Abstract
The menace of pessimism in early critical theory is often criticized for being antithetical to Marxism’s emancipatory vision and/or implicitly conservative, a position memorably illustrated in Lukács’ appraisal of Adorno as a resident of Schopenhauer’s “Grand Hotel Abyss,” where one enjoys a nihilistically detached yet aesthetically pleasurable stay without mounting any real challenges to the miseries of the real world. This stance, reworked in numerous assessments of the first-generation Frankfurt School, presupposes that radicalism and pessimism are antagonistic positions. By rethinking early critical theory in light of discussions of “nonideal” alternatives to the ideal theories of liberal egalitarian thinkers, I argue that the Frankfurt School salvaged the prospects of emancipation precisely due to their view from the “Grand Hotel Abyss.” Through their gloomy reply to Marx in nonideal conditions, the Frankfurt School’s negative views paradoxically preserved the possibility for historical alternatives and serve two functions for social theory today: (1) to help bring the causes of injustice to consciousness and (2) to preserve a messianic hope.
Introduction: ideal theory and its discontents
Dialectical thought starts with the experience that the world is unfree; that is to say, man and nature exist in conditions of alienation, exist as “other than they are.” Any mode of thought which excludes this contradiction from its logic is a faulty logic. (Herbert Marcuse, 1960: ix)
As outlined by Charles W Mills (2005), the term “ideal” in moral and political theory should be analytically broken down for clarity. First, one should distinguish between “ideal-as-normative” and “ideal-as-model.” The former, he argued, is inherent in any moral and political theory because they deal with normative and prescriptive arguments. The latter, ideal-as-model, should be further broken down into “ideal-as-descriptive-model” (roughly, abstractions from real objects for descriptive/empirical generalization) and “ideal-as-idealized-model.” The latter, for Mills, is what is often denoted by the term “ideal theory.” Ideal theory proper is usually used by liberal egalitarian thinkers in political and moral theory to prescribe how individual human beings or groups should ideally act by first presupposing idealized human beings via hypothetical models and thought experiments (e.g. Rawls’ original position).
Mills (2005: 168f) argued that ideal theory relies on six common and misplaced assumptions. First, ideal theory presupposes the human being of classical liberalism (atomized, self-interested, rational, etc.) while ignoring actual humans and social forms of oppression and hierarchy. Second, ideal theory assumes idealized human capacities that are unrealistic. Third, ideal theory ignores historical and current manifestations of oppression. Fourth, ideal theory assumes idealized social institutions that are described in a way that does not reflect reality. Fifth, ideal theory assumes an ideal “cognitive sphere” where ideology, false consciousness, and barriers to knowledge are non-existent or minimized. Sixth, ideal theory believes it is necessary to secure an ideal theoretical foundation before examining today’s pressing problems. A series of interrelated difficulties follow such an approach to moral and political theory. Most fundamentally, ideal theorists are said to rely “on idealization to the exclusion, or at least marginalization, of the actual” (Mills, 2005: 168). This severing of the ideal and actual creates a twofold problem. First, by theorizing in an imaginary world, ideal theory cannot guide moral action in the real world. Second, by assuming away real-world structures of oppression, exploitation, and hierarchy prior to theory-building, ideal theory’s idealizations may actually perpetuate existing social structures rather than challenge them.
If one accepts Mills’ critique, how should moral and political theory be done? A number of scholars, especially within feminist theory, have put forth “nonideal” alternatives through the development of normative theories that begin theorizing by engaging with a nonideal world of oppression and injustice (especially see Tessman, 2009). I contribute to this discussion by providing another alternative to ideal theory: the critical social theory developed by the first-generation Frankfurt School, specifically the theories of Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor W Adorno. As shown below, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Adorno avoided utopian 1 thought experiments by consistently anchoring theoretical investigation and normative vision in real social conditions, rejected liberalism’s one-sided anthropology, and paid close attention to the causes and outcomes of oppression and ideology.
In addition to providing a novel framework for nonideal theorizing, rethinking the works of the Frankfurt School in light of Mills’ critique of ideal theory can help, I think, give good reason for the pessimism underlying their thought, especially expressed in their post-Second World War writings. Addressing the menace of pessimism in critical theory, if acknowledged, is usually criticized on grounds that it is antithetical to Marxism’s emancipatory vision and/or implicitly conservative. Georg Lukács (1971: 9) was the first to level such a criticism, memorably claiming Adorno, like Schopenhauer, had taken up residence in the “Grand Hotel Abyss” to enjoy a nihilistic though pleasurable stay (detailed below). Such a stance presupposes that radicalism and pessimism are antagonistic positions. This project provides a different interpretation: their pessimism does not indicate a break in Marxism’s messianic goals or lend itself to conservatism. Instead, I argue early critical theory salvaged the prospects of emancipation and the chance for alternatives precisely due to its view from the “Grand Hotel Abyss.” Or, stated negatively, when confronted with a social formation that did not offer what Marcuse called “real possibilities” or “historical alternatives,” they refused to adopt positively programmatic accounts of a better society based on hypothetical models or ideal theories.
Below, I explain the Frankfurt School’s gloomy reply to Marx and why this was justified; how their negative views shaped their methodology and social theories; and why pessimism is still an appropriate component of social theory today if we are to preserve hope. As implied throughout the paper, the potential setback of adopting a pessimistic nonideal theory demands a willingness to be unwilling to guide moral or political action in affirmative or programmatic ways.
The Frankfurt School’s nonideal theory: the coupling of materialism and pessimism
Adorno’s (2006: 134) description of social criticism as an “active” form of melancholy, as an objectification of unhappiness, embodies the Frankfurt School’s nonideal theory: a union of radical critique and reflexive despair. This approach to nonideal theory can be understood as consisting of two interrelated components: Marxist materialism (and with it, anti-utopianism (see note 1) and anti-idealism) coupled with social pessimism. Both are important for understanding the theoretical approach of the first-generation Frankfurt School, especially from the 1940s on.
A gloomy reply to Marx, or, historical materialism without a revolutionary subject
We can expect nothing more from mankind than a more or less worn-out version of the American system. (Max Horkheimer) We do not live in a revolutionary situation, and actually things are worse than ever. The horror is that for the first time we live in a world in which we can no longer imagine a better one. (Theodor W Adorno) (Fragments from conversations about the prospects of writing an updated Communist Manifesto in the 1950s, Adorno and Horkheimer, 2011: 21, 107–108) Critical theory finds itself without the empirical basis on which it can transcend the status quo. (Herbert Marcuse, 2001: 40)
As Mills (2005: 170) made clear, nonideal theory at large is rooted in Marx and Engels’ critique of the Young Hegelians in The German Ideology (1970). Rather than starting with the various God-given dogmas and deductive systems as the idealists and Young Hegelians did, Marx started his analyses with the practical life of “real individuals.” Although restricted within time-bound structures (“not under circumstances chosen by themselves”), these real individuals have actively changed and shaped their world and history. While Marx argued capitalism had stunted and distorted the opportunity to perfect social life through free and creative labor, human beings, even in an alienated and estranged form, were ripe with potentiality. The potentiality of human beings was not simply due to their natural drive to socially create and objectify themselves through work (Marx, 1964), but also due to the contradictions created by the anarchy of production – specifically the contradiction between wage labor and capital. The purpose of theory was to both explain and describe reality and, more importantly, to aid in the process of progressively altering it by discovering openings for change without relying on utopian speculation or moralizing. Iris Young (2001: 10) described the methodological implications of this framework well: [a] critical theory does not derive [normative] principles and ideals from philosophical premises about morality, human nature, or the good life. Instead, the method of critical theory…reflects on existing social relations and processes to identify what we experience as valuable in them, but as present only intermittently, partially, or potentially.
This is the method passed on to the Frankfurt School by Marx. One cannot bring about a better world by erecting one inside the mind, positing a universal notion of human nature, 2 or listing moral maxims. Instead, one must examine societal contradictions to discover the ways in which a better society could be born out of these contradictions, and, as theorists, attempt to guide society in a rational way, rather than reproducing similar or worse conditions. For Marx, this meant showing how the dynamics of class struggle, the internal contradictions of capitalism, and the advancement of the forces of production could bring forth a society that realizes true justice (“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”) and positive freedom (“the only society in which the original and free development of individuals ceases to be a mere phrase”) (Marx and Engels, 1970: 118). The monumental failure of this vision forcibly negates Marx’s messianic optimism.
In addition to illuminating the inherent contradictions and crisis-prone nature of capitalism, Marxist theory has maintained that at least three prerequisites must be met for building a better society: (1) significant developments in the means of production (to reduce the amount of required toil), (2) a coherent working class movement that is, or might potentially be, radicalized, and (3) a socialist party committed to the abolition of capitalism. The Frankfurt School knew (1) had already been met, (3) was becoming less prominent and often totalitarian, and, most importantly, (2) may never be met. As Horkheimer (in Adorno and Horkheimer, 2011: 49) stated: in whose interest do we write, now that there is no longer a party and the revolution has become such an unlikely prospect? My answer would be that we should measure everything against the idea that all should be well.
Deprived of (2), Marx’s contribution merely portrays a stunted and deformed social world, whose estranged and market-dependent members are swallowed up by unfulfilling and alienating work. Historical materialism without the real possibility of a fundamentally better future reveals a grim existence of increased alienation, inevitable economic crises, and increasing inequalities – without a political means to improve the wretched lot.
How are Marx’s insights and criticisms of capitalism to be interpreted and applied without the prospects for universal socialism in any near future? Like Marx himself, those theorists convinced by Marx’s system of thought must bear the nonideal: society as it is. However, unlike Marx, many Western Marxist theorists did not believe a revolution was around the corner, a thesis “only stubbornness could still maintain” (Adorno, 1998: 14), or that something great will rise out of the contemporary contradictions of what they considered to be a “rationalized, automated, totally managed world” (Horkheimer, 1972: vii). Indeed, Anderson (1976: 42, 88) argued, correctly I think, Western Marxism is the product of defeat, whose theoretical diversity is unified by “a common and latent pessimism.” This pessimism was first encapsulated by Gramsci’s (1971: 175n) reflection in prison, claiming that Marxists ought to have “pessimism of the intelligence.” The first-generation Frankfurt School also shared Gramsci’s theoretical pessimism, not only due to the missed chance for a socialist revolution in Europe and the rise of fascism, but also due to the rise of Stalinism in the East and the “culture industry” in the United States.
Along with consumer society’s silent success in closing the openings for qualitative change, the Frankfurt School’s primary explanation for society’s inability to create a better world was said to be rooted in humanity’s quest to dominate nature. A goal originally intended to free humanity from nature’s supremacy had paradoxically enslaved humans along with the rest of nature (Horkheimer, 1947; Horkheimer and Adorno, 1969). What is considered progress in Western civilization “runs in a single strand, on the rails of the mere domination of nature” (Adorno, 1998: 212), a rationality “reproduced” in society and the self, creating a condition in which “the material preconditions for a free society have been created [i.e. the “forces of production”] [yet] the subjective conditions for its realization [i.e. revolutionary consciousness]…have been distorted” (Whitebook, 1979: 42, emphasis removed). The conclusions of the first generation declared that instrumental calculation had become total, closing off avenues for qualitative social change.
Examining the practical life of human beings no longer pointed to a better future as it did for Marx, instead causing disappointment and contempt. The uniqueness of the Frankfurt School’s Marxist pessimism, or “critical pessimism” (Postone and Brick, 1982), is that it does not arise from nostalgic reflections of a past, preferred Golden Age. Marx maintained that the capitalist social formation was still part of a prehistoric age of backwardness. Human history proper would not start until the “free, conscious activity” (Marx, 1964: 113) of humankind is unleashed under a classless society of associated production. Nor does the Frankfurt School’s pessimism arise solely from the widespread and pervasive suffering of the present preceded by the forgotten and immeasurable sufferings of civilization’s past victims. In concert with the latter considerations, Marxist pessimism derives from the crushing disappointment that human history proper possibly missed its opportunity to begin at all and that the order of things may likely stay the same or get worse. As a historical framework meant to take the real world into account, Marxist theory needed to be restructured.
Marxist pessimism as nonideal theory
Theory does not contain answers to everything; it reacts to the world, which is faulty to the core. (Theodor W Adorno, 1966: 31)
Following the historical happenings during the development of critical theory (i.e. the rise of fascism, Stalinism, consumer society, and the monistic proliferation of instrument reason), the Frankfurt School was incapable of identifying the contradictions of society that could lead to a better society, and thus were “capable only of exposing the historical embodiments of unreason” (Roderick, 1986: 39; cf. Benhabib, 1986: ch. 5.2). In other words, the telos of the critical theory of society itself was self-declared a historical impossibility, at least in the confines of their time-bound structures. If critical theory, to quote Young (2001: 10) again, “reflects on existing social relations and processes to identify what we experience as valuable in them, but as present only intermittently, partially, or potentially,” how should the critical theorist proceed if these valuable experiences are nowhere to be found, especially if the theorist does not wish to rely on idealist, utopianist, moralist, or philosophical anthropological assumptions for theorizing? The solution was to develop a thoroughgoing, radical pessimism, what Adorno (1978: 15) memorably termed the “melancholy science.” This gloomy impasse is the key to unlocking valuable aspects of the Frankfurt School’s nonideal theory.
Too often, Western common sense superficially reacts to pessimism as a negative “attitude” due to deficiencies in character that a person ought not to have (Dienstag, 2006; Hartmann, 1895: 68–69). Yet from its continental origins,
3
pessimism is associated with a range of logically constructed philosophical positions, with various ethical and political implications (for a good analysis of leading pessimists, see Dienstag, 2006). Along with this common and superficial objection to pessimism, there is a more substantive objection to pessimism leveled by radical theory, which states that pessimism is implicitly conservative (if not explicitly) and detached from praxis. The implication of this critique for early critical theory was abridged well by Aronowitz (1988: 133): “[c]ritical theory reifies the reified by asserting its irreversibility.” This assertion was most famously outlined by Georg Lukács’ (1980) critique of Schopenhauer, and later, of Adorno (1971). The former German metaphysician, Arthur Schopenhauer, argued life’s givens are pain and boredom and that we occupy the “worst of all possible worlds” (1958: 583), because if the world were any worse, like an animal that loses a limb, it would not be able to carry on at all (his influence on Horkheimer is outlined below). Lukács (1980) argued Schopenhauer was unknowingly an apologist of capitalism’s barbarism and the function of Schopenhauer’s thought was said to prevent its adherents in the intelligentsia from critically questioning and changing the social order and encouraged them, instead, to bask in existential nothingness as the real world collapsed around them. This same critique was later leveled at Adorno in the preface to the translated The Theory of the Novel (1971: 9). Lukács claimed Adorno had taken up residence in Schopenhauer’s Grand Hotel Abyss to enjoy a nihilistically detached yet aesthetically pleasurable life without mounting any real challenges to the miseries of the real world. Similarly, Anderson (1976: 88ff) argued the disappointed Frankfurt School, like Western Marxists as a whole, separated themselves from emancipatory intent and practical life – both in their work and physically in universities – in order to write impractical works on topics like aesthetics in a difficult language. For Piccone (1978: xxii), the “esoteric” development in critical theory, their “pessimistic philosophy of history” (the nature domination thesis outlined above), replaced their emancipatory goals and “swallowed social analysis.” A more forceful critique was leveled by Fromm (1993: 204–205) in his reply to Marcuse’s despairing “romantic martyrdom”: [i]t is unfortunate that this hopelessness is translated into a political theory which lacks any sense of reality.…On hopelessness and fear one can hardly build any political action but one can do a good deal of damage in persuading others that the most progressive and radical theory has no better advice to give than to be proud of one’s hopelessness.
One should note Habermas’ (1987: 106ff) project is partially formulated as a reply to the first-generation’s “blackness” and failure to find progressive alternatives (cf. Honneth, 1979; Roderick, 1986: 41ff). In contrast to these common criticisms that are reworked in many accounts of the Frankfurt School, an alternative interpretation is emerging in this essay: the view from the “Grand Hotel Abyss,” when understood as a continuation of Marx’s nonideal theory in very nonideal social conditions, can be seen as a shelter for preserving radicalism through negative critique rather than useless, bourgeois meanderings.
Two related yet omitted topics (for the sake of limiting length) should be noted before discussing the pessimism of Adorno, Marcuse, and Horkheimer. The first omission is the influence of Walter Benjamin’s attempts to unite materialism and messianism and rejection of social progress (e.g. Benjamin, 1968: 253ff). Focusing on parallels between late Horkheimer and Benjamin, Gur-Ze’ev (1988) has argued the latter’s “negative utopian pessimism,” rejected by Horkheimer and Adorno in their early formulations of critical theory, later became the “central position” of critical theory from the Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1969) on. Adorno’s (1967: 241) praise of Benjamin’s ability to keep “fragmented hope” alive through negativity, by revealing the “chasm” splitting utopia from what is, seems to foreshadow the method he aspires for in his negative dialectics.
The second omission relates to Marcuse’s utopian leanings in the works following One-Dimensional Man (1964), which, as one reviewer pointed out, cannot be comfortably placed under the heading of pessimism (e.g. Marcuse, 1972). Unlike Adorno and Horkheimer, Marcuse took an explicit political position by extending solidarity to the student movement – though denied their historical role in radical change, conceiving it as a rebellion of “fresh air” – and especially with the “potential force” of the Third World against global capitalism (for good discussion of the mostly “unhappy relationship” between the student movement and the Frankfurt School, see Wiggershaus, 1994: 609–636). The reader is left to decide whether Adorno’s ambiguous relation to, and Horkheimer’s rejection of, the student protest movement was a sign of weakness and fear or of sound judgment and whether Marcuse’s support was admirable or naïve. This project is primarily concerned with Marcuse’s pessimistic position put forth in One-Dimensional Man (1964) and brackets his later utopian developments and political commitments. 4
Alluding to Hegel’s analogy that the present is pregnant with the future, Adorno (1966: 3) claimed that society had “miscarried” and, thus, philosophy “lives on because the moment to realize it was missed.” Although critical of Adorno’s ambiguous relationship with praxis, Landmann (2011: xxv)
5
accurately explained the implications of this famous cryptic passage: [t]he role of philosophy can now be only a theoretical one: it has to bring to consciousness the fact that the world did not change. From now on, philosophy’s only duty will be to voice its protest, to unmask unreason, and to articulate man’s suffering. In spite of its powerlessness and hopelessness, philosophy has one remaining function: to accuse, to call things by their names. Through its relentless opposition to a very bad reality, philosophy constitutes an island of resistance.
Again, the nonideal theory of Adorno – and one can generalize this to his colleagues’ positions – protests what exists by unmasking unreason and articulating humanity’s suffering. It can do no more because it cannot find latent signs of a better future in the present. The process of unmasking unreason cannot flow from an a priori conception of what reason is, as the latter had been made unreasonable through the proliferation of instrumental reason (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1969).
When examining and criticizing systems of thought or popular ideologies, the dialectical approach taken was not the Hegelian “both/and,” but a negative “neither/nor.” The critical theorist must accept the possibility that contradictions may never be reconciled so any nonideal theory must remain openly contradictory and negative to show, as Adorno (1978: 50) famously put it, that “[t]he whole is the false.” Thus, critiques of unreason should attempt to reveal the meaninglessness and lifelessness hiding under the experience of modernity: “[o]ur perspective of life has passed into an ideology which conceals the fact that there is life no longer” (Adorno, 1978: 15). For Adorno (e.g. 1966: 10–11, 144f, 1991: 175), it was nonsensical to make positive statements about progressive alternatives in order to leave his (anti-) system of thought open to change with changing material conditions and contradictions – to “make way” for reconciling intellectual contradictions that can only be reconciled after they are negated in reality. The only way to approximate something that looks like truth is “to lend a voice to suffering…. For suffering is objectivity that weighs upon the subject; its most subjective experience, its expression, is objectively conveyed” (Adorno, 1966: 17–18). Indeed, in broad strokes, the critical theory of society after the Second World War can be seen as a project to explain the causes of, and clearly describe, the suffering of the existing society, in order to preserve the possibility of reconciliation. If Hegel’s (1967: 12) moral and social philosophy was an attempt to “recognize reason as the rose [joy] in the cross [tragedy/suffering] of the present” and thereby reconcile the subject with the actual, Adorno’s was having the courage to propose that the rose may have already withered in the cross so as to rescue the failed promise of reason.
A similar approach of exposing unreason was shared by Marcuse, although he was willing to deliver a more affirmative standard for what is rational when compared to Adorno. For Marcuse, the most “vexing” characteristic of contemporary society was the masking of the irrational world with the instrumental rationality of bureaucracy, profit-maximization, marketing, technicity, and positivism. Thus, critical theory must “[drive] Reason itself to recognize the extent to which it is still unreasonable” (Marcuse, 1960: xiii). Although Marcuse (1964: 215f) considered all systematic thought to contain ideological elements, as all are historically contingent and embodied by individuals, the critical theory of society is different in that it attempts to, even if it must do so “indirectly,” point to alternatives that can better advance the course of civilization through better meeting authentic human needs. To do this, critical theory (1) puts forth alternatives that could potentially flow from the existing society (i.e. “real possibilities”) (cf. Bloch, 1986) and (2) justifies the alternative on rational-normative grounds (that the alternative will better meet authentic human needs) (Marcuse, 1964: 220). However, like Adorno, Marcuse was aware of the results of staying true to this method in a one-dimensional society. Comparing Marx’s advantage to the Frankfurt School’s position – critical theory “at the point of its greatest weakness” – he stated: [t]he critical theory of society, was, at the time of its origin, confronted with the presence of real forces…in the established society which moved (or could be guided to move) toward more rational and freer institutions by abolishing the existing ones which had become obstacles to progress [Marx’s situation].…Without the demonstration of such forces, the critique of society would still be valid and rational, but it would be incapable of translating this rationality into terms of historical practice [Marcuse’s situation]. (Marcuse, 1964: 254–255)
This means that accomplishing Marcuse’s first step of critical theory (identifying historical alternatives) was accepted as an impossibility as critical theory was no longer able “to demonstrate the liberating tendencies within the established society” (Marcuse, 1964: 254). Thus, in the final page of Marcuse’s (1964: 257) disturbing account of consumer society, he declared that the “critical theory of society possesses no concepts which could bridge the gap between the present and its future; holding no promise and showing no success, it remains negative.” One must start with the irrationality of the real world without attempting to prescribe any programmatic plan, unless progressive forces exist in germ in the actually-existing order. Marcuse, at least in the mid-1960s, could not detect seeds for a better future.
Horkheimer’s version of Marxist pessimism was more complete than either Marcuse’s or Adorno’s, likely due to the early though sustained influence of Schopenhauer on his thought (Gunderson, 2012; Schmidt, 1993). For Horkheimer, it was important to clarify the limits of radical thought before going about social criticism. First, he made clear that the immeasurable amount of injustice and suffering characterizing human history can never be made right through the creation of a better future. Hegel’s (1956: 20ff) theodicy, his cunning of reason thesis, must be rejected if the theorist is going to explain and depict the misery of the world in an honest way (Horkheimer, 1972: 26).
6
Second, Horkheimer claimed that one outcome of materialism is the knowledge that existence is neither inherently meaningful nor transcendental. Even if human beings manage to create a better social world, they are still biological beings that will die and fade from memory. It may appear a noble goal for humans to live on this earth more happily and wisely than they did under the bloody and stultifying conditions that tend to designate the end of social life forms. However, the future generations will die out anyway, and the earth will continue its course as if nothing had happened.…[A] sincere consciousness and honest action begin in the place where this simple truth gains ground and is resolutely retained. (Horkheimer, 1993: 158)
Keeping these assumptions in mind – which read like verses from Ecclesiastes if the Preacher had been a Marxist – in order to limit the scope of social criticism’s significance, one can proceed to give a voice to the suffering of the present in a “sincere” and “honest” fashion. To accomplish this, Horkheimer adopted something that looks like Schopenhauer’s (e.g. 1974: 291ff) claim that life’s suffering has an ontologically greater status than life’s happiness and evil is an overriding force whereas goodness is merely the absence of evil. It is often difficult to analytically separate Horkheimer’s (1972: ix) Marxist (sociological) and Schopenhauerian (metaphysical) insights concerning suffering and evil. At times they seem to be framed in a socially and historically contingent way (i.e. suffering can be lessened through radical change). However, the ideas are sometimes presented as universal, unchangeable, and fixed declarations; as a doctrine that declares “suffering is eternal” (Horkheimer, 1978: 188, 219). Although the ambiguous conflation of social and metaphysical pessimism in some of Horkheimer’s thought is problematic, the moral implications of these insights for nonideal theorists are helpful as Horkheimer was more willing to directly partake in moral theory than Adorno. For ideal theory, moral action and a just society are to be determined prior to engagement with the real world. In contrast, Horkheimer’s (1978: 237) mature moral theory argued that: [i]f one wishes to define the good as the attempt to abolish evil, it can be determined. And this is the teaching of Critical Theory. But the opposite – to define evil by the good – would be an impossibility, even in morality.
This means that the critical theorist must begin with the pervasiveness of suffering and privation in the world and bring these conditions and events to consciousness. From here, the good life can only be understood as a state that will at least not be what is. One is reminded of a passage from the great synthesizer of Schopenhauer and Hegel, Eduard von Hartmann (1931: 73), when he described the outcome of hope purged of positive illusions: “the only thing which remains possible to him as object [sic] of hope is not the greatest possible happiness, but the least possible unhappiness.” Horkheimer thought it impossible to define the good life within contemporary conditions. Such is a pessimistic nonideal theory of morality: the “ideal-as-normative” too must proceed by starting with what is, which, for Horkheimer, is essentially evil and emptied of real possibilities.
Pessimistic nonideal theorizing today: distilling hope through negativity
It is the darker voices especially that speak to us now, not because they speak in tones of despair but because they help us distinguish “optimism” from hope and thus give us the courage to confront the mounting difficulties that threaten to overwhelm us. (Christopher Lasch, 1991: 39)
Critical theory must still grapple with the haunting questions posed by early Marcuse (1968: 142): “What…if the development outlined by the [critical] theory does not occur? What if the forces that were to bring about the transformation are suppressed and appear to be defeated?” The undemanding response to these questions is to abandon critical inquiry, for example through moral nihilism, taking up an anthropological pessimism to naturalize suffering, embracing a theodicy, or simply adopting a no-nonsense, down-to-earth realism. 7 I bracket this first option and assume that the reader shares something similar to Marcuse’s (1964: x) judgment that human life “can be and ought to be made worth living,” Horkheimer’s (1993: 35f) compassion for suffering, or what Bernstein (2001: 188) called Adorno’s “ethical impulse,” which “is fundamentally oriented by remorse, the need to make restitution, to repair the damage done, to seek reconciliation, to make amends.”
For those unwilling to stifle these value judgments that presuppose the possibility of critical theory, there seems to be two elemental answers to Marcuse’s questions for social theorists still committed to “changing the concrete conditions under which men suffer,” as Horkheimer (1972: 32) plainly put it. The first is to create utopian or ideal systems gained through hypothetical thought experiments to formulate what constitutes moral action and a just society. However, I think Mills’ criticisms of “ideal theory,” not to mention Marx’s critiques of idealism and utopianism, are convincing enough that one ought to avoid this first option (see Introduction). The second answer is to continue the quest to understand and explain the nonideal world of suffering and reflect upon it in order to find fissures that may help bring about historical alternatives.
It lies outside the purpose of this project to explain what real possibilities may exist today, though the negative and, I think, accurate view should be noted. There is not an objective basis to predict that seeds of resistance – Third World movements against privatization, passing protests against financial capital in overdeveloped countries, red–green alliances in Europe, pockets of deliberative democratic forums, etc. – present historical alternatives to global neoliberalism. The immediate reason for this situation is simple, though the circumstances leading up to this situation are complex: what remains of the Left is even more fractured and unorganized than during the midcentury and there is nothing that bears a resemblance to the international anti-capitalist movement needed to hint at the possibility of historical alternatives. Despite increasing national- and international-level inequality and a rapidly degrading natural environment, we do not live on the brink of the “messianic time.”
As explained above, if real possibilities cannot be detected, the Frankfurt School developed methods and theories for continuing this second, nonideal answer to Marcuse’s questions. It is my contention that the method outlined above should be unapologetically continued until real possibilities are found. Of course, a dogmatic, stale program of pessimistic social theory is an infantile endeavor. From a (neo-) Marxist perspective, pessimism is only necessary so long as the world suffers greatly and real possibilities for the future cannot be positively formulated. Further, the necessity of pessimism will depend on the radical nature of the demands made by critical theory. The liberal can circumvent pessimistic conclusions by adopting Mills’ ideal-as-idealized model to avoid taking real conditions into consideration and hold fast to the progressive tale that all will be well. But social theorists who look for a world beyond liberalism and are confronted with, for example, a billion malnourished humans and an ecological crisis that may be irreversible, should be open to gloom-ridden theorizing without being dismissed as bourgeois cultural pessimists. One is left to articulate suffering, explain the root causes of the systematic destruction of humanity and the rest of nature, and unmask irrationalities embedded in social structures and day-to-day life. Perhaps most importantly, the nonideal theorist who cannot detect real possibilities in present social conditions must firmly reject “fraudulent hope” (Bloch, 1986) and, if needed, explain why the contradictions of a monstrous world such as ours may give birth to an even fouler monster.
For radical scholars, what end can pessimism serve? Does pessimism not lead to detachment, nihilism, conservatism, and hopelessness, as critics of the Frankfurt School have claimed? Social pessimism, at least the pessimism underpinning the Frankfurt School’s treatises, serves two functions: (1) it provides meaningful and honest narratives for society to better understand the sources of its own ugliness (i.e. although pessimistic social theory cannot guide practical action, it can help raise the experiences and causes of injustice to consciousness) and (2) it preserves a radical, messianic hope. Because the first point seems intuitive to me, I will clarify the second.
Regarding the second function of pessimistic social theory, I follow an argument made by Lasch (1991) in one of his greatest works, that hope is more honestly preserved in negativity than in cheerful though empty promises. 8 This is what Horkheimer recognized in Schopenhauer’s ideas. Hope can only be located after despair is first made fully conscious of itself: “ideas…in the face of utter hopelessness, because they confront it, know more than any others of hope” (Horkheimer, 1974: 83). Or, as Adorno (1991: 175) put it at the end of one of his last statements: “thought achieves happiness in the expression of unhappiness.” Hope must remain dormant, lingering beneath unhappiness unless objective conditions evoke the possibility of relief. This is why the despairing, life-affirming hopes of the existentialists, offshoots of Nietzsche’s (1967: 17) Dionysian “pessimism of strength,” are to be rejected. Adorno (2006: 160–161) argued that subjective, authentic spontaneity is incapable of “defeating the omnipotence of society,” as “[s]uch hopes are entertained simply and solely because at the moment there is no basis for hope in the objective historical trend.” Such empty hopes find different expression today in the widespread eager and pragmatic liberalism, a tendency already depicted quite well by Žižek (2008: xivf). “Stop talking about problems and get out there and actually do something,” “Think globally and act locally,” and similar mantras may function as frantic attempts to displace a felt despair about the sufferings of the world into an unjustifiable and desperate optimism, complete with what Adorno (1991: 172) once termed “pseudo-activity”: “one clings to action because of the impossibility of action.”
In opposition to false hope, insights from thinkers like Pascal, Voltaire, Schopenhauer, and Weber shine more light on the modern human condition and future prospects than Leibniz, Condorcet, Hegel, and Comte, for example. Or, as Horkheimer and Adorno (1969: 118) put it in their opus, “the dark chroniclers mercilessly declared the shocking truth.” The “dark” and “black” writers of the bourgeoisie, because they held the world in contempt, protested against existing social relations more honestly and forcefully than any theodicy, secularized or not. The Frankfurt School’s social theory preserves pessimism’s disgust of, and compassion for, the world yet rids it of its tendencies to naturalize social suffering and regress into anti-modernism. Such a framework remains vitally important. This is why it is healthy that the stereotypically disillusioned and bleak scholars of the social sciences and philosophy endure; those of the exact kind almost mockingly described by Anderson and earlier by Lukács as residing in the Grand Hotel Abyss. They are paradoxically preserving a radical hope that, at one time, could genuinely manifest itself as optimism. When the doors are barricaded, it is doubly important that thought not be interrupted. It is rather the task of thought to analyse the reasons behind this situation and to draw the consequences from these reasons.…If there is any chance of changing the situation, it is only through undiminished insight. (Adorno, 1991: 173)
Keeping the causes of social suffering and mediocrity in constant gaze is the route to the potential discovery of historical alternatives, no matter how long the wait may be. In more abstract theological terms, negativity is the remaining route to: contemplate all things as they would present themselves from the standpoint of redemption.…Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will appear one day in the messianic light. To gain such perspectives without velleity or violence, entirely from felt contact with its objects – this alone is the task of thought. It is the simplest of all things, because the situation calls imperatively for such knowledge, indeed because consummate negativity, once squarely faced, delineates the mirror-image of its opposite [i.e. utopia]. (Adorno, 1978: 247)
As one reviewer pointed out, this abstract articulation of hope preserved in negativity is also conveyed in Adorno’s (2001: 170ff) assessment of the “block” Kant placed between knowledge and metaphysics. A social product that reflects the resignation required in capitalist societies, Kant’s block paradoxically suggests a “metaphysical mourning.” For Adorno, the possibility of the transcendent – of objective meaningful experience, of future social transformation – must always remain open. But to leave open this possibility in a nonideal world, one must do so negatively (Adorno, 1966: 406). A positive program was not only a politically naïve option, but also risked reproducing the reified world into consciousness (Buck-Morss, 1977: 186–187). For now, one must wait and “do what the miner’s adage forbids: to work one’s way through the darkness without a lamp” (Adorno, 2000: 144).
Conclusions
I do not believe that things will turn out well, but the idea that they might is of decisive importance. (Max Horkheimer, in Adorno and Horkheimer, 2011: 45)
Criticizing the pessimistic systems developed in the Upanishads in the East and Schopenhauerian philosophy in the West, Albert Schweitzer (1960: 94) stated that “[a]bout society, nation, mankind, the individual is not to trouble himself; he is only to strive to experience in himself the sovereignty of spirit over matter.” Yet in the Frankfurt School’s pessimistic revisions to Marxist theory, this formulation is inverted. It is because the thinker troubles herself with society and humankind, while knowing there is no life beyond the contours of materialist assumptions, that the thinker adopts a pessimistic position. They sustained Marx’s refusal to rely on moralizing and utopian models and, rather, attempted to explain the nonideal world as it is in order to discover the progressive alternatives present conditions might be holding. However, unlike Marx, the first-generation Frankfurt School could not detect the seeds of a better future in present social conditions. Instead of falling back on utopian schemes and moralizing, they were left to give a voice to suffering, explain the underlying causes of evil, and expose the irrationalities of society. Rather than marking a conservative or nihilistic break with Marxist theory, I argue this method and resultant theories ought to stay intact in order to preserve hope in an honest fashion.
Those dedicated to improving society must adjust their views in accordance with today’s social misery and allow ethical-political visions to be regulated by real social conditions and trends in order to circumvent utopianism, false promises, and, as stressed in this essay, ideal theory. Rivera (2009: 30) summarized Mills’ critique of ideal theory well: “ideal-as-idealized theories make it impossible to understand how injustice works in reality, and thus impossible to actually achieve justice.” In positive terms, then, the purpose of nonideal theory is to understand how injustice works in reality in order to actually achieve justice. As we have seen, the Frankfurt School would agree, but would add a significant caveat: doing the former may lead one to question or even reject the possibility of the latter, at least within the foreseeable future, so long as “the doors are barricaded.” But this should not be read as a call for the abolition of what Bloch (1986: 11) called “an anticipation of Not-Yet-Become.” In a nonideal world without real possibilities, the “Grand Hotel Abyss” continues to be the most appropriate stronghold of hope.
Footnotes
Acknowledgment
This essay was written in honor of Professor David Ashley’s retirement from the Department of Sociology at the University of Wyoming. Professor Ashley’s notoriously gloomy lectures acted as a constant reminder that human history had yet to begin. Just as his pessimism preserves a fervent radicalism, so too his stubborn Nietzschean hardness havens a deep-seated compassion for the sufferings of the world and concern for its future.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.