§ Art • Art and the Promise of Happiness • Poetry after Auschwitz • Imageless images
§ Religion • Judaism • Ban on images and prohibition on naming • Negative Theology • Mysticism
Philosophy and Critical Theory
Restauration ist in der Philosophie so vergeblich wie sonstwo.
Adorno, 1963
Many different books have been written on Adorno by musicologists, sociologists, cultural theorists, and particularly by twentieth century intellectual historians. Some, though surprisingly few, have been written by philosophers. Though Adorno came to be recognised as one of the most important German intellectuals of the last century, he has never been accepted as one of its great philosophers, and is still today a relatively minor figure in the discipline. There are various reasons for this, including the formidable difficulty of his work, the fact that over half his oeuvre consists in musical writings, and that he remained for most of his career outside the German academic establishment. In addition to this, there is Adorno’s lifelong animus against the major traditions of philosophy, combined with an intransigent and virulent hostility towards almost all the main currents of philosophy contemporary to him – neo-Kantianism, phenomenology, existentialism and Vienna School positivism. Adorno's critical theory of society is, at the same time, a self-criticism of philosophy. However, the chief reason Adorno never made the ranks of the great twentieth century philosophers probably stems from the fact that his work consists in a novel and for most philosophers baffling amalgam between music theory, aesthetic theory and philosophy. As we will see later when we discuss Adorno’s philosophical style and ‘method’, just as he has a highly reflective and philosophical approach to music, Adorno has a musical (or at least aesthetic) approach to philosophy. Philosophers schooled in the analytic tradition, who share none of Adorno’s qualms about philosophy and none of his interests, wonder why they should concern themselves with his thought at all. By contrast, anyone who comes to share Adorno's view of philosophy, and many do, for Adorno has a style of writing and thinking that exerts a fascinating hold on his readers, find that it makes the attempt to write a philosophical book on Adorno intrinsically problematic. To write philosophically on Adorno, as he might have said, is both a requirement and an impossibility. Quite a number of his interpreters respond to this difficulty by emulating Adorno’s style and repeating his formulations, with the result that everything that is difficult to understand in Adorno’s work is equally difficult to grasp in the interpretation of it. This is a mistake. To be true to the spirit of Adorno’s writings one has to find one’s own way into his ideas, and one’s own way out of them, to think them through for oneself. For someone like me who is interested in Adorno, but who does not share his view of what philosophy is, there is no particular problem. To write a philosophical book about Adorno is just to interpret his ideas with charity and sensitivity, with the aim of making sense of them, but to temper this aim with a willingness to argue with him and where necessary against him. The danger in writing a philosophical interpretation of Adorno, for someone who has a different understanding of philosophy, and who disagrees with many of his ideas, is that one risks treating the questions Adorno addresses in his work as if they were a timeless philosophical problems free from intellectual, social and historical context. This is perhaps not such a danger for intellectual historians. The corresponding danger for them is rather that, by focusing on the questions Adorno asked and on the answers he gave, they risk turning critical theory into an intellectual heritage site, drained of any contemporary relevance. I hope to steer between these two dangers, to avoid snagging on the first by being historically sensitive both to the situation in which Adorno was writing, and to the different situation in which his work is now being interpreted and written about; and to avoid snagging on the second by being willing to contest the questions he raises and the answers he offers.
Just in case anyone out there is interested, here is a synopsis of my new book on Adorno, which I am aiming to finish by Christmas. Now where I have I heard that it will be over by Christmas before?
Atopia, Critique and Resistance:
Adorno’s Social, Moral and Political thought
§ Introduction
* Philosophy and Critical Theory * Adorno’s Atopianism
§ Truth
* Negativism * Ban on images and prohibition on naming * Non-identity
Just received my expected pfo from J Phil after sending them an article for consideration nearly 5 months ago. Zip comments because the pfo came before 6 months was out. No reasons given either. Only this:
"There are, of course, many possible reasons for such rejections, not all having to do with the intrinsic quality of the article. Unfortunately, because of the large number of manuscripts received, combined with the pressure of other work, the editors find it impossible to detail these reasons in each case; they trust that you will understand."
What I fail to understand is why it should take 5 almost months to reject it without reasons. If you don't have to offer reasonsit should not take that long.
Mind you, Phil Review gave me a pfo with nil comments after nearly 8 months for a different article. When I complained, pointing out that they say they usually reply within 3 months, the editor sent me an apologetic note. I would have preferred some comments. I doubt I'll be submitting anything to Phil Review or J Phil again any time soon.I'll try my luck with Ethics, Mind and PPR.
By contrast I've had excellent responses from Ethics, Journal of Political Philosophy, European Journal of Philosophy, Inquiry, and most recently from Review of Politics.
Does someone collate the actual response times of these journals, rather than the advertised response times?
Gordon Finlayson
Last update: 08-09-2009 17:00
Forthcoming Edited Collection on Habermas and Rawls
Finally Fabian and I have signed a contract for Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political. It has been a long road. Publishers don't want to know about collections of essays. As Raymond Geuss told me they will try to get away with publishing as few as they can decently get away with publishing. Any hint of a lukewarm remark in a reader's report is likely to put them off. Remember that if and when you write a reader's report for a proposal. There is always something that can be criticised in a proposal, but doing so may well scupper it.
Some publishers now want a non refundabe subvention of $9000 lest they lose money. Others are only interested if all the same old big names are in the book. The same familiar roster of stars that everyone knows about. Above all, no new voices. Finally, many publishers - I've heard this more than once - say that the book won't sell in the US unless a majority of US academics be among the contributors. Strange eh. A Friend of mine Henry Pickford, had a proposed volume with Cornell sunk because it did not contain a piece by a particular author - a rising star in the field, apparently. For similar reasons, I guess, British Films always have to have American stars in them. I never thought academic publishing would be so like the film industry.
Still, it'll be a good volume. Here is a quick preview.
Disputing the Political: Habermas and Rawls
Contents
(1) a substantial introduction; (2) reproduction of the contributions by Rawls and Habermas to the original dispute; (3) chapters evaluating the original dispute, or on substantive issues relevant to the debate (4) an afterword by Habermas; (5) a select topic by topic bibliography and index.
4. Overview of the Volume and List of Contributors
Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political
I: Editors’ Introduction:
The pre-history of the dispute. The actual dispute. Post-dispute developments. Contents of the volume.
II: The Original Dispute
Ch. 1 ‘Reconciliation through the Public Reason: Remarks on John Rawls’s Political Liberalism.’ Jürgen Habermas.
Ch. 2 ‘Reply to Habermas.’ John Rawls†.
Ch. 3 ‘Reasonable versus True: or the Morality of World Views.’ Jürgen Habermas.
III: Disputing the Political
Ch. 4 ‘Habermas and Rawls on Collective Reasoning.’ Chris McMahon, (University of California, Santa Barbara).
Ch. 5 ‘Justice: Transcendental not Metaphysical. What Habermas should have said to Rawls.’ Joseph Heath, (University of Toronto, Canada).
Ch. 6 ‘The Justification of Justice.’ Rainer Forst, (University of Frankfurt).
Ch. 7. ‘The Idea of Social Criticism in Habermas and Rawls.’ Andrea Sangiovanni (King's College London).
Ch. 8. ‘Habermas and Rawls on Human Rights.’ Jeff Flynn (Fordham).
Ch. 9 ‘Procedural versus substantive conceptions of justice.’ Cristina Lafont (Northwestern University)
Ch. 10 ‘Democracy and Public Reasons.’ Anthony Simon Laden (University of Illinois at Chicago).
Ch. 11. ‘Habermas and Rawls on Religion.’ Catherine Audard (London School of Economics). Ch. 12 ‘Habermas and Rawls on International Justice.’ Jim Bohman (St. Louis).
IV: Afterword. Jürgen Habermas
V: Select Bibliography and Index.
Last update: 01-09-2009 20:39
The Work of Art and the Promise of Happiness in Adorno
Written by James Gordon Finlayson
Sunday, 26 July 2009 23:22
Draft version - without references. See the full version in the Journal World Picture 3
I. One of the most striking and intriguing theses of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory is that art is the promise of happiness.
Stendhal's dictum about the promesse du bonheur says that art thanks existence by accentuating what in existence prefigures utopia. This is a diminishing resource, since existence increasingly mirrors only itself. Consequently art is ever less able to mirror existence. Because any happiness that one might take from or find in what exists is false, a mere substitute, art has to break its promise in order to keep it.
Nothing about this dictum is self-evident, not least its attribution to Stendhal, who wrote not that art is the promise of happiness, but that ‘beauty is but the promise of happiness’ (la beauté n'est que la promesse du bonheur). Stendhal’s saying about beauty occurs in a footnote to a passage in De l' amour in which he states that it is possible to love the ugly. He illustrates the point with an anecdote about a man who, in the presence of two women, one beautiful and the other thin, ugly and scarred with smallpox, falls for the latter, who quite by chance reminds him of a former love. The moral of the story is that beauty has little or nothing to do with physical perfection. Stendhal’s definition of beauty, and his thought that the idea of beauty lies far from nature and from the physical form of the object of desire, impressed Baudelaire. He comments in Le Peintre de La Vie Moderne that, although it “submits the beautiful too much to the infinitely variable ideal of happiness and divests the beautiful too quickly of its aristocratic character” Stendhal’s idea nonetheless has the considerable merit of “breaking decisively with the mistakes of the academicians.” The mistakes which Baudelaire refers to are presumably those of taking nature as the ideal of beauty, and of having a misguided moral conception of nature. Baudelaire, under Stendhal’s influence, works up a theory of the beautiful, a theory reminiscent of Platonism.
The beautiful is made of an eternal, immutable element the quantity of which is excessively difficult to determine, and of a relative and circumstantial element which will be in turn or at once, the era, the fashion, morality or passion. Without this second element...the first element would be indigestible, inappreciable, maladapted and inappropriate to human nature...Consider, if you please, the eternally substantial element as the soul, and the variable element as its body.
The main lesson Baudelaire takes from Stendhal is that the beautiful is a form or idea that can and must take on a myriad historical forms, just as the lure of happiness can entice the flâneur into a thousand different alleys and arcades. Adorno’s dictum that art is a promesse du bonheur, then, though it draws on Stendhal and Baudelaire, is in an important sense his own work. The dictum is a recurrent motif, suggesting not just that Adorno is fond of it, but that it is also a central thought in his work. At least we can regard it as central, provided that we disregard Adorno's programmatic claim that in philosophical texts all propositions should stand equally close to the centre. This startling prescription does not apply even to his own work: some propositions stand much closer to its center than others. The thesis that art is a promise of happiness is one of them and it radiates out in different directions. To understand it properly, is to understand something important not just about Adorno’s philosophy of art, but also about his wider social and political theory, and finally about the close and fraught interrelation between these, an interrelation which is thematised in a significant passage from the opening of Aesthetic Theory.
Art is not only the plenipotentiary of a better praxis than that which has to date predominated, but is equally the critique of praxis as the rule of brutal self-preservation at the heart of the status quo and in its service. It gives the lie to production for production's sake and opts for a form of praxis beyond the spell of labour. Art's promesse du bonheur means not only that hitherto praxis has blocked happiness, but that happiness is beyond praxis. The force of negativity in the artwork gives the measure of the chasm separating praxis from happiness.
Here Adorno unambiguously sets forth the social and critical role of art: the happiness it promises serves both as a foil for criticising existing society, and as an ideal for constructing a better one. Yet the passage raises a whole cluster of questions. What notion of happiness is in play? What is it to promise happiness? In virtue of what features can art promise happiness?
