adorno, 'the actuality of philosophy' (1931; 1977 telos ed)

7/27/2019 Adorno, 'the Actuality of philosophy' (1931; 1977 Telos Ed)

1/11

112 / TELOS

KarlKorsch

Revolutionary

Theory

Edited

by

Douglas Kellner

There

isgrowing

interest

inEuropeand the UnitedStatesin the workof

the major

German

social-political philosopher KarlKorsch. Histhought

provides

an

illuminatingperspective

on the process of

revolution

and

counterrevolution

in

recent history,

and

this

is the first

Englishanthology

of his

mostimportantwritings.Kellner'ssubstantial

introduction,the

first

comprehensive criticalinterpretation

of Korsch to

appear

in English,

examines

hislifeandwork,and

roots

hispolitical theoryin the socio

political contextinwhichitevolved.

384

pages,

14.95

Essayson

Modern

European

RevolutionaryHistory

The

Walter

Prescott

Webb Memorial

Lectures No. XI

EditedbyBedeK

Lackner

and

Kenneth

Roy

Philp

Thiscollectionfocuses

on

variousaspects

of

European

revolutionary

history

from1798 to thepresent. StanleyH. Palmerdiscusses theIrish

Rebellion

of 1798; AnthonyS.

Baker studies

the

careet

of

Frenchtrade

unionorganizer Femand

Pelloutier;

Dennis Reinhartz'

subject

is

Yugo

slavian

revolutionary

MilovanDjilas;

R. R.

Palmer examines

the views

of

European revolutionaries

on the

American Revolution;

and

George

Barr

Carson, Jr.,

writes

aboutthe

Court

of Justice of the European

Economic

Community.

160

pages.

7.95

t

Alienation Praxis and Techne in the

Thought

of Karl

Marx

By Kostas

Axelos

Translated

by

Ronald Bruzina

Originallypublished

in

French

in 1961,

this

is one of the

standard works

on the

question

of

alienation

inMarx.

434

pages,

12.50

University

ofTexasPress

Box 7819

Austin78712

^

INTRODUCTIONT O ADORNO'S

T H E A C T U A L I T YOFPHILOSOPHY

byBenjaminSnow

During the 1960s, Adorno's negative dialect ics

became

identified wi th

the

critical

theory of the Frankfurt Institute, of which he had become the

most illustr ious member. Yet

critical

theory was never a

ful ly

articulated

philosophy meaning the samething for all the membersof the Institute. It

was more of a set of shared assumptions that distinguished their approach

from bourgeois or tradit ion al theory.

1

W i t h i n

this common frame, the

rriethodology of individual members could and did vary. Thus, the term

criticaltheory lacks historical precision, referri ng generally to the Insti tute's

theoretical orientation during the thirty-oddyears of Max Horkheimer's

directorship.

Although Adorno later clearly felt comfortable being called a critical

theorist, he first out lined the dist inguishing characteristics of his own

method seven yearsbefore he becamea full-fledged Institute member. The

occasion was the inaugural lecture marking his entry into the philosophy

faculty of the University of Frankfu rt, The Actualityo f Philosophy, which

remained unpublished

u n t i l

after his death and

appears

in translation

here.

A tthe time (May 1931) Horkheimer hadbeenthe Institute's director for only

a few months, and the new orien tation i ncriticalmethodology that he brought

toitwas just beginnin g to take

shape.

Of course, even then Horkheimer's

ideas

had much in common

w i t h

Adorno's, due to their close personal and

intellectual

frie ndship. They had both moved towardMarxismin the late1920s

but the impact of dialectical materialism led them in different directions.

Horkheimer turne d toward the socialsciences,whileAdorno, insteado fjoining

his friend at the Institute, chose to accept an academicposition.

The you ng Adorno saw himself as a philosopher and an arti st,

2

not a social

scientist, and he was then clearly more excited by the literary criticism of

Walter Benjamin than by the empirical social research projects of die

Frankfurt Insti tute . Nor was the Institute 's evaluation of Adorn o much more

enthusiastic: it isworth noting that two articles which he submitted to the

Institute

journal,

the

Zeitschrift fiir

Sozialforschung, in the 1930s repeatedly

1. As Adorn o noted, the term critical theory was Horkheimer's phrasing. Cf. Theodor W.

Adorno.

Negative Dialectics,

trans. E.B. Ashton (New Y o r k : The

SeaburyPress,

1973) p. 197.

Horkheimer had f irstout line d its distin guishi ng characteristics in his 19S7 article on Tradi tio nal

and Critical Theory, now in his Critical Theory, trans. Matthew J. O'Connell and others(New

Y o r k : Herde r and Herder, 1972). pp. 188-245.

2. As he later recalled in comparing himself to Horkhei mer:

I ,

however, by background

and early devel opment, was an artis t, music ian, yet animated by an impulse to account f or art

and its possibility in the

present,

in which something objective

also

desired expression, the

suspiciono fthe insufficiency of a naiveaestheticprocedure in view of thetendenciesofsociety. In

Theodor W. Adorno, Offener Br i e fan Max Horkheimer, Die Zeit, February 12, 1965, p. 32.


2/11

114 / TEWS

failed

to

pass

the review board .

3

An d, although the articles by Adomo whic h

were accepted Zurgesellschaftlichen Lage der Musik (1932) and Ueber

Jazz

(1936)were of lasting importance t o his inte llectual dev elopment,

4

his

major works oftheseyearswere the morestrictlyphilosophicalstudiesofKier

kegaard and Husser l. The

themes

ofjazz and the social condi tion of music re

flected

the Institute's primary concern

w i t h

the question of howgeistige pro

ductsfunctioned to support or challenge thestatus quo. This was something

quite distinct f romAdomo's self-prescribed task:fostering the li quidati on of

idealist philosophy.

Horkheimer believed as firmlyas Adorno that bourgeois philosophy was in a

state

ofdecay,

5

but heseemstohave concluded that i f metaphysics were no

longer possible, then the philosopher had to look to the social

sciences

in order

to

find

truth. Althoughthese

sciences,

in turn,

needed

a

c r i t i c a l ,

speculative

perspective, philosophy as a

separate

discipline was eliminated.

6

For Hork

heimer, the problem of the object tended to dissolve into (Mar xian ) socio

logy,

the problem of the subject into (Freudian) psychology,

7

and critical

theory attempted to explain their interr elations. I n his inaugural lecture as

Institute director, hespokeof the dialectical inter action between theory and

empirical research.

8

Adorno, however, discerned a dialectical

process

within philosophy itself.

Indeed, he had an almost Hegelian

f a i t h

in the immanent logic of philosophy,

i n

its historical development as the unf oldin g of tru th , even if , in very un-

S. A study of Mann hei m went thr oug h two revisions (1954 and 1937) yet

never appeared

i n

the journala

t h i r d

revision was finally published elsewhere.Cf. Theodor W. Adomo, Ueber

Mannheims Wissenssoiiologie (195S), reprint ed in

Prismen

(Frankfurt am M a i n : Suhrkamp

Verlag. 1955). A 1957 article on Husserl, revised by Adomo in 1938. was

never

published, but

copies of both drafts are to be found in Ado mo's estate.

4. In the-1932 artic le and in the more than f o r ty short pieceson music that he published in a

variety of journals and newspapers during the thirties, Adomo

l a i d

the groundwork for an

aesthetic

philosophywhoseformulation occupied him u n t i l his death. (The book manuscript,

Aesthetische Theorie.

was publishe d posthu mously i n 1970 as vol. 7 of the

Gesammelte

Schriften.) This is not tosuggestthat the early musicessaysin the Zeitschrifl far Sozialforschung.

whichcontained

elements

of an

aesthetic

theory as w el las a critical theory ofmassculture, were

insignificant

compared w i t h his book-length philosophical studies; the point is simply that

whereas

the Institut e was more interested i n a (philosophical)sociologyof art, Adomo's primary

concern was in a (sociological) philosophyof aesthetics as w el l as of epistemology.

5. As hestated in 1932, the idealist premise, the ident ity of subject and object, . . . has long

since

collapsed, and w i t h it . the edifice of Hegelian philosophy 'Absolute' philo sophy .. .is a

thing of thepast. (Horkheimer. Hegel und das Problem der Metaphysik. Festschrift far Carl

Grfnberg:

Zum 70. Geburtstag

[ L e i p z i g :

Verlag von C.L. Hirschfeld. 1932], p. 192.)

6.

Horkheimer's f a i t h that the social sciences could

answer

the traditional

questions

of

philosophy through empirical

research

was not something Adomoshared. Against this tendency,

Adorno, as, he later recalled, trie d to strengthen the anti-positivis tic. speculative bent of

Horkheimer. (Theodor W. Adomo, Offener Br i e f an Max Horkheimer, op. cit. p. 32.)

7. These two theories, he f e l t , provided a formulation of the old [philosophi cal]

questions

more appropriate to the state of our

present

knowledge (Max Horkheimer, Die

grgrns3rtige Lage der Sozialphilosophie und die Aufgaben

eines

Inst ituts fQr Sozialforschung

[1931], Sorialphilosophische Studien: Aufsdtxi, Redtn und Vortrage, 19)0-1972, ed. Werner

Brede [Frankfurt am

M a i n :

Athenaum Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. 1972], p. 43.)

8. He advocated .. .a continuous dialectical penetrati on and development between

philosophical

theory and the practice of the single scientific disciplines. . .

Ibid.,

p. 40.)

INTRODUCTION TO ADORNO

/

115

Hegelian fashion, he believed that truthc r i t i c a l l ychallenged thecourseofhis

tory rather than merging w i t h i t. Convinced that social contradictions ap

peared

w i t h i n

the materialo fphilosophy in a mediated fo rmand that the p h i l

osopher, l ike the artist, had to be absolutely modern, graspingthesecontra

dictions in their most curr ent and (in an age of disint egration) t heir most

antagonistic manifestations, Adorno took up the strugglesbequeathedby the

preceding generation ofphilosophers. Byplacing

himself

w i t h i ntheir ranks, he

pressed the antinomies of their theories to the point where the dialectical

negation of idealism might be achieved.

9

This challenge

f rom

w i t h i n , on the

basis

of philosophy's own in herent, historically developed logic, i n order to

break out of bourgeois idealism and into revolutionary materialism was what

Adornomeantby immanent criticism and it constituted the

substance

o fhis'

c

idea of a logic of disintegr ation.

This program bound Adorn o to Benjamin more t han to Horkheimer. Al

though Horkheimer, too, claimed that i fbourgeois theory were to be effectively

challenged it had to be f rom

w i t h i n ,

to hi m this

meant

simply that bourgeois

theory could not be dismissed by merely adapti ng an external, anti-bourgeois

metaphysics.

Rather,

one had toexposethe gap between bourgeois theory and

its own reality. In his

essays

Horkheimer confronted bourgeois concepts(of

justice, reason,indivi dualism)

w i t h

the actualit y of bourgeois society (its in

justice, ir ration alism, monopoly capitalism), pointed to the discrepancy

between the potential affluence of

present

productive forces and the existing

scarcity, and demonstrated thatLebensphilosophie, for example, betrayed its

ownintento fprotestbecause,in functioning as a support for the societal status

quo, it converged w i t hthe very positivism it attacked.

10

But unlike Adorno,

Horkheimer did not get deeply inv olved in the t echnical controversies o f con

temporary philos ophy. Hence, although almost all his articles in the Zeit-

schrift

fiir

Sozialforschung during the 1930swere critiques of bourgeois philo

sophy, they were notthemselves philosophical in the strict

sense

of the term.

Keeping one foot outside the discipline, he traced

themes

and

concepts des

criptively through the his tory of the bourgeois e ra his knowledge of history

was far superior to Adomo'sso that thei r social function might be reve aled.

12

9. As he wrote in his inaugural speech: Only an essentially undialectical philosophy, one

which

aims at ^historical tru th, could maintain that the o ld problems coul d simply be removed

by forgetting them and starting fresh f ro m the begin ning. Onl y in the strictest dialecti cal

communication w i t h the most

recent

solution-attempts of philosophy and of philosophic

terminology

can a real change of philosophical consciousnessprevail.

10. For an English summary of Horkhei mer's writi ngs of the early 1930s. see M a r t i nJay, Tht

Dialectical

Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research,

1923 1950

(Boston:

L i t t l e ,

Brown, 1973), pp. 44-65.

11 . Horkhei mer's prime concern wasIdeologiekritih. i.e. , how it was that (bourgeois) views

v a l idi n

themselves

and t heoretical and

aesthetic

works of undeniably high quality can in certain

circumstances operate

ideologi cally.. . . (Hor khei mer, Notes on

Science

and the Crisis [1932],

in Critical Theory, op. cit., p . 7.) Ado mo, convinced as he was that the social

inv a l id i t y

of

bourgeois thought was manifested

immanently,

would not

have

held that such thought could be

v a l id in itself; at the same time, he believed that ideology, correctly interpreted, was the

source

of truth.

12. The distincti on can be illustrated by comparing Adomo'scritical analysis of the con cept


3/11

11 6

/ TELOS

INTRODUCTION

TO ADORNO / 117

Horkheimer thus moved between theory and society, point ing out corres

ponding

structures i nconsciousnessand reality in a manner similar to that of

the early Lukacs (and to Lukacs' teacher W i l h e l m Dilthey, whose work

Horkheimerappreciated).

13

By

contrast, Adorno attempted quite l i t e ra l l y to

make the structure ofbourgeois society

visible

in the

very

words of the bourgeois

texts: dialecticalexegesis, that was more Sprachkritik than Ideologiekritik,

more critical interpretation than theory.

14

The difference between Adorno's and Horkheimer's methods

implied d i f

ferent grounds for determining a theory's

va l id i ty .

Horkheimer's arguments

rested on principles of

moral

rectitude

1S

indeed, pr inciples developed by the

very bourgeois society that he was attacking. As he explained: I f we take

seriously the ideasbywhichthe bourgeoisie explains its own orderfree ex

change, free

competition,

harmony of interests, and so onand i f we

fol low

them to theirlogical conclusion, they manifest their inner contradiction and

therefore their real opposition to the bourgeois order.

16

The transcendent

element of

idealism

whichallowed a moral dis tinc tion between the is and the

ought remained essential to Horkhei mer despite his advocacy of empiri cal re

search.Adornowouldlaterrecall, w i t h

y ou

theprimary

thing

was indign ation

over injus tice, and he noted that Horkheimer was indebted to the Judaic ethics

of hisfa m i ly as

well

as bourgeois enlightenment principles for this impu ls e.

17

of

history

w i t h

two of Horkheimer's early

essays.

Adorno's approach, out line d in his 1932 speech

to theKanlgtsellschafl in Frankfurt (in Adorno , Die Idee der Naturgeschichte. Gesammelte

Schrifltn, vol .

1, pp. 345-365). was to juxtapose the ant ithet ical

concepts

of

nature

and history in

such

a

way that neither was posited as the foun dation of an affirmative philosophy of history. His

argument was dialectical and polemical rather t han descriptive . By contrast, in a 1930 essay,

AnfSnge der bOrgerlichen Geschichtsphilosophie, Horkheimer's approach was to outline t he

historical development of the bourgeois concept of history from Machiavelli to Vico and Hegel,

identifyingboth its progressive and

regressive elements

w i t h regard to their ideological function.

Hi s program for a theory of history, outli ned inanother

speech

delivered to the Kantgesellschaft.

suggested

that the p roblem, while formerly the concern of the metaphysician, c ould not

best

be

dealt w i t h by Marx's s cientific theory and (Freudian ) psychology. (See Geschichte und

Psychologic [1932],reprinted in Max Horkheimer, Kritische Theorie: Erne Dokumentation, ed.

A l f r e d

Schrsidt [Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verl ag, 1968], vol. 1, pp. 9-30.)

IS . His aim was to point out the common structural characteristics of wel l known

developments in modern history. (Max Horkheimer, Egoismus und Freiheitsbewegung,

Kritische Theorie,

op.cil.,

vol. 2, p. 106.) For a discussion of Horkheimer 's evaluat ion of

Dilthey,his

criticisms

asw el las the points of

agreement,

see Jay, TheDialectical Imagination, op.

at.,

p p. 48-53.

14.

Ricoeur's description of Marx. Freud and Nietzsche as practitioners o f an art of

interpreting as an

exercise

in suspicion, a hermeneutics of demystifi cation, applies just as

wel l to Adomo. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans.

Dean

Savage

(New Haven : Yale University

Press.

1970). p. 33.

15. When , for example, Hor kheimer criticized the

acceptance

of what had historically

evolved as

second

nature, he was concerned not only that, as a suprahistorical eternal

category it was in fact incorrect, but that, in regard to moral

w i l l ,

i t was a sign of contemptible

weakness. In Horkheimer, Tradition al and Critical Theory, op. at., p. 210.

16.

Ibid.,

p. 215. italics

added.

Cf.

also

Max Horkhcimer (alias Heinrich Regius),

Ddmmerung: Notixen in Deutschland (Zurich: Verlag Oprecht und Helbling. 1934). p. 193.

where he writes : The chasm between the moral

standards

which the Europeans have

acknowledged

since

the advent of Christianity, and

those

which

theseEuropeans

in fact practice,

is immeasurable.

17. Adomo, Offener B r i e f an Max Horkheimer. op. cit., p . 32.

I f the impulse for Horkheimer's social criticism was an ethical, quasi-

religious humanism, Adorn o was primarily concerned

w i t h

the problem of

truth.For

him,

notissuesofrightorwrong,but judgments of true or false were

thenecessaryground for the

validation

of theory. In an era when metaphysics

had lost all legitimacy, Adorn o kept asking the metaphysical quest ion; just as

in

an era whichhad proclaimed God dead, Horkhei mer refused to dismiss the

moral

problem of good and e v i l .

1 8

Adorno,

the metaphysician

w i t h

no fa i th in metaphysics; Horkheimer, the

moralist

wi th

no

belief

in

Divine

Providence: to describe the m thus may in

fact

express

what

separated

their intellectual

paths

not

only

in the 1930s, but

throughout their lives as

w e l l .

1 9

The difference accounts for Horkheimer's

greater concern

w i t h

the gap between imputed and empirical prole tarian

consciousness,

20

for he considered that in the modern e ra, moral praxis was

necessary

political

praxis. Indeed, the fail ure of the proletar iat to achieve

revolutionary

consciousness became the focus of the Institute's research

during

the first

decade

of Horkheimer's directorship,

21

whereas Adorno's

overridinginterest in the questions of the truthof theory or the va l id i tyof art

as

issues

totallyremoved fromthe question of prole tariatconsciousness caused

the very idea of a collective revolutionary subject t o drop out of this the ory .

22

S t i l l ,

the polari ty between metaphysician and moralist should not be

stressed too strongly, as it was never categorical. Their work was essentially

complementary, and

became

increasingly so after 1938. Even if Adorno's

18. Adorno was st i l lstrugglingw i t hthe question of the possibility of metaphysics i n the final

chapter

of

Negative Dialectics.

Cf. Horkheimer's

statement

in 1934: I di d not know how far

metaphysicians are correct;

perhaps there

exists

somewhere

an especially compelling

metaphysical system or fragment. But I do know that metaphysicians are usually onlyminimally

impressed by that which torments and

afflicts

human beings. (Max Horkheimer,

Ddmmtnmg,

op.

cit., p. 86.) Horkheimer's moral concern f or physical suffering (of animals as w el l as human

beings) as

opposed

to Adorno's more cerebral orientation is illustrated by Adorno's recollection:

Onceyou

[Horkheimer]

said to me that I perceived animals as human

whereas

you sawhumans

as animals. There is something to that. (Adorno . Offener Br i e f an Max Horkhei mer. p. 32.)

19. As Adorno wrot e: the tension between the

poles

from whence we

came

did not

disappear,

and grew to be

f r u i t f u l

for us. Ibid.

20 . Here, as elsewhere, Horkhe imer was closer to the early Lukacs of History and Class

Consciousness.

He viewed the intellectual's role to be the articulat ion of imputed class

consciousness,

although, like Adorno . he refused to sanction Party control of the intellectuali

theoretical work. See Horkheimer. Tradit ion al and Critical Theory, op. cit., pp. 221-224.

2 1.

In his inaugu ral address as director he wrote: the discussion concerning society

crystalizes gradually and w i t hincreasing clarity around one question, namely the question of the

connection between the economic lifeof society, the psychic development of the indiv iduals, and

transformations in the cultural realm. In Horkheimcr, Die gegenwSrtige Lage der

Sozialphilosophie und die Aufgaben

eines

Institute for Sozialforschung (1931), Soiialphilo-

sophische

Studien,

p. 43. The problem led Horkheimer, as it did

Wilhelm

Reich (see hit

Massenpsychologie des Faschi smus (Kopenhagen: Verlag

f l l r

Sexualpolitik, 1933]), to

merge

Marxist social theory w i t h Freudian psychology: What needs to be examined is how the

psychologi cal mechanism evolved whereby it is possible for the tensions between social classesto

remain latent,

tensionswhich,

due to the economic situation,

press

toward

conflict.

Horkheimer.

Geschichte und Psychologie (1932), Kritische Theorie, op. cit., vol . 1. p. 21.

22 . Althou gh neither saw theory as subservient to political praxis, for Adorno the relation

between the two was more high ly mediated, and developments in theory remained more

self-contained.


4/11

118 / TELOS

INTRODUCTIONTO ADORNO / 119

original choice was to

teach

philosophy rather than to j o i n Horkheimer's

Institute, he acknowledged f rom the first the.

dependence

of his k i n d of

philosophy on the findings of social science research,

23

just as Horkheimer

considered speculative theory indispensable to the processo fresearch. One

was doing sociological philosophy ; the othe r, philosophical sociology.

Moreover, Horkheimer

shared

Adorno's interest, if not his preoccupation ,

with

the

task

of establishing a new gro und for dialectical, materialist

theory.

24

In fact, Adomo's correspondence makes it clear that hope of

collaborating w i t h Horkheimer on this

task

was one reason why Adorno

finally

decided in 193 8

25

to

j o i n

the Institute in the United

States.

I tis interesting that the description ofcriticaltheory whichappeared in the

Institute's journal in 1941 (in the first Englishissue)reflected Adorno's more

rigorous conception of immanent criticism,

26

as we l l as a very Benjaminian

notion

of the inductive method of arriving at t ru th ,

27

indications that the

change in the Institute's theory at that time was much the result of a power

shift fo l lowin g Adorno's arrival as it was a

response

to w o r l d events, while

Adorno's own position remained remarkably consistent over t ime .

28

This is not tosuggestthat Adorno had no new ideasafter the age of t h i r t y .

Thethemeof domination whichbecamecent ral i n his writings after 1940 was

23. In his 1931 speech,translated

here,

Adomo noted that philosophy wou ld . .

.have

to

take

its specific disciplinary material preponderantly

f r o m

sociology

24. In

a

1932

essay,

Horkheimer, re ferring to the

tasks

philosophy had s t i l l to do, reflected

thesamespirit of philosophy which Adorno had arti culated i n his inaugural address the

year

before: Itis

also

fu l l y possible to

present

theresultsof empirical

research

in such a way that the

l i fe

of the objects

comes

to expression on al l

sides.

(Horkhei mer, Hegel und das Problem der

Metaphysik,

in Krilische

Thtorit, op.cit., vol . 2. p. 195.)

25. As he wrote BenjamininJuneof that

year:

Furthermore, the literary

plans

of Max and me

art now taking on a very

concrete

f o r m . It is

as

good as set that we

w i l l

first

of all write

a

long

essay together on the new open-ended

f o rm

of the dialectic. We are both totally f u l l of the

pl an ... Letter. Adorno to Benjamin,

June

8, 1938 (Fran kfu rt am M a i n ,Adorno Estate).

W i t h

the outbreak of war, however, this

essay,

part of a proposed

gTeat

materialistic logic, was put

aside in favor of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, the themewhich more adequately

expressed

their shock at the barbarism of Auschwitz and Hiroshi ma. When Ador no

f i n a l l y

wrote his

essay

on the new f o rm of the dialecti c in 1966 (Negative Dialectics), it was all by himself. Thu s,

Dialectic

of Enlightenment was. in a

sense,

a preliminary study for Negative Dialectics, as a

comprehensive analysis of the history of the Enlight enment and how it had ru n amok: one had to

know what had

gone

wrong w i t h

Reason

in order to

redeem

it.

26. [OJwi ng to the fact the concept is to be formedunder theaspectof the historical totali ty

to which it pertains, sociology should be

able

to develop this changing [social] pattern f rom the

very content o f the concept instead of adding specific

contents

f ro m witho ut. In Max

Horkheimer, Notes on Instit uteActivities, Studies in Social Science, 9:1 (1941), p. 125.

27. The method was described as indu ctiv e, not in the tradit ional

sense

of collecting

individual experiences u n t i l

they attained the weight of universal laws, but of seeking the

universal w i t h i n the particular, not

above

or beyond it ; because society

is

a 'system in the

materialsense that every single social field or relati on contains and reflects in various ways the

whole itself. Ibid.

28. It should be noted that the mature Ad orno was not uncri tical of his own early efforts. In a

note to the 1966 repri nti ng of his Kierkegaard study, he said that he now foun d the book too

affirmative,

too

hopeful. In reprinting his early musicessayshe

sometimes

altered

sections

which

teemed

inexcusably idealistic (see. e.g., his

note

to Moments Musicaux [1964]). But it is

st i l l

remarkable that Adorno could publishso many ofhisearly

essays

alongside his mature works

with l i t t l e

or no revision.

heavily indebted to the Institute's theoretical and empiri cal work durin g the

1930son the problem of authority

29

work which Adorno carried further in

his contribution to The Authoritarian Personality. Nor didthose ideaswhich

remained

constant

in his theory emerge fu l l - b lown l ike Minerva out of his

youthful

head; one has the

sensef rom

his early writings that his formulat ion

of concepts precededhis ownful l understanding of their potentialitie s. Only

afteryearsofworking w i t hthem was he

able

to develop out of theirabstract

possibilities a f u l l ,

concrete

meaning.

The goal of transcending idealism by leading its concepts via their own

immanent logic to the point of self-liquidation was one idea to which Ad omo

kept returning. As he wrote in the

preface

toNegative Dialectics: To use the

strength of the subject to break throug h the fallacy of constitutive

subjectivitythis is what the author felt to be his

task

ever sincehe came to

trust his own mental impulses.

30

This was the impetus for his major study on

Husserl, ZurMetakritik der Erkenntnislheorie,

31

and it was the

task

which he

first proposed for philosophy in his inaugural lecture.

Indeed, it is tempting to suggest that Adomo may have had this latter

document before hi m when he was w r i t i n g the introduction to Negative

Dialectics, so great is the

similarity

of their philosophical intent.

32

The

Actuality of Philosophy must be viewed therefore as a key document for

introducing the most important concepts in Adorno's thought and of the

negative dialectics int o which his philosophy evolved.

29. Studien tiber Authoritat und Familie, ed. Max Horkh eime r (Paris: Fel ix Alcan , 19S6).

We may note, however, that criticism of the domination of nature was already explicit in

Adorno's Kierkegaard study (writ ten between 1928 and 1933), and that it played

a

role in his

critique of Wagner,

also

written before Adorno joined the Institute,

whereas

in the

year

Adorno

published his Kierkegaard book, Horkheimer could

st i l l

write: For tru e human freedom is not to

be

equated

either

w i t h indeterminateness

or

w i t h mere

arbitrariness; instead, it is identical

w i t h

c

the domination of

nature

w i t h i n and without us through rational decision. In Max Horkheimer,

Zum

Problem der Voraussage in den Sozialwissenschaften (1933), reprinted in Horkhe imer,

Kritische Theorie vol. 1. op. cit., p. 117.

30. Adorno, Negative

Dialectics,

p. xx.

3 1 .

Writ ten 1934-37. and revised and published in 1956.

32. In an editor's note to the

first

(posthumous) pu blication of the address, Tiedemann

commented that this and several other early

essays,

unus ually progTaramatic for Adomo' s

thinking. introduced motifs and ideaswhich anticipate something l ike a companion

piece

to

Negative

Dialectics.

R ol f

Tiedemann, Editorische Nachbemerkung. in Adorno,

Cesammeltt

Schriften,

op.cit.,

vol . 1, p. 383.


5/11

TH E

ACTUALITY

OF

PHILOSOPHY

/ 121

T H E A C T U A L I T Y

O F

P H I L O S O P H Y *

by Theodor W. Adorno

Whoever choosesphilosophy as a profession today must

first

reject the

i l l u s ion that earlier philosophical enterprises began

w i t h :

that the power of

thought is sufficient to grasp the totality of the real. No justifying reason

could rediscover itse lf in a reality whose order and fo rm suppresses every

claim

to

reason;

only

polemically

does

reason present

itse lf

to the knower as

total

reality,while onlyintracesand ru ins is it prepared to hope that it

wi l l

ever come

across

correct and just reali ty. Philosophywhich presentsreality as

such today only veils reality and eternalizes its

present

condition. Prior to

every answer, such a

function

is already

i m p l i c i t

in the question that

questionwhichtoday is called radical andwhichis really the leastradical of

a l l : the quest ion of being (Sem) itself, as expressly formulated by the new

ontological

blueprints,

1

and as, despite all contraditions, fundamental to the

idealist systems, now allegedly overcome. This question assumes as the

possibility

of its answer that being itse lf is appropriate to thought and

available toi t,that the idea ofexistingbeing{des Seienden) can be examined.

Theadequacyofthinkingabout being as atotality,however, hasdegenerated

and consequently the idea of existing being has itse lf become impervious to

questioning, for the idea could stand

only

over a round and closed reality as a

starin clear

transparence,

and has nowperhapsfaded

f rom

viewfor all time,

ever since the images of our l i fe are guaranteed through history alone. The

idea of being has become powerless in philos ophy; i t is nothi ng more than an

empty form-pri ncipl e whose archaic dignity helps to cover any content

whatsoever. The fullness of the real, astotality,

does

not let

itse lf

be subsumed

under the idea of beingwhichmight allocate meaning to it ; nor can the idea

ofexistingbeing beb u i l tup out of elements of

reality.

It [the idea of being] is

lostfor philosophy, and thereby itsclaimto the totalityof the real is struck at

its

source.

The history of philosophyitse lfbearswitness to this. The crisis of idealism

comesat the

same

time as a crisis in philosophy's pretensions to totality. The

autonome ratio

[autonomous reason]thiswas the

thesis

of every idealistic

systemwassupposedto be capable of developing the concept of reality, and

This

speechwas deliver ed by Ado mo May 7, 1931, as his inau gura l lecture to the philosophy

faculty of the Univer sity of Frankf urt where he taught

u n t i l

19SS. The to pic of Adorno's f irst

seminar was Walter Benjamin's book, Ursprung des deulschen Trauerspiels (completed in 1925

and published in 1928), a study which Benjamin intended as his Habilitationsschrift but which

was rejected by the academic es tablishment. Ado rno's

speech

reflects strongly the influence of

Benjamin'sTrauerspiel study. It was to

have been

dedicated to Benjamin in published f o r m , but

the planned publication did not take place. The speechwas found in Adorno'sestate after his

death and appears for the

f irst

time in vol. 1 of his CesammeUe

Schriften.

1. Adornoisreferring to M a r t i nHeidegger's Sein und Ztit (1927),whichby 1931 had

made

a

significant

impact w i t h i n academic circles.

in fact all reality,from ou t of itself. This thesishas disintegrated. The Neo-

Kantianismof the Marburg School,which labored most strenuously to gain

the content of reality

from

logical categories, has indeed preserved its

self-contained fo rm as a system, but has thereby renounced every right over

reality

and has

withdrawn

int o aformalregion inwhichevery determination

of content is condemned to v i r tu a l l y the farthest point of an unending

process.

W i t h i n

idealism, the position opposed to the Marbu rg School,

Simmel's Lebensphilosophie

w i t h

its psychologistic and irrat ionali st orien

tations, has admittedly maintained contact

w i t h

the reality

w i t h

which it

deals, but in so doing has lost all

claim

to make

sense

out of the empirical

w o r l d

whichpressesin upon it , andbecomesresigned to thel i v i n g as a

b l i n d

and unenlightened concept of nature which itvainly attempts to raise the

unclear, illusory transcendence of the more-than- life . The southwest-

German School of Rickert,

finally, which

mediates between the extremes,

purport s that its values represent more concrete and applicable philo

sophical crit eria than the ideasof the Marburg School, and has developed a

method which sets empirical reality in relation, however questionable, to

thosevalues. But the locus and

source

of the values remains undetermine d;

they li e between logical necessity and psychologicalm u l t i p l i c i t y somewhere,

not bindingw i t h i n reality, not transparent w i t h i n themind, an ontology of

appearanceswhichis as l i t t l eable to

bear

the question of value-from-whence

as that of value-for-what. Working apart f rom the attempts at grand

resolutions of idealist philosophy are the scientistic philosophies, which give

up f romthe beginning thebasicidealist question regarding the constitution

of

reality and,

st i l l w i t h i n

the frame of a propadeutics of the separate,

developed disciplines, grant va l id i tyonlyto the natural sciences,and thereby

mean topossesssecureground in the given, be it the unity ofconsciousness

{Bewusstseinszusammenhang), or be it the research of the separate

disciplines.

Los ing contact

w i t h

the historical problems of philosophy, they

forgot

that in every assumption their ownstatementsare inext ricably bound

tohistorical problems and the history ofthose problems, and are not to be

resolved independent of them.

Inserted into this situation is the effort of the philosophic spirit which is

known

to us inpresent day under the name of phenomenology: the effort,

fo l lowin gthe disintegration of the idealistsystemsand w i t h the instrument of

idealism,

the autonome ratio, to gain a trans-subjective, bindi ng order of

being.It is thedeepestparadox of all phenomenological intent ions that, by

means

of thesamecategories produced by subjective, post-Cartesian thoug ht,

they strive to gain just that

objectivity

which these intentions originally

opposed. It is thus no accident that phenomenology i n Husserl took precisely

its starting point f rom transcendental idealism, and the late products of

phenomenology are all thelessable to disavow thiso r i g i n ,the more they try to

conceal it . It was the authentically productive and f r u i t f u l discovery of

Husserl more import ant t han the exter nally more effective method of

Wesenschau [essential intuition]that he recognized in the meaning o f the


6/11

/ TEWS

concept of the non-deducible given (unableitbaren Gegebenheit), as

developed by the

positivist

schools, the fundamental problem of the relati on

ship between reasonand

reality.

He rescued f rom psychology the concept of

the originally given in tu i t ion , and in the development of the descriptive

method ofphilosophy,hewonback a certainty ofl i m i t e danalysiswhich had

longbeen

lost in the

separate

disciplines. But i t cannot be denied and the

factthat Husserlexpressedit so openly isproof o fhis great and clear honesty

that every one of the Husserliananalysesof the givenrestson an im pl ic i t

system of transcendental idealism,whichHusserlultimately formulated: that

the jurisdiction

o f

reason (Rechtsrechnung der Vernunft) remains the court

of

f i n a l

appeal for the relation between

reason

and reality and that therefore

al l Husserlian descriptions belong to the domain of this reason. Husserl

purified

idealism

from

every

excess

of speculation and brought i t up to the

standard of the highest reali ty

w i t h i n

its reach. But he didn't burst it

[idealism]

open. As

w i t h

Cohen and Natorp, his domain is ruled by the

autonomous mind, w i t h the import ant difference, however, that he has

renounced the claim of the productive power of mind, the Kantian and

Fichtean spontaneity, and resigns himself, asonlyKant

himself

had done, to

takepossessionofthesphereofthatwhichis adequately w i t h i n his reach. The

traditional inte rpre tation of philosophical history of the last t h i r t y

years

would

l ike

to understand this self-resignation of Husserlian phenomenology as

its l i m i t a t i o n , and views it as the beginning of a development which leads

ultimately to the plan of working out just that order of being which in

Husserl's description of the noetic-noerriatic relationship could be

only

formally l a id out. I must e xp l ic i t l y contradict this interpretation. The

transitionto material phenomenology has onlyapparentlysucceeded, and

at the price of that certainty of the findings which alone provided the

legitimacy

of the phenomenological method. I f

in

MaxScheler'sdevelopment

the eternal,basictruths alternate i n sudden changes,to be exiled

f in a l l y

into

, the powerlessness of transcendence, then one can certainly recognize the

tirelesslyquestioning impulse of a thinking which

takes

part in

truth only

i n

moving

from error to error. ButScheler'spuzzling and disquieting develop

mentneedsto be understood more rigorously than as the fate of an individual

mind. On the contrary, it indicates that the transit ion of phenomenology

from

the formal-idealist to the materi al and objective region cannot succeed

w i t h

continuity or totalassurance, that instead the images of transhistorical

truth, whichat one time [Scheler's] philosophy projected so seductively onto

the background of closed, Catholic theory, became confused and disin

tegrated as soon as they were sought for in just that reality , the compre

hension of which was in fact precisely what constituted the program of

materialphenomenology. Scheler'slast changeof directionappears to me

to

possess

its authentic, exemplary va l id i ty i n his recognition of the gap

between the eternal ideas and re ality, the overcoming of which led

phenomenology to enter the materialsphere,as itse lf material-metaphysical,

and thus he abandoned reality to a b l i n d impulse(Drang) w i t h a relationship

TH E

ACTUALITY OF

PHIWSOPHY

/ 123

tothe heaven ofideasthat is dark and problematic, andleavesroom foronly

the weakest t race of hope. W i t h Scheler, material phenomenology has

dialectically

revoked itself.Only the metaphysics of the impulse is

left

over

f rom the ontological design; the only remaining eternity over which his

philosophy has disposal is that of a boundless and u ncont roll ed dynamic.

Viewed under the

aspect

of this self-revocation of phenomenology,

Heidegger's theory alsopresents itse lf differently than is apparent from the

pathos of the beginningwhich is responsible for its external effect.

W i t hHeidegger, atleasti n his publishedwritings,the question of objective

ideasand objective being has

been

replaced by the subjective. The challenge

of

materi al ontology is reduced to the re alm of

subjectivity, w i t h i n

thedepths

of which itsearchesfor what it was not able to locate in the open fullness of

reality.I t is thus no accident, in thephilosophical-historical

sense

aswe l l ,that

Heidegger

falls

back on precisely the latest plan for a subjective ontology

produced by Western thinking: the existentialist philosophy of Soren

Kierkegaard. But Kierkegaard's plan is irre parably shattered. No f i r ml y

grounded being hasbeenable to reach Kierkegaard's

restless,

inner-subjective

dialectic;

the last depth which opened up to it was that o f the despair int o

whichsubjectivity disintegrated, an objective despair which transformed the

design of being w i t h i n subjectivity into a design of h e l l . It knows of no

other way to

escape

this hellish

space

than by a leap int otranscendence

whichremains an inauthentic and empty act of thought, itse lfsubjective, and

whichfinds its highest deter mination in the paradox that herethe subjective

mind must sacrifice itse lf and retain belief instead, the contents ofwhich,

accidental for

subjectivity,

derive solelyf rom the

Bib l ic a l

word. Onlythrough

the assumption of an essentially undialectical and historically pre-dialectical

ready at hand (zurhanden) reali ty is Heidegger able to evade such a

consequence. However, a leap and an undialectical negation

(Negat)

of

subjective being is also Heidegger's ultimate justification,

w i t h

the sole

difference that the analysis of the existing there (Vorfindlichen), whereby'

, Heidegger remains bound to phenomenology and breaks in principle w i t h

Kierkegaard's idealist speculation, avoids thetranscendenceofbelief whichis

grasped spontaneously

w i t h

the sacrifice of subjective mind, and instead

recognizes solely the transcendence to a vitalist thus being (Sosein): in

death. W i t h Heidegger's metaphysics of death, phenomenology seals a

development

which

Scheler already inaugurated

w i t h

the theory of impulse.

I t cannot be concealed that phenomenology is on the verge of ending in

precisely that vitalism against which it originally declared battle: the

transcendenceof death

w i t h

Simmel is distinguished

f rom

Heidegger's solely

in

that it remains

w i t h i n

psychological categorieswhereasHeidegger

speaks

in

ontological

ones.However, in the material itself, for example in the analysis

ofthe anxiety phenomenon, itwouldbe hard tof ind asureway to distinguish

them.

I n

accordance

w i t h

this interpre tation of the transition of phenomeno

logy into vitalism, Heidegger could evade the second great threat to


7/11

12 4

/

TELOS

phenomenological ontology, that posedby historicism, only by ontologizing

time itself, i.e., putt ing it fo r thas thatwhich constituted theessenceof man

whereby the

effort

of material phenomenology to discover the etern al i n man

paradoxically dissolved: as eternal, only temporality remained. The claims of

phenomenology are satisfied only bythosecategories, f rom the absolute rule

of

which phenomenology wanted thought to be exempt: mere subjectivity

and

mere

temporality.

W i t h

the concept of thrownness (Geworfenheit),

which is set fo r th as the ultimate conditi on of man's being, l i fe by itse lf

becomesas b l i n d and meaninglessas only it was inLebensphilosophie, and

death is as incapable of alott ing a positive meanin g

here

as there. The

claim

ito totality made by thought is thrown back upon thought itself, and it is

finally shattered there too. A ll that is needed is an understanding of the

narrowness of the Heideggerian existentialcategoriesof thrownness , anxiety,

and death,

which

are in fact not able to banish t he fullness of what is

l iv ing ,

and the pure concept of l i f e completely

seizes

the Heideggerian ontological

blueprint. If appearances are not deceiving, then

w i t h

this further

development, phenomenological philosophy is preparing for its own final

disintegration.

For the second time, philosophy stands powerless before the

question of being . It can no more describe being as free-standing and funda

mental than it was able earlier to develop it f rom out of itself.

have discussedthe most recent history of philosophy, not for a general

intellectual history orientation, but because only out of the historical

entanglement of questions and answers

does

the question of philosophy's

actualityemergeprecisely. And that simplymeans,after the failure of efforts

for

a grand and to tal philosophy: whether philosophy isitse lfat all actual. By

actuality

i$ understood not its

vague

maturity or immaturi ty on the basis

of no n-binding conceptions regarding the general int ellectual situ ation, but

much more: whether, after the failur e of the last great efforts, there exists an

adequacybetween the philosophic questions and the possibility of their being

answered at al l; whether the authentic results of the recent hi story of

these

problems is the essential unanswerability of the cardin al philosophic

questions. The question is in no way rhetorical, but should be taken very

l i t e ra l l y .

Every philosophy which today

does

not depend on the security of

current intellectual and social conditions, but instead upon truth, sees itself

facing the problem of aliquidationof philosophy. Thesciences,particularly

the logical and mathematical sciences, have set about the liquidation of

philosophywith an

earnestness

which hardly ever existed before. Thi s

earnestness is so significant because the

separate

sciences, including the

mathematical natural sciences, have long since rid themselves of the

naturalistic conceptual

apparatus

that, in the 19th century,

made

them

inferiorto idealist theories of knowledge, and theyhavetotally annexed the

contents ofcognitivecriticism.

W j t h

the help ofsharpened, c r i t i c a l ,cognitive

methods, the most advanced logic

I am thinkingof the new Vien na School

as it proceeded

f rom

Schlick, and is now carri ed on by

Camap

and Dubislav

in close connection

w i t h

Russell and the logical analystsis atte mpting to

THE ACTUALITY OF PHILOSOPHY

/

125

keep all authentic, wider-r eaching knowledge of experience in exclusive

reserve, and tries tosearchfor all propositions which in any way reach out

beyond the circle of experience an d its relativity, solely in tautologies, i n

analytical

propositions. Acco rdin g to this, the K anti an question as to the

constitution ofa priori synthetic judgments would be utterly meaningless,

becausethereis absolutely no such thing as thisk i n d

of

judgment; every move

beyond that which is veri fiable by the power of experience is preven ted;

philosophy becomes solely an occasion for ordering and controlling the

separatesciences,without being allowed to append anythi ng essential from

itse lf

to the ir findings. Associated as complement and supplement to the ideal

of such absolutely scientific philosophynot, to be sure, for the Vienna

School, but for every viewwhich wants to defend philosophy f rom the claims

of

an exclusively scient ific methodwhilein fact itse lf recognizing that this

claim

is a concept of philosophy as an art f o r m , whose lack of bin din g force

before t ru th is excelled only by itsunfamiliarity

w i t h

art and its ownaesthetic

in fe r io r i ty . Itwouldbe better just to li quidate philosophyonceand fora ll and

dissolve it into the particular disciplines than to come to its aid w i t h a poetic

ideal

which means nothing more than a poor ornamental cover for faulty

thinking.

I t must be said here that the thesis that all philosophic questioning in

principle can be dissolved into that of theseparate

sciences

is even today in no

way

so philosophically presuppositionless as it

makes

itse lf

out to be. I

would

simply

l iketo recall two problemswhichcould not be mastered on thebasisof

this thesis. First, the problem of the meaning of the given itself, the

fundamental category of all empiricism,whichmaintains the question of the

accompanying subject, which in turn can only be answered historico-

philosophically,

because the subject of the given is not ahistorically iden

tical and transcendental, but rather assumes changing and historically

comprehensible forms. This problem is not even posed in the frame of

empirio-criticism,

including the most modern, but instead it naivelyaccepts

the Kant ian point of departure . The other problem is familiar to it, but

solved only arbit rari ly and wit hout any stringency. The problem of the

unknown

consciousness,

the alien ego, can be

made accessible

for empirio-

criticism only throug h analogy, composed subsequently on the basisof

one's

ow n

experience,

whereas

in fact the empirio-cri tical method already

necessarily assumes unknown consciousness in the language it has at i ts

disposal. Solely by posing

these

problems, the theory of the Vienna School is

drawn into precisely that philosophic continuity f rom which it wanted to

distance itself. Yet thatsaysnothing against t he extraordinary importance of

this School. I view its significance less in that it might have successfully

converted philosophy intosciencethan in that its rigorous formulation of the

scientific in philosophysharpens the contours of the contents of philosophy

not subject to logic and the separate sciences. Philosophy

wi l l

not be

transformed into

science,

but under the pressure of the empiricist attack it

wi l lbanish from itse lfall questioningwhich,as specifically scientific, belongs


8/11

12 6

/ TELOS

THE ACTUALITY OF PHILOSOPHY / 127

of

rightto theseparate

sciences

and clouds philosophic questioning. I do not

mean tosuggestthat philosophy should give up or even slacken that contact

w i t hseparate

scienceswhich it has f in a l l y regained, and the attainment of

whichcounts among the most fortunate results of the most recent intel lectu al

history.

Quite the contrary. Philosophy wi l l be able to understand the

materialcontent and concretion of problemsonly

w i t h i n

thepresentstanding

of the separate sciences.I t wi l l also not be allowed to raise itse lf above such

sciences

by accepting their results as finished and medit atin g upon them

f rom asafedistance. Rather, philosophic problems wi l llie always, and in a

certain

sense

irredeemably, locked

w i t h i n

the most specific questions of the

separatesciences. Philosophy distinguishes itse lf fromsciencenot by a higher

level of generality, as the banal

view

st i l l today assumes, nor through the

abstraction of its categories nor thr oug h the nature of its materials . The

central difference lies far more in that the

separate

sciences accept their

findings, atleasttheirf in a land

deepest

findings, as indestructible and static,

whereas philosophy perceives the

first finding

which it lights upon as a sign

that

needs

unriddling. Plainly pu t: the idea of science (Wissenschaft) is

research; that of philosophy is interpr etation . In this remains the great,

perhapsthe everlasting paradox: philosophy persistently and w i t h the claim

of truth, niust proceed interpretively

without

ever possessing a sure key to

interpretation; nothing more is given to it than

fleeting,

disappearing traces

w i t h i nthe riddle figures of thatwhichexists and their astonishing entwin ings .

Thehistory

o f

philosophyisnothingother than the history of such entwinings.

Thus it

reaches

so few results. It must always begin anew and therefore

cannot do

without

the least thread Which earlier times have spun, and

throughwhich the lineature isperhapscompletedwhichcould transform the

ciphers into a text.

I t

follows,then, that the idea of interpretation in no way coincides w i t h the

problem

of meaning,

w i t h

whichit is mostly confused. It just is not the task

of philosophy to present such a meaning positively, to portray reality as

meaningful and thereby ju s t i fy i t. Every such justification of that which

exists is prohi bited by the fragmentation in being itself .Whileour images of

perceived

reality

may very

we l l

beGestalten, the

w o r l d

i nwhichwe

l ive

is not;

it is constituteddifferently than out of mere images of percept ion. The text

which

philosophy has to read is incomplete, con tradict ory and fragmentary,

and much in it may be delivered up to b l i n d demons; in fact

perhaps

the

reading of it is our task precisely so that we, by reading, can better learn to

recognize the demonic forces and to banish them. At the

same

time the idea

of

interpretationdoesnot mean tosuggesta second, asecret w o r l dwhichis to

be opened up through an analysis ofappearances.The dualism of the in t e l l i

gible

and the

empirical,

as was formulated by Kant and only f rom the post-

Kantianperspective was attributed to Plato, whose heaven ofideas st i l l lies

undisguised and open to the mindthi s dualism is better ascribed to the idea

of researchthan that of interpretationthe idea ofresearch, which

assumes

the reducti on of the question to given and known elements where n oth ing

would seem necessary except the answer. He who interprets by searching

behindthe phenomenal w o r l dfor aworld-in-itself(Welt ansich) whichforms

its

foundation and support,

acts

mistakenlyl ikesomeonewho wants to f ind in

the riddle the reflection of a beingwhich lies behind i t, a being mirrore d in

the

riddle,

inwhich it is contained. Instead, the

function

of

riddle-solving

is

to l igh tup the

riddle-Gestalt

l ikelightningand tonegateit(aufzuheben), not

to

persist behind the riddle and imitate it. Authenti c philosophic interpre

tation does

not meet up

w i t h

a

f ixe d

meaningwhichalready lies behind the

question, but lights it up suddenly and momentarily, and consumes it at the

same

time.

Just

as riddle-solving is constituted, in that the singular and

dispersed elements of the question are brought into various groupings long

enough for them to close together in a figure out ofwhichthe solution springs

fo r th , whilethe questiondisappearssophilosophy has to

bring

its elements,

whichit receives from thesciences,into changing constellations, or , to say it

w i t hless

astrological and

scientifically

more current expression, into changing

t r i a l

combinations,

u n t i l

they

fal l

into a figure which can be read as an

answer, while at the same time the question disappears. The task of

philosophyis not tosearch for concealed and manifest in tent ions of reali ty,

b.ut to interpret unin tentional reality, in that, by the power of constructing

figures, or images Bilder), out of the isolated elements of reali ty, it

negates

(aujhebt) questions, the exact arti culat ion ofwhich is the task of science,

2

a

task to

which

philosophy always remains bound,

because

its power of

illumination

is not able to catch

fire

otherwise than on

these

solid

questions.

Here one can discover what

appears

as such an astounding and strange

a f f in i ty exist ing between interpret ive philosophy and that type of thinking

which most strongly rejects the concept of the intentional, the meaningful:

the thinking of materialism. Interpret ation of the un intent ional through a

juxtapositionof theanalyticallyisolated elements andilluminationof the real

by

the power of such inte rpre tation is the prog ram of every authent ically

materialist

knowledge, a program towhich the materialist procedure

does

all

the more justice, the more it distances itse lf from every meaning of its

objects and thelessitrelatesitse lfto ani m p l i c i t ,quasi-religious meaning. For

long

ago, interpretation divorced

itse lf from

all questions of meaning or, in

other words, the symbols of philosophy are decayed. I f philosophy must learn

to renounce the question oftotality, then it implies that it must learn to do

withoutthe symbolicfunction, in

which

for a long time, at

least

in idealism,

the particular appearedt orepresent the general. It must give up the great

problems, the size ofwhich once hoped to guarantee the totality, whereat


9/11

128 / TELOS

TH E

ACTUALITY

OF PHILOSOPHY / 129

Construction out of small and unintentionalelements thus

counts

among the

basic

assumptionsof philosophic interpret ation; turn ing to the refuseof the

physical w o r l d (Abhub der Erscheinungswelt) which Freud proclaimed, has

va l id i ty beyond the realm of psychoanalysis, ju st as the tu rn in g of progressive

social philosophy to economics has va l id i ty not merely due to the empirical

super iori ty of economics, but just as much because of the immanent

requirements of philosophic interpre tation itself. Should philosophy today ask

about the

absolute

relationship between the thi ng-in- itse lf and appearance,

or, to

grasp

a more current formulation, about simply the meaning of being,

it would either remain formal and unbinding, or it would split itse lf into a

multitude of possible and arbit rary world-view positions (weltanschaulicher

Standpunkte).

Suppose, howeverI give an example as a thought experiment , wi thout

suggesting its actual feasibilitysuppose i t were possible to group the

elements

of a social analysis in such amannerthat the way they

came

together

madea figure which certainly

does

not lie before us organically, but which

must firstbe posited: t he commodity structure . This would hardly solve the

thing-in-itself

problem, not even in the

sense

that somehow the social

conditions might be revealed underwhi ch the thing-in-itself problem came

into

existence, as Lukacs even thought the solut ion to be;

3

for the tr uth

content of a problem is in principl e different f romthe his torical and psycho

logical

conditions out of

which

it grows. But it might be possible that,

from

a

sufficient

construction of the commodity structure, the thing -in-it self

problem absolutelydisappeared. L i k easourceofl i g h t ,the historical figure of

commodity and ofexchangevalue may free the fo rmof a reality , the hidden

meaning of which remained closed to invest igation of the thing -in-it self

problem, because there is no hidden meaning which could be redeemable

f rom its one-time and first-time historical appearance. I don't want to give

any material

statements

here, but only point out the direction for what I

perceive as the tasks of philosophic interpretation. But even simply the

correct formulation ofthesetaskswou ld establish several things concerning

those questions of philosophic principle, the explicit expression of which I

would

l ike to avoid. Namely this : that the funct ion which the trad iti onal

philosophic inqu iry expected f rommeta-historical, symbolically meaningful

ideas is accomplished by inner-hi storically constituted, non-symbolic ones.

W i t h this, however, the relationship between ontology and history woul dalso

be differently posited, i n principle , without thereby allow ing the device of

ontologizing

history as totality in the fo rm of mere historicity, whereby

every specific tension between int erpret atio n and the object would be lost,

and merely a masked his torici sm wou ld remain. Instead of this, according to

my

conception, history would no more be the

place

f rom which ideas arise,

stand out independently anddisappearagain. On the contrary, the historical

images(geschichtliche Bilder) woul d at the same time be themselves ideas,

the configuration of which constituted uninten tional tr uth (intentionslose

5. Cf. Georg Lukacs. Ceschichti und Klautnbeumiilstm (1923).

Wahrheit), rather than that tr uth

appeared

in history as intention.

But

I break off the thought here: for nowhere are general statementsmore

questionable than in a philosophy which wants to exclude abstract and

general statements and requires t hem only in the necessity of transition.

Instead, I would l ike to point out a second essential connection between

interpretive philosophy and materialism. I said that the riddle's answer was

not the meaning of the riddle in thesensethat both could exist at thesame

time. The answerwas contained w i t h i n the riddle, and the riddle portrayed

only

its own

appearance

and contained the

answer

wi th in i t se l f

as intention.

Far more, the answer stands in strict antithesis to the riddle,needs to be

constructed out of the riddle's

elements,

anddestroysthe riddle, which is not

meaningful, but

meaningless,

as soon as theansweris decisively given to it.

The movement whichoccurs in this process is executed in

earnestness

by

materialism. Earnestness means here that the answer does not remain

mistakenly in the closed

area

of knowledge, but that praxis is granted to i {

The in terpre tation of given reality and its abolition are connected to

each

other, not, ofcourse,in the sensethat reality isnegatedin the concept, bu t

that out of the construction of a configuration of reality the demand for its

[reality's] realchangealwaysfollowspromptly. Thechange-causing gestureof

the riddle

process

not itsmere resolu tion as such provides the image of

resolutions to which materialist praxis

alone

has access. Mater iali sm has

named this relationship

w i t h

a

name

that is philosophically certi fied:

dialectic. Only dialectically, it seems to me, is philosophic interpretation

possible. When Marx reproached the philosophers, saying that they had only

variously interpreted the w o r l d , and contraposed to them that the point was

tochangeit, then the

sentence

receivesits legitimacy not only out ofpolitical

praxis, but also out of philosophic theory. On ly in the annih ilati on of the

question is the authenticity of philosophic interpretation first successfully

proven, and mere thought by itse lf cannot accomplish this [auth ent icit y]:

therefore the annihil ati on of the question compels praxis. It is superfluous to

separate out

e xp l ic i t l y

a conception of pragmatism, in which theory and

praxis entwine

w i t h

each other as they do in the dialectic.

am clearly

conscious

of the

impossibility

of developing the program which

presented youan impossibilit y whichstems not only f rom the l im i t so f

time, but exists generally, because precisely as a program it does not allow

i tse lfto be worked out incompletenessand generali ty. Nevertheless, I clearly

sec i t as my duty to give you several suggestions.First: the idea of philosophic

interpretationdoesnot shrink back f rom that liquidationof philosophy which

to meseemssignalled by the collapse of the last philosophic claims to totality.

For the st rict exclusion of all ontologicalquestionsin the traditionalsense, the

avoidance of invarian t general concepts, also perhapsthe concept ofman, the

.exclusion of every conception of a self-sufficient to tali ty of min d Geist), orof

a self-contained history of

mind ;

the concentration of philosophicquestions

on

concrete

inner-historical complexes f rom w hich they are not to be

detachedthesepostulatesindeed becomeextremely similar to a dissolution


10/11

13 0 / TELOS

THE ACTUALITY OF PHIWSOPHY / 131

of thatwhichhas

long

been called philosophy. Whereas (at least the

offic ia l)

lcontemporary philosophic thinking has

long

kept its distance f rom

these

demands, or in anycasehas att empted to assimilate them

singly

in a watered-

down f o r m ,

one of the

first

and most actual tasks

would

appear to be the

radical

criticismof the

ruling

philosophic thinking. I am not

afraid

of the

reproach ofu n f r u i t f u l negativityan expression which Gottfried Kelleronce

characterized as a gingerbread expression (Pfefferkuchenausdruck). I f

philosophic

interpr etation can in factonlyprosper

dialectically,

then the

first

dialectical

point of attack is given by a philosophywhichcultivates precisely

those

problems whose removal

appears

more pressingly

necessary

than the

addition

of a new answer to so many old

ones. Only

an essentially

undialectical

philosophy, onewhichaims at ahistoricaltruth,

could

maintain

that the old problems

could simply

be removed by forgetting them and

starting fresh f rom the beginning. In fact, the deception of beginning is

precisely

that

which

in Heidegger's phi losophy comes under

criticism first

of

a l l . Only in the strictest dialectical communication

w i t h

the most recent

solution-attempts of philosophy and of philosophic terminology can a real

changein philosophicconsciousness

prevail.

Thiscommunicat ion

wi l l

have to

take its specific scientific material preponderantly

from

sociology and, as

the interpretive groupingprocess demands, crystalize out the small , unin

tentional elements which are nonetheless st i l l bound to philosophic

material.

One of the most

powerful

academic philosophers of the present [Heidegger]

issaid to have answered the question of the relationship between philosophy

and sociology somewhat l ike this: while the philosopher is l ike an architect

wh o presentsand develops the bluepr int of a house, the sociologist is

l ike

the

cat burglar who climbs the walls f rom outside and takes out what he can

reach. I wquld be inclined to acknowledge the comparison and to int erpr et

positively

the

function

he gave sociology for philosophy. For the house, this

bi g house, has

long

since decayed in its foundations and threatensnotonlyt o

destroy al l thoseinsidei t,but tocauseall the things to vanishwhichare stored

w i t h i n it. much ofwhich is irreplaceable. I f the cat burglar

steals

these

things, these

singular, indeed often half-forgotten things, he

does

a good

deed, provi ded that they areonly rescued; he wi l lscarcelyholdonto them for

long,

since they are for him

only

of

scant

worth.

Of course, the appreciati on

of

sociology by philosophic inte rpre tati on requires some limitations. The

point

of interpretive philosophy is to construct keys, before which

reality

springs open. As to the size of the key categories, they are specially made t o

order. The old idealismchosecategories too large; so they di d not even come

close to

f i t t in g

the keyhole. Pure philosophic sociologismchooses them too

small;

the key indeed

goes

in , but the door doesn't open. A great number of

sociologists carry nominal ism so far that the concepts become too small to

align the others w i t h themselves, to enter w i t h them

into

a constellation.

What

remains is a vast, inconsistent connect ion of simple this-here deter

minations, whichscoffs at every cognit ive orde rin g and in no way provides a

critical criterion. Thus, for example, the concept ofclass is n u l l i f i e d and

replaced by countless descriptions of

separate

groups so that they can no

longer be arranged

into

overlapping unities, although they i n fact appear as

such in

empirical reality.

Similarly,one of the most import ant concepts, that

of

ideology,

4

is robbed of its cutting

edge

by

defining

it formally as the

arrangement of contents of consciousness in regard to particular groups,

without

allowingthe question to arise any longer as to the truth orfalsityof

the contents themselves. This sociology classifies itse lf as a k i n d of general

relativism,

the generality of

which

can be no more recognized by philosophic

interpretationthan can any other generality, and for the correction of

which

philosophy possessesa

sufficient

means in the dialectical method.

I n regard to the manipu lation of conceptual material by philosophy, I

speak purposely of grouping and

t r ia l

arrangement, of constellation and

construction.Th e

historical

images, which do not constitute the meaning of

being(Dasein) bu t dissolve and resolve its questions are notsimplyself-given.

They

do notl ie

organically

ready in

history;

not showing

(Schau [Husserl])

or

i n t u i t i o n is requ ired to become aware of them. They are not

magically

sentby

the gods to be taken in and venerated. Rather, they must be produced by

human beings and are legit imated in the last analysis alone by the fact t hat

reality

crystalizes about them instriking conclusiveness (Evidenz

[Husserl]).

Here they divorce themselves cen trally f rom the archaic, the mythic

archetypes

Urbilder)

which

psychoanalysis lights upon, and

which

[ L u d w i g ]

Klages hopes to preserve as categories of ouf knowledge. Should they be

equivalent to them in a hundred characteristics, they

separate

themselves at

the poin t wherethose[archetypes] describe t heir fatali sticorbit in the heads

of

human beings. Thehistoricalimages are manageable and comprehensible,

instruments of human reason, even there where theyseemtoalign themselves

objectively,

as magnetic centers of objective being. They are models, by

meansofwhich theratio, examining and testing,approachesa

reality

which

refuses

to submit to laws, yet can imitate the pattern of the model every

time,

provided

that pattern is

imprinted

correctly. One may seeherean attempt to

re-establish that o ld concept of philosophywhichwas formulated by Bacon

and passionately contended around the time ofLeibniz, a conceptionwhich

idealism

derided as a fad: that of thears inveniendi [art ofinvention].Every

other conception of models

would

be gnostic and indefensible. But the

organon of thisars inveniendi is fantasy. An exact fantasy; fantasy which

abides strictly w i t h i nthe materialwhichthesciencespresent to

i t,

andreaches

beyond them only in the smallest

aspects

of their arrangement: aspects,

granted, which fantasy itse lf must originally generate. I f the idea of

philosophicinterpretationwhichItriedto develop for you isva l id ,then it can

be expressed as the demand to answer the questions of a pre-given

reality

each

time,

through a fantasy which rearranges the elements of the question

without

goi ng beyond the circumference of the elements, the exactitude of

which has its control in the disappearance of the question.

4.

Adorno is referring to K a r l Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (1929).


11/11

132 / TELOS

THE

ACTUALITY

OF

PHILOSOPHY

/ 133

know fu l l

we l l

that many, perhapsmost of you are not inagreement

w i t h

what I am presenting here. Not only scientific thinking but, st i l l more,

fundamental ontology contradicts my conviction as to the curre nt tasksof

philosophy. But

thinking which

aims at relations w i t h the object, and not at

va l id i ty isolated in itself, is accustomed to prove its right to exist not by

refuting

the objections which are voiced against i t and which consider

themselves irrefutable, but by its fruitfulness, in the

sense

i nwhich Goethe

used

the te rm. Nonetheless, may I

st i l l

perhaps

address

a word to the most

current objections, not as Ihaveconstrued them, but as the representativesof

fundamental ontology formulate them, and as they

first

led me to formulate

the theory according to which, up u n t i l then, I had proceeded solely in the

praxis of philosophic interpretation.

The central objection is that my conception, too, isbased on a concept of

man, a bluepri nt of Being Entwurf des Daseins); only, out of b l i n d anxiety

before the power of history, I allegedly shrank f rom puttingthese invariants

fo r th clearly and

left

them clouded; instead I bestowed upon historical

facticity, or its arrangement , the power which actually belongs to the

invariant, ontological first principles, practiced idolatry w i t hhistorically

produced being, destroyed i n philosophy every permanent standard,

sublimated it into an aestheticpicturegame

Bilderspiel).

and transformed

the-prima philosophia [philosophy of first principles] intoessayism.

'

Inresponse, I can relate to these objections only by admitting of their

content, but I defend it as philosophically legitimate. I

w i l l

not decide

whether a particular conception of man and being lies at t he baseof my

theory, but I do deny the necessity of resorting to this conception. It is an

idealist demand, that of an absolute beginnin g, as only pure t hought byitse lf

can accomplish. It is a Cartesian demand, whichbelieves itnecessarytoraise

thinking to the fo rm of its thought presuppositions and axioms. However,

philosophy which no longer makes the assumption of autonomy, which no

longer believes reality to be grounded in the ratio, but instead assumesalways

and forever that thelaw-givingof autonomousreason piercesthrough a being

which is notadequate to it and cannot be l a id out rationally as a total i ty-

such a philosophy

wi l l

not go the entire path to the ration al presuppositions,

but instead

wi l l

stop therewhere irre ducible reality

breaks

in upon i t. I f it

proceeds

furthe r in to the region of presuppositions, t hen it

w i l l

be able to

reach them onlyformally,and at the price of that reality inwhich its actual

tasks

are l a i d .The break-in of what is irredu cible, however, occurs concrete-

historically

and thus it is historywhichretardsthe movement of thought to its

presuppositions. The product ivi ty of thinking is able to prove itse lf only

dialectically, in historicalconcreteness. Both thought and history come into

communication w i t h i n the models. Regarding efforts to achieve a fo rm

for such communication , I gladly put up

w i t h

the reproach ofessayism. The

English empiricists called their philosophic writingsessays, as did Leibniz,

because the power of freshly disclosed reality, upon which their thinking

struck, continuously forced upon them the risk of experimentati on. Not u n t i l

the post-Kantian century was the risk of experimentation lost, along

w i t h

the

power of reality. Thus f rom a fo rmof great philosophy theessaybecame an

insignificant fo rm of aesthetics, in

which

a concretion of interpretation

nonetheless takes refuge as appearance (Schein), over which authentic

philosophy, in the gran d dimensions of its problems, has long since lost

disposal.

If ,

w i t h

the disintegration of all security

w i t h i n

great philosophy,

experimentmakesits ent ry; i f it thereby ties onto the l i m i t e d , contoured and

unsymbolic interpretations ofaestheticessays,then thatdoesnot

appear

to be

condemnable, provided that the objects are

chosen

correctly, that they are

real. For themind Geist) is indeed notcapableof producing or grasping the

totalityof the real, but it may be possible topenetratethe det ail, to explode in

miniature the mass of merely existing reality.

Working Papers in Cultural Studies 10

ON IDEOLOGY

The first part of the 1977 issue wi l l analysedifferent concepts of ideology

with in

the marxist tradition. The theorists considered wi l l include Gramsci,

Althusser, and Poulantzas. A

series

of

case

studiesare presented in the second

part. These involve the ideologicalaspectsof the crisis in education, a critique

of

sociological notions ofworking

class

' community ', and a commentary on the

problems of ideology in marxistaesthetics.

AVAILABLE APRIL

977

1.75

CENTRE FOR

CONTEMPORARY

C U L T U R A LSTUDIES

UNIVERSITYOF

B I R M I N G H A M

B I R M I N G H A M

15

:

adorno, 'the actuality of philosophy' (1931; 1977 telos ed)

Documents