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.

Yeah.

Or -- Adorno says that Heidegger did not critique but attempted to rope in the critical turn by imputing being to the Kantian project, thereby rendering Heidegger's approach as somehow encompassing Kant.

But Adorno is saying "Naw", here; that Heidegger gets Kant wrong when he tries to reply.

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:

I think your comment here makes sense of Adorno's allusions to Heidegger's fascism. Adorno understands the ontological need, but if you supersede the categories (standards of intersubjective judgment) then how is an initiate to criticize?

Were this to happen within a monastery then that'd be different from what happened: there is a place for when one needs a teacher or guide in life, spiritual or otherwise.


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".

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

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?

For some reason I did not receive a notification of a reply — Leontiskos

I assumed you’d slunk away defeated and whimpering, your tail between your legs.

Anyway, thanks Leon, I appreciate the magnanimousness of your response.

I don't see that Adorno succeeds in brushing away the self-refutation of relativism. What does he do? He calls the objection "wretched," gives a single sentence of justification, and then moves on to a critique that he likes better. And his critique is fine as far as it goes, but he doesn't provide any argument for why the less "fruitful" objection is "wretched." This is probably because he doesn't have one.

[…]

I don't think this is right, but neither you nor Adorno are offering much to respond to in the way of argument. Obviously the person who thinks relativism is self-refuting would say that the "critical vs positive" distinction is _ad hoc_, and therefore it is hard to believe that this is a serious attempt to point up some problem with that objection. Indeed, if by "wretched" Adorno means something like, "The interlocutor would not be amenable to this objection," then his own objection surely suffers from the same problem, no? — Leontiskos

Maybe it’s best not to interpret him as offering a standalone refutation of the charge of relativism’s self-refutation. It’s better to see him as briefly indicating that this charge conflates the logical form of an assertion with the immanent critique of the conditions under which assertions claim universality. The self-refutation charge treats the latter as if it were the former.

In a general sense Adorno's quibble is usually taken into account by speaking about performative self-contradiction rather than simple self-contradiction, and that would include the relativist's belief that he has license to argue "critically" rather than "positively" in order to avoid the matter of applying his own criteria to himself. But in a more general sense, there is a strain of continentalism that sees simple arguments as passé. Like the basketball player who loves to dazzle with complicated plays and maneuvers, they have a disdain for the simple layup, and would almost argue that it should not count. Yet even if such individuals must label it "wretched," it still nevertheless counts. In some sense it counts more, because even (especially?) the uneducated can see that it is correct. — Leontiskos

Your reading takes his critical vs. positive distinction as an evasion, whereas I think what he is doing is describing an actual difference in the form of the claim. That distinction may be rejected, but I don’t think it’s just a hand-wavy gesture.

This is of course related to our differences over validity vs. genesis, direct engagement vs. metacritique, and justification vs. genealogy. Adorno, in the context of the section of ND under the heading “Against Relativism,” is much more interested in the latter of these pairs, because he thinks it is neglected by the focus on formal consistency, refutational success etc.

So in this respect he belongs to a tradition, which includes Hegel, Nietzsche, and Foucault, for whom insight, interpretation, and experience are modes of philosophical cognition, not reducible to argument or refutation. They are not rejecting reason, but rejecting the idea that reason is identical with formal validity. It’s an expansive concept of reason, a lot like the one explicitly set out in Horkheimer’s Eclipse of Reason and implicit in Dialectic of Enlightenment.

I’m sympathetic to this tradition. This might be a fundamental difference between us, although you seem quite far from the ahistorical tendencies of some Anglo-philosophy.

Incidentally, this tension is one of the fascinating things about Negative Dialectics: he is very sensitive to the suspicion that his emphasis on the philosophical centrality of spiritual experience, insight, and rhetorical expression might be interpreted as irrational. So he spends a lot of time explaining why Bergson, for example—who valorizes intuition over reason—is not where it’s at (despite having sympathies).

Puzzles about the one and the many are very old, and there is an established school of thought that favors the universal over the particular. Still, I worry about thinkers who wish to reconfigure the relation of the one and the many based on a practical aim; or who wish to reconfigure speculative reason on the basis of practical reason. To make the truth subservient to our desires is truly wretched, even where those desires are noble. Obviously I am not a Marxist. — Leontiskos

The point is that the division between theoretical and practical reason is itself historical, and that it breaks down historically—after Auschwitz. We can no longer take seriously the idea of purely speculative thought. But this is not the same as subordinating truth to our desires. Adorno is trying to show that the Enlightenment’s own conceptual scheme produced blind spots that had catastrophic consequences.

You seem to be worried about some ideological corruption of philosophy. It’s as if you’re advancing a more philosophical version of the “facts don’t care about your feelings” critique of the Left. I think this is misplaced, not least because much of what Adorno wrote is not easily packaged in terms of ethics; is difficult for the Left to swallow and is written off by most Marxists as pessimistic and counter-productive; and explicitly goes against many of the tenets of revolutionary politics. The whole point for Adorno is how to reach truth—not how to ground a political or ethical project and the truth be damned. The truth is that people suffer and they ought not to (he rejects the complete separability of facts and values).

Well, there are two things at play here. I never thought Adorno's opposition to identity-thinking was a first principle or originary ground, and yet this does not mean that he is not monomaniacal. To be possessed by a singular idea or ideational current is monomaniacal whether or not that singular thought is seen as originary. So Adorno may or may not be monomaniacal, but I don't see that your argument here is to the point. — Leontiskos

If the possession of a singular idea or ideational current is the criterion, then many of the great philosophers become monomaniacal. The distinction Adorno draws is between a fixation that hypostatizes a principle, and a critical focus that traces a structural feature of conceptual thought.

EDIT: Correction: it's not a distinction Adorno draws, but one I am drawing. If Adorno were monomaniacal about identity-thinking, it would be a fixation that hypostatizes the principle that identity-thinking is bad or whatever; whereas I think it's more like "a critical focus that traces a structural feature of conceptual thought."

The critique of identity thinking is not a doctrine, but is the confrontation with the historically dominant form of conceptual mediation, which any immanent critique must confront all the time, simply because it’s so ubiquitous. Calling that “monomania,” despite what you say, does seem to mistake the object of analysis for the ground of a system.

As for totalitarianism, I think it's too easy, or perhaps superficial, to say that an anti-totalitarian philosophy might itself become totalitarian if it goes too far. — Jamal

But wouldn't you agree with someone who says that? — Leontiskos

Sure. The point of my comment was that this truism is not a good criticism of Adorno. There is no totalizing program in Adorno.

I grant that the danger you describe is real: becoming so horrified by X that one becomes doctrinal in opposing X. But Adorno actually resists that move by refusing to convert catastrophe into the foundation of a system or determinate political programme. Instead he is arguing for a particular kind of attentiveness, because philosophy cannot proceed as though nothing happened.

As an auxiliary point, I favor traditions of philosophy over novel, heroic individual efforts. Philosophizing within a tradition (and in relation to other traditions) helps smooth out rough edges and avoid the monomaniacal tendencies I alluded to. This is another reason why I am generally skeptical in cases such as these. But I might be wrong. — Leontiskos

Adorno is steeped in tradition and is alive to both its importance and its dangers. He comes out of Kant and Hegel while also analyzing the genesis of their ideas to reveal their constitutive blind spots. So he is both traditional and anti-traditional.

And like you, he is significantly suspicious of the heroic individual in philosophy. Contrast him with the “heroic” Heidegger (who he hated). Heidegger sought to sweep it all away and start again from the pre-Socratics, and Adorno put a lot of effort into exposing this as a fantasy—the fantasy of starting fresh (one which expresses ideological commitments and presuppositions).

As evidence, two observations:

1. Adorno doesn’t reject the subject-object structure. He doesn’t think we can step outside it or replace it with a better alternative, by fiat.
2. The method of immanent critique depends entirely on inherited concepts and categories and would be impossible without them. The whole point is to interrogate our inherited concepts from within.

So I think Adorno is to be commended for his restraint. Even though he has the intellectual range and imagination to attempt a Heidegger-style heroic rupture, he refuses.

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. — Pussycat

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.

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).

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.

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

I mean Being. Does the above explanation of what's going on in my mind as I read this making sense of what I said, or making things worse?