January 13, 2005
Hauke Brunkhorst's Adorno and Critical Theory looks to be an interesting text indeed.
Ali Rizvi over at Habermas Reflections has dug up a review by Matt F. Connell in Contemporary Political Theory (1, 242-244, 2002) and posted two of Connell's comments.
Connell's first comment refers to Adorno and Horkheimer's classic Dialectic of Enlightenment text:
"In a critical move familiar from Habermas, Brunkhorst endorses their dark critique of totalizing enlightenment, but is keen to emphasize that it is open to correction, seeking to avoid what he sees as the pessimistic side of Adorno's negative theological critique, which runs the risk of going 'along with Heidegger and a broad stream of conservative cultural criticism. Critical theory falls back upon a negative philosophy of the history of decay.' (p. 75)"
I'v always been wary of that critical move as it is based on a misreading of Adorno and Horkheimer's dialectical critique of enlightenment reason. This immanent critique does not fall back upon a negative philosophy of the history of decay.
That is a conservative discourse, not Adorno's negative dialectics, which works within the ethos of the enlightenment. For Adorno human history is an antagonistic unity in which advances are purely progressive and obstacles to progress not simple regresssive. The dialectic of enlightenment isa genuine dialectic not a simple logic of disintegration.
When are people going to start reading Habermas from the perspective of Adorno? When are they going to start reading Habermas' overcoming of the philosophical tradition critically,instead of just repeating it? Why are these commentators so under the spell of the Habermas's philosophical narrative of modernity?
Adorno does not risk going along with Heidegger. Adorno was deeply critical of Heidegger, even if he misread him. He bashed him up continually, especially in Negative Dialectics. Adorno's The Jargon of Authenticity is concerned with Heidegger's debasement of language (jargon), and its emptiness of real content filled by catch phrases (commitment, curiosity, idle chatter, dignity, and death) of indefinite meaning. These serve a duplicitous ideological function in the manner of advertising slogans.
There is a fundamental paradox in Heidegger: he tries to maintain the ethos of the mythic (the sentimentality about pre-industrial rural life) in a demythologized world of capitalist exchange value. Adorno analysis of the relation between wholeness and death (involving also the "they" and exchange), uncovers the fascist violence at the root of Heidegger's entire philosophy (a reactionary lebensphilosophie).
Connell's second comment is more interesting as it breaks new ground:
"For me, Brunkhorst's most extensive and valuable contribution is his attention to the complex of disputes on Adorno's legacy in modern critical philosophy, a complex which forms the philosophical background to many of the issues of cultural theory. Different lines of theoretical relationship to Heidegger is crucial here, and Brunkhorst's book is dominated by an effort to clarify Adorno's complex theoretical relationship to Heideggerian thought, with Brunkhorst being careful to make clear the commonalities as well as the differences. Brunkhorst develops his analysis of Adorno and Heidegger into an interesting series of juxtapositions with post-modern, analytical and pragmatic schools of thought, carefully unpicking (sic) a range of affiliations which place aspects of Adorno close to pragmatism (especially Dewey) and postmodernism (especially Rorty), whilst being well aware of the areas of distance which are emphasized more strongly by other receptions of Adorno."
It is true that the different lines of theoretical relationship to Heidegger are crucial. However, the analysis of the critical and complex relationship between Adorno and Heidegger has not been done very well in the past.
It has been broached a couple of times here at philosophical conversations with little progress being made on sorting through the issues. I recall that I was unable to find mucch on the net at the time of the posts.
So if Brunkhorst's book is indeed dominated by an effort to clarify Adorno's complex theoretical relationship to Heideggerian thought then it is an important text. If Brunkhorst is careful to make clear the commonalities as well as the differences, then it is well worth reading.
Update
I find this phrase by Connell misleading:
"Brunkhorst develops his analysis of Adorno and Heidegger into an interesting series of juxtapositions with post-modern, analytical and pragmatic schools of thought, carefully unpicking (sic) a range of affiliations which place aspects of Adorno close to pragmatism (especially Dewey)"
It is misleading because Dewey accepted instrumental reason (plus a rhetorical celebration of science, technology and American liberalism) whilst Adorno was deeply opposed to instrumental reason.
Dewey was an Enlightenment optimist with technocratic ambitions at solving social problems. Admittedly, this optimism was tempered by his faith in democracy, and his hints about the growing threat of technocracy to democracy. However, Deweyan pragmatism is a custom made tool for "tuning up" a technological culture, not for criticizing it. Dewey accepts the domination of nature (the ecosystems we are a part of) by an instrumental reason.
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The "ingenuity" of Brunkhorst consists in the fact that he makes Adorno and Horkheimer (and by implication Habermas as well) look more Heideggerian than Heidegger himself, and then criticise Heidegger for allegedly doing the same for which Heidegger has criticised others.
Secondly Brunkhorst contrasts essential modernity of Judaeo Christian tradition (of whose flag bearer are Adorno and Horkheimer and Habermas!!) with essential un-modernity of Greek tradition of whose flag barer is Heidegger.
Both moves are essentially those of Habermas but Brunkhorst fills in details in a lively manner, which is at times insightful and moving.
"[Adorno and Horkheimer] repudiate a privileged and theoretical model of knowing in favour of the project of practically transforming the world, a materialist this-worldly negativism and fallibilism, all these are central themes which they share with Habermas and the pragmatists from Dewey to Putnam. And they are also themes which distance them from Greek thought and its contemplative metaphysics, along with the correspondence theory of truth, all of them ideas which must be ascribed to the other tradition of European self-understanding, that deriving form the biblical thought of the Jewish and Christian monotheism."
"In redemptive religions, the privileged access to moral insight is destroyed and exposed as the ideology of the propertied male classes. In order to experience injustice, it is not necessary to have the wisdom of well-to-do, worldly-wise old men experienced in matters of power. . . . Only theodicy of suffering pushes through to the true, the moral, and egalitarian concept of justice; injustice which has been experienced becomes the foundation of a moral insight accessible to everyone. Insight into experienced injustice is the privilege of the underprivileged. Behind the veil of ecstasy, the redemptive religions articulate the reflective force of this insight." (Adorno and Critical Theory, pp. 107-108).
Though any such view is faced with a paradox: If "Insight into experienced injustice is the privilege of the underprivileged" then how such undeniably privileged people as Habermas and Brunkhorst have access to this? The paradox is an old one often presented to the old Marxist revolutionaries but is more acute in the case of contemporary critical theorists who have all but abandoned the revolutionary politics.