Critical Models

Interventions and Catchwords

Theodor W. Adorno, Henry Pickford

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780231510424
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Aesthetics in Philosophy

Critical Models combines into a single volume two of Adorno's most important postwar works — Interventions: Nine Critical Models (1963) and Catchwords: Critical Models II (1969). Written after his return to Germany in 1949, the articles, essays, and radio talks included in this volume speak to the pressing political, cultural, and philosophical concerns of the postwar era. The pieces in Critical Models reflect the intellectually provocative as well as the practical Adorno as he addresses such issues as the dangers of ideological conformity, the fragility of democracy, educational reform, the influence of television and radio, and the aftermath of fascism.

This new edition includes an introduction by Lydia Goehr, a renowned scholar in philosophy, aesthetic theory, and musicology. Goehr illuminates Adorno's ideas as well as the intellectual, historical, and critical contexts that shaped his postwar thinking.

Appendix 1

Discussion of Professor Adorno’s Lecture “The Meaning of Working Through the Past”

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: The first published version of “The Meaning of Working Through the Past” includes the following transcription of the discussion that followed the lecture.

Professor Adorno’s lecture was first discussed in four study groups. Each of these groups prepared several questions, which were then presented to the lecturer in the plenary meeting.

FIRST QUESTION:	Would the question of coming to terms with the German past arise if there had not been a National Socialist period?
PROF. ADORNO:	I can only respond to that by saying that Hegel handled this problem with the concept of “abstract possibility.”^1 I mean, I simply cannot answer this question. If world history had not been shattered into pieces, then the problem of collective amnesia probably would not have arisen, but in the end it is no coincidence that everything happened the way it did. I would like to propose that we set this question aside, because I think answering it will not help us much.
SECOND QUESTION:	The focus of our discussion was on the concept you called the “self-alienation of society.” Could you please explain this in a bit more detail?
PROF. ADORNO:	I spoke of the self-alienation of society here in connection with the problem of democracy, and I meant that because of the preponderance of innumerable societal processes over the particular individuals, people in their societal role are not identical with what they are as immediate, living people. Democracy, according to its very idea, promises people that they themselves would make decisions about their world. But democracy actually prevents them from this “deciding for oneself about the world.” In other words, with the concept of self-alienation—and perhaps I should not have done so—I was really referring to a very fundamental philosophical state of affairs, in terms of social philosophy, that perhaps we should not go into here, because I don’t think that here, where we are of course concerned ultimately with deriving applications, that within such a group we have the possibility of coming to grips with this phenomenon of self-alienation in the real world. However, I don’t want to evade your question. I think that this question can be changed into something far more empirical, which to be sure is only indirectly related to this highly theoretical concept of self-alienation I allowed myself to use in a sentence just that once. It is in fact a pedagogical-psychological question I have in mind here. You must excuse me, if I churn butter out of the Milky Way and now speak directly terre à terre. It seems to me to be the case that in the development of children, their first experience of alienation generally is when they enter school. For the first time the child is torn away from the protection of the family, from the extended womb, so to say, and comes to feel the coldness of a world with which he or she is not identical. And it seems to me to be the case that genetically the first expressions of anti-Semitism or of racial hatred at all, as for instance the persecution of black children or red-haired children or whatever it may be, takes place precisely at this stage. Now in part this has the quite solid reason that in school, for one reason or another, there is always a child who has already picked that up from home—this prejudice—and who then spreads it further. But I think that generally a factor comes in here, that people have the tendency to pass onto others whatever has happened to them, to do once more to others what was done to them. Thus, the child who in school experiences coldness, anxiety, the pressure of the collective, psychologically saves himself by displacing it onto others, and groups form in order, as it were, to pass this burden of alienation onto others. I would at least construe as a problem—God knows I would not presume to solve it, but I would like to mention it for the educators among you—whether, if possible, precisely in the first years of school forms might not be developed that would prevent this oppression of the individual, and moreover of every individual, by the collective. Perhaps thereby at a very crucial place genetically in the development of the child one could counteract the emergence of racial prejudices. Here I would like just to toss these thoughts into the debate, so to speak, as a first practical application of the problem of alienation, for indeed here one could really, as it were, get at the alienation. I mean here, that is, here one could really come to grips with it in manageably small groups, whereas of course the socially dictated alienation within society at large, in which we live, cannot be overcome through any kind of educational work.
THIRD QUESTION:	Within the system underlying your observations, where is there room for individual responsibility? To what extent are the societal processes and conditions so overwhelming that for the individual there remains no possibility whatsoever to make one’s own decisions and to act with personal responsibility?
PROF. ADORNO:	I think this question in fact repeats the question I raised myself. It would be extremely irresponsible and careless of me to say to you: yes, but the individual’s responsibility is something inalienable, but it really is curtailed precisely under the preponderance of this process, and when I told you that the reflections I’ve shared with you are not of an edifying nature, but rather very earnest, then I was referring exactly to this. Nonetheless I think that if people finally are able really to see through their entanglement in the objective conditions I tried, however sketchily, to explain to you, that the consciousness that raises itself above this compulsion by seeing through it at the same time also produces the potential that can be used to resist it. I would say, and I also tried to suggest this in the last sentence of my lecture, that what you have termed autonomy and self-responsibility today essentially consists altogether in the resistance of people, in that they try to see through these mechanisms and that they themselves yet somehow rebel against these mechanisms. Morality has transformed itself nowadays into the resistance against this blind force, against this predominance of the merely existent, under which in fact we all must suffer today. This is of course very abstract and unsatisfying, and is no fanfare at all, for how far this resistance goes, that’s another story. But I would still like to say, if one once at some point or other—and I return to what I said about the paranoia being infectious—pursues something specific with a little bit of craziness, if you will allow me, without letting oneself get all confused, then strangely enough one comes further than in fact would be expected if one reflected about these things objectively. I could give you quite curious evidence of this from my own experience, I don’t want to do that, lest it divert us from our subject. I really believe that when one has this power of consciousness on his side, that is, when one really has the better insight on his side and when one today is committed—a word I do not like at all—that the scope of such a commitment is larger than the mere analysis of objectivity would lead one to suppose. We are not only spectators looking upon this predominance of the institutional and the objective that confronts us; rather it is after all constituted out of us, this societal objectivity is made up of us ourselves. In this doubleness, that we are subject and object of this society, surely lies precisely also the possibility of perhaps changing it.
ADDITIONAL QUESTION:	If the conditions of society remain unchanged, then the latent danger of a resurgence still exists. Does this danger also exist in other countries with similar societal conditions?
PROF. ADORNO:	I would answer with an emphatic yes: that the danger also exists in other countries, and it is even probably important for the practical work in Germany that the issue is not a purely German phenomenon and that it is not a matter of some particular characteristics of the German national character, but that this threat lies precisely in a society where simply the immense concentration of economical and administrative power leaves the individual no more room to maneuver, that the structure of such a society also tends toward totalitarian forms of domination. But it is better to indicate this danger and become conscious of it than to act naively and innocently as though the danger did not exist.
FOURTH QUESTION:	What possibility do you see of lessening the universal anxiety? Someone in our group said that rational means don’t work against feelings and that distinctions must be made between older and younger people, since the latter surely have less anxiety.
PROF. ADORNO:	I think that any irrationality that is recommended for rational reasons, that is, because people cannot be changed by rational means, is always something very dubious. Irrationality that, as it were, is rationally prescribed—that is exactly what I described in my short characterization of propaganda—introduces into the work, which is so vitally important for us, an element of dishonesty and ambiguity that would give me serious pause. Well, I would say, and I agree completely with you, one cannot simply overcome very strong irrational forces by rational means. I said this over and over again in my lecture as well. So, psychologically speaking, in terms of the economy of drives there exist needs for things like racial prejudices that are simply far too powerful for one to be able deal with them by making clear to people that Rothschild did not start the battle of Waterloo and that The Protocols of Zion are counterfeit. By the way, the fact that the general refutation of the Protocols did not alter in the least their effectiveness is in itself a very interesting thing. But that does not condemn us to irrationality; instead the consequence to be drawn would really be what I tried to characterize as the turn to the subject, that is, the crucial thing is to be rational, not in the superficial sense, as when people who believe untrue things for irrational reasons are then confronted with the truth, but instead that people be brought to the point in themselves, through self-reflection, of gaining insight into what they can do in this respect. And this seems to me certainly to be the most important task for education that would begin relatively early in childhood, that is, rationality not in the sense of a rationalistic insistence on facts, but rationality in the sense of people being led to self-reflection and thereby being prevented from becoming blind victims of this instinctual impulse. By the way, I of course do not want to speak in favor of a crude and philistine rationalism, rather I mean only that the irrationality, which I consider a very serious danger, of course does not lie in the fact that people have instincts and passions and whatever else, but rather that the irrationality—and perhaps I have not stressed this enough, in the emphatic sense, in which I meant it as something negative—this irrationality is the instinctual impulses and the affects that are repressed—I simply must speak Freudian here—and that teem about in the darkness and emerge again in distorted, twisted, altered form as aggression, as projection, as displacement, all those things we are so familiar with, and wreak havoc. And so when I spoke of the need to resist irrationality, I meant irrationality in this repressed, this twisted sense that was first wonderfully described by Nietzsche and then thoroughly analyzed by Freud. I therefore do not mean that people should become merely cold rationalists and shouldn’t have affects and passions any more. On the contrary, if they have more affects and more passions, they will have less prejudices. I would like to say, if they allow themselves more of their affects and passions, if they do not once again repeat in themselves the pressure that society exerts upon them, then they will be far less evil, far less sadistic, and far less malicious than they sometimes are today.
ADDITIONAL QUESTION:	Would you please briefly address the question of whether young people suffer less from universal anxiety than the older generation?
PROF. ADORNO:	One can answer such questions only with reservations if one really does not want to speak irresponsibly. I would say that nonetheless the young people have also received a great deal of this anxiety. The anxiety itself—I tried to explain this—has its basis in reality. The anxiety today is not at all neurotic anymore. The anxiety that people have, that they will be killed by atomic bombs—for that I don’t need any existentialist philosophy that issues mysterious statements about the essence of anxiety. This anxiety is in itself quite reasonable. The excessive need for security, for safety, that can be seen in many people, that they always want to be holding something solid in their hands, that they are anxious about getting involved in anything they cannot get an overall view of beforehand, the tendency to marry as soon as possible, before one is mature enough—I could provide countless other, and above all intellectual moments—all this seems to me to indicate a repressed anxiety, and this repressed anxiety certainly is closely connected to this potential for disaster. I don’t believe that here a great distinction can seriously be made between the forty-year-olds and the twenty-year-olds today.
FIFTH QUESTION:	How can the working-through succeed if self-examination already assumes abilities the majority of people doesn’t have?
PROF. ADORNO:	This is of course correct. And here you precisely define the problem, that is, it would be wholly wrong if we were to preach self-examination and then expect that because of this sermon people will examine themselves. That is illusory. What we can do is give people contents, give them categories, give them forms of consciousness, by means of which they can approach self-reflection. The question you pose seems to me in turn to be extraordinarily grave because we know from psychology that something like analysis and also self-analysis faces extraordinarily great difficulties for reasons I do not want to go into here. I know the forces that repress the unconscious are the same forces that then prevent us from becoming conscious of these things, and to be sure when we talk here we cannot forget what we have learned from psychology. In our work we must not, so to say, be more naive than the most advanced psychology. But I think, we should be a little more liberal on this point. For example, as I could observe in America, if something has once been established in public opinion, for instance, that anti-Semitism is ...