No, please come up with your own arguments.

Ah, I see. It would have been deleted for containing very little of your own argument—mainly it was just content produced by ChatGPT. So I've deleted it again.

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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.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

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.

Do you mean this one?:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15835/democracy-and-military-success

The last post was 3 months ago, so it’s on page 5 of “All Discussions”.

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. — Moliere

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.

what Adorno is really doing is demonstrating the falsity of the claim that the essence/appearance distinction is real — 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. — Metaphysician Undercover

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).

It's crazy to me that people never read prefaces. There are cases where I don't, when I read the preface afterwards, but I don't skip them completely unless they're obviously just formalities. Otherwise, a preface is often an important part of the work. Reading Don Quixote without the preface is not advised. Reading Pale Fire but skipping the foreword is a catastrophic error.

Wow.

Excellent work!

It shares concerns with a recent discussion in the Negative Dialectics reading group, about Adorno's claim that human beings were "becoming ideology," by which he meant that subjectivity was becoming no more than a construct of commodification and the culture industry. In that discussion I also happened to mention Hans-Georg Moeller's theory of profilicity, which is centrally based on Niklas Luhmann's systems theory.

I hope to come back and say something more interesting.

There will be discussions in those threads, and you won't be able to see them.

They cover a wide range of philosophical areas so you could just pretend lots of high quality OPs suddenly appeared at the same time. The idea that they might overwhelm the front page only applies if they're on the same topic (or if they're not philosophy, like the fiction competitions).

Go to the category, "Phil. writing challenge - June 2025", scroll to the bottom, click on the eye. I urge you not to do it though, because I think those essays will produce some of the best discussions we've had for a long time, and you'll miss them all.

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:

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. — 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). — Metaphysician Undercover

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.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

This seems to be a good way to think about it.

I wonder what you think of the following quotation from his sociology lectures, a year or two later than the LND:

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. — Introduction to Sociology p38

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.

@Metaphysician Undercover

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. — Jamal

I'll try again.

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. — p107

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).

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.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

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.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

It doesn't follow that he's promoting metaphysical speculation in the sense he is using the term. — Jamal

How can you deny this? It is the conclusion of the lecture. He promotes "depth", and speculation is depth. — Metaphysician Undercover

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.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

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).

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". — Metaphysician Undercover

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.

Good morning MU.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh right. Well, I disagree with that too, but it's less important so I'll leave it there. :grin:

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

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.

Then what meaning do you give to the following? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see any conflict.

Is he saying that the essential motif of philosophy, which takes the distinction between essence and appearance as real, is a mistaken motif? — Metaphysician Undercover

No. It doesn't follow that he's promoting metaphysical speculation in the sense he is using the term.

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". — Metaphysician Undercover

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.

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? — Pussycat

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.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

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:

subjective modes of behaviour in modern societies are dependent on objective social structures — p100

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).

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

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.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

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:

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 ... — p105

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.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

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:

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.

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.

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.

The blind leading the blind? :wink:

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" — Moliere

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.

There we go. If that sounds right I think it all clicked for me finally. — Moliere

Yes, sounds right. Although Adorno would no doubt caution you against being satisfied with anything clicking into place.

I think expressions of elitism automatically incur some kind of disdain from me — Moliere

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.

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.

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. — Moliere

I know what you mean about “bleating,” but with Adorno it definitely isn't disdain for the herd, at least not in this case:

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. — p107

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.

I think I can get used to it too. And I prefer accuracy to readability. — Moliere

Yes, me too.

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. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't understand this interpretation of ideology as essence, since it undermines his whole point about breaking through the facade:

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. — p100

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)

This makes the actions of resistance, assigned to the philosopher, non essential, therefore not-necessary, and free in that sense. — Metaphysician Undercover

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.

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'. — Metaphysician Undercover

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.

Don't worry, I'm probably wrong.

What 'that list' are you referring to here? — unimportant

The one I linked to earlier:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CriticalTheory/comments/1h7l2qk/good_leftist_critiques_of_identity_politicswokeism/

I don't think you would read that in any of the canon texts. — unimportant

Doesn't seem very objectionable to me. I'd make a couple of minor changes but I think it's basically right. It is not as it stands an endorsement of identity politics.

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 — Moliere

That doesn't seem all that far from his view actually.

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)

No, theory is great! It's the practical stuff that's boring.

While an exciting idea, anarchism in practice is, well, boring. Far from what window-smashing insurrectionists are doing, it mostly takes the form of an extremely slow-moving and highly rule-bound process of collective deliberation. Anarchy, paradoxically, means more rules, not fewer, and more collective responsibility, not less. — David Flood

:yawn: :wink:

I think Zizek once (probably more than once) complained about people who advocate direct democracy, saying he would rather write books and watch movies than discuss who's going to collect the bins next week.

Are there any bulwarks on the contemporary Left that are seeing through this? — unimportant

Well, that list on Reddit is made up mostly of leftist thinkers, so there's a fairly strong contingent. Zizek is another prominent leftist critic of wokeism.

But if you're asking if any left-wing groups, movements, parties etc., take a stand against identity politics, I don't know off the top of my head. I'm completely out of the loop. I guess the Communist Party of the Russian Federation doesn't count :grin:

Identity politics appears to have polluted all these so called far left movements.

Is it not a product of capitalist thinking? I am reminded of the old term of spiritual materialism for religious epithets. This could be called identity materialism and a by product of the rot of capitalism. — unimportant

Indeed, there are leftist critiques of identity politics that make similar points, tying it to neoliberalism. One example:

Remember when we were supposed to celebrate the first black president, even though he disappointed the hopes of every progressive who campaigned for him? Remember when supporters of Bernie Sanders were relentlessly tarred as sexist (and racist, somehow) for opposing Hillary Clinton?

This style of politics continued to define liberalism during the Donald Trump administration. While women lost abortion rights and right-wing men gained power, liberals cheered the spectacle of prominent liberal men — mostly in media and cultural institutions — losing their jobs for sexual harassment. Land acknowledgments became prevalent in corporate and academic settings, even as the construction of pipelines on indigenous lands continued apace. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder by the police, many were disappointed by how little changed for poor and working-class black Americans: the most tangible outcome of the widespread street protests of 2020 was that corporate America put more black people on its boards.

This was neoliberal identity politics, an elite discourse that centered identities as a way of undermining a robust, effective class politics. Of course, race, gender, and sexuality matter and are salient political concepts in the fight for human freedom. But elites used neoliberal identity politics to undermine broad human solidarities, divide the Left, and advance policies that benefited only the 1 percent. Because bigotry is still a real problem, many good progressives would fall for it every time. — Liza Featherstone

If that’s too shallow, I found some good stuff listed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/CriticalTheory/comments/1h7l2qk/good_leftist_critiques_of_identity_politicswokeism/

EDIT: Come to think of it, your mention of religion reminds me of Hans-Georg Moeller's view that "wokeism" is a "civil religion". His YouTube channel is pretty good. (He definitely comes out of the tradition of left-wing philosophy, btw)

If I can't dance, it's not my revolution — BC

It's a good line. I hadn't heard it before. And it's good to set against the impression that anarchism is ... kinda boring.

A couple of other things I found interesting in lecture 10:

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. — p106-107

As a deracinated, debased subject myself, I resemble that remark.

I like his attitude to happiness:

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. — p104

The idea that happiness is shallow is itself shallow.

In arguing that the great Impressionists were superior to self-consciously metaphysical painters:

you will perceive something like a certain absence of sensuous happiness, a certain melancholy of sensuous happiness arising out of the picture before you ... — p105

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:

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. — p108

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:

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. — Minima Moralia 38

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:

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. — Minima Morali 72

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.

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. — Moliere

Yes, good point. Preserving "essence" importantly traces his use of the legacy of Hegel and Marx.

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". — Moliere

You have a talent for concision. :up:

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". — Metaphysician Undercover

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:

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. — p100

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].

So, human beings are ideology. Further, I think he says that this ideology needs to be abolished, because it is an "inhumanity". — Metaphysician Undercover

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:

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 ... — p101

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.