Good summaries! — Moliere

Thanks :smile:

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. — Moliere

Yeah, but in his utopian mode I think he would say not that philosophy is superior, but that all thinking, scientific-empirical and otherwise, stands to benefit from this wider kind of reason that doesn't leave qualities behind. Like I was saying recently, he doesn't think that philosophy and empirical science are separate domains.

But given the state of things, a kind of philosophical elitism might be apparent. He really tries to persuade us that it's not that (which is kind of funny considering that many of the people who knew him and worked with him said he was a genius).

So, yes to this:

a generic defense of philosophical thinking in a scientistic society — Moliere

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. — Jamal

I will offer my opinion here, but our modes of interpretation have diverged significantly, so much so that unless you adopt the principles which you recently disputed, what I say will look far off track.

As discussed in the prior sections, our object is now the subject. He says we yield to this principle. "To yield to the object is so much as to do justice to its qualitative moments." Kantian principles have demonstrated that we have no immediate access to any supposed independent objects, therefore if we want a true immediate understanding of the object, we need to look internally, and look at oneself as an object. This means that I am primarily an object, and I need to yield to this fact and understand myself as an object. This perspective will provide a basis for understanding that this object is also a subject, the objective being prior to the subjective though. Primarily, the person, myself, must be removed from the social context, within which the word "subject" applies, and understood as an "individuated object".

Form this perspective the qualitative, based in non-conceptual sensations and feelings, is prior to the quantitative which is conceptual and therefore mediated by the social context. In Plato, "the good" (qualitative) replaces the Pythagorean "One" (quantitative) as the first principle.

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.

Now the sentence at question:

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 subject awaits the qualities within itself, the thing, as sensations and feelings. The "transcendental residue" is what is left from that qualitative moment and communicated to the social context, thereby transcending the individual. The division of labour has produced certain restrictions which enhance this capacity of the subject to experience its own qualitative aspect, it's being an object amongst other objects.

Notice the next sentence:

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

The qualitative moment is dismissed within the social context, as "subjective", and therefore is neglected and escapes cognition. This relates back to what he said about truth in "Privilege of experience".

The "capability of distinction" is a relation between the nonconceptual object, and the conceptual subject, within the individual person. It is a judgement the person carries out.

After this Adorno describes how Hegel misrepresented the individual consciousness as requiring the concept for its continuity. This he did from the intent of disempowering the individual spirit. And he proceeds to explain how the individual, being in its primary sense, an object, becomes a subject.

The qualitative moment is dismissed within the social context, as "subjective", and therefore is neglected and escapes cognition. This relates back to what he said about truth in "Privilege of experience" — Metaphysician Undercover

Yep.

The "capability of distinction" is a relation between the nonconceptual object, and the conceptual subject, within the individual person. It is a judgement the person carries out. — Metaphysician Undercover

Although I obviously don’t think this relation itself is “within the individual person,” it’s true that Adorno is interested, in the introduction, in intellectual experience, so the precise way that the philosophical subject relates to the object is the main focus at this stage. So I think we probably agree on at least this: that he wants to see subjective qualitative judgement make a comeback.

Although I obviously don’t think this relation itself is “within the individual person,” it’s true that Adorno is interested, in the introduction, in intellectual experience, so the precise way that the philosophical subject relates to the object is the main focus at this stage. So I think we probably agree on at least this: that he wants to see subjective qualitative judgement make a comeback. — Jamal

We are essentially in agreement, other than some fine details about word usage which creates the appearance of inconsistency to me. The principal dispute I have is concerning your desire to portray the state, or society in general, as "objective". This I believe derives from Hegel's representing the state as the evolution of the Idea, which he bases in absolute Spirit. So that form of "objectivity" which is based in absolute Spirit, and consisting of concepts and ideology, is really in truth, subjective because these are evolving aspects of the subject rather than having an eternal base of absolute Spirit.

So Adorno is showing that we should really base "the object" in the opposite pole, the experience of the individual, and this pays respect to the spirit of the individual, as objective, instead of the absolute Spirit which is a theologically based falsity, for him. But now with your usage, we have a duality of "objective", which is confusing and may produce ambiguity, equivocation, and mislead us, even though your usage is the conventional, as derived from Hegelian ideology.

Think of the "object" as the grounding, what objectifies or substantiates the philosophy. Hegel has the false ground of idealism, absolute spirit, which when analyzed produces the infinite regress of bottomlessness. So we need to follow Marx's lead, and flip things over, putting the ground in the individual, making the individual an object with relations to other objects. This provides a true ground, for true objectivity.

I'm glad we found some agreement MU.

However, I don't know what to say about the other stuff. You didn't like what I had to say before, but now you're bringing it up again. I fear that if I respond, you'll complain that I'm lecturing you again. Ultimately, I agree that subjects are also objects, but the rest of your interpretation of "the object" makes little sense to me, and since trying to address it before was counter-productive and thus even worse than a waste of time, I'm not willing to engage with it any more.

Before anyone cuts me off with heavy criticism, I'll go a bit further to explain the need for the turn around. Plato exposed this need with "the good". The guiding principle is always intention, and this produces another sense of "object" or "objective", the goal. If we base the state in the abstract Idea, absolute Spirit, then the guiding intention is equivalent to the will of God. But we have no access to God's intention, so we haven't a clue as to what the true objective (goal) is. When we flip things around, then we have the intent of individual human beings to deal with, as what guides us. Since we have no access to God's intent it cannot be what guides us, but I have access to my own intent, so this must be what guides me, rather than God's intent.

I'm not willing to engage with it any more. — Jamal

That's good. We'll just continue, I'll speak my words, you speak yours. When we clash we clash, so be it.

On the other hand...

In an introduction to Adorno's essay, "Subject and Object," Ruth Groff succinctly summarizes his view:

Subject and object cannot be pried apart, he insists. To begin with, subjects are always and only embodied: there is no such thing as a subject that is not also an object. Transcendental subjectivity itself therefore turns out to presuppose material objects that are not themselves synthesized a priori by pure reason. For if there were no such objects, there would be no bearers of reason to do the synthesizing. Admittedly, there exist objects that are not subjects—and in this respect the relationship between subject and object is a-symmetrical. Adorno famously refers to this a-symmetry as the “primacy of the object.” But of the objects that are not subjects, many are artifacts that are made by subjects. Moreover—and more important for Adorno—any object that is an object for a subject is thereby directly mediated, for the subject, by the socially-mediated subjectivity that is his or her embodied consciousness. Even if one does not want to go as far as Kant does in the Critique of Pure Reason in saying that it is transcendental subjectivity that constitutes phenomenal objects as objects, nevertheless it would seem to be that, for subjects, there is no access to objects that bypasses subjectivity. Indeed, the very concept of pure materiality presupposes a subject to conceive it. In Negative Dialectics, Adorno suggests that the most basic epistemic challenge is to ensure that the unavoidable mediation of objects by subjects, in our experience of them, does as little damage as possible. — Frankfurt School Writings on Epistemology, Ontology, and Method

Assuming this is correct (I think it is), am I wrong in thinking it might help us get past our current impasse?

I'm always open to adjust my view point as I read the text further, and often forces me to reread. So I don't know if we can get past the impasse at this point. How my understanding stands right now, I agree with the first part of your quoted secondary reference, all subjects are objects. However, when the subject views oneself as an object, "subjectivity" becomes an ambiguous term, because it doesn't distinguish between the person as an object and the person as a subject. Then, the part of the person, which the person understands through reflection on oneself as an object, e.g. feelings and qualitative value judgements, are said to be "subjective", while things that the person as a subject understands, mathematical judgements etc., are said to be objective. So this is reverse of what the person sees in oneself as an object.

My interpretation of what I've read so far of ND indicates to me that Adorno is assigning priority to the objective (nonconceptual) aspect of the human person )feelings sensations), as immediate to the person, and the conceptual as mediated through societal justification of the concepts, e.g. ideology and education. I provided the quotes to support that interpretation, and it is further supported by his claims that the qualitative (nonconceptual sensations) are prior to, and underlying, the quantitative (mathematics). We do not need to agree on this.

But notice that Adorno singles out the philosopher, just like Plato's cave allegory, as an individual who sees beyond the conventional, or traditional ideology, which the sheep (Adorno), or cave dwellers (Plato) accept. In both cases, for some reason it is incumbent on the philosopher to open the eyes of the others.

In the Privilege of Experience:

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.

In Quality and the Individuated:

The Party is supposed to
have a cognitive power a priori superior to that of every individual
solely due to the number of its members, even if it is terrorized or
blinded.
The isolated individual [Individuum] however,
unencumbered by the ukase, may at times perceive the objectivity more
clearly than a collective, which in any case is only the ideology of its
committees.

Introduction: QUALITY AND THE INDIVIDUATED (ii)

This contingency meanwhile is not so radical as the criteria of scientivism would wish. Hegel was peculiarly inconsistent when he arraigned the individual consciousness, the staging-grounds of intellectual experience, which animated his work, as the contingent and that which is limited. This is comprehensible only out of the desire to disempower the critical moment which is tied to the individual Spirit. In its particularization he felt the contradictions between the concept and the particular. Individual consciousness is always, and with reason, the unhappy one. Hegel’s aversion towards this denies the very state of affairs [Sachverhalt] which he underlined, where it suited him: how much the universal dwells within that which is individual. According to strategic necessity he denounces the individuated as if it were the immediate, whose appearance [Schein] he himself is destroying. With this however the absolute contingency of individual experience disappears, too.

"This contingency" refers back to the previous sentence: it's the contingency of the individual subjectively making qualitative judgements. The key statement in this passage is, "the universal dwells within that which is individual." I said last time that "we have to adjust our expectations and see that the better kind of reason, and the better kind of knowledge, is contingent and worldly." However, this contingency is not an anything-goes meaningless chaos—the subject is part of a greater whole and is shaped by its universal structures. More than that, the universal only exists at all through particularity, and the result is a kind of mediated contingency, not a random one. The subject is the site where historical, social, and conceptual forces are concentrated and find expression.

The argument takes the form of a critique of Hegel. All I'll say about that is: the gist is that Hegel had this insight about mediated contingency, but dropped it for systematic reasons in favour of the Absolute Spirit. The reason Adorno makes an argument which is primarily against scientism by means of a critique of Hegel is that it brings out both the necessary insight and the lack of the same insight. Scientism is able to dismiss the subjective owing to its mere contingency, but Adorno counters that this contingency is nevertheless structured according to objective reality.

The argument is then fleshed out:

It would have no continuity without concepts. Through its participation in the discursive medium it is, according to its own determination, always at the same time more than only individual. The individuated becomes the subject, insofar as it objectifies itself by means of its individual consciousness, in the unity of itself as well as in its own experiences: animals are presumably bereft of both. Because it is universal in itself, and as far as it is, individual experience also reaches into that which is universal. Even in epistemological reflection the logical generality and the unity of individual consciousness reciprocally condition one another. This affects however not only the subjective-formal side of individuality. Every content of the individual consciousness is brought to it by its bearer, for the sake of its self- preservation, and reproduces itself with the latter.

Individual: the biological human being
Subject: the unified self-aware "I", which reasons and knows

So it's through participation in language and thought (the "discursive medium") that the individual finds its grounding in the universal. At the same time, the individual becomes subject. These two moments are two sides of the same coin: (1) a reciprocal conditioning where the universal provides concepts and the necessary logical form for self-objectification—including the identification of oneself as a member of a class of objects; (2) the act of self-objectification—becoming a self-aware "I"—is how the universal is actualized in a thinking being.

Grounding in the universal <--> Self-objectification

But the grounding in the universal only comes to be actualized in the subject, so the former is both the condition and the result of the latter.

The result is that to accuse the individual's judgements of being "merely subjective" or contingent, is misleading, because it implies such judgements have no possible objective structure or meaning, and this is far from the truth. Because the subject is constituted by the universal, its experience is never just private but is always already connected to and structured by universal reality.

The result will be that through the universal, the subject reaches for the objective.

By the way, it has become doubtful that all animals are bereft of the unity of the self and subjective experience, but this doesn't really affect Adorno's point.

Through self-awareness it is possible for the individual consciousness to emancipate itself, to expand itself. What drives it to this is the misery, that this universality tends to exert its hegemony in individual experience. As a “reality check” experience does not simply mirror the impulses and wishes of the individual, but also negates them, so that it would survive. That which is general in the subject is simply not to be grasped any other way than in the movement of particular human consciousness. If the individuated were simply abolished by fiat, no higher subject purified of the dross of contingency would emerge, but solely one which unconsciously follows orders. In the East the theoretical short-circuit in the view of the individuated has served as the pretext for collective repression. The Party is supposed to have a cognitive power a priori superior to that of every individual solely due to the number of its members, even if it is terrorized or blinded. The isolated individual [Individuum] however, unencumbered by the ukase, may at times perceive the objectivity more clearly than a collective, which in any case is only the ideology of its committees.

Here Adorno turns from pure philosophy to politics, so I think this and the next paragraph are crucial in understanding how abstract philosophy and political engagement are connected in negative dialectics. In a way it might seem a bit dated, since he has East German totalitarianism in his sights, but on the other hand the threat of authoritarianism has hardly lessened for us in recent times, so I think it's very relevant.

He is standing up for individualism: an expansive critical reason just isn't possible without autonomous subjectivity. "The people," though above and beyond the subject, is not thereby in a better to position to determine the objective. On the contrary, it is the autonomous subject, unshackled in its thoughts by the ukase (official decree), which can better perceive the truth.

It's become common for Leftists, especially American ones, to emphasize the collective over the individual. This is partly because American conservatism is so reliant on the assertion of uncompromising individualism, that its opponents feel obliged to take the opposite view (which is fair enough). Adorno and his fellow Frankfurt thinkers had a horror of the coercive collective as much as they did of selfish individualism, understandably given their own experiences in Europe.

But of course, there is a dialectic between individual and collective, and they're interdependent.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. — Communist Manifesto

Marx and Engels here clearly make the freedom of the individual a necessary condition for a free society. But which one we may want to emphasize in our political statements depends on when and where we are. On top of that, Adorno would make the point that what ideologically presents itself as individualism, as freedom of the individual particularly in the United States, is really no such thing. This is why he and others were so critical of bureaucracy, the culture industry, and conformism in advanced capitalism.

But I'm digressing. Adorno repeats and elaborates on the argument:

Brecht’s sentence, the Party has a thousand eyes, the individual only two, is as false as any bromide. The exact imagination of a dissenter can see more than a thousand eyes wearing the same red- tinted glasses, who then mistake what they see with the universality of the truth and regress. The individuation of cognition resists this. The perception of the object depends not only on this, on the distinction: it is itself constituted from the object, which demands its restitutio in integrum [Latin: restitution in whole] in it, as it were. Nevertheless the subjective modes of reaction which the object needs require for their part the unceasing corrective in the object. This occurs in the self-reflection, the ferment of intellectual experience. The process of philosophical objectification would be, put metaphorically, vertical, intra-temporal, as opposed to the horizontal, abstract quantifying one of science; so much is true of Bergson’s metaphysics of time.

This is the poem by Brecht that Adorno is referring to:

In Praise of the Work of the Party

Man has only two eyes;
The Party has a thousand eyes . . .
Man alone can be annihilated;
The Party cannot be annihilated.

Brecht was the kind of Marxist Adorno hated: the orthodox Party loyalist. The statement that the Party has a thousand eyes, the individual only two, is not only a chilling celebration of the coercive collective [EDIT: actually that's quite uncharitable] but is downright false, if it means that the Party can see clearer.

But Adorno's final point is that despite the necessity for subjective judgement, constant self-reflection is required so as not to lose sight of the object's real qualities, i.e., so as not to get carried away with one's own concepts.

This self-reflection, which is also the process of "philosophical objectification," is vertical and intra-temporal, rather than horizontal, abstract, and quantifying, like science. I understand the metaphor like this: science casts its conceptual net out horizontally, and anything underneath—the qualitative and non-identical—is ignored. Philosophy, on the other hand, should excavate downwards to the real objects in all their diversity and qualitative variation. As for time, he agrees to some extent with Bergson's critique of spatialized, quantified time: to be intra-temporal, then, is to be in time, not just laying down a scale on top of it.

I think that's a very good assessment Jamal. I completely agree with the substance of what you wrote, especially the last few paragraphs. There's one small point I would like to address though, because I think that this specific point facilitates a better understanding of what Adorno is saying. The point is the reversal he has made, from the "identity", "positive" way of thinking, which portrays the concept as extending beyond the object, to the position he now describes, in which the object extends beyond the concept. What you state as "the universal dwells within that which is individual".

Here it is in the Solidified section:

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.

Here now in Quality and the Individuated:

Hegel’s aversion towards this denies the very state of
affairs [Sachverhalt] which he underlined, where it suited him: how
much the universal dwells within that which is individual.

That which is general in the subject is
simply not to be grasped any other way than in the movement of
particular human consciousness.

The isolated individual [Individuum] however,
unencumbered by the ukase, may at times perceive the objectivity more
clearly than a collective, which in any case is only the ideology of its
committees.

Having the concept extend beyond the object is the mathematical way. The category, as the universal, allows for every possible instance, that means that it extends beyond every one. The set for example allows for possible objects, and this provides the basis for the empty set. That the concept extends beyond the object is the principle which provides for the object to be measured. Numbers are infinite, so they will always extend beyond what is to be counted, therefore we will be able to count anything and everything.

But Aristotle showed how in reality the object always extends beyond the concepts. This he formalized with the difference between the essence and the accidents. The essence is what the concept captures of the particular individual, whereas the accidents are the aspects of the particular which extend beyond this. He validated this with the law of identity which makes identity a relation between the object and itself, rather than a relation between the object and concept, allowing that every object is unique, with properties which extend beyond what can be captured with abstract concepts, universals.

So Aristotelian logic proceeds with principles which are reversed in relation to how we commonly speak. The more general is said to be "within" the more specific. Commonly, we would say that "human being" is in the category of "animal" as a member of that group. But for Aristotle "animal" is within "human being", as a defining feature. This is what enables deductive logic. If human being, then animal, because animal is within human being, as logically prior. In "Categories", primary substance is defined as "that which is neither predicable of a subject nor present in a subject; for instance, the individual man or horse".

So it's through participation in language and thought (the "discursive medium") that the individual finds its grounding in the universal. At the same time, the individual becomes subject. These two moments are two sides of the same coin: (1) a reciprocal conditioning where the universal provides concepts and the necessary logical form for self-objectification—including the identification of oneself as a member of a class of objects; (2) the act of self-objectification—becoming a self-aware "I"—is how the universal is actualized in a thinking being. — Jamal

According to what I've written above, I am critical of this passage. The individual cannot find grounding in the universal, because that would position the individual as "within" the universal. And that is the identity thinking which Adorno is avoiding, "the identification of oneself as a member of a class of objects".

What I think, is that the self-objectification is when the individual grounds oneself as an object, instead of grounding oneself as the subject of some state (the universal). This is when the individual allows one's own feelings, emotions, intuitions, and most importantly goals and values, to extend beyond the conventional, the formal, and the person comes into contact with one's own accidentals, the nonconceptual within oneself.

These two moments are two sides of the same coin: (1) a reciprocal conditioning where the universal provides concepts and the necessary logical form for self-objectification—including the identification of oneself as a member of a class of objects; (2) the act of self-objectification—becoming a self-aware "I"—is how the universal is actualized in a thinking being. — Jamal

So I would say that the true self-objectification is not a logical form. We had some discussion earlier about different logical forms, like abduction, but I would say that the self-objectification goes beyond even abduction in its lack of form. The issue I see is the matter of intention, goals, and the hierarchies of value such as moral values. First principles cannot be validated by logic, that's why we've had things like God and Spirit in this place.

But the grounding in the universal only comes to be actualized in the subject, so the former is both the condition and the result of the latter. — Jamal

See, by not grounding the individual within oneself, by objectifying oneself as an individuated object, but saying that the individual is grounded "in the universal", you set up a vicious circle, where the individual and the universal are grounded in each other. Take note of Aristotle's definition of primary substance above, "nor present in a subject". To be a true object, an individuated object, i.e. primary substance, the object cannot be within a universal.

He is standing up for individualism: an expansive critical reason just isn't possible without autonomous subjectivity. "The people," though above and beyond the subject, is not thereby in a better to position to determine the objective. On the contrary, it is the autonomous subject, unshackled in its thoughts by the ukase (official decree), which can better perceive the truth. — Jamal

Yes, I think this is exactly the point, and I'm glad you see this. But are you willing to go all the way on this principle, as I believe Adorno is leading us? Consider the way that the object extends beyond the concept. "The Party" holds the concept, as ideology, but only the individual has the capacity to see beyond the party line, and determine what is truly objective. In other words, The Party is actually guided by the efforts of various individuals who see beyond, and shape the concept, they are not guided by the conceptual ideology (that's just an appearance).

Thank you for closely reading my post. I appreciate it. And I'm glad you agree with my conclusions.

However, I don't think we'll agree on those details. I enjoyed the idea that Aristotle's accidents are equivalent to Adorno's non-identical, but in the end of course, they are very different. I'm not sure I understand the rest. If your central point is that for Adorno, concepts = bad and intuitions = good, that's not right at all.

Otherwise, I think there's quite a lot of agreement between us.

However, I don't think we'll agree on those details. I enjoyed the idea that Aristotle's accidents are equivalent to Adorno's non-identical, but in the end of course, they are very different. I'm not sure I understand the rest. If your central point is that for Adorno, concepts = bad and intuitions = good, that's not right at all. — Jamal

To be clear, I am not saying that Aristotle's accidents are equivalent to Adornos non-identical. Equivalence itself is taken as an identity type of relation which would be misleading in this context. I am using Aristotle's approach to the object, defining it as primary substance, as an analogy to help understand Adorno's approach. So I am pointing at a similarity between the two.

We appear to agree that Adorno is saying that the philosopher ought to give special status to oneself, in self-reflection, as an individuated object. Where we disagree is in how Adorno recommends that we develop the relationship between the object and the universal, or in this case, the particular person and the more general, state. I think you jump the gun, and jump to a conclusion when you say that the individual grounds oneself in the universal. Adorno has not yet revealed how the individual is to be related to the universal, as a "subject", and the traditional spiritual way is for the individual to ground one's own existence in the divine. Then the self-reflecting individual sees oneself as a sort of medium between divinity and state, while the non-self-reflecting individual might see the state as a medium between the divine and the individual.

So I am definitely not saying concepts=bad, and intuitions=good. Adorno has not made any reference to such a hierarchy of values. That would be the sort of grounding which I am looking for, and I have been critical of him from the beginning, for not providing it. But I am patient to see what comes.

To be clear, I am not saying that Aristotle's accidents are equivalent to Adornos non-identical. Equivalence itself is taken as an identity type of relation which would be misleading in this context. I am using Aristotle's approach to the object, defining it as primary substance, as an analogy to help understand Adorno's approach. So I am pointing at a similarity between the two. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I suspected so. I should have just said that I appreciated the analogy.

So I am definitely not saying concepts=bad, and intuitions=good — Metaphysician Undercover

Cool.