Abstract
Darrow Schecter and Andrew Bowie discuss a similar question: what is the future of critical theory and philosophy? The former takes a more sociological perspective, while the latter’s perspective is more philosophical. Schecter begins by highlighting the move from a linguistic towards a literary turn in recent critical thinking, as found, for example, in Jameson’s readings of Marx, Adorno and Derrida. Against Nancy Fraser’s much debated ethics of distribution versus Hegel/Honneth’s ethics of recognition (Fraser & Honneth 2003), the book argues, ‘human emancipation has broader connotations than simply redistributive justice’ (p. 18). This also means that critical-intellectual exchange is ideally conducted in the Hegelian realm of freedom. Excluded from this are highly structured institutions such as, for example, workplace, scientific laboratory and other settings in which a competence-based hierarchy is used rather than an assembly of equals (Diefenbach 2013).
These ethical demands – freedom, no hierarchies, and an assembly of equals – carry connotations to modern civil societies that have been a product of the modern world linked to what Hegel once called Sittlichkeit or ethical life. What Hegel meant by this has been explained in a not-yet translated but most insightful text on ‘Hegels System der Sittlichkeit’ (Schmidt 2007). On that reading, the individual and subjective dimension of a Hegelian dialectic has not only been somewhat understated by Adorno, but has also given rise to ‘largely academic theories of recognition’ (p. 44). Nonetheless, the ‘Hegel-Marx-Adorno’ dialogue on what might be termed ‘recognition-vs.-distribution’ remains of great interest to contemporary critical theory. As a consequence of a possible outcome of such a dialogue, it remains somewhat insufficient simply to realise that theorists must be reflexive. Critical theory must reach beyond that and be reflective in a dialectical-critical way that includes contemporary conceptions of critique (Klikauer 2014a). This can achieve things that traditional theory could not and can never achieve. It can combine dialectical materialism after Marx with other prominent approaches to social research. Perhaps critical realism might be one of the closest, with certain versions of system theory being other likely candidates. Since there has been a lifetime of Luhmann-Habermas exchanges, perhaps a highly pluralist version of system theory can be taken somewhat more seriously by critical theorists than had been the case in the past.
Unlike many more traditional theories – including system theory – critical theory remains committed to immanent critique and non-dogmatic objectivity. It is for this reason that critical theory has never and can never abandon the Enlightenment ideal of a rational society free of prejudice, obscurantism and the arbitrary exercise of power. Aligned to that is the fact that critical theory analyses how reason, obscurantism and the arbitrary exercise of power actually function in liberal-democratic and post-liberal-democratic societies, examining the underlying structure, namely capitalism itself. Hence critical theory continues to investigate the capitalism-society dialectic and current forms of populism and hegemony designed to undermine democracy.
One of the key ideologies that undermine democracy is what Adorno calls ‘identity thinking’, e.g. identifying as real in society only that which harmonises and fits with dominant concepts. Hence, non-identity thinking can begin by pointing out the anthropological assumptions underlying the contemporary liberal-democratic conceptions of a mass-mediated unity designed to eclipse the inherent contradictions and pathologies found in capitalism and contemporary society. Meanwhile, identity thinking leads to the conviction that humanity is part of nature and subject to natural forces and that morality is linked to mechanical and biological causality beyond human control.
Nonetheless, while critical knowledge always aspires not only to be critical but to be reflective and self-reflective, it simultaneously can never simply re-phrase the ideas of the Frankfurt School’s first generation. At the same time, however, the first generation of critical theory thinkers raise epistemological and political questions that are not easily dismissed as obsolete and overrun by events. Hence, current critical theory needs to remain an open-ended project capable of assimilating other theoretical influences and methodological impulses. Theories that make only brief appearances in the works of Adorno, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Neumann, Sohn-Rethel, Pollock, Kirchheimer, Marcuse, etc. should perhaps not be discarded, but refashioned. Perhaps a key author remains Adorno. But there remain some notable differences between Adorno and the highly fashionable concept of recognition. One area in which both differ is, for example, the question of reconciliation. For Adorno, the possibility of real freedom lies with the institutionalisation of mediated non-identity. Therefore, the task of critical theory is to constantly evaluate the status of non-identity thinking – especially within the context of institutionalization – so that recognition can become more than a ‘fleeting avant-garde modernist’ concept.
One attempt to achieve this has been Habermas’s ‘Legitimation Crisis’, showing new pathways beyond the Marx-Freud synthesis. Habermas’s work was guided by the conviction that the totally administered world (Adorno) and the one-dimensional man (Marcuse) approach to history and social theory exaggerate the extent to which systemic power can marginalise differences and impose homogeneity upon individuals, objects, urban spaces, voting behaviour and consumptive patterns amidst generalised late modern complexities and contingencies (p. 163). With this and more in his Theory of Communicative Action (1997), Habermas sought to overcome the dystopian Weltgeist put forward by Adorno and Marcuse during the mid-20th century.
Going back to Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse, there is also a view that the dystopian elements as found in capitalism might not be a total exaggeration, as, for example, Benson and Kirsch (2010) have recently shown. One might agree with Adorno that ‘exaggeration is the medium of truth’ (p. 38; cf. Klikauer 2013). Perhaps one needs Adorno’s exaggerations in order to understand Habermas’s socio-pathologies of capitalism. In any case, one might be tempted to argue that critical theory has always endeavoured to reach beyond ethical abstractions and formalist description. Hence, critical theory has always analysed how the mediating dynamics in virtually all theorising has resulted in somewhat false syntheses that excluded and silenced dissent as well as theoretical elements (Klikauer 2013). There is a fine line between two variants of critical theory – namely, a critical theory that (1) undermines itself by discrediting pretty much all of theory as inherently dogmatic; and (2) one that enlarges the domain for theoretical validity without becoming too eclectic and diffuse.
On the latter, one might argue that any critique of knowledge produced in the realm of social and natural science continues to have important implications not just for criticism itself but also for political policy (Klikauer 2014a). As a consequence, critical theory does not so much question science and objectivity in the name of relativism, but seeks to point out where and how rigorous standards of verification are undermined by instrumental and strategic interventions. Such emancipatory interventions are ‘the’ central concern of critical theory. These can be complemented by practical attempts to end global scarcities paralleled by Affluenza without reinforcing managerialism’s global control (Klikauer 2013). The crucial task of critical theory remains to show how institutional mediations between identity thinking and repressive integration function in practice.
How this can be achieved is part of ‘Adorno and the ends of philosophy’, which might have also been called ‘Adorno between analytical philosophy and scientism’ for two reasons: on the one hand, there is a prevalence of analytical philosophy which appears to contribute little to understanding of Adorno’s philosophy while on the other hand examining it in the light of scientific and neuro-scientific advancements, offering an insightful perspective. While ‘the present book is not intended as any kind of definite account on Adorno’ (p. vii), in fact no book ever is. Strangely, the book begins with ‘the wider significance of Naturalism’ by Akeel Bilgami (2010), which is followed by ‘analytical philosophy’. One is left wondering why a book on Adorno should start with Akeel Bilgami’s Naturalism, and why analytical philosophy should receive such a prominence. Adorno was not an analytical philosopher.
While the cleavage between analytical and European approaches is well known, Adorno remains a major resource for contemporary European philosophy, while simultaneously not becoming part of mainstream philosophical debate. There is no illumination here on whether or not this was Adorno’s intention – whether perhaps this is not really Adorno’s failure, but perhaps mainstream’s failure; and whether Adorno is, at least in Germany, seen as part of the mainstream of post-war philosophy.
Interestingly, Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (published 1947) was out of print for much of the time until 1969, though illegal copies admittedly circulated. But Adorno’s broader influence largely rests on his talks on radio. Many of Adorno’s radio and TV lectures discussed a dialectical approach to philosophy. Adorno’s dialectical philosophy may well be clarified via an exploration of Adorno’s relation to certain responses to the issue of contradictory philosophy.
But Adorno has never subscribed to the straight anti-metaphysical approach characteristic of certain scientifically oriented members of the Vienna Circle. Instead, metaphysics has to do with what makes human lives worth living. For Adorno, philosophy means transcending the world as it presents itself to us in specific historical circumstances, where the pressure of those circumstances can blind people to more humane alternatives. This can have a real destructive impact, as shown most recently when ‘the basic danger of an atomist analytical focus [became] apparent in the way that brilliant mathematical economists came up with formulae which nearly destroyed the world’s economic system in 2008’ (p. 27). Perhaps one thing that many economists – and, perhaps even more so, econometricians – can learn from Adorno’s philosophy is that ‘in his lectures Adorno does not define “philosophy”, but rather offers a series of reflections which let what he means emerge, beginning with the idea that philosophy is the comprehensive obligation not to be naïve’ (p. 29).
A philosophy most commonly not associated with the word ‘naïve’ was Kant’s philosophy, as Bowie’s ‘Contradiction as truth-content: Adorno and Kant’ shows. Crucially, and perhaps post-Kantian, is Adorno’s concept that ‘the depth of a philosophy does not lie in the extent to which this philosophy can reconcile contradictions, but rather in the extent to which it is able to make contradictions manifest which are inherent in the matter [Sache] itself’ (p. 41). But ‘Adorno [also] agrees that Kant’s separation of the world of appearance and the world in itself is inconsistent’ (p. 46). Adorno is more agreeable to ‘the Hegelian point that the notional line between the subjective and the objective is not a fixed one, and that it changes in relation to historical developments’ (p. 50).
Adorno’s relationship to Hegel is further elaborated in Bowie’s ‘Immediacy and mediation: Hegelian and Adornian dialectics’, in which he argues that ‘Hegel … is seen as embodying the hubris of philosophy’ (p. 55) by Adorno. Hegelian and Kantian thinking continues in Bowie’s ‘dialectic and non-identity’, where he seems to argue a more Kantian than Hegelian notion that ‘freedom is not adequately understood if one thinks of it just in terms of Kantian and Hegelian individual self-determination in accordance with norms’ (p. 67).
Perhaps Adorno’s most famous statement is his problematic dictum in Minima Moralia that ‘there is no true life in the false [that] can be understood … in relation to the difficulties of self-determination in complex, commodity-dominated societies, where a trip to the supermarket can oppress a third-world farmer without realizing it’ (p. 68). What is perhaps problematic is not so much Adorno’s allegedly ‘problematic’ (sic) statement, but the later part of Bowie’s sentence (Brink 2010). What is perhaps even more true is that a CEO, for example, ‘could kill someone in China without anyone knowing in order to become rich, he would do it. The point is that this is what the development of capital at the time was making possible, whilst also concealing that this was what one was doing’ (p. 68). Again problematic on Bowie’s assertion are two issues: (a) the deceptively placed ‘would’ that is, in reality, a ‘must’, given the imperatives of shareholder-value and profit-maximisation for corporations (Benson & Kirsch 2010); and (b) Bowie’s ‘at the time’, which is actually more like ‘today’, because unethical corporate behaviours are conducted today (Reilly 2013).
Bowie is certainly correct in emphasising that ‘the contemporary sense that the relationship of humankind to the non-human world is in crisis has increasingly revived the philosophical concern with nature’ and our place within it’ (p .75). But the relationship between Adorno’s philosophy and environmental ethics has not been conceptualised by Bowie (Vogel 1996). This shortcoming occurred despite the fact that Bowie is aware of the fact that ‘what nature is is indissolubly linked to the nature which investigates it, namely us’ (p. 85). Despite this, Bowie takes the problematic issue of nature and freedom, as well as ‘the meaning for freedom’ (p. 96), very seriously. Perhaps key to understanding Adorno’s philosophy is that: Kant thinks he can reconcile social necessities with the demand for freedom; Adorno’s conception is predicated on the sense that this reconciliation has been rendered illusionary by modernity. He thinks that the way in which Kant’s approach leads to necessary contradictions in thinking about freedom is more appropriate to the world that generated the Holocaust than is Hegel’s insistence on mutual recognition as what resolves the tension between the individual and the social whole. (p. 108 f.)
This is rather odd, given the historical evidence that the Holocaust was preceded by the systematic de-recognition of Jewish people since 1933, and especially after 1936 through rafts of administrative measures and race laws (Aly 2005; Levy 2005; Klikauer 2011). In contrast to Bowie, it is this sort of de-recognition that makes atrocities possible (Klikauer 2014b). It is further enhanced when ‘instrumentality has become the dominant modern form of reason’ (p. 111) as Adorno Prize Laureate Zygmunt Bauman (1989) noted with perfect precision with regard to the Holocaust, and as Darrow Schecter did more recently, at a more general level (2010).
Bowie’s final chapter is about ‘aesthetics and philosophy’, in which the author argues that ‘the Holocaust is the key to modernity [and this] demands that one be very careful about identifying which social trends are really related to what made the Holocaust possible or which may make something similar more likely’ (p. 139; Klikauer 2011). As such, ‘what Adorno seeks is echoed in Rorty’s contention that the primary aim for philosophy should be to diminish cruelty’ (p. 163). If Bowie is correct and the aim of philosophy is indeed to diminish cruelty, then perhaps Bowie is quite correct on the book’s title – ‘the ends of philosophy’ – because with the current and foreseeable level of global cruelty, philosophy should not end (Moellendorf & Widdows 2013).
Against his own book title, Bowie concludes, ‘the future philosophical significance of Adorno will, I suspect, depend on the extent to which his work can inform the growing awareness that too much contemporary philosophy is blind to how focus on meaning is based too exclusively on semantic and cognitive considerations’. This ‘may obscure our understanding of meanings that can both motivate and sustain lives and inhibit, distort, and destroy them’ (p. 188). In conclusion, there does not appear to be anything like ‘Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy’. On the contrary, Adorno’s philosophy will continue to inform philosophy, as Bowie has shown, and equally Adorno’s philosophy will also assure that critical theory carries on existing in the 21st century, as Schecter has most exquisitely outlined.