[FRA:] Adorno & Heidegger (2) [[fwd from 11/4/07]

[Ralph Dumain]

Adorno and Heidegger: Philosophical Questions. Iain Macdonald and 
Krzysztof Ziarek, Editors.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008.

1. Ethics and Authenticity: Conscience and Non-Identity in Heidegger 
and Adorno, with a Glance at Hegel (Iain Macdonald)

Macdonald is also one of the editors framing the book.  In this essay 
he summarizes the ideas of Heidegger--I cannot stomach reading this 
stuff--and connects his ontology to the problem of guilt.  Adorno has 
accused Heidegger of identity thinking, but Macdonald finds 
non-identity in the gap between what Dasein is and ought to be.

"The claim, then, is that the call of non-identity in the call of 
conscience and guilt is an acknowledgement of non-identity, which 
Adorno accuses Heidegger of undialectically suppressing. In fact, I 
think that the non-identity in play in conscience and guilt is fully 
compatible with Adorno's dialectical understanding of non-identity." (15)

Aside from the fact that Heidegger had no conscience, how can anyone 
call this shit philosophy?

There follows an excursis on Heidegger, Hegel, and guilt. (16-7) 
Allegedly, for Hegel as well as Heidegger, guilt is not a 
psychological state that issues from failing to live up to a 
pre-established standard, which doesn't in fact exist, but is 
constitutive of self-consciousness . . . I can't go on.

Adorno's problem, as Macdonald sees it, is italicized in this passage:

"to what extent can Adorno object to Heidegger's alleged identitarian 
ahistoricality by invoking non-identity, without making the immanent 
construal of non-identity a necessary moment of rationality, 
knowledge, and normativity?" (19)

Having to read this sort of thing turned me off to this whole 
enterprise, but let's see what else develops.

2. Truth and Authentication: Heidegger and Adorno in Reverse (Lambert 
Zuidervaart)

Zuidervaart begins with this premise, that truth is not reducible to 
propositional correctness or empirical adequacy, though they are 
indispensable to truth. (22) He then moves on to a possible 
contradiction between truth and Heidegger's disclosedness (23), which 
is especially troublesome for those who believe that truth is indeed 
about propositional correctness ( guess that includes me). (23) But 
maybe recovery is possible.  Z liste Heideggers's criteria for truth (24):

         (1) The discoveredness of entities can be distinguished from 
their being covered up
         (2) The disclosedness of the world and of Dasein can be 
distinguished from their lack of disclosedness
         (3) The authenticity of Dasein's disclosedness can be 
distinguished from the inauthenticity of Dasein's disclosedness
         (4) Dasein's falling prey within its disclosedness can be 
distinguished from Dasein's reclaiming itself from falling prey
         (5) The illusion (Schein) and distortion (Verstellung) into 
which discovered entities sink (relative to Dasein's falling prey) 
can be distinguished from their having been wrested from concealment.

Z doesn't find this to be intolerable, empty mystical obscurantist 
trash as I do.

After discussing authentic disclosedness, Z goes on to criticize 
Heidegger, but first he finds there is something right about reducing 
truth to the "correctness of assertions or the discoveredness of 
entities." (27) I should type out this paragraph, but for the moment 
I'll just say I find it utter bullshit.

For all this, though, Z finds three problems in Heidegger's account 
of authenticity:

         (1) it turns a substantial concept pertaining to actual 
merits into a formal state of being self-related
         (2) it transfigures a historically conditioned and 
destructive rupture in the fabric of modern society (that is, 
'alienation') into an ontological and authenticating encounter with 
one's own finitude.
         (3) it turns a mediated process of disclosure into a denial 
of mediation.

What's wrong with authenticity?  ". . . Heidgger's formalism leaves 
little room for the self's authenticity to be either constituted or 
tested in public." (29) truth cannot be publicly authenticated.

Maybe Hitler can authenticate it?

Z sees Heidegger's "authenticity" as an ontologization of a form of 
alienation characteristic of a particular stage of bourgeois society. 
(31) Therefore, there's no legitimate basis for ethics in H's notion 
of conscience. Z disagrees with Macdonald (see above).  Z lists three 
objections. (31-2) It all comes down to this: ". . . because 
Heidegger's non-identity is a purely formal difference between the 
actual and the possible, it cannot be a source of normativity." (32) 
Heidegger excludes others and society from consideration. 
(35)  Heidegger's "truth" cannot be authenticated. (36)

Now we come to Adorno. Z reviews Adorno's notion of "philosophical 
experience" and "emphatic experience". (37) I have yet to make 
Adorno's "philosophical experience" comprehensible to myself--I don't get it.

In any case, Z finds Adorno's "philosophical experience" also 
incapable of public authentication. (40)

Returning to the notion of truth, Z asserts two conceptions of truth, 
which seem to be, insofar as I can decipher his obscurantist prose, 
to consist of the propositional component of truth and an action 
component--what you do about it. (44) Authentication in this mode 
apparently goes beyond the characteristic notion of authentication in 
western philosophy, with its alleged "logical prejudice", i.e. the 
first dimension of truth.  "Their inherent validity is not a matter 
of other societal principles such as solidarity and justice but 
rather a matter of logic and rhetoric." I regard this as obscurantist 
jibberish.  It sounds like religion, like Jesus saying "I am the truth."

The subsequent chapters get more interesting, but at this point I 
felt as if I had wasted my money. There is something fundamentally 
amiss with all this, but I guess this is where academic incest gets you.

TO BE CONTINUED