Adorno Primer For The

Seattle Reading Group

July 7, 2014

C O N T E N T S

i excerpts from the positivist dispute in

german sociology 2

1 introduction - adorno 3

1.1 A Section 88

2 test chapter 89

2.1 A Section 89

ii appendix 91

a appendix chapter 92

a.1 A Section 92

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Part I

E X C E R P T S F R O M T H E P O S I T I V I S TD I S P U T E I N G E R M A N S O C I O L O G Y

1I N T R O D U C T I O N - A D O R N O

‘Open Sesame! I want to get out.’Stanislav Jerzy Lec

In his incisive remarks on the Tübingen discussion of thetwo papers which marked the beginning in Germany ofthe public controversy on dialectics and positivistic sociol-ogy in the broadest sense, [1] Ralf Dahrendorf regrets thatthe discussion ‘generally lacked the intensity that wouldhave been appropriate to the actual differences in views'.[2] According to him, some of the participants in the dis-cussion censured 'the lack of tension between the symposi-asts' papers'. [3] Dahrendorf, for his part, senses 'the ironyof such points of agreement' and suggests that profounddifferences in the matters discussed are hidden behind sim-ilarities in formulation. But the conciliatory attitude of thetwo symposiasts was not the only reason why no discus-sion might actually came about in which reasons and coun-ter-reasons might have interacted upon one another. Thesymposiasts were primarily concerned to make their posi-tions in general theoretically commensurable. Nor was itmerely a question of the attitude of [1/2] several partic-ipants in the discussion who asserted their estrangementfrom philosophy—an estrangement which, in some cases,has only recently been acquired. The dialecticians have ex-

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plicit recourse to philosophy, but the methodological inter-ests of the positivists are hardly less alien to naively prac-tised research activity. Both speakers, however, ought toplead guilty to one genuine lack which obstructed the dis-cussion. Both failed to achieve the complete mediation oftheir theoretical interests with sociology as such. Much ofwhat they said referred to science in general. A degree ofbad abstraction is posited in all epistemology, and even inthe criticism of it. [4] Anyone who does not remain satisfiedwith the immediacy of scientific procedure and renouncesits requirements secures together with a less restricted view,illegitimate advantages. However, the claim that was occa-sionally voiced, namely that the Tübingen discussion con-fined itself to preliminaries and consequently was of no useto sociology as a distinctive discipline, misses the point. Ar-guments which commit themselves to the analytical theoryof science without inquiring into its axioms—and 'prelim-inaries' can only imply this—become caught up in the in-fernal machine of logic. No matter how faithfully one mayobserve the principle of immanent critique, it cannot be ap-plied in an unreflected manner when logical immanenceitself, regardless of any particular content, is elevated tothe sole standard. The critique of its constraining characteris included in an immanent critique of an unleashed logic.Thought assumes this constraining character through un-thinking identification with formal logical processes. Imma-nent critique has its limitation in the fetishized principle ofimmanent logic: this principle must be called by its propername. Moreover, the material relevance of the supposedlypreliminary discussions is by no means excluded in soci-ology. For instance, whether one can talk of ideology de-pends directly upon whether one can distinguish betweenillusion and essence, and is thus a central piece of sociolog-

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ical doctrine extending into all ramifications of the subject..This material relevance of what sounds like epistemologi-cal or logical preliminaries is explained by the fact that therelevant controversies are, for their part, of a latently mate-rial nature. Either, knowledge of society is interwoven withthe latter, and society enters the science of society in a con-crete form, or society is [2/3] simply a product of subjectivereason, beyond all further inquiry about its own objectivemediations.

But behind the censured abstractness of the discussionlie far more serious difficulties. For the discussion to bepossible it must proceed according to formal logic. But thethesis concerning the priority of the latter is, in turn, thecore of the positivistic or—to replace the perhaps all tooloaded term with one which might be acceptable to Pop-per—scientistic view of any science, sociology and the the-ory of science included. Amongst the topics in the contro-versy which must be considered is the question whetherthe inescapable logicality of the procedure actually givesabsolute primacy to logic. But thoughts which demandthe critical self-reflection of the primacy of logic in concretedisciplines inevitably end in a tactical disadvantage. Theymust reflect upon logic with the aid of means which, inturn, are largely logical—a contradiction of the type thatWittgenstein, as the most reflective positivist, realized alltoo clearly. If the present inevitable debate became oneof 'Weltanschauungen' and were conducted from externallyopposed standpoints, then it would a priori be unfruitful.But if it enters into argumentation then there is the dangerthat if the rules governing one position were to be tacitlyrecognized then this would inevitably supply the object ofthe discussion.

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Dahrendorf answered my remark that it was not a mat-ter of difference in standpoint but rather of determinabledifferences, with the question 'whether the first statementwas correct but the latter false'. [5] Whilst in his view thetwo positions did not exclude discussion and argument,the differences in the type of argumentation were so pro-found 'that one must doubt whether Popper and Adornocould even agree upon a procedure with the aid of whichtheir differences could be decided'. [6] The question is agenuine one. It can only be answered after the attempthas been made to produce such a decision and not before.This attempt should be made since the amiable tolerancetowards two different coexisting types of sociology wouldamount to nothing more than the neutralization of the em-phatic claim to truth. The task itself is paradoxical. Thecontroversial questions must be discussed without logicis-tic prejudice, but also without dogmatism. Habermas im-plies this effort, and not crafty eristic arts, with the formu-lations 'flanking strategy' or 'behind positivism's back'. A[3/4] theoretical position ought to be found from whichone can respond to the other person without, however, ac-cepting a set of rules which are themselves a theme of thecontroversy—an intellectual no man's land. But this posi-tion cannot be conceived, in terms of a model derived fromextensional logic, as something even more general than thetwo opposing positions. It is made concrete since even sci-ence, including formal logic, is not only a social force ofproduction but also a social relation of production. Onemay doubt whether this is acceptable to the positivists. Itcritically affects the basic thesis of the absolute indepen-dence of science and its constitutive character for all knowl-edge. One ought to ask whether a valid disjunction existsbetween knowledge and the real life-process, or whether it

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is not rather the case that knowledge is mediated throughthe latter; or whether its own autonomy, through which ithas made itself productively independent of its genesis andobjectivated itself, can be derived, in turn, from its socialfunction; or whether it forms an immanent context and yet,in terms of its constitution, is situated in a field which sur-rounds it and even acts upon its immanent structure. Butsuch a dual nature, no matter how plausible, would clashwith the principle of non-contradiction, science would thenbe both independent and dependent. A dialectics whichadvocated this could, in so doing, no more act as if it were'privileged thought' than it could elsewhere. It cannot setitself up as a specific subjective capacity, with which oneperson is gifted but which is denied to others. Nor canit present itself as intuitionism. Conversely, the positivistsmust make sacrifices. They must relinquish the attitudewhich Habermas calls the 'systematic pretence of failure tounderstand', and not unhesitatingly disqualify out of handas unintelligible anything that fails to coincide with their'criteria of meaning'. In view of their increasing animositytowards philosophy, one suspects that certain sociologistsare taking great pains to shake off their own past. But thepast usually takes its revenge.

At first sight the controversy seems to be that the posi-tivists’ position represents a strict concept of objective sci-entific validity which is weakened by philosophy, whilstthe dialecticians proceed speculatively, as the philosophi-cal tradition would suggest. However, everyday linguisticusage converts the concept of the speculative into its oppo-site. It is no longer interpreted, as it was by Hegel, in thesense of the critical self-reflection of the intellect, [4/5] ofself-reflection's boundedness and self-correction. But ratherit is imperceptibly interpreted in a popular manner. Here,

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he who speculates is viewed as an unrestricted wild thinkerwho in his vanity dispenses with logical self-criticism andany confrontation with the facts. Since the collapse of theHegelian system, and perhaps as a consequence of it, theidea of speculation has become so inverted that it resemblesthe Faustian cliché of the beast on the barren heath. Whatwas once intended to signify the thought that renounces itsown narrowness and in so doing gains objectivity, is nowequated with subjective caprice. It is caprice since specula-tion lacks generally valid restraints; it is subjectivism sincethe concept of the fact of speculation is dissolved throughemphasis upon mediation, through the 'concept' which ap-pears as a relapse into scholastic realism and accordingto positivistic ritual, as that product of the thinker whichboldly confuses itself with an entity in itself. On the otherhand, stronger than the tu quoque argument which Albertregards with suspicion, is the thesis that the positivist posi-tion, where pathos and influence are inherent in its claim toobjectivity, is in turn, subjectivist. This was anticipated byHegel's critique of what he termed the philosophy of reflec-tion. Carnap's jubilation was based on the claim that noth-ing remained of philosophy but its method. His methodof logical analysis is the prototype of the quasi-ontologicalpredisposition towards subjective reason. [7] Positivism,to which contradictions are anathema, possesses its inner-most contradiction unbeknown to itself, in the following:namely, that it adheres to an objectivity which is most ex-ternal to its sentiments and purged of all subjective projec-tions, but thereby simply becomes all the more entangledin the particularity of mere subjective instrumental reason.Those who regard themselves as victors over idealism arefar closer to it than critical theory. They hypostatize theknowing subject, not as an absolute subject or a source, but

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as the topos noetikos of all validity—of scientific control.Whilst they wish to liquidate philosophy, they advocate aphilosophy which, resting on the authority of science, seeksto immunize itself against itself. In Carnap's work, the finallink in the Hume-Mach-Schlick chain, the connection withthe older subjective positivism is still revealed through hissensualist interpretation of protocol statements. Since thesescientific statements are [5/6] simply given in language andare not immediately given as sense certainty, this sensualistinterpretation gave rise to Wittgenstein's problematic. Butthe latent subjectivism is in no way penetrated by the lan-guage theory of the Tractatus. There, one reads: 'Philos-ophy does not result in "philosophical propositions", butrather in the clarification of propositions. Without philoso-phy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its taskis to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.’[8] But clarity is only accorded to subjective consciousness.In a scientific spirit, Wittgenstein exaggerates the claim ofobjectivity to such an extent that it dissolves and yields tothe total paradox of philosophy, which forms Wittgenstein'snimbus. Latent subjectivism has formed a counterpoint tothe objectivism of the entire nominalist Enlightenment, thepermanent reductio ad hominem. Thought need not adaptto it. It has the power to reveal critically the latent sub-jectivism. It is amazing that the supporters of scientism, in-cluding Wittgenstein, were no more disturbed by this antag-onism than by the permanent antagonism between the for-mal logical and empiricist currents, which, distorted withinpositivism, brings to light an extremely real antagonism.Even for Hume the doctrine of the absolute validity of math-ematics was heterogenously contrasted with sceptical sen-sualism. Here the relative failure of scientism to achieve amediation between facticity and concept becomes evident.

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If the two are not united then they become logically in-compatible. One can neither advocate the absolute priorityof the individual entity over 'ideas', nor can one maintainthe absolute independence of the purely ideal, namely themathematical, realm. No matter how one interprets it, aslong as Berkeley's esse est percipi is retained, it is difficultto see where the claim to validity of the formal disciplinesis derived from, for this claim is not founded in anythingsensuous. Conversely, all the connecting mental operationsof empiricism, for which the connectedness of statementsis a criterion of truth, postulate formal logic. This simpleconsideration ought to be sufficient to induce scientism totake up dialectics. The unsatisfactory abstract polarity ofthe formal and the empirical is extended, in a highly tan-gible manner, to the social sciences. Formal sociology isthe external complement to what Habermas has termed re-stricted experience. The theses of sociological formalism,[6/7] for instance those of Simmel, are not in themselvesfalse. Yet the mental acts are false which detach these fromthe empirical, hypostatize them and then subsequently fillthem out through illustration. The favourite discoveries offormal sociology, such as the bureaucratization of proletar-ian parties, have their fundamentum in re, but they do notinvariably arise from the higher concept 'organization ingeneral' but rather from societal conditions, such as the con-straint of asserting oneself within an overwhelming systemwhose power is realized through the diffusion of its own or-ganizational forms over the whole. This constraint infectsthe opponents of the system and not merely through socialcontamination but also in a quasi-rational manner—so thatthe organization is able, at any time, to represent effectivelythe interests of its members. Within a reified society, noth-ing has a chance to survive which is not in turn reified. The

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concrete historical generality of monopolistic capitalism ex-tends into the monopoly of labour, with all its implications.A relevant task for empirical sociology would be to analysethe intermediate members and to show in detail how theadaptation to the changed capitalist relations of productionincludes those whose objective interests conflict, in the longrun, with this adaptation.

The predominant positivistic sociology can rightly be termedsubjective in the same sense as subjective economics. In thework of one of economics' major representatives, VilfredoPareto, contemporary sociological positivism has one of itsroots. 'Subjective' has a double meaning here. Firstly, asHabermas expresses it, such a sociology operates with cat-alogues of hypotheses or schemata imposed upon the ma-terial. Whilst undoubtedly, in this operation, it is the mate-rial which prevails, depending upon the section into whichit must be incorporated, what is more decisive is whetherthe material—the phenomena—is interpreted in accordancewith its own predetermined structure, and not simply estab-lished by science in a classificatory manner. Just how deci-sive is the choice of the supposed system of co-ordinates, isexemplified by the alternative of subsuming certain socialphenomena under concepts such as prestige and status, orderiving them from objective relations of domination. Ac-cording to the latter interpretation, status and prestige aresubject to the dynamics of class relations and, in principle,they can be conceptualized as capable of abolition. Buttheir classificatory subsumption, on the other hand, tendsto accept such categories as simply given, and [7/8] prob-ably untransformable. A distinction which apparently con-cerns only methodology therefore has vital concrete conse-quences. The subjectivism of positivistic sociology accordswith this in its second meaning. In quite a considerable area

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of its activity at least, it takes as its starting point opinions,modes of behaviour and the self-understanding of individ-ual subjects and of society. In such a conception, societyis largely what must be investigated statistically: the aver-age consciousness or unconsciousness of societalized andsocially acting subjects, and not the medium in which theymove. The objectivity of the structure which, for the pos-itivists, is a mythological relic is, according to dialecticaltheory, the a priori of cognitive subjective reason. If sub-jective reason became aware of this then it would have todetermine the structure of its own law-like nature and notpresent it independently according to the procedural rulesof conceptual order. The condition and the content of thesocial facts to be derived from individual subjects are pro-vided by this structure. Regardless of the extent to whichthe dialectical conception of society has realized its claimto objectivity, and whether this is still possible for it, the di-alectical conception takes this claim more seriously than doits opponents, who purchase the apparent security of theirobjectively valid findings by foregoing, from the outset, theemphatic idea of objectivity, which was once intended withthe concept of the in-itself. The positivists prejudice theoutcome of the debate in so far as they insinuate that theyrepresent a new advanced type of thought whose views, asAlbert puts it, have as yet not prevailed everywhere, butcompared with which dialectics has become archaic. Thisview of progress disregards the price paid which sabotagesit. The mind is to advance by fettering itself as mind forthe benefit of the facts—truly a logical contradiction. Al-bert asks, 'Why should not new ideas similarly receive achance to prove themselves?" [9] By 'new ideas' he meansa mentality which is not generally favourably disposed to-wards ideas. Its claim to modernity can only be that of

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advanced Enlightenment. But this claim requires the criti-cal self-reflection of subjective reason. The advance of thelatter, which is permeated to its innermost core with thedialectics of Enlightenment, cannot, without difficulty, beassumed to be a higher objectivity. This is the focal point ofthe controversy. [8/9]

Since dialectics is not a method independent of its object,it cannot, unlike a deductive system, be represented as afor-itself [Für sich]. It does not accede to the criterion of thedefinition but instead it criticizes it. What is more serious isthat, after the irrevocable collapse of the Hegelian system,dialectics has forfeited the former, profoundly questionable,consciousness of philosophical certainty. The accusation ofthe positivists, namely that dialectics lacks a foundationupon which everything else might be constructed, is heldagainst it even by currently predominant philosophy withthe claim that it lacks ά[1EE3?]χή [**]. In its idealist version,dialectics ventured, through numerous mediations and, infact, by virtue of Being's own non-identity with Spirit, topresent Being as perfectly identical with the latter. Thiswas unsuccessful and consequently, in its present form, di-alectics adopts a position towards the 'myth of total reason'no less polemical than Albert's scientism. Dialectics is un-able to take its claim to truth as guaranteed, as it did inits idealist phase. For Hegel the dialectical movement wasable, with difficulty, to consider itself to be a comprehensiveexplanatory principle—to be 'science'. For, in its first stepsand positings, the thesis of identity was always present, athesis which in the development of the analyses was neithercorroborated nor explicated. Hegel described it with themetaphor of the circle. Such closedness, which necessarilyimplied that nothing remained essentially unrecognized orfortuitous outside dialectics, has been exploded along with

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its constraint and unambiguity. Dialectics does not possessa canon of thought which might regulate it. Nevertheless, itstill has its raison d'être. In terms of society, the idea of anobjective system-in-itself is not as illusory as it seemed tobe after the collapse of idealism, and as positivism asserts.The notion of the great tradition of philosophy, which posi-tivism considers to be outdated, [10] is not indebted to theallegedly aesthetic qualities of intellectual achievements butrather to a content of experience which, because of its tran-scendence into individual consciousness would tempt meto hypostatize it as being absolute. Dialectics is able to le-gitimize itself by translating this content back into the expe-rience from which it arose. But this is the experience of themediation of all that is individual through the objective so-cietal [9/10] totality. In traditional dialectics, it was turnedon its head with the thesis that antecedent objectivity—theobject itself, understood as totality—was the subject. Albertobjects that in my Tübingen paper there are merely hints attotality. [11] Yet it is almost tautological to say that onecannot point to the concept of totality in the same manneras one can point to the facts, from which totality distancesitself as a concept. 'And to this first, still quite abstract ap-proximation, let us add a further qualification, namely thedependency of all individuals on the totality which theyform. In such a totality, everyone is also dependent on ev-eryone else. The whole survives only through the unityof the functions which its members fulfil. Each individualwithout exception must take some function on himself inorder to prolong his existence; indeed, while his functionlasts, he is taught to express his gratitude for it.' [12]

Albert accuses Habermas of adhering an idea of total rea-son, together with all the sins of the philosophy of identity.In objective terms, Albert claims that dialectics carries on,

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in an obsolete Hegelian manner, with a notion of the soci-etal whole that cannot be realized by research and whichthus belongs on the rubbish dump. The fascination exertedby Merton's 'theory of the middle range' can certainly beexplained by the scepticism towards a category of totality,whilst the objects of such theorems are violently torn fromthe encircling contexts. According to the simplest commonsense, the empirical strives towards totality. If one stud-ies social conflict in a case such as the hostile reactions inBerlin towards students in 1967, then the occasion of theindividual situation is not sufficient for an explanation. Athesis such as the following: that the population simply re-acted in a spontaneous manner towards a group which itconsidered to be endangering the interests of a city main-tained under precarious conditions—would be inadequate,and not only because of the doubtfulness of the politicaland ideological connections assumed.

Such a thesis in no way makes plausible the rage againsta specific visible minority, easily identifiable according topopular prejudice, which immediately exploded into phys-ical violence. The most widespread and effective stereo-types in vogue against the students [10/11] — that theydemonstrate instead of working (a flagrant untruth), thatthey squander the taxpayers' money which pays for theirstudies, and similar statements—apparently have nothingto do with the acute situation. The similarity between suchslogans and those of the jingoistic press is obvious. Butthis press would scarcely be influential if it did not actupon dispositions of opinion and instinctive reactions of nu-merous individuals and both confirm and strengthen them.Anti-intellectualism and the readiness to project discontentwith questionable conditions onto those who express thequestionableness, make up the reactions to immediate causes

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which serve as a pretence or as a rationalization. If it werethe case that even the situation in Berlin was a factor whichhelped to release the mass psychological potential, then itcould not be understood other than within the wider con-text of international politics. It is a narrow line of thoughtwhich deduces from the so-called Berlin situation what arisesfrom power struggles actualized in the Berlin conflict. Whenlengthened, the lines lead to the social network. Owingto the infinite plurality of its moments, it can, of course,scarcely be encapsulated by scientific prescriptions. But ifit is eliminated from science then the phenomena are at-tributed to false causes, and the dominant ideology regu-larly profits from this. That society does not allow itself tobe nailed down as a fact actually only testifies to the exis-tence of mediation. This implies that the facts, are neitherfinal nor impenetrable, even though the prevailing sociol-ogy regards them as such in accordance with the modelof sense data found in earlier epistemology. In them thereappears that which they are not. [13] Not the least signifi-cant of the differences between the positivist and dialecticalconceptions is that positivism, following Schlick's maxim,will only allow appearance to be valid, whilst dialecticswill not allow itself to be robbed of the distinction betweenessence and appearance. For its part, it is a societal lawthat decisive structures of the social process, such as thatof the inequality of the alleged equivalency of exchange,cannot become apparent without the intervention of the-ory. Dialectical thought counters the suspicion of what Ni-etzsche termed nether-worldly [hinterweltlerisch] with theassertion that concealed essence is non-essence. Dialecti-cal thought, irreconcilable with the philosophical tradition,affirms this non-essence, not [11/12] because of its powerbut instead it criticizes its contradiction of 'what is appear-

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ing' [Erscheinendes] and, ultimately, its contradiction of thereal life of human beings. One must adhere to Hegel'sstatement that essence must appear. Totality is not an af-firmative but rather a critical category. Dialectical critiqueseeks to salvage or help to establish what does not obeytotality, what opposes it or what first forms itself as thepotential of a not yet existent individuation. The interpre-tation of facts is directed towards totality, without the in-terpretation itself being a fact. There is nothing sociallyfactual which would not have its place in that totality. Itis pre-established for all individual subjects since they obeyits 'contrainte' even in themselves and even in their monado-logical constitution and here in particular, conceptualize to-tality. To this extent, totality is what is most real. Since it isthe sum of individuals' social relations which screen them-selves off from individuals, it is also illusion—ideology. Aliberated mankind would by no means be a totality. Theirbeing-in-themselves is just as much their subjugation asit deceives them about itself as the true societal substra-tum. This certainly does not fulfil the desideratum of alogical analysis of the concept of totality, [14] as the analy-sis of something free from contradiction, which Albert usesagainst Habermas, for the analysis terminates in the objec-tive contradiction of totality. But the analysis should protectrecourse to totality from the accusation of decisionistic arbi-trariness. [15] Habermas, no more than any other dialecti-cian, disputes the possibility of an explication of totality; hesimply disputes its verifiability according to the criterion offacts which is transcended through the movement towardsthe category of totality. Nevertheless, it is not separate fromthe facts but is immanent to them as their mediation. For-mulated provocatively, totality is society as a thing-in-itself,with all the guilt of reification. But it is precisely because

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this thing-in-itself is not yet the total societal subject—nor isit yet freedom, but rather extends nature in a heteronomousmanner—that an indissoluble moment is objective to it suchas Durkheim, though somewhat one-sidedly, declared to bethe essence of the social as such. To this extent it is also 'fac-tual'. The concept of facticity, which the positivistic viewguards as its final substratum, is a function of the same so-ciety about which scientistic sociology, insistent upon thisopaque [12/13] substratum, promises to remain silent. Theabsolute separation of fact and society is an artificial prod-uct of reflection which must be derived from, and refutedthrough, a second reflection.

In a footnote, Albert writes the following:

'Habermas quotes in this context Adorno's ref-erence to the untestability of the dependenceof each social phenomenon "upon the totality".The quotation stems from a context in whichAdorno, with reference to Hegel, asserts thatrefutation is only fruitful as immanent critique;see Adorno, "On the Logic of the Social Sciences",pp. 113f. Here the meaning of Popper's com-ments on the problem of the critical test is roughlyreversed through "further reflection". It seemsto me that the untestability of Adorno's asser-tion is basically linked with the fact that nei-ther the concept of totality used, nor the natureof the dependence asserted, is clarified to anydegree. Presumably, there is nothing more be-hind it than the idea that somehow everything islinked with everything else. To what extent anyview could gain a methodical advantage fromsuch an idea would really have to be demon-

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strated. In this matter, verbal exhortations oftotality ought not to suffice.' [16]

However, the 'untestability' does not reside in the fact thatno plausible reason can be given for recourse to totality, butrather that totality, unlike the individual social phenomenato which Albert's criterion of testability is limited, is notfactual. To the objection that behind the concept of totalitythere lies nothing more than the triviality that everythingis linked with everything else, one should reply that thebad abstraction of that statement 'is not so much the signof feeble thinking as it is that of a shabby permanency inthe constitution of society itself: that of exchange. The first,objective abstraction takes place; not so much in the scien-tific account of it, as in the universal development of theexchange system itself, which happens independently ofthe qualitative attitudes of producer and consumer, of themode of production, even of need, which the social mecha-nism tends to satisfy as a kind of secondary by-product. Ahumanity classified as a network of consumers, the humanbeings who actually have the needs, has been socially pre-formed beyond anything which one might naïvely imagine,and this not only by the technical [13/14] level of produc-tive forces but just as much by the economic relationshipsthemselves in which they function. The abstraction of ex-change value is a priori allied with the domination of thegeneral over the particular, of society over its captive mem-bership. It is not at all a socially neutral phenomenon asthe logistics of reduction, of uniformity of work time pre-tend. The domination of men over men is realized throughthe reduction of men to agents and bearers of commodityexchange. The concrete form of the total system requires ev-eryone to respect the law of exchange if he does not wish to

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be destroyed, irrespective of whether profit is his subjectivemotivation or not.' [17] The crucial difference between thedialectical and the positivistic view of totality is that the di-alectical concept of totality is intended 'objectively', namely,for the understanding of every social individual observa-tion, whilst positivistic systems theories wish, in an uncon-tradictory manner, to incorporate observations in a logicalcontinuum, simply through the selection of categories asgeneral as possible. In so doing, they do not recognizethe highest structural concepts as the precondition for thestates of affairs subsumed under them. If positivism deni-grates this concept of totality as mythological, pre-scientificresidue then it mythologizes science in its assiduous strug-gle against mythology. Its instrumental character, or ratherits orientation towards the primacy of available methodsinstead of towards reality and its interest, inhibits insightswhich affect both scientific procedure and its object. Thecore of the critique of positivism is that it shuts itself offfrom both the experience of the blindly dominating total-ity and the driving desire that it should ultimately becomesomething else. It contents itself with the senseless ruinswhich remain after the liquidation of idealism, without in-terpreting, for their part, both liquidation and what is liqui-dated, and rendering them true. Instead, positivism is con-cerned with the disparate, with the subjectivistically inter-preted datum and the associated pure thought forms of thehuman subject. Contemporary scientism unites these nowfragmented moments of knowledge in a manner as externalas that of the earlier philosophy of reflection which, for thisreason, deserved to be criticized by speculative dialectics.Dialectics also contains the opposite of idealistic hubris. Itabolishes the illusion of a somehow natural-transcendentaldignity [14/15] of the individual subject and becomes con-

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scious of it in its forms of thought as something societal initself. To this extent, dialectics is 'more realistic' than scien-tism with all its 'criteria of meaning'.

But since society is made up of human subjects and isconstituted through their functional connection, its recog-nition through living, unreduced subjects is far more com-mensurable with 'reality itself' than in the natural scienceswhich are compelled, by the alien nature of a non-humanobject, to situate objectivity entirely within the categorialmechanism, in abstract subjectivity. Freyer has drawn at-tention to this. The distinction between the nomothetic andidiographic, made by the south-west German neo-Kantianschool, can be left out of consideration all the more read-ily since an unabbreviated theory of society cannot foregothe laws of its structural movement. The commensurabilityof the object—society—with the knowing subject exists justas much as it does not exist. This too is difficult to com-bine with discursive logic. Society is both intelligible andunintelligible. It is intelligible in so far as the condition ofexchange, which is objectively decisive, itself implies an ab-straction and, in terms of its own objectivity, a subjectiveact. In it the human subject truly recognizes himself. Interms of the philosophy of science, this explains why Webe-rian sociology concentrates upon the concept of rationality.In rationality, regardless of whether consciously or uncon-sciously, Weber sought what was identical in subject andobject, namely that which would permit something akin toknowledge of the object [Sache], instead of its splinteringinto data and its processing. Yet the objective rationalityof society, namely that of exchange, continues to distanceitself through its dynamics, from the model of logical rea-son. Consequently, society—what has been made indepen-dent—is, in turn, no longer intelligible; only the law of be-

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coming independent is intelligible. Unintelligibility doesnot simply signify something essential in its structure butalso the ideology by means of which it arms itself againstthe critique of its irrationality. Since rationality or spirithas separated itself as a partial moment from the living hu-man subjects and has contended itself with rationalization,it moves forward towards something opposed to the sub-jects. The aspect of objectivity as unchangeability, whichit thus assumes, is then mirrored in the reification of theknowing consciousness. The contradiction in the concept ofsociety as intelligible and unintelligible is the driving forceof rational [15/16] critique, which extends to society and itstype of rationality, namely the particular. If Popper seeksthe essence of criticism in the fact that progressive knowl-edge abolishes its own logical contradictions, then his ownideal becomes criticism of the object if the contradiction hasits own recognizable location in it, and not merely in theknowledge of it. Consciousness which does not blind itselfto the antagonistic nature of society, nor to society's imma-nent contradiction of rationality and irrationality, must pro-ceed to the critique of society without µετάβασις είς άλλoγέυoς, without means other than rational ones.

In his essay on the analytical theory of science, Haber-mas has justified the necessity of the transition to dialecticswith particular reference to social scientific knowledge. [18]According to Habermas' argument, not only is the objectof knowledge mediated through the subject, as positivismwould admit, but the reverse is just as true: namely, thatthe subject, for its part, forms a moment of the objectivitywhich he must recognize; that is, it forms a moment of thesocietal process. In the latter, with increasing scientization,knowledge becomes to an increasing extent a force of pro-duction. Dialectics would like to confront scientism in the

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latter's own sphere in so far as it strives for a more correctrecognition of contemporary societal reality. It seeks to helpto penetrate the curtain hanging before reality—a curtainwhich science helps to weave. The harmonistic tendency ofscience, which makes the antagonisms of reality disappearthrough its methodical processing, lies in the classificatorymethod which is devoid of the intention of those who uti-lize it. It reduces to the same concept what is not fundamen-tally homonymous, what is mutually opposed, through theselection of the conceptual apparatus, and in the service ofits unanimity. In recent years, an example of this tendencyhas been provided by Talcott Parsons' well-known attemptto create a unified science of man. His system of categoriessubsumes individual and society, psychology and sociologyalike, or at least places them in a continuum. [19] The idealof continuity, current since Descartes and Leibniz especially,has become dubious, though not merely as a result of re-cent natural scientific [16/17] development. In society thisideal conceals the rift between the general and the partic-ular, in which the continuing antagonism expresses itself.The unity of science represses the contradictory nature ofits object. A price has to be paid for the apparently conta-gious satisfaction that nonetheless can be derived from theunified science: such a science cannot grasp the societallyposited moment of the divergence of individual and soci-ety and of their respective disciplines. The pedantically or-ganized total scheme, which stretches from the individualand his invariant regularities to complex social structures,has room for everything except for the fact that the individ-ual and society, although not radically different, have his-torically grown apart. Their relationship is contradictorysince society largely denies individuals what it—always asociety of individuals—promises them and why society co-

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alesces at all; whilst on the other hand, the blind, unre-strained interests of individuals inhibit the formation of apossible total societal interest. The ideal of a unified sci-ence merits an epithet, but one which it would by no meansplease it, namely, that of the aesthetic—just as one speaksof 'elegance' in mathematics. The organizatory rationaliza-tion in which the programme of unified science results, asopposed to the disparate individual sciences, greatly prej-udices questions in the philosophy of science which arethrown up by society. If, in Wellmer's words, 'meaningfulbecomes a synonym for scientific', then science, socially me-diated, guided and controlled, paying existing society andits tradition a calculable tribute, usurps the role of the ar-biter veri et falsi. For Kant, the epistemological constitu-tive question was that of the possibility of science. Now, insimple tautology, the question is referred back to science.Insights and modes of procedure which, instead of remain-ing within valid science affect it critically, are banished alimine. Thus it is that the apparently neutral concept of con-ventionalist bond' has fatal implications. Through the backdoor of conventionalism social conformism is smuggled inas a criterion of meaning for the social sciences. The ef-fort of analysing in detail the entanglement of conformismand the self-enthronement of science proved worthwhile.More than thirty years ago, Horkheimer drew attention tothe whole complex in 'The Latest Attack upon Metaphysics'.[20] The concept of [17/18] science is also assumed by Pop-per as if it were self-evident. But such a concept containsits own historical dialectic. When Fichte's Theory of Sci-ence and Hegel's Science of Logic were written at the turnof the eighteenth century, the present concept of sciencewith its claim to exclusiveness would have been criticallyplaced on the level of the pre-scientific, whilst nowadays

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what was then termed science, no matter how chimericallyit was called absolute knowledge, would be rejected as ex-tra-scientific by what Popper refers to as scientism. Thecourse of history, and not merely of intellectual history,which led to this is by no means unqualified progress, as thepositivists would have it. All the mathematical refinementof the highly developed scientific methodology does not al-lay the suspicion that the elaboration of science into a tech-nique alongside others has undermined its own concept.The strongest argument for this would be that what appearsas a goal to scientific interpretation, namely fact-finding, isonly a means towards theory for emphatic science. With-out theory the question remains open as to why the wholeenterprise was undertaken. However, the reformulation ofthe idea of science begins even with the idealists, in partic-ular with Hegel, whose absolute knowledge coincides withthe manifest concept of what exists thus—and not other-wise [so und nicht anders Seiendes]. The point of attack forthe critique of this development is not the crystallizationof particular scientific methods the fruitfulness of whichis beyond question but rather the now dominant sugges-tion, crudely urged on the authority of Max Weber, thatextra-scientific interests are external to science and that thetwo should be strictly separated. Whilst, on the one hand,the allegedly purely scientific interests are rigid channelsand are frequently neutralizations of extra-scientific inter-ests which, in their weakened form, extend into science,the scientific body of instruments, on the other hand, whichprovides the canon of what is scientific, is also instrumentalin a manner in which instrumental reason has never dreamt.This body of instruments is the means for answering ques-tions which both originate beyond science and strive be-yond it. In so far as the ends-means rationality of science

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ignores the Telos which lies in the concept of instrumen-talism and becomes its own sole purpose, it contradicts itsown instrumentality. But this is what society demands ofscience. In a determinably false society that contradicts theinterests both of its members and of the whole, all knowl-edge [18/19] which readily subordinates itself to the rulesof this society that are congealed in science, participates inits falsehood.

The current academically attractive distinction betweenthe scientific and the pre-scientific, to which even Albert ad-heres, cannot be upheld. The revision of this dichotomy islegitimated by a fact which can constantly be observed andis even confirmed by positivists, namely, that there is a splitin their thinking in that, regardless of whether they speak asscientists or non-scientists, they nevertheless utilize reason.What is classified as pre-scientific is not simply what hasnot yet passed through, or avoided, the self-critical workof science advocated by Popper. But rather it subsumes allthe rationality and experience which are excluded from theinstrumental determinations of reason. Both moments arenecessarily dependent upon one another. Science, whichincorporates the pre-scientific impulses without transform-ing them, condemns itself to indifference no less than doamateur arbitrary procedures. In the disreputable realm ofthe pre-scientific, those interests meet which are severed bythe process of scientization. But these interests are by nomeans inessential. Just as there certainly would be no ad-vance of consciousness without the scientific discipline, itis equally certain that the discipline also paralyses the or-gans of knowledge. The more science is rigified in the shellwhich Max Weber prophesied for the world, the more whatis ostracized as pre-scientific becomes the refuge of knowl-edge. The contradiction in the relationship of the spirit to

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science responds to the latter's own contradiction. Sciencepostulates a coherent immanent connection and is a mo-ment of the society which denies it coherence. If it escapesthis antinomy, be it by cancelling its truth content through asociology of knowledge relativization, or by failing to recog-nize its entanglement in the faits sociaux, and sets itself upas something absolute and self-sufficient, then it contentsitself with illusions which impair science in what it mightachieve. Both moments are certainly disparate but not indif-ferent to one another. Only insight into science's inherentsocietal mediations contributes to the objectivity of science,since it is no mere vehicle of social relations and interests.Its absolutization and its instrumentalization, both prod-ucts of subjective reason, are complementary. Scientism be-comes false with regard to central states of affairs by engag-ing itself one-sidedly in favour of the unified moment of in-dividual and society for the sake of logical systematics, andby devaluing [19/20] as an epiphenomenon the antagonis-tic moment which cannot be incorporated into such logicalsystematics. According to pre-dialectical logic, the constitu-tum cannot be the constituens and the conditioned cannotbe the condition for its own condition. Reflection upon thevalue of societal knowledge within the framework of whatit knows forces reflection beyond this simple lack of contra-diction. The inescapability of paradox, which Wittgensteinfrankly expressed, testifies to the fact that generally the lackof contradiction cannot, for consistent thought, have thelast word, not even when consistent thought sanctions itsnorm. Wittgenstein's superiority over the positivists of theVienna Circle is revealed in a striking manner here: the logi-cian perceives the limit of logic. Within its framework, therelationship between language and world, as Wittgensteinpresented it, could not be treated unambiguously. For him

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language forms a closed immanent context through whichthe non-verbal moments of knowledge, for instance sensedata, are mediated. But it is not the intention of languageto refer to what is non-verbal. Language is both languageand autarchy. In accord with the scientistic assumption ofrules only being valid within it, it is as a moment withinreality, a fait social. [21] Wittgenstein had to account forthe fact that it removed itself from all that factually existssince the latter is only 'given' through it, and yet is con-ceivable only as a moment of the world which, in his view,can only be known through language. At this point, hehad reached the threshold of a dialectical awareness of theso-called problems of constitution and had reduced ad ab-surdum scientism's right to cut off dialectical thought. Thisaffects both the current scientistic notion of the subject, evenof the transcendental subject of knowledge, which [20/21]is seen as dependent upon its object as a precondition forits own possibility, and it also affects the current scientisticnotion of the object. It is no longer an X whose substra-tum must be composed from the context of subjective de-terminations but rather, being itself determined, it helps todetermine the subjective function.

The validity of knowledge, and not only of natural laws,is certainly largely independent of its origin. In Tübin-gen the two symposiasts were united in their critique ofthe sociology of knowledge and of Pareto's sociologism.Marx's theory opposes it. The study of ideology, of falseconsciousness, of socially necessary illusion would be non-sense without the concept of true consciousness and objec-tive truth. Nevertheless, genesis and validity cannot be sep-arated without contradiction. Objective validity preservesthe moment of its emergence and this moment permanentlyaffects it. No matter how unassailable logic is, the process

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of abstraction which removes it from attack is that of thecontrolling will. It excludes and disqualifies what it con-trols. In this dimension logic is 'untrue'; its unassailabilityis itself the intellectualized societal taboo. Its illusory na-ture is manifested in the contradictions encountered by rea-son in its objects. In the distancing of the subject from theobject, which realizes the history of the mind, the subjectgave way to the real superiority of objectivity. Its domina-tion was that of the weaker over the stronger. Perhaps inno other way would the self-assertion of the human specieshave been possible. The process of scientific objectivationwould certainly not have been possible. But the more thesubject seized for itself the aims of the object, the moreit, in turn, unconsciously rendered itself an object. Thisis the prehistory of the reification of consciousness. Whatscientism simply assumes to be progress was always, at thesame time, a sacrifice. What in the object does not corre-spond to the ideal of a 'pure' subject for-itself, alienatedfrom its own living experience, slips through the net. Tothis extent, advancing consciousness was accompanied bythe shadow of false consciousness. Subjectivity has in it-self eradicated what does not yield to the unambiguous-ness and identity of its claim to domination. Subjectivity,which is really always object, has reduced itself no less thanits object. One should also recall the moments which arelost in scientific methodology's curtailment of objectivity,and similarly the loss of the spontaneity of knowledge in-flicted by the subject upon himself in order to master hisown restricted achievements. Carnap, one of [21/22] themost radical positivists, once characterized as a stroke ofgood luck the fact that the laws of logic and of pure math-ematics apply to reality. A mode of thought, whose en-tire pathos lies in its enlightened state, refers at this cen-

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tral point to an irrational—mythical—concept, such as thatof the stroke of luck, simply in order to avoid an insightwhich, in fact, shakes the positivistic position; namely, thatthe supposed lucky circumstance is not really one at all butrather the product of the ideal of objectivity based on thedomination of nature or, as Habermas puts it, the 'prag-matistic' ideal of objectivity. The rationality of reality, reg-istered with relief by Carnap, is simply the mirroring ofsubjective ratio. The epistemological metacritique deniesthe validity of the Kantian claim to the subjective a prioribut affirms Kant's view to the extent that his epistemol-ogy, intent on establishing validity, describes the genesisof scientistic reason in a highly adequate manner. Whatto him, as a remarkable consequence of scientistic reifica-tion, seems to be the strength of subjective form whichconstitutes reality is, in truth, the summa of the historicalprocess in which subjectivity—liberating itself from natureand thus objectivating itself—emerged as the total masterof nature, forgot the relationship of domination and, thusblinded, re-interpreted this relationship as the creation ofthat ruled by the ruler. Genesis and validity must certainlybe critically distinguished in the individual cognitive actsand disciplines. But in the realm of so-called constitutionalproblems they are inseparably united, no matter how muchthis may be repugnant to discursive logic. Since scientistictruth desires to be the whole truth it is not the whole truth.It is governed by the same ratio which would never havebeen formed other than through science. It is capable ofcriticism of its own concept and in sociology can character-ize in concrete terms what escapes science—society.

Both Tübingen symposiasts were in agreement in theiremphasis upon the concept of criticism. [22] Followinga remark by Peter Ludz, Dahrendorf pointed out that the

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concept had been used equivocally. For Popper it signifies,without any concrete determinacy, a 'pure mechanism ofthe temporary corroboration of the general statements ofscience', for Adorno 'the development of [22/23] the con-tradictions of reality through knowledge of them'; never-theless, I had already laid bare this equivocation. [23] Butit is not a mere contamination of various meanings in thesame word, rather it is concretely grounded. If one acceptsPopper's purely cognitive or, possibly, 'subjective' conceptof criticism, which is to apply only to the unanimity ofknowledge and not to the legitimation of the reality rec-ognized, then thought cannot leave it at that. For here andthere critical reason is similar. It is not the case that two'capacities' are in operation. The identity of the word is noaccident. Cognitive criticism, of knowledge and especiallyof theorems, necessarily also examines whether the objectsof knowledge are what they claim to be according to theirown concept. Otherwise it would be formalistic. Imma-nent criticism is never solely purely logical but always con-crete as well—the confrontation of concept and reality. Itis for criticism to seek out the truth which the concepts,judgments and theorems themselves desire to name andit does not exhaust itself in the hermetic consistency offormation of thought. It is in a largely irrational societythat the scientifically stipulated primacy of logic is at issue.Material concretion, which no knowledge—not even purelylogical procedure—can entirely dismiss, demands that im-manent critique, in so far as it is directed towards whatis intended by scientific statements and not towards 'state-ments in themselves', does not generally proceed in an ar-gumentative manner but rather demands that it investigatewhether this is the case. Otherwise, disputation falls preyto the narrowness which can often be observed in ingenu-

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ity. The notion of argument is not as self-evident as Popperbelieves but requires critical analysis. This was once ex-pressed in the phenomenological slogan, 'back to the thingsthemselves'. Argumentation becomes questionable as soonas it assumes discursive logic to be opposed to content. Inhis Science of Logic, Hegel did not argue in a traditionalmanner and in the introduction to the Phenomenology ofMind he demanded ‘pure reflection’. On the other hand,Popper, who sees the objectivity of science in the objectivityof the critical method, elucidates it with the statement 'thatthe main instrument of [23/24] logical criticism—the logicalcontradiction—is objective' [24] This certainly does not raisean exclusive claim for formal logic such as that criticismonly possesses its organon in the latter, but such a claimis at least suggested. Albert, following Popper, can hardlyinterpret criticism differently. [25] He certainly permits thetype of 'investigations of such factual connections as Haber-mas himself mentions' [26] but he wishes to keep them andthe logical connections. The unity of both types of criticism,which indicates their concepts, is conjured away througha conceptual order. But if logical contradictions appear insocial scientific statements, such as the relevant contradic-tion that the same social system unleashes and leashes theforces of production, then theoretical analysis is able to re-duce such logical inconsistencies to structural moments ofsociety. It must not eliminate them as mere maladjustmentsof scientific thought since, in any case, they can only be re-moved through a change in reality itself. Even if it were pos-sible to translate such contradictions into merely semanticcontradictions, that is, to demonstrate that each contradic-tory statement refers to something different, their form stillexpresses the structure of the object more sharply than aprocedure which attains scientific satisfaction by turning its

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back upon what is unsatisfactory in the non-scientific objectof knowledge. Moreover, the possibility of devolving objec-tive contradictions onto semantics may be connected withthe fact that Marx, the dialectician, did not possess a com-pletely developed notion of dialectics. He imagined thathe was simply 'flirting' with it. Thinking, which teaches it-self that part of its own meaning is what, in turn, is not athought, explodes the logic of non-contradiction. Its prisonhas windows. The narrowness of positivism is that it doesnot take this into account and entrenches itself in ontologyas if in a last refuge, even if this ontology were simply thewholly formalized, contentless ontology of the deductiveconnection of statements in themselves.

The critique of the relationships of scientific statementsto that to which they refer is, however, inevitably compelledtowards a critique of reality. It must rationally decide whetherthe insufficiencies which it encounters are merely scientific,or whether reality insufficiently accords with what science,through its concept, expresses about it. The separation be-tween the structures [24/25] of science and reality is notabsolute. Nor may the concept of truth be attributed solelyto the structures of science. It is no less meaningful to speakof the truth of a societal institution than of of the truth oftheorems concerned with it. Legitimately, criticism doesnot normally imply merely self-criticism—which is what itactually amounts to for Popper—but also criticism of real-ity. In this respect, Habermas' reply to Albert has its pathos.[27] The concept of society, which is specifically bourgeoisand anti-feudal, implies the notion of an association of freeand independent human subjects for the sake of the possi-bility of a better life and, consequently, the critique of nat-ural societal relations. The hardening of bourgeois societyinto something impenetrably and inevitably natural is its

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immanent regression. Something of the opposing intentionwas expressed in the social contract theories. No matterhow little these theories were historically correct, they pen-etratingly remind society of the concept of the unity of in-dividuals, whose conscious ultimately postulates their rea-son, freedom and equality. In a grand manner, the unityof the critique of scientific and meta-scientific sense is re-vealed in the work of Marx. It is called the critique of po-litical economy since it attempts to derive the whole thatis to be criticized in terms of its right to existence fromexchange, commodity form and its immanent 'logical' con-tradictory nature. The assertion of the equivalence of whatis exchanged, the basis of all exchange, is repudiated byits consequences. As the principle of exchange, by virtueof its immanent dynamics, extends to the living laboursof human beings it changes compulsively into objective in-equality, namely that of social classes. Forcibly stated, thecontradiction is that exchange takes place justly and un-justly. Logical critique and the emphatically practical cri-tique that society must be changed simply to prevent a re-lapse into barbarism are moments of the same movementof the concept. Marx's procedure testifies to the fact thateven such an analysis cannot simply ignore the separationof what has been compounded, namely of society and pol-itics. He both criticized and respected the separation. Thesame person who, in his youth wrote the 'Theses on Feuer-bach', remained throughout his life a theoretical politicaleconomist. The Popperian concept of criticism inhibits logicby restricting it to scientific statements [25/26] without re-gard for the logicity of its substratum which it requires inorder to be true to its own meaning. Popper's 'critical ra-tionalism' has something pre-Kantian about it; in terms offormal logic, this is at the expense of its content. Sociolog-

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ical constructs, however, which contented themselves withtheir logical freedom from contradiction, could not with-stand concrete reflection. They could not withstand thereflection of a thoroughly functional society—though onewhich perpetuates itself solely through the harshness of re-lentless repression ad calendas Graecas—because that soci-ety is inconsistent; because the constraint under which itkeeps itself and its members alive does not reproduce theirlife in a form which would be possible given the state ofthe rationality of means, as is specifically presupposed byintegral bureaucratic domination. Endless terror can alsofunction, but functioning as an end in itself, separated fromwhy it functions, is no less a contradiction than any logi-cal contradiction, and a science which fell silent before itwould be irrational. Critique does not merely imply the de-cision as to whether suggested hypotheses can be demon-strated as true or false; it moves transparently over to theobject. If theorems are full of contradictions then by mod-ifying Lichtenberg's statement one might say that they arenot always to blame. The dialectical contradiction expressesthe real antagonisms which do not become visible withinthe logical-scientistic system of thought. For positivists, thesystem, according to the logical-deductive model, is some-thing worth striving for, something 'positive'. For dialec-ticians, in real no less than in philosophical terms, it isthe core of what has to be criticized. One of the decay-ing forms of dialectical thought in dialectical materialismis that it reprimands critique of the dominant system. Di-alectical theory must increasingly distance itself from thesystem. Society constantly distances itself from the liberalmodel which gave it its systematic character, and its cogni-tive system forfeits the character of an ideal since, in thepost-liberal form of society, its systematic unity as a total-

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ity is amalgamated with repression. Today, wherever di-alectical thought all too inflexibly adheres to the system,even and precisely in what is criticized, it tends to ignoredeterminate being and to retreat into illusory notions. Itis a merit of positivism that it draws attention to this, ifits concept of the system, as merely internal-scientific andclassificatory, is not to be enticed to hypostasis. Hyposta-tized dialectics becomes undialectical and requires correc-tion [26/27] by the fact finding whose interest is realizedby empirical social research, which then, in turn, is un-justly hypostatized by the positivistic theory of science. Thepre-given structure which does not merely stem from classi-fication—Durkheim's impenetrable—is essentially negativeand is incompatible with its own goal, namely the preserva-tion and satisfaction of mankind. Without such a goal theconcept of society, seen in concrete terms, would indeed bewhat the Viennese positivists used to term devoid of mean-ing. To this extent, sociology even as a critical theory ofsociety is 'logical'. This compels us to extend the conceptof criticism beyond its limitations in Popper's work. Theidea of scientific truth cannot be split off from that of a truesociety. Only such a society would be free from contradic-tion and lack of contradiction. In a resigned manner, scien-tism commits such an idea to the mere forms of knowledgealone.

By stressing its societal neutrality, scientism defends it-self against the critique of the object and replaces it withthe critique merely of logical inconsistencies. Both Albertand Popper seem to bear in mind the problematic of sucha restriction of critical reason or, as Habermas expressedit, of the fact that scientific asceticism encourages the deci-sionism of ends or that irrationalism inherent even in We-ber's theory of science. Popper concedes that 'protocol sen-

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tences are not inviolable' and that this 'represents, in [his]opinion, a notable advance'. [28] His concession that uni-versal law-like hypotheses could not be meaningfully re-garded as verifiable, and that this even applies to protocolsentences, [29] indeed furthers the concept of criticism ina productive manner. Whether intentionally or not, it hastaken into account that the referent of so-called sociologicalprotocol statements, namely simple observations, are pre-formed through society which, in turn, cannot be reducedto protocol statements. But if one replaces the traditionalpositivist postulate of verification by the postulate of 'thecapacity for confirmation' then positivism forfeits its inten-tion. All knowledge requires confirmation; it must ratio-nally distinguish between true and false without autolog-ically setting up the categories of true and false in accor-dance with the rules of established science. Popper con-trasts his [27/28] 'sociology of knowledge' [Soziologie desWissens] with that familiar since Mannheim and Scheler[Wissenssoziologie]. He advocates a 'theory of scientific ob-jectivity'. But it does not transcend scientistic subjectivism[30]; rather it can be subsumed under Durkheim's still validstatement that 'Between "I like this" and "a certain numberof us like this" there is no essential difference.' [31] Popperelucidates the scientific objectivity which he advocates inthe following manner: 'Objectivity can only be explainedin terms of social ideas such as competition (both of indi-vidual scientists and of various schools); tradition (mainlythe critical tradition); social institution (for instance, publi-cation in various competing journals and through variouscompeting publishers; discussion at congresses); the powerof the state (its tolerance of free discussion).' [32] The ques-tionable nature of such categories is striking. For instance,in the category of competition there lies the entire competi-

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tive mechanism, together with the fatal factor denouncedby Marx, namely, that market success has primacy overthe qualities of the object, even of intellectual formations.The tradition upon which Popper relies, has apparentlydeveloped within the universities into a fetter of produc-tive forces. In Germany a critical tradition is completelylacking—'discussions at congresses' aside—which Poppermight hesitate to recognize empirically as an instrument oftruth, just as he will not overestimate the actual range of thepolitical 'tolerance of free discussion' in science. His forcedinnocence with regard to all this breathes the optimism ofdespair. The a priori negation of an objective structure of so-ciety, and its substitution by ordering schemata, eradicatesthoughts which turn upon this structure, whilst Popper'senlightening impulse strives after such thoughts. In accor-dance with its pure form, the denial of social objectivityleaves such thoughts undisturbed. An absolutized logic isideology. Habermas sums up Popper's position as follows:'Popper, in opposing a positivist solution to the basis prob-lem, adheres to the view that the observational statementswhich lend themselves to the falsification of law-like hy-potheses cannot be justified in an empirically compellingmanner; instead, it must be decided in each case whetherthe acceptance of a basic statement [28/29] is sufficientlymotivated by experience. In the process of research, allthe observers who are involved in attempts at falsifyingcertain theories must, by means of relevant observationalstatements, arrive at a provisional consensus which can berefuted at any time. This agreement rests, in the last in-stance, upon a decision; it can be neither enforced logicallynor empirically.' [33] Popper's Tübingen paper correspondsto this where he claims, ‘It is a mistake to assume that theobjectivity of a science depends upon tile objectivity of the

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scientist.’ [34] But in fact this objectivity suffers less underthe personal equation which has been made from time im-memorial, than from the objective societal pre-formation ofthe objectivated scientific apparatus. Popper the nominal-ist can provide no stronger corrective than intersubjectivitywithin organized science: 'What may be described as sci-entific objectivity is based solely upon a critical traditionwhich, despite resistance, often makes it possible to criti-cise a dominant dogma. To put it another way, the objec-tivity of science is not a matter of the individual scientistbut rather the social result of their mutual criticism, of thefriendly-hostile division of labour among scientists, of theirco-operation and also of their competition.' [35] The beliefthat very divergent positions, by virtue of the recognizedrules of co-operation, will 'get together' and thereby achievethe particular attainable level of objectivity in knowledge,follows the outmoded liberal model of those who gatherat a round table in order to work out a compromise. Theforms of scientific co-operation contain an infinite amountof societal mediation. Popper in fact calls them a 'socialconcern' but does not concern himself with their implica-tions. They stretch from the mechanism of selection whichcontrols whether someone is academically co-opted and re-ceives a call—a mechanism in which conformity with pre-vailing group opinion is apparently decisive—to the formof communis opinio and its irrationalities. After all sociol-ogy, whose topics deal with explosive interests, is also inits own form, not only privately but also in its institutionsa complete microcosm of these interests. The classificatoryprinciple in itself has already taken care of this. The scopeof concepts which seek to be simply abbreviations of partic-ular existent facts, does not lead beyond their compass. Thedeeper the approved method [29/30] descends into societal

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material the more apparent its partisanship becomes. If thesociology of the 'mass media'—the accepted notion purveysthe prejudice that by questioning the human subjects, theconsumer masses, one must establish what is planned andkept alive in the sphere of production—seeks to ascertainsimply the opinions and attitudes of those socially catego-rized and tested and to elicit 'socially critical' consequences,then the given system, centrally guided and reproducing it-self through mass reactions, tacitly becomes its own norm.The affinity of the whole sphere of what Paul F. Lazarsfeldhas called administrative research with the goals of admin-istration in general is almost tautological. What is no lessevident here is that these goals, if one does not forciblytaboo the concept of the structure of objective domination,according to the needs of the latter, are formed frequentlyover the heads of individual administrators. Administra-tive research is the prototype of a social science which isbased upon the scientific theory of science and which, inturn, acts as a model for the latter. In societal and concreteterms, both political apathy and the much-praised scien-tific neutrality prove to be political facts. Ever since Pareto,positivistic scepticism has come to terms with the specificexisting power, even that of Mussolini. Since every socialtheory is interwoven with real society, every social theorycan certainly be misused ideologically or operationalized ina distorted manner. Positivism, however, specifically lendsitself, in keeping with the entire nominalist-sceptical tradi-tion, [36] to ideological abuse by virtue of its material inde-terminacy, its classificatory method and, finally, its prefer-ence for correctness rather than truth.

The scientific measure of all things, the fact as the fixedand irreducible entity which the human subject is not al-lowed to undermine, is borrowed from the world—a world,

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however, that more scientifico still has to be constitutedfrom the facts and from their connection formed accord-ing to logical rules. The entity to which scientistic analy-sis leads, the final subjective phenomenon postulated bya critique of knowledge and one which cannot be furtherreduced, is in turn the inadequate copy of the objectivityreduced here to the subject. In the spirit of an unswervingclaim to objectivity, sociology cannot content itself with thefact, with what is only in appearance most objective. An-ti-idealistically, [30/31] something of idealism's truth con-tent is preserved in it. The equation of subject and objectis valid in so far as the subject is an object, initially in thesense emphasized by Habermas that sociological research,for its part, belongs to the objective context which it in-tends to study. [37] Albert replies, 'Does he [Habermas]wish to declare common sense—or somewhat more sub-limely expressed, "the natural hermeneutics of the sociallife-world"—to be sacrosanct? If not, then wherein doesthe specificity of his method lie? To what extent is "theobject" (Sache) treated more "in accord with its own sig-nificance" than in the usual methods of the empirical sci-ences?' [38] But dialectical theory in no way inhibits in anartificial-dogmatic manner, as Hegel once did, the critiqueof so-called pre-scientific consciousness. At the Frankfurtsociology conference in 1968, Dahrendorf addressed thedialecticians ironically with the words: you simply knowmuch more than I do. He doubted the knowledge of an-tecedent social objectivity since the social in itself is me-diated through subjective categories of the intellect. Thepredominance of the method attacked by the dialecticianswas, he claimed, simply the advancing reflection of the in-tentio recta through which the advance of science is ac-complished. But it is epistemological critique—the inten-

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tio obliqua—in its results which the dialecticians criticize,Here, however, they annul the prohibitions in which scien-tism, including the recent development of 'analytical phi-losophy', has culminated, since these prohibitions are main-tained at the expense of knowledge. The concept of theobject itself does not, as Albert suspects, revive 'certainprejudices' or even the priority of intellectual 'origin' as op-posed to 'achievement'; and incidentally, the achievementof scientism within the field of sociology is not so very im-pressive. Popper's view, referred to by Albert, according towhich theorems 'can be understood as attempts to illumi-nate the structural characteristics of reality', [39] is not sovery far removed from the concept of the object itself. Pop-per does not deny the philosophical tradition as Reichen-bach had done. Criteria such as that of ‘relevance’ [40] or of‘explanatory power’, [41] [31/32] which he certainly inter-prets later in a sense closer to the natural-scientific model,would have little meaning if, in spite of everything, therewere not an implicit underlying concept of society whichseveral positivists—for instance, König and Schelsky in Ger-many—would prefer to abolish. The mentality which re-fuses to admit an objective social structure draws back fromthe object which it taboos. In caricaturing their opponentsas visionary metaphysicians the followers of scientism be-come unrealistic. Operationally ideal techniques inevitablywithdraw from the situations in which what is to be inves-tigated is located. In particular, this could be demonstratedin the social-psychological experiment but it could also bedemonstrated in the alleged improvements in scale con-struction. Objectivity, which actually should be served bythe finishing touches of methodology and the avoidance ofsources of error, becomes something secondary, somethinggraciously dragged along by the operational ideal. What

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is central becomes peripheral. If the methodological willto make problems unambiguously determinable and 'falsi-fiable' predominates in an unreflected manner, then scienceis reduced to alternatives, which only emerged through theelimination of 'variables', that is, by abstracting and therebychanging the object. Methodological empiricism works ac-cording to this scheme in the opposite direction to experi-ence.

In sociology, interpretation acquires its force both fromthe fact that without reference to totality—to the real totalsystem, untranslatable into any solid immediacy—nothingsocietal can be conceptualized, and from the fact that it can,however, only be recognized in the extent to which it isapprehended in the factual and the individual. It is thesocietal physiognomy of appearance. The primary mean-ing of 'interpret' is to perceive something in the features oftotality's social givenness. The idea of the 'anticipation' oftotality, which perhaps a very liberal positivism would beprepared to accept, is insufficient. Recalling Kant, it envis-ages totality as something in fact indefinitely relinquishedand postponed, but something in principle to be fulfilledthrough the given, without regard for the qualitative gapbetween essence and appearance in society. Physiognomydoes better justice to it since it realizes totality in its dual re-lationship to the facts which it deciphers—a totality which'is', and does not represent a mere synthesis of logical op-erations. The facts are not identical with [32/33] totalitybut the latter does not exist beyond the facts. Knowledgeof society which does not commence with the physionomicview is poverty-stricken. In this view appearance is cat-egorically suspect. But knowledge cannot adhere to this.By developing mediations of the apparent and of what ex-presses itself in these mediations, interpretation occasion-

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ally differentiates and corrects itself in a radical manner.As distinct from what in fact is a pre-scientific, dull reg-istration, knowledge worthy of human cognizance beginsby sharpening the sense for what is illuminated in everysocial phenomenon. This sense, if anything, ought to bedefined as the organon of scientific experience. Establishedsociology banishes this sense—hence its sterility. Only ifthis sense is first developed can it be disciplined. Its disci-pline requires both increased exactness of empirical obser-vation and the force of theory which inspires interpretationand transforms itself in it. Several followers of scientismmay generously accept this, but the divergence still remains.The divergence is one of conceptions. Positivism regardssociology as one science among others and, since Comte,has considered that the proven methods of older science, inparticular of natural science, can be transferred to sociology.The actual pseudos is concealed here. For sociology has adual character. In it, the subject of all knowledge—society,the bearer of logical generality—is at the same time theobject. Society is subjective because it refers back to thehuman beings who create it, and its organizational princi-ples too refer back to subjective consciousness and its mostgeneral form of abstraction—logic, something essentiallysubjective. Society is objective because, on account of itsunderlying structure, it cannot perceive its own subjectiv-ity, because it does not possess a total subject and throughits organization it thwarts the installation of such a sub-ject. But such a dual character modifies the relationship ofsocial-scientific knowledge with its object; positivism doesnot take this into account. It simply treats society, poten-tially the self-determining subject, as if it were an object,and could be determined from outside. It literally objecti-vates what, for its part, causes objectivation and what can

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provide an explanation for objectivation. Such a substitu-tion of society as object for society as subject constitutes thereified consciousness of sociology. It is not recognized thatby recourse to the subject as something estranged from it-self and objectively confronting the researcher, the subjectimplied, in other words the very object of sociology, [33/34]becomes another. Certainly the change through the orien-tation of knowledge possesses its fundamentum in re. Thedevelopment within society, moves, for its part, towardsreification; this provides a reified consciousness of societywith its adaequatio. But truth demands that this quid proquo also be included. Society as subject and society as ob-ject are the same and yet not the same. The objectivatingacts of science eliminate that in society by means of whichit is not only an object, and the shadow of this falls upon allscientistic objectivity. For a doctrine whose supreme normis the lack of contradiction it is most difficult to perceivethis. Here lies the innermost difference between a criticaltheory of society and what is commonly known as sociol-ogy. Despite all the experience of reification, and in thevery expression of this experience, critical theory is orien-tated towards the idea of society as subject, whilst sociol-ogy accepts reification, repeats it in its methods and therebyloses the perspective in which society and its law wouldfirst reveal themselves. This relates back to the sociologicalclaim to domination raised by Comte; a claim which todayis more or less openly reproduced in the notion that, sinceit is possible for sociology to control successfully particu-lar societal situations and fields, it can extend its controlto the whole. If such a transfer were somehow possible,if it did not crassly fail to recognize the power relationsthrough whose givenness sociology is constituted, then thescientifically totally controlled society would remain an ob-

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ject—that of science—and as unemancipated as ever. Evenin the rationality of a scientific management of the wholesociety which had apparently thrown off its shackles, dom-ination would survive. Even against their will, the domina-tion of the scientists would amalgamate with the interests ofthe powerful cliques. A technocracy of sociologists wouldretain an elitist character. On the other hand, one of themoments which must remain common to philosophy andsociology, and which must rank highly if the two are notto decline—the latter to a lack of content, the former to alack of concepts—is that inherent to both is something notwholly transformable into science. In both nothing is meantin a completely literal manner, neither statement of fact norpure validity. This unliteralness—according to Nietzsche apart of a game—paraphrases the concept of interpretationwhich interprets being as non-being. What is not quite lit-eral testifies to the tense non-identity of essence and appear-ance. Emphatic knowledge does not lapse into irrational-ism [34/35] if it does not absolutely renounce art. The sci-entistic adult mockery of 'mind music' simply drowns thecreaking of the cupboard drawers in which the question-naires are deposited—the sound of the enterprise of pureliteralness. It is associated, with the trusty objection to thesolipsism of self-satisfying thought about society which nei-ther respects the latter's actual condition nor fulfils a usefulfunction in it. Nevertheless there are many indications thattheoretically trained students who have a flair for realityand what holds it together, are more capable, even in reality,of reasonably fulfilling their allotted tasks than recruitedspecialists for whom method is paramount. The catchword'solipsism', however, turns the state of affairs upon its head.In that the individual, to which even Max Weber believedhe had to have recourse in his definition of social action,

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does not count as a substratum for dialectics, the latter doesnot content itself with a subjective concept of reason. Butall solipsism rests upon the individual as a substratum. Allthis has been explicated in detail in the philosophical pub-lications of the Frankfurt School. The illusion of solipsismis furthered by the fact that apparently in the present sit-uation the subjectivistic spell is only penetrated by whatremains unenthusiastic about subjective sociology's generalpleasure in communication. Recently something of this hasbeen manifested in rebellious public opinion which feelsthat it can believe only what, through the form of 'com-munication', does not leer at consumers of culture who areabout to have something foisted upon them.

What jars like discordant music in the positivists' earsis that which is imperfectly present in objective circum-stances and requires linguistic form. The closer the latterfollows the objective circumstances, the more it surpassesmere signification and comes to resemble expression. Whatwas hitherto unfruitful in the controversy surrounding pos-itivism probably stems from the fact that dialectical knowl-edge was taken all too literally by its opponents.Literalnessand precision are not the same but rather the two diverge.Without the broken, the inauthentic there can be no knowl-edge which might be more than an ordering repetition. That,thereby, the idea of truth is nevertheless not sacrificed, as ittends to be in the most consistent representatives of posi-tivism, expresses an essential contradiction: knowledge is,and by no means per accidens, exaggeration. For just aslittle as something particular is 'true' but rather by virtueof its mediatedness is [35/36] always its own other, so thewhole is no less true. It is an expression of its own negativ-ity that it remains unreconciled with the particular. Truthis the articulation of this relationship. In ancient times lead-

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ing philosophers still knew it: Plato's philosophy, whichpre-critically raises the extreme claim to truth, continuallysabotages this claim in its presentational form of the 'aporetic'dialogues as a literally fulfilled claim. Speculations whichrelated Socratic irony to this would not be out of place. Thecardinal sin of German idealism which today takes its re-venge upon it through positivistic critique, consisted in de-ceiving itself and its followers about such disjointednessby means of the subjective pathos of fully attained iden-tity with the object in absolute knowledge. Thereby Ger-man idealism transferred itself to the showplace of the state-ments of fact and of validity's terre à terre, upon which itis then inevitably defeated by a science which can demon-strate that idealism does not meet its desiderata. The in-terpretative method becomes weak at the moment when,terrorized by the progress of individual sciences, it pro-fesses to be as good a science as the others. There is nomore stringent objection to Hegel than that already utteredby Kierkegaard, namely, that he took his philosophy liter-ally. But interpretation is by no means arbitrary. Historymediates between the phenomenon and its content whichrequires interpretation. The essential which appears in thephenomenon is that whereby it became what it is, whatwas silenced in it and what, in painful stultification, re-leases that which yet becomes. The orientation of physiog-nomy is directed towards what is silenced, the second levelof phenomena. One should not assume that Habermas'phrase 'the natural hermeneutics of the social life-world',[42] which Albert censures, applies to the first level of phe-nomena, but rather it is the expression which emergent so-cial processes receive in what has emerged. Nor shouldinterpretation be absolutized according to the usage of phe-nomenological invariance. It remains enmeshed in the to-

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tal process of knowledge. According to Habermas, 'the de-pendence of these ideas and interpretations upon the in-terests of an objective configuration of societal reproduc-tion makes it impossible to remain at the level of subjectivemeaning-comprehending hermeneutics; an objective mean-ing-comprehending theory must also account for that mo-ment of reification which the objectifying [36/37] proce-dures exclusively have in mind'. [43] Sociology is onlyperiphally concerned with the ends-means-relation subjec-tively carried out by actors. It is more concerned with thelaws realized through and against such intentions. Interpre-tation is the opposite of the subjective meaning endowmenton the part of the knowing subject or of the social actor.The concept of such meaning endowment leads to an affir-mative fallacy that the social process and social order arereconciled with the subject and justified as something intel-ligible by the subject or belonging to the subject. A dialecti-cal concept of meaning would not be a correlate of Weber'smeaningful understanding but rather the societal essencewhich shapes appearances, appears in them and concealsitself in them. It is not a general law, understood in the usu-ally scientistic sense, which determines the phenomena. Itsmodel would be Marx's law of crisis—even if it has becomeso obscured as to be unrecognizable—which was deducedfrom the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Its modifi-cations, for their part, should also be derived from it. Theefforts to ward off or postpone the system immanent ten-dency are already prescribed within the system. It is by nomeans certain that this is possible indefinitely or whethersuch efforts enact the law of crisis against their own will.The writing on the wall suggests a slow inflationary col-lapse.

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The employment of categories such as totality and essencestrengthens the prejudice that the dialecticians concern them-selves uncommittedly with the global, whilst the positivistsdeal with solid details and have purged the facts of alldoubtful conceptual trappings. One should oppose the sci-entistic habit of stigmatizing dialectics as theology, whichhas crept in through the back door, with the difference be-tween society's systematic nature and so-called total thought.Society is a system in the sense of a synthesis of an atom-ized plurality, in the sense of a real yet abstract assemblageof what is in no way immediately or 'organically' united.The exchange relationship largely endows the system witha mechanical character. It is objectively forced onto its el-ements, as implied by the concept of an organism—themodel which resembles a celestial teleology through whicheach organ would receive its function in the whole andwould derive its meaning from the latter. The context whichperpetuates life simultaneously destroys it, and consequentlyalready possesses in [37/38] itself the lethal impulse to-wards which its dynamic is propelled. In its critique oftotal and organicist ideology, dialectics lacks none of posi-tivism's incisiveness. Similarly, the concept of societal total-ity is not ontologized, and cannot be made into a primarything-in-itself. Positivists who ascribe this to dialecticaltheory, as Scheuch did recently, simply misunderstand it.The concept of a primary thing-in-itself is just as little gen-erally accepted by dialectical theory as by the positivists.The telos of the dialectical view of society runs contraryto the global view. Despite reflection upon totality, dialec-tics does not proceed from above but rather it attempts toovercome theoretically the antinomic relationship betweenthe general and the particular by means of its procedure.The followers of scientism suspect that the dialecticians are

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megalomaniacs for, instead of striding through the finite inall direction in a Gothean masculine manner and fulfillingthe requirement of the day within the attainable, they enjoythemselves in the uncommitted infinite. Yet as a mediationof all social facts totality is not infinite. By virtue of its verysystematic character it is closed and finite, despite its elu-sive nature. Even if the great metaphysical categories werea projection of inner-worldly societal experience onto thespirit which was itself socially derived, it remains true that,once retrieved into society, they do not retain the illusionof the absolute which the projections created in them. Nosocial knowledge can profess to be master of the uncondi-tioned. Nevertheless, its critique of philosophy does not im-ply that the latter is submerged in this knowledge without atrace. Consciousness which retreats to the societal domainalso liberates, through its self-reflection, that element in phi-losophy which does not simply dissolve in society. But if itis argued that the societal concept of system, as the conceptof something objective, secularizes metaphysic's concept ofsystem, then this argument is true but applies to everythingand therefore to nothing. It would be no less justifiable tocriticize positivism on the grounds that its concept of se-cure certainty is a secularization of celestial truth. The ac-cusation of crypto-theology is incomplete. The metaphysi-cal systems apologetically projected the constraining char-acter of society onto being. Anyone who desires to extricatehimself from the system through thought, must translateit from idealistic philosophy into the societal reality fromwhich it was abstracted. Thereby, the concept of totality,preserved by the followers of scientism such as Popper inthe [38/39] notion of the deductive system, is confrontedwith enlightenment. What is untrue but also what is truein it can be determined.

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The accusation of megalomania is no less unjust in con-crete terms. Hegel's logic knew totality as what it is in itssocietal form: not as anything preformed before the singu-lar or, in Hegel's language, preformed before the moments,but rather inseparable from the latter and their motion. Theindividually concrete has more weight in the dialectical con-ception than in the scientistic conception which fetishizes itepistemologically and, in practical terms, treats it as rawmaterial or as an example. The dialectical view of societyis closer to micrology than is the positivistic view which inabstracto certainly ascribes to the singular entity primacyover its concept but, in its method, skims over it in thattimeless haste which is realized in computers. Since the in-dividual phenomenon conceals in itself the whole society,micrology and mediation through totality act as a counter-point to one another. It was the intention of a contributionto the theory of social conflict today [44] to elucidate this;the same point was central to the earlier controversy withBenjamin concerning the dialectical interpretation of soci-etal phenomena. [45] Benjamin's social physiognomy wascriticized for being too immediate, for lacking reflectionupon the total societal mediation. He suspected the latterof being idealistic, but without it the materialistic construc-tion of social phenomena would lag behind theory. Thefirmly established nominalism, which relegates the conceptto the status of an illusion or an abbreviation, and repre-sents the facts as something concept-free or indeterminatein an emphatic sense, thereby becomes necessarily abstract.Abstraction is the indiscrete incision between the generaland the particular. It is not the apprehension of the generalas the determination of the particular in itself. In as far asabstraction can be attributed to the dialectical method, asopposed to the sociographic description of individual find-

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ings, it is dictated by the object, by the constancy of a soci-ety which actually does not tolerate anything qualitativelydifferent—a society which drearily repeats itself in the de-tails. Nevertheless, the individual phenomena expressingthe general are far more substantial than they would be ifthey were merely its logical representatives. The dialecti-cal formulation of social laws as historically concrete lawsaccords [39/40] with the emphasis on the individual, an em-phasis which, for the sake of its immanent generality it doesnot sacrifice to comparative generality. The dialectical deter-minacy of the individual as something simultaneous partic-ular and general alters the societal concept of law. It nolonger possesses the form 'if-then' but rather 'since-must'.In principle, it is only valid under the precondition of lackof freedom, since, inherent in the individual moments, is al-ready a determinate law-likeness which follows from thespecific social structure, and is not merely a product ofthe scientific synthesis of individual moments. It is in thisway that Habermas' remarks on the historical laws of move-ment should be interpreted—in the context of the objec-tive—immanent determinacy of the individual himself. [46]Dialectical theory refuses to contrast sharply historical andsocietal knowledge as a knowledge of the individual withknowledge of laws since what is supposed to be merely in-dividual—individuation is a societal category—embodieswithin itself a particular and a general. Even the neces-sary distinction between the two possesses the character ofa false abstraction. Models of the process of the general andthe particular the development tendencies within society,such as those leading to concentration, over-accumulationand crisis. Empirical sociology realized long ago what itforfeited in specific content through a statistical generaliza-tion. Something decisive about the general is frequently ap-

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prehended in the detail, and escaped mere generalization;hence, the fundamental complementation of statistical in-quiries through case studies. The goal of even quantitativesocial methods would be qualitative insight; quantificationis not an end in itself but a means towards it. Statisticiansare more inclined to recognize this than is the current logicof the social sciences. The behaviour of dialectical thoughttowards the singular can perhaps best be underlined incontrast with one of Wittgenstein's formulations quoted byWellmer: 'The simplest kind of proposition, an elementaryproposition, asserts the existence of a state of affairs.' [47]The apparently self-evident view that the logical analysis ofstatements leads to elementary statements is anything butself-evident. Even Wittgenstein still repeats the dogma ofDescartes' Discours de la Méthode, namely, that the mostsimple—whatever one could imagine this [40/41] to be—is'more true' than what is composed, and therefore that thereduction of the more complicated to the simple a priori de-serves greater merit. In fact, for the followers of scientism,simplicity is a value criterion of social scientific knowledge.This is exemplified in the fifth thesis of Popper's Tubingenpaper. [48] Through its association with honesty, simplicitybecomes a scientific virtue. The overtone is unmistakablehere, namely that the complicated arises from the confu-sion or the pomposity of the observer. But the objects de-cide objectively whether social theorems should be simpleor complex.

Popper's statement that 'What really exists are problemsand solutions, and scientific traditions' [49] depends uponhis own insight which immediately precedes this one, thata so-called scientific discipline is a conglomeration of prob-lems and attempts at solution. The selection of tacitly cir-cumscribed problems as the scientistic 'sole reality' installs

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simplification as a norm. Science is to concern itself solelywith determinable questions. The material seldom posesthese questions in such a concise form. In the same spirit,Popper defines the method of the social sciences 'like thatof the natural sciences'. It 'consists in trying out tentativesolutions to certain problems: the problems from which ourinvestigations start, and those which turn up during the in-vestigation. Solutions are proposed and criticized. If a pro-posed solution is not open to pertinent criticism, then it isexcluded as unscientific for this reason, although perhapsonly temporarily.' [50] The concept of a problem employedhere is hardly less atomistic than Wittgenstein's criterionof truth. It is postulated that everything with which soci-ology legitimately ought to concern itself can be dissectedinto individual problems. If one interprets Popper's the-sis in a strict sense then, despite its common sense whichrecommends it at a first glance, it becomes an obstructivecensure upon scientific thought. Marx did not suggest the'solution of a problem'—in the very concept of suggestion,the fiction of consensus as a guarantor of truth creeps in.Does this mean that Das Kapital is therefore not a contri-bution to the social sciences? In the context of society, theso-called solution of each problem presupposes this con-text. The panacea of trial [41/42] and error exists at theexpense of moments, after whose removal the problems arelicked into shape ad usum scientiae and possibly becomepseudo-problems. Theory has to bear in mind that the con-nections, which disappear through the Cartesian dissectionof the world into individual problems, must be mediatedwith the facts. Even if an attempted solution is not imme-diately amenable to the 'pertinent criticism' stipulated byPopper, that is, if it is not amenable to refutation, the prob-lem can nevertheless be central with regard to the object.

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Whether or not capitalist society will be impelled towardsits collapse, as Marx asserted, through its own dynamic is areasonable question, as long as questioning is not manipu-lated; it is one of the most important questions with whichthe social sciences ought to concern themselves. As soon asthey deal with the concept of the problem, even the mostmodest and therefore the most convincing theses of social-scientific scientism gloss over what are actually the mostdifficult problems. Concepts such as that of hypothesis andthe associated concept of testability cannot be blithely trans-ferred from the natural to the social science. This doesnot imply approval of the cultural-scientific ideology thatthe superior dignity of man will not tolerate quantification.The society based on domination has not simply robbed it-self and human beings—its compulsory members—of sucha dignity, but rather it has never permitted them to becomethe emancipated beings who, in Kant's theory, have a rightto dignity. What befalls them nowadays, as earlier in theform of an extended natural history, is certainly not abovethe law of large numbers, which astonishingly prevails inthe analysis of elections. But the context in itself has a differ-ent, or at least a more recognizable, form than it did in theolder natural science from which the models of scientisticsociology are derived. As a relationship between human be-ings, this context is just as much founded in them as it com-prehends and constitutes them. Societal laws are incom-mensurable with the concept of hypothesis. The Babylonianconfusion between positivists and critical theorists emergeswhen the former, although professing tolerance, rob theory,by its transformation into hypotheses, of that moment ofindependence which endows hypotheses with the objectivehegemony of social laws. Moreover, social facts are not aspredictable as natural-scientific facts within their relatively

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homogeneous continua—a point to which Horkheimer firstdrew attention. Included in the objective law-like nature of[42/43] society is its contradictory character, and ultimatelyits irrationality. It is the task of social theory to reflect uponthis too and, if possible, to reveal its origins, but not to ar-gue it away through an overzealous adaptation to the idealof prognoses which must either be corroborated or refuted.

Similarly, the concept—also borrowed from the naturalsciences—of the general, quasi-democratic, empathetic re-constructability [Nachvollziehbarkeit] of cognitive operationsand insights is by no means as axiomatic in the social sci-ences as it pretends to be. It ignores the power of the nec-essarily false consciousness which society imposes upon itsmembers—a consciousness which in turn must be criticallypenetrated. It is embodied in the aspiring type of socialscience research assistant as the contemporary form of theworld spirit. Anyone who has grown up under the influ-ence of the culture industry so entirely that it has becomehis second nature is initially hardly able and inclined tointernalize insights which apply to the culture industry'sfunctions and role in the social structure. Like a reflexaction he will fend off such insights preferably, by refer-ring to the scientistic guide-line of general empathetic re-constructability. It took thirty years for the critical theoryof the culture industry to prevail. Even today numerousinstances and agencies attempt to stifle it since it is harm-ful to business. The knowledge of objective societal invari-ant regularities and, in particular, its uncompromisinglypure, undiluted representation by no means measures it-self against the consensus omnium. Opposition to the re-pressive total tendency can be reserved for small minoritieswho even have to suffer being castigated for an elitist stance.Empathetic reconstructability is a potential possessed by

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mankind and does not exist here and now under existingconditions. It is certainly the case that what one personcan understand can potentially be understood by another,for in the interpreter [der Verstehende] that whole is oper-ative through which generality is also posited. Yet in orderto realize this possibility, it is not sufficient to appeal tothe intellect of others as they are, nor even to education.Probably a change in the whole would be required—thatwhole which today, in terms of its own law, deforms ratherthan develops awareness. The postulate of simplicity har-monizes with such a repressive disposition. Since it is inca-pable of any mental operations other than those which, forall their perfection, proceed mechanically, this dispositionis even [43/44] proud of its intellectual honesty. Involuntar-ily it denies the complicated nature of precisely those socialrelations which are indicated by such currently overworkedterms as alienation, reification, functionality and structure.The logical method of reduction to elements, from whichthe social is constructed, virtually eliminates objective con-tradictions. A secret agreement exists between the praisefor simple life and the anti-intellectual preference for thesimple as what is attainable by thought. This tendency pre-scribes simplicity for thought. Social scientific knowledge,however, which expresses the complex nature of the processof production and distribution, is apparently more fruitfulthan the dissection into separate elements of production bymeans of surveys on factories, individual companies, indi-vidual workers and the like. It is also more fruitful thanreduction to the general concept of such elements which,for their part, only attain their importance in the more com-plex structural context. In order to know what a worker isone must know what capitalist society is; conversely, the lat-ter is surely no 'more elementary' than are the workers. If

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Wittgenstein justifies his method by the statement: 'Objectsform the substance of the world. Therefore they cannot becompound', [51] then in so doing he follows, with the posi-tivist's naïvety, the dogmatic rationalism of the seventeenthcentury. Scientism certainly regards the res—the individ-ual objects—as the sole true existent, but thereby dispos-sesses them of all their determinations, as mere conceptualsuperstructure, to such an extent that this solely real entitybecomes wholly nugatory for scientism and then, in fact,merely serves as an illustration for what, in nominalisticbelief, is a similarly nugatory generality.

The positivist critics of dialectics rightly demand mod-els at least of sociological methods which, although theyare not tailored to empirical rules, prove to be meaningful.Here however the empiricist's so-called 'meaning criterion'would have to be altered. The index verborum prohibito-rum demanded by Otto Neurath in the name of the Vi-enna Circle would then be abolished. One might name as amodel something which certainly did not emerge as science,namely, the critique of language, which Karl Kraus, whostrongly influenced Wittgenstein, practised for decades inDie Fackel. His critique, often directed at journalistic [44/45]corruptions of grammar, was immanently inscribed. Fromthe outset, however, aesthetic criticism possessed a socialdimension. For Kraus linguistic impoverishment was theherald of real impoverishment. Already in the First WorldWar he witnessed the realization of the malformations andrhetoric whose muted cry he had heard long before. Thisprocess is the prototype of a non-verbal one. The world-ly-wise Kraus knew that language, no matter how much itmight be a constituens of experience, did not simply cre-ate reality. Through its absolutization, language analysisbecame for Kraus both a distorted mirror of real tenden-

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cies and a medium in which his critique of capitalism wasconcretized into a second immediacy. The linguistic abom-inations which he created, and whose disproportion to thereal abominations is most readily emphasized by those whowish to gloss over the real ones, are excretions of the soci-etal processes which appear archetypically in words beforethey abruptly destroy the supposedly normal life of bour-geois society in which, beyond current scientific observa-tion, they matured almost imperceptibly. Consequently, thephysiognomy of language developed by Kraus contains agreater penetrative power over society than do largely em-pirical sociological findings since it records seismograph-ically the monster which science, out of a sense of pureobjectivity, narrow-mindedly refuses to deal with. The fig-ures of speech cited and pilloried by Kraus parody and sur-pass what research only tolerates under the sloppy headingof 'juicy quotes'. Kraus' non-science or anti-science putsscience to shame. Sociology may contribute mediationswhich Kraus would in fact scorn as mitigations of his di-agnoses that still inevitably lag behind reality. Even duringhis lifetime, the Viennese socialist workers' newspaper wasaware of social conditions which made Viennese journal-ism into what Kraus recognized it to be. In History andClass Consciousness Lukács defined the social type of thejournalist as the dialectical extreme of reification. In this ex-treme case, the commodity character conceals what is sim-ply contrary to the essence of commodities and devours it;namely, the primary spontaneous capacity for reaction onthe part of human subjects, which sells itself on the mar-ket. Kraus' physiognomy of language would not have hadsuch a profound effect upon science and upon the philos-ophy of history without the truth content of the underly-ing experiences which are dismissed by the clique with a

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subordinate's arrogance [45/46] as mere art. [52] The anal-yses micrologically attained by Kraus, are by no meansso 'unconnected' with science as would be acceptable tothe latter. More specifically, his language-analytical the-ses on the mentality of the commercial traveller—of thefuture office worker—must, as a neo-barbaric norm, con-cur with those aspects of Weber's theory of the dawning ofbureaucratic domination which are relevant to the sociol-ogy of education. In addition, Kraus' analyses also concurwith the decline of education explained by Weber's theory.The strict relation of Kraus' analyses to language and theirobjectivity lead them beyond the promptly and automat-ically recorded fortuitousness of merely subjective formsof reaction. The analyses extrapolate from the individualphenomena a whole which comparative generalization can-not master, and which is co-experienced as pre-existent inthe approach adopted in Kraus' analysis. His work maynot be scientific but a discipline which lay claim to scien-tific status would have to emulate it. Freud's theory inthe phase of its diffusion, was ostracized by Kraus. Nev-ertheless, and despite Freud's own positivistic mentality,his theory ran as counter to established science as Kraus'own work. Since it was developed on the basis of a rela-tively small number of individual cases, according to thescientific system of rules, it would be judged to be a falsegeneralization from the first to the last statement. [46/47]But without its productivity for the understanding of so-cial modes of behaviour and, in particular, the understand-ing of the 'cement' of society, one could not imagine whatmight possibly be registered as actual progress of sociol-ogy over recent decades. Freud's theory which, for rea-sons of a complex nature, prompted established science toshrug its shoulders—and psychiatry has still not grown out

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of this habit—provided intra-scientifically practicable hy-potheses for the explanation of what otherwise cannot beexplained; namely, that the overwhelming majority of hu-man beings tolerate relations of domination, identify them-selves with them and are motivated towards irrational atti-tudes by them—attitudes whose contradiction with the sim-plest interests of their self-preservation is obvious. But onemust doubt whether the transformation of psycho-analysisinto hypotheses does justice to its specific type of knowl-edge. Its utilization in survey procedures takes place atthe expense of the immersion in detail to which it owesits wealth of new societal knowledge, even if it placed itshopes in general law-like regularities in accordance withthe model of traditional theory.

Albert seems to be well disposed towards such models.[53] But what is actually at issue in the controversy is unfor-tunately disguised in his concept of testability in principle.If a sociological theorist repeatedly observes on the postersof New York subway stations that one of the dazzling whiteteeth of an advertising beauty is blacked out then he willinfer, for example, that the glamour of the culture industry,as a mere substitute satisfaction through which the spec-tator pre-consciously feels himself to be deceived, simulta-neously arouses aggression in the latter. In terms of theepistemological principle Freud constructed his theoremsin a similar manner. It is very difficult to test such extrap-olations empirically, unless one were to light upon partic-ularly ingenious experiments. Such observations can, how-ever, crystallize into social-psychological thought structureswhich, in a different context and condensed into 'items',lend themselves to questionnaire and clinical methods. Butif, on the other hand, the positivists insist that the dialec-ticians, unlike themselves, are unable to cite any binding

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rules of behaviour for sociological knowledge and that theytherefore defend the aperçu, then this postulate presup-poses the strict separation of [47/48] reality and methodwhich is attacked by dialectics. Anyone who wishes tofollow the structure of his object and conceptualizes it aspossessing motion in itself does not have at his disposal amethod independent of the object.

As a counterpart to the general positivist thesis of theverifiability of meaning a valuable model will be cited herefrom the author's own work in the sociology of music. Thisis not because the author overestimates the status of thework, but rather since a sociologist naturally becomes awareof the interdependence of material and methodological mo-tives most readily in his own studies. In the 1936 article'Über Jazz', published in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung andreprinted in Moments musicaux, the concept of a 'jazz sub-ject' was employed, an ego-imago which occurs quite gen-erally in this type of music. Jazz was regarded as a totallysymbolic process in which this jazz subject, confronted bythe collective demands represented by the basic rhythm, fal-ters, stumbles and 'drops out' but, while 'dropping out', re-veals himself in a kind of ritual to be similar to all the otherhelpless subjects and is integrated into the collective at theprice of his self-cancellation. One can neither put one's fin-ger on the jazz subject in protocol statements, nor reducethe symbolism of the process to sense data in a completelystringent manner. Nevertheless, the construction which in-terprets the smooth idiom of jazz, stereotypes of whichawait such deciphering like a secret code, is hardly devoidof meaning. This construction should promote the inves-tigation of the interiority of the jazz phenomenon, namelyof what it generally signifies in societal terms, more than dosurveys of the views of various population—or age—groups

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on jazz, even if the latter were based upon solid proto-col statements such as the original comments of those ran-domly sampled and interviewed. Presumably one couldonly decide whether the juxtaposition of positions and cri-teria was quite irreconcilable after a concentrated attempthad been made to realize theorems of this type in empiricalresearch projects. Up till now, this has hardly interested so-cial research, although the possible gain in cogent insightcan scarcely be denied. Without indulging in a shoddycompromise one can readily detect possible meaning cri-teria for such interpretations. This is exemplified in extrap-olations from the technological analysis of a phenomenonof mass culture—this is the point of the theory of the jazzsubject—or the capacity to combine [48/49] theorems withother phenomena closer to the usual criteria: phenomenasuch as the eccentric clown and certain older types of film.In any case, what is implied by such a thesis as that ofthe jazz subject, in his capacity as the latent embodimentof this type of popular music, is intelligible even if it isneither verified nor falsified by the reactions of the jazz lis-teners questioned. Subjective reactions by no means needto coincide with the determinable content of cultural phe-nomena which provoke a reaction. The moments whichmotivate the ideal construction of a jazz subject must be ad-duced. No matter how inadequately, this was attempted inthe above-mentioned article on jazz. As an evident meaningcriterium there emerges the question whether, and to whatextent, a theorem illuminates questions which would oth-erwise remain obscure and whether, through this theorem,diverse aspects of the same phenomenon are mutually elu-cidated. The construction can fall back upon far-reachingsocietal experiences, such as that of the integration of soci-ety in its monopolistic phase at the expense of the virtually

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powerless individuals and by means of them. Hertha Her-zog, in a later study of the 'soap operas' popular at that timeon American radio—radio series for housewives—appliedthe formula closely related to jazz theory of 'getting intotrouble and getting out of it', to such programmes. Thisstudy took the form of a content analysis, empirical in termsof the usual criteria, and achieved analogous results. Thepositivists themselves must state whether the internal posi-tivistic extension of the so-called verifiability criterion makesroom for the above-cited models, in that it does not restrictitself to observations requiring verification, but rather in-cludes statements for which any pre-conditions for theirverification can be created at all, [54] or whether the alltoo indirect possibility of verification of these statements—apossibility burdened down by additional 'variables'—as usualrenders them unacceptable.

It ought to be the task of sociology to analyse whichproblems can be dealt with adequately by means of an em-pirical approach and which problems cannot be analysedin this manner without forfeiting some degree of mean-ing. A strictly a priori judgment on this question cannot bemade. One can presume that a gap exists between empiricalresearch actually carried out and positivist [49/50] method-ology. Even in the form of 'analytical philosophy', the latter,until now, has contributed little that is positive to sociolog-ical research, and the reason for this is probably that, inresearch, interest in the object (Sache) has, in fact, asserteditself—sometimes through crudely pragmatistic considera-tions—against methodological obsessions. Living sciencemust be rescued from the philosophy which, having beenculled from it, holds it in tutelage. One should simply askoneself whether, for all its faults, the F-scale of The Authori-tarian Personality—a study which operated with empirical

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methods—could ever have been introduced and improvedif it had been developed, from the outset, with the aid ofthe positivist criteria of the Gutman scale. The dictum ofthe academic teacher that 'You are here to do research, notto think', mediates between the subordinate status of nu-merous social scientific surveys and their social standpoint.The inquiring mind which neglects the question 'what' infavour of the question 'how', or neglects the goal of knowl-edge in favour of the means of knowledge, changes itself forthe worse. As a heteronomous cog, it forfeits all its freedomin the machinery. It becomes despiritualized through ratio-nalization. [55] Thought, harnessed to the functions of anoffice worker, becomes an office worker's mentality in itself.The despiritualized spirit must virtually lead ad absurdum,since it flounders when faced with its own pragmatic tasks.The defamation of fantasy, and the inability to conceive ofwhat does not yet exist, become sand in the mechanism ofthe apparatus itself, as soon as it finds itself confronted withphenomena not provided for in its schemata. Undoubtedly,part of the blame for the Americans' helplessness in theVietnamese guerilla war is borne by what the Americanscall 'top brass'. Bureaucratic generals pursue a calculatingstrategy that is unable [50/51] to anticipate Giap's tactics,which are irrational according to their norms. Scientificmanagement, which is what the strategy of warfare has be-come, results in military disadvantage. Moreover, in soci-etal terms, the prohibition of fantasy is all too compatiblewith societal statics, with the decline in capitalist expansionwhich, despite all protestations to the contrary, is becomingdiscernible. What, by virtue of its own nature, strives forenlargement becomes, as it were, superfluous, and this inturn damages the interests of capital which must expandin order to survive. Anyone acting in accordance with the

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maxim 'safety first' is in danger of losing everything. Theyare a microcosm of the prevailing system whose stagnationis precipitated both by the surrounding dangerous situationand by deformations immanent in progress.

It would be worthwhile to write an intellectual history offantasy, since the latter is the actual goal of positivist prohi-bitions. In the eighteenth century, both in Saint-Simon'swork and in d'Alembert's Discours préliminaire, fantasyalong with art is included in productive labour and par-ticipates in the notion of the unleashing of the forces ofproduction. Comte, whose sociology reveals an apologetic,static orientation, is the first enemy of both metaphysicsand fantasy simultaneously. The defamation of fantasy orits relegation to a special domain, marked off by the divi-sion of labour, is the original phenomenon of the regressionof the bourgeois spirit. However, it does not appear as anavoidable error of this spirit, but rather as a consequenceof a fatality which instrumental reason—required by soci-ety—couples with this taboo. The fact that fantasy is onlytolerated when it is reified and set in abstract oppositionto reality, makes it no less of a burden to science than toart. Legitimate science and art desperately seek to redeemthe mortgage that burdens them. Fantasy implies an intel-lectual operation rather than free invention—without theequivalent of hastily realized facticity. But this is preciselywhat is prevented by the positivist theory of the so-calledmeaning criterion. In quite formal terms, for instance, thisis exemplified in the famous postulate of clarity: 'Every-thing that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Ev-erything that can be put into words can be put clearly'. [56]But everything which is not sensuously realized retains ahalo of indeterminacy. No abstraction is ever quite clear;every abstraction is also indistinct [51/52] on account of the

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diversity of possible concretizations. Moreover, one is sur-prised by the language-philosophical apriorism as Wittgen-stein's thesis. Knowledge as free from prejudice of posi-tivism requires would have to confront states of affairs that,in themselves, are anything but clear and are, in fact, con-fused. There is no guarantee that they can be expressedclearly. The desire to do so, or rather the desire that ex-pression must do strict justice to the object, is legitimate.But this can only be satisfied gradually, and not with theimmediacy expected of language only by a view alien to it,unless one dogmatically regards the priority of the instru-ment of knowledge, even up to the subject-object relation,as prestabilized—a standpoint emanating from Descartes'theory of theclara et distincta perceptio. Just as it is certainthat the object of sociology, contemporary society, is struc-tured, so there is no doubt that, in its immanent claim torationality, it possesses incompatible characteristics. Thesepossibly give rise to the effort to conceptualize, in a clearmanner, what is not clear—but this cannot be made into acriterion for the object itself. Wittgenstein would have beenthe last to overlook the unfathomable; namely, whether theconceptualization of something which is, for its part, un-clear can ever be clear of itself. In social science, new expe-riences which are only just developing completely mock thecriterion of clarity. If one were to measure them here andnow against this criterion, then the tentatively developingexperience would not be permitted to become active at all.Clarity is a moment in the process of knowledge, but it doesnot exhaust this process. Wittgenstein's formulation closesits own horizon against expressing mediately, in a complexmanner, and in constellations, what cannot be expressedclearly and immediately. In this respect, his own behaviourwas far more flexible than his pronouncements. For in-

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stance, he wrote to Ludwig von Ficker, who had presentedGeorg Trakl with a considerable sum of money donatedby Wittgenstein, to say that, although he did not under-stand Trakl's poems, he—Wittgenstein—was convinced oftheir high quality. Since the medium of poetry is language,and since Wittgenstein deal with language as such and notmerely with science, he unintentionally confirmed that onecan express what cannot be expressed. Such paradoxical-ity was hardly alien to his mode of thought. It wouldbe a sign of equivocation to attempt to evade this para-dox by claiming a dichotomy between knowledge and po-etry. Art is knowledge sui generis. In poetry, [52/53] thatupon which Wittgenstein's theory of science lays stress isemphatic: namely, language.

Wittgenstein's hypostasis of the cognitive moment, clar-ity, as the canon of knowledge clashes with some of hisother major theorems. His formulation, 'The world is ev-erything that is the case', which has become an article offaith for positivism, is in itself so ambiguous that it is in-adequate as a 'criterion of meaning', in terms of Wittgen-stein's own postulate of clarity. Its apparent incontestabil-ity and its ambiguity are surely inextricably linked. Thestatement is armed with a language form which preventsits content from being fixed. To be 'the case' can mean thesame as to exist in factual terms, in the sense of what ex-ists [das Seiende] in philosophy τά oντα; but it can alsomean: to have logical validity—that two times two is fouris 'the case'. The positivists' basic principle conceals the con-flict between empiricism and logistics, which the positivistshave never settled. In fact, this conflict prevails throughoutthe entire philosophical tradition and only penetrates posi-tivism as something new since positivism would prefer toknow nothing about this tradition. Wittgenstein's statement

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is grounded in his logical atomism, rightly criticized withinpositivism. Only single states of affairs—something, fortheir part, abstracted—can be 'the case'. Recently, Wellmerhas criticized Wittgenstein by asserting that one looks invain for examples of elementary statements in the Tracta-tus. [57] For there ‘are’ none with the conclusiveness uponwhich Wittgenstein would have to insist. In announcing ex-amples he implicitly reveals the critique of the category ofthe 'First'. If one strives for it, then it evaporates. Unlikethe actual positivist members of the Vienna Circle, Wittgen-stein opposed the desire to replace a positivism hostile tophilosophy with a philosophy which was itself question-able—and ultimately, sensualist—through the primacy ofthe concept of perception. On the other hand, the so-calledprotocol statements actually transcend language, within whoseimmanence Wittgenstein wishes to entrench himself. Anti-nomy is inevitable. The magic circle of reflexion upon lan-guage is not breached by recourse to crude, questionablenotions such as that of the immediately 'given'. Philosoph-ical categories, such as that of the idea, the sensual, aswell as dialectics, all of which have been in existence sincePlato's [53/54] Theaetetus, arise in a theory of science hos-tile to philosophy, thereby revoking its hostility towardsphilosophy. One cannot dispose of philosophical questionsby first deliberately forgetting them, and then rediscover-ing them with the effect of dernière nouveauté. Carnap'smodification of Wittgenstein's criterion of meaning is a ret-rogressive step. Through the question concerning the crite-ria of validity he represses the question of truth. Most ofall, they would like to relegate this question to metaphysics,In Carnap's opinion, 'metaphysical statements are not "em-pirical statements"' [Erfahrungssatze] [58] —a simple tau-tology. What motivates metaphysics is not sense experi-

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ence, to which Carnap ultimately reduces all knowledge,but rather mediated experience. Kant did not tire of point-ing this out.

The fact that the positivists extrapolate from science, ina gigantic circle, the rules which are to ground and justifyit, has its fateful consequences, even for the science whoseactual progress includes types of experience which, in turn,are not prescribed and approved by science. The subse-quent development of positivism confirmed just how un-tenable Carnap's assertion is that 'protocol sentences . . .themselves do not require corroboration, but rather theyserved as a basis for all the other statements of science.' [59]Presumably, both logically and within science itself, imme-diacy is essential; otherwise the category of mediation, forits part, would lack any rational meaning. Even categorieswhich distance themselves as greatly from immediacy associety does, could not be conceptualized without some-thing immediate. Anyone who does not primarily perceivein social phenomena the societal, which expresses itself inthem, cannot advance to an authentic concept of society.But in the progress of knowledge the moment of immedi-acy must be transcended. The objections raised by Neurathand Popper as social scientists against Carnap, namely thatprotocol sentences can be revised, indicates that these state-ments are mediated. In the first instance, they are medi-ated through the subject of perception, presented in accor-dance with the model of physics. Since Hume, positivismhas regarded careful reflection upon this subject as super-fluous and, as a result, the subject has constantly crept in asan unnoticed presupposition. The consequences are borneby the truth-content of protocol sentences. They are bothtrue and not true. They would have to [54/55] be eluci-dated on the basis of several questionnaires such as are

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used in surveys in political sociology. As preliminary ma-terial, the answers are certainly 'true' and, despite their ref-erence to subjective opinions, they are themselves a part ofsocial objectivity to which opinions themselves belong. Thepeople sampled have affirmed this, or put a cross againstthis and nothing else. On the other hand, however, in thecontext of the questionnaires, the answers are frequentlyinconsistent and contradictory; on an abstract level, theymight be pro-democratic whilst, with regard to concrete'items', they are anti-democratic. Hence sociology cannotbe satisfied with the data, but rather it must attempt to re-veal the derivation of the contradictions; empirical researchproceeds accordingly. When viewed subjectively, the phi-losophy of science's ab ovo scorn for such considerationscommon in science, presents the dialectical critique with itspoint of attack. The positivists have never wholly shaken offthe latent anti-intellectualism which was already present inHume's dogmatic degradation of ideas to mere copies ofimpressions. For them thought is nothing more than recon-struction [Nachvolkzug]; anything beyond this is an evil.Undoubtedly, such a disguised anti-intellectualism, with itsunintended political overtones, increases the influence ofthe positivist doctrine. Amongst its followers, there is oneparticular type who distinguishes himself both through thelack of a reflective dimension, and through resentment to-wards those intellectual modes of behaviour which essen-tially operate within such a dimension.

Positivism internalizes the constraints exercised upon thoughtby a totally socialized society in order that thought shallfunction in society. It internalizes these constraints so thatthey become an intellectual outlook. Positivism is the pu-ritanism of knowledge. [60] What puritanism achieves inthe moral sphere is, under [55/56] positivism, sublimated

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to the norms of knowledge. Kant's equivocally phrasedwarning not to digress into intelligible worlds, which Hegelcountered with his ironic comment on 'evil houses', formsa prelude to this development; but only, of course, as onevocal line in the polyphonic structure of the philosophicalscore, whereas, for the positivists, it has become the triv-ially dominant melody of the soprano part. From the out-set, knowledge denies what it seeks, what it ardently de-sires, since this is denied by the desideratum of sociallyuseful labour. Knowledge then projects the taboo which ithas imposed upon itself onto its goal, and proscribes whatit cannot attain. The process which otherwise might be un-bearable for the subject—namely, the integration of thoughtinto what confronts it and what must be penetrated byit—is integrated into the subject by positivism and madeinto his own affair. The felicity of knowledge is not tobe. If one wished to subject positivism to the reductio adhominem which it so readily practises on metaphysics, thenone would surmise that positivism grants a logical form tothe sexual taboos which were converted into prohibitionson thought some time ago. Within positivism, it becomesa maxim of knowledge itself that one should not eat fromthe tree of knowledge. Curiosity is punished in the noveltyof thought; utopia must be expelled from thought in ev-ery form it takes—including that of negation. Knowledgeresigns itself to being a mere repetitive reconstruction. Itbecomes impoverished just as life is impoverished underwork discipline. In the concept of the facts to which onemust adhere, and from which one cannot distance oneself,not even through an interpolation of them, knowledge isreduced to the mere reproduction of what is, in any case,present. This is expressed by recourse to logic in the idealof the continuous deductive system from which nothing is

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[56/57] excluded. Insensible enlightenment is transformedinto regression. The subordinate and trivial in positivistdoctrine is not the fault of its representatives. Frequently,when they set aside their gowns, they derive no profit fromit. Objective bourgeois spirit has risen up as a replacementfor philosophy. One cannot fail to recognize in this the partipris for the exchange principle, abstracted to the norm ofbeing-for-another (Füranderessein), with which the crite-rion of empathetic reconstructability and the concept ofcommunication, ultimately formed in the culture industry,comply as the measure of all that is intellectual. It is hardlydisloyal to interpret what the positivists mean by 'empir-ical' as what something is for something else; the objectitself is never to be apprehended. The positivists react tothe simple shortcoming that knowledge does not attain itsobject but merely places it in relations external to the object,by registering this shortcoming as immediacy, purity, gainand virtue. The repression, which the positivist mind cre-ates for itself, suppresses what is not like itself. This causespositivism—despite its avowal of neutrality, if not by virtueof this avowal—to be a political fact. Its categories are la-tently the practical categories of the bourgeois class, whoseenlightenment contained, from the outset, the notion thatone cannot have recourse to ideas which cast doubt uponthe rationality of the prevailing ratio.

Such a physiognomy of positivism is also that of its cen-tral concept: the empirical, experience. In general, cate-gories are only dealt with if, in Hegel's terminology, theyare no longer substantial, or if they are no longer unques-tionably alive. In positivism, a historical condition of themind is documented which no longer knows experienceand, consequently, both eradicates the indictments of ex-perience and presents itself as its substitute—as the only

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legitimate form of experience. The immanency of the sys-tem, which virtually isolates itself, neither tolerates any-thing qualitatively different that might be experienced, nordoes it enable the human subjects adapted to it to gainunregimented experience. The state of universal media-tion and reification of all the relations between human be-ings sabotages the objective possibility of specific experi-ence of the object—can this world be experienced at all assomething living?—together with the anthropological ca-pacity for this. Schelsky rightly called the concept of un-regimented experience one of the central points of contro-versy between dialecticians and positivists. The regimented[57/58] experience prescribed by positivism nullifies experi-ence itself and, in its intention, eliminates the experiencingsubject. The correlate of indifference towards the object isthe abolition of the subject, without whose spontaneous re-ceptivity, however, nothing objective emerges. As a socialphenomenon, positivism is geared to the human type thatis devoid of experience and continuity, and it encouragesthe latter—like Babbitt—to see himself as the crown of cre-ation. The appeal of positivism must surely be, sought inits a priori adaptation to this type. In addition, there is itspseudo-radicalism which makes a clean sweep without at-tacking anything substantially, and which deals with everysubstantially radical thought by denouncing it as mythol-ogy, as ideology and outdated. Reified consciousness au-tomatically turns upon every thought which has not beencovered in advance by facts and figures, with the objection:'where is the evidence?'. The vulgar-empirical praxis of con-cept-free social science, which usually takes no notice of an-alytical philosophy, betrays something about the latter. Pos-itivism is the spirit of the age, analogous to the mentalityof jazz fans. Similar, too, is the attraction it holds for young

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people. This is augmented by the absolute certainty whichit promises, after the collapse of traditional metaphysics.But this certainty is illusory; the pure non-contradiction, towhich it contracts, is simply a tautology—the empty com-pulsion to repeat, which has developed into a concept. Cer-tainty becomes something quite abstract and transcends it-self. The desire to live in a world without anxiety is sat-isfied by the pure identity of thought with itself. Para-doxically, security, which fascinates positivism, is similarto the alleged safety which the functionaries of authentic-ity derive from theology, and for whose sake they advocatea theology which no one believes in. In the historical di-alectics of enlightenment, ontology shrinks to a zero point.But this point, although in fact nothing, becomes the bas-tion—or the ineffable—for the advocates of scientism. Thisis in keeping with the consciousness of the masses, whosense that they are societally superfluous and ineffectual,and at the same time cling to the fact that the system, ifit is to survive, cannot let them starve. Ineffectuality issavoured as destruction, whilst empty formalism is indif-ferent, and therefore conciliatory, towards whatever exists.Real impotence itself consciously becomes an authoritarianmental attitude. Perhaps objective emptiness holds a spe-cial attraction for the emergent anthropological type of theempty [58/59] being lacking experience. The affective real-ization of an instrumental thought alienated from its objectis mediated through its technification. The latter presentssuch thought as if it were avant-garde.

Popper advocates an 'open' society. The idea of such asociety is contradicted, however, by the close regimentedthought postulated by his logic of science as a 'deductivesystem'. The most recent form of positivism fits the admin-istered world perfectly. In the early days of nominalism,

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and even for early bourgeois society, Bacon's empiricismimplied the emancipation of experience from the ordo ofpre-given concepts—the 'open' as liberation from the hierar-chical structure of bourgeois society. Since, however, the lib-erated dynamics of bourgeois society are nowadays movingtowards a new statics, this openness is obstructed throughthe restitution of closed intellectual control-systems by thescientistic syndrome of thought. If one applies to posi-tivism its own supreme maxim, one might say that posi-tivism—with its elective affinity to the bourgeoisie—is self-contradictoryin that it declares experience to be its ultimate, and yet inthe very same breath prohibits it. The exclusivity which itascribes to the ideal of experience both systematizes it andthereby potentially transcends it.

Popper's theory is more flexible than normal positivism.He does not insist upon value-freedom in such an unre-flected manner as does the most influential tradition in Ger-man sociology since Weber. Albert, for instance, writes:‘Adorno's judgement that the whole value problem is falselyposed, bears no relation to a definite formulation of thisproblem, and can therefore hardly be judged; it is an as-sertion which sounds comprehensive but carries no risk.’[61] To this one must reply that the criticized abstractnessof formulation corresponds to a dichotomy which has beensacrosanct in Germany since Weber, and that its inaugura-tors and not its critics should be censured. The antinomiesin which positivism has been entangled through the normof value-freedom, however, can be made concrete. Just as astrictly apolitical stance becomes a political fact, as does ca-pitulation in the face of might in the political play of forces,so value neutrality generally subordinates itself, in an unre-flected manner, to what the positivists call valid value sys-tems. Even Popper with his [59/60] demand 'that it should

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be one of the tasks of scientific criticism to point out confu-sions of value and to separate purely scientific value prob-lems of truth, of relevance, simplicity, and so forth, from ex-tra-scientific problems', [62] takes back to some extent, whathe originally permits. The problem of this dichotomy canactually be traced in concrete terms to the social sciences.If one applies value freedom as vigorously as Max Weberdid on public occasions—but not always in his texts—thensociological studies can easily violate the criterion of rele-vance, which Popper after all includes. If the sociology ofart seeks to brush aside the question of the quality of workswhose effects it studies, then it fails to apprehend such rel-evant complexes as that of manipulation through the con-sciousness industry, the truth or falsity content of 'stimuli'to which a random sample of people is exposed, and ulti-mately the determinate insight into ideology as societallyfalse consciousness. A sociology of art, unable or unwillingto distinguish between the quality of an honest and signifi-cant work and that of a kitsch product, calculated in termsof its influence, forfeits not only the critical function it seeksto exercise, but also the knowledge of such faits sociaux asthe autonomy or heteronomy of intellectual works, whichdepends upon their social location and determines theirsocial influence. If this is ignored, then we are left withthe empty remains of a 'head count'—at most, mathemat-ically perfected—of likes and dislikes, of no consequencefor the social significance of the registered likes and dis-likes. The critique of the evaluative procedure of the socialsciences should not be refuted, nor should, for instance, theentological theory of value of Scheler's middle period berestored as a norm for the social sciences.The dichotomybetween value and value freedom, and not the one or theother, is untenable. If Popper concedes that the scientistic

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ideals of objectivity and value freedom are, in turn, values,then this extends to the truth of judgments. Their meaningis implied by the 'evaluative' notion that a true judgmentis better than a false one. Analysis of any substantive so-cial-scientific theorems would necessarily encounter theiraxiological elements, even if the theorems do not give anaccount of them. But this axiological moment does notstand in abstract opposition to making a judgment, butrather is immanent to it. Value and value freedom arenot separate; rather, [60/61] they are contained in one an-other. Each, by itself, would be false—both the judgmentwhich is fixed to an external value and a judgment whichparalysed itself through the extirpation of its immanent andinextinguishable evaluative moment. One has to be com-pletely blind to separate the thema probandum, togetherwith the line of argument in Weber's treatise on the Protes-tant Ethic, from the—by no means value-free—intention ofhis critique of Marx's base-superstructure theorem. This in-tention nourishes the individual arguments, but above allit also supports the insulation of the investigation againstthe socio-economic origin of the theologumena, which, itis claimed, constituted capitalism. Weber's anti-materialiststandpoint not only provides the motivation—as he wouldadmit—for the questions raised in his sociology of religion,but also its focus of attention, the selection of material andthe mental complex. Self-consciously, his line of argumentturns the economic derivation upon its head. The rigid-ity of the concept of value, external to thought and objectalike, was, for both sides, precisely what was unsatisfactoryin the debate on value-freedom. Moreover, without men-tioning Weber, a positivist such as Durkheim stated franklythat cognitive and evaluative reason were the same and that,consequently, the absolute separation of value and knowl-

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edge was invalid. With respect to the latter, positivists andontologists are in agreement. The solution of the allegedproblem of value, which Albert finds lacking in the dialec-ticians' work, must surely be sought—to use a positivistconcept on this occasion—in the fact that the alternative isapprehended as a pseudo-problem (Scheinproblem), as anabstraction which dissolves when confronted with the con-crete view of society and reflection upon consciousness ofsociety. This was the point of the thesis concerning the reifi-cation of the problem of value, namely, that the so-calledvalues—whether they are regarded as something to be elim-inated from the social sciences, or as their blessing—areelevated to something independent, quasi self-constitutive;whereas, neither in real historical terms, nor as categories ofknowledge, are they anything of the kind. Value-relativismis the correlate to the absolutist apotheosis of values. Assoon as values are removed from the arbitrariness and af-fliction of the knowing consciousness, and are torn awayfrom its reflection and from the historical context in whichthey emerge, they fall prey to this very relativity which aninvocation of these values sought to banish. The economicconcept of value, which served [61/62] as a model both forLotze's philosophical concept, and that of the South WestGerman School, and subsequently for the dispute on ob-jectivity, is the original phenomenon of reification—namely,the exchange-value of the commodity. Starting out fromthe latter, Marx developed his analysis of fetishism, whichinterpreted the concept of value as the reflection of the rela-tionship between human beings as if it were a character-istic of objects. The normative problems arise from his-torical constellations, and they themselves demand, as itwere, mutely and 'objectively', that they be changed. Whatsubsequently congeals as values for historical memory are,

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in fact, question-forms (Fragegestalten) of reality, and for-mally they do not differ so greatly from Popper's conceptof a problem. For instance, as long as the forces of pro-duction are not sufficient to satisfy the primitive needs ofall, one cannot declare, in abstract terms, as a value that allhuman beings must have something to eat. But if thereis still starvation in a society in which hunger could beavoided here and now in view of the available and potentialwealth of goods, then this demands the abolition of hungerthrough a change in the relations of production. This de-mand arises from the situation, from its analysis in all itsdimensions, independently of the generality and necessityof a notion of value. The values onto which this demand,arising from the situation, is projected are the poor andlargely distorted copy of this demand. The mediating cate-gory is immanent critique. It contains the moment of valuefreedom in the form of its undogmatic reason, succinctlyexpressed in the confrontation between what a society ap-pears to be and what it is. The value moment, however,lives in the practical challenge which must be construedfrom the situation; to fulfil this task, however, one requiresa theory of society. The false chorismos of value freedomand value reveals itself to be the same as that of theory andpractice. Society, if it is understood as the functional con-text of human self-preservation, 'means' this: namely, thatit aims objectively at a reproduction of its life which is con-sonant with the state of its powers. Otherwise, every soci-etal arrangement even societalization itself—in the simplistcognitive sense is absurd. As soon as it were no longer actu-ally retarded by societal or scientistic authoritative orders,the subjective reason of the ends-means relation would betransformed into objective reason, which is contained inthe axiological moment as a moment of knowledge itself.

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Value and value freedom are mediated dialectically [62/63]through one another. No knowledge orientated towardsthe mediated essence of society would be true if it desireda different state of affairs. To this extent, it would be an'evaluative' knowledge. Nothing can be demanded of soci-ety which does not emerge from the relationship betweenthe concept and the empirical, which is not therefore essen-tially knowledge.

A dialectical theory of society does not simply brush asidethe desideratum of value freedom, but rather seeks to tran-scend it, together with the opposing desideratum. It shouldadopt this attitude towards positivism in general. It maybe that out of a feeling of aversion towards philosophy, di-alectics treat Marx's distinction between the representationand origin of knowledge philosophically in a manner thatis all too light. With this distinction, Marx intended to wardoff the objection that he was devising a deductive system.What is true here, however, is the heavy accent upon theexistent as opposed to the unleashed concept—the sharpen-ing of critical theory against idealism. It is an innate temp-tation for thought which proceeds immanently to disregardthe facts. But the dialectical concept is mediation, not some-thing which exists in itself. This imposes on the dialecticalconcept the duty of not pretending that there is any truthset apart from the mediated, from the facts. A dialectical cri-tique of positivism finds its most important point of attackin reification, in the reification of science and of unreflectedfacticity. And consequently, such critique must not reify itsconcepts either. Quite correctly, Albert recognizes that suchcentral concepts as society or collectivity, which are nothowever sensorily verifiable concepts, should not be hypo-statized nor posited and fixed in a naively realistic manneras things that exist in themselves. Nevertheless, a theory en-

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dangered by such reification is persuaded to become a the-ory of the object while the object itself is so hardened thatit recurs in the theory—provided that the theory merely 're-flects'—as its dogma. If society, a functional and not a sub-stantial concept, remains hierarchically above all individualphenomena in an apparently objective manner, then evendialectical sociology cannot ignore the aspect of their reifiednature. Otherwise it distorts that which is decisive, namely,the relationships of domination. Even Durkheim's conceptof the collective consciousness, which so obviously reifiesmental phenomena, derives its truth content from the con-straint exerted by societal [63/64] mores. But this constraintought, in turn, to be derived from the relationships of dom-ination in the real life process, and not accepted as an ulti-mate pregiven or as a thing [Sache]. Perhaps, in primitivesocieties, the lack of food necessitates organizational modesof constraint which recur in situations of scarcity in suppos-edly mature societies where such situations are caused bythe relations of production and are consequently unneces-sary, The question which comes first, the socially necessaryseparation of physical and mental labour or the usurpatoryprivilege of the medicine man resembles the debate over thechicken and the egg. In any case, the shaman an requiresideology and without him it would not be possible. For thesake of sacrosanct theory one cannot exorcise the possibil-ity that social constraint might be an animal or biologicalinheritance. The inescapable spell of the animal world is re-produced in the brutal domination of a society, still caughtup in natural history. But one should not apologeticallyconclude from this that constraint is immutable. Ultimatelyit is positivism's most profound moment of truth—even ifit is one against which positivism rebels as it does againstthe word which holds it in its spell—that the facts, that

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which exists in this manner and not in any other, haveonly attained that impenetrable power which is then rein-forced by the scientistic cult of facts in scientific thought,in a society without freedom of which its own subjects arenot masters. Even the philosophical preservation of posi-tivism would require the procedure of interpretation pro-hibited by positivism—the interpretation of that which, inthe course of the world, prevents interpretation. Positivismis the conceptless appearance of negative society in the so-cial sciences. In the debate, dialectics induces positivismto become conscious of such negativity, of its own nega-tivity. The traces of such consciousness are not lacking inWittgenstein. The further positivism is driven the more en-ergetically it drives itself beyond its boundaries. Wittgen-stein's statement, emphasized by Wellmer, ‘that much mustbe prepared in language in order that mere naming has ameaning’, [63] achieves no less than the recognition of thefact that tradition is constitutive for language and conse-quently, precisely in Wittgenstein's sense, for knowledge assuch. Wellmer touches a nerve-point when he detects inthis an objective denial of the reductionism of the ViennaCircle, a [64/65] rejection of the criterion of validity for pro-tocol statements. Reductionism has even less of a claim toan authoritative model for the social sciences. Accordingto Wellmer, even Carnap relinquishes the principle of thereduction of all terms to observational predicates and intro-duces alongside observational language a theoretical onewhich has been only partially interpreted. [64] In this onemay reasonably detect a decisive developmental tendencyfor the whole of positivism. It is consumed by increasingdifferentiation and self-reflection. By using a widespreadtypification its apologetics is able to profit from this; cen-tral objections to the school are rejected as outdated when

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compared with the school's current level of development.Recently Dahrendorf implied that the positivism criticizedby the Frankfurt School no longer existed. But the more thepositivists are unable to maintain their harsh but sugges-tive norms, the more the appearance of a legitimation fortheir scorn for philosophy and for the methods penetratedby the latter vanishes. Like Popper, even Albert seems toabandon prohibitive norms. [65] Towards the end of hisessay, 'The Myth of Total Reason', it becomes difficult todraw a sharp dividing line between Popper's and Albert'sconcept of science and dialectical reflection on society. As adifference there remains the following, 'the dialectical cultof total reason is too fastidious to content itself with "spe-cific" solutions. Since there are no solutions which meet itsdemands, it is forced to rest content with insinuation, allu-sion and metaphor'. [66] Dialectical theory, however, doesnot indulge in a cult of total reason; it criticizes such. rea-son. But whilst arrogance towards specific solutions is aliento it, it does not allow itself to be silenced by them.

Nevertheless, one should not lose sight of what contin-ues to survive untouched in positivism. Dahrendorf's ironiccomment that the Frankfurt School is the last school of soci-ology is symptomatic. What was probably meant here wasthat the age of schools within sociology was past and thatunified science has triumphantly ousted the schools as ar-chaically qualitative entities. But no matter how democraticand, egalitarian the prophecy is intended to be, its fulfil-ment would be intellectually totalitarian and would deci-sively undermine the very dispute which Dahrendorf him-self regards as the agent of all progress. The ideal of [65/66]progressive technical rationalization, even of science, dis-avows the pluralistic conceptions to which the opponentsof dialectics otherwise pay homage. Anyone who, when

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faced with such a slogan as that of the last school, recallsthe question of the little girl upon seeing a large dog—howlong can such a dog live?—does not need to subscribe toany sociological psychologism.

Despite the avowed intention of both sides to conduct thecontroversy in a rational spirit, the controversy retains itsthorny nature. In the press comments on the dispute overpositivism, particularly after the Sixteenth German Sociol-ogy Congress, which incidentally often did not even followthe course of the debate in an adequate and informed man-ner, one repeatedly finds the stereotyped statement that noprogress was made, that the arguments were already fa-miliar, that no settlement of the opposing viewpoints wasin sight. Consequently, doubt was thrown upon the fruit-fulness of the debate. These misgivings, which are full ofrancour, miss the point. They expect tangible progress inscience at a point where its tangibility is just as much inquestion as its current conception. It has not been estab-lished whether the two positions can be reconciled throughmutual criticism as they might be in Popper's model. Al-bert's cheap comments ad spectatores on the whole subjectof Hegel, not to mention his most recent comments, pro-vide little ground for hope. To protest that one has beenmisunderstood does not further the discussion any morethan the nudging appeal for agreement by refering to thenotorious unintelligibility of the opponent. If one contam-inates by association dialectics and irrationalism then oneblinds oneself to the fact that criticism of the logic of non-contradiction does not suspend the latter but rather reflectsupon it. One can generalize the observations made evenin Tübingen on the ambiguities contained in the word criti-cism. Even when the same concepts are used, in fact, evenwhere consensus is achieved, the opposing parties actually

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mean and strive after such diverse things that the consen-sus remains a façade covering the antagonisms. A continu-ation of the controversy would surely have to make visiblethose underlying antagonisms, which have by no meansbeen fully articulated as yet. It could often be observedin the history of philosophy that doctrines which considerthemselves to be the true representation of another divergebecause of the climate of the intellectual context right upto the last detail. The relationship of Fichte to Kant wouldprovide [66/67] the most striking example. In sociologymatters are no different; no matter whether sociology asa science has to maintain society in its particular function-ing form, as was the tradition from Comte to Parsons, orwhether sociology strives for the change of society's basicstructures as a result of societal experience, this is deter-mined down to the last category by the theory of scienceand therefore can scarcely be decided in terms of the the-ory of science. It is not even the immediate relationship topraxis which is decisive; but rather what role one accordsscience in the life of the mind and ultimately in reality. Di-vergencies here are not those of world view. They have theirrightful place in logical and epistemological questions, inthe interpretation of contradiction and non-contradiction,of essence and appearance, of observation and interpreta-tion. Dialectics remains intransigent in the dispute sinceit believes that it continues to reflect beyond the point atwhich its opponents break off, namely before the unques-tioned authority of the institution of science.

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1.1 a section

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae,felis. Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero,nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donecvehicula augue eu neque. Pellentesque habitant morbi tris-tique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis eges-tas. Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus rhoncus sem. Nullaet lectus vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eutellus sit amet tortor gravida placerat. Integer sapien est, ia-culis in, pretium quis, viverra ac, nunc. Praesent eget semvel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus. Morbi dolornulla, malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla. Cur-abitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus.Duis nibh mi, congue eu, accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis,diam. Duis eget orci sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.

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2T E S T C H A P T E R

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae,felis. Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero,nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donecvehicula augue eu neque. Pellentesque habitant morbi tris-tique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis eges-tas. Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus rhoncus sem. Nullaet lectus vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eutellus sit amet tortor gravida placerat. Integer sapien est, ia-culis in, pretium quis, viverra ac, nunc. Praesent eget semvel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus. Morbi dolornulla, malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla. Cur-abitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus.Duis nibh mi, congue eu, accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis,diam. Duis eget orci sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.

2.1 a section

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae,felis. Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero,nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donecvehicula augue eu neque. Pellentesque habitant morbi tris-

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tique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis eges-tas. Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus rhoncus sem. Nullaet lectus vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eutellus sit amet tortor gravida placerat. Integer sapien est, ia-culis in, pretium quis, viverra ac, nunc. Praesent eget semvel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus. Morbi dolornulla, malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla. Cur-abitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus.Duis nibh mi, congue eu, accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis,diam. Duis eget orci sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.

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Part II

A P P E N D I X

AA P P E N D I X C H A P T E R

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae,felis. Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero,nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donecvehicula augue eu neque. Pellentesque habitant morbi tris-tique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis eges-tas. Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus rhoncus sem. Nullaet lectus vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eutellus sit amet tortor gravida placerat. Integer sapien est, ia-culis in, pretium quis, viverra ac, nunc. Praesent eget semvel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus. Morbi dolornulla, malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla. Cur-abitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus.Duis nibh mi, congue eu, accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis,diam. Duis eget orci sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.

a.1 a section

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae,felis. Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero,nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donec

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vehicula augue eu neque. Pellentesque habitant morbi tris-tique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis eges-tas. Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus rhoncus sem. Nullaet lectus vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eutellus sit amet tortor gravida placerat. Integer sapien est, ia-culis in, pretium quis, viverra ac, nunc. Praesent eget semvel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus. Morbi dolornulla, malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla. Cur-abitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus.Duis nibh mi, congue eu, accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis,diam. Duis eget orci sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.

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