I interpreted Adorno differently. I don't want to drag the thread through parts of the text that have already been covered, but just to explain, these passages made me think Adorno was using or alluding to the specialized meaning Hegel gave to the word concept: — frank

I think our views can probably be made to come out as consistent. :up:

Introduction: Privilege of Experience (ii)

When Adorno uses the term "experience" recall that the introduction is meant to be an account of intellectual/spiritual/philosophical experience, the experience necessary to retain critical freedom in a debased society.

In sharp contrast to the usual scientific ideal, the objectivity of dialectical cognition needs more subject, not less. Otherwise philosophical experience shrivels. But the positivistic spirit of the epoch is allergic to this. Not everyone is supposed to be capable of such experience. It is held to be the prerogative of individuals, determined through their natural talents and life-history; to demand this as the condition of cognition, so runs the argument, would be elitist and undemocratic.

The critical theorist is a radical democrat who wants to make the world better for everyone, but at the same time requires a level of philosophical engagement that is highly demanding of individuals; only a privileged few can satisfy these demands. What wants to be democratic is necessarily undemocratic—or so it seems ("so runs the argument").

It is to be conceded that not everyone in fact is capable of the same sort of philosophical experiences, in the way that all human beings of comparable intelligence ought to be able to reproduce experiments in the natural sciences or mathematical proofs, although according to current opinion quite specific talents are necessary for this. In any case the subjective quotient of philosophy, compared with the virtually subjectless rationality of a scientific ideal which posits the substitutability of everyone with everyone else, retains an irrational adjunct. It is no natural quality. While the argument pretends to be democratic, it ignores what the administered world makes of its compulsory members. Only those who are not completely modeled after it can intellectually undertake something against it. The critique of privilege becomes a privilege: so dialectical is the course of the world. It would be fictitious to presume that everyone could understand or even be aware of all things, under historical conditions, especially those of education, which bind, spoon-feed and cripple the intellectual forces of production many times over; under the prevailing image-poverty; and under those pathological processes of early childhood diagnosed but by no means changed by psychoanalysis. If this was expected, then one would arrange cognition according to the pathic features of a humanity, for whom the possibility of experience is driven out through the law of monotony, insofar as they possessed it in the first place. The construction of the truth according to the analogy of the volonté de tous [French: popular will] – the most extreme consequence of the subjective concept of reason – would betray everyone of everything which they need, in everyone’s name.

It's true that only a few are able to engage in such experience, but this is not so much an elite privilege born of natural talent or good breeding, but is the tragic result of an administered society that leaves so little room for independent thought that only a few, by chance, make it through with their wits in order. The argument against Adorno's elitism "pretends to be democratic," purportedly arguing on behalf of the people, but what it's really doing is arguing on behalf of the administered society, taking the debased state of intellectual culture as the democratic standard. Thus the democratic objection is quite dangerous, since it attacks the very thing—independent, original critical thought—that might help diagnose society's problems correctly:

The construction of the truth according to the analogy of the volonté de tous [French: popular will] – the most extreme consequence of the subjective concept of reason – would betray everyone of everything which they need, in everyone’s name.

You don't take a vote on what is true. This notion actually stems from the relativism of the subjective concept of reason. The individual is the measure of truth, therefore the collective of all these individuals is the ultimate arbiter. The people themselves are thus betrayed by the idea that the popular will can decide what is and is not so.

So Adorno has redescribed the argument against elitism like this:

The administered society, the capitalist system, and narrow scientific and technical training have together produced stunted minds, conditioned to accept the status quo. But then they say that the statements of the intellectual should be acceptable to these minds, i.e., they should fit with standard lines of thought, must not be erratic and eccentric, etc. These, they say, are all signs of elitism. So critical thinking is automatically disqualified and conformist thinking prevails, seen as true, reasonable, realistic etc.

To those who have had the undeserved good fortune to not be completely adjusted in their inner intellectual composition to the prevailing norms – a stroke of luck, which they often enough have to pay for in terms of their relationship to the immediate environment – it is incumbent to make the moralistic and, as it were, representative effort to express what the majority, for whom they say it, are not capable of seeing or, to do justice to reality, will not allow themselves to see. The criterion of truth is not its immediate communicability to everyone. The almost universal compulsion to confuse the communication of that which is cognized with this former, all too often ranking the latter as higher, is to be resisted; while at present, every step towards communication sells truth out and falsifies it. In the meantime, everything to do with language labors under this paradox.

He insists on the necessity for independent critical thinking carried out by a lucky few, but insists that they are just that: lucky. Adorno is, then, elitist in a certain sense, but radically democratic at heart.

Still, it does look pretty elitist: it's incumbent on the intellectuals to think on behalf of the benighted masses, who cannot do it themselves, such are their crippled, pathological minds. On the other hand, this is just an uncharitable description of something that's natural and unavoidable, or perhaps rather morally imperative, in present conditions: insofar as any society-wide social movement needs intellectuals, they will be few in number and must try to focus and distil the thoughts and feeling of the non-intellectuals, and lead the way.

The criterion of truth is not its immediate communicability to everyone.

Adorno is facing up to the following problem: given that intellectuals have a responsibility to think for the general population, how will they communicate it to them, especially considering that people are structurally conditioned not to see the truth? Easily digestible, dumbed-down info nuggets are easy to communicate, but not up to the task of conveying difficult truths.

Adorno says there is a tendency to confuse communicability with truth, and this has to be resisted. But he goes further:

at present, every step towards communication sells truth out and falsifies it

This seems hyperbolically pessimistic, but I don't believe he means it quite like that. I think he means to bring out the deep conflict or "paradox" as he puts it: communicative language distorts the truth, but such language is necessary to convey the truth.

Obviously this goes back to what we were saying about his difficult prose style. In this section, he justifies it. (Some might counter that other intellectuals in the Frankfurt School, particularly Horkheimer and Marcuse, were able to write clearly and accessibly while effectively communicating the same or similar truths.).

Later on, after the glimpse of his theory of truth, which I've already covered, he returns to the theme of elitism:

Elitist arrogance has not the least place in philosophical experience. It must give an account of how much, according to its own possibility in the existent, it is contaminated with the existent, with the class relationship. In it, the chances which the universal desultorily affords to individuals turn against that universal, which sabotages the universality of such experience. If this universality were established, the experience of all particulars would thus be transformed and would cast aside much of the contingency which distorted them until that point, even where it continues to stir. Hegel’s doctrine, that the object would reflect itself in itself, survives its idealistic version, because in a changed dialectics the subject, disrobed of its sovereignty, virtually becomes thereby the reflection-form of objectivity.

"Elitist arrogance has not the least place in philosophical experience" because philosophical experience depends on a humility with regard to its own abilities, for example an awareness of the subject's own class interests. More plainly, philosophical experience demands self-reflection: e.g., what social and historical factors have shaped my perspective? Answering questions like these is to reveal how one's philosophical practice is "contaminated with the existent". The intellectuals, while able to see a bit deeper than others to see how the social totality conditions our thoughts, do not float free of the world like all-knowing guiding angels; they are as mediated and conditioned as everyone else.

Put differently, true elitists believe that in their philosophical experience they have a sovereign subjectivity, pure and uncontaminated and above the herd. Adorno, in contrast, says the philosophers must start with the knowledge that they are already contaminated, and work out how. Then, in negative dialectics...

the subject, disrobed of its sovereignty, virtually becomes thereby the reflection-form of objectivity.

Last bit:

The less that theory comes across as something definitive and all-encompassing, the less it concretizes itself, even with regard to thinking. It permits the dissolution of the systemic compulsion, relying more frankly on its own consciousness and its own experience, than the pathetic conception of a subjectivity which pays for its abstract triumph with the renunciation of its specific content would permit. This is congruent with that emancipation of individuality borne out of the period between the great idealisms and the present, and whose achievements, in spite of and because of the contemporary pressure of collective regression, are so little to be remanded in theory as the impulses of the dialectic in 1800. The individualism of the nineteenth century no doubt weakened the objectifying power of the Spirit – that of the insight into objectivity and into its construction – but also endowed it with a sophistication, which strengthens the experience of the object.

Fascinating stuff. It turns out that the privilege of experience is not just a stroke of personal luck but is an achievement of modernity: the possibility of this non-conformist kind of philosophical thought that the world needs was generated by bourgeois individualism, especially the hundred years or so of stability and progress that led up to the First World War (and Adorno's birth a few years before that).

But there are two sides to it, of course.

We've been here before. Remember that what we're doing is trying to understand what Adorno means. It's clear that he does not think that when we talk about economic systems, we are talking about concepts; he thinks we are talking about a material reality to which concepts are applied (the response of "material reality itself is just a concept!" is equally inappropriate, an intrusion of idealist dogma). — Jamal

The problem with this description is that under the principles derived from Karl Marx, there is no proper separation between the internal mind, and the external material reality. That idealist separation is dissolved, and the entire thing is "material reality.

In your description of "economic systems" you rely on a distinction between concepts and the material reality to which concepts apply, but that distinction is not valid, having already been denied by the ontological principles of Marxist materialism. By that ontology, concepts are already a part of the material reality. Therefore your argument is not valid because "the material reality to which concepts are applied" includes concepts themselves, so that if he is talking about material reality, we cannot automatically conclude that he is not talking about concepts.

This is why I referred you to the Marxist distinction between form and content. Content is the means by which the material aspect is represented within ideas. So, my interpretation is that economic systems are as you say, a part of material reality, just like ideology is a part of material reality, but they are a fundamentally conceptual part. Look at the quote provided by frank from p154. Material reality enters into the concept.

The idea of something immutable, identical to itself, would also thereby collapse. It is derived from the domination of the concept, which wished to be constant towards its content, precisely its “matter”, and for that reason is blind to such. — frank

Concepts like "economic system" are not just abstract categories; they're crystallizations of real social relations, and the nonconceptual is the lived experience of those relations, including, say, exploitation and homelessness. Or are exploitation and homelessness just concepts too? — Jamal

Yes, I agree that we are talking about "real social relations", but the way of analyzing society, categorizing the parts, is not the same as traditional western philosophy. We do not start with a mind/body, material/immaterial, idea/material reality, separation. Instead, we take a position which is supposed to be more real, which is more like the division between the individual subject, and the society. Then we can see that the essence of the societal is the form, while the essence of the individual is the content. However, both form and content coexist within each, though their positioning as essence and accident is reversed relative to each other. Content is the essence of the subject, and form is accidental, while form is the essence of society and content is accidental. In this way all aspects partake of both sides of the ontological category division, and the category division is no longer between internal mind and external material reality, as both of these partake of both sides of the new division, form and content.

Generally you are being pedantic, failing to take my analogy in the spirit it was intended, and stubbornly upholding an idealist viewpoint while trying to understand an anti-idealist philosopher. — Jamal

Wow, that's exactly the criticism I've leveled at you above. You are describing Marxist philosophy from fundamental idealist categories, the separation between mind and material reality. So I think it is actually you who is stubbornly upholding the idealist ontological perspective, while trying to understand Marxist materialism.

So you tried the Kantian angle, and now it's Marxism. What will you be throwing at me next?

The ontological status of concepts is a red herring. It doesn't follow from the fact that concepts are part of the material world that there is no legitimate distinction to be made between concepts and the world. ND is full of the distinction and utterly relies on it. This doesn't imply a mind vs. matter ontology. One can maintain a materialist ontology, where both concepts and objects are part of a single, material world, and still insist on a functional or critical distinction between the act of identifying (the concept) and that which is to be identified (the object).

You draw the wrong conclusion from Adorno's materialism. The point of it isn't to collapse the distinction between a concept and what it represents, but to enable a critique of the relationship between them.

concepts are already a part of the material reality. Therefore your argument is not valid because "the material reality to which concepts are applied" includes concepts themselves, so that if he is talking about material reality, we cannot automatically conclude that he is not talking about concepts. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, concepts are part of the material world. But this does not mean that when we use a concept, we are talking about the concept itself. This is to confuse a tool with the object it is being used on.

When we want to talk about the concept, which is also part of material reality, then we will take care to make that clear. It's the difference between "capitalism goes back to the 16th century" and "capitalism is concept that goes back to Adam Smith". In the former statement, the concept of capitalism is being used as a tool, but the fact that the tool is also material does not magically transform the object of analysis into the tool itself.

If we could not make this distinction, Adorno's whole cricial project would be dead in the water, because he could no longer say that the conventional concept of capitalism fails to capture the reality of the economic system.

The concept is a kind of material object that attempts to subjugate others. The non-conceptual and non-identical are what resists or escapes such domination.

Wow, that's exactly the criticism I've leveled at you above. You are describing Marxist philosophy from fundamental idealist categories, the separation between mind and material reality. So I think it is actually you who is stubbornly upholding the idealist ontological perspective, while trying to understand Marxist materialism. — Metaphysician Undercover

It should now be clear that I'm not promoting any form of idealism. But I've certainly simplified Adorno to make my points. The 16th-century economic system did not have a "capitalism" nametag. Our historical concept of capitalism came later, and was used to organize, understand, and indeed, partly constitute that past as a specific object of analysis. This mediation is where identity thinking happens, e.g., the modern concept can easily impose itself retrospectively, smoothing over the non-conceptual particularity and internal contradictions of that historical reality.

But this mediation, or "partial constitution," does not erase the fundamental distinction. On the contrary. The goal of negative dialectics is to use the concept to push against its own mediating function, to expose the gap between our conceptual "capitalism" and the heterogeneous, non-identical reality of the 16th-century economic life it tries to capture. To say the object is conceptually mediated is not to say it's conceptually created. Conflating the two is what allows the concept to dominate the object apparently without remainder.

So I'm not promoting a simplistic dualist interpretation. I'm basing things on Adorno's underlying dialectical maintenance of subject vs. object, a "separation" (but not an ontological one) which is both true and false:

The separation of subject and object is both real and semblance. True, because in the realm of cognition it lends expression to the real separation, the rivenness of the human condition, the result of a coercive historical process; untrue, because the historical separation must not be hypostatized, not magically transformed into an invariant. This contra- diction in the separation of subject and object is imparted to epistemol- ogy. Although as separated they cannot be thought away, the ψεῦδος [falsity?] of the separation is manifested in their being mutually mediated, object by subject, and even more and differently, subject by object. As soon as it is fixed without mediation, the separation becomes ideology, its normal form. Mind then arrogates to itself the status of being absolutely inde- pendent—which it is not: mind’s claim to independence announces its claim to domination. — On Subject and Object, from Critical Models

Redacted.

Please start a new discussion for that, because it doesn’t belong here. This thread is for those who are reading Negative Dialectics to discuss the book.

EDIT: Thanks

What will you be throwing at me next? — Jamal

I've got a heavy arsenal and I'll choose the weapon according to intent and circumstances. Just kidding, we're not doing battle, nor even debating, just trying to assist each other to understand why we each, respectively, interpret the way that we do. You are guided by your principles, and I follow mine, and I think we both claim a better interpretation than the other. I'm willing to adapt if you show me how your principles are better suited for the purpose.

Our primary disagreement seems to be concerning what type of existence things like society, economic systems, and ideology, have. You claim these to be objects, i claim them to be concepts. I've shown willingness to compromise. I'm ready to allow that they are material objects, under the principles of Marxist materialism, whereby concepts are material objects. This way, these things can be concepts as I claim, and also material objects, as you want them to be interpreted.

The ontological status of concepts is a red herring. It doesn't follow from the fact that concepts are part of the material world that there is no legitimate distinction to be made between concepts and the world. ND is full of the distinction and utterly relies on it. This doesn't imply a mind vs. matter ontology. One can maintain a materialist ontology, where both concepts and objects are part of a single, material world, and still insist on a functional or critical distinction between the act of identifying (the concept) and that which is to be identified (the object). — Jamal

Adorno is arguing in ND, that what you are insisting on here, is a false premise.

One can ... still insist on a functional or critical distinction between the act of identifying (the concept) and that which is to be identified (the object).

A principal point is that Identity thinking, identifying concept and object is a false principle. We need to dismiss it as faulty thinking. This means that we cannot refer to this principle in an attempt to understand the principles which Adorno is putting forward, because he has explicitly said that we need to reject this. This implies that we need to look at other principles for understanding the relationship between conceptual and nonconceptual. To fall back onto this identity principle is a mistake.

If we could not make this distinction, Adorno's whole cricial project would be dead in the water, because he could no longer say that the conventional concept of capitalism fails to capture the reality of the economic system. — Jamal

That the concept of capitalism does not capture the reality of capitalism is evidence that identifying concept and object is a mistaken project. Such identity thinking misleads us. Now that we understand that there is no such thing as an identity relation between concept and object, we can pursue the true nature of the concept. As an alternative, Adorno has proposed a relationship between concept and nonconceptual.

So we need to understand the nonconceptual. I propose that the nonconceptual is referred to as "content". And the dialectical method allows that the negation inheres within the concept, so we can understand that the nonconceptual inheres within the concept, as the content, which may manifest as the irrational aspect of the concept.

The concept is a kind of material object that attempts to subjugate others. The non-conceptual and non-identical are what resists or escapes such domination. — Jamal

This is exactly what I am talking about, except instead of "attempts" I'd say that it has succeeded. The concept subjugates, and this is why the nonconceptual inheres within it, as the content. It does make sense to speak about resistance, but I do not think that "escapes" makes any sense because of the nature of the relationship between the two. Resistance may cause change and evolution of the concept, and this is why the concept is not immutable and eternal, but I don't think escape is possible.

It should now be clear that I'm not promoting any form of idealism. But I've certainly simplified Adorno to make my points. The 16th-century economic system did not have a "capitalism" nametag. Our historical concept of capitalism came later, and was used to organize, understand, and indeed, partly constitute that past as a specific object of analysis. This mediation is where identity thinking happens, e.g., the modern concept can easily impose itself retrospectively, smoothing over the non-conceptual particularity and internal contradictions of that historical reality. — Jamal

You agree with me here too, that identity thinking is a mistaken way.

But this mediation, or "partial constitution," does not erase the fundamental distinction. — Jamal

it does not erase the distinction, because many will still utilize it. however it demonstrates the distinction to be unsound, therefore one which we ought to reject. Philosophers like to instil categories, and these may become dogma or ideology, but Adorno is showing that this specific way of categorizing is unacceptable. To have a better understanding we need to reject it and accept a better way.

On the contrary. The goal of negative dialectics is to use the concept to push against its own mediating function, to expose the gap between our conceptual "capitalism" and the heterogeneous, non-identical reality of the 16th-century economic life it tries to capture. To say the object is conceptually mediated is not to say it's conceptually created. Conflating the two is what allows the concept to dominate the object apparently without remainder. — Jamal

OK, so let's say that Adorno does this, he demonstrates the gap between concept and reality. And you are referring to the reality as "the object". So what he has shown is that our understanding of "the object" is wrong because objects don't relate to our concepts in the way we believe. Now he proposes a different object, the subject, and is proceeding to investigate whether we can produce a true understanding of this object. That would be a true concept/object relation. From the perspective of the subject, the concept is mediated, and the nonconceptual is immediate, but this requires that the subject is the object.

So I'm not promoting a simplistic dualist interpretation. I'm basing things on Adorno's underlying dialectical maintenance of subject vs. object, a "separation" (but not an ontological one) which is both true and false: — Jamal

Maybe at some other times he speaks of a separation between subject and object, but at this point in the book he is almost explicit to say that the subject is the object.

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.

When skepticism concerning the object, hits the subject as immediate reality, the subject turns to its own experience, and is certain of itself, such as "I think therefore I am", then the subject becomes the object.

This is the point of the "Privilege of Experience"

[/quote]In sharp contrast to the usual scientific ideal, the objectivity of dialectical cognition needs more subject, not less.
...
The individualism of the nineteenth century no doubt weakened the objectifying power of the Spirit – that of the insight into objectivity and into its construction – but also endowed it with a sophistication, which strengthens the experience of the object.[/quote]

Notice "the experience of the object". The subject is the object.

Our primary disagreement seems to be concerning what type of existence things like society, economic systems, and ideology, have. You claim these to be objects, i claim them to be concepts. I've shown willingness to compromise. I'm ready to allow that they are material objects, under the principles of Marxist materialism, whereby concepts are material objects. This way, these things can be concepts as I claim, and also material objects, as you want them to be interpreted. — Metaphysician Undercover

Adorno was an ontological anti-realist. He wouldn't take the concept, as you're using the word, and materiality to be anymore than a dichotomy that plays out in one kind of dialectical story. What's implied by dialectics is unification. When you realize that ideas and materiality are two sides of one coin, the image of dissolution of the division appears to the mind. Giving a name to the outcome of this dissolution, and then reifying it, is positive dialectics.

In other words, try to remember that "dialectics" is in the title. That is the framework for all that follows.

I've got a heavy arsenal and I'll choose the weapon according to intent and circumstances. Just kidding, we're not doing battle, nor even debating, just trying to assist each other to understand why we each, respectively, interpret the way that we do. You are guided by your principles, and I follow mine, and I think we both claim a better interpretation than the other. I'm willing to adapt if you show me how your principles are better suited for the purpose. — Metaphysician Undercover

Agreed! It seemed to me that rather than trying to understand, you were just automatically gainsaying anything I said, scoring points by fisking. Years of TPF will normalize that kind of behaviour, but it's not the best way. However, if that's your style I can deal with it :cool:

I think @frank is right to notice that you are forgetting the dialectical nature of Adorno's philosophy.

Adorno is arguing in ND, that what you are insisting on here, is a false premise. — Metaphysician Undercover

A principal point is that Identity thinking, identifying concept and object is a false principle. We need to dismiss it as faulty thinking. This means that we cannot refer to this principle in an attempt to understand the principles which Adorno is putting forward, because he has explicitly said that we need to reject this. This implies that we need to look at other principles for understanding the relationship between conceptual and nonconceptual. To fall back onto this identity principle is a mistake. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think what it comes down to—what must always be borne in mind with Adorno—is that concepts, and therefore identity-thinking, are both indispensible and problematic. This might even be the central idea of negative dialectics. He does not say that we should "dismiss" or "reject" concepts or identity-thinking. The difficulty he has been at pains to describe, especially in the lectures, is that negative dialectics seeks to understand the nonconceptual by means of the concept, which is to say, to circumvent the falsifying nature of the concepts, by means of concepts themselves. He is aware that this looks impossible on the surface.

I've found it useful to go back over what we've already read, because a lot of our current questions are, if not answered, at least clarified. In the section entitled "Dialectics not a standpoint," he admits that identity-thinking is fundamental to thought and cannot be completely avoided, only supplemented and corrected as we go.

The appearance [Schein] of identity dwells however in thinking itself as a pure form from within. To think means to identify

I interpreted this before as follows:

This word for appearance, Schein, is the same as in appearance/essence, and it similarly suggests illusion. Here, the illusion is that thought has exhausted the object, that mind and world are united completely. But this is an illusion that arises from within, from the way we think: to think means to identify. — Jamal

In his book Adorno Brian O'Connor makes the distinction between coercive and non-coercive identity-thinking:

In contrast to the coercive attitude – the one Adorno finds in modern society and in its philosophy – the non-coercive attitude attempts to close the gap between it and the object, without the authority of preconceived categories. — Brian O'Connor, Adorno, p78

Identity-thinking is the main villain precisely because it cannot really be dispensed with entirely.

Now that we understand that there is no such thing as an identity relation between concept and object, we can pursue the true nature of the concept. As an alternative, Adorno has proposed a relationship between concept and nonconceptual. — Metaphysician Undercover

According to what I've said so far, this here is a faulty argument. The implied premise, which you state elsewhere, is that if there is no such thing as a 100% successful identity relation, identity-thinking must be rejected. But this is not Adorno's view. So the focus on the relationship between the concept and the conconceptual is not an alternative to identity-thinking, but a way of pushing it through to breaking point, whereupon the nonconceptual might be revealed. But there is a kind of alternative, a supplement to coercive identity-thinking, which is mimesis, the kind of understanding embodied in art.

Incidentally, my impression is that despite appearances I don't think we're too far apart in our interpretations. But you just seem too eager to come down on one side or the other, and to reify and hypostasize and systematize all over the place with the result that the elements of Adorno's thought become frozen and static.

it does not erase the distinction, because many will still utilize it. however it demonstrates the distinction to be unsound, therefore one which we ought to reject. Philosophers like to instil categories, and these may become dogma or ideology, but Adorno is showing that this specific way of categorizing is unacceptable. To have a better understanding we need to reject it and accept a better way. — Metaphysician Undercover

I agree with the part about categories, dogma and ideology. In fact, it's deeper than that. Reification is essential to the genesis of concepts anyway, so from the outset concepts falsify their objects, making them prime material for ideology.

But I disagree with "unacceptable". What he finds unacceptable is not identity-thinking per se, but its dominance and coerciveness in modern thought.

The subject is the object. — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't really understand this part of your post. The subject as object is a moment in the practice of negative dialectics, especially since in the "Privilege" section he emphasizes the importance of the philospher's self-examination—but you seem to want to say more than that.

I recommend you have a look again at the "Disenchantment of the Concept" section. It helped me. It has some relevant nuggets:

The requirement that philosophy must operate with concepts is no more to be made into a virtue of this priority than, conversely, the critique of this virtue is to be the summary verdict over philosophy. Meanwhile, the insight that its conceptual essence would not be its absolute in spite of its inseparability is again mediated through the constitution of the concept; it is no dogmatic or even naively realistic thesis. Concepts such as that of being in the beginning of Hegel’s Logic indicate first of all that which is emphatically non-conceptual; they signify, as per Lask’s expression, beyond themselves. It is in their nature not to be satisfied by their own conceptuality, although to the extent that they include the non-conceptual in their meaning, they tend to make this identical to itself and thereby remain entangled in themselves. Their content is as immanent in the intellectual sense as transcendent in the ontical sense to such. By means of the self- consciousness of this they have the capacity of discarding their fetishism. Philosophical self-reflection assures itself of the non- conceptual in the concept. Otherwise this latter would be, after Kant’s dictum, null, ultimately no longer the concept of something and thereby void.

Anyway, concept/thing, subject/object, and mediation seem to be covered extensively later, so maybe we should hold off getting too deep into it now.

Something else I meant to say is that Adorno very intentionally avoids defining the non-conceptual, because to do so would be to reify it, to solidify it into a fasifying concept. Of course, it is a concept, but he wants it to remain just a pointer, a bit like the thing in itself, which is a signpost without much positive content.

So in a way I was undermining his intention by trying to pin it down. The solution might be to just talk about what it means, without offering these meanings as definitive and comprehensive.

In other words, try to remember that "dialectics" is in the title. That is the framework for all that follows. — frank

I broached this already with Jamal. If "dialectics" refers to Hegelian dialectics, then Adorno is not practising dialectics, and this is not "the framework for all that follows". He is clearly very critical of Hegelian dialectics, and I would say that he firmly rejects it. That was evident when he rejected Hegelian synthesis, and it becomes even more evident in "Dialectics and the Solidified" where he exposes "the deception of prima philosophia", the idealistic illusion that "that the whole seamlessly emerges out of that
which is immediate, solid and simply primary".

The problem with Hegelian dialectics which Adorno is revealing, is that this method cannot adequately portray the nature of becoming, evolution, emergence. What he said about synthesis is that it could just as easily be a step backward as a step forward. Now he has revealed that because Hegel does not provide for a principle of change which inheres within the concept itself, change to the concept is impossible, if we were to adhere strictly to Hegelian dialectics. This is essentially the same issue I took up with my professor. Since the thesis (being), and the antithesis (nothing), are both purely conceptual, admitting of no degree of matter (the potential for change) the becoming which is supposed to result from the synthesis cannot possibly be a true representation of becoming. We must allow something else, a medium, between being and nothing, such as the potential of matter, or else we have no true becoming. In other words, becoming cannot be the synthesis of those two, it must be a medium between them.

For these reasons we cannot assume that "dialectics", in the sense of Hegelian dialectics, is the framework from which Adorno is working. It would be a more accurate conclusion to say that "negative dialectics" is a project which refutes Hegelian dialectics, negating it in that sense. And, we cannot say that it "negates" dialectics in the sense of Hegelian dialectics, because that would be hypocritical, anmd self-defeating, to use the process which one is demonstrating to be defective, in your refutation of that process.

So if we allow that Adorno is using a dialectical method, we must accept that it is not Hegelian dialectics. Near the beginning of the thread, I remarked that Adorno's form of "dialectics" seems much closer to Platonic dialectics then Hegelian to me. Plato allowed for a true becoming in his dialectics with his proposal of "the good".

Agreed! It seemed to me that rather than trying to understand, you were just automatically gainsaying anything I said, scoring points by fisking. Years of TPF will normalize that kind of behaviour, but it's not the best way. However, if that's your style I can deal with it — Jamal

For me it's not a matter of scoring points, it's a matter of getting at the truth. But it's natural for a person who believes oneself to understand something, to defend against contrary claims.

I agree that the way you and I each understand Adorno is not very different. However, there are nagging little things which I believe derive from a difference in each of our preconceived ideas. The preconceived ideas form the principles by which we interpret. That's why I throw some names to elucidate the preconceptions.

The problem though is that a small difference can have a substantial effect. This is because dialectics (and I mean in a general sense which incudes Platonic as well as Hegelian) deals with relations between concepts. And, since logic often works with relations of priority, a small difference can invert the logical priority misleading any logic which follows.

So for example, if we take being and nothing as two opposing concepts and we produce becoming as a synthesis, it is implied that the concepts of being and nothing are logically prior to the concept of becoming. In this way it appears like becoming emerges. But this presents an empirical problem because emergence is a type of becoming, and now we say that becoming comes to be from a process of becoming (it comes from itself} This problem is easily avoided in a naive way by saying that the concept of becoming emerges from those other concepts, but "real material becoming" is something prior to even those concepts. However, that simple avoidance is to admit nonidentity, that the conceptual scheme is false. The concept of becoming is not true.

Now to have a true conceptualization we need to place becoming as prior to both concepts, being and nothing. This allows that the concepts emerge through a process of becoming. Then "becoming" refers to the nonconceptual, as something which is logically prior to the concept. Therefore we are forced by this logical necessity to place "becoming" into a completely different category, as nonconceptual. "Becoming" cannot be the logical synthesis of being and nothing, because it is something which is necessarily prior to concepts in general, therefore it must be characterized as other than conceptual.

Aristotle demonstrated something similar. If we characterize becoming as a process of is-not/is (does not have the property then has the property), we will have an infinite chain of such, which will never provide a true representation of what the activity of becoming really is. So all this does is produce a false conception of becoming.

The main difference of interpretation between you and I is how we relate some key concepts to each other. But little differences sometimes have a big impact. So I'm going to fisk out the rest of your post and show a couple points where I think you are inconsistent with Adorno.

The difficulty he has been at pains to describe, especially in the lectures, is that negative dialectics seeks to understand the nonconceptual by means of the concept, which is to say, to circumvent the falsifying nature of the concepts, by means of concepts themselves. He is aware that this looks impossible on the surface. — Jamal

I think he is actually showing the opposite of this. The nonconceptual has been shown to be the immediate. The concept is mediated. This implies that we come to understand the concept through the means of the nonconceptual. The alternative is disputed as the false representation. Consider for evidence, that a child born into this world understands no concepts. But the child comes to understand concepts. This implies that at the fundamental level the nonconceptual is always prior to the concept. And throughout our lives, the nonconceptual experience is always the means by which we learn concepts.

Now, the difference is this. You can say that we work towards extending our understanding by applying the conceptual (knowledge) to the nonconceptual (unknown), but is this really the case? When we work with the conceptual we are always applying concept to concept. The nonconceptual enters the work through some type of intuition, or abductive reasoning, but it needs to be rendered into the conceptual form before it can actually enter the work. This, I believe is the point of the "Privilege" section. The type of person who is suited to this intuitive work is the type who does not think in the normal way of concept to concept relations. That person allows the nonconceptual to rule over the conceptual, as one of those "who have had the undeserved good fortune to not be completely adjusted in their inner intellectual composition to the prevailing norms".

According to what I've said so far, this here is a faulty argument. The implied premise, which you state elsewhere, is that if there is no such thing as a 100% successful identity relation, identity-thinking must be rejected. But this is not Adorno's view. So the focus on the relationship between the concept and the conconceptual is not an alternative to identity-thinking, but a way of pushing it through to breaking point, whereupon the nonconceptual might be revealed. But there is a kind of alternative, a supplement to coercive identity-thinking, which is mimesis, the kind of understanding embodied in art. — Jamal

Again, you talk about how "the nonconceptual might be revealed". But this is backward, the nonconceptual is always already directly revealed, as the immediate. This means that what is at issue, is how the concept is revealed through the medium which is the nonconceptual.

The example of mimesis and art show that we are close to the same understanding, but I think you have things turned around. These are ways in which concept (understanding) come from the nonconceptual (lack of understanding).

ncidentally, my impression is that despite appearances I don't think we're too far apart in our interpretations. But you just seem too eager to come down on one side or the other, and to reify and hypostasize and systematize all over the place with the result that the elements of Adorno's thought become frozen and static. — Jamal

The issue is to understand the truth. And if the truth is that Adorno prioritizes one over the other, then we need to understand him that way. To systematize is what Adorno described as necessary for understanding, but this is distinctly different from creating a system.

But I disagree with "unacceptable". What he finds unacceptable is not identity-thinking per se, but its dominance and coerciveness in modern thought. — Jamal

I have not found any reason yet to think that Adorno thinks of identity thinking as good. He's described as based in false premises and misleading. To me that merits "unacceptable", but maybe you know where he describes it as acceptable.

Of course, it is a concept, but he wants it to remain just a pointer, a bit like the thing in itself, which is a signpost without much positive content. — Jamal

I really think that it is this tendency of yours, to categorize the nonconceptual as some form of external object, or the thing in itself, which misleads you. We have no need or warrant to look at external things, because they are completely ineffective in the realm of concepts. That is because the intuitions lie between, as the medium. And the intuitions are nonconceptual. So we have our conceptual and nonconceptual right here, without looking toward the thing in itself.

Anyway, concept/thing, subject/object, and mediation seem to be covered extensively later, so maybe we should hold off getting too deep into it now. — Jamal

I agree. If you're ok to hold off on this particular topic, we ought. However, it appears to be a pivotal point which underlies a lot, so it might just fester for a while.

The nonconceptual has been shown to be the immediate. — Metaphysician Undercover

For Adorno, this is very much not the case. Can you remember which passages made you so convinced of this?

I have not found any reason yet to think that Adorno thinks of identity thinking as good. — Metaphysician Undercover

Of course not, I wouldn't make that claim.

really think that it is this tendency of yours, to categorize the nonconceptual as some form of external object, or the thing in itself, which misleads you. We have no need or warrant to look at external things, because they are completely ineffective in the realm of concepts. That is because the intuitions lie between, as the medium. And the intuitions are nonconceptual. So we have our conceptual and nonconceptual right here, without looking toward the thing in itself. — Metaphysician Undercover

I get it straight from the text.

Speaking of change, a cool thing to do is compare Adorno's conception of emancipation to Heidegger's, then think about how very different their approaches to dialectics were. Adorno and Heidegger are at the poles on both philosophical and political spectrums, so you can walk through how they relate to each other dialectically, and the whole thing subsequently swirls down the drain. Just kidding.

Another cool thing, regarding change, is to rethink how Hegel figured in Marxism. Somewhere along the line, I got the impression that Marx was more a student of Feuerbach than Hegel, so a project would be to revisit Feuerbach's way of turning Hegel on his head, vs. Adorno's.

And more change: We presently live at a time when extremes of right and left are weirdly allied. What would Adorno say about that?

I might go back and reread with those questions in mind. ND is very dense and mysterious, so a little more staring at the page might be good. :razz:

Adorno was an ontological anti-realist. He wouldn't take the concept, as you're using the word, and materiality to be anymore than a dichotomy that plays out in one kind of dialectical story. — frank

I disagree. He's not a naive realist, and he's not a realist in any other ordinary way, but I don't think he believes that reality is constituted by the mind. The priority of the object, the insistence that reality precedes and resists the mind (resists concepts and identity-thinking) despite its mediation, point to a realist thrust in Adorno's philosophy. Add to that his commitment to aspects of reality denigrated or ignored by other philosophers: the particular and contingent, and suffering. Suffering and the non-identical are not just "stories," and his anti-idealism gains its passion and commitment from this ethical orientation, namely that suffering has revealed the hubris and falsity of idealism.

But I see where you're coming from: we cannot break out of mediation. But Adorno believes this knowledge of our mediation can reveal mediation's crimes and misdemeanors.

I disagree. He's not a naive realist, and he's not a realist in any other ordinary way, but I don't think he believes that reality is constituted by the mind. — Jamal

Ontological anti-realism isn't the view that reality is constituted by the mind. You're thinking of Dummett's anti-realism.

Ontological anti-realists wouldn't try to settle the debate about whether the mind or the body takes precedence. Sometimes it's the kind of skepticism we find in Wittgenstein, which is that we don't have a vantage point from which to rule on the question. In continental philosophy, it's dialectics: that mind and body are thesis and anti-thesis. What's the synthesis? The Absolute, which was once another name for God. The fact that the Absolute inherits shades of divinity contributes to the illusion that it's something static. The only thing we'll ever know about the Absolute is the experience of following the contours of the mind, which is dialectics. It's very cool to be reminded of that.

Add to that his commitment to aspects of reality denigrated or ignored by other philosophers: the particular and contingent, and suffering — Jamal

I'm struggling to fit Adorno into my philosophical landscape, and this is another thread to it: Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche all orbit around suffering, primarily with the aim of accepting it as part of life: and not just an unfortunate part, and definitely not a result of capitalism, but rather the primary engine of the psyche. Does this trivialize or denigrate suffering? Actually, I think it does. The philosophy of acceptance needs to be tempered by actually facing it.

But Adorno believes this knowledge of our mediation can reveal mediation's crimes and misdemeanors. — Jamal

Absolutely. Pun intended. :smile:

Ontological anti-realism isn't the view that reality is constituted by the mind. You're thinking of Dummett's anti-realism.

Ontological anti-realists wouldn't try to settle the debate about whether the mind or the body takes precedence. Sometimes it's the kind of skepticism we find in Wittgenstein, which is that we don't have a vantage point from which to rule on the question. In continental philosophy, it's dialectics: that mind and body are thesis and anti-thesis. What's the synthesis? The Absolute, which was once another name for God. The fact that the Absolute inherits shades of divinity contributes to the illusion that it's something static. The only thing we'll ever know about the Absolute is the experience of following the contours of the mind, which is dialectics. It's very cool to be reminded of that. — frank

Yeah, ok :up:

I'm struggling to fit Adorno into my philosophical landscape, and this is another thread to it: Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche all orbit around suffering, primarily with the aim of accepting it as part of life: and not just an unfortunate part, and definitely not a result of capitalism, but rather the primary engine of the psyche. Does this trivialize or denigrate suffering? Actually, I think it does. The philosophy of acceptance needs to be tempered by actually facing it. — frank

Exactly.

Introduction: Qualitative Moment of Rationality

To yield to the object is so much as to do justice to its qualitative moments. The scientivistic objectification tends, in unity with the quantifying tendency of all science since Descartes, to flatten out qualities, to transform them into measurable determinations. Rationality itself is to an increasing extent equated more mathematico [Latin: in mathematical terms] with the capability of quantification. As much as this took into account the primacy of the triumphant natural sciences, so little does it lie in the concept of the ratio in itself.

Here he contrasts actually existing rationality with ratio, or "ratio in itself". The latter is reason or rationality in its widest or most originary sense, embracing both its meaning in classical Greek philosophy and also its even more expansive potential. It is reason before it was hijacked by quantification, i.e., before the Scientific Revolution made mathematics the paradigm of rational thought—or else it is reason as it could have been and could be. The important point about this is that quantification is not essential to reason: it does not "lie in the concept of ratio is itself."

It [quantification] is blinded not the least because it blocks itself off from qualitative moments as something which is for its part to be rationally thought. Ratio is not a mere sunâgôgê [Greek: gathering, assembly], the ascent from disparate phenomena [Erscheinungen] to the concept of its species. It demands just as much the capacity of distinction. Without it the synthetic function of thinking, abstractive unification, would not be possible: to aggregate what is the same means necessarily to separate it from what is different. This however is the qualitative; the thought which does not think this, is already cut off and at odds with itself.

The "qualitative moment" is indispensible to reason, so a reason centred on measurement, which forgets the importance of qualitative variation, goes wrong. Reason as such is not just about abstracting categories from phenomena. If it were, quantification would be an appropriate kind of rationality, because both categorization and quantification involve abstracting away from the particulars—to a general class or to a number, respectively.

The other side of synthesis—the synthesis required for the categorization of multiple phenomena under a single category—is the act of making distinctions, and this fundamentally qualitative. Felix and Tom are both cats, but Rover over there is not a cat.

Now, quantification may come along and claim that distinctions can be reduced to different measurements, but in doing so it is unknowingly parasitic on qualitative distinction.

Plato, the first to inaugurate mathematics as a methodological model, still gave powerful expression to the qualitative moment of the ratio at the beginning of the European philosophy of reason, by endowing sunâgôgê [Greek: gathering, assembly] next to diairesis [Greek: a dividing] with equal rights. They follow the commandment, that consciousness ought, in keeping with the Socratic and Sophistic separation of physei [Greek: by nature] and thesei [Greek: thesis], snuggle up to the nature of things, instead of proceeding with them arbitrarily. The qualitative distinction is thereby not only absorbed by the Platonic dialectic, into its doctrine of thinking, but interpreted as a corrective to the violence of quantification run amok. A parable from the Phaedros is unambiguous on this score. In it, the thought which arranges and nonviolence are balanced. One should, so runs the argument, in the reversal of the conceptual movement of the synthesis, “have the capacity, to divide into species corresponding to its nature, to carry out the cut according to the joints, and not attempt, after the manner of a bad cook, to shatter every member”.

This is a satisfying and rather counter-intuitive interpretation of Plato, not as the progenitor of a top-down rationalism contemptuous of particulars, but as a philosopher concerned with doing justice to "the nature of things".

The physei/thesei distinction in Plato seems to be primarily about language, but Adorno is using it in a wider sense to connote modes of reason.

Thesei (by convention): a mode of reason that imposes its theses on things
Physei (by nature): a mode of reason which is open to that which is objective and other than thought (this is where the snuggling comes in)

Adorno claims that Plato is careful not to bypass or dismiss the physei, because he keeps the two in balance. One must divide up nature, but not however one likes, i.e., not the way necessitated by the system one happens to be committed to already (i.e., "arbitrarily"), but rather follow the joints ("snuggle up to the nature of things").

That qualitative moment is preserved as a substrate of what is quantified in all quantification, which as Plato cautions should not be smashed to pieces, lest the ratio, by damaging the object which it was supposed to obtain, recoil into unreason. In the second reflection, the rational operation accompanies the quality as the moment of the antidote, as it were, which the limited first reflection of science withheld from philosophy, as suborned to this latter as it is estranged from it. There is no quantifiable insight which does not first receive its meaning, its terminus ad quem [Latin: end-point], in the retranslation into the qualitative. Even the cognitive goal of statistics is qualitative, quantification solely the means. The absolutization of the quantifying tendency of the ratio tallies with its lack of self-consciousness.

The first sentence demonstrates on a micro-scale the same argument as found in Dialectic of Enlightenment, where it's shown that reason, in its very attempt to lead us out from under the spell of religion and superstition, nevertheless becomes myth again—this is the "recoil into unreason" on a larger scale. Here, the primacy of quantification mirrors this instrumentalization of reason.

The meaning of "first reflection" and "second reflection" seems clear enough now, but it tripped me up at first. The first reflection is science, or the mode of rationality characteristic of science, which does not question or know its presuppositions (including qualitative distinction), and just carries on in the conventional way—which for historical reasons happens to be the way of quantification. The second reflection is the philosophical mode, which is able to bring back the qualitative as an antidote to this quantification. The second reflection examines science's presuppositions and reveals that the qualitative is fundamental to thought and cannot be cast aside without going wrong.

Insistence on the qualitative serves this, rather than conjuring up irrationality. Later Hegel alone showed an awareness of this, without any retrospective-romantic inclinations, at a time to be sure when the supremacy of quantification was not yet so widespread as today. For him, in accordance with the scientific formulation, “the truth of quality [is] itself quantity”. But he cognized it in the System of Philosophy as a “determination indifferent to being, extraneous to it”. It retains its relevance in the quantitative; and the quantum returns back to the quality.

Hegel showed the way. He was not a Romantic irrationalist, harking back to a pure, pre-rational past or appealing to an intuitive engagement with reality. He held quality and quantity together in some kind of balance, or made them interdependent. So the goal is not to destroy quantification but to sublate it along with quality into a more balanced kind of reason.

I am not quite sure, but I think "the truth of quality [is] itself quantity" means that quality implies the possibility of quantification. Quality leads to quantification but the latter does not or should not just surpass and cancel out the former. In fact, "the quantum returns back to the quality" in their sublation, meaning that the measurement, or data point, or maybe unit of measurement, is revealed through this union with quality to be an aspect of that quality, or to be meaningful in a qualitative context.

For Adorno, this is very much not the case. Can you remember which passages made you so convinced of this? — Jamal

It's what the section on the solidified is all about. Here's some cherry picking. Notice that he is inverting, turning around, what Hegelian logic teaches. What is actually the case, the truth, is the exact opposite of the principles which Hegelian logic is based in. That is the Marxist technique. Karl Marx took the whole idealistic Hegelian structure, completely intact, and flipped it over. This hands priority to the indeterminate "matter", content; rather than to the determined "Idea", the formal concept. But this ends up putting certainty, necessity, at the very fringes, instead of at the base, which is a huge difference.

The turn around is completed at paragraph 5. Instead of the concept extending beyond the object, he now speaks of the object extending beyond the concept. And this, that which extends beyond the concept, the nonconceptual, indeterminate, is shown to be what is immediate to the subject.

Paragraph 1

Unfettered dialectics does not dispense with anything solid any more
than Hegel. Rather it no longer accords it primacy.

They [Hegel's logical categories] are brought into harmony with the dynamic through
the doctrine of an immediacy which reproduces itself anew at every
dialectical level.

It [negative dialectics] takes the unmediated
immediacy, the formations, which society and its development present
to thought, tel quel [French: as such], in order to reveal their
mediations through analysis, according to the measure of the
immanent difference of the phenomena to what they claim, for their
own part, to be.

Paragraph 2

That which holds itself together as solid, the “positive” of the
young Hegel, is the negative of such analyses, just like his.

Paragraph 3

The Science of Logic is for its
part abstract in the simplest sense; the reduction of general concepts
already uproots in advance the counter-force [Widerspiel] to such, that
which is concrete, which idealistic dialectics boasts of harboring in
itself and developing.

Paragraph 4

Since Hegelian logic always had to do with the medium of the
concept and only generally reflected on the relationship of the concept
to its content, the non-conceptual, it is already assured in advance of
the absoluteness of the concept, which it was bent on proving. The more
the autonomy of subjectivity is seen through critically, the more it
becomes aware of itself as something mediated for its part, the more
conclusive the obligation of thought to take up what solidity has
brought to it, which it does not have in itself.

Paragraph 5

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. That which is most
subjective of all, the immediately given, eludes its grasp. Yet such
immediate consciousness is neither continuously held fast nor positive
pure and simple.

Paragraph 6

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.

Explicitly
idealistic philosophy is by no means always ideology. It hides in the
substruction of something primary, almost indifferent as to which
content, in the implicit identity of concept and thing, which the world
then justifies, even when the dependence of consciousness on being is
summarily taught.

My Interpretation:

Paragraph 1 states that the Hegelian representation, the immediacy of conceptual formations, is false, and negative dialectics will reveal their mediations.

Paragraph 3 The concrete solidity which idealism boasts is just an assumption.

Paragraph 4 That assumption proves the absoluteness of the conceptual, but it's a matter of begging the question. However, the autonomy of the subject, which this enables, allows the subject to become aware of the true mediation, because the concept claims to have the solidity, which the subject does not experience. In other words, the autonomy of the subject, which this ideology allows for, widens the gap, the medium, between subject and concept, forcing an obligation on the subject, to doubt the solidity.

Paragraph 5 The doubt produces the turn around referred to above,

Paragraph 6 The whole structure, the whole system, is revealed as an idealistic illusion, because of the false priority which it has assumed.

And this, that which extends beyond the concept, the nonconceptual, indeterminate, is shown to be what is immediate to the subject. — Metaphysician Undercover

But where? I don't see the evidence in those quotations.

Note what I said before about that section:

Here in the "Solidified" section, he makes the point that generally speaking what is given in immediacy and unrelfected-upon is not a good candidate for a fixed point, because these things are mediated in ways that are non-obvious. Immanent critique begins in concrete material reality, but it doesn't take it for what it appears to be; it must analyze the ways in which the concrete givens are mediated socially, historically, and via their "affinities". In other words, the material (the social) is indeed some kind of ground or fixed point, but it is not an unquestionable foundation.

On the other hand, even though the immediately given has to be assumed to be intrinsically problematic...

"Not every experience which appears to be primary is to be denied point-blank. "

So he is more subtle than might be expected. Recall the vital importance in intellectual experience of openness. The non-identical may be glimpsed at such moments of raw unreflective experience. — Jamal

The last point there sort of aligns with your current opinion, but I'm not sure I believe it any more.

@Metaphysician Undercover It occurs to me that you are thinking of Adorno's non-conceptual along the lines of Kant's manifold or Bergson's (naturally non-conceptual) intuition. I think this is because from the outset you are looking for the non-conceptual within consciousness. But Adorno doesn't have much time for that kind of non-conceptual, at least not on its own:

Bergson as well as Husserl, the standard-bearers of philosophical modernity, innervated this, but shrank away from it back into traditional metaphysics. Bergson created, by fiat, a different type of cognition for the sake of the non-conceptual. The dialectical salt was washed away in the undifferentiated flow of life; that which was materially solidified was dismissed as subaltern, instead of being understood along with its subalternity. Hatred of the rigid general concept produced a cult of irrational immediacy, of sovereign freedom amidst unfreedom. — Adorno, ND, Interest of Philosophy

Intuitions succeed, however, only desultorily. Every cognition, even Bergson’s own, requires the rationality which he so despised

Going back to the Solidified section...

For consciousness is at the same time the universal mediation and cannot leap, even in the données immédiate [French: given facts] which are its own, over its shadow. They are not the truth.

The non-conceptual is what philosophy aims for, as Adorno has explicitly stated. This is because it is the site of truth. And here he says that they, the given facts (by which he means the immediate, since he is contrasting it with "universal mediation"), "are not the truth". Therefore the non-conceptual is not the immediate.

Generally speaking, the idea that the very thing Adorno is interested in is something internal to the subject is the opposite of Adorno's meaning, to put it very mildly.

But where? I don't see the evidence in those quotations. — Jamal

If you can't follow that, it becomes more explicit later. Here's the second paragraph in "Thing, Language, History". It starts with the assertion that matter is the mediation of the non-conceptual. Then pay special attention to the final sentence of the paragraph. What for idealism is the immediacy of the concept, is the measure of untruth for materialism.

For the mediation in the midst of what is non-conceptual is no
remainder of a complete subtraction, nor is it something which would
refer to the bad infinity of such procedures. On the contrary, the
mediation is the hyle [Greek: primary matter] of its implicit history.
Philosophy creates, wherever it is still legitimate, out of something
negative: that in its attitude of things-are-so-and-not-otherwise, the
indissolubility before which it capitulates, and from which idealism
veers away, is merely a fetish; that of the irrevocability of the existent.
This dissolves before the insight that things are not simply so and not
otherwise, but came to be under conditions. This becoming disappears
and dwells in the thing, and is no more to be brought to a halt in its
concept than to be split off from its result and forgotten. Temporal
experience resembles it. In the reading of the existent as a text of its
becoming, idealistic and materialistic dialectics touch. However, while
idealism justifies the inner history of immediacy as a stage of the
concept, it becomes materialistically the measure not only of the
untruth of concepts, but also that of the existing immediacy. — ND p66-67

And here he says that they, the given facts (by which he means the immediate, since he is contrasting it with "universal mediation"), "are not the truth". Therefore the non-conceptual is not the immediate. — Jamal

From the perspective of idealism, the given facts are the immediate. From the perspective of materialism, this is false. The given facts are not truth, nor are they immediate. According to the final statement in the paragraph I quoted here, "immediacy as a stage of the concept" is not only a measure of the untruth of that concept, but also a measure of the untruth of that proposed immediacy. In other words the concept is never immediate from the materialist perspective.

Here's a proposal for a compromise. Adorno is very crafty, open minded, and doesn't appear to take sides. For compromise, let's say that he is elucidating both sides, the idealist (your interpretation, i.e. the immediacy of the concept) and the materialist (my interpretation, i.e. the untruth of that immediacy), and he does not side with or the other.

Generally speaking, the idea that the very thing Adorno is interested in is something internal to the subject is the opposite of Adorno's meaning, to put it very mildly. — Jamal

I don't think we could call it "philosophy" if the interest is something external to the subject. Wouldn't this bring us into the field of empirical sciences.

Well, I've really tried to be clear but the more I say, the less of my view you seem to understand. I have not said and would not say that concepts are immediate. So, much as I'd like to compromise, I can't do so if you don't know what it is I'm saying.

I don't think we could call it "philosophy" if the interest is something external to the subject. Wouldn't this bring us into the field of empirical sciences. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ah, why didn't you say so! The answer is no. This notion of philosophy is exactly what Adorno is against. Never forget that for Adorno, the need to let suffering speak is the condition of all truth. The suffering of the victims of genocide is an utterly external, material reality. To claim that philosophy should only be interested in our concepts of that suffering, and not in the way the reality of that suffering shatters our concepts, is to make philosophy ethically monstrous. This is Adorno's deep motivation.

He isn't turning philosophy into an empirical science. He's arguing that a philosophy which only looks inward at its own concepts becomes a pointless academic game, blind to the real-world suffering and domination that its own thought-structures help to enable.

So his interest is indeed in "external" things, but particularly insofar as our concepts falsify them or break down under their pressure. So if we want to compromise, maybe here is where we can do it: Adorno's philosophy is about the relation between concepts and things, where concepts are subjective and things are "external to the subject". If we can agree on that then we've made progress.

But as it happens, Adorno rejected the philosophy vs. empirical science dichotomy. And he not only expressed that rejection but actively practiced the fusion of the two. In fact that was the foundational aim and modus operandi of the Institute for Social Research (the Frankfurt School).

Ah, why didn't you say so! The answer is no. This notion of philosophy is exactly what Adorno is against. Never forget that for Adorno, the need to let suffering speak is the condition of all truth. The suffering of the victims of genocide is an utterly external, material reality. To claim that philosophy should only be interested in our concepts of that suffering, and not in the way the reality of that suffering shatters our concepts, is to make philosophy ethically monstrous. This is Adorno's deep motivation. — Jamal

In case you weren't aware, suffering is an internal condition of the subject.

He's arguing that a philosophy which only looks inward at its own concepts... — Jamal

Clearly he acknowledges the reality of the internal nonconceptual. That is essential to Marxism, of which he is familiar.

So if we want to compromise, maybe here is where we can do it: Adorno's philosophy is about the relation between concepts and things, where concepts are subjective and things are "external to the subject". If we can agree on that then we've made progress. — Jamal

This is not at all correct. How can you argue that suffering is external when it exists for others, yet concepts are always internal, even when they are the concepts of others? Your principles make no sense. It is clear that for Adorno the division between concepts and nonconceptual is not equivalent to the division between internal and external to the subject.

Anyway this bickering is not productive, and I'm participating here to read and discuss the text, not to have you lecture me on "exactly what Adorno is against". I had enough of that kind of thing in school.

In case you weren't aware, suffering is an internal condition of the subject. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, no here we go. From this forced "walking on stilts on a catwalk" position of human experience, so is every emotion, per your claim. And from there, it's like consciousness isn't even real but an imagined thing of no consequence in philosophical discussion. This is silly.

You're normally pretty smart and what not, but when you're not, you can be sure I'll be the first to call you out.

Yes, every emotion is an internal condition of the material subject. Why would you think that this implies that consciousness is not real? In Marxist materialism consciousness is very real. Contrary to idealism though, consciousness has a material base. Is that difficult to grasp?

Why would you think that this implies that consciousness is not real? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because the human experience cannot exist without consciousness. What is the human experience without emotion and mental response to one's environment via one's senses by means of consciousness (be it positive like pleasure or negative like pain).

I stake it or claim that, yes, if a being cannot ever experience suffering, it cannot ever experience pleasure, if it cannot experience emotion, it is not conscious per largely established and widely-agreed upon definition. So one cannot simply act like the legs that form a chair do not exist, or otherwise have no meaning, and still talk about the thing as if were a chair.

I stake it or claim that, yes, if a being cannot ever experience suffering, it cannot ever experience pleasure, if it cannot experience emotion, it is not conscious per largely established and widely-agreed upon definition. So one cannot simply act like the legs that form a chair do not exist, or otherwise have no meaning, and still talk about the thing as if were a chair. — Outlander

Sorry Outlander, I really cannot follow your argument. You talk about experiencing emotion, and I have no problem with that premise. It is a broadly accepted definition. But then you start talking about the legs of a chair, and i don't see how you relate these two very distinct ideas.

Anyway this bickering is not productive, and I'm participating here to read and discuss the text, not to have you lecture me on "exactly what Adorno is against". I had enough of that kind of thing in school. — Metaphysician Undercover

Nae bother pal. :cool:

Introduction: QUALITY AND THE INDIVIDUATED (i)

The quantifying tendency corresponded on the subjective side to the reduction of that which was cognized to something universal, devoid of qualities, to that which was purely logical. Qualities would no doubt first be truly free in an objective condition which was no longer limited to quantification and which no longer drilled quantification into those forced to intellectually adapt to such. But this is not the timeless essence which mathematics, its instrument, makes it appear as. Just like its claim to exclusivity, it became transient. The qualitative subject awaits the potential of its qualities in the thing, not its transcendental residue, although the subject is strengthened solely thereto by means of restrictions based on the division of labor.

The bolded "this" must, I think, refer back to the "quantifying tendency". It and its claim to be the only valid form of reason are transient: the exclusively mathematized image of nature is not nature's timeless essence but is rather a historical artifact, as is the arrogant claim that there is no other valid form of reason.

The "qualitative subject," i.e., the subject that thinks qualitatively, is receptive to the qualities of a particular thing. It "awaits" the thing's qualitative potential rather than pre-emptively imposing itself by means of its categories and metrics. And it is the concrete thing it is interested in, not a pure transencendental abstraction.

But this is a puzzler:

although the subject is strengthened solely thereto by means of restrictions based on the division of labor.

Another dialectical twist. Does it mean that only in our alienated modern society in which everyone must be an exclusive specialist of some sort could there be people, like Adorno and his peers, capable of focusing intently and deeply on the qualities of things? If so, this is a natural follow-on from the "Privilege" section.

The dialectical point would be that bureaucratic capitalism, the very thing that has created the problem of scientism (of reason as measurement and instrumental rationality) has also created the social capacity for its solution, in the shape of the division of labour.

The more meanwhile its own reactions are denounced as presumably merely subjective, the more the qualitative determinations in things escape cognition.

In reference to the qualitative subject, i.e., the philosopher making qualitative determinations, he says that "its own reactions are denounced as presumably merely subjective". Those who believe that mathematical science has uncovered the eternal essences of nature are inclined to regard the identification of qualities as merely subjective, as a matter of opinion and of the individual's finitude, its particular and eccentric perceptions and ideas etc. Reason in its supposedly highest, most objective form is meant to get beyond such diverse perspectives, which owe too much to the constitution of the individual and too little to the eternal and essential realm of objective reality.

But maybe this is not the most commonly held attitude in science, being found mainly among cosmologists, physicists, and mathematicians, so we might ask: is this just Adorno's straw man? Well, I don't think so; it's just that I've described it too narrowly, on the basis of his "timeless essence" from the first paragraph. There's a more general attitude that wants to label all qualitative determinations—including those used in the criticism of artworks, the analysis of historical periods, and psychological case studies, to name a few—as "merely subjective". This is so widespread among educated people that I hardly need to argue for its existence; we see it on TPF every other day. So Adorno's target is not so much the explicit Platonism of mathematicians as just the idea that if it can't be measured, it isn't real.

And the more that this idea holds sway, the more that the qualities of things will be missed—and, it's tempting to add, the more stupid we will become.

The ideal of the distinction [Differenzierten] and the nuanced, which cognition never completely forgot down to the latest developments in spite of all “science is measurement” [in English], does not solely refer to an individual capacity, which objectivity can dispense with. It receives its impulse from the thing. Distinction means, that someone is capable of discerning in this and in its concept even that which is smallest and which escapes the concept; solely distinction encompasses the smallest. In its postulate, that of the capability to experience the object – and distinction is the subjective reaction-form of this become experience – the mimetic moment of cognition finds refuge, that of the elective affinity of the cognizer and that which is to be cognized. In the entire process of the Enlightenment this moment gradually crumbled. But it does not completely remove it, lest it annul itself. Even in the concept of rational cognition, devoid of all affinity, the grasping for this concordance lives on, which was once kept free of doubt by the magical illusion. Were this moment wholly extirpated, the possibility of the subject cognizing the object would be utterly incomprehensible, the jettisoned rationality thereby irrational. The mimetic moment for its part however blends in with the rational in the course of its secularization. This process summarizes itself in the distinction. It contains the mimetic capability of reaction in itself as well as the logical organ for the relationship of genus, species and differentia specifica [Latin: specific difference]. Therein the capability of distinction retains as much contingency as every undiminished individuality does in regards to the universal one of its reason.

Distinction, characteristic of qualitative judgement, "receives its impulse from the thing". It is executed by the subject, but it doesn't have its source in the subject. In other words, qualitative determination is not merely private and idiosyncratic; it is a mimetic response to the qualities themselves and is the only thing that can see through the crude concepts that trample all over them, to the thing itself in its non-identity. This qualitative determination, distinction in particular, is where mimesis still operates, in the guise of "elective affinity": a resonance between subject and object, a non-coercive cognitive engagement.

Crucially, we must take care not to interpret Adorno as recommending feelings or intuitions over reason like Bergson, as if the mimetic capacity is the alternative to reason. Reason as it ought to be holds them together: (1) the "logical organ" of distinction, and (2) distinction's mimetic adaptation to the thing's own distinctions. These combine in an expansive non-instrumental reason.

And yet, even though this is the better kind of reason, because it is open to qualities, we should not think of it as thereby elevated to a status above that of the fallible, contingent individual. Rather, we have to adjust our expectations and see that the better kind of reason, and the better kind of knowledge, is contingent and worldly.

But this is a puzzler:

although the subject is strengthened solely thereto by means of restrictions based on the division of labor.

Another dialectical twist. Does it mean that only in our alienated modern society in which everyone must be an exclusive specialist of some sort could there be people, like Adorno and his peers, capable of focusing intently and deeply on the qualities of things? If so, this is a natural follow-on from the "Privilege" section.

The dialectical point would be that bureaucratic capitalism, the very thing that has created the problem of scientism (of reason as measurement and instrumental rationality) has also created the social capacity for its solution, in the shape of the division of labour. — Jamal

I found that puzzling, but your explanation does make sense at least.

I'm still uncertain about Adorno's so-called elitism here. I haven't commented on your previous summaries because I had nothing to add as I read them and the sections, and reread them, concurrently. Good summaries!

But I'm having trouble parsing my own defense of ability from the charge of elitism and Adorno's justification -- in some sense, yes, the division of labor will make it such that some are better able than others in a particular field.

But I wonder if this is a general call to elitism, or rather a generic defense of philosophical thinking in a scientistic society: He mentioned earlier how the scientists demand something which can be "understood by anyone", i.e. eliminate the subjective in favor of the quantitative, so I could see this as something more akin to Derrida's defense of his own work: Philosophy is a real discipline that you learn something in and get better at, and so yes some people -- due to the division of labor -- will be better at philosophy than others.

But this does not then mean that philosophy is somehow what makes Adorno and his peers superior to others in that social sense: Rather, he seems to be countering the claim of scientism's chauvinism.

But, then, I also may just be thinking that because it gets along with my own notions, and Adorno really does think that philosophy is superior in the sense that the qualitative distinction is what "grounds" the quantitative method -- being able to differentiate what something is from what it is not is the basis of being able to count and individuate, i.e. think quantitatively.