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The Torturable Body: Adorno’s Negative Dialectic

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Abstract

This chapter, centered on Negative Dialectic, explores the paramount role of suffering in Adorno’s notion of the nonidentical—the suffering of the torturable body, and as its historical paroxysm, the suffering of the victims of the Shoah. A look at Adorno’s reading of Aristotle shows that for Adorno, philosophy has been marred from the very beginning by a double allegiance: to affirmativity and identity. Adorno’s negative dialectic counters philosophy’s affirmative essence and the identity thinking it is bound up with by searching for ways to give the nonidentical a voice. The chapter analyzes Adorno’s concept of the Hinzutretende and its connection to resistance, explores the relationship between his philosophy of the nonidentical and German idealism, and examines Adorno’s dialectic of theory and praxis by analyzing his relationship with the German student movement.

The need to give voice to suffering is the condition of all truth.

—Adorno, Negative Dialectic

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Das Eine gemäß dem Vielen” in Adorno’s translation of the Greek, see Adorno, MP 55/33.

  2. 2.

    Quoted in ibid.

  3. 3.

    Adorno, “Die Aktualität der Philosophie”, in: GS 1:334.

  4. 4.

    Susan Buck-Morss, The Origin of Negative Dialectics (New York: The Free Press, 1977), 48.

  5. 5.

    Inspired by Paul Klee’s painting Angelus Novus.

  6. 6.

    Walter Benjamin, “Über den Begriff der Geschichte” in Gesammelte Schriften, Band 1.2 (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1991), 697–8.

  7. 7.

    Quoted in: “Editorische Nachbemerkung” in Philosophische Frühschriften, GS 1:384.

  8. 8.

    Adorno, “Bemerkungen zu Hegel”, in Adorno, Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit. Reden und Gespräche, Audio CD, (München: Der Hörverlag, 1999).

  9. 9.

    Adorno borrows the expression from Brecht’s poem on the death of Walter Benjamin. See Adorno, ND 6:281/286.

  10. 10.

    It is Adorno’s response to Wittgenstein, who wrote in his famous last sentence of the Tractatus logico-philosophicus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Wittgenstein, Logisch-philosophische Abhandlung. Tractatus logico-philosophicus (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2003), 111.

  11. 11.

    Jay Bernstein frames Adorno’s obsession with suffering differently. He asserts that Adorno’s thinking “is fundamentally oriented by remorse, the need to make restitution, to repair the damage done, to seek reconciliation, to make amends.” He calls it a “backward-looking impulse” that seeks to “redeem the hopes of the past”. Bernstein, Adorno: Ethics and Disenchantment, 188. While this backward-looking impulse is undeniable, I want to claim that Adorno’s preoccupation with suffering is just as much driven by a forward-looking “desire that things be right, that men reach a state in which the pointless suffering ends” (VND 82–3/53).

  12. 12.

    See KRV 285/187 and KRV note 234, 400/note 8, 269–70.

  13. 13.

    Améry , Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne, 32.

  14. 14.

    Ibid.

  15. 15.

    Ibid., 53.

  16. 16.

    Ibid., The qualification “for most parts” is of course important. Let us not forget that Jean Améry spent the rest of his interrupted life as a public intellectual, a homo ludens. Adorno might even have agreed with Améry’s statement, as his own reflections on the part of ludus in philosophy suggest (see ND 6:25–6/14). He would have insisted, however that the little part that is left to the humbled Geist can be redemptive, as long as the latter integrates the painful lesson of its own limits.

  17. 17.

    Jean Améry to Ernst Mayer, 17.6.1965. Fonds Jean Améry, DLA Marbach, HS.2002.0083.

  18. 18.

    Adorno, “Dingliches and Noematisches in Husserls Phänomenologie” in GS 1:49. Italics T.W.A.

  19. 19.

    Adorno, “Über Tradition”. In: GS 10.1:314–5.

  20. 20.

    More on Adorno’s view of children in Chap. 4 below.

  21. 21.

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discours sur l’Origine de l’Inégalité parmi les Hommes” in Oeuvres Complètes de J. J. Rousseau, Tome Premier (Paris: Furne, 1837), 547.

  22. 22.

    Ibid.

  23. 23.

    For a thorough and thoughtful analysis of Kant’s moral philosophy in relationship to Adorno that mitigates some of Adorno’s criticism, see Martin Shuster, Autonomy after Auschwitz. Adorno, German Idealism and Modernity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014), chaps. 1–3. A prominent defense of Kant’s moral philosophy against its critics more generally is Henry E. Allison’s Kant’s Theory of Freedom (Cambridge University Press, 1990).

  24. 24.

    Robert Pippin claims that “Adorno’s account is held captive by a distorted (if conventional) picture of this tradition, especially of the moral and ethical project tied to such idealism, so distorted that there is no good reason to accept Adorno’s attack or his more general claim about what the tradition stands for (Western modernity, essentially)” (Pippin, The Persistence of Subjectivity, 101). Is there a better reason to accept Pippin’s attack? His claim that Adorno’s understanding of Kant is “distorted” seems to be based on little more than an intellectual disagreement. There is famously more than one way to read Kant, and with the great thinker himself no longer here to straighten things out, it seems hasty to discard Adorno’s interpretation in such a peremptory way. Pippin’s own acknowledgment that Adorno’s reading is “conventional” moreover strengthens the very claim he wants to dismiss: that the Kantian tradition as read by Adorno “stands for Western modernity”. If Adorno’s Kant is the conventional Kant, he may well be the one who had the most lasting impact on his times.

  25. 25.

    Quoted in ND 6:224/225.

  26. 26.

    Jay Bernstein rightly remarks that “the type of moral failure” for Kant is “to be a free rider”. The question whether free riding is wrong is ambiguous by measure of the very criteria on which Kant bases his judgment: instrumentality and morality. The fact that Kant conflates the two is one of the stumbling blocks of his moral philosophy. See Jay Bernstein, Adorno: Ethics and Disenchantment, 169.

  27. 27.

    Quoted in ND 6:223/224.

  28. 28.

    Ibid.

  29. 29.

    I am not implying here that Kant is responsible for Hitler. I am simply pointing towards socially ingrained patterns of thought and behavior that Kant philosophically sanctioned, and which played an important part in Hitler’s success. See also John Dewey, German Philosophy and Politics (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1915) and Norbert Elias, Studien über die Deutschen. Machtkämpfe und Habitusentwicklung im 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1992).

  30. 30.

    Adorno, “Graeculus (II). Notizen zu Philosophie und Gesellschaft 1943–1969”, 26. Italics T.W.A.

  31. 31.

    Immanuel Kant, “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?” in Werke in zehn Bänden, Band 9, edited by Wilhelm Weischedel (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 56.

  32. 32.

    As Otto Dietrich, Press Chief of the NSDAP, wrote in The Philosophical Foundations of National-Socialism: “Kant’s moral law: ‘Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal’, is the classic formulation of national-socialist ethics.” Otto Dietrich, Die philosophischen Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus (Breslau: Ferdinand Hirt, 1935), 23.

  33. 33.

    Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 1977), 136.

  34. 34.

    Ibid.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., 136–7.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., 137.

  37. 37.

    Kant, “Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten”, BA 53, in Werke in Zehn Bänden, Band 6, 51.

  38. 38.

    Jay Bernstein reflects on this shortcoming of moral universalism, using the example of slavery. See Bernstein, Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics, 154–7.

  39. 39.

    Kant, “Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten”, BA 66, 61.

  40. 40.

    Ibid., BA 84, 72.

  41. 41.

    Ibid., BA 84.

  42. 42.

    Emil Fackenheim, To Mend the World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 271.

  43. 43.

    On the centrality of resistance in Adorno’s thought, see also Freyenhagen, Adorno’s Practical Philosophy, 162–86.

  44. 44.

    On July 20, 1944 took place the only known attempt to assassinate Hitler, led by a group of German officers. The failed attempt led to the execution of almost 5000 Germans. See Ian Kershaw, Hitler 1936–1945: Nemesis (London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001), 693.

  45. 45.

    Adorno, “Meinung Wahn, Gesellschaft” in GS 10.2:586.

  46. 46.

    See Samuel and Pearl Olimer, The Altruistic Personality (New York: The Free Press, 1988); Eva Fogelman, Conscience and Courage (New York: Doubleday, 1994); Tzvetan Todorov, La fragilité du bien. Le sauvetage des juifs bulgares (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999).

  47. 47.

    Fogelman, Conscience and Courage, 40–1.

  48. 48.

    Ibid., 53.

  49. 49.

    Ibid., 54.

  50. 50.

    “Only if what is, is not everything, can what is be changed.” ND 6:391/398.

  51. 51.

    Adorno, Probleme der Moralphilosophie, 28.2.1957 (unpublished), quoted in: Schweppenhäuser, Ethik nach Auschwitz. Adornos negative Moralphilosophie (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2016), 220.

  52. 52.

    Adorno, “Wozu noch Philosophie” in GS 10.2:464.

  53. 53.

    See Anthony D’Amato, “Obligation to Obey the Law: A Study of the Death of Socrates” in Southern California Law Review 49 (1976), 1079–108. D’Amato offers an insightful analysis of the legal meaning and implications of the obligation Socrates’ cites, as well as a comparison to John Rawl’s theory of civil disobedience.

  54. 54.

    Martin Shuster challenges not only Adorno’s criticism of Kant, but also of Hegel in Autonomy after Auschwitz. op.cit.

  55. 55.

    See e.g. DA 3:34/13; MM 4:161/141–2.

  56. 56.

    Adorno, Horkheimer, Kogon, “Die Menschen und der Terror” (1953), in: Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 13 (Frankfurt, 1989), 152.

  57. 57.

    Ibid., 151.

  58. 58.

    Adorno, Horkheimer, Kogon, “Die verwaltete Welt oder: Die Krisis des Individuums”, in: Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 13 (Frankfurt 1989), 124.

  59. 59.

    Ibid., 129.

  60. 60.

    Ibid., 130.

  61. 61.

    “Die Menschen und der Terror”, 152.

  62. 62.

    Ibid.

  63. 63.

    Adorno, “Erziehung nach Auschwitz”, in: GS 10.2:674. Translation: “Education after Auschwitz” in Adorno, Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader (Stanford University Press, 2003), 19.

  64. 64.

    Ibid., 10.2:679/23.

  65. 65.

    Martin Shuster explores the role of autonomy in Adorno’s philosophy and the way it relates to Kant and Hegel in Shuster, Autonomy after Auschwitz. Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity.

  66. 66.

    Adorno, Erziehung nach Auschwitz/Education after Auschwitz, 10.2:679/23 (italics O.C.S.)

  67. 67.

    Ibid., 10.2:681/25.

  68. 68.

    Ibid., 10.2:683/26–7.

  69. 69.

    Ibid., 10.2:682/26.

  70. 70.

    Ibid.

  71. 71.

    Ibid., 10.2:683/26.

  72. 72.

    Ibid., 10.2:683/27

  73. 73.

    Ibid., 10.2:687/30.

  74. 74.

    Ibid.

  75. 75.

    Adorno, “Erziehung nach Auschwitz”, 10.2:688/31.

  76. 76.

    Ibid.

  77. 77.

    Ibid., 10.2:676/21.

  78. 78.

    Ibid., 10.2:677/22.

  79. 79.

    Theodor W. Adorno to Max Horkheimer, 12.3.1953, in: Max Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften, Band 18. Frankfurt am Main, 1996, 247–8.

  80. 80.

    Ibid., 248.

  81. 81.

    See Adorno, “Warum sind Sie zurückgekehrt ?”, in GS 20.1:394. Adorno names the German language as one of the reasons for his return.

  82. 82.

    Adorno, “Erziehung nach Auschwitz”, 10.2:677/22.

  83. 83.

    Ibid.

  84. 84.

    Ibid.

  85. 85.

    Adorno’s refusal to name the good has been likened to the Jewish reluctance to positively describe what the world to come, the world after the advent of the Messiah, would look like, which prompted some commentators to call Adorno’s philosophy messianic. See e.g. Hent de Vries, Minimal Theologies: Critiques of Secular Reason in Adorno and Levinas (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2005), 147. Micha Brumlik, “Theologie und Messianismus” in Klein and Kreuzer and Müller-Dohm (eds.), Adorno Handbuch: Leben-Werk-Wirkung (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2011), 295–309. Adorno himself refers to Jewish theology in Negative Dialectic: “In the right state [Zustand], everything would be, as the Jewish theologoumenon has it, only a tiny bit different than it is, but not the tiniest thing can be imagined as it would be then.” ND 6:294/299.

  86. 86.

    Freyenhagen ascribes what he calls a “negative Aristotelianism” to Adorno, claiming that just as Aristotle indexes goodness and badness to the ergon, the essential teleological function of a thing, Adorno indexes the good to humanity and the bad to inhumanity, where humanity is a potential yet to be actualized and inhumanity directly related to suffering. See Freyenhagen, Adorno’s Practical Philosophy, 232–54. Adorno’s “happiness”, with its ungraspable yet most concrete nature, may come closest to his elusive idea of the good. For an analysis of Adorno’s “concept of happiness”, see Rufus Sona, Der Begriff des Glücks bei Adorno, http://www.kritiknetz.de/images/stories/texte/Der_Begriff_des_Gluecks_bei_Adorno.pdf

  87. 87.

    Adorno, “Erziehung nach Auschwitz”, GS 10.2:674/19.

  88. 88.

    Martin Shuster interprets this as saying that “there is no way to force, through discursive means, a somatic experience upon someone” (Shuster, “Nothing to Know”, 17). I read this statement much more literally, as a visceral, ‘prephilosophical’ outcry at the sacrilege of dealing discursively with unspeakable physical suffering.

  89. 89.

    More on Adorno’s take on argumentation in Chap. 4 below.

  90. 90.

    While Adorno would likely not have used the term “cosmic imbalance”, there are numerous indications that point toward the presence of such ‘theological’ notions in his thought. See Brumlik, “Theologie und Messianismus”.

  91. 91.

    The most sustained rejections of this claim can be found in Bernstein, Adorno: Ethics and Disenchantment, and Freyenhagen, Adorno’s Practical Philosophy. Espen Hammer’s Adorno and the Political takes it a step further and demonstrates convincingly that, as Hammer writes, “Adorno was one of the most politically acute thinkers of the twentieth century.” Hammer, Adorno and the Political. New York: Routledge 2006, 1.

  92. 92.

    This was one of the most prominent accusations voiced by the German students during the unrest of the 1960s (see below).

  93. 93.

    Theodor W. Adorno, “Keine Angst vor dem Elfenbeinturm”, Interview with the magazine “Der Spiegel”, May 5, 1969, in: Wolfgang Kraushaar, Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung, Vol. 2 (Hamburg: Zweitausendeins, 1998), 621.

  94. 94.

    Adorno, “Zum Freispruch des Polizeiobermeisters Kurras”. Vor der Vorlesung am 23. November 1967, in: Frankfurter Adorno Blätter III (München: text + kritik 1994), 147.

  95. 95.

    Ibid.

  96. 96.

    Adorno, “Gegen die Notstandsgesetze. Ansprache auf der Veranstaltung “Demokratie im Notstand” im Hessischen Rundfunk, 28. Mai 1968”, in GS 20.1:396.

  97. 97.

    Ibid., 397.

  98. 98.

    Adorno did however differ with the students on the exact scope of these reforms. He feared that the students’ proposals ultimately meant a watering down, a “simplification” of studies. See Kraushaar, Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung, Vol. 2, 307.

  99. 99.

    Adorno, “Resignation”, in GS 10.2:797.

  100. 100.

    Ibid., 797–8.

  101. 101.

    Adorno, Kritische Theorie und Protestbewegung, GS 20.1:400.

  102. 102.

    Adorno, “Kritik”, GS 10.2:792.

  103. 103.

    Adorno, “Marginalen zu Theorie und Praxis”, in GS 10.2:777.

  104. 104.

    Adorno, “Resignation”, GS 10.2:796.

  105. 105.

    Adorno, “Keine Angst vor dem Elfenbeinturm”, 622.

  106. 106.

    In January 1969, a group of students led by Hans-Jürgen Krahl occupied the Institute of Social Research. When they refused to retreat, violently insulting the institute members, Adorno (who, according to his own account, was worried about potential damage to the premises for which he was legally liable), called the police. This event is commonly considered as the point of no return in the rift between Adorno and the student movement.

  107. 107.

    Adorno, “Resignation”, 10.2:795.

  108. 108.

    Adorno, “Marginalien zu Theorie und Praxis”, 10.2:776–7.

  109. 109.

    Adorno, Brief an Herbert Marcuse, June 19, 1969, in: Kraushaar, Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung, Vol. 2, 652.

  110. 110.

    Adorno, “Resignation”, 10.2:794.

  111. 111.

    Adorno, “Keine Angst vor dem Elfenbeinturm”, 621.

  112. 112.

    Ibid.

  113. 113.

    Theodor W. Adorno, Hans-Jürgen Krahl et al, “Ich bin der Bitte sehr gerne nachgekommen”, Discussion during Adorno’s lecture on Aesthetics, November 30, 1967, in Kraushaar, Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung, Vol. 2, 328.

  114. 114.

    Adorno, “Entwurf eines nicht abgesandten Leserbriefs an den ‘Spiegel’”, July 13, 1967, in Kraushaar, Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung, Vol. 2, 271.

  115. 115.

    Theodor W. Adorno/Ralf Dahrendorf, “Kontroverse über das Theorie-Praxis-Problem auf dem 16. Deutschen Soziologentag, April 9, 1968”, in Kraushaar, Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung, Vol. 2, 354.

  116. 116.

    Adorno, “Resignation”, 10.2:795.

  117. 117.

    Kraushaar, Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung, Vol. 2, 328.

  118. 118.

    Adorno, “Marginalien zu Theorie und Praxis”, 10.2:780.

  119. 119.

    Ibid.

  120. 120.

    See Adorno, “Keine Angst vor dem Elfenbeinturm”, 620.

  121. 121.

    Adorno, “Marginalien zu Theorie und Praxis”, 10.2:782.

  122. 122.

    Ibid.

  123. 123.

    Ibid.

  124. 124.

    Adorno, “Keine Angst vor dem Elfenbeinturm”, 623.

  125. 125.

    Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, [Diskussion über Theorie und Praxis] (1956), in Horkheimer, Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1996), Bd. 19, 58.

  126. 126.

    Adorno, “Resignation”, 10.2:798.

  127. 127.

    Adorno, “Kritik”, 10.2:790.

  128. 128.

    Adorno, “Keine Angst vor dem Elfenbeinturm”, 621.

  129. 129.

    Ibid. (italics O.C.S.)

  130. 130.

    Adorno, Horkheimer, [Gespräch über Theorie und Praxis], 53.

  131. 131.

    Theodor W. Adorno, “Kritische Theorie und Protestbewegung”, Interview with the “Sueddeutsche Zeitung”, April 27, 1969, in: Kraushaar, 606.

  132. 132.

    Adorno, “Kritik”, 10.2:793.

  133. 133.

    Adorno, “Resignation”, 10.2:796.

  134. 134.

    Ibid.

  135. 135.

    Ibid., 10.2:795

  136. 136.

    Theodor W. Adorno, “Kritische Theorie und Protestbewegung”, Interview with the “Sueddeutsche Zeitung”, April 27, 1969, in: Kraushaar, 606.

  137. 137.

    Theodor W. Adorno, “Es ist für einen älteren Universitätslehrer nicht ganz leicht…”, in Kraushaar, 309.

  138. 138.

    Adorno’s critique of capitalism, which is not a focal point of the present study, is a function of his critique of identity thinking (or, as some would argue, the other way around). There is a direct link between the nonidentical’s reification and fungibility in modern societies and the universalization of commodification and exchange value, just as the “identity spell” is intimately connected to the sheer might of capitalism. The two Adorno studies who most insistently foreground the capitalist reading are Rose, The Melancholy Science, and Jameson, Late Marxism, op.cit.

  139. 139.

    “the world that could now, here be paradise (…)” Adorno, “Warum Philosophie?” in GS 10.2:471.

  140. 140.

    In his analysis of why Adorno sees praxis as postponed for the foreseeable future, Fabian Freyenhagen identifies two decisive factors: one, that “the proletariat has been integrated into the capitalist social world in such a way as to blunt its revolutionary potential”, and two, “that such a practice would presuppose free and possibly autonomous individuals [that] do not exist any longer” (Freyenhagen, “Adorno’s Politics. Theory and Praxis in Germany’s 1960s”, in Philosophy and Social Criticism 40(9), 870–1). The two factors are of course related, and play a crucial role in the Verblendungszusammenhang.

  141. 141.

    Quote by F.H. Bradley, in MM 4:94/83.

  142. 142.

    Adorno, Krahl , et al., “Ich bin der Bitte sehr gerne nachgekommen…”, 328–9.

  143. 143.

    Adorno, “Keine Angst vor dem Elfenbeinturm”, 622.

  144. 144.

    Ibid.

  145. 145.

    Adorno, “Marginalien zu Theorie und Praxis”, 10.2:778.

  146. 146.

    Hans-Jürgen Krahl , “Der politische Widerspruch der Kritischen Theorie Adornos”, in: Kraushaar, 674.

  147. 147.

    Ibid.

  148. 148.

    Ibid.

  149. 149.

    Ibid., 675.

  150. 150.

    Adorno, Eilbrief an Herbert Marcuse, 6.8.1969, in Kraushaar, Frankfurter Schule und Studentenbewegung, Vol. 2, 671.

  151. 151.

    There is no consensus on the matter—while some claim that the student movement triggered profound societal changes and was essential for the development of the modern Germany of today, others deny that the movement had any lasting impact and attribute the birth of modern Germany simply to the forces of progress and Zeitgeist (which again one could argue the students carried forward). See e.g.: Albrecht von Lucke, 69 oder neues Biedermeier. Der Kampf um die Deutungsmacht (Berlin: Wagenbach, 2008).

  152. 152.

    Adorno, Horkheimer, [Gespräch über Theorie und Praxis], 40.

  153. 153.

    Adorno, “Kritik”, 10.2:793.

  154. 154.

    In his comparison between Cavell’s skepticism about other minds and Adorno’s philosophy of the nonidentical, Martin Shuster neglects, in my view, the utopian aspiration of the latter, when he writes that “for Adorno, non-identity delineates a logical space where there is nothing to be known.” (Shuster, “Nothing to Know”, 12). While that may be true in the present state of our epistemic abilities (and the common understanding of what it means ‘to know’), Adorno does not want to abandon the nonidentical to the unknowable, but harbors the utopian hope for a different kind of knowledge that would lead us to know the nonidentical (be it neither discursively nor conceptually). Adorno seems to believe that at least glimpses of that knowledge are within our reach. See Chap. 4 below (e.g. his view on children’s ways of knowing). Similarly, when Shuster concludes that “ Cavell and Adorno share the idea that our basic relation to the world is not one of knowing” (18), it really all hinges on what is meant by “knowing”. I don’t think Adorno was ready to hand knowledge over to the kind of rational grasp it is commonly associated with.

  155. 155.

    “Only if what is, is not everything, can what is be changed.” ND 6:391/398.

  156. 156.

    Roger Foster remarks that “what matters for Adorno is what is revealed about our concepts in the very process of trying (and failing) to say something” (Foster, The Recovery of Experience, 33). The same can be said about the quest for truth: much can be learned from trying (and failing) to grasp it.

    In his book on dominant theories of truth in Twentieth century continental philosophy, Lambert Zuidervaart writes that Adorno’s concept of truth does not meet the requirement of public authentication, without which truth “is not truth at all” (Zuidervaart, Truth in Husserl, Heidegger and the Frankfurt School, MIT Press, 2017, 91). The question of what constitutes truth is too vast to be decided here. It seems, however, that the requirement of public authentication at the outset disqualifies certain conceptions of truth (particularly of the comprehensive, non-propositional nature), and that Adorno’s aspiration to save the nonidentical may be irreconcilable with that requirement (at least in the present state of our epistemic abilities). Whether a truth that is not fully shareable and communicable is still truth is debatable, but it is a question that cannot be decided one way or the other without presupposing a particular idea of truth that precedes the answer.

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Silberbusch, O.C. (2018). The Torturable Body: Adorno’s Negative Dialectic. In: Adorno’s Philosophy of the Nonidentical. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95627-5_3

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