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Adornoâs social philosophy
Although Adorno is not the sole influence on Habermas, the theory of communicative action is presented as a response to the impasses of Adornoâs social philosophy and aesthetic theory (TCA1: 345â96 [414â75]). Accordingly, I intend to present the key motifs of Habermasian social philosophy and aesthetic theory as a communicative reframing of Adornoâs core insights. Habermas reformulates Adornoâs critique of instrumental rationality as the problem of the âcolonizationâ of everyday life by system imperatives originating in the economy and the state. The inspiration for Habermasâs celebrated concept of communicative reason springs from Adornoâs search for an alternative to instrumental rationality. The result of Adornoâs enquiry, his conception of aesthetic mimesis, is rethought by Habermas in terms of a communicative aesthetics that locates art and literature within an intersubjective framework. The effect of Habermasâs communicative rethinking of Adornoâs social philosophy is a break with the bleak pessimism of Adornoâs notion of the âadministered societyâ. It is also a democratization of the relation between progressive literature and the readership community, for Habermas rejects what he describes as the âstrategy of hibernationâ of hermetic forms of modernism. Yet the Habermasian position is a prolongation, rather than a rejection, of Adornoâs effort to develop a Critical Theory of society with an emancipatory practical intent.
The concept of a dialectic of enlightenment is central to Habermas and Adorno, but they have entirely different conceptions of what this means. It is reasonable to say that Adornoâs (and Horkheimerâs) controversial and provocative Dialectic of Enlightenment is the definitive work of classical Frankfurt School Marxism. The social philosophy and aesthetic theory that emerges from Dialectic of Enlightenment is the basis for Adornoâs subsequent Negative Dialectics (1966) and Aesthetic Theory (1970). Not surprisingly, that seminal text is the main object of Habermasâs criticisms of Adorno as well as the starting point for Habermasâs democratic retrieval, in his celebrated The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962). Furthermore, in many respects, The Theory of Communicative Action (1981) is Habermasâs effort to rewrite Dialectic of Enlightenment in intersubjective and post-metaphysical terms, after the linguistic turn. Accordingly, I intend to concentrate on the way that Dialectic of Enlightenment sets up a whole line of thinking about literature and society, so as to clarify why I think that Habermas has a dialectical relation to Adorno. But I will be doing it a little bit differently.
The standard Habermasian presentation of the relation between the theory of communicative action and Adorno involves the idea of a paradigm shift from the âphilosophy of the subjectâ to communicative intersubjectivity (PDM: 106â30 [130â58]). Had it been stated in this form, however, Adorno would not have accepted this characterization of his position. Adorno certainly would have represented his own thinking as part of a critique of the philosophy of the subject, centred on a repetition, with two differences, of the Hegelian critique of Kant. The basic Hegelian strategy is to locate the âtranscendental subjectâ of Kantian philosophy in its social environment and show that this site evolves according to a dialectical logic of historical development. Dialectical reinscription inserts the (now merely quasi-transcendental) subject into the intersubjective network of social conventions and customary norms that Hegel describes as âethical lifeâ. Now for the two twists. The first is the historical materialist reading of ethical life as itself merely the superstructural reflection of forms of political economy centred on the labour process. This locates the subject, grasped in materialist terms through the concept of labour as the human metabolism with nature, in an ascending sequences of historical stages in the dialectic of forces and relations of production. The second is the psychoanalytic interpretation of the subject as a material ego that is the result of a formative process of socialization. In its maturation process, the ego must traverse a series of potential vicissitudes in coping with instinctual impulses, by successfully developing its reality principle, social conscience and socially acceptable love objects. Both of these twists to the Hegelian dialectic radically de-transcendentalize the subject and re-locate the material ego in social and historical processes that depend on the human relation to nature.
The problem is that the Hegelian critique of Kant only partly succeeds, because it displaces the locus of the transcendental subject from the individual, as its empirical bearer, to the world spirit (Hegel) or the human species (Marx). In the Hegelian Marxism of Georg LukĂĄcs, this problem is intensely visible, as the claim that the proletariat is a collective subject whose world-constituting destiny is inscribed in the historical teleology of the forces of production. How then to retain the critical insights into historical development (Hegel), social alienation (Marx) and commodity reification (LukĂĄcs), without relapse into historical teleology and a transcendental meta-subject? In many respects, this is the fundamental question that Dialectic of Enlightenment sets out to answer, and a key part of its response is to propose that the Freudian twist makes the Hegelian dialectic divergent, not convergent. The ascent of the productive forces is a descent into repression, so that enlightenment culminates in totalitarianism, not emancipation, because barbaric irrationalism, not socialist revolution, breaks forth in protest against the ârenunciation of instinctual satisfactionâ demanded by a civilization founded on domination. This is what Adorno means by a âdialectic of enlightenmentâ.
Habermasâs basic argument is that Adorno generates an inverted Hegelianism, a Hegelianism of disaster, not progress, because he lacks access to the conceptual framework of communicative intersubjectivity. The plan for the chapter, then, is to trace out the genesis of Adornoâs dialectic of enlightenment, beginning from the Frankfurt Schoolâs initial alternative to the LukĂĄcsian theory of commodity reification. After looking at the Frankfurt Schoolâs research programme of âCritical Theoryâ, and Adornoâs role within that, the chapter then turns to the Schoolâs two initial breaks with Hegelian Marxism. The first is the critique of labour, as the source of âinstrumental reasonâ, and its implications for the Hegelian-Marxist concept of the subject. The second is the turn to Freudian psychoanalysis and its implications for the Hegelian-Marxist philosophy of history. Then, the chapter looks at Adornoâs (and Horkheimerâs) provisional summary of the philo sophical results of this investigation, in Dialectic of Enlightenment. After analysing Adornoâs underlying philosophical anthropology, I return to the Habermasian critique of Adorno. In conclusion, I show how Habermas resumes Adornoâs project from within a different conceptual framework.
Reification: Alienation plus rationalization
According to Habermas, the trajectory of Frankfurt School Marxism, or Critical Theory, including Adornoâs work, is significantly inflected by the problematic of reification developed in LukĂĄcsâs History and Class Consciousness (1921) (TCA1: 366 [490]). LukĂĄcsâs brilliant synthesis of Marxâs critique of alienation with Weberâs notion of rationalization, in âthe reifying effects of the dominant commodity formâ (LukĂĄcs 1971: 84), defines the starting point for Adornoâs critical social theory (Buck-Morss 1977: 27; Claussen 2008: 83â5; Held 1980: 22â3; Jarvis 1998: 8â9; Jay 1973: 42). In fact, the entire notion of a âdialectic of enlightenmentâ, in which enlightenment reverses into mystification, and emancipation twists around into domination, is unimaginable without LukĂĄcsâs discovery that rationality might sometimes reinforce, rather than dissolve, alienation. Arguably, Critical Theory represents an effort to dialectically transcend the problems inherent in LukĂĄcsâs totalizing integration of social philosophy and aesthetic theory, while extending and deepening the critique of reification (Rose 2014: 35â62).
LukĂĄcs adds Weber to Marx â as do Adorno and Habermas. Marxâs critique of commodity fetishism, the way that âa definite social relation between men that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between thingsâ, when mediated by exchange value (Marx 1963: 72), is the origin of the concept of reification (Verdinglichung â petrifaction). Commodity fetishism and capitalist alienation are the same thing, and, in a society dominated by commodity production, LukĂĄcs proposes, instrumental calculations and logical consistency dominate social action. Enter Weber. For Weber, the modern world is formed through a new type of âformal rationalityâ, which abstracts the calculable form of rational procedures from the substantive goals of social action (Weber 1968: 84â5). What Weber calls âpurposive rationalityâ involves instrumental calculations of the most efficient means to (potentially irrational) goals, while reflection on the goals of action happens in âvalue rationalityâ, the submission of reasonâs ends to procedural formalism. This focus on calculation, LukĂĄcs argues, âleads to the destruction of every image of the wholeâ, that is, to the de-totalization of theoretical consciousness and the practical fragmentation of human activity (LukĂĄcs 1971: 103). Accordingly, the central conceptual contrast in dialectical theory is between sociocultural fragmentation and revolutionary totalization (LukĂĄcs 1971: 27).
According to LukĂĄcs, in line with the Hegelian conception of totality, the commodity is the âuniversal category of society as a wholeâ, a âcentral structural problemâ whose âconsequences are able to influence the total . . . life of societyâ (LukĂĄcs 1971: 86, 84). Hegelian dialectics focuses on âa conception of the subject which can be thought of as the conscious creator of the totality of contentâ (LukĂĄcs 1971: 122), that is, an active subject who consciously creates the world and at the same time transforms themselves (LukĂĄcs 1971: 128). LukĂĄcs maintains that Hegel idealistically reified this agent of totalization into the âworld spiritâ, but Marxâs discovery indicates that the proletariat is the âidentical subject-object of historyâ (LukĂĄcs 1971: 206). Confident about the Marxist version of historical teleology, LukĂĄcs boldly announces that commodity reification is therefore the last major contradiction of world history. According to LukĂĄcs, with âthe entry of the proletariat into historyâ, at last a âhistorical situation has arisen in which . . . the unity of theory and practice becomes possibleâ (LukĂĄcs 1971: 3).
Initially, then, LukĂĄcs argued that the practical totalization proposed by the vanguard party of the revolutionary proletariat was the antidote to reification, but with the retreat of the revolutionary tide, LukĂĄcs turned to the historical novel as the agent of a conceptual totalization. LukĂĄcs suggests that, irrespective of the politics of the author, the aesthetic programme of the historical novel demands the representation of an entire social formation, consisting of historical agents, social relations and material institutions (LukĂĄcs 1962). Through the selection of socially typical representative characters, the novelist reconstructs the total internally related network of social practices that constitutes an historical world, not just as a set of reified appearances (experiential fragments constrained by social location), but also as an essential process (social relations based in material production). Accordingly, the realist novel provides a figuration of the historical process itself, locating class agents in the rise and fall of modes of production. At the same time, the novel presents human universality but in a way that speaks to the reader about individual experience and communicates a revolutionary injunction: âyou must change your life!â (LukĂĄcs 1963: 645). In the late work of LukĂĄcs, therefore, the historical novel itself becomes loaded up with the messianic expectation of a unification of theory and practice. Literature is regarded as a revolutionary totalization that involves world-constituting creative praxis, acting as a placemarker for a now-quiescent proletariat.
Although insightful, the concept of reification secretes a problematic metaphysics. The Hegelian cumulative series of historical stages of âconsciousness in the progress of freedomâ â in its Marxist acceptation as an ascending sequence of modes of production â is not the only ballast hidden in the reification problematic. Alongside historical teleology, Hegelian dialectics also relies on the concept of society as an expressive totality, that is, on the theory that all social structures (economic, political, juridical, ideological) are merely expressions of a single âprincipal contradictionâ that determines the particular historical stage. Finally, Hegelian dialectics depends on a âsubject of historyâ, a social macrosubject such as the proletariat, supposed to be the agent of revolutionary transforma tion. In LukĂĄcsâs formulation of reification, these three aspects of Hegelian dialectics â historical teleology, expressive totality and social macrosubject â are inscribed with particular force.
Adorno and Horkheimer had their doubts. Adorno vehemently rejected the notion of a historical subject capable of generating the natural environment and the social totality (Adorno 1973: 22â4, 189â92; Jay 1977: 147â74). Horkheimer agreed (Abromeit 2011: 121). Accordingly, the programmatic documents of the Institute for Social Research, under the directorship of Max Horkheimer, describe the critique of reification in terms of the ubiquity of âcalculationâ and âequivalenceâ. Despite refusing his terminology, however, their synthesis of Marx and Weber is without question an extension and development of the problematic inaugurated by LukĂĄcs (Buck-Morss 1977; Rose 2014).
Instrumental reason: Reification plus repression
Frankfurt School Marxism, then, or âCritical Theoryâ (Horkheimer 1982: 188â252), deliberately diverges from the Hegelian-Marxist formulations of LukĂĄcs in some crucial respects. The most significant of these is that Adorno and Horkheimer add Freud to Marx and Weber, thus combining repression with reification in the single figure of âinstrumental reasonâ. But the importance of that innovation only emerges clearly against the background of the other three â the development of an interdisciplinary materialism, the critique of labour as inherently alienated and âsympathy for the devilâ of counter-Enlightenment philosophy.
To provide an alternative to the expressive totality generated by Hegelian Marxism, it was necessary for Adorno and Horkheimer to develop an interdisciplinary theory capable of grasping social complexity. In Horkheimerâs inaugural lecture (1931), and in subsequent programmatic documents (1937), this innovation in historical materialism was prudently described as Critical Theory, rather than as Marxism (Horkheimer 1982: 188â252). The Instituteâs survival in a hostile academic and political environment was not the only consideration motivating Horkheimerâs euphemism, however, for the dialectical methodology of Critical Theory differs from LukĂĄcsian totalization in major respects.
For LukĂĄcs, the crisis tendencies of capitalism are a direct expression of the principal contradiction of the social formation: in an economic collapse, âthe true structure of society appearsâ (LukĂĄcs 1971: 101). Consequently, although Marxist theory is constantly evolving in light of historical developments, a single homogenous theoretical medium (Marxist method and its empirical findings) suffices to describe bourgeois society (LukĂĄcs 1971: 1â26).
By contrast, anticipating contemporary theories of social complexity, Frankfurt School Marxism took into consideration the relative autonomy of the functional structures of capitalist society. For the Frankfurt School, society is a complex arrangement of relatively autonomous social institutions, involving the economy, the state (including both law and politics), cultural apparatuses â and the family. It therefore acknowledges the need for discipline-specific inquiry into the fields of economics, politics, jurisprudence and culture. Yet, although each set of social institutions has its own evolutionary dynamic and social conflicts, their interaction is mediated by what Adorno calls âthe principle of equivalenceâ (Adorno 1973: 178).
To grasp this complexity requires a critique of the bourgeois disciplines in materialist terms, by historicizing their categories of inquiry (in accordance with the history of their objects), before integrating these conclusions into a complex totality. The implication is that Horkheimerâs proposal for methodological totalization of the research findings of an interdisciplinary materialism replaces the âcategory of totality as the bearer in theory of the principle of revolutionâ (LukĂĄcs). This recasts the problem of transcending conceptual reifi...