Liberalism took itself to be a universal political philosophy which ought to rule, and the managed state with markets has fulfilled this vision -- capitalism is everywhere enforced by a giant web of rules around property, and everything is owned: including us.

So what is substantive about the subject becomes this ability to function rather than to be. It's one's relationship to the wider liberal order that gives people worth, and thereby shapes their subjectivity to the point that who we are doesn't matter as much as how much we own. — Moliere

Yes, however liberalism didn't start out to be like what it has become. I mean, it promised quite different things than those it actually delivered. It's like those funny internet memes of "what I ordered vs what I got". Adorno is playing constantly with this formula. Then, the philosopher's task would be to find out exactly why and how it failed.

So you are connecting the functional concept to the managerial? I guess so, we can say it is all about efficiency, productivity these days.

But let us forget about Heidegger, categories and such, for a brief moment, to focus on the problem at hand, the one Adorno is referring to above, which is not something that Heidegger created, but inherited.

...functional concepts really have come more and more to repress substantive concepts, as once in epistemology. Society has become the total functional context which liberalism once thought it was; what is, is relative to what is other, irrelevant in itself. — Adorno

So nowadays if someone doesn't produce enough, is not good at their job, then they are considered of little worth. In a society where self-worth is solely judged by role, function and/or performance, subjects have no other way to produce their subjectivity. This, I take what Adorno means with the functional concept repressing the substantive one. The subject's functional concept erasing and pushing back the subject's substance.

But why the reference to epistemology? When did this occur, when did it start in epistemology?

And why the reference to liberalism? What did liberalism once think it was?

I have yet to think about these.

Better, I think, but can you explain this bit?

.. functional concepts really have come more and more to repress substantive concepts — Adorno

So he is critical of Heidegger's project but sees how the subject is becoming lost in a series of functional, rather than substantive categories -- into the liberal managed state. — Moliere

Aargh, you left me high and dry! But seriously, no worries!

What, unconvinced of your own conclusion? :smile:

The only error I see is this thing with the categories.

Is it cryptic? I reach for it because he referenced the amphiboly and the paralogisms earlier. It seems on-point to me because Kant and Heidegger both address "the ontological need" in different ways, and Adorno is mentioning Kant in this text at least. What to do with that? — Moliere

There is no mention from Adorno here that Kant addressed "the ontological need.

Adorno is simply using Kant to reject Heidegger's claims: "An ontology of Being was thoroughly and penetratingly shown to be impossible by Kant, a dogmatic hypostases, what on earth is Heidegger blabbering about? He should have at least made an effort to respond to Kant's critique!"

My take away from going over the amphiboly and paralogisms is that Kant's philosophy directly stops Heidegger's philosophy from lifting off the ground because it denies knowledge of the subject, whereas Heidegger's fundamental ontology is based upon that Being which I am, Dasein -- a sort of knowledge of the subject. — Moliere

Exactly! This is Adorno's charge against Heidegger.

I meant Heidegger's philosophy isn't exactly pre-critical, according to Adorno, but mistaken in its response to the critical turn. Adorno seems to recognize that Heidegger is attempting to get beyond the Kantian denial of metaphysics, at least, so I'd hesitate to call Heidegger's philosophy of fundamental ontology as pre-critical. — Moliere

Well, I said that (as always, according to Adorno) Heidegger's philosophy of fundamental ontology is pre-critical, and gave the reasons for my believing this is so, based on the "Affirmative Character" section. But it is actually much worse than that, it is regressive, dogmatic, archaistic, myth. Have a quick read-through the second next section titled "Being, Subject, Object". But within the current section, we should have been alerted to dogma, when Adorno speaks of "dogmatic hypostases" and "cult".

I read your quote there as: "In those categories which fundamental ontology owes its resonance" is referring to Kant's categories. So fundamental ontology owes its resonance to Kant's categories. And because of that Heidegger's fundamental ontology either denies the category or sublimates the category into his wider project, thereby removing Kant's critique of the project of metaphysics (unwelcome confrontations). — Moliere

I'd never thought of that, that the aforementioned categories would refer to Kant's and not Heidegger's own. I think it would be really cryptic of Adorno to mix two different projects into one, without explicitly saying so, and therefore I do not agree. Besides, Heidegger's fundamental ontology has its own categories, what does it needs Kant's for?

So, simplifying, Kant's categories is to be read how much they are the imprints of something missing and not produced even though they complement Heidegger's project. I.e. there is something beyond those categories, namely Being. Or even moreso, the very ability to articulate the meaning of the question "What is the meaning of being?"

Roughly I'm reading this as Adorno reading Heidegger's reading/critique/subsumption of Kant. — Moliere

I think that you are over-thinking it, and over-complicating things, while it is simple. No matter what the problematic with Kant's categories is, they are not the focus here. Heidegger illegitimately moves past Kant, Kant is not even his stepping stone, just an obstacle that he bypasses out of whim, there is nothing of Kant in Heidegger, nothing at all, not even subsumption.

But Heidegger is an unapologetic fascist to the point that he turned against his mentor in favor of the Nazi party, in a way not even allowing Husserl to reply to Nazi "thought". — Moliere

I am not well-read on the matter, but from what I've heard, Heidegger's treatment of Husserl wasn't right.

I'm not sure Heidegger is pre-critical, tho, at least according to Adorno. — Moliere

I didn't say that Heidegger is pre-critical, but that his philosophy of fundamental ontology is:

In those categories to which fundamental ontology owes its resonance and which they for that reason either deny or so sublimate, that they can no longer give rise to unwelcome confrontations, is to be read how much they are the imprints of something missing and not produced, however much they are its complementary ideology. — Adorno

I read "unwelcome confrontations" as "conflict" or "critique". Then, the categories of fundamental ontology (Being, Dasein, Present-at-hand, Ready-at-hand, Care, Destiny etc), either do not (deny) confront the ontology, or integrate into (sublimate) it. In fact, these categories give the ontology its power. But, Adorno sees deprivation in them, as he treats them negatively, as well as complicity.

He seems to sometimes note that Heidegger is taking a particular path in light of critical philosophy, but subsuming it within his wider project of something that's been missed for all of philosophical history.

Where is he saying this? What's been missing? You mean Being?

rope in: persuade someone to take part in an activity despite their reluctance.

So Heidegger was reluctant to engage critically, but had to make it seem like he was doing critical philosophy, in order to turn Kant's noumenon into a positive ontology. Moreover, he made it foundational and pre-critical, thus barring it from critique, paving the way for acceptance and conformity to the status quo. Well, he didn't like critique very much! :razz:

So there's a sense in which I think he agrees with criticizing Kant, but not in the manner of imputing being as he interprets Heidegger to do. — Moliere

I thought so as well, since Adorno says that Heidegger's reading is legit, and also he himself sees a problem in Kant. However Heidegger only read, but didn't critique.

i am contemplating it now, so I might be mistaken, but my first impression is that you got it wrong.

But first, I will write something that surprised me, but only after I researched it.

The ontological need guarantees so little of what it wishes as the misery of the hungry does of food. However no doubt of such a guarantee plagued a philosophical movement, which could not have foreseen this. Therein was not the least reason it ended up in the untrue affirmative. “The dimming of the world never achieves the light of being.”1 — Adorno - Affirmative Character

He starts by saying that wanting something really bad, doesn't make it happen (against wishful thinking). And then he somehow excuses Heidegger for his short-sightedness. But I didn't much notice the quote of the dimming of the world, until later. When I googled it, I got an AI overview, saying "that humanity's self-inflicted obscurities (like pollution, evil, or spiritual apathy) prevent true understanding or fulfillment (the "light of being"), creating a state where darkness becomes normalized rather than overcome by genuine enlightenment", as well as a link to a gallery exhibition, but not its author. Then I noticed the superscript index 1, only to see:

1. Martin Heidegger, Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens [From the Experience of Thinking], Pfullingen 1954, p.7.

Wow, it's from Heidegger, the man himself! Why on earth is Adorno quoting him? Well, it's because the world's dimming got to him too, plaguing his philosophy. So Adorno used Heidegger's own saying against him.

But anyway, I think your mistake was here:

Kant's effort to theoretically vindicate humanity and being and time as Ur-phenomena does not halt the destiny of resurrected ideas (that are resurrected by Heidegger). Concepts were criticized (by Heidegger) even in especially philosophical areas as Kant's dogmatic hyposteses. Kant's transcendence of the soul in the paralogism chapter is met with the aura of the word Dasein. For Kant's attack on treating the soul as something empirically indeterminable Heidegger employs the question of "being" as originary. — Moliere

It wasn't Kant's efforts but Heidegger's. Concepts were not criticized by Heidegger, but by Kant. In fact, Adorno's charge against Heidegger is that he didn't engage at all critically and philosophically with them, but only ritualistically disposed of Kant's critique.

The way Heidegger overcomes Kant isn't so much to address the critical philosophy as much as to treat him as a sort of fallen philosopher stuck in the present-at-hand. But then this opens the door to questions about what I truly am, the sorts of things Kan'ts philosophy denied knowledge of except as transcendental condition of thought (and thereby empty).

But in spite of the Kantian doctrine that there is no intuition of the self that is a priori and rationalistic Heidegger "ropes in" critical philosophy into his sites by imputing an affirmative character to the philosophy: i.e. it does not escape the question of the meaning of being and the history of metaphysics as presence. — Moliere

Yes, Heidegger, after ignoring Kant's critique like it wasn't there, like it vanished in thin air, conjures up an ontology out of it, out of the unknowledgeable and empty, like you say, transcendental condition of thought.

Adorno sees some merit to the critique, but not enough to say that Heidegger overcame concepts of presence to get at something fundamental through the analysis of the subject, Dasein. Rather, as he stated at the beginning, this is the untrue affirmative philosophy finds itself in. This resembles, to my eye, Kant's definition of a paralogism: — Moliere

I very much doubt that Adorno sees any merit to Heidegger's (non) critique. He most probably was appalled by Heidegger's writings, in both content and form, although I am not sure which one he abhorred the most.

But on a general note, and trying to be as faithful to Adorno as is humanly possible, I think that what he is saying here is that virtually all philosophy before negative dialectics is pre-philosophical.

What is to be insisted on against both is what each tries to conjure up in vain; pace Wittgenstein, to say what cannot be said. The simple contradiction of this demand is that of philosophy itself: it qualifies the latter as dialectics, before it embroils itself in its specific contradictions. The work of philosophical self-reflection consists of working out this paradox. Everything else is signification, post-construction, today as in Hegel’s time pre-philosophical. — Interest of philosophy

Everything else is signification, post-construction,

Following my triptych of Kant, Hegel, Adorno, Kant also said something similar, in his CRP, that "This critique is not a doctrine, but a propaedeutic to any future metaphysics that wishes to appear as a science". Hegel, as if this science has arrived with him: "What raises philosophy to the rank of a science is the exposition of knowledge as a developing process". And Adorno again with the phrase above.

EDIT: oops, I didn't mean to post this, was working on it, pressed the wrong button. Anyway, the comment is to express my worry that maybe our psilosophical knowledge is pretty minimal, like prehistoric. I mean, binded with scientific knowledge, which is great, and continually increasing, philosophical knowledge shares its light. But unbound, as Adorno seems to say, then philosophical knowledge stands naked and afraid.

On the face of it, it would seem right, seeing the state of the world, with all its technological and scientific advancements, but with all else that is happening. I wonder how an alien civilization would judge us, whether they would focus on our scientific knowledge, or on our philosophical.

Yep. Being critical or negative is a necessity, not just an evasion of philosophical responsibilities. — Jamal

Still, and on another note, here, you described roughly how could one make an (affirmative) ontology out of negative dialectics, if they wanted to. In a similar manner, one could make an epistemology, by founding all knowledge on the non-conceptual, making it transcendental ala Kant, the necessary condition of all knowledge and experience: it's because thought and its object never coincide exactly, that there is knowledege and experience. A religion can also be founded on the non-conceptual, revering it as god, with I dunno, Adorno as its prophet. Last but not least, a theory of consciousness, having (secularized) soul as its precursor or Ur-image. It's all there for the taking, or rather for the plucking, or rather for the defiling. This would confirm an on-going suspincion, that very little in this world, if anything at all, is sacred.

But then of course you'd have Adorno spinning in his grave, facepalming: It's incredible, those idiots did it again, they managed to reify negative dialectics! Just look at what they did to my song. But I can't be accused of not trying, I did my best, although clearly, my best wasn't good enough. It never is.

An interesting question, PC. Maybe you could start a dedicated discussion topic. — Jamal

I would certainly love to do that, but I can hardly cope with one topic at the moment. I could, I suppose, start the thread, but then I would be under the compulsion to defend it, or rather to deflect it to where I would think it should go. It would be quite irresponsible of me if I didn't, and as I have many irresponsibilities already, I wouldn't want to add another. And so I have to decline. Besides, I think that it constellates well with other thoughts expressed in this topic. Nevertheless, the topic is philosophical responsibility, the ethics of philosophical thought that is, is it some vacuous or idle claim, or something else, something more.

Yep. Being critical or negative is a necessity, not just an evasion of philosophical responsibilities. — Jamal

Philosophical responsibilities! It's some strange phrase. First time I came across it was some years ago when reading Kant's Prolegomena (to any future metaphysic that can present itself as a science), and I am trying to wrap my head around it ever since. Here is what was said:

Reason bases an assertion on a universally admitted principle, and infers the exactly opposite assertion, with the greatest correctness of argument, from another principle that is equally accepted. That’s what actually does happen in our present case of the four natural Ideas of reason, from which arise four assertions and four counter-assertions, each validly derived from universally accepted principles, revealing the dialectical illusion of pure reason in the use of these principles—an illusion that would otherwise have stayed hidden for ever. So this is a decisive experiment, which must necessarily reveal to us any error lying hidden in the presuppositions of reason.*(10)

* I should therefore like the critical reader ·of the Critique of Pure Reason· to attend especially to this antinomy of pure reason, because nature itself seems to have arranged it to pull reason up short in its bold claims, and to force it to look into itself. I take responsibility for every proof I have given for the thesis as well as for the antithesis, and thereby promise to show the certainty of the inevitable antinomy of reason. If this curious phenomenon ·of the ‘proofs’ of both P and not-P· leads you to go back to examine the presupposition on which it is based, you will feel yourself obliged to join me in inquiring more deeply into the ultimate basis of all knowledge of pure reason. Contradictory propositions can’t both be false unless they both involve some self-contradictory concept.·And then they can both be false·. — Kant - prolegomena (52b)

Well, it seems that memory didn't serve me right, and Kant actually spoke of responsibility, instead of philosophical responsibility, but at the time I thought of "philosophical" as implicit, and it stayed within me ever since.

So Kant was driven to reject the presuppositions of reason, when arriving at a contradiction involving those, referring to a dialectical illusion. Hegel later said that this was not an illusion at all, but a moment in the dialectic, that needed development, leading to a synthesis. And now Adorno challenges this synthesis, adding that it was precisely what lead us into our current predicament and dire straits, forms of social domination.

And so, what are we to make of this concept of philosophical responsibility?

If you're interested, there's a book of his 1965 lectures on metaphysics, which seems to be mainly about Aristotle: Metaphysics: Concept and Problems. — Jamal

This is quite nice, more ... humane than ND, meaning Adorno there speaks like a normal person, unlike the convoluting language employed in his theoretical work, I can actually understand him on first reading!

The trouble, from your point of view, will be that refuses to develop this into a positive ontology, instead using it as part of a critical move to reveal the shortcomings of all ontology ever attempted. — Jamal

Do you think it is because he only wants to be critical that he doesn't develop his philosophy into an ontology and epistemology? Wouldn't the development be ideological, or lead back to ideology via reification?

I don't think so. At the end of the quoted passage he is dismissing claims that Hegel's dialectics can properly be called "negative". And, at the beginning, he distinguishes a "succinct" sense from a "general" sense. I believe that Adorno is moving toward the general sense. Look at this quote from "Rhetoric": — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see how he is dismissing at the end of the quoted passage, quite the opposite, care to explain? Also, I believe Adorno is dismissing both the "succinct" sense and the "general sense", the latter being far too broad for Adorno.

I take your quote from "Rhetoric" to recover dia-lectics literal meaning, in order to save rhetoric, and nothing more.

This is clearly not the case. Read "Rhetoric" thoroughly. This is the final paragraph. — Metaphysician Undercover

I read it, and I don't see how it relates to what the two of us have been talking about. Unless ... unless you would think that somehow utopia links to the polyvalence of experience?? After all, polyvalence implies a colorful experience, and so philosophy, as prism, captures life's richness of lived experience. Is this what it is you are saying?

But this is what one would expect, since negative dialectics is the opposite of hegelian dialectics, right? — Pussycat


No. The paragraph you provided explains why this is not the case. — Metaphysician Undercover

Clearly. I was only following what you said:

I think that negative dialectics, being the negative to Hegelian dialectics, recognizes the importance of the opposite, noncontradiction, as the foundation for this polyvalence. That is the richness of lived experience which escapes conceptualization when conceptualization is bounded by contradiction. — "Metaphysician

I couldn't disagree more. Not only does Adorno not say that negative dialectics is the negative to Hegelian dialects, but.. Wait, where exactly in the text does he say all this? That negative dialectics recognizes the importance of noncontradiction, being the foundation of the polyvalence?? That there is a richness of lived experience which escapes conceptualization when conceptualization is bounded by contradiction??? This is very sloppy...

I can't say that I understand what you are asking. If X infuriates you, then it is right that you object to it. Don't you agree? The question of whether or not X is objectively right, and whether you ought to object to X by some third party principles, is not relevant. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think it is more like he is stating this as an observation. The infuriation is what it is, as the way Adorno interprets the situation, whether or not it is right or correct for them to be infuriated is not being discussed.

This is one thing I've noticed about Adorno, he seldom, if ever makes judgements of good or correct. He judges nonidentical, false, and things like that, but not right, or correct, and things like that. I assume that's a feature of negative dialectics. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, Adorno doesn't interpret the situation, but I would think that whenever he brings up mainstream opinion, that he doesn't think very highly of it. This, bundled with the fact that the furies are never a wise counsel, leads me to believe that Adorno meant it to show the opposition of the common people to dialectical thought, both flavors, if you like.

He finishes his first lecture with:

Now, you all know that when we speak of dialectics in the succinct sense that I have tacitly been assuming – the ancient Greek concept of dialectics coincides more or less with epistemology and logic, and is far more general than what I have been explaining to you – you all know that dialectics in the sense of contradictions both in things and in concepts exists in two major versions: an idealist version which may to a certain degree be regarded as the pinnacle of philosophical speculation, and a materialist version which has been turned into an official world-view that dominates a very large portion of the globe (and as such it has degenerated into the very opposite of itself). And you may well want to ask me why I do not simply declare myself satisfied with this alternative but choose instead to speak of something else, namely a negative dialectics. You may well ask further whether I am not the kind of professor who tries to brew his own little philosophical soup in the hope that one day he may obtain a chapter to himself in Ueberweg-Heinze (or one or other of its continuations). At this point I should like to mention an objection that has been raised by an extremely knowledgeable source, namely by someone from your own circle, someone from amongst those present here today. 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? We could just say that, simply by refusing to make do with the given reality, the subject, thought, negates whatever is given; and that as a motive force of thought subjectivity itself is the negative principle, as we see from a celebrated passage in Hegel’s Phenomenology where he remarks that the living substance as subject, in other words, as thought, is pure, simple negativity, and is ‘for this very reason, the bifurcation of the simple; it is the doubling which sets up opposition, and then again the negation of this indifferent diversity and of its antithesis.’ In other words, 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. I should like to respond to this in detail next time. For now I wish only to set out the problem as it has been put to me and to say that it calls for an answer.

So he concedes that his own "negative" dialectics is very similar to Hegel's dialectics, owing to the presence of contradiction, to the point that it might be indistinguishable by some. His whole project, one can say, is to show how it differs, not ignoring the similarities.

If one objected, as has been repeated ever since by the Aristotelian critics of Hegel, that dialectics for its part grinds everything indiscriminately in its mill down into the mere logical form of the contradiction, overlooking – even Croce argued this – the true polyvalence of that which is not contradictory, of the simply different, one is only displacing the blame for the thing onto the method.

The "grinding everything indiscriminately in its mill down into the mere logical form of the contradiction", what I reinterpreted as "reducing everything unto contradiction", is what is similar, and here Adorno is defending every form of dialectics: hegelian (idealistic), marxist (materialistic), negative. The herd doesn't comprehend and is angried.

It's not like that negative dialectics comes to the rescue of our precious polyvalence of experience, which was erroneously sacricifed by bad and faulty hegelian dialectics. There is nothing to restore about it, negative dialectics continues in the same path, even more so.

But this is what one would expect, since negative dialectics is the opposite of hegelian dialectics, right? So where the latter reduces everything to contradiction, discarding polyvalent experience, the former would bring it back, our hero, well no, that's too bad.

The introduction is not so much an introduction as the heart of the whole work. — Jamal

From what I've gathered, the introduction in ND is a reviewed version of an essay Adorno has written to accompany his lectures, which is featured in LND. This might explain why there are parts missing in the LND translation, and also why some parts are different: the LND appendix translation in based on a different original material. I spent hours trying to validate this for sure, I gave up, it is what I think.

Yes, he doesn't say anything about right, I was asking you.

Your interpretive position is that the impoverishment of experience through dialectics (due to the sacrifice of qualitative polyvalence of experience) is wrong, based on faulty hegelian dialectics, right? To this Adorno adds that this impoverishment infuriates mainstream opinion. So do you think that the mainstream rightly object so vehemently to it?

This is exactly the point. To reduce everything to contradiction is the faulty process because that misses out on "the richness of lived experience". In other words it doesn't grasp the reality of the situation, therefore it is not the appropriate philosophical process. So, I propose to you, that you are mistaken in classing Hegelian dialectics and negative dialectics together, in the same category, as reducing the polyvalence of experience to contradiction. I think that negative dialectics, being the negative to Hegelian dialectics, recognizes the importance of the opposite, noncontradiction, as the foundation for this polyvalence. That is the richness of lived experience which escapes conceptualization when conceptualization is bounded by contradiction. — Metaphysician Undercover

So when Adorno says: "The impoverishment of experience through dialectics, which infuriates mainstream opinion, proves itself however to be entirely appropriate to the abstract monotony of the administered world", there by "dialectics" he means Hegelian dialectics, and not negative dialectics? (so that to not class them together). And therefore that mainstream opinion has every right and is correct in being infuriated?

OK, that's one way of looking at it. But being "absorbed into institutional authority" doesn't necessarily imply being "tamed by it" rather than "subverting" it. We could look at the presidency of Trump for example, and evaluate whether this is an instance of a revolutionary movement being tamed by authority, rather than subverting authority. We'd probably be able to identify elements of both, but that just means that it's wrong to portray the possibilities as a dichotomy, one or the other. — Metaphysician Undercover

Trump's presidency is a revolutionary movement? Subvert as in undermine? I don't understand why you would bring Trump up, since the thrust and power of the hippie movement was clearly stopped and commodified, thus tamed, and eventually didn't bring a stop to domination, whereas Trump is all about domination. That one seeks to replace one power with another, this is no true revolution, one being to end all domination.

I think you misunderstand what Adorno was saying. The "dialectical discipline" is the inadequate way of looking at things. And whoever adopts this method forfeits the true perspective which the polyvalence of experience provides for, as a bitter sacrifice. "Whoever submits to dialectical discipline, must unquestionably pay with the bitter sacrifice...".

Please reread the passage, and you'll see that what follows supports my interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

I reread, and from I gather:

Dialectical discipline, Hegel's (positive) and Adorno's (negative), both sacrifice and reduce the polyvalnece of experience to contradiction. Contradiction is not a caprice of dialectical thought, as critics pose, but ontologically real, and for dialectics to be in touch with the world, it must embrace contradiction, especially in a damaged world as ours. This embrace is what would enable dialectics to critique the abstract monotony of the administered world. But it comes at a cost, the reduction of everything unto contradiction means the loss of the richness of lived experience, its immediacy, living in the moment. There is already a contradiction here: the polyvalence of lived experience in a monovalent dominative world.

An example would be of a fast car, say a Ferrari, the owner would race it to the ground, pride himself of how fast she is, get high on the adrenaline of speed, perhaps treat it as a pussy magnet etc. Whereas the dialectician would refuse all these, see the power dynamics behind it, and just see the Ferrrari as a totem of capitalist culture. There can be no middle point between the owner and the dialectician. Dialectics reflects reality's hollowness, its impoverishment, it is why it is so infuriating, on one hand, but so appriopriate, on the other.

But Adorno does not stop there. "What is painful about it is the pain of such, raised to a concept". Reality's hollowness is not infuriating to the dialectician, but painful, and also conceptualized, meaning thought of. This conceptualization itself is what produces guilt: "Thought is driven, out of its unavoidable insufficiency, its guilt for what it thinks, towards it". Conceptualization always falsifies.

In the myth of Theseus and Procrustes, Procrustes was forcing travelers to fit his bed by stretching or cutting them, robbing them of their riches, their identity. Theseus forces Procrustes to the same, not for revenge, but to witness the result. It is why Adorno needs Hegel, to submit him to his own method and report on the failure.

Where do you get the sense that the realization was missed — Metaphysician Undercover

This, I took from ND's introduction:

Philosophy, which once seemed outmoded, remains alive because the moment of its realization was missed. — ON THE POSSIBILITY OF PHILOSOPHY

The realization was missed because the hippie movement failed to transform the world in its image, but was commodified and commercialized, liquitated even. What could have been a revolutionary movement, capable of subverting entrenched power and liberating consciousness, was instead absorbed into institutional authority, tamed by it. Much like, as Adorno says, what happened with Hegel's dialectic.

A wave is a temporal event, it comes to an end, and its energy is dispersed. But this does not imply that the realization of its energy is necessarily "missed".
It is only missed by those who do not follow the threads of transformation. That is why the polyvalence of experience is a requirement. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't understand, who or what requires the polyvalence of experience? Why then would Adorno say that (negative) dialectics demands the bitter sacrifice of the qualitative polyvalence of experience?

Anyway, I just wanted to try to visualize this sacrifice, by taking images from the arts.

It's probably a crude summary but I think that's roughly right: dialectics sacrifices the richness and diversity of experience in its pursuit of truth.

On the main point, I agree. And it's not like Adorno ever pretends that negative dialectics is presuppositionless. — Jamal

Yes, I was just about to post the following before I saw your reply. I remembered this movie I watched lots of years ago.

This law is however not one of thinking, but real. Whoever submits to dialectical discipline, must unquestionably pay with the bitter sacrifice of the qualitative polyvalence of experience. The impoverishment of experience through dialectics, which infuriates mainstream opinion, proves itself however to be entirely appropriate to the abstract monotony of the administered world. What is painful about it is the pain of such, raised to a concept. Cognition must bow to it, if it does not wish to once again degrade the concretion to the ideology, which it really begins to become. — ND

I think an example of the "bitter sacrifice" can be seen in the following clip from the movie "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", a scene from Adorno's time.



The narrator, Duke, in retrospect, recollects:

Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Has it been five years? Six? It seems like a lifetime, the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle '60s, was a very special time and place to be a part of, but no explanation, no mix of words, or music or memories, can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world, whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. And that, I think, was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense - we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. — Duke

Then, the bitter sacrifice would be not to get carried away by the commonplace experience of the time, to not "ride the beautiful wave", to not get distracted by this "qualitative polyvalence of experience", to not live in the moment, but to sit back and medidate, to think things through, to warn of the dangers, and to ultimately see the future commodification, the false consciousness and the capitalist exploitation that the movement entails, much like what Adorno did with the revolutionaries of his time, as it can be seen in his interview "Who's Afraid of the Ivory Tower?"

https://cominsitu.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/adorno-spiegel-1969.pdf

This attidude, not only infuriates the revolutionaries, but also their adversaries, as if the latter are conjoined to them, and so it amounts to just about everybody; the party pooper.

But Duke continues:

So now, less than five years later, you can go up a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high-water mark, that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back. — Duke

Why did it roll back? Why was the moment of realization missed?

We're all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the '60s. That was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America, selling "consciousness expansion", without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait, for all those people who took him seriously. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy peace and understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure, is ours too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole lifestyle that he helped create. A generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the acid culture: the desperate assumption that somebody or at least some force is tending the light at the end of the tunnel. — Duke

Well, it seems like that you can't "buy" true consciousness, immediacy doesn't work, things must be thought and worked thorouglhy through, it is why theory is needed, which is what ND is about. I guess that Adorno would say that the hippie movement, despite its flaws, progressed towards true emancipation, but that eventually became part of the disease, and not the cure.

To be honest it hadn't occurred to me that it was a different translation — Jamal

Yes, it is a different one, I think it's very good, but some parts are missing. Oh, and not to forget, I found an outright error in Redmond's translation, two actually. In section "FRAGILITY OF THE TRUTH", page
48:

The open thought is unprotected against the risk of going astray into what is popular;

The same also in section "AGAINST RELATIVISM", page 49:

Relativism is null and void simply because, what it on the one hand considers popular and
contingent, and on the other hand holds to be irreducible, originates out of objectivity – precisely that of an individualistic society – and is to be deduced as socially necessary appearance [Schein].

"popular" in both cases above should be replaced with "arbitrary". In Thorne, it is "arbitrary", and Adorno also mentions it in his notes. "Popular" does not make any sense there, it troubled me until I saw the other translations, I couldn't understand what popularity had to do with what he was saying.

But what truly interests me now is to find out what Adorno really means by this "bitter sacrifice" mentioned above.

Anyway, I also wanted to say that "Lectures on Negative Dialectics: Fragments of a Lecture Course 1965/1966", are feature rich, I think that it would be a good idea for them to accompany our reading of ND. It seems to me that both the editor Rolf Tiedemann, as well as the translator Rodney Livingstone, have done a great job, with their notes and footnotes. The appendix of LND features yet another translation of the introduction of ND, with some parts however missing for some reason. And thus the number of translations, Ashton (1973), Redmond (2001), Thorne, together with Livingstone's, comes down to all four. Still waiting for Robert Hullot-Kentor's, to bring the number to 5.

QUESTION: If Adorno goes from particular to universal, shouldn't we a bit suspicious that he always ends up in the same places: commodification, instrumental reason, bourgeois consciousness, capitalist exploitation, etc? — Jamal

According to Adorno, this is what is supposed to happen, when going from particular to universal, or rather, like he says, when "dialectics develops the difference of the particular from the generality, which is dictated by the generality". The objection is anticipated by Adorno:

If one objected, as has been repeated ever since by the Aristotelian critics of Hegel, that dialectics for its part grinds everything indiscriminately in its mill down into the mere logical form of the contradiction, overlooking – even Croce argued this – the true polyvalence of that which is not contradictory, of the simply different, one is only displacing the blame for the thing onto the method. — DIALECTICS NOT A STANDPOINT

Also:

This law is however not one of thinking, but real. Whoever submits to dialectical discipline, must unquestionably pay with the bitter sacrifice of the qualitative polyvalence of experience. The impoverishment of experience through dialectics, which infuriates mainstream opinion, proves itself however to be entirely appropriate to the abstract monotony of the administered world. What is painful about it is the pain of such, raised to a concept. Cognition must bow to it, if it does not wish to once again degrade the concretion to the ideology, which it really begins to become. — REALITY AND DIALECTICS

And so, being aware of what total identification does, we always end up in these nasty things you mention.

If a joke was what it ever was, then how do you explain the following?

One which cannot fall into the abyss, of which the fundamentalists of metaphysics prattle – it is not that of agile sophistics but that of insanity – turns, under the commandment of its principle of security, analytical, potentially into tautology.

Dont you see this as a suggestion, to "fall into the abyss"? Doesn't he say that those that don't do that, will turn to analytical and tautological statements? What is an abyss, if not something bottomless?

Only those thoughts which go to extremes can face up to the all-powerful powerlessness of certain agreement; only mental acrobatics relate to the thing, which according to the fable convenu
[French: agreed-upon fiction] it holds in contempt for the sake of its self-satisfaction.

Doesn't he say here that it is with mental acrobatics that one should approach the extremes? And that the herd will see these moves as nothing more than self satisfied rhetoric, as perhaps it was done with Nietzsche?

Another reference to abyss and bottomless:

In contrast to this, the cognition throws itself à fond perdu [French: into the depths] at objects, so as to be fruitful. The vertigo which this creates is an index veri [Latin: index of truth]; the shock of the revelation, the negativity, or what it necessarily seems to be amidst what is hidden and monotonous, untruth only for the untrue.

Also, as per your suggestion, I had a look at the lectures. The notes on this passage say:

Truth [to be found] only in whatever throws itself away without safety belt, à fonds perdu.

I believe he's trying to keep the tension, the dialectic, of grounding alive. Descartes grounded certainty in the cogito, as a way to escape dogmatism, and this now has recoiled in just that. I guess for Adorno this is the ultimate fate of any stable grounds, they are sealed and buried, never to be questioned, until they become hollow. But the main reason I engaged with MU the way I did, is because he said that negative dialectics escapes bottomlessness, and that it is a lie. Whereas the way I see it, there is no escape, but Adorno seems to imply dialectical confrontation. Between you and me, he might as well think the same, not sure.

The truly groundless move here would be, after hitting groundlessness, to shirk back and create some absolute beginning in order to cover up the truth. (hence leading to its fragility next...) — Moliere

This is how I read it too, like there are two kind of groundlessness, a true and a false one. One that is acknowledged, and one that is not and forgotten.

Therefore the abyss between subject and object which may be evident in Hegel, would in fact be a grounding for negative dialectics. — Metaphysician Undercover

For Hegel, subject and object are ultimately identical, in the Absolute Spirit, and thus this is where his system is grounded, on this identity. Another dyad is thought and being, yet another reason (rationality) and reality: "The real is rational and the rational is real". There is no abyss in Hegel, truly optimistic.

But for someone, like Adorno, that rejects this identity thesis, the world rests on rather shaky grounds. Well, no rest for the wicked, like they say.

Anyhow, the question is whether the groundlessness is real or not, contradiction also, and what is ND's stance against it.

Indeed, in "fragility", it is "groundlessness". However, in "vertigo", it is bottomless:

A dialectic no longer “riveted” to identity prompts if not the objection, which ye shall know by its fascist fruits, that it is bodenlos—bottomless, without ground or soil—then the objection that it is dizzy-making.

Whereas the Thorne translation in "vertigo" is:

The objections leveled at everything groundless should be turned against the principle of a mind or spirit that maintains itself within itself as the sphere of absolute origins. But Wherever ontology, and above all Heidegger, starts banging away at groundlessness—that is where truth dwells.

But curious that you say that, because I was thinking of asking MU whether he thinks that bottomless is any different from groundless. For my part, I think they are all the same, bottomless, groundless, foundationless. The abyss, even.

Wouldn't you think that, as long as subject and object cannot be reconciled, as in Hegel, then an abyss would form between them? And that this abyss would be manifest in any grounding attempts? So far we agree of what negative dialectics would say of others, but what would it say of itself?

This is very consistent with my reading, except I read bottomlessness itself as untruth — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes I know, it is what I was saying, we agree in everything else but this, but this is a very crucial part.

I don't know how to take the following sentence, maybe "is" is a typo which should be "in"? If so, then bottomlessness is clearly an untruth itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

there however, where ontology ... hits bottomlessness, is the place of truth.

Take it as it stands: a true ontology is a bottomless ontology.

He is criticizing attempts to secure the bottomless abyss with tautological absolutes, whereas he'd rather leave the chasm open, engaging with it with mental acrobatics.

I agree with this to an extent. Acknowledgement of the bottomlessness is what touches the truth, but it is an acknowledgement of bottomlessness as untruth. What actually constitutes bottomlessness, is the untruth, and this is what negative dialectic sees in identity philosophy. And, the charge that negative dialectics is bottomless, is itself an untruth. This is evident in the last statement of the section. The bottomlessness of the untruth creates the vertigo which is the index of truth, in the negative approach. In general, the untruth of identity is the truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think you read it slightly wrong. My take is that Adorno says that identity philosophy despite claiming bottomlessness with its absolute, solid grounds, and scolding negative dialectics for lack of bottom, is in reality the epitome of bottomlessness. The fact that it doesn't recognize this, consists in its untruth. This is why he says that the objection of bottomlessness "needs to be turned against the intellectual principle which preserves itself as the sphere of absolute origins", it's a turntable, ah you said so yourself. And so the untruth lies in the claim, not in the bottomless itself.

As explained in the lectures, negative dialects is actually pinned to positivism, or identity, in a negative way. It is pinned to the falsity of positivism, and this constitutes the determinate negative. Otherwise negative dialectics would be completely indeterminate, negating anything, and everything, therefore useless. The subject of negative dialectics is the untruth of positivism and identity philosophy, and in this sense it actually is pinned to identity, in a way which allows it to escape the bottomlessness which is actually a part of the identity philosophy it resists. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is a misunderstanding here to what "pinned" means. THE VERTIGINOUS passage starts with "
A dialectics which is no longer “pinned” to identity provokes...". I understood it as Adorno describing negative dialectics, that the dialectics does not presume the identity claim. But like you say, if ND isn't pinned to anything, it will be completely arbitrary, criticizing everything in its pass, with no compass guiding it. Better then to say that ND is pinned to identity thinking, but not to identity. By its holding fast and being tethered to identity philosophy, ND doesn't lose itself and offers valuable critique. It feeds off the latter, and works towards its own dissolution. However, I don't think it escapes bottomlessness, maybe Adorno means that this tension should, as always, be kept standing?

I think it is important to note that this is described by Adorno as untruth. "The falsity of the jettisoned rationality which runs away from itself..." It is falsity because it dissociates thinking from its content, to make thinking, or as you say "Being" absolute. But content is necessary to thinking, so this way of absolutizing Being is a falsity. Therefore the "rationality which runs away from itself" by accepting this false impression of itself, as an absolute, is really irrational. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I agree, it is a regress into myth, as Adorno also noted in his Enlightenment book with Horkheimer.

So it seems that he is really against any absolutizations, then, one would say that he is a relativist, since you must either be the one or the other.

The meaning of such complaints is to be grasped in a usage of the dominant opinion. This refers to present alternatives in such a way that one would
have to choose between one or the other. Administrations frequently reduce decisions over plans submitted to it to a simple yes or no; administrative thinking has secretly become the longed-for model of
one which pretends to be free of such. But it is up to philosophical thought, in its essential situations,
not to play along.

Didn't have time to get to "against relativism" next.

This section appears to describe an approach to truth. Vertiginous is distinguished from bottomlessness. And truth is vertiginous, (makes one's head swim) rather than bottomless as the abyss of untruth. — Metaphysician Undercover

He doesn't say that bottomlessness relates to untruth, rather the opposite, that the acknowledgment of it is what touches truth. Negative dialectics, being foundationless and non-unitarian - better, a dialectics which is no longer “pinned” to identity - will be either accused of:

a) bottomlessness. This accusation, he says, comes from the "fascist fruits", which demand strong foundations, eg race, family, "blood", religion, nation, history etc. And so, a philosophy that does not provide some foundations, is outright and with no much further thought discarded by them as silly, to say the least.

b) vertiginous. Those that think it through, will still discard it, because of the felt vertigo that bottomlessness induces. But this relates to great modern poetry, and moreover is what philosophy needs: "This feeling has been central to great modern poetry since Baudelaire; philosophy, runs the anachronistic suggestion, ought not to participate in any such thing".

Then there is a paragraph that I have difficulty to understand, which appears to be directed against the absolutism of Hegel. There is a jettisoning of that which is first to thought, but the jettisoning does not absolutize it. The jettisoning seems to be intended to remove the content of thought, from thought. But it's irrational to think that the content of thinking could be removed from thinking, because this would leave thinking as something other than thinking. — Metaphysician Undercover

The objection of bottomlessness needs to be turned against the intellectual principle
which preserves itself as the sphere of absolute origins; there however, where ontology, Heidegger first and foremost, hits bottomlessness, is the place of truth.

Here I think he is alluding to Heidegger, not Hegel. Of Heidegger's absolutization of Being. As if he thinks that Heidegger correctly arrived at bottomolessness, to Being, but then he stopped by making it absolute, and left it abstract:

Even in the logical abstraction-form of the Something, as something which is meant or judged, which for its part does not claim to constitute anything existent, indelibly survives that which thinking would like to cancel out, whose non-identity is that which is not thinking.

And so it seems that the above does not apply to Heidegger's Being.

The jettisoning of that which is first and solidified from thought does not absolutize it as something free-floating. Exactly this jettisoning attaches it all the more to what it itself is not, and removes the illusion of its autarky. The falsity of the jettisoned rationality which runs away from itself, the recoil of Enlightenment into mythology, is itself rationally determinable. Thinking is according to its own meaning the thinking of something. Even in the logical abstraction-form of the Something, as something which is meant or judged, which for its part does not claim to constitute anything existent, indelibly survives that which thinking would like to cancel out, whose non-identity is that which is not thinking. The ratio becomes irrational where it forgets this, hypostasizing its own creations, the abstractions, contrary to the meaning of thinking. The commandment of its autarky condemns it to nullity, in the end to stupidity and primitivity. The objection of bottomlessness needs to be turned against the intellectual principle which preserves itself as the sphere of absolute origins; there however, where ontology, Heidegger first and foremost, hits bottomlessness, is the place of truth.

Heidegger, by throwing away first principles, arrived at Being. But this Being, according to Adorno, is neither absolute, nor free in itself, it is still dependent on what is thought. When philosophy forgets this and hypostasizes its own creations - without relation to what is being thought - it becomes irrational, null and stupid.

Anyways, catching up with everyone now. Summers over, schools back in session, and I'm reading again. — Moliere

Well, holidays got to me, eventually.. :cool: Have fun catching up!

I think we need to assume Adorno was attempting to be consistent, and not ambiguous or equivocal. So I see the difference as a matter of perspective. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am sure he was, but the main problem is that all of our concepts have been reified by ideology. And so equivocality is more pertinent than ever. Take the concept of theory in this case. What does it tell you? Is it the same when it is used in "theory of knowledge" as in "critical theory"?

Another way to see the same concept differently, it would be with perspectivism, I suppose. This was advanced foremost by Nietzsche. Not having the concepts of reification and non-identity at hand, and unable to procure them on his own, since he was a psychologist and not a philosopher, lacking theory, he was naturally led to perspectivism.

That is why I spoke of pre-consumption and post-consumption, from the perspective of a particular subject. — Metaphysician Undercover

I take post-consumption to imply a deification process, where theory becomes live and kicking, in the subject, from its reified static and external state.

Consider that theory is fed to the subject as an educational tool in the form of ideology, in the process of the subject's intellectual experience. Also, the subject might freely choose theory for consumption. But post-consumption, theory is within the subject, and is then a tool of that subject. The analogy is one of eating. Food is fed to a child, who then learns to choose one's own food. But in both of these cases, after consumption the food is then used by the subject who consumes. The difference is an external/internal difference, and the point you appear to be claiming is that there is a difference between the thing when it is external, and the thing after its been internalized. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes exactly this is what I am saying, the thing - theory in this case - is transformed after consumption. Before, it was something external, say a set of rules that one learns, and applies them to objects of experience so that to receive knowledge. After, it is in dialectic with experience, the one shaping the other. But I am sorry, I got a bit confused with your food example, isn't this what you are also saying?

Question for you Pussycat. Why do you need to make "theory" analogous with the diner, and "experience" analogous with the roast, so that you end up with the diner being devoured by the roast? Why not just make "theory" analogous with the roast, and "experience" analogous with the diner? Then you have experience devouring theory just like the diner devours the roast, without the absurdity which you propose. — Metaphysician Undercover

Cause Adorno was coerced into giving a standpoint, as you well know he was against standpoints. So I would imagine he would offer one as absurd as it gets, in order to mock those asking for it. Theory, in the passage I attempted to interpret, is not like the theory in the passage after. The first theory points to a traditional theory of knowledge, like Kant's, ahistorical, atemporal, totalizing and universal, the very kind Adorno opposes. And so he says, if theory of knowledge is one you want, it would be one that is devoured by experience, and that this experience will also devour the philosophical seasoned subjects supporting it, the diners. Its supposed to be sarcastic. This is how I see it, anyway.

"Experience" is proper to the subject right? "Theory" is a bit more complex though, because it may be ideology (objective), or it may be speculative (subjective). Notice above, that experience consumes theory. But in the next paragraph, post consumption, theory can also be used to resist ideology. — Metaphysician Undercover

Experience is proper to the subject, yes, but I think its also more broad than that, as to all the happenings in the world. For example, Auschwitz was an experience, no matter if we didnt experience it. And since Adorno's death in the late sixties, new experiences were added in the world: the moon landing experience, the sixties movement, the bringing down of the Berlin wall, the internet experience, now the AI experience etc. Have our philosophical theories been able to keep pace with technological progress? Because progress seems to be running pretty fast, and our heavy feet are a problem.

In the next paragraph, I think he's talking about critical theory, unlike the first one.

I don't think it's a matter of seeing that there is a right way and a wrong way of describing things. I think it's a matter of understanding the way that he describes things. if, in the end, it doesn't work for you, you cannot perceive what he is describing, then reject it. Is that what you are doing? — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course there is. Anyway, hear me out:

The scientific consensus would probably concede that even experience would imply theory.

Jamal was right to remember Kant, since he was the one that started with all these "conditions of possible experience", thereby formulating a theory consisting of stuff like forms of intuition, categories of understanding etc, a universal, objective and all-encompassing system. In his famous prolegomena (to any Future Metaphysic that can Present itself as a Science), for example, he writes:

The laws that govern our ways of knowing also govern the objects that we know, as long as these are considered as objects of experience and not as they are in themselves. There are two things we can say:
(1) A judgment of perception can’t count as valid for experience unless the mind in which it occurs conforms to the following law: When any event is observed to happen, it is connected with some earlier event that it follows according to a universal rule.
(2) Everything that we experience as happening must be caused to happen. — Kant

And so in this way, he was able to reject certain experiences (the ones that didn't fit in his schemata) as either invalid knowledge claims, unscientific, or otherwise meaningless, for all times, impervious to critique.

It is however a “standpoint”, at best hypothetical. Conciliatory representatives of scientivism demand what they call proper or clean science, which is supposed to account for these sorts of presuppositions.

But pejorative science - scientivism - demands theory, or a standpoint, should the accounts of one's experiences be taken seriously. If a critic does not choose a clear predefined standpoint - there sure are many to choose from - or doesn't supply a clear one of his own, then we'd better not listen to him, understandably.

Another interpretation is that conciliatory scientivism, ie some more charitable and less stringent scientists, would still allow a hypothetical standpoint, but only provided that there is a proper or clean science to back it up.

Exactly this demand is incompatible with intellectual experience.

Adorno says that intellectual experience cannot be coerced by theoretical frameworks. He could also have said that this demand stems from a bourgeois prejudice, as he's done elsewhere.

If a standpoint is demanded of the latter, then it would be that of the diner to the roast.

But if representatives of scientivism want a standpoint, he will indulge them and provide them with one: the diner to the roast. So he reluctantly gives them one, not one they were expecting, for sure. It is his way of ridiculing, both them, their compulsion, as well as epistemology - the theory of knowledge - in general, which takes itself as prior and superior to actual experience, with this waiting for theory to justify and validate it. Much like the roast that is waiting for the diner to come and call it a roast, like it would be nothing without the diner, the epistemological and proud philosopher. This nevertheless creates a false dichotomy between theory and experience, with no room for movement between them.

It lives by ingesting such; only when the latter disappears into the former, would there be philosophy.

But still, there's a twist in the story, with Adorno there always is, and even this sarcastic and ironic jab can be transformed: instead of the diner eating the roast, the roast eats the diner. Now I guess there is some confusion with the former and the latter, where the former actually maps to experience and the latter to theory, but in "the diner to the roast", the former is the presumptious philosopher with his theory of knowledge and the latter is experience. At least I was confused, which is why I said that "experience is consumed into theory". So it seems that I was half-right: the diner to the roast is the old-school wrong traditional epistemology, and the diner (theory) being devoured by the roast (experience) is the correct one. We can see this in what Adorno had been saying regarding Auschwitz, that after this dreadful experience, our theoretical philosophical frameworks no longer work, they have been, or at least should have been, discredited by what experience showed us, they were invalidated to the point of bankruptcy.

Until this point theory embodies that discipline in intellectual experience which already embarrassed Goethe in relation to Kant.

Question mark here, as I am completely ignorant of Goethe.

If experience relied solely on its dynamic and good fortune, there would be no stopping.

So after all this, we get the impression that Adorno crowns experience king. Alas no, yet another twist, as he is preparing for his dialectical moment which continues in the next paragraph.

I'm starting to believe that the "diner to the roast" is the wrong old school model. And that experience is consumed into theory, not the opposite.