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 want to condense Against Relativism in a facetious manner:

Relativism is something which ND opposes.

Not in the way that others do, because (various reasons)

The points I think that are important here are that ND is against relativism, and this is a long overdue time for ND to transition from the epistemic to the ethical.

It would be more fruitful to cognize relativism as a delimited
form of consciousness.

Sums up his take on the bourgeois form of relativism, I think: Rather than producing arguments against it one can, from a philosophical vantage, see that such kinds of relativism or skepticism aren't worth addressing: But that's not to say that skepticism is not worth addressing (as Adorno has already done)

I'm more inclined to see this as a straight expression, but I don't know. It seems hard to reconcile the notion that Adorno is making fun of this idea while also noting how the place where ontology hits bottomlessness is the place of truth. — Moliere

Where's the difficulty? Think of it as I said, when ontology hits (the bottom of) bottomlessness, there it finds truth. In other words, ontology never finds truth. And, contrary to those who think that truth is never hidden from us, Adorno seems to think it is always hidden from us.

I have a hard time reading this like he's poking fun. — Moliere

Well he has already said that there is humour involved in philosophy.

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? — Pussycat

i don't see your point. When he says that, he is talking about those who think that truth cannot hide from us. That whole paragraph, from which you quoted, is all part and package of that sarcasm involving the relationship between truth and groundlessness. To avoid groundlessness we choose tautology, but tautology is useless, powerless. So metaphysics is nothing but the insane prattle of going from one extreme to the other.

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? — Pussycat

He's sarcastically making fun of metaphysics. It's mental acrobatics, yes, but it is doing nothing (Wittgenstein's idleness) but insane, ridiculous moves, which we might be entertained by (laugh at). These acrobatic moves are even beyond sophistry in ridiculousness, because at least the agility of sophistry is purposefully directed.

Where's the difficulty? Think of it as I said, when ontology hits (the bottom of) bottomlessness, there it finds truth. In other words, ontology never finds truth. And, contrary to those who think that truth is never hidden from us, Adorno seems to think it is always hidden from us. — Metaphysician Undercover

Probably in us talking past one another in some sense, somewhere.

I don't think I or @Pussycat would disagree with "ontology never finds truth" or that "truth is hidden from us" (not always, tho). I put it this ways because it looks like we agree more or less on "bottomlessness"

But then that's to show how these terms warp around one another more than its an interpretation of the text at hand, no?

We are, after all, still in the introduction :D

Maybe some relativism to the text is worthy to pursue together? Whether we think this or that way?

I don't think I or Pussycat would disagree with "ontology never finds truth" or that "truth is hidden from us" (not always, tho). I put it this ways because it looks like we agree more or less on "bottomlessness" — Moliere

Rethinking here:

Where ontology hits bottomlessness is the place of truth, but that does not, in turn, mean that ontology finds truth.

I am imagining at this point to make sense of things, but I'm thinking that ontology is a sort of beginning whereby we say various things we take to be true with respect to reality: Every event has a cause. No individual can be at two places at once. Space is Euclidean.

But truth is where we begin to see these statements unravel: the groundlessness demonstrates how the ontological statement is false, sometimes, and so unravels its universal expression.

However, theory (ontology) must be sought out again after ontology hits bottomlessness.

The one negates the other at the most extreme point they can and this is how thought progresses to the next point in the dialectic.

But rather than all the assertions of Hegel we get a somewhat open dialectic...

Still speculative at this point, for sure, but the thoughts I'm having.

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. — Pussycat

:up:

I agree with this interpretation.

However, theory (ontology) must be sought out again after ontology hits bottomlessness. — Moliere

But how does "ontology hits bottomlessness" make any sense? Suppose ontology progresses indefinitely, as "bottomlessness" implies. When would it "hit" bottomlessness; after two years, a hundred years, a thousand years, a million years? It doesn't make any sense to say that it has hit, or it hits, bottomlessness.

We can judge a specific ontology as groundless, or bottomless, if we think that the claims of that ontology are ungrounded, or unsound, but that would just mean that we disagree with the ontology. Then bottomless, or ungrounded, is just an avoidance. Instead of addressing what we disagree with, we simply dismiss the ontology as groundless or bottomless. So the charge of bottomless, or groundless, is just a nothing charge, useless and meaningless, while those who make the charge are acting out bottomlessness..

This is what he says about infinity. Philosophers talk about infinity, without recognizing that they are really acting it out.

The metacritical turn against prima philosophia [Latin: originary
philosophy] is at the same time one against the finitude of a philosophy,
which blusters about infinity and pays no heed to it.

Further, this is where "play" enters philosophy:

Against the total domination of method, philosophy retains,
correctively, the moment of play, which the tradition of its
scientifization would like to drive out of it. Even for Hegel this was a
sore point, he reproached “…types and distinctions, which are
determined by pure accident and by play, not by reason.”6 The non
naïve thought knows how little it encompasses what is thought, and yet
must always hold forth as if it had such completely in hand. It thereby
approximates clowning. It may not deny its traces, not the least because
they alone open up the hope of that which is forbidden to it. Philosophy
is the most serious of all things, but not all that serious, after all. What
aims for what is not already a priori and what it would have no statutory
power over, belongs, according to its own concept, simultaneously to a
sphere of the unconstrained, which was rendered taboo by the
conceptual essence. The concept cannot otherwise represent the thing
which it repressed, namely mimesis, than by appropriating something
of this latter in its own mode of conduct, without losing itself to it. — p25-26

Despite being the most serious thing, the pretense of truth in ontology, is just clowning.

But how does "ontology hits bottomlessness" make any sense? — Metaphysician Undercover

Didn't I answer this?

As a moment in a dialectic rather than a literal ground we stand upon.

"Hitting bottomlessness", I'd say, is the moment you see the absurd: that which is beyond the categories.

Or, to use Heidegger, ontology hitting bottomlessness is realizing that there's a difference between the present-at-hand (that which has a bottom) and the ready-to-hand (that which has now been fished out of the bottomlessness to contrast with our bottom)

On a personal level I'd say it's the moment when you see multiplicity -- and all you can say is "it's multiplicity, but I'm trying to make sense of it"


Have you ever felt that?

Have you ever felt that? — Moliere

I'm having a hard time, felt what? The moment I saw the absurd, or the moment I saw multiplicity? Or is multiplicity absurd for you? I don't know if I've ever really felt either one.

However, hitting bottomlessness is absurd to me. Therefore, I suppose I can conclude that I have felt that moment of seeing the absurd, as "hitting bottomlessness".

I'm having a hard time, felt what? The moment I saw the absurd, or the moment I saw multiplicity? Or is multiplicity absurd for you? I don't know if I've ever really felt either one. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then the answer is "no" ;)

Dialectics and the Solidified --

Thought is always negative but does not leave what is solid behind. That which is immediately perceived begins as a moment of the solidified and then upon reflection is mediated. While Hegel tried to ground dialectics in this mediated immediacy Adorno claims he did not leave the domination of the object by the subject behind as much as covered it up with "Geist"

The following I'm having trouble disentangling:

The Hegelian Logic foots the bill for this in its thoroughly formal character.
While it must according to its own concept be substantive, it excises, in
its effort to be everything at the same time, metaphysics and a doctrine
of categories, the determinate existent out of itself, in which its
beginnings could have legitimated itself; therein not so far away from
Kant and Fichte, who Hegel never tired of denouncing as the
spokespersons for abstract subjectivity.

Especially the first clause of the second sentence: "While it must according to its own concept be substantive, it excises, in its effort to be everything at the same time, metaphysics and a doctrine of categories, the determinate existent out of itself"

"While it must according to its own concept be substantive" where "it" = the Science of Logic

"it excises..." -- I'm trying to figure out which of the latter clauses this is connecting the first clause to.

"in its effort to be everything at the same time" must not be the clause because it immediately follows so this feels more like a parenthetical notation or an aside from the main point. But "it" is still Hegel's logic.

it's the next two that have me scratching my head: does the logic excise metaphysics and a doctrine of categories, the determinate existent out of itself, or both and the comma is effectively an "and"?


***

Next paragraph:

The spirit wins the battle against the non-existent enemy -- I take it "the enemy" are examples like Krugian's feather, and that Hegel's response is a "stop thief"

I'm guessing "stop thief" is riffing on the common phrase? So Hegel is, effectively, yelling an accusation in order to stop what seems to be a reasonable ask of a universal philosophy? Or is there such a thing as a thief who takes stops from others?

I think Adorno is taking Hegel to task here for being assured in the concept because his logic primarily deals with the conceptual and leaves behind the non-identical. And this is seen by seeing through the autonomy of subjectivity which, in turn, leads to several consequences that unravel to show the solidified beyond the concept.

***

Consciousness has a certain naivete. If it did not then thinking would lose itself and become naive. If the experience of consciousness did not create resistance to the facade (what I'm gathering is this naive experience in consciousness and then the reflection upon that naivete) then thought and activity "would only be dim copies"

I'm gathering that this is the sort of thinking he's speaking against, i.e., identity-thinking: whereas Adorno wants thought to have more to it than merely representing activity or reflecting it.

***

"What in the object goes beyond the determinations laid upon it by thinking, returns firstly to the subject as something immediate; where the subject feels itself to be quite certain of itself, in the primary experience, it is once again least of all a subject."

This naive certainty is not a subject but the return of what is in the object after determinations are laid upon it: we call a ball "round", but that ball could be an American football (it is round after all) or an International football (spherical) -- the object will return what is beyond the concept "round" and we'll be able to distinguish further, but this immediate experience -- the naive realism of the immediate -- is not fully determined by our concepts. There is still the non-identical, and this immediate return of the object is the least subject-like consciousness.

***

"The confidence that the whole seamlessly emerges out of that which is immediate, solid and simply primary, is idealistic appearance [Schein]. To dialectics immediacy does not remain what it immediately
expresses.It becomes a moment instead of the grounds. At the opposite pole, the same thing happens to the invariants of pure thought. "


So this "least subject like' experience is still an idealism when taken as a ground. Only by taking it as a moment in the dialectic, with its opposite (thought) do we obtain truth of the solidified.

And it's interesting how Adorno is speaking against a philosophy which emphasizes invariance as the seat of truth -- Platonic realms underlying the mere shadow of our experience as a classic example. We think "permenance" is the marker of the Solidified, but the marker of ideology is when these moments become solidified as transcendence -- the exact opposite of the Solidified in ND.

But, Adorno finishes, Idealism is not per se ideology, but rather is something which hides in the substructures of "something primary". I'm guessing that this is the conclusion for this section, but I am having more difficulty with it than the previous one.

the "something primary" for Hegel is the dialectic, I think. Whereas Adorno is trying to bring in the non-conceptual Hegel is the example he's using to note how the identical, and the unchanging, are markers of the solidified, but that for ND the solidified is taken in a negative, non-idealistic capacity.

However, hitting bottomlessness is absurd to me. Therefore, I suppose I can conclude that I have felt that moment of seeing the absurd, as "hitting bottomlessness". — Metaphysician Undercover

To take back what I said far too flippantly yesterday:

This is close, I think, but I want to make a distinction between the absurd and the groundless on the basis of the opening to this section: In one sense "the absurd" can be a terminus of thought and in that way I think it'd be wrong to interpret Adorno. Rather it seems "the groundless" is the beginning of thought proper that is not merely mirroring activity.

So rather than an empty and quiet absurdity it seems we have the vertiginous groundlessness which is a beginning rather than an end to thought. So insofar that "hitting bottomlessness" leads to some new thought then I think we're close in our thoughts.

We can judge a specific ontology as groundless, or bottomless, if we think that the claims of that ontology are ungrounded, or unsound, but that would just mean that we disagree with the ontology. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm thinking that "hitting bottomlessness" is not something we ascribe to other thoughts as much as is an encounter with the vertiginous. We don't judge a specific ontology as groundless as much as, in the course of thinking identity as primary, we encounter the failings of thinking.

If bottomlessness is where we find truth then, no, we don't just disagree with an ontology: We're seeing something new through the act of negation rather than simply denying it as false.

Then bottomless, or ungrounded, is just an avoidance. Instead of addressing what we disagree with, we simply dismiss the ontology as groundless or bottomless. So the charge of bottomless, or groundless, is just a nothing charge, useless and meaningless, while those who make the charge are acting out bottomlessness..

Hopefully the above addresses your concerns so that this does not follow.

If bottomlessness is where we find truth then, no, we don't just disagree with an ontology: We're seeing something new through the act of negation rather than simply denying it as false. — Moliere

I just can't understand your use of "bottomlessness" Moliere. How is bottomlessness related to the act of negation?

Take Heidegger's distinction between present-at-hand/ready-to-hand.

Prior to Heidegger -- at least so the story goes from his lips -- ontology was focused upon the present-at-hand.

Heidegger disputes that -- negates it.

But he doesn't just say "No"

Instead he broaches a question: How can we make the question "What is the meaning of being?" make sense again?

Broaching the question is the encounter with the groundless/bottomless. But negation had to happen prior -- a realization that our thought is not "all there is" even though we thought, due to this being ontology, that's all there was -- to even form the question which then leads to a distinction as it develops.