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Neglected or Misunderstood: Introducing Theodor Adorno
While Theodor Adorno has continued to be influential since his death in 1969, his very centrality has led to the left simplifying his ideas while the right placed him at the center of a myriad of wild conspiracy theories, all of them filed under the category of Cultural Marxism. Adorno has wrongly been blamed for everything from the Beatles to postmodernism, but he has continued to be read, if read badly. Stuart Walton's introduction to Adorno attempts to explain how this idiosyncratic thinker reframed elements of the Hegelian-Marxist dialectical in the fields of philosophy, sociology, politics and aesthetics and to rectify some of the major misunderstandings about Adorno and the Frankfurt School. When Walton began studying Adorno at Oxford in 1983 he felt that Adorno was nowhere in the English-speaking world, but that he should be everywhere. Now Adorno is everywhere, but hardly anywhere sufficiently or deeply understood.
- GenresPhilosophySociology
300 pages, Paperback
First published December 8, 2017
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December 31, 2024
Adoring Adorno
Adorno is most often thought of as a cultural critic, but I believe that dear Teddy has been both neglected AND misunderstood because his approach to doing philosophy was at radical variance with the trends (Analytical) and fashions (Existential) of his time. What follows is a brief description of how Adorno’s approach differed from that of his contemporaries. Adorno was working during a paradigm shift, he was one of the last great thinkers of modern age entering into a post-modern stage in which I believe we are now thoroughly immersed. An age where we now must ask, what is true about truth?
Adorno Contra Wittgenstein, et. al.
As Stuart Walton notes, the major flaw that Adorno saw in Wittgenstein, and the growing dominant form of British analytical logic, as well as Heidegger’s ontological approach to philosophy and the solipsistic Existential fashion show that followed as well as the shallow Vitalism and Pragmaticism that proceeded, was the essentially undialectical method of each. Adorno thought that one could not simply sweep away the history of thought; there are no ahistorical truths that can be derived by forgetting the old problems and starting over in a state of virtuosity or authenticity. In philosophy, unlike other disciplines of thought, to study the history of philosophy is to do philosophy; for embedded in the history of philosophy is the philosophy of history. To ignore this is to cut ourselves off from the great dialog, our conversation with the great minds of the past. Philosophy is the invitation to join in this conversation. As Adorno said, the purpose of philosophy is to prevent humans from lapsing into brutality. A brutality and barbarism too often endorsed by reason and thinking cutoff from historical perspective. This is why philosophy is dialectical, no category of thought can exit in itself, outside of the historical process. A departure from the dialectical method and the historical approach leads us down fresh but false paths. Some paths are banal and innocuous, others ugly and gruesome. Contra Hegel himself, Adorno takes a darker view of history and understood that the dialectal approach is no guarantee of harmonious progress without resistance and retrenchment or without wild oscillations between ruthless individualism and oppressive collectivism, tension between universal and particular, conflict between totality and partiality, but the problem with the new analytical undialectical approach to philosophy is that it falls prey to a circularity in thinking that brings us back to unenlightened mythology. Philosophy cannot be as easily secured as the analytical philosophers like to think. Science becomes scientism with instrumental reason, it becomes the monolithic and unquestionable ideal of human thought. Absolute faith in science and rationalism becomes status-quo realism which is at variance with reality. Our current culture is an example of realism (status-quo ideology) and nature is an example of reality. This ideology of realism is the circular path back to cultural mythology. Religious myth and scientific realism (status quo ideology) become the bookends of human madness. As Adorno and Horkheimer put it in the ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’, “…so enlightenment with every step becomes more deeply engulfed in mythology.”
From Adorno’s perspective, philosophy reduced to linguistic rummaging and the nitpicking of symbolic logic chopping with all of the intricate and sophisticated work of Russell, Whitehead, Wittgenstein and the whole movement of analytical philosophy amounted to nothing, it contributed nothing to explaining or improving of human condition or in helping us understand the social order, the cultural framework, the position of the individual in it, or in how to define a life worth living. Analytical philosophy is narrow in focus, it only keeps us distracted and confused and unable to address the real problems of the human community. To be blunt, analytical philosophy only solves the problems that it creates. Reason boomerangs and instead of showing the path forward, it only leads us down a circular pathway back to mythology. The ancient myths were those based upon the mysterious events of the natural world. The return to mythology is based upon the mysterious events of science by making the enthronement of science the principle of social organization. In a sense, this represents an inversion of Hegel’s notion of incremental progress toward a consciousness of freedom. We now have the power to alienate ourselves.
The Impossible Object:
What Adorno and his Frankfurt School colleagues developed is known as Critical Theory. Critical Theory is an eminently employable multi-disciplinary intellectual speculative approach to social commentary and cultural criticism. Critical Theory compels us to reexamine once thought settled issues, comfortable assumptions, and convenient methodologies from different perspectives and to reconsider the dictates of accepted, often instrumental, reason. The Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School provides a powerful framework from which to launch stinging social commentary and caustic cultural criticism, much of which is needed today when we see culture being sacrificed to capital just as Adorno feared. With this, spontaneous culture is not eliminated, but it is homogenized so that it can be commoditized and reduced to commercial value. The greatest tragedy is the actual merger of culture with capital so that they become one in the same. Anything produced within a market order will necessarily be marketable, including culture itself, otherwise it would not be produced. Value and marketability are conflated and the notion that something can be valuable but not profitably marketable falls outside of capitalist logic. It is an impossible object. Culture must be a profitably marketable entertainment commodity in order to exist. We can now refer, with confidence, to our culture as the commodity culture.
But why has our culture become a commodity culture? Adorno tells us that this is due to the workings of something that has become known as the ‘culture industry’. An industry no different than any other industry in a market economy in that it can only sustain itself by making as broad an appeal as possible to the market participants. My question, is this due to a defect or failing of the market system or is the market merely a transmitter of information about the values of society? To blame the market for market outcomes is to shoot the messenger, so to speak. Perhaps the undesirable culture outcomes of the market process, such as loathsome multi-million-dollar athletic contracts, is merely a reflection of what the underlying society truly values and places priority upon? But still, why does the society have such low values? Again, Adorno tells that the demands of life in a hyper-competitive market order sap so much energy and attention for the participants that little energy is left to put into the appreciation of higher culture. They have energy enough only for the simpler and easier appeal of low culture, e.g., simple sporting events, formulaic movies, commodity music, prurient comedy. Again, we come full circle in thinking as Adorno identified. The demands of life in a capitalist hyper-competitive make-or-break market environment informs all tastes. Economic relation becomes the basis of social values. These are the walls of our imprisonment that Adorno was able to articulate but are difficult for us to see. We create an ideology of flattering individualism only to render the individual suitable as a subject for the collective exchange economy and a participant in mass culture with individuality reduced to a commodity. Our individuality is based upon exchange relations. These exchange relations promise escape and emancipation from misery while all the time being complicit in the creation of misery. That is, we create a state of hyper-reality, a new ideology of realism, where individuality only exists to confirm conformity. From here, we fetishize both solipsistic consumer-based individuality and monolithic cultural collectivity. Individualized choice thus become trivialized by generalized social tendencies informed by economic relations. As Adorno saw it, we have only achieved a pseudo-individualism based on reducing humans to crude exchange components. We have created community solidarity based upon oppressing one or other social groups or outcast individuals with a notion of equality that results in equal distribution of misery.
Adorno is most often thought of as a cultural critic, but I believe that dear Teddy has been both neglected AND misunderstood because his approach to doing philosophy was at radical variance with the trends (Analytical) and fashions (Existential) of his time. What follows is a brief description of how Adorno’s approach differed from that of his contemporaries. Adorno was working during a paradigm shift, he was one of the last great thinkers of modern age entering into a post-modern stage in which I believe we are now thoroughly immersed. An age where we now must ask, what is true about truth?
Adorno Contra Wittgenstein, et. al.
As Stuart Walton notes, the major flaw that Adorno saw in Wittgenstein, and the growing dominant form of British analytical logic, as well as Heidegger’s ontological approach to philosophy and the solipsistic Existential fashion show that followed as well as the shallow Vitalism and Pragmaticism that proceeded, was the essentially undialectical method of each. Adorno thought that one could not simply sweep away the history of thought; there are no ahistorical truths that can be derived by forgetting the old problems and starting over in a state of virtuosity or authenticity. In philosophy, unlike other disciplines of thought, to study the history of philosophy is to do philosophy; for embedded in the history of philosophy is the philosophy of history. To ignore this is to cut ourselves off from the great dialog, our conversation with the great minds of the past. Philosophy is the invitation to join in this conversation. As Adorno said, the purpose of philosophy is to prevent humans from lapsing into brutality. A brutality and barbarism too often endorsed by reason and thinking cutoff from historical perspective. This is why philosophy is dialectical, no category of thought can exit in itself, outside of the historical process. A departure from the dialectical method and the historical approach leads us down fresh but false paths. Some paths are banal and innocuous, others ugly and gruesome. Contra Hegel himself, Adorno takes a darker view of history and understood that the dialectal approach is no guarantee of harmonious progress without resistance and retrenchment or without wild oscillations between ruthless individualism and oppressive collectivism, tension between universal and particular, conflict between totality and partiality, but the problem with the new analytical undialectical approach to philosophy is that it falls prey to a circularity in thinking that brings us back to unenlightened mythology. Philosophy cannot be as easily secured as the analytical philosophers like to think. Science becomes scientism with instrumental reason, it becomes the monolithic and unquestionable ideal of human thought. Absolute faith in science and rationalism becomes status-quo realism which is at variance with reality. Our current culture is an example of realism (status-quo ideology) and nature is an example of reality. This ideology of realism is the circular path back to cultural mythology. Religious myth and scientific realism (status quo ideology) become the bookends of human madness. As Adorno and Horkheimer put it in the ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’, “…so enlightenment with every step becomes more deeply engulfed in mythology.”
From Adorno’s perspective, philosophy reduced to linguistic rummaging and the nitpicking of symbolic logic chopping with all of the intricate and sophisticated work of Russell, Whitehead, Wittgenstein and the whole movement of analytical philosophy amounted to nothing, it contributed nothing to explaining or improving of human condition or in helping us understand the social order, the cultural framework, the position of the individual in it, or in how to define a life worth living. Analytical philosophy is narrow in focus, it only keeps us distracted and confused and unable to address the real problems of the human community. To be blunt, analytical philosophy only solves the problems that it creates. Reason boomerangs and instead of showing the path forward, it only leads us down a circular pathway back to mythology. The ancient myths were those based upon the mysterious events of the natural world. The return to mythology is based upon the mysterious events of science by making the enthronement of science the principle of social organization. In a sense, this represents an inversion of Hegel’s notion of incremental progress toward a consciousness of freedom. We now have the power to alienate ourselves.
The Impossible Object:
What Adorno and his Frankfurt School colleagues developed is known as Critical Theory. Critical Theory is an eminently employable multi-disciplinary intellectual speculative approach to social commentary and cultural criticism. Critical Theory compels us to reexamine once thought settled issues, comfortable assumptions, and convenient methodologies from different perspectives and to reconsider the dictates of accepted, often instrumental, reason. The Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School provides a powerful framework from which to launch stinging social commentary and caustic cultural criticism, much of which is needed today when we see culture being sacrificed to capital just as Adorno feared. With this, spontaneous culture is not eliminated, but it is homogenized so that it can be commoditized and reduced to commercial value. The greatest tragedy is the actual merger of culture with capital so that they become one in the same. Anything produced within a market order will necessarily be marketable, including culture itself, otherwise it would not be produced. Value and marketability are conflated and the notion that something can be valuable but not profitably marketable falls outside of capitalist logic. It is an impossible object. Culture must be a profitably marketable entertainment commodity in order to exist. We can now refer, with confidence, to our culture as the commodity culture.
But why has our culture become a commodity culture? Adorno tells us that this is due to the workings of something that has become known as the ‘culture industry’. An industry no different than any other industry in a market economy in that it can only sustain itself by making as broad an appeal as possible to the market participants. My question, is this due to a defect or failing of the market system or is the market merely a transmitter of information about the values of society? To blame the market for market outcomes is to shoot the messenger, so to speak. Perhaps the undesirable culture outcomes of the market process, such as loathsome multi-million-dollar athletic contracts, is merely a reflection of what the underlying society truly values and places priority upon? But still, why does the society have such low values? Again, Adorno tells that the demands of life in a hyper-competitive market order sap so much energy and attention for the participants that little energy is left to put into the appreciation of higher culture. They have energy enough only for the simpler and easier appeal of low culture, e.g., simple sporting events, formulaic movies, commodity music, prurient comedy. Again, we come full circle in thinking as Adorno identified. The demands of life in a capitalist hyper-competitive make-or-break market environment informs all tastes. Economic relation becomes the basis of social values. These are the walls of our imprisonment that Adorno was able to articulate but are difficult for us to see. We create an ideology of flattering individualism only to render the individual suitable as a subject for the collective exchange economy and a participant in mass culture with individuality reduced to a commodity. Our individuality is based upon exchange relations. These exchange relations promise escape and emancipation from misery while all the time being complicit in the creation of misery. That is, we create a state of hyper-reality, a new ideology of realism, where individuality only exists to confirm conformity. From here, we fetishize both solipsistic consumer-based individuality and monolithic cultural collectivity. Individualized choice thus become trivialized by generalized social tendencies informed by economic relations. As Adorno saw it, we have only achieved a pseudo-individualism based on reducing humans to crude exchange components. We have created community solidarity based upon oppressing one or other social groups or outcast individuals with a notion of equality that results in equal distribution of misery.
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