I think Adorno would say social process is equivalent to ideology. In that way, it is most distinct from Hegel's Absolute Spirit because Absolute Spirit thinks itself to have achieved objectivity. Negative Dialectics, on the other hand, is not a peering into reality, it is not truth through dialectic, rather it is a revelation about the presuppositions that sustain the ideological system. — NotAristotle

That gets along with what I'm thinking regarding @Metaphysician Undercover's inquiry.

At least insofar that we understand "Ideology" as more than "that which is thought", but something enacted and unquestioned.

Right, ideology is properly more than is thought qua thought, but I think Adorno would say it is thought nonetheless. In other words, ideology has yet to think itself as thought. Ideology qua ideology is enacted and unquestioned because it is "reality" or "the way things are" in opposition to the way things could be. That is perhaps one reading anyways.

I think Adorno would say social process is equivalent to ideology. In that way, it is most distinct from Hegel's Absolute Spirit because Absolute Spirit thinks itself to have achieved objectivity. — NotAristotle

I don't see the difference. How do you explain the following?

"The presumed social relativity of the intuitions obeys the objective law of social production under private ownership of the means of production"

He explicitly says "the objective law of social production". So he is claiming objectivity just as much as Hegel does with Absolute Spirit. "Social production" has replace "Absolute Spirit".

Further, when you say "social process is equivalent to ideology", the specific ideology being referred to is the ideology of Absolute Spirit. This is what inclines the individual, divergent perspectives to lose the non-committal aspect. It is true that the ideology which serves this purpose could be something other than Absolute Spirit, but what would that be? Well, it's "the objective law of social production". But now we need to understand how this law could be objective.

I read that in a Marxist sense. So the entrepreneur must pay a wage which is below the value produced by the labor-power he employs, else he will not be an entrepreneur for long. "social process" I take it to mean "Capitalism" in the age he's writing in, but as Marx describes it. — Moliere

Then he says about this capitalist attitude, "it can just as stringently be shown, however, why this objectively necessary consciousness is objectively false". And so I ask, how does he show it. And he claims "The presumed social relativity of the intuitions obeys the objective law of social production under private ownership of the means of production". And I do not understand what he means by this. What is "the objective law of social production"?

So, in fact, we can't all just "have our own truth", at least in accord with this particular relativism, because there is one truth that we must insist upon -- which, more generally, I'd take from the Marxist notions to think about so the economic superstructure of some kind. — Moliere

"Economic superstructure of some kind" does not equate with "objective law of social production". If such a law exists shouldn't it be describable?

And I do not understand what he means by this. What is "the objective law of social production"? — Metaphysician Undercover

The way I'm understanding that paragraph:


"... must calculate so that
the unpaid part of the yield of alienated labor falls to him as a profit,
and must think that like for like – labor-power versus its cost of
reproduction – is thereby exchanged"

is the law so described. "Like for like" is exchanged -- so a wage is set such that labor-power is sustained and reproduced and the wage is below the value being produced.

Ideologically "A fair days labor for a fair days pay" -- a falsity because if it were true then there'd be no profit, and thereby no entrepreneur.

The "objective law" is objective for someone who has consented to its objectivity, its reality; it is not truly objective but the one who consents to that "reality" thereby reifies it and lends it its objective aura. The objectively necessary consciousness is the thinking that goes in to sustaining the non-thought objectivity - that is, the ideology. That ideology could be capitalism as much as it could be Marxist communism. The relevant part is the attitude I think Adorno would have us take to theories and that attitude is one that acknowledges fictions as fictions. The point of such reflections must surely be intended as critique of the operant ideology. That is not to say that all ideologies are equal as the horrors of the twentieth century enacted by Marxist communist regimes indict themselves.

By "Marxist Interpretation" I'm referring to Karl Marx more than latter political movements -- here the "objective law" I'm thinking is as Marx describes it in Capital.

The way I'm understanding that paragraph:


"... must calculate so that
the unpaid part of the yield of alienated labor falls to him as a profit,
and must think that like for like – labor-power versus its cost of
reproduction – is thereby exchanged"

is the law so described. "Like for like" is exchanged -- so a wage is set such that labor-power is sustained and reproduced and the wage is below the value being produced.

Ideologically "A fair days labor for a fair days pay" -- a falsity because if it were true then there'd be no profit, and thereby no entrepreneur. — Moliere

But Adorno clearly says: "it can just as stringently be shown, however, why this objectively necessary consciousness is objectively false". So isn't it the case that he is rejecting the Marxist characterization of the capitalist form of the "objective law of social production"? If so, what is he proposing to replace it with?

Clearly he is saying that it is some form of "objective law" which produces the "whole", which we know as society:

In truth divergent perspectives have their law in the structure of
the social process, as one of a preestablished whole. Through its
cognition they lose their non-committal aspect.

The described law, Marx's social production is a law of competition. So when Adorn says that it can equally be shown to be objectively false, therefore sublated, I think he means that we could equally replace it with a law of cooperation. Competition and cooperation are opposed. But the law of competition is the one accepted by the bourgeoisie which embodies narrow-minded relativism.

Then he goes on, in the final paragraph, to explain how this really is hostility to the Spirit. There is a concept which rationalizes these relations of social production, it may be "the idea of the autonomy of the Spirit". But this idea produces a self-loathing, because it has actually ended up inhibiting the development of freedom. So this is what actually refutes relativism, the proof is in the pudding, the consequences of what its own existence has brought upon itself "the proof of its own narrowness crushes it".

The objectively necessary consciousness is the thinking that goes in to sustaining the non-thought objectivity - that is, the ideology. That ideology could be capitalism as much as it could be Marxist communism. — NotAristotle

Right, I think that the "objective law" could really be anything. But then, are we speaking any sort of truth when we refer to the "objective law"? If we want to acknowledge "fictions as fictions", then why would we even talk about the objective law, if all objective laws are actually fictions. Notice the quote above, "In truth ... a preestablished whole". I think we ought to conclude that Adorno thinks some form of "preestablished whole" is the truth, but the question is, what form of objective law supports the reality of this whole. He doesn't believe that all objective laws are fictions, because there must be a true one to support the existence of the preestablished whole.

if all objective laws are actually fictions — Metaphysician Undercover

I personally don't think all objective laws are fictions. And I think you are correct that Adorno also believes in objective laws and truth. There must be a reality in the first place for the project of negative dialectics to make any kind of sense.

But Adorno clearly says: "it can just as stringently be shown, however, why this objectively necessary consciousness is objectively false". — Metaphysician Undercover

I'd interpret this as it's the consciousness which is false rather than the necessary social law.

I'm interpreting Adorno as noting a performative contradiction in the relativist. The consciousness must adhere to the law of exchange, but if the entrepreneur were to do that then there is not an equality between labor-power and a wage unless the entrepreneur were to erase himself from the equation.

On one side we have the capitalist who sets the wage such that labor is reproduced and there is some surplus-value which said capitalist directs. On the other we have a worker who would set their wage equal to the value produced such that they keep their surplus value. Were the capitalist a true relativist then this social law could be mediated by people setting their own wages such that they retain their surplus-value.

But the capitalist is no relativist, after all -- there is only a very small part of thought which the capitalist relativizes, namely the Spirit and anything that has nothing to do with the productive process, such as the qualitative rather than the quantitative.


I could be wrong but that's how I understood that section, at least.

I personally don't think all objective laws are fictions. And I think you are correct that Adorno also believes in objective laws and truth. There must be a reality in the first place for the project of negative dialectics to make any kind of sense. — NotAristotle

Assuming that there is an objective law concerning social relations, how do you think it would it look? Traditionally, this would be God's law, and I discussed this briefly with Jamal earlier in the thread. But "God" is actually very simplistic, and just an easy principle which facilitates the assertion of objective law. As much as this principle is readily accepted by the followers, the sheep, it's not very appealing to the rational speculative mind, because it's really more of an avoidance of the problem rather than addressing it. Hegel attempted to provide a more rational principle with the Idea, or the Spirit, but it's not well grounded.

This way that "God" is unappealing to the rational mind is very interesting to me. God is an ancient idea, and as such it is ultra simplistic, and it actually becomes repugnant to the modern mind. Rational human beings rebel against this idea because it is ancient, simplistic, and produced by uneducated beings. This is how I see the movement of Jesus and his followers as a resistance against "God". They rebelled against those who held on to "God", and rebelled against the prevailing idea of "God". However, the human population in general, was not readily for this revolution, and Saul/Paul subverted the whole process, rendering Christianity, which was intended as a revolt against the God fearing religion, as a God serving religion. Some claim Jesus failed.

We can see a similar situation today. rational human beings rebel against the idea of "God" and desire to rid us of this artifact left behind from the uneducated. However, we can notice from the state of the world today, that the human population is generally not ready for this.

But this is where "objective law" is the crux. Anyone can offer up a version of "objective law" which is fictional, but over time the fictitiousness will be revealed, and the movement will be fruitless. There is however, one which always seems to escape this fate, God. So in this particular set of circumstances, charging that God is fictional, just like all the other fictional objective laws doesn't work, because we generally believe in objective laws and truths, and the habit is already, to fall back on "God". This means that a better, more true, or less fictional, objective law is required to avoid this trap.

I could be wrong but that's how I understood that section, at least. — Moliere

As usual, we disagree in interpretation.

I'm interpreting Adorno as noting a performative contradiction in the relativist. The consciousness must adhere to the law of exchange, but if the entrepreneur were to do that then there is not an equality between labor-power and a wage unless the entrepreneur were to erase himself from the equation. — Moliere

Why would you assume that there needs to be an equality? The inequality is what the capitalist lives on, and it is the basic feature of relativism.

But the capitalist is no relativist, after all -- there is only a very small part of thought which the capitalist relativizes, namely the Spirit and anything that has nothing to do with the productive process, such as the qualitative rather than the quantitative. — Moliere

The capitalist is the relativist:

The presumed social relativity of the intuitions obeys
the objective law of social production under private ownership of the
means of production. Bourgeois skepticism, which embodies relativism
as a doctrine, is narrow-minded.

Why would you assume that there needs to be an equality? The inequality is what the capitalist lives on, and it is the basic feature of relativism. — Metaphysician Undercover

The capitalist is the relativist: — Metaphysician Undercover

I feel like we're so close and so far away at the same time here.

There does not need to be an equality -- that's the false consciousness of the capitalist relativist. A capitalist says "A fair days work for a fair days wage", but the objective law of that wage is that the capitalist must pay the worker less than what they produce.

So the capitalist claims relativism but it's a narrow relativism that is, objectively, in the capitalist's favor.

Again, that's how I understand that section.

I want to note that there aren't so many demonstrations here (especially wrt Marx) as much as an introduction to the idea of ND -- we have much more of the book to go through is what I mean. We can drop this (as you note, usual) disagreement on interpretation and move on.

Rational human beings rebel against this idea — Metaphysician Undercover

But God is not an idea. And I am a rational human being who does not rebel against God. God is simple in being, yes, but I should think the creator of all things is even more complex than the greatest complexity found in creation. God is truth and the source of the objective law. And what is this objective law? Jesus spoke it, you know it already: it is to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself.

But God is not an idea. And I am a rational human being who does not rebel against God. God is simple in being, yes, but I should think the creator of all things is even more complex than the greatest complexity found in creation. — NotAristotle

Good point, but for many rational human beings, God is just an idea. In that case God is very simple. So , amongst rational human beings there is discrepancy as to the meaning of "God". And many deny that "to love God with all your heart, mind, and soul and to love your neighbor as yourself" is the objective law.

This calls into question the relationship between rational human beings and objective law. Since human beings are subjects, and rationality is a property of subjects, rationality is fundamentally subjective. This implies a sort of gap between rational human beings and objective law, perhaps the ought/is gap.

Thought-forms want to go beyond what is merely extant, “given”. The point which thinking directs against its material is not solely the domination of nature turned spiritual. While thinking does violence upon that which it exerts its syntheses, it follows at the same time a potential which waits in what it faces, and unconsciously obeys the idea of restituting to the pieces what it itself has done; in philosophy this unconsciousness becomes conscious. The hope of reconciliation is conjoined to irreconcilable thinking, because the resistance of thinking against the merely existent, the domineering freedom of the subject, also intends in the object what, through its preparation to the object, was lost to this latter. — from Portrayal

What is this "hope" about? Does the proper expression always hope to reconcile its violence to its object in order to restitute it? Is this what it would mean to reach the non-conceptual? — Moliere

I missed this before. Yes, I think so. it’s an example of what I've been calling his utopianism, where he holds up the ideal of a non-domineering understanding of the world in which the non-conceptual can shine through. But he’s also making the dialectical point that it is precisely the somewhat inherently violent and domineering subject that can—or can be motivated to—do this.

I'm back and looking forward to joining in again.

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

I’ll have a go.

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

Negative dialectics, which jettisons the first principles and reified concepts characteristic of most philosophy—which, in other words, ditches the thinking that demands or proceeds from foundations—does not make the equally absolutist mistake of treating thought as arbitrary and free of contraints and connections. In rejecting foundationalism, we don't want to embrace the opposite view that thought is entirely unrooted.

Jettisoning foundationalism etc., allows us to see that the subject is not entirely independent and all-powerful: it depends on something outside itself. What actually roots thought is the non-conceptual, that which thought is directed towards. A critical question arises at this point: isn’t this just another kind of foundationalism? Isn’t the “priority of the object” yet another first principle? This is an important issue but I’ll tackle it later.

Next, he refers to the thesis of Dialectic of Enlightenment: Enlightenment thinking, which set itself against mythology, tends to become myth again via the ossification of Enlightenment thought into instrumental reason. The new mythology is a basic form of ideology, so it includes any ideas meant to naturalize the status quo (e.g., one often sees conservative, liberal, or free-market libertarian people in casual conversation claiming that capitalism is as old as humanity or civilization itself). Enlightenment thinking tended to become intrumental reason and thereby forgot everything that didn't contribute to maintaining capitalism; what was left was repeated and idealized so much that it became the new mythology.

What I've sketched in the last paragraph is an example of the "rational determination" of the degeneration of Enlightenment reason into myth. Despite reason's tendencies, we can think things through and find the truth.

And this in turn is because thinking is inherently intentional, i.e., it is directed towards objects (and we can add: objects that are outside of thought). This is evident just in the logical form of propositions, even apart from the actuality of the objects that are assigned predicates.

Rationality becomes irrational when it forgets this and takes its creations to be the be-all and end-all (idealism being the culmination of this tendency in thought), i.e., forgetting about the real things that are its proper objects and instead taking its own philosophical constructs to be the real objects.

So far, so good. But then, a dialectical reversal:

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

I feel like Adorno is saying, "they say that negative dialectics (or critical theory in general) lacks all foundations, but really it's their ontologies that don't have a leg to stand on, so you could say that it's their thinking which is groundless." They are looking for something that isn't there. Heidegger comes up against groundlessness but doesn't acknowledge it or only acknowledges it as a problem to surpass; he tries to uncover the meaning of being and doesn't realize that the groundlessness he wants to get beyond is itself the truth the philosopher ought to be looking for.

It was the alternative translation that put me on the right track:

But Wherever ontology, and above all Heidegger, starts banging away at groundlessness—that is where truth dwells. — The Fragility of Truth

Also in the Fragility of Truth section there's another interesting bit:

It [the demolition of systems and the realization that truth isn't granted to thought in advance but has to be sought in the details] compels thinking to linger before the smallest of all things. Not about the concrete, but on the contrary out from this, is what needs to be philosophized.

He makes a distinction here between philosophy which is about the concrete, in which "the concrete" is a category, and philosophy which actually begins in the concrete and goes out from there. The latter method, that of negative dialectics, allows itself to be guided by concrete particulars.

Connecting this to the jettisoning already discussed: you cannot properly start with concrete particulars if you are still committed to a first principle, because you are not free to be guided wherever the particulars will take you.

This confirms an experience in philosophy which Schoenberg noted in traditional musical theory: you only really learn from this how a passage begins and ends, but nothing about it itself, its trajectory. Analogous to this, philosophy ought not to reduce itself to categories but in a certain sense should compose itself [komponieren: to compose musically]. It must continually renew itself in its course, out of its own power just as much as out of the friction with that which it measures itself by; what it bears within itself is decisive, not the thesis or position; the web, not the inductive or deductive, one-track course of thought. That is why philosophy is essentially not reportable. Otherwise it would be superfluous; that it for the most part allows itself to be reported, speaks against it. But a mode of conduct which protects nothing as the first or the secure, and yet, solely by power of the determination of its portrayal, makes so few concessions to relativism, the brother of absolutism, that it approaches a doctrine, causes offence. It drives past Hegel, whose dialectic must have everything, and yet also wished to be prima philosophia (and in the identity-principle, the absolute subject, was indeed this), to the breaking-point. — The Fragility of Truth

It occurs to me that a better musical analogy is jazz—unavailable to Adorno because he failed to appreciate jazz—which surely has the power to "continually renew itself in its course, out of its own power" through improvisation. It is not the score, the "thesis or position," of the composer, that is decisive, but the performance itself. Likewise in philosophical thinking, it is not the thesis or position or principle (or conclusion, I suppose) which are decisive, but the philosophy as performed.

And just as a particular musical performance—especially a jazz performance—cannot be faithfully conveyed in a report (even a recording will not do justice to it), negative dialectics in action cannot be summarized and reported in digestible form. To understand it, you have to go through it.

Some more stuff about the Fragility of Truth section.

What is different from the existent is regarded by such as witchcraft, while in the false world nearness, homeland and security are for their part figures of the bane. With these human beings fear they will lose everything, because they have no other happiness, also none within thought, than what you can hold on to yourself, perennial unfreedom. What is demanded is at the very least a piece of ontology in the midst of its critique; as if not even the smallest unaffiliated [ungedeckte] insight could better express what is wished for, than a “declaration of intention” [in English] which stays at that.

[...]

It sways gently, fragile due to its temporal content; Benjamin penetratingly criticized Gottfried Keller’s Ur-bourgeois maxim that the truth cannot run away from us. Philosophy must dispense with the consolation that the truth cannot be lost. 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. 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.

Adorno makes a parallel here. There is the lack of general happiness and freedom in society, which causes us to reach for what is close: "homeland and security," representing the only possible happiness in a world in which human potentiality is stifled. Adorno sees the consolation of ontological security as a form or symptom of this wider lack of happiness and freedom.

In negative dialectics, on the other hand, you bite the bullet. You accept that you won't be able to encompass the object of thought completely, you expose yourself to the vertigo of bottomlessness (reading ND as philosophical exposure therapy), and you relinquish the consolation that the truth cannot be lost.

Incidentally, there is a clear Nietzschean flavour to this. To be a proper philosopher, one must bravely reject easy comforts and the will to certainty and follow the will to truth, and one must be unafraid of the vertigo-inducing abyss, of extremes and acrobatics. Adorno's celebration of independence and creativity is a lot like Nietzsche's.

And the last passage of the Fragility section:

No unreflective banality can, as the imprint of the false life, still be true. Every attempt today to hold back thought, for the sake of its utility, by talk of its smug overwroughtness and non-committal aspect [Unverbindlichkeit], is reactionary. The argument can be summarized in its vulgar form: if you want, I can give you any number of such analyses. Therein each becomes devalued by every other. Peter Alternberg gave the answer to someone who in a similar fashion was suspicious of his compressed forms: but I don’t want to. The open thought is unprotected against the risk of going astray into what is popular; nothing notifies it that it has adequately satisfied itself in the thing, in order to withstand that risk. The consistency of its execution, however, the density of the web, enables it to hit what it should. The function of the concept of certainty in philosophy has utterly recoiled. What once wished to overtake dogma and tutelage through self-certainty became the social insurance policy of a cognition which does allow anything to happen. Nothing in fact happens to anything which is completely unobjectionable.

Those whose thinking consists of unreflective banalities and is motivated by the concern for utility see each analysis as an interchangeable commodity. "I can give you any number of such analyses," says the bad philosopher. The authentic philosopher, on the other hand, is represented by Peter Alternberg, who dismissed criticism of his short, compressed poetic fragments. But Adorno does not state exactly what the demand is that is being answered with "But I don't want to". We have to reconstruct it. I imagine it's the demand that Alternberg expand upon what is in those fragments to make them easier to understand, or to produce versions of his fragments that are more developed or sophisticated, or that he explain what the fragments are supposed to mean.

Adorno thinks philosphers should be like Alternberg. In philosophy one faces the demand to ensure that one's philosophical insights are fully justified, resting securely on their foundations, reproducible and concisely reportable, or developed into a consistent system. Adorno says "But I don't want to," because he rejects the demand and the way of thinking that generates it.

Looking at the last few sentences: Adorno says that the concept of certainty has degenerated from a liberating one—Descartes, as a precursor to the Enlightenment, made his philosophy depend not on religious authority but on his own reason—to a stifling one in which caution is so important that making new breakthroughs and reaching new insights become impossible, and "nothing happens".

Nothing in fact happens to anything which is completely unobjectionable.

We should make our thinking in some sense objectionable, to make things happen. We should be objectionable to those who adhere to convention, security, comfortable modes of argument, demands for certainty, and so on.

In negative dialectics, on the other hand, you bite the bullet. You accept that you won't be able to encompass the object of thought completely, you expose yourself to the vertigo of bottomlessness (reading ND as philosophical exposure therapy), and you relinquish the consolation that the truth cannot be lost. — Jamal

Well said.

The object is the face of non-identity; it is beyond thought in its objectivity. ND works because it aims to unravel, not the object, but thought itself, that is, negativity, thus the name: ND. Thought is undefined; it is fungible; in its formation (information? Information for what?) it negates the object through determinate negation through presenting, portraying, the moments of thought (philosophical therapy). Moving from untruth to Truth.

The Truth can be lost in philosophy, in any thought, scientific, etc. because Truth lives, and so can be killed. Can be forgotten. Can be lost. Can be buried. But then its not really Truth who dies when Truth dies but us instead, or Truth in us.

Adorno says that the concept of certainty has degenerated from a liberating one—Descartes, as a presursor to the Enlightenment, made his philosophy depend not on religious authority but on his own reason — Jamal

I would be interested to see what Adorno would have to say about Descartes. My take on Adorno's ND project is that he wants us to avoid imposing reality (read ideology), our own version of reality, upon reality as it really is. That way, Truth isn't merely "my truth;" but the Truth in entirety.

I think Adorno adopts a more combative stance against the supremacy of reason, ratio. The Enlightenment expected to build a world out of reason, only to realize its baselessness, its lack of any foundation, for reason - thought, is nothing other than pure negativity. Ratio, analysis, it seems to me, is a kind of destruction, a rending apart, into subcomponents, atomistically; reason is not a real rending, but a mental one, a negative one, until actualized. "Knowledge is power" as "Enlightenment is dominion" over nature, over others, even over self.

Reason qua analysis (of persons including self), in contrast to a more intimate knowing by means of intellectus, understanding, is, at least at times, a kind of distancing, an unwillingness to feel or experience, ultimately a "no" to Truth, to reality. It is detachment from reality. Rationalization. Analysis is cold, procedural, dead, there's no love in it is there?

To analyze is to objectify, but not in a way that allows the objectified to be what it is, rather it appropriates the other as a kind of thought-meat; analysis is the rendering of an object into a thought-object.

I feel like Adorno is saying, "they say that negative dialectics (or critical theory in general) lacks all foundations, but really it's their ontologies that don't have a leg to stand on, so you could say that it's their thinking which is groundless." They are looking for something that isn't there. Heidegger comes up against groundlessness but doesn't acknowledge it or only acknowledges it as a problem to surpass; he tries to uncover the meaning of being and doesn't realize that the groundlessness he wants to get beyond is itself the truth the philosopher ought to be looking for.

It was the alternative translation that put me on the right track: — Jamal

That's similar to the way I see it. But I think Adorno goes further, and demonstrates that negative dialectics is actually grounded, and that the other philosophies which absolutize thought and Spirit are really groundless. Those philosophies assume a foundation which is false. Those falsities assumed by the other philosophies, is the truth of negative dialectics. This truth, that their foundations are false, and that they are actually groundless, is the grounding of negative dialectics.

I'll refer to the Lectures, lecture 3, "Whether negative Dialectics is Possible", where he discusses Hegel's concept of the determinate negation. I believe that Adorno demonstrates the falsity of Hegel's conception of "synthesis". This falsity becomes the true determinate negation for Adorno, therefore a fixed point, a grounding for negative dialectics

But I believe that precisely
this aspect of positivity, which acts as a corollary to negativity, is
conjoined with the principle of negativity because it resists being fixed
once and for all in an abstract, static manner.

...

Hence, to make this quite clear, the issue is not to deny the existence of a certain fixed
point, it is not even to deny the existence of some fixed element in
thought; we shall in due course, I hope, come to discuss the meaning
whether negative dialectics is possible of such a fixed
element in dialectical logic in very concrete terms. But
the fixed, positive point, just like negation, is an aspect – and not
something that can be anticipated, placed at the beginning of every
thing.

...

At the same time, I should
like to draw your attention to the fact that the status of synthesis in
Hegel is actually somewhat anomalous. The fact is that, when you
read the texts closely, you find that there is much less said about such
syntheses, such positivities, than you might expect initially. And I
believe that if you were to trace Hegel’s use of the term ‘synthesis’
[Synthese] purely lexically – as opposed to the concept of ‘Synthesis’,
as used by Kant in his epistemology – you would find that it occurs
very rarely indeed, in contrast to such concepts as ‘positing’ [Setzung],
‘position’ or ‘negation’ – and this tells us something about the situation.
It is grounded in the subject matter; it is no merely external trait
of Hegelian language. In the three-stage scheme – if we allow for once
that such a thing is to be found in Hegel – the so-called synthesis that
represents the third stage as opposed to negation is by no means
simply better or higher. If you consider an example of such a three
stage dialectic – we might look at the famous triad of Being, Nothing
and Becoming16 – you will find that this so-called synthesis is actually
something like a movement, a movement of thought, of the concept,
but one that turns backwards and does not look forward and produce
something complete to be presented as a successful achievement on
a higher plane. Hegelian syntheses tend – and it would be rewarding
to follow this up with detailed analysis – to take the form that the
thesis reasserts itself within the antithesis, once this has been postulated.
Thus once the identity of two contradictory concepts has been
reached, or at least asserted in the antithesis, as in the most famous
case of all, the identity of Nothing with Being, this is followed by a
further reflection to the effect that, indeed, these are identical, I have
indeed brought them together – Being, as something entirely undefined,
is also Nothing. However, to put it quite crudely, they are not
actually entirely identical. The thought that carries out the act of
identification always does violence to every single concept in the
process. And the negation of the negation is in fact nothing other
than the α¸να′µνησις, the recollection, of that violence, in other words
the acknowledgement that, by conjoining two opposing concepts, I
have on the one hand bowed to a necessity implicit in them, while
on the other hand I have done them a violence that has to be rectified.
And truth to tell, this rectification in the act of identification is
what is always intended by the Hegelian syntheses.

This truth, that their foundations are false, and that they are actually groundless, is the grounding of negative dialectics.

I'll refer to the Lectures, lecture 3, "Whether negative Dialectics is Possible", where he discusses Hegel's concept of the determinate negation. I believe that Adorno demonstrates the falsity of Hegel's conception of "synthesis". This falsity becomes the true determinate negation for Adorno, therefore a fixed point, a grounding for negative dialectics — Metaphysician Undercover

Interesting point. I think it might be a bit misleading, and this hinges on whether such a fixed point can act as, or is equivalent to, a ground, foundation, or first principle, in the traditional philosophical sense that Adorno is addressing. I'm not sure it can. Determinate negation as fixed point is not so much a foundation—it is not a positive proposition on which a system can be built—but is more like method, critical orientation and commitment.

I mean, you could take the fixed point to be the ground, but is it interpretatively useful to do so?

EDIT: Maybe the answer to the last question is yes. Another way of putting it is that ND is in a sense grounded insofar as it starts from the solid ground of the knowledge that there is no ground, and this is the dialectical point Adorno himself makes. Ultimately, to me this seems more rhetorical than strictly accurate.

EDIT2: And there's another candidate for the ground of negative dialectics: material reality, or "the object" as in "the priority of the object". As he has been saying in the Frigility of Truth section, ND starts in the concrete and works out from there. So why not that? I happen to think this is wrong or misleading too, but I won't go into that now.

A reason to think about negative dialectics in the first place is the failure of Marxism to accurately predict events. Many people put everything on the line, only to be disappointed. Imagine that NASA planned a manned mission to Mars, demonstrating enough confidence in apriori principles of geometry that people's lives are risked. But then during the mission, something goes wrong that reveals that they didn't understand the world at all. It was like that for some Marxists. They hadn't been slightly wrong. They were completely wrong. Psychology could be brought to bear to answer how this happened, but what Adorno focuses on is something that should have been obvious from reading Hegel: synthesis is not subject to the intellect. It's not that it's wrong, it's that the mind only deals with a dismantled world. Synthesis, especially the Grand Synthesis isn't something available to us for making blueprints of human history. But as Wittgenstein experienced: grasping that there's a point where the questions must stop is fleeting. The hunger to know and predict takes over. We end up overreaching in spite of ourselves.

Is negative dialectics potent enough to teach us humility? To reconcile ourselves to partial truths? My answer is: of course not.

Interesting point. I think it might be a bit misleading, and this hinges on whether such a fixed point can act as, or is equivalent to, a ground, foundation, or first principle, in the traditional philosophical sense that Adorno is addressing. I'm not sure it can. Determinate negation as fixed point is not so much a foundation—it is not a positive proposition on which a system can be built—but is more like method, critical orientation and commitment. — Jamal

The "fixed point" in negative dialectics which Adorno refers to in lecture 3 is definitely not a foundation or first principle. He explicitly says this. Rather it is an aspect. Nevertheless I would argue that it is a grounding, as grounding is not necessarily the first principle of a philosophy. Further, I would argue that since the true grounding must be the object itself, the grounding point must be just as variable as the variability of objects. This variability may even prevent the possibility of a fixed point which is first principle, or foundation.

I mean, you could take the fixed point to be the ground, but is it interpretatively useful to do so? — Jamal

It is useful, as a rebuttal to the accusation of groundlessness.

This is what turns around the objection of groundlessness. In lecture 3 he shows the deficiency of Hegelian sublation. When the thesis is defined by the antithesis this is what renders the concept as free-floating. The definition is within the concept, thesis defined by antithesis. But in so doing this does violence to the concept because it removes the concept from its true defining aspect, which is its relation to the object. This produces an evolving concept, but it is not a true representation.

So this process of becoming, by which the concept is supposed to evolve through Hegelian sublation is really a falsity. That is what Adorno expresses here

Moreover, one of the most astonishing features of the Hegelian
dialectic and one that is especially hard to grasp is that, on the one hand,
categories are ceaselessly promoted as things that are changing and
becoming, while, on the other hand, they are logical categories and
as such simply have to retain their validity, as in any traditional logic
or epistemology.

When the process which is the evolution of a concept is described as Hegelian sublation, the only thing which stays the same, is the process itself. This produces the groundlessness, as an endless process. That this therefore is a false representation, is the grounding of that aspect of negative dialectics which criticizes it. The falsity of Hegelian sublation is the object of that specific aspect of negative dialectics, and the truth of that falsity is a grounding point.

EDIT2: And there's another candidate for the ground of negative dialectics: material reality, or "the object" as in "the priority of the object". As he has been saying in the Frigility of Truth section, ND starts in the concrete and works out from there. So why not that? I happen to think this is wrong or misleading too, but I won't go into that now. — Jamal

The precise meaning of "object" is vague. As you say, ideology, and social structures, are objective, while I would say they are purely conceptual. Because of this, "object" might refer to ideology. In the case of Hegelian sublation, "the concrete" is that ideology. The jettisoning process described allows the concept to be free-floating, thus an "object". The supposed object must be approached as if it is the object, even though it may be a false object.

Psychology could be brought to bear to answer how this happened, but what Adorno focuses on is something that should have been obvious from reading Hegel: synthesis is not subject to the intellect. It's not that it's wrong, it's that the mind only deals with a dismantled world. — frank

I think the point is that "synthesis" in the Hegelian representation, is the subject of the intellect, and it is wrong. To make the representation work, requires that we do violence on the concept, falsely represent it. Synthesis falsely represents the 'logical' evolution of the Idea, as something free-floating, independent from the material world, manipulated by human reason. However, as experience demonstrates to us, the Idea does not evolve in a logical way, that is due to influence of "the irrational", which is the true reality of the material world.

I think the point is that "synthesis" in the Hegelian representation, is the subject of the intellect, and it is wrong. to make the representation work, requires that we do violence on the concept, falsely represent it. Synthesis falsely represents the 'logical' evolution of the Idea, as something free-floating, independent from the material world, manipulated by human reason. However, as experience demonstrates to us, the Idea does not evolve in a logical way, that is due to influence of "the irrational", which is the true reality of the material world. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think this is all pretty thoroughly incorrect. You could start with just understanding Hegelian dialectics.

Introduction: Against Relativism

Adorno says dialectics (including negative dialectics) is as much against relativism as it is against the absolute. However, he thinks the popular argument against relativism, namely that it is self-refuting, is "wretched".

The popular argument against Spengler since Leonard Nelson, that relativism presupposes an absolute, namely its own validity and thus contradicts itself, is wretched. It confuses the general negation of a principle with its own ascent to an affirmation, without consideration of the specific difference of the positional value of both.

He is saying that one can legitimately negate a principle, in this case with "there is no absolute truth," and that the popular argument against relativism mistakes this negation for an illegitimate, self-defeating affirmation. The popular argument is thus lacking in nuance. For Adorno, it is no more than a logical gotcha that misses the point that relativism is a critical stance, or perhaps a sceptical tool, rather than a positive, universal proposition. This is what he means when he mentions their "positional value": the popular argument flattens out these differences and treats everything like a positive claim.

So that's not the way to defeat relativism. Instead...

It would be more fruitful to cognize relativism as a delimited form of consciousness. At first it was that of bourgeois individualism, which for its part took the mediated individual consciousness through the generality for the ultimate and thus accorded the opinions of every single individual the same right, as if there were no criterion of their truth. The abstract thesis of the conditionality of every thought is to be most concretely reminded of that of its own, the blindness towards the supra-individual moment, through which individual consciousness alone becomes thought. Behind this thesis stands a contempt of the Spirit which prefers the primacy of material relationships, as the only thing which should count. The father’s reply to the uncomfortable and decided views of his son is, everything is relative, that money, as in the Greek saying, maketh the man. Relativism is vulgar materialism, thought disturbs the business.

Here he avoids taking on relativism directly and instead historicizes it. It begins with bourgeois individualism, expressed in classical liberalism, for which the individual is sovereign and independent. It thereby "accorded the opinions of every single individual the same right"; the individual is the ultimate source and arbiter of truth.

The problem is that although this relativism sees that all thoughts are conditioned by context—in this originary case the context of individual consciousness—it fails to see the conditions of this very idea itself, which feature a constitutive blindness to the social inheritance of thought.

In other words, Adorno is saying that relativism is, not logically self-refuting, but hypocritical. It makes use of thoughts inherited from the social world to produce the thought that thoughts are entirely the product of the individual.

Behind this thesis stands a contempt of the Spirit which prefers the primacy of material relationships, as the only thing which should count.

I'm finding it hard to work out how he makes this leap from the thesis of relativism to the contempt for Spirit. I understand the distinction he means, which is that between (1) useful productive work and the financial, class, in general materialist (in the popular sense, as Adorno says, "vulgar") concerns that go along with it; and (2) art and ideas, love and beauty, and God if you're so inclined. But how does relativism produce the exclusive focus on (1) and dismissal of (2)?

Maybe the answer is in the analogy:

The father’s reply to the uncomfortable and decided views of his son is, everything is relative, that money, as in the Greek saying, maketh the man.

The father is unimpressed by his son's critical views. He can dismiss them without argument, because in the real world, that is, the world of materialist interests, all that matters is money, and the son's ideas amount to nothing in comparison.

In practice, then—given the socio-economic system we have—relativism puts the seal of approval on any action of the individual that improves or maintains its financial or class status, and at the same time protects such individuals and the systems they participate in from criticism.

So relativism is not a profound philosophical position but is just an affirmation of the bourgeois individual's right to enrich himself, and is thereby a shallow, spiritless product of a shallow, spiritless society.

So the connection here has to do with the distinction made in intellectual history between genesis and validity. By reductively treating ideas as nothing more than the expression of their conditional origins (be it an individual or a class), relativism dismisses the claims of Spirit, and any truth that aspires to a validity beyond its genesis. This reduction is the methodology of vulgar materialism, which sees material interests as the only reality. The relativist's "everything is relative" is in effect a tool for this dismissal.

To be continued.

I think this is all pretty thoroughly incorrect. You could start with just understanding Hegelian dialectics. — frank

I actually did a post graduate course specifically on Hegel's dialectics of being. The professor refused to give me the mark I needed, even after I defended my thesis in person. It seems like there is dogmatic principles concerning "the correct" way to interpret Hegel. The concept of "matter" is not allowed to enter into, or even be compared to Hegel's "becoming". I suppose this is due to an inclination to maintain a separation between Hegel and Marx.

You could start with just understanding Hegelian dialectics. — frank

Or, perhaps, you could start with explaining what his perceived misinterpretations in your mind are. You surely cannot believe every person capable of understanding what you do, and beyond (heh, if such a concept is possible..) believes the exact same thing you do. Interpretation is the lifeblood of philosophy, after all.

I wasn't going to post this, seeing as I'm fairly unacquainted with "established" philosophy and really enjoy, perhaps even prefer, just being an interlocutor, or observer, but in light of @Metaphysician Undercover's latest post, I feel it may be slightly more relevant than I first had envisioned.

Introduction: Against Relativism (continued)

Next, Adorno moves from historicizing relativism to tackling it head-on. To stop at historicism would be no better than relativists themselves, because it would be the same reductionist move, namely taking the genesis of the idea, as opposed to its validity, to be all that matters.

Recalling that he had already characterized relativism as an attitude of vulgar materialism...

Utterly hostile towards the Spirit, such an attitude remains necessarily abstract. The relativity of all cognition can only be maintained from without, for so long as no conclusive cognition is achieved. As soon as consciousness enters into a determinate thing and poses its immanent claim to truth or falsehood, the presumably subjective contingency of the thought falls away. Relativism is null and void simply because, what it on the one hand considers popular and contingent, and on the other hand holds to be irreducible, originates out of objectivity – precisely that of an individualistic society – and is to be deduced as socially necessary appearance [Schein]. The modes of reaction which according to relativistic doctrine are unique to each individual, are preformed, always practically the bleating of sheep; especially the stereotype of relativity. Individualistic appearance [Schein] is then extended by the cannier relativists such as Pareto to group interests. But the strata-specific bounds of objectivity laid down by the sociology of knowledge are for their part only deducible from the whole of the society, from that which is objective. If Mannheim’s late version of sociological relativism imagined it could distill scientific objectivity out of the various perspectives of social strata with “free-floating” intelligence, then it inverts that which conditions into the conditioned.

Despite its roots in vulgar materialism, relativism is always only an abstract thesis that survives only insofar as it is "maintained from without," i.e., pretending to transcendence—because when one is on the inside of the thing, immanently achieving a determinate conclusion, the purported relativism of the thought becomes irrelevant.

Relativism is "null and void" because the particularly conditioned and yet also sacrosanct opinion of the individual is, as a matter of objective fact, produced in the first place by society, a society that needs such an appearance, i.e., the appearance that everyone has their own equally valid truth is "socially necessary". Despite the celebrated individuality of these opinions, they are to a large degree "preformed," amounting to "the bleating of sheep." The very thesis of relativity is one such fashionable off-the-shelf idea.

But of course, it isn't very fair to take this primitive individualist relativism to be the primary example of relativism per se, so Adorno brings up a more sophisticated variety, that of Vilfredo Pareto, for whom truth is relative not to individuals but to social groups such as economic classes. Pareto argued that what appear to be logical arguments are usually nothing more than rationalizations that hide the underlying interests of particular groups.

This is more plausible, and even seems close to something Adorno might say himself, but he is against it too. This relativism, having the same structure, is structurally flawed in the same way: there is a larger social context shared by the various groups, just as there is a larger social context shared by various individuals, and it is this context—society as a whole—which produces groups and ideas.

QUESTION: Since the social whole changes, isn't Adorno himself just another relativist, but on a bigger scale? Is there a difference between the relativism of truth and the historical situatedness of truth?