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About
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno -
Author Information:
Andrew Fagan -
fagaaw@essex.ac.uk - University of Essex -
IEP
1. Biography
2. Philosophical influences and motivation
3. Identity thinking and instrumental reason
4. Morality and nihilism
5. The culture industry
6. Conclusion and general criticisms
7. Bibliography
1. Biography
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno was born in 1903 to relatively
affluent parents in central Germany. His mother was a gifted singer, of
Italian descent, and his father was a wine merchant and Jewish. Adorno's
partial Jewish status was to have an immeasurable effect upon his life
and philosophical works. He was an academically and musically gifted
child. Initially, it appeared that Adorno was destined for a musical
career. During the early to mid 1920s Adorno studied music composition
under Alban Berg in Vienna and his talent was recognized by the likes of
Berg and Schoenberg. However, in the late 1920s, Adorno joined the
faculty of the University of Frankfurt and devoted the greatest part of
his considerable talent and energy to the study and teaching of
philosophy. Adorno's Jewish heritage forced him to eventually seek exile
from Nazi Germany, initially registering as a doctoral student at Merton
College, Oxford and then, as a member of the University of Frankfurt's
Institute for Social Research, in New York concluding his exile in
Southern California. Adorno did not complete his Oxford doctorate and
appeared to be persistently unhappy in his exilic condition. Along with
other members of the Institute for Social Research, Adorno returned to
the University of Frankfurt immediately after the completion of the war,
taking up a professorial chair in philosophy and sociology. Adorno
remained a professor at the University of Frankfurt until his death in
1969. He was married to Gretel and they had no children.
2. Philosophical influences and motivation
Adorno is generally recognized within the Continental
tradition of philosophy as being one of the foremost philosophers of the
20th. Century. His collected works comprise some twenty-three volumes.
He wrote on subjects ranging from musicology to metaphysics and his
writings span to include such things as philosophical analyses of
Hegelian metaphysics, a critical study of the astrology column of the
Los Angeles Times, and jazz. In terms of both style and content,
Adorno's writings defy convention. In seeking to attain a clear
understanding of the works of any philosopher, one should begin by
asking oneself what motivated his or her philosophical labours. What was
Adorno attempting to achieve through his philosophical writings?
Adorno's philosophy is fundamentally concerned with human suffering. It
is founded upon a central moral conviction: that the development of
human civilization has been achieved through the systematic repression
of nature and the consolidation of insidiously oppressive social and
political systems, to which we are all exposed. The shadow of human
suffering falls across practically all of Adorno's writings. Adorno
considered his principal task to be that of testifying to the
persistence of such conditions and thereby, at best, retaining the
possibility that such conditions might be changed for the better. The
central tension in Adorno's diagnosis of what he termed 'damaged life'
consists in the unrelentingly critical character of his evaluation of
the effects of modern societies upon their inhabitants, coupled with a
tentative, but absolutely essential, commitment to a belief in the
possibility of the elimination of unnecessary suffering. As in the work
of all genuine forms of critical philosophy, Adorno's otherwise very
bleak diagnosis of modernity is necessarily grounded within a tentative
hope for a better world.
Adorno's philosophy is typically considered to have been
most influenced by the works of three previous German philosophers:
Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. In addition, his association with the
Institute of Social Research profoundly affected the development of
Adorno's thought. I shall begin by discussing this last, before briefly
summarizing the influence of the first three. The Institute for Social
Research was established at the University of Frankfurt in 1923. The
Institute, or the 'Frankfurt School', as it was later to become known,
was an inter-disciplinary body comprising specialists in such fields as
philosophy, economics, political science, legal theory, psychoanalysis,
and the study of cultural phenomena such as music, film, and mass
entertainment. The establishment of The Frankfurt School was financed by
the son of a wealthy grain merchant who wished to create a western
European equivalent to the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow. The
Intellectual labour of the Institute in Frankfurt thus explicitly aimed
at contributing to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of
socialism. However, from 1930 onwards, under the Directorship of Max
Horkheimer, the work of the Frankfurt School began to show subtle but
highly significant deviations from orthodox Marxism. Principally, the
School began to question, and ultimately reject, the strict economic
determinism to which orthodox Marxism was enthral at the time. This
coincided with a firm belief amongst the members of the School that
social phenomena, such as culture, mass entertainment, education, and
the family played a direct role in maintaining oppression. Marxists had
typically dismissed the importance of such phenomena on the grounds that
they were mere reflections of the underlying economic basis of the
capitalist mode of production. An undue concern for such phenomena was
thus generally thought of as, at best, a distraction from the real task
of overthrowing capitalism, at worst a veritable hindrance. In contrast,
the Frankfurt School argued that such phenomena were fundamentally
important, in their own right. The Frankfurt School thus challenged the
economically-centric character of Marxism. The Frankfurt School's
rejection of economic determinism and interest in the social and
cultural planes of human oppression culminated in a far more circumspect
appraisal of the likelihood of capitalism's demise. The Frankfurt School
rejected the Marx's belief in the economic inevitability of capitalism
experiencing cataclysmic economic crises. The Frankfurt School continued
to argue that capitalism remained an oppressive system, but increasingly
viewed the system as far more adaptable and robust than Marxists had
given it credit for. The Frankfurt School came to portray capitalism as
potentially capable of averting its own demise indefinitely. The final
break with orthodox Marxism occurred with the Frankfurt School's coming
to condemn the Soviet Union as a politically oppressive system.
Politically the Frankfurt School sought to position itself equidistant
from both Soviet socialism and liberal capitalism. The greater cause of
human emancipation appeared to call for the relentless criticism of both
systems. The Frankfurt School's contribution to the cause of human
emancipation consisted in the production of primarily theoretical
studies of social and cultural phenomena. This brand of theoretical
study is generally referred to as 'critical theory'. Although
originating with the Frankfurt School, critical theory has now achieved
the status of a distinct and separate form of philosophical study,
taught and practiced in university departments throughout the world.
What, then are the central philosophical characteristics of critical
theory and to what extent does Adorno's philosophy share these
characteristics? Critical theory is founded upon an unequivocal
normative basis. Taking a cold, hard look at the sheer scale of human
misery and suffering experienced during the 20th century in particular,
critical theory aims to testify to the extent and ultimate causes of the
calamitous state of human affairs. The ultimate causes of such suffering
are, of course, to be located in the material, political, economic, and
social conditions which human beings simultaneously both produce and are
exposed to. However, critical theory refrains from engaging in any
direct, political action. Rather, critical theorists argue that
suffering and domination are maintained, to a significant degree, at the
level of consciousness and the various cultural institutions and
phenomena that sustain that consciousness. Critical theory restricts
itself to engaging with such phenomena and aims to show the extent to
which 'uncritical theory' contributes to the perpetuation of human
suffering. Critical theory has thus been defined as 'a tradition of
social thought that, in part at least, takes its cue from its opposition
to the wrongs and ills of modern societies on the one hand, and the
forms of theorizing that simply go along with or seek to legitimate
those societies on the other hand.' (J.M.Bernstein, 1995:11) Max
Horkheimer, the Director of the Frankfurt School, contrasted critical
theory with what he referred to as 'traditional theory'. For Horkheimer
the paradigm of traditional theory consisted in those forms of social
science that modelled themselves upon the methodologies of natural
science. Such 'positivistic' forms of social science attempted to
address and account for human and social phenomena in terms analogous to
the natural scientist's study of material nature. Thus, legitimate
knowledge of social reality was considered to be attainable through the
application of objective forms of data gathering, yielding, ultimately,
quantifiable data. A strict adherence to such a positivist methodology
entailed the exclusion or rejection of any phenomena not amenable to
such procedures. Ironically, a strict concern for acquiring purely
objective knowledge of human social action ran the very real risk of
excluding from view certain aspects or features of the object under
study. Horkheimer criticized positivism on two grounds. First, that it
falsely represented human social action. Second, that the representation
of social reality produced by positivism was politically conservative,
helping to support the status quo, rather than challenging it. The first
criticism consisted of the argument that positivism systematically
failed to appreciate the extent to which the so-called social facts it
yielded did not exist 'out there', so to speak, but were themselves
mediated by socially and historically mediated human consciousness.
Positivism ignored the role of the 'observer' in the constitution of
social reality and thereby failed to consider the historical and social
conditions affecting the representation of social. Positivism falsely
represented the object of study by reifying social reality as existing
objectively and independently of those whose action and labour actually
produced those conditions. Horkheimer argued, in contrast, that critical
theory possessed a reflexive element lacking in the positivistic
traditional theory. Critical theory attempted to penetrate the veil of
reification so as to accurately determine the extent to which the social
reality represented by traditional theory was partial and, in important
respects, false. False precisely because of traditional theory's failure
to discern the inherently social and historical character of social
reality. Horkheimer expressed this point thus, 'the facts which our
senses present to us are socially preformed in two ways: through the
historical character of the object perceived and through the historical
character of the perceiving organ. Both are not simply natural; they are
shaped by human activity, and yet the individual perceives himself as
receptive and passive in the act of perception.' (Ref??) Horkheimer's
emphasis upon the detrimental consequences of the representational
fallacies of positivism for the individual is at the heart of his second
fundamental criticism of traditional theory. Horkheimer argues that
traditional theory is politically conservative in two respects. First,
traditional theory falsely 'naturalizes' contingent social reality,
thereby obscuring the extent to which social reality emanates not from
nature, but from the relationship between human action and nature. This
has the effect of circumscribing a general awareness of the possibility
of change. Individuals come to see themselves as generally confronted by
an immutable and intransigent social world, to which they must adapt and
conform if they wish to survive. Second, and following on from this,
conceiving of reality in these terms serves to unduly pacify individuals.
Individuals come to conceive of themselves as relatively passive
recipients of the social reality, falsely imbued with naturalistic
characteristics, that confronts them. We come to conceive of the
potential exercise of our individual and collective will as decisively
limited by existing conditions, as we find them, so to speak. The status
quo is falsely perceived as a reflection of some natural, inevitable
order. Adorno was a leading member of the Frankfurt School. His writings
are widely considered as having made a highly significant contribution
to the development of critical theory. Adorno unequivocally shared the
moral commitment of critical theory. He also remained deeply suspicious
of positivistic social science and directed a large part of his
intellectual interests to a critical analysis of the philosophical basis
of this approach. He shared the Frankfurt School's general stance in
respect of orthodox Marxism and economic determinism, in particular.
Adorno persistently criticized any and all philosophical perspectives
which posited the existence of some ahistorical and immutable basis to
social reality. He thus shared Horkheimer's criticisms of any and all
attempts at 'naturalizing' social reality. However, Adorno ultimately
proceeded to explicate an account of the entwinement of reason and
domination that was to have a profound effect upon the future
development of critical theory. In stark contrast to the philosophical
convention which counter-posed reason and domination, whereby the latter
is to be confronted with and dissolved by the application of reason so
as to achieve enlightenment, Adorno was to argue that reason itself had
become entangled with domination; reason had become a tool and device
for domination and suffering. This led Adorno to reassess the prospects
for overcoming domination and suffering. Put simply, Adorno was far more
sanguine in respect of the prospects for realizing critical theory's
aims than other members of the Frankfurt School. Adorno was perhaps the
most despairing of the Frankfurt School intellectuals. The Frankfurt
School provided Adorno with an intellectual 'home' in which to work. The
development of Adorno's thought was to have a profound effect upon the
future development of critical theory. Adorno's philosophy itself owed
much to the works of Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche. The greater part of
Adorno's thought, his account of reason, his understanding of the role
of consciousness in the constitution of reality, and his vision of
domination and human suffering are all imbued with the thought of these
earlier philosophers. Adorno's philosophy consists, in large part, of a
dialogue with these philosophers and their particular, and very
different, visions of the formation and deformation of social reality. I
shall briefly consider each in turn. Hegel's philosophy is notoriously
abstruse and difficult to fully understand. There are aspects of Hegel's
thought which Adorno consistently criticized and rejected. However, what
Adorno did take from Hegel, amongst other things, was a recognition that
philosophy was located within particular socio-historical conditions.
The objects of philosophical study and, indeed, the very exercise of
philosophy itself, were social and historical phenomena. The object of
philosophy was not the discovery of timeless, immutable truths, but
rather to provide interpretations of a socially constituted reality.
Hegel was also to insist that understanding human behaviour was only
possible through engaging with the distinct socio-historical conditions,
of which human beings were themselves a part. In stark contrast to
Immanuel Kant's conception of the self-constituting character of human
consciousness, Hegel argued that human consciousness was mediated by the
socio-historical conditions of specific individuals. Further, Hegel
argued that the development of each individual's self-consciousness
could only proceed through relations with other individuals: attaining a
consciousness of oneself entailed the existence of others. No one single
human being was capable of achieving self-consciousness and exercising
reason by herself. Finally, Hegel also argued that the constitution of
social reality proceeded through subjects' relationship with the 'objective',
material realm. In stark contrast to positivism, an Hegelian inspired
understanding of social reality accorded a necessary and thoroughly
active role to the subject. Hegel's draws our attention to our own role
in producing the objective reality with which positivists confront us.
Adorno was in basic agreement with all of the above aspects of Hegel's
philosophy. A recognition of philosophy as a socio-historical phenomenon
and an acceptance of the socio-historical conditions of human
consciousness remained central to Adorno's thought. However, Adorno
differed from Hegel most unequivocally on one particularly fundamental
point. Hegel notoriously posited the existence of some ultimately
constitutive ground of human reality, in the metaphysical form 'Geist',
or 'Spirit'. Hegel ultimately viewed reality as a manifestation of some
a priori form of consciousness, analogous to a God. In conceiving of
material reality as emanating from consciousness, Hegel was expounding a
form of philosophical Idealism. Adorno would never accept this aspect of
Hegel's thought. Adorno consistently argued that any such recourse to
some a priori, ultimately ahistorical basis to reality was itself best
seen as conditioned by material forces and conditions. For Adorno, the
abstractness of such philosophical arguments actually revealed the
unduly abstract character of specific social conditions. Adorno could
thereby criticize Hegel for not according enough importance to the
constitutive character of distinct social and historical conditions.
Such criticisms reveal the influence of Karl Marx's thought upon the
development of Adorno's thought. Marx has famously been described as
standing Hegel on his head. Where Hegel ultimately viewed consciousness
as determining the form and content of material conditions, Marx argued
that material conditions ultimately determined, or fundamentally
conditioned, human consciousness. For Marx, the ultimate grounds of
social reality and the forms of human consciousness required for the
maintenance of this reality were economic conditions. Marx argued that,
within capitalist societies, human suffering and domination originated
in the economic relations characteristic of capitalism. Put simply, Marx
argued that those who produced economic wealth, the proletariat, were
alienated from the fruits of their labour as a result of having to sell
their labour to those who controlled the forces of production: those who
owned the factories and the like; the bourgeoisie. The disproportionate
wealth and power of the bourgeoisie resulted from the extraction of an
economic surplus from the product of the proletariat's labour, in the
form of profit. Those who owned the most, thus did the least to attain
that wealth, whereas those who had the least, did the most. Capitalism
was thus considered to be fundamentally based upon structural inequality
and entailed one class of people treating another class as mere
instruments of their own will. Under capitalism, Marx argued, human
beings could never achieve their full, creative potential as a result of
being bound to fundamentally alienating, dehumanising forms of economic
production. Capitalism ultimately reduces everyone, bourgeoisie and
proletariat alike, to mere appendages of the machine. Adorno shared
Marx's view of capitalism as a fundamentally dehumanising system.
Adorno's commitment to Marxism caused him, for example, to retain a
lifelong suspicion of those accounts of liberalism founded upon abstract
notions of formal equality and the prioritisation of economic and
property rights. Adorno's account of domination was thus deeply indebted
to Marx's account of domination. In addition, in numerous articles and
larger works, Adorno was to lay great stress on Marx's specific
understanding of capitalism and the predominance of exchange value as
the key determinant of worth in capitalist societies. As I will show
later, the concept of exchange value was central to Adorno's analysis of
culture and entertainment in capitalist societies. Marx's account of
capitalism enabled critical theory and Adorno to go beyond a mere
assertion of the social grounds of reality and the constitutive role of
the subject in the production of that reality. Adorno was not simply
arguing that all human phenomena were socially determined. Rather, he
was arguing that an awareness of the extent of domination required both
an appreciation of the social basis of human life coupled with the
ability to qualitatively distinguish between various social formations
in respect of the degree of human suffering prerequisite for their
maintenance. To a significant degree, Marx's account of capitalism
provided Adorno with the means for achieving this. However, as I argued
above, Adorno shared the Frankfurt School's suspicions of the more
economically determinist aspects of Marx's thought. Beyond even this,
Adorno's account of reason and domination ultimately drew upon
philosophical sources that were distinctly non-Marxian in character.
Foremost amongst these were the writings of Frederich Nietzsche. Of all
the critical theorists, the writings of Nietzsche have exerted the most
influence upon Adorno in two principal respects. First, Adorno basically
shared the importance which Nietzsche attributed to the autonomous
individual. However, Nietzsche's account of the autonomous individual
differs in several highly important respects from that typically
associated with the rationalist tradition, within which the concept of
the autonomous individual occupied a central place. In contrast to those
philosophers, such as Kant, who tended to characterize autonomy in terms
of the individual gaining a systematic control over her desires and
acting in accordance with formal, potentially universalizable, rules and
procedures, Nietzsche placed far greater importance upon spontaneous,
creative human action as constituting the pinnacle of human possibility.
Nietzsche considerd the 'rule-bound' account of autonomy to be little
more than a form of self-imposed heteronomy. For Nietzsche, reason
exercised in this fashion amounted to a form of self-domination. One
might say that Nietzsche espoused an account of individual autonomy as
aesthetic self-creation. Being autonomous entailed treating one's life
as a potential work of art. This account of autonomy exercised an
important and consistent influence upon Adorno's own understanding of
autonomy. Furthermore, Adorno's concern for the autonomous individual
was absolutely central to his moral and political philosophy. Adorno
argued that a large part of what was so morally wrong with complex,
capitalist societies consisted in the extent to which, despite their
professed individualist ideology, these societies actually frustrated
and thwarted individuals' exercise of autonomy. Adorno argued, along
with other intellectuals of that period, that capitalist society was a
mass, consumer society, within which individuals were categorized,
subsumed, and governed by highly restrictive social, economic and,
political structures that had little interest in specific individuals.
For Adorno, the majority of peoples' lives were lead within mass,
collective entities and structures, from school to the workplace and
beyond. Being a true individual, in the broadly Nietzschean sense of
that term, was considered to be nigh on impossible under these
conditions. In addition to this aspect of Nietzsche's influence upon
Adorno, the specific understanding which Adorno developed in respect of
the relationship between reason and domination owed much to Nietzsche.
Nietzsche refused to endorse any account of reason as a thoroughly
benign, or even disinterested force. Nietzsche argued that the
development and deployment of reason was driven by power. Above all else,
Nietzsche conceived of reason as a principal means of domination; a tool
for dominating nature and others. Nietzsche vehemently criticized any
and all non-adversarial accounts of reason. On this reading, reason is a
symptom of, and tool for, domination and hence not a means for
overcoming or remedying domination. Adorno came to share some essential
features of this basically instrumentalist account of reason. The book
he wrote with Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, which
is a foremost text of critical theory, grapples with precisely this
account of reason. However, Adorno refrained from simply taking over
Nietzsche's account in its entirety. Most importantly, Adorno basically
shared Nietzsche's account of the instrumentalization of reason, however,
Adorno insisted against Nietzsche that the transformation of reason was
less an expression of human nature and more a consequence of contingent
social conditions which might, conceivably, be changed. Where Nietzsche
saw domination as an essential feature of human society, Adorno argued
that domination was contingent and potentially capable of being overcome.
Obviously, letting go of this particular aspiration would be
intellectually cataclysmic to the emancipatory aims of critical theory.
Adorno uses Nietzsche in an attempt to bolster, not undermine, critical
theory. Adorno considered philosophy to be a social and historical
exercise, bound by both the past and existing traditions and conditions.
Hence, it would be fair to say that many philosophical streams run into
the river of Adorno's own writings. However, the works of Hegel, Marx,
and Nietzsche exercised a profound and lasting influence upon the form
and content of Adorno's work. It is now time to move on and engage with
certain key aspects of Adorno's philosophical writings. I shall focus
upon three aspects of Adorno's writings so as to provide a clear summary
of the scope and substance of Adorno's philosophy: his understanding of
reason and what he termed 'identity thinking'; his moral philosophy and
discussion of nihilism; and finally, his analysis of culture and its
effects upon capitalist societies.
3. Identity thinking and instrumental reason
Adorno unequivocally rejected the view that philosophy
and the exercise of reason afforded access to a realm ofpristine
thoughts and reality. In stark contrast to those rationalists such as
Plato, who posited the existence of an ultimate realm of reality and
truth underlying the manifest world, Adorno argued that philosophical
concepts actually expressed the social structures within which they were
found. Adorno consistently argued that there is no such thing as pure
thought: thinking is a socio-historical form of activity. Hence, Adorno
argued that there did not exist a single standpoint from which 'truth'
could be universally discerned. To many this may sound like mere
philosophical relativism; the doctrine which claims that all criteria of
truth are socially and historically relative and contingent. However,
the charge of relativism has rarely been levelled at Adorno's work.
Relativists are typically accused of espousing a largely uncritical form
of theorizing. A belief in the social contingency of truth criteria
appears to exclude the possibility of criticizing social practices and
beliefs by recourse to practices and beliefs alien to that society.
Further, their commitment to the notion of contingency has frequently
resulted in philosophical relativists being accused of unduly affirming
the legitimacy claims of any given social practice or belief without
subjecting them to a sufficiently critical scrutiny. No such criticisms
have been made of Adorno's work. Adorno's analysis of philosophical
concepts aims to uncover the extent to which such concepts are
predicated upon, and manifestations of, relations of power and
domination. Adorno coined the term 'identity thinking' to refer to that
form of thinking which is the most expressive philosophical
manifestation of power and domination. Drawing a contrast between his
own form of dialectical thinking and identity thinking, Adorno wrote
that 'dialectics seeks to say what something is, while identarian
thinking says what something comes under, what it exemplifies or
represents, and what, accordingly, it is not itself.' (1990:149). A
perfect example of identity thinking would be those forms of reasoning
found within bureaucracies where individual human beings are assembled
within different classes or categories. The bureaucracy can thus only be
said to 'know' any specific individual as an exemplar of the wider
category to which that individual has been assigned. The sheer, unique
specificity of the individual in question is thereby lost to view. One
is liable to being treated as a number, and not as a unique person. Thus,
Adorno condemns identity thinking as systematically and necessarily
misrepresenting reality by means of the subsumption of specific
phenomena under general, more abstract classificatory headings within
which the phenomenal world is cognitively assembled. While this mode of
representing reality may have the advantage of facilitating the
manipulation of the material environment, it does so at the cost of
failing to attend to the specificity of any given phenomenal entity;
everything becomes a mere exemplar. One consequence of apprehending
reality in this way is the elimination of qualities or properties that
may inhere within any given object but which are conceptually excluded
from view, so to speak, as a result of the imposition of a
classificatory framework. In this way, identity thinking misrepresents
its object. Adorno's understanding and use of the concept of identity
thinking provides a veritable foundation for his philosophy and
ultimately underlies much of his writing. One of the principal examples
of Adorno's analysis of identity thinking is to be found in his and
Horkheimer's critical study of enlightenment, presented within their
Dialectic of Enlightenment.
The centrepiece of Adorno and Horkheimer's highly unusual
text is an essay on the concept of enlightenment. The essay presents
both a critical analysis of enlightenment and an account of the
instrumentalization of reason. The enlightenment is characteristically
thought of as an historical period, spanning the 17th and 18th Centuries,
embodying the emancipatory ideals of modernity. Enlightenment
intellectuals were united by a common vision in which a genuinely human
social and political order was to be achieved through the dissolution of
previously oppressive, unenlightened, institutions. The establishment of
enlightenment ideals was to be achieved by creating the conditions in
which individuals could be free to exercise their own reason, free from
the dictates of rationally indefensible doctrine and dogma. The means
for establishing this new order was the exercise of reason. Freeing
reason from the societal bonds which had constrained it was identified
as the means for achieving human sovereignty over a world which was
typically conceived of as the manifestation of some higher, divine
authority. Enlightenment embodies the promise of human beings finally
taking individual and collective control over the destiny of the species.
Adorno and Horkheimer refused to endorse such a wholly optimistic
reading of the effects of the rationalization of society. They stated,
'in the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has
always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their
sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster
triumphant.' (1979:3) How do Adorno and Horkheimer conceive of the 'fully
enlightened earth' and what is the nature of the 'disaster' that ensues
from this? Adorno and Horkheimer's understanding of enlightenment
differs in several highly significant respects from the conventional
understanding of the concept. They do not conceive of enlightenment as
confined to a distinct historical period. As a recent commentator on
Adorno has written, 'Adorno and Horkheimer do not use the term
ìenlightenmentî primarily to designate a historical period ranging from
Descartes to Kant. Instead they use it to refer to a series of related
intellectual and practical operations which are presented as
demythologizing, secularizing or disenchanting some mythical, religious
or magical representation of the world.' (Jarvis, 1998:24). Adorno and
Horkheimer extend their understanding of enlightenment to refer to a
mode of apprehending reality found in the writings of classical Greek
philosophers, such as Parmenides, to 20th. Century positivists such as
Bertrand Russell. At the core of Adorno and Horkheimer's understanding
of enlightenment are two, related theses: 'myth is already enlightenment,
and enlightenment reverts to mythology.' (1979:xvi). An analysis of the
second of these two theses will suffice to explicate the concept of
enlightenment Adorno and Horkheimer present. Adorno and Horkheimer's
understanding of enlightenment differs fundamentally from those accounts
of the development of human thought and civilization that posit a
developmental schema according to which human history is considered as
progressively proceeding through separate stages of cognitively
classifying and apprehending reality. These accounts typically describe
the cognitive ascent of humanity as originating in myth, proceeding to
religion, and culminating in secular, scientific reasoning. On this view,
the scientific world- view ushered in by the enlightenment is seen as
effecting a radical intellectual break and transition from that which
went before. Adorno and Horkheimer fundamentally challenge this
assumption. Their thesis that 'myth is already enlightenment' is based
on the claim that the development of human thought possesses a basic
continuity. Both myth and enlightenment are modes of representing
reality, both attempt to explain and account for reality. Adorno and
Horkheimer's second thesis, that enlightenment reverts to mythology
requires a far more detailed explanation since it entails engaging with
their entire understanding of reason and its relationship with
heteronomy. They aim to demonstrate that and how enlightenment's
rationalization of society comes to revert to the character of a
mythical order. Adorno and Horkheimer argue that enlightenment's
reversion to mythology amounts to the betrayal of the emancipatory
ideals of enlightenment. However, they view the betrayal of
enlightenment as being inherently entwined with enlightenment itself.
For them, the reversion to mythology primarily means reverting to an
unreflexive, uncritical mode of configuring and understanding reality.
Reverting to mythology means the institution of social conditions, over
which individuals come to have little perceived control. Reverting to
mythology means a reversion to a heteronomous condition. Adorno and
Horkheimer conceive of enlightenment as principally a demythologizing
mode of apprehending reality. For them, the fundamental aim of
enlightenment is the establishment of human sovereignty over material
reality, over nature: enlightenment is founded upon the drive to master
and control nature. The realization of this aim requires the ability to
cognitively and practically manipulate the material environment in
accordance with our will. In order to be said to dominate nature, nature
must become an object of our will. Within highly technologically
developed societies, the constraints upon our ability to manipulate
nature are typically thought of in terms of the development of
technological, scientific knowledge: the limits of possibility are
determined not by a mythical belief in god, say, but in the development
of the technological forces available to us. This way of conceiving of
the tangible limits to human action and cognition had first to overcome
a belief that the natural order contained, and was the product of,
mythical beings and entities whose presumed existence constituted the
ultimate form of authority for those societies enthrall to them. The
realization of human sovereignty required the dissolution of such
beliefs and the disenchantment of nature. Adorno and Horkheimer write,
'the program of the Enlightenment was the disenchantment of the world;
the dissolution of myths and the substitution of knowledge for
fancyÖFrom now on, matter would at last be mastered without any illusion
of ruling or inherent powers, of hidden qualities.' (1979:3-6)
Overcoming myth was effected by conceiving of myth as a form of
anthropomorphism, as already a manifestation of human cognition so that
a realm which had served to constrain the development of technological
forces was itself a creation of mankind, falsely projected onto the
material realm. On this reading, enlightenment is conceived of as
superseding and replacing mythical and religious belief systems, the
falsity of which consist, in large part, of their inability to discern
the subjective character and origins of these beliefs. Few would dispute
a view of enlightenment as antithetical to myth. However, Adorno and
Horkheimer's claim that enlightenment reverts to mythology is
considerably more contentious. While many anthropologists and social
theorists, for example have come to accept Adorno and Horkheimer's claim
that myth and enlightenment have the same functional purpose of
representing and understanding reality, most political theorists would
take great issue with the claim that enlightenment has regressed, or
relapsed into some mythical state since this latter claim clearly
implies that the general state of social and political freedom assumed
to exist in 'enlightened' societies is largely bogus. This is, however,
precisely what Adorno and Horkheimer argue. They argue that human beings'
attempt to gain sovereignty over nature has been pursued through, in
large part, the accumulation of objective, verifiable knowledge of the
material realm and its constitutive processes: we take control over
nature by understanding how it can be made to work for us. Viewed in
this way, the value of nature is necessarily conceived of in primarily
instrumental terms: nature is thought of as an object for, and
instrument of, human will. This conception of nature necessitates
drawing a distinction between this realm and those beings for whom it is
an object. Thus, the instrumentalist conception of nature entails a
conception of human beings as categorically distinct entities, capable
of becoming subjects through the exercise of reason upon nature. The
very category of subject thus has inscribed within it a particular
conception of nature as that which is to be subordinated to one's will:
subject and object are hierarchically juxtaposed, just as they are in
the works of, for example, Descartes and Kant. For nature to be
considered amenable to such subordination requires that it be conceived
of as synonymous with the objectified models through which human
subjects represent nature to themselves. To be wholly conceivable in
these terms requires the exclusion of any properties that cannot be
subsumed within this representational understanding of nature, this
particular form of identity thinking. Adorno and Horkheimer state, 'the
concordance between the mind of man and the nature of things that he had
in mind is patriarchal: the human mind, which overcomes superstition, is
to hold sway over a disenchanted nature.' (1979:4) Nature is thereby
configured as the object of human will and representation. In this way,
our criteria governing the identification and pursuit of valid knowledge
are grounded within a hierarchical relationship between human beings and
nature: reason is instrumentalized. For Adorno and Horkheimer then, 'myth
turns into enlightenment, and nature into mere objectivity. Men pay for
the increase of their power with alienation from that over which they
exercise their power. Enlightenment behaves towards things as a dictator
toward men. He knows them in so far as he can manipulate them. The man
of science knows things in so far as he can make them. In this way,
their potentiality is turned to his own ends.' (1979:9) Adorno and
Horkheimer insist that this process results in the establishment of a
generally heteronomous social order; a condition over which human beings
have little control. Ultimately, the drive to dominate nature results in
the establishment of a form of reasoning and a general world-view which
appears to exist independently of human beings and, more to the point,
is principally characterized by a systematic indifference to human
beings and their sufferings: we ultimately become mere objects of the
form of reason that we have created. Adorno and Horkheimer insist that
individual self-preservation in 'enlightened' societies requires that
each of us conform to the dictates of instrumental reason. How do Adorno
and Horkheimer attempt to defend such a fundamentally controversial
claim? Throughout his philosophical lifetime Adorno argued that
authoritative forms of knowledge have become largely conceived of as
synonymous with instrumental reasoning; that the world has come to be
conceived of as identical with its representation within instrumental
reasoning. Reality is thus deemed discernible only in the form of
objectively verifiable facts and alternative modes of representing
reality are thereby fundamentally undermined. A successful appeal to the
'facts' of a cause has become the principal means for resolving disputes
and settling disputes in societies such as ours. However, Adorno argued
that human beings are increasingly incapable of legitimately excluding
themselves from those determinative processes thought to prevail within
the disenchanted material realm: human beings become objects of the form
of reasoning through which their status as subjects is first formulated.
Thus, Adorno discerns a particular irony in the totalising
representation of reality which enlightenment prioritizes. Human
sovereignty over nature is pursued by the accumulation of hard,
objective data which purport to accurately describe and catalogue this
reality. The designation of 'legitimate knowledge' is thereby restricted
to that thought of as 'factual': legitimate knowledge of the world is
that which purports to accurately reflect how the world is. As it stands,
of course, the mere act of describing any particular aspect of the
material realm does not, by itself, promote the cause of human freedom.
It may directly facilitate the exercise of freedom by providing
sufficient knowledge upon which an agent may exercise discretionary
judgement concerning, say, the viability of any particular desire, but,
by itself, accurate descriptions of the world are not a sufficient
condition for freedom. Adorno, however, argues that the very
constituents of this way of thinking are inextricably entwined with
heteronomy. In commenting upon Adorno and Horkheimer's claim that
enlightenment restricts legitimate knowledge to the category of
objectively verifiable facts, Simon Jarvis writes, 'thought is to
confine itself to the facts, which are thus the point at which thought
comes to a halt. The question as to whether these facts might change is
ruled out by enlightened thought as a pseudo-problem. Everything which
is, is thus represented as a kind of fate, no less unalterable and
uninterrogable than mythical fate itself.' (1998:24). Conceived of in
this way, material reality appears as an immutable and fixed order of
things which necessarily pre-structures and pre-determines our
consciousness of it. As Adorno and Horkheimer themselves state, 'factuality
wins the day; cognition is restricted to its repetition; and thought
becomes mere tautology. The more the machinery of thought subjects
existence to itself, the more blind its resignation in reproducing
existence. Hence enlightenment reverts to mythology, which it never
really knew how to elude. For in its figures mythology had the essence
of the status quo: cycle, fate, and domination of the world reflected as
the truth and deprived of hope.' (1979:27) Facts have come to take on
the same functional properties of a belief in the existence of some
mythical forces or beings: representing an external order to which we
must conform. The ostensible difference between them is that the realm
of facts appears to be utterly objective and devoid of any subjective,
or anthropomorphic forces. Indeed, the identification of a truly
objective order was explicitly pursued through the exclusion of any such
subjective prejudices and fallacies. Subjective reasoning is fallacious
reasoning, on this view. Adorno's attempt to account for this objective
order as constituted through identity thinking poses a fundamental
challenge to the epistemological conceit of such views. Adorno and
Horkheimer argued that the instrumentalization of reason and the
epistemological supremacy of 'facts' served to establish a single order,
a single mode of representing and relating to reality. For them, 'enlightenment
is totalitarian' (1979:24). The pursuit of human sovereignty over nature
is predicated upon a mode of reasoning whose functioning necessitates
subsuming all of nature within a single, representational framework. We
possess knowledge of the world as a result of the accumulation of facts,
'facts' that are themselves necessarily abstractions from that to which
they refer. Assembled within a classificatory scheme these facts are not,
cannot ever be, a direct expression of that to which they refer; no
aspect of its thought, by its very nature, can ever legitimately be said
to possess that quality. However, while facts constitute the principal
constituents of this classificatory scheme, the scheme itself, this mode
of configuring reality, is founded upon a common, single cognitive
currency, which necessarily holds that the essence of all that can be
known is reducible to a single, inherently quantifiable property: matter.
They insist that this mode of configuring reality originates within a
desire to dominate nature and that this domination is effected by
reducing the manifold diversity of nature to, ultimately, a single,
manipulable form. For them the realization of the single totality that
proceeds from the domination of nature necessitates that reason itself
be shorn of any ostensibly partial or particularistic elements. They
conceive of enlightenment as aspiring towards the institution of a form
of reasoning which is fundamentally universal and abstract in character:
a form of reasoning which posits the existence of a unified order, a
priori. They argue, 'in advance, the Enlightenment recognizes as being
and occurrence only what can be apprehended in unity: its ideal is the
system from which all and everything follows. Its rationalist and
empiricist versions do not part company on this point.' (1979:7) Thus,
the identarian character of enlightenment, on this reading, consists of
the representation of material reality as ultimately reducible to a
single scale of evaluation or measurement. Reality is henceforth to be
known in so far as it is quantifiable. Material reality is presented as
having become an object of calculation. The form of reasoning which is
adequate to the task of representing reality in this way must be
necessarily abstract and formal in character. Its evaluative procedures
must, similarly, avoid the inclusion of any unduly restrictive and
partial affiliations to any specific component property of the system as
a whole if they are to be considered capable of being applicable to the
system as a whole. Adorno and Horkheimer present the aspiration towards
achieving human sovereignty over nature as culminating in the
institution of a mode of reasoning which is bound to the identification
and accumulation of facts; which restricts the perceived value of the
exercise of reason to one which is instrumental for the domination of
nature; and which, finally, aims at the assimilation of all of nature
under a single, universalizing representational order. Adorno and
Horkheimer present enlightenment as fundamentally driven by the desire
to master nature, of bringing all of material reality under a single
representational system, within which reason is transformed into a tool
for achieving this end. For Adorno and Horkheimer then, nature has been
fully mastered within the 'fully enlightened earth' and human affairs
are regulated and evaluated in accordance with the demands of
instrumental reasoning: the means by which nature has been mastered have
rebounded upon us. The attempt to fully dominate nature culminates in
the institution of a social and political order over which we have lost
control. If one wishes to survive, either as an individual or even as a
nation, one must conform to, and learn to utilize, instrumental reason.
Thought and philosophy aids and abets this order where it seeks merely
to mirror or 'objectively' reflect that reality. Adorno aims to avoid
providing any such support by, at root, providing a prototypical means
of deconstructing that 'reality'. The radical character of his concept
of 'identity thinking' consists in its insistence that such 'objective'
forms of representing reality are not 'objective' enough, so to speak.
The facts upon which instrumental reasoning goes to work are themselves
conceptual abstractions and not direct manifestations of phenomena, as
they claim to be. Adorno's philosophical writings fundamentally aim to
demonstrate the two-fold falsity of 'identity thinking'. First, in
respect of debunking the claims of identity thinking to representing
reality objectively. Second, in respect of the effects of instrumental
reasoning as a form of identity thinking upon the potential for the
exercise of human freedom. Adorno posits identity thinking as
fundamentally concerned not to understand phenomena but to control and
manipulate it. A genuinely critical form of philosophy aims to both
undercut the dominance of identity thinking and to create an awareness
of the potential of apprehending and relating to phenomena in a non-coercive
manner. Both how he aims to do this, and how Adorno's philosophical
project can itself be criticized will be considered in the final section.
However, having summarized the substance of Adorno's understanding of
philosophy and reason, what must now be considered is the next most
important theme addressed in Adorno's philosophical writings: his vision
of the status of morality and moral theory within this fully enlightened
earth.
4. Morality and nihilism
Adorno's moral philosophy is similarly concerned with the
effects of 'enlightenment' upon both the prospects of individuals
leading a 'morally good life' and philosophers' ability to identify what
such a life may consist of. Adorno argues that the instrumentalization
of reason has fundamentally undermined both. He argues that social life
in modern societies no longer coheres around a set of widely espoused
moral truths and that modern societies lack a moral basis. What has
replaced morality as the integrating 'cement' of social life are
instrumental reasoning and the exposure of everyone to the capitalist
market. According to Adorno, modern, capitalist societies are
fundamentally nihilistic, in character; opportunities for leading a
morally good life and even philosophically identifying and defending the
requisite conditions of a morally good life have been abandoned to
instrumental reasoning and capitalism. Within a nihilistic world, moral
beliefs and moral reasoning are held to have no ultimately rational
authority: moral claims are conceived of as, at best, inherently
subjective statements, expressing not an objective property of the world,
but the individual's own prejudices. Morality is presented as thereby
lacking any objective, public basis. The espousal of specific moral
beliefs is thus understood as an instrument for the assertion of one's
own, partial interests: morality has been subsumed by instrumental
reasoning. Adorno attempts to critically analyse this condition. He is
not a nihilist, but a critic of nihilism.
Adorno's account of nihilism rests, in large part, on his
understanding of reason and of how modern societies have come to
conceive of legitimate knowledge. He argues that morality has fallen
victim to the distinction drawn between objective and subjective
knowledge. Objective knowledge consists of empirically verifiable 'facts'
about material phenomena, whereas subjective knowledge consists of all
that remains, including such things as evaluative and normative
statements about the world. On this view, a statement such as 'I am
sitting at a desk as I write this essay' is of a different category to
the statement 'abortion is morally wrong'. The first statement is
amenable to empirical verification, whereas the latter is an expression
of a personal, subjective belief. Adorno argues that moral beliefs and
moral reasoning have been confined to the sphere of subjective knowledge.
He argues that, under the force of the instrumentalization of reason and
positivism, we have come to conceive of the only meaningfully existing
entities as empirically verifiable facts: statements on the structure
and content of reality. Moral values and beliefs, in contrast, are
denied such a status. Morality is thereby conceived of as inherently
prejudicial in character so that, for example, there appears to be no
way in which one can objectively and rationally resolve disputes between
conflicting substantive moral beliefs and values. Under the condition of
nihilism one cannot distinguish between more or less valid moral beliefs
and values since the criteria allowing for such evaluative distinctions
have been excluded from the domain of subjective knowledge. Adorno
argues that, under nihilistic conditions, morality has become a function
or tool of power. The measure of the influence of any particular moral
vision is an expression of the material interests that underlie it.
Interestingly, Adorno identifies the effects of nihilism as extending to
philosophical attempts to rationally defend morality and moral reasoning.
Thus, in support of his argument he does not rely upon merely pointing
to the extent of moral diversity and conflict in modern societies. Nor
does he rest his case upon those who, in the name of some radical
account of individual freedom, positively espouse nihilism. Indeed, he
identifies the effects of nihilism within moral philosophy itself,
paying particular attention to the moral theory of Immanuel Kant. Adorno
argues that Kant's account of the moral law demonstrates the extent to
which morality has been reduced to the status of subjective knowledge.
Kant certainly attempts to establish a basis for morality by the
exclusion of all substantive moral claims, claims concerning the moral
goodness of this or that practice or way of life. Kant ultimately seeks
to establish valid moral reasoning upon a series of utterly formal,
procedural rules, or maxims which exclude even the pursuit of human
happiness as a legitimate component of moral reasoning. Adorno
criticizes Kant for emptying the moral law of any and all reference to
substantive conceptions of human well-being, or the 'good life'.
Ultimately, Kant is condemned for espousing an account of moral
reasoning that is every bit as formal and devoid of any substantively
moral constituents as instrumental reasoning. The thrust of Adorno's
criticism of Kant is not so much that Kant developed such an account of
morality, since this was, according to Adorno, to a large extent
prefigured by the material conditions of Kant's time and place, but that
he both precisely failed to identify the effects of these conditions and,
in so doing, thereby failed to discern the extent to which his moral
philosophy provides an affirmation, rather than a criticism, of such
conditions. Kant, of all people, is condemned for not being sufficiently
reflexive. Unlike some other thinkers and philosophers of the time,
Adorno does not think that nihilism can be overcome by a mere act of
will or by simply affirming some substantive moral vision of the good
life. He does not seek to philosophically circumnavigate the extent to
which moral questions concerning the possible nature of the 'good life'
have become so profoundly problematic for us. Nor does he attempt to
provide a philosophical validation of this condition. Recall that Adorno
argues that reason has become entwined with domination and has developed
as a manifestation of the attempt to control nature. Adorno thus
considers nihilism to be a consequence of domination and a testament,
albeit in a negative sense, to the extent to which human societies are
no longer enthral to, for example, moral visions grounded in some
naturalistic conception of human well-being. For Adorno, this process
has been so thorough and complete that we can no longer authoritatively
identify the necessary constituents of the good life since the
philosophical means for doing so have been vitiated by the domination of
nature and the instrumentalization of reason. The role of the critical
theorist is, therefore, not to positively promote some alternative,
purportedly more just, vision of a morally grounded social and political
order. This would be to far exceed the current bounds of the potential
of reason. Rather, the critical theorist must fundamentally aim to
retain and promote an awareness of the contingency of such conditions
and the extent to which such conditions are capable of being changed.
Adorno's, somewhat dystopian, account of morality in modern societies
follows from his argument that such societies are enthral to
instrumental reasoning and the prioritization of 'objective facts'.
Nihilism serves to fundamentally frustrate the ability of morality to
impose authoritative limits upon the application of instrumental reason.
5. The culture industry
I stated at the beginning of this piece that Adorno was a
highly unconventional philosopher. While he wrote volumes on such stock
philosophical themes as reason and morality, he also extended his
writings and critical focus to include mass entertainment. Adorno
analysed social phenomena as manifestations of domination. For him both
the most abstract philosophical text and the most easily consumable
film, record, or television show shared this basic similarity. Adorno
was a philosopher who took mass entertainment seriously. Adorno was
among the first philosophers and intellectuals to recognize the
potential social, political, and economic power of the entertainment
industry. Adorno saw what he referred to as 'theculture industry' as
constituting a principal source of domination within complex, capitalist
societies. He aims to show that the very areas of life within which many
people belief they are genuinely free, free from the demands of work for
example, actually perpetuates domination by denying freedom and
obstructing the development of a critical consciousness. Adorno's
discussion of the culture industry is unequivocal in its depiction of
mass consumer societies as being based upon the systematic denial of
genuine freedom. What is the culture industry, and how does Adorno
defend his vision of it?
Adorno described the culture industry as a key
integrative mechanism for binding individuals, as both consumers and
producers, to modern, capitalist societies. Where many sociologists have
argued that complex, capitalist societies are fragmented and
heterogeneous in character, Adorno insists that the culture industry,
despite the manifest diversity of cultural commodities, functions to
maintain a uniform system, to which all must conform. David Held, a
commentator on critical theory, describes the culture industry thus,
'the culture industry produces for mass consumption and significantly
contributes to the determination of that consumption. For people are now
being treated as objects, machines, outside as well as inside the
workshop. The consumer, as the producer, has no sovereignty. The culture
industry, integrated into capitalism, in turn integrates consumers from
above. Its goal is the production of goods that are profitable and
consumable. It operates to ensure its own reproduction.' (1981:91) Few
can deny the accuracy of the description of the dominant sectors of
cultural production as capitalist, commercial enterprises. The culture
industry is a global, multibillion dollar enterprise, driven, primarily,
by the pursuit of profit. What the culture industry produces is a means
to the generation of profit, like any commercial enterprise. To this
point, few could dispute Adorno's description of the mass entertainment
industry. However, Adorno's specific notion of the 'culture industry'
goes much further. Adorno argues that individuals' integration within
the culture industry has the fundamental effect of restricting the
development of a critical awareness of the social conditions that
confront us all. The culture industry promotes domination by subverting
the psychological development of the mass of people in complex,
capitalist societies. This is the truly controversial aspect of Adorno's
view of the culture industry. How does he defend it? Adorno argues that
cultural commodities are subject to the same instrumentally rationalized
mechanical forces which serve to dominate individuals' working lives.
Through our domination of nature and the development of technologically
sophisticated forms of productive machinery, we have becomes objects of
a system of our own making. Any one who has worked on a production line
or in a telephone call centre should have some appreciation of the claim
being made. Through the veritably exponential increase in volume and
scope of the commodities produced under the auspices of the culture
industry, individuals are increasingly subjected to the same underlying
conditions through which the complex capitalist is maintained and
reproduced. The qualitative distinction between work and leisure,
production and consumption is thereby obliterated. As Adorno and
Horkheimer assert, 'amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation
of work. It is sought after as an escape from the mechanized work
process, and to recruit strength in order to be able to cope with it
again. But at the same time mechanization has such a power over man's
leisure and happiness, and so profoundly determines the manufacture of
amusement goods, that his experiences are inevitably after-images of the
work process itself.' (1979:137). According to Adorno, systematic
exposure to the culture industry (and who can escape from it for long in
this media age?) has the fundamental effect of pacifying its consumers.
Consumers are presented as being denied any genuine opportunities to
actively contribute to the production of the goods to which they are
exposed. Similarly, Adorno insists that the form and content of the
specific commodities themselves, be it a record, film, or TV show,
require no active interpretative role on the part of the consumer: all
that is being asked of consumers is that they buy the goods. Adorno
locates the origins of the pacifying effects of cultural commodities in
what he views as the underlying uniformity of such goods, a uniformity
that belies their ostensible differences. Adorno conceives of the
culture industry as a manifestation of identity-thinking and as being
effected through the implementation of instrumentally rationalized
productive techniques. He presents the culture industry as comprising an
endless repetition of the same commodified form. He argues that the
ostensibly diverse range of commodities produced and consumed under the
auspices of the culture industry actually derive from a limited,
fundamentally standardized 'menu' of interchangeable features and
constructs. Thus, he presents the structural properties of the
commodities produced and exchanged within the culture industry as being
increasingly standardized, formulaic, and repetitive in character. He
argues that the standardized character of cultural commodities results
from the increasingly mechanized nature of the production, distribution,
and consumption of these goods. It is, for example, more economically
rational to produce as many products as possible from the same identical
'mould'. Similarly, the increasing control of distribution centres by
large, multinational entertainment conglomerates tends towards a high
degree of uniformity. Adorno's analyses of specific sectors of the
culture industry extensive in scope. However, his principal area of
expertise and interest was music. Adorno analyzed the production and
consumption of music as a medium within which one could discern the
principal features and effects of the culture industry and the
commodification of culture. The central claim underlying Adorno's
analysis of music is that the extension of industrialized production
techniques has changed both the structure of musical commodities and the
manner in which they are received. Adorno argued that the production of
industrialized music is characterized by a highly standardized and
uniform menu of musical styles and themes, in accordance with which the
commodities are produced. Consistently confronted by familiar and
compositionally simplistic musical phenomena requires that the audience
need make little interpretative effort in its reception of the product.
Adorno presents such musical commodities as consisting of set pieces
which elicit set, largely unreflected upon, responses. He states, 'the
counterpart to the fetishism of music is a regression of listeningÖit is
contemporary listening which has regressed, arrested at the infantile
stage. Not only do the listening subjects lose, along with freedom of
choice and responsibility, the capacity for conscious perception of
musicÖbut they stubbornly reject the possibility of such perceptionÖThey
are not childlike, as might be expected on the basis of an
interpretation of the new type of listener in terms of the introduction
to musical life of groups previously unacquainted with music. But they
are childish; their primitivism is not that of the undeveloped, but that
of the forcibly retarded.' (1978:286). Here Adorno drew upon a
distinction previously made by Kant in his formulation of personal
autonomy. Distinguishing between maturity and immaturity, Adorno repeats
the Kantian claim that to be autonomous is to be mature, capable of
exercising one's own discretionary judgement, of making up one's own
mind for oneself. Adorno argued that the principal effect of the
standardization of music is the promotion of a general condition of
immaturity, frustrating and prohibiting the exercise of any critical or
reflexive faculties in one's interpretation of the phenomena in question.
Adorno viewed the production and consumption of musical commodities as
exemplary of the culture industry in general. However, he also extended
his analysis to include other areas of the culture industry, such as
television and, even, astrology columns. A brief discussion of this
latter will suffice to complete the general contours of Adorno's account
of the culture industry. Adorno conducted a critical textual analysis of
the astrology column of the Los Angeles Times. His aim was to identify
the 'rational' function of the cultural institution itself. He thus took
astrology seriously. He considered astrology to be a symptom of complex,
capitalist societies and discerned in the widespread appeal of astrology
an albeit uncritical and unreflexive awareness of the extent to which
individuals' lives remain fundamentally conditioned by impersonal,
external forces, over which individuals have little control. Society is
projected, unwittingly, on to the stars. He stated that, 'astrology is
truly in harmony with a ubiquitous trend. In as much as the social
system is the ìfateî of most individuals independent of their will and
interest, it is projected onto the stars in order thus to obtain a
higher degree of dignity and justification in which individuals hope to
participate themselves.' (1994:42). According to Adorno, astrology
contributes to, and simultaneously reflects, a pervasive fetishistic
attitude towards the conditions that actually confront individuals'
lives through the promotion of a vision of human life as being
determined by forces beyond our ultimate control. Rather than describing
astrology as being irrational in character, Adorno argued that the
instrumentally rational character of complex, capitalist societies
actually served to lend astrology a degree of rationality in respect of
providing individuals with a means for learning to live with conditions
beyond their apparent control. He describes astrology as 'an ideology
for dependence, as an attempt to strengthen and somehow justify painful
conditions which seem to be more tolerable if an affirmative attitude is
taken towards them.' (1994:115) For Adorno no single domain of the
culture industry is sufficient to ensure the effects he identified it as
generally exerting upon individuals' consciousness and lives. However,
when taken altogether, the assorted media of the culture industry
constitute a veritable web within which the conditions for leading, for
example, an autonomous life, for developing the capacity for critical
reflection upon oneself and one's social conditions, are systematically
obstructed. According to Adorno, the culture industry fundamentally
prohibits the development of autonomy by means of the mediatory role its
various sectors play in the formation of individuals' consciousness of
social reality. The form and content of the culture industry is
increasingly misidentified as a veritable expression of reality:
individuals come to perceive and conceive of reality through the pre-determining
form of the culture industry. The culture industry is understood by
Adorno to be an essential component of a reified form of second nature,
which individuals come to accept as a pre-structured social order, with
which they must conform and adapt. The commodities produced by the
culture industry may be 'rubbish', but their effects upon individuals is
deadly serious.
6. Conclusion and general criticisms
Adorno is widely recognized as one of the leading, but
also one of the most controversial continental philosophers of the 20th.
Century. Though largely unappreciated within the analytical tradition of
philosophy, Adorno's philosophical writings have had a significant and
lasting effect upon the development of subsequent generations of
critical theorists and other philosophers concerned with the general
issue of nihilism and domination. Publications on and by Adornocontinue
to proliferate. Adorno has not been forgotten. His own, uncompromising
diagnosis of modern societies and the entwinement of reason and
domination continue to resonate and even inspire many working within the
continental tradition. However, he has attracted some considerable
criticism. I shall briefly consider some of the most pertinent
criticisms that have been levelled at Adorno within each of the three
areas of his writings I have considered above. I want to begin, though,
with some brief comments on Adorno's writing style.
Adorno can be very difficult to read. He writes in a
manner which does not lend itself to ready comprehension. This is
intentional. Adorno views language itself as having become an object of,
and vehicle for, the perpetuation of domination. He is acutely aware of
the extent to which this claim complicates his own work. In attempting
to encourage a critical awareness of suffering and domination, Adorno is
forced to use the very means by which these conditions are, to a certain
extent, sustained. His answer to this problem, although not intended to
be ultimately satisfying, is to write in a way that requires hard and
concentrated efforts on the part of the reader, to write in a way that
explicitly defies convention and the familiar. Adorno aims to encourage
his readers to attempt to view the world and the concepts that represent
the world in a way that defies identity thinking. He aims, through his
writing, to express precisely the unacknowledged, non-identical aspects
of any given phenomenon. He aims to show, in a manner very similar to
contemporary deconstructionists, the extent to which our linguistic
conventions simultaneously both represent and misrepresent reality. In
contrast to many deconstructionists, however, Adorno does so in the name
of an explicit moral aim and not as a mere literary method. For Adorno,
reality is grounded in suffering and the domination of nature. This is a
profoundly important distinction. Adorno's complaint against identity-thinking
is a moral and not a methodological one. However, it must be admitted
that understanding and evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of
Adorno's philosophical vision is a difficult task. He does not wish to
be easily understood in a world in which easy understanding, so he
claims, is dependent upon identity-thinking's falsification of the world.
Adorno's writing style follows, in large part, from his account of
reason. Adorno's understanding of reason has been subject to consistent
criticism. One of the most significant forms of criticism is associated
with Jurgen Habermas, arguably the leading contemporary exponent of
critical theory. In essence, Habermas (1987) argues that Adorno
overestimates the extent to which reason has been instrumentalized
within modern, complex societies. For Habermas, instrumental reasoning
is only one of a number of forms of reasoning identifiable within such
societies. Instrumental reasoning, therefore, is nowhere near as
extensive and all-encompassing as Adorno and Horkheimer presented it as
being in the Dialectic of Enlightenment. For Habermas, the undue
importance attributed to instrumental reasoning has profound moral and
philosophical consequences for Adorno's general vision. Habermas insists
that Adorno's understanding of reason amounts to a renunciation of the
moral aims of the Enlightenment, from which critical theory itself
appears to take its bearings. There is not doubt that the deployment of
technology has had the most horrendous and catastrophic effects upon
humanity. However, Habermas argues that these effects are less the
consequence of the extension of reason grounded in the domination of
nature, as Adorno argues, and more an aberration of enlightenment reason.
Adorno is accused of defending an account of instrumental reasoning that
is so encompassing and extensive as to exclude the possibility of
rationally overcoming these conditions and thereby realizing the aims of
critical theory. Adorno is accused of leading critical theory down a
moral cul-de-sac. Habermas proceeds to criticize Adorno's account of
reason on philosophical grounds also. He argues, in effect, that
Adorno's account of the instrumentalization of reason is so all
encompassing as to exclude the possibility of someone like Adorno
presenting a rational and critical analysis of these conditions.
Adorno's critical account of reason seems to logically exclude the
possibility of its own existence. Habermas accuses Adorno of having
lapsed into a form of performative contradiction. For Habermas, the very
fact that a given political or social system is the object of criticism
reveals the extent to which the form of domination that Adorno posits
has not been fully realized. The fact that Adorno and Horkheimer could
proclaim that 'enlightenment is totalitarian' amounts to a simultaneous
self-refutation. The performance of the claim contradicts its substance.
Habermas takes issue with Adorno, finally, on the grounds that Adorno's
account of reason and his advocacy of 'non-identity thinking' appears to
prohibit critical theory from positively or constructively engaging with
social and political injustice. Adorno is accused of adopting the stance
of an inveterate 'nay-sayer'. Being critical can appear as an end in
itself, since the very radicalness of Adorno's diagnosis of reason and
modernity appears to exclude the possibility of overcoming domination
and heteronomy. Similar criticisms have been levelled at Adorno's
account of morality and his claims in respect of the extent of nihilism.
Adorno is consistently accused of failing to appreciate the moral gains
achieved as a direct consequence of the formalization of reason and the
subsequent demise of the authority of tradition. On this view,
attempting to categorize the Marquis de Sade, Kant, and Nietzsche as all
similarly expressing and testifying to the ultimate demise of morality,
as Adorno and Horkheimer do, is simply false and an example of an
apparent tendency to over-generalize in the application of particular
concepts.
7. Bibliography
T.W.Adorno & M.Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, tr.
J.Cumming, London, Verso, 1979
T.W.Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life,
tr. E.F.N.Jephcott, London, Verso, 1978. T.W.Adorno, Negative Dialectics,
tr. E.B.Ashton, London, Routledge, 1990 J.Habermas, The Philosophical
Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, tr. F.G.Lawrence, Cambridge,
Polity Press, 1987 D.Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer
to Habermas, Cambridge, Polity, 1980 S.Jarvis, Adorno: a Critical
Introduction, Cambridge, Polity, 1998 D.Rasmussen (ed.) The Handbook of
Critical Theory, Oxford, Blackwell, 1996.
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