Goldmann vs Adorno

[James Rovira]

I'm not too sure that Habermas is really "rebelling."  In _Philosophical 
Discourse of Modernity_ he seems to identify H and A's argument in 
_Dialectic of Enlightenment_ with Nietzche's radical critique of reason. 
 Rather than going all the way down Nietzche's road, however, he asserts 
that Adorno maintained that the "performative contradiction" inherent in 
questioning reason even while using it to question reason was the place 
the social critic was supposed to maintain.  Habermas gets a little 
fuzzy to me from this point -- he seems to be saying that there is a 
"way back" out of the radical critique offered by the DE, and that H and 
A were mistaken in their pursuit of a purist notion of reason.  He 
argues that instrumental reason isn't a ubiquitous thing anymore because 
the rise of specialized knowledge has brought with it the rise of 
discreet "logics" that don't all necessarily serve the same purpose, and 
that there's never any such thing as "pure" reason.

It seems to me that these discreet logics still all serve the purposes 
of instrumental reason, and that the idea of "no pure reason" (which 
Habermas claimed Marx accepted uncritically) needs to be developed 
further.  I tend toward the idea that nature reasons through humanity. 
 Nature isn't then just conceptualized, but conceptualizes itself 
through reasoning agents -- as a result, we can reject the idea of a 
"pure reason."  This may violate Adorno's principle of non-identity, but 
not necessarily.  A conceptualization of a thing is still separate from 
the thing itself, even if the thing itself produces the 
conceptualization.  Conceptualization/nature can be understood in terms 
of self-generating dialectic, then.

Jim

matthew piscioneri wrote:

> Ralph,
>
>> Pending a detailed study, I contest the notion that the essence of 
>> what the Frankfurters have to offer is the dialectic of 
>> enlightenment.  I suspect that just the reverse is true, that maybe 
>> this work should be put at the bottom and not at the top.  The fact 
>> that it is most influential arouses my greatest suspicions.  But time 
>> will tell.  If it is Habermas' starting point, so much the better for 
>> Habermas to want to contradict it.  But what are the implications of 
>> being held hostage to the way one was raised even while rebelling 
>> against it?
>
>
> It's just what I take from H. & A. Anyway I am a new optimist (as 
> compared to a post-structuralist). The liberation of Iraq has been a 
> resounding success. Allah bless America.
>
> MattP.
>
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