Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 10:19:46 -0400
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.org>
Subject: Re: Translations of the Dialectic of Enlightenment


This is very helpful.  I'll respond point by point.

At 11:11 AM 7/18/2003 +0200, Claus Hansen wrote:

>I am not sure if I get you right on this. Is what you are objecting 
>against that instrumental reason is only the ideological appearance of 
>certain phenomena to us that is in fact governed by a completely different 
>logic (say, class conflicts), thus making it a fallacy to appeal directly 
>to instrumental reason as some kind of explanation for the current state 
>of our society because instrumental reason is itself only a result of 
>certain dynamics in society?

Yes, you have it right.  Instrumental reason is not self-explanatory but is 
a manifestation of something deeper.

On Buck-Morss:

"For if the book was more than a critical negation of bourgeois 
philosophies of history, then its positive message was that when 
dialectical change takes place with the superstructure alone and leaves the 
class structure untouched, it falls back on itself and repeats itself like 
a cycle of nature. The book thus attested to the inadequacy of revolution 
within 'reason' when what was needed was a revolution within society. But 
the same, it implied was true of a dialectic within the substructure alone" 
(Buck-Morss 1977:61-62)"

I don't understand this passage.

>My main interest lies with Adorno as I think he is the most inspiring of 
>the Frankfurt people

I have found Adorno the most inspiring of them as well, though I have to 
read more of Horkheimer and Marcuse.

>  But as I wrote in an earlier mail regarding the new translation there 
> are many changes where Marxist terminology have been removed so as to 
> make the book more acceptable to the American surroundings they lived in. 
> These changes can all be seen in the new translation - an example could 
> be the following (the words in the parantheses are the ones that were 
> edited out of the final version):

This would certainly be a main motivation for acquiring the new 
translation.  The specific quotes you adduce do not necessarily alter my 
perception of what's going on.  H & A do use various metaphors from 
commerce and economics even in the Cummings translation.

>However, when that is said it must be emphasised that Adorno did not 
>accept historical materialism in its entirety - the process governing the 
>development of history is not exclusively one of class domination. 
>Instrumental reason should be seen as having its origin in the myths of 
>premodern societies - which is why they use Odysseus as a figure in DoE. 
>Instrumental reason should instead be seen as an attempt to explain and 
>control the world, for human beings to be installed as masters and thereby 
>overcoming fear.

I have read this chapter as well (and now I am reading the one on de 
Sade).  I'm not convinced by this argument, though.  First, the 
preoccupation with the domination of nature is not mine, even in our time 
preoccupied by ecology.  If primitive man wanted to control nature, so much 
the better for him.  If something links modern with premodern man in his 
alienated thinking, I think it should be characterized differently.

>  I don't think instrumental reason is a pure epiphenomenon in Adorno's 
> thought it is a logic that structures our very way of living and acting - 
> however it becomes more pronounced with the turn to market based 
> economies because the market is build on a logic of identity as well as 
> instrumental reason is.

I'm not sure I would accept this as stated--I don't know about the logic of 
identity--I would need an elaboration.  A purely abstract utilitarianism 
cum rational calculation is a product of capitalism.  In my view it is this 
logic that is responsible for the degeneration of materialism into 
empiricism and positivism, already in the late 18th century.  But in the 
late 19th century, in the so-called age of materialism, materialism itself 
would have disappeared had it not been for Engels and the Marxists.

>  I think it is correct that Adorno did not use much time discussing 'the 
> truth content of the natural sciences'. HOWEVER, and this is important, 
> this does not mean that Adorno thinks there are no such thing as a truth 
> content of the natural sciences.

Adorno recognizes this more clearly in his lectures in CRITICAL MODELS, as 
does Horkheimer in some of his essays (perhaps "Traditional and Critical 
Theory"--my memory is hazy).  I do not recognize this in D of E though, 
which, at least in the bad translation I'm reading, seems completely 
immersed in myth.

>The problem Adorno wanted to alert our attention to was that in the course 
>of history our ability to experience and therefore to gain knowledge is 
>not used to the full potential - enlightenment (and hence science) is not 
>rationalised thoroughly enough. For Adorno art represented another type of 
>relation between subject and object thus constituting a potentiality for 
>another type of experience (and therefore knowledge) - this potentiality 
>is almost completely absent from science. Adorno was never against 
>enlightenment or the natural sciences - however he felt it was necessary 
>to enlighten these two domains about themselves. That Adorno relegates all 
>science to positivism is of course exaggerated, however we should not, as 
>I mentioned, take everything he says literally.

Well, I'm not certain what to take literally.  My problem with D of E so 
far as that I see it as excessively mythical in a way that doesn't point 
beyond itself.  But I could be wrong.

>You are right, there are big differences between science and myths. 
>However, to say that myth is already enlightenment is not to say that they 
>are completely identical, it is only to say that there are certain 
>features that are similar for instance their aims and aspirations. Adorno 
>is not trying to say that the 'objective content of myth and science' are 
>identical and therefore equally rational and good. What he is saying is 
>that when science (and this is best exemplified in positivism) comes to 
>think of itself as the sole originator of knowledge, of scientific 
>knowledge as self sufficient and that everything has to be explained by 
>reference to the scientific systems, it becomes mythological because it 
>cannot accept the idea of anything outside itself. This is what happens 
>when Carnap or Popper says that everything that cannot be verified or 
>falsified by the methods of the sciences is metaphysical, or when 
>astro-physicist try to develop a unified field theory, or biologists claim 
>they have found the gene that makes people criminal. Science is 
>mythological because it excluded so many other forms of knowledge while 
>claiming to be the sole representative of true knowledge.

You are correct about positivism, Carnap, and Popper.  My point is that an 
ideology of science is not identical with science.  Is science limited or 
is it the scientist that is limited?  Is the scientist inherently devoid of 
self-consciousness and needs the philosopher/social critic to help him out, 
or does the scientist's self-consciousness and sense of totality differ 
with respect to social conditions including the socialization of the 
scientist?  We should not be too presumptuous here.  The mentality you 
describe is certainly pervasive enough, but it is not universal.  And I 
think it often applies more to social scientists trying to ape the natural 
sciences rather than to natural scientists or mathematicians, who do not 
always need or adhere to the mythos of number-crunching.  Mathematicians in 
fact are a special case.  Practically speaking, a large contingent are 
employed by the military-industrial complex, and so like other scientists 
their socialization as professionals may well be skewed in a particular 
direction.  But as a pure science, mathematics is akin to the arts in its 
social function: if it is not utilizable for the practical aims of 
business, industry, and the military, nobody wants to be bothered by 
it.  Many mathematicians are like artists in their frustration with a pure 
utilitarian orientation, and can be found on the left.  They are also not 
so impressed with the shallow scientism of number-crunching empiricist 
sociology.  Finally, there is the question of an over-arching philosophical 
perspective within which science is conceived, hence its claims and 
limitations are open for debate, and of course these claims are the claims 
of living people and institutions, not just ascribable to the intrinsic 
nature of the subject matter.

>It is too easy to think that A & H was so negative in DoE due to the 
>experience of World War II, Fascism, the failed revolution etc. this 
>interpretation was already dismissed as errouneous by Buck-Morss in 1977. 
>Adorno is extremely consistent from 1931 (when he held his inaugural 
>lecture at the University of Frankfurt called the Actuality of Philosophy) 
>and throughout the rest of his life, so while the experience of the war 
>and fascism certainly put a mark on him their pessimism cannot be reduced 
>to a matter of biographical experiences. Let me try and frame some counter 
>questions: (1) What if the ideals of rationality inherent in enlightenment 
>thought and modern science are inferior - what if the 'irrational' (for 
>instance artworks) are forms of knowledge that we just can't relate to 
>because of our social circumstances? (2) This is a very difficult question 
>that I cannot answer sufficiently.......

But 1931--and European civilization at least since World War I--was 
certainly marked by a sense of severe crisis.  And living in a mechanistic 
society certainly has a dampening effect on one's spirits and drives one 
inward into instinctive rebellion--hence the familiar obsessions.  Even in 
my own lifetime I've seen this at work.  Growing up watching television in 
the early days was to look at a different generation and a set of 
stereotypes reflecting a mechanistic view of existence.  I was watching, 
found it wanting.  I could feel it around me.  The natural consequence was 
the cultural revolution of the '60s and '70s.  Its very innocence was 
predicated on what it was rebelling against.  But in spite of all the hype, 
commercialization, consumerism, and self-indulgence there too, there was 
something in it beyond commodification, and that had to be destroyed, had 
to be mechanized and sublated into the system, which took place towards the 
end of the '70s and embodied in the disco era.  But since then, a much 
sexier mainstream consumerism has been established, very different from 
that of the 1950s but much more insidious and just as totalitarian, because 
it has incorporated all the impulses of rebellion.  The mechanistic 
character of society is much better disguised now that our robots can shake 
they booty.  However, looking back, at Europe even more than America, I can 
see the desperation that drove people like Sartre, Camus, Beckett, etc. 
into a spiritual desert and their desperate fightback.