Date: Mon, 13 May 2002 11:55:35 +0100
From: Mervyn Hartwig <mh-AT-jaspere.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: BHA: Is it Hegel or Adorno?


Resending.

Hi Ruth, Phil

Ruth wrote:

>Adorno also suggests that the conception of 
>reason that comes from Hegel is in some sense necessarily totalitarian.  I'm 
>assuming that you don't buy that either!  I'm curious, though, how you think 
>about that aspect of his critique, if you have.  

Does he? I thought Adorno linked totalitarianism with the instrumental
reason of market society, not with reason as such. On the question of
freedom and compulsion, according to Jarvis (185f), Adorno was heavily
indebted to Hegel, and his critique was mainly directed, not against
Hegel, but against Kant for suppressing 'a necessarily heteronomous
moment in freedom'.

Here's what I for my part said about the alleged link between Hegelian
reason and totalitatianism in JCR 4:2 (reviewing Daly, *Deals and
Ideals: Two Concepts of Enlightenment*), which I would stand by:

*******
The standard liberal charge against rationalist perfectibilism (echoed
by Collier in *Christianity and Marxism*, 2001: 13), with its positive
view of freedom as self-government by reason, is of course that it leads
to totalitarianism.  Daly's response is that 'totalitarian power is not
reason; and reason is not totalitarian power' (104). Eudaimonistic
freedom demands the fullest possible development of individual freedom
and the 'holistic politics of participatory democracy', including
economic democracy. While this can only be achieved on the basis that
those who oppose it 'can be forced to be free' (Rousseau), the same
holds true of the 'negative' freedom as freedom from constraint that is
enshrined in the market: bourgeois democracy and freedom by no means
came into the world by the democratic road (Trotsky), and today people
continue to be 'shelled into the enforced unity' of its 'negative
freedom' (58) [do they ever!]. Isaiah Berlin's problem of 'positive
freedom's negating true (i.e. negative) freedom' is therefore false.
*********

In an era where one system is making a bid for planetary 'full spectrum
dominance' there can be little doubt as to what is keeping the true
spirit of totalitarianism alive. To give Collier his due, he names it
for what it is: totalitarian commercialism (parading precisely as
Kantian liberalism, e.g. in human rights imperalism). 

Mervyn



Ruth Groff <rgroff-AT-yorku.ca> writes
>Hi Phil,
>
>No prob, but thanks for the nice words anyhow.
>
>There is actually a wonderful-looking symposium here next weekend that my 
>advisor is involved with, on Adorno.  I'm, like, the only person who has ever 
>worked with him who isn't presenting a paper there!  O well.  Critical realism 
>it is.  
>
>You wrote:
>
>   Now to Adorno this alienation derives from the overconfidence and
>>complacency of reason which never seems to be adequate to the richness of
>>experience.  To Adorno, Hegel is implicated in this problem.
>
>
>Yes, I think this is right (though it's not *only* reason that is involved).  
>
>
>>But, as I read Hegel, what gives meaning to experience is precisely reason.
>>By this I mean reason working through history, which is not pure and simply
>>human reason, but is a teleology located in nature as a whole.  If I may put
>>it like this, Hegel seems to be saying to Adorno "My dear fellow, human
>>experience is indeed incredibly varied and important to analyse, but let's
>>not imagine that human experience supplies reason.  It is in truth much
>>closer to say that reason supplies human experience.".
>
>I'm not in a position to assess Adorno's reading of Hegel, so I am really 
>limited in what I can say, but it seems to me that our guys reach kind of an 
>impasse here.  As I understand him, Adorno will say that this claim in Hegel's 
>hands is the crux of what he, Adorno, calls the myth of constitutive 
>subjectivity.  This is why Adorno prefers Kant in certain ways -- because in 
>Kant there is at least the recognition that reason comes up against objective 
>limits.  And it is not just a question of metaphysics; it relates to the 
>qualifications of Hegel's politics that you introduce.  That is, Adorno thinks 
>that it's not just that Hegel happens unfortunately to endorse the Prussian 
>state.  He (along with Marx) would say that an illusory freedom is (at best) 
>[the "at best" part is Adorno on his own] precisely what is expressed in the 
>idea that reason can be co-extensive with being.
>
>In one sense, for Adorno it comes down to Hegel not being a materialist.  It's 
>interesting that this isn't a problem for you.  On the contrary, it sounds as 
>though it is precisely the metaphysics that you are drawn to, because it 
>authorizes a conception of reason as potentially all-extensive.  In fact, if I 
>understand you, your criticism of Bhaskar is that his attempt at absolute 
>idealism falls short.  (Bhaskar, I think, would in turn charge you with 
>"cognitive triumphalism," I think he calls it.)
>
>But back to Adorno for a second.  Adorno also suggests that the conception of 
>reason that comes from Hegel is in some sense necessarily totalitarian.  I'm 
>assuming that you don't buy that either!  I'm curious, though, how you think 
>about that aspect of his critique, if you have.  
>
>Warmly,
>Ruth
>
>
>
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