TWENTIETH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY: Intellectual Heroes and Key Themes

1. TWENTIETH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY: Intellectual Heroes and Key Themes

2. LECTURES • The pariah as rebel. • The hope of the hopeless. • Message in a bottle. • Absolute free. • Genealogy as critique. • Human flourishing.

3. MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

4. PHILOSOPHY AFTER AUSCHWITZ How should philosophy look like after the holocaust? 2. A PRODUCTIVE ANTITHESIS What does freedom mean? 3. CULTURE INDUSTRY AND AVANTGARDE To what extent is culture the object and resource of critique?

5. 1. PHILOSOPHY AFTER AUSCHWITZ

6. THEODOR W. ADORNO BIOGRAPHICAL DATA: • 1903: Born September 11, in Frankfurt am Main. • 1921-1924: Studies philosophy, philosophy and musicology in Frankfurt am Main. • 1924: Phd on Husserl. • 1925: Studied composition with Alban Berg in Vienna. • 1931: Habilitationsschrift on Kierkegaard. • 1931-33: Private lecturer in philosophy and cooperation with the ‘Institut für Sozialforschung’ (of the Frankfurt School). • 1934: Leaves Germany because of the Nazis. • 1937: Marriage to Margarete Karplus. • 1949: Returns to Germany. • 1959: Becomes director of the ‘Institut für Sozialforschung’. • 1961: Positivism dispute with Karl Popper. • 1969: Died August 6, in Visp (Switzerland).

7. MAJOR WORKS • Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente (with Max Horkheimer) (1947). • Philosophie der neuen Musik (1949). • The Authoritarian Personality (with others) (1950). • Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben (1951). • Prismen. Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft (1955). • Noten zur Literatur (1958, 1961, 1965 and 1974). • Jargon der Eigentlichkeit (1964). • Negative Dialektik (1966). • Ästhetische Theorie (1970[published posthumously]).

8. THE PARADOX OF THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL Adorno was a member of the so-called Frankfurt School. The paradox of the critical theory developed by the Frankfurt School > although its members adhere to the project of Enlightenment (emancipation of the oppressed, exploited and marginalized people) they criticize it radically. Therefore they are interesting for postmodern philosophers (for instance Jean-François Lyotard) who want to give up the project of Enlightenment. The project of Enlightenment is the promise of individual happiness and political freedom.

9. CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVES • Auschwitz is the epicentre of Adorno’s philosophy. • Because of Auschwitz and inspired by Kant en Marx he formulates his own categorical imperative. • Kant > “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” • Marx > “To overthrow all those conditions in which man is an abased, enslaved, abandoned, contemptible being”. • Adorno > “Hitler imposes a new categorical imperative on human beings in their condition of unfreedom: to arrange their thought and action that Auschwitz would not repeat itself, [that] nothing similar would happen”.

10. RADICAL CRITIQUE • Adorno’s categorical imperative implies that critique should be radical. • Critique only serves the truth if it is uncompromisingly. • Those who are in power want to silence critics by arguing that they should present an alternative if they are so critical, i.e. that their critique should be constructive and not destructive. • Adorno resists the idea that critique should be constructive. • Critique will not lose its legitimacy if one doesn’t present an alternative.

11. IN SEARCH OF A NEW LANGUAGE • Adorno: “Writing poems after Auschwitz is barbarian”. • This sentence should not be interpreted as a prohibition. • Auschwitz is standing for the attack on human dignity and means a rupture in modern culture. • The aim of Adorno’s philosophy > to understand what cannot be understood. • The challenge of poetry and other forms of art is trying to express what cannot be expressed. • Art after Auschwitz > in search of a new language. • Good examples of such a new language: the poems of Paul Celan and the plays of Samuel Beckett.

12. BEYOND UNITARY THOUGHT • The motive of Adorno’s philosophy: the undeniable human suffering > “The need to let suffering speak is a condition of all truth. For suffering is objectivity that weights upon the subject…” • Adorno criticizes false identifications > while identifying something not doing justice to the nonidentical. • Philosophy should resist unitary thought (Einheitsdenken), because it doesn’t recognize the nonidentical, i.e. all those elements in the world that cannot be subsumed under the umbrella of certain categories. • Task of the philosopher > “To use the strength of the subject to break through the deception of constitutive subjectivity.”

13. PHILOSOPHICAL STYLE • The work of Adorno consists of scientific reports ( for instance ‘The Authoritarian Personality’), philosophical reflections (for instance ‘Negative Dialektik’) and essays (for instance ‘Prismen’) . • Different intellectual activities > essay, television-programmes and radio-programmes. • Constellations > specific presentation around a subject matter > logical stringency and expressive flexibility should interact, so that the truth of the subject matter will manifest itself. • Philosophy can unlock the historical dynamic hidden within objects whose identity exceeds the classifications imposed upon them.

14. HEURISTIC VALUE • Literature (Thomas Mann amongst others). • Philosophy (Axel Honneth amongst others). • Cultural studies (Susan Buck-Morss amongst others). • Musicology (Carl Dahlhaus amongst others). • Sociology (David Held amongst others). • Psychology (Lars Rensmann amongst others). • History (Martin Jay amongst others).

15. 2. A PRODUCTIVE ANTITHESIS

16. TOTALITY Adorno argues that any critical theory has to construct a totality, i.e. the entire society. Hegel > the individual is subsumed to the society, i.e. his construction of the totality > “The system as a whole is the truth.” Adorno: “The system as a whole is untruthful.” In order to show that Adorno has to get rid of the reification of the subject, the object and their relation. Negative dialectics > a critique of all forms of thought that hypostasize the world.

17. SUBJECT AND OBJECT Adorno is inspired by the dialectical thinking of Hegel. Dialectical thinking is a critique of identarian thinking. Adorno: “dialectics seek to say what something is, while ‘identarian’ thinking says what something comes under, what it exemplifies or represents, and what, accordingly, it is not itself.” Dialectical thing is a way to grasp the contradictions that are inherent to historical developments, in order to understand how what is possible becomes real. History is a process characterised by the divergence of subject and object, although they will always be mediated with each other.

18. THE NONIDENTICAL • Negative dialectics > the attempt to recognize the nonidentity between thought and the object while carrying out the project of conceptual identification. • The nonidentical is often subsumed by the use of concepts. • Identification implies the fixation of a certain identity of someone or something and suppressing or ignoring differences. • The imposition of a certain identity is driven by a society whose exchange principle demands the equivalence (exchange value) of what is inherently nonequivalent (use value).

19. THE PRIORITY OF THE OBJECT • Adorno wants to create space for the recognition of experiences that reveal the nonidentical of human and non-human beings. • How to do that? • Adorno’s answer: admit at one and the same time the priority of the object and a more of the subject. • Priority of the object (Vorrang des Objekts) > to do as far as possible justice to the nonidentity of objects, i.e. their differences from the standardized identity imposed on them. • In fact, Adorno criticizes idealism that prioritizes the knowing subject and affirms an identity between subject and object.

20. A MORE OF THE SUBJECT • Empiricism, in contrast to idealism, presupposes that the object is simply given. • Adorno argues that any object pressuposes a subject and that empiricism doesn’t take into account how the subject and the object change over time. • A more of the subject (ein Mehr an Subjekt) > to do justice to the inner nature of the subject (suppressed desires) and recognize that it is an agent with megalomaniac fantasies of sovereignty that will never come true.

21. AUTHORITARIANISM • The Authoritarian Personality (1950) > part of a larger project entitled ‘Studies in Prejudice’. • How to explain the affirmative character of people, i.e. the fact that people support authoritarian regimes? • Ideologies that appeal to the little man who seeks to be less lonely, threatened and isolated. • F-scale > so-called because it is concerned with the measurement of implicit prefascist tendencies. • Authoritarian submission > submissive, uncritical attitude towards idealized moral authorities of the in-group.

22. CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION • The avoidance of authoritarianism should be the starting point of the education system. • The education system should be directed to autonomy > “Education to maturity” (Erziehung zur Mündigkeit). • Education should help to develop a sense of freedom: “The dawning sense of freedom feeds upon the memory of the archaic impulse not yet steered by any solid I…. Without an anamnesis of the untamed impulse that precedes the ego – an impulse later banished to the zone of unfree bondage to nature – it would be impossible to derive the idea of freedom, although that idea in turn ends up reinforcing the ego.”

23. 3. CULTURE INDUSTRY AND AVANTGARDE

24. OBJECT AND RESOURCE • Adorno argues that culture can be: 1. The object of critique > culture industry. 2. A source of critique > modern art. • Main work concerning the culture industry > Dialektik der Aufklärung. • Main work concerning modern art > Ästhetische Theorie.

25. THE OBJECT OF CRITIQUE • Adorns argues that culture can be affirmative or critical. • Affirmative culture > reproduces the status quo. • Three aspects of culture as an object of critique: 1. The production of a cultural products > only for profit? 2. The cultural products itself > only mainstream? 3. The reception of a cultural product > only for fun?

26. ENLIGHTENMENT • Immanuel Kant > ‘What is enlightenment?’ (1784). • “Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another. The motto of enlightenment is therefore: Sapere aude! Have courage to use your own understanding!” • Is is mainly associated with the emergence of the sciences.

27. INSTRUMENTAL REASON Central question: “why mankind, instead of entering into a truly human condition, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism”. Main object of criticism: instrumental reason. Three forms of domination: 1. The domination of one’s self. 2. The domination of other individuals. 3. The domination of outward nature. Central thesis: enlightenment turns against itself. Mythology and enlightenment have the same roots: survival, self-preservation and fear.

28. CULTURE AS MASS DECEPTION Culture industry: Standardization. Pseudo-individualization. The production of goods that are profitable and consumable. Culture as means to defend the status quo.

29. HIGH VERSUS LOW Literature: James Joyce < > Heinz Konsalik Painting: Pablo Picasso < > poster of gypsy. Cinema: Federico Fellini < > Walt Disney Music: Igor Stravinsky < > Jimi Hendrix

30. ART AS SOURCE OF CRITIQUE Art that is not mainstream can evoke a critical perspective on several aspects of life. Good art changes the horizons of people. Music > to make you hear what is unheard. Fine arts > to make you sea what is unseen. Literature > to present you a language you didn’t know.

31. AN ANTITHESIS Adorno > good art is the best antithesis towards the status quo of society! The reason for this: good art has a truth-function. Art can only fulfil this truth-function if it is relatively autonomous. Good art embodies the promise of happiness and freedom.

32. THE POWER OF THE POWERLESS • Adorno and Horkheimer suggest in Dialektik der Aufklärung that their philosophy is a message in a bottle. • Leo Löwenthal (1900-1993) once said that this bottle became uncorked with a boom during the sixties. • What is the message? • “The almost irresolvable task is not becoming dumb because of the power of others and not becoming dumb because of ones own powerlessness. There is no true life amid the untrue.”

33. RECOMMENDED • Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben[translations in several languages]. • Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente[translations in several languages]. • Stefan Müller-Doohm, Adorno. Eine Biographie (2003).