Introduction to Sociology

Theodor W. Adorno

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780745629711, 9780745615660
• eBook ISBN: 9780745694306
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Social Philosophy

This book provides an invaluable introduction to his historical and conceptual engagement with sociology.

EDITOR’S NOTES

Abbreviations

Adorno’s writings, when translated, are quoted from the English-language editions. When no English translation is available, the references are to the German edition, Gesammelte Schriften (edited by Rolf Tiedemann in collaboration with Gretel Adorno, Susan Buck-Morss and Klaus Schultz, Frankfurt/Main 1970ff). The following abbreviations are used:

GS 5	Zur Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie/Drei Studien zu Hegel, 3rd edn 1990
GS 6	Negative Dialektik/Jargon der Eigentlichkeit, 4th edn 1990
GS 8	Soziologische Schriften I, 3rd edn 1990
GS 9.2	Soziologische Schriften II, Zweite Hälfte, 1975
GS 10.1	Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I: Prismen/Ohne Leitbild, 1977
GS 10.2	Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft II: Eingriffe/Stichworte/Anhang, 1977
GS 11	Noten zur Literatur, 3rd edn 1990
GS 13	Die Musikalischen Monographien, 3rd edn 1985
GS 14	Dissonanzen/Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie, 3rd edn 1990
GS 16	Musikalische Schriften I-III. Klangfiguren/Quasi una fantasia/Musikalische Schriften III, 2nd edn 1990
GS 18	Musikalische Schriften V, 1984
GS 20.1	Vermischte Schriften I, 1986
GS 20.2	Vermischte Schriften II, 1986

Lecture One

1 The dating 16 April 1968, found both in a pirate edition of the lecture (see Theodor W. Adorno, Vorlesung zur Einleitung in die Soziologie, Junius-Drucke, Frankfurt/Main 1973) and on the transcription of the tape recordings of nine lectures made by a secretary at the Institut für Sozialforschung and preserved in the Theodor W. Adorno Archiv, is incorrect. On 12 April 1968, directly after the conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie held at Frankfurt from 8 to 11 April 1968, Adorno went on holiday to Baden-Baden until 22 April 1968. The lectures were held on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4 to 5 p.m.

2 Adorno is referring to the press reporting of the conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, which, in agreement with the papers delivered by Ralf Dahrendorf and Erwin K. Scheuch, had particularly deplored the remoteness of the ‘Frankfurt sort’ of sociology from praxis: ‘Thousands of sociology students have found out after completing their studies that they and their theories are not needed in practice’ (Der Spiegel, 22 April 1968, p. 84). At the same time the press reported criticisms by the students of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie, which was said to have failed to provide ‘precise information on the professional situation of sociologists’ or on student numbers, or proper ‘course planning for sociology’ (ibid.).

3 The theme of the conference of German sociologists was the question: ‘Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?’ Adorno, who had been chairman of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (DGS) from November 1963 to November 1967, had given the opening lecture, with the same title, as chairman of the planning committee. See Spätkapitalismus oder Industriegesellschaft} Verhandlungen des 16. Deutschen Soziologentages. Im Auftrag der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie, ed. by Theodor W. Adorno, Stuttgart 1969, pp. 12–26 (now GS 8, pp. 354–70).

4 The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie was founded by Max Weber (1864–1920), Georg Simmel (1858–1918), Werner Sombart (1863–1941) and others in 1909. The DGS was forced to cease its activities in 1933–45. It was reconstituted in April 1946 under the chairmanship of Leopold von Wiese (1876–1969).

5 Heinz Kluth (1921–77) had been Professor of Sociology at Hamburg University since 1961.

6 The following year, as a result of the continuing deterioration of career prospects for sociologists, the governing body of the DGS, at a meeting on 11 April 1969, issued a statement opposing the further introduction of degree courses in sociology at universities. The introduction of sociology as a major subject was rejected primarily on grounds of insufficient professional opportunities. The setting up of new qualifications in social science, in which several subjects were combined, with sociology as either the central or a subsidiary subject, was recommended.

7 The reference is to the recession of 1966 and 1967, which for the first time cast doubt on the future ability of universities to replace existing staff as jobs became vacant.

8 The main reason for the growing number of sociology students since 1955 was the degree course introduced at Frankfurt in 1954, which enabled sociology to be studied as a major subject. Here and in the following discussion Adorno bases his comments on statistical material gathered through internal surveys carried out at the Institut für Sozialforschung.

9 Ludwig von Friedeburg (b. 1924), head of department at the Institut für Sozialforschung from 1955 to 1962, then Professor of Sociology at the Freie Universität, Berlin, returned to Frankfurt in 1966, where in 1968 he was a director of the Institut and of the Sociology Department.

10 Adorno was alluding to the idea of education as formulated by German idealist philosophers such as Fichte and Schelling. (See Johann Gottlieb Fichte, ‘Die Bestimmung des Menschen’, in Fichtes Werke, ed. by Immanuel Hermann Fichte, vol. 2: Zur theoretischen Philosophie II, Berlin 1971 [photo reprint], pp. 165–319; F.WJ. Schelling, ‘Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums’, in Schellings Werke, new edn ed. by Manfred Schröter, vol. III: Schriften zur Identitätsphilosophie 1801–06, Munich 1927, pp. 229–374.)

11 On 4 November 1967 the Professor of Sociology at Konstanz University, Ralf Dahrendorf (b. 1929), had been elected to succeed Adorno as chairman of the DGS. In 1968 Dahrendorf became a member of the Executive Committee of the FDP.

12 The quotation is from the poem ‘Kennst Du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn’ from Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre; the third stanza contains the line: ‘The mole seeks underground its dingy way’ (see Goethe, Poetische Werke, Romane und Erzählungen II: Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, Berlin 1976, p. 149).

13 See Theodor W. Adorno, ‘Zum Studium der Philosophie’, in Diskus, Frankfurt students’ newspaper, vol. 5 (1955), no. 2 (annex), pp. 81–3; now GS 20.1, pp. 318–26.

14 See Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E.F.N. Jephcott, 7th impression, London/New York 1993, pp. 80–1.

15 As is seen from his use of the mathematical formulation in GS 13, p. 220, by ‘determinate manifold’ Adorno meant a ‘self-contained multiplicity’.

16 Max Scheler (1874–1928) called the results of the positive sciences, which serve the ‘domination and transformation of the world for our human goals and purposes’, Herrschafts- oder Leistungswissen (see Max Scheler, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 9: Späte Schriften, with an appendix edited by Manfred S. Frings, Bern/Munich 1976, p. 114).

17 See Émile Dürkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method, trans, by W.D. Halls, London 1982, ch. 1: ‘What is a Social Fact?’ At the end of the chapter Dürkheim arrives at the definition: ‘A social fact is any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting over the individual an external constraint; or: which is general over the whole of a given society whilst having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations’ (p. 59). On Dürkheim, see Adorno’s introduction to Emile Dürkheim, Soziologie und Philosophie, Frankfurt/Main 1967; now GS 8, pp. 245–79.

18 See Talcott Parsons, The Social System, Glencoe, IL 1951. In his introduction to The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, Adorno insists, against this ‘harmonistic tendency’, on the ‘contradictory nature of [science’s] object’:

In recent years, an example of this tendency has been provided by Talcott Parsons’ well-known attempt to create a unified science of man. His system of categories subsumes individual and society, psychology and sociology alike, or at least places them in a continuum. The ideal of continuity, current since Descartes and Leibniz especially, has become dubious, though not merely as a result of recent natural scientific developments. In society this ideal conceals the rift between the general and the particular, in which the continuing antagonism expresses itself. The unity of science represses the contradictory nature of its object. […] Such a science cannot grasp the societally posited moment of the divergence of the individual and society and of their respect...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• CONTENTS
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT
• SERIES
• LECTURE ONE
• LECTURE TWO
• LECTURE THREE
• LECTURE FOUR
• LECTURE FIVE
• LECTURE SIX
• LECTURE SEVEN
• LECTURE EIGHT
• LECTURE NINE
• LECTURE TEN
• LECTURE ELEVEN
• LECTURE TWELVE
• LECTURE THIRTEEN
• LECTURE FOURTEEN
• LECTURE FIFTEEN
• LECTURE SIXTEEN
• LECTURE SEVENTEEN
• EDITOR’S NOTES
• EDITOR’S AFTERWORD
• TRANSLATOR’S AFTERWORD
• INDEX