The essay starts with a straw man fallacy (an argument that misrepresents an opponent's position and then attacks it). — RussellA

It doesn't. It starts by stating the conclusion that will be argued for in the main body of the essay. The argument hasn't been presented yet, so there can be no fallacy at this stage. Have you ever read a philosophical essay before?

The essay looks great, but I haven't read it yet.

I don't think "real" solves the problem. If our primary distinction is between concepts and objects, and we are talking about relations between concepts and objects, all three are "real", concepts, objects and their relations. — Metaphysician Undercover

Fair enough. I just meant something like not fictional or not imaginary, in other words not purely conceptual. This has to be emphasized because Adorno sees contradiction as where the non-conceptual, thus non-subjective, is revealed.

So my proposal was that since we understand such relations as concepts, the relations must be themselves concepts. You don't think Adorno would accept this, so he must have a third category, something which is neither concept nor object, but consists of the relations between these. Do you think that this is the case? Would we put "identity" in this category? Is the category itself "identity", or does "non-identity" fit into the category as well, as a relation which is not an identity relation? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't share your love of metaphysical taxonomy. Non-identity is precisely about where categories fail. But I suppose we can talk about a third relational term, namely mediation—without thinking of it as an ontological category. Identity, centrally, is a failed mediation; and the non-identical, rather than a negation of identity, is the remainder of that failure.

If you must talk in terms of ontological categories, at least see that for Adorno they're dynamic and provisional, and that it's about processes more than things.

At the risk of hand-waviness, note that these issues are exactly what negative dialectics is about, in the sense that Adorno uses concepts that despite everything are not quite right (to expose a world that is not quite right).

The way I'm using "objective," it does not mean "mind-independent," or pertaining only to what is not dependent on a subject. It means it's not just an invention or artifact of the subject. It's opposed to subjective in the sense of purely conceptual and thereby in some sense unrelated to what is outside it (depending on what we're talking about). "Objective" used in this way describes social reality, not just the concepts produced by subjects involved in that reality.

I can see why it might be confusing though, since it's not just the object we're talking about. We could distinguish between your traditional sense of "objective" and my dialectical one. In any case, I thought mine was legitimate and fairly easy to understand.

Anyway, in the end you seem to choose the route of total subjectivization, which I don't think is a good way of understanding Adorno, even if it's the way you like to look at things.

But I'm happy to use "real" instead. What would you say to that?

Ultimately, I have nothing against making the situation clear in the rules next time.

Thank you. I think it would be good to clarify for future events. — Amity

Yes, I agree. What we need in future is to establish how much people want to be able to publish their TPF work elsewhere. Perhaps some people are unaware that essays already published on the internet often cannot be published in magazines and other publications. It's common knowledge, but it hadn't occurred to me when I put my plum pie in the TPF oven of competition.

EDIT: On the other hand, only two participants have ever shown any concern about getting their work published (me and hyper) and it is otherwise assumed that posts on TPF will be public.

Feedspot — Jack Cummins

Feedspot is a blog reader and content aggregator and is thus nothing new and nothing to worry about in particular.

TPF is a website, by default all posts on TPF are available to non-members and search engines, so people are free to copy TPF content as they are with any other site.

We could make the site entirely private, so all the content would eventually disappear from search engines and things like Feedspot, thus reducing the risk of content theft and plagiarism. I doubt the members here would want to do that, since they joined on the understanding that TPF is a public website.

And if we did make TPF private we wouldn't attract any new members, because we would lose our high ranking in search engines.

So I don't think Feedspot or similar aggregators and feed readers are relevant to the issue of the essays under discussion at the moment.

Introduction: dialectics not a standpoint

The first paragraph stands up for (a kind of) dialectics and leads towards the first introduction of the concept of the non-identical.

Its name ["(negative) dialectics"] says to begin with nothing more than that objects do not vanish into their concept, that these end up in contradiction with the received norm of the adaequatio.

The norm of adaequatio refers to the expected correspondence between concepts and objects. Under this norm, contradictions appear because correspondence is imperfect, i.e., concepts do not exhaust their objects.

The contradiction is not what Hegel’s absolute idealism unavoidably transfigured it into: no Heraclitean essence. It is the index of the untruth of identity, of the vanishing of the conceptual into the concept.

For Hegel as for Heraclitus, contradiction is an essential part of reality. Adorno denies this, saying rather that contradiction is the result of a concept inadequately matching its object. This is a bit puzzling, because doesn't he say in the first or second lecture that contradictions are more than this mismatch, that in fact they inhere in the objects themselves (society really is full of them), not only between objects and concepts? How isn't this an inconsistency?

The answer, I suppose, has to be that the claim that contradictions are inherent in the object is not a claim of metaphysical essence. Instead, it is a claim that contradiction is neither solely on the side of ontology nor just a subjective inadequacy, but is an objective feature of the relation between the two. There is more to be said here but I'll leave it for now.

The second paragraph is fun—incredibly dense and really crucial. It goes from the important admission that identity thinking is fundamental to thought and cannot be completely avoided, to the idea of the non-identical.

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

The impossibility of avoiding identity-thinking is not a pessimistic point, because the pure ideal of bringing heterogeneous things together in unity can be used well or badly. Reading the chapter on identity and non-identity in Brian O'Connor's book Adorno helped me understand this. He 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

This is backed up in Adorno's next sentence:

Conceptual schemata self-contentedly push aside what thinking wants to comprehend.

So for Adorno, identity thinking expresses a utopian ideal of unity, in which contradictions and antagonisms are reconciled and understanding is reached without domination. But what happens is that conceptual schemes subvert this ideal and turn it into domination and violence (both metaphorically and literally, of course).

O'Connor calls the utopian ideal "rational identity."

Adorno’s critique of identity thinking, then, is not of ‘rational identity’, but of the coercive attitude which, in the ways we have seen above, force an identity onto the object. — O'Connor

This raises the question, why does Adorno spend so much time attacking identity-thinking when in fact he could be positively promoting the good kind of identity thinking? The reason is that bad identity thinking is where we are at—the ideal is unattainable in our present material reality. It follows that negative critique of reality is what we need, not positive affirmation of what can only be a fantasy in present conditions. This negative critique takes the central form of an emphasis on the non-identical, that which resists (coercive) identity-thinking.

But I want to look at that paragraph's opening two sentences again:

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

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.

He goes on:

The former [the appearance or illusion of identity] is not to be summarily removed, for example by vouchsafing some existent-in-itself outside of the totality of thought-determinations.

In other words, we cannot (or ought not) deal with the mismatch between mind and world by appealing to a noumenal realm beyond concepts, saying it's inevitable that we cannot encompass objects with our concepts since real reality is inaccessible to them anyway.

Instead, we should deal with it by pushing thought to its limits from within:

To the consciousness of the phenomenal appearance [Scheinhaftigkeit] of the conceptual totality there remains nothing left but to break through the appearance [Schein] of total identity: in keeping with its own measure.

In other words, once we see that the conceptual system as a whole only appears to be complete—this is the illusion of total identity—there is only one option, namely to break through this illusion. "In keeping with its own measure" means we do this using the same conceptual means as we use in identity thinking, or in all thinking as such.

Since however this totality is formed according to logic, whose core is constructed from the proposition of the excluded third, everything which does not conform to such, everything qualitatively divergent assumes the signature of the contradiction. The contradiction is the non-identical under the aspect of identity; the primacy of the principle of contradiction in dialectics measures what is heterogenous in unitary thinking. By colliding against its own borders, it reaches beyond itself.

"This totality" refers back to "the conceptual totality" quoted above. It's the conceptual system as a whole, a result of identity thinking and giving the illusion of being the result of rational identity. So he says here that this system is shaped by logic. According to the law of the excluded middle, A or not-A with no third option. But reality is ambivalent and complex, so becomes contradictory according to this logic (or this zealous application of logic). For example, Duchamp's "Fountain" is both art and not art, and this is precisely what it means, so it appears contradictory.

So we can see (if we had forgotten) why contradiction is so central to Adorno. Negatively, it is the site of truth, meaning it is what shows there is something wrong, both with our concepts and with the reality described by them.

In the last paragraph of this section, he makes the conclusion explicit, that dialectics, with its treatment of contradiction, is the kind of philosophy we should be doing:

Dialectics is the consistent consciousness of non-identity. It is not related in advance to a standpoint. Thought is driven, out of its unavoidable insufficiency, its guilt for what it thinks, towards it.

Next, he notes that dialectics is seen as reductive. It "grinds everything indiscriminately in
its mill down into the mere logical form of the contradiction," overlooking the real polyvalence that might be better described just as difference. But Adorno doesn't back down:

That which is differentiated appears as divergent, dissonant, negative, so long as consciousness must push towards unity according to its own formation: so long as it measures that which is not identical with itself, with its claim to the totality. This is what dialectics holds up to the consciousness as the contradiction.

Lastly for now...

Thanks to the immanent nature of consciousness, that which is in contradiction has itself the character of inescapable and catastrophic nomothetism [Gesetzmaessigkeit: law-abiding character]. Identity and contradiction in thinking are welded to one another. The totality of the contradiction is nothing other than the untruth of the total identification, as it is manifested in the latter. Contradiction is non-identity under the bane [Bann] of the law, which also influences the non-identical.

He said before that "contradiction is the non-identical under the aspect of identity" and here says that "contradiction is non-identity under the bane [Bann] of the law," because identity imposes itself as laws, particularly the law of the excluded middle and the law of identity.

So the bane of the law is identity-thinking's tyrannical character, and the non-identical is actually affected by this ("also influences the non-identical"). I often say that the non-identical is that which "escapes" our concepts, but in fact, it suffers under their systems. Or, it is distorted by them and appears as contradiction.

What I haven't addressed so far is how dialectics is not a standpoint and what this has to do with anything. I suppose what it means is that dialectics is not a position, but is rather a process. And rather than taking sides, it tries to understand those sides as aspects of a single system. Maybe I'll come back to this when I have more to say about it.

I don't know if the potential publishers of philosophical essays apply the same exclusivity criteria as many of the fiction magazines do. From my very cursory research, they seem to be more permissive, meaning that if someone wanted to get their essay published, for example on Aeon, it might still be possible.

If anyone is thinking of doing that they should speak up and I'll do what needs to be done. As it is, most if not all participants would have assumed the essays were going to be viewable to non-members, since that is always the default on TPF and discussion forums generally.

What has changed regarding keeping essays or stories private for the sake of publication? — Amity

Nothing has changed, except that @hypericin wanted to share essays with non-members.

I made the symposium viewable only by members because I wanted to submit stories to magazines, and because @hypericin had (I think) expressed a wish to do so too. That doesn't apply to the philosophy essays—nobody has expressed a desire for them to be members-only—and on the other hand, someone wants to be able to share them.

How's that sound to you? — Moliere

Good, except I don't think the “power” and “hegemony” that philosophies of Spirit are directed towards or against refer to the technicians per se. Technicians are just agents of the hegemony; the hegemony itself is the totality of industrial capitalism. So these words, “power” and “hegemony”, refer back to “immeasurably expanded society”, i.e., immeasurably developed in terms of industry, administration, control and ideology.

Whether that makes much difference, I’m not sure.

the event can move on — Amity

:up:

@Moliere @hypericin @Baden

I have made the essays public, as promised.

Although @Baden and @Amity were against it, they did not give any reasons beyond speculation that some participants might be relying on the fact that the category is members-only. But I don't think this is a realistic possibility, and nobody with such a concern has spoken up. Against that, @hypericin has a real need to share the essay with some non-members, and it is pointlessly cruel to disallow this on the basis of basically no good reason at all.

The short stories were once public too, and nobody complained. I made them private because I, and I think @hypericin, were trying to get our stories published in magazines.

As far as I know, nobody has voiced a desire that this unusual permissions scheme be extended to the philosophy essays. It just happened to be the default because I applied the members-only permission to the whole Symposium.

ND Introduction: on the possibility of philosophy

Philosophy, which once seemed outmoded, remains alive because the moment of its realization was missed. The summary judgement that it had merely interpreted the world is itself crippled by resignation before reality, and becomes a defeatism of reason after the transformation of the world failed. It guarantees no place from which theory as such could be concretely convicted of the anachronism, which then as now it is suspected of. Perhaps the interpretation which promised the transition did not suffice. The moment on which the critique of theory depended is not to be prolonged theoretically. Praxis, delayed for the foreseeable future, is no longer the court of appeals against self-satisfied speculation, but for the most part the pretext under which executives strangulate that critical thought as idle which a transforming praxis most needs.

This first paragraph is basically lecture 5 in an extremely condensed form: (a) the failure of the project to change the world; and (b) the dialectic of theory and practice and the mistake of denigrating theory.

In lecture 5 this almost seemed to be covered in passing, but here it's placed right at the start of the introduction, so we can see that the failure of the project to change the world is central to negative dialectics. As he says in the prologue, he doesn't intend to lay out a foundation, but we can maybe see a central ethical motivation: preventing another Holocaust and keeping alive the possibility of changing the world, though practical concerns, depend on the independence of theory.

In the second paragraph he widens the scope. This is the best line:

The introverted thought-architect lives behind the moon which extroverted technicians have confiscated.

In German, someone who lives behind the moon is someone who is out of touch with reality, or as we might say in English, who has their head in the clouds or is living under a rock. The speculative metaphysician, having turned away from the empirical world and inwards into the world of ideas has not noticed that the world of philosophical wonder that they thought was their exclusive domain has already been requisitioned by the scientists and engineers.

As a result, the conceptual frameworks of the philosophers, which were meant to be deep and opposed to the naivety of empiricism, now look ridiculous or quaint, like bartering or family-run artisan manufacture within a society of corporate industrial capitalism.

This bit is confusing:

The meanwhile completely mismatched relationship (since degraded to a mere topos) between each Spirit and power, strikes the attempt to comprehend this hegemony by those inspired with their own concept of the Spirit with futility. The very will to do so betokens a power-claim which countermands what is to be understood.

@Moliere I think this is what you were asking about here:

The philosopher has been overshadowed by the engineer – the engineer has demonstrated to the world positive cognition just at the moment philosophers turned on their discipline and away from positive cognitions. This to the point that philosophy appears to be a product of commodity society. (What do the last two sentences mean?) — Moliere

My first thought was that Adorno was mentioning this "power-claim" approvingly: the attempt to comprehend the hegemony is at the same time revolutionary, seeking to overthrow it ("countermand"). But I don't think Adorno would ever mention a power-claim approvingly (the German is Machtanspruch, claim to power or literally power-claim), so I think he is warning that philosophy which tries to comprehend the totality on the basis of outdated concepts like Spirit has a dominating, totalizing tendency, like the hegemony itself. Its impulse is, say, to inherit or take over the hegemony and put Spirit on the throne, as in Hegel's Philosophy of Right. It’s another way of describing idealism’s imposition of concepts and systems, which does violence to the real world rather like capitalism itself does.

The retrogression of philosophy to a narrow scientific field, rendered necessary by the rise of specific scientific fields, is the single most eye-opening expression of its historical fate. Had Kant, in his words, freed himself from the scholastic concept of philosophy into its world-concept, then this has regressed under compulsion to its scholastic concept. Where it confuses this latter with the world- concept, its pretensions degenerate into sheer ludicrousness.

In the "Architectonic of Pure Reason" Kant contrasted two concepts of philosophy, the scholastic concept and the world-concept. The former is narrow, concerned only with building logically consistent systems, and the latter is wide and "cosmopolitan," concerned with the purpose of reason. Under the pressure of science and instrumental reason, philosophy has shrunk back to the scholastic concept, but sometimes still believes that what it's doing aligns with the world-concept and is thus ludicrous. Examples might be Husserl, and in the present day probably analytic metaphysics and object-oriented ontology.

Only the philosophy which dispenses with such naivete is the slightest bit worth thinking further. Its critical self-reflection may not stop however before the highest achievements of its history. It needs to be asked if and whether, following the collapse of the Hegelian one, it would even be possible anymore, just as Kant investigated the possibility of metaphysics after the critique of rationalism. If the Hegelian doctrine of the dialectic represented the impossible goal of showing, with philosophical concepts, that it was equal to the task of what was ultimately heterogenous to such, an account is long overdue of its relationship to dialectics, and why precisely his attempt failed.

So by the end of the last paragraph of "On the possibility of philosophy" he doesn't quite tell us if there is such a possibility, only that we need to work out if there is—by doing it.

@hypericin Ok, if in 12 hours nobody has given a reason why the essays shouldn't be made public, I'll make them public. How's that?

@hypericin @Moliere I'm removing the custom permissions for the essay category, which will put things back to how they were before I made the mistake of getting involved. They are now unavailable to anyone who isn't signed in.

Please discuss the issue amongst yourselves and come to a democratic decision, then let me know.

Yes. But I want to know why they went AWOL. — Amity

When I made them public I made them viewable by guests but forgot I had to explicitly make them viewable by members too.

As requested by @hypericin, I made the essays viewable to guests and search engines, just like most other posts and discussions. If any participants want to keep their essays off the internet, I can once again restrict them to members-only, which is the default for the Symposium.

The whole event vanished as I was posting a reply. — Amity

Can you see the essays now?

Done

Re: the game, and cards. The game, I thought, would be what comes after having laid out how one is thinking in the first place. So the application of negative dialectics to its detractors, or towards other subjects other than an exposition of negative dialectics (albeit, it seems to me, a consistent one -- i.e. this reflection comes from a dialectical process) — Moliere

Yes, that makes sense to me :up:

He is fond of using the "cards on the table" metaphor, I think because he is aware how insistent the demand for initial justification is, particularly a justification for his method, that is, a foundation. Putting his cards on the table is openly saying look, I'm not going to do that; you'll have to wait for the justifications.

So what he is eager to get across is that there is so much more to (his) philosophy than this concessional starting point: okay, I can show you my cards if you insist—not that they will tell you anything—but let's play the game.

Very creative, MU. We'll see how each of our interpretations survives the onslaught of ND itself.

Ok :up:

No, please come up with your own arguments.

Ah, I see. It would have been deleted for containing very little of your own argument—mainly it was just content produced by ChatGPT. So I've deleted it again.

See the guidelines:

AI LLMs are not to be used to write posts either in full or in part (unless there is some obvious reason to do so, e.g. an LLM discussion thread where use is explicitly declared). Those suspected of breaking this rule will receive a warning and potentially a ban.

AI LLMs may be used to proofread pre-written posts, but if this results in you being suspected of using them to write posts, that is a risk you run. We recommend that you do not use them at all

ND Prologue

The first paragraph is the familiar rejection of the tradition of affirmation in dialectics stretching all the way from Plato to Hegel. The second is a rejection of foundationalism:

What in accordance with the conception of philosophy would be the foundation, the author develops only after a great deal of explication of what that conception presumes would be raised on a foundation. This implies the critique of the concept of the foundation, as well as of the primacy of substantive thought. Its self-consciousness achieves its movement solely in its consummation. It requires what, according to the ground rules of the Spirit which always remain in effect, is secondary.

Before diving into a more comfortable rewording, it's worth stopping to wonder why he wrote like this. It is initially quite annoying. I don't think it's an intentionally inflated pomposity or pretentiousness, although it reads a bit like it is. It's a serious attempt to performatively express content in form. Difficult substance, difficult style. The idea, I suppose, is that the mode of clarity and linearity would be too comfortable to elicit proper intellectual engagement. Personally, I'm 50/50 on this issue. Sceptical but also sympathetic. In a way, this kind of writing is easier than a plainer kind of style, because you don't have to constantly remind yourself to slow down as you do when reading, say, Plato; it's forced on you.

The idea in this paragraph is that he won't start with a foundation and build up from there as traditionally expected in philosophy. Instead he’ll present things the other way, starting with what was commonly considered to be dependent on the foundation. In reversing the hierarchy he intends to question the very notion of foundationalism. As he says, he is also calling into question "the primacy of substantive thought," where substantive thought is thought in terms of fixed essences, which is another way of describing reified thought. Furthermore, although thought needs to be self-aware, it doesn't achieve this by starting off on a firm foundation but in the process of engaging with whatever objects are to be analyzed. Thus, the self-aware movement of thought requires an engagement with phenomena, which were considered by philosophers of the past to be secondary and derivative of a more basic reality like Spirit.

What is given herein is not solely a methodology of material labor of the author; according to the theory of negative dialectics, no continuum exists between the former and the latter. However such a discontinuity, and what instructions may be read out of it for thinking, will indeed be dealt with. The procedure is not grounded, but justified. The author lays, so far as he can, his cards on the table; this is by no means the same thing as the game.

Adorno is not presenting a neutral record of the method he has employed to get to his theory, and there is no methodology that guarantees a smooth transition from the labour of thinking to the philosophical product of the theory of negative dialectics. He intends to explain or show that this very lack of a guaranteed method is philosophically important. And again he rejects foundationalism: rather than a secure ground, his justification will appear as part of the process, or retrospectively.

I'm not sure of the meaning of "this is by no means the same thing as the game." My guess is that "the game" is his philosophical project, and that there is a lot more to it than laying his cards on the table, i.e., being open about what he's doing, even though that's necessary.

At the end of the following paragraph we find this:

To reach stringently across the official division of pure philosophy and what is relevant to the matter [Sachhaltigem] or what is formally scientific, was one of the determining motives therein.

In case we thought that Adorno was only interested in speculative philosophy, or that in recommending a philosophy that goes beyond facts he wants to thereby ignore the facts, this reminds us that he still sees scientific results as the material for philosophy. And this is borne out in his academic practice, in which he did sociology and psychology as well as philosophy. And I think he is also more generally emphasizing the importance of the particulars, of the material, of the down-to-earth and empirical in philosophy, therefore of social philosophy against the habitual abstraction of metaphysics and idealism.

In the next paragraph he says something interesting while laying out the structure of the book:

They are not examples; they do not simply illuminate general considerations. By leading towards what is relevant to the matter, they would like to simultaneously do justice to the substantive intention of what is at first dealt with generally, out of necessity, in contrast to the usage of examples as something indifferent in themselves, which Plato introduced and which philosophy has ever since merely repeated. While the models are supposed to clarify what negative dialectics would be, and to drive this latter, according to its own concept, into the realm of reality, they elucidate, not dissimilar to the so-called exemplary models, key concepts of philosophical disciplines, in order to centrally intervene in these.

And in the previous paragraph he had already said this:

Concretion was for the most part smuggled into contemporary philosophy.

So this goes back to what I was saying several pages ago about examples. His antipathy to examples is conscious. But what exactly is this distinction he is making, between examples and models?

First, examples are arbitrary, whereas models are relevant. Quills and mugs are "idiotic" because they do not take thought towards the matter to which it is meant to be directed. And second, this means that examples are misleading, because concept and example are not independent. Models are similarly mutually dependent on the concepts they elucidate, but since they are chosen carefully, they function also to develop the concept, not just to exemplify a solid, ready-made one. Examples are tools of instrumental reason, but models are where the thinking actually happens.

Due to the inconsistency in what you have written here, I interpret what you are really saying is that the distinction is not something real, it is merely metaphysical speculation, and that's the reason why it can be re-purposed by Adorno, because it's not fixed in anything real. If it was something real, it would be fixed by that reality, and not re-purposable. — Metaphysician Undercover

I question this assumption that if a distinction is real, it must be fixed and immune to reinterpretation. That’s just one of those rigid frameworks we were talking about before. For Adorno, the appearance/essence distinction corresponds to actual social phenomena. However, because he is dialectical, he doesn’t treat the distinction as a static dualism. He repurposes it according to how social structures mediate and transform themselves, including how essences are historically constituted and never fully separate from appearances. So, the distinction is real in that it refers to something happening in the world, but it’s also a critical-philosophical tool, shaped by the task of demystification.

So don’t misinterpret me: the distinction is real. For example, beneath the ideology of employment—free contracts, the work ethic, meritocracy, etc.—there is exploitation. The former is the appearance that masks the latter essence. This is not imaginary, not mere highfalutin metaphysics, and this was Adorno’s original point.

But I probably wasn’t as clear as I should have been. To say that essence/appearance is real is to say it’s a conceptual framework that refers to real relations and processes, not that it is metaphysically baked into eternal reality. And although the distinction is repurposable, it isn’t arbitrarily so.

Do you mean this one?:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15835/democracy-and-military-success

The last post was 3 months ago, so it’s on page 5 of “All Discussions”.

This is the part of the paragraph I begin to lose the plot on, just at the end. “what was ultimately heterogenous to such” I do not know what that sentences is referring to. — Moliere

I think the “such” refers to the “philosophical concepts” just mentioned.

If the Hegelian doctrine of the dialectic represented the impossible goal of showing, with philosophical concepts, that it was equal to the task of what was ultimately heterogenous to such, an account is long overdue of its relationship to dialectics, and why precisely his attempt failed.

So my version is as follows:

“Since Hegel attempted to do the impossible, namely to apply philosophical concepts to that which is irreducibly nonconceptual, an account is long overdue of the relationship of Hegel’s dialectic to dialectics in general, and why the attempt failed.”

I'm going to catch up in a couple of days, but I might post something about the prologue first.

what Adorno is really doing is demonstrating the falsity of the claim that the essence/appearance distinction is real — Metaphysician Undercover

The key to making our interpretations consistent (and this I believe is more important than trying to make Adorno consistent), is the recognition that when he says that within the "entire philosophical tradition", "that the distinction between essence and appearance is not simply the product of metaphysical speculation, but that it is real", and he appeals to sociology to demonstrate this, what he is really doing is demonstrating the falsity of this principle. — Metaphysician Undercover

Then we'll have to carry on disagreeing. Adorno believes there are beliefs and ways of thinking that obscure underlying social relations, and uses appearance/essence to frame this. In other words, the distinction is real, meaning that it's not something merely dreamt up by metaphysicians. But we can think of this as a re-purposing of the distinction in a new, dialectical context (which probably goes for all of the binary distinctions he uses).

It's crazy to me that people never read prefaces. There are cases where I don't, when I read the preface afterwards, but I don't skip them completely unless they're obviously just formalities. Otherwise, a preface is often an important part of the work. Reading Don Quixote without the preface is not advised. Reading Pale Fire but skipping the foreword is a catastrophic error.

Wow.

Excellent work!

It shares concerns with a recent discussion in the Negative Dialectics reading group, about Adorno's claim that human beings were "becoming ideology," by which he meant that subjectivity was becoming no more than a construct of commodification and the culture industry. In that discussion I also happened to mention Hans-Georg Moeller's theory of profilicity, which is centrally based on Niklas Luhmann's systems theory.

I hope to come back and say something more interesting.

There will be discussions in those threads, and you won't be able to see them.

They cover a wide range of philosophical areas so you could just pretend lots of high quality OPs suddenly appeared at the same time. The idea that they might overwhelm the front page only applies if they're on the same topic (or if they're not philosophy, like the fiction competitions).

Go to the category, "Phil. writing challenge - June 2025", scroll to the bottom, click on the eye. I urge you not to do it though, because I think those essays will produce some of the best discussions we've had for a long time, and you'll miss them all.

The best approach is to work out how LND and ItS can be consistent. Two comments of yours, one from your most recent post and the other from the previous one, stand out to me as possible obstacles along this path:

The relation between society and human subjects is brought up to exemplify that the distinction between essence and appearance is a real distinction, not just a distinction of metaphysical speculation. So here, that relation between society and human beings, must fit that mold, of a real distinction. — Metaphysician Undercover

You have claimed that society is an object, and Adorno seems to accept this premise as well, with "objective social structures". And so Adorno sees society as essence (objective), and individuals as appearance (subjective). — Metaphysician Undercover

This is not how Adorno's logic goes. Also note that the claim that society was an object was a strategic one in the context of the provisional but unavoidable use of the subject-object and concept-object polarities, such that "the object" is just that which is beyond the subject and which the subject directs its thought towards.

Specifically on society, it is better to think of society as the relation, the totality in which we can non-rigidly identify essence and appearance: social structures, modes and relations of production etc, on one side (essence); and beliefs on the other (appearance). If you force Adorno to say that society is essence and individuals are appearance, you are imposing your own framework, because Adorno says no such thing, and never would.

For Adorno—and I agree—society is not an autonomous object standing over individuals, but neither can it be dissolved into intersubjectivity as you propose.

Any way the you approach it, understanding the concept "society" is not an easy task. And, I think it tends to be a shape shifting sort of thing, which takes it form from the context of usage. — Metaphysician Undercover

This seems to be a good way to think about it.

I wonder what you think of the following quotation from his sociology lectures, a year or two later than the LND:

Last time I demonstrated in great detail that this concept [that of society] should be understood as a mediated and mediating relationship between individuals, and not as a mere agglomerate of individuals. Today, in my admittedly cursory remarks on Durkheim's concept of society, I pointed out that it is equally inappropriate to regard society as an absolute concept beyond individuals. It is neither the mere sum or agglomeration, or whatever you wish to call it, of individuals, nor something absolutely autonomous with regard to individuals. It always contains both these moments at the same time; it is realized only through individuals but, as the relationship between them, it cannot be reduced to them. On the other hand, it should not be seen as a pure, over-arching concept existing for itself. This fact, that it cannot be reduced to a succinct definition - either as a sum of individuals or as something existing, rather like an organism, in itself - but represents a kind of interaction between individuals and an autonomous objectivity which stands opposed to them, is the macrocosmic or, as it tends to be called today, the macrosociological model of a dialectical conception of society. It is dialectical in the strict sense - and here you can see very clearly why sociology must be conceived dialectically - because the concept of the mediation between the two opposed categories - individuals on one side and society on the other - is implicit in both. No individuals, that is, people existing as persons with their own claims and, above all, performing work, can exist except with regard to the society in which they live, any more than society can exist without its concept being mediated by the individuals composing it. For the process by which it is maintained is, of course, the process of life, of labour, of production and reproduction, which is kept in motion by the individuals socialized within the society. That is a very simple and - if you like - elementary example of what could be said to make it obligatory to adopt a dialectical approach to society. — Introduction to Sociology p38

Is this consistent with your interpretation or does it suggest an amended one? I'm thinking of course of your attribution of "separation" to Adorno (and me), and your either/or framework.

@Metaphysician Undercover

But then, I have so far not been able to work out what Adorno means with his "Yeah! Yeah!" comment, particularly the supposed fact that it is self-aware. — Jamal

I'll try again.

By bleating I don’t just mean the cry of ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ The latter, I would say, is an open and, if I may call it that, a relatively self-aware form of bleating, and as such is comparatively innocent. I am thinking rather of resistance to all those disguised and more dangerous forms of bleating of which I hope I have given you a few examples in my Jargon of Authenticity. — p107

Ok, so the "Yeah! Yeah" refers to the enthusiastic affirmation of ideology, i.e., of prevailing beliefs like the superiority of capitalism or whatever, perhaps even conformist cheerleading in support of the government on specific issues. We can also think of employees chanting a corporate slogan.

Even if this is genuinely enthusiastic and heart-felt, it is self-aware in that the participants know what they're doing, to the extent that they know they are cheering on particular ideas. They probably do not know it is false or illusory, but they do know they are supporting a particular idea, conception of the situation, etc., and they don't pretend to be deep. But the philosophical bleaters targeted in The Jargon of Authenticity think they're doing something more profound and independent, when in fact they're merely riffing ideologically.

In neither case is there any intentional deception as far as I can see.

EDIT: Actually, there is a small space for intentional deception to get in there. I said the innocent bleaters "probably do not know it is false or illusory," which suggests that maybe sometimes some of them do. Certainly it's reasonable to believe that some of the cheerleaders know that the ideas they're cheering on are not quite true, that they prioritize the effectiveness of the ideas over their truth (this is obviously the case with a lot of deliberate propaganda, e.g., in times of war). But I don't think this is paradigmatic of ideology, and I think Adorno would say this makes it less ideological (in Minima Moralia I think he says fascism is less ideological than liberal capitalism).

On ideology in particular I think you're not seeing the forest for the trees, maybe because you're reading too much into some ambiguous comments in what is a fairly disorganized, improvised lecture. I also think you're not understanding my interpretation.

We agree that the facade is an aspect of appearance, beliefs in the minds of human subjects. Where we disagree is on the method required to break through the facade. I understand, that since ideology is an attribute of social structure, and ideology produces these beliefs, Adorno is promoting a resistance to the prevailing social structure, which may even be characterized as the abolition of human beings. You reject this, and seem to think that there is another way to break through this facade of human belief, but I do not understand what you are proposing. — Metaphysician Undercover

He is promoting resistance to ideology, i.e., to the beliefs produced by the social structure. This is also a form of resistance to the social structure itself, because if what you're doing is theory, your resistance to objective social conditions takes the form of resistance to their socially necessary illusions.

Rather than ideology producing the beliefs, a better basic understanding is: ideology is the beliefs.

It seems quite clear that depth and speculation in Adorno's hands are to be wielded in the immanent critique of ideology. But I can't quite tell what you disagree with here.

I don't see how 102 supports your interpretation. He says, that the attempt to deny the distinction between appearance and essence is the arch-ideology. And he says this right after he describes philosophy as resistance to ideology. So as much as the distinction between appearance and essence is commonly disputed, this is exactly the arch-ideology which deep philosophy must resist. — Metaphysician Undercover

It doesn't follow that he's promoting metaphysical speculation in the sense he is using the term. — Jamal

How can you deny this? It is the conclusion of the lecture. He promotes "depth", and speculation is depth. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, I explained it already. Here you are conflating speculation and metaphysical speculation. I agree that he is promoting depth and a kind of speculation, but when he says that the distinction between appearance and essence is not just a product of metaphysical speculation, he means to oppose the more common position in the twentieth century that the distinction is metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. Note that it doesn't follow from this that he is 100% on board with metaphysical speculation, since by this he is referring vaguely towards the targets of contemporary sceptics of the distinction, targets like German idealism and earlier kinds of metaphysics like Leibniz. In other words dogmatic metaphysics. But I've forgotten why we're arguing about this.

I think you misunderstand the meaning of "socially necessary illusion". This refers to an illusion which is needed by society. This necessity implies 'required for its ends'. Therefore it is intentional deception, just like a noble lie. It's an illusion which society needs, to fulfill its ends in its relation to its subjects. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is a non-sequitur. You can't get from the structural necessity of ideology, which is what "socially necessary illusion" refers to—you can't get from that to intentional deception without some additional premises. Also, I'm not sure just how literally you intend your "intentional" to be understood. Plato's noble lie is a lie and not just a falsehood because it is known to be untrue by the elite rulers who promote it. It is an intentional deception on the part of certain people. Are you suggesting that Adorno thinks there is such a conspiracy in capitalism? If so, you're misunderstanding him and the tradition he comes out of. (No doubt some Marxists have a tendency to talk in terms of elite conspiracies, but that's loose talk at best, vulgar misunderstanding at worst).

I believe, that the reciprocation aspect is what actually makes it intentional. Ideology is produced from earlier speculation, but how it becomes ideology is questionable. There is either shallow acceptance in the form of innocent "bleating", or depth of further speculation, which is true resistance. The innocent "bleating" may be characterized as reciprocation, but it is described as a "self-aware form of bleating" therefore we can say it is intentional. And the more dangerous form of bleating, which he alludes to seems to be no less intentional. So I do not see how you escape "intentional deception". — Metaphysician Undercover

I take this as an attempt to supply the missing steps in your argument that concludes with intentional deception, but I don't get it. How the comparitively innocent "Yeah! Yeah!" has become intentional deception in your mind I really can't tell. But then, I have so far not been able to work out what Adorno means with his "Yeah! Yeah!" comment, particularly the supposed fact that it is self-aware.

Generally I think you should keep in mind that rather than ideology being a product of speculation, it emerges out of material conditions. It's better to say that speculation is often a product of ideology, or that if it's not properly deep and speculative in Adorno's senses of those words, it just is ideology.

Good morning MU.

Oh, I see, I wasn't clear, and you misunderstood me. What I intended (meant), is that the person who objects, is claiming that Adorno supports the abolition of human beings, not that Adorno is claiming himself to support such. — Metaphysician Undercover

Oh right. Well, I disagree with that too, but it's less important so I'll leave it there. :grin:

In that context, where he is distinguishing between essence and appearance, he does not at all say what you are saying here. I believe you are reading into it, extra baggage, for the sake of supporting your preconceived ideas, which support your faulty interpretation. — Metaphysician Undercover

You won't be surprised to learn that I think that's exactly what you are doing. My interpretation is backed up indirectly by what he says on page 102:

And it was not by chance that this took the form of the distinction between essence and appearance. That distinction of course is almost universally disputed nowadays. ... However, I regard this attempt to deny the distinction between appearance and essence as the arch-ideology because it compels us to accept that the phenomena are just as they appear, since there is nothing else behind
them.

"Disputed nowadays" by contemporary philosophers. So I'm not just making things up to suit my secret agenda. I'm reconstructing his view as best I can, based on the lecture, the other lectures, and other stuff of his I've read.

Then what meaning do you give to the following? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't see any conflict.

Is he saying that the essential motif of philosophy, which takes the distinction between essence and appearance as real, is a mistaken motif? — Metaphysician Undercover

No. It doesn't follow that he's promoting metaphysical speculation in the sense he is using the term.

Look, "the immediate consciousness of human beings" is an illusion, a form of deception which is "socially necessary". The means for this deception is ideology, and since it is said to be socially necessary, the goal or end inheres within society itself, as an entity. Therefore it is society which is using this means called "ideology". It is not the human beings who are deceiving themselves in self-deception, it is society which is deceiving them with ideology. As I've been saying, it's a form of Plato's "noble lie". — Metaphysician Undercover

You describe it as intentional deception, but it's systemic, and is in fact also reciprocal. Plato's noble lie only half fits.

I find the rest of what you say unconvincing. I believe it's a misinterpretation, but I think I've said enough about it.

Yes, you are right, I think I misspoke when I said "same" or "similar", hmm "closely related" might be more appropriate, as this is ambiguous enough to leave room for interpretation and representation.

I am attempting a syncretism of various quite different schools of thought, the result of which is, more than often, dubious, not to say ridiculous.

Nonetheless, I didn't have pain in mind, or other such private and subjective experiences, but was alluding to the original concepts from the TLP, like values, beauty, meaning, the sense of the world as a whole. Are these misrepresented or unrepresentable? More importantly, what happens if we lump them into the same category as pain?

If we ask, "oh, but what is pain", LateW would tell us: "don't ask 'is' questions, see how pain is being employed in context". But if we try to divide pain into different kinds, then we could say there are 3 kinds of pain: physical, psychological and intellectual (Or maybe a 4th - as existential). I take it that identity thinking is when an experienced pain in each kind is being reduced to a measure or number. Even worse, when pains from different kinds are mixed together in the one and same concept of Pain. This reduction of pain, and thereby reality itself, to a system, fails to do (it) justice. And with no justice, there can be no vindication, for anyone or anything. And Lord Pain goes on laughing in our face.

But is it identity thinking when an unspeakable tooth- or heartache, is treated the same as matters of beauty, by virtue of their common unspeakability? — Pussycat

I applaud your effort but it looks like a stretch to me. No doubt there's much more to be said, so feel free, but I don't think I have anything else at this stage.