Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2003 18:34:51 +0300 (EEST)
From: j laari <jlaari-AT-cc.jyu.fi>
Subject: [FRA:] Re: Adorno and Empirical Sociology


Greetings

Good, thanks Filipe. I understand. You think that "German idealism"
(in quotation marks, because not all of the philosophy called "German
idealism" actually isn't idealism), including transcendental
philosophy, is part of metaphysical tradition. That's a bit worrying,
I think, because transcendental philosophy has exactly been an effort
to step out of the metaphysics. It's crucial to the understanding of
German philosophy that it probably has utilized some old
(metaphysical) methods of argumentation and so forth, but in doing so
haven't committed itself to the metaphysics in a sense of an effort to
justify and explain phenomenal and experiential world by some
metaphysical principle (the Absolute, God, the One, Reason, Nature
etc.). on the other hand, there seem to be as many concepts of
metaphysics as there are discourses on metaphysics... oh, well...

On Wed, 6 Aug 2003, filipe ceppas wrote:

> What I mean is that Adorno deals with those weberian kind of
> problems always in connection with a reappraisal of the
> metaphysical tradition (specially german idealism). I think that
> it is very obvious, but nonetheless very important too.

However, you also wrote:

> IMO it is not so obvious to think about Kant as part of
> metaphysical tradition. We must remember that he thought he was
> overcoming crude metaphysics, and I think he actually did it.
> Maybe we would need to take in consideration philosophical and
> also scientific reiterpretations of kantian transcendental to
> discuss that.

I think it's commonplace to think that Kant really overcame at least
the old metaphysics - crude or sophisticated - and began something
genuinely new as the founder of transcendental philosophy that refuses
to rely on any metaphysically postulated or formulated foundation.
That's also called as (philosophical) modernity.

Things like that were at the background when I originally made my
questions. Why? Because it's crucial for any interpretation of any
critical theorist whether he somehow relies on non-metaphysically
understood transcendental philosophy or on metaphysically understood
philosophy (say, "German idealism" in toto).

Therefore I also made a formulation you wrote about:

> Anyway, I don't know what you mean by "being somehow along the
> lines of Kantian or neo-kantian transcendental-philosophical
> discussion" when we are talking about Adorno, but it is clear for
> me that Adorno seeks to preserve the tensions that we can identify
> at Kant and german idealism "truth content" or (if I misuse this
> concept) the "truth ambitions" we find at Kant or Hegel

[By the way, could we call them 'truth claims', or is this already
another concept?]

By "being somehow along the lines..." I meant that perhaps [a] Adorno
understood Kantian philosophy and even neo-kantianism to be useful
non-metaphysical developments, that [b] were able to present fruitful
(viz. fruitful for his purposes) philosophical truth claims.

> It is clear to me that Adorno is facing everywhere the problematic
> nature of philosophical discourse at XX century ...

When philosophical discourse haven't had problematic nature? I think
that's the very point with it. Not answers after answers after
answers, but questions and "problematizations" (how that should
actually be rendered in English?).

> ... loss of a clear support from a "basic principle of all
> thinking" to deal with problems like that of the functions and
> meanings of specialized sciences. I insist that, if you are
> concerned with meanings of sociological discourse from a
> philosophical perspective (...), then... IMO the subject-object
> dialetics and related questions are mandatory **according to
> Adorno philosophical perspective**.

Yeah, and Adorno distanced himself from the 20th century strategy to
that. I referred to this earlier as transcendental-philosophical
problems of 'Lebenswelt'. However, Adorno wrote his infamous book on
Husserl - the one he wrote in England ("Against epistemology"?), I
don't remember the original name - where he believed he had disproved
phenomenological philosophy. Whatever his reasons were, he practically
cut himself off from modern transcendental philosophy. Yet he tried to
maintain same kind of non-metaphysical stance that there was
available. My point? It's twofold: (a) there are more than one way to
tackle what you call subject-object dialectics, and (b) A. may have
been stronger dialectician had he been theoretically enlightened on
the problems of 'Lebenswelt'.

> I doubt Adorno would be happy with a probabilistic account of
> human/social knowledge, but of course he is not an "absolutist"
> whatever it means...

Whether happily or not, folks like Adorno were *leading the way* after
WW2 in European social sciences. In USA refugees like Adorno learned
the new U.S. way of doing sociology: surveys, statistical analysis.
They brought these then new methods and techniques to Europe. In
sociology, "Teddy" was most modern then. In this sense he's with
'probabilistic camp', so to speak, as everyone in human/social
sciences who understands the nature of the knowledge of his
discipline. I.e. knowledge like 'pure deductions of reason' concerning
human/social world (presented, in worst cases, as absolute truths) is
replaced by probabilistic knowledge.

> well, I guess Adorno would not say that to see the problem is
> somehow already begin to overcome it, but he would probably say
> that trying to avoid the problem on the easier way is to make the
> problem worse.

That's well put, yes indeed!

Sincerely, Jukka L