[FRA:] Adorno's constellation

[Ralph Dumain]

My description of inwardness was not particularly adroit.  In the chapter 
concerned, it was part of the analysis of the bourgeois interieur, which 
itself seems a stretch to me, in this second-hand account at any rate.

There is quite a bit about Kierkegaard reception in George Cotkin's 
EXISTENTIAL AMERICA, which reveals K's influence as almost entirely 
reactionary.

Anyway, I think what's key here is Adorno's critique of K that is akin to 
his critique of Heidegger, that K can't let real history and real sociology 
intrude into his mystified world view.  And there is K's 
authoritarianism--the irrational submission to the arbitrary divine 
will.  K is essentially anti-bourgeois from the right, though he wasn't a 
disgusting Nazi pig like Heidegger.  Adorno's critique of K continues the 
line of argument he developed in "The Idea of Natural History", wherein he 
argues the vacuity of Heidegger's notion of historicity.

And there is Adorno's ongoing work on Husserl.

Although I've read many descriptions of their differences, I still don't 
have a clear understanding of how Adorno differs from Horkheimer in their 
critique of idealism.  The consensus seems to be:  Horkheimer analyzes the 
reactionary aspects of idealism from an external, ideal standpoint, 
measuring how it fails to live up to its own ideals or understand social 
reality, and finding the remedy for idealism in sociology.  Adorno, on the 
other hand, engages in immanent critique, finds the evidence for the 
influence of bourgeois society in the philosophical texts 
themselves--giving themselves away at unexpected moments--and explodes the 
text from within.  While I have a vague idea of what this means, I don't 
have real fix on it.

Furthermore, I remain perplexed by Adorno's method of constellation, 
inspired by Benjamin but translated into a non-mystical frame of 
reference.  I don't see how this is a method, and one that can be used by 
others.


At 08:56 AM 4/5/2006 -0400, James Rovira wrote:
>Thanks, Ralph, for reminding me of Buck-Morss' book and for your short
>discussion of Adorno on Kierkegaard.  I've been wanting to read A's
>Kierkegaard book and was curious what he had to say -- I see the
>influences of K in Adorno at times in the first essay of _The Culture
>Industry_: A's attacks on false individuality are reminiscent of
>Kierkegaard.
>
>I think A's critique of K as you have presented it here is off the
>mark, but at the same time represents a common reading of Kierkegaard
>during the early years of his dissemination across Europe and the US
>-- a reading that still persists for many people.  K didn't retreat
>into inwardness. K located the universal in inwardness and claimed
>that by it we rejoin the entire human race. Furthermore, he argues in
>Either/Or II that the leap into the ethical stage makes us aware of a
>historically and socially conditioned self that, with this new
>awareness, we begin to take responsibility for.  Those who truly do
>retreat into inwardness K describes as "the demonic" in his _Concept
>of Anxiety_.
>
>Still going to read A's book though, and probably read SBM's summary
>of it first.
>
>Jim R.

_________________

"To say 'we' and mean 'I' is one of the most recondite insults."
          -- Theodor W. Adorno