Critique 2/13: Horkheimer and Adorno, Critical Theory and the Actuality of Philosophy

welcome to critique 213 we are we have temporary sound issues in that the mics aren't working right now but we are in communication with everybody who should be able to fix it shortly so I'm gonna try and speak as loudly as I can is this working yes okay Nadia come on in there's seats just come in front so welcome everyone we turn today to our first substantive texts first Horkheimer z-- 1937 article traditional and critical theory which laid out a blueprint for his vision of the research project and method of the Institute for Social Research at the university of frankfurt paired with Adorno's own blueprint at six years earlier in 1931 for his vision of philosophical research and method which was his article entitled the actuality of philosophy delivered as the inaugural lecture on the occasion of his entry into the philosophy department at the university of frankfurt i propose that we pair these two very different texts because of the subsequent history of Horkheimer and Adorno is close intellectual collaboration as a way to explore the tensions hopefully fruitful tensions in their points of departure now as you know history of course would push Horkheimer and Adorno into closer collaboration during the war leading to their monumental text dialectic enlightenment but I wanted to start here earlier to explore the seeds of the tensions between their thoughts and I wanted to begin in conversation with my dear friend and colleague here at Columbia axel Hanif who is the jacksie weinstein professor of the humanities in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia the C for professor emeritus of social philosophy and the former director of the Institute for Social Research at the good university in Frankfurt and of course he is one of the most formidable thinkers on and of the Frankfurt School now at our last seminar we were discussing methods of reading critical methods of reading and several work proposed you will recall Lidia Gore had proposed an adorning method of reading one that takes philosophical texts like artworks as having a history reception and afterlife as she argued that calls on us to do justice to the social truth context of the texts Nadya urbanity had urged us not to rest lazily on those texts and not distort them but to speak in our own voices H and Benny BA had proposed a more delusion method of reading as a form of dramatization that turns the text into a battlefield now you will recall that axel Hana had proposed for different legitimate forms of reading but he had favored one which was the dialogical or what he called the dialogical by contrast to the morphological or that was the first category the second was the ideological reading where you're actually trying to extract the ideology from the text or the fourth which was the more instrumental present issed reading axel leaned towards a dialogical method of reading to be in permanent dialogue with the text the effort there I think is to figure out how the text is in conversation with one's own work and to be interested in his own words in whether the text speaks to me right to reject the parts of the critical text that you don't understand to figure out what you can and in that way to be in conversation with the text and actually you had mentioned at the last seminar that you've been in dialogue with Hegel all your intellectual life in that dialogical way well one of the main reasons I wanted to start today the conversation with you is of course because you've also been in dialogue for all of your intellectual life with Horkheimer and Adorno especially Horkheimer more so than a doorknob I think but you have been in dialog with these particular texts for your life and I'm thinking here of course of your brilliant first book the critique of power which was published in 1985 which actually starts from a dialogue with this text critical traditional and critical theory by Horkheimer and what what animated that book of yours was you're finding of a sociological deficit in Horkheimer essay the essay that were going to be studying today in fact it was to repair and to overcome that sociological deficit in this article that you turned first to the writings of Michel Foucault on relations of power as a way to kind of infuse the notion of of conflict but then ultimately that u-turned at that time to harbor masses communicative action theory and it was in dialogue with Horkheimer and then with habermas that you were able to reconstruct a critical social theory for our times and I think that was pretty clear from the text in other words one could see that dialogical method in the text but he was oriented towards the present it was oriented towards reconstructing a social critical social theory for the present and in fact and in fact you you wrote at the time right that that sent the central problem for a critical social theory today is that's the question of how the conceptual framework of an analysis has to be laid out so that it is able to comprehend both the structures of domination and the social resources for its practical overcoming and what was missing in Horkheimer I take it was the social resources for its practical overcoming which was what you were able to extract find and draw from harbour masses work now I would argue that that method was in itself in part dialogical in the way you were speaking last week but it also contained I think an element of the text as a battlefield in each anybody bow sense in the sense that it was you were you were finding the sociological deficits in that text and it also contained I believe the fourth method closer to mine I would say which you called instrumental of course no one likes the term instrumental it's a derogatory term so we don't we don't we don't we don't do that right we don't we're not instrumental I kind of willingly embraced provocatively other terms that we don't like like present issed or even brutalist was what I was playing with last time but I think it did have that element because the idea was to construct a critical social theory for today maybe today maybe today I will simply call that fourth approach engaged an engaged critical reading right because that's less derogatory but it had an element of an engaged reading especially regarding Hamas I think since he was so central to rejuvenating critical social theory now I also think that that's an approach that you've used more recently in your more recent book one of your more recent books but in the idea of socialism where of course it's not so much a text that you are playing with or working with or manipulating or working on but an idea the idea of socialism and in that sense that goes also back to some discussions we were having with Etienne last week about the text versus other resources or the narrowing of this seminar to text and the problematic narrowing but there it wasn't a narrowing it was focused on the idea and what you did there I think was that you extracted you took out the historical context of the idea of socialism you stripped the idea of its context of the Industrial Revolution you stripped it also of its Marxist philosophy of history and assumptions about the proletariat and then you infused it or steeped it in the sphere of political deliberation there too there were birth defects in the in the original idea that needed to be eliminated and replaced and and of course what they were replaced with and what they are infused with instead are a notion of democratic politics resulting in a somewhat experimentalist vision of socialism there in that sense that work too represented an effort I would propose to wrestle the idea of socialism to extract it from its historical origins and to infuse it with new ideas which may well be biological also but I think it is engaged in that fourth sense as well enough now though with methods of reading at least the methods the critical methods that will be this seminar let's turn now or rather return now to the actual text itself and to the two formative texts from the 1930s to see what work they can do for us possibly today so Axl yes thanks now are you gonna have this does not work sadly okay so you're gonna have to project as much as possible yeah thank you very much for the energize for that no problem I hope it's not a problem can you can you understand me so in the case I'm getting less loud you have to tell me immediately yeah so yeah thank you very much two burners for the invitation to discuss these two eminent texts with you before I will give my own short account of these two texts let me shortly come back to the question of readings I couldn't resist to say something about this and this again has to do with the question how to understand the different alternatives that were presented last time in our discussion and I will not mention again one of the types I thought it's worthwhile to bring into view namely what I called ideology critic I mean I think this is a very useful form of reading text namely by reconstructing their ideological content if they have an ideological content but very often take self such an ideological content and now Donovan reading Hegel was sometimes doing exactly that yeah to find out to what degree certain piece of a Haggar text incorporates an ideological content for example by legitimizing the Prussian state or something like that so I leave that out I would like to come to come back to two of the other types named me what I called a file feller just reading and to what you call now engage reading huh and I think it would be a misconception of what a brilliant philologists could accomplish when we will take it not as a kind of serious undertaking and I even would go so far to say that what at the end called the text as a battlefield is a slightly over to a my dramatized version of food what I would call a good theological reading because all good filler logic readings have to under uncover in the text the tensions the possible struggles with which the author is by BT or the author is kept so I give you an example I have a close friend in Germany who is now editing the third critic backhand in the new edition and that's an enormous heavy work but what she has to do is to reconstruct all important notions Kant is using by making clear what the meaning in the time was and to what degree can't was using a certain notion by refusing other meanings by attacking other authors even when that is not visible on the surface so what a good philologist has to do he or she has to reconstruct the text that it becomes visible to what degree such texts are the results of encounters with others sometimes battlefields I mean if you take Quentin Skinner for him or text Abed I mean each text by Hobbs is a battlefield because Hobbs always wants to reject his opponent I mean the Conservative Party I mean or the more the more Republican Party so I think there is not really a difference between such a better fate battlefield metaphor and good theological best theological reading and one other word too engaged reading engaged sounds for me very different to what you also use today manipulative reading you said manipulate manipulation about manipulation is I think another word for something you used last time two weeks ago in order to reject the metaphor namely the metaphor of the toolbox to take text as a toolbox means in my view to simply use elements of the text instrumentally in in that sense that you want to take elements of out of it which helping your present concerns you don't care about the context of the text you simply ignore the context you ignore the ambition or intention of the text you you have somewhat manipulative engagement with the text engagement is not the right word a manipulative relation to the text that I called instrumentalism engaging is in my view not different from a dialogical reading I mean with the dialogic reading I had in the beginning I had a gharana in view I mean god AMA is probably the best on that kind of understanding interpretation and he would say all reading has to be engaged or dialogical because you can't understand even the meaning of the text if you are not in dialogue with it and it to be in a dialogue with it means to try to understand to reject where you can't understand and to be in that sense in a permanent dialogue with the text and I think this is the way we should read texts when we are sitting here and I wouldn't mind to call it engaged because I mean what what does engage with me it means I bring my own interests in dialogue with the text my own concerns which are concerns of today in dialogue with the given text and I I'm not repressing my my present concern smell I'm bringing my concerns in a dialogue so that I reject those parts of a text which are not longer speaking to me and I I take up and even I mean I take on those parts of the text of which I think I can operate with them I can I can understand them and not even understand them I can continue their contents and their meaning so in that sense I think between engaged reading and dialogic reading I don't see a big difference and so we be proof today yeah probably what kind of readings we have so and let me come to the two texts and I did I will do my best to give you a short account of the two texts and then we can come into the dialogue about the relevance the importance and yeah even the meaning of the text because both texts are not easy especially the Adorno text is it might be extremely complicated it was written at a certain time you can see that Adana was already partly influenced by data Benjamin yeah and that he is living in a certain philosophical atmosphere for best discussions on force' the early Heidegger who plays a certain role max Scheler I mean the whole phenomenological tradition so he is in dialogue with all these traditions in the 20s and 30s of the 19th cent of the 20th century in Germany and what makes the the the text so difficult in my view is that the proposal he then is developing it's not easy to understand yeah I mean this whole idea of consulate of thinking so I would say something about that but let me start with how camest text text I have to say that I never really liked and out of many reasons at first I think it's much too long yeah so it would have been much better if it would have been shortened then I think he has not a clear solution for the central problem in the text and I will justify why I believe that so hakama is developing in his text what I call a functionalist interpretation of all Sciences or theoretical undertakings you also could say a pragmatist interpretation or you could say an action theoretical interpretation of all Sciences because he is claiming that all Sciences or theoretical undertakings have to be understood at the reflexive continuations of pre theoretical problem-solving within and by human action that is in fact very pragmatist view on the sciences it is as if he had read you if somebody he never liked then he rejected his whole life but the whole opening of the text is is a variation of Julian thought without mentioning you theory is fulfilling the function to increase by the production of knowledge the efficiency of problem-solving as it is provided by actions that are basic for human reproduction the kind of action in which science is rooted as being it's reflexive continuation or enhanced continuation is as Alchemist naming it work the practical effort to get control over nature that's Marxist perspective you are clearly I mean Sciences are rooted in a specific type of action namely work traditional is science or the sciences because it has no knowledge knowledge about its own practical rootedness and since it has forgotten that it is the intellectual part of the permanent effort to control nature it can be called positivistic positivism is for hakama the name for science or intellectual endeavor that has lost out of sight that it has a practical purpose inscribed in the kind of action of which it is the continuation the reflexive continuation however this positivism is not the fault of the individual researcher or scientist it is the outcome of the fact that human mankind as such within its own history has so far not yet realized that it is the subject of progress in the control over nature that is by the way a location motif yeah then you read history and class consciousness what look at wants to say because subjects in the contemporary society capitalism passive normally they don't have the right view on history it is only one class that has the correct view on history namely the proletariat because the proletariat is Eve able to see that it itself is the agent of all historical progress and all historical development so it's something like that in the background it's there's a lot of lookups in the text I guess so this unawareness of the of the fact that the subject of historical progress is human mankind this unawareness is the consequence of the fact that up until now the economy the economic structures were not organized in a transparent way so that everyone would be able to understand that humanity is the real subject or agent of the permanently growing productivity of work within history given this function list of pragmatism premises of his article hakama is forced now in its second part to give such a functionalist account also for what he calls critical theory he has to demonstrate that critical theory well understood is also rooted in some kind of human activity that allows it to have the correct view on the fabric of human history namely that it is human mankind that is behind all progress in the overcoming of natural determinations and limitations it is my guess that Hawken offers in his article two very different answers to this question of how to understand the practical roots of critical theory on the one side he seems to believe that such knowledge is embedded in the work process itself namely on a higher level as the awareness or the inside in the path the organization of work has to take in order to be fairly organized or more just justly organized on the other side he seems to conceive of this practical activity in which critical theory is embedded as its intellectual or reflexive organ as the struggles and conflicts the dominated classes have to fight in order to reach fairer more just living conditions and social structures I could give you quotes that would justify my reading that there are two very alternative ways of justifying I mean for gamma of justifying of demonstrating in what sense critical theory is rude rooted in a specific form of actually not in simple laboring or working but in an other type of action I think is giving two answers the one you'll find on page 212 and 213 if you want me I could read it but it takes a long time and the other one you'll find on page 216 and 218 I mean if it's necessary I can read it later probably in my view how come as undecided in its article about which of the two solutions to follow both answers are meant to explain why a critical theory is allowed to have a correct view on the fabric of human history but in two very different ways either by being part of the work progress on a higher second-order level as if critic theory is the self reflection of the path work has to take in order to create a just society this is almost a formulation is using on one page so either by being part of the work process on a higher second-order level about being the intellectual expression of ongoing struggles for emancipation from domination and oppression but the premises of both solutions are philosophically exactly the same and I stress this because this makes a huge difference to Adonis Texas human history is a park and seems irrational only from the perspective of the participants who are unable to understand that they are the real agents of our progress in overcoming the forces of nature whereas the philosophical observer or the critical theorist has knowledge of this fact for him or her the critical theorist human history is rational insofar as it follows a path of progress rooted in the activity of human mankind to overcome natural determinations or to reduce natural process in Lukacs history and class consciousness from 1923 a book of highest importance for the Frankfurt School this liberating emancipatory inside was still attributed to the proletariat in hakama be Dornan we do not find such an attribution to the opposite I mean Okemah expressly expressed simply rejects this position saying that the proletariat is meanwhile integrated yeah this is 1937 and certain portions of the German proletariat had meanwhile voted for Hitler so it's the clear thing to say that it is misleading to believe that the proletariat is still the revolutionary subject so how come I reserves the liberating emergent Ettore knowledge to the critical theorist as a member of a small group of the Academy I mean that's not the right word I mean to a small group of intellectuals so Agha Edano by coming out to the actuality of photography begins his inaugural lecture by the statement that is clearly opposite to how cameras view regarding human history and the hidden rationality of all social reality he Edano claims the right at the beginning that all reality is not longer rational or reasonable neither from the perspective of the participants nor from the perspective of the theoretical observer in some of his later writings especially in the negative dialectics he will say that reality became de pride deprived of all rationality in the times giggle around 1800 that's a very interesting remark but he is very often repeated so that is the reason that he believes Adana believes that Hegel therefore what the last philosopher who could convincingly attempt to do what is philosophies highest purpose namely to discursive ly capture the whole universe or reality as being rational so that's an interesting passage that is repeating sometimes in the text he is very often saying that the true purpose of a philosophy is to capture will rush to capture with reality as being rational but this highest purpose can't be served any longer because reality as such is deprived of any rationality or reason ability or whatever you want to have there so Adorno continues then by arguing that because of the vanishing of rationality from reality all philosophical ambitions have to fail today be transcendental idealism in the footsteps of Kant Mayo kantianism bead phenomenology in the manner of hustle or mishaela these approaches all unsuccessfully attempt to find the methodological means to have access to some kind of rationality this in reality and these attempts terminate in high legis philosophy that is for Adorno here a kind of vitalism is naming it vitalism philosophy of life but in the worst sense which with its premise of a being to death that's very simple and bad reading of article but I leave this out I mean I think his reading of other than ever was really good from all this results the question if today philosophy philosophy is at all capable of answering its Cardinal question namely how to conceive of the relation of reality and reason surprisingly Adana at this point attributes to the Vienna circle canopy he is mentioning and I think sleek the correct conclusion to abandon the search for reason in reality as such an interesting move and surprising move he is praising the Vienna SOTA which means logical positivism and is praising it because it has given up the pre understanding that philosophy should aim for capturing reason within reality instead logical positivism claims that you have to take the given simply as the gift so it is by far for Adorno more convincing to take empirical facts as they are naming it out being filled with some kind of reason then to look for such reason in reality in vain however Adonis decisive step is then to claim that these facts have to be taken as something not understandable something that misses any meaning and therefore forms a kind of riddle for us the central notion in this text the notion riddle I think there's a lot of importance here I mean I think one of the central notions she is using to take social reality as a riddle implies for Adorno to use a method of interpretation in order to make it understandable understandable but such hermeneutics has to be of a different kind then that one offered by the tradition I guess yes here Delta in view I mean the famous German representative of the hermeneutic tradition at that period the later representative then became gamma but before you did try I think the Americans are even saying death I'm not sure about which by the way is wrong it it does I mean this kind of understanding that Edano has in view does not operate with the pre understanding that text the social reality will gain any meaning after a long enough attempt of interpretation it will instead remain without such meaning despite all hermeneutical efforts therefore the critical understanding is aiming at unraveling social reality by trying to bring its different segments so long in to constantly new groupings until it suddenly a certain sense is disclosed and since it's here a difficult notion certain you could now say meaning but you shouldn't confuse meaning here with intentional meaning it has something like an objective meaning yeah so this is important because he wants his own enterprise be different from all traditional hermeneutics even when it's very it sounds very hermeneutical so like in solving a riddle the notion Madonna is using for describing this method method is constellation the interpreter attempts by applying exact fantasy this is his notion and knowledge of empirical facts facts to disclose social reality by forming permanently new constellations of elements of that reality until and I quote the solution springs forth the example Adana is giving in this text is Marx's concept of commodity structure of commodity form he's saying structure I think form is the right word this one notion as a result of solving the riddle of capital economy or society is meant to explain at a single stroke the truth of capitalism or its meaning their meaning should not be confused with intentionality reason or rationale stuff like this a donor is summing up his description of what a materialist cognition or knowledge is supposed to be by saying and I quote page 35 nitrogen which is this one the Adana reader probably another one than the early t los 37 isn't 30 dirty web page 35 yeah but you must have you must have another page and I think I got it yeah yeah it is 35 1 1 30 and 31 1 30 in the table ok 1 so the the the the sense runs like like this the point of interpretive photography is to construct keys before which reality Springs open and he adds that such knowledge can initiate praxis page 34 one page earlier obviously because if portrays reality in such a form or manner that it demands change or abolished abolitionists as well I think one way to understand better what Adana had in mind when proposing this method but he courts interpret 2t philosophy might be to look in later examples of what can count as results of such a form of constitutive or materialist materialist interpretation what comes to mind are the notions like cultural industry or administrative administrative word which tried to bring with certain exaggeration diverse elements of our search social world together in a new way such that we suddenly are able to perceive something in it that was inaccessible for us before another way to make this method more understandable would be to compare and compare it with Max Weber idea of idea type that shares a lot of methodological features with our donors conceptual and he's I leave that out I would love to comment on this but I leave yourself so let me in a lust that finally summarized the striking differences between Horkheimer and Adorno on the four levels of the concept of history the concept of philosophy the method in the relation of theory to practice first there is hakama take social reality as being rational or reasonable when seen from the right angle name is seen from the perspective of a critical his philosophy of history when seen from this perspective you suddenly realize that history is rational its following certain rational purpose namely it's very again in the overcoming of natural determinations that's also a Marxist view in his early writings that work is the force between a bird's human mankind to reduce natural determinations so who cannot take social reality as being rational or reasonable when seen from the right angle Adorno proceeds on the assumption that the social world is today without any reason and therefore thank you very much regulate it by blind nature like laws I mean to read in this context his text on Natural History would be worthwhile because he is defending there this idea that human has to be so far is nothing else then natural history because it is regulated by blind laws second pair for various for hakama it is the task of a critical philosopher of history to demonstrate how reason as a human capacity operates within history as a driving force for Adorno it is the only remaining term for critic photography to create this fantasy or imagination and acute knowledge figures his notion of constellations also his notions notion that enable us to perceive through features of the game reality that were inaccessible for us before the differences between these two concepts of another fairy results from the alternative views concerning the existence or nonexistence of reason in history third the best method for hakama to analyze the given social reality is by interdisciplinary research under the guidance of the before-mentioned philosophy of history there as far Donner the adequate method for critical theory under the given circumstances if the solving of the riddle of a not understandable not intentionally structured one could say reality by constructing key figures as described before falsely Adana believes that these figures might have the performative or aesthetic force to motivate a move to practical change whereas hot lemma insists that critical theory has to be the intellectual organ of already ongoing struggles and fights for the better let me say something about their later work because it when you read the dialectic of enlightenment you can guess the you can get the impression that the meanwhile have managed to synthesize their very different views but I think and I more and more belief that is very misleading because you can have two very different readings of the dialectic of enlightenment you can have either Hawkeye mania how can a reading of the dialectic of enlightenment or you can have nod or no reading and if you read it either with one perspective or the other the book reads very different differently so the hakama reading would be such that the dialectic of enlightenment is delivering a negative history of philosophy yeah I mean this is the traditional reading by the way yeah everyone would agree to say what is presented there is that human history so far is insofar negative a negative process because it's the process of in the the increase of instrumental rationality and instrumental rationality is nothing else then control over nature and human beings I mean it's that reason you need in order to control nature and in order to control human beings so history is the process of an increase of instrumental rationality which is terminating in the totalitarianism of National Socialism and of Stalinism and so this is the hawk I'm a hawk I'm Hawkeye Marian for coming and reading there is mean by Adorno reading of the dialectic of enlightenment which sounds completely different you would say then that the dialectic of enlightenment is delivering a sequence of what can be called figures or constitutive metaphors that allow us to see the existing sort of reality differently from how we are used to see it so you could say the whole usage of the audio source myth or the whole chapter on the cultural industry and nothing else then the result of the construction of such figures with a certain and this is I think to a certain acceleration so these chapters portrays of the given situation it has nothing to do with the philosophy of history it's simply a presentation of the present seeing this the constructed figures that are even mentioned in the title of the different readers so the chapter on cultural industry is not meant to be a chapter on a new stage in the history of human mankind the chapter on cultural industry is a chapter presenting the cultural situation of the present as if it is completely in this industrialized completely capitalized and this would be the result of the method adano had developed in his inaugural lecture so that's completely different reading I think both readings are legitimate both legitimate is again the word we can discuss I think both readings are fine I think the negative philosophy reading the negative philosophy of history reading has some big disadvantages because I find it extremely unconvincing to say that all history from the beginning is it's the unilateral process of an increase of instrumental rationality I never found that very convincing so I think the at Dorney entreating reading is the more convincing thank you so let me let me begin were you and well no let me let me start from your your perspective let me make it one or two tweaks or suggestions we raised a couple of questions and then also for you raise a few questions but then also propose something about using these texts in their engaged reading okay so in terms of what you were proposing I'd like to suggest that the difficulty in both of their texts and in the resulting relationship between the texts is their own biological engagement with marks that is in an odd way what the texts share the the little that they share is their engagement with marks but it also creates attention in the resulting well on both sides but also then in the resulting relationship between their theories now you mentioned at first this idea that one of the major differences is that for Horkheimer you suggested he takes social reality as being rational or reasonable and you say when seen from the right angle I mean I would suggest that it's more that it can be rational under certain conditions it's not rational in 1937 it's barbaric in some sense it's um it's there's a lack of reason but that his aim is for a perfectly rational society and that that is possible organized rationally around economic production and so in his own words that the goal is to 16 the rash state of society right so it's not that it's rational now but that it could be under proper under a transformation that would have to be brought by the critical theorist leading the proletariat in a particular direction whereas for a door no of course that possibility is be behind us that possibility of a rational world is behind us that ration that possibility of a of a totality is behind us it was the the old project of philosophy and it's old pretension to totality where and so this is 25 or 120 in the Adorno text now so that conflict though results in the fact right that for Horkheimer there is the possibility of a philosophical treatment of reality that gives us a totality that that makes everything fully coherent whereas for Adar no we're working at at a lower level at some kind of mid level and and that's and I think that was what you were getting at in a part but maybe this is a way to rephrase it that we're working at a at a middle level we're never going to achieve the totality instead we're going to have particular interpretations that solve the riddles that solve the problems but we're working with concepts like class for instance right that's that the the sociologists are at too much of a lower level because they get to my new too small they deconstruct class too much so that we lose the traction of that category but he wants to work at some level in the middle right and so we the commodity form is this example or class it's somewhere in the middle and and the end and the result for Adorno is that there is this experimental and si yes thick si as in an essay where he ends his his article and and where he extolled the virtues of experimentalism but at a middling level right and so that creates very different sensibilities to these two texts but it of course it it creates a fundamental problem because if indeed the dialogic engagement with marx would lead Adorno to a notion of class or commodity structure that would tend to push it towards a more a greater totality a greater understanding of all of reality whereas in fact he's kind of holding on to the Marx but it's not leading to a grander vision right it's leading to particular solutions that if that that gives the his approach a completely different texture which is this interpretive texture at a middling level a different sensibility it almost feels more in a way kind of geared Seon in terms of an interpretation that's going to help us to understand the world a little bit a little bit more right I mean so geertz's notion of a better interpretation is what did he say he wrote that it's the further figures that issue from them their capacity to lead to an extended account which intersecting other accounts of other matters gears wrote widens their implications deepens their hold but it's not it's not going to get you to this totality right of course the the problem there is then what exactly is Marx doing or what work is Marx doing in Adorno's text right it's clear what it's doing in Horkheimer stacks because Horkheimer basically embraces most of the categories braces categories of of alienation of the proletariat of class conflict it's I mean and there are passages where he's very explicit about this right I mean he in the PostScript he writes that critical theory as a way of knowing is based on Marx's critique of political economy so he's pretty explicit about it and the text reads in that way but instead Adorno is kind of just using certain categories ideas at this different level and so that creates I think the greatest tension between these different texts and it's not clear how one could have such different sensibilities with a similar politics right and that's that's that in part is I think a riddle in in between these two texts now the question I wanted to ask you about is the is the Praxis implications because it's pretty clear that for Horkheimer at this stage in 1937 and I think that his views are going to change after and during the war and after at this stage he is writing about the unity of theory and practice in a way in which theory dictates praxis here and you were mentioning of course this idea that yes it I mean he mentions that you know the proletariat should be in the best position to understand their exploitation but they're not because of ideological interference he talks about false consciousness and then he talks about the role of the critical theorist and so the praxis implications are pretty clear for Horkheimer critical theorists are the ones who are able to see this totality and to try to eliminate the false consciousness I think Adorno it's much less clear it is that passage that you refer to on page 34 of your collection it's on 129 of the Telos article yours is page 34 its Telos at page 129 and in the middle of the page and and and and this is a facet I think that it would be helpful to focus on because it's not it's not entirely clear what he's suggesting that there's there's a sense in which there there's a praxis follows follows theory here so he's writing about the census praxis is granted to Ernest Ness means here that the answer does not remain mistakenly in the closed area of knowledge but the praxis is granted to it the interpretation of given reality and its abolition so the notion here of being just the interpretive act but also its abolition its abolition which would require praxis so I mean this is the practical side of it are connected with each other not of course in the sense that reality is negated in the concept but that out of the construction of a configuration of reality so out of some constellation use of concepts may be commodity form or something the demand for its real change always follows promptly so it's as if it's as if at the middle level the use of a concept like class or a constellation of concepts would then immediately prompt a demand for real change right and then and then he refers to the eleventh thesis he says when Marx reproached the philosopher saying that they had only variously interpreted the world and contra posed to them that the point was to change it then the sentence receives its limit legitimacy not only out of political praxis but also out of philosophic theory and only in the annihilation of the question is the authenticity of philosophic interpretation first successfully proven and therefore the annihilation of the question compels praxis so it's as if it's as if out of a proper out of an interpretation that gives us an objective objective meaning because it's not just a subjective interpretation but an objective understanding will automatically flow a demand and will automatically flow praxis now it's not entirely clear what that what that means although the direction again as in Horkheimer is from theory to practice although you might even suggest that there could be some unity of theory and practice here for Adorno since it's so immediate since its immediately prompted now this would change I would argue starting in at least in 44 in in in surely in the eclipse of Reason in 46 Horkheimer is already kind of contesting the unity and of course Adorno famously would in you know the marginalia contest this unity think about no it's a constant conflict it's got to be a dialectical relationship there is no unity etc but at this point in time in part because of the place of marx in these texts i think that there is a more direct link between theory and practice although my question would be how what exactly do we mean how do we make sense of this passage in a door no and how do we and so and so the first question really is how do we make this how do we make sense of these different layers one of a possibility of a totalizing understanding of reality the other at this middling level and yet marx being in dialogue so those are the those are the questions but the the final point I wanted to suggest is of course we are rereading these critical texts now in part of these are these are intended to be motivated readings not just explaining the text but doing something them and so the question becomes what could one find of compelling in these texts or how could one be in dialogue with them and of course you've in the past you have been in closed dialogue with them for your project and so in the critique of power was a dialogic engagement that pushed it in a particular direction I'd like to propose one quickly and then ask you perhaps where your thoughts are now on that and then we can open it up to two other questions and comments I mean what I would I find most compelling about these texts is first the emancipatory ambition and of course this is something that you discuss in your essay that we posted on the website your essay called is there an emancipatory interest and attempt to answer critical theories most fundamental question in the european journal of philosophy i think and and and you suggest there that Horkheimer by contrast to Marx is locating that emancipatory ambition in you right the inner radical human tendency to revolt against structures of domination right so it's it's not really located in the proletariat in the same way it might have been in lukács or in Marx but it's in the in eradicable tendency to revolt so and I agree that that emancipatory ambition in these texts is compelling and and something that one can engage with and draw from in one's own work the second thing I would say is the direct engagement with praxis which would later disappear but it's something that I find in these texts that I certainly find in Horkheimer texts more clearly as something that I would as someone who is constantly trying to confront theory and practice whose that's my obsession I find at least in Horkheimer x' work someone who's doing that and one particular path and the third thing is their particular practice model at least for Horkheimer perhaps also for Adorno which is a particular model that I personally would reject but that is useful to me in rejecting and that and that is the idea that theory leads in some way to practice that that there's a directionality to it that's that's a model of praxis which I I don't agree with in the sense that I think more of a of a constant confrontation which would enrich both theory and practice rather than a direct directionality but I am thankful to these texts for laying the groundwork on which I could then build a very different theory of critique and praxis yeah so yeah very much it was a lot and if nobody would control me I would need one hour to to comment on what you said it's it's my nature by the way yeah so let me start this what you said about the engagement with Marx which is true I think in a very interesting way both texts are in dialogue I would say with Marx but in in two very different ways and I think the two ways are easily to describe and this is even backed up by the personal anecdote which I would like to tell I can't resist and I think how camera is much more into the young young Marx I mean he is heavily influenced by the Paris manuscripts which were edited I don't know shortly before he is engaged with the early max because he thinks there he finds already that kind of pragmatist view I call it pragmatism how come I wouldn't call it pragmatism but it thinks he finds there the view that theory is somewhat rooted in practical actions and it takes it as being highly important for the right self understanding of critical theory so the differentiation he is developing in this article namely that scientists built the Social Sciences or the Natural Sciences rooted in some kind of work is taken I think from the early Marx I mean from the epistemology you find in the early max especially in the Paris manuscripts of what is called the Paris manuscript and critical theory he believes this is almost also a Marxian idea of the early period critical theory has to be understood as the expression or the reflexive articulation of struggles already going on I mean max is using some metaphors for describing that he is once saying that theory has simply to play the melody of the ongoing conflicts and stuff like that I think this is a view wrote it in a careful reading relatively careful makuu's was much better on this of the young early marks I think adano is not interested in the young marks at all he is if at all interested in certain passages of the first volume of the capital and now comes the anecdote because at the Institute for Social Research we have half of the library of adano located half of I mean a certain portion of the library was stolen and taken by the Nazis the rest was taken by students later but there there is a good portion it's better yet probably a good portion is still there and what is still there are his editions of Marx and that's not a lot he has two volumes that is something like the collective works of Marx very bad additional and he has the old mega edition of capital first volume when you look in it which you normally are not allowed but because of all the director I could take a look at it you see that he read exactly one chapter he was completely distance interested in the economic stuff I mean accumulation process the labor day and others not of your interest what he read and you see thousands of little annotations is the chapter on the commodity for that reappears here yeah I mean the commodity form for him is something I mean deeply philosophical because you can understand it as a kind of figurative thinking or something like that I I will say something about this in a minute so I think you're right both are engaged with Marx but in a very different way so I think I have a slightly different view on how how Kaymer understands reason in history I mean you are right for him the situation in his times that is then you have Nazi Germany and you have on the other side Stalinism and he was fully aware of you he talked to determinism totalitarianism of both sides you can't speak of any reason in history but what he still believes and I could give you a quote and I'll show you the passage is that there is a kind of path in history that's his notion a path which leads to slowly and not theologically constrained or tto logically determined that is expected to lead to the rational society this path is interrupted in the present but you have a view I mean if you are if you are if you take the rightful use of your perspective you can see that path and this is again that's the young Marx this is the young max appropriating Haggar reason in history but in this specific form so I think he is much more optimistic about his ministry than Adorno who does not longer believe that is reason either in history or even in in society there is nothing like that there might have been some reason in history and terror capitalism I mean speed it up I think that's a Donna's picture so in the beginning of the negative dialectics he seemed something about this yeah and so in that sense the first one how come up is still defending at that time a philosophy of history where Adorno never would have defended a philosophy of history he is the I mean he is deeply convinced that something like a philosophy of history which needs something like an idea about what Rives history is not possible and therefore I believe that then that the dialectic of enlightenment is a strange book because you can read it as a philosophy of history but Adorno never would have defended I think a philosophy of history even of the negative sort yeah he wouldn't defend the idea that you can establish something like a philosophy of history so a one word on Donna's method I like the idea to bring it closer to what Clifford girls called thick descriptions I don't believe it's true I mean it's it's it's tempting but I think Edano doesn't aim for a thick description he is aiming for abstraction to abstract from a lot of contingent features of the given situation in order to stress those elements of the Givens rotation which are constitutive in order to understand it now I give you a quotation from Max Weber yeah and very interesting but after dialogue with Luca so Max Weber being in conversation with Luca was not his disciple directly but who studied with him so Max Weber is saying in this article on objectivity in the social sciences he's saying one can delineate the ideal type of a capitalist culture that means one in which the governing principle ISM only the investment of private capital this procedure would accentuate certain individual concretely diverse traits of modern material and intellectual culture in its unique aspects into an ideal construct which from our point of view would be completely self consistent consistent this then would be the Dehlia nation of an idea of capitalist culture I think I always believed that o'donnell who read more weber than marx i think got the idea of the figure the construction of a figure from Beiber's idea of the construction of an ideal type because Weber in describing that is using the two notions you have to start from empirical facts you have to abstract certain of these facts in order to construct a certain picture of reality or figure of reality and you have and this is now interestingly Davis notion to invest fantasy exact fantasy this is repeatedly in words by Adorno I mean he speaks of exact fantasy it meets exact fantasy in order to construe such figures so what I believe is it's a method of abstraction he likes the idea to start from empirical facts he thinks one has to abstract from contingent facts which are not relevant insofar as I don't inform us about the central features of the given reality so we have to abstract from certain facts you have to accentuate other facts and then then you have to construct a certain figure which suddenly allows you to understand what's going on commodity for I think that I come now to the other point about praxis and I mean again there are huge differences between Holcomb and Edano hakama in his instrumentalist a functionalist or pragmatist view of theory has to believe that all theory is rooted in praxis before it can influence praxis yeah so I don't know never but but think of theory as having the power to create or to influence praxis as such joy it can influence praxis but it is prior to this rooted in practices he asked himself what might be the praxis in which critical theory is rooted as I wanted to show he gives two answers to it the more convincing definitely is when he's saying critical theory is rooted in critical I think he is calling it critical behavior in critical actions I think what he means are struggles of the dominated groups against domination and he thinks critical theory is rooted in such a praxis it can influence them these praxis by making it more knowledgeable for example by adding knowledge to that already ongoing praxis but it never can separate itself from the already ongoing plexus I mean it's almost a transcendental view of theory he believes that critical theories transcendentally rooted in an interest that is incorporated in struggles against domination this is then later taking up a have a mass in knowledge and you matrix I think I still think Obamas best book dare he take this up and gives it a different interpretation by using psychoanalysis as a model but this is Holcomb US view I think adonis view is very different and you mentioned that and i think he believes here in the what i called the aesthetic power of such figures i mean this is one sense you mentioned that already which is very interesting yeah and astonishing very is saying that i read it again the interpretation of given reality in it abolition are connected to each other not of course in the sense that reality is negated in the concept that would be idealistic thinking but that out of the construction of a configuration of reality the demand for its real change always follows probably i think it means then you are capable of constructing the right kind of what is made noise near configurations of reality the right kind then this prompts praxis insofar as the aesthetic power of the configuration is strong enough to motivate people to change reality so i mean i give you an example which are always light cultural industry imagine that already if you suddenly understand that all our cultural institutions organized in the form of capitalist industry you feel this is an idea thing you feel suddenly such a shame and at the same time a hate against the given situation then you are prompted to act against it yeah which means that you are promptly motivated to change the given situation so I think this is the belief in the performative power or the aesthetic power in certain configural notions or figures so to present our given situation not simply as neoliberalism of financial capitalism but to come up with the right world to describe what is going on I mean this candless kind of financial capitalism if you if you have to tell it and if you have the aesthetic force to come up with the right figure then you probably can prompt people to do something but it needs I mean this is his notion entry averse notion exact fantasy it needs imagination it needs a kind of aesthetic power to come up with such figures and this is not an idea how can I ever heard and I think this is an idea which is behind certain moves in the dialectic of enlightenment as I said because there you find certain figures or configurations that are meant to portray the given situation in such a way that you can't resist to take it as the worst ever so this is I think the method here and so the the relation between theory and practice is completely different because adano does not believe that philosophy is already rooted our critical theory is already rooted in a kind of praxis he he doesn't share the pragmatist epistemology with hakama or this kind of instrumentalism yeah so he believes that philosophy like art is meaningful in itself it is not simply rooted in a kind of prior praxis or pre theoretical kind of practices but it can motivate praxis or action then it is able to develop aesthetically forceful configurations of the right kind and I think he sometimes manage it not always and not always to the better I think the whole idea of the administrated word is stuff like that and I think it it's not very convincing nobody is upset about over when it is described as administered but when it is then our culture I mean even what's going on in high art and high culture is described as cultural industry that has a certain motivating effect and in fact by the way in German it had an effect because it led to certain legal regulations of public broadcasting and private television yeah it lead to forbidding certain I now know it it led to the legal regulation to force all radio broadcasting and all television stations to include at least 30% of information and high qualitative information in in the production so and we still have this paragraph which is astonishing but I think that is a result of this fantastic idea of describing the reality of our culture as cultural industry to bring two words together with do not fit together culture and industry but to join them and to say look if you look carefully enough this is industry nothing else okay so yeah will will leave open for you to come back the last provocation which was you know how would you be using these texts but we'll come back to that and on the last point though it's particularly interesting what do you think yeah sure I think and this might come now as a surprise I'm more even if my heart is beating for Donnell I think I don't have the aesthetic imagination it uses to follow that method and I don't know a lot of people probably Benjamin had that kind of aesthetic imagination through camera but Benjamin was less successful then I don't know with regard to this so I'm I think I follow Horkheimer in certain respects in the text which you can find on the Internet is the documentation that I want to be this sounds very arrogant and you don't have to take misses you shouldn't take me seriously I want to be the bigger better hakama I mean less authoritarian the Nakamura was a little bit more flexible leave more open but my heart is on our donor sites my mind is my or you say my spirit is on hakama side maybe maybe your heart has softened to Adorno though and because because in in in the critique of power yeah you were very critical of Adorno yeah well you were critical of Horkheimer too but more so of a during I would say but in a ok all right and then the only only wasn't aware of the possibility to read adano as somebody who differs deeply from hakama in having his own method of interpretive philosophy I still was believing that Adana is the other part of Okinawa namely doing that kind of that kind of philosophy of history I only changed my picture of Adorno later and I became aware that you are and this has a lot to do with reading that article again and again the actuality of relevee I think we have to start to think of Edano not in hoc I'm marryin terms that is completely independent more influenced by Benjamin than by every borough comma less influenced by Lukas grandiose philosophy of history but deeply influenced by people like Georg Simmel Berta Benjamin the aesthetic tradition and so on and I agree entirely about that and and the only small footnote I would add though is I found fascinating the the notion of a performative power I would call it the performative power of naming in a way that you were that you were developing here but it's interesting it's interesting still when you then read that and when you reread the marginalia it's a theory and practice how there is there's perhaps than not a self conscious and almost maybe in 68 there isn't a self-consciousness of that performative power of naming because when he writes there that you know he had no practical intention when he wrote the dialectic of enlightenment or the authoritarian personality where he says specifically no practical intention and Marx had no practical intention in his work it's almost as if well if he did believe in the performativity of naming then there would be a practical intention you know because all that and all that work would be motivated in sense like this articles in the period of the student movement and he was extremely skeptical with regard through the revolutionary self understanding of the student movement so he never wanted to to be engaged in a kind of practice which shared the wrong belief that it could change by revolution the existing conditions in he never believed that in 68 or in 65 so it was deeply skeptical and he therefore resisted the idea that there could that his writings could be understood as wanting to initiate some kind of student protest I mean he was too skeptical about it and and quite resignate if at the time already like a comma - they they both became very reckless resignated ardor Nakamura by becoming more religious going over to shop mala and Adorno by relying himself more on aesthetics than on what can be called critical for theology or something like okay good so let's open it up and let me get the mic out Joe are you picking up from the blue or from there's a mic on the table hi I'm Dylan baños first year PhD student when the history department I do German intellectual history I wanted to I was really interested with this discussion and what I found a little bit interesting was in examining Adorno I was sort of mulling over sort of how its translated between the the German title is very similar to the English title in that it's up to allocate instead of actuality but I have to allocate has a different meaning from my understanding and so I feel like the English title almost tries to make it seem like it's about philosophy as becoming rather than an article on the relevance of philosophy okay thank you um I found this conversation enormous ly productive and helpful and it made me want to revisit that section which you both alluded to on page 131 about exact fantasy I mean actually I think I would slightly disagree with the understanding of vapors use of that term to calibrate essentially the distance between the page 36 for you okay Faber that's sort of calibrating the distance between the ideal type and the phenomenal actuality whereas it seems in this passage that for Adorno it really has to do with the question of arrangement and I mean it's remarkable remarkable the passage there an exact fantasy which abides strictly within the material which the sciences present to it and reaches beyond them only in the smallest aspects of their Arrangements aspects granted which fantasy itself must originally generate I mean this strikes me as a kind of model of pedagogy and so it's interesting that rat Co here is really reduced to the question of examining and testing it's not rationality it's not rationalization it's not the definitely not totalization in any in any way and I just wanted to to ask you to think aloud with us or help me understand better a notion of practice here which is not simply the automaticity of you give a different constellation and automatically people will feel motivated impelled to move but whether the practice of testing examining and testing is indeed the source of that constitutive rethinking that rearrangement of what he says elements in question or we have a colleague who speaks a great deal about pedagogy as the non-coercive rearrangement of desires and that affinity and difference is interesting but I mean is is is that practice that experimenting and testing examining and testing that constellation the practice I mean it's not revolutionary practice but it's not it's not following it's not merely the outcome of the constellation it is the generation of the constellation Nadia I'd like to ask you a question that seems to be a blasphemy kind of question meaning this idea of the narrative or the configuration capable of striking our imaginations and then to make us act consistently relation to that this is reminiscent of a longer terrifying tradition in the 20th century surveilled and this idea of the myth capable of striking the imaginations of masses following a goal without even understanding but the understanding is in their action even if they don't rationalize how much these permanent in terrifying somehow image of imagination strike surfaced in this way was present in adorned in that case yeah so I start with not yes I think I think that what you are mentioning is true especially for vitae Benjamin Benjamin was heavily influenced by surrett I mean he has rep Sorrell he then I could remember correctly even trying to to come in contact with Sorrell they overlapped for certain years and so he was fascinated by the idea of constructing myths and he was using it when he later developed the idea of historic I I don't know the English translation for it the German word is his tour should be readable yeah historical picture is not the right word figures what images historical images I think that's a translation yeah so I think I don't know I mean and then you have and you have that in Benjamin Cleary then you have the idea that those images can move a whole group of mess I think in the case of O'Donnell he has a much more individualized understanding of it it's not the mess it's not the group but it is the individual single human subject which might conclude from reading such names or I mean being confronted with such figures might conclude for him or herself to go over drew drechsel's he never trusted the message yeah yeah yeah but I think the logic the logic works for Benjamin clearly and you see all this aurelion element in the middle of benjamine I think but in Adana this is absurd because he has already in mind the the esthetic model of understanding an artwork and this is something you do individually he never liked the idea that the the benjamine Ian's idea that it is the mass in the cinema in the movie theater which can be moved as which can be moved to the kind of reward he had in view the individual listener in a concert the individual observer or visitor of an art exhibition so all with the individual so I think it's away from this I mean with regard to to your question I don't know whether I mean I said terrible defend the comparison to variable and because I mean it is an activity sure yeah to construct such figures is a kind of philosophical activity he would say an interpretive activity of a specific kind it's not simply the activity we are already applying when we try to understand another person or when we try to understand the foreigner from a strange culture these are attempts of understanding he has not in mind but these are also activities yeah the activities of trying to understand the meaning of utterances he thinks they're not such utterances because there is no intention behind the text of reality no intention we could understand the text as a meaningful entity if there would be some kind of intention behind it but because there is no intent behind it we can't take the texts as a normal text like this book this book is intentional text I mean the author wants to say or something the capitalist culture or the capitalist economy is not a text in that sense he describes it as a text that is it is it is a text of a different character because it's a text without meaning I think his his usage of the notion riddle is meant to indicate this that social pieces of social reality or certain social reality is a riddle means that it would be in vain to search for an intention behind it a meaning in that sense so we have to come up with other form of interpretation a more active one more constructive I don't know whether I would use notions like examining probably examining reality No yeah I know I know but still I sure I mean yeah oh can I describe how I understand it you you you have to make selections from the given reality you have to make heavy selections because there's too many broader factors so how do you make these deselect shion's you have a certain interest in coming up with figures of constitutive figures that allow you to understand this reality better understanding now in this non hermeneutical sense yeah so how you are treating the reality you I mean the Marx example yeah he thinks Marx was able to concentrate on certain elements of this capitalist economy to abstract from other many other details in which marks wasn't interested at the moment in which he came up with the idea of the commodity for he reduced the whole reality to one specific element of it I mean one abstract element which is meant to to to present all the constitutive elements of that reality and so yeah you have to test realities as long as you suddenly realize how to construct it best it's an episode it's it's it's it's an activity of our cognition or imagination of our imaginations liberty is using our exact fantasy yeah but again this is exactly the notion Weber is using Weber is saying it meets Bevers even using the notion exact fantasy needs exact exact entity because it operates on facts yeah it's not simple aesthetic imagination because you start from given facts from social reality as it is given in form of certain empirical facts you operate on these facts and to invest in exact entity yeah I mean testing and experimenting plays a role yeah because you try as long on that material you try till that moment in which you're suddenly yeah it's like an like how you say like like yeah like a spark I mean like the central intuition you have suddenly you have and he's using in one sense here the notion of you start I think that also plays a role yeah it needs a certain sensitivity for the cash Titan of reality and you have to try as long as you have it in you I don't see the connection to pedagogy but I'm I may have a very limited understanding of what pedagogy that was about yeah actuality I don't know exactly what it I mean sure I think in in what you wanted to say is the actual the what was you this is also sort of in the context of 1931 Germany right Heidegger is sort of reigning supreme at this point and he's trying to say no he's trying to divorce us from sort of the purpose of philosophy so that's why I feel like sometimes with these translations words are chosen that I think make context more complicated than they really need to be and my impression from this text was more of leaning towards a relevance of philosophy than say sort of a material becoming a philosophy that actuality seems to what you have in actuality and Adorno definitely wanted to have is this moment of history or I mean this time the the importance of philosophy how to understand philosophy in exactly the moment in which I am writing this text and this means a moment that is already characterized by all the consequences of the destruction of Reason in social reality so the moment in which I'm writing this text is characterized by the absence of that kind of reason that some philosophers are still searching for or others have completely given up to search for and replaced it by the force of irrationality this is in his view the philosophy of life its back so in the background but he always liked that song to some degree it is mainly Heidegger whom he takes I think wrongly for the vitalist or philosophy of life so you have these two wrong understandings of philosophy you have us are still searching for rationality with in russia--the in in reality by his transcendental kind of idealism and on the other side you have this irrational list which are also believing that there is some force behind everything some driving force namely the ELA meter in the case of Peck saw or the the drive for death in Heidegger nothing of that is true what we are confronted with is an understandable text no force behind it no visible and the actuality refers to that effort but and I don't know how the English sounds when you hear the English notion actuality it sounds like importance yeah relevance it does capture the important element of the temporal dimension of it's a temporal dimension today given that we have gone beyond the the period of totality in philosophy I just wanted to come back to the the fantasy the ideal type and because what's so important here I think is the size is the space that this category takes and you see it clearly so on page 35 at the bottom of okay sorry and on 130 130 and the Telos and the bottom of 35 in the black well where he the the point of interpretive philosophy is to construct keys before which reality Springs open you had mentioned that part right as to the size of the key categories they are specially made to order right the old idealism chose categories to large so they could not even come close to fitting the key hold philosophic so sociology is amused them to small right and then he talks about class and the category of class being the right level he suggests that the sociologists are nullifying the the the performative effect of the category of class because they have countless descriptions of separate groups and that doesn't do the work right and so they're at some level too small and so and so here so you know so what did the fad the fantasy works nicely in that sense because it can kind of change size in some way I suppose ideals I mean the question becomes what size is the ideal type how is it that the ideal type fits next to other ideal types in the relationship of ideal types if for instance we have you know traditional or charismatic or ideal types like that right they are in some sense alternate they fit next to each other there are three ideal types of there may be and here here there isn't that element right there's an element of something like class but of course the problem with class as the proper size is that well with marks it's a pretty big size right line like you know the history of all what is it how do how do we start you know the history is class conflict right so I mean it covers a lot but but somehow I'm still I still think that the level it's kind of like I was suggesting this middle level somehow because we know what's too big and we know it's too small but then this thing fits there but it does have something to do with coming up with the power of the category in some sense is related to its copious Ness in covering facticity some example he was giving himself capitalist countries were other big it's meant to cover the whole reality of existing capitalism and I think I mean the I'm sure that Weber has some other methodological ideas in view when he's using his notion of a ideal type others then I don't know I don't want to say they are sharing exactly the same concept Weber believed that the ideal type helps us I mean I want to stress the fact that the ideal type in Weber sense is the result of the combination of the usage of exact when to the end knowledge of facts this is very often repeated in our Donna's text so this is similar for Reba the idea type has a methodological purpose maybe to make visible what he calls potential possibilities or objective possibilities of reality this is not simple reality it's not a mirror of reality than you speak of the capitalist culture because the culture is not completely capitalistic you have many many other elements but then we are using the notion or the figure of capitalist culture you make clear you want to make clear that this is an objective possibility within the existing culture yeah and I think this is true for commodity form too because it would be completely wrong to believe that all our interactions all our behavior in the capitalist society Marx had in view are dictated by the commodity form now you have very different and other forms of compartment and of behavior but it indicates the objective possibility that everything can become the result of that commodity form so I thought this is also linkage between waver and and our donor even when Vemma is not mentioning the method or logic idea of objective possibility which plays a big role for diva all right so I've got four four next questions and then we'll come back to you we're going to start with Frank home and then we're gonna have Camilla Vergara hñ Madiba and Reinhold Martin okay maybe we can continue the metaphor of size of the key here's my attempt within last 48 to 72 hours the leader of the free world in this town in the forum of UN declared to the effect that the future does not belong to kalapa list belongs to nationalist party patriots is that some category of the right side for current generation to try to solve as a riddle is that something qualified as a riddle for this generation as a critical thinking I'm not really asking this question I ask you this rhetorically because that opened up to debate not fitting to this class so with that in mind as I read your article that is there in pansori interest 2014 article you used Harvey mosques as point of departure and you have the line to the effect the naturalization of hegemonic interpretation of norms they're a different way of saying the same thing and also I noticed your 1993 article the conception of civil society where toward the end of that article you quickly alluded to Grammys and sonogram images concept and he it to my knowledge used the concept of hidden money a lot I was somewhat surprising your 2014 article you seem did not mention him and did not really cite his points I wonder is that just because the space of limitation of your writing or for some other reason within 20 years you'll find his theories kind of outdated well otherwise not worthy so that was my question thank you Frank camellia thank you so I want to question you on the kind of normative understanding difference between these two approaches to critical theory so as I understood Horkheimer he critical theory for him starts from a protest against the system in a way of the rules that exist a protest that is generated by the order itself so it's a kind of response that is also rooted in the idea of self-determination and in that distrust he says that is based on that is trust for the rules of conduct and but even then he says that the position of the critical theorist or the position of the swell turn outside does not assure the correctness of knowledge because of hierarchy and other things are happening so there's not really a correct critical theory it's just a position as I understand it but for Adorno as I understood your analysis of him is the that the correct words or the correct critical theory is the one that demands this praxis that comes out of it so in a way is the the it is the result or the response that is demanded that actually gives the kind of the normative element of what is critical theory so it's only this capacity for change is the first question that would allow us allows us to understand what is critical theory and what is not critical theory so in a way the correct key hole is connected to the result to our further understanding of and our demanding of praxis or or and and this is connected to the other question that I have which is if Adorno is more on the side of abstracting so is the abstraction the correct abstraction would that wit that determines what critical theory is what is a danger of abstracting from material conditions in order to determine what critical theory is so there was a book last year about Plato as a critical theorist and this idea that anybody could be a critical theorist and basically this is the abstraction from the material conditions that would kind of undermine critical theory at least as Horkheimer would understand it so what are the dangers of this abstraction even if it's useful thank you it's anybody bad my question is in a very different point but yeah I mean only very shortly to the point on trial I mean I mean if there is any intention behind it if you are optimistic enough to believe that Trump has rational intentions then his usage of the notion patriotism he was patronizing and not nationally is intended I mean it's clever because Petra Chisholm is positively associated yeah it has it ring I mean it allows one to have positive associations which you don't have automatically with nationalism so it would have been a clever move but it's more the Sorel Union surrendering I dia of constructing the myth of a patriotic USA or something like that being independent from all all the rest of the world and so and so on it wouldn't have to do anything that Adorno's construction and about Graham sheet this is a true big question I have to say I mean it's not that I intentionally avoided to come back to Graham she I think I had at a certain point the impression that I do not understand him sufficiently mainly because not being able to read the original I mean there is in the meantime a German translation of the prison book prison Prison notice note which and which I didn't read because lack of time properly but no systematic reason yeah this question is also very big because it leads to a very problematic question at the end namely bear better that is at all an identity in what we are used to call critical field or to make it more precise the Franklin School I mean there are many critical theories in the world and they all have their possibly their legitimacy most of them worthwhile endeavors to come up with method methodologies to criticize the existing social order only one of these many many approaches is called critical theory with a big scene or the Frankfurt School and if you realize how huge the differences are between Holcomb and O'Donnell you start to think about whether the whole idea that there is a unified approach which deserves it to be called the school or the critical theory that this whole idea becomes doubtful and I never know exactly how to deal with this I mean and how to I there was a time in which I believed and I still have somewhat the idea that the specific identity of the critical theory which was for a certain period based in Frankfurt is its left Hegelian and I think it's true for most of the participants it's true for how camera it's true for have a mass it's probably true for Madonna but I have more reservations with regard to our Donald than with regard to the others the the center figures like O'Donnell McCoy sir and Hamas they shared the idea of what I sometimes called a pathology of reason that capitalism has led to a pathology of what reason is meant to be this is a deeply Hegelian idea namely that there is a history of reason and that we can spell out by under specific capitalist conditions our capacity for reasoning and for progression by using our reason why this capacity is somewhat violated or disturbed under capitalist conditions I thought that the center idea so the center idea would have to do with certain left regalian appropriation of vagrant the materialistic reading of Hagen and then the ambition to spell out why capitalist by the structures of capitalist societies are such that it leads to an inhibition of our capacity for reasoning namely for example to reduction of all reasoning to instrumental reason or however sometimes call it strategic reasons and also for him this has to do with requirements of capitalist economy yeah the requirements of a capitalist economy and therefore a capitalist society require from us of phosphorus to make use only of one of the elements of our capacity for reason or reasoning namely the instrumentalist excite so it's this kind of idea of which I thought it unifies the creative experience of the Frankfurt School and I still believe it I'm a little bit more doubtful disregard true to Adorno I mean if you especially when you read this article you you realize that he I mean he I don't know whether he feels at home in that kind of company because he from the beginning was much more interested in coming up with aesthetic methods he was more influenced probably by shelling in that regard than behavior a certain aesthetic I mean the the aesthetic has been the leading kind of discipline and therefore I have doubts whether one can easily include Adorno on the other side he also shares the idea that critical theory I mean critical theory should be able to to understand the riddle of capitalism and the riddle of capitalism has something to do also for him with a certain destruction of Reason I mean not not in the look urgent sense yeah I mean in look at later strange book on I don't know the English title for it it says during the destruction of will but that capitalism can't be understand sufficiently without describing what it does with our I mean kept our our capacities for reasoning of for reason this is share but I don't know where these shares all the rest yeah so I have certain doubt there let me I just want to add something to that though because I mean the the reading you're giving I think is highly influenced by your Hegelian ISM and by that of some others maybe raha yogi yogi but I mean in terms of in terms of these texts I feel more I feel Marx is a greater presence in these texts then okay yeah okay and then yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah okay all right yeah and and then and then let me just had two things I would say also that within the later work there's more of a gravitation I would say I mean in others in some others towards a certain certain Contin ISM then eggie eggie alien ism certainly in the work of reiner forests a and then the other thing I would observe also in terms of these is that from from my own personal and from anecdotal you know this is not a scientific study but I think that I would say that much more doctoral work today is being done say but maybe that's my maybe that's my bias or my you know what I see on the relationship between say Foucault and Adorno right then between core climber and Adorno right and so there's some kind of splitting that seems to be going on in the contemporary kind of theoretical kind of matrices that are being placed over some of these thinkers right okay hñ and then ran out thank you so much can you hear me yes yes okay I I need not to be too long and I want to explain myself so I leave a side entirely the Horkheimer side although there is something very interesting in hawk I'm around the definition of science as problem-solving which I would like to discuss my mouth I want to concentrate on Adorno let me start again with your remarks on the cultural industry that was very striking because I hope I'm not distorting are not simplifying but what you said essentially is there's something utterly and bearable it's scandalous in the combination of these two notions which refer to antithetic values industry especially capitalist industry of course but every distributed a is Kabbalist and culture so when it is described as such and displayed in a theory on a theoretical discourse we feel that anger that despair that hate you said hate and therefore will react against it too late my dear friend this is no longer the case this is the case for a handful of people who are almost all in this room tonight you know but not even not even not even all academics intellectuals in the broad sense feel anger and hate and despair at the idea that culture is an industry that has to be rationally organized and managed to be productive effective rewarding it's a writer on the contrary this is extremely appealing now of course in the younger generation and they see that with my grandson's for example some feel despair but this is there so despaired that they moved to extreme anarchism and today the idea that in fact this society is just to be destroyed the the the the coming insurrection or something like that but we're no longer in the mood of a donor which is still yours and mine in innocence so this is a riddle and this is a riddle in the present and something that calls for anhedonia new method of interpretation which takes me if you'll owe me one more minute to to my point concerning the text I was struck by the fact and please please don't believe I'm trying to push you in a nasty manner it's era but by the fact that you did not come and command on something that I believe is central in the text which is not the reference to Marx when it comes to the riddle right sir but which is the reference to Freud and so of course riddle is a Marxian category and it is directly linked to the privilege that Adorno as you explained serrata his library and all that and we knew that of course granted to the first section of Capitol volume 1 where Marx repeats again and again that there is something rates are haft it was rate sir hapless in their Valley or the order in the wagon product drop would in the production of commodities there is something enigmatic something after read or fetishism blah blah which has to be solved okay this is true but when in the middle of his text for eternal comes to trying to better explain more directly more practice pragmatically I would say what materialist attitude materialist kind of interpretation would be then he comes to Freud and of course this makes a lot of sense biographically because this is no girl lecture and before that he had written his ability at CERN and the ability at CERN was on for dance on it but what I find extremely interesting is I returned to the German text because the the the the the the English translation is catastrophic here the English translation says what is interesting in Freud's method is that he wants to interpret totality ease or complex that there are taking as his point of observation and departure the smallest elements something small a detail which seems to be an allusion to an old tradition in natural history or biology where you explain what the structure of the big animal is just by looking at the form of a small finger or a bone it's a Reza the German doesn't say that it says then the haft dong a line goes to them and tell'em disk lines turn great disk line stone so this is of course to be dramatically German it's a it's a it's a category the the small the smallest the smallest as such and in a context where you talk about Freud the name of that smallest is not difficult to find it's a symptom it's the symptom so the riddle is immediately identified with the symptom in deep psychoanalytic sense and the key to the materialist Adi Jude is related to the interpretation of symptoms now I jump to the conclusion of course the interpretation of symptoms in of psychoanalytic context is a clinical operation it's not just an observation an explanation that objectively or that keeps the distinction between the subject and the object it destroys the distinction between the subject and the and the end and the object therefore it has an active dimension and so that gives me the idea that in fact Adana in this neck is looking for some sort of overcoming I would say of the subject object distinction of the kind of objectivity yes and looking for materialism that includes an element of intervention or if you like an element of activity in its consideration of active of eternity now what you said to the question was absolutely accurate but there is something also very symptomatic there I looked for repetitions of this name actually Tet or actual actuality in the text there is none it's only in the title it's only in the title but then of course Adorno continuously works with approximations I would say so it starts with various guide and of course in the Hegelian or portugal in context we at least guide includes already an element of activity is not really today sir it's not the exam kite it's not activity but then of course you have the actual and of garbin and yeah and then you have the productivity so I think that I don't know doesn't I don't want to him to say what he doesn't say but at the limit at the edge of his speech there emerges in fact very strongly if you read it twice in a symptomatic manner this question about the materialist attitude that would combine that could combine of course objectivity intervention or a clinic or element and then of course everything is opened you can take that in the darkness because when known attacks on enlightenment etcetera entirely about that yon - look - Lucy the directory theater around this concept about 30 days and the fruit in orientation of the quasi fujian orientation is the one at that as you say always favored so I find I don't know here amazingly close to Alta says problem I'm sorry if I was a little long but I wanted to challenge you on that I do actually want to hear what their response to it ends question I'll just try to compliment this in briefly my question is actually really - both Bernhard and Axel and returns a little bit to the toolkit problem from the last time around that you mentioned at the beginning because it seems to me and and this it may in fact be in some sense inversely complementary to a Chen's question about riddles that that that the the central figure in in this text it seems to me or the two subject one is the riddle the others the key and and the key the key the Riddler said and and so you know I want to ask if we can on the one hand think dialectically with this pair Horkheimer Adorno as ideal types in their own way of two different sides of the problem that we're discussing of idealism materialism because I'm because at some level of key is just a key to speak with Freud and and there are just like things in the world actual things called keys out of which like automobiles bombs and movies in the culture industry chapter out of which a figure constellation in a lavinia mean you know is constructed with through this kind of a magic of act a trois also I think rightly alluded to is potentially pedagogical so the question is how to read the key I mean how to teach ourselves to learn how we might read these figures in the world today and especially in this response to the toolkit question because what is it it's an instrument right and and so I think in some sense this a generous reading of this could be first of all to read Adorno was instrumental but but simultaneously to you know to the function of philosophies to unlock the door not to provide the idealist blueprint or to do the burglary of sociology but but simultaneously to to think twice about what we mean by instrumentalization and this would be if I take your characterization Adorno's critique of Horkheimer in some sense that the you know this kind of talos of instrumental rationality and so on is a bit you know bit much ultimately and and isn't in it in some sense a little bit more dialectical so so the because it does it on the aesthetic of philosophy esophageal side of this equation that I'm really wanting to ask about I did want to ask whether Bernards earlier call for toolkit thinking or instrumental thinking in the sense I think you're trying to get at could be recovered but in an Andorian fashion yet with keys not necessarily thanks right yeah thank you did a small remark before I even start to answer the questions because you said a Donna's critic of Okinawa I don't know never criticize don't ever not one sense you can find it is scandalous I think but now he even accepted how commas that's a famous story I mean how come I rejected the habilitation of harming us because how come I believe this is true Marxist I don't know was against this but never mentioned anything - oh come on to change his mind so he was somewhat so you say submissive to to Hamas in a docile in a very strange that so he never would have criticized them but this is not a systematic answer to anything and I mean first the the remarks about culture industry the culture industry I think it simply means that those figures conservation so however you want to call them have their history their history I mean they in Adana would be completely aware of it yeah these the intervention or the the the production of such keys able to open the door I mean to the riddle yeah to solve the riddle they can die out as soon as reality has changed and what we realized now is that culture industry is so I mean so total that the notion probably doesn't make any sense more because we don't have a lot of alternatives yeah I mean in his time then he was writing there there I think he believed there is still high culture high catch not completely destroyed by the industrial organization of no in these times yeah and now we are living in a in a completely different time so it I mean to answer your question with a door no one would have to say look then you have to come up with new kids these new figures to describe the new reality and one more remark to that remark by you I am not completely sure but I share the empirical observation that people do accept that kind of industrialized correction I'm not sure about yeah yeah but you know you know that it is famous famous little research done by Adorno on how people looking television yeah and it's not very very known but he normally have this idea television is the most awful thing because it many pilate's people are there sitting in front of it they believe what they are told and they are completely manipulated so there is this one little research project the project that he once performed in the Institute for Social Research and there is a passage where saying for the first time I realized that people probably are not in I'm not even looking to it instead they are using it as an opportunity for very interesting conversations they are not manipulated by this so I don't know what's going on yeah I think it's a very different question what's going on and sometimes I'm hopefully enough to believe that when people are seeing certain movies or I don't know television productions they simply don't believe the yeah but in this case I respected riblets yeah and I found your remarks on short extremely interesting yeah and I think you are completely right I think there is a lot of the techniques of Freud's in that text yeah and it is one more element to help to understand what he means with constructing the figure yeah and I think it's also right to say that reader could also be equated with what in the context of Freud's is called symptoms yeah symptoms are something we don't understand at the beginning and symptoms symptoms also share with what he calls riddle the fact that they don't have intention as their source I mean they are not intended in that sense they are not they don't have intentional meaning which you simply can understand with the classical instruments of a melodic this is all true I still believe and I don't know whether we share that or not that the psychoanalytic technique of the therapist trying to solve that we're trying to understand a symptom is a specific form of hermeneutics a specific not the traditional form of hermeneutics but it is an endeavor to understand something something which is not understandable I know I know I know yeah I know so here I'm more on the side of those which would say Freud is using a kind of their different notions for that some are saying deep interpretation I don't like that notion some people would say objective hermeneutics I like that notion I have to say it's not subjective hermeneutics it's not trying to understand the intention yeah subjective intention it is to understand the objective meaning of a text so the objective meaning of the symptom and the objective meaning of the symptom means the place of a symptom in the history of [Music] but what is disturbing and in fact destructive and therefore it has an intrinsically irrational element which certainly does not take in the direction of at the end of the text they are related there are references to the forms in which taken technologies is used by cloggers and others who transform it into precisely the technique of mythic war at this is not the material side we agree on almost everything here and I try to figure out where we don't agree because we normally don't agree and it would be it would be too surprising that we would agree on something and I think it's simply I have a different slightly different understanding of the Freudian technique I think that's the whole point and that also then means that I have difficulties to see but that will not surprising why adora and ultra sir can be even named one in the same sentence yeah III don't see that but I have probably a different and I mean you are closer to are to say and you have certainly the better understanding of our to say but to all of my understanding these are true very different strategies of analyzing capitalism yeah the Hermann dude I mean the quasi hermeneutical method a Donnell is privileged in here and again I agree it's a kind of psychoanalytic understanding of a text that has no intention meaning and in that sense has to be taken as a symptom I agree but this is still a kind of hermeneutical enterprise there is I deserve to my little reading I would say preferred a certain type of specific interesting explanation not understanding if that makes sense to you this distinction well fortunately on that we'll we'll be back here on November 13th with H and Betty Bob on Giselle so we'll have an opportunity to revisit this but I think we should also address the question of the keys I mean and one thing that I was particularly focusing is on the the verbs that are used in these passages that I know I know I was gonna be cautious about this hñ you might want to double-check the ATN you might want to double-check the German on this but the passage on constructing so the the point of interpretive philosophy is to construct keys which is 1 2 3 4 5 it's kind of six paragraphs from the end I don't know if you'll be able to find it it's on the bottom of 136 paragraphs from the end bottom of 130 or bottom of of about 35 36 in your right is this so there's this notion of catalyst in the translation constructing keys but what's interesting is that in the other sentence pure philosophical socialism chooses them to small right which is so it's choosing so it's a very different relationship to the object because it's almost as if the object is there and not being constructed but being picked up in a way and there's another and there's another reference to a number of sociologists who carry nominalism too far right so I think we would need to know I think that there's a little bit of I mean depending on the German original there the the English translation suggests a little bit of inexactitude in the metaphor because I think the constructing the keys is an important one that is different than the toolbox which was the point I was trying to make last time which is that we don't find the tools in the toolbox but we are in the process of constructing them right yeah well so I mean there's some ambiguity to that right there's some ambiguity I would prefer the idea of constructing keys personally or at least in my readings right [Music] chee-chee-chee upon the theses on Feuerbach number 11 she served to constrain for din and devious kite offsprings as if marks had written philosophers until now have interpreted the world wrongly it now it's now the question is now to find the good method of interpretation I won't give this sense to instrumentalist ik meaning yes I mean the instrumentalist ik meaning would lead to the to the idea that there is this box with different keys and you have to to choose the right key from that box and I think the idea of constructing the key is much more going in the direction of aesthetic productivity I think the the the production by our aesthetic imagination like the like the analysts who also need a lot of image imagination in order to find the right clue to understand the symptom yeah so it's more about construction than you taking taking an already prefigured key yeah no I mean yeah it would be contradictory with the whole essay it seems to me to be suggesting that there would be in existence already in some way right but and you know seems to possess a kind of figural value that that is that see that you know exceeds in that venya minion way maybe even a dialectical capacity to the the instrumental interpretation and and military in whatever aspect of this but that I really was asking this in response to this larger question of instrumental reason that is so much associated with this kind of thinking that that it perhaps you know to complement that the point you just made the point would be to devise an instrumentality adequate to philosophically to the situation as well as an interpretive I don't know you now you are not making the connection so strong as before but before you connected this again back to the differentiation of different forms of reading of reading you wanted to defend to certainly be what I have called negatively an instrumentalist ik form of reading or I mean and you don't want to defend an instrumentalist ik form of reading no provocatively perhaps but I would say engaged engaged now the last question which you've resisted is how you would use these texts yourself right but you don't need to answer because I but because I have your book the idea of socialism and so I think I used to point to page 40 where you say we must credit the early Frankfurt School under the direction of Max Horkheimer with being the first to present empirically founded doubts in the sociological fiction of revolutionary working class at any rate the interdisciplinary studies on the authoritarianism of the working class set a process in motion which led to the insight that there is no automatic connection between a class specific objective situation and certain desires or interests right and then a continuation of the discussion about socialist ideals and stripping them of the kind of Industrial Revolution context I suppose this would be a use of a use of the text in order to perhaps corroborate your re-imagination of the socialist idea as no longer being linked to a revolutionary working class and polit Aryan Revolution and more towards maybe not reformism but at least some kind of experimental ISM right dialogic instrumentalist so easy to say engaged it now let me reply in the most clever way I mean you are completely right I'm taking their a book or an idea for purposes that do not are not in need of any deeper engagement with the text yeah in that sense I'm instrumentally instrumental I realizing one original idea of akamalik but I'm not even pretending that I'm reading something here yeah I mean making use of an idea is something completely innocent I think so I can say the Hegelian idea of Reason has strange elements no it's not a good example let's let's take a better example I could say that venya means idea of the class rather it's very helpful in articulating some deeper psychological factors within the working class then I'm not engaged with the text I'm making use of an idea without really I mean going deeper into it so that kind of instrumental instrumental ISM I found completely innocent and I think it's is it using something as a toolbox I thought it's a pretty approbation for I mean I mean saving months elf the time to go deeper into that one idea by quoting it it's a quotation probably a citation okay I should leave it there definitely but I would contest though the idea that it doesn't depend on a reading but but I I won't so that we can because we've tried your patience and we've gone over so two things I want to do first first I want to thank axel on earth for an extraordinary which I found fascinating and I learned a tremendous amount so that was and and thank you for your questions and and and our students for their posts Tyler and Maximilian and then the other thing I wanted to say is that so critique 13:13 goes international next so anyone who's in Paris on October 16th can join us but we will try the live stream also it'll be just at noon rather than at 6:00 but it'll be in Paris will be reading Simone de Beauvoir the second sex with Judy cava on October 16th and then on October 22 will be in Rio in Brazil and we'll be reeling Paulo Freire is pedagogy of the oppressed with Maria in s mark on best de Sousa at the book real University Cecilia Bell who's the theatre director of the theatre of the oppressed Alessandra Vannucci of Pook and Antonia Pele of book we then will come back on November 13th and I believe we will be right here in the same room to do lgz with Mitch and Buddy bah so stay tuned and please join us and reading reading Kathryn okay so please join us on an offline thank you [Applause]

Channel: Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought

Views: 14,630

Keywords: criticaltheory, adorno, foucault

Id: ZwWlM6JSyo4

Length: 159min 26sec (9566 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 26 2019