NEGATIVE DIALECTICS (1)

[Ralph Dumain]

At 01:30 AM 3/5/98 -0800, Dennis R Redmond wrote:
>Yes, this is the problem with the Ashton translation, it's not just off,
>or markedly off, it's an unbelievable mess. My own, somewhat
>idiosyncratic translation of the original German passage,
>from page one of ND, would be as follows:
>
>"What once, as opposed to the surface appearance of the senses and every
>sort of externally directed experience, felt itself to be the purely
>unnaive, has for its part objectively become so naive as Goethe's 
>miserable doctoral candidates a hundred fifty years ago, who subjectively
>feasted on speculation."
 
Well, correcting the botched translation certainly has its merits, though it
would still be useful to know: what philosophers Adorno had in mind then
(Goethe) and now.  Clarification of Adorno's specific meaning is most
welcome.  Oddly though, this murkiness of sense and reference was not my
original point of concern.  What really interested me about this passage was
Adorno's general statement about the naivete of philosophy now.  I have my
own applications of this criticism in mind.  For example, the Bucknell Hegel
discussion list strikes me as totally naive and ingenuous when it comes to
applying philosophy to today, though the object of study is most arcane.  I
think a great percentage of academic theorizing in many schools of
thought--postmodernist, Habermasian, or the stuff you find right here--is
also naive in spite of the morbid self-reflexiveness that accompanies it,
because everyone is convinced that this sort of theorizing is what it
purports to be.  And yet for all the guilty self-examination of contemporary
intellectuals, I find they can't match by a long shot the perspicacity of
Adorno in honestly facing his own situation by refusing to mortify his own
reason while recognizing that he is just one man among multitudes though not
a confused individual seeking shelter in the profession of footnote-whoring.

In a related matter, I do not understand the implications Hector draws out
of the following statement:

At 06:33 PM 3/3/98 -0500, Hector Rottweiller Jr.'s Place wrote:
>If philosophy isn't identical to itself, then its claims to
>primacy -- and I don't know Heideigger too well, but it seems the 
>primacy of philosophy was very much on his agenda -- have to be 
>disregarded or at least viewed with suspicion.