I read through that again, and I really don't know what he means by this. But pre-eminence doesn't mean "prior to."

But that issue aside, when you say content can precede form, are you thinking about existence preceding essence? — frank

Content is logically prior, by Aristotelian logic, in the way I explained. And also the way that Adorn described, "the whole which is expressed by theory is contained within the particular to be analyzed".

i cannot draw any relation to existence and essence. Those terms have not yet been discussed by Adorno, and I don't know how you would understand them.

Content is logically prior, — Metaphysician Undercover

Logically prior. That doesn't compute.

I'll give you an example. I was walking through a park with a forestry student who was learning the latin names for trees. As we walked along, he would name off them. I realized eventually that listening to him do that had put me in a weird frame of mind in which I couldn't even see the trees anymore. All I saw was the species and genus names, not the individual leaves and unique shapes as I was used to. I struggled to get back to my homebase because I didn't like seeing the trees as Latin names.

So you might think that this is a case where form and content are completely isolated from one another. The more immersed in the form, the less I can even see the content. You might think that content preceded form, because I saw the individual trees as just trees before I knew their species names.

But I don't think so. There was no point where, like Sartre staring at the root, I lost consciousness of form. I didn't know species names, but I knew "leaves" and "branches." That idea of formless content is a little bit of a myth, I think. If you could enter that state, where you don't name anything, you wouldn't be able to remember what happened. We use concepts and names, which figure in webs of belief, to mark out any experience at all. Do you agree with that?

Logically prior. That doesn't compute. — frank

Sorry, my mistake, I wasn't thinking when i wrote that. I didn't adequately grasp what you were asking. I didn't say that content precedes form did I? I said content and form cannot be opposed dialectically, and that Adorno mentions the pre-eminence of content. He is saying that the content always extends beyond the conception, and this is due to "non-identity".

:up: