Gary,

I think a few things are becoming clearer as a result of your latest post. I can see now how you were answering some of my questions but in a way that wasn’t particularly clear to me at the time, and perhaps in a way that I didn’t want. This is to some extent a problem of conducting a conversation in writing over the internet. If we were speaking we could quickly sort these things out, whereas we must wait some time for a written reply, and there is so much that can be said in words that just isn’t practical in writing.

There is one thing you say that I am still having trouble with and that is that you say you don’t work in terms of interpretations being correct but at the same time get irate about things I say about Heidegger. I can’t see how you can have it both ways – either mine is just a different story about Heidegger or its wrong. Or is it both? I don’t know. Perhaps you can sort this one out.

I’ll explain my motivations and it might help you to understand my perspective and my concerns, and perhaps indicate why what you have been saying about Heidegger doesn’t help me all that much.

My conference paper is on Adorno’s metaphysics. I’ll tell you about it in a moment. But one of the things I would like to do is to indicate the similarities with Heidegger and also how they differ. It’s not an important part of the paper but it’s a useful thing to do. That is why getting what I say right is important. I don’t want people saying, ‘but that’s not Heidegger’s position. You’ve got it all wrong’. Do you see what I’m after?

Okay, now, in a nutshell, this is Adorno’s view on metaphysics – which, as I said, owes most to Walter Benjamin for its influences and, as far as I can ascertain, nothing to Heidegger. Metaphysics came into existence as a philosophical concern as part of the process of rationalisation in European culture. It also happened as part of the process of secularisation and demythologisation. Metaphysics is a secularisation of theology and Plato’s Ideas can an example of this, although Plato hadn’t reached the stage of metaphysics because he didn’t really look into the consequences of this secularisation. That task fell to Aristotle, who critically reflected on this secularisation process and called the activity ‘metaphysics’.

By its very nature, metaphysics is anti-theological in that, through secularisation and rationalisation it does away with theology, metaphysics is also anti-metaphysical. Through its process of rationalisation, metaphysics will eventually do away with itself – at least, that is its tendency. Then along came Kant and stopped this process of the self-destruction – through rational secularisation – of metaphysics, even if he thought he was completing the process. A metaphysic of reason, a new set of universals, blocked the path. So, for Adorno, the problem is not to resurrect metaphysics in the face of Kant but to put metaphysics back on course so that it can complete its process of self-destruction. The anti-metaphysical metaphysics of the 20th century is as close as European culture has come to the elimination of metaphysics.

The end of metaphysics will not be the end of life on the planet but the end of history, which will be followed by messianic time. Messianism is the drive to end oppression, while human history is the history of oppression, so messianic time will be the time when humans no longer live lives of oppression. Until that time metaphysics will continue to exist, which means that the secularisation process will continue.

For Adorno, above all, secularisation refers to the breaking down of universals, or timeless truths, or abstract generalisations, or whatever you want to call them. The direction of metaphysics is towards the singular and ephemeral, and truth – which remains, as it was for Benjamin, the death of all intention – attaches to the latter. Metaphysics begins with theology and ends as history.

If the general direction of metaphysics can be seen as progressive demythologisation in this sense, then Heidegger’s move, as far as I understand it, can be seen as a remythologisation. Abandoning Kantian universals, he looks for more adequate universals for the present, ones that relate to the ordinary everyday lives of ordinary everyday people. In contrast, Adorno wants to push on with the abandonment of all universals.

I see Adorno as a Kantian who wants to correct an error in Kant’s critical philosophy. Gillian Rose was more correct in seeing him as a neo-Kantian than those are who see him as a Hegelian. Negative dialectics, such as Hegel developed but then tried to subvert through the negation of the negation, is a fundamental development in resolving Kant’s problem. Adorno even conceives of categorical imperatives in exactly the way Kant conceives of them, and they are connected to metaphysics, rather than epistemology, again as they are for Kant. Adorno recognises one categorical imperative: we should conduct ourselves in such a way that Auschwitz is never repeated. By ‘Auschwitz’ Adorno means more than a particular place or what happened there – he means all the death camps, all the concentration camps, all the prisons where torture, degradation and humiliation take place, all the immigration detention centres, all the weapons of mass destruction. As you can see, we haven’t got very far in meeting our moral obligations under this imperative. In fact, we’ve done quite the opposite.

Adorno even subscribes to Kant’s idea of enlightenment. History will only be overcome when we see through it and recognise it for what it is. The Christians have got it all wrong. It won’t end in judgment day. As he wrote in The Dialectic Of Enlightenment, ‘in laughter, blind nature becomes conscious of itself precisely as such and gives up its destructive force’ – not in judgment, in laughter. The history of oppression is the history of one person judging another. This is what Karen Blixen found in the Africans: ‘they sum you up but they do not judge you’. Somehow, in the end, judging is like drawing on universals. When there are no more universals governing us there will be no more judging either.

Anyway, there’s a pretty potted Adorno. I’ve left heaps out. But at least you have a sense of what I am doing and where I am coming from in approaching Heidegger. Maybe you can see why I want to get Heidegger right, rather than just understanding how you come at him.