Significantly for our debate, I think the self itself is a fake immediacy, at least in the world we know---and I think this is an important position of Adorno's. — Jamal

I agree with this, that for Adorno the immediacy of the self is fake. And it makes sense to me because I put this into a temporal context, as a sort of analogy to help me understand. We are inclined to place the self, with its experience, at the present in time, and this presence supports the assumption of immediacy. But analysis of this experience, which is represented as the immediate, or being at the present, fails to find the present, and all is reduced to either past or future. So the immediacy of the present is illusory.

Not to be dissuaded though, the logical solution would be to unite the two opposing features, past and future, in synthesis, thereby creating the required immediacy of the present, in conception. However, this ultimately fails because the two opposing features are categorically distinct, incompatible, so in actual practise, "the present" becomes a divisor rather than a unifier. Therefore the two cannot properly be opposed in conception nor can they be unified in synthesis.

Now we have the situation which Adorno likes to describe as each of the two in the pair, being mediated by the other. The inclination is to unite the two in synthesis, and the unity would be what is immediate. But this doesn't work because the incompatibility prevents the possibility of synthesis, so that immediacy is fake.. Now we are left with the two distinct features, each mediated, and we have nothing which is immediate.

5. Possibility obstructs utopia, because if utopia is limited to what happens now to be possible, it's not much of a utopia. Focusing on possibility forecloses on utopia. At least a focus on the "immediately realized" allows the utopian ideal to be maintained, because it remains just a hopeful dream. Possibility, on the other hand, by bringing it closer in imagination to what exists, sells it short. — Jamal

Referring to my temporal analogy above, utopia would be found in the immediacy of the present. The future (expressed as "possibility") obstructs utopia through the sense of urgency, as the unending need to produce change. But looking backward in time, the "immediately realized", appears to support a real end to change, the reality of the effect, thereby keeping the dream of utopia alive. In this way the two (possibility, and the realized) mediate each other, and the immediate, as the utopia of now, is never actually present.

The way I see it is that the future is like an immense force, the force of "possibility" which necessitates that we choose. So long as the future is forcing us in this way, utopia is impossible. However, when we see that through choice and action we can bring about real change, as the "immediately realized", this provides hope that we can put an end to the destructive force of possibility, and have utopia.

I agree with this, that for Adorno the immediacy of the self is fake. And it makes sense to me because I put this into a temporal context, as a sort of analogy to help me understand. We are inclined to place the self, with its experience, at the present in time, and this presence supports the assumption of immediacy. But analysis of this experience, which is represented as the immediate, or being at the present, fails to find the present, and all is reduced to either past or future. So the immediacy of the present is illusory.

Not to be dissuaded though, the logical solution would be to unite the two opposing features, past and future, in synthesis, thereby creating the required immediacy of the present, in conception. However, this ultimately fails because the two opposing features are categorically distinct, incompatible, so in actual practise, "the present" becomes a divisor rather than a unifier. Therefore the two cannot properly be opposed in conception nor can they be unified in synthesis.

Now we have the situation which Adorno likes to describe as each of the two in the pair, being mediated by the other. The inclination is to unite the two in synthesis, and the unity would be what is immediate. But this doesn't work because the incompatibility prevents the possibility of synthesis, so that immediacy is fake.. Now we are left with the two distinct features, each mediated, and we have nothing which is immediate. — Metaphysician Undercover

I roughly agree.

Referring to my temporal analogy above, utopia would be found in the immediacy of the present. The future (expressed as "possibility") obstructs utopia through the sense of urgency, as the unending need to produce change. But looking backward in time, the "immediately realized", appears to support a real end to change, the reality of the effect, thereby keeping the dream of utopia alive. In this way the two (possibility, and the realized) mediate each other, and the immediate, as the utopia of now, is never actually present.

The way I see it is that the future is like an immense force, the force of "possibility" which necessitates that we choose. So long as the future is forcing us in this way, utopia is impossible. However, when we see that through choice and action we can bring about real change, as the "immediately realized", this provides hope that we can put an end to the destructive force of possibility, and have utopia. — Metaphysician Undercover

I like this angle on possibility. My only doubt is your interpretation of "immediately realized," which differs from mine. It's difficult to imagine Adorno regarding anything immediately realized as good. Here's the translation in the appendix of the lectures:

Its path is blocked by possibility, never by immediate reality; this explains why it always seems abstract when surrounded by the world as it is.

Immediate reality is surely the world as it is, the false or bad world. Adorno aims to surprise by saying that this is not what obstructs utopia, but rather possibility.

But I like your idea of possibility as an "immense force". Utopia as an actual possibility weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living (to repurpose a quotation from Marx).

My only doubt is your interpretation of "immediately realized," which differs from mine. It's difficult to imagine Adorno regarding anything immediately realized as good. Here's the translation in the appendix of the lectures:

Its path is blocked by possibility, never by immediate reality; this explains why it always seems abstract when surrounded by the world as it is. — Jamal

I think my interpretation is very similar to yours. Possibility blocks the path to utopia, and the realized is opposed to this. That implies good. The "immediately realized" supports the ideal of utopia, while possibility blocks it. In your last post you said:

"At least a focus on the 'immediately realized' allows the utopian ideal to be maintained, because it remains just a hopeful dream." "The good" is what is desired, what supports hope.

Immediate reality is surely the world as it is, the false or bad world. — Jamal

This is the play of the contraries. Plato did an extensive study of the relationship between pleasure and pain, it shows up in a number of different dialogues. The common way of understanding pain is that it is the absence, or want of pleasure. But this creates a problem because we then cannot get to pleasure without first experiencing pain as what is required, as prior to pleasure, being the absence of pleasure which precedes its presence. So Plato speculated that there must be a type of pleasure which is not properly opposed to pain, and this would support the true good, as a more pure form of pleasure which was not derived from pain.

The introduction is not so much an introduction as the heart of the whole work. It's an essay outlining the problem and the program of negative dialectics, namely how to approach the world philosophically in conditions that have eroded the fullness of intellectual-spiritual experience---in other words how to fulfil the promise of philosophy in conditions where conceptuality itself hinders the search for truth.

The centrality of language in this program only became clear to me at the end, and that sent me back to the "Speculative Moment" and "Darstellung" sections:

The need to give voice to suffering is the condition of all truth. For suffering is the objectivity which weighs on the subject; what it experiences as most subjective, its expression, is objectively mediated.
This may help to explain why portrayal [Darstellung] is not a matter of indifference or external to philosophy, but immanent to its idea. Its integral moment of expression, non-conceptually-mimetic, becomes objectified only through portrayal – language. The freedom of philosophy is nothing other than the capacity of giving voice to this unfreedom.

This is then reiterated and emphasized at the end, in the "Rhetoric" section, where he switches from suffering to utopia. So the dimension that language must illuminate expressively, using concepts to reveal their own inadequacy, is the dimension with suffering at one end and utopia on the other. The search for truth is inseparable from ethics (and politics?).

Other important aspects of the introduction are:

- Identity thinking and the consequent failure of idealism and other philosophies
- (Negative) Dialectics
- Anti-system but preserving the spirit of system