Gary,

The messianism and redemption in Adorno and Benjamin leaves you cold, especially its alien Judaic form. I’m sorry to hear it.

Let me try to give Adorno’s main point in a nutshell. Whatever it is that theology is after still plays a role in our lives, our experience, our consciousness. When we say ‘this is shithouse!’ there is something, no matter how intangible, against which we compare the unpleasantness. You might say that this is the metaphysical residue not soaked up by Kantian epistemology. This residue is what theology has always been pursuing, although theology has become secularised, rationalised and demythologised through the process of reflective metaphysics, which has gone on to perform the same process on itself. The result of this tradition is that the residue sought by theology has passed into the hands of those philosophers willing to take up the unfinished process of metaphysical development.

Okay, what’s messianism about? It is the drive to end oppression. Messianic thought draws on two sources: 1) revelation, which is essentially the result of theoretical deduction, and 2) the direct experience of oppression – this is according to Scholem.

The messianic age is the end of history. History is the history of oppression, the history of human beings judging other human beings. This is where at least this version of Judaism differs from Christianity. The Christian idea of the day of judgment is a day just like any other. In the messianic age there will be no judgment. There will only be laughter. Not only Jews subscribe to this idea. You can also find it in Karen Blixen’s writings and it underpins the thought of numerous secular Christians (if this last notion isn’t an oxymoron).

Another idea that comes from the Jews is that listening to tradition is the way in which we prepare for the onset on the messianic age. This relates to the ban on speaking about God. We can only talk about the ungodly. This is where this approach differs from Heidegger’s dogmatic metaphysics, which tries to throw tradition away and make up its own. Instead of attempting any metaphysical resurrection, Adorno and Benjamin are concerned with the critical appropriation of the Western philosophical tradition. This is what leads Adorno to his view of contemporary metaphysics.

The problem I have with your attitude to Adorno in your June 10 entry is that you grab a few lines and ask what seems to me a rather childish question – why is it so? – instead of completing the hermeneutic task – this is from Gadamer – of finding out what Adorno means by these sentences. It reads as if you’ve already made up your mind.

You don’t like words like ‘redemption’ and ‘messianism’. Okay. I’ll say it in the terms of my previous discussion: ‘The only philosophy to be responsibly practised in the face of despair is to attempt to contemplate all things from the perspective of the end of oppression. Knowledge that is not from this vantage point is just reconstruction, mere technique.’

If you read the whole passage you’ll find an implicit critique of Heidegger’s position there: ‘The more passionately thought denies its conditionality for the sake of the unconditional, the more unconsciously, and so calamitously, it is delivered up to the world.’ Adorno could be describing Heidegger and his embrace of Nazism, which no doubt from his abstract perspective seemed to be just the thing he was seeking in his philosophy.

I prefer Benjamin’s position: write in such a way that your words are never useful to fascists. This is the hardest thing in the world to do but it is a worthwhile goal.