But I wondered in what way the ideology from which the postulate has been snatched away by our bold consciousnesses was supposed to appear as profound. — Jamal

I believe we must pay attention to what Adorno says about profundity in philosophy, in the preceding paragraph. Profundity is related to death and religion. And profundity appears to be the facade which the speculative moment must break through. This relates to what he says about "the renunciation of sacrosanct transcendence".

What is silenced and swept under the rug is a
theological terminus ad quem [Latin: end-point], as if its result, the
confirmation of transcendence, would decide the dignity of thought, or
else the mere being-for-itself, similarly for the immersion into
interiority; as if the withdrawal from the world were unproblematically
as one with the consciousness of the grounds of the world. By contrast,
resistance to fantasms of profundity, which throughout the history of
the Spirit were always well-disposed to the existing state of affairs,
which they found too dull, would be its true measure.

I believe he is saying that resistance to fantasms of profundity is the true measure of the Spirit. There is a deep issue with the "sacrosanct", which is well represented with the word "blasphemy". This is the difference between the profound and the profane. What he appears to be saying in the final paragraph is that the true measure of Spirit, true transcendence, is found in the renunciation of the profound, i.e. it\s found in profanity. And, in this rejection of that ideology, what is taken as profound, whereby the Spirit breaks those boundaries, is the Spirit's expression of freedom.

This brings us squarely to the issue of suffering. And, I must admit that I do not really know how Adorno relates these two. So I will speculate. I suppose that this resistance to ideology, this renunciation of the sacrosanct, is itself an expression of suffering, as if that profound, or sacrosanct ideology is oppressive. This is similar to what Plato says in "The Republic" about the relation between the philosopher and the ruler, a relation known as 'the philosopher king'. The philosopher knows that the job of ruling is the worst possible job, and in no wants to do that job. So the philosopher will not move to take that position until the suffering of having to live under the punishment of the prevailing rulers is worse than the pain of having to rule. It is the suffering caused by poor leadership which brings out the good leader.

So to relate this to what Adorno says about "the need to give voice to suffering". Ideology gains its power of authority through the appearance of profundity. But the ideology may itself be a medium of oppression, by which objectivity weighs on the subject as suffering. The facade of profundity is what needs to be broken, through the speculative moment. This is the expression of suffering, profanity.

Very interesting post, MU, I like it. I think your interpretative scheme of death/religion, profound/profane, sacrosanct/blasphemy, is inventive and enlightening. I think it's a good model, or instance, of what Adorno is referring to—or else a metaphor (or both). I don't think it reveals his central referent, as you seem to be suggesting, but it's a good way of thinking about it anyway. I particularly like the idea of the critique of ideology as profanity.

Certainly theology, which he mentions, is an instance of ideology in the garb of profound philosophy, justifying the submission to authority by appeals to the soul's salvation and the Absolute, etc. Adorno is using this as a model of the problem situation.

This brings us squarely to the issue of suffering. And, I must admit that I do not really know how Adorno relates these two. So I will speculate. I suppose that this resistance to ideology, this renunciation of the sacrosanct, is itself an expression of suffering, as if that profound, or sacrosanct ideology is oppressive. This is similar to what Plato says in "The Republic" about the relation between the philosopher and the ruler, a relation known as 'the philosopher king'. The philosopher knows that the job of ruling is the worst possible job, and in no wants to do that job. So the philosopher will not move to take that position until the suffering of having to live under the punishment of the prevailing rulers is worse than the pain of having to rule. It is the suffering caused by poor leadership which brings out the good leader.

So to relate this to what Adorno says about "the need to give voice to suffering". Ideology gains its power of authority through the appearance of profundity. But the ideology may itself be a medium of oppression, by which objectivity weighs on the subject as suffering. The facade of profundity is what needs to be broken, through the speculative moment. This is the expression of suffering, profanity. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well said. Yes: profound, sacrosanct ideology is oppressive. I would add that it is oppressive in that it justifies the material state of affairs that oppresses people in actuality. And yes: to resist ideology, renouncing the sacrosanct, is to give voice to suffering, the suffering of those being oppressed.

At this point I can no longer postpone my attempt to interpret this:

The power of the existent constructs the facades into which the consciousness crashes. It must try to break through them. This alone would snatch away the postulate from the profundity of ideology. The speculative moment survives in such resistance: what does not allow itself to be governed by the given facts, transcends them even in the closest contact with objects and in the renunciation of sacrosanct transcendence. What in thought goes beyond that to which it is bound in its resistance is its freedom. It follows the expressive urge of the subject. The need to give voice to suffering is the condition of all truth. For suffering is the objectivity which weighs on the subject; what it experiences as most subjective, its expression, is objectively mediated.

The need to give voice to suffering is the condition of all truth.

This is not just a brilliant line and a stirring exhortation; it is also a radical challenge to standard theories of truth which is meant to be taken entirely seriously.

In the words of Ben Shapiro, facts don't care about your feelings. Indeed, they don't care about anyone's feelings. And that's the problem with facts, or rather with the Enlightenment rationality that takes facts as the be-all and end-all of truth (and therefore knowledge). Adorno wants a more expansive concept of truth, one that doesn't submit to Enlightenment's split between facts and values. (Another option would be to reject truth entirely, but to do so would be to embrace nihilism and to give up on critique).

Truth for Adorno is the reality and injustice of suffering. Since, where the most important matters are concerned, the real is unjust, truth should not be neutral.

Examples help. A factual report on the Holocaust that ignores witness testimony is not true in Adorno's expanded sense. We could think of this as a lie of omission (which is not to say it's intentional deception). And this is a signpost to another aspect, found in the work of Foucault: the idea that a truth that depends on the suppression of marginalized voices is suspect—and in Adorno's terms, not really a truth at all. You might say, then, that facts are lies of oppression.

But it's not just that facts are not enough; it's that knowledge in the form of facts is already ideological, is value-laden without knowing it (or without saying so). To uncover the truth then is not just to add more, or different kinds of, information, e.g., including formerly marginalized voices, but to critique the facts themselves to reaveal the truth negatively. You can see this better with a fact like, workers are free in capitalist society because in taking jobs they voluntarily sign contracts. This fact can be criticized to reveal that the company and the worker are not equal parties except in a narrow legal sense, and that the choice between the burdensome job and destitution is no choice at all.

Adorno's condition equally applies in art. Compare Goya's Black Paintings and his Disasters of War series with propaganda art that glorifies war or labour. I don't think I'm using a special notion of truth when I say that the former are truthful and the latter are not. And the former are truthful because they give voice to suffering, not only by actually depicting it but by explicitly going against both the style and the content of paintings that celebrate war.


For suffering is the objectivity which weighs on the subject; what it experiences as most subjective, its expression, is objectively mediated.

Suffering is not just a private feeling but is a material, social reality with real causes. The subject suffers under objective conditions. The inability of a South African miner to stay awake and concentrate for half an hour on the book he wants to read after a 12-hour shift in a gold mine, his fatigue exacerbated by his chronic silicosis, is both the most personal and private of problems and also an example of the economic injustice of capitalist society.

In the "Relation to System" section there's a remarkable passage that charts the rise of the philosophical system and accounts for this in starkly Marxist terms, i.e., in terms of class and ideology:

In the history of philosophy the systems of the seventeenth century had an especially compensatory purpose. The same ratio which, in unison with the interests of the bourgeois class, smashed the feudal order of society and its intellectual reflection, scholastic ontology, into rubble, promptly felt the fear of chaos while facing the ruins, their own handiwork. They trembled before what ominously continued under their realm of domination and which waxed in proportion to their own power. This fear shaped the earliest beginnings of the mode of conduct entirely constitutive of bourgeois thought, of hurriedly neutralizing every step towards emancipation through the strengthening of the social order. In the shadows of the incompletion of its emancipation, the bourgeois consciousness had to fear being cashiered by a more progressive class; it suspected that because it was not the entire freedom, it only produced the travesty of such; that is why it expanded its autonomy theoretically into the system, which at the same time took on the likeness of its compulsory mechanisms.

Hegel, Nietzsche, and Foucault all do this kind of thing (though not from the same political perspective), and we call it genealogy. I'm very partial to it, myself, but the question that always comes up, at least in my own mind, is how literally are we supposed to take it? Adorno is not really doing history, so what is it? Does he really mean that the philosophical systems of the 17th century were created with the aim of cementing the bourgeois social order so as to prevent more radical social change?

On the one hand, of course not. That is not what Descartes, Leibniz, and Spinoza intended, and it was not close to being their motivation. Neither were they brainwashed puppets of the bourgeoisie or consciously taking on the role of middle-class heroes fighting the intellectual fight against the ancien régime on one side and the proletariat on the other.

On the other hand, yes. These philosophical systems functioned ideologically in literally the way he describes, and they literally seemed like good ideas at the time partly for the reasons he gives. The trick is just to know how to interpret these genealogies: not as accounts of the intentions of the people in question, i.e., not as empirical history, but as speculative reconstructions of cultural tendencies and the way that these ideas functioned socially and historically.

So I think it's somewhere between literal and metaphorical, not exactly one or the other. That said, it does seem extremely schematic and therefore a bit crude; it's not much different from the standard Marxist narrative of the bourgeois superstructure in the period following feudalism and prior to full-on industrial capitalism.

EDIT: But I think we have to always keep in mind Adorno's dictum that "only exaggeration is true." The crudeness is intentional: it's the bluntness of a sledgehammer.

Hegel, Nietzsche, and Foucault all do this kind of thing (though not from the same political perspective), and we call it genealogy. I'm very partial to it, myself, — Jamal

Well, Jean Baudrillard criticized Foucauldian genealogy, in that it loses (or has lost) its critical power:

For a time I believed in Foucauldian genealogy, but the order of simulation is antinomical to genealogy. If you take this logic to the extreme, what you get is the reabsorption of all genealogy. That's why I believe Foucault was unable to make the leap. What interests me is the mysterious point where he stops and finds nothing more to say. — Baudrillard

But then again, the same he believes for Adorno's negative dialectics:

Benjamin is someone whom I admire deeply. In addition, there is a striking similarity between the tonalities of both periods- a very original combination, in Benjamin as well as Adorno, of a sort of dialectics with a presentiment of what is no longer dialectical: the system and its catastrophe. There is both dialectical nostalgia and something not at all dialectical, a profound melancholy. There is indeed a sort of testimony to the fatality of systems ... — Baudrillard

I make a note of all this not to criticize Adorno, but because you invoked Foucault and seemed sceptical about genealogy. Moreover, from what I read, Foucault is supposed to be 2nd generation critical theorist, and Baudrillard 3rd. I think it is interesting to see how critical theory has developed since the sixties, well, if one believes there has been continuation.

But to return to the matter in hand, at the end of the beginning paragraph of this section, Adorno writes:

In a historical phase where the systems, insofar as they take content seriously, have been relegated to the ominous realm of thought-poetry and have left only the pale outline of organizational schemata behind, it is difficult to really imagine what once drove the philosophical Spirit towards the system. — Adorno

Do you think that in the later passage that you quoted, Adorno is trying to provide an exegesis for exactly that?

how literally are we supposed to take it? — Jamal

Quite literally, I would say. If we take Adorno's "Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, remains alive because the moment to realize it was missed", seriously, together with his demand that philosophy becomes conscious as to what it's been doing (to the non-conceptual), then I think we can safely conclude that all philosophies prior to negative dialectics were unconscious reactions to stimuli of their time.

I'd probably be interested in Baudrillard's criticism of genealogy but I don't understand it from what you've quoted or from the interview it's taken from. I did, however, nod along to the mention of "the mysterious point where he [Foucault] stops and finds nothing more to say."

His portrayal of Adorno and Benjamin as both dialectical and non-dialectical fits quite well with my understanding. It's his way of describing their anti-Hegelian kind of dialectics. Adorno himself says he is doing dialectics but without the progressive unfolding of reason in history. This negativity is what Baudrillard is talking about.

Do you think that in the later passage that you quoted, Adorno is trying to provide an exegesis for exactly that? — Pussycat

"Exegesis" is the wrong word (sorry for the pedantry) but yes, he is giving a genealogical account of what it was that "drove the philosophical Spirit towards the system." Since he does this in terms of class analysis and ideology, the appropriate conception of the philosophical Spirit becomes "the bourgeois consciousness."

Quite literally, I would say. If we take Adorno's "Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, remains alive because the moment to realize it was missed", seriously, together with his demand that philosophy becomes conscious as to what it's been doing (to the non-conceptual), then I think we can safely conclude that all philosophies prior to negative dialectics were unconscious reactions to stimuli of their time. — Pussycat

Nice angle. But how far we should take literally the claim that in the 17th century the philosophical Spirit qua bourgeois consciousness expanded its autonomy into the system and exercised its freedom in thought to produce the Monadology, Cartesianism, and Spinozist pantheism, because it feared it was not able to produce the freedom it had promised in the real world—whether that should be taken literally is another matter.

I'd probably be interested in Baudrillard's criticism of genealogy but I don't understand it from what you've quoted or from the interview it's taken from. I did, however, nod along to the mention of "the mysterious point where he [Foucault] stops and finds nothing more to say."

His portrayal of Adorno and Benjamin as both dialectical and non-dialectical fits quite well with my understanding. It's his way of describing their anti-Hegelian kind of dialectics. Adorno himself says he is doing dialectics but without the progressive unfolding of reason in history. This negativity is what Baudrillard is talking about. — Jamal

What I've gathered from Baudrillard, a prima vista, is that he is over pessimistic over the current affairs. I think he means that genealogy, however valid it may be, has been sublated, appropriated by the dominant system. The same he thinks of dialectics, the one between subject and object, that it is no longer working, since both subject and object do not point to anything real, and we would be doing dialectics between fake images, resulting in the loss of dialectical critical power, and basically of critique in general. He believes that this lament over the loss of dialectics is evident, a presentiment, in Adorno's writings, giving rise to a profound melancholy through nostalgia, what was once great, or what could have been, but has since died. Needless to say, I don't like it, I don't like him at all!

But I was trying to find whether any subsequent thinker continued Adorno's work on negative dialectics, which led me to thinkers like Foucault and Baudrillard. I thought that they would represent the next generations of critical theory or the Frankfurt School, but it turns out I was wrong, the established view is that Jurgen Habernas is 2nd, and Axel Honneth 3rd, and they all have a teacher-student relationship. But it is true that a lot of people engaged, criticized, interpreted and were influenced by Adorno, however none of them actually followed in his steps, not even his so-called successors, his thinking wasn't explored by the next generations. Because who practiced negative dialectics, who did put emphasis on style and content as critique, who gestured towards the non-identical, who did all this, in all, who played the game? Nay, Adorno stands alone.

"Exegesis" is the wrong word (sorry for the pedantry) but yes, he is giving a genealogical account of what it was that "drove the philosophical Spirit towards the system." Since he does this in terms of class analysis and ideology, the appropriate conception of the philosophical Spirit becomes "the bourgeois consciousness." — Jamal

Guess it was, funny, it sounded fitting at the time.

Nice angle. But how far we should take literally the claim that in the 17th century the philosophical Spirit qua bourgeois consciousness expanded its autonomy into the system and exercised its freedom in thought to produce the Monadology, Cartesianism, and Spinozist pantheism, because it feared it was not able to produce the freedom it had promised in the real world—whether that should be taken literally is another matter. — Jamal

Well, I don't know, but it seems plausible, at least. I will attempt to break it down.

In the history of philosophy the systems of the seventeenth century had an especially compensatory purpose.

The first thing that comes to mind when reading "compensatory purpose", is that of the rich guy that compensates for his minimalistic sexualia with a big car. But in the paragraph above, we also note:

According to Nietzsche's critique, the system documents only the narrow-mindedness of the educated, who compensated for their political powerlessness by means of the conceptual construction of an administrative right-of-domain, as it were, over the existent.

So, Nietzsche's view is that system builders are those wishing to compensate for their political inexistence with totalizing structures over existence, using philosophy to do so. Adorno disagrees, as if he defends philosophy's systematic need:

But the systematic need – that which prefers not to disport itself with the membra disiecta [Latin: dissected members] of knowledge, but achieves it absolutely, whose claim is already involuntarily raised in the conclusiveness of every specific judgement – was at times more than the pseudomorphosis of the Spirit into irresistibly successful mathematical, natural-scientific methods.

Adorno believes that the attempt to glue seemingly heterogeneous pieces together unto a unifying whole, is not always purely psychological (like Nietzsche believes), in that it is not driven by envy of the success of the other divisions of labour, mathematics, physics, politics etc. Spirit still pseudomorphises into evidently successful scientific theories, but there is also something else, something involuntary, compulsory even, amidst this move.

And then he goes on to explain that this other was fear: fear of chaos, and fear of the new ruling class being displaced, just like it did itself to the previous one, they would be the ones to know! So basically self-preservation, a defence mechanism, towards the "strengthening of the social order", by imbuing itself into the system it created.

Very interesting post, MU, I like it. I think your interpretative scheme of death/religion, profound/profane, sacrosanct/blasphemy, is inventive and enlightening. I think it's a good model, or instance, of what Adorno is referring to—or else a metaphor (or both). I don't think it reveals his central referent, as you seem to be suggesting, but it's a good way of thinking about it anyway. I particularly like the idea of the critique of ideology as profanity. — Jamal

I think the metaphor works pretty good, even to take it so far as to the expressions of suffering. The use of profanity in language is very often a response to mistake, pain, or wrongdoing, sometimes like a reflexive response to pain. Yet swearing is also a way of rejecting profundity, and not long ago swearing was unacceptable in most social settings. Its expression was a rejection of that taboo. Now, swearing is becoming more and more pervasive, and corresponding with this comes the idea that ideology is bad. We act out the taboo, to swear, and this is a symbolic rejection of the ideology which says don't swear. It's an expression of freedom. But it goes much deeper than a simple rejection, or expression of freedom, because it is derived from those who are being hurt by the ideology, and it is a reflexive response to that pain.

But it's not just that facts are not enough; it's that knowledge in the form of facts is already ideological, is value-laden without knowing it (or without saying so). To uncover the truth then is not just to add more, or different kinds of, information, e.g., including formerly marginalized voices, but to critique the facts themselves to reaveal the truth negatively. You can see this better with a fact like, workers are free in capitalist society because in taking jobs they voluntarily sign contracts. This fact can be criticized to reveal that the company and the worker are not equal parties except in a narrow legal sense, and that the choice between the burdensome job and destitution is no choice at all. — Jamal

I take this attitude toward facts as applicable to all fields of knowledge. At the base of all forms of knowledge, lies the given, the posited. You might call these the brute facts. Wittgenstein posits hinge, or bedrock propositions, and suggests that it would be irrational to doubt them. Adorno actually recommends that we criticize through negative dialectics, these basic facts, the supposed elements of certainty, which constitute the foundation of ideology. So from the positivist perspective, Adorno is irrational.

I take for example, Newton's first law of motion, a basic fact which underlies much of modern physics. You would think that this is just a pragmatic principle which is highly useful toward understanding motion, so this "fact" would be irrelevant toward any suffering caused by ideology. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. In reality, Newton's first law of motion is the basic premise of determinism, which is pervasive, as a backdrop, to materialist philosophy.

Now, I believe that determinist ideology is very harmful and causal toward suffering, because it propagates fatalism and thoughts of helplessness. This, I believe, is how Adorno shows that despite his rejection of idealism, he is in touch with true spirituality. Look at how he talks about finding freedom through resistance to the given facts, and transcending them. Then consider how we describe objects through determinist facts. When this (determinist) objectivity weighs on the subject through the medium of ideology, the expressions of the subject are those of suffering (profanity by the metaphor above). The expressions are symbolic of the desire for freedom.

The speculative moment survives in such resistance: what does not allow
itself to be governed by the given facts, transcends them even in the
closest contact with objects and in the renunciation of sacrosanct
transcendence. What in thought goes beyond that to which it is bound
in its resistance is its freedom. It follows the expressive urge of the
subject. The need to give voice to suffering is the condition of all truth.
For suffering is the objectivity which weighs on the subject; what it
experiences as most subjective, its expression, is objectively mediated.

Because who practiced negative dialectics, who did put emphasis on style and content as critique, who gestured towards the non-identical, who did all this, in all, who played the game? Nay, Adorno stands alone. — Pussycat

At the moment, sure.

I think what'd be interesting through this reading group is to understand "Negative Dialectics" well enough that we could carry on in that capacity -- at least as well as we are able to understand it (and perhaps others have done so as well, but here we are talking about it). ((And really I'd be fine if we simply have a collective understanding of a complicated text -- use be damned))

I'm attracted to Adorno so far. It feels familiar and challenging at the same time. I want to understand how to do "Negative Dialectics" for topics other than negative dialectics itself. It looks like a promising avenue to pursue for lots of my interests (which, to be honest, means that in the long run I'll find something wrong....)

That would be nice indeed. However, I must note that there is an extra difficulty in doing so in english, for us non-german speakers, on top of everything else. I asked the ai to compare german to english with respect to flexibility:

========

German vs. English: Flexibility in Expression (Especially for Philosophy)

How grammatical structure shapes philosophical expression

INFLECTION & WORD ORDER

German:

• Inflection: ✅ Moderate: retains case endings (4 cases - nominative, accusative, dative, genitive), verb conjugations, adjective endings
• Word Order Flexibility: ✅ Relatively flexible: thanks to case endings, word order can vary for emphasis or poetic effect (inflection)
• Case System: ✅ Nominative, accusative, dative, genitive
• Verb position: ✅ Verb-second in main clauses; verb-final in subordinate clauses
• Gendered Nouns and Agreement: ✅ Strong gender system (masc/fem/neut) affects articles and adjectives
• Precision in Logical/Philosophical Phrasing: ✅ High: long compound structures, nested clauses, abstract nominal forms

English:

• Inflection: ❌ Minimal: relies mostly on word order and helper words
• Word Order Flexibility: ❌ Rigid SVO: changing word order usually alters or obscures meaning
• Case System: ⚠️ Only in pronouns (I/me, he/him); nouns rely on position
• Verb position: ❌ Verb typically fixed in second position (subject-verb-object)
• Gendered Nouns and Agreement: ❌ No gender in nouns, minimal agreement (he/she/it)
• Precision in Logical/Philosophical Phrasing: ✅ High, but tends toward analytic and linear structure

EXAMPLES OF WORD ORDER FLEXIBILITY

Case Endings Free Up Word Order

German marks grammatical roles using case, so it can move subjects, objects, and indirect objects around without losing clarity.

In German, all of the following mean “I give the man the book”:

• Ich gebe dem Mann das Buch
• Dem Mann gebe ich das Buch
• Das Buch gebe ich dem Mann

In English:

• "I give the man the book" – ✅standard
• "The book, I give the man" – awkard or poetic
• "To the man, I give the book" – ✅but stylistically elevated, rare

German allows word reordering for emphasis because grammatical roles are clear from case endings. English relies on strict position, changing the order tends to make the sentence sound poetic, archaic, or even confusing, because grammatical function depends on position, not form.

VERB POSITION (flexibility)

German has verb-second (V2) word order in main clauses, but verb-final in subordinate clauses:

German:
Ich denke, also bin ich.
..., weil ich denke.

English:
I think, therefore I am.
..., because I think.

German subordinate clauses allow the verb to appear at the end. English requires the verb to appear early. The ability to postpone the verb to the end of a dependent clause allows suspense, precision, or logical layering — which German philosophers like Kant and Hegel used extensively. English can't do this. Subordinate clauses still demand the verb early:

• "...because I think" ✅
• "...because I the truth through reason grasp" ❌

PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING STYLE

German favors recursive, meditative, and hierarchical thought structures:

• Used by Kant, Hegel, Heidegger
• Verbs at the end allow a thought to build slowly toward a conclusion
• Example (Kantian style):
  “The understanding, by means of the categories, the manifold of intuition into a unified representation brings.”

English prefers clear, sequential, analytic sentence structure:

• Used by Russell, Locke, Rawls
• Forces premature commitment to action/verb early in sentence
• Same sentence becomes:
  “The understanding brings the manifold of intuition into a unified representation by means of the categories.”

Both are accurate and communicate the same idea, but the German allows more suspense and emphasis on process (to build toward the final verb) — which is useful for complex or abstract reasoning.

SUMMARY:

German:
- Flexible word order due to case system
- Verbs often come at the end in dependent clauses
- Emphasis can be shifted through syntax
- Ideal for layered, dialectical, or meditative reasoning

English:
- Fixed word order, limited inflection
- Emphasis relies more on tone or word choice
- Ideal for analytic, step-by-step argumentation

Let me know if you'd like a version comparing German to Latin, Sanskrit, or Ancient Greek!

========

SVO/SOV and inflection, as the main problems I see. :rofl: And so it would seem that the project is severely hampered and severed from the outset. The translated material we are working with is mostly analytic and not dialectical, as it has been mediated through the english language. This poses an additional challenge, as english readers can't be helped by language, the dialectic is neither immanent nor immediate in it. But I guess this is the whole point, mediation, which even in a highly dialectical language such as german, cannot be avoided. As to our own style and presentation, tone or syntax tricks must be employed, at the peril of making one sound like Yoda. Yet another challenge we brought ourselves against, who wouldn't love a challenge anyway, what else is there?

This poses an additional challenge, as english readers can't be helped by language, the dialectic is neither immanent nor immediate in it. — Pussycat

I don't see how you draw this conclusion. You've pointed out differences between English and German, but you haven't indicated why you think one is more conducive to negative dialectics, or dialectics in general, than the other. You simply assert that German is "a highly dialectical language", without explaining why.

It appears like you base this on flexibility. But flexibility is multi-faceted, and your AI report focuses only on flexibility of form. Your AI was baited because you limited it to "grammatical structure" with complete disregard for semantics. Most of that report doesn't even make sense. "Suspense" it says "is useful for complex or abstract reasoning". How does that make any sense? It just speaks nonsense and appears to support the conclusion you wanted it to.

The point that I would have liked to make was that in the translated material, we can see its meaning, the semantics of it, but not its aesthetic, its style, which for Adorno is crucial. To make this point, I figured a comparison between the german and the english language would suffice, to show how much can be lost in translation between the two. There is a translator's note in the pdf, if you would like to read it. Now, regarding my haughty statement that german is a "highly dialectical language", compared to english which is less, you are right, I didn't explain it. However it wasn't me that baited the AI, it was rather the other way round. But tell me, do you think that languages are historically conditioned?

There is a translator's note in the pdf, if you would like to read it. — Pussycat

I read the translator's notes, and they say nothing about what you are claiming. There is no mention of "style", and I do not see the issue with style which you are talking about. I can read Plato's dialogues, translated from ancient Greek, which is far more distant to English than German is, and with a decent translation, the style comes through quite well. Some of the meaning is lost though, often because of ambiguity. This is what is referred to in the translator's notes, when he describes how he translates specific words.

Overall though, the aesthetic comes through, and this is what the translator means when he says:

Strange as it sounds, good translations are actually rather like the false
color images of distant planets relayed by spacecraft: Neptune and
Pluto wouldn’t actually look like that to the naked eyes of an astronaut
cruising the dim outer reaches of the solar system in person, but the
reprocessed and rescaled image does justice to the reality, by making
the inexperienceable nevertheless experienceable after all.

Remastering, if it is done well, enhances the experience, it does not degrade it. So the difference between a good translation and a bad one, is the difference between enhancing and degrading the experience. This might be closely linked to how the style is presented by the translator, but there is nothing to indicate that a good translator cannot enhance the style. It takes knowledge of both languages, effort, and skill.

But tell me, do you think that languages are historically conditioned? — Pussycat

I really don't know what you are asking here.

And so it would seem that the project is severely hampered and severed from the outset. — Pussycat

Since we are not reading the original, I take it you think my recent post about how Adorno performs the content of his philosophy in the form of his writing is completely misguided?

I want to understand how to do "Negative Dialectics" for topics other than negative dialectics itself. — Moliere

I flatter myself that I'm getting a good feel for it. But maybe the best way to understand how to apply it or use it is to read Minima Moralia and Dialectic of Enlightenment, as well as the “Models” section of ND.

As for who could be said to have done ND after Adorno, the closest I think would be Fredric Jameson and Zizek, though the latter is far from explicitly Adornian.

Maybe kin to ND would be trying to see the world without an ideological lens?

Yes, because ND itself tries to see the world without the distortions of ideology (he notes the importance of the appearance/reality discinction). Even so, a pure unideological standpoint is not possible; critical thought is itself produced by the society is critiques.

Even so, a pure unideological standpoint is not possible; critical thought is itself produced by the society is critiques. — Jamal

Maybe sometimes trying on someone else's ideology would help. By help, I just mean loosen the grip of my own ideas so I might see something I've been ignoring. Or just realize that if I don't take a grain of salt with my ideology, I can end up reacting to a dreamworld, because all I see is my biases.

Again, ND is in a sense doing just that, since the idea of immanent critique is to confront ideological concepts on their own terms and push them to breaking point.

someone else's ideology — frank

If it's not obvious, my use of "ideology" is the Marxist one: the ideas that justify the status quo.

I think in my world there are opposing ideologies that both justify aspects of the status quo. Sometimes it seems like the real difference is just a matter of tone... the vibe.

That's an interesting point that I will ponder.

I read the translator's notes, and they say nothing about what you are claiming. There is no mention of "style", and I do not see the issue with style which you are talking about. I can read Plato's dialogues, translated from ancient Greek, which is far more distant to English than German is, and with a decent translation, the style comes through quite well. Some of the meaning is lost though, often because of ambiguity. This is what is referred to in the translator's notes, when he describes how he translates specific words. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ancient greek and german share common structure and grammar, they are both SOV and inflected languages, unlike modern greek which is SVO, but managed to keep some of its inflection.

Redmond follows Benjamin's theory of translation:

Yet any translation that intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but communication-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. But do we not generally regard that which lies beyond communication in a literary work-and even a poor translator will admit that this is its essential substance-as the unfathomable, the mysterious, the "poetic"? And is this not something that a translator can reproduce only if he is also-a poet? Such, actually, is the cause of another characteristic of inferior translation, which consequently we may define as the inaccurate transmission of an inessential content. — Benjamin - The Task of the Translator

Overall though, the aesthetic comes through, and this is what the translator means when he says: — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, quite a positive outlook on translation he has. Which is curious why subsequently he'd write:

Though I’ve done my best to render something of the subtlety, grace, tact and sheer power of Adorno’s original, bear in mind that what you’re reading is nothing but the false-color bitmap image, as it were, of the planetary surface of the original. — Redmond

Remastering, if it is done well, enhances the experience, it does not degrade it. So the difference between a good translation and a bad one, is the difference between enhancing and degrading the experience. This might be closely linked to how the style is presented by the translator, but there is nothing to indicate that a good translator cannot enhance the style. It takes knowledge of both languages, effort, and skill. — Metaphysician Undercover

But then, if the experience has been enhanced, why should we be wary of the false-color bitmap surface image?

And before that, he says:

Thinking, said Brecht, is one of the greatest pleasures of life, and on this score Adorno, who certainly had his share of disagreements with Central Europe’s greatest modernist playwright, would not only concur, but match Brecht’s own aesthetic praxis step for dialectical step by writing some of the most gorgeous theory ever written. — Redmond

There it is again, the positivity, "thinking is one of the greatest pleasures of life". Isn't this an ideological standpoint?

I really don't know what you are asking here. — Metaphysician Undercover

Whether languages adapted so that to represent and match the dominating ideologies of the times.

Since we are not reading the original, I take it you think my recent post about how Adorno performs the content of his philosophy in the form of his writing is completely misguided? — Jamal

What, you mean this?

It just occurred to me: Adorno's style is mimesis in action, showing in the form of his writing the real contradictions of the world. — Jamal

This can indeed be so in his other works, but in ND, his only metatheoretical work? Hm, it should be, if we consider that there is no higher language, and let ND be a language in and for itself. For if there were a higher language than ND through which ND is being presented, it would undermine it. If, on the other hand, ND is being exposed in a lesser language, that would insult it.

But I guess I would agree with Gillian Rose:

If Minima Moralia is written from 'the subjective standpoint', then Negative Dialectic is written from 'the objective standpoint'. The second of these books, although fragmentary like the first, constitutes the most direct statement of Adorno's ideas, free of irony. Minima Moralia is much less formal in its tone and often lyrical in style and relies greatly on 'indirect methods', especially ironic inversion.This indirect and more idiosyncratic way of presenting his ideas is what Adorno means by 'the subjective standpoint'. In Minima Moralia Adorno's use of ironic inversion is most explicit, while in other texts the inverted ways in which he presents his ideas about society are less obvious because the irony is less
obvious. Adorno, like many essayists and ironists, has thus been read far too literally, and this is partly because some of his texts are stylistically much more meticulous than others. — Gillian Rose - The Melancholy Science

@Moliere

I flatter myself that I'm getting a good feel for it. But maybe the best way to understand how to apply it or use it is to read Minima Moralia and Dialectic of Enlightenment, as well as the “Models” section of ND. — Jamal

I feel like I might want to read his Aesthetic Theory after ND. Since it was written after ND, it might actually be a conscious application, whereas MM and DoE are negative dialectics in action before Adorno had formally theorized it. And since the art and aesthetic angle is so important in ND, Aesthetic Theory seems like it might be ideal.

Until now I've been a bit put off by what I expect to be his exclusive avant garde and modernist preoccupations—where Adorno goes for Schoenberg and Berg, I go for Stravinsky and Messiaen, not to mention the dreaded jazz—but I've seen enough interesting quotations from AT recently to catch my attention.

I flatter myself that I'm getting a good feel for it. But maybe the best way to understand how to apply it or use it is to read Minima Moralia and Dialectic of Enlightenment, as well as the “Models” section of ND.

As for who could be said to have done ND after Adorno, the closest I think would be Fredric Jameson and Zizek, though the latter is far from explicitly Adornian. — Jamal

In relation to my ability now I'd say your flattery is warranted. I'm still looking to your reading for guidance through this.

I feel like I might want to read his Aesthetic Theory after ND. Since it was written after ND, it might actually be a conscious application, whereas MM and DoE are negative dialectics in action before Adorno had formally theorized it. And since the art and aesthetic angle is so important in ND, Aesthetic Theory seems like it might be ideal.

Until now I've been a bit put off by what I expect to be his exclusive avant garde and modernist preoccupations—where Adorno goes for Schoenberg and Berg, I go for Stravinsky and Messiaen, not to mention the dreaded jazz—but I've seen enough interesting quotations from AT recently to catch my attention. — Jamal

Well, you know I like aesthetics :D

Also, thanks for the heads up on where to go for that line of thought.

Yes, quite a positive outlook on translation he has. Which is curious why subsequently he'd write: — Pussycat

Well, he is the translator. You wouldn't expect him to be saying that it's impossible for the translator to translate, would you? So what he does is elucidate the difference between the original and the translation, with the analogy. Then, the part you find "curious" is simply him reminding us of that difference.

But then, if the experience has been enhanced, why should we be wary of the false-color bitmap surface image? — Pussycat

What he describes with the bitmap analogy, is a difference. As I explained, that difference may enhance, or it may degrade the experience, in relation to the original. Further, it may enhance some aspects, and degrade others, and all sorts of different possibilities for "difference". In other words, the translator knows that there are good translations and bad, and might also even know that his translation is lacking in some areas, if he knew that he didn't adequately understand some areas. Therefore he is warning us to be wary of all translations, even his.

Whether languages adapted so that to represent and match the dominating ideologies of the times. — Pussycat

Such a relation would be reciprocal, over lengthy time. Ideology gets shaped by language as much as language gets shaped by ideology. In my reply to Jamal above, the use of profanity in language is described as a rejection of ideology. And, as the profundity of ideology is renounced in the manner described by Adorno, new ideology will fill the void, and this will be shaped by language. Some ideology will severely restrict language use, as was evident with Catholicism and The Inquisition. But ultimately such restriction of freedom induces rejection, then the new ideology which evolves is restricted by the limits of language.

Others are welcome to go over the system sections in more detail, but since we discussed the stuff about system quite a lot when reading the lectures, I'm not inclined to do my usual commentary. As far as I can tell he's saying basically the same thing, though in more glittering and arresting prose. So I'll just skate over the sections here.

In the Relation to System section his view of systems seems entirely negative, and he even calls them insane:

The excrescences of the systems since the Cartesian pineal gland and the axioms and definitions of Spinoza, already filled to the brim with the entire rationalism which he then deductively extracts, proclaim by their untruth that of the systems themselves, their madness.

But the dialectical character of his view comes out two sections later in Double Character of the System, which begins with...

Critique does not simply liquidate the system.

In other words, "I know I said that systems are crazy, but that doesn't mean they can be entirely rejected." And the task is...

... to transpose the energy of thought once unbound from the philosophical systems into the open determination of particular moments.

This "open determination" is what he referred to in the lectures as "blasting open the phenomena with the insistent power of thought." And crucially the focus is on individual phenomena rather than on the whole as it is in systems, which are essentially totalizing.

Then, in an intriguing passage, he gets more specific about what he wants to preserve of systems:

As prejudiced as this postulate is in the presupposition of the identity of everything existent with the cognizing principle, so too does that postulate, once burdened as in the manner of the idealistic speculation, legitimately recall the affinity of objects to each another, which is rendered taboo by the scientific need for order in order to yield to the surrogate of its schemata. What the objects communicate in, instead of each being the atom to which classificatory logic reduces it, is the trace of the determination of objects in themselves, which Kant denied and which Hegel wished to re-establish against Kant through the subject.

Here he explicitly associates the "affinity of objects to each other"—an affinity that escapes scientific and otherwise systematic classification—with things in themselves. This takes me back to my post in which I wondered how close the non-identical was to the in-itself.

But rather than continuing to wonder about that, the main thing to see is that there are relations between things that are not adequately captured, or are obscured, by our concepts and categories, especially the scientific ones. It's about qualitative relationships, those which paradigmatically concern artists, rather than the measurable relationships represented and reified in equations.

In Adorno's hands, Kant's in-itself becomes metaphorical or at least redefined and refunctioned. It is no longer beyond experience, unknowable, unconditioned or mind-independent. But it does represent what is most real in things: their irreducible particularity, the non-identical.

To comprehend a thing itself, not to merely fit it in, to register it in a system of relationships, is nothing other than to become aware of the particular moment in its immanent context with others. Such anti-subjectivism stirs beneath the crackling shell of absolute idealism, in the impulse to open up the thing in question, by recourse to how they became. The concept of a system recalls, in inverted form, the coherence of the non-identical, which is exactly what is damaged by deductive systematics. Critique of the system and asystematic thinking are superficial, so long as they do not make it possible to unbind the power of coherence, which the idealistic systems signed over to the transcendental subject.

This goes back to the earlier discussions about systems. What matters here is the idea of a coherent, meaningful reality, an inheritance of system that's worth hanging on to.

In the System Antinomical section he returns to his genealogical account of systems as products of bourgeois consciousness. This implies that there were no systems prior to the modern era. Indeed he points out that system "could be imputed only retrospectively" to Plato, for instance; and that Kant's criticism of Aristotle's categories (as merely empirical) is a historical product of Kant's epoch, in which the reason of the autonomous individual was to be elevated above everything else, hence the concept of the transcendental.

The crucial call to arms comes at the end of the section:

However the speculative power to blast open that which is irresolvable is that of the negation. Solely in it does the systematic movement live on. The categories of the critique of the system are at the same time those which comprehend the particular. What has once legitimately stepped beyond the particularity in the system has its place outside of the system. The gaze which becomes aware, by interpreting the phenomenon, of more than what it merely is, and solely thereby, what it is, secularizes metaphysics. Only a philosophy in fragment form would give the illusionary monads sketched by idealism what is their due. They would be representations [Vorstellungen] of the totality, which is inconceivable as such, in the particular.

The spirit of system or "systematic movement", and therefore the idea of a coherent, meaningful reality, can now live on only in negativity, i.e. in critique rather than by charting progress, and only by focusing on the particulars.

QUESTION: How does he propose to focus only on particulars, doing philosophy in fragment form, and at the same time uncover a coherent, meaningful reality and the affinity between objects?

Introduction: Argument and Experience (i)

The thought which may positively hypostasize nothing outside of the dialectical consummation overshoots the object with which it no longer has the illusion of being one with; it becomes more independent than in the conception of its absoluteness, in which the sovereign and the provisional shade into one another, each dependent on the other. Perhaps the Kantian exemption of the intelligible sphere from every immanence aimed for this. Immersion into the particular, dialectical immanence raised to an extreme, requires as one of its moments the freedom to also step out of the object, the freedom which the claim of identity cuts off. Hegel would have abjured this; he relied upon the complete mediation in objects. In the praxis of cognition, the resolution of the irresolvable, the moment of such transcendence of thought comes to light in that solely as a micrology does it employ macrological means.

A hell of a passage, ultra-compressed and dialectical. Adorno is criticizing Hegelian dialectics but at the same time showing how its failure can lead to the non-identical. The "thought which may positively hypostasize nothing outside of the dialectical consummation" is the Hegelian thought that insists on systematic comprehensiveness. But why does he seem to imply that hypostasizing something outside of the dialectical consummation is a good thing? He seems to be criticizing Hegelian thought for failing to hypostasize anything except what is immanent to the dialectic and therefore to reason. Well, that's just it: in hypostasizing merely within the system it neglects to posit anything outside it, denying the reality of objects beyond this system, i.e., treating abstract concepts as concrete entities in the system, but failing to see concerete entities precisely where they are, beyond the system.

This thought therefore "overshoots the object" and flies away into abstractions, in its commitment to the system. But the object is "the object with which it no longer has the illusion of being one with." This refers to the identity-thinking of Hegelian idealism, the idea that thought and object coincide without remainder—but how did the Hegelian thought suddenly become so self-aware such that it is no longer under this illusion? The answer is that Adorno is pushing two stages together: represented here is the collapse of Hegelian dialectics into Adornian critique and negative dialectics; the overshoot is the failure that exposes the illusion, and in grasping this the thought has already found its way to negative dialectics (all being well). This part of the sentence is thus a dialectical image of the revealing failure of Hegel's system.

From that point, the thought "becomes more independent than in the conception of its absoluteness, in which the sovereign and the provisional shade into one another, each dependent on the other." (As far as I can tell the interdependence of sovereign and provisional might refer to the simultaneous presence alongside the Absolute—the telos of the dialectic and the final authority to which everything is subject—of a historical contingency that Hegel has, conveniently and retrospectively, made necessary in his system.)

Perhaps the Kantian exemption of the intelligible sphere from every immanence aimed for this.

Perhaps Kant, in putting the thing-in-itself beyond reason, wanted to reserve a space for the non-conceptual, denying reason's ability to capture everything.

Immersion into the particular, dialectical immanence raised to an extreme, requires as one of its moments the freedom to also step out of the object, the freedom which the claim of identity cuts off.

In negative dialectics we focus on concrete particulars, this being the dialectical method of immanent critique that pushes concepts till they fail. Thought here needs to be able to step out of the object and recognize that it has failed (failed because it used a deficient or ideological concept, for example). The claim of identity embedded in Hegel's system denies this freedom to thought since it insists beforehand on an identity between thought and the object. As Adorno says, "Hegel would have abjured this; he relied upon the complete mediation in objects." Negative dialectics is always ready to admit thought's failure; Hegel's dialectics has no such humility.

In the praxis of cognition, the resolution of the irresolvable, the moment of such transcendence of thought comes to light in that solely as a micrology does it employ macrological means.

Micrology is the commitment to concrete particulars, but what about macrology? I think it must be referring to what has gone before, i.e., Hegelian dialectics. But employing "macrological means" does not mean to employ Hegel's system, only its dialectical tools. So the point is that only in a philosophy deeply committed to concrete particulars can a method derived from a totalizing system produce the "transcendence of thought" whereby thought manages to reveal something of the non-conceptual, which was the point of philosophy all along.

QUESTION: I said that the following is a dialectical image of the collapse of Hegelian dialectics: "The thought which may positively hypostasize nothing outside of the dialectical consummation overshoots the object with which it no longer has the illusion of being one with." But since this collapse produces negative dialectics, which is supposedly the better philosophy, how is this dialectical movement not a positive synthesis?

This is one of Adorno's alternate way, one of many, of saying what he said before, namely to go beyond the concept by means of concept.

"The thought which may positively hypostasize nothing outside of the dialectical consummation overshoots the object with which it no longer has the illusion of being one with": this is exactly the negative dialectics claim, principle. Dialectical consummation, speculation, still happens, the thought overshoots, transcends the object, a form of critical transcendence, but thought is not under the illusion that it grasped the object. If hypostasization ever takes place, it would have to be within the dialectic, never outside of it, which is what Hegel did.

QUESTION: I said that the following is a dialectical image of the collapse of Hegelian dialectics: "The thought which may positively hypostasize nothing outside of the dialectical consummation overshoots the object with which it no longer has the illusion of being one with." But since this collapse produces negative dialectics, which is supposedly the better philosophy, how is this dialectical movement not a positive synthesis? — Jamal

I think this relates directly to what he says about system thinking. The idea of negative dialectics is not to reject systems thinking, but to determine its true form. And this displays how Adorno thinks of criticism. To criticize is not to reject, but a way of bettering the thing being criticized.

There's been some back and forth between you and I in this thread, concerning this issue. First there was the question of whether Adorno accepts or rejects Hegelian principles. Also we had the question of whether what Adorno presents is properly called "dialectics" in the context of Hegelian "dialectics". It's becoming apparent to me, that the process is to neither accept nor reject a given principle, but to criticize it. This leaves synthesis as unnecessary, because acceptance of principles, adoption of belief is not the intended end. The process may or may not enable synthesis, and having synthesis as a goal from the outcome would prejudice the procedure.

QUESTION: How does he propose to focus only on particulars, doing philosophy in fragment form, and at the same time uncover a coherent, meaningful reality and the affinity between objects? — Jamal

I think that this is the real issue with the idea of the concept going beyond, or overshooting the object. Relations between objects "affinity" is something categorically distinct from objects themselves. So conceptualization which focuses on objects, and representing objects (identity thinking), really cannot grasp this very significant aspect of reality which is the affinity between objects.

The issue appears to be the difference between the relations between concept and object, and the relations between object and object. When the concept overshoots the object it may establish a scientific relation of prediction. Notice though that this relation is a subject/object relation because that overshooting is directed by intention toward producing an extended conception of the object. What Adorno is interested in is the true object/object relation. This must take as its primary assumption, a separation which produces a multitude, rather than the primary assumption of unity which conceptualizes "the object". The difference being that the primary postulate is separation rather than unity.

Introduction: Idealism as Rage

I'm backtracking here. Reading the following from J. M. Bernstein in the Blackwell Companion to Adorno made me realize that I missed some good stuff in the "Idealism as Rage" section, so I'll have a look at it here.

But first, and incidentally, I think this passage from the Bernstein essay goes some way to accounting for Adorno's form of expression and also justifying the statement that "the need to give voice to suffering is the condition of all truth.":

Even if one were to concede that grasping a concept is grasping its inferential commitments – a version of the doctrine that meaning is use – nothing of the value of those inferences would thereby be captured. Although scientific rationality is ideally affect free, if identity thinking is for the sake of controlling nature and a product of the drive for self‐preservation, then even truth‐only cognition is interested and desiring. Adorno offers a hyperbolic genealogy of idealism in this respect, tracing it back to the animal’s rage at its soon‐to‐be victim [...] The rationalist and idealist systems are rigorous sets of inferential relations among foundational premises and remote conclusions about things – matter is nothing but res extensa or atoms or force fields composed of positive and negative forces – that express the concept of a totality in which thought is set in opposition to each content, evaporating the content in the thought of it. What matters in this is Adorno’s contention that inferential relations always express something more and other than their sheer logicality; truth‐only cognition sublimates desire, fear, and rage into chilling indifference, into a coldness that colors rationalized reason’s approach to every living thing. Adorno’s skepticism about the neutrality of truth‐only cognition explains one of the singular ambitions of Negative Dialectics, namely, to find a mode of argument that could achieve bindingness without system, that is, a form of rigor that could be both rationally and cognitively compelling in a manner that while not crossing the limits of logic, derived its authority from a distinct mode of writing and presentation.

[...]

If the satisfaction of truth‐only cognition is not the normative guide for critique, what is? What is the expressive impulse of negative dialectics? Adorno’s answer is direct and blunt: “The need to give voice to suffering is the condition of all truth. For suffering is the objec- tivity that weighs on the subject; what it experiences as most subjective, its expression, is objectively mediated” (Adorno 1973, 17–18, 1975, 29). If rationalized reason is indifference, it is above all indifferent to suffering, the most deeply subjective experience a living being can undergo since it is the immediate experience of the negation of particular life; giving voice to suffering is providing the vanquished transient dimensions of human life with the conceptual presentation that modern reason has deprived them of. For here and now, this is what being true to human living comes to, hence the condition for all truth. — Bernstein, J. M. Concept and Object: Adorno’s Critique of Kant The Blackwell Companion to Adorno, p. 495

Anyway, on to what Bernstein refers to as Adorno's "hyperbolic genealogy":

The system by which the sovereign Spirit thought to transfigure itself has its Ur-history in that which is pre-intellectual, in the animal life of the species. Predators are hungry; the pounce onto the prey is difficult, often dangerous. The animal needs, as it were, additional impulses in order to dare this. These fuse with the displeasure of hunger into rage at the victim, whose expression is designed to terrify and weaken the latter. During the progression to humanity this is rationalized through projection. The animal rationale [French: rational animal] which is hungry for its opponent, already the fortunate owner of a super-ego, must have a reason. The more completely that what it does follows the law of self-preservation, the less it may confess the primacy of this to itself and others; otherwise its laboriously achieved status as a zoon politikon [Greek: political animal] loses, as modern German puts it, credibility.

The life-form to be devoured must be evil. This anthropological schemata has been sublimated all the way into epistemology. In idealism – most obviously in Fichte – the ideology unconsciously rules that the non-Ego, l’autrui [French: the others], finally everything reminiscent of nature, is inferior, so that the unity of the thought bent on preserving itself may gobble it up, thus consoled. This justifies its principle as much as it increases the desire. The system is the Spirit turned belly, rage the signature of each and every idealism; it distorts even Kant’s humanity, dispelling the nimbus of that which is higher and more noble in which this knew how to clothe itself. The opinion of the 34person in the middle is the sibling of contempt for human beings: to let nothing go undisputed. The sublime inexorability of moral law was of a piece with such rationalized rage at the non-identical, and even the liberal Hegel was no better, when he walled off the superiority of the bad conscience, from those who demurred from the speculative concept, the hypostasis of the Spirit. What was emancipatory in Nietzsche, a true turning-point of Western thinking, which later versions merely usurped, was that he expressed such mysteries. The Spirit, which throws off its rationalization – its bane – ceases by virtue of its own self-reflection to be that which is radically evil, which irritates it in the Other.

I found an online translation of most of the introduction to ND by Christian Thorne and Matthias Menda, available here:

https://sites.williams.edu/cthorne/theodor-adorno-negative-dialectics/

Comparing various sections with the Redmond translation, it mostly seems to convey the same sense but in a more readable form. I don't want to switch, because I am very happy with the clunky-but-accurate Redmond, but sometimes it's good to have a look at an alternative rendering, especially if it's also pretty good. Here's the "Idealism as Rage" section:

Philosophical system, in which the sovereign mind entertains delusions of its majesty, has its earliest history in the pre-intellectual realm, that is, in the animal life of the species. Beasts of prey are hungry; pouncing on a victim is hard, often dangerous. If the animal is to risk it, it will require not just the standard impulses, but an auxiliary set, as well. These fuse together with the un-pleasure of hunger to become a kind of rage against the victim, the expression of which, in turn—and expediently enough—terrifies that victim and stuns it. Along the pathway to humanity, this gets rationalized by means of a projection. The rational animal who develops an appetite for his opponent has to, as happy owner of a super-ego, come up with a reason for attacking. The more completely his actions accord with the law of self-preservation, the less he is able to concede, to himself or others, its primacy; otherwise, the status of what the Germans now call the zoon politikon, achieved after so much effort, would come to seem implausible. Any creature marked out for eating had better be evil. This anthropological scheme has been sublimated all the way into epistemology. Idealism—and Fichte most emphatically—is governed unknowingly by an ideology which says that the not-I, l’autrui, anything, finally, that reminds one of nature, is worth almost nothing, so that the unity of the self-sustaining thought can devour it in good conscience. This vindicates the principle of thought and, equally, whets its appetite. Philosophical system is the belly turned mind, just as rage is the defining mark of idealism in all its forms; it disfigures even Kant’s humanity, confutes the nimbus of elevation and nobility with which Kant’s thinking has a way of investing itself. The view of the man in the center of the world is akin to contempt for humanity: to leave nothing uncontested or unchallenged. The sublime implacability of moral law was of the same cut as such rationalized rage against the non-identical, and even Hegel, liberally inclined, was no better, scolding, with the superiority of bad conscience, anything that rejects the speculative concept or hypostasis of the mind. What was so liberating about Nietzsche, who truly marked an about-face in the history of Western thought, a turn which later figures merely usurped, was that he spoke such mysteries out loud. The mind that breaks the spell of rationalization by dint of such stocktaking stops being the radical evil that, when rationalized, is the mind’s goad and trigger. — Idealism as Rage

So, idealism is the projection into reason of the predator's rage against its prey. It is the demonization of the Other, of nature, of the non-identical, to justify devouring it. This is even more extreme than the geneaology I was looking at before, and again the question is just how to interpret it. But in a way, it feels like that doesn't really matter: the passage is electrifying and scandalous, so it's a lot of fun to read; and it has an intuitively persuasive power, as if I understand it already. It hits in the way that sociobiological just-so stories hit those who are not already sceptical of them, with the shock of recognition. Or conspiracy theories might be another example.

Once again, the true interpretation is somewhere between literal and metaphorical. Or rather, it is both at the same time. Things didn't really happen that way—Adorno is not actually doing evolutionary biology—but he is making truth-claims about the structure of idealism, the way it functions to dominate, and speculating about which antecedent animal passions could have conditioned human beings in such a way as to allow this kind of thinking to develop. The result is a true picture with a speculative, coherent origin story. The origin story is needed to emphasize that reason's tendency to domination is not just an accident along the way. And it is literally true that reason was and still is used to justify domination, so it makes sense to trace this back to the earliest form of domination we can think of.

It operates at the limit between metaphor and material history. Adorno isn't doing evolutionary natural history, but he's doing more than metaphor for rhetorical effect (even though the passage is rhetorically effective). One of the things Adorno wants to convince us of is that there is a space between poetry and hard science.

So the passage makes two central claims: idealism systematically replicates predatory logic (demonization as justification of consumption); and this emerges from real conditions of human animality, not by way of genetic determinism but as sublimated survival strategy, channeled into reason.

I think these are plausible at the very least. The origin story exposes reason's domination as non-accidental while avoiding biological determinism. The speculative prehistory unearths, in a similar way to Nietzsche and Freud, reason's repressed animality through its own contradictions. When Fichte belittles the non-Ego, this really does continue, in infinitely developed form, the predator's rage, because the material needs of self-preservation persist in the structure of thought itself.