Brandon BatchelorCulture, Politics, Critique

Prof. A. Thiem5/5/2011

An Introduction to the Problem of Writing in Minima Moralia and Its Inheritance From Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

“The melancholy science from which I make this offering to my friend relates to a region that from time immemorial was regarded as the true field of philosophy, but which, since the latter’s conversion into method, has lapsed into intellectual neglect, sententious whimsy and finally oblivion: the teaching of the good life.”

—Minima Moralia, “Dedication”1

Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia is a collection of falsehoods. Once delivered over to

the reader, these falsehoods do not transform into an object. The historical experiences

sedimented in these aphoristic fragments resist thinking’s tendency to arrest the object, or

synthesize the properties of fragments into a new object. To posit a singular continuity of

Minima Moralia would be a readerly violation of the discontinuity of Adorno’s text, and thus, an 1 See Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 1974). Minima Moralia is the only Adorno text cited in this paper. Minima Moralia will be referred to as Adorno in the body of the paper.

**Also, a note to this research in general: The quality of my research might have been greatly improved by a more thorough recourse to Adorno’s views on rhetoric in Negative Dialectics. My views on Adorno’s concepts of literature and writing would have been supplemented by an investigation of his Notes To Literature. I was not able to access the later text. In the event of a revision of this research I would include a reading of relevant sections of Negative Dialectics and both volumes of Notes to Literature. As my research is currently configured I cannot help but notice tremendous holes in my understanding of Adorno’s concept of literature. Yet, to an extent, I am confident that my analysis sheds light on the perplexing character of the “Dedication” as it relates to itself and the subsequent aphorisms of Minima Moralia.

Furthermore, I will mention that I have recently read two of Jacques Derrida’s texts: “Given Time: The Time of the King” and “Différance.” Both of Derrida’s texts were on my mind while brainstorming this research. In retrospect, the operation Derrida’s text significantly informs my own textual procedure. At the moment, however, I cannot say exactly how – this is a fault of my research.

example of the violence thought enacts on the object.2 The question of how one might, or should

read Adorno’s Minima Moralia is of secondary importance to this investigation. Of primary

concern to this investigation is the manner in which Adorno’s text figures its own economy of

exchange, thus, redefining the concept of writing dialectics from the model afforded by Hegel’s

Phenomenology of Spirit.3 I will argue that the economic ambivalence of the figure of Minima

Moralia as an “offering” opens up a site for a critical genealogy of language and writing in

Adorno and Hegel’s texts (Adorno 15). A genealogical investigation of Adorno and Hegel’s texts

may enable further literary aspects of both texts to emerge, which would retrospectively define

our point of inquiry given by the figure of Minima Moralia as an “offering,” or “this offering.”

An additional focus of the present investigation is to develop a constellation based on

Adorno and Hegel’s texts in order to illuminate the implications of the claim that Adorno’s

Minima Moralia has literary aspects. The Hegelian and Adornian conception of language is by

no means identical. Yet, Adorno’s “Dedication” indicates “[Hegel’s] method schooled that of

Minima Moralia” (Adorno 16). Thus, we will begin our genealogical investigation by way of an

analysis of those aspects of Hegel’s dialectical method that might contain a kernel of the concept

of writing, or the concept of language. Our investigation of Hegel’s text does not presuppose any

distinction between these concepts.

2 The thought performed in this sentence, as well as some of the language employed above, grew out of a conversation with Professor Thiem during the spring semester of 2011. 3 G.W.F Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller. (United States of America: Oxford University Press, 1977).

2

The Impossibility of a Problem of Writing in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit

In general, Hegelian philosophy installs a rigid distinction between logical and literary

properties of dialectic by disavowing literary properties as properties and only avowing logical

ones. Taking note of this Hegelian distinction is by no means a condition for the possibility of

establishing a thematic orientation to the thought of a written, or literary ideal. Even if such a

move might appeal to a pure thinking of literature, the consequence of such thinking would be

the collapse Hegel’s absolute for the sake of a literary absolute. We might clarify up front that

the present investigation hopes to disinclude all naiveté regarding the production of a meaningful

ontology of the text. If, as Adorno’s text claims, “the whole is false,” then the production of texts

is not a simple matter of writing well, writing in good form, or writing the good life (Adorno 50).

In lieu of reifying “Spirit” as the textual ideal, we might analyze an aspect of linguistic meaning

in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. The aspect of linguistic meaning in question is generated by

a dialectical meta-narrative, a category unaccounted for by Hegel’s text. Thus, we will see that in

a sense, the so-called “rigid distinction” between logical and literary properties of dialectic is not

a thorough distinction at all.

Agamben’s Language and Death: The Place of Negativity analyzes the dialectical

concept of meaning in the first dialectic of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the “Sense

Certainty: Or The ‘This’ and ‘Meaning’”.4 Agamben’s reading of Hegel is inflected by an overly

concrete Heideggerian thinking: thus, if only to preserve the logical development of a

constellation Hegel and Adorno, we shall avoid crossing paths with Agamben’s line of reasoning

directly. In Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel’s dialectic of the “This,” the subject-term is “sense-

4 See Giorgio Agamben’s chapter, “The First Day” in Language and Negativity: The Place of Death, trans. Karen E. Pinkus with Michael Hardt. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991)

3

certainty,” whose shape is altered in subsequent dialectics and renamed “Consciousness,” “Self-

consciousness,” “Spirit” and so on (Hegel 65). The dialectic of “sense-certainty” requires that

“sense-certainty” disavow its belief that the truth of sensuous matter lies in the matter’s meaning.

“Sense-certainty” learns the truth of matter only by accepting that the negation of the negation of

matter is the truth. The truth does not belong to the matter in itself. The matter is only in-itself

insofar as it is for “sense-certainty”. The truth of “sense certainty” is that it differentiates itself

from the matter. The labor of conceptualization is a purely logical one for Hegel’s text. Yet, a

further indication of a problem of writing adhering in Hegel’s text emerges in a text by

Alexandre Kojève.

Kojève’s Introduction to the Reading of Hegel intimates a lack of agency that inheres in

the Hegelian concept of writing. In a sense, the labor of conceptualization stops short of thinking

its own production of a “record,” or text, of the synthesis of “primary” philosophical systems

(i.e. Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Spinoza etc.).5

However, neither these philosophies through their discussions, nor the historian-philosopher who observes them, effects the synthesis in question: real History is what does it, at the end of its own dialectical movement; and Hegel is content to record it without having to do anything whatsoever, and consequently, without resorting to a specific mode of operation or a method of his own.

(Kojève online)

According to Kojève’s Introduction, Hegel’s text does not concede to the fact that its writing is

the site of a lost agency. But why should it? If “real History” performs the synthesis, then

5 I use the term “primary” in quotation marks in order to give a sense of the line of thought leading up to the “synthesis in question” mentioned in the below citation of the Kojève text. For the first chapter of Alexandre Kojève’s Introduction to the Reading of Hegel see the following online resource:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/Kojeve.htm

4

Hegel’s text need not concern itself with itself as a production. If there is a risk in ignoring the

possibility that dialectical writing is transmitted through a literary form, or genre, how might one

explore the relevance of such a possibility?6

Inscribed into Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, is a

literary comportment that suggests Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit regards itself immediately

as a written perfection. Thus, we might consider Adorno and Horkheimer’s text an answer our

question of Kojève’s analysis. Adorno and Horkheimer’s The Dialectic of Enlightenment

mediates the genre of dialectical writing, at once wresting it from its unacknowledged

immediacy in the Hegelian text of the absolute idea, and arresting it their own text. In a radical

sense, this arrest means that the Dialectic of Enlightenment exposes an underlying problem in

Hegel’s dialectical meta-narrative, by performing the breakdown of its constitutive contradiction

– namely, that of myth and enlightenment.7 In Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, the movement

from mythical writing to rational thinking is prefigured by the Hegelian dialectic of “Sense-

certainty.” Yet, the concept of writing the dialectic is treated as though it is of no literary

consequence. Giorgio Agamben’s text brings this point into focus, but fails to become critical of

the consequence of the Hegelian genre of dialectical meta-narrative.

Agamben’s text reproduces a poem titled “Eleusis” that had been written by Hegel prior

to his elaboration of the path to Absolute Knowledge in Phenomenology of Spirit. The problem

6 Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit includes an analysis of three categories of traditional Literature; however, the formal analysis of these categories does not contain a response to the dialectical meta-narrative as a form of writing.

7 See Steven Helmling’s insightful article “‘Immanent Critique” and “Dialectical Mimesis’” on Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment”. The portion of the argument paraphrased in the paragraph to which this footnote is attached summarizes a claim made starting on p. 111 of Helmling’s article. Also see Helmling’s book Adorno’s Poetics of Critique (London: Continuum, 2009), for a further analysis of historical and ethical dimensions of Dialectic of Enlightenment are developed.

5

of unsayability that haunts Hegel’s poem appears again, but neutralized by the Absolute

dialectical consistency of language, in the Phenomenology of Spirit’s first dialectic.8 Agamben’s

text presents a constellation of two disparate Hegelian genres: the poetry of the Eleusinian

mystery, and the dialectical meta-narrative of Spirit. Yet, the Phenomenology’s generation of a

dialectical concept of language relies on the category of the absolute text, but only as a pure

negativity for the taking place of thought. Thus, the absolute text has no genre, as it is not

literary, or written.9 On the one hand, Agamben’s constellation illuminates the thematic

interpenetrations of Hegel’s texts, i.e. both literary and philosophical texts. On the other hand,

Agamben’s pursuit of an ontological concept of “voice” shatters this constellation as the site of a

critical conceptualization of literary aspects of Hegel’s categories.

Reading Minima Moralia’s “Dedication”: Adorno’s Text as an “Offering” of Historical Matters

In the “Dedication” to Minima Moralia, Adorno’s text describes the historical dynamics

that condition the thematic program of his dialectical thinking. Thus, we might ask, which

8 See “Sense-Certainty: Or the ‘This’ and ‘Meaning’” (especially § 95-109) in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. The neutralization of the problem of Hegel’s poem is referenced in § 108-109. In short, a prolonged fascination with the Eleusinian mystery is reduced to a simple problem of an inability to distinguish the individual sign from oneself.

9 Hegel hits this point home in §110 of Phenomenology of Spirit: “They mean ‘this’ bit of paper on which I am writing—or rather have written—‘this’; but what they mean is not what they say. If they actually wanted to say ‘this’ bit of paper which they mean, if they wanted to say it, then this is impossible because the sensuous This that is meant cannot be reached by language, which belongs to consciousness, i.e. to that which is inherently universal. In the actual attempt to say it, I t would therefore crumble away; those who started to describe it would not be able to complete the description, but would be compelled to leave it to others, who would finally have to admit to speaking about something which is not. They certainly mean, then this bit of paper here which is quite different from the bit mentioned above; but they say ‘actual things’ , ‘external or sensuous objects,’ ‘absolutely singular entities [Wesen] and so on; i.e. they say of them only what is universal. Consequently, what is called the unutterable is nothing else than the untrue, the irrational, what is merely meant [but is not actually expressed]. (bolded is my emphasis in bold, Phenomenology of Spirit p. 66) ”

6

historical dynamics circumscribe and condition Adorno’s thinking as a product of a specific

temporal horizon? Adorno’s text is written Minima Moralia in 1944 to 1947, the years following

the Holocaust. The operation of concentration camps displaces the historical subject, profoundly

altering its significance in Marxist-Hegelian philosophies (Adorno 16). Adorno’s text interprets

the historical dynamic introduced by the violence of the concentration camps; the production of

“life” as a mere semblance “without autonomy or substance of its own” is an effect of this

historical dynamic (Adorno 15). Minima Moralia’s reflection on the historical dynamic

employed by the concentration camp hones in on the problem of the “dissolution of the subject”

in its thematic aspect:

Nevertheless, considerations which start from the subject remain false to the same extent that life has become appearance. For since the overwhelming objectivity of historical movement in its present phase consists so far only in the dissolution of the subject, without giving rise to a new one, individual experience necessarily bases itself on the old subject, now historically condemned, which is still for-itself, but no longer in-itself. The subject still feels sure of its autonomy, but the nullity demonstrated to subjects by the concentration camp is already overtaking the form of subjectivity itself.

(Adorno 15-16)

The “historical movement,” or general historical dynamic, of the horizon of Adorno’s text is one

that nullifies particulars, or subjects; thus, there can be no object for the subject. Yet, experience

continues to be structured by the old principle of subjective reflection. Thus, the subjects of this

horizon are left with a nostalgia for authentic subjective reflection, the promise of Hegel’s texts.

However, the dynamic introduced into history by the concentration camps is the condition for the

impossibility of dissolving a totality of true content into reflection. This is precisely what

Adorno’s text indicates in writing the, “old subject, now historically condemned, [is] still for-

itself, but no longer in-itself” (Adorno 16). One may note how the horizon of Adorno’s text is

characterized by the disfiguration of history pointing to the impossibility of the subject. How

7

might the historical dynamic introduced by the violence of the concentration camps permit the

Hegelian injunction of a passive writing which waits for “real History” to unfold a dialectical

totality? 10 Would such a concept of writing defer the responsibility of producing writing in the

face of a violent and unspeakable historical dynamic? I would like to suggest that Adorno’s text

crystallizes this characterization of its own horizon into a key theme of the subsequent one-

hundred and fifty three negative dialectical aphorisms.

In the opening lines of the “Dedication,” Adorno refers to the text of Minima Moralia as

an “offering” to his own horizon, i.e. to his friend Max Horkheimer on the occasion of his fiftieth

birthday. One might ask, why might Adorno’s text contain the inscription of a performative

utterance, one which could accompany the action of giving a gift, into the first sentence of

Minima Moralia? Yet, it is unclear as to whether or not Adorno’s text as an “offering,” or

paradoxically, as “this offering,” is contextualized by a specific logic of exchange. We might

recognize Adorno’s “offering,” even as it belongs to different historical horizon, as a gift to

philosophy itself, or to philosophy as it is practiced and taught. Along similar lines, Adorno’s

opening sentence may be interpreted as a gesture to moral philosophy, which keeps to “the

teaching of the good life,” the field of philosophy that might receive Minima Moralia’s

“offering.”11 The opening sentence reads:

10 Here I am again referring to the previous interpretation of Alexandre Kojève’s analysis of Hegel’s text in light of the possibility of a problem of writing.11 See Adorno’s Problems of Moral Philosophy. On the whole, uncovering the truth of “teaching of the good life” is a tremendous problem for Adorno’s thinking. However, we will leave off discussion of the moral aims of Adorno’s thinking, and instead develop an analysis of literary aspects of Adorno’s Minima Moralia. The thread of moral philosophy, although not explicitly thematized in this paper’s analysis, would be difficult to leave behind entirely. The literary properties of dialectic are considered by several critics of Adorno and the Early Frankfurt School, often in relation to the rhetorical concept of emotionality. I found Annika Thiem’s “Adorno’s Tears: Textures of Philosophical Emotionality” and Michael K. Palamarek’s “Adorno’s Dialectics of Language” particularly helpful and insightful on this topic.

8

The melancholy science from which I make this offering to my friend relates to a region that from time immemorial was regarded as the true field of philosophy, but which, since the latter’s conversion into method, has lapsed into intellectual neglect, sententious whimsy and finally oblivion: the teaching of the good life.

(Adorno 15)

Interpreting the meaning of the phrase, “melancholy science,” runs the risk of over-determining

our reading of Adorno’s text. Yet, allowing Adorno’s “melancholy science” to crystallize into a

theme may not require us to accept “melancholy” as a mere pathology such as is the case for

Freudian psychoanalysis. However, the Freudian pathology of melancholy may bear structural

similarities to the Adornian figure of “melancholy science.” As was proposed before, Adorno’s

text develops a theme that incorporates the loss of the subjective reflection effected by a broken

history. It remains an open question as to whether a writing that thematizes a loss necessarily

becomes melancholic in an overtly pathological manner. Adorno’s Minima Moralia may in fact

take on an aspect of melancholy in order to disavow the possibility of forgetting the

unforgettable temporality in which his writing must unfold. Thus, the loss of a subject capable of

realizing the truth of a totality is the historical conditioning from which Adorno’s text takes its

point of departure. Adorno’s text warns that one may become “arrested” in “lament[ing]” this

loss, and thus, must in some sense, move beyond it by containing it within the conceptual

thought (16). The thinkerly comportment suggested in Adorno’s Minima Moralia is at times

indistinguishable from advice regarding writerly comportment. Yet, further elaboration of this

point would lead us away from the themes of history and loss in Adorno’s text.

Minima Moralia’s “Dedication” references itself, or Adorno’s text, as a concrete object

susceptible to forces emergent within real material conditions of history. “Adorno’s text” is not a

representation of Minima Moralia qua object; rather, “Adorno’s text” is figured in terms of the

9

disparate conceptualities given in aphoristic style. The textual relation of philosophical and

literary aspects of the individual aphorism can be posited as this “aphoristic style.” Elements of

historical experience sedimented in “aphoristic style” may or may not be retrievable by, or

reproducible in another text. However, based on our analysis of Minima Moralia’s “Dedication”

the properties of Adorno’s text are derived in part from elements of sedimented experience. 12

Yet, while we read and interpret the thematic constellation of history and loss, we might

remember that Adorno’s text cannot suffer a loss, as it is an “offering” that is conceptually

related to a rupture in the promise of history. On the one hand, Adorno’s text as an “offering” is

for Max Horkheimer’s fiftieth birthday, which is a singular event. Thus, the text inscribes itself

into the real conditions of materiality within its own horizon. However, the text’s reception is

imperceptible to the reader. The “offering” is that of an object to an individual who is, perhaps,

always the reader, and only sometimes the proper recipient of the “offering”. On the other hand,

“this offering” is that of a loss of meaning, or perhaps, an unsayable fullness of meaning, the

inversion of Hegel’s text’s economy, which is constituted on the refusal to recognize its own

literary category: of this one cannot decide as “this offering” could not be but a false one. Yet,

“this offering” resists objectification in an economy of exchange, and thus, “this offering” also

resists petrifaction into a commodity. Even if “this offering” is a writing about nothing for all,

“this offering,” seems to be hinting at a network of mimetic relations of text to text, a network

free of the absolute text of Hegel. This would be an economy without identity, but, still written, a

genre offering nonetheless.

12 See chapter six of Roger Foster’s book Adorno: The Recovery of Experience, titled “Proust: Experience Regained” Roger Foster’s “Adorno: The Recovery of Experience” produces a theory of language based on Adorno’s philosophical position. Foster’s analyses of the relationship of language and experience in both Adorno and Proust contributed greatly to my own problematization of the concept of writing in Adorno’s Minima Moralia. Aphorism ninety six of Minima Moralia is a prime example of the kind of thematic Foster’s text interprets in the chapter on experience.

10