Summary of Jargon of Authenticity

[Jim Rovira]

Thanks much for your useful comments, Ralph.  I think when I write a reply to
my own summary I'll probably wind up defending Heidegger's _Being and Time_
(not everything he's written) a little bit.  I don't think Adorno properly
understood the They-self in that work, and sounded as if he thought Heidegger
believed we could attain an authentic self independently of the They-self.
Rather, it seems to me that Heidegger thought the They-self is a necessary
stage though which the authentic self needs to pass, and the They-self is never
completely abandoned even when we attain an authentic self.

This isn't meant to invalidate Adorno's critique, but to point out flaws in
it.  Adorno should have seen some parallels between the transition from
they-self to authentic self even within the framework of CT's view of the
subject, created from social and biological forces but then establishing a
difference of some sort between the self and others at some point.

I think the debate between the two is unresolvable because one proceeds from
materialist premises and one does not -- there's no common ground on a
fundamental level from which to stage a debate.  I also think the most useful
way to handle Heidegger and CT is to put them in dialog since I think there are
potentially unacknowledged parallels simply couched in different language.

Thanks much for reading and for your comments.  Glad to know my summary didn't
read too far off at first glance.

Jim

Ralph Dumain wrote:

> I've read so much other stuff since reading this book not long ago, I
> couldn't comment without consulting my notes, but your description pretty
> much jibes with the text as I remember it.
>
> Coincidentally, I've come across critiques of Heidegger with special
> reference to his jargon in my recent reading on American philosophy, of
> such authors as Roy Wood Sellars and Marvin Farber.  Farber was very
> critical of Husserl's subjective idealism but took his usable techniques
> seriously.  Farber, however, had nothing but contempt for Heidegger.  One
> of Farber's essays starts out thus:
>
> T0 MANY readers of philosophical literature, Martin Heidegger appears to
> have made great contributions to philosophy. But to those who have taken
> the trouble to read his writings with logical standards in mind, he has
> very little to offer, and he rates primarily as a pretentious verbal
> philosopher. He has taken care to create severe linguistic barriers between
> himself and his readers, which serve to make plausible the claim to untold
> profundity and novelty. It will be instructive and quite disillusioning to
> some to examine a piece of Heidegger's more audacious writing carefully.
> Nothing could be better for this purpose than his essay on "The Essence of
> Truth."
>
> The reader has the right to expect something definite from any discussion
> of the concept of truth. He is not likely to be deceived, or impressed, by
> anything else. Once he has departed from the murky intricacies of the
> language dealing with "being" and "existence," Heidegger becomes quite a
> different kind of figure. The change is, roughly, from tragedy (a
> linguistic tragedy, at least) to comedy or the commonplace. . . .
>
> SOURCE: Farber, Marvin. "Heidegger on the Essence of Truth", in: Radical
> Currents in Contemporary Philosophy, ed. David H. DeGrood, Dale Riepe, John
> Somerville (St. Louis, MO: Warren H. Green, Inc., 1971), pp.
> 79-89. Reprinted from Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Vol.
> XVIII, #4, June, 1958, pp. 523532.
>
> This essay looks very similar to a chapter in Farber's NATURALISM AND
> SUBJECTIVISM, published in the subsequent year. I've been
> corresponding with people who knew Farber. While admiring of Husserl with
> strong qualifications, Farber may never have considered himself a
> phenomenologist. He is described as a methodological pluralist who was open
> to everybody and not just closed groups. Hence people like Carnap published
> freely in Farber's journal. However, Heidegger got his goat, and Farber
> went on the warpath.
>
> Again, let me remind you of Pierre Bourdieu's  THE POLITICAL ONTOLOGY OF
> MARTIN HEIDEGGER, which also delves into Heidegger's insulation of his
> philosophy from profane interpretation.  All of these approaches are
> different, but they all zero in on Heidegger's duplicity.  And don't forget
> Stephen Eric Bronner's essay.
>
> BTW, Herf in a footnote brings Lukacs and Adorno together briefly,
> mentioning their common contempt for Heidegger whilst Adorno trashed
> Lukacs' THE DESTRUCTION OF REASON.
>
> The moral of the story, to head off those who take Heidegger's garbage
> seriously, is what a sewer idealist philosophy is, intellectually as well
> as morally.  We need to remember that Adorno and Horkheimer were
> materialists, though strange materialists.  BTW, I would like to know more
> about their relation to dialectical materialism if any in the
> 1930s.  However, there were other anti-positivist materialists (e.g. a
> whole lineage in the USA) who developed independently of Marxism though
> were ultimately sympathetic, like Sellars and Farber.  They criticized both
> positivism and reactionary lebensphilosophie.  While they did not cover the
> same territory as the Frankfurters, they approached the issues from their
> interest in the philosophy of science.  Depending again on the terrain,
> they would have been less sophisticated in some areas, but much more so in
> philosophy of science, and not rigid like the Stalinists.
>
> It's really important to understand this to overcome the provincialism of
> specialization which allows people to cover up the ideological determinants
> that govern their invisible colleges, or should I say circle
> jerks.  Heidegger was a very small, small thinker, and it is only the
> bourgeois mentality that elevates his pseudo-profundities to serious
> consideration.  Too bad critical theory in certain hands has just become
> another traditional theory and not critical at all.
>
> But yeah, your summary is pretty decent, so far.
>
> At 11:44 PM 5/9/2003 -0400, Jim Rovira wrote:
> >Any comments would be appreciated as I come to grips with this text...
> >
> >Jim