Philosophy and Sociology: 1960. Theodor W. Adorno

vol. 5, p. 215).

      17 17 In a series of lectures delivered in the winter semester of 1929/30 Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) had declared that atransformation of seeing and questioning is always the decisive thing in science. The greatness and vitality of a science is revealed in the power of its capacity for such transformation. Yet this transformation of seeing and questioning is misunderstood when it is taken as a change of standpoint or shift in the sociological conditions of science. It is true that this is the sort of thing which mainly or exclusively interests many people in science today – its psychologically and sociologically conditioned character – but this is just a facade. Sociology of this kind relates to real science and its philosophical comprehension in the same way in which one who clambers up a facade relates to the architect or, to take a less elevated example, to a conscientious craftsman. (Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm von Hermann, Frankfurt, 2004, p. 379; The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, trans. Nicholas Walker and William McNeill, Bloomington, IN, 1995, p. 261)Adorno could not have had direct knowledge of these lectures (which were first published in 1983) but probably heard these remarks on sociology going the rounds.

      18 18 See Max Weber, Soziologische Grundbegriffe, Tübingen, 1960 (an offprint from: Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 4th edn, ed. Johannes Winckelman, 1956, pp. 1–30). This opening chapter from Economy and Society is included in Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, ed. Talcott Parsons, New York, 1964, pp. 87–157.

      19 19 On the introduction of the term ‘sociology’ by Auguste Comte (1798–1857), see Adorno’s footnote in the opening chapter of Soziologische Exkurse:The term ‘sociology’ can be found in Comte in his letter to Valat of December 25, 1824 (Lettres d’Auguste Comte à Monsieur Valat, Paris, 1870, p. 158). The term was made public in 1838 in the fourth volume of Comte’s chief work. Up to that point he had designated the science at which he was aiming ‘physique sociale’. He justified the introduction of the new term as follows: ‘I believe that at the present point I must risk this new term, physique sociale, in order to be able to designate by a single word this complementary part of natural philosophy which bears on the postivie study of the totality of fundamental laws proper to social phenomena.’ (Soziologische Exkurse, ed. Theodor Adorno and Walter Dirks, Frankfurt, 1956, p. 18; Aspects of Sociology, by The Frankfurt Institute of Social Research, trans. John Viertel, London, 1973, pp. 11–12)

      20 20 Claude-Henri de Rouvoy, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), is generally regarded as one of the founding fathers of sociology as a specific discipline. From 1817 to 1824 Saint-Simon was Comte’s student, secretary and confidante.

      21 21 Claude Adrien Helvétius (1715–1771) and Paul Thiry d’Holbach (1723–1789) both regarded themselves as followers of John Locke (1632–1704). Like Locke, they espoused the theory of innate ideas and regarded human beings as essentially the products of their environment. In the essay referred to in the previous note, Adorno says thatThus the left-wing encyclopedists Helvetius and Holbach proclaim that prejudices of the sort which Bacon attributed to man universally have their definite social function. They serve the maintenance of unjust conditions and stand in opposition to the realization of happiness and the establishment of a rational society. … To be sure, the Encyclopedist too did not as yet attain a comprehensive insight into the objective origin of ideologies and the objectivity of their social function. For the most part prejudices and false consciousness are traced back to the machinations of the mighty. In Holbach it is said: ‘Authority generally considers it in its interest to maintain received opinions [les opinions recues]: the prejudices and errors which it considers necessary for the secure maintenance of its power are perpetuated by this power, which never reasons [qui jamais ne raisonne]’ At approximately the same time, however, Helvetius, perhaps the thinker among the Encyclopedists endowed with the greatest intellectual power, had already recognized the objective necessity of what was attributed by others to the ill will of camarillas: ‘Our ideas are the necessary consequence of the society in which we live.’ (Institut für Sozialforschung, Soziologische Exkurse, pp. 164f.; Aspects of Sociology, pp. 184–5)The quotation is from d’Holbach’s Système de la nature ou des lois du monde physique et du monde moral and is cited in German translation by Hans Barth in his book Wahrheit und Ideologie, Zurich, 1945, p. 69. In the same essay Adorno quotes a passage from Helvétius, De l’esprit, also in Barth’s German translation, p. 62. In this connection, see also Adorno’s Beitrag zur Ideologienlehre, GS 8, pp. 457–77.

      22 22 The concept of ‘ideology’ can be traced back to Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836). He used the term in his work Eléments d’idéologie (Paris, 1801–15) to describe the exact theory of ideas (in the sense of mental ‘representations’). This Enlightenment theory was expressly taken over by the philosophical ‘School of the Ideologists’ and exerted considerable influence in the French educational system until the doctrine was attacked and discredited by Napoleon Bonaparte. In a passage from the Soziologische Exkurse we read that:Although his dictatorship was itself linked in so many respects to the bourgeois emancipation, Napoleon, in a passage which Pareto cites, already raised the accusation of subversion against the ideologues, even if he did so in a more subtle manner, an accusation which ever since has attached itself like a shadow to the social analysis of consciousness. In this reproach he emphasized the irrational moments – in a language with Rousseauean colorations – to which a continual appeal was made subsequently, against the so-called intellectualism of the critique of ideology … Napoleon’s denunciation charges: ‘It is to the doctrine of the ideologues – to this diffuse metaphysics, which in a contrived manner seeks to find the primary causes and on this foundation would erect the legislation of the peoples, instead of adapting the laws to a knowledge of the human heart and to the lessons of history – to which one must attribute all the misfortunes which have befallen our beautiful France. Their errors had to – and indeed this was the case – bring about the regime of the men of terror. Indeed, who was it who proclaimed the principle of insurrection as a duty? Who misled the people by elevating them to a sovereignty which they were incapable of exercising? Who has destroyed the sanctity of the laws and all respect for them, by no longer deriving them from the sacred principles of justice, the essence of things, and the civil order of rights, but exclusively from the arbitrary volition of the people’s representatives, composed of men without knowledge of the civil, criminal, administrative, political, and military law? If one is called upon to renew a state, then one must follow principles which are in constant opposition to each other [des principes constamment opposés]. History displays the history of the human heart; it is in history that one must seek to gain knowledge of the advantages and the evils of the various kinds of legislation.’ … The later usage too, which employs the expression ‘unworldly ideologues’ against allegedly abstract utopians in the name of ‘Realpolitik,’ is discernible in Napoleon’s pronouncements. But he failed to realize that the ideologues’ analysis of consciousness was by no means so irreconcilable with the interests of the rulers. Already then a technical manipulative moment was associated with it. (Institut für Sozialforschung, Soziologische Exkurse, pp. 166f.; Aspects of Sociology, pp. 187–8)

      23 23 The other ‘force’ was the rationalism defended by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) and Christian Wolff (1679–1754) as an alternative to British empiricism. Kant sought to overcome both of these schools with his philosophy of transcendental idealism, which claimed that knowledge depended upon both sensible experience and the ‘concepts of the understanding’. For Kant, the opposition between rationalism and empiricism was equivalent to that between dogmatism and scepticism; he was concerned principally with the question concerning the possibility of metaphysics as a science, an idea which dogmatism simply affirmed and empiricism denied. For Kant, genuine metaphysical knowledge is simply knowledge that holds independently of experience and comes about through the formation of pure synthetic a priori judgements. In his view, ‘the dogmatists’ were never able to explain how the formation of such judgements is even possible. See NaS IV.4, p. 89; Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Livingstone, p. 56.

      24 24 The description of empiricist philosophy and psychology as the ‘analysis of consciousness’ can already be found in Hegel:Psychology, like logic, is one of those sciences which in recent times have still derived least profit from the more general cultivation of the mind and the deeper concept of reason. It is still