Philosophy and Sociology: 1960. Theodor W. Adorno

(and that in its empirical condition) constitute the foundation of metaphysics, a science which is to consist of nothing but the empirical apprehension and analysis of the facts of human consciousness, merely as facts, just as they are given. (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Werke, ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Michael Markus, Frankfurt, 1969–, vol. 10: Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse, Dritter Teil: Philosophie des Geistes, p. 238; Philosophy of Mind, trans. William Wallace and A. V. Miller, rev. Michael Inwood, Oxford, 2010, §444, p. 171)See also aphorism 39, ‘Ego is Id’, from Minima Moralia (GS 4, pp. 70–2; Minima Moralia, trans. Edmund Jephcott, London, 1974, pp. 63–4).

      25 25 In his lecture ‘The Virginity Taboo’, delivered in 1917, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) had spoken for the first time of ‘the narcissism of small differences’ (S. Freud, Gesammelte Werke, London, 1940–, vol. XII, p. 169; Pelican Freud Library, vol. 7, Harmondsworth, 1977, p. 272.) In his late text Civilization and its Discontents of 1939, Freud returned to this form of narcissism:I once discussed the phenomenon that it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and in ridiculing each other – like the Spaniards and Portuguese, for instance, the North Germans and South Germans, the English and Scotch, and so on. I gave this phenomenon the name of ‘the narcissism of small differences’, a name which does not do much to explain it. We can now see that it is a convenient and relatively harmless satisfaction of the inclination to aggression, by means of which cohesion between the members of the community is made easier. In this respect the Jewish people, scattered everywhere, have rendered most useful services to the civilizations of the countries that have been their hosts; but unfortunately all the massacres of the Jews in the Middle Ages did not suffice to make that period more peaceful and secure for their Christian fellows. (S. Freud, Gesammelte Werke, vol. XIV, pp. 473f.; Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. XXI, London, 2001, p. 114)

      26 26 In §46 of his Prolegomena, Kant says that ‘in all substances the subject proper, that which remains after the accidents (as predicates) are abstracted, hence the substantial itself, remains unknown’; and a little further on he continues:Now we appear to have this substance in the consciousness of ourselves (in the thinking subject), and indeed in an immediate intuition; for all the predicates of an internal sense refer to the ego, as a subject, and I cannot conceive myself as the predicate of any other subject. Hence completeness in the reference of the given concepts as predicates to a subject – not merely an idea, but an object – that is, the absolute subject itself, seems to be given in experience. But this expectation is disappointed. For the ego is not a concept, but only the indication of the object of the internal sense, so far as we cognize it by no further predicate. Consequently, it cannot be itself a predicate of any other thing; but just as little can it be a determinate concept of an absolute subject, but is, as in all other cases, only the reference of the internal phenomena to their unknown subject. (Kant, Werke in sechs Bänden, vol. III: Schriften zur Logik und Metaphysik, pp. 204–5; Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics that Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science, trans. Paul Carus, rev. James W. Ellington, Indianapolis, 1977, p. 75)

      27 27 See Kant’s discussion of ‘The Original Synthetic Unity of Apperception’, in §16 of the Critique of Pure Reason (B 131–6; Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, London, 1970, pp. 152–5).

      28 28 ‘The Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding’ is the title of chapter 2 of Book 1 of the Critique of Pure Reason (Kemp Smith, pp. 129–75).

      29 29 In §16 of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant writes:It must be possible for the ‘I think’ to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me. That representation which can be given prior to all thought is entitled intuition. All the manifold of intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation to the ‘I think’ in the same subject in which this manifold is found. (Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Kemp Smith, pp. 152–3)In Negative Dialectics Adorno provides a critique of the constitutive function of the pure ‘I think’ (GS 6, pp. 63f., 98, 184f., 213, and 228f.; Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton, London, 1973, pp. 53, 91, 182f., 213, 229).

      30 30 Reading ‘Einheit’ for ‘Eigenheit’.

      31 31 In the Prolegomena Kant writes:The uniting of representations in a consciousness is judgment. Thinking therefore is the same as judging, or referring representations to judgments in general. Hence judgments are either merely subjective when representations are referred to a consciousness in one subject only and are united in it, or they are objective when they are united in a consciousness in general, that is, necessarily. The logical moments of all judgments are so many possible ways of uniting representations in consciousness. But if they serve as concepts, they are concepts of the necessary unification of representations in a consciousness and so are principles of objectively valid judgments. (Werke in sechs Bänden, vol. III, p. 171 (A 88); Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science, trans. Paul Carus, rev. James W. Ellington, Indianapolis, 1977, §22, p. 47)

      32 32 An allusion to a line from the final strophe of Schiller’s ‘Rider’s Song’: ‘Youth dashes, life sparkles’ (Friedrich Schiller, ‘Reiterlied’, in Sämtliche Werke, ed. Gerhard Fricke and Herbert G. Göpfert, 3rd edn, Munich, 1962, vol. 1, p. 414).

      33 33 In §7 of the introduction to the second volume of the Logical Investigations (‘The Principle of the Presuppositionless Character of Epistemological Investigations’) Husserl wrote: ‘An epistemological inquiry which makes a serious claim to be regarded as scientific in character, must, as has indeed often been said, satisfy the principle of presuppositionlessness. But in our view this principle can only mean the strict exclusion of all assertions that cannot be fully and completely realized phenomenologically’ (Husserliana, Gesammelte Werke, vol. IX.2: Logische Untersuchungen. Zweiter Band, p. 24; Logical Investigations, vol. 2, Findlay, p. 11). Adorno always strongly criticized philosophies which appealed to some kind of first or original principle, and thus rejected ‘the idea that we must begin from something which is primary and entirely certain, upon which everything else must subsequently be based in a transparent way.’ For this approach already decides key questions in advance – like the question concerning the possibility or necessity of some such original principle in the first place. These questionscan only be resolved in the context of philosophy itself. The concept of presuppositionlessness in particular is a fantasy and has never actually been realized by any philosophy. Anyone who genuinely engages with philosophy must leave this idea of presuppositionlessness outside … In short, the only appropriate thing where philosophy is concerned is to give oneself over to it without recourse to any kind of authority, but also without anticipating the result by imposing rigid demands on it from the start, while still retaining one’s own capacity for thought. There can be no rules for this, but only modest suggestions for how to go about it. (Zum Studium der Philosophie, GS 20.1, pp. 318f.; see also NaS IV.4, pp. 30f.; Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Rodney Livingstone, Cambridge, 2001, pp. 15–17)

      34 34 The ‘Dasein analysis’ to which Adorno refers was developed by Ludwig Binswanger (1881–1966), a student of C. G. Jung (1875–1961), in the early 1940s. It attempted to develop a therapeutic approach that was not specifically based on psychology – i.e., on an analysis of the subjective development of the patient – but drew instead on the so-called analysis of existence undertaken by Heidegger.

LECTURE 2 12 May 1960

      Ladies and gentlemen,

In the last lecture I took Kant as a starting point and model for exploring the traditional resistance and antagonism which some disciplines have displayed towards sociology and all forms of truth or knowledge that appeal to the factual domain. In terms of the central problem I have already indicated, I should now like to do the opposite and introduce you to the kind of resistance to philosophy that one typically encounters in the field of sociology. And here you may be surprised by two