From: "Martti Puttonen" <pop-AT-saunalahti.fi>
Date: Wed, 15 May 2002 16:57:05 +0200
Subject: Re: BHA: apologies to Ruth and Martti



Hi Phil,

You wrote:
> Hi Ruth and Martti,
> 
> I'm really struggling for time at the moment, so I can't give my two penny's
> worth in your highly stimulating discussion about Adorno.  I will try to say
> something soon.
> 
> Martti, can you help me?  You said that Adorno is interested in the real but
> you put it inside scare quotes - 'real'.  Can you say something about why
> you used those scare quotes?  I hope I am not asking a too big question.
> 
As Adorno has explicated almost explicitly (that is, trying to find 
ways of deriving them as philosophical notions) that there is or at 
least there is a logical requirement (arising directly of the 
everywhere caught dualisms of subject-object in human 
consciousness and self-reflection) three objective realms:  
empirical, actual or for him rather factual, and something more 
beyonds those two previous 'objective' realms. But as he explores, 
dualist thinking having only identities of the objective, can't have 
necessities of the objective as real (As Bhaskar has explicated 
more consistently and explicitly), so this realm of 'natural 
necessities' is 'real' for him. 

Somewhere in 'Negative Dialectics' Adorno uses the expression 
'real' but I do not can recall where. In any case Adorno says: "The 
object is more than pure factuality; at the same time, the fact that 
factuality is irremovable forbids contentment with its abstract 
concept and with the dregs of factuality, the recorded sense data" 
(ND, p. 188).   Adorno does not think it is possible to explicate 
'real', but it is something more than factual. Seems sound and 
logical in his formulations; in this subject- object dialectics it is not 
possible to say more but not anything less, either, I think.
 
I think that 'real' and real (the latter absolutely is inexplicable in this 
philosophy in Adornos thoughts and writings as it is for me here in 
this philosophy, too) are not apt to any philosophcial explications, 
because there is not possible even human ego in its emergent 
powers materialisms (he does not use this conception, but tries to 
have it in his delineations). So I think that 'real' must be factualities 
in Adorno's philosophy (he can't avoid it although his conception of 
real science, if there is that possibility, seems to be somewhat in 
conflict with this interpretation), if  Adorno considers that human 
consciousness is a (direct?) result of social, as he explicates in 
'Negative Dialectics'. 

There is also the possibility, which also Adorno thinks really 
possible, that 'real' is ideological form in the objective which self-
reflection in its subject - object dualisms can have as conception. 
But that is not enough to this self reflection here, because this self-
reflection means two negations at the same time. This second 
reflection is required here and it is logical: with this second 
negation self saves its authentity or total subjectivity and its 
separatness from objects, which is required in order to have 
objects as transparencies in self-consciousness. 

So it seems, that it is very difficult to delineate more accurately, 
what Adorno has really explicated and which are his searches of 
finding ways of having a truly realist philosophy.In any case, it is 
logical from Adorno that he mainly illustratively (I think) used in his 
text the concept 'real'.

 

> Best regards to you both,
> 
> Phil

Martti  


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