truth, anyway. So we imagine a pending resolution is a gate to something substantial. But if we take synthesis that way, we've forgotten the point of dialectics, haven't we? Our synthesis is really just another thesis, containing its own negation.

It's in that state of associating satisfaction with synthesis that the act of reification dwells.

Reply to frank
I don't see it. Wikipedia tells me reification is a form of alienation. So that would be the opposite of this negation of the negation, which leads to the positive synthesis. Are you saying that Adorno's negative dialectics, which disputes this interpretation, is itself a reification?

LND, Lecture 2 (continued)

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover covered some of this nicely but here are my own thoughts.

He looks at what I'll call "pop positivity":

[quote=p.17]The situation today is one that secretly everyone finds deeply dubious, but it is also one that is so overpowering that people feel they can do nothing about it, and perhaps they can in fact do nothing about it. Nowadays – in contrast to what Hegel criticized as abstract subjectivity or abstract negativity – what predominates in the general public is an ideal of abstract positivity ...[/quote]

His antipathy to this is a big part of the reason he chose to call his dialectics negative:

[quote=p.18]Now, when I speak of ‘negative dialectics’ not the least important reason for doing so is my desire to dissociate myself from this fetishization of the positive ...[/quote]

He is talking about the idea that positivity is something good in itself, expressed in everyday life with the familiar imperative to "keep on smiling," which characterizes the "positive attitude". Adorno makes the simple point that before we say yes, we might want to stop and ask what we're saying yes to.

Since the examples he gives from everyday life seem fairly harmless, I wondered how this kind of positivity could have helped to motivate him to label his philosophy "negative". I think it becomes clearer as the lecture progresses.

The fetishization he's talking about has a pernicious manifestation, today known as toxic positivity, which involves the repression and minimization of suffering. We see this in the "Law of Attraction," a quasi-religious self-help movement whose core message implies a kind of victim-blaming: if something bad happens to you, it's because you've failed to send enough positivity out into the universe.

He returns to Hegel to criticize his dialectic as a whole for its positive culmination:

[quote=p.19]The fact is that what we might call the secret or the point of his philosophy is that the quintessence of all the negations it contains – not just the sum of negations but the process that they constitute – is supposed to culminate in a positive sense, namely in the famous dialectical proposition with which you are all familiar that ‘what is actual is rational’. It is precisely this point, the positive nature of the dialectic as a whole, the fact that we can recognize the totality as rational rightdown into the irrationality of its individual components, the fact that we can declare the totality to be meaningful – that is what seems tome to have become untenable.[/quote]

He rams the point home by referring to the line he is most famous for: "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric" (which is from a 1951 essay called "Cultural Criticism and Society").

I do not know whether the principle that no poem can be written after Auschwitz can be sustained. But the idea that we can say of the world as a whole in all seriousness that it has a meaning now that we have experienced Auschwitz, and witnessed a world in which that was possible and that threatens to repeat itself in another guise or a similar one – I remind you of Vietnam – to assert such an idea would seem to me to be a piece of cynical frivolity that is simply indefensible to what we might call the pre-philosophical mind. A philosophy that blinds itself to this fact and that in its overweening arrogance fails to absorb this reality and continues to insist that there is a meaning despite everything – this seems to me more than we can reasonably expect anyone who has not been made stupid by philosophy to tolerate (since as a matter of fact, alongside its other functions, philosophy is capable of making people stupid).

This is about Hegelian philosophy, and I think you can make the same point in reference to pop-positivity and the ideology of optimism as seen not only in the Law of Attraction but also in such works as Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now and Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist, in which suffering and horror are (arguably) reduced either to primitive stages or else to set-backs on the march of Progress.

This brings everything back to the nonidentical. There is a passage in Minima Moralia in which he connects this concept with genocide:

[quote=Minima Moralia, 149]... neither Timur nor Genghis Khan nor the British colonial administration of India deliberately burst the lungs of millions of human beings with poison gas ...

One cannot bring Auschwitz into analogy with the destruction of the Greek city-states in terms of a mere gradual increase of horror, regarding which one preserves one’s peace of mind. Certainly, the martyrdom and degradation suffered by those in the cattle-cars, completely without precedent, casts a harsh, deathly light on the most distant past, in whose obtuse and unplanned violence the scientifically organized kind was already teleologically at work. The identity lies in the non-identity, in what has not yet been, which denounces what has been. The statement that it’s always been the same, is untrue in its immediacy, true only through the dynamic of the totality. Whoever allows the cognition of the increase of horror to escape them, does not merely fall prey to cold-hearted contemplation, but fails to recognize, along with the specific difference of what is newest from what has gone before, simultaneously the true identity of the whole, of horror without end.[/quote]

For Adorno then, it seems that being positive, whether you're doing history, Hegelian philosophy, or just the everyday fetishization, is a kind of identity thinking, which obscures the particulars. To put events on a historical continuum or in a ready category is, like Hegel's final synthesis or the Law of Attraction, an affirmation of meaning, and you can't get more positive than that. But in doing this one refuses to hear actual suffering voices.

The other way he expresses this is with the term abstract. The idea here seems to be that in both cases the abstraction is a removal from the stuff of life, from the particulars. Just as, in Hegel's philosophy, the abstract freedom of the critical subject represents the individual's self-conception as independent of society, which is thus a forgetting of or abstraction away from the individual's sociality, so abstract positivity represents both a forgetting of what it is we're being positive about, and a reduction of the bad stuff to inconveniences, or worse, self-inflicted wounds.

He says that negative dialectics, since it's essentially critical of all this positivity—the idea that everything is okay or will be for the best in the end—could be just another term for critical theory as such. But...

[quote=p.20]Perhaps, to be more precise, with the sole difference that critical theory really signifies only the subjective side of thought, that is to say, theory, while negative dialectics signifi es not only that aspect of thought but also the reality that is affected by it. In other words, it encapsulates not just a process of thought but also, and this is good Hegel, a process affecting things. This critical character of dialectics has to be dissected into a series of elements. The first of these is the one I attempted to explain last time – as you will perhaps recollect – namely the relation of concept to thing.[/quote]

What I think this amounts to is that Adorno is going to have to provide some kind of philosophical justification for the project, that is, something resembling epistemology and metaphysics in which he sets out his picture of the concept-object relation and experience in general. This is interesting because he usually positions himself against epistemology and metaphysics.

But, after reminding us that what he's doing has nothing to do with Soviet dialectical materialism or Lenin's incompetent criticism of Hegel, he ends by emphasizing the need for the critical and the negative, alluding to a possible paradox, namely that philosophy is essentially false:

[quote=p.21]Do not forget that the very fact that thinking takes place in concepts ensures that the faculty that produces concepts, namely mind, is manoeuvred into a kind of position of priority from the very outset; and that if you concede even an inch to this priority of spirit – whether in the shape of the ‘givens’ that present themselves to the mind in the form of sense data or in the shape of categories – if you concede even an inch to this principle, then there is in fact no escape from it.[/quote]

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The lecture is concluded by assertions that he adheres firmly to Hegelian principles

This is a minor quibble. He says that all of his ideas are contained in Hegel's philosophy at least in tendency. That is, interpreted a certain way, everything he's saying can be spun out of Hegel. I don't think that's the same as saying he adheres firmly to Hegelian principles.

Incidentally, I forgot to mention this bit, also from near the end:

I believe furthermore that at present a true philosophical critique of the hypostasis of mind is fully justified because this hypostasis is proving irresistible to philosophy, which after all operates in the medium of the intellect, which thrives exclusively and at all times in the mind.

This is something like my example of consciousness, which I suggested might be a "frozen concept" that could do with some dialectical thought to loosen it up. Of course, what I was talking about without realizing it was reification or hypostasization (I'm not clear on the difference).

Reply to Jamal
I think we're fond of doing that with individuality, noting in various ways how the very idea of an individual arises against the backdrop of society.

With consciousness it seems like we're bumping against the limits of language. I don't have a vantage point on consciousness.

Quoting Jamal

This is a minor quibble. He says that all of his ideas are contained in Hegel's philosophy, or are contained at least in tendency. That is, interpreted a certain way, everything he's saying can be spun out of Hegel. I don't think that's the same as saying he adheres firmly to Hegelian principles.

Ok, what I said was completely an exaggeration, not an interpretation which remains true to Adorno's intention. It seems I have an odd subconscious habit of seizing on quirky lines and directing attention to them by interpreting them in a strange way. So what exactly is Adorno's intention in mentioning this?
The quirky lines often betray secrets which the author has no intention of revealing.

This what he actually said:

The enormous power of Hegel – that is the power which
impresses us so hugely today and, God knows,
it is a power that impresses me today to the point where I
am fully aware that, of the ideas that I am presenting to you, there
is not a single one that is not contained, in tendency at least, in
Hegel’s philosophy.

So, to pay respect for the difference you point out, what I see is a trick of rhetoric. He apprehends Hegel as hugely powerful in influencing the minds of men, and he has a desire to tap into that power, perhaps having political objectives. To support this end, he has mentioned some work of the younger Hegel, which is somewhat inconsistent with the older Hegel, and with reference to this, he claims everything he says is "contained" (in a qualified sense) in Hegel.

The trickery is this. He implies that he and the thoughts he presents, originate from, or have been greatly influenced by ("contained") by Hegel, suggesting that he is Hegelian. In reality, he is not, but he knows that Hegel is understood as a powerful authority, and he desires to gain support for his project by appearing to be consistent with Hegel.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So, to pay respect for the difference you point out, what I see is a trick of rhetoric. He apprehends Hegel as hugely powerful in influencing the minds of men, and he has a desire to tap into that power, perhaps having political objectives. To support this end, he has mentioned some work of the younger Hegel, which is somewhat inconsistent with the older Hegel, and with reference to this, he claims everything he says is "contained" (in a qualified sense) in Hegel.

The trickery is this. He implies that he and the thoughts he presents, originate from, or have been greatly influenced by ("contained") by Hegel, suggesting that he is Hegelian. In reality, he is not, but he knows that Hegel is understood as a powerful authority, and he desires to gain support for his project by appearing to be consistent with Hegel

Interesting take, by which I mean you're dead wrong.

Adorno wants to do what all good philosophers want to do, which is to overturn philosophy with a critique of what has come before. He is doing this with Hegel, but at the same time distinguishing himself from the shallow critics of Hegel. That is what's happening when he praises Hegel, as in, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, because Hegel is still fundamental --- and this is an honest response to what he sees as misunderstandings. I see no reason not to think his assessment of Hegel is honest.

I've read two of Adorno's lecture courses and also Dialectic of Enlightenment and Minima Moralia --- and on that basis I can judge the idea that he has an ulterior motive for praising Hegel, that his engagement with him is opportunistic rather than dialectical, as hasty, baseless, and scurrilous (that reminds me that you've put forward one of these uncharitable accusations before --- I remember calling you "scurrilous" --- but I can't recall what it was about EDIT: it was about German philosophers). The idea that he is appealing to authority to gain recognition for his own philosophy can only be excused by a lack of familiarity with Adorno and his milieu. But even then, I can't see why you would jump to that conclusion.

He was already at the time of these lectures (1965/66) very influential and highly respected (this was late in his career). Left-wing activist students in Germany already looked to him for support and guidance, he was fairly high-profile in the culture, and philosophically he was seen as the guiding light of critical theory. I don't see how he had anything to prove, in terms of personal reputation. Also, he had no political objectives and was generally against activism in this period (the time for praxis had gone and there was no prospect of its returning (he wasn't a big fan of what the rebellious students were doing, as it turned out)).

Also, appeals to authority are totally not Adorno's style. He's giving credit where it's due, and positioning himself against other critics of Hegel. So I think he is pretty much the opposite of what you're accusing him of being: he is Hegelian, and against Hegel.

LND, Lecture 3

This lecture starts by deepening the account of negativity he began in lecture 2, and then goes on to look at the question, "is negative dialectics possible?"

In this post I'll look at the first part, on negativity. One of the things he does here is answer the objection I voiced about lecture 2:

Quoting Jamal

It almost looks like he's chosen the evaluative descriptor, "negative," as a nay-saying gesture, which an uncharitable person might think is hardly better than the yay-saying he criticizes (or thinks is stupid).

He is aware of this danger, and stresses that abstract negativity is no better than abstract positivity. Both are examples of reification.

In reification, concepts ...

[quote=p.23]... are no longer measured against their contents, but instead are taken in isolation, so that people take up attitudes to them without bothering to inquire further into the truth content of what they refer to. For example, if we take the concept ‘positive’, which is essentially a concept expressing a relation, we see that it has no validity on its own but only in relation to something that is to be affirmed or negated. Then we find that simply because of the emotional values that it has acquired, that have accumulated around the word, the term is wrenched out of the context in which it has validity and is turned into an independent and absolute thing, the measure of all things.[/quote]

And since the same goes for negativity, and the two are nothing without each other, it follows that nay-saying is little better than yea-saying. But before he makes that point he says something interesting about the origin of reification:

[quote=p.24]Its principal cause is undoubtedly the irrevocable loss of absolutely binding uniform categories. This means that the less the mind possesses predetermined so-called substantial, unquestioned meanings, the more it tends to compensate for this by literally fetishizing concepts of its own devising which possess nothing that transcends consciousness. In short it makes absolutes of things it has created. And it achieves this by tearing them from their context and then ceasing to think of them further.[/quote]

I take "the irrevocable loss of absolutely binding uniform categories" to be referring to the loss of certainty in God and the fragmentation of meaning, or disenchantment, of the post-Enlightenment world. So the idea is that with the disappearance of unquestionable spiritual and intellectual authorities and the lack of a metaphysical foundation that everyone can agree on, thinkers have invented concept after concept in a search for meaning, and have—as compensation for the lack of shared certainty—reified those concepts, treating them as absolutes, self-evident, fixed things.

Reification would have been a familiar concept to the attendees of the lectures, but for me it's always had something mysterious about it, and it's not used much outside modern continental philosophy and Marxism, so I think it's worth defining it roughly. It literally means thingification and it refers to the way in which concepts, processes and relations are treated as fixed and self-contained, i.e., as separate things. I spoke earlier of "frozen concepts," giving the example of consciousness—or mind might be the better example here—which is treated as a thing in the head.

But in the context of Adorno, who picked up the concept of reification from Lukacs, the thingification of consciousness or mind might be better termed hypostasization, which is the fundamental philosophical error of which reification is an instance or type specifically in the context of society (or the theory thereof, i.e., sociology, political science, etc).

An important consequence, for social philosophy, of the solidification that results from reification is that concepts, processes, and relations come to be seen as fixed, natural, and unquestionable. For example, the market is now an unquestionable thing standing above society, increasingly outside of the reach of politics—or so it seems. One of the tasks of critical theory, then, is to uncover such reifications, as Marx had done with the commodity (see commodity fetishism).

Reification is obviously connected with identity thinking. I'm thinking it's like this:

Identity thinking (epistemology)

    ?

Hypostasization (ontology)

    ?

Reification (sociology, politics, etc)

Next, he admits that the way he has already introduced the meaning of his negativity—presumably he means the way he described it in lecture 2—is misleading, in that he has given the impression that he was urging the adoption of an abstract negativity against the dominant abstract positivity. This was precisely the impression I got (and which I still can't quite shake).

He contrasts abstract negativity, or negativity in itself, with what he is really getting at with his negative dialectics, which is something to do with determinate negation:

[quote=p.25]But I believe that, if you wish to grasp what I am aiming at but am forced to explain to you in stages, you should be clear in your minds from the outset that we are not speaking here about negativity as a universal, abstract principle of the kind that I was initially forced to develop – or not to develop, but that I placed at the start of my argument because I had to start somewhere, even if I do not believe in an absolute beginning. Instead, the negativity I am speaking about contains a pointer to what Hegel calls determinate negation. In other words, negativity of this kind is made concrete and goes beyond mere standpoint philosophy by confronting concepts with their objects and, conversely, objects with their concepts.[/quote]

In answering the charge that he doesn't apply his much-vaunted negativity to his own ideas, he is brought to some interesting reflections on the meaning of negativity.

He imagines one such criticism:

[quote=p.26]‘Well, if he has got a negative principle or if he thinks negativity is such an important matter then he ought really to say nothing at all’[/quote]

After all, to say anything at all in philosophy is a positive act, an affirmation, and Adorno agrees that ...

[quote=p.26]... there is perhaps a so-called positive motive force of thought ...[/quote]

There follows a dense and interesting passage which I think is pretty important. I'll separate it into paragraphs for easier reading.

[quote=p.26]But I believe that precisely this aspect of positivity, which acts as a corollary to negativity, is conjoined with the principle of negativity because it resists being fixed once and for all in an abstract, static manner.

If it is true that every philosophy that can have any claims at all to the truth lives from the ancient fires, i.e. it secularizes not just philosophy, but also theology, then we have identified here, or so I believe, an outstanding point in the secularization process. It is the fact that the prohibition on graven images that occupies a position of central importance in the religions that believe in salvation, that this prohibition extends into the ideas and the most sublime ramifications of thought.

Hence, to make this quite clear, the issue is not to deny the existence of a certain fixed point, it is not even to deny the existence of some fixed element in thought; we shall in due course, I hope, come to discuss the meaning of such a fixed element in dialectical logic in very concrete terms. But the fixed, positive point, just like negation, is an aspect – and not something that can be anticipated, placed at the beginning of everything.
[/quote]

The upshot is that positivity and negativity are mutually dependent aspects of each other. I think the bit about secularization and graven images is suggesting that just as religions needed this prohibition (against graven images), philosophy in the secularized world needs a prohibition against reification—referring back to his account of the origin of reification.

This leads him to anticipate an important question:

You may well ask me about what I said earlier on: if you admit that the positive, like the negative, is no more than an aspect, and that neither may be regarded as an absolute – why then do I privilege the concept of negativity so emphatically?

The philosophical answer, he says, will have to wait, and we just have to be patient. But the practical answer is there is just too much positivity in the world, and that since this positivity "turns out to be negative," as in bad (nationalism, racism, etc)—and here he makes use of the different senses of the positive-negative dimension that he discussed in the last lecture—it "behoves us to assume" the negative attitude.

So if we suspected that his choice of the "negative" descriptor was somewhat rhetorical and emotionally charged, then maybe we were right. But then, he would not have accepted dichotomies with evaluative/emotive/rhetorical on one side, and detached/objective/rational on the other.

Quoting Jamal

concepts ...

... are no longer measured against their contents,

I think when he says "contents" he's talking about real events that stand as examples of concepts. Like with music, the score is the concept (or form), and a performance is the content. He said it's a mistake to fail to see the way the performance is its own entity, each moment arising out of the history of the performance, and propelled onward from there. The score is literally nothing in the absence of the performance (and vice versa).

That would relate to the mind as when people think of mind as a domain or vault of some kind. They're separating mind from the living flow of events that are the content of the concept of mind.

Reply to Jamal
I guess that one example of negativity being 'reified' points to Adorno objecting to the "material" as a reliable pole star in Marx and Lenin (and Lukács).

In Negative Dialectics, Adorno observes:

Quoting Adorno, Negative Dialectics, page 224 ff, translated by Dennis Redmond

The corporeal moment registers the cognition, that suffering ought not to be, that things should be different. “Woe speaks: go.” That is why what is specifically materialistic converges with what is critical, with socially transforming praxis. The abolition of suffering, or its mitigation to a degree which is not to be theoretically assumed in advance, to which no limit can be set, is not up to the individual who endures suffering, but solely to the species that it belongs to, even where it has subjectively renounced the latter and is objectively forced into the absolute loneliness of the helpless object. All activities of the species make reference to its physical continued existence, even if they fail to recognize this, becoming organizationally autonomous and seeing to their business only as an afterthought. Even the institutions which society creates in order to exterminate itself are, as unleashed, absurd self-preservation, simultaneously their own unconscious actions against suffering. Narrowly restricted indeed by what is their own, their total particularity also turns against this. Confronted with them, the purpose which alone makes society into a society demands that it be so arranged, as what the relations of production here and there relentlessly prevent, and as what would be immediately possible to the productive forces right here and now. Such an arrangement would have its telos in the negation of physical suffering of even the least of its members, and of the innervated reflection-forms of that suffering. It is in the interest of all, at this point to be realized solely through a solidarity transparent to itself and to every living being.

MATERIALISM IMAGELESS
To those who wish that it not be realized, materialism has in the meantime done the favor of its self-degradation. The immaturity which caused this is not, as Kant thought, the fault of humanity itself. In the meantime at least it is reproduced according to plan by the powers that be. The objective Spirit, which they direct, because they require its chaining, adjusts itself to that consciousness, which was enchained for millennia. The materialism which achieved political power has devoted itself to such praxis no less than the world, which it once wanted to change; it continues to chain the consciousness, instead of comprehending it and for its part changing it. Terroristic state-machineries entrench themselves under the threadbare pretext of a soon to be fifty-year-old dictatorship of the long since administrated proletariat as permanent institutions, the mockery of the theory which they pay lip service to. They chain their underlings to their immediate interests and keep them narrow-minded. The depravation of theory meanwhile would not have been possible without the dregs of the apocryphal in it. By leaping summarily outside of culture, the functionaries who monopolize it would like to crudely feign that they would be beyond culture, and thus give sustenance to universal regression. What philosophy wished to liquidate, in the expectation of the immediately impending revolution, was, impatient with its claim, already at that moment lagging behind it. What is apocryphal in materialism reveals that of high philosophy, that which is untrue in the sovereignty of the Spirit, which the prevailing materialism disdains as cynically as bourgeois society had done in secret before. The idealistic sublime is the cognate of the apocryphal; the texts of Kafka and Beckett harshly illuminate this relationship.

Solely indefatigably reified consciousness imagines, or tries to persuade others into imagining, that it would possess photographs of objectivity. Its illusion crosses over into dogmatic immediacy. When Lenin, instead of entering into epistemology, compulsively and repeatedly asserted against this the being-in-itself of cognitive objects, he wanted to demonstrate the complicity of subjective positivism with the “powers that be” [in English]. His political need turned thereby against the theoretical cognitive goal. Transcendent argumentation finishes things off by means of the power-claim, and for ill: by being left unpenetrated, what is criticized remains undisturbed as it is, and is capable, as what has not been properly examined, of being resurrected in transformed power-constellations any which way.

Materialistic theory became not merely aesthetically defective in contrast to the hollowed-out sublime of bourgeois consciousness, but untrue. This is theoretically determinable. The dialectic is in the things, but it would not be without the consciousness which reflects it; no more than it could be dissolved into the latter. In the One pure and simple, undifferentiated, total matter, there would be no dialectic. The official materialistic one skipped over epistemology by decree. The latter’s revenge is epistemological: in the reflection-doctrine [Abbildlehre]. The thought is no reflection of the thing – it is made into this solely by
materialistic mythology in Epicurean style, which discovered that matter sends out little images – but aims at the thing itself. The enlightening intention of thought, demythologization, nullifies the image-character of consciousness. What clings to the image remains mythically ensnared, idolatry. The summation of images forms a wall before reality. Reflection-theory denies the spontaneity of the subject, a movens [Latin: what moves] of the objective dialectic of productive forces and relations of production. If the subject is bound to the stubborn mirror-image of the object, which necessarily lacks the object,
which discloses itself only to the subjective surplus in thought, then the result is the restless intellectual silence of integral administration.

The way Adorno bounces what is imagined or not in particular schemes is interesting.

Reply to Jamal
There is no reason for him to mention "The enormous power of Hegel", and speak as if he's awed by this mysterious force of ideology. How is that consistent with his project of negative dialectics? And he did this right after claiming we need to critique the hypostasis of mind. Instead, he's sucking up to it when he says that all his ideas are contained in Hegel.

Anyway, you can call me scurrilous, and I'll say that you turn a blind eye, willfully ignore and deny, a significant aspect of German philosophy. Now we can happily continue on, with these negative opinions about each other.

Quoting Jamal

He contrasts abstract negativity, or negativity in itself, with what he is really getting at with his negative dialectics, which is something to do with determinate negation:

When he talks about "confronting concepts with their objects and, conversely, objects with their concepts", isn't this exactly the type of identity philosophy which he claims to be rejecting?

And, the meaning of "determinate negation" seems very unclear. It appears strangely like a reification. When "negativity of this kind is made concrete", doesn't this imply making it a fixed object? He may attempt to explain this when he talks about the "fixed element" as an aspect rather than an absolute, but it's very unclear what he is trying to do here.

Maybe it will become clearer when he addresses the question of whether a negative dialectics is even possible. Maybe it will end up being self-defeating, and we'll just be negating the negative dialectic.

See I'm practising my negative (critical) thinking, to see how it goes.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

See I'm practising my negative (critical) thinking, to see how it goes.

I suggest you sublate yourself by directing your negativity inwards. Like I said, I'd like to postpone criticism of Adorno till after we understand the material, and in the meantime practice hermeneutic charitability.

But it's fair to point out that determinate negation is unclear. I actually meant to go into that in my last post but forgot. Adorno's audience, like all German humanities students at the time, would have been quite familiar with Hegel, so they would have known what he was talking about.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

When he talks about "confronting concepts with their objects and, conversely, objects with their concepts", isn't this exactly the type of identity philosophy which he claims to be rejecting?

There's no getting away from the concept-object confrontation; the question is how much of the object is lost in the confrontation, or how much the nonidentical is otherwise part of the experience in which the concept-object confrontation is central (which is so far unexplained).

As for your scurrilous defamations, I think they're so ridiculous that they must be motivated by strong prejudice, and I guess I won't be able to argue you out of that. I look forward to your continued participation in the reading group and your eventual contrition.

Quoting frank

I think when he says "contents" he's talking about real events that stand as examples of concepts. Like with music, the score is the concept (or form), and a performance is the content. He said it's a mistake to fail to see the way the performance is its own entity, each moment arising out of the history of the performance, and propelled onward from there. The score is literally nothing in the absence of the performance (and vice versa).

That would relate to the mind as when people think of mind as a domain or vault of some kind. They're separating mind from the living flow of events that are the content of the concept of mind.

Well put.

Quoting Jamal

There's no getting away from the concept-object confrontation; the question is how much of the object is lost in the confrontation, or how much the nonidentical is otherwise part of the experience in which the concept-object confrontation is central (which is so far unexplained).

I don't like this concept-object confrontation, and I do not see the need for it. It appears like it will reduce the activity of mind to mere representation, and this would be an ignorance of what I believe to be the primary activity of mind, creativity. I believe that a proper understanding of concepts reveals that there is no necessity of a corresponding object, and this lack of object is not a fault of the concept, but a feature of its utility, versatility, and infinite applicability. This is what we see in mathematics for example, conceptions produced without corresponding objects.

The issue though is that since there is no object which corresponds with these concepts, a loss of objectivity becomes apparent. There is nothing to ground "truth". Then the pure mathematicians who dream up these concepts with their imaginations tend toward Platonism to fill this gap, producing a vacuous form of "objectivity". The concept and object are one and the same.

Quoting Jamal

I think they're so ridiculous that they must be motivated by strong prejudice, and I guess I won't be able to argue you out of that.

There is prejudice here, no doubt. I don't believe it is strong though. Since the matter is the intentions which authors conceal from us in the secrecy of their own minds, it is something which can only be speculated about, therefore confidence cannot be obtained. If one allowed oneself confidence (strong prejudice), in this sort of matter, that person would be subsumed by paranoia. But also the highly speculative nature makes it very difficult to argue one out of it, as well.

Anyway, I'll try to hold off the criticism until the designated time slot, and enjoy the reading. I find the material well written and very interesting. And I don't mean this in the sense of "dead wrong", I'll withhold judgement on that.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Anyway, I'll try to hold off the criticism until the designated time slot, and enjoy the reading. I find the material well written and very interesting.

Cool. Yeah the lectures are fun to read. But be warned: you will find a big difference in style when we get to Negative Dialectics itself, which is dense and severe.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

. I believe that a proper understanding of concepts reveals that there is no necessity of a corresponding object, and this lack of object is not a fault of the concept, but a feature of its utility, versatility, and infinite applicability. This is what we see in mathematics for example, conceptions produced without corresponding objects.

Adorno agreed with Lukacs that the perspective you're describing is embedded in human consciousness, and its origin is in the concept of exchange value (basically the abstraction we call money). So he would totally understand what you're saying, but would warn that it leads to the conundrum of indirect realism.

By the way, this alienation of subject to object (or concept to content) is what Adorno is calling idealism.

Reply to Jamal A reaction: I'm struck by how this rejection of positivity parallels the criticism of faith I have been outlining in that thread.

There are also some interesting relations to logical pluralism in the rejection of a single totalising framework and sensitivity context.

Quoting frank

By the way, this alienation of subject to object (or concept to content) is what Adorno is calling idealism.

The problem is that this supposed alienation, concept without object, is a very true aspect of reality, what is at the base of creativity, like I explained. So Adorno needs to provide good reasons if he moves to reject it. Because it is idealism isn't a good reason. Idealism itself only becomes problematic when ideas are objectified, reified, as I explained is the case with common Platonism.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Idealism itself only becomes problematic when ideas are objectified, reified, as I explained is the case with common Platonism.

But we know Plato grooved on the dialectics, so would he have really gotten mired in what Adorno calls idealism?

Jamal touched on this above, but at page 26, he appears to approach a negative part of positivity. Notice how saying 'if you have nothing positive to say, don't say anything' is really, itself, saying something negative. This is a negative aspect of positivity. So positivity's approach to negativity, can be, and often is negative.

[quote=p27] But I believe that precisely
this aspect of positivity, which acts as a corollary to negativity, is
conjoined with the principle of negativity because it resists being fixed
once and for all in an abstract, static manner.[/quote]

He then describes this as a "prohibition", and the prohibition is called a "fixed element", which is said to be an "aspect". Notice it is the fixed positive point which becomes an aspect of the negative. This appears to me to be the intended grounding of the "determinate negative", it sort of reciprocates to the positive, or the positive submits to the negative, through prohibition. This must be where we find will power, and the moral capacity to say "no".

He then proceeds to express how the world is overflowing with positivity, but much of it turns out to actually be negative, like the example above. So negative dialectics is called for, and this constitutes an important difference between him and Hegel who taught positive dialectics. And he describes Hegelian dialectics as a sort of vicious circle, where the analytic becomes the synthetic and vise versa.

[quote=28]It is here that critical thinking and Hegel have to part company. [/quote]

Now he proceeds to the question " is a negative dialectics at all possible?" And, we see how the object can be the subject, or the object be a concept:

[quote=p28]Can we speak of a dialectical
process if movement is not brought into play by the fact that the
object that is to be understood as distinct from spirit turns out itself
to be spirit. [/quote]

Further, the source of determinate negativity is said to be in "bad positivity". This bad positivity is characterized by the claim that the negation of the negation is positive. And he refers to Spinoza for an example. It's a little confusing, but it appears to be, that when the claim that something else is false, is taken to be true, but this claim is really false itself, then this falsity obtains a sort of immediacy.

He then proceeds to criticize the Hegelian concept of synthesis. He does this with reference to Hegel's famous triad of Being, Nothing, and Becoming. He explains how being and nothing must actually be the same, identical. But to make them identical, in the sense of ideally opposed, requires that we "do violence" to the concept. The violence then requires rectification, and the rectification is what is called "synthesis".

His criticism appears to be, that this doing violence to the concept which is required to create two opposites, as ideal, is a sort of mutilation of the concept. Therefore what is rectified, as the synthesis isn't necessarily derived from a true representation of the original concept, it's the mutilated concept. This allows that the synthesis might just as well be a step backward as a step forward. So this seems to be what validates "non-identity". Identity is a creation of that violence, and this need to do violence is a negative aspect of that positive dialectic. Then he describes this as a minimal difference between him and Hegel, but with " large-scale implications".

The final question of this lecture is " the question of whether dialectics is possible without system". He describes a common negative attitude toward systems in philosophy, and states the following:

[quote=p32] What I am attempting
here and would like to show you is the possibility of philosophy
in an authoritative sense without either system or ontology – that is
what I am aiming at.[/quote]

He claims that he will show, through these lectures, "that a philosophical system is not possible".

Quoting frank

But we know Plato grooved on the dialectics, so would he have really gotten muted in what Adorno calls idealism?

What we commonly know as Platonism is better named as "Pythagorean idealism". I read Plato as being very critical of Pythagorean idealism, through the use of dialectics. This criticism laid the ground work for Aristotle's more formal refutation of Pythagorean idealism. Because of this, I view "Platonism" as a misnomer, because Plato was actually not Platonist.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

What we commonly know as Platonism is better named as "Pythagorean idealism".

I didn't realize that. Thanks.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Because of this, I view "Platonism" as a misnomer, because Plato was actually not Platonist.

I agree. :up:

Quoting frank

I didn't realize that.

It's dependent on interpretation of a thorough reading. Plato's writing is commonly divided into three stages, early, middle, late. Here is a brief example of how one may interpret.

The early provides a good demonstration of an attempt to understand Pythagorean idealism, and the associated theory of participation, through application of the dialectical method. The middle work reveals problems with this form of idealism, such as what we know as "the interaction problem", so he introduces "the good" as an active principle which bridges this gap. The later work, such as Parmenides and Sophist, reveal all sorts of problems of idealism, especially with sophistry not maintaining clear categories, and arguments produced from a predetermined end, designed for specific purposes. (Compare Adorno's doing violence to the concept.) The Timeaeus uses "matter" as a fundamental principle to sort out categories, and this becomes the base of Aristotle's "primary substance".

Throughout, Plato's belief in idealism is strengthened, but the prevailing idealism is rejected by what we can call his "negative dialectics". This is his critical analysis of the conventional idealism. It does not refute idealism, but exposes problems, and produces the need to revamp outdated principles.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The middle work reveals problems with this form of idealism, such as what we know as "the interaction problem

Adorno was preoccupied with the 'thing-in-itself' problem via Kant. I think that's similar to the interaction problem?

He thought the problem originated in various abstractions taking root in the human psyche.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Throughout, Plato's belief in idealism is strengthened, but the prevailing idealism is rejected by what we can call his "negative dialectics". This is his critical analysis of the conventional idealism. It does not refute idealism, but exposes problems, and produces the need to revamp outdated principles.

So what was Plato's ontology then? Could you explain?

Reply to frank
I don't believe we can really say that Plato had an ontology. Think that's strange? Look at the quote from Adorno, p32, in my post.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover
You're saying he was an ontological anti-realist. Did he see understanding as a continuously evolving thing that swings between oppositions?

Quoting Banno

A reaction: I'm struck by how this rejection of positivity parallels the criticism of faith I have been outlining in that thread.

There are also some interesting relations to logical pluralism in the rejection of a single totalising framework and sensitivity context.

That is quite Interesting. Regarding faith, I’ve only read a few of those posts. I guess the critical parallel you’re seeing between faith and positivity is the suppression of the negative, where the negative refers both to critique and to the bad shit (suffering seems to be embraced and simultaneously, effectively, cancelled out by Christian faith).

Certainly I, and probably Adorno, would broadly agree with your position on faith. But in a different work, Dialectic of Enlightenment, I take him to be saying that while Enlightenment sought to demystify reason and do away with faith, it tends to become myth again, meaning that it has its own tendency to set up unquestionable authorities, of which the fetishization of positivity, e.g., progress narratives, is an example. Thus faith and positivity are in the same business, although Adorno on the face of it ignores religious faith, thinking it’s a dead duck, and aims his guns at post-faith instrumental rationality. That's his Eurocentrism.

However, it occurs to me it’s not so simple. What I personally like about religious faith is something I imagine—not quite sure yet—Adorno would sympathize with, namely the refusal to let go of a utopian vision and the dedication to the sacredness of life. And the nonidentical might work here to provide a space for that.

As for logical pluralism, I take you to be making a general point about single vs multiple frameworks and the need for logical frameworks to be sensitive to context (like relevance logic?) rather than a point about how we can make space for a paraconsistent logic accommodating dialectical contradiction, right? Well, all I’ll say right now is…cool beans :cool:

This quote from LND 3 was exciting to read because it confirmed a lot of what I felt about Hegel:

Thus once the identity of two contradictory concepts has been
reached, or at least asserted in the antithesis, as in the most famous
case of all, the identity of Nothing with Being, this is followed by a
further refl ection to the effect that, indeed, these are identical, I have
indeed brought them together – Being, as something entirely undefi ned, is also Nothing. However, to put it quite crudely, they are not
actually entirely identical. The thought that carries out the act of
identifi cation always does violence to every single concept in the
process. And the negation of the negation is in fact nothing other
than the ?
¸
??? µ?????, the recollection, of that violence, in other words
the acknowledgement that, by conjoining two opposing concepts, I
have on the one hand bowed to a necessity implicit in them, while
on the other hand I have done them a violence that has to be rectifi ed. And truth to tell, this rectifi cation in the act of identifi cation is
what is always intended by the Hegelian syntheses.17 This structure
– we are speaking here of a structure of dialectics – this structure is
not something that can always be strictly sustained, and I know very
well that you could show me quite different structures in Hegel’s
Logic.

That the dialectic, in a sense, does a violence to the concepts of Being and Nothingness in their equation and sublation, and that this pattern is one of thought -- that the positing will bring about another positing, and these things together form a moment -- these are things I've tried to find ways to say and so it's something of a relief to see a Big Cheese say similar things to my sympathies. Makes me think maybe I got something out of the reading after all, while the suspicion the entire time was that it was nothing but my own imagination.

EDIT: And, generally, LND 3 felt clearer than 1 and 2 in terms of what Adorno is doing because he's less responding to criticisms to get his audience to listen to why his project is worth listening to and beginning to differentiate himself from Hegel, as well as ends with a kind of transcendental question: Is philosophy without system possible? And Negative Dialectics is meant to answer in the affirmative, but also without arbitrarity -- where philosophy has a proper authority.

Quoting Moliere

That the dialectic, in a sense, does a violence to the concepts of Being and Nothingness in their equation and sublation, and that this pattern is one of thought -- that the positing will bring about another positing, and these things together form a moment -- these are things I've tried to find ways to say and so it's something of a relief to see a Big Cheese say similar things to my sympathies. Makes me think maybe I got something out of the reading after all, while the suspicion the entire time was that it was nothing but my own imagination.

And it's like he's saying that this insight is in Hegel already, or more like ... Hegel's dialectic "wants" to rectify the violence, but Hegel himself didn't allow it to. In other words, here's what Hegel should have done.

But that stuff is difficult for me since I don't know Hegel very well. I'm finding lecture 4 more digestible.

Coincidentally, I just read this:

[quote=Brian O'Connor, Adorno's Negative Dialectic]Clearly Adorno believes that Hegel’s theory possesses some of the essential elements, but that the system within which the elements are located—with its idealist teleology—actually threatens to undermine their ability to explain experience, contrary to what seemed to have been promised in the introduction to the Phenomenology. As he sees it, Hegel oscillates “between the most profound insight and the collapse of that insight” (ND 161/160). What that really means, for Adorno, is that Hegel may indeed have a potent arsenal of philosophical concepts and insights. However, the reality of Hegel’s texts is that these concepts and insights are ultimately subordinated to the needs of Hegel’s architectonic. Hegel strives to assemble the encyclopaedia of con-cepts in a logical and quasi-deductive system. But by so doing, Adorno argues, he actually undermines the negativity—the insight into the moment of nonidentity—in his philosophy.[/quote]

Reply to Jamal :grin: nice, reason might be subject to a critique paralleling that of faith I gave elsewhere. it would be interesting to follow through on that - although it might be restricted to faith in reason... I'll have to give it some thought.

I have to some extent set aside the discussion of logic hereabouts, since Adorno appears to either misunderstand the nature of modern logic or to be talking about something quite different. I'll go with the latter. Recent advances in formal logic - you mention relevant logic - take a step back form the neatness of Fregean premisses, while maintaining formal clarity. His interest is perhaps in the interpretation that occurs before logic commences.

Reply to Jamal
Hegel's teleology has deep roots in Indo-european culture. Christianity has threads of it running through its whole history. Unrevised Marxism is basically these same psychological forces shed of Christian paraphernalia. Adorno witnessed firsthand the powerful effects of these forces, but somehow remained immune to them. This allowed him to become a bridge out of the lunacy.

Reply to Moliere Quoting Jamal

And it's like he's saying that this insight is in Hegel already, or more like ... Hegel's dialectic "wants" to rectify the violence, but Hegel himself didn't allow it to. In other words, here's what Hegel should have done.

I figure what he is saying is that the concept ("Being" in the example) must be abused (defined in a way which is inconsistent with what it really means to us) in order to produce the identity relationship required by the thesis/antithesis opposition. In other words, the proposed antithesis is the antithesis of an artificially manipulated concept, designed for that antithesis. Then it turns out that all that the synthesis is, is an attempt to rectify the damage caused by that abuse. And, depending on the skill of the dialectician, this may just as likely be a step backward for the concept, as it is likely to be a step forward.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I figure what he is saying is that the concept ("Being" in the example) must be abused (defined in a way which is inconsistent with what it really means to us) in order to produce the identity relationship required by the thesis/antithesis opposition. In other words, the proposed antithesis is the antithesis of an artificially manipulated concept, designed for that antithesis. Then it turns out that all that the synthesis is, is an attempt to rectify the damage caused by that abuse. And, depending on the skill of the dialectician, this may just as likely be a step backward for the concept, as it is likely to be a step forward.

No. This is just dialectics. Being and Nothing are two sides of the same coin, which Hegel identifies as Becoming. Being and Nothing seem to disappear into Becoming. That's the violence he's talking about.

Reply to frank
Being and nothing are only made to be two sides of the same coin, by doing violence to the concept. When they "disappear into Becoming", that is the so-called synthesis, which is really nothing more that an attempt to rectify the violence which was required to establish the thesis/antithesis identity.

[quote=p30]Thus once the identity of two contradictory concepts has been
reached, or at least asserted in the antithesis, as in the most famous
case of all, the identity of Nothing with Being, this is followed by a
further reflection to the effect that, indeed, these are identical, I have
indeed brought them together – Being, as something entirely undefined,
is also Nothing. However, to put it quite crudely, they are not
actually entirely identical. The thought that carries out the act of
identification always does violence to every single concept in the
process. And the negation of the negation is in fact nothing other
than the ?¸???µ?????, the recollection, of that violence, in other words
the acknowledgement that, by conjoining two opposing concepts, I
have on the one hand bowed to a necessity implicit in them, while
on the other hand I have done them a violence that has to be rectified.
And truth to tell, this rectification in the act of identification is
what is always intended by the Hegelian syntheses. [/quote]

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Being and nothing are only made to be two sides of the same coin, by doing violence to the concept.

This is incorrect, but I'm not interested in debating it.

Reply to frank
Did you read the quote? Maybe it's incorrect by conventional interpretations of Hegelian dialectics, but it is what Adorno is arguing about Hegelian dialectics.

So by Adorno's interpretation of Hegelian dialectics, "Becoming" is just a new proposal for the concept of "Being". It cannot be called "Being" because that word refers to what was identified as opposed to "Nothing". But that original concept of "Being" was manufactured by the mentioned violence, to match that antithesis, because "to put it quite crudely, they are not actually entirely identical".

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover You'd need to spend some time contemplating Hegel. Do thought experiments where you delete (from existence) one pole of an opposition. Notice what happens to the meaning of the pole that's left. Think of the yin-yang symbol.

Quoting Banno

Adorno appears to either misunderstand the nature of modern logic or to be talking about something quite different. I'll go with the latter. Recent advances in formal logic - you mention relevant logic - take a step back form the neatness of Fregean premisses, while maintaining formal clarity. His interest is perhaps in the interpretation that occurs before logic commences.

Yes, and also in the use to which it's put. So I do think it's right to say he's talking about something different. As I was saying before to @Moliere, he takes formal logic to be its own thing, unquestionable in itself, like Kant did with "general logic". He may have thought of modern developments in logic as exemplifying the bad philosophical use of general logic.

He may have been wrong about that [EDIT: which I guess means that he did "misunderstand the nature of modern logic"], but I don't think there's an interesting critique of him there, because it would miss the point. The critique I am keeping in mind, incidentally, is that of Habermas, who said Adorno was stuck in the philosophy of consciousness, having failed to take the linguistic turn. I've seen some defences of Adorno against that charge, but I can see his point.

Quoting frank

No. This is just dialectics.

Quoting frank

This is incorrect, but I'm not interested in debating it

Quoting frank

You'd need to spend some time contemplating Hegel.

You'd need to spend some time contemplating the actual reading if you're going to criticize an interpretation of it.

Quoting Jamal

The critique I am keeping in mind, incidentally, is that of Habermas, who said Adorno was stuck in the philosophy of consciousness, having failed to take the linguistic turn. I've seen some defences of Adorno against that charge, but I can see his point.

Another thing I'm thinking about is how much Adorno's philosophy of the nonidentical and nonconceptual, and his materialist "priority of the object", share with other 20th century developments like being-in-the-world, forms of life, embodiment, and lived experience.

Quoting Jamal

You'd need to spend some time contemplating the actual reading if you're going to criticize an interpretation of it.

What we were discussing is basic Hegel.

Quoting Banno

nice, reason might be subject to a critique paralleling that of faith I gave elsewhere. it would be interesting to follow through on that - although it might be restricted to faith in reason... I'll have to give it some thought.

For Adorno it seems to be both, i.e., faith in reason is the target, but reason has that tendency. But, you might reply, since it's the actually existing form of reason operating in the modern world that he criticizes (instrumental reason), he's not actually criticizing reason as such, but just this bad kind—which is in line with your distinction of reason and faith therein.

I feel like resisting that, because I've learned to pay attention to Adorno's exaggerations, which are not always or only rhetorical. Maybe it's like this: since reason doesn't float free of society and history, so the bad kind of reason is what reason is in the modern world. It would follow that the critique has to go deeper than just saying reason is fine, so long as we don't forget to question what kind of reason we're using.

This raises a question: if Adorno is using the tools of thought that everyone else uses and which are implicated in instrumental rationality—and given that he cannot appeal to anything transhistorical, or to a golden age of reason, without contradicting himself—then how can he stand above it all and pass judgement? I see negative dialectics and the methods of critical theory in general as answers to that question: we work away at the contradicitons from the inside.

Quoting frank

Hegel's teleology has deep roots in Indo-european culture. Christianity has threads of it running through its whole history. Unrevised Marxism is basically these same psychological forces shed of Christian paraphernalia. Adorno witnessed firsthand the powerful effects of these forces, but somehow remained immune to them. This allowed him to become a bridge out of the lunacy.

Seems like a fair summary.

Morning thought -- the structure of a symphony may provide a good analogue to the dialectical pattern.

I listened to Beethoven's 7th this morning to confirm, and I think there's something to the analogy still. The basic structure I'm referring to is that a symphony is composed of four movements, and a standard structure for the composer for the movements is 1: Main theme, 2: Minor theme, 3: Synthesis of the themes, 4: Progression and cap

Furthermore, the notion of counter-point in symphony has a kind of mirror to the notion of reflection between moments in dialectics.

This by way of offering a form for understanding dialectics which is sensible and yet not logical in the strict, modern logical sense. At most it's an informal logics from that viewpoint -- though from Adorno's viewpoint I imagine that the formal logics are a diversion from what's proper to philosophical thought, at best.

Reply to Moliere

Great!

You're in good company because my sources inform me that Adorno himself viewed Beethoven's symphonies as dialectical. There's a book, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, that collects together the fragments he wrote about it.

As well as the structure of a symphony, and the tension and resolution that lead to transformation, there's the way that the parts (movements and motifs) are shaped by the whole, and vice versa.

EDIT: A relevant article: The Symphonic Subject: Beethoven, Hegel, Adorno

Reply to Jamal Huh. Well look at that. That's cool. Thanks for sharing!

I finished ND with a newfound appreciation for Adorno. I really like this guy on a personal level, and I think his philosophy addressed issues that his community was struggling with. I don't see my community as struggling with those same issues, but still, good stuff.

Hope you guys enjoy the rest of your reading. Peace out!

Reply to frank

:up:

Quoting Jamal

...we work away at the contradictions from the inside.

I'm wondering if he has the right tools for this.

Quoting Banno

I'm wondering if he has the right tools for this.

I get the sense that he was tired of having to prove that he had the right tools for this from the first two lectures -- I felt he was expressing exasperation at being hounded by questions that he felt didn't matter after all, that the tools presented were not inferior but not even applicable -- a screwdriver offered for a wire-nut for instance.

Quoting Jamal

As well as the structure of a symphony, and the tension and resolution that lead to transformation, there's the way that the parts (movements and motifs) are shaped by the whole, and vice versa.

Hmm, parts and whole, in relation. Doesn't this amount to "a system"? I'm in the middle of reading the next lecture, concerned with systems.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Hmm, parts and whole, in relation. Doesn't this amount to "a system"?

I don't think so. It becomes system in the context of Hegel, who has a grand idealist structure behind it (or both initiating it and culminating it, as he says in lecture 3). On its own, and as Adorno uses dialectics, it's open-ended and doesn't attempt to encompass and exhaust all the parts with its concepts.

You could say that it's a somewhat systematic method, but not that it's actually a system in the strong philosophical sense that he describes in lecture 4.

LND, lecture 3 (continued)

Before I write a post about lecture 4 I'll say some things about the second half of lecture 3, even though @Metaphysician Undercover and @Moliere have already said good things about it.

It addresses the question: is a negative dialectics possible? What this means is: can you do dialectical philosophy without Spirit or something to take its place? (And this will lead to the more general question, can you do philosophy without a system, addressed in lecture 4)

So this is the question that Adorno's explanation of negativity in the first part of the lecture is leading up to, because the overarching presence of Spirit in Hegel's philosophy is what Adorno's negative is negating. It's the difference between their philosophies.

He points out that Hegel contradicts himself, wanting to have his cake and eat it with a system that, like mathematics or logic, is one "gigantic tautology," yet is supposed to tell us something substantive about the world:

[quote=p.27]In short, on the one hand this philosophy presented itself as a gigantic analytical proposition, but on the other hand it claimed simultaneously to be the synthetic proposition par excellence. In other words, it claimed that this analytical proposition captured in the mind that which is not itself mind, and identified with it. It is precisely this twofold claim, the assertion that something can simultaneously be both a synthetic and an analytical proposition, that marks the point at which I believe we have to go beyond Hegel ... It is here that critical thinking and Hegel have to part company.[/quote]

This clears the ground, and the question is how to proceed without this Hegelian solution, i.e., is a negative dialects even possible?

He puts things differently by saying he wants to reject Spinoza's verum index sui et falsi, which is something like, the truth is an index of or standard for the false, meaning what is false can be just read of from what is true. He proposes the alternative: falsum index sui atque veri, the false indicates both itself and the true.

This is a suggestive formula rather than a systematic or programmatic one, but even so I wanted to work out exactly what he meant, and found the following piece of a radio broadcast that Adorno did with the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch (among others):

[quote=http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/adorno_bloch_utopia1.html;http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/adorno_bloch_utopia1.html]Yes, at any rate, utopia is essentially in the determined negation, in the determined negation of that which merely is, and by concretizing itself as something false, it always points at the same time to what should be.

Yesterday you quoted Spinoza in our discussion with the passage, “Verum index sui et falsi.” I have varied this a little in the sense of the dialectical principle of the determined negation and have said, “Falsum—the false thing—index sui et veri.” That means that the true thing determines itself via the false thing, or via that which makes itself falsely known. And insofar as we are not allowed to cast the picture of utopia, insofar as we do not know what the correct thing would be, we know exactly, to be sure, what the false thing is.

That is actually the only form in which utopia is given to us at all. But what I mean to say here—and perhaps we should talk about this, Ernst—this matter also has a very confounding aspect, for something terrible happens due to the fact that we are forbidden to cast a picture. To be precise, among that which should be definite, one imagines it to begin with as less definite the more it is stated only as something negative. But then—and this is probably even more frightening—the commandment against a concrete expression of utopia tends to defame the utopian consciousness and to engulf it. What is really important, however, is the will that it is different.[/quote]

The falseness he has in mind is that which presents itself as one thing but which really isn't, e.g., freedom (which in modern society isn't freedom in the full sense) or happiness (which merely attempts to compensate for alienation) or glory (which actually stands for violence and domination). So this is the falseness we have to start with, where critical philosophy begins.

Incidentally, what he said there about utopia is interesting and good to bear in mind. His attitude to utopia is complex: disliking the presumption of attempting to define the good society but valuing the idea that things could be different.

Then he elaborately uses the Being-Nothing antithesis in Hegel's Logic to make the point that even in the synthesis (negation of negation or sublation), Hegel's philosophy has the seeds of negative dialectics, because this moment is not only a reconciliation and a forward movement but also preserves antagonisms within it, thus also points back. It's part of the meaning of Aufheben (sublation) that there is preservation, not only a lifting up and abolition.

So the synthesis is itself a "recollection of the violence" done to the opposing concepts, but Hegel undermines this because the oppositions are finally contained and everything is ultimately subordinated to forward movement.

It's worth pointing out that several Hegelians regard this as a caricature of Hegel, saying that Hegel did not in fact undermine the dialectic, that he was much more open to the continuing presence of antagonism than Adorno thought, therefore that negative dialectics is misguided and superfluous, because it's all in Hegel already and there is actually no ultimate subsumption. I heard the Hegelian Todd McGowan saying something to this effect on the "Why Theory" podcast he does, and I think it's a common criticism of Adorno. So far I'm on Adorno's side, though I can't really justify that. I get the impression it misunderstands Adorno and minimizes Hegel's idealist systematicity, but that's just an impression—I'm hardly in a position to compare interpretations of Hegel.

He concludes that line of thinking by implying that the difference here is both large and small. It just takes a twist at this point of sublation—that twist being the refusal to identify the opposing things—to cause the idealist edifice to crash down.

Quoting Jamal

The falseness he has in mind is that which presents itself as one thing but which really isn't, e.g., freedom (which in modern society isn't freedom in the full sense) or happiness (which merely attempts to compensate for alienation) or glory (which actually stands for violence and domination).

As I write this I'm in Moscow on Russia's Victory Day. They have seeded the clouds with chemicals to produce a beautifully clear day for the parade and the flyover of military aircraft. Yesterday on my bike ride I saw a convoy of cars and trucks honking their horns and flying "Z" flags.

LND Lecture 4

This picks up the second question from the last lecture: is philosophy possible without system?

The crux of the biscuit is as @Moliere put it:

Quoting Moliere

Is philosophy without system possible? And Negative Dialectics is meant to answer in the affirmative, but also without arbitrarity -- where philosophy has a proper authority.

To begin with Adorno lays out where contemporary philosophy stands with regard to systems:

[quote=p.35]Today it has become much easier to assert that systematic philosophizing has become impossible – and, in consequence, we must renounce attempts to secure everything that has given the concept of system such enormous emphasis. And I place such great value on this because I believe that you will understand my approach to philosophy only if you see it in its relation to the idea of system and not simply as a random body of thought indifferent to system.[/quote]

He takes the idea of system seriously, rather than merely dismissing it.

To get more specific about the concept of system, he distinguishes the relevant philosophical sense from mere systematization. The latter is some kind of organizational schema applied selectively, as in sociology; but a philosophical system develops from a basic principle to "draw everything into itself" so that nothing escapes it. It is totalizing.

The drive towards system in philosophy "is no longer felt by people’s enfeebled consciousness today." Knowing that Adorno, along with most other 20th century philosophers, concedes that systems are a lost cause, this is a curious comment. It signals the complexity of his position.

[quote=p.36]it is my belief that an a-systematic or anti-systematic form of thought can compete with the system nowadays only if it feels this need itself and – if I may anticipate this programmatic point – if it is also capable of absorbing into itself something of the energy that was formerly stored up in the great philosophical systems.[/quote]

However, more than absorbing this energy, some supposedly anti-systematic philosophies are latently systematic, namely that of Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger. I won't attempt to work out how this applies to Nietzsche, or to unpack what Adorno says about Heidegger, but it's more obvious to me in Husserl, whose phenomenology ended up in a system of transcendental idealism.

His comments on Heidegger lead him to say something interesting about Kant, who I'm more at home with:

[quote=p.38]Paradoxically, then, we might speak in Heidegger’s case of an irrational system of philosophy. It combines, we might say, the claim to totality or, as he himself says in a number of places, at least of Being and Time, it combines the claim to totality with the renunciation of comprehension. Incidentally, you can already find this curious coupling implied in Kant, since Kant expressly defends the idea of a system of transcendental idealism and had formed the plan of supplementing the three Critiques with a positive system of this sort, while at the same time rejecting the idea of comprehending the objects ‘from within’ as intellectualistic and Leibnizian – even though the reality is that, if philosophy had succeeded in conceptualizing everything that exists without leaving a remainder, it would necessarily have comprehended the phenomena it had subsumed. But this is just one of the many questions that remain unresolved – magnificently unresolved, we must add – in Kant.[/quote]

Kant simultaneously asserts the possibility of an all-encompassing system, while admitting that we cannot know things in themselves. But having such a system would require the phenomena it incorporated to be properly comprehended, meaining they would have to somehow bring in the noumenal along with them. Adorno might think this tension is "magnificent" because Kant is honest about it: he doesn't pretend to have conceptual closure, despite his massive urge to systematize.

In contrast to Heidegger, whose philosophy is an "idealism in disguise," philosophy should take a different path:

[quote=p.38]the path on which system becomes secularized into a latent force which ties disparate insights to one another (replacing any architectonic organization) – this path in fact seems to me to be the only road still open to philosophy.[/quote]

I don't really get exactly how this good latency is supposed to be different from Heidegger's latency, but as he says it's to do with the way the latter makes use of the concept of Being. In any case, that last quotation is a concise statement of the basic programme.

This is along the lines of what we may say of theology, since in this latter case the process of secularization released the idea of the system as the idea of a coherent, meaningful world.

I like this analogy. Prior to secularization, the idea of a coherent, meaningful world was unreleased because it was unquestioned. It had nothing to appear against, therefore it just wasn't a thing. Or, secularization broke the monopoly on the idea.

The analogy is that the idea of a coherent authoritative philosophy has been released by the demise of systems, so that a strong and meaningful philosophy might thrive without depending on system.

To me Adorno seems to be saying that we shouldn't be satisfied with a weak kind of philosophy that pursues restricted problems or else abandons itself to relativism, subject to "contingency and whim". We should want some kind of unity.

[quote=p.40]My postulate would then be that the power of the system – what at one time was the unifying power of a structure of thought as a whole – had to be transformed into the criticism of individual detail, of individual phenomena.[/quote]

In explaining what he means by criticism he mentions the debate he had with Karl Popper. I might look into that in a separate post because I imagine it's a fascinating confrontation between philosophical traditions.

[quote=p.40]That, then, would be the programme I want to put before you here. And this programme may well come closest to something that Nietzsche had in mind. Thinking would be a form of thinking that is not itself a system, but one in which system and the systematic impulse are consumed; a form of thinking that in its analysis of individual phenomena demonstrates the power that for- merly aspired to build systems. By this I mean the power that is liberated by blasting open individual phenomena through the insistent power of thought. This power is the same power that once animated the system, since it is the force which enabled individual phenomena, non-identical with their own concepts as they are, to become more than themselves. This means that something of the system can still be salvaged in philosophy, namely the idea that phenomena are objectively interconnected – and not merely by virtue of a classification imposed on them by the knowing subject.[/quote]

Whatever its merits, it sure sounds good.

He anticipates the objection that he's naive in expecting all this:

[quote=p.41]You will all want to say: Aren’t you being rather naïve in expecting philosophy to deliver something of which it is no longer capable? In the age of the great systems – in modern times, let us say, from Descartes to Hegel – the world possessed a certain visibility.[/quote]

The world simply does not have this visibility now. The world is not so simple as it was, and there is no shared ground in which everything can be expected to make sense. Disenchantment, the fragmentation of meaning, the demise of hierarchical societies in which everyone knew their place, the rise of secularism and Enlightenment, and the permanent revolution of capitalist development---all this means we can't do philosophy like we used to:

the traditional conception of philosophy can only be validated if thinking behaves as though it still inhabited the traditional society in which philosophy was able to function.

But this would be the validation of falsehood.

Quoting Jamal

He points out that Hegel contradicts himself, wanting to have his cake and eat it with a system that, like mathematics or logic, is one "gigantic tautology," yet is supposed to tell us something substantive about the world:

I like the circle analogy. The Absolute, as the premise, is the cause of the Hegelian dialectical process, but it is also what is supposed to emerge as the result of that process. So we have an eternal circular motion, similar to what Aristotle demonstrated was logically possible, but is actually physically impossible.

Quoting Jamal

He puts things differently by saying he wants to reject Spinoza's verum index sui et falsi, which is something like, the truth is an index of or standard for the false, meaning what is false can be just read of from what is true. He proposes the alternative: falsum index sui atque veri, the false indicates both itself and the true.

I believe that the issue which lies beneath this conundrum is the problem of the relationship between the true and the false. The true, we can never know with absolute certainty, yet we have certainty about the false, as the impossible, beginning with contradiction. This produces a categorical distinction between the false and the true, as the false is "the thing" which is impossible, while the true is the possible, which is not a thing at all, but a multitude of possibility. I believe that this description provides an explanation of Adorno's reference to what is "definite", and to the "concrete expression" in the radio broadcast you quoted.

This outlook is set up in a general way, with the question of "is a negative dialectics possible". The negative actually determines what is impossible, and that forms the determinate, the determinate negation. Since the negative produces the determinate as the impossible, the requirement is to invert the dialectical process, from the Hegelian proposal of determining the positive, which is actually fruitless (or impossible), to a more realistic method of determining the negative. Determining the impossible then places the possible into a proper perspective. I believe that is sort of what is meant at the top of p29, with "index sui atque veri". Falsity is the index for truth.

...that this falseness proclaims itself in whether negative dialectics is possible what we might call a certain immediacy, and this immediacy of the false, this falsum, is the index sui atque veri.

Here's an interpretation from "Adorno Studies Through a Glass Darkly: Adorno's Inverse Theology"

The determinate negation of the negative conditions in
which we find ourselves provides a glimpse of “the only
permissible figure of the Other.”22 Amending Spinoza in his
essay “Critique,” Adorno argues that “the false, once
determinately known and precisely expressed, is already an
index of what is right and better.”23 Echoing this remark in his
lectures on Negative Dialectics, Adorno again rejects Spinoza’s
proposition “that verum index sui et falsi, or that the true and
the false can both be read directly ... from the truth.” Here
Adorno contends that “the false, that which should not be the
case, is in fact the standard of itself: . . . the false, namely that
which is not itself in the first instance–i.e. not itself in the
sense that it is not what it claims to be–that this falseness
proclaims itself in what we might call a certain immediacy, and
this immediacy of the false, this falsum, is the index sui atque
veri. So here then, . . . is a certain pointer to what I consider
‘right thinking’.”24

https://www.adornostudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/darkly.pdf

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I believe that the issue which lies beneath this conundrum is the problem of the relationship between the true and the false. The true, we can never know with absolute certainty, yet we have certainty about the false, as the impossible, beginning with contradiction. This produces a categorical distinction between the false and the true, as the false is "the thing" which is impossible, while the true is the possible, which is not a thing at all, but a multitude of possibility. I believe that this description provides an explanation of Adorno's reference to what is "definite", and to the "concrete expression" in the radio broadcast you quoted

I think I see what you mean. I relate this to the mundane fact that it's easier to criticize than to offer something positive, and it's somehow more productive to give a bad review than a good one: the false, or falsely presented, is what strikes us most and gives thinking purchase.

In case there's any misunderstanding, I don't really mean that negative dialectics seeks out the false just because that's the easy thing to do. It's more that the false is what stands out, needing to be addressed.

EDIT: I'm not sure if that works to be honest.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

from the Hegelian proposal of determining the positive, which is actually fruitless (or impossible), to a more realistic method of determining the negative. Determining the impossible then places the possible into a proper perspective.

It's possible that this agrees with my own understanding of it.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Here's an interpretation from "Adorno Studies Through a Glass Darkly: Adorno's Inverse Theology"

Yep, looks good.

Quoting Jamal

To me Adorno seems to be saying that we shouldn't be satisfied with a weak kind of philosophy that pursues restricted problems or else abandons itself to relativism, subject to "contingency and whim". We should want some kind of unity.

This I believe is the key point of lecture 4. The reading is quite difficult with numerous twists and turns, so I won't give a full interpretation without more study, but I'll make a few initial comments. The distinction between "system" and "systematization", where a "system" is a whole and objective, while a systemization addresses a specific subject, and is subjective, sets up the framework for the discussion.

The first twist, is that the meaning of "system" has really changed. Now, what "system" refers to in anti-system philosophy, is really systematization. So anti-system, or a-system philosophy, if it's decent philosophy, will demonstrate system in a latent form. The latent system is really quite tricky because it's where the subjective meets the objective.

The point though, is that this systematization type of thinking, which becomes "provincial", and even "cottage" at the end of the lecture, is what true philosophy must strive to avoid.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The first twist, is that the meaning of "system" has really changed. Now, what "system" refers to in anti-system philosophy, is really systematization. So anti-system, or a-system philosophy, if it's decent philosophy, will demonstrate system in a latent form. The latent system is really quite tricky because it's where the subjective meets the objective.

The point though, is that this systematization type of thinking, which becomes "provincial", and even "cottage" at the end of the lecture, is what true philosophy must strive to avoid.

The first time I read this I thought wow, MU, you're a genius, I totally missed that twist!

And it's backed up by the notes for the lecture:

[quote=p.33]So great is the need for system that today systematization has taken its place unobserved. The explanation is assumed to be that the facts should find their proper place in an organized scheme that has previously been abstracted from the facts themselves.

This need ensures that even bodies of thought that claim to be anti-systematic (Nietzsche), or a-systematic, are latent systems.[/quote]

So now I'm doubting my own interpretation of what he meant.

But it doesn't seem to fit. Part of the problem I think is that in these lectures Adorno is improvising. He goes from a few notes but otherwise makes it up on the spot, so it often doesn't tie together neatly, and that makes the arguments difficult to untangle. In this case, I don't think it's just the systematization he wants to avoid; it's also system in the traditional sense exemplified by German idealism, explaining the world from a single principle kind of thing.

The way I'd put it is, philosophy should avoid both traditional system and systematization, but it should take the energy of the former.

The provincialism he talks about can't just be a matter of systematization, because its problem is that it still acts like it's able to do traditional systemaic philosophy:

This consists in the fact that, in general nowadays, in the models it applies to reality, philosophy behaves as if the visibility of existing circumstances allowed it to survey all living creatures and subsume them under a unifying concept – this is something it still takes for granted.

But the problem here, I'm inclined to believe, is Adorno's presentation, which as you say is all over the place. Maybe he gets too carried away polemicizing. As it is, I don't know what he's referring to with the stuff about provincialism.

Actually, looking at it again it's clear enough that he's targeting Heidegger and the existentialists, because he mentions his book The Jargon of Authenticity in this connection, and that's who he is targeting in that book.

[time passes]

OK, I think I know what he's getting at, and I now think you're right. Provincial philosophies are latently systematic in that they secretly maintain that impulse to tie everything together by imposing their ready-made schemes (systematization), but they fail to take what is good about system, which is the organic development of such a system. In other words, they follow the letter, not the spirit, of system (pun not intended).

I don't think it's important so sort out this confusion (although the confusion might be entirely mine). What matters is:

1. Philosophy should treat phenomena as interconnected within an organized whole
2. This is possible without system in the traditional sense
3. And this takes what is good about system rather than merely abandoning it dismissively
4. Imposing one's own scheme on the phenomena from the outside is to take what's bad about system---the phenomena should be allowed to speak for themselves

I got there in the end.

Quoting Jamal

The way I'd put it is, philosophy should avoid both traditional system and systematization, but it should take the energy of the former.

That's what I thought after first reading. After second, I realized that he is actually promoting the need for a true philosophical system. To unlock this understanding required that I take the time to fully consider the distinction between system and systematization laid out at the beginning. Systematization treats one subject as a whole and so is subjective according to the choice of subject. A system "is the development of the fact from a principle, in a dynamic manner, in short, as a development, a movement that draws everything into itself, that takes hold of everything and is itself a totality; it claims objective validity such that, as Hegel would put it,7 nothing between heaven and earth can be conceived of as being outside such a system."

The difference between the two is the difference between part and whole. The systematization treats the part as a whole, and this is where I see the problem. Treating the part like a whole leaves out the aspects where one part relates to another, in the larger whole. So each subject (each form of science for example) will have its own systematization, and there could very easily be contradiction between the distinct systematizations.

Quoting Jamal

The provincialism he talks about can't just be a matter of systematization, because its problem is that it still acts like it's able to do traditional systemaic philosophy:

That's exactly the problem which he is bringing to our attention, systematization (in this context provincialism) pretends to be system, and this gives "system" a new meaning as such. This would leave a sort of void where the true "system" ought to be, and the "latent system" creeps in to fill the void.

The "latent system" is is similar to what I was talking about which brings the charge of scurrilous. This is the author's secret intention. When only systematizing a part of reality, as a single subject, there are personal reasons why the author likes to address that part, in that way, and this is why the systematization is subjective. For example, in my early criticism, I faulted Adorno for focusing on Hegel (systematizing), instead of philosophy as a whole (system). I implied that Adorno believed Hegel had authoritative power as a philosopher, and Adorno's intention was to tap into this power.

So the latent system is the secret intentions of the author in the systematization. Intention is "the good" of Plato, what Aristotle described as "that for the sake of which", final cause. The good is what sort of guides our knowledge directing it toward this or that subject. When a philosopher presents a systematization, or a multitude of systematizations, there is usually an undisclosed intention behind the author's choice of subjects and how to deal with them. This undisclosed intention is what really unifies the systematization, but that unity is relative to something external to it, a larger "objective", in the sense of a goal, and this makes a latent system.

[quote=39] And this very criticism, that of the aperçu-like
nature of my thinking, has frequently been levelled at me too, until
finally – simply because so many things came together and created a
context – it then lost ground in favour of other objections, without
my having had to put my cards on the table13 and without my having
had to show what joins up my various insights and turns them into
a unity. [/quote]

So a proper philosophical system has the true unified understanding of all reality as its goal (objective), and hides nothing in latency because there is no further concealed unifying principle. The objective, a system, is presented as a system, without any hidden intentions which would make what is presented as a system really a systematization.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

After second, I realized that he is actually promoting the need for a true philosophical system.

He is saying there is value in the need for a system, but he is not promoting the project of a philosophical system itself. He is on board with the modern rejection of systematic philosophy, and makes that quite obvious. This is where he differs from Hegel and Fichte (and Kant, although it’s more complex with Kant).

If you think his wish to preserve the energy of philosophical systems is evidence of a secret drive towards a full-blown system, then that’s going beyond what he’s saying, turning his critique back onto him. I don’t think there’s the evidence to make that accusation, though there’s an obvious tension in his position.

What he says about philosophical systems is a justification of his attempt to make sense of the world as an objective reality whose parts are connected without imposing an overarching metaphysical principle, such as spirit.

Do you disagree with this summary:

Quoting Jamal

1. Philosophy should treat phenomena as interconnected within an organized whole
2. This is possible without system in the traditional sense
3. And this takes what is good about system rather than merely abandoning it dismissively
4. Imposing one's own scheme on the phenomena from the outside is to take what's bad about system---the phenomena should be allowed to speak for themselves

Quoting Jamal

He is saying there is value in the need for a system, but he is not promoting the project of a philosophical system itself. He is on board with the modern rejection of systematic philosophy, and makes that quite obvious. This is where he differs from Hegel and Fichte (and Kant, although it’s more complex with Kant).

I did not read it like that. The "need for a system" speaks for itself. I think he rejects systematic philosophy as systematization. Further, he shows how the current use of "system" actually refers to what he calls systematization. So what is known as "anti-system philosophy" is really anti-systematization. He is anti-systematization, so we could call him "anti-system", but he really promotes the need for a proper philosophical system.

Anyway, I'll give it another read, and make a report one way or another.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

he really promotes the need for a proper philosophical system.

But this is ambiguous. He promotes the need for a system, in that he thinks there is something important in this need that can be redirected into "blasting open the phenomena with the insistent power of thought". But I don't think he's saying he wants to actually do a philosophical system.

I had a look at ND itself:

[quote=ND, Prologue]If one speaks in the newest aesthetic debates of anti-drama and anti-heroes, then negative dialectics, which holds itself distant from all aesthetic themes, could be called an antisystem. With logically consistent means, it attempts to put, in place of the principle of unity and of the hegemony of the supra-ordinated concept, that which would be outside of the bane of such unity.[/quote]

[quote=ND, Relation to System]The philosophical system was from the very beginning antinomical. Its very first signs were delimited by its own impossibility; exactly this had condemned, in the earlier history of the modern systems, each to annihilation by the next. The ratio which, in order to push itself through as a system, rooted out virtually all qualitative determinations which it referred to, ended up in irreconcilable contradiction with the objectivity to which it did violence, by pretending to comprehend it. It became all the more removed from this, the more completely it subjugated this to its axioms, finally to the one of identity. The pedantry of all systems, all the way to the architectonic ponderousness of Kant and, in spite of his program, even Hegel, are marks of an a priori conditional failure, documented with incomparable honesty by the rifts of the Kantian system; in Moliere pedantry is already the center-piece of the ontology of the bourgeois Spirit.[/quote]

[quote=ND, Idealism as Rage]All emphatic philosophy had, in contrast to the skeptical kind, which renounced emphasis, one thing in common, that it would be possible only as a system. This has crippled philosophy scarcely less than its empirical currents. Whatever it might be able to appropriately judge is postulated before it arises. System, the form of portrayal of a totality in which nothing remains external, sets the thought in absolute opposition to each of its contents and dissolves the content in thought: idealistically, before any argumentation for idealism.[/quote]

EDIT: But our disagreement here is just the result of the real ambivalence in his position, which is dialectical: he is both against and for system.

EDIT: Incidentally, how should we reference quotations from ND, given that the various versions of the Redmond translation have different paginations? Above I’ve just referred to the section titles, and in a couple of versions these have numbers too, which I’m guessing refer to the old Ashton translation. I guess it’s not a huge deal when we’re using electronic copies that can be searched.

Some reflections concerning dialectics in general...

Quoting Jamal

But our disagreement here is just the result of the real ambivalence in his position, which is dialectical: he is both against and for system.

Here I'm tempted as always to resolve the contradiction by saying that his position is not really one of dialectical contradiciton, that it's more like: he is against X aspects of system but he is for Y aspects of system, which replaces the contradiciton with a simple differentiation. But Adorno always resists this, believing that this is identity-thinking in action.

So I should ask myself: is something lost when I resolve the contradiciton in that way? Perhaps what is lost is that aspects X and Y are not really separable into discrete sets of aspects, these having this effect and those having that. In other words, the non-identical in those aspects, or in system as such, is lost when the contradiciton is dissolved. The aspects are part of an inextricably tied up bundle of mutually dependent phenomena, so separating them breaks and thereby hides all the interconnections, thus their characteristics, and thus the unique characteristics of system itself.

So what is then lost is that his critique of system is not in fact extricable from his promotion of it. More precisely what is lost is the open tension in his view, which he doesn't want to be neatly wrapped up so we can move on to the next problem. EDIT: The key here is that the persistence of contradictions is a mode of truth.

That's a bit weak but I'll leave it there.

And it's not like he clearly demarcates X and Y aspects anyway. For example, in the lectures he seems to approve of the "principle of unity," but in ND, quoted above, he says that negative dialectics seeks to replace that principle. Contradictions all the way down.

Quoting Jamal

But this is ambiguous. He promotes the need for a system, in that he thinks there is something important in this need that can be redirected into "blasting open the phenomena with the insistent power of thought". But I don't think he's saying he wants to actually do a philosophical system.

That idea, "blasting open the phenomena with the insistent power of thought", has given me much difficulty in understanding. I just couldn't get it. Here is another stab at it:

Upon further reading, I realize that the lecture gets very complex and difficult at page 38, where he addresses Heidegger directly. This induces me to reassess my interpretation of the defining aspect of "system". I had interpreted the essential feature as being one whole which includes everything, but now I'm inclined to see it as 'being guided by one principle'. So in the notes we see "System in this philosophical sense is the development of the fact from a principle, in a dynamic manner, in short, as a development, a movement that draws everything into itself...". And at page 39 when he says that the question of the possibility of philosophy without a system hasn't been given the serious thought it deserves, he says: "The question then becomes how can thought be unified if it is not guided by a principle?"

Now the difficult part of the lecture. When he addresses the influence of Heidegger on philosophy, he describes a change, a transformation of the concept of "system", a "secularization", whereby "system" becomes a "latent force". The central question is the unification of thought, how is thought unified. The issue of unification is brought up in the quote I already provided from page 39, where Adorno speaks of criticism of his own "apercu" thoughts, and says he didn't have to lay his cards on the table and reveal what unifies his thoughts. It is implied that the unifying force may remain latent. The issue is that without a guiding principle philosophy would be whimsical, or arbitrary. But the question appears to be, can the unifying principle remain latent within a philosophy?

So that is how Adorno approaches Heidegger. In my understanding, Heidegger employs the concept of "region" in "Being and Time", so that "Being" is divided into modes of Being generally corresponding with the three aspects of time, past present and future. "Being" is not a single principle, but a sort of plurality of distinct aspects derived rom the aspects of time. I would say that this plurality is unified by a single principle "time", but perhaps Adorno see things differently.

Starting from page 38, he explains how, from Heidegger the concept of system undergoes a qualitative change:
[quote=p38] This means – and I am not
embarrassed to say that at this point I feel a certain emotion – that
the path on which system becomes secularized into a latent force
which ties disparate insights to one another (replacing any architectonic
organization) – this path in fact seems to me to be the only road
still open to philosophy. Admittedly, this path is very different from
the one that passes through the concept of Being, exploiting en route
the advantages provided by the neutrality of the concept of Being.
And it is from this standpoint that I would ask you to understand
the concept of a negative dialectic: as the consciousness, the critical
and self-critical consciousness of such a change in the idea of a philosophical
system in the sense that, as it disappears, it releases the
powers contained within itself. [/quote]

Then at page 39 the latent force is described as what produces the unification of thought, so that the unity of thought becomes the central issue. He distinguishes positive thinking from negative by applying an internal/external distinction. Positive thinking imposes its own authority on itself, and creates its own objects from within itself, while negative thinking is in a sense a response to the external, the situation, or environment, what "confronts" it.

[quote=p39] We might say, then, that thought which aspires to be authoritative without
system lets itself be guided by the resistance it encounters; in other
words, its unity arises from the coercion that material reality exercises
over the thought, as contrasted with the ‘free action’ of thought itself
which, always concealed and by no means as overt as in Fichte, used
to constitute the core of the system.[/quote]

However, we cannot forego, or overlook the latent aspect of this unity, so he adds:

[quote=39-40]I would ask you to combine this
with an idea that I have hinted at in quite a different context, that
of the idea of the secularization of system or the transformation of
the idea of system, in other words, with the fact that philosophical
systems have ceased to be possible.[/quote]

I interpret this as meaning that philosophical systems are not possible because we now have a form of contradiction where the latent aspect, which forms the system or unity, is within, yet at the same time the philosopher must be guided by the external circumstances. So Adorno gives priority to the external, and seems to imply that confrontation of external circumstances must be given priority over the latent tendency toward system. I believe that the implication is that the internal inclination toward unifications is inverted to the external inclination of division. Hence "blasting open the phenomena".

Now we have a duality of criticism, noological, as directed inward toward judgement, and phenomenal, as directed outward toward phenomena. This duality Adorno recognizes, but refuses to separate, so he sort of rejects the duality. And in this way, the power that was formerly directed inward toward criticism of judgement, creation and production of a coherent system, is directed outward toward the criticism of individual phenomena, the "blasting open".

[quote=p40] Thinking would be a form
of thinking that is not itself a system, but one in which system and
the systematic impulse are consumed; a form of thinking that in its
analysis of individual phenomena demonstrates the power that
formerly aspired to build systems. By this I mean the power that is
liberated by blasting open individual phenomena through the insistent
power of thought. [/quote]

And the conclusion:

[quote=p40] This means that something of the system can still
be salvaged in philosophy, namely the idea that phenomena are
objectively interconnected – and not merely by virtue of a
classification imposed on them by the knowing subject. [/quote]

I'd say that conclusion is doubtful. What supports " the idea that phenomena are
objectively interconnected"?

The final issue is the naivety of modern philosophy in relation to visibility. This naive attitude produces a sort of provincialism. This I take as a belief that our immediate circumstances are indicative of reality as a whole. This is where the incompatibility between the positive (system) and the negative (confrontation of phenomena) is exposed in philosophy. This I believe is the "philosophical cottage". It's the belief that the conditions which I am subjected to are indicative of the conditions which others are subjected to. And this produces a false unity (system). The real issue which arises in my mind, is how can he support this claim that "phenomena are objectively interconnected" when "phenomena" is already plural, and they can be blasted open with the power of thought. How can we justify an objective interconnectedness?

Quoting Jamal

Do you disagree with this summary:

1. Philosophy should treat phenomena as interconnected within an organized whole
2. This is possible without system in the traditional sense
3. And this takes what is good about system rather than merely abandoning it dismissively
4. Imposing one's own scheme on the phenomena from the outside is to take what's bad about system---the phenomena should be allowed to speak for themselves

I'll answer this now.
1. I agree that this is a sort of conclusion which Adorno makes, but I do not see that it is justified.
2. The problem is that system is what unites phenomena. Adorno turns the power of philosophy around to blast apart phenomena, but there is no reason to believe that phenomena, as a multiplicity already, has any sort of interconnectedness other than that granted by a system.
3. Really, he is taking the "power" of system, its force, or even its "latent force", and redirecting this. So we cannot say that this takes "what is good about system", because as Plato pointed out, the same power can be directed toward either good or evil. Adorno has not provided us the principles required to judge whether his proposed redirection of this power is good or bad. The critical point I believe, is his proposed duality of criticism. Criticism of judgement is generally based in principles of good and bad, correct and incorrect, or true and false. If we do not hand priority to this sort of judgement, how could we criticize phenomena? We have no principles for this.
4. I agree with this. I think the idea that we could get to the outside of phenomena is the naivety he refers to, the visibility of the world. This produces a false sense of objectivity. It is like the common assumption of "independent reality". What this does is separate the subject from the reality, leaving the subject with one's system of judgement as outside the phenomena which is to be judged. We ought to leave the phenomena to speak for themselves, as you say, but then as I say, we need principles to support any supposed interconnectedness.

So, I agree with you that what you present is pretty much consistent with what Adorno argues, but I think it may not be tenable. It may actually be the case that philosophy without system is really impossible, and the latency which he refers to is actually the essence of true "system". I've pointed out the reasons for considering this, but I'll reserve final judgement for now.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

there is no reason to believe that phenomena, as a multiplicity already, has any sort of interconnectedness other than that granted by a system.

Isn't there? Is this a Thatcherite point, i.e., there's no such thing as society?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Anyway MU, I'll ponder your thorough analysis and get back to you in a day or two. I'll say right now though, that I don't really see the problem. I mean, I see the tension, but I think it's just another way of stating Adorno's dialectical attitude to system, and the proof will be in the pudding.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover
Philosophical systems are myths (though we forget this while they're giving us purpose). When an old myths dies (as Hegel's did), the energy that was bound up in it becomes disorganized. We end up with a religious smorgasbord.

Reply to frank

That's a good way of putting it. And from Adorno's point of view neither the myth nor the smorgasbord are good options, on their own.

ND, Idealism as Rage:System, the form of portrayal of a totality in which nothing remains external

Note his way of wording this. I think it implies there is an alternative form of the portrayal of totality, namely that which does not contain everything and which is not closed.

Quoting Jamal

Isn't there? Is this a Thatcherite point, i.e., there's no such thing as society?

But this interconnectedness is by means of system. The issue is, if we reject system philosophy, what would maintain interconnectedness. If there is nothing other than system philosophy which produces interconnectedness, then it is still needed, and cannot be replaced by the inverse. The question is still, how is thought unified.

Quoting Jamal

And from Adorno's point of view neither the myth nor the smorgasbord are good options, on their own.

So are you saying that he thinks we still need system thinking, along with the inverse, a philosophy without system is actually not possible?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

If there is nothing other than system philosophy which produces interconnectedness, then it is still needed

Like Adorno, I don't accept the antecedent. Things are really connected, before a system is applied to them. Indeed we could think of that as his main point, since the problem with philosophical systems is that they forget the real interconnectedness in their drive to cover everything with their own schemes.

Now, if you are looking for some kind of foundational argument justifying the claim of interconnectedness, I think you will look in vain, because negative dialectics is demonstrative and anti-foundational, rather than progressing in a linear fashion from, say, a proof that the world exists. I'm not quite clear: is that the kind of thing you're expecting he should do?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So are you saying that he thinks we still need system thinking, along with the inverse, a philosophy without system is actually not possible?

No, I just meant what I said before, the interpretation of his position that we both agree on. Myth represents philosophical systems and the smorgasbord represents fragmentation. This is probably very un-Adornian, but I feel like he wants a middle way between them.

Finished LND 4

I noticed, thanks to y'alls efforts, how "systemization" [s]isn't[/s]is a contrast-class, but one that isn't as described as "System" in this lecture. "System" is something that philosophy at one time pursued and should continue to preserve that spirit, whereas systemization is a pre-figured tabulating system with a bucket labeled "Not of interest", or something along those lines -- I get the idea that given we cannot have a true System in the manner which philosophy once pursued we have, in order to fulfill that need for a system, replaced it with systemization which has the appearance of a system without any of the drive for what motivated the philosophical system in the first place: not just totalizing, but a grasping of the universe, and with the end of LND 4 -- not just a grasping, but rather a grasping of all that is such that human beings come to live free lives.

So "System" is that which cannot be achieved, but likewise for Adorno there's an impulse in there that he seems to believe is necessary in order for philosophy to progress at all.

In LND 5 I get the sense that Adorno is missing out on a lot of what makes Marxism so great -- while some of his predictions are false what he offers is the explication of a worldview from the philosophical perspective such that one need not adopt bourgeois philosophy, and while his utopian visions have yet to be achieved Marx's contributions to a proletariat philosophy have been invaluable as a basis for reflection. He takes Rousseau's notion of the social contract to include the economic flows wherein people, born free, came to live in chains. His articulation between slave and worker, and the relationshiop between worker/owner is invaluable for analyzing power relationships, and not just in an academic sense -- but in terms of real world organizing.

Without articulating how selling one's labor-time is exploitative, for instance, there'd be no practical political basis for workers to struggle on the shop floor. Rather, and this did happen, they ought join liberal societies of association for workers rather than disrupt the flow of commerce.

But if the relationship in which exchange is freely taking place is exploitative unto itself then this gives political justification -- as in an articulatable standard that could hold across people as something they can consistently demand together -- for industrial agitation.

But, I gather this will be a frequent point of thinking for me -- because it seems Adorno is trying to save what's worth saving, whereas I'm pretty much just a Marxist who doesn't see it as a doomed project or something which has been falsified, but a proper political philosophy for the working class which has aided many sorts of the have-nots in their struggle to have.

EDIT: On the flip-side, his criticisms are also very valuable -- I'm not disagreeing with them so much as reacting to them from my own perspective.

Reply to Moliere
I am glad that you focused upon exploitation and inequality because it points back to the centrality of lordship and bondage in Hegel's Phenomenology. That another existence can cancel a sense of that for oneself by simply being there is Hegel's 'state of nature' in contrast to Rousseau and Hobbes.

Quoting Jamal

Like Adorno, I don't accept the antecedent. Things are really connected, before a system is applied to them. Indeed we could think of that as his main point, since the problem with philosophical systems is that they forget the real interconnectedness in their drive to cover everything with their own schemes.

This is why Adorno's philosophy gets difficult for me. I find that there is ambiguity, or vagueness in the distinction between "system" as a thing, and the act which is creating the thing. Notice that in my first interpretation I took "system" to mean a whole which includes everything, the totality of reality. From this interpretation I could not get beyond the idea that he promotes system thinking. However, I noticed at the part where he talks about Heidegger that "system" thinking refers to following a single principle, and this is what unifies thought. So I went back to the beginning of the lecture and found that he actually defines "system" as a movement of thought which follows a single principle. So "system" must be properly understood as the activity of a certain type of thinking, not as the thing produced by that type of thinking

So the interconnectedness we are talking about here, is relations of thought. And we can criticize these relations with the criticism of judgement, as he says. We can also criticize phenomena, and "phenomena" refers to how the material situation appears to us through sensation. You propose a "real interconnectedness" of phenomena, but how are we supposed to derive this? Any connections we make are made within our minds, by our minds, and the same holds for divisions. So I don't see how "real interconnectedness" can be supported. Or even if we assume it, it drops from relevance like Kant's noumena.

Adorno seems to propose blurring the boundary between criticism of judgement and criticism of phenomena, but how can this help? What I think, is that we are to take phenomena as the consequences of the thinking of others, and we criticize it as a criticism of the judgements which created it. But then it all turns into a criticism of judgement, and we need principles by which to criticize.

Quoting Jamal

Now, if you are looking for some kind of foundational argument justifying the claim of interconnectedness, I think you will look in vain, because negative dialectics is demonstrative and anti-foundational, rather than progressing in a linear fashion from, say, a proof that the world exists. I'm not quite clear: is that the kind of thing you're expecting he should do?

The question is whether philosophy without system is possible. We do not have to prove that the world exists, nor even assume that the world exists, because we are dealing solely with thinking. The reality of the material world is sort of irrelevant. From this perspective, we have a creative activity of following a principle to unify thought, as "system", and we also have critical analysis, or the negative dialectics Adorno proposes which is an activity of division (blast apart). If we reject the creative activity of following a principle, and adhere strictly to the critical activity, as a type philosophy, we are confronted with the latency, which tends to indicate system. In other words when we remove ourselves from system thinking in the constructive way, there is still a latent tendency toward system thinking in the deconstructive way. There is a guidance from the philosopher's intentions in one's act of criticizing. So new a problem arises, because a philosopher must criticize according to some principle(s) which unify ones thoughts, or else it's all whimsical and incoherent. Now we're right back to the issue of "system". Isn't the best critical philosophy one which judges all according to the same principle, therefore a system?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

I hesistate to follow you down that rabbit hole, because I find it hard to relate to your concerns. I think you're making it more complex than you need to. Or, more charitably, you're a hardcore idealist who cannot accept Adorno's materialism.

But what you're saying does go to the heart of the subject-object relation, which is a central part of his thinking; and there is in fact a dialectical antagonism in his thinking between objects as non-conceptual and objects as ineluctably mediated—so I'll try responding.

From this interpretation I could not get beyond the idea that he promotes system thinking. However, I noticed at the part where he talks about Heidegger that "system" thinking refers to following a single principle, and this is what unifies thought. So I went back to the beginning of the lecture and found that he actually defines "system" as a movement of thought which follows a single principle. So "system" must be properly understood as the activity of a certain type of thinking, not as the thing produced by that type of thinking

The thing produced being a philosophical system such as Kant's transcendental idealism or Fichte's Science of Knowledge, yes? Well, why not both? They're part of the same deal. I don't think Adorno makes an important distinction between the activity of making a system and the resulting philosophical system itself, or if he does it's along the lines of the systematization/system distinction.

But it's central to Adorno that there is not just thought; philosophical system is almost synonymous with idealism, for him. When he speaks of phenomena he means the objects of experience, which he wants to treat as non-conceptual, or not entirely conceptual. His basic thrust with regard to the status of phenomena is materialist and anti-idealist. The question of idealism vs realism is something I think he goes into in more detail in ND itself. For now I find it helpful to maintain a more-or-less naive picture of the subject-object relation, with the mind here and semi-mind-independent things over there. (In the end, he is neither idealist nor naive realist, but somewhat Kantian, but without inaccessible noumena (maybe that's another way of saying he's a Hegelian without Spirit)).

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So the interconnectedness we are talking about here, is relations of thought.

Well, which interconnectedness are we talking about? Adorno is saying there is an interconnectedness beyond thought, not only beyond philosophical systems but obscured by philosophical systems.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So the interconnectedness we are talking about here, is relations of thought. And we can criticize these relations with the criticism of judgement, as he says. We can also criticize phenomena, and "phenomena" refers to how the material situation appears to us through sensation. You propose a "real interconnectedness" of phenomena, but how are we supposed to derive this? Any connections we make are made within our minds, by our minds, and the same holds for divisions. So I don't see how "real interconnectedness" can be supported. Or even if we assume it, it drops from relevance like Kant's noumena.

So this is a classic argument for idealism: real interconnectedness must obviously be understood in thought, so such a real interconnectedness, beyond thought, cannot be supported, therefore there is only thought—or else we go with Kant's solution.

Though I cannot see the attraction of this approach, I'm happy to keep an eye out to see how he criticizes idealism further down the line. Suffice to say, it's one of his biggest targets, perhaps his biggest (he thinks empiricism always ends up in idealism too).

EDIT: I forgot...

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

We can also criticize phenomena, and "phenomena" refers to how the material situation appears to us through sensation.

We should be careful. Adorno has an interesting theory of bodily experience, and tends to use "somatic" when he is talking about sensation, because he believes the concept of "sensation" is implicated in the subjectivization characteristic of idealism, i.e., the concept of sensation takes something physical and relational and unjustifiably turns it into something mental and private. This idealist pressure of thought is demonstrated by your own way of wording things here, I think.

Incidentally, it might help to put the somatic in context: irreducible suffering, non-conceptual and resisting the conceptual, testifies to the non-identical:

[quote=Adorno, ND]The need to give voice to suffering is the condition of all truth. For suffering is the objectivity which weighs on the subject; what it experiences as most subjective, its expression, is objectively mediated.[/quote]

Quoting Moliere

In LND 5 I get the sense that Adorno is missing out on a lot of what makes Marxism so great -- while some of his predictions are false what he offers is the explication of a worldview from the philosophical perspective such that one need not adopt bourgeois philosophy, and while his utopian visions have yet to be achieved Marx's contributions to a proletariat philosophy have been invaluable as a basis for reflection. He takes Rousseau's notion of the social contract to include the economic flows wherein people, born free, came to live in chains. His articulation between slave and worker, and the relationshiop between worker/owner is invaluable for analyzing power relationships, and not just in an academic sense -- but in terms of real world organizing.

I've only skimmed the lecture and will have re-read it, but from my dark post-Marxist point of view he might actually be too uncritical of Marxism. I think he agrees with most of what you say here. What he rejects are mainly (1) the proletariat as the revolutionary subject and universal class, and (2) the teleology of history. (And probably (3) a strict economic determinism (whether or not that is actually Marx's position)).

He agrees with a lot of historical materialism and, I think, buys right into Marx's analysis of alienation, the commodity, and exploitation.

Quoting Moliere

Without articulating how selling one's labor-time is exploitative, for instance, there'd be no practical political basis for workers to struggle on the shop floor. Rather, and this did happen, they ought join liberal societies of association for workers rather than disrupt the flow of commerce.

But if the relationship in which exchange is freely taking place is exploitative unto itself then this gives political justification -- as in an articulatable standard that could hold across people as something they can consistently demand together -- for industrial agitation.

You're right that Adorno's approach does little for working-class organization, but that's because he probably sees the extraction of surplus-value as one aspect or way of looking at the more generally alienating and dominating nature of capitalist society. That is, he de-prioritizes it.

Quoting Moliere

But, I gather this will be a frequent point of thinking for me -- because it seems Adorno is trying to save what's worth saving, whereas I'm pretty much just a Marxist who doesn't see it as a doomed project or something which has been falsified, but a proper political philosophy for the working class which has aided many sorts of the have-nots in their struggle to have.

EDIT: On the flip-side, his criticisms are also very valuable -- I'm not disagreeing with them so much as reacting to them from my own perspective.

But I can understand the Marxist assessment that Adorno is effectively regressive. If the working-class remains the agent of change, his thinking is not much use, or counter-productive. That said, I think his hatred of capitalism exceeds that of Marx, so I'd say yes, he's definitely worth reading even from that Marxist point of view.

EDIT: Also you might want to have a look at the Adorno-Popper debate, part of the "positivism dispute" in the social sciences, in which Adorno seems to have been put in the position of defending Marxism. It might supply a different picture of his relationship with Marxism. I used ChatGPT to produce a summary of it because there's a lot to read and I've got enough on my plate. I can post it here if you're interested.

EDIT 2: A personal reflection. What strikes me now is that the Frankfurt School were facing up to the failure of working class revolution and the absorption of the working class into bourgeois society and culture (which was not the case in Marx's time), long before I was born, and yet it's only in the last ten years or so that I've faced up to this in my own thinking. I imagine you might say that they were over-reacting, perhaps understandably given the world situation at the time; personally I think their disillusionment still stands (but I don't particularly want to infect you with it).

Quoting Moliere

Finished LND 4

I noticed, thanks to y'alls efforts, how "systemization" is a contrast-class, but one that isn't as described as "System" in this lecture. "System" is something that philosophy at one time pursued and should continue to preserve that spirit, whereas systemization is a pre-figured tabulating system with a bucket labeled "Not of interest", or something along those lines -- I get the idea that given we cannot have a true System in the manner which philosophy once pursued we have, in order to fulfill that need for a system, replaced it with systemization which has the appearance of a system without any of the drive for what motivated the philosophical system in the first place: not just totalizing, but a grasping of the universe, and with the end of LND 4 -- not just a grasping, but rather a grasping of all that is such that human beings come to live free lives.

So "System" is that which cannot be achieved, but likewise for Adorno there's an impulse in there that he seems to believe is necessary in order for philosophy to progress at all.

Yep, that's how I read it.

On the topic of realism it would be interesting at some point to compare Adorno with McDowell. They seem very close, and also very distant. For both, the objects of experience, though not ideal, are conceptually mediated; but for Adorno, this mediation goes wrong and leaves stuff out.

Quoting Jamal

Or, more charitably, you're a hardcore idealist who cannot accept Adorno's materialism.

Yes, that's the issue, appropriate principles (which i haven't yet seen), are required for acceptance, justification.

Quoting Jamal

But what you're saying does go to the heart of the subject-object relation, which is a central part of his thinking; and there is in fact a dialectical antagonism in his thinking between objects as non-conceptual and objects as ineluctably mediated—so I'll try responding.

You and I disagree as to what gets placed in the "subject" category of the subject-object relation, and what gets placed in the "object" category. For example, I said "society" refers to a concept, you said it refers to an object. I haven't yet seen from Adorno any clear principles as to how to categorize. In fact, when he said that he doesn't recognize a clear distinction between criticizing judgement and criticizing phenomena, I found this to be an indication that he is intentional blurring the separation between these categories. You say the subject-object relation is a central part of his thinking, but is blurring the boundary between them a central part of what he is doing? I don't see how that could be conducive to understanding.

Quoting Jamal

The thing produced being a philosophical system such as Kant's transcendental idealism or Fichte's Science of Knowledge, yes? Well, why not both? They're part of the same deal. I don't think Adorno makes an important distinction between the activity of making a system and the resulting philosophical system itself, or if he does it's along the lines of the systematization/system distinction.

The problem is that there is a fundamental difference between activities of change, and static states. Aristotle demonstrated how the two, as "becoming", and "being", are incompatible. Becoming cannot be described with the same terms as states of being, and states of being cannot be described by the terms of active becoming. So if we allow the same word, "system" to refer to both, that would be a serious ambiguity which could lead to equivocation and misunderstanding.

It may be the case that Hegelian dialectics of logic allow for this sort of "both", by allowing that being is subsumed within the category of becoming. If this is the case, then I would argue that Hegel is mistaken. Aristotle demonstrated decisively how describing the active becoming as consisting of states of being leads to an infinite regress, and unintelligibility. So the Hegelian approach, of allowing that states of being are negated by the antithesis, in the activity of becoming, which is a synthesis of the two, is actually a recipe for unintelligibility. The contraries, being and nothing are allowed to coexist, in contradiction, within the synthesized "becoming". That is the problem with making the descriptive terms of "becoming" (or activity in general), the same as the descriptive terms of being.

Adorno, it appears shares my disdain for Hegelian dialectics. Notice the way that he rejects Hegelian "synthesis". If the opposing terms are true negations there can be nothing left for synthesis, and if they are not true opposites the premise fails. So Hegelian dialectics is a misunderstanding from the outset.

Quoting Jamal

Well, which interconnectedness are we talking about? Adorno is saying there is an interconnectedness beyond thought, not only beyond philosophical systems but obscured by philosophical systems.

If we assume an interconnectedness which is "beyond thought", then we need proper principles to distinguish this type of interconnectedness from that which is imposed by thought. Kant provides a good example. At this point, after reading lecture 4, I would say that Adorno seems intent on blurring the distinction.

Here's an example of the need for distinction. Advocates for the application of systems theory in science, will say that a weather storm, like a hurricane, can be modeled as "a system". This system is assumed to be a composition of interconnected active parts, interconnected through their activities, and operating as a whole, an object," the system". The problem is that in reality there is no such boundary between the low pressure area and the high pressure area, just a gradation, and the supposed boundary which makes all that interconnected activity into "a system" as a whole, an object, is completely "imposed by thought".

This is common in modern thought, to impose an arbitrary boundary on activity, create "a system", and treat that created system as if it is a real, independent object, "beyond thought". I would argue that this is similar to how you claim that "society" refers to an object. You impose some arbitrary boundaries on activities, and you clim that there is an object here, called "society". But your object is simply a creation of boundaries imposed by thought.

The lesson here is that thought imposes "system" on the interconnectedness which is beyond thought, because "system" is the current trend in thinking. In reality, we have very little understanding of this interconnectedness, referred to in physics by terms like "strong force", "weak force", "gravity" "electromagnetism", and in social studies, "intentions", "emotions" "morals" etc.. We can model these activities as "systems" and "societies", but the boundaries or limits of the interconnectedness, which produce "the object", imposed by thought.

Quoting Jamal

We should be careful. Adorno has an interesting theory of bodily experience, and tends to use "somatic" when he is talking about sensation, because he believes the concept of "sensation" is implicated in the subjectivization characteristic of idealism, i.e., the concept of sensation takes something physical and relational and unjustifiably turns it into something mental and private. This idealist pressure of thought is demonstrated by your own way of wording things here, I think.

I'm interested to learn more. I really do not see the anti-idealism which you refer to, yet. His criticism seems true and honest, not directed at at any specific group, but approaching idealism and materialism equally.

Quoting Jamal

I've only skimmed the lecture and will have re-read it, but from my dark post-Marxist point of view he might actually be too uncritical of Marxism. I think he agrees with most of what you say here. What he rejects are mainly (1) the proletariat as the revolutionary subject and universal class, and (2) the teleology of history. (And probably (3) a strict economic determinism (whether or not that is actually Marx's position)).

He agrees with a lot of historical materialism and, I think, buys right into Marx's analysis of alienation, the commodity, and exploitation.

Quoting Jamal

You're right that Adorno's approach does little for working-class organization, but that's because he probably sees the extraction of surplus-value as one aspect or way of looking at the more generally alienating and dominating nature of capitalist society. That is, he de-prioritizes it.

Fair. I was very much reacting to the text because I'm used to having to defend Marxism -- and I suspect we just have a slightly different set of experiences which can account for what is basically an aesthetic preference. I agree with his criticisms, but felt like I needed to point out positives since that is my habit.

Quoting Jamal

But I can understand the Marxist assessment that Adorno is effectively regressive. If the working-class remains the agent of change, his thinking is not much use, or counter-productive. That said, I think his hatred of capitalism exceeds that of Marx, so I'd say yes, he's definitely worth reading even from that Marxist point of view.

Here I think there's a certain agreement then, too -- because I tend to take the intersectional approach, and by so doing I can point to more than the labor struggle as examples that I have in mind: Not just the Soviet Union, but also the labor movement. And not just the United States' labor movement, but also the modern Chinese labor movement. And not just labor, but also race. And not just race, but also sex.

But I know this is not at all orthodox, or Marx's position, or what Adorno is addressing. I just see Marx's analysis as influencing a lot of the disciplines which inform these various struggles in addition to the obvious, direct applications such as Lenin's and the labor movement's.

Still, I'll not digress too much on this as we go forward. I'll accept Adorno's appraisal and keep trucking along -- I got it out of me now :D

Quoting Jamal

EDIT: Also you might want to have a look at the Adorno-Popper debate, part of the "positivism dispute" in the social sciences, in which Adorno seems to have been put in the position of defending Marxism. It might supply a different picture of his relationship with Marxism. I used ChatGPT to produce a summary of it because there's a lot to read and I've got enough on my plate. I can post it here if you're interested.

Heh, naw. I'll just slot it into the eternal List -- things that could be interesting to visit, but for now I'll stay focused on the lectures and ND.

Quoting Jamal

EDIT 2: A personal reflection. What strikes me now is that the Frankfurt School were facing up to the failure of working class revolution and the absorption of the working class into bourgeois society and culture (which was not the case in Marx's time), long before I was born, and yet it's only in the last ten years or so that I've faced up to this in my own thinking. I imagine you might say that they were over-reacting, perhaps understandably given the world situation at the time; personally I think their disillusionment still stands (but I don't particularly want to infect you with it).

I can see it either way -- I think I was just reacting because I'm in the habit of pointing out good things, given how unpopular Marx tends to be. Reading the criticisms I think he's correct about Marx and various failings of Marxism -- I certainly wouldn't venture to say something as stupid as he didn't understand it! :D

But, I'll keep the apologism reigned in.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

My previous post in reply to you was rather dismissive and simplistic. I do see the problems, you've set them out well in your latest post, your position is coherent, and it highlights the tension at the heart of Adorno's philosophy. He is not simply anti-idealist. It's good to take time over the antagonism rather than, as I am tempted to do, forget about it and move on.

What it comes down to is (a) I am nevertheless ready to move on and don't think this is the right time to tackle the issue (though I intend now to keep it in mind), and (b) there is a real antagonism in Adorno's thinking, which goes right down to the bottom of idealism vs realism, which I hope will become, maybe not clearer, but more explicit as the reading goes on into ND.

So I'll keep it short. I think you're on the right track with the line of throught that goes from Aristotle, through Hegel, and to Adorno: the "blurring" is exactly his intention, but not so as to muddy the waters but to be more truthful. He hasn't just forgotten to lay out his principles—he is against doing philosophy in that way. Your position is ultimately based on a framework Adorno rejects.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Here's an example of the need for distinction. Advocates for the application of systems theory in science, will say that a weather storm, like a hurricane, can be modeled as "a system". This system is assumed to be a composition of interconnected active parts, interconnected through their activities, and operating as a whole, an object," the system". The problem is that in reality there is no such boundary between the low pressure area and the high pressure area, just a gradation, and the supposed boundary which makes all that interconnected activity into "a system" as a whole, an object, is completely "imposed by thought".

This is common in modern thought, to impose an arbitrary boundary on activity, create "a system", and treat that created system as if it is a real, independent object, "beyond thought". I would argue that this is similar to how you claim that "society" refers to an object. You impose some arbitrary boundaries on activities, and you clim that there is an object here, called "society". But your object is simply a creation of boundaries imposed by thought.

Good stuff, but here is the thing: the bolded conclusion isn't justified. It begs the question. From the fact that we impose artificial boundaries on hurricanes it doesn't follow that hurricanes don't exist apart from those boundaries.

I suggest we return to that interminable debate later on. Suffice to say I'm glad you chose not to let go of this particular bone of contention, and I'll continue to think about it.

Quoting Moliere

Here I think there's a certain agreement then, too -- because I tend to take the intersectional approach, and by so doing I can point to more than the labor struggle as examples that I have in mind: Not just the Soviet Union, but also the labor movement. And not just the United States' labor movement, but also the modern Chinese labor movement. And not just labor, but also race. And not just race, but also sex.

Yes, and that would be very much in sympathy with Marcuse, I suppose. Adorno is just a lot less optimistic across the board.

Quoting Moliere

But, I'll keep the apologism reigned in.

Feel free! Anyway, I'll read lecture 5 and say something soonish.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I'm interested to learn more. I really do not see the anti-idealism which you refer to, yet.

I think he states it openly in the first lecture:

We are concerned here with a philosophical project that does not presuppose the identity of being and thought, nor does it culminate in that identity.

I count the ???????? by each citizen and will leave of my own accord.

May fortune be yours.

Quoting Jamal

What it comes down to is (a) I am nevertheless ready to move on and don't think this is the right time to tackle the issue (though I intend now to keep it in mind), and (b) there is a real antagonism in Adorno's thinking, which goes right down to the bottom of idealism vs realism, which I hope will become, maybe not clearer, but more explicit as the reading goes on into ND.

I agree that this is not the right time. I am not at all familiar with Adorno, this is my first reading. So what I am expressing is a first impression, which is bound to change as I become more familiar.

Quoting Jamal

Good stuff, but here is the thing: the bolded conclusion isn't justified. It begs the question. From the fact that we impose artificial boundaries on hurricanes it doesn't follow that hurricanes don't exist apart from those boundaries.

I think you are missing the point. The argument is not that this aspect of the weather does not have real existence, the argument is that it does not exist as an "object". Nor does it truthfully exist as a "system", though it might be modeled as a system. We impose imaginary boundaries as this is what is required of "system", and this imposition produces the illusion of an "object".

If we started from the core of the storm, and worked our way outward, looking for these boundaries which make the storm into a definitive "object" as a system, we wouldn't ever find them. We start at the eye, and we wouldn't limit the system just to the eye. Nor would we limit it to the eye and the eyewall. Then we have spiral rain bands, but still the wind and clouds extend further, right into the neighbouring high pressure area, such that there is a continuous pressure gradient from the middle of the low pressure area to the middle of the high. There is no real boundary which separates the storm from everything else, it's just an imaginary boundary imposed on a world of interconnectedness.

This could be an example of Adorno's "systematization". Notice, it's a sort of subjective boundary imposed upon the whole, to create what passes for a "system", out of a selected part. Adorno is talking about, and provides an example of this systematization in theory. What I have provided is a description of how it works in practise. We apply systems theory to partition out a specific, intentionally selected aspect of reality, and model that aspect as an object, a system which is bounded.

So I extend this by analogy to the way you consider "society" to be an object. How would you separate one specific society from another, as they are all interconnected. And if the entirety of humanity is "society" in general, how would we account for all the opposing customs, etc.? This practise of systematization, which is to take something which is inherently subjective, and portray it as objective we find everywhere. For example, some will take a subjectively created group of people such as "the working class", and treat this proposed group as an objective distinction. In reality, there is just arbitrary, subjective criteria which are imposed to create the illusion of a real unified group of people.

Quoting Jamal

I think he states it openly in the first lecture:

We are concerned here with a philosophical project that does not presuppose the identity of being and thought, nor does it culminate in that identity.

I don't think that constitutes anti-idealism, it simply signifies that it is a philosophy which is other than the philosophy which establishes an identity of being and thought. So for example, Parmenides promoted an idealism with that identity of being and thought. Socrates and Plato were critical of this idealism, mostly due to the way that it seemed to exclude the possibility of becoming as something real, and intelligible. Plato ended up outlining an idealism which places mind as prior to being. So he moved away from "the identity of being and thought", but he didn't get away from idealism.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I think you are missing the point. The argument is not that this aspect of the weather does not have real existence, the argument is that it does not exist as an "object". Nor does it truthfully exist as a "system", though it might be modeled as a system. We impose imaginary boundaries as this is what is required of "system", and this imposition produces the illusion of an "object".

If we started from the core of the storm, and worked our way outward, looking for these boundaries which make the storm into a definitive "object" as a system, we wouldn't ever find them. We start at the eye, and we wouldn't limit the system just to the eye. Nor would we limit it to the eye and the eyewall. Then we have spiral rain bands, but still the wind and clouds extend further, right into the neighbouring high pressure area, such that there is a continuous pressure gradient from the middle of the low pressure area to the middle of the high. There is no real boundary which separates the storm from everything else, it's just an imaginary boundary imposed on a world of interconnectedness.

This could be an example of Adorno's "systematization". Notice, it's a sort of subjective boundary imposed upon the whole, to create what passes for a "system", out of a selected part. Adorno is talking about, and provides an example of this systematization in theory. What I have provided is a description of how it works in practise. We apply systems theory to partition out a specific, intentionally selected aspect of reality, and model that aspect as an object, a system which is bounded.

So I extend this by analogy to the way you consider "society" to be an object. How would you separate one specific society from another, as they are all interconnected. And if the entirety of humanity is "society" in general, how would we account for all the opposing customs, etc.? This practise of systematization, which is to take something which is inherently subjective, and portray it as objective we find everywhere. For example, some will take a subjectively created group of people such as "the working class", and treat this proposed group as an objective distinction. In reality, there is just arbitrary, subjective criteria which are imposed to create the illusion of a real unified group of people.

Okay, this is great. I think you've hit the nail on the head. I was focusing on the full-on idealism because you had been seeking justification not just for real objects but for real interconnectedness (but I guess if the objects are in some sense ideal/imposed then so is the interconnectedness). So you're right that I was missing something, but what I was missing, specifically, is that you're expressing the problem that negative dialectics seeks to address. Adorno agrees with you (up to a point), and you're making a very Adornian point, which is that reality exceeds the grasp of concepts. That in reality which exceeds this grasp he calls the nonidentical.

Now, you'll notice that Adorno will refer to objects, using concepts, while also implying that the concept doesn't quite fit, which in your terms implies that the object is imposed and means that he cannot legitimately use that concept to refer to the real, or that the purported object is entirely ideal. But he has no choice. He will say things like "objects exceed the grasp of their concepts," and applying this to one object, say the working-class, this is a way of showing that we must refer to it as an object but must also remember that its very object-hood is partly a product of thought and does not precisely capture what it's trying to capture (and what's more, no object concept can capture it).

My simplistic way of thinking of it is that we can use "the working-class" as a convenient shorthand, because there is something real there which is a lot like that, so long as we remember to keep our minds open. That is, the conclusion that the object is in your words "simply a creation of boundaries imposed by thought" is not quite right: it is not simply or only that. It might be more or less close to what is real, but the important point is that sometimes it is very far from close, which is when we fail to hear the "suffering voices."

NOTE: See my post below in which I criticize and attempt to revise what I just said: Reply to Jamal

So it's sort of a starting point for negative dialectics that philosophy is paradoxical. Concepts always leave something out or fail to fit reality, i.e., they to some degree reflect thought. Imposing a boundary is a good example. And yet to do philosophy at all (and not only philosophy) we have to think in concepts. Adorno's solution will be the method of constellations.

In his inaugural lecture of 1931 he said:

[quote=Copied from the SEP entry;https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/adorno/]philosophy has to bring its elements, which it receives from the sciences, into changing constellations … into changing trial combinations until they fall into a figure which can be read as an answer, while at the same time the question disappears[/quote]

(constellations of concepts, he means)

I'm guessing that later on he abandoned the idea that the procedure comes to an end and the question just disappears (that would seem to result in a system), but this gives a flavour of the method of constellations (wrapping the idea neatly in the phrase "the method of constellations" is probably very un-Adornian but it's ok for now).

So society and hurricanes are real but are also in a sense ideal, in that judgements are socially and historically mediated through concepts. Adorno's theory is one of mediation: reality is not constituted by the subject, but neither is it just given immediately as in empiricism.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think that constitutes anti-idealism, it simply signifies that it is a philosophy which is other than the philosophy which establishes an identity of being and thought. So for example, Parmenides promoted an idealism with that identity of being and thought. Socrates and Plato were critical of this idealism, mostly due to the way that it seemed to exclude the possibility of becoming as something real, and intelligible. Plato ended up outlining an idealism which places mind as prior to being. So he moved away from "the identity of being and thought", but he didn't get away from idealism.

But for Adorno the identity of being and thought is the result of the idealist prioritization of the subject.

Anyway, generally I think you go too far when you (appear to) reject the objects entirely, as if they are subjective illusions. This is attempting to dissolve the problem too soon, and Adorno resists this—he settles within the tension rather than coming down on one side, as he must do to do justice to what's real. So, in summary, I think you are quite deeply in tune with Adorno, but you give too much ground to idealism, which is the point at which you begin to demand foundational principles and justifications.

Quoting Jamal

This is attempting to dissolve the problem too soon

Specifically it is dissolving the problem in favour of the subject, which is why he is against idealism.

Quoting Jamal

My simplistic way of thinking of it is that we can use "the working-class" as a convenient shorthand, because there is something real there which is a lot like that, so long as we remember to keep our minds open.

Partly for my own benefit I'd like to work out exactly what is lost, what is misleading, in this over-simple formulation. It seems to assume there is an object that in principle might be captured by a concept, if only we found the right one. But the object itself is not a stable entity and the idea that the concept resembles or approximates it is a reification of the concept. It pretends to abnegate itself while secretly continuing to apply it. Better put, the concept and the object are historical, fractured, necessarily non-identical. It's not a matter of finding a good approximation but of finding the truth in the contradictions. That's pretty vague but it's the best I can do right now.

There's also a risk, with "so long as we remember to keep our minds open," of psychologizing and trivializing negative dialectics. The non-identity of concepts and objects is not just a matter of mental attitude but is an objective condition of society.

Quoting Jamal

I think you've hit the nail on the head.

I like to sort of apply, in thought experiments, the theory which a philosopher expresses, this helps me to understand, but sometimes misunderstand.

Quoting Jamal

Now, you'll notice that Adorno will refer to objects, using concepts, while also implying that the concept doesn't quite fit, which in your terms implies that the object is imposed and means that he cannot legitimately use that concept to refer to the real, or that the purported object is entirely ideal. But he has no choice. He will say things like "objects exceed the grasp of their concepts," and applying this to one object, say the working-class, this is a way of showing that we must refer to it as an object but must also remember that its very object-hood is partly a product of thought and does not precisely capture what it's trying to capture (and what's more, no object concept can capture it).

I think we can distinguish between objects exceeding there concepts, and concepts exceeding their objects, and this roughly corresponds with the two types of criticism. The former is found in hypothesizing, theorizing about reality. The latter is found when we apply ideals, such as my example of applying systems theory.

This plays into the theory/practice distinction of lecture 5. I find that the two always get wrapped together with internal reciprocation, and I think this is why Adorno seems to recommend blurring the boundaries. I believe the blurring of boundaries is counterproductive to analysis and criticism in general, but maybe the point is just what I am saying, that any such application of boundaries produces an artificial representation which will be deficient. Incidentally, Charles Peirce has a lot to say about this blurring, and how we must allow exceptions to the laws of noncontradiction and excluded middle to avoid problems like the sorites paradox.

I believe, that at the base of this issue, is the incompatibility between "being" and "becoming" which was demonstrated by Plato. What gave me the problem in lecture 4 is the ambiguity between "system" as a way of thinking (activity, becoming), and "system" as an object (unity, whole, being). Because I accept as a fundamental, guiding principle, this incompatibility, my philosophical training has inclined me to reject the blurring of this categorical separation.

So when things are understood in terms of their activities, and these things are said to be parts of a whole, we need something further, a principle of equilibrium or something, which supports the interconnectedness required for the stability of "an object". Natural objects are understood to exist as active parts, fundamental particles, but extra "forces" are required to produce the equilibrium of the object. Likewise, if "society" is understood as a collective of active parts, we need a further principle to support the interconnectedness of those parts which is required for the equilibrium that is essential to a true "object". Systems theory inclines us to believe that we can arbitrarily impose boundaries without any such cause of equilibrium, producing "an object" without any real support for the supposed interconnectedness required for "an object".

Quoting Jamal

But for Adorno the identity of being and thought is the result of the idealist prioritization of the subject.

I haven't quite seen this yet, but I view this entire perspective, the one which blurs the boundaries and refuses to carry the critical analysis deeper, as a feature of the modern inclination toward monism. Ultimately, I believe it leads to unintelligibility, which to avoid requires the priority of the subject.

Quoting Jamal

Partly for my own benefit I'd like to work out exactly what is lost, what is misleading, in this over-simple formulation.

I think, the thing might be to recognize the two distinct directions of systematization type thought. In one case, we apply systems theory to existing reality. We produce a model, "a system" which to our purposes fits the reality, such that we can apply it and predict future activities (weather forecast). In the other direction (the case of society) we theorize with intent (perhaps latent system), to create an object according to what we view as desirable. Unless the intended object is the entirety, the whole, it must be the means to a further end. We can place the concept "working class" in that category, as an object creating for a purpose.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Ultimately, I believe it leads to unintelligibility, which to avoid requires the priority of the subject.

Adorno thinks that gets you intelligibility at the cost of falsity.

Well, your position is interesting and I’ve enjoyed grappling with it, but I’ll move on to theory and practice now. No doubt we’ll revisit this stuff.

LND6 was a wild ride. I found myself agreeing with him on Heidegger, and his distinction between two bad poles of philosophy that feed on one another -- the formal and the arbitrary -- is very interesting.

Philosophy always deals in concepts, and it is for this reason that the philosopher is easily tempted to cut out what philosophy is supposedly about -- the ever changing world, the "content", the "referent".


The paragraph which talks about Hegel's move I don't think I'm fully following. Hegel makes an inference , or an equivocation, in moving from "the indeterminate" to "indeterminateness":

However, when Hegel substitutes ‘indeterminateness’ for this, the concept, namely, thethe w absence of
determinateness as such takes the place of what is undetermined – through what Kant would have called a ‘subreption’, that is, a misrepresentation. The purely linguistic slippage from ‘the indeterminate’,
the term that denotes what is underlying, to indeterminateness is itself the turn to the concept.

"The turn to the concept" -- I'm not sure I'm understanding. My first guess is that Hegel is moving from "the indeterminate", a concept about the concept "indeterminateness", and the linguistic move is his phenomenology from the concept of the concept to the concept itself. And Kant would call this move illegitimate, but that's kind of the whole rift between Kantian and Hegelian epistemology -- For Hegel terra incognita can be uncovered, and there is no separation between concepts and objects, not even in a parallel-functional operation of a pure-understanding/pure-intuition, where "intuition" is counted as part of the mind but is still the "object" which comes to justify concepts with respect to scientific knowledge.

Reply to Jamal Going back over LND5 I'm thinking I'm sympathetic to Adorno's take on theory/practice -- I certainly agree that "practice" can become a kind of fetish, and even anti-intellectual. Concepts -- theory -- are an important part of practice, and thinking is itself a practice.

Quoting Moliere

Going back over LND5 I'm thinking I'm sympathetic to Adorno's take on theory/practice -- I certainly agree that "practice" can become a kind of fetish, and even anti-intellectual. Concepts -- theory -- are an important part of practice, and thinking is itself a practice.

From what I remember—I still have to read it again—he says that this point is already in Marx, that the fetishization of practice is a feature of the contemporaneous versions of Marxism popular in the sixties. That lecture is very much of its time, as I recall, with the student protests brewing and activists hungry for action.

LND Lecture 5

I might not say much about this lecture, because it feels like a digression in which Adorno is answering the letter he received about Marx's Theses on Feuerbach. It's all very Marxist and practical—and not just because it concerns the relationship of theory to practice but because he seems genuinely concerned about what is to be done, and surprisingly even seems quite optimistic when he says that now is a good time to develop a philosophy fit for purpose, because "We find ourselves in a kind of historical breathing space." [EDIT: actually that's in lecture 6]

[quote=Marx, Theses on Feuerbach]11. Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.[/quote]

There's a striking tension in what Adorno says. His interpretation has it that Marx in thesis 11 did not just mean that the time for philosophy is over and we have to just "wade in with our fists and there will be no more need for thought"—because it's the task of philosophy to change the world, philosophically. And yet...

[quote=p.51]That aside, I believe that Marx really did believe – and we have to think back to the period in which the writings we are considering here were written, that is to say, around the year 1848 – that philosophers would in fact be best advised to pack it in and become revolutionaries, in other words, man the barricades – which, as is well known, cannot be found anywhere nowadays, and if they were to be erected in any advanced society today they would be quickly eliminated by police or security guards. But he probably did mean something of the sort.[/quote]

So this is close to contradiction, unless we say that around 1848, a few years after the Theses on Feuerbach, Marx changed his mind, or at least his emphasis. For Marx, there has to come a point when it's time for revolution.

That aside, Marx's metaphilosophical position seems to be assumed in a lot of what Adorno says. Marx thought that philosophy would eventually be overcome, negated or as I like to put it, solved, in an emancipated post-revolutionary society. In this way, philosophy would lead to practice and this practice would be the culmination of philosophy. Thus it's a teleological view, even if Marx did not always see a necessity in the process.

Adorno is asking what philosophy should do in the situation in which that culmination didn't happen, since the expected revolutions either failed or led to bad outcomes like the bureaucratic and totalitarian systems of the Eastern Bloc (it's interesting that he mentions "Those of you who have escaped from the East").

For Adorno, philosophy must remain autonomous, and only in that way, decoupled from practice, can it be of any use to practice. A familiarly dialectical view.

Note that to say philosophy must remain autonomous is not to imply that it can go on as if it can float freely, unmediated, above society and history—this is as much anathema to Adorno as it was to Marx. It just means it cannot be expected to justify its every move according to either the contemporary situation or to Marxist orthodoxy. This would amount to a "shackling" of philosophy.

One question: if emancipation is the realization of philosophy, does that mean there will be no more philosophy?

Reply to Jamal Excellent summary. My thoughts are still so scatterbrained I appreciate these synopses.

Quoting Jamal

One question: if emancipation is the realization of philosophy, does that mean there will be no more philosophy?

If we take Marx as an Orthodox sage --

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

It seems that even in communist society there's a time for those who wish to critique, but one need not become a philosopher.

Reply to Jamal
I was just reading about Hegel and his situation with Napoleon. Hegel believed Napoleon was the World Soul, bringing in a new age. A lot of young Germans believed that. Hegel though he was watching the end of history. This is a fusion of esoteric wisdom and ancient apocalypticism. Instead of there being a second coming of Christ, it's Napoleon, advancing the principles of the French Revolution. Hegel eventually became disillusioned, but I was looking for whether he ever revised his philosophy to reflect the change. I don't think he did, and this isn't unusual for apocalypticists. If the vision isn't realized the way they thought, they often just put the date further into the future.

Hegel's experience with Napoleon wasn't an isolated thing. Across the world, from Russia to the USA, people were imagining that they were on the threshold of a new era, and if you think about it, they actually were. We could take Hegel's experience as an attempt to understand what was happening.

I think that with Marxism, the fever set in again, this time with the Proletariat animated by the World Soul to emancipate the world. It didn't happen the way they thought it would, but once again, people were thinking in terms of a massive shift in human life. In Russia, Marxists believed that even language would change as the new era emerged. There was a Russian poet who tried to write poetry in the "new" language. So I think the answer is yes: prior to disillusionment, German Marxists thought philosophy was basically done. The great metaphysical journey was finished.

Augustine is famous for taking the apocalypticism in Christianity and putting it in the category of myth: by myth, I don't mean something that's false exactly, just not to be taken entirely literally. I think with negative dialectics, Adorno was doing something similar.

Quoting Moliere

It seems that even in communist society there's a time for those who wish to critique, but one need not become a philosopher.

Suits me :smile:

Reply to frank

Good stuff, thank you for filling in the Hegelian background. I noticed in one of Adorno's essays on Hegel (Hegel: Three Studies) that he identifies Spirit with "social labour", which sounds like a crude sociologization. It's like he was saying here's what Hegel was talking about without realizing it.

LND lecture 6

This was a fun one. I had to do a breakdown to make sense of it. For now, I'll just post it and leave it at that, before coming back to look at things in more detail.

So the lecture goes something like this:

1. How philosophy can proceed, picking up the problem in lecture 5 (p56)
2. One reason the world wasn't changed is that it wasn't interpreted sufficiently: Marx and Marxism failed to critique the domination of nature, and in fact celebrated it, and this is a major failure; there is more philosophizing to do (p58)
3. That the world has a meaning can't now be maintained, and this means Hegel is beyond redemption, and so is all identity thinking (p59)
4. Hegel's Logic (p60)
5. Illustration of the problem with Hegel by a linguistic analysis of Hegel's move from "the indeterminate" to "indeterminateness" (p61)
6. General points about Hegel just demonstrated: Hegel "conjures away" exactly what philosophy sets out to understand (p62)
7. The paradox of philosophy: can philosophy succeed using concepts to reach the nonconceptual? (p.62)
8. Two bad options remaining if philosophy fails to face this challenge: the formal or the arbitrary (p63)
9. Heidegger and being (p64)

Generally, 2 is a really interesting critique of Marx, 3 is a fundamental tenet of Adorno's connected to his deepest motivations, and 4/5 is a fiendish puzzle.

Quoting Moliere

The paragraph which talks about Hegel's move I don't think I'm fully following. Hegel makes an inference , or an equivocation, in moving from "the indeterminate" to "indeterminateness":

Yeah, I haven't got to the bottom of it yet. What's cool about it though is that it looks a lot like the linguistic analysis I've seen in ordinary language philosophy, like that of Austin and Ryle.

Quoting Jamal

That the world has a meaning can't now be maintained,

This is a theme I'm enjoying throughout -- not an assumption so much, but a Background belief that need not be demonstrated at all. I'm enjoying it because it's what I feel and I don't run into many deep thinkers who feel the same.

Quoting Jamal

Yeah, I haven't got to the bottom of it yet. What's cool about it though is that it looks a lot like the linguistic analysis I've seen in ordinary language philosophy, like that of Austin and Ryle.

Yeh! It's a very cool passage -- which is why I highlighted it, and gave the best guess interpretation I could give.

I'm glad you gave a structure for the lecture cuz I was thinking of doing the same, with numbers and summaries, and yours looks about right to me

Quoting Jamal

Suits me :smile:

Me too :smile: -- imagine a world where what you do for the economy doesn't define your entire existence. I like that imaginary.

Here's a few remarks on lecture 5:

Adorno does not promote a concise separation between theory and practice. The two are always intermingled. Even thinking is an activity, therefore a sort of practice, and not pure theory. He also refers to Marx's criticism of some anarchists' position of "absolute action", independent of all theory. The two, theory and practice do not exist separately

There is also a pervasive concept introduced, "the forces of production". This I find to be a vague concept, and I haven't really grasped its meaning. But it's roughly stated as human energies and technologies.

[quote=p48]And if we fail to follow up this idea that the
forces of production could satisfy human needs and enable mankind
to enter into a condition worthy of human beings – if we fail to give
voice to this thought, then we certainly will be in danger of giving
ideology a helping hand. Such an outcome is prevented only by the
relations of production and by the extension of the forces of production
into the machinery of physical and intellectual power.[/quote]

It appears like the forces of production might lead us toward suffering and destruction, or else toward happiness and paradise. This emphasizes the need for theory, and the idea that we cannot allow theory to be shackled by practice. And so, to give absolute precedence to practice, is "bad practice" (p50)

[quote=p50]For to take a dogmatic view of that book of Lenin’s, or indeed all
books by Lenin or even all the books ever produced by Marxism, is
the precise equivalent of the procedures adopted by administrations
that have set themselves up in the name of Marxism, that have
absolved themselves of the need for any further thought and that have
done nothing but base their own acts of violence on these theories
without thinking them through and developing them critically.[/quote]

He then explains his view of how interpretation is much the same as criticism. And, without this form of interpretation "there can be no such thing as true practice" (51). From here he criticizes "Scientific socialism", emphasizing the need for philosophy.

[quote=p52]Engels also understood very clearly: that science is not only a force
of production but that it is implicated in the social power relations
and command structures of its age. It follows from this that we
cannot simply transfer to science the authority purloined from
philosophy or the authority denied to philosophy by criticism. [/quote]

After all this discussion about how practice ought not overcome theory he throws a twist. Thinking, in the end, is just a form of practice anyway. So all is ultimately reduced to practice, but distinct types of practice, theorizing being one of them. And he mentions "organizer" as a type of practice.

[quote=p53]For thinking itself is always a form of behaviour;18 it is, whether it likes it or not,
a kind of practice, even in its purest logical operations. Every
synthesis it creates brings about change. Every judgement that links two
ideas together that were separate previously is, as such, work; I would
be tempted to say it always brings about a minute change in the
world. And once thinking sets out in its purest form to bring about
change in even the smallest thing, no power on earth can separate
theory from practice in an absolute way. The separation of theory
and practice is itself an expression of reified consciousness. And it is
the task of philosophy to dismantle the rigidity, the dogmatic and
irreconcilable character of this separation.[/quote]

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

It appears like the forces of production might lead us toward suffering and destruction, or else toward happiness and paradise. This emphasizes the need for theory, and the idea that we cannot allow theory to be shackled by practice.

Yes, along with the stuff about the domination of nature, this helps to answer a question that always haunts me, which is, what is theory for anyway?

Also, the idea that thinking is part of practice helps. Practice, in new and changing contexts, always involves decisions about what to do. What to do depends on an assessment of the situation. Hence the need for theory, as a part of practice.

The danger with that, though, is that it might imply that theory ought to be immediately applicable. So Adorno has to simultaneously say that theory is practice and that it has to be decoupled from practice.

LND lecture 6 (continued)

I'll take a look at the linguistic analysis. Referring back to my previous post...

Quoting Jamal

5. Illustration of the problem with Hegel by a linguistic analysis of Hegel's move from "the indeterminate" to "indeterminateness" (p61)

6. General points about Hegel just demonstrated: Hegel "conjures away" exactly what philosophy sets out to understand (p62)

Dare I say that the linguistic analysis is not as difficult as it looks? In the Science of Logic Hegel goes from this:

They [i.e. the thoughts of pure space, pure time, pure consciousness, or pure being] are the results of abstraction; they are expressly determined as indeterminate and this – to go back to its simplest form – is being.

To this:

But it is this very indeterminateness which constitutes its determinateness; for indeterminateness is opposed to determinateness; hence, as so opposed, it is itself determinate or the negative, and the pure, quite abstract negative. It is this indeterminateness or abstract negation which thus has being present within it, which reflection, both outer and inner, enunciates when it equates it’ – that is, being – ‘with nothing, declares it to be an empty product of thought, to be nothing.

Hegel goes from indeterminate to indeterminateness.

Indeterminate: As used by Hegel it's a substantive term referring to a something not yet determined, a kind of "substratum" that might later be specified (though it covers the concept as well). Even if this substratum is a logical placeholder, the grammar maintains an object.

Indeterminateness: The absence of determination as such; the concept only, a universal or abstract quality.

So Hegel starts with the something but drops it in favour of the concept. And this is how Hegel manages to equate being with nothing. It's fair enough to do that with the indeterminateness, but when we talk of being we're not just referring to the abstract concept of indeterminacy.

My initial thought was, doesn't this analysis assume that Hegel starts out by talking about beings, as in individual concrete entities? If so, Adorno is wrong because that's obviously not what Hegel is doing.

But the point Adorno is making is not that Hegel starts out talking about beings but that there is a minimal ontological commitment in the indeterminate as used in the first passage. It points to a logical something, not only to the abstract concept.

This feels right, but I'm not sure if I've wrapped my head around it fully. But it's a really neat way of showing where Hegel has gone wrong. It's where Hegel's idealism takes over, where the thing itself gets lost—right at the start of his system too.

EDIT: It’s like going from “the unknown” to “unknownness”.

Quoting Jamal

What to do depends on an assessment of the situation.

Further to this, "what to do" requires putting the assessment of the situation into the context of goals, objectives, or, vise versa. Notice how producing goals within the context of the situation is distinctly different from putting an assessment of the situation, into the context of one's goals. One way shapes the goals according to the situation, and the other holds steadfast to the goals, looking for ways to shape the situation toward the goals. I think that prioritizing goals, theory, is what is alluded to in the following passage. Otherwise the forces of production which naturally outgrow the bounds of any existing society, will sort of run amok.

[quote=p48-49] Moreover, it is not enough
for us to live in hope that the history of mankind will move towards
theory and practice a satisfactory state of affairs of its own accord and that all that will
be required from us is a bit of a push from time to time to ensure
that everything works out. Even though – and here too I would rather
err on the side of caution – we should bear in mind, and in this respect
Marx was undoubtedly right to maintain that the forces of production,
in other words human energies and their extension in technology,
have a tendency of their own to overcome the limits that have
been set by society. To regard this overcoming as a kind of natural
law, however, and to imagine that it has to happen in this way, and
that it has to happen immediately, that would render the entire situation
harmless, since it would undermine every kind of practice that
placed its reliance on it. And, finally, in taking the link between
theory and practice seriously, one of our most vital tasks is to realize
that thought is not a priori impotent in the face of a possible practice.
This was in fact the point of Marx’s criticism of an abstract utopia.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, certainly with Adorno there is always a goal into which everything has to fit, namely…

[quote=p48]… to follow up this idea that the forces of production could satisfy human needs and enable mankind to enter into a condition worthy of human beings[/quote]

But a goal of earlier socialists was to dominate nature:

[quote=Trotsky, Literature and Revolution;https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1924/lit_revo/ch08.htm]The present distribution of mountains and rivers, of fields, of meadows, of steppes, of forests, and of seashores, cannot be considered final. Man has already made changes in the map of nature that are not few nor insignificant. But they are mere pupils’ practice in comparison with what is coming. Faith merely promises to move mountains; but technology, which takes nothing “on faith”, is actually able to cut down mountains and move them. Up to now this was done for industrial purposes (mines) or for railways (tunnels); in the future this will be done on an immeasurably larger scale, according to a general industrial and artistic plan. Man will occupy himself with re-registering mountains and rivers, and will earnestly and repeatedly make improvements in nature. In the end, he will have rebuilt the earth, if not in his own image, at least according to his own taste. We have not the slightest fear that this taste will be bad.[/quote]

For Adorno, this goal is wrong (deeply bad in fact), even though it was arguably essential to the revolutionary project—and this is because he put that goal into the context of his assessment of the situation and of history.

So we could say that some goals should be steadfastly held to, while others shouldn’t. Or, the first, minimal goal takes priority, and the latter goal is tested in thought against the first.

Reply to Jamal
That brings me back to my earlier point. If we do not maintain a clear separation between means and ends, such that the means are justified relative to the end, and the end gets judged relative to a further category of good or not good, how can we have decisive (or objective) principles for judgement of good? You say Adorno judged the goal by putting it "into the context of his assessment of the situation and of history", but that seems very subjective.

I think that what Adorno is indicating in the passage I quoted, is that there is something inherently deficient about judging the goodness of a goal, for the future, by placing it into the context of history, the past. There would be a sort of implied determinism intrinsic to that perspective. But he has respect for how the forces of production will naturally overcome the [determinist] limits of society. Therefore we must recognize the potency of thought, now, at the present, to free itself from the constraints of the past, and set goals for the future, which are free from past mistakes. This is stated as relative to Marx's criticism of "abstract utopia". However, the creative aspect, something completely new for the future, is a requirement to keep the forces of production on the good instead of the bad (the bad being essentially a lack of unity, aimless anarchy).

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Not much there I disagree with. But...

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

However, the creative aspect, something completely new for the future, is a requirement to keep the forces of production on the good instead of the bad (the bad being essentially a lack of unity, aimless anarchy).

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. When he says that "the forces of production, in other words human energies and their extension in technology, have a tendency of their own to overcome the limits that have been set by society," and that we must not think of this as a natural law, he seems to be unambiguously equating such an overcoming with revolutionary emancipation.

On the other hand, it is the forces of production applied instrumentally that he objects to, i.e., rational means to sometimes irrational ends (destruction of nature, nuclear weapons). So yes, you’re right to emphasize the importance of the goal for Adorno, since the big problem is the tendency in modern rationality to establish means without asking what the goal should be.

Reply to Jamal

Good stuff, but here is the thing: the bolded conclusion isn't justified. It begs the question. From the fact that we impose artificial boundaries on hurricanes it doesn't follow that hurricanes don't exist apart from those boundaries.

:up:

Right, and common objections to this tend to rely on the assumption that any such systems must be defined according to some sort of rigid binary. But if unity (by which anything is one thing) and multiplicity represent a sort of contrariety (and so to for relative degrees of self-organization, self-government, self-determination), then we shouldn't expect the distinctions to be distinct. The storm need not have exact boundaries to be a storm. If the boundaries are "artificial" they nonetheless do not spring from the aether uncaused, but unfold for reasons (per Hegel at least).

In particular, rigid "building block" ontologies have a problem with defining systems or things. You can see this in the "Problem of the Many." Which molecules exactly make up a cloud? Which atoms exactly make up a cat?

But this is a demand that the higher order be explained in terms of, and ordered to, the lower, i.e. a cat is already assumed to be a mere concatenation lower constituents, as opposed to the higher, unifying principle itself.

Whereas, the focus on the principle of unity would seem to be a focus on "yes-saying," on actuality and form. An idealism? I suppose that depends on how one looks at such an actuality. But an actuality also determines potencies and powers, so it is always not just a "yes-saying," and specifically not a static yes-saying if this is kept in view, because the actuality of things is directed towards change/becoming, towards a potency to be actualized.

Actually, movement towards any goal assumes that the goal hasn't yet been reached, so there is a sort of bracketed priority of potency and difference in this. If a thing were not different from its perfection, it would have no impetus to change.

LND lecture 7

(Should I wait and allow people to catch up? Should we set a schedule from now on?)

In lecture 6 Adorno spoke of the big challenge facing philosophy post-Hegel:

[quote=p63]In other words, can the self-reflection of the concept succeed in breaking through the wall that the concept erects around itself and its concerns by virtue of its own conceptual nature.[/quote]

And he identified two bad options remaining if philosophy fails to face this challenge of breaking out of the conceptual: the formal or the arbitrary.

Lecture 7, containing criticisms of a few notable philosophies that attempt a breakout, is very much a prelude to the following lectures, in which he discusses intellectual experience. So everything in lecture 7 leads to this:

[Philosophy's] task is not to reduce the entire world to a prefabricated system of categories, but rather the opposite, viz. to hold itself open to whatever experience presents itself to the mind

On the way there he criticizes Bergson, Husserl, and as always Heidegger. The criticisms are interesting and it’s worth trying to understand them, because (a) we haven’t read his extended critique of Husserl in Against Epistemology—so these lectures fill a gap—and (b) there’s an extended critique of Heidegger in ND, so this is good preparation.

Philosophical systems, particularly Hegel's, have a big advantage in that they assume...

[quote=p66]that spirit is the sole reality and that all reality is reducible to spirit.[/quote]

Without this, we're in the realm of arbitrary material experience. Adorno then explains how this problem plays out in Heidegger:

[quote=p67]Heidegger’s philosophy, which claims not to be formal and which nevertheless needs to draw itself together into supreme, abstract categories, this philosophy, when it then enters into the material side of things, has every interest in making sure that the transition into materiality does not appear to be as haphazard as it must be in reality, given the vagueness of the concept of existence. In consequence, it almost inevitably has recourse in its material propositions to the past, to conditions that have become historical and that have acquired a kind of aura through that historicity; the aura that events have developed in this way and no other, and which in addition, if we may put it like this, are in a sense pre-ordained.[/quote]

So Heidegger borrows a sentimental attachment to pre-modern ways as the way things are meant to be, i.e., their "aura," to compensate for the lack of a system to give material life meaning in his philosophy. But which "material propositions" is Adorno referring to? Well, some examples are in Heidegger's description of agrarian life in a Black Forest farmhouse, presented as a paradigm of authenticity:

[quote=Heidegger, Being Dwelling Thinking]Here the self-sufficiency of the power to let earth and sky, divinities and mortals enter in simple oneness into things ordered the house. It placed the farm on the wind-sheltered mountain slope, looking south, among the meadows close to the spring. It gave it the wide overhanging shingle roof whose proper slope bears up under the burden of snow, and that, reaching deep down, shields the chambers against the storms of the long winter nights. It did not forget the altar corner behind the community table; it made room in its chamber for the hallowed places of childbed and the “tree of the dead” — for that is what they call a coffin there; the Totenbaum — and in this way it designed for the different generations under one roof the character of their journey through time.[/quote]

According to Adorno, such archaic ways thus become "hypostases of the transitory belonging to the realm of being," meaning that transitory historical ways of life are turned into something timeless with a special relation to being itself. It's easy to see how Adorno views this as fundamentally reactionary.

Then he repeats his characterization of where philosophy stands, or what he thinks the task of philosophy is:

[quote=p68]I believe that this allows us to distinguish quite precisely between the programme I am trying to expound to you and Hegel’s philosophy, to which it is so closely related. The distinction I would make is to say that the interest of philosophy can be found to lie at the precise point where he and the entire philosophical tradition have no interest, namely, in the non-conceptual.[/quote]

Next he looks at an early criticism of Hegel by Krug, who "objected that if he really wished to do justice to Hegel’s philosophy he would have to be able to deduce the quill with which he had been writing."

Incidentally, something that annoys me about Adorno—and I say that as someone who finds his personality mostly very likeable—is that he regards such examples as "idiotic," as far too trivial for philosophy. Philosophy should concern itself only with essential matters, not the everyday. Me, I prefer his idea, presented in a later lecture (I've been reading ahead), that philosophy has to involve play, where he seems to be arguing along the lines of the Zen saying that in great matters, we should act as if they are small; and in small matters, act as if they are great.

But here, with the quill example, Adorno seems to reveal his elitist over-seriousness. Thus he says he disagrees with Plato, who in the Theaetetus said that...

[quote=Plato]if investigations of great matters are to be properly worked out we ought to practise them on small and easier matters before attacking the very greatest.[/quote]

It's clear that Adorno would not be sympathetic to talk of tables or mugs in cupboards. Thus I see a tension in Adorno's philosophical temperament—and it might be philosophically significant, because isn't negative dialects supposed to "micrologically" open itself up to reality?

His antipathy to Krug's quill might also be an example of something else he shares with Hegel, namely an avoidance of and suspicion of concrete examples. I imagine this will continue to annoy me, since I'm a great believer in the power of such examples. On the other hand, in the lectures at least, he does provide a lot of good examples (though often with some embarrassed apology) so it's not as if he doesn't understand their use in conveying ideas.

Anyway, despite his sympathy with Hegel's dismissive attitude he agrees that Krug's criticism gets to the heart of the problem: in this system which is supposed to encompass everything, where have the real things gone? How do you get from these highfalutin concepts down to the stuff of life?

Then he says that philosophy ought to follow Freud's example and "concentrate on matters that have not been pre-digested by the pre-existing concepts of the prevailing philosophy and science." I can definitely go along with this, and believe it's fundamental to good philosophy.

He goes on to criticize two attempted breakouts: Bergson and Husserl. I'll save that for another post.

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

But this is a demand that the higher order be explained in terms of, and ordered to, the lower, i.e. a cat is already assumed to be a mere concatenation lower constituents, as opposed to the higher, unifying principle itself.

Whereas, the focus on the principle of unity would seem to be a focus on "yes-saying," on actuality and form. An idealism?

Yes, I think this is the tension that Adorno is dealing with. I think it's fair to say he is often arguing for a bottom-up approach against the higher idealist unity, but he would not regard scientific reductionism as an example of proper bottom-up reasoning, because it tends to view the lower as mere instances of laws which I think he views as idealistic impositions. So when Adorno advocates the "priority of the object" he is against both reductionism and the higher unity—or maybe I should say that in viewing this as dialectical, we might be able to reach some better unity?

Quoting Jamal

When he says that "the forces of production, in other words human energies and their extension in technology, have a tendency of their own to overcome the limits that have been set by society," and that we must not think of this as a natural law, he seems to be unambiguously equating such an overcoming with revolutionary emancipation.

I don't think this is a necessary conclusion. I think what is implied is that the forces of production overcoming the limits set by society is in some sense inevitable, but revolution is not. So overcoming the limits of society may occur in ways other than revolution. Look at the way modern technology has 'revolutionized' communications for example. The technology has globalized communication capacity to an extent far beyond the laws imposed by some societies. Changes in technology are faster than the capacity of the lawmakers to keep up, so laws are sort of posterior to the changes already brought on, they are reactive. Now, things like genetic manipulation, and AI are just beginning, and they will overcome limits of society which were not designed to reign them. This type of overcoming the limits doesn't necessitate revolution, but it indicates the need for significant, even structural, or radical societal change to keep pace with globalization.

Anyway, I'm trying to catch up so here's my opinion of Lecture 6.

Quoting Jamal

Hegel goes from indeterminate to indeterminateness.

Adorno applies substantial criticism to Hegel at this point. I believe the central issue here is the violence which Hegel does to the traditional "law of identity" derived from Aristotle. The law of identity places the identity of an individual, or particular object, directly within that object, as inhering within the object "a thing is the same as itself". This law recognizes that each object has a unique identity particular to itself. When Hegel goes from "the indeterminate" to "determinateness", he is taking identity from the object itself, which is approached by us as an indeterminate, and he is assigning it to how we apprehend the object, as "indeterminateness".

For background information on the way that Hegel deals with the law of identity, you could look at this thread in the Debates section of TPF: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/9078/hegel-versus-aristotle-and-the-law-of-identity. That topic was derived from discussion in another thread, which probably has better information.

Anyway, Hegel dismisses the Aristotelian law of identity, and this discussion about the indeterminate vs indeterminateness, which Adorno describes, supports a form of "identity" which is probably more common today. This form of "identity" places identity in what we say about the object, the concept, rather than the object itself. For example, in predication there is a subject and a predicate. The subject may be representative of an object. The law of identity places true identity within the object, and respects a separation between the subject with its predicates, and the object. The other form of "identity" allows that the subject has an identity provided for by predications. The essential difference is that the law of identity allows no imaginary objects to have an identity, because they are lacking in substance, while the other form of "identity" provides no difference between a subject which has a corresponding object, and an imaginary subject. The requirement of an object is completely removed from this identity concept, and this enables things like the possible worlds of modal logic.

Quoting Jamal

So Hegel starts with the something but drops it in favour of the concept. And this is how Hegel manages to equate being with nothing.

This is exactly the way I see it. By doing violence to the concept of "Identity" Hegel removes being from the object itself, and makes it something we say about the object, a concept. This allows him to negate "being" with "nothing" when "being" has this form of identity, rather than the identity of "a being", because there is no longer an object which would otherwise prevent this negation. It's a sort of trick of switching the category of what "being" refers to, from the traditional understanding of substantial objects (as developed by Aristotelian studies), back to the Parmenidean proposal which equates being with knowledge. But a study of the history of ideas will demonstrate that this proposal enables Parmenidean based sophistry such as Zeno's.

The conclusion of Lecture 6 is interesting. He returns to the idea expressed in lecture 5, philosophy's practice of distancing itself rom practice, results in what was called in Lecture 5 "bad practice", but he now changes to "false practice". This change of terminology I believe is supported by this discussion of how the concept has been separated from the object, leaving no basis for truth in the sense of correspondence. That's what I believe denying the law of identity does, removes the basis for "truth".

So he proceeds to criticize formalism, and the way that it attempts to remove content from philosophy. Heidegger is the chosen example. He explains that Heidegger does this to avoid vagueness, randomness and arbitrariness, and he advises that this is the other extreme to be avoided.

And the question or the problem facing philosophy is simply about
how it can have both content and rigour at the same time. And that
indeed can only become possible if the philosophers succeed in escaping
from the equation of universal concepts with the substantive
contents about which they have agreed to this day.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think this is a necessary conclusion. I think what is implied is that the forces of production overcoming the limits set by society is in some sense inevitable, but revolution is not. So overcoming the limits of society may occur in ways other than revolution. Look at the way modern technology has 'revolutionized' communications for example. The technology has globalized communication capacity to an extent far beyond the laws imposed by some societies. Changes in technology are faster than the capacity of the lawmakers to keep up, so laws are sort of posterior to the changes already brought on, they are reactive. Now, things like genetic manipulation, and AI are just beginning, and they will overcome limits of society which were not designed to reign them. This type of overcoming the limits doesn't necessitate revolution, but it indicates the need for significant, even structural, or radical societal change to keep pace with globalization.

Yes, that's fair. It looked like he was referring only to the revolutionary seizure of the means of production because he was taking on Marx's viewpoint, temporarily setting aside for the sake of argument his very real concerns along the lines you've set out here.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Adorno applies substantial criticism to Hegel at this point. I believe the central issue here is the violence which Hegel does to the traditional "law of identity" derived from Aristotle.

Always with the Aristotle, MU. :wink:

I guess you've reached the same conclusion as Adorno's linguistic analysis but from an Aristotelian perspective, which would be perfectly fine with me except that I wonder if it's right. It looks like an accidental alignment.

When Hegel writes about the indeterminate, he is not talking about beings, as in individual objects, but about what is indeterminate. In using the adjective indeterminate one grammatically points to a substantive, a logical something awaiting determination—but this is lost when he moves to indeterminateness, because the latter is a free-standing abstract quality, a universal. It's a subtle shift from a realist grammar to an idealist grammar, even though the whole time he's just talking about being. It's more a linguistic point than one about identity.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So he proceeds to criticize formalism, and the way that it attempts to remove content from philosophy. Heidegger is the chosen example. He explains that Heidegger does this to avoid vagueness, randomness and arbitrariness, and he advises that this is the other extreme to be avoided.

Yes. Expect more of this in lecture 7, which has a brief critique of Heidegger's recourse to agrarian motifs, which I looked at here.

Quoting Jamal

(Should I wait and allow people to catch up? Should we set a schedule from now on?)

I plan on catching up tomorrow. So far lack of schedule has worked for me, but if you'd feel better with it I'm not opposed either.

Reply to Moliere

No, I'm happy the way it is and I'm in no rush, except that I enjoy the material. :cool:

Quoting Jamal

When Hegel writes about the indeterminate, he is not talking about beings, as in individual objects, but about what is indeterminate. In using the adjective indeterminate one grammatically points to a substantive, a logical something awaiting determination—but this is lost when he moves to indeterminateness, because the latter is a free-standing abstract quality, a universal. It's a subtle shift from a realist grammar to an idealist grammar, even though the whole time he's just talking about being. It's more a linguistic point than one about identity.

What you call "a logical something awaiting determination" is actually a material thing, that constitutes what is called by Adorno "a substratum". Notice, "the concept of the indeterminate does not distinguish between concept and thing". This is because "indeterminate" in concept, implies no thing. This allows that the thing which is named as "the indeterminate", is negated by the self-contradicting concept, to leave only the concept. So the concept of "indeterminate" does not differentiate between concept and thing, but since it cannot be a thing, it can only be a concept.

Hegel intended to bypass Aristotle's law of identity, as indicated in my early discussion with Jersey Flight, referenced above. The law of identity puts the identity of the thing in the thing itself, by saying that to be a thing is to have an identity. Now Hegel uses a trick (I'd say sophistry) to replace the thing which has an inherent identity, with "the indeterminate", which Adorno takes to mean a lack of determination. But since to be a thing is to be determinate, and therefore to have an inherent identity, Hegel robs identity from the material world by saying it is not necessary that the material world consists of determinate things. Determinate things, things with identity, can be replaced with "the indeterminate" as the substratum. But the indeterminate is really nothing, no thing, and as such it can only be a concept, it cannot be something material. This actually denies the intelligibility of the substratum, leaving the concept of "indeterminateness", and puts identity into the concept rather than the thing.

[quote=p61]Just reflect for a moment on the difference between ‘the indeterminate’ and
‘indeterminateness’. The language is right to make a distinction here.
‘The indeterminate’ is in the nature of a substratum. To be sure, the
concept of the indeterminate does not distinguish between concept
and thing, but precisely because there has been no determination the
distinction between the determinant, namely the category, and the
thing does not emerge as such in this term. But in this absence of
differentiation appropriate to it, it does possess both: both the concept
and the thing that is undetermined.[/quote]

Lecture 7:

The question of "breaking out" of the conceptual is central, and the issue appears to be how it could even be possible to move beyond the conceptual without getting into arbitrary randomness.

I find the following passage may possibly be a hint at a solution:

[quote=p73If a breakout is at all possible, it cannot be the product of the postulate
of something alien to the subject; it cannot result from postulating a
Not-I – we know of course from the history of philosophy that the
subjective postulate of the Not-I was in fact the zenith of idealism.15
Rather, if such a breakout exists as a possibility, the only path leading
to it is that of the critical self-reflection of the subjective sphere. In
the course of that self-reflection, this insight recognizes itself – in a
compelling, conclusive manner – as something that is not merely
subjectivity, but as something that necessarily presupposes a relation
to the very thing that, as idealist, it had hoped to be able to bring
into being. In other words, the subject is shown that it is itself some
thing postulated, or, at any rate, that it is also something postulated,
and not simply by demonstrating that the Not-I is itself a postulate. [/quote]

What I think, is that the proposed way of "breakout" is through the internal self, i.e. self-reflection. We tend to think of the objective world as what is external, what is evident to the senses. However, we ourselves partake of the material world through our very being, and the material cause of our being, so we may be able to break out of the conceptual through the internal, self-reflection. In this way we approach the unconscious aspect of ourselves and cross into the nonconceptual without having to do the impossible which would be to breakout externally. Instead of crossing the boundary of the conceptual externally, we cross it internally. This would be the reason for his mention of Freud and the unconscious, early in the lecture.

This also provides a reason to reject systematization type thinking. Systems theory assumes a boundary between the system and the external environment, but it does not provide the principles for an internal boundary. What lies beyond the system to the inside?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I find the following passage may possibly be a hint at a solution:

Yes! I was going to say something about that. But I think what it means is that the breakout from the conceptual can only happen conceptually, through the perpetual self-criticism of the concepts we're using—not that we can stop thinking in concepts and just attend to images and intuitions as Bergson might be seen to be recommending.

But it goes a bit deeper than that. It is saying something about the self-recognition of the subject as subject, or as one pole of a relation. I don't really understand this bit:

[quote=p73]In other words, the subject is shown that it is itself something postulated, or, at any rate, that it is also something postulated, and not simply by demonstrating that the Not-I is itself a postulate.[/quote]

EDIT: OK, I get it. Rather than thinking of what is outside the subject as constituted by the subject, it should be the other way round: the subject depends on, is in a manner of speaking postulated by, something outside itself. One has take the indirect route, recognizing that the self is not primary and self-sufficient, before one can grasp the nonconceptual. To breakout directly is again to impose one's concepts uncritically on the nonconceptual, which is what Bergson and Husserl did. But it's not enough to just show this, i.e., that one's (direct) assertion of the existence and character of what is outside the subject is a reflection of the subject, which is why he says "not simply by demonstrating that the Not-I is itself a postulate." One has to analyze the subject's role, not just state that it has one.

I think we reached similar understandings @Metaphysician Undercover

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

What you call "a logical something awaiting determination" is actually a material thing, that constitutes what is called by Adorno "a substratum". Notice, "the concept of the indeterminate does not distinguish between concept and thing". This is because "indeterminate" in concept, implies no thing. This allows that the thing which is named as "the indeterminate", is negated by the self-contradicting concept, to leave only the concept. So the concept of "indeterminate" does not differentiate between concept and thing, but since it cannot be a thing, it can only be a concept.

Hegel intended to bypass Aristotle's law of identity, as indicated in my early discussion with Jersey Flight, referenced above. The law of identity puts the identity of the thing in the thing itself, by saying that to be a thing is to have an identity. Now Hegel uses a trick (I'd say sophistry) to replace the thing which has an inherent identity, with "the indeterminate", which Adorno takes to mean a lack of determination. But since to be a thing is to be determinate, and therefore to have an inherent identity, Hegel robs identity from the material world by saying it is not necessary that the material world consists of determinate things. Determinate things, things with identity, can be replaced with "the indeterminate" as the substratum. But the indeterminate is really nothing, no thing, and as such it can only be a concept, it cannot be something material. This actually denies the intelligibility of the substratum, leaving the concept of "indeterminateness", and puts identity into the concept rather than the thing.

It looks to me like you're talking about what Hegel does prior to the move from indeterminate to indeterminateness that Adorno examines, because Hegel is talking about pure being from the start (from the start of the passage that Adorno analyzes). I think you've turned a linguistic critique with metaphysical consequences into a metaphysical critique from start to finish. What Adorno identifies as the substratum, the logical something, is definitely not a material thing in this case, but merely a logical subject, that which you predicate things of.

EDIT: The metaphysical consequences flow from Hegel's elimination of the implied referent in the grammar of "indeterminate." So the move to "indeterminateness" ensures that being is then exhaustively conceptual, with no thought of a substrate.

That aside, your position on Hegel's prior move away from objects looks kind of like it might be consistent with Adorno, but I'm not sure.

LND lecture 7 (continued)

On to the critique of Bergson's and Husserl's attempted breakouts:

[quote=p70]Both men, incidentally, were acting under the coercion of the same situation; both were resisting the universal dominance of causal, mechanical thinking and reacting to the unsatisfactory implications of cause-and-effect thinking for the desire to comprehend.[/quote]

He starts by summarizing their views.

Bergson's solution was to come up with a cognitive dualism: at the deep, primary level there is a profound ituitive grasp of the world, and then on top of that is classificatory knowledge arrived at by abstraction. His philosophy meant to locate higher truth in the former, thus resisting the mechanical thinking of science. Against rationalism, intuitive knowledge is superior to conceptual knowledge.

Husserl, while also going for some kind of intuitive grasp, did not go along with Bergson's opposition to rationalism. Instead of downgrading conceptual cognition, Husserl located concepts in objects themselves, which we grasp through "eidetic intuition".


Bergson

I really like Adorno's bit about how Proust implicitly refutes Bergson's dualism. The famous passage about the madeleine, often taken to be Bergsonian, starts with an involuntary memory—and this is the Bergsonian part—but proceeds to conceptual interpretation. There is no attending to images and intuitions without interpretation. Whereas Bergson situates higher truth in a kind of direct grasp, Proust only finds the meaning in the images with difficulty, admitting that he did not understand them at first. He also finds the need for metaphors, which Bergson regards as secondary, belonging to the classifying intellect.

I've read part of In Search of Lost Time and can confirm that it is much more intellectually elaborate than a mere registering of images. And this is inevitable: even a stream-of-consciousness narrative would be interpretative.

So, where Bergson sees a dualism in which the intellect fails to capture the deeper truths, Adorno, and performatively Proust, see a dialectical relation in which there is no truth in images and intuitions at all without intellectual interpretation.


Husserl

I'm not sure what to say about the critique of Husserl, partly because Adorno provides only a few comments. I casually read Logical Investigations years ago and have read some other bits and pieces by him, and I kind of see what Adorno is saying, but I don't think I can look at the matter in detail.

[quote=p72]The strange fact in Husserl – and here too astonishingly little has been written about it in the relevant literature – is that what gazes out at us when I extract the pure entities from the individuations or the individual phenomena (instead of appropriating them by a process of comparison) – that what gazes out is at bottom nothing but the good old concepts of classificatory logic. So what we have here is really no more than an attempt at an ontological vindication of the concepts that are supposed not to be concepts established by the cognitive mind, but to belong intrinsically to the things themselves. But if we then look at what individual experience yields up in Husserl, what opens up to individual experience, we simply find abstract categories that are just like the categories of ordinary scientific discourse. And in consequence, in his late phase, when he sought to underpin this entire theory with a transcendental logic, these were categories with which he could effortlessly communicate.[/quote]

So Husserl's breakout is fake. When he strips away the empirical particulars to find the essences that reside in the objects (and which are not put into them by the mind), what he's left with is actually just the concepts handed down through science, philosophy, and logic.


Wittgenstein

[quote=p74]For this reason, I would maintain that Wittgenstein’s statement that ‘What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence’ is the anti-philosophical statement par excellence. We should insist instead that philosophy consists in the effort to say what cannot be said, in particular whatever cannot be said directly, in a single sentence or a few sentences, but only in a context. In this sense it has to be said that the concept of philosophy is itself the contradictory effort to say, through mediation and contextualization, what cannot be said hic et nunc; to that extent phi- losophy contains an inner contradiction, that is, it is inwardly dialectical in itself. And this perhaps is the profoundest vindication of the dialectical method, namely, that philosophy in itself – as the attempt to say the unsayable, before it arrives at any particular content or any particular thesis – is dialectically determined.[/quote]

Incidentally, I think I've seen a few dismissive comments about Wittgenstein scattered through the works of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, and what stands out is that they probably never read late Wittgenstein, and carried on regarding him as a mere logical positivist, one of the bad guys. Sometimes when Adorno and Horkheimer use other philosophers as "occasions" for the development of their own ideas, this results in misrepresentation.

But this particular mention of Wittgenstein is not actually one of the egregious ones, and it highlights important differences between them. Adorno is unwilling to give up on philosophy's great goals (in some strange version anyway), whereas for Wittgenstein philosophy helps to fix bad thinking but the really important stuff is outside of its domain, except to achieve clear description. For Adorno, the meaningful in life remains a matter for theory, but for Wittgenstein it doesn't.


The infinite

To end the lecture he begins talking about philosophy's treatment of the infinite. I think this is continued in the next lecture so I won't say anything about it here, but what I like in this section is his comments about exhaustiveness:

[quote=p74]Even when I was still at school, I never understood why teachers would write at the end of an essay that the topic had not been fully ‘exhausted’. This was because even then I was aware that the human mind was concerned with intensity, depth of immersion, and not a sort of quantitative completeness – of the kind, incidentally, that has an honourable pedigree going back to Descartes’s Discours de la méthode, where exhaustiveness according to the criteria of right knowledge has an explicit role to play.[/quote]

Reply to Jamal

I found this quote, shortly after where you left off, hit me right. "Get out of my head!?!" type feeling:

If the method I am trying
to describe to you constantly tends towards micrology, in other
words to immerse itself in the minutest details, it does so not out of
philosophical pedantry, but precisely so as to strike a spark, and my
predilection for such matters is connected with factors such as these.
For in general the concept tends to magnify its objects; it perceives
in them only what is large enough to compare with other objects.

I also found his dismissal of Krug's quill off-putting. For me it's the perfect sort of example to reflect through Hegel's philosophy. If it can't derive the quill pen, then maybe it's not so universal after all. In which case "what is important" becomes a matter of the taste of the philosopher writing.

EDIT:Adding more quotes as I finish up --

You may well reply: then why
philosophize at all – and I can give you no answer to that.

:D

That made me smile, but his following remarks are actually interesting:

Nevertheless, if you feel such a need, it cannot be satisfi ed without an element
of confi dence in the possibility of a breakout. And this confi dence
itself is inseparable from the confi dent utopian belief that it ought
after all to be possible to obtain access to that which is not already
shaped in advance, staged or reifi ed. For this reason, I would maintain that Wittgenstein’s statement that ‘What we cannot speak about
we must pass over in silence’16 is the anti-philosophical statement par
excellence.

Considering Wittgenstein wanted to cure philosophers of doing philosophy I can see a certain truth there.

The task of philosophy, then – and I would like to fi nish today on
this programmatic note – is to concern itself with what is different
from itself, heterogeneous, and not with the attempt to import everything that exists into itself and its concepts. Its task is not to reduce
the entire world to a prefabricated system of categories, but rather
the opposite, viz. to hold itself open to whatever experience presents
itself to the mind. And I should like to say more about this concept
of experience and the altered relation towards infi nity in my next
lecture on Thursday

What a conclusion.

So, to break it down to simple bits --

This lecture is mostly about Adorno's project. He differentiates his project from Hegel's because of their closeness. The difference is in an interest in the non-conceptual. Other attempts have been made to "break out" towards the "dregs of the phenomenal world", namely Bergson and Husserl.

The problem with them is that they remain idealist, just like Hegel, so there is no breaking out. For Bergson he devolves everything to images, as from an individual subject, and for Husserl at the end of it all we have the basic logical categories. Both are idealistic, and after Auschwitz the world has no meaning, so this is untenable.

And he ends with some requirements for what this philosophy would do, and even notes how it is contradictory in itself. In a way I wonder if his anti-utopian stance means that negative dialectics will never reach the cognitive utopia he mentions.

Reply to Moliere

Good summary.

Quoting Moliere

I also found his dismissal of Krug's quill off-putting

But maybe there were mitigating circumstances. Imagine, with the horror of the Holocaust, the onward march of dehumanizing social systems, and the failure of socialism all ever-present in your mind, and believing it's the task of philosophy to change the world, and someone starts talking about a quill (or a mug in the cupboard). He probably found it offensive.

Of course, Krug was writing around 150 years earlier, but my armchair psychologizing might help to explain Adorno's brutal attitude to the mundane. And really it's not that a quill or a mug are not grand enough or are too mundane, more that there are everyday, mundane, social issues that demand attention, whereas quills and mugs can be left aside. Which is fair enough.

In the end though, I still side with you.

Quoting Moliere

That made me smile, but his following remarks are actually interesting

Yes, I liked that too, especially "if you feel such a need," which is almost an admission that philosophy is just something some people have to do, whether or not there's a good reason for doing it.

Reply to Jamal FWIW I kept going and finished LND 8. I really breezed through it because I found it very amenable, though I'll have more to say after it digests.

Reply to Moliere

I just made a list of the points he covers in lecture 8 and may post it tomorrow. I'm looking forward to what you say because, oddly, I don't really have anything to say about it.

Reply to Jamal I liked his highlighting the concept of infinity changing between Kant and Hegel, and how Kant's notion is pretty clearly inspired by the calculus.

Then his harsh treatment of it in Hegel surprised me because -- well, there's something funny in Hegel where I get the sense that there is some twaddle sometimes, but it's hard to pinpoint where. So this was an interesting point to note how "infinity" became a bit of a looser concept and so could be applied to all sorts of things.

Interesting, though, how he wants to preserve infinity as a basis for understanding what a proper philosophy does -- that it is reaching for what it cannot have, as a mortal thinking mortal thoughts, though perhaps the reflection brings one closer to immortal thoughts. This by way of still differentiating philosophy proper from Leibenphilosophie, or idle chatter, or a philosophy of this or that, but while also laying it out in a dialectical pattern which doesn't grasp the positive -- it's mindblowing stuff because it's making sense to me in a way Hegel didn't really.
***

Where he describes an intellectual experience at first I thought he was speaking hypothetically until he gets to...

The contents of this
experience – and this too sounds highly nominalist – are identical
with the concept of experience as this is contrasted with deduction.
The contents of such experience provide no models for categories,
but they become relevant because they enable the new to show itself
– whereas the fl aw in the entire gamut of current empiricist trends is
the concept of intellectual experience 83
that, as a theory of cognition, empiricism seems to me to be unable
to allow for the possibility of an Other, of something new in principle

Which strikes me as something like, to use his latter example, is an aesthetic experience of the object, but instead towards intellectual ends.

There is something to this, though the example I'd reach for would not be Adorno-appropriate, because I think about how repetition of the same often brings out the different that was hard to spot initially.

Even so, there's something to that 'aha!" moment when you put two and two together about some object and make a correct inference not because of something you already knew about it but because you notice something new that you didn't have words for before. In which case I find myself nodding along with him a lot of the time with respect to salvaging empiricism through dialectical reflection.

I also like his reflection on art because I tend to believe that aesthetics is more than directed at art and has greater applicability to things like epistemology and ethics so while a painting is not an act, there's something to the generality of aesthetics that makes these principles applicable to thought. At the very least they're helpful avenues for exploring why we make inferences, from a philosophical rather than psychological perspective.

Oh, one more quote:

. The fact is that philosophy does not have any particular
guaranteed object of study; it is possible to think philosophically only
where thinking can go awry, where it is fallible.

I agree with that.

Also I think I'd add a cribbing from the Dao, but instead with respect to philosophy: You can do anything you want with it.

Quoting Moliere

a mortal thinking mortal thoughts, though perhaps the reflection brings one closer to immortal thoughts.

Yeah, it was inevitable that Adorno was going to say that confining ourselves to mortal thoughts is the only way we can think immortal thoughts. Just like with Zizek, I do want to roll my eyes sometimes at his dialectical shenanigans.

But that's facile and I'll rein it in, because in the end I very much like this approach.

EDIT: I'll say more tomorrow

LND lecture 8

My lecture breakdown:

1. Infinity came into philosophy from the infinitesimal calculus
2. But in German idealism, the concept of infinity degenerated into "commonplace twaddle"
3. In Kant and Hegel, philosophy shrinks to a finite, complete set of principles or axioms that is supposed to encapsulate the infinite, everything that exists
4. This sentimental vision of philosophy is narrow-minded while trying not to be, and is untenable
5. Mortals must think mortal thoughts, and not immortal ones: if philosophy possesses anything at all, then it can only be finite, and not infinite
6. In a sense, this restriction opens philosophy to the infinite once again (we saw that coming!)
7. So we need an open philosophy, not a systematic one
8. Intellectual experience: such an open philosophy would amount to "full, undiminished experience in the medium of conceptual reflection"
9. This would include a dialecticalized salvaging of empiricism
10. Comparison with art, which does something similar
11. Systematic philosophy, on the other hand, is "merely technology in the broadest sense"—critique of enlightenment rationality
12. Bergson's philosophy was a protest against enlightenment rationality
13. "Knowledge that is not dangerous does not deserve to be thought"
14. A thumbs-up for John Dewey

I think the important step is the part I've bolded. He mentioned it in the last lecture but here he emphasizes that he's talking about intellectual experience; it's not about Bergsonian intuitions or immediate givens.

Quoting Moliere

I also like his reflection on art because I tend to believe that aesthetics is more than directed at art and has greater applicability to things like epistemology and ethics so while a painting is not an act, there's something to the generality of aesthetics that makes these principles applicable to thought. At the very least they're helpful avenues for exploring why we make inferences, from a philosophical rather than psychological perspective.

Yeah, and he says a lot more about art and aesthetics in lecture 9. He's really on fire in lecture 9, by the way.

Quoting Jamal

In Kant and Hegel, philosophy shrinks to a finite, complete set of principles or axioms that is supposed to encapsulate the infinite, everything that exists

This is sort of ridiculed, as trying to "enclose the infinite in a finite network of axioms". It's another instance of narrowness, the "provinciality" which he dislikes. In general, a finite system of categories, like Kant's cannot provide us with secure knowledge.

Quoting Jamal

Mortals must think mortal thoughts, and not immortal ones: if philosophy possesses anything at all, then it can only be finite, and not infinite

Only by accepting, and approaching our own narrowmindedness, "reflect upon our own provinciality" can we rid ourselves o that narrowmindedness. This produces an open philosophy rather than a sytematic one.

Quoting Jamal

So we need an open philosophy, not a systematic one

However, we must also avoid the type of openness of Lebensphilosopie. This leads to a mollusc-like arbitrariness, where objects are approached openly, but with the intent of manipulating them to the philosopher's purpose.

Quoting Jamal

Intellectual experience:

[quote=p83]The motor of an experience of this sort, of what drives a person
to seek this sort of intellectual experience – and this is what counts
above all in philosophy – is the admittedly unwarranted, vague,
obscure expectation that every singular and particular that it encounters
ultimately represents the totality that constantly eludes it [/quote]

This is oddly reminiscent of Aquinas' approach to the divinity. Every single material thing is evidence of the unapprehended divinity which has created it. But Adorno approaches infinity, or the infinite this way, as the gateway to intellectual experience.

Quoting Jamal

Comparison with art, which does something similar

I would say that what is described here is that a work of art has infinite meaning. But, it is only by analyzing each minute, finite aspect of meaning, that we move progressively toward an objective knowledge of the true meaning (notice "authentic works of art" is indicated.

I suggest that this process involves a sort of process of elimination, of determining false meaning. And that is how the initial infinite meaning is brought into the finite sphere, by determining falsity. This starts with determining impossibility. It is distinctly different from the scientific process which is positive, this is negative. The intellectual experience is contrasted with the pointedly non-intellectual experience of the empirical sciences.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Great points.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I suggest that this process involves a sort of process of elimination, of determining false meaning. And that is how the initial infinite meaning is brought into the finite sphere, by determining falsity. This starts with determining impossibility. It is distinctly different from the scientific process which is positive, this is negative. The intellectual experience is contrasted with the pointedly non-intellectual experience of the empirical sciences.

That’s quite good. I hadn’t thought about it like that.

LND lecture 9

I really enjoyed this lecture, but there is a lot packed into it.

1. The concept of intellectual experience contains an empiricist element, but it is much more than attending to what is "given" through the sense-data (as certain empiricists have it) (p89)
2. Because of the additional and constitutive intellectual element, such experience goes beyond immediate givens, so intellectual experience contains the danger of spiritualizing the world (p89)
3. There is a temptation "to take intellectual phenomena more seriously than perhaps they deserve in reality" (p90)
4. A way of dealing with this is with play (p90)
5. Playfulness has an honourable history in philosophy, even though many of its exemplars are placed somewhat outside the tradition or stand out as unusual (p90)
6. Play is an expression of philosophy's tragicomic existence (p90-91)
7. Inconsistency in Hegel: philosophy is just one part of human life and shouldn't be absolutized, and yet philosophy is one of the moments (elements or phases) of absolute spirit (p91)
8. What is beyond the a priori is uncontrolled and therefore a suitable domain of play (p91)
9. Philosophy needs both rigour and play, discipline and indiscipline, perhaps even rationality and irrationality (p91)
10. The irrational can take the form of the mimetic element, which is essential to philosophy but dangerous (p91-92)
11. Philosophy should appropriate the mimetic impulse, which is an impulse to identify with things and resonate with them—things different from oneself—but not to assimilate them to oneself (p92)[thereby mimesis becomes conceptual]
12. The place to look for this is art, which is where the mimetic impulse survives (p92)
13. Both philosophy that strives to be art and art that strives to be philosophy [e.g., conceptual art?] are bad (p92)
14. From mimesis and art, which are largely intuitive, to intuition itself: it's an element in philosophy but nothing very special (p92-93)
15. But intuition is nevertheless essential: it is a way in which thought sometimes works—underground rivers that suddenly come to the surface, or "crystallizations of an unconscious knowledge" (p93-94)
16. The organ of philosophy remains the concept (p94)
17. Philosophy is using concepts to reach beyond concepts, that is to say, it is inescapably speculative (p95)
18. Speculation in this sense is to think "beyond the point where one's thinking is backed up by facts," but in a consistent way (p95)
19. Some say that speculation is essentially idealist, but this is not so (p95)
20. Marx was a speculative thinker even though his intentions were entirely materialist (although in a sense he was actually quite idealist too—the metaphysics of the forces of production as a continuation of the World Spirit) (p95-96)
21. Speculation cannot be rejected; we need a philosophy that goes the whole hog (p97)

Before I get to the meat, one thing I left out of the list above is what he says in passing about definitions. In introducing his definition of philosophy as the use of the concept to reach beyond the concept, he says:

[quote=p95]I am not so malicious as simply to hate all definitions and reject them. I just believe that definitions are far better located in the movement of thought, as its terminus ad quem, than as an introduction to it.[/quote]

It's not important for understanding this particular lecture but I bring it up because, as we approach ND itself, I am thinking about Adorno's style of presentation. It's a fact that his style is very deliberate, something he was always conscious of, and something he was forever pre-occupied by (because he didn't separate form and content). I think it will help to know how to read him, which is not always a matter of finding an answer to "what is he trying to say?" at the level of a paragraph but of keeping multiple descriptions, analogies, etc. in mind over the course of the work.

One aspect is his attitude to definition. It's a principle of his method that in his writing he avoids definitions of concepts, instead circling around them, or approaching them from different angles. (More than that, I suppose he does not even regard them as fixed points that can be honed in on)

Even though these lectures were recorded, not written, I think we've already seen this principle at work. We've seen him going over similar ground repeatedly, never satisfied with a single metaphor or encapsulation.

But I digress.

This lecture is centrally about speculation. The upshot is that he wants a middle way between speculation as metaphysics or idealism, and a kind of philosophy expunged of speculation entirely, on the model of the natural sciences. What he says parallels what he said in a previous lecture about systems: just as he wants to preserve the spirit of system, he wants to do the same for the spirit of speculation; and just as the spirit of system can be liberated from system, speculation can be liberated from its conventional forms, i.e. metaphysics and idealism. (The difference is that he wants to be able to call his philosophy speculative in some sense, but he doesn't want to call his philosophy a system—and this might indicate that the parallel is not exact).

Adorno compares his own concept of the speculative element to Hegel's, but I prefer to use Kant. My nutshell version is that for Kant, speculation is thinking that attempts to go beyond experience, but for Adorno, it is thinking that attempts to go beyond facts, but without leaving the domain of experience (since the nonidentical is part of experience).

He gets to speculation by way of some thoughts about play. What is the connection? One way to put it is that playing is uncontrolled and thereby open to what hasn't already been planned or established—the new and surprising are where it's at—and this is a way of describing speculation as defined by Adorno.

He seems to say that play is an expression of the knowledge of philosophy's tragicomic existence as the most profound and super-serious discipline of all that's nevertheless just a specialism with little social and cultural significance, just one material activity among others. This somewhat absurd situation demands a somewhat (only somewhat) irrational response: to play, to venture into uncontrolled territory.

Talk of the irrational brings him to mimesis. That's two crucial concepts introduced in this lecture, three if you include play. Compared to previous lectures, that's quite a lot.

The irrational, or at least a-rational, attitude of identifying with something is the "mimetic stance". He does not mean the impulse just to imitate the object, but to either adapt oneself to something, or to assimilate it to oneself. I think when he says that the mimetic element can degenerate into "illusion and lie," he is referring to this latter kind of mimesis, a kind of domination. Adorno is recommending the kind of mimesis we see in art, which can be a disclosure of difference.

[quote=p92]... only by registering the non-identity of spirit and world, spirit and reality, can philosophy acquire a share in the truth – and the stance that formerly guaranteed this and continues to do so today in a certain sense is the mimetic stance. However – and I believe that this is an important point, so that you will be able to obtain clarity about the very complex relationship between philoso- phy and art – philosophy must preserve [aufheben] this aesthetic dimension, incorporating it into its binding insights into the real. It is a constitutive element of philosophy that it should speak the truth about the real – and not just function for its own satisfaction.[/quote]

What I see in Lecture 9 is an overall goal of apprehending the creative aspect of thinking. It is an "intrinsic aspect of irrationality" which is essential to rationality This aspect is demonstrated in play, and art, which are wider categories than philosophy, but it manifests in philosophy as the intuitive and the speculative. The goal of Adorno here, is to produce a sort of basic understanding of this aspect of thought, through the type of "circling around it" which @Jamal describes.

The creative aspect of thought is extremely difficult to provide an explanation for, especially if we reject idealism. And, we must reject idealism because it is fundamentally flawed. The creative aspect presents us with an aspect of thought which is not grounded in sense experience, but somehow extends beyond sense experience. The idealist approach is flawed because it is a sort of cop-out, instead of trying to understand the truth about this type of thought, it simply assumes an overarching "Spirit" or something like that, to account or it.

I can elucidate the problem with idealism by referring to current concepts of Platonism. Platonism avoids the need to understand the origin of concepts (creativity) by positing that ideas are eternal and independent. The glaring problem is called the interaction problem, and we are left with no way to understand how the human mind is supposed to tap into the eternal independent ideas, and get these concepts into one's own mind. So that's the fault with idealism in general, it does not provide an approach toward understanding the reality of creativity, it simply provides an excuse to avoid it.

What Adorno points out in this lecture, is that this type of idealist evasion, this "spiritualization of the world" is pervasive in modern philosophy. Hegel employs "World Spirit". Kant has "original apperception". And, Adorno argues that even Marx may be considered idealist with his use of "forces of production".

My own opinion is that all forms of materialism are reducible to idealism. This is because "matter" itself is nothing more than a concept which we employ to understand the temporal extension of the sensible world. Therefore giving priority to matter is giving priority to a concept. With rigorous analysis of the term "matter" it is dissolved into "indeterminateness", Aristotle's 'prime matter' being total lack of form. So indeterminateness is necessarily conceptual only, for the reasons explained in lecture 6. Therefore placing priority in matter as a starting point, is no different from placing priority in indeterminateness, and both of the two are demonstrably idealist approaches. Marx presents his materialism as showing the true nature of Hegel's idealism as supportive of a more basic underlying materialism. But actually, this materialism is swallowed up into idealism when its true nature is exposed, and Marx's spin doesn't succeed in getting him out of idealism.

So Adorno's critical rationality makes use of play, intuition, mimesis, and the irrational, but channeled and controlled. This got me thinking about Antonio Damasio's Somatic Marker Hypothesis in neuroscience, popularized in Descartes' Error.

The hypothesis is that feelings, associated with emotions, motivate and guide reason in a fundamental way, such that there would be no recognizable rationality without them. If true—and it seems to be significantly backed up by science—then the Cartesian and Kantian dualism of reason and sensibility, which has been reflected in culture for hundreds of years, is wrong. As Adorno says, there is a constitutive element of the irrational in the rational.

There is a lot of overlap with other philosophies here. Nietzsche, Freud, Merleau-Ponty, and Foucault all in various ways downgraded reason and put it in its bodily (or social and historical) place. For Adorno, the key thinkers were likely Nietzsche and Hegel.

Another connection is the work on metaphor by Mark Johnson and George Lakoff. Metaphor isn't just poetic decoration but is fundamental to the way we think. Perhaps without consciously thinking of it this way, Adorno enacts this in his use of play and mimesis, and in his writing—as if his playful, provocative, and paradoxical analogies are constitutive, rather than standing poetically for something more fundamental.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Creativity is a great way of tying it all together. I had been thinking of it as a kind of openness, but that's too passive, more like Kant's sensible receptiveness than the spontaneity of the understanding. Once again, I want to say, but also hesitate to say, that Adorno is taking the middle path.

Reply to Jamal
I like to think about the role that intention plays in art. We tend to think of intention as a direct conscious awareness of a specific goal, guiding the actions toward that goal. But there is an experiment which an artist can do, which is to select a medium, attempt to eliminate all conscious intentions from one's mind, and simply create. The only real consciously directed intention is in the selection of the medium, and the intention to have no intention. Then the guidance of one's actions arises immediately from one's unconscious, and the direction is sort of like dreaming. The inverse of lucid dreaming, instead of taking entering the dream with the consciousness, allow the waking activity to be subsumed by the unconscious.

Experiments like that demonstrate to me, that even in our day to day conscious activity, a vast part o that conscious activity is actually directed by the unconscious. And when we analyze what motivates us in general, why we strive to meet deadlines, fulfil social obligations, etc., it becomes apparent that the unconscious aspect of "intention" plays a much larger role than the conscious. Even if a person is very focused, and driven towards a very specific goal, it is not the conscious mind which keeps the person focused, but the underlying unconscious. So the more that a person is goal oriented, driven toward conscious goals, it's actually the case that the unconscious aspect is playing a bigger role as the cause of that capacity to remain focused on conscious goals, to be determined.

So I've theorized that the conscious self, is actually an inauthentic "self" which the unconscious creates, and pushes out into the world of activity in a sort of trial and error process, where the unconscious is recording the results in memory. The unconscious is the authentic self, and there is a sort of antinomy between it and the conscious (rational/irrational as Adorno says). But it's just the conscious which sets the rational as better than the irrational. The unconscious must distance itself as much as possible from the conscious, because it sets the conscious into a life of self abuse, for reasons which cannot be revealed to the conscious (like Plato's noble lie, in the context of self-deception), and that's what life on earth consists of, as the conscious difference between pleasure and pain and how that is actually conditioned, or derived from the unconscious.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

How Freudian of you. You go a bit far when you say that the unconscious is the "authentic self," in my opinion. What's missing from your view is the reciprocity between one and the other, which is more the way Freud and Adorno see it. They don't come down only on one side, so to speak.

But yeah, that art experiment is a good way to think about what Adorno says on the parallels between art and philosophy.

Quoting Jamal

You go a bit far...

I generally do.

I do not completely dismiss the reciprocity between the conscious and unconscious, but I've come to think of it as more one way. Vast information goes from conscious to unconscious, continually, in the practice of memory for example. But I realize that the brain is extremely complex in its processes, and administering to consciousness is really only a small part of its functions. This means that everything else which it is doing, continually overseeing, directing, and synchronizing all the internal living systems, must be prioritized over consciousness, as being the major aspect of the brain's activities. This leaves consciousness just as a sort of tip of the iceberg, which raises the question of why all the rest is hidden from the consciousness. The consciousness only receives a vague hint of what the brain is doing with the rest of the body, through pleasures, pains, and the various emotions. Why the separation?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

I think you've committed the motte-and-bailey fallacy, moving from a controversial existential claim to an uncontroversial functional one, from talk of what the self is to talk of what the brain does. I don't think you can support the former with the latter.

But what matters is that we agree (I think) that what has been considered irrational is actually a basic component of the rational, and also that rational, conscious cognition is not as independent and in control as once thought.

But for me you are too close to falling into the kind of pure irrationalism criticized by Adorno, viz., reason cannot grasp the truth, and what is hidden is deeper and truer. As it happens, he has something to say about depth in the next lecture.

Habermas faulted Adorno for being too negative, but in these lectures we can see him trying to articulate a philosophy that is not only critical but is also speculative, going beyond what we (think we) know.

Instead of saying “what has been thought of as irrational is a basic component of reason,” Adorno will instead say something like “the rational is also irrational”. In doing so he adopts problematic, reified concepts to expose contradictions in ideology—this is the critical part—but at the same time indirectly suggest a more expansive rationality that could do more justice to the potential of reason—and this is the speculative part.

(Incidentally, although in his writing he is performative in the way I just described, in the lectures he drops the act to a degree and says “ok, here’s what I’m doing when I say that,” in relatively plain language. This is why the lectures work as an introduction, and as a “how to read Adorno”.)

It’s tempting to think of this speculative element as positive, and having the character of reconciliation as in the Hegelian sublation or synthesis. Adorno of course would deny this, but how exactly?

And after all, he is negative for a positive reason. He has goals, for philosophy and for society.

I think the answer is, obviously enough, that any positivity in the method is a negative positivity, that is, it emerges as a result of the negative thrust rather than being asserted alone. Adorno is thus always carefully indirect.

The level of abstraction in what I’m saying here produces the suspicion that it’s lacking in substance. I don’t think it is, but maybe there’s a need to bring it down to earth with concrete examples, more concrete than talk of rationality and irrationality. Maybe later.

Quoting Jamal

The level of abstraction in what I’m saying here produces the suspicion that it’s lacking in substance. I don’t think it is, but maybe there’s a need to bring it down to earth with concrete examples, more concrete than talk of rationality and irrationality. Maybe later.

I don't think it's lacking in substance.

(Btw, Tuesday is when I'm catching up on 9)

Quoting Moliere

I don't think it's lacking in substance.

:smile:

Quoting Moliere

Btw, Tuesday is when I'm catching up on 9

:cool:

Quoting Jamal

Instead of saying “what has been thought of as irrational is a basic component of reason,” Adorno will instead say something like “the rational is also irrational”. In doing so he adopts problematic, reified concepts to expose contradictions in ideology—this is the critical part—but at the same time indirectly suggest a more expansive rationality that could do more justice to the potential of reason—and this is the speculative part.

This relationship between the rational and irrational was a bit perplexing to me. Look at the conscious/unconscious relation we just discussed. The consciousness is the seat of concepts, abstractions, and what idealists attempt to designate as substance. And the unconscious is how we generally relate the conscious to the material human body, through emotions, pleasure, pain, etc.. So the unconscious is supported by the substance of the material body, and these two opposing directions is what dualism latches a hold of. In my last post, I posited "the brain" as a sort of medium between the two, and you corrected me on this. As well, common understanding puts the brain decidedly on the material substance side of any dualism.

Now, Adorno proposes a rational/irrational relationship, and these two seem to be codependent. Of course the rational can be associated with the consciousness, but where does the irrational fit? My first inclination was to place it in the unconscious, as the source, or category, of the emotions, or something like that, a property of the body in a traditional Platonic dualism sense. But now I think what he means is that the irrational is right in consciousness, as a part of the intellect itself, the irrational part. This would describe this feature, what I called the artistic aspect, which manifests as the intuitive, the speculative, as a sort of irrational part of the intellect. It's irrational in the sense that it doesn't follow the habits and rules of rationality, yet it is still intellectual. It's creative, and creativity defies rationality. The rational part would get lost in itself without the irrational part to throw it a bone to sniff at, and the irrational part would make totally arbitrary decisions without the influence of the rational part. So the two are codependent.

Quoting Jamal

It’s tempting to think of this speculative element as positive, and having the character of reconciliation as in the Hegelian sublation or synthesis. Adorno of course would deny this, but how exactly?

I think by the interpretation I gave above, we'd have to say that the speculative is negative, in the sense of being irrational. The speculative part is what negates the existing, the status quo, to get beyond it, then the rational reestablishes itself through some sort of synthesis.

Quoting Jamal

I think the answer is, obviously enough, that any positivity in the method is a negative positivity, that is, it emerges as a result of the negative thrust rather than being asserted alone. Adorno is thus always carefully indirect.

He led me earlier, to believe that he is engaged in a positive negativity. A type of negativity which is somehow grounded in a fixed point which is found to be embedded in the existing positivity, i.e. his form of negativity grounds itself in the negative aspect of the existing positivity, therefore it is critical.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Now, Adorno proposes a rational/irrational relationship, and these two seem to be codependent. Of course the rational can be associated with the consciousness, but where does the irrational fit? My first inclination was to place it in the unconscious, as the source, or category, of the emotions, or something like that, a property of the body in a traditional Platonic dualism sense. But now I think what he means is that the irrational is right in consciousness, as a part of the intellect itself, the irrational part. This would describe this feature, what I called the artistic aspect, which manifests as the intuitive, the speculative, as a sort of irrational part of the intellect. It's irrational in the sense that it doesn't follow the habits and rules of rationality, yet it is still intellectual. It's creative, and creativity defies rationality. The rational part would get lost in itself without the irrational part to throw it a bone to sniff at, and the irrational part would make totally arbitrary decisions without the influence of the rational part. So the two are codependent.

Adorno problematizes the binary while also talking in terms of that binary. The first view of the irrational as associated only with the unconscious is the common view, in philosophy and in culture. The second view, that the irrational is part of consciousness, is (a) what Adorno is advocating as a deliberate philosophical practice, and (b) actually how reason works without our necessarily being aware of it. What Adorno thus advocates under the name of speculation is a self-aware use of the irrational within reason.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I think by the interpretation I gave above, we'd have to say that the speculative is negative, in the sense of being irrational. The speculative part is what negates the existing, the status quo, to get beyond it, then the rational reestablishes itself through some sort of synthesis.

So according to the way I've put it above, the speculative is the intentional appropriation of the irrational by reason. Now, whether this is positive or negative is the issue that I feared was lapsing into insubstantial nonsense. Depending on how you look at it, each can be characterized as either positive or negative relative to the other, since each is such at all only relative to the other.

So I see what you mean, and you are right. And as I noted, Adorno would (might?) deny that speculation in this context is positive—he would deny the synthesis. But I still want to say that my framing is crucial (and this is my "how you look at it"): speculation in Adorno is positive or quasi-positive in that it aims to realize the potential of reason to get beyond facts and existing concepts. It's the positive bounce-back of reason's (negative) critique of existing concepts.

I'm not saying this way of looking at it ought to be privileged, only that it is crucial to see things in this way sometimes, so that we can see that there is more than negativity to critique—there is also an emergent reach for truth, or perhaps just, it is also the reach for truth.

And this aligns well with the traditional conception of speculative philosophy, which is characterized as dogmatic as opposed to sceptical/critical/pragmatic/etc—in the sense that it offers postive doctrines (but Adorno doesn't go that far, so his speculation remains also negative, and this is why I said it was a negative positivity).

The assignment of positive and negative is somewhat arbitrary, but only somewhat. There is a range of important historically sedimented meanings for these words that can be made use of or called into question deliberately, and that's what I take Adorno to be doing.

Whether or not it's unnecessarily confusing, I couldn't possibly comment (Adorno's reply: "No, it is necessarily confusing).

EDIT: Coming up for air now, the general point here is that without the positivity I've identified, Adorno is merely nihilistic or self-defeating.

His view of utopia might shed some light on this. He thinks the utopian impulse, the sense that there is a way we could live that would be much better than the way we live now, is vitally important. But he also thinks that making it explicit can be bad: we should not turn it into a more concrete vision or programme.

Here's the point. Utopia as merely implicit or semi-secretly motivating can be characterized as negative, opposed to utopia as an explicitly asserted, positive vision. But utopia as such is also fairly characterized as positive, in that it is in opposition to total hopelessness, cynicism, and the bad society itself, whether or not it is implicit or explicit. It depends how you look at it.

EDIT: Adorno would prefer dystopian science fiction like Nineteen Eighty-Four to the utopian variety like Star Trek: The Next Generation, but the former is in a sense also utopian in that it shows us the opposite of what we want to happen, bringing to consciousness the latter. 1984 is negative (utopia negatively defined) and TNG is positive (utopia positively defined) but the utopia implied or negatively defined in 1984 is, as a utopia, itself positive, thus 1984 is in a sense positive too.

EDIT2: Question: would negative form, positive function be too reductive?

Quoting Jamal

What Adorno thus advocates under the name of speculation is a self-aware use of the irrational within reason.

I question your use of "reason". Generally we associate reason with rational, and this aspect of the mind is not at all rational, even opposed to it. Irrational, implies opposition and that's a very strong idea. Maybe it's opposition in the sense of rebellious, in the way that teenagers sometimes rebel against the authority of their parents. The trouble with reason, or rationality (using the two words interchangeably now) is that it tends to trap itself into a vicious circle through the adherence to laws of reasoning. Then we ask, where did these laws come from, and if they are not imposed by God, or derived from an eternal realm of Platonic Forms, they must be created by human beings. That implies that human beings must, break out from the existing, outdated laws, providing the impetus to actually do that with the rebellious, creative attitude.

The breaking out, from the laws, puts reason (if we can still call it reason, as reasoning outside the laws of reason, speculation) face to face with infinite regress. And infinity, I think, is the manifestation of the irrational, first derived from irrational ratios like pi. The unruly speculative mind allows the irrational, as the infinite, to penetrate all sorts of logic, as it does in mathematics today, and infinite possible worlds. Reclosing the circle, to restrict the irrational, would be a sort of synthesis.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

You continue to resist the reciprocity, then. For Adorno, it's not a dualism between separate forces so much as a dialectical entanglement between reason and that which is in reason but often excluded by it to its detriment.

I think Adorno would agree that reason needs to broken free of rigid frameworks, but this is reason's way of correcting itself, not an irrationalist rebellion.

The discussion re keeping particularity and difference in focus came to mind when I came across this G.K. Chesterton quote again recently (from Orthodoxy):

The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning, but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun, and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

IIRC he is here reflecting on Saint Augustine's reflection re miracles that the rising of the sun is quite miraculous and that if it has only occured once in a generation we would still be talking about it generations later. I thought it was an interesting celebration of sameness in difference, and of repetition as repetition in particulars.

The philosophy of history is interesting in that it is always particular, and yet it is the particular in which all universals are instantiated if they are instantiated at all (e.g. cosmic or natural history), and so represents the individualization of all universals in their larger context. That is, "materialism" is one way to focus on difference and particulars, favoring a sort of "smallism," but one also reaches maximal particularity through a sort of "bigism," the frame of history.

Reply to Jamal

I think Adorno would agree that reason needs to broken free of rigid frameworks, but this is reason's way of correcting itself, not an irrationalist rebellion.

Right, and if you combine this with something like MacIntyre's view of [I]traditions[/I] it could be the traditions themselves that are "rigid frameworks," but not necessarily! Calcified historical frameworks can also be the "matter" of such traditions, perhaps even a sort of material sickness frustrating the actualization of form (i.e. the tradition's attainment of rationality), sort of in the way that all animals are different and yet they all strive for life and form, and yet can be frustrated in this by material deficits.

One would be led to this view though only if one actually accepted the adage in PR that "the actual is the rational and the rational is the actual" (Hegel at his more Aristotlelian).

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

Right, and if you combine this with something like MacIntyre's view of traditions it could be the traditions themselves that are "rigid frameworks," but not necessarily! Calcified historical frameworks can also be the "matter" of such traditions, perhaps even a sort of material sickness frustrating the actualization of form (i.e. the tradition's attainment of rationality), sort of in the way that all animals are different and yet they all strive for life and form, and yet can be frustrated in this by material deficits.

Nice. But...

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

One would be led to this view though only if one actually accepted the adage in PR that "the actual is the rational and the rational is the actual" (Hegel at his more Aristotlelian).

That’s precisely what Adorno will not accept. For him, the actual is the site of reason's failure, not its fulfillment.

Reply to Jamal

That’s precisely what Adorno will not accept. For him, the actual is the site of reason's failure, not its fulfillment.

Indeed, and I think this makes sense given his starting point in Kant, Hegel, and the broader framework of Enlightenment philosophy, which tends towards "philosophy as a system," and a distinct totalizing tendency within these "systems." This tendency is particularly acute in Hegel's philosophy of history.

Maritain is similarly motivated in his claim that philosophy can never be a system, and can never be closed, but is rather man's openess to being. It's a problem a lot of people seemed to be grappling with during this time period.

The common appeals to the Holocaust in these discussions, now the better part of a century later, start to strike one as properly [I]historical[/I] in particular. If reason must lose its luster, or even its authority after the Holocaust, then it should have already shed these in the wake of the Thirty Years War, the conquistador conquests, the Mongol sweep across Asia, the aftermath of the sack that gave us the Book of Lamentations, etc. Wiesel, for his part, picks the 17th century's pogroms, as opposed to the 20th's, as the setting for his Trial of God," and while Enlightenment, "rational," Dr. Pangloss style metaphysical optimism ends up being the tool of Satan, neither does the play end up seeming to exclude the Logos of the generation of Jews who saw Masada fall. In this aspect, these debates sometimes remind me of Dostoevsky's Pro and Contra section of the Brothers Karamazov, that is, there is a "I humbly return my ticket," element.

My thoughts have tended more towards rejecting the particular Enlightenment notion of reason and systematicity tout court, but I can see why, within that tradition, Adorno's proposals make sense. There has to be an irrationality in consciousness because "rationality" has become so bound up in rules and systematicity (ratio) that it seems incapable of providing its own content and impetus. It is far from the old "infinite fecundity" and the erotic. Indeed, it's downright sterile. Other thinkers of this period also had to look for "new sources" in consciousness, Jung being a good example.

Quoting Jamal

But this particular mention of Wittgenstein is not actually one of the egregious ones, and it highlights important differences between them. Adorno is unwilling to give up on philosophy's great goals (in some strange version anyway), whereas for Wittgenstein philosophy helps to fix bad thinking but the really important stuff is outside of its domain, except to achieve clear description. For Adorno, the meaningful in life remains a matter for theory, but for Wittgenstein it doesn't.

Isn't Adorno's non-identical similar to Wittgenstein's mystical, in that both resist conceptualization?

Wittgenstein, early at least, suggests quietism, while Adorno believes it will be revealed via negative dialectics.

Reply to Count Timothy von Icarus

You seem to be both more radical and also more conservative than Adorno. You go further than him in your rejection of Enlightenment reason, but defang this critique in your appeal to the pre-modern and anti-rational. Adorno, modernist through and through, would say you are regressive, retreating from reason's critique of itself to irrational comforts.

So your defanged critique floats above history and flattens it, failing to perceive historical specificity while claiming to properly historicize events:

Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus

The common appeals to the Holocaust in these discussions, now the better part of a century later, start to strike one as properly historical in particular. If reason must lose its luster, or even its authority after the Holocaust, then it should have already shed these in the wake of the Thirty Years War, the conquistador conquests, the Mongol sweep across Asia, the aftermath of the sack that gave us the Book of Lamentations, etc.

Adorno addresses this in Minima Moralia (maybe you're alluding to that, I'm not sure):

[...] neither Timur nor Genghis Khan nor the British colonial administration of India deliberately burst the lungs of millions of human beings with poison gas ...

One cannot bring Auschwitz into analogy with the destruction of the Greek city-states in terms of a mere gradual increase of horror, regarding which one preserves one’s peace of mind.

I think this Holocaust exceptionalism is justified. It was an industrialized, bureaucratic genocide, unimaginable without the means. Not impracticable without the means but literally unimaginable for pre-industrial people. It's not that Germans had always been wanting to exterminate the Jews but just didn't have the ability; it's that the shape, scale, and goal of the Holocaust was engendered by the means of its execution (bureaucratic classification and calculation, mass production, racial science, and instrumental rationality itself). This was unprecedented in both scale and character, I believe.

So the materialist critique that characterizes the Holocaust specifically as capitalism's collapse into barbarism seems a stronger one, and thus in a sense more radical, than a theological or existential critique; whereas you, I suppose, see the materialist critique as also implicated in reason-gone-wrong. The thing is, only reason can critique reason.

Well, this is not really the place for a more thorough debate about it, but it's given me a lot of food for thought. :up:

Quoting Pussycat

Isn't Adorno's non-identical similar to Wittgenstein's mystical, in that both resist conceptualization?

Wittgenstein, early at least, suggests quietism, while Adorno believes it will be revealed via negative dialectics.

That's roughly right as far as it goes, but I think it probably minimizes vast differences, between (a) the nonidentical and the mystical, and of course (b) what to do about it.

Reply to Jamal Good summary, and noting how this lecture is conceptually dense in that it's using more original terms than the first 8 lectures have.

So throughout I was thinking about his take on "intuition", and how it gets at something right in terms of practice, but perhaps we could still "hold onto" intuition through a modification in theoretical thinking.

For Adorno, what you noted, is that the limits of "intuition" were beyond "the facts", but simultaneously he's committed to the notion that philosophy is a conceptual activity, whereas art can get away with this because it's not even trying to speak in the conceptual way but reveal truth in the non-conceptual in the artwork.

Obviously this goes back to Kant, and like you said this means "experience" and "beyond experience", where intuition is within experience but justifies our intellectual wonderings. For Adorno it seems it's mostly just that sense of an insight, but ultimately he's not interested in defending a hard distinction but rather trying to salvage the good parts of intuition while maintaining a difference between philosophy and art.

I can tell he's very interested in differentiating art from philosophy, but aside from that being an interesting question I think him speaking plainly about what he roughly means works as well as a precise definition -- there are philosophers which present their philosophy artistically, and artists who create philosophical works of art, and these activities are both human but different in some capacity. But we can adhere to Adorno's warnings on the two bad ways of treating intuition -- positivistically or idealistically -- without having to have a theory of what differentiates philosophy from art, even while we reflect on the nature of art and borrow those concepts for understanding philosophy.

I wonder to what extent he means the bad kinds of philosophy and art that try to do what the other is doing -- does he have particular examples?

***

Marx as speculative philosopher: when he talks about the two unifying speculative concepts Marx must maintain I was inclined to read his interpretation along similar lines as the notion that theories are always underdetermined, and yet the guide the research. Marx couldn't appeal to the obvious facts -- a pile of government economic records and newspapers -- but had to utilize them and order them in a speculative (good-kind) manner.

As an aside I think it's this noticing how theoretical constructs serve as a kind of order for our facts/intuitions/what-have-you is where people get an idealist impression. But here Adorno utilizes Marx as an example of a materialist who is at the same time speculative.

The reason I mention the above is while I get the sense that Adorno is hounded, I also get the sense that the positivists are wrong about science too :D -- science is a speculative endeavor. It doesn't just give you a list of facts, but explains the facts, orders them, predicts them and so forth.

Quoting Moliere

I wonder to what extent he means the bad kinds of philosophy and art that try to do what the other is doing -- does he have particular examples?

As I recall (I don't have the lectures to hand right now) he mentions a few examples of art that tries to be philosophical. Mystical French and German painters whose work had self-consciously metaphysical themes (it's possible that's in lecture 10, not sure). But these days we can think of better examples, since the rise of conceptual art. It's in the name after all.

I went to a gallery once and in one room there was a bunch of bananas on the window sill. The label had the title "bananas, urine injected". Another, much earlier example is Duchamp's "Fountain". The artists are provoking philosophical questions.

EDIT: I posted that by mistake and I hadn't even got to philosophy that tries to be art. I'll put that in another post.

Reply to Jamal Cool. And, OK, good examples.

Reply to Moliere

I don't think he mentions anyone, but examples of philosophy that tries to be art might be the novels of Sartre and Camus, late Heidegger, and maybe some of the more poetic Nietzsche like TSZ—Adorno was heavily influenced by Nietzsche but he might have been less keen on the arty stuff, but I'm not sure.

Quoting Moliere

The reason I mention the above is while I get the sense that Adorno is hounded, I also get the sense that the positivists are wrong about science too :D -- science is a speculative endeavor. It doesn't just give you a list of facts, but explains the facts, orders them, predicts them and so forth.

This is a very good point. It's too easy when reading Adorno (and Horkheimer) to interpret them as always viewing science as the enemy, but that's likely not the case, and what you say here is a bridge to a better way of thinking about it.

Reply to Jamal A question to keep in mind for myself, then -- I thought of Sartre and Camus, but would defend them as "good" examples of blending the disciplines while keeping them separate too.

Quoting Jamal

That's roughly right as far as it goes, but I think it probably minimizes vast differences, between (a) the nonidentical and the mystical, and of course (b) what to do about it.

Sure, there are differences, first and foremost because they belong to different traditions.

However, both thinkers seem to be pointing to the same thing or structure, each from their own perspective, and each demand that it is recognized as the most important.

Wittgenstein, in TLP, suggests that once every sayable, scientific, and logical question is resolved, when language reaches its limit, what remains is not nothing, but the mystery itself, which is not expressed - because it is beyond propositional knowledge - but revealed, shown. This might explain his insistence on linguistic clarity.

Adorno, on the other hand, thinks that a thing can never be fully grasped by a concept, the non-identical is the residue, what remains, of whatever is beyond the limit of its own concept, which is revealed through negation and critique.

They are both playing with limits and are in the business of demystification.

What to do about it is certainly different, Adorno is active, whereas (early) Wittgenstein is passive. I think that early Wittgenstein was/became disillusioned with philosophy, that it cannot be salvaged, believing in its purely epistemological/scientific nature. This of course later changed in his Philosophical Investigations. Whereas Adorno never lost faith, believing that philosophy can be restructured so as to yield what it was always meant to and promised, negative dialectics being the way forward.

Quoting Pussycat

What to do about it is certainly different, Adorno is active, whereas (early) Wittgenstein is passive.

There's a type of activity, which is sort of passive, what Wittgenstein called idling. Wittgenstein criticized this, but he was wont to demonstrate in his use of words, what he criticized with the meaning of his words, in a sort of hypocritical way.

Now, as much as Adorno calls thinking and theorizing an activity, simply thinking is really not doing anything. So Adorno seems to request a balance between the Marxist's call for action, and the logical requirement of theory. To avoid irrational acts we must make rationality into an act itself, so that it can qualify as virtuous.

Quoting Pussycat

However, both thinkers seem to be pointing to the same thing or structure, each from their own perspective, and each demand that it is recognized as the most important.

I used to think so too, but now I’m not so sure. Is one pointing at the same thing when one says it's unsayable as when one says that concepts are distorting it by the exclusion of particularity? One is pointing at the unrepresentable, while the other is pointing at the misrepresented. The former is transcendental, the latter is immanent. So their differing views on what to do about it can be seen as presuming different ontologies, i.e., a different "it".

Take the example of pain. Adorno would say that the pain scale does conceptual violence to pain by reducing particular suffering to numbers—the pain as experienced is nonidentical with pain as measured (this is not to say he was against its use in medicine). But Wittgenstein would not say that pain is unsayable or mystical; that one cannot “say” one's private experience is unproblematic, because that's not what language does.

I’ve alluded in this post to both early and late Wittgenstein without distinguishing them. It might matter but I’m not sure.

LND lecture 10

In this lecture he talks about essence vs. appearance, philosophical depth, and reaffirms the importance of negation. He's circling around concepts already introduced, trying new ones, especially to elaborate on his version of speculation.

The basic thrust of the lecture is to argue for a philosophy that smashes through the facade of appearances.

He clears the ground by rejecting the traditional quest for absolute certainty. Oddly, he seems to associate this with positivism. I think he does this because he thinks the latter, in condemning thought that goes beyond facts, functions in the same way as the demand for certain foundations. In both cases, one supposedly needs an established ground before one can philosophize legitimately.

This brings him to appearance vs. essence, which we can think of as appearance vs. reality so as to remove any hints of essentialism: the essence behind the appearance is not anything transcendent, but rather the form of something which is specific to the conditions—usually, of course, social and historical conditions.

He is committed to maintaining the centrality of this distinction, because of ideology. In case there's any confusion, Adorno always uses this term in the Marxian sense:

[quote=marxists.org;https://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/i/d.htm#ideology]Ideology is a system of concepts and views which serves to make sense of the world while obscuring the social interests that are expressed therein, and by its completeness and relative internal consistency tends to form a closed system and maintain itself in the face of contradictory or inconsistent experience.

The word is used with a wide variety of connotations, even among Marxists; Terry Eagleton, in his Ideologies, lists a range of meanings:

[*] the process of production of meanings, signs and values in social life;
[*] a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class;
[*] ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power;
[*] false ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power;
[*] systematically distorted communication;
[*] that which offers a position for a subject;
[*] forms of thought motivated by social interest;
[*] identity thinking;
[*] socially necessary illusion; the conjecture of discourse and power;
[*] the medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world;
[*] action-oriented sets of beliefs;
[*] the confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality;
[*] semiotic closure;
[*] the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations to a social structure;
[*] the process whereby social life is converted to a natural reality;

Marxists seek to subject all ideology to critique, uncovering the internal contradictions in an ideology and exposing the social interests expressed by it.
[/quote]

"Smashing through the facade" and "blasting open the phenomena" are ways of describing philosophy's attempt to uncover the social reality behind appearances, and the method is the critique of ideology in the context of a new epistemology, i.e., negative dialectics.

Then he says something strange: human beings are becoming ideology, and in a sense this would mean the abolition of human beings. (p.100-101)

I think what he means is that in modern industrial capitalism, supported as it is by a culture industry, ideology is now all-pervading and there is little space left for independence of thought and action. Human beings have the potential to be spontaneous, to be free, to question prevailing beliefs, and to resist compulsion—and to some extent they have at times realized these potentials. But now, subjectivity is a standardized construct of ideology rather than the source of freedom and independence as it was in the Enlightenment era.

I think this is even easier to see now than it was in the sixties. Individualism seems to remain strong, and the need to form an identity that expresses one's "true self" is widely felt, and yet the resulting identities are standardized, not unique, and even nonconformity is comformist. In consumer capitalism, individuality is reduced to one's choice of car. And now, what is persistently framed as self-actualization is in fact the curation of a public profile whose features and limits are determined by social media trends and expectations, and algorithmic validation.

For some, the figure of the entrepreneur is the paradigm of individuality, but as such a paradigm it is just a standard template, produced as a by-product of the market. The meaning of autonomy shrinks within the bounds of capital, in which entrepreneurship seems to be the only road to self-actualization and autonomous engagement with the world.

Resistance seems pointless, because resistance itself is branded. The film Barbie was hailed all over the place as "subversive" and yet its feminist and anti-corporate critiques functioned, very deliberately, as marketing for Mattel. But the people who said it was subversive knew all that, so what were they thinking? Similar to autonomy, the meaning of "subversive" has shrunk to a signal.

But what about the "abolition" of human beings? He did say "in a sense," and the sense I think he intended was that there is a qualitative change in the concept and experience of being human. If the human being had once been the authentic, autonomous individual of the Enlightenment and the classic era of the bourgeoisie (which despite everything was a promising avenue for human development), then such a creature was going extinct, replaced by administered puppets with manufactured desires, their resistance pre-emptively co-opted.

On the surface this might seem to rely on a transcendent essentialism of the human, but it's not that. It's a response to specific conditions rather than an appeal to an essential purity. Adorno thought the very ability to think critically was actually in danger, and that what had been the dominant conception of human beings, which was in itself a product of specific historical conditions but at the same time provided space for resistance, was losing its anchor in reality.

Incidentally, philosopher Hans-Georg Moeller, who has a pretty good Youtube channel, has an interesting theory about all this called Profilicity. He sees Adorno as stuck in the age of authenticity and doesn't seem to think the new age of profile-based identity is all that bad.

[quote=Hans-Georg Moeller;https://www.kritike.org/journal/issue_31/moeller_december2022.pdf]In profilicity, the old Nietzschean motto of authenticity is modified to “become who you wish to be seen as.” Applying the terminology of Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory, the shift from authenticity to profilicity can be described as a shift towards thoroughgoing “second-order observation.”

While in authenticity recognition, including self-recognition, is supposed to emanate from authentic selves who see what they see in the mode of individual first-order observation, in profilicity observation is more complex and is fascinated by observing how and what others observe.
[/quote]

Well, that was a lengthy digression. I'll probably post something else about this lecture soon.

NOTE: After I'm done with this lecture I'm going to skim over Adorno's notes for lectures 11-25 and bring things up here if I find them interesting. What I won't be doing do is reading "The Theory of Intellectual Experience," which is printed first alongside the notes to lectures 11-25, and then in full in an Appendix, because this is just the introduction to ND, and we'll be coming to that very soon.

An explanation is unhelpfully buried in the notes to lecture 10:

Since these notes [Adorno's notes for lectures 11-25] for the most part refer to specific pages of the ‘Introduction’ to Negative Dialectics, they are printed on the right-hand side of the page and juxtaposed to the related passage from the Introduction on the left-hand side. The Introduction is given in extenso in the Appendix of the present volume.

Quoting Jamal

After I'm done with this lecture I'm going to skim over Adorno's notes for lectures 11-25 and bring things up here if I find them interesting. What I won't be doing do is reading "The Theory of Intellectual Experience," which is printed first alongside the notes to lectures 11-25, and then in full in an Appendix, because this is just the introduction to ND, and we'll be coming to that very soon.

Cool.

It was my understanding that we'd be switching over to ND after Lecture 10.

Reply to Moliere

Pretty much. I'm just saying I might skim read the rest in one go and write a post collecting a few thoughts about what's there, just before starting ND.

Reply to Jamal :up:

Reply to Jamal Something I found interesting in this lecture is the connection of speculation to depth, and thereby speculation to the appearance/essence distinction. Part of me wonders if it is better to read it as "essence" since he makes the remark about how Marx was enough of a Hegelian to maintain essence in his philosophy, but I'm not sure. Either way I can see avoiding debates on essentialism is a good idea :D -- I'm just thinking out loud on how to interpret him.

So a quick summary as I understand it: Philosophy is resistance to the facts as they appear. It engages in speculation in order to probe the depths of the phenomena, and while Adorno emphasizes that this is never a complete process it's something that philosophy must do in order to obtain depth, or even be a worthwhile philosophy. He makes some notes about how there's a false depth which is bound up with suffering such that expressions of happiness are taken as a mark of shallowness, and Adorno notes how this is to miss depth for what depth is about. Depth expresses human suffering rather than says "I am suffering, so I am wise" -- analogy to the artists who give impressions, and thereby were more metaphysical painters than the ones who painted explicit scenes of people "touching the source".

Quoting Jamal

Then he says something strange: human beings are becoming ideology, and in a sense this would mean the abolition of human beings.

What he says is that subjective behaviour of human beings is just the appearance, while the objective social structure which in a sense is the cause of that behaviour, is the essence. So what we take as the immediate, subjective behaviour, is really the mediated. He turns around the common perspective. Then, he says that this perspective, which we commonly hold, of the immediacy of consciousness, is just appearance, and actually an illusion. Further, this illusion is "socially necessary", so it is ideology.

I would interpret this as similar to Plato's noble lie. The idea of the immediacy of consciousness, and priority of the subjective human existence, is set up by the social structures, as an ideology of deception, because it hides from the individual subject, the reality that the individual being is just an extension of the true essence, which is society.

So, when he says that human beings are ideology, I think he means that the idea of individuality, that we are distinct individual human beings with that sort of freedom, is ideology. So, human beings are ideology. Further, I think he says that this ideology needs to be abolished, because it is an "inhumanity".

He goes on to say, that speculation is the "anti-ideological element". It is hostility towards the ideological, and philosophy is "the power of resistance". He actually proposes this as the only true definition of philosophy. But this resistance must not be irrational, it must develop within a theoretical framework.

That is what brings him to "depth". This is a tricky concept because of the connotations, especially in German thinking, and we must heed them. He reviews a definition of depth as the "theodicy of suffering", which he says is itself shallow, and this itself is viewed as an ideology.

[quote=p106] We could say, then, that an essential aspect of the concept of depth
is that the insistence on the idea of depth negates the average
traditional manifestation of it. And the idea of a radical secularization of
the theological meanings, in which something like the salvaging of
such meanings can alone be sought, comes in fact very close to such
a programme of depth. The dignity of a philosophy cannot be decided
by its result. Nor can it be decided by whether it results in something
affirmative or approving, or by whether it has a so-called meaning. [/quote]

His conclusion: "the mark of depth nowadays is resistance". This is not a shallow resistance of "bleating".

" Depth means to refuse resolutely to remain satisfied with the surface, and to insist on breaking through the façade."

...

" Resistance means refusing to allow the law
governing your own behaviour to be prescribed by the ostensible or
actual facts. In that sense resistance transcends the objects while
remaining closely in touch with them." - p107

"What I am describing to you is philosophical
depth regarded subjectively – namely, not as the justification
or amelioration of suffering, but as the expression of suffering,
something which understands the necessity of suffering in the
very act of expression. " - p 108

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

What he says is that subjective behaviour of human beings is just the appearance, while the objective social structure which in a sense is the cause of that behaviour, is the essence. So what we take as the immediate, subjective behaviour, is really the mediated. He turns around the common perspective. Then, he says that this perspective, which we commonly hold, of the immediacy of consciousness, is just appearance, and actually an illusion. Further, this illusion is "socially necessary", so it is ideology.

I would interpret this as similar to Plato's noble lie. The idea of the immediacy of consciousness, and priority of the subjective human existence, is set up by the social structures, as an ideology of deception, because it hides from the individual subject, the reality that the individual being is just an extension of the true essence, which is society.

So, when he says that human beings are ideology, I think he means that the idea of individuality, that we are distinct individual human beings with that sort of freedom, is ideology. So, human beings are ideology. Further, I think he says that this ideology needs to be abolished, because it is an "inhumanity".

You're quite close to my own idea of ideology, but your interpretation differs from mine at critical points.

First, I think you're missing that Adorno is noting a historical degradation:

[quote=p100]It follows that since the immediate consciousness of human beings is a socially necessary illusion, it is in great measure ideology. And when I said in my lecture on society ... that I regarded it as the signature of our age that human beings were becoming ideology, then this is precisely what I meant.[/quote]

It's not that subjectivity is just ideology, but that it's becoming ideology. He marks a contrast between the era in which the ideology of liberal humanism had something real, or emancipatory, about it; and the late twentieth century, in which it has been entirely hollowed out. My way of putting this was to say that ideology has become all-pervasive due to the total absorption of the masses into the system by means of bureaucracy, all-encompassing commodification, mass media and the culture industry.

The liberal humanism of the Enlightenment was a force of emancipation: from the domination of religion and the traditional feudal network of obligation. Certainly, it was (and still is) ideology in its justification of the rights of property and of capitalist exploitation by the appeal to free and equal exchange and so on, but even so it represented the subject's effort to resist domination. It had this potential because it was produced by real changes in social relations, that is, it was not merely a lie.

I think Adorno is a self-consciously Enlightenment thinker in that he remains wedded to this emancipatory potential of the subject while remaining relentlessly critical, even going so far as to turn the Enlightenment resistance to domination back on itself to expose its fundamental contradictions and tendencies towards domination. Incidentally, I'm tempted to say he was the last Enlightenment thinker: after him you get the domesticated liberalism of Habermas and Rawls on one side (and more recently, in the popular sphere, the triumphalism of Pinker's Enlightenment Now); and postmodernism on the other. [EDIT: But I suppose Zizek carries on the tradition].

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

So, human beings are ideology. Further, I think he says that this ideology needs to be abolished, because it is an "inhumanity".

I think this is a crucial misinterpretation. Look at what he says:

If anyone objects that I am lending support to the claim that in a sense this would mean the abolition of human beings, I can only reply by saying in good American: that’s just too bad.

He is not lending support to the abolition of human beings (in the sense of human subjectivity), but to the claim that human beings are being abolished. He doesn't mean he thinks it's a good thing; he means that we should not not be afraid to point it out. This is backed up by the comments immediately following:

[quote=p101]By this I mean that this abolition is being brought about not by the inhumanity of the idea
that describes it [the idea that human beings are being abolished], but by the inhumanity of the conditions to which this idea refers [late capitalism]. And if you will permit me to make a personal remark, it seems to me very questionable for people to take offence at statements that go against their own beliefs, however justified and legitimate these beliefs may be, simply because they find such statements uncomfortable ...[/quote]

The statement that human beings are being abolished makes people uncomfortable, but the abolition of potentially critical and emancipatory subjectivity, though a very bad thing, is real and we have to face up to it.

Quoting Moliere

Something I found interesting in this lecture is the connection of speculation to depth, and thereby speculation to the appearance/essence distinction. Part of me wonders if it is better to read it as "essence" since he makes the remark about how Marx was enough of a Hegelian to maintain essence in his philosophy, but I'm not sure. Either way I can see avoiding debates on essentialism is a good idea :D -- I'm just thinking out loud on how to interpret him.

Yes, good point. Preserving "essence" importantly traces his use of the legacy of Hegel and Marx.

Quoting Moliere

So a quick summary as I understand it: Philosophy is resistance to the facts as they appear. It engages in speculation in order to probe the depths of the phenomena, and while Adorno emphasizes that this is never a complete process it's something that philosophy must do in order to obtain depth, or even be a worthwhile philosophy. He makes some notes about how there's a false depth which is bound up with suffering such that expressions of happiness are taken as a mark of shallowness, and Adorno notes how this is to miss depth for what depth is about. Depth expresses human suffering rather than says "I am suffering, so I am wise" -- analogy to the artists who give impressions, and thereby were more metaphysical painters than the ones who painted explicit scenes of people "touching the source".

You have a talent for concision. :up:

A couple of other things I found interesting in lecture 10:

[quote=p106-107]I believe that I need only remind you of those who are quiet in the land for you to realize where this kind of depth is leading, namely, to a pure evasion compared to which we have to stick with Hegel’s insight, and indeed Goethe’s, that depth does not involve immersion merely in the subject which, once it comes to reflect on itself, discovers nothing but an ‘empty depth’, but rather that depth is inseparable from the strength to externalize oneself. If a person is deep, he will be able to make that depth a reality in what he does and what he produces. In contrast to that, the depth a person as an isolated subject is aware of may serve to enable him to think of himself as belonging to an elite, and indeed a declining and endangered elite, but it will have no substance. For if it had substance it could be expressed as an act of externalization. The individual who cultivates himself as an absolute and as the guarantor of depth, and who imagines that he can discover meaning in himself, is a mere abstraction, a mere illusion vis-à-vis the whole. Inevitably, the meanings that he then discovers in himself as an absolute being-for-himself are in reality not his own absolute possession but merely a collective residue, the dregs of the universal consciousness. And this is merely an older form of debasement, I would say, one that differs from its present incarnation only in that it has not quite kept pace with current forms of debasement. So what I believe is that the mark of depth nowadays is resistance, and by this I mean resistance to the general bleating.[/quote]

As a deracinated, debased subject myself, I resemble that remark.

I like his attitude to happiness:

[quote=p104]What I am saying, then, is that this concept of depth, which amounts to a theodicy of suffering, is itself shallow. It is shallow because, while it behaves as if were opposed to the shallow, rather mundane desire for sensual happiness, in reality it does no more than appropriate worldly values which it then attempts to elevate into something metaphysical.[/quote]

The idea that happiness is shallow is itself shallow.

In arguing that the great Impressionists were superior to self-consciously metaphysical painters:

[quote=p105]you will perceive something like a certain absence of sensuous happiness, a certain melancholy of sensuous happiness arising out of the picture before you ...[/quote]

He's not saying that sensuous happiness is shallow and Impressionist paintings are great because they don't depict it, but rather that, in parallel with what I was saying about utopia, they negatively raise the prospect of true happiness to consciousness in the form of longing and melancholoy.

Then at the end:

[quote=p108]This speculative surplus that goes beyond whatever is the case, beyond mere existence, is the element of freedom in thought, and because it is, because it alone does stand for freedom, because it represents the tiny quantum of freedom we possess, it also represents the happiness of thought. It is the element of freedom because it is the point at which the expressive need of the subject breaks through the conventional and canalized ideas in which he moves, and asserts himself.[/quote]

I think we see the influence of Nietzsche here, and I see a parallel between the dismissive "deep" attitude to a supposedly shallow happiness, an attitude which is itself shallow, and the pompous aloofness of some philosophy, especially what we might call fan-philosophy (on the model of fan-fiction), that has contempt for the body.

Adorno is not afraid to stand up for happiness and pleasure. But elsewhere he criticizes the ideology of happiness:

[quote=Minima Moralia 38]The admonitions to be happy, voiced in concert by the scientifically epicurean sanatorium-director and the highly-strung propaganda chiefs of the entertainment industry, have about them the fury of the father berating his children for not rushing joyously down stairs when he comes home irritable from his office. It is part of the mechanism of domination to forbid recognition of the suffering it produces, and there is a straight line of development between the gospel of happiness and the construction of camps of extermination so far off in Poland that each of our own countrymen can convince himself he cannot hear the screams of pain. That is the model of an unhampered capacity for happiness.[/quote]

Note the extra-Adornian claim I've put in bold (Minima Moralia was written right at the end of the war).

In the same work he has an analysis of happiness that I find true to life:

[quote=Minima Morali 72]To happiness the same applies as to truth: one does not have it, but is in it. Indeed, happiness is nothing other than being encompassed, an after-image of the original shelter within the mother. But for this reason no-one who is happy can know that he is so. To see happiness, he would have to pass out of it: to be as if already born. He who says he is happy lies, and in invoking happiness sins against it. He alone keeps faith who says: I was happy. The only relation of consciousness to happiness is gratitude: in which lies its incomparable dignity.[/quote]

I have at times thought to myself, "in the future I'm going to think back on this moment as a happy one, so I should try to raise this happiness, which in the normal run of things will only become apparent later, to consciousness in the here-and-now." Now I'm in that future, I think back on those moments and mainly just remember my effort to be consciously happy, so I'm not sure if I really was happy and the memory of this conscious effort is obscuring it, or if I really wasn't happy and that's why I can only remember that conscious effort. This is my punishment for sinning against happiness.

Quoting Jamal

You have a talent for concision. :up:

Thanks :)

Reply to Jamal I find myself conflicted often with his various remarks on happiness, and ideology, and especially the use of the term "bleating" -- reminds me of Nietzsche's disdain for the herd.

There's part of me that agrees a lot with him on happiness in that there is nothing shallow or deep about happiness -- but I'd say the same of suffering and melancholy and pain. And I like his approach because I get the sense that the essence of something comes forth through this back-and-forth process -- but there's still this element of desire as a lack that I generally think is a common but wrong way to think on happiness since I don't think happiness is something that even can be fulfilled or pursued so much as worked towards by stopping doing what we think will make us happy and starting doing what will actually make us happy. But that's not as tragic as Adorno's philosophy :D

Also, I tried starting ND today.

I can see what you mean @Jamal about how the difficulty has gone up a few notches. I've had to reread several sentences just due to the sheer number of pronouns, and the parts that I've understood so far are only because we've gone over them in the lectures prior -- so I'm glad we started with something to at least give me some footholds into the material!

Reply to Moliere

Yeah, I've read the prologue and a page or two of the introduction and it just doesn't feel like a good translation. I have no way of knowing if it is or not, but it just feels like it isn't.

Because Minima Moralia shows that he's actually a great writer, suggesting it's the different translators that make the difference.

On the other hand, an Adorno scholar I was reading recently (can't recall which one) said that MM is his best work in terms of prose quality, and ND is not so good.

So I don't know. I think I can get used to it, and it's not as difficult as some other stuff I've read, but I might have a look at the original English translation by Ashton to see if it reads any better (but even if it does this doesn't mean it's as accurate)

Quoting Moliere

but there's still this element of desire as a lack that I generally think is a common but wrong way to think on happiness since I don't think happiness is something that even can be fulfilled or pursued so much as worked towards by stopping doing what we think will make us happy and starting doing what will actually make us happy. But that's not as tragic as Adorno's philosophy

That doesn't seem all that far from his view actually.

Reply to Jamal Okiedoke. Then it's just a wondering on my part where I'm not fully following everything.

Reply to Moliere

Don't worry, I'm probably wrong.

Reply to Jamal :rofl: Well that's reassuring...

Reply to Jamal OK I think I've figured it out -- if you've ever just "felt suspicious" of an idea in a philosophical text I think that's it because I can't really pin something down in the text. And I probably "feel suspicious" just because I've thought about happiness a lot in my own thoughts so it's harder for me to disentangle my thinking on the topic because of emotional attachment to it, on a philosophical level.

Quoting Jamal

I think I can get used to it, and it's not as difficult as some other stuff I've read, but I might have a look at the original English translation by Ashton to see if it reads any better (but even if it does this doesn't mean it's as accurate)

I think I can get used to it too. And I prefer accuracy to readability.

The excessive use of pronouns reminds me of Norman Kemp Smith's translation of Kant. (could be a choice thing -- breaking out the German words that are compact into explicit English sentences which explicitly state, if repeatedly, the meaning)

Quoting Jamal

It's not that subjectivity is just ideology, but that it's becoming ideology. He marks a contrast between the era in which the ideology of liberal humanism had something real, or emancipatory, about it; and the late twentieth century, in which it has been entirely hollowed out. My way of putting this was to say that ideology has become all-pervasive due to the total absorption of the masses into the system by means of bureaucracy, all-encompassing commodification, mass media and the culture industry.

I agree with your interpretation, and the import of historicity, process, becoming, but Adorno leaves significant ambiguity for interpretations which are inconsistent with yours. Since he designates the structures of society as "essence", and the behaviour of individuals as "appearance", then we have to assign priority to ideology, as an essential aspect. This makes the actions of resistance, assigned to the philosopher, non essential, therefore not-necessary, and free in that sense. So freedom of the individual is derived from breaking out of, or resisting ideology, but this has necessitated a response from the ideology, which has turned this freedom into an ideology itself. The idea of the freedom of the subject, as an individual distinct from society, has evolved from being speculative philosophy to being an ideological therefore essential aspect of society.

Imagine that the speculative philosopher in the past, has dreamed up ways to resist, and be free from the oppression of ideology. Then these speculative theories are accepted by others, until what was once speculation becomes itself ideology. This is why he rejects such philosophy as shallow. It's not speculative anymore, as such subjects were when they were newly speculated, it's just mimicking the prevailing ideology now. It's old hat, and that philosophy is now a matter of following ideology, rather than resisting it, even though it might bare the name of being new and innovative, "deep", because it was given that name when it was such.

Quoting Jamal

He is not lending support to the abolition of human beings (in the sense of human subjectivity), but to the claim that human beings are being abolished. He doesn't mean he thinks it's a good thing; he means that we should not not be afraid to point it out.

I believe that the ambiguity mentioned above, could allow the interpretation that he is lending support to the abolition of human beings, and I think that is the proper interpretation, what is intended by the author.. I suspect that this is where he turns things around, in a lecture which is rather twisted. First, it is fact, by the objective essence of societal structure, that the individuality of the human being is supported by the ideology of that structure. This is what our society has come to. The philosopher's position is one of resistance to the prevailing ideology of society, resist the essence. If the ideology is one which prioritizes the human being, then to resist this, is to negate it with the abolition of the human being. So I interpret Adorno as actually promoting the abolition of human beings.

"If anyone objects that I am lending support to the claim that in a sense
this would mean the abolition of human beings, I can only reply by
saying in good American: that’s just too bad.'

Notice, "that's just too bad" in this context, means something like 'tough luck for you, that's what I'm doing, and you won't be stopping me'. And he explains, this idea of abolition is not itself inhumane, but it is the conditions which produce it which are. Then he makes those remarks about people who "find such statements uncomfortable". Philosophers ought not reject such ideas outright, but understand them, and "incorporate such statements into their way of seeing things and where possible making use of them to arrive at a correct form of practice."

So, the "abolition of human beings" is not metaphorical, it's a speculative principle, proposed as possibly something to be pursued in practice. And, it's an example of philosophy which is very deep. We'll find that this principle is well supported by both science and theology, so it makes a good candidate for secular theology. Science has shown us the reality of evolution, and we can tunderstand the reign of humanity as just a passing phase in the evolutionary process. Further, sciences such as genetic manipulation, and perhaps AI, may bring such an abolition into the range of practicality. And theology, with its principle of a being greater than the human being (God), has long emphasized human weakness, and the deficiencies of the human intellect. So the abolition of human beings, as a deep philosophy has much support.

Here's a sort of example. In ancient philosophy, the human species is referred to as "man". Aristotle defined "man" as rational animal. It wasn't until the Latin greats, Aquinas and the scholastics, that "man" was replaced by "human being". This is actually a significant difference marked by a better understanding of our position in the universe. Most people do not see this as significant, but in actuality "man", the rational animal, was sort of abolished as inappropriate for the newer beings who wanted to distance themselves from the old. This allowed them to escape the traps of established ideologies. After abolishing "man", and creating this new identity for themselves, "human being", they were able to revisit the old, "man", as superior to man, and reject foundational certainties (Wittgenstein's bedrock) which man believed, but were found after this rejection, to be false and misleading. A specific example is the nature of the solar system, and the cosmos in general.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Since he designates the structures of society as "essence", and the behaviour of individuals as "appearance", then we have to assign priority to ideology, as an essential aspect.

I don't understand this interpretation of ideology as essence, since it undermines his whole point about breaking through the facade:

[quote=p100]In other words, the sphere of immediacy that we are all concerned with in the first instance, and which we are accordingly tempted to regard as a matter of absolute certainty, is actually the realm of the mediated, the derived and the merely apparent, and hence of uncertainty. On the other hand, however, this appearance is also necessary, that is to say, it lies in the nature of society to produce the contents of the minds of human beings, just as it is the nature of society to ensure that they are blind to the fact that they mistake what is mediated and determined for actuality or the property of their freedom, and treat them as absolutes. It follows that since the immediate consciousness of human beings is a socially necessary illusion, it is in great measure ideology.[/quote]

On one side he has “the nature of society” and on the other side “the contents of the minds of human beings”. Essence and appearance, respectively. (That’s too static and dichotomous a formula, but you get the idea)

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

This makes the actions of resistance, assigned to the philosopher, non essential, therefore not-necessary, and free in that sense.

Non-essential to not-necessary looks like a non-sequitur. Adorno seems to me to say explicitly that the appearances are necessary (“socially necessary illusion”).

But maybe I’m misunderstanding you.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Notice, "that's just too bad" in this context, means something like 'tough luck for you, that's what I'm doing, and you won't be stopping me'.

Yes, and what he’s doing is claiming that, in a sense, human beings are being abolished. I don't see any support for the interpretation that he is promoting the abolition itself. It’s not “human beings are being abolished, and that's tough luck,” but rather “I’m claiming that human beings are being abolished, and that's tough luck.”

That said, some have interpreted Adorno generally as an anti-humanist along the lines of Althusser. In my view, all of his supposed anti-humanism is critique of the ideology of humanism, and he retains a negative humanism, along the lines of his negative utopia and negative happiness. That is, the capacity of the subject to resist ideology remains.

Quoting Moliere

I think I can get used to it too. And I prefer accuracy to readability.

Yes, me too.

Quoting Moliere

I find myself conflicted often with his various remarks on happiness, and ideology, and especially the use of the term "bleating" -- reminds me of Nietzsche's disdain for the herd.

I know what you mean about “bleating,” but with Adorno it definitely isn't disdain for the herd, at least not in this case:

[quote=p107]By bleating I don’t just mean the cry of ‘Yeah! Yeah!’9 The latter, I would say, is an open and, if I may call it that, a relatively self-aware form of bleating, and as such is comparatively innocent. I am thinking rather of resistance to all those disguised and more dangerous forms of bleating of which I hope I have given you a few examples in my Jargon of Authenticity.[/quote]

So the bleaters are Heidegger, religious existentialists, and romantic conservatives.

I often make a distinction between elitism and snobbery, such that elitism is in a sense democratic (high art and philosophy is open to whoever is interested) and snobbery is bigoted and essentialist (those Others are constitutively unable to partake in high art and great philosophy). According to this scheme, I see Adorno as an elitist, but not a snob.

So where he seems to be disdainful of what is popular — not here particularly, but definitely in other places — it’s out of an elitism that works as a kind of sympathy for the benighted and suffering masses.

EDIT: The endnote for “Yeah! Yeah!” reveals that he said it in English, suggesting he was mockingly alluding to the American habit of relentless affirmation and cheerleading. No doubt this really got on his nerves and factored into his elitism, but even so, he says it’s comparatively innocent, so he’s not overflowing with contempt, Nietzsche-style.

Reply to Jamal OK, that helps me understand better.

Reply to Moliere

It occurred to me that his attitude can also be seen in the idea of a culture industry: the target is not "mass culture," which might imply a culture native to and produced by the masses, but rather a top-down industry assimilating the leisure, thoughts and desires of the masses.

Reply to Jamal Right -- I think expressions of elitism automatically incur some kind of disdain from me, but you're pointing out significant differences.

I wouldn't expect such language to go down well in a union hall, though :D I can hear the jeers already...

Reply to Jamal Looking over Lecture 10 again I can see these are just my little prejudices getting in the way. The real thrust of Lecture 10 is what resistance is, and all the prior examples are him trying to outline what it is not in order to get at what it is.

There we go. If that sounds right I think it all clicked for me finally.

Quoting Moliere

I think expressions of elitism automatically incur some kind of disdain from me

Then I suggest you avoid what he says about movies and jazz :grin:

Unless you really hate movies and jazz. Me, I think he just got it wrong, and didn't really know what he was talking about. Or, more charitably, he was talking about the most commercial stuff of the 30s through to the 50s and wasn't aware of the rest.

Reply to Jamal Heh. I've heard. In fact I think I've put off reading him so long probably because I heard he disliked Jazz, at which point I thought "No man could be a good thinker and dislike Jazz" :D -- so petty.

Quoting Moliere

There we go. If that sounds right I think it all clicked for me finally.

Yes, sounds right. Although Adorno would no doubt caution you against being satisfied with anything clicking into place.

Reply to Jamal Heh, fair.

but I want it to...

Quoting Moliere

Heh. I've heard. In fact I think I've put off reading him so long probably because I heard he disliked Jazz, at which point I thought "No man could be a good thinker and dislike Jazz"

Yeah I haven't even read his writing on jazz and only know about it from secondary sources. I've probably avoided it for similar reasons as you. But I seem to be able to compartmentalize his thought and pick and choose.

Reply to Jamal It's a good thing. I'm glad to have you reading along to help me realize where I'm getting lost on garden paths.

Reply to Moliere

The blind leading the blind? :wink:

Quoting Jamal

I used to think so too, but now I’m not so sure. Is one pointing at the same thing when one says it's unsayable as when one says that concepts are distorting it by the exclusion of particularity? One is pointing at the unrepresentable, while the other is pointing at the misrepresented. The former is transcendental, the latter is immanent. So their differing views on what to do about it can be seen as presuming different ontologies, i.e., a different "it".

Take the example of pain. Adorno would say that the pain scale does conceptual violence to pain by reducing particular suffering to numbers—the pain as experienced is nonidentical with pain as measured (this is not to say he was against its use in medicine). But Wittgenstein would not say that pain is unsayable or mystical; that one cannot “say” one's private experience is unproblematic, because that's not what language does.

I’ve alluded in this post to both early and late Wittgenstein without distinguishing them. It might matter but I’m not sure.

Yes, you are right, I think I misspoke when I said "same" or "similar", hmm "closely related" might be more appropriate, as this is ambiguous enough to leave room for interpretation and representation.

I am attempting a syncretism of various quite different schools of thought, the result of which is, more than often, dubious, not to say ridiculous.

Nonetheless, I didn't have pain in mind, or other such private and subjective experiences, but was alluding to the original concepts from the TLP, like values, beauty, meaning, the sense of the world as a whole. Are these misrepresented or unrepresentable? More importantly, what happens if we lump them into the same category as pain?

If we ask, "oh, but what is pain", LateW would tell us: "don't ask 'is' questions, see how pain is being employed in context". But if we try to divide pain into different kinds, then we could say there are 3 kinds of pain: physical, psychological and intellectual (Or maybe a 4th - as existential). I take it that identity thinking is when an experienced pain in each kind is being reduced to a measure or number. Even worse, when pains from different kinds are mixed together in the one and same concept of Pain. This reduction of pain, and thereby reality itself, to a system, fails to do (it) justice. And with no justice, there can be no vindication, for anyone or anything. And Lord Pain goes on laughing in our face.

But is it identity thinking when an unspeakable tooth- or heartache, is treated the same as matters of beauty, by virtue of their common unspeakability?

Quoting Jamal

I don't understand this interpretation of ideology as essence, since it undermines his whole point about breaking through the facade:

It's actually a very subtle difference of interpretation, with significant consequences. First, consider all those different connotations of "ideology" which you provided. Think about things like " a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class". Now, do you consider ideology to be a feature of the individual human being's mind (subjective), or do you consider it to be a feature of a specific society (objective)? I think you will accept the latter.

Further, the following phrase is easy to pass over, but really needs to be seriously considered: "the distinction between essence and appearance is not simply the product of metaphysical speculation, but that it is real". That line sets the context, of the distinction between what is real (the true essence) as the social constructs, and what is appearance, as metaphysical speculation. Don't forget though, that what he is promoting, is metaphysical speculation. Not any speculation, but that which is "deep", as opposed to shallow. So he is promoting an aspect of appearance (metaphysical speculation), which extends right to the essence, by being deep. This would be the boundary, where our metaphysical speculations about where the boundary lies, do not always line up exactly with the real boundary. And so it is with ideology itself, it may not itself be properly representative. And that's where the facade comes in, where ideology misleads the subjects.

Then he exposes the common misunderstanding between the immediate and the mediate. This common misunderstanding places behaviour of the subjects as immediate. This is because we see ourselves as acting subjects, interacting with others, and the empirical experience of human subjects is prioritized. So this behaviour is perceived as immediate, and the structure of society is apprehended as something which develops from these subjective interactions, therefore the social structure is understood as mediated by the interactions of the subjects. That is the illusion. Adorno proposes that a proper understanding requires that we turn this around, and we see social structure as the immediate, and the interactions of the subjects as the mediated. This puts priority onto the social structure, making it the cause of subjective interactions.

In the traditional, classical hierarchy, the immediacy of the state is easier to understand, because God is placed at the top, higher than the state. Then the ruling class, clergy and aristocracy, with their ideologies, are immediate to God. So the subjects are mediated. The modern society removes God, but this leaves no principles to support the superiority of society, or the sate over the subjects, so priority must be handed to the individual. Marxism does this, it makes the purpose of the state to serve the needs of the individual. And it does this by removing God, so that the priority is no longer that the individual serves God through the state, in the state's immediacy with God. Without God, the relation between state and individual is reversed, because the state no longer has the claim of closeness to God, required to maintain its priority over the subjects, and so there is nothing left but to prioritize the individual.

Now, since human subjects act with intent, ideas and goals, and this intent guides their actions, we need to interpret "ideology", (which shapes these intentions), as the immediate, a property of the social structure, which shapes and forms the intentions of individual subjects, making their behaviour a representation (as appearance) of the underlying essence, which is the society itself, with its ideology. I suggest you read the following very carefully, and apprehend what he is actually saying. This is representative of Plato's "noble lie". Notice that society produces the illusion of "the immediate consciousness of the human being", and for reasons unexplained, this is said to be a necessity for society. That is ideology.

[quote=p100]On the other hand, however, this appearance is also necessary,
that is to say, it lies in the nature of society to produce the contents of the
minds of human beings, just as it is the nature of society to ensure
that they are blind to the fact that they mistake what is mediated and
determined for actuality or the property of their freedom, and treat
them as absolutes. It follows that since the immediate consciousness
of human beings is a socially necessary illusion, it is in great measure
ideology. [/quote]

So all that is just a sort of preamble, a setting up of the context, or conditions for this idea, "the abolition of human beings". We have the following two important principles. Ideology has created the illusion of the immediacy of the human being, and philosophy resists ideology. Third, we can say that Adorno is promoting philosophy, and not just any philosophy, but deep philosophy. Now, we can approach his mention of "the abolition of human beings from that perspective. Please read the following passage thoroughly:

[quote=p100-101] If anyone objects that I am lending support to the claim that in a sense
this would mean the abolition of human beings, I can only reply by
saying in good American: that’s just too bad. By this I mean that this
abolition is being brought about not by the inhumanity of the idea
that describes it, but by the inhumanity of the conditions to which
this idea refers. And if you will permit me to make a personal remark,
it seems to me very questionable for people to take offence at
statements that go against their own beliefs, however justified and
legitimate these beliefs may be, simply because they find such statements
uncomfortable – instead of attempting to incorporate such statements
into their way of seeing things and where possible making use of
them to arrive at a correct form of practice. [/quote]

What this passage means, is that if anyone objects to what he is dong, claiming that he supports the abolition of human beings, then that's just too bad (Indicated by the qualification of "good American" as —used in an ironic way to show that one is not sorry or does not feel bad about something).

Then, he goes on with a "personal remark", about people who "take offence at statements that go against their own beliefs", simply because the statements make them "uncomfortable". He says it is "very questionable" that they take offense in this way, instead of attempting to include such statements into their own perspective, and try using such statements in their own practice.

Quoting Jamal

Yes, and what he’s doing is claiming that, in a sense, human beings are being abolished. I don't see any support for the interpretation that he is promoting the abolition itself. It’s not “human beings are being abolished, and that's tough luck,” but rather “I’m claiming that human beings are being abolished, and that's tough luck.”

What he is saying is neither "human beings are being abolished", nor "I'm claiming that human beings are being abolished". He is proposing a deep speculative philosophy that resists the current ideology which prioritizes individual human beings, and that proposal is an approach to the necessary abolition of human beings. And if this makes you feel uncomfortable, well that's just too bad. You ought to instead, consider the truth of his principles, and work with them to be consistent with your principles, and make them conducive to your own practices. Consider for example, that if human beings are inherently evil, then the abolition of them is the rational choice.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Nice interpretation, very subtle and deep. The only defect I can see is that it's wrong.

I might elaborate later, although I fear I'd just be repeating myself. In a nutshell, first you reify what is meant to be dialectical and fail to see that both essence and appearance are mediated; and then you completely misread Adorno by saying he is "claiming that he supports the abolition of human beings," which flatly contradicts what he says.

Generally as you say I'm at an advantage because I had already read some Adorno before this started, so for what it's worth: unless I've been completely misunderstanding him the whole time, your interpretation couldn't possibly be true.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

It's actually a very subtle difference of interpretation, with significant consequences. First, consider all those different connotations of "ideology" which you provided. Think about things like " a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class". Now, do you consider ideology to be a feature of the individual human being's mind (subjective), or do you consider it to be a feature of a specific society (objective)? I think you will accept the latter.

Well, it’s both, and anyway it doesn’t follow that Adorno puts ideology on the side of essence. It’s a feature of society, but he makes a distinction within society:

[quote=p100]subjective modes of behaviour in modern societies are dependent on objective social structures[/quote]

Ideology is in the realm of "subjective modes of behaviour" as that which is produced by the objective social structures (again with the caveat that this is too static a picture, a shorthand for a dialectical process).

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Further, the following phrase is easy to pass over, but really needs to be seriously considered: "the distinction between essence and appearance is not simply the product of metaphysical speculation, but that it is real". That line sets the context, of the distinction between what is real (the true essence) as the social constructs, and what is appearance, as metaphysical speculation.

My brain hurts.

He makes no such distinction "between what is real (the true essence) as the social constructs, and what is appearance, as metaphysical speculation."

I believe that it is one of the essential motifs ... of philosophy – that the distinction between essence and appearance is not simply the product of metaphysical speculation, but that it is real.

By "real" he means actually operative in the world. He does not mean to align it merely with essence. And he is saying that if you do philosophy you should believe that there is a distinction between appearance and essence, that it is not just an artifact of the conceptual or linguistic paraphernalia of metaphysical speculation as claimed in various ways by phenomenologists, logical positivists, pragmatists, and ordinary language philosophers. He is alluding to contemporaneous philosophies, explicitly going against the fashion of collapsing or rejecting the distinction.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Don't forget though, that what he is promoting, is metaphysical speculation. Not any speculation, but that which is "deep", as opposed to shallow. So he is promoting an aspect of appearance (metaphysical speculation), which extends right to the essence, by being deep. This would be the boundary, where our metaphysical speculations about where the boundary lies, do not always line up exactly with the real boundary. And so it is with ideology itself, it may not itself be properly representative. And that's where the facade comes in, where ideology misleads the subjects.

Adorno is not promoting metaphysical speculation; he mentions it in reference to the tradition of dogmatic metaphysics attacked by those 20th century philosophies I just mentioned. His position is ambivalent on metaphysics. What he says about Impressionist paintings is the key:

[quote=p105]you need only to look at such a picture with what I would call a modicum of metaphysical sensitivity for the situation to become quite clear: you will perceive something like a certain absence of sensuous happiness, a certain melancholy of sensuous happiness arising out of the picture before you; or else the expression of mournfulness from a realm that presents itself as a sphere of pleasure; or else the endless tensions that exist between the world of technology and the residues of nature that technology has invaded. . . . All such problems are really metaphysical problems, and they will become readily visible in the greatest paintings by Manet, whom I regard as a metaphysical painter of the first rank, but equally in those of Cézanne or Claude Monet and some of Renoir’s. I think that something similar happens in philosophy too. Consider, for example, the way in which Nietzsche resists the positive introduction of any so-called metaphysical ideas. The violence with which his thought rejects such attempts shows much greater respect for metaphysical ideas than writings where they are celebrated in the style of the Wilhelminian commemorative speeches ...[/quote]

Thus he embraces metaphysics more in a negative sense than intended by the term "metaphysical speculation".

On the other hand, I don't really object to your conclusion in that paragraph.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Then he exposes the common misunderstanding between the immediate and the mediate. This common misunderstanding places behaviour of the subjects as immediate. This is because we see ourselves as acting subjects, interacting with others, and the empirical experience of human subjects is prioritized. So this behaviour is perceived as immediate, and the structure of society is apprehended as something which develops from these subjective interactions, therefore the social structure is understood as mediated by the interactions of the subjects. That is the illusion. Adorno proposes that a proper understanding requires that we turn this around, and we see social structure as the immediate, and the interactions of the subjects as the mediated. This puts priority onto the social structure, making it the cause of subjective interactions.

No. As I say, they are each dialectically intertwined and mediated with and by the other. It sometimes seems that he goes along with the base-superstructure model in Marxist sociology, but the dialectical element is the crucial difference. There is no general priority (it depends what you're looking at).

As for the abolition of human beings, here is Adorno:

If anyone objects that I am lending support to the claim that in a sense this [human beings becoming ideology] would mean the abolition of human beings, I can only reply by saying in good American: that’s just too bad.

And here is you:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

What this passage means, is that if anyone objects to what he is doing, claiming that he supports the abolition of human beings, then that's just too bad (Indicated by the qualification of "good American" as —used in an ironic way to show that one is not sorry or does not feel bad about something).

He doesn't claim that he supports the abolition, but rather supports the claim of abolition.

And very generally, fascism and Stalinism engendered in Adorno (and Horkheimer) a strong antipathy to collectivism and the lack of real individuality, and I think your interpretation goes against that.

Quoting Pussycat

Yes, you are right, I think I misspoke when I said "same" or "similar", hmm "closely related" might be more appropriate, as this is ambiguous enough to leave room for interpretation and representation.

I am attempting a syncretism of various quite different schools of thought, the result of which is, more than often, dubious, not to say ridiculous.

Nonetheless, I didn't have pain in mind, or other such private and subjective experiences, but was alluding to the original concepts from the TLP, like values, beauty, meaning, the sense of the world as a whole. Are these misrepresented or unrepresentable? More importantly, what happens if we lump them into the same category as pain?

If we ask, "oh, but what is pain", LateW would tell us: "don't ask 'is' questions, see how pain is being employed in context". But if we try to divide pain into different kinds, then we could say there are 3 kinds of pain: physical, psychological and intellectual (Or maybe a 4th - as existential). I take it that identity thinking is when an experienced pain in each kind is being reduced to a measure or number. Even worse, when pains from different kinds are mixed together in the one and same concept of Pain. This reduction of pain, and thereby reality itself, to a system, fails to do (it) justice. And with no justice, there can be no vindication, for anyone or anything. And Lord Pain goes on laughing in our face.

But is it identity thinking when an unspeakable tooth- or heartache, is treated the same as matters of beauty, by virtue of their common unspeakability?

I applaud your effort but it looks like a stretch to me. No doubt there's much more to be said, so feel free, but I don't think I have anything else at this stage.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

There's a type of activity, which is sort of passive, what Wittgenstein called idling. Wittgenstein criticized this, but he was wont to demonstrate in his use of words, what he criticized with the meaning of his words, in a sort of hypocritical way.

You are saying that Wittgenstein was a hypocrite? That the famous "meaning is use" is invalid, not because there isn't a correspondence between meaning and use, but because Wittgenstein's true intention was hidden behind this principle?

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Now, as much as Adorno calls thinking and theorizing an activity, simply thinking is really not doing anything. So Adorno seems to request a balance between the Marxist's call for action, and the logical requirement of theory. To avoid irrational acts we must make rationality into an act itself, so that it can qualify as virtuous.

I am not sure whether this is a correct assessment. First of all, I don't understand what it is you are saying here. What do irrational acts have to do with theory? It only makes sense to me if you mean that all actions are irrational.

As far as I understand, but of course I could be wrong, Adorno is saying that there are people whose thought system is deeply non-identical, like it is and feels natural for them, without much effort: these are the true artists. Adorno realizes that himself is no artist, for example he cannot write poetry or paint, however, he has a knack for theory. And so he wants to provide the theoretical framework.

Reply to Jamal Good morning Jamal, I see that you somewhat misunderstood what I wrote, so I'll clear up that aspect right away:

Quoting Jamal

As for the abolition of human beings, here is Adorno:

If anyone objects that I am lending support to the claim that in a sense this [human beings becoming ideology] would mean the abolition of human beings, I can only reply by saying in good American: that’s just too bad.

And here is you:

What this passage means, is that if anyone objects to what he is doing, claiming that he supports the abolition of human beings, then that's just too bad (Indicated by the qualification of "good American" as —used in an ironic way to show that one is not sorry or does not feel bad about something).
— Metaphysician Undercover

He doesn't claim that he supports the abolition, but rather supports the claim of abolition.

Oh, I see, I wasn't clear, and you misunderstood me. What I intended (meant), is that the person who objects, is claiming that Adorno supports the abolition of human beings, not that Adorno is claiming himself to support such.

Quoting Jamal

In a nutshell, first you reify what is meant to be dialectical and fail to see that both essence and appearance are mediated

Then what meaning do you give to the following?

[quote=p100] I believe that it is one of the essential motifs,
I almost said one of the essential legitimating elements,
of philosophy – that the distinction between essence and appearance
is not simply the product of metaphysical speculation, but that it is
real.[/quote]

Is he saying that the essential motif of philosophy, which takes the distinction between essence and appearance as real, is a mistaken motif? Then why does he say, or "almost" say that it is an essential legitimating element of philosophy?

Quoting Jamal

Ideology is in the realm of "subjective modes of behaviour" as that which is produced by the objective social structures (again with the caveat that this is too static a picture, a shorthand for a dialectical process).

This is clearly backward. Ideology is a feature of objective social structures, which produces subjective behaviour.

[quote=p100]On the other hand, however, this appearance is also necessary, that is to
say, it lies in the nature of society to produce the contents of the
minds of human beings, just as it is the nature of society to ensure
that they are blind to the fact that they mistake what is mediated and
determined for actuality or the property of their freedom, and treat
them as absolutes. It follows that since the immediate consciousness
of human beings is a socially necessary illusion, it is in great measure
ideology. [/quote]

Look, "the immediate consciousness of human beings" is an illusion, a form of deception which is "socially necessary". The means for this deception is ideology, and since it is said to be socially necessary, the goal or end inheres within society itself, as an entity. Therefore it is society which is using this means called "ideology". It is not the human beings who are deceiving themselves in self-deception, it is society which is deceiving them with ideology. As I've been saying, it's a form of Plato's "noble lie".

Quoting Jamal

By "real" he means actually operative in the world. He does not mean to align it merely with essence. And he is saying that if you do philosophy you should believe that there is a distinction between appearance and essence, that it is not just an artifact of the conceptual or linguistic paraphernalia of metaphysical speculation as claimed in various ways by phenomenologists, logical positivists, pragmatists, and ordinary language philosophers. He is alluding to contemporaneous philosophies, explicitly going against the fashion of collapsing or rejecting the distinction.

In that context, where he is distinguishing between essence and appearance, he does not at all say what you are saying here. I believe you are reading into it, extra baggage, for the sake of supporting your preconceived ideas, which support your faulty interpretation.

In this context of LND, he is using the distinction of subject/society, to apply to the distincton of mediated/immediate, to elucidate the appearance/essence distinction, as something real, not merely metaphysical speculation. So, the behaviour of individuals is said (as a primary assumption) to be dependent on objective structures of society. This validates '"structures of society" as operative in the world, real. Then he proceeds to assert (which I'll mention, is without proper justification, which "God" serves as in theology) that these structures of society are actually immediate, rather than the behaviour of individuals. The idea that the behaviour of individuals is immediate is claimed to be an illusion produced by those structures of society which are operative in the world, and this illusion is claimed to be "socially necessary". (As I explained in the last post, this social necessity is produced by the removal of God). Then he assigns the name of "ideology" to these structures of society process create that illusion.

Quoting Jamal

Thus he embraces metaphysics more in a negative sense than intended by the term "metaphysical speculation".

He simply points out a specific inverse relation involved with metaphysics. When a philosopher expresses disdain for metaphysics, that person is actually demonstrating the highest regard for metaphysics. This can manifest in many ways, even to the extent of the hypocrisy of Wittgenstein which I mentioned. So for Adorno, it appears like metaphysical speculation is this process, negative dialectics, within which metaphysics is criticized. It's a twist in the matter of "taking things seriously" (and this reflects back on "that's just too bad"). To simply praise something creates the illusion that you take it seriously, when in reality you are just going with the flow, and not taking any time to understand it. To criticize it requires that you actually take it seriously.

[quote=p106]We could say, then, that an essential aspect of the concept of depth
is that the insistence on the idea of depth negates the average traditional manifestation of it. [/quote]


Quoting Pussycat

You are saying that Wittgenstein was a hypocrite? That the famous "meaning is use" is invalid, not because there isn't a correspondence between meaning and use, but because Wittgenstein's true intention was hidden behind this principle?

There is more to meaning than simple use. That is exemplified by ambiguity. The person who speaks, or writes, is the user of the words, and proper "use" is attributable to the author's purpose. The audience however must interpret, and this itself is an assignment of "meaning". This assignment of meaning s not a matter of "use". it is what Adorno would call a mediated act, whereby the immediate would be the social structures which trained the individual to interpret the way that one does.

Quoting Pussycat

What do irrational acts have to do with theory?

Theory is rational. It is through the means of theory that we avoid irrational acts.

Quoting Pussycat

As far as I understand, but of course I could be wrong, Adorno is saying that there are people whose thought system is deeply non-identical, like it is and feels natural for them, without much effort: these are the true artists. Adorno realizes that himself is no artist, for example he cannot write poetry or paint, however, he has a knack for theory. And so he wants to provide the theoretical framework.

I see no problem with this. And, think that it s likely that the non-identical here is the irrational.

Good morning MU.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Oh, I see, I wasn't clear, and you misunderstood me. What I intended (meant), is that the person who objects, is claiming that Adorno supports the abolition of human beings, not that Adorno is claiming himself to support such.

Oh right. Well, I disagree with that too, but it's less important so I'll leave it there. :grin:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

In that context, where he is distinguishing between essence and appearance, he does not at all say what you are saying here. I believe you are reading into it, extra baggage, for the sake of supporting your preconceived ideas, which support your faulty interpretation.

You won't be surprised to learn that I think that's exactly what you are doing. My interpretation is backed up indirectly by what he says on page 102:

And it was not by chance that this took the form of the distinction between essence and appearance. That distinction of course is almost universally disputed nowadays. ... However, I regard this attempt to deny the distinction between appearance and essence as the arch-ideology because it compels us to accept that the phenomena are just as they appear, since there is nothing else behind
them.

"Disputed nowadays" by contemporary philosophers. So I'm not just making things up to suit my secret agenda. I'm reconstructing his view as best I can, based on the lecture, the other lectures, and other stuff of his I've read.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Then what meaning do you give to the following?

I don't see any conflict.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Is he saying that the essential motif of philosophy, which takes the distinction between essence and appearance as real, is a mistaken motif?

No. It doesn't follow that he's promoting metaphysical speculation in the sense he is using the term.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Look, "the immediate consciousness of human beings" is an illusion, a form of deception which is "socially necessary". The means for this deception is ideology, and since it is said to be socially necessary, the goal or end inheres within society itself, as an entity. Therefore it is society which is using this means called "ideology". It is not the human beings who are deceiving themselves in self-deception, it is society which is deceiving them with ideology. As I've been saying, it's a form of Plato's "noble lie".

You describe it as intentional deception, but it's systemic, and is in fact also reciprocal. Plato's noble lie only half fits.

I find the rest of what you say unconvincing. I believe it's a misinterpretation, but I think I've said enough about it.

Reply to Jamal
I have just a few last remarks before we leave this difference of interpretation, which may not be substantial anyway. It appears to me, like the difference is based in you attributing ideology to the subjective mind of the individual, and I attributing ideology to the objective social structure. The issue is "the facade". We agree that the facade is an aspect of appearance, beliefs in the minds of human subjects. Where we disagree is on the method required to break through the facade. I understand, that since ideology is an attribute of social structure, and ideology produces these beliefs, Adorno is promoting a resistance to the prevailing social structure, which may even be characterized as the abolition of human beings. You reject this, and seem to think that there is another way to break through this facade of human belief, but I do not understand what you are proposing.


Here's something from p 101 to consider:

This at any rate is what I understand by speculation:
it is hostility towards the ideological as an alternative to resigning
oneself simply to establishing facts, in very marked contrast to the
habits of a science based on such a statement of facts – while the
prevailing habit of thought is of course to conflate speculation and
ideology.

.

Quoting Jamal

My interpretation is backed up indirectly by what he says on page 102:

I don't see how 102 supports your interpretation. He says, that the attempt to deny the distinction between appearance and essence is the arch-ideology. And he says this right after he describes philosophy as resistance to ideology. So as much as the distinction between appearance and essence is commonly disputed, this is exactly the arch-ideology which deep philosophy must resist.

Quoting Jamal

It doesn't follow that he's promoting metaphysical speculation in the sense he is using the term.

How can you deny this? It is the conclusion of the lecture. He promotes "depth", and speculation is depth.

[quote=p 108]Thus the concept of depth always implies the distinction between
essence and appearance, today more than ever – and this explains
why I have linked my comments on depth to that distinction. That
concept of depth is undoubtedly connected to what I described to
you last time as the speculative element. I believe that without
speculation there is no such thing as depth.

Quoting Jamal

You describe it as intentional deception, but it's systemic, and is in fact also reciprocal.

I think you misunderstand the meaning of "socially necessary illusion". This refers to an illusion which is needed by society. This necessity implies 'required for its ends'. Therefore it is intentional deception, just like a noble lie. It's an illusion which society needs, to fulfill its ends in its relation to its subjects.

I believe, that the reciprocation aspect is what actually makes it intentional. Ideology is produced from earlier speculation, but how it becomes ideology is questionable. There is either shallow acceptance in the form of innocent "bleating", or depth of further speculation, which is true resistance. The innocent "bleating" may be characterized as reciprocation, but it is described as a "self-aware form of bleating" therefore we can say it is intentional. And the more dangerous form of bleating, which he alludes to seems to be no less intentional. So I do not see how you escape "intentional deception".

The real problem is what I pointed to earlier. The supposed objective "society", or "social structures" is really a false objectivity. So the reality of ideology is based in this reciprocation. But reciprocation is actually nothing but human to human interactions, and when understood in this way, the supposed object, "society", is redundant. The object, society, is nothing but intersubjectivity.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

On ideology in particular I think you're not seeing the forest for the trees, maybe because you're reading too much into some ambiguous comments in what is a fairly disorganized, improvised lecture. I also think you're not understanding my interpretation.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

We agree that the facade is an aspect of appearance, beliefs in the minds of human subjects. Where we disagree is on the method required to break through the facade. I understand, that since ideology is an attribute of social structure, and ideology produces these beliefs, Adorno is promoting a resistance to the prevailing social structure, which may even be characterized as the abolition of human beings. You reject this, and seem to think that there is another way to break through this facade of human belief, but I do not understand what you are proposing.

He is promoting resistance to ideology, i.e., to the beliefs produced by the social structure. This is also a form of resistance to the social structure itself, because if what you're doing is theory, your resistance to objective social conditions takes the form of resistance to their socially necessary illusions.

Rather than ideology producing the beliefs, a better basic understanding is: ideology is the beliefs.

It seems quite clear that depth and speculation in Adorno's hands are to be wielded in the immanent critique of ideology. But I can't quite tell what you disagree with here.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see how 102 supports your interpretation. He says, that the attempt to deny the distinction between appearance and essence is the arch-ideology. And he says this right after he describes philosophy as resistance to ideology. So as much as the distinction between appearance and essence is commonly disputed, this is exactly the arch-ideology which deep philosophy must resist.

Quoting Jamal

It doesn't follow that he's promoting metaphysical speculation in the sense he is using the term.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

How can you deny this? It is the conclusion of the lecture. He promotes "depth", and speculation is depth.

Well, I explained it already. Here you are conflating speculation and metaphysical speculation. I agree that he is promoting depth and a kind of speculation, but when he says that the distinction between appearance and essence is not just a product of metaphysical speculation, he means to oppose the more common position in the twentieth century that the distinction is metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. Note that it doesn't follow from this that he is 100% on board with metaphysical speculation, since by this he is referring vaguely towards the targets of contemporary sceptics of the distinction, targets like German idealism and earlier kinds of metaphysics like Leibniz. In other words dogmatic metaphysics. But I've forgotten why we're arguing about this.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I think you misunderstand the meaning of "socially necessary illusion". This refers to an illusion which is needed by society. This necessity implies 'required for its ends'. Therefore it is intentional deception, just like a noble lie. It's an illusion which society needs, to fulfill its ends in its relation to its subjects.

This is a non-sequitur. You can't get from the structural necessity of ideology, which is what "socially necessary illusion" refers to—you can't get from that to intentional deception without some additional premises. Also, I'm not sure just how literally you intend your "intentional" to be understood. Plato's noble lie is a lie and not just a falsehood because it is known to be untrue by the elite rulers who promote it. It is an intentional deception on the part of certain people. Are you suggesting that Adorno thinks there is such a conspiracy in capitalism? If so, you're misunderstanding him and the tradition he comes out of. (No doubt some Marxists have a tendency to talk in terms of elite conspiracies, but that's loose talk at best, vulgar misunderstanding at worst).

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I believe, that the reciprocation aspect is what actually makes it intentional. Ideology is produced from earlier speculation, but how it becomes ideology is questionable. There is either shallow acceptance in the form of innocent "bleating", or depth of further speculation, which is true resistance. The innocent "bleating" may be characterized as reciprocation, but it is described as a "self-aware form of bleating" therefore we can say it is intentional. And the more dangerous form of bleating, which he alludes to seems to be no less intentional. So I do not see how you escape "intentional deception".

I take this as an attempt to supply the missing steps in your argument that concludes with intentional deception, but I don't get it. How the comparitively innocent "Yeah! Yeah!" has become intentional deception in your mind I really can't tell. But then, I have so far not been able to work out what Adorno means with his "Yeah! Yeah!" comment, particularly the supposed fact that it is self-aware.

Generally I think you should keep in mind that rather than ideology being a product of speculation, it emerges out of material conditions. It's better to say that speculation is often a product of ideology, or that if it's not properly deep and speculative in Adorno's senses of those words, it just is ideology.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

I see no problem with this. And, think that it s likely that the non-identical here is the irrational.

In general, I am thinking of the non-identical more as the non-dominating aspect of nature, rather than the irrational.

@Metaphysician Undercover

Quoting Jamal

But then, I have so far not been able to work out what Adorno means with his "Yeah! Yeah!" comment, particularly the supposed fact that it is self-aware.

I'll try again.

[quote=p107]By bleating I don’t just mean the cry of ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ The latter, I would say, is an open and, if I may call it that, a relatively self-aware form of bleating, and as such is comparatively innocent. I am thinking rather of resistance to all those disguised and more dangerous forms of bleating of which I hope I have given you a few examples in my Jargon of Authenticity.[/quote]

Ok, so the "Yeah! Yeah" refers to the enthusiastic affirmation of ideology, i.e., of prevailing beliefs like the superiority of capitalism or whatever, perhaps even conformist cheerleading in support of the government on specific issues. We can also think of employees chanting a corporate slogan.

Even if this is genuinely enthusiastic and heart-felt, it is self-aware in that the participants know what they're doing, to the extent that they know they are cheering on particular ideas. They probably do not know it is false or illusory, but they do know they are supporting a particular idea, conception of the situation, etc., and they don't pretend to be deep. But the philosophical bleaters targeted in The Jargon of Authenticity think they're doing something more profound and independent, when in fact they're merely riffing ideologically.

In neither case is there any intentional deception as far as I can see.

EDIT: Actually, there is a small space for intentional deception to get in there. I said the innocent bleaters "probably do not know it is false or illusory," which suggests that maybe sometimes some of them do. Certainly it's reasonable to believe that some of the cheerleaders know that the ideas they're cheering on are not quite true, that they prioritize the effectiveness of the ideas over their truth (this is obviously the case with a lot of deliberate propaganda, e.g., in times of war). But I don't think this is paradigmatic of ideology, and I think Adorno would say this makes it less ideological (in Minima Moralia I think he says fascism is less ideological than liberal capitalism).

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

There is more to meaning than simple use. That is exemplified by ambiguity. The person who speaks, or writes, is the user of the words, and proper "use" is attributable to the author's purpose. The audience however must interpret, and this itself is an assignment of "meaning". This assignment of meaning s not a matter of "use". it is what Adorno would call a mediated act, whereby the immediate would be the social structures which trained the individual to interpret the way that one does.

Got it, I think! So instead of "meaning is use", you would replace it with "my meaning is my use", right?

But suppose there were indeed such a principle that would claim universality as to what meaning is, then I guess that would be a perfect example of identity thinking, as it would not fully represent the whole spectrum of meaning. Additionally, it could easily turn out to be and become totalitarian and dominative, strangulating other voices that think otherwise. Correct?

Quoting Jamal

Rather than ideology producing the beliefs, a better basic understanding is: ideology is the beliefs.

OK, so this difference of interpretation is rooted in the different ways that you and I apprehend "society". You have claimed that society is an object, and Adorno seems to accept this premise as well, with "objective social structures". And so Adorno sees society as essence (objective), and individuals as appearance (subjective).

Now, I do not see this separation of category, and my basic intuitive inclination is the opposite to this. I see things exactly the way that Adorno is critical of. I see society as an extension of human individuals, so that society might be called "inter-subjective" but this does not support the unity required for "object". This is what I explained at the beginning of this adventure, I have difficulty conceiving society as an object.

So, I make the attempt, to conceive of this object, society, with objective social structures, in order to read and properly understand the author. Accordingly, you should recognize that I have no basic principles (biases or prejudices) by which I would draw a boundary to distinguish properties of the object, society, from properties of the subjects, the human beings. So when Adorno says that this distinction between appearance and essence is real, that's just a subjective statement to me, and I continue to believe that all such distinctions are metaphysical efficacies. However, I have to accept this principle to understand the author, therefore I am prepared to apply it within his material, to determine whether he actually adheres to his own stated principles.

With respect to "ideology" then, I believe Adorno very clearly describes it as property of the object, society. To me, the entire object (society) is fictional, imaginary to begin with, so I have no problem with proceeding from this principle, to assign whatever fictional properties are required to understand this supposed object. You however, seemed to be inclined by "the reality" of the situation, and you cannot separate "ideology" from the beliefs of individual human beings, because that's what you believe is real. For me, I have already accepted what I consider a fictional object, "society", so I have no problem doing what Adorno proposes, and accepting ideology as a property of this fictional object. The critical point, for me, is that whether or not Adorno actually believes in this separation between human subject, and society as an object, is not relevant. What is relevant is that this is what he is proposing, for whatever reasons.

For you, you already accept this separation between human subject and society as an object, so the truth or reality of this is irrelevant to you as well, you accept it as a premise. However, Adorno uses a term, "ideology", which is very ambiguous, having many connotations, which allow it to cross the boundary, and refer sometimes to a property of the minds of subjects, and sometimes to a property of the object, society. And, since you already accept this boundary, between human subject and societal object, you already have a preconceived idea as to which side of the boundary this term applies, the subjective. Therefore you need to pay special attention, read very closely, to determine how Adorno is using the term, because if he is using it in a way which makes it refer to a property of the other side of the boundary, societal object (and I submit that he is), then to read it in the other way is a sort of equivocation.

Therefore I beg you please, consider the following: "it lies in the nature of society to produce the contents of the minds of human beings" -100. He does not explicitly define this as ideology, but do you not agree with me, that that this "nature of society to produce the content of human minds" is precisely "ideology"?

Quoting Jamal

Well, I explained it already. Here you are conflating speculation and metaphysical speculation. I agree that he is promoting depth and a kind of speculation, but when he says that the distinction between appearance and essence is not just a product of metaphysical speculation, he means to oppose the more common position in the twentieth century that the distinction is metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. Note that it doesn't follow from this that he is 100% on board with metaphysical speculation, since by this he is referring vaguely towards the targets of contemporary sceptics of the distinction, targets like German idealism and earlier kinds of metaphysics like Leibniz. In other words dogmatic metaphysics. But I've forgotten why we're arguing about this.

This is problematic. Adorno's claim that the distinction between essence and appearance is real, can simply be dismissed as itself metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. So he does not make any progress here with those metaphysicians like myself, who already deny that distinction. However, he appeals to people like yourself, who already accept a real categorical division between societal object, and human subject. But if you are in this position, of accepting this distinction, then you need to carry through with a complete understanding of what he proposes, and that is resistance to the societal object (as resistance to ideology).

The following is indicative and very powerful:
[quote=p 107] Resistance means refusing to allow the law
governing your own behaviour to be prescribed by the ostensible or
actual facts. In that sense resistance transcends the objects while
remaining closely in touch with them. [/quote]

Quoting Jamal

You can't get from the structural necessity of ideology, which is what "socially necessary illusion" refers to—you can't get from that to intentional deception without some additional premises.

Aren't you just admitting here, that you actually believe that Adorno is using "ideology" to refer to a property of society? This statement clearly exposes the problem with the 'human subject/societal object' division. Once you put ideology into the 'societal object' category, as Adorno does, and you do here, then you separate it from intention, which is proper to the human subject. By doing this you separate it from moral value, leaving terms of moral reprehension like "intentional deception" as inapplicable.

Now, with that vague separation between moral human subject, and amoral societal object, immoral, blameworthy, intentional actions can be hidden as property of the amoral societal object. So you talk about "the structural necessity of ideology", but if this is a true objective necessity, distinct from human intention and moral value, how could a lowly human being, with subjective human values, ever obtain the authority to judge ideologies?

Quoting Jamal

How the comparitively innocent "Yeah! Yeah!" has become intentional deception in your mind I really can't tell.

Human actions are inherently intentional, and naivety, or claims of innocent 'going with the flow' (which leads to mob rule), do not absolve one from responsibility. If a human being rapes another, and "innocent" others are cheering, those "innocents" are actually complicit and not so innocent.

Quoting Jamal

In neither case is there any intentional deception as far as I can see.

EDIT: Actually, there is a small space for intentional deception to get in there. I said the innocent bleaters "probably do not know it is false or illusory," which suggests that maybe sometimes some of them do. Certainly it's reasonable to believe that some of the cheerleaders know that the ideas they're cheering on are not quite true, that they prioritize the effectiveness of the ideas over their truth (this is obviously the case with a lot of deliberate propaganda, e.g., in times of war). But I don't think this is paradigmatic of ideology, and I think Adorno would say this makes it less ideological (in Minima Moralia I think he says fascism is less ideological than liberal capitalism).

This is exactly the problem with the 'human subject/societal object' distinction, or 'division' I'd prefer to call it because it makes a categorical separation. The object, society, cannot have status of moral responsibility, because it cannot have intentionality, as explained above. The 'innocent onlookers' accept authority, having no status to judge principles of the society (ideologies), also alluded to above. The "bleating", Yeah! Yeah!, cannot be assigned the status of "unintentional", because then you allow that the individual acts of individual subjects are included into the amoral societal object. That would be analogous to saying that the democratic vote (the Yeah! Yeah!) is unintentional, whenever a voter didn't adequately understand the principles being voted for.

Quoting Pussycat

But suppose there were indeed such a principle that would claim universality as to what meaning is, then I guess that would be a perfect example of identity thinking, as it would not fully represent the whole spectrum of meaning. Additionally, it could easily turn out to be and become totalitarian and dominative, strangulating other voices that think otherwise. Correct?

Yes, I think that's the point. Such a principle of universality of "use" would necessarily be false, because actual use is inherently formed to match the uniqueness of the circumstances. So this would in a sense, misrepresent each particular instance of use, in order to fit it into the universal. That's representative of "identity thinking", which neglects aspects of the true identity of the individuals, in order to identify the individual conceptually.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

I wonder what you think of the following quotation from his sociology lectures, a year or two later than the LND:

[quote=Introduction to Sociology p38]Last time I demonstrated in great detail that this concept [that of society] should be understood as a mediated and mediating relationship between individuals, and not as a mere agglomerate of individuals. Today, in my admittedly cursory remarks on Durkheim's concept of society, I pointed out that it is equally inappropriate to regard society as an absolute concept beyond individuals. It is neither the mere sum or agglomeration, or whatever you wish to call it, of individuals, nor something absolutely autonomous with regard to individuals. It always contains both these moments at the same time; it is realized only through individuals but, as the relationship between them, it cannot be reduced to them. On the other hand, it should not be seen as a pure, over-arching concept existing for itself. This fact, that it cannot be reduced to a succinct definition - either as a sum of individuals or as something existing, rather like an organism, in itself - but represents a kind of interaction between individuals and an autonomous objectivity which stands opposed to them, is the macrocosmic or, as it tends to be called today, the macrosociological model of a dialectical conception of society. It is dialectical in the strict sense - and here you can see very clearly why sociology must be conceived dialectically - because the concept of the mediation between the two opposed categories - individuals on one side and society on the other - is implicit in both. No individuals, that is, people existing as persons with their own claims and, above all, performing work, can exist except with regard to the society in which they live, any more than society can exist without its concept being mediated by the individuals composing it. For the process by which it is maintained is, of course, the process of life, of labour, of production and reproduction, which is kept in motion by the individuals socialized within the society. That is a very simple and - if you like - elementary example of what could be said to make it obligatory to adopt a dialectical approach to society.[/quote]

Is this consistent with your interpretation or does it suggest an amended one? I'm thinking of course of your attribution of "separation" to Adorno (and me), and your either/or framework.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I think that's the point. Such a principle of universality of "use" would necessarily be false, because actual use is inherently formed to match the uniqueness of the circumstances. So this would in a sense, misrepresent each particular instance of use, in order to fit it into the universal. That's representative of "identity thinking", which neglects aspects of the true identity of the individuals, in order to identify the individual conceptually.

Could we say that the above critique applies to all universal principles, irrespective of their content?

Quoting Pussycat

Now, as much as Adorno calls thinking and theorizing an activity, simply thinking is really not doing anything. So Adorno seems to request a balance between the Marxist's call for action, and the logical requirement of theory. To avoid irrational acts we must make rationality into an act itself, so that it can qualify as virtuous. — Metaphysician Undercover


I am not sure whether this is a correct assessment. First of all, I don't understand what it is you are saying here. What do irrational acts have to do with theory? It only makes sense to me if you mean that all actions are irrational.

As far as I understand, but of course I could be wrong, Adorno is saying that there are people whose thought system is deeply non-identical, like it is and feels natural for them, without much effort: these are the true artists. Adorno realizes that himself is no artist, for example he cannot write poetry or paint, however, he has a knack for theory. And so he wants to provide the theoretical framework.

After having read the SEP article on Adorno and more specifically this:

Principles of rational morality, as in Kant, are tailored to the self-reflection in which the modern autonomous subject engages, which simultaneously separates insight from action, exemplified, for Adorno, by Hamlet.

I have to say that for Adorno theory and praxis are two completely different things. Hamlet, deeply knowledgeable of the intricacies and perplexities of his situation, was still unable to decide on a proper action. And so it seems that, for Adorno, knowledge, even if complete, does not necessarily inform on action, this has to be treated separately, theoretically again. For example, the revolutionaries in his time looked up to him and expected him to lead the revolutionary movement against establishment. How must they have been disappointed, to say the least, when he decided to turn them down, only to lend a hand to established educational systems. So there is a difference between knowing and acting upon this knowledge, my guess is that Adorno anticipates this, and he will have a lot to say about that.

Quoting Jamal

Is this consistent with your interpretation or does it suggest an amended one? I'm thinking of course of your attribution of "separation" to Adorno (and me), and your either/or framework.

I would say that it is just a little but amended. And that is very easy to understand, because "society" is an extremely difficult and vague concept, generally shaped and adapted toward the purpose of the discussion, in general usage. That's much like all the connotations of "ideology" you listed. The concept "society" is similar to "God" in that way, it generally fills a gap in our understanding, so the concept at play, changes form depending on the context.

As for the separation, the subject/object distinction is significant, and I do not see how it can be anything other than a categorical distinction. If for example, there was a difference of degree between subjective and objective, such that if a subjective idea became well enough justified, it would become objective knowledge, this would allow both to be of the same category. However, I do not think that this is what we're talking about here with the distinction between moral human subjects, and the objective structures of society.

So the difference I see is that in the LND "society" has a place of priority over the human subject, whereas in this "Introduction to Sociology" there is more of a balanced and equal relation between the two. That society has a place of priority in LND is evident from the beginning of the exposé on p100. The relation between society and human subjects is brought up to exemplify that the distinction between essence and appearance is a real distinction, not just a distinction of metaphysical speculation. So here, that relation between society and human beings, must fit that mold, of a real distinction. We can of course maintain the possibility that Adorno's actual intention was to doubt, and criticize claims that the essence/appearance distinction is real, and something more than just speculative. However, he goes on in that exposé to explain "that subjective modes of behaviour in modern societies are dependent on objective social structures", and this implies that human behaviour is mediated rather than immediate. Then he goes on with "the nature of society"... "to produce the contents of the minds... to ensure that they are blind...". So he is describing society as something with this described nature.

In this passage, "Introduction to Sociology", "society" is given a slightly different concept. Instead of having priority over human individuals, "to produce...", "to ensure...", society is said to be a "relationship between individuals". I believe the description in LND is somewhat dismissed with "On the other hand, it should not be seen as a pure, over-arching concept existing for itself", and also with the dismissal of "something existing, rather like an organism, in itself ". Those phrases I feel are applicable to how society is described in LND, because it is described as a thing with a specific nature, but that is rejected here.

So in this passage, society is robbed of its thinghood (which it has in LND), and described as a type of relation. The two, individuals and society, are said to name opposing categories, but they aren't really opposing, though they are clearly distinct categories. Truly opposing terms are usually within the same category. And, I can see another problem which could develop. This way of describing "society" doesn't necessarily produce a whole. And if there is a whole, it needs another name. There is human beings, and there is relationships (society), but what is the whole in this model? Normally, we'd say that the whole itself, human beings and their relationships, is society, and this is why we think of society as an object. Now, Adorno says there is human beings, and there is their relationships (society), but we do not have a whole, what the unity of human beings and their relationships produces. The other description in LND is more conducive to a interpreting society as that whole, therefore a describable object with its "nature".

Any way the you approach it, understanding the concept "society" is not an easy task. And, I think it tends to be a shape shifting sort of thing, which takes it form from the context of usage.

Quoting Pussycat

I have to say that for Adorno theory and praxis are two completely different things.

I don't think so. In that lecture he explicitly said that he does not accept a clean separation between the two.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

The best approach is to work out how LND and ItS can be consistent. Two comments of yours, one from your most recent post and the other from the previous one, stand out to me as possible obstacles along this path:

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The relation between society and human subjects is brought up to exemplify that the distinction between essence and appearance is a real distinction, not just a distinction of metaphysical speculation. So here, that relation between society and human beings, must fit that mold, of a real distinction.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

You have claimed that society is an object, and Adorno seems to accept this premise as well, with "objective social structures". And so Adorno sees society as essence (objective), and individuals as appearance (subjective).

This is not how Adorno's logic goes. Also note that the claim that society was an object was a strategic one in the context of the provisional but unavoidable use of the subject-object and concept-object polarities, such that "the object" is just that which is beyond the subject and which the subject directs its thought towards.

Specifically on society, it is better to think of society as the relation, the totality in which we can non-rigidly identify essence and appearance: social structures, modes and relations of production etc, on one side (essence); and beliefs on the other (appearance). If you force Adorno to say that society is essence and individuals are appearance, you are imposing your own framework, because Adorno says no such thing, and never would.

For Adorno—and I agree—society is not an autonomous object standing over individuals, but neither can it be dissolved into intersubjectivity as you propose.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Any way the you approach it, understanding the concept "society" is not an easy task. And, I think it tends to be a shape shifting sort of thing, which takes it form from the context of usage.

This seems to be a good way to think about it.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

And that is very easy to understand, because "society" is an extremely difficult and vague concept, generally shaped and adapted toward the purpose of the discussion, in general usage

One way to think of it in terms of needs. Think about the way we limit the freedom of individuals to protect society, as when we sanction theft. The needs of the individual thief threaten the well-being of society. On the other hand, if the well-being of society always trumps individual well-being, what's lost is creativity and innovation, which come from the dreams of individuals.

That's a way of seeing a spectrum with individuality as one pole and society as the other. Capitalism is heavily focused on the well-being of individuals, especially wrt freedom of the spirit. Capitalism says do whatever you want, there's no limit. There's theory that says no harm can come to society from individual greed, but though that theory is perennial, it's been shown over and over to be false.

We might imagine that collectivism would be the cure for all of mankind's ailments, but remembering that the spectrum is indivisible should be a warning about that.

Quoting Jamal

The best approach is to work out how LND and ItS can be consistent. Two comments of yours, one from your most recent post and the other from the previous one, stand out to me as possible obstacles along this path:

Sometimes, it is good to look specifically at inconsistencies. This I think, is "critical" analysis, and that approach helps to reveal the evolving aspects of an author's thought. We can oppose this approach (perhaps as the negative approach) with the one which looks for consistency (the positive approach). I think that this is a very good way of reading Plato for example, but it requires much study. So Plato is commonly divided into 3 phases. My interpretation is that he works hard to elucidate Pythagorean idealism in the first stage. In the process he notices the interaction problem, so he proposes "the good", and also a medium between body and intellect (tripartite soul), as a remedy. Then by his late period he is firmly rejecting Pythagorean idealism. The defective interpretation produces "Platonism" as a rendition of Pythagorean idealism, and attempt, through misinterpretation, to make late Plato consistent with the early.

I admit, that when I look at an author like Aristotle, what I look for is consistency from one work to the next. The principles he sets out in one work, when well understood, are applicable toward understanding another work. The works sort of build on each other, and Aristotle clearly started with some principles which he would adhere to throughout..

But maybe this difference is the difference between a negative dialectic (Plato), which criticizes and deconstructs, and a positive system-building type of philosophy (Aristotle).

Quoting Jamal

This is not how Adorno's logic goes.

In that example, in LND, he explicitly brings up sociology as a means of exemplifying the essence/appearance distinction, and the claim that it is a real distinction rather than just an artificial division produced by metaphysical speculation. With the use of this type of example however, we must be very careful to judge how well the example actually portrays the purported principle. With Plato, for example, he'll provide a principle, then an example to portray it, and I am sure that the example is intentionally chosen to disprove the principle. Plato doesn't draw the conclusion though, that the principle has been disproven, but leaves the reader to make that conclusion. So, the dialogue will read as if the example provides proof of the principle, but careful reading reveals the exact opposite. This may be the case here in Adorno's LND.

Notice how the example really twists and turns, with the immediacy of subjective behaviour being an illusion, and society producing the illusion as a necessity, and this being ideology. But, ultimately the subject, through deep speculation can resist that supposed "necessary" illusion. So really, what Adorno has done with that example, is proved that the essence/appearance distinction is not real, because "deep" speculation can overturn it. So he proceeds through the rest of the lecture speaking about philosophical resistance, and deep speculation, which actually would be impossible if that essence/appearance distinction was real.

Quoting Jamal

Specifically on society, it is better to think of society as the relation, the totality in which we can non-rigidly identify essence and appearance: social structures, modes and relations of production etc, on one side (essence); and beliefs on the other (appearance). If you force Adorno to say that society is essence and individuals are appearance, you are imposing your own framework, because Adorno says no such thing, and never would.

I believe this passage indicates that you and I are now consistent in our interpretations. In the above, I accept that what Adorno is really doing is demonstrating the falsity of the claim that the essence/appearance distinction is real, it is actually a product of metaphysical speculation. This is consistent with your claim of non-rigid identity. Further, I indicated that "society" is a sort of gap filling concept, used to fill lapses in our understanding, so we can pass over them with that word, without requiring that we actually understand what the word refers to, allowing the supposed concept of "society" to be a shape shifting form, determined by context. This is consist also with your determination of non-rigid identity.

The key to making our interpretations consistent (and this I believe is more important than trying to make Adorno consistent), is the recognition that when he says that within the "entire philosophical tradition", "that the distinction between essence and appearance is not simply the product of metaphysical speculation, but that it is real", and he appeals to sociology to demonstrate this, what he is really doing is demonstrating the falsity of this principle. Then when he says that human beings are becoming ideology, this is not necessary, or essential, it may just be appearance, and therefore can be reversed without the need for the abolition of human beings.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

what Adorno is really doing is demonstrating the falsity of the claim that the essence/appearance distinction is real

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

The key to making our interpretations consistent (and this I believe is more important than trying to make Adorno consistent), is the recognition that when he says that within the "entire philosophical tradition", "that the distinction between essence and appearance is not simply the product of metaphysical speculation, but that it is real", and he appeals to sociology to demonstrate this, what he is really doing is demonstrating the falsity of this principle.

Then we'll have to carry on disagreeing. Adorno believes there are beliefs and ways of thinking that obscure underlying social relations, and uses appearance/essence to frame this. In other words, the distinction is real, meaning that it's not something merely dreamt up by metaphysicians. But we can think of this as a re-purposing of the distinction in a new, dialectical context (which probably goes for all of the binary distinctions he uses).

I'm just going to begin with the first section in trying to summarize what I'm understanding. It's thick enough that I'm having to slow down and type out things just to make sure I'm reading it correctly. Here's my attempt at the beginning section of the introduction -- and on paragraph four I've tried to describe my confusion:


On the Possibility of philosophy.
1. Theory is once again relevant.
2. The philosopher has been overshadowed by the engineer – the engineer has demonstrated to the world positive cognition just at the moment philosophers turned on their discipline and away from positive cognitions. This to the point that philosophy appears to be a product of commodity society. (What do the last two sentences mean?)
3. The course of philosophy supports the notion that the engineer has overshadowed them since philosophy in its academic form splits into several sub-discplines, much like the scholastics of old, instead of reaching for the world concept. Where philosophy confuses the scholastic concept of philosophy for the world it de it degenerates into sheer ludicrousness, and then forgets the distinction when immanent truth is what philosophy depends upon.
4. If a philosophy cannot realize the difference between the concept and the non-conceptual which it is about it is too naïve to be worth thinking about. We must instead ask, in light of Hegel’s failure, whether philosophy is possible in the exact manner that Kant investigated the possibility of metaphysics after a critique of rationalism. There is an account which is long overdue – that account is of the Hegelian doctrine of the dialectic: a representation of an impossible goal showing that the representation is equal(fit?) to the task of (what was ultimately heterogenous to such?****
This is the part of the paragraph I begin to lose the plot on, just at the end. “what was ultimately heterogenous to such” I do not know what that sentences is referring to.

And after “an account is long overdue…” – “of its relationship to dialectics”; of what’s relationship to dialectics?

Getting lost in the pronouns on that paragraph

Quoting Moliere

This is the part of the paragraph I begin to lose the plot on, just at the end. “what was ultimately heterogenous to such” I do not know what that sentences is referring to.

I think the “such” refers to the “philosophical concepts” just mentioned.

If the Hegelian doctrine of the dialectic represented the impossible goal of showing, with philosophical concepts, that it was equal to the task of what was ultimately heterogenous to such, an account is long overdue of its relationship to dialectics, and why precisely his attempt failed.

So my version is as follows:

“Since Hegel attempted to do the impossible, namely to apply philosophical concepts to that which is irreducibly nonconceptual, an account is long overdue of the relationship of Hegel’s dialectic to dialectics in general, and why the attempt failed.”

I'm going to catch up in a couple of days, but I might post something about the prologue first.

Quoting Jamal

“Since Hegel attempted to do the impossible, namely to apply philosophical concepts to that which is irreducibly nonconceptual, an account is long overdue of the relationship of Hegel’s dialectic to dialectics in general, and why the attempt failed.”

Ahhh thanks. That makes sense.

Quoting Jamal

I'm going to catch up in a couple of days, but I might post something about the prologue first.

Oh yeah, no worries. I wasn't sure what to say about those so I just hopped into where I was beginning to have difficulties (page 1) -- but take your time.

Quoting Jamal

Then we'll have to carry on disagreeing. Adorno believes there are beliefs and ways of thinking that obscure underlying social relations, and uses appearance/essence to frame this. In other words, the distinction is real, meaning that it's not something merely dreamt up by metaphysicians. But we can think of this as a re-purposing of the distinction in a new, dialectical context (which probably goes for all of the binary distinctions he uses).

Due to the inconsistency in what you have written here, I interpret what you are really saying is that the distinction is not something real, it is merely metaphysical speculation, and that's the reason why it can be re-purposed by Adorno, because it's not fixed in anything real. If it was something real, it would be fixed by that reality, and not re-purposable.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

Due to the inconsistency in what you have written here, I interpret what you are really saying is that the distinction is not something real, it is merely metaphysical speculation, and that's the reason why it can be re-purposed by Adorno, because it's not fixed in anything real. If it was something real, it would be fixed by that reality, and not re-purposable.

I question this assumption that if a distinction is real, it must be fixed and immune to reinterpretation. That’s just one of those rigid frameworks we were talking about before. For Adorno, the appearance/essence distinction corresponds to actual social phenomena. However, because he is dialectical, he doesn’t treat the distinction as a static dualism. He repurposes it according to how social structures mediate and transform themselves, including how essences are historically constituted and never fully separate from appearances. So, the distinction is real in that it refers to something happening in the world, but it’s also a critical-philosophical tool, shaped by the task of demystification.

So don’t misinterpret me: the distinction is real. For example, beneath the ideology of employment—free contracts, the work ethic, meritocracy, etc.—there is exploitation. The former is the appearance that masks the latter essence. This is not imaginary, not mere highfalutin metaphysics, and this was Adorno’s original point.

But I probably wasn’t as clear as I should have been. To say that essence/appearance is real is to say it’s a conceptual framework that refers to real relations and processes, not that it is metaphysically baked into eternal reality. And although the distinction is repurposable, it isn’t arbitrarily so.

ND Prologue

The first paragraph is the familiar rejection of the tradition of affirmation in dialectics stretching all the way from Plato to Hegel. The second is a rejection of foundationalism:

What in accordance with the conception of philosophy would be the foundation, the author develops only after a great deal of explication of what that conception presumes would be raised on a foundation. This implies the critique of the concept of the foundation, as well as of the primacy of substantive thought. Its self-consciousness achieves its movement solely in its consummation. It requires what, according to the ground rules of the Spirit which always remain in effect, is secondary.

Before diving into a more comfortable rewording, it's worth stopping to wonder why he wrote like this. It is initially quite annoying. I don't think it's an intentionally inflated pomposity or pretentiousness, although it reads a bit like it is. It's a serious attempt to performatively express content in form. Difficult substance, difficult style. The idea, I suppose, is that the mode of clarity and linearity would be too comfortable to elicit proper intellectual engagement. Personally, I'm 50/50 on this issue. Sceptical but also sympathetic. In a way, this kind of writing is easier than a plainer kind of style, because you don't have to constantly remind yourself to slow down as you do when reading, say, Plato; it's forced on you.

The idea in this paragraph is that he won't start with a foundation and build up from there as traditionally expected in philosophy. Instead he’ll present things the other way, starting with what was commonly considered to be dependent on the foundation. In reversing the hierarchy he intends to question the very notion of foundationalism. As he says, he is also calling into question "the primacy of substantive thought," where substantive thought is thought in terms of fixed essences, which is another way of describing reified thought. Furthermore, although thought needs to be self-aware, it doesn't achieve this by starting off on a firm foundation but in the process of engaging with whatever objects are to be analyzed. Thus, the self-aware movement of thought requires an engagement with phenomena, which were considered by philosophers of the past to be secondary and derivative of a more basic reality like Spirit.

What is given herein is not solely a methodology of material labor of the author; according to the theory of negative dialectics, no continuum exists between the former and the latter. However such a discontinuity, and what instructions may be read out of it for thinking, will indeed be dealt with. The procedure is not grounded, but justified. The author lays, so far as he can, his cards on the table; this is by no means the same thing as the game.

Adorno is not presenting a neutral record of the method he has employed to get to his theory, and there is no methodology that guarantees a smooth transition from the labour of thinking to the philosophical product of the theory of negative dialectics. He intends to explain or show that this very lack of a guaranteed method is philosophically important. And again he rejects foundationalism: rather than a secure ground, his justification will appear as part of the process, or retrospectively.

I'm not sure of the meaning of "this is by no means the same thing as the game." My guess is that "the game" is his philosophical project, and that there is a lot more to it than laying his cards on the table, i.e., being open about what he's doing, even though that's necessary.

At the end of the following paragraph we find this:

To reach stringently across the official division of pure philosophy and what is relevant to the matter [Sachhaltigem] or what is formally scientific, was one of the determining motives therein.

In case we thought that Adorno was only interested in speculative philosophy, or that in recommending a philosophy that goes beyond facts he wants to thereby ignore the facts, this reminds us that he still sees scientific results as the material for philosophy. And this is borne out in his academic practice, in which he did sociology and psychology as well as philosophy. And I think he is also more generally emphasizing the importance of the particulars, of the material, of the down-to-earth and empirical in philosophy, therefore of social philosophy against the habitual abstraction of metaphysics and idealism.

In the next paragraph he says something interesting while laying out the structure of the book:

They are not examples; they do not simply illuminate general considerations. By leading towards what is relevant to the matter, they would like to simultaneously do justice to the substantive intention of what is at first dealt with generally, out of necessity, in contrast to the usage of examples as something indifferent in themselves, which Plato introduced and which philosophy has ever since merely repeated. While the models are supposed to clarify what negative dialectics would be, and to drive this latter, according to its own concept, into the realm of reality, they elucidate, not dissimilar to the so-called exemplary models, key concepts of philosophical disciplines, in order to centrally intervene in these.

And in the previous paragraph he had already said this:

Concretion was for the most part smuggled into contemporary philosophy.

So this goes back to what I was saying several pages ago about examples. His antipathy to examples is conscious. But what exactly is this distinction he is making, between examples and models?

First, examples are arbitrary, whereas models are relevant. Quills and mugs are "idiotic" because they do not take thought towards the matter to which it is meant to be directed. And second, this means that examples are misleading, because concept and example are not independent. Models are similarly mutually dependent on the concepts they elucidate, but since they are chosen carefully, they function also to develop the concept, not just to exemplify a solid, ready-made one. Examples are tools of instrumental reason, but models are where the thinking actually happens.

Quoting Jamal

So don’t misinterpret me: the distinction is real. For example, beneath the ideology of employment—free contracts, the work ethic, meritocracy, etc.—there is exploitation. The former is the appearance that masks the latter essence. This is not imaginary, not mere highfalutin metaphysics, and this was Adorno’s original point.

As far as I can tell that distinction is arbitrary. And from what I've read so far, Adorno treats it as such, regardless of whether or not he asserts that it is real. It is a tactic of philosophers, a ploy, to assert that something is real, "given", as a means of avoiding justification. This is "the postulate", which Adorno is very critical of, because acceptance of it makes one like a bleating sheep, and that stymies deep speculation. Read the beginning of the lecture very carefully, and you may come to agree with me, that Adorno is actually criticizing this postulate, that the distinction between essence and appearance is real. Consider that the claim to be "real", is what he refers to as "factuality".

[quote=p 99-100] I set aside here the consideration that one consequence of the postulate of
absolute certainty underlying the rejection of speculation – which is
itself the product of what we might call an inflated idealism, by which
I mean that we come to expect things of concepts that they cannot
possibly satisfy, namely absolute certainty – one effect of this postulate
is to muzzle thinking, thus preventing it from advancing beyond
the point warranted by supposedly certain facts. To the extent that
such concepts as certainty and factuality or immediate givens become
the object of philosophical reflection, they cannot be presented as
criteria for a priori thought. And it is the very ideas that are indigenous
in this realm, that is to say, the ideas that concern themselves
with the rightness or wrongness of such criteria which, looked at
naïvely from the standpoint of factuality or givenness, appear as
speculative. By uttering the word ‘appear’, I have arrived for the first
time in these lectures at a distinction that cannot be taken seriously
enough and that, if there is such a thing as a criterion of what is
philosophy and what isn’t, must certainly qualify as such. This is the
distinction between essence and appearance, a distinction that has
been sustained in almost every philosophy – with the exception of
positivist critique and certain invectives in Nietzsche – throughout
the entire philosophical tradition. I believe that it is one of the essential
motifs, I almost said one of the essential legitimating elements,
of philosophy – that the distinction between essence and appearance
is not simply the product of metaphysical speculation, but that it is
real.[/quote]

Now, turn to the conclusion of the lecture, and see how it supports what I say about the opening:

[quote=107-108] Resistance means refusing to allow the law
governing your own behaviour to be prescribed by the ostensible or
actual facts. In that sense resistance transcends the objects while
remaining closely in touch with them.
Thus the concept of depth always implies the distinction between
essence and appearance, today more than ever – and this explains
why I have linked my comments on depth to that distinction. That
concept of depth is undoubtedly connected to what I described to
you last time as the speculative element. I believe that without speculation
there is no such thing as depth. The fact that in its absence
philosophy really does degenerate into mere description may well
seem quite plausible to you. This speculative surplus that goes beyond
whatever is the case, beyond mere existence, is the element of freedom
in thought, and because it is, because it alone does stand for freedom,
because it represents the tiny quantum of freedom we possess, it also
represents the happiness of thought. It is the element of freedom
because it is the point at which the expressive need of the subject
breaks through the conventional and canalized ideas in which he
moves, and asserts himself. And this breakthrough of the limits set
on expression from within together with the smashing of the façade
of life in which one happens to find oneself – these two elements may
well be one and the same thing. What I am describing to you is philosophical
depth regarded subjectively – namely, not as the justification
or amelioration of suffering, but as the expression of suffering, some
thing which understands the necessity of suffering in the very act of
expression. [/quote]

That basic illusion, the so-called "façade of life", is the fundamental claim to facticity itself, supported by that principal postulate, of a real distinction between appearance and essence, which justifies factuality at its base. Smashing that façade is what provides to the subject, freedom of thought, happiness of thought, and depth of speculation, to go beyond those conventional limits which formulate "what is the case", facticity.

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

Very creative, MU. We'll see how each of our interpretations survives the onslaught of ND itself.

Reply to Jamal Re: Style -- I can understand him writing the way he does. Where I'm writing out the short version I'm mostly doing the thing where I'm checking myself to make sure I understand the basic message as a sanity check to my understanding. The style makes sense, though, because his justifications for his philosophical moves come from a large number of philosophical concerns and comparisons; the concept simply isn't easy to write about in a philosophically persuasive way.

Also, great rendition of the prologue. I think a lot of my silence comes from unfamiliarity, so your more thorough synopsis is helping me to think through things better.

Re: the game, and cards. The game, I thought, would be what comes after having laid out how one is thinking in the first place. So the application of negative dialectics to its detractors, or towards other subjects other than an exposition of negative dialectics (albeit, it seems to me, a consistent one -- i.e. this reflection comes from a dialectical process)

Quoting Moliere

Re: the game, and cards. The game, I thought, would be what comes after having laid out how one is thinking in the first place. So the application of negative dialectics to its detractors, or towards other subjects other than an exposition of negative dialectics (albeit, it seems to me, a consistent one -- i.e. this reflection comes from a dialectical process)

Yes, that makes sense to me :up:

He is fond of using the "cards on the table" metaphor, I think because he is aware how insistent the demand for initial justification is, particularly a justification for his method, that is, a foundation. Putting his cards on the table is openly saying look, I'm not going to do that; you'll have to wait for the justifications.

So what he is eager to get across is that there is so much more to (his) philosophy than this concessional starting point: okay, I can show you my cards if you insist—not that they will tell you anything—but let's play the game.

Quoting Metaphysician Undercover

That basic illusion, the so-called "façade of life", is the fundamental claim to facticity itself, supported by that principal postulate, of a real distinction between appearance and essence, which justifies factuality at its base. Smashing that façade is what provides to the subject, freedom of thought, happiness of thought, and depth of speculation, to go beyond those conventional limits which formulate "what is the case", facticity.

:up: Essence is the unchanging core of an object, the idea. Appearance is the transient expression of the core, alive in time, like music, unfolding out of itself. Any object is the dynamic tension between the two. We do move in a domain of ideas, but if we let those become concrete to us, it's like we're living in a dictionary. Life won't tolerate that for long.

ND Introduction: on the possibility of philosophy

Philosophy, which once seemed outmoded, remains alive because the moment of its realization was missed. The summary judgement that it had merely interpreted the world is itself crippled by resignation before reality, and becomes a defeatism of reason after the transformation of the world failed. It guarantees no place from which theory as such could be concretely convicted of the anachronism, which then as now it is suspected of. Perhaps the interpretation which promised the transition did not suffice. The moment on which the critique of theory depended is not to be prolonged theoretically. Praxis, delayed for the foreseeable future, is no longer the court of appeals against self-satisfied speculation, but for the most part the pretext under which executives strangulate that critical thought as idle which a transforming praxis most needs.

This first paragraph is basically lecture 5 in an extremely condensed form: (a) the failure of the project to change the world; and (b) the dialectic of theory and practice and the mistake of denigrating theory.

In lecture 5 this almost seemed to be covered in passing, but here it's placed right at the start of the introduction, so we can see that the failure of the project to change the world is central to negative dialectics. As he says in the prologue, he doesn't intend to lay out a foundation, but we can maybe see a central ethical motivation: preventing another Holocaust and keeping alive the possibility of changing the world, though practical concerns, depend on the independence of theory.

In the second paragraph he widens the scope. This is the best line:

The introverted thought-architect lives behind the moon which extroverted technicians have confiscated.

In German, someone who lives behind the moon is someone who is out of touch with reality, or as we might say in English, who has their head in the clouds or is living under a rock. The speculative metaphysician, having turned away from the empirical world and inwards into the world of ideas has not noticed that the world of philosophical wonder that they thought was their exclusive domain has already been requisitioned by the scientists and engineers.

As a result, the conceptual frameworks of the philosophers, which were meant to be deep and opposed to the naivety of empiricism, now look ridiculous or quaint, like bartering or family-run artisan manufacture within a society of corporate industrial capitalism.

This bit is confusing:

The meanwhile completely mismatched relationship (since degraded to a mere topos) between each Spirit and power, strikes the attempt to comprehend this hegemony by those inspired with their own concept of the Spirit with futility. The very will to do so betokens a power-claim which countermands what is to be understood.

@Moliere I think this is what you were asking about here:

Quoting Moliere

The philosopher has been overshadowed by the engineer – the engineer has demonstrated to the world positive cognition just at the moment philosophers turned on their discipline and away from positive cognitions. This to the point that philosophy appears to be a product of commodity society. (What do the last two sentences mean?)

My first thought was that Adorno was mentioning this "power-claim" approvingly: the attempt to comprehend the hegemony is at the same time revolutionary, seeking to overthrow it ("countermand"). But I don't think Adorno would ever mention a power-claim approvingly (the German is Machtanspruch, claim to power or literally power-claim), so I think he is warning that philosophy which tries to comprehend the totality on the basis of outdated concepts like Spirit has a dominating, totalizing tendency, like the hegemony itself. Its impulse is, say, to inherit or take over the hegemony and put Spirit on the throne, as in Hegel's Philosophy of Right. It’s another way of describing idealism’s imposition of concepts and systems, which does violence to the real world rather like capitalism itself does.

The retrogression of philosophy to a narrow scientific field, rendered necessary by the rise of specific scientific fields, is the single most eye-opening expression of its historical fate. Had Kant, in his words, freed himself from the scholastic concept of philosophy into its world-concept, then this has regressed under compulsion to its scholastic concept. Where it confuses this latter with the world- concept, its pretensions degenerate into sheer ludicrousness.

In the "Architectonic of Pure Reason" Kant contrasted two concepts of philosophy, the scholastic concept and the world-concept. The former is narrow, concerned only with building logically consistent systems, and the latter is wide and "cosmopolitan," concerned with the purpose of reason. Under the pressure of science and instrumental reason, philosophy has shrunk back to the scholastic concept, but sometimes still believes that what it's doing aligns with the world-concept and is thus ludicrous. Examples might be Husserl, and in the present day probably analytic metaphysics and object-oriented ontology.

Only the philosophy which dispenses with such naivete is the slightest bit worth thinking further. Its critical self-reflection may not stop however before the highest achievements of its history. It needs to be asked if and whether, following the collapse of the Hegelian one, it would even be possible anymore, just as Kant investigated the possibility of metaphysics after the critique of rationalism. If the Hegelian doctrine of the dialectic represented the impossible goal of showing, with philosophical concepts, that it was equal to the task of what was ultimately heterogenous to such, an account is long overdue of its relationship to dialectics, and why precisely his attempt failed.

So by the end of the last paragraph of "On the possibility of philosophy" he doesn't quite tell us if there is such a possibility, only that we need to work out if there is—by doing it.

Quoting Jamal

Moliere I think this is what you were asking about here:

Yes.

Trying again with some rest and your rendition --

"The meanwhile completely mismatched relationship (since degraded to a mere topos) between each Spirit and power, strikes the attempt to comprehend this hegemony by those inspired with their own concept of the Spirit with futility. The very will to do so betokens a power-claim which countermands what is to be understood."

"meanwhile" contrasts the way the technician and the philosopher operates in a world which glorifies the technician. So the philosopher has turned away from positive cognitions and instead critiques itself while the technicians demonstrate their worth through power -- the mismatch then is between Spirit and Power.

To add a punctuation mark to note how I'm reading this now...

"The meanwhile completely mismatched relationship (since degraded to a mere topos) between each,Spirit and Power, strikes the attempt...."


So the philosophers -- the introverted thought-architects who have a sense of Spirit, are struck with futility at even being able to comprehend the hegemony if the technician.

The desire to comprehend this hegemony indicates a technician's knowledge, which in turn turns one away from Spirit.

***


How's that sound to you?

Quoting Moliere

How's that sound to you?

Good, except I don't think the “power” and “hegemony” that philosophies of Spirit are directed towards or against refer to the technicians per se. Technicians are just agents of the hegemony; the hegemony itself is the totality of industrial capitalism. So these words, “power” and “hegemony”, refer back to “immeasurably expanded society”, i.e., immeasurably developed in terms of industry, administration, control and ideology.

Whether that makes much difference, I’m not sure.

Reply to Jamal :up: That makes sense to me.

Onto paragraph 5! ;)

Introduction: dialectics not a standpoint

The first paragraph stands up for (a kind of) dialectics and leads towards the first introduction of the concept of the non-identical.

Its name ["(negative) dialectics"] says to begin with nothing more than that objects do not vanish into their concept, that these end up in contradiction with the received norm of the adaequatio.

The norm of adaequatio refers to the expected correspondence between concepts and objects. Under this norm, contradictions appear because correspondence is imperfect, i.e., concepts do not exhaust their objects.

The contradiction is not what Hegel’s absolute idealism unavoidably transfigured it into: no Heraclitean essence. It is the index of the untruth of identity, of the vanishing of the conceptual into the concept.

For Hegel as for Heraclitus, contradiction is an essential part of reality. Adorno denies this, saying rather that contradiction is the result of a concept inadequately matching its object. This is a bit puzzling, because doesn't he say in the first or second lecture that contradictions are more than this mismatch, that in fact they inhere in the objects themselves (society really is full of them), not only between objects and concepts? How isn't this an inconsistency?

The answer, I suppose, has to be that the claim that contradictions are inherent in the object is not a claim of metaphysical essence. Instead, it is a claim that contradiction is neither solely on the side of ontology nor just a subjective inadequacy, but is an objective feature of the relation between the two. There is more to be said here but I'll leave it for now.

The second paragraph is fun—incredibly dense and really crucial. It goes from the important admission that identity thinking is fundamental to thought and cannot be completely avoided, to the idea of the non-identical.

The appearance [Schein] of identity dwells however in thinking itself as a pure form from within. To think means to identify.

The impossibility of avoiding identity-thinking is not a pessimistic point, because the pure ideal of bringing heterogeneous things together in unity can be used well or badly. Reading the chapter on identity and non-identity in Brian O'Connor's book Adorno helped me understand this. He makes the distinction between coercive and non-coercive identity-thinking:

[quote=Brian O'Connor, Adorno, p78]In contrast to the coercive attitude – the one Adorno ?nds in modern society and in its philosophy – the non-coercive attitude attempts to close the gap between it and the object, without the authority of preconceived categories.[/quote]

This is backed up in Adorno's next sentence:

Conceptual schemata self-contentedly push aside what thinking wants to comprehend.

So for Adorno, identity thinking expresses a utopian ideal of unity, in which contradictions and antagonisms are reconciled and understanding is reached without domination. But what happens is that conceptual schemes subvert this ideal and turn it into domination and violence (both metaphorically and literally, of course).

O'Connor calls the utopian ideal "rational identity."

[quote=O'Connor]Adorno’s critique of identity thinking, then, is not of ‘rational identity’, but of the coercive attitude which, in the ways we have seen above, force an identity onto the object.[/quote]

This raises the question, why does Adorno spend so much time attacking identity-thinking when in fact he could be positively promoting the good kind of identity thinking? The reason is that bad identity thinking is where we are at—the ideal is unattainable in our present material reality. It follows that negative critique of reality is what we need, not positive affirmation of what can only be a fantasy in present conditions. This negative critique takes the central form of an emphasis on the non-identical, that which resists (coercive) identity-thinking.

But I want to look at that paragraph's opening two sentences again:

The appearance [Schein] of identity dwells however in thinking itself as a pure form from within. To think means to identify.

This word for appearance, Schein, is the same as in appearance/essence, and it similarly suggests illusion. Here, the illusion is that thought has exhausted the object, that mind and world are united completely. But this is an illusion that arises from within, from the way we think: to think means to identify.

He goes on:

The former [the appearance or illusion of identity] is not to be summarily removed, for example by vouchsafing some existent-in-itself outside of the totality of thought-determinations.

In other words, we cannot (or ought not) deal with the mismatch between mind and world by appealing to a noumenal realm beyond concepts, saying it's inevitable that we cannot encompass objects with our concepts since real reality is inaccessible to them anyway.

Instead, we should deal with it by pushing thought to its limits from within:

To the consciousness of the phenomenal appearance [Scheinhaftigkeit] of the conceptual totality there remains nothing left but to break through the appearance [Schein] of total identity: in keeping with its own measure.

In other words, once we see that the conceptual system as a whole only appears to be complete—this is the illusion of total identity—there is only one option, namely to break through this illusion. "In keeping with its own measure" means we do this using the same conceptual means as we use in identity thinking, or in all thinking as such.

Since however this totality is formed according to logic, whose core is constructed from the proposition of the excluded third, everything which does not conform to such, everything qualitatively divergent assumes the signature of the contradiction. The contradiction is the non-identical under the aspect of identity; the primacy of the principle of contradiction in dialectics measures what is heterogenous in unitary thinking. By colliding against its own borders, it reaches beyond itself.

"This totality" refers back to "the conceptual totality" quoted above. It's the conceptual system as a whole, a result of identity thinking and giving the illusion of being the result of rational identity. So he says here that this system is shaped by logic. According to the law of the excluded middle, A or not-A with no third option. But reality is ambivalent and complex, so becomes contradictory according to this logic (or this zealous application of logic). For example, Duchamp's "Fountain" is both art and not art, and this is precisely what it means, so it appears contradictory.

So we can see (if we had forgotten) why contradiction is so central to Adorno. Negatively, it is the site of truth, meaning it is what shows there is something wrong, both with our concepts and with the reality described by them.

In the last paragraph of this section, he makes the conclusion explicit, that dialectics, with its treatment of contradiction, is the kind of philosophy we should be doing:

Dialectics is the consistent consciousness of non-identity. It is not related in advance to a standpoint. Thought is driven, out of its unavoidable insufficiency, its guilt for what it thinks, towards it.

Next, he notes that dialectics is seen as reductive. It "grinds everything indiscriminately in
its mill down into the mere logical form of the contradiction," overlooking the real polyvalence that might be better described just as difference. But Adorno doesn't back down:

That which is differentiated appears as divergent, dissonant, negative, so long as consciousness must push towards unity according to its own formation: so long as it measures that which is not identical with itself, with its claim to the totality. This is what dialectics holds up to the consciousness as the contradiction.

Lastly for now...

Thanks to the immanent nature of consciousness, that which is in contradiction has itself the character of inescapable and catastrophic nomothetism [Gesetzmaessigkeit: law-abiding character]. Identity and contradiction in thinking are welded to one another. The totality of the contradiction is nothing other than the untruth of the total identification, as it is manifested in the latter. Contradiction is non-identity under the bane [Bann] of the law, which also influences the non-identical.

He said before that "contradiction is the non-identical under the aspect of identity" and here says that "contradiction is non-identity under the bane [Bann] of the law," because identity imposes itself as laws, particularly the law of the excluded middle and the law of identity.

So the bane of the law is identity-thinking's tyrannical character, and the non-identical is actually affected by this ("also influences the non-identical"). I often say that the non-identical is that which "escapes" our concepts, but in fact, it suffers under their systems. Or, it is distorted by them and appears as contradiction.

What I haven't addressed so far is how dialectics is not a standpoint and what this has to do with anything. I suppose what it means is that dialectics is not a position, but is rather a process. And rather than taking sides, it tries to understand those sides as aspects of a single system. Maybe I'll come back to this when I have more to say about it.