Summary of Jargon of Authenticity

[Ralph Dumain]

I think the clarification most called for is the original one you demanded:

>Adornos key observation seems to be that through the jargon, the authority of
>the absolute is overthrown by absolutized authority (5). At this point, as at
>many others, it is unclear if Adorno is really developing an argument or 
>simply
>making assertions.  Immediately after making this observation, however, Adorno
>describes fascisms development in a powerful social context supported by
>language, presumably the jargon.  Since absolutized authority in this
>sentence clearly refers to fascism, Adornos critique of existentialism
>ultimately seeks to demonstrate how its jargon of authenticity actually 
>creates
>an atmosphere conducive to and supportive of fascism.

I think I know what Adorno is getting at here with respect to absolute 
authority, but the point should be clarified.  It's important and therefore 
we should guard against misinterpretation.  I take Adorno to contrast the 
new subjectivism with the old absolute idealism.  The metaphysical 
assertions of yore are overthrown--i.e. the authority of the absolute--but 
what replaces them?  A philosophy claiming to represent real being and 
experience over abstraction, but with indefinite reference and 
content.  Adorno then wants to show how the Heideggerian template does not 
promote authentic experience at all, but rather an ideology of power 
against which there is no appeal because there is no determinate 
intellectual content to support or oppose.  Hence there is no ideal order 
to confirm or oppose, but a mere subjective stance, which absolutizes 
authority as a power principle while destroying it as an intellectual 
principle.  And this is just what Nazism did.  The paradox is that Nazism 
was so opportunistic that, apart from its racial theory, it never 
established or accepted any official philosophy!  Neither Heidegger nor his 
rivals  succeeded in getting the Nazis to endorse their philosophies.  If 
Adorno means anything like what I think he does, I would say his 
observation is very profound.

As for Adorno's objection to the authentic self, let's hope this was not 
motivated by the same animus that set him against Fromm.  Either way, 
Adorno is certainly correct to point out how the jargon of authenticity 
serves as an ideological mask, first of all for Heidegger himself, whose 
authenticity ended up as the fuhrerprinzip.  Heidegger was a scumbag 
through and through, and the fact that people like Marcuse or Sartre could 
be taken in to the extent that they were screams volumes about the 
bankruptcy of bourgeois European civilization and its intellectuals.

As for parallels between C.T. and Heidegger, I take it you've read LUKACS 
AND HEIDEGGER by Lucien Goldmann?

At 11:07 AM 5/10/2003 -0400, Jim Rovira wrote:
>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