Date: Thu, 15 Jun 1995 20:59:09 +0200 (CST)
From: Dr Frederik van Gelder <Gelder-AT-em.uni-frankfurt.de>
Subject: Re: HAB: Critical Theory and Christianity



On Thu, 18 May 1995, leo meeks wrote:
> >
> Dr. Gelder,
>
> i notice that you use the term positive religion in describing the
> refusal of critical theory to ascribe normative character to any system;
> what exactly do you make of habermas' assertion that Adorno's negative
> dialectic is a sort of ascetic practise theory of communicative action I,
> 383ff? i quite understand the need to diffentiate the work of someone
> like adorno, who in spite of Jurgen Moltmann, cannot easily be
> appropriated into a theological textuality, and Habermas who is easily
> appropriated by theologians (i have in mind jens glebe-moller). There is
> nevertheless i would suggest a level where the work of adorno and Karl
> Barth could be compared at length and one could possibly understand
> either a church dogmatics or a negative dialectic operating along similar
> critical lines though in highly differentiated economies of signs.
> i suppose i am going about asking you, though in a long winded manner, do
> you think a theology possible schooled in the negative dialectic which
> does not place this last under the bane of escapism or metaphysics?
>
> -leo
**********************************



There are people who draw explicit parallels between theology
and Critical Theory and explore only this aspect of it - I
heard a Hamburg philosopher recently who compared Adorno with
Levinas. Horkheimer had a high regard of Tillich; in a world
descending into a kind of technocratic barbarism, both
Horkheimer and Adorno were convinced that what we call 'truth'
is the last refuge of what was once called 'religion'. (One
finds statements like this: "Wahrheit ist ohne einen
bestimmten Begriff von negativer Theologie unm=94glich"
Horkheimer GS vol. 12, p.492; or: "Eine absolute Geltung ohne
Gott kann ich mir nicht denken" GS 13, p.159; or a whole
section: Kritische Theorie und Theologie  vol.14, p.507)

There's no doubt that what CT and religion have in common is
the conviction that the whole of reality is such a vale of
tears that no perspective which does not judge it from some
kind of '(quasi)transcendental' perspective in which truth,
justice, beauty, dignity play a role is a primitive travesty
of what the human race is capable of; everything else is
'positivism'. Another point in common is the question of
'mortality'; the fact that we are biological organisms
condemned to age and then to die; or even: capable of
destroying all life on this earth in some all too easily
imaginable future act of collective suicide.
All of these views on the other hand stand in stark contrast
to the objectivism of the natural sciences, for whom this is
so much obscurantism and quasi-religious dogma. (c.f. Karl
Popper's views expressed in the 'positivist dispute' of the
sixties)
But the opposite view is just as defensible: that what CT and
science have in common is that their point of departure is not
- as it is in the positive religions - a transcendental
'Being' or 'essence', but the nature of reality, as described
by the empirical disciplines. From this angle what it is that
CT and science share is their _materialism_; the one abstract,
the other dialectical, but united in their rejection of
transcendentalism.
Perhaps the question is not whether "a theology is possible",
but whether it is possible to turn the world into such a place
that the constantly frustrated longing for truth and justice
on the part of millions of people does not have to turn to
purely virtual sources of satisfaction. We don't live in the
middle ages anymore; this internet thing proves it. It is
possible to feed, clothe, house, educate every human being on
this planet, within a set of institutions in which conflicts
of interest are settled non-violently. We can probe the causes
- economic, political, social-psychological - of why these
things are *not* happening, are *not* realizable in the
foreseeable future. These causes are complex, but to pursue
them at all - andd hence express one's conviction that one day
the world *can* be such a place, that it worth spending one's
life probing these things - *that* is Critical Theory. This
internet makes it possible to speak to anyone on this planet;
perhaps CT tells us what we should be talking about.
Adorno has this reformulation of Kant's categorical imperative
which moves me every time: "Hitler has imposed upon human
beings, in their state of unfreedom, a new categorical
imperative: to organise their ideas and their actions in such
a way as to make a repetition of Auschwitz impossible; to make
certain that the occurance of something similar cannot ever
happen again." (_Negative Dialektik_, p. 356, my translation.)

regards,


Dr. Frederik van Gelder
Institut fuer Sozialforschung
Frankfurt University