Then identity thinking is the equality, justice = Justice: my subjective conception of Justice (justice) equals to Justice - the object (of conceptualization).
— Pussycat

This is not how I understand Adorno's reference to identity thinking. I understand that he is talking about an identity relation between concept and object. — Metaphysician Undercover

Im confused... How is this different from what I said??

Hold on, I was under the impression that "object" means anything that can be known or cognized, the philosopher's subject-matter, like justice, beauty, science, etc, basically everything that is not subject (ourselves).

For example, I want to know what justice is. I take it as object, camel case, then Justice. And then try to conceptualize it, using the concept of justice (lowercase). Then identity thinking is the equality, justice = Justice: my subjective conception of Justice (justice) equals to Justice - the object (of conceptualization).

I'm way off, you think?

Whether languages adapted so that to represent and match the dominating ideologies of the times.
— Pussycat

Such a relation would be reciprocal, over lengthy time. Ideology gets shaped by language as much as language gets shaped by ideology. In my reply to Jamal above, the use of profanity in language is described as a rejection of ideology. And, as the profundity of ideology is renounced in the manner described by Adorno, new ideology will fill the void, and this will be shaped by language. Some ideology will severely restrict language use, as was evident with Catholicism and The Inquisition. But ultimately such restriction of freedom induces rejection, then the new ideology which evolves is restricted by the limits of language. — Metaphysician Undercover

So a dialectic between ideology and language. I guess nowadays we have political correctness and woke culture, but it is not clear which is promoted by dominant ideology and which is resistance to it. Dialectics is surely complicated!

But regarding linguistic evolution, from what I read, there was a linguistic shift from subject-object-verb (SOV) towards subject-verb-object (SVO) order, that came together with the loss of inflection, ultimately strictly prioritizing the subject, both grammatically and conceptually. I don't think this to be a mere coincidence or accidental, but that it goes hand-in-hand with the ideology of domination, imperialism and colonization. It nevertheless reflects a cultural shift towards a human-centric perspective, as a way to dominate nature, which is not only grammatical, but also epistemological, ethical and metaphysical.

It is why I insisted previously on SVO and inflection, with the report on the differences between the german and the english languages. I think that this is in tune with Adorno's genealogy account and his evolutionary natural history, as far as a series of historically conditioned stories go, with language being the third in line. English, as the common language for the administered, bureaucratic and calculative world, lingua infranka.

It is the assumption that objects are identical to their concepts. I think the denial of this, is the only principle of negative dialectics, everything else follows and derives from it. And so, in principle, if I'm right of course, one should be able to construct and re-construct everything Adorno says. But what do you think?

Now, by saying that thinking is pleasure, one is not really equating thinking with pleasure, as it would be absurd to think that thinking equals pleasure, one is only saying that thinking produces pleasure, or that thinking partakes in pleasure, or else. So how does this fit into identity thinking? I think it is something of this sort:

The two concepts of thinking and pleasure are bound together, each in their own identity, and without any qualification, thereby producing a grossly positive and ambiguous statement. For what thinking are we talking about? And what kind of pleasure? What of the non-identical residue in both of those concepts? It seems to me that one may talk like that only for static and reified concepts, where we seem to know exactly what thinking and pleasure are, contrary to ND. But this is the least of the statement's problem.

For it implies that there are a great many pleasures in life, that these are ordered hierarchically, and that thinking would be on top. Isn't this system building and categorization, of which Adorno was against?

The statement is blatantly positive and affirmative, and wallows in aestheticized positivity, where is the negativity? It paints thinkers as comfortably sitting in their armchairs, pipe at hand, thinking, and having the time of their lives. "Let them do their thing", one would say, "they found true happiness amongst their thoughts". What started off as something that didn't sound at all right for me, it now turned to something else. The more I think of it, the more I think that Adorno would anathematize it. I guess its because I take him to have been a deeply troubled man, most possibly suffering from PTSD and/or survivor's guilt, like Auswitz never left him. And so I cant really imagine him partaking in any pleasure, lest for the sake of a possible future reconciliation.

As to whether Adorno would (not only) concur to thinking being one of the greatest pleasures of life, I very much doubt that he would: — Pussycat


Excuse me for butting in. That passage does not to me show what you think it shows. At most it shows he condemns thinking when it's a complacent or dominating pleasure. The “resistance of thinking against the merely existent” can be pleasurable, I would think. Why not? Adorno of course likely thought that good thinking was both pleasurable and painful. And since he speaks with such approval of play in philosophy, I reckon we can be confident that Redmond’s assessment is right.

Anyway, I think it jumps off the page. He’s enjoying himself. — Jamal

Wouldn't you think that equating thinking with pleasure, is identity-thinking?

What he describes with the bitmap analogy, is a difference. As I explained, that difference may enhance, or it may degrade the experience, in relation to the original. Further, it may enhance some aspects, and degrade others, and all sorts of different possibilities for "difference". In other words, the translator knows that there are good translations and bad, and might also even know that his translation is lacking in some areas, if he knew that he didn't adequately understand some areas. Therefore he is warning us to be wary of all translations, even his. — Metaphysician Undercover

I was thinking regarding the "false-color bitmap image of the planetary surface", whether it is one of ideology's ways to make us forget about the earthly problems, the ugliness, by presenting beautiful images from outer space.

As to whether Adorno would (not only) concur to thinking being one of the greatest pleasures of life, I very much doubt that he would:

If ideology encourages thought more than ever to wax in positivity, then it slyly registers the fact that precisely this would be contrary to thinking and that it requires the friendly word of advice from social authority, in order to accustom it to positivity.
...
While thinking does violence upon that which it exerts its syntheses, it follows at the same time a potential which waits in what it faces, and unconsciously obeys the idea of restituting to the pieces what it itself has done; in philosophy this unconsciousness becomes conscious. The hope of reconciliation is conjoined to irreconcilable thinking, because the resistance of thinking against the merely existent, the domineering freedom of the subject, also intends in the object what, through its preparation to the object, was lost to this latter.

This is one of Adorno's alternate way, one of many, of saying what he said before, namely to go beyond the concept by means of concept.

"The thought which may positively hypostasize nothing outside of the dialectical consummation overshoots the object with which it no longer has the illusion of being one with": this is exactly the negative dialectics claim, principle. Dialectical consummation, speculation, still happens, the thought overshoots, transcends the object, a form of critical transcendence, but thought is not under the illusion that it grasped the object. If hypostasization ever takes place, it would have to be within the dialectic, never outside of it, which is what Hegel did.

Since we are not reading the original, I take it you think my recent post about how Adorno performs the content of his philosophy in the form of his writing is completely misguided? — Jamal

What, you mean this?

It just occurred to me: Adorno's style is mimesis in action, showing in the form of his writing the real contradictions of the world. — Jamal

This can indeed be so in his other works, but in ND, his only metatheoretical work? Hm, it should be, if we consider that there is no higher language, and let ND be a language in and for itself. For if there were a higher language than ND through which ND is being presented, it would undermine it. If, on the other hand, ND is being exposed in a lesser language, that would insult it.

But I guess I would agree with Gillian Rose:

If Minima Moralia is written from 'the subjective standpoint', then Negative Dialectic is written from 'the objective standpoint'. The second of these books, although fragmentary like the first, constitutes the most direct statement of Adorno's ideas, free of irony. Minima Moralia is much less formal in its tone and often lyrical in style and relies greatly on 'indirect methods', especially ironic inversion.This indirect and more idiosyncratic way of presenting his ideas is what Adorno means by 'the subjective standpoint'. In Minima Moralia Adorno's use of ironic inversion is most explicit, while in other texts the inverted ways in which he presents his ideas about society are less obvious because the irony is less
obvious. Adorno, like many essayists and ironists, has thus been read far too literally, and this is partly because some of his texts are stylistically much more meticulous than others. — Gillian Rose - The Melancholy Science

I read the translator's notes, and they say nothing about what you are claiming. There is no mention of "style", and I do not see the issue with style which you are talking about. I can read Plato's dialogues, translated from ancient Greek, which is far more distant to English than German is, and with a decent translation, the style comes through quite well. Some of the meaning is lost though, often because of ambiguity. This is what is referred to in the translator's notes, when he describes how he translates specific words. — Metaphysician Undercover

Ancient greek and german share common structure and grammar, they are both SOV and inflected languages, unlike modern greek which is SVO, but managed to keep some of its inflection.

Redmond follows Benjamin's theory of translation:

Yet any translation that intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but communication-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. But do we not generally regard that which lies beyond communication in a literary work-and even a poor translator will admit that this is its essential substance-as the unfathomable, the mysterious, the "poetic"? And is this not something that a translator can reproduce only if he is also-a poet? Such, actually, is the cause of another characteristic of inferior translation, which consequently we may define as the inaccurate transmission of an inessential content. — Benjamin - The Task of the Translator

Overall though, the aesthetic comes through, and this is what the translator means when he says: — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, quite a positive outlook on translation he has. Which is curious why subsequently he'd write:

Though I’ve done my best to render something of the subtlety, grace, tact and sheer power of Adorno’s original, bear in mind that what you’re reading is nothing but the false-color bitmap image, as it were, of the planetary surface of the original. — Redmond

Remastering, if it is done well, enhances the experience, it does not degrade it. So the difference between a good translation and a bad one, is the difference between enhancing and degrading the experience. This might be closely linked to how the style is presented by the translator, but there is nothing to indicate that a good translator cannot enhance the style. It takes knowledge of both languages, effort, and skill. — Metaphysician Undercover

But then, if the experience has been enhanced, why should we be wary of the false-color bitmap surface image?

And before that, he says:

Thinking, said Brecht, is one of the greatest pleasures of life, and on this score Adorno, who certainly had his share of disagreements with Central Europe’s greatest modernist playwright, would not only concur, but match Brecht’s own aesthetic praxis step for dialectical step by writing some of the most gorgeous theory ever written. — Redmond

There it is again, the positivity, "thinking is one of the greatest pleasures of life". Isn't this an ideological standpoint?

I really don't know what you are asking here. — Metaphysician Undercover

Whether languages adapted so that to represent and match the dominating ideologies of the times.

The point that I would have liked to make was that in the translated material, we can see its meaning, the semantics of it, but not its aesthetic, its style, which for Adorno is crucial. To make this point, I figured a comparison between the german and the english language would suffice, to show how much can be lost in translation between the two. There is a translator's note in the pdf, if you would like to read it. Now, regarding my haughty statement that german is a "highly dialectical language", compared to english which is less, you are right, I didn't explain it. However it wasn't me that baited the AI, it was rather the other way round. But tell me, do you think that languages are historically conditioned?

That would be nice indeed. However, I must note that there is an extra difficulty in doing so in english, for us non-german speakers, on top of everything else. I asked the ai to compare german to english with respect to flexibility:

========

German vs. English: Flexibility in Expression (Especially for Philosophy)

How grammatical structure shapes philosophical expression

INFLECTION & WORD ORDER

German:

• Inflection: ✅ Moderate: retains case endings (4 cases - nominative, accusative, dative, genitive), verb conjugations, adjective endings
• Word Order Flexibility: ✅ Relatively flexible: thanks to case endings, word order can vary for emphasis or poetic effect (inflection)
• Case System: ✅ Nominative, accusative, dative, genitive
• Verb position: ✅ Verb-second in main clauses; verb-final in subordinate clauses
• Gendered Nouns and Agreement: ✅ Strong gender system (masc/fem/neut) affects articles and adjectives
• Precision in Logical/Philosophical Phrasing: ✅ High: long compound structures, nested clauses, abstract nominal forms

English:

• Inflection: ❌ Minimal: relies mostly on word order and helper words
• Word Order Flexibility: ❌ Rigid SVO: changing word order usually alters or obscures meaning
• Case System: ⚠️ Only in pronouns (I/me, he/him); nouns rely on position
• Verb position: ❌ Verb typically fixed in second position (subject-verb-object)
• Gendered Nouns and Agreement: ❌ No gender in nouns, minimal agreement (he/she/it)
• Precision in Logical/Philosophical Phrasing: ✅ High, but tends toward analytic and linear structure

EXAMPLES OF WORD ORDER FLEXIBILITY

Case Endings Free Up Word Order

German marks grammatical roles using case, so it can move subjects, objects, and indirect objects around without losing clarity.

In German, all of the following mean “I give the man the book”:

• Ich gebe dem Mann das Buch
• Dem Mann gebe ich das Buch
• Das Buch gebe ich dem Mann

In English:

• "I give the man the book" – ✅standard
• "The book, I give the man" – awkard or poetic
• "To the man, I give the book" – ✅but stylistically elevated, rare

German allows word reordering for emphasis because grammatical roles are clear from case endings. English relies on strict position, changing the order tends to make the sentence sound poetic, archaic, or even confusing, because grammatical function depends on position, not form.

VERB POSITION (flexibility)

German has verb-second (V2) word order in main clauses, but verb-final in subordinate clauses:

German:
Ich denke, also bin ich.
..., weil ich denke.

English:
I think, therefore I am.
..., because I think.

German subordinate clauses allow the verb to appear at the end. English requires the verb to appear early. The ability to postpone the verb to the end of a dependent clause allows suspense, precision, or logical layering — which German philosophers like Kant and Hegel used extensively. English can't do this. Subordinate clauses still demand the verb early:

• "...because I think" ✅
• "...because I the truth through reason grasp" ❌

PHILOSOPHICAL WRITING STYLE

German favors recursive, meditative, and hierarchical thought structures:

• Used by Kant, Hegel, Heidegger
• Verbs at the end allow a thought to build slowly toward a conclusion
• Example (Kantian style):
  “The understanding, by means of the categories, the manifold of intuition into a unified representation brings.”

English prefers clear, sequential, analytic sentence structure:

• Used by Russell, Locke, Rawls
• Forces premature commitment to action/verb early in sentence
• Same sentence becomes:
  “The understanding brings the manifold of intuition into a unified representation by means of the categories.”

Both are accurate and communicate the same idea, but the German allows more suspense and emphasis on process (to build toward the final verb) — which is useful for complex or abstract reasoning.

SUMMARY:

German:
- Flexible word order due to case system
- Verbs often come at the end in dependent clauses
- Emphasis can be shifted through syntax
- Ideal for layered, dialectical, or meditative reasoning

English:
- Fixed word order, limited inflection
- Emphasis relies more on tone or word choice
- Ideal for analytic, step-by-step argumentation

Let me know if you'd like a version comparing German to Latin, Sanskrit, or Ancient Greek!

========

SVO/SOV and inflection, as the main problems I see. :rofl: And so it would seem that the project is severely hampered and severed from the outset. The translated material we are working with is mostly analytic and not dialectical, as it has been mediated through the english language. This poses an additional challenge, as english readers can't be helped by language, the dialectic is neither immanent nor immediate in it. But I guess this is the whole point, mediation, which even in a highly dialectical language such as german, cannot be avoided. As to our own style and presentation, tone or syntax tricks must be employed, at the peril of making one sound like Yoda. Yet another challenge we brought ourselves against, who wouldn't love a challenge anyway, what else is there?

"Exegesis" is the wrong word (sorry for the pedantry) but yes, he is giving a genealogical account of what it was that "drove the philosophical Spirit towards the system." Since he does this in terms of class analysis and ideology, the appropriate conception of the philosophical Spirit becomes "the bourgeois consciousness." — Jamal

Guess it was, funny, it sounded fitting at the time.

Nice angle. But how far we should take literally the claim that in the 17th century the philosophical Spirit qua bourgeois consciousness expanded its autonomy into the system and exercised its freedom in thought to produce the Monadology, Cartesianism, and Spinozist pantheism, because it feared it was not able to produce the freedom it had promised in the real world—whether that should be taken literally is another matter. — Jamal

Well, I don't know, but it seems plausible, at least. I will attempt to break it down.

In the history of philosophy the systems of the seventeenth century had an especially compensatory purpose.

The first thing that comes to mind when reading "compensatory purpose", is that of the rich guy that compensates for his minimalistic sexualia with a big car. But in the paragraph above, we also note:

According to Nietzsche's critique, the system documents only the narrow-mindedness of the educated, who compensated for their political powerlessness by means of the conceptual construction of an administrative right-of-domain, as it were, over the existent.

So, Nietzsche's view is that system builders are those wishing to compensate for their political inexistence with totalizing structures over existence, using philosophy to do so. Adorno disagrees, as if he defends philosophy's systematic need:

But the systematic need – that which prefers not to disport itself with the membra disiecta [Latin: dissected members] of knowledge, but achieves it absolutely, whose claim is already involuntarily raised in the conclusiveness of every specific judgement – was at times more than the pseudomorphosis of the Spirit into irresistibly successful mathematical, natural-scientific methods.

Adorno believes that the attempt to glue seemingly heterogeneous pieces together unto a unifying whole, is not always purely psychological (like Nietzsche believes), in that it is not driven by envy of the success of the other divisions of labour, mathematics, physics, politics etc. Spirit still pseudomorphises into evidently successful scientific theories, but there is also something else, something involuntary, compulsory even, amidst this move.

And then he goes on to explain that this other was fear: fear of chaos, and fear of the new ruling class being displaced, just like it did itself to the previous one, they would be the ones to know! So basically self-preservation, a defence mechanism, towards the "strengthening of the social order", by imbuing itself into the system it created.

I'd probably be interested in Baudrillard's criticism of genealogy but I don't understand it from what you've quoted or from the interview it's taken from. I did, however, nod along to the mention of "the mysterious point where he [Foucault] stops and finds nothing more to say."

His portrayal of Adorno and Benjamin as both dialectical and non-dialectical fits quite well with my understanding. It's his way of describing their anti-Hegelian kind of dialectics. Adorno himself says he is doing dialectics but without the progressive unfolding of reason in history. This negativity is what Baudrillard is talking about. — Jamal

What I've gathered from Baudrillard, a prima vista, is that he is over pessimistic over the current affairs. I think he means that genealogy, however valid it may be, has been sublated, appropriated by the dominant system. The same he thinks of dialectics, the one between subject and object, that it is no longer working, since both subject and object do not point to anything real, and we would be doing dialectics between fake images, resulting in the loss of dialectical critical power, and basically of critique in general. He believes that this lament over the loss of dialectics is evident, a presentiment, in Adorno's writings, giving rise to a profound melancholy through nostalgia, what was once great, or what could have been, but has since died. Needless to say, I don't like it, I don't like him at all!

But I was trying to find whether any subsequent thinker continued Adorno's work on negative dialectics, which led me to thinkers like Foucault and Baudrillard. I thought that they would represent the next generations of critical theory or the Frankfurt School, but it turns out I was wrong, the established view is that Jurgen Habernas is 2nd, and Axel Honneth 3rd, and they all have a teacher-student relationship. But it is true that a lot of people engaged, criticized, interpreted and were influenced by Adorno, however none of them actually followed in his steps, not even his so-called successors, his thinking wasn't explored by the next generations. Because who practiced negative dialectics, who did put emphasis on style and content as critique, who gestured towards the non-identical, who did all this, in all, who played the game? Nay, Adorno stands alone.

Hegel, Nietzsche, and Foucault all do this kind of thing (though not from the same political perspective), and we call it genealogy. I'm very partial to it, myself, — Jamal

Well, Jean Baudrillard criticized Foucauldian genealogy, in that it loses (or has lost) its critical power:

For a time I believed in Foucauldian genealogy, but the order of simulation is antinomical to genealogy. If you take this logic to the extreme, what you get is the reabsorption of all genealogy. That's why I believe Foucault was unable to make the leap. What interests me is the mysterious point where he stops and finds nothing more to say. — Baudrillard

But then again, the same he believes for Adorno's negative dialectics:

Benjamin is someone whom I admire deeply. In addition, there is a striking similarity between the tonalities of both periods- a very original combination, in Benjamin as well as Adorno, of a sort of dialectics with a presentiment of what is no longer dialectical: the system and its catastrophe. There is both dialectical nostalgia and something not at all dialectical, a profound melancholy. There is indeed a sort of testimony to the fatality of systems ... — Baudrillard

I make a note of all this not to criticize Adorno, but because you invoked Foucault and seemed sceptical about genealogy. Moreover, from what I read, Foucault is supposed to be 2nd generation critical theorist, and Baudrillard 3rd. I think it is interesting to see how critical theory has developed since the sixties, well, if one believes there has been continuation.

But to return to the matter in hand, at the end of the beginning paragraph of this section, Adorno writes:

In a historical phase where the systems, insofar as they take content seriously, have been relegated to the ominous realm of thought-poetry and have left only the pale outline of organizational schemata behind, it is difficult to really imagine what once drove the philosophical Spirit towards the system. — Adorno

Do you think that in the later passage that you quoted, Adorno is trying to provide an exegesis for exactly that?

how literally are we supposed to take it? — Jamal

Quite literally, I would say. If we take Adorno's "Philosophy, which once seemed obsolete, remains alive because the moment to realize it was missed", seriously, together with his demand that philosophy becomes conscious as to what it's been doing (to the non-conceptual), then I think we can safely conclude that all philosophies prior to negative dialectics were unconscious reactions to stimuli of their time.

There is another quote that you also might find of interest:

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.

It seems to me that what Adorno is saying here, is that guilt is an integral part of philosophy. That without guilt, there would be no philosophy. Or, if negative dialectics is the engine of philosophy, then that guilt would be its fuel. Then maybe guilt is the criterion that delineates a good philosophy from a bad one (at best), or from a completely aphilosophical one (at worst).

The full quote is:

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. If the moment of expression tries to be anything more, it
degenerates into a point of view; were it to relinquish the moment of
expression and the obligation of portrayal, it would converge with
science.

From this we/I gather:
1) Philosophy is only mediated through language, language is its only portrayal. No images, gestures, music etc.
2) Philosophy is free as long as it pictures the unfreedom that the non-conceptual suffers under the concept, ie it portrays (its) suffering.
3) There are 2 dangers in this picturing:
a) If philosophy tries to do anything more, eg. justifying it, redeeming it, affirming it, renouncing it etc, then it degenerates into a point of view. It is an imperative from Adorno to let philosophy only be interested in the portrayal, and leave all other matters - consequences, implications, interpretations etc - open. As if it is not philosophy's job to settle the suffering, by direct approach, at least.
b) If philosophy abdicates from its role of giving voice to suffering, from its obligation, then it pseudo-morphises into science.

EDIT: I think for Adorno there are like two philosophies: philosophical science and philosophical philosophy. It seems to me that he is only interested in the latter.

Poor Jamal, I imagine him saying "I asked for a reading group, and all I got was a metaphysician and a smelly cat!" :grin:

I've been thinking for the last few days of an analogy of what Adorno is saying of dialectics, and its relation to physics, namely thermodynamics, the similarities seem to me more than metaphorical, but I can't get my head around it. So I figured I would post these thoughts to the community, as it would know best what to do with them.

So it is basically dynamics, between object-subject, much like thermodynamics, the cold object and the hot subject. Positive dialectics transfers power from the subject to the object, while negative dialectics is the reverse, energy transfer from the object to the subject, with philosophy being the discipline or activity that both describes and affects these two processes.

Also, Adorno seems to be saying that the whole system is isolated, in that no new energy may come from outside the system, ie no "Heraclitean essence", no metaphysics, no transcendence, no divine intervention, no aliens, there ain't no help, the cavalry stayed home: philosophy must work through contradictions within the system, not posit a naive outside, liberation doesn't come from without, it must be immanently worked through.

Objects and subjects, both compete for power, between each other and between them, but since this is an isolated system, it is a zero-sum game we are playing, energetically speaking. The object cannot grow unless it drains power from the subject, and vice-versa, it is the antagonistic whole.

The whole, Adorno says, is an illusion, it's not real. It is what he would want us to resist. It is what Hegel posited in his famous "The true is the whole". We do not discover ourselves in the whole, but we are negated and alienated by it, in a sense we discover ourselves in it, but by negation, because the whole is broken. The object, society, is not passive, it is a negating force that antagonizes us, that in thermodynamic terms burns us with contradictions. Object and subject feed off each other.

And then, there is the thing with entropy. Entropy is related to uncertainty, (dis)order and information loss. Positive hegelian dialectics induces an information loss to the non-conceptual, that much is clear. And so Adorno's negative dialectics, that wants to recover it, can be seen as negative entropy, or negentropy, "a measure of distance to normality".

The thing with entropy in a closed system, as we learn from physics, is that, if no work is done, then the system tends towards maximum entropy, uniformity and statis, ending in a heat-death, a form of unfreedom, where the particles are so distant and alienatied to each other, that no further energy can be produced, in Adornian terms, it is total domination, the "totally administered world". Differences, contradictions, non-identical elements are flattened or neutralized, everything is reduced to exchange value. Subjects are reduced to just cogs in the machine, the object, without meaningful agency, where even no dialectics is possible, no critique and critical theory, nihilism. The throne of Spirit is empty and without meaning, it died due to the maximization of entropy.

Entropy presents us with a paradox, not unlike the one that Adorno is professing: entropy is chaos and disorganization, our institutions - society, the object - prevent against that, by control, at the cost of life and difference, by reducing everything to exchange value, input and output. This very effort reduces entropy, by alienation, which increases entropy in the individual, which then reflects on society, and thus entropy is globally increased. And so philosophy, according to Adorno, I think it has to do with solving this paradox.

Finally, I am thinking of cybernetics, something new and relatively unknown in Adorno's times, with its feedback loops and its rationality for control, but I cannot say, I am new to it.

Well, on reflection, maybe not, since negative theology attempts at something positive. For example, when they say "god is not unjust", it is evident that they mean that "god is just", and so they are playing around with the law of contradiction. Does Adorno warn against this misuse of negative dialectics? But maybe I misunderstand negative theology. But also maybe, these folks somehow understood the violence done to the concept of god via positivity, and so decided to refrain from it, perhaps immaturely.

Seems like negative/apophatic theology, but without the divine and metaphysical connotations.

I don't think we are doing anything but. :joke:

Nice! I put a spell on you! :) I think I read somewhere in the lectures that Adorno was saying something like detachment while still being attached, or something like that, but I can't seem to find it right now.

I am clueless to what it is you are saying. Nevertheless, how does all this follow from the text? I am not saying you are wrong, but maybe you are getting ahead of yourself, like I did with Jamal the other day, and unwittingly confused him.

I think the “this” is either the ludicrousness of philosophy’s confusion of the scholastic with the world-concept, or the retrogression itself (retrogression of philosophy to the scholastic or narrowly scientific).

So Hegel knew this as a mere moment of reality, an activity among others. And he knew it “in spite of the teaching of the absolute Spirit to which he assigned philosophy”.

Adorno is saying that Hegel, though officially claiming that philosophy is the culmination of absolute Spirit, representing total knowledge, actually knew that philosophy was a finite, socially situated activity. I’m not sure how he thereby restricted philosophy, though: just by knowing this about it? Or evidenced in the philosophy? — Jamal

So I guess we agree that, on Adorno's view, Hegel saw philosophy as an activity among others and thereby restricted it. How? I don't know either, I guess we have to take Adorno's word for it, that he wasn't trying to inflate philosophy as to dominate over the other divisions, but to help them emancipate - society, people as well. The fact that he ascribed absolute Spirit to philosophy, doesn't mean that he himself knew everything, but that his method could eventually lead to total knowledge, theoretically. Practically of course, this may never have happened. Hegel believed that his method of (positive) dialectics was the sign of truth, the process through which all divisions of labour, if they would only adopt it, could lead them to all positive things, like knowledge, freedom, happiness etc. Also of note is the fact that Hegel's system is closed, in that, in theory at least, total knowledge is possible, irrespective of the fact that humanity could never attain it, due to its inherent limitations or whatever other reasons. But both socially and historically, philosophy, in Hegel's time, Hegel might have said that it was at its very beginning, after his great discovery of how nature works, in dialectical terms. Hegel even tried to apply his method in science, like mathematics or physics. An interpretation of quantum mechanics, Bohmian mechanics named after physicist David Bohm, who was inspired by Hegel (he carried the Encyclopedia wherever he went), is based on his philosophy.

In the previous paragraph, it’s not just that the attempt to use outdated concepts seems futile, but that it seems futile to those who attempt it. So the line we’re discussing now refers back, implying Hegel knows that philosophy is somewhat futile, or at least is more restricted than he claims outwardly. — Jamal

Here I have to disagree, I know of a few stalinists that certainly don't think that their attempt is futile! :) And also I doubt that Hegel thought that philosophy was futile, quite the opposite. As to the restriction, I think I clarified it above.

This would be more interesting if Adorno explained how this shows itself in Hegel’s philosophy. There is a clue in lecture 9, where he says that in the Logic Hegel writes…

that philosophy is itself merely one element in the actual life of mankind and should therefore not be turned into an absolute.


Unfortunately, the note says that this statement has not been found in the Logic or anywhere else. However, we could assume that Adorno has not just dreamt up this view of Hegel’s, that it might actually be found in his work, though perhaps not stated so clearly as Adorno remembers. I’m not enough of a Hegelian to know. — Jamal

This would be a nice thing to know, or a way of doing critique to Adorno himself, as he would have wanted it, but I don't think that it would benefit us at the present time.

To be clear, I am trying to interpret Adorno. So I think he is saying that philosophy is just another human activity, like politics, science, sociology etc., and that Hegel knew this, and restricted it to just that: to an activity, on the same level as all other activities, the divisions of labor. But then something happened, and philosophy forgot its own restriction, and imposed itself onto the other activities, by means of domination, a power move. So as long as it doesn't recognize this move, doesn't let go of its pretentious dominance over totality, it will never find its immanent truth, which is side-to-side to its brothers and sisters, and not over them.

I am thinking it in terms of separation of powers, much like in the political sense, where each are left to grow on their own terms, with philosophy not intervening, but criticizing and keeping them in check, like journalism for example. Things changed when philosophy forgot this, as being purely critical, and subsumed their role and identity, interwining with them. With "instead of
recognizing how very much its immanent truth depends on such, down to its innermost composition", I believe that Adorno is saying that philosophy, as critical theory, depends on the various "divisions of labours", because without them it would have nothing to be critical of, and by forgeting its limit, it monopolized their content matter.

It had me thinking, if Adorno believes that conceptual thinking is some degrees away from understanding, then how many degrees further would he say is thinking in outdated concepts?

But I think you missed a part:

Hegel knew this, in spite of the teaching of the absolute Spirit to which he assigned philosophy, as a mere moment of reality, as an activity in the division of labor, and thereby restricted it. Since then, its own narrowness and discrepancy to reality has emerged out of this, and all the more so, the more thoroughly it forgot this delimitation and expunged it from itself as something alien, in order to justify its own position in a totality which it monopolizes as its object, instead of recognizing how very much its immanent truth depends on such, down to its innermost composition.

Its where he discusses the scholastic and world-concept of philosophy. I am not quite sure what he meant by "Hegel knew this", what did Adorno believe that Hegel knew? Was it the ludicrousness of philosophy confusing the scholastic with the world-concept? Is Adorno advocating the former or the latter? Or neither? What do you think?

In the face of an immeasurably expanded society and the progress of positive cognition of nature, the conceptual structures in which, according to philosophic mores, the totality is supposed to be housed, resemble remnants of simple commodity society amidst industrial late capitalism. 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.

A lot has changed since Hegel and Marx. The classes of Victorian era don't exist anymore. Back in those days, a merchant, no matter how wealthy, could hardly compete with a bankrupt aristocrat, there was discrimination. Whereas nowadays, money talks, in a language that we all understand. Markets were mostly small and isolated, no comparison to today's global economy. The world expanded to the moon and beyond. Science and technology, population, and much much more. It is futile to try to understand today's world using outdated concepts, since they no longer fit, it is merely a power move that won't yield any knowledge.

Now, as much as Adorno calls thinking and theorizing an activity, simply thinking is really not doing anything. So Adorno seems to request a balance between the Marxist's call for action, and the logical requirement of theory. To avoid irrational acts we must make rationality into an act itself, so that it can qualify as virtuous. — Metaphysician Undercover


I am not sure whether this is a correct assessment. First of all, I don't understand what it is you are saying here. What do irrational acts have to do with theory? It only makes sense to me if you mean that all actions are irrational.

As far as I understand, but of course I could be wrong, Adorno is saying that there are people whose thought system is deeply non-identical, like it is and feels natural for them, without much effort: these are the true artists. Adorno realizes that himself is no artist, for example he cannot write poetry or paint, however, he has a knack for theory. And so he wants to provide the theoretical framework. — Pussycat

After having read the SEP article on Adorno and more specifically this:

Principles of rational morality, as in Kant, are tailored to the self-reflection in which the modern autonomous subject engages, which simultaneously separates insight from action, exemplified, for Adorno, by Hamlet.

I have to say that for Adorno theory and praxis are two completely different things. Hamlet, deeply knowledgeable of the intricacies and perplexities of his situation, was still unable to decide on a proper action. And so it seems that, for Adorno, knowledge, even if complete, does not necessarily inform on action, this has to be treated separately, theoretically again. For example, the revolutionaries in his time looked up to him and expected him to lead the revolutionary movement against establishment. How must they have been disappointed, to say the least, when he decided to turn them down, only to lend a hand to established educational systems. So there is a difference between knowing and acting upon this knowledge, my guess is that Adorno anticipates this, and he will have a lot to say about that.

Yes, I think that's the point. Such a principle of universality of "use" would necessarily be false, because actual use is inherently formed to match the uniqueness of the circumstances. So this would in a sense, misrepresent each particular instance of use, in order to fit it into the universal. That's representative of "identity thinking", which neglects aspects of the true identity of the individuals, in order to identify the individual conceptually. — Metaphysician Undercover

Could we say that the above critique applies to all universal principles, irrespective of their content?

There is more to meaning than simple use. That is exemplified by ambiguity. The person who speaks, or writes, is the user of the words, and proper "use" is attributable to the author's purpose. The audience however must interpret, and this itself is an assignment of "meaning". This assignment of meaning s not a matter of "use". it is what Adorno would call a mediated act, whereby the immediate would be the social structures which trained the individual to interpret the way that one does. — Metaphysician Undercover

Got it, I think! So instead of "meaning is use", you would replace it with "my meaning is my use", right?

But suppose there were indeed such a principle that would claim universality as to what meaning is, then I guess that would be a perfect example of identity thinking, as it would not fully represent the whole spectrum of meaning. Additionally, it could easily turn out to be and become totalitarian and dominative, strangulating other voices that think otherwise. Correct?

I see no problem with this. And, think that it s likely that the non-identical here is the irrational. — Metaphysician Undercover

In general, I am thinking of the non-identical more as the non-dominating aspect of nature, rather than the irrational.

There's a type of activity, which is sort of passive, what Wittgenstein called idling. Wittgenstein criticized this, but he was wont to demonstrate in his use of words, what he criticized with the meaning of his words, in a sort of hypocritical way. — Metaphysician Undercover

You are saying that Wittgenstein was a hypocrite? That the famous "meaning is use" is invalid, not because there isn't a correspondence between meaning and use, but because Wittgenstein's true intention was hidden behind this principle?

Now, as much as Adorno calls thinking and theorizing an activity, simply thinking is really not doing anything. So Adorno seems to request a balance between the Marxist's call for action, and the logical requirement of theory. To avoid irrational acts we must make rationality into an act itself, so that it can qualify as virtuous. — Metaphysician Undercover

I am not sure whether this is a correct assessment. First of all, I don't understand what it is you are saying here. What do irrational acts have to do with theory? It only makes sense to me if you mean that all actions are irrational.

As far as I understand, but of course I could be wrong, Adorno is saying that there are people whose thought system is deeply non-identical, like it is and feels natural for them, without much effort: these are the true artists. Adorno realizes that himself is no artist, for example he cannot write poetry or paint, however, he has a knack for theory. And so he wants to provide the theoretical framework.

I used to think so too, but now I’m not so sure. Is one pointing at the same thing when one says it's unsayable as when one says that concepts are distorting it by the exclusion of particularity? One is pointing at the unrepresentable, while the other is pointing at the misrepresented. The former is transcendental, the latter is immanent. So their differing views on what to do about it can be seen as presuming different ontologies, i.e., a different "it".

Take the example of pain. Adorno would say that the pain scale does conceptual violence to pain by reducing particular suffering to numbers—the pain as experienced is nonidentical with pain as measured (this is not to say he was against its use in medicine). But Wittgenstein would not say that pain is unsayable or mystical; that one cannot “say” one's private experience is unproblematic, because that's not what language does.

I’ve alluded in this post to both early and late Wittgenstein without distinguishing them. It might matter but I’m not sure. — Jamal

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?

That's roughly right as far as it goes, but I think it probably minimizes vast differences, between (a) the nonidentical and the mystical, and of course (b) what to do about it. — Jamal

Sure, there are differences, first and foremost because they belong to different traditions.

However, both thinkers seem to be pointing to the same thing or structure, each from their own perspective, and each demand that it is recognized as the most important.

Wittgenstein, in TLP, suggests that once every sayable, scientific, and logical question is resolved, when language reaches its limit, what remains is not nothing, but the mystery itself, which is not expressed - because it is beyond propositional knowledge - but revealed, shown. This might explain his insistence on linguistic clarity.

Adorno, on the other hand, thinks that a thing can never be fully grasped by a concept, the non-identical is the residue, what remains, of whatever is beyond the limit of its own concept, which is revealed through negation and critique.

They are both playing with limits and are in the business of demystification.

What to do about it is certainly different, Adorno is active, whereas (early) Wittgenstein is passive. I think that early Wittgenstein was/became disillusioned with philosophy, that it cannot be salvaged, believing in its purely epistemological/scientific nature. This of course later changed in his Philosophical Investigations. Whereas Adorno never lost faith, believing that philosophy can be restructured so as to yield what it was always meant to and promised, negative dialectics being the way forward.

But this particular mention of Wittgenstein is not actually one of the egregious ones, and it highlights important differences between them. Adorno is unwilling to give up on philosophy's great goals (in some strange version anyway), whereas for Wittgenstein philosophy helps to fix bad thinking but the really important stuff is outside of its domain, except to achieve clear description. For Adorno, the meaningful in life remains a matter for theory, but for Wittgenstein it doesn't. — Jamal

Isn't Adorno's non-identical similar to Wittgenstein's mystical, in that both resist conceptualization?

Wittgenstein, early at least, suggests quietism, while Adorno believes it will be revealed via negative dialectics.

I think it is the kind of promise that is central to faith. Faith involves an unspoken, invisible promise, one that is not made by ourselves, but by the other, e.g. god, science, philosophy, tradition, institutions, other people etc. Evidence is circumstantial or, better, just informative, in that it helps shape, understand or explain the faith in something. Also, given the immense ambiguity and subjectivity of what counts as evidence in such cases, I would discard evidence altogether from any definition of faith.

Of course, faith can be broken, for example when a trusted friend proves to be a fraud. No matter if the friend promised that they would be forever loyal to us, we assumed and believed that such a promise was made in silence, and therefore it is this promise that is in fact broken, puting at risk our faith in friendship in general.

I think that faith is linked to some promise.

Ok, far tooo long for a response, and I am sorry.
Moreover, I forgot what I was going to say...
Anyway, here goes.

I don't doubt that in the text Socrates is depicted as one fearless to death and remorseless about the live he has lived, having lived it as best as is humanly possible. What I do doubt though, is if there can ever be such a man. The belief in his existence is what I call dogmatic, which, as it seems, follows necessarily from the whole of socratic/platonic philosophy. Have we been misled into believing that there is even a slightest chance that all this is possible and true, with Socrates as the main perpertator of this misleading? Is Socrates, in our eyes - and not in his, deified, having reached a status of apotheosis? In Socrates' own eyes, isn't his own deification a hubris?

Socrates, suddenly plagued by the thought that he might’ve misunderstood the daimonion, the divine whisper. That he may have mistranslated the music-dream. What if his whole life's pursuit of dialectic, of reason, was a grand detour? What if the divine meant not logos, but lyre? Not reason, but rhythm?

Aargh, what a terrible thing has befallen me in my last hours, to have me doubt my life's work!
Did I misinterpret the music-dream?

“Make music, Socrates. Make music.”

I thought the search for truth was song enough.

But what if it wasn’t?
What if the gods spoke plainly, and I—clever fool that I am—interpreted instead of listening?

What if they asked for song, and I gave them syllogisms?
What if they meant laughter, and I gave them logos?

I persuaded so many…
Turned the youths from the poets to the philosophers, from the myths to the arguments.
Did I lead them away from the chorus, from the dance?

But no! I won't drag myself into self-doubt, not now, at the very end.
The daimon never told me what to do—only what not to do.
And he was silent all through this path.
That must mean something. Doesn’t it?

And thank the gods I left no writings.
So that my truth may live as rumor, echo, myth.
Living inquiry is better than dead scripture, anyway. — Socrates

SHADE:
Hello, Socrates. Long have we awaited your return.

SOCRATES:
...

SHADE:
I am sent here to inform you that you are to stand trial for your crimes. I hope that you have fully recovered from your earthly trial, regain your strength my friend, you 're going to need it.

SOCRATES:
Why? What are the charges?

SHADE:
The charges are numerous, but they all stem from this:
That you gave philosophy a bad name—for all time.
And as you yourself once said, it’s better to pull out one’s eye than to lose one's name.

SOCRATES:
What! You can’t possibly pin that on me!
Just because I talked to a few blokes in the Agora, doesn't mean—

SHADE:
I’m afraid we can.
And we have ample evidence.
Tell me—do you remember a man named Plato?

SOCRATES:
Plato? Of course. Nice fellow. Didn’t talk much.
A bit of a recluse, if you ask me. Always lurking in the back. No friends around.
He hardly even looked at me.

SHADE:
Yes, well… that may be because he was recording you.
He developed a system of stenography. Quite advanced.
He recovered, wrote, and distributed most of your talks.

SOCRATES:
Wait, he did what?
That sneaky basterd!

It goes in both directions. The property of matter that makes it produce something also makes it respond to that same thing. At least when it comes to gravity and electrical charge. If there's a property of matter that gives it consciousness, then there's no way to rule out the possibility that that property can also make matter susceptible to consciousness. — Patterner

In physics, the mass of an elementary particle is believed to be generated by its passing through a Higgs field:

A vacuum Higgs field is responsible for spontaneous symmetry breaking the gauge symmetries of fundamental interactions and provides the Higgs mechanism of generating mass of elementary particles.

And

In the Standard Model of particle physics, the Higgs mechanism is essential to explain the generation mechanism of the property "mass" for gauge bosons. Without the Higgs mechanism, all bosons (one of the two classes of particles, the other being fermions) would be considered massless, but measurements show that the W+, W−, and Z0 bosons actually have relatively large masses of around 80 GeV/c2. The Higgs field resolves this conundrum. The simplest description of the mechanism adds to the Standard Model a quantum field (the Higgs field), which permeates all of space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_mechanism

Do you think that something similar happens with consciousness, with matter passing through a field to rise?