Trevor,
This text may be of help to both of us. A conversation about Heidegger and Adorno is difficult, given that it is usually structured around the claim of the implicit connection between fundamental ontology and totalitarianism.
As I have mentioned previously I found Adorno's criticisms of Heidegger to be deeply polemical and I have pretty much interpreted Adorno as misrepresenting Heidegger almost beyond recognition--eg. the claim that Heidegger threw away rationality and embraced irrationalism and myth.
I do acknowledge that, and have sympathy with, Adorno's deep challenge to systematic large-scale theories (e.g., the Enlightenment narrative of the emancipation of the rational subject and instrumental reason) that subsumed the particularity of a certain historical condition under general principles and rules. This totalizing thinking was displaced by recognizing the specificity and singularity of events. I presume that Adorno's criticism is that Heidegger's use of language covers up the particularity and complexity of historical experience.
What I find disconcerting about Adorno is that he does not--refuses to--- recognize a similar movement in Heidegger. Or that he--and you for that matter-- do not acknowledge the similarities between Adorno and Heidegger: their critique of purposive (technical) rationality and modern epistemology; their attempts to base aesthetics on a notion of truth rather than beauty; their shared emphasis on temporality and their critique of modernity.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at June 19, 2004 11:52 PM | TrackBack