Notes on
the Introduction to Adorno, T
(1973) Negative Dialectics,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
I am fully aware of the
stupidity of what I am about to try to do. No-one summarises Adorno
-- the text deliberately resists such a vulgar effort. You are
supposed to read Adorno and begin a process of thought and
self-reflection, using the text and its poetry as a kind of
stimulus. God knows why I am even attempting a summary here. I
suppose I hope it might persuade or encourage you to have a look
yourself one day. If you do, you are in for a severe challenge -- if
the English doesn't put you off , the frequent use of Latin or Greek
will. Is it worth it in the end -- only you can
tell.
Meanwhile, let us forget
our philosophical reservations and get on with it. This is what I
think some of it might mean...
'The name of dialectics says no
more, to begin with, than that objects do not go into their concepts
without leaving a remainder, that they come to contradict the
traditional norm of adequacy' (page 5). This and
other contradictions are not essential ones, however. They are used
simply to indicate the untruth of identity – ‘contradiction’ means
non-identity. There is so much pressure towards identity, and
striving for it that we need the dialectic and negativity. In a way,
however, this is a familiar feature of our own consciousness --
first there is a drive towards identity, then a recognition of its
impossibility. However, this is not just a ‘cogitative law: It is
real' (page 6).
We need to emphasise the
particular and the substantive rather than the universal and
conceptual. This is the reversal of most philosophy, of course. Even
Husserl’s conception of essences were still somehow intuited from
particulars, just like the old universal concepts, still grounded in
subjectivity, and thus still reductionist: concepts remain as
subjective reconciliations with objectivity. We need to go beyond
such concepts, but this causes problems because you can only ever do
this with new concepts. However, this supply of new concepts
indicates an interesting presupposition -- that there must be some
totality. However, this is not simply a matter of adding concepts
together. There is a necessary antagonism between reality and
thought, and this is the object of genuine mental experience. Any
philosophy which tries to overcome such antagonism is flawed, and
this includes idealist subjectivism and social objectivism. There is
always an ineffable portion of reality (page
11).
There can be no philosophy
without concepts. Even empiricism is forced to use them, and on the
other hand the most 'pure' concepts have a non-conceptual
referent (turning on the control of
nature). Concepts only seem
independent [of political and historical
processes], and this apparent independence runs the risk of turning
into fetishism. We need to dereify (page 12), that is to recapture
the relations between concepts and the non-conceptual whole which
constitutes them. Reflection is needed to do this, a process of
'disenchantment of the concept' [ a ref to Weber
here].
We need to
immerse ourselves in heterogeneity, relinquishing both our sense of
self and any attempt to confine reality to our concepts.
We should seek infinity rather than codification, and a
diversity for objects, rather than seeing them as 'a mirror in which
to re-read [themselves]' (page
13). We need to attempt a full experience of reality, rather than
one mediated through existing categories. Philosophical categories
should be seen only as a method, as a technology, rather as in
Deweyian pragmatism [irony here]. They should never be
dominant: we should play with them instead. Philosophy therefore
resembles art in its cogency and playfulness, but it is not an
imitation of art: it is not intuitive and it does not yearn for
reconciliation [between subject and object, thought and reality]
only to fail (page 15). Philosophy is
speculative, and should not stick to safe ground. It should be
modest rather than attempt to be profound. Philosophical speculation
is a main source of resistance to the status quo, a barrier erected
by power.
Why is presentation [including
writing style?] so important? Identity thinking
aims at mimesis, and it is our duty to prevent subjective experience
from degenerating into a mere world view or science. Negativity
keeps philosophy free from 'both the positivity of science and the
contingency of dilettantism' (page 19). Thought
is negation, and resistance, and a good deal of effort is actually
needed to positivise it, even though there are tendencies inherent
in thought which lead that way -- [Kantian?] judgment, for example.
Thought can do violence to objects in attempting to synthesise them,
but there is a potential in objects too, and philosophy should
expose this, and thus hope to restore the damage done by
objectification.
The aim or telos of philosophy is
anti-systemic, enshrining a 'freedom to interpret phenomena with
which it joins unarmed issue' (page 20).[is
Adorno arguing for some kind of value free philosophy here? Nothing
as silly, probably-- an open exploratory encounter instead?].
‘System' is important as a concept to grasp how heterogeneous
things are rendered alike in advanced capitalism, and in this sense
the notion of system does order things in order to get on with
interpretation. However, a system can also be a scholar's substitute
for power (page 20). This reflects on the success
of maths and science.
Initially, bourgeois reason
smashes feudalism, but it then encounters chaos, and reason must be
used conservatively, against emancipation. Reason escapes even that
goal eventually, and becomes a thing in itself, something apparently
natural, apparently coterminous with thought itself.
[This is one example of a more general figure in Adorno’s
work -- the ‘dialectic of genesis and validity', page 21]. Such
reason tries to overcome its inherent antinomies by eliminating all
qualitative referents -- but then it loses its object. In this way,
identity prevails and objectivity, in the sense of adequacy to the
object, is lost too. Mere pedantic classifications, of axioms and
definitions and so on, ensue: 'pedantry [is] the main feature of the
ontology of the bourgeois spirit' (page 22). Such
elaborations, classifications and systematisations serve as a
precaution against doubt, and express a paranoid zeal to incorporate
everything.
The idea of a system turns into
a matter of control. The rage against the victim of such control is
a projection of our own drives and fears. Human beings need reason
and must rationalise [if they cannot do the real
thing]. Thus ingenious ways are found to denounce the other as
evil [presumably, Nazi anti-Semitism was the referent
here?] There is an equivalent when we consider social processes too.
The drive towards systems leads to a bureaucratic administration of
advanced capitalism, but this can never control reality and thus
crises of the system are produced [which are
rationalised as threats from outsiders again?]. Such systems here
are engaged in a fruitless quest for some Archimedian point [outside
the social formation itself] at which opposites can be unified or
reconciled. This is nonsense, but is better than mere
classifications, which involve a completely naive view of concepts
as totally equal to the objects.
Idealism also features antinomies. Thought
appears capable of synthesising everything, having infinite
applicability, and leaving nothing outside the realm of ideas. Yet
the very idea of a system implies a boundary, beyond which thought
stops thinking. Again, there is an echo of bourgeois society here,
which colonises everything, but once totality is achieved bourgeois
society must end [because it depends on some
non-bourgeois elements to dominate and control and to define itself
against?]. Both systems exhibit constant tension between dynamism
and stasis. Idealist systems, like Hegel's, are forced into some
unhappy compromise -- they appear dynamic, but in reality 'each
single definition in [Hegel's system] was already preconceived', and
each phenomenon is always and only just ‘a case’ to its
concept (page 27). [This
reminds me very much of a discussion on ideology by Althusser [see file], which stresses the 'mirror-like'
nature of ideology, where concepts can only reflect objects and
vice-versa. Ironically, the concept of the social formation in the
work of Althusser and Balibar was seen in the same way, as a mere
'combinatory', reflecting a limited number of moves instead of
offering a proper discovery of history]. By contrast, negation is
vital if we are to grasp the particulars, the bits which transcend
the system (page 28). This is a way to break out
of metaphysics, even if it involves an inconceivable
totality.
Immersion in particularity leads to the
freedom to break the hold of the object, without having to back into
abstract concepts. We need a thought model to guide us here --
and negative dialectics is 'an ensemble of analyses of thought
models' (page 29). Philosophy does need to
intervene, to attribute to objects 'what is waiting in the objects
themselves.… to speak'. It is like the project of the early
Encyclopaedists, before they were harnessed to institutional reason
and forced to systematise; it is like mundane experience before it
becomes academicised; it is like the activities of the
[amateur] homme des lettres, before being specialised.
It is a matter of argument, not the application of a technique
[or method], 'which robots can learn and copy'
(page 30). [As an example of how important
it is not to be stuck by having to apply a approach consistently,
Adorno argues that Idealism would be improved by combining it with
naive empiricism: according to some critics, of course, such a
combination arises anyway, at the moment at which idealism wants to
apply itself to actual social situations]. Theory should not be used
as some sort of discipline with which to constrain experience.
Indeed non-identity should lead to negativity, a celebration of the
'abundance of ways [in which a subject can] react'
(page 31). Indeed, critical self-reflection [resisting
identity thinking] is crucial. In this way, theory and experience
should be allowed to interact -- the critics of unregulated
experience and systematic theory have something in
common.
Would such philosophising be groundless, or
vertiginous? These are already features of modern culture,
recognised as such in poetry for example [and these days, in
post-modernist critique]. The bureaucratisation of thought is so
widespread that anything else seems to threaten us with vertigo.
Philosophy must resist the choice between these given alternatives,
both of which involve coercion and a coarsening of
consciousness.
A desire for system and order in philosophy
comes from the same impulse as does magic [a theme developed in the
contributions to the Positivist Dispute -- see file]. An emphasis on the
framework or on categories misses the whole point of content. As a
result, philosophy cannot be easily expounded [or taught or reduced
to some nice simple points]. The refusal to categorise is a
liberation of philosophy from idealism, especially Hegel's, and a
rejection of identity thinking, including an identitarian ontology.
Systems of 'first philosophy' can save themselves from accusations
of groundlessness, but only by admitting that the primitive terms
used are not secure, or at least not immediately, not until the
final step is taken. [This seems to be a version of the slightly
more familiar post-modernist critique of foundationalism]. The truth
is fragile, and it can easily be lost rather than guaranteed by a
system: 'no unreflective banality can remain true'
(page 35). The point is still to try to grasp the truth, but
there is no way to it through some agreed banality as the base.
[That is, no simple agreed first step, or basic agreement about
facts].
Dialectics also opposes relativism --'the
twin of absolutism' (page 34). Relativism is to
be criticised by recognising it as a limited form of consciousness,
which began as bourgeois individualism (page
36). [It also permits what Adorno has called
'repressive egalitarianism', the insistence that every opinion is as
good as any other. Marcuse has a similar concept--'malicious
egalitarianism'-- where the requirement that everyone must be
treated equally means that no inequalities can be
rectified]. The smug insistence that all thought
must be conditioned by material factors 'disdains' the mind and its
ability to transcend such factors. It implies that material things
are the only ones that matter, and is thus reductionist. It is also
an abstraction, indifferent to the actual contents of thought
[some of which might be materially conditioned, and others
might not be]. It also fails to grasp how a
social context might produce both material conditions and thought:
'Knowledge of the whole makes perspectives binding'
(page 37), just as the so-called 'laws' of
the economic system act as a kind of background to
'individual' decisions. Finally, and
paradoxically, relativism itself 'obeys the objective law of
social production under private ownership' (page 37),
although it is not self reflective enough to understand this. A
definite anti-intellectualism accompanies relativism, based on fear
that Reason, once liberated, would break the entire system, hence
reason must be limited. In this sense, relativism is always
reactionary, since sophists can always be found to serve the 'more
powerful interests'' (page 37). [This whole
paragraph advances some criticisms of great interest to current
debates about ‘post-modernism’, of course, and summarises quite
nicely most of those made more recently by Habermas – see Dews
1987).
Excessive abstraction,
involving a reduction to general concepts, loses concreteness, and
thus staves off opposition to the system
(directed principally at Hegel -- this is a departure from
other Critical Theorists, principally Marcuse, who thought the
Hegelian scheme might still serve to guide CT --see file), (pages
37-39). The same goes with philosophies trying to develop categories
based on originary or primary experience, as does Phenomenology --
these categories just seem to be somehow immediate. Both primary
experience and abstract concepts are better seen as poles or
moments [in a dialectical process]. Apparent
invariants, 'peeled out' from variables [and this
curious phrase is also found in Marx's Grundrisse],
are derived only from substances which happen to be at hand and
which will change. However, this is disguised, as invariants become
'stabilised in transcendence, they become ideology'
(page 40). Ideology is a form of identity thinking 'justified
by the world' (page 40).
Experience needs more subjectivity,
unconstrained, and not restricted to those few who possess some
agreed method [the real elitists?]. Such lack of
constraint is not available to all, however -- some remained
crippled by mass culture (page 41). Only a stroke of
luck keeps some out of this crippling force. They might become
intellectuals, able to speak on behalf of the rest. However, direct
communication between intellectuals and others is not necessarily
possible --'the truth is objective not plausible'
(page 42). Further, no one can fully grasp it. There is no
reason for intellectuals to bask in some elitist pride, since all of
us are contaminated 'by existence and ultimately by the class
relationship'. Insights arise as ‘chances’, the relations between
the individual and universal are 'accidental'
(page 42). Further there is a danger of attempting to pursue
a method or system --a system ‘promises the liberation of the
individual, but only if he succumbs to it' (page
42).[exactly what Althusser is famous for saying, of course -- see file].
Science eliminates qualities. Rationality
has become a matter of quantification. Abstraction triumphs over
discrimination. However, discrimination is needed first, before
unification into higher orders can proceed. This is hidden under one
aspect of quantification, the reduction of the individual knower to
a 'logical universal'. This is assisted by the
division of labour [into mental and manual? Into academic
specialism?] (page 44). Anything qualitative is
taboo, and dismissed as mere subjectivity. We need discrimination
now to find it what it is that escapes the concept in the object,
instead of the quantified version of discrimination. This turns into
a matter of classifying, the differences between species, for
example, but on reflection the basis for this must be irrational and
accidental -- another example of a kind of
subjective decisionism before science can take place. Such
quantifiable discrimination leads to individuals becoming
'unconsciously imitative’ (page 46). Subjectivity
does need correction, but by self-reflection, not by imposing
uniformity.
The social totality is what links the
subject and object as something substantive. Idealism simply
misunderstands this, and sees the links between subject and object
as direct: the subject masters or contains the object in thought.
This language is not accidental, and shows that 'coercion is
inherent in philosophy'. Of course some form of discipline is
needed, to prevent regression into mere licence, but philosophy
should be adequate to the substantive issue, and the idealist turn
shows that it isn't .
Existentialism sets out to be critical of
the fetishism of philosophy. There are political variants belonging
to both left and right, according to how the underlying decisionism
is conceived. Thus Sartre saw decisionism as the last refuge of the
authentic against the tyranny of the party or bureaucracy. Making a
decision therefore became absolute for Sartre, and the social
conditions in which it took place were seen as merely settings.
However, authentic, heroic decisions are never really possible,
since social constraints are always too much. The whole position
overstresses subjectivity as the source of substantial being.
Inevitably, this leads to a need to borrow back concepts from other
sciences [this is always needed with formal sciences
-- the substance returns behind philosophy’s back, as Adorno
puts it. Elsewhere, he refers to this as the 'return of the
repressed'].This is a example of the obsessions which dog abstract
and formal systems. The concept 'Man' , as in Lukacs, falls into the
same difficulty: this concept is ‘ideological because its pure form
dictates the invariant of the possible answer, even if the
invariant [claims to be something dynamic
like]... historicity' (page 51). [What I think
this means is that abstract philosophies using abstract concepts
like 'Being', or 'Man' end in circularity, positing certain
characteristics of the concept in the first place, only to
'discover’ them at the end of the analysis. The same point is made
against Hegel's concepts in the section above. Adorno uses another
one of his suggestive, but gnomic, quotes to reinforce this point:
'They illustrate Existenz the concept by Existenz the
condition' (page 51).]
Language shows the possibilities of breaking
out of these limits to cognition. [This leads to some remarks about
the presentation of philosophy, a defence for deliberately elusive
language. True to form, it relies heavily on
Greek terms at crucial moments!] To dissolve fetishised cognition,
one needs to read things as a 'text of their becoming', a process
where idealist and materialist dialectics concur. This is quite
unlike the usual view: Idealism sees the process of becoming as an
indication of the concept, but materialism sees only the untruth of
concepts and of the apparent immediacy. We can only stress
possibilities, and these are not easily expressed: whenever we use
words we risk identity thinking. We need to think in terms of
describing ‘constellations’, rather than simple objects which can be
captured by single words or concepts.
Philosophy is now positivised and
ahistorical. [In Nazi Germany, and perhaps in modern
popular culture?] history has become superstition. But a sense of
history and tradition is vital to philosophy: there simply is no
chance of being able to start again from some new
objectification [or foundation?]
(page 54). All knowledge is unconscious remembrance, usually
mistakenly located in the activities of the synthesising ego, but
found really in cultural tradition.
Philosophy depends on texts, so it is a
linguistic activity not a scientific method. It is fashionable now
to condemn rhetoric, but it finds its expression only in [is
essential to?] language. It has been corrupted by its use for
persuasive purposes, and there has been an attempt to abolish it,
discipline it in the name of logic, the Enlightenment, or scientism.
Dialectics fully embraces the importance of language in
thought [including rhetoric?] and wants to
resuscitate the link between philosophy and language in its full
sense, rather than replacing it with a special language
[an argument continued against positivism in the
Positivist Dispute]. A dialectical approach uses rhetoric to
get at the crucial issue of consent, to pursue unconstrained
argument. It may be Utopian, but it helps to see Utopia as blocked
off by possibilities rather than by the immediate reality
itself [as some kind of insurmountable natural
obstacle?].
In conclusion, we need to celebrate the
negative as essential to philosophy and critique. The usual view
insists that proper theory is one which helps us explain immediate
existing reality, but Adorno’s view is expressed in opposition, and
in a characteristically poetic form: thought that is as far away
from reality as possible is closest to 'the inextinguishable
colour'. Philosophy is the 'prism in which this colour is
caught'. (page 57).
References
Adorno T (et al)
(eds) (1976) The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology,
London: Heinemann
Dews P (1987) Logics of
Disintegration. Post-Structuralist Thought and the Claims of
Critical Theory, London:
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