In search of a philosophy of praxis in Adorno's negative dialectics

By Terje Steinulfsson Skjerdal, Centre for Cultural and Media Studies, University of Natal, Durban, South Africa, 1997

Abstract
This paper evaluates Theodor Adorno's work in light of Karl Marx's preference to expand ideology beyond the mere theoretical framework. Particular attention is paid to Adorno's "Dialectic of Enlightenment", which he authored with Max Horkheimer. The concepts of culture and modernity are most important in this matter. The conclusion remains that Adorno diverges significantly from Marx, both in his interpretation of modernity and his proposed possibilities for change.

Content

Framework: philosophy as a vehicle for change Adorno's interpretation of modern culture: pessimism in its fullest extent Adorno vs. Marx: a troubled relationship Adorno and the possibility of change: logically inconceivable

Framework: philosophy as a vehicle for change

In introducing the expression the philosophy of praxis, Antonio Gramsci (1971) captured well the intention of Karl Marxs philosophical project, namely, to bring about a philosophy that was not merely a philosophy per se, but also a philosophy that actually sought to change the world for the better. To investigate whether Marx succeeded in his project is not at stake here. Rather, we will look into the thoughts of Theodor W. Adorno, whose aim was in part to advance the Marxian project to an application of contemporary culture. Our argument is twofold: Firstly, that the works of Adorno must be read as an imperative cry for change; secondly, that Adornos concern nonetheless was more that of a pessimistic interpretation than that of an optimistic action. The observant reader will notice that we fail to answer to what extent the thoughts of Adorno actually has led to change of any kind. The objection is sound. We will namely to no degree claim to prove the link between theory and practice. On the contrary, it is our proposition that such a link can hardly be established at all on the explanatory level. In investigating Adornos thoughts which is a more appropriate word than philosophy since Adorno probably nowhere claimes to give birth to a new philosophy departed from all previous [1] we will look at his view of culture and modernity, and his relationship to Marx. Culture and modernity will not be dealt with separately, since they overlap, at least when it comes to understanding contemporary society. Culture is the manifold expression of human activity in a given group or groups of people. It involves manners of production as well as ways of exchanging ideas. Modernity, then, is the general depiction of Western society and

culture subsequent to the advent of advanced production methods and after the increase in mass communication, usually specified to the eighteenth century and onwards. It is reasonable that Adorno would agree on these general definitions; we see no need to elaborate on them further. An underlying framework of this paper is the role of change in philosophy, or the relationship between theory and practice. This approach may very well provide a relatively exhaustive method to look at a certain philosophy, yet it also leaves behind some blind spots. The reader should be aware of this shortcoming. To read this paper as a comprehensive comparison between Adorno and Marx is wrong and unfruitful.

Adornos interpretation of modern culture: pessimism in its fullest extent

Adornos view of modern culture was pessimistic from A to Z. He saw the progress of enlightenment as a calamity to mankind, not only on the outward, mechanic level, but on the inward, intuitive level as well. This is the blunt way to summarize Adornos interpretation of modernity. The sophisticated way is not as simplistic since it will have to take into consideration various presuppositions and explanations, but it remains just as pessimistic. The main source to Adornos interpretation of modernity is Dialectic of Enlightenment (1979 [1947]), which he composed together with Max Horkheimer during the Frankfurt schools American exile. The significance of the work lies in its demand that all parts of modern culture is unconsciously penetrated by the self-destruction of the Enlightenment (p. xiii). Adorno did not tone down these thoughts later in his academic writings; rather, he reinforced them. In The schema of mass culture (1991), he paid particular attention to the collapse of the difference between culture and practical life (Bernstein, 1991) [2]. In Culture industry reconsidered (1991), he repeated that the total effect of the culture industry is one of antienlightenment (p. 92) [3]. Hence, we may utilize Saussurean terms and in the name of Adorno doom the signified enlightenment ironic and false since the signifier (the enlightenment era) actually does not at all signify true information or freedom from deception [4]. The same irony appears in the title The culture industry: enlightenment as mass deception, a significant chapter on modernity in Dialectic of Enlightenment. Therein lies the very core of Adorno and Horkheimers argument. The modern man should, according to Adorno (1979), be viewed as having a fallen nature (p. xiv). This fallen nature appeared through all of modern culture: in the means of production, in mans thought, in societys superstructure, in the trace of history. Enlightenment rendered no room for reason in its redeeming sense. A substantial part of Adornos critical theory was built on his notion of the culture industry, which he claimed to be a preferred term over mass culture since the latter falsely implies a culture that arises spontaneously from the masses themselves, the contemporary form of popular art (Adorno, 1991, p. 85). Adorno claimed that the whole and the parts of the modern world have no choice but to conform to the culture industry: The whole world is made to pass through the filter of the culture industry (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1979, p. 126). Thus, monopoly and sameness contained to Adorno some important features of the culture industry. Adorno claimed that what enlightenment was expected to bring about, pluralism and demythologization, turned out to be the contrary. Man is subject to conformity rather than

choice, and myth is still a predominant guiding force, though it has taken on a different costume than previous ages all-absorbing Christianity. The important, underlying assumption that Adorno makes here is that all these things take place on the unconsicous level. Man thinks he is free, but he is not. Freedom to choose an ideology since ideology always reflects economic coercion everywhere proves to be freedom to choose what is always the same (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1979, pp. 166167). If someone wants to object to the preset order of the culture industry, the only way is through realistic dissidence, which is in reality not a threat to the industry but rather a reinforcement (p. 132). The cultural chaos of enlightenment was to Adorno and Horkheimer a result of the power of capitalism. Their ideas in this respect clearly owe a great deal to Marx. Culture was not any more a product of mans creative mind, but of the standardized, uniform mechanisms put forth by large intenational financial conerns. The result was the circle of manipulation and a society alienated from itself (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1979, p. 121). The motive of the culture industry is questioned in a number of Adornos writings, and the assumption remains that the industry is interested in people merely as costumers people become objects and surrender to the overall driving force of capitalism. One last important characteristic of Adornos view of modernity and culture is his thorough disbelief in progress. The trajectory of modern history is unequivocally making its way to the worse. What gave rise to a certain protest against the establishment from Romanticism to Expressionism, is no longer appreciated or acknowledged. A keen art critic, Adorno gave several examples to prove his point in this regard. Broad attention was given to the field of music, where jazz in particular became the materialized representation of how enlightenment deteriorates [5]. We are then left with three characteristics which summarize Adornos view of modernity: a mankind with a collectively corrupted mind, an industry with exploitative motives, and a history with a collapsing progress. The natural way to read Adorno in these matters is that he was careful to provide a thorough interpretation of modern culture and all its shortcomings. The next step would then be to look for proposals for change, be it on the theoretical or the practical level. But Adorno never got there. He was stuck in his pessimistic interpretations, his subjectivist explanations, his anti-revolutionary nihilism. Before elaborating this point, we will turn to Adornos relationship to classical Marxism.

Adorno vs. Marx: a troubled relationship

The Frankfurt Institute of Social Research is usually seen as a proponent of neo-Marxism. In this lies that the members of the Institute advocated a Marxism which had undergone some seemingly necessary changes since Marx was on the scene. A further progress of the means of production had resulted in people becoming more dependent on the mass society, and two world wars had led to a distrust in the ability of the masses to overthrow regimes. In Adornos case, Marxs methodological tool was attempted reincarnated in negative dialectics, a theorized model which sought to explain how opposing social forces produce change (Adorno, 1973) [6]. We should already at this stage note that most commentators apparently find it very difficult to compare the negative dialectics of Adorno (which perhaps might be denounced anti-dialectical) with the dialectics of Marx. One is tempted to believe that Adorno often is viewed as having placed himself close to the outer edge of what can be called the Marxist tradition. But before investigating Adornos departure from classical Marxism, we will acknowledge some common factors between the two theories at stake.

Adornos ever-present condemnation (implicit or explicit) of capitalism as the driving force in a society on its way towards increased suppression was certainly in line with traditional Marxist thought. It is here enough to refer to Dialectic of Enlightenment (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1979): Whereas today in material production the mechanism of supply and demand is disintegrating, in the superstructure it still operates as a check in the rulers favor (p. 133). Adding to the similarities between Adorno and Marx, we immediately recognize two traditional Marxist concepts, superstructure and ruler. Throughout Adornos works it is clear that he adopted a certain Marxist terminology, especially when it came to explaining the relationship between the means of production and owners/subordinates. Steven Best and Douglas Kellner (1991) note that the critical theorists Adorno included employed Marxist categories such as commodification, exchange, reification, and fetishism to analyse social phenomena and to describe new forms of capitalist domination. Socioeconomic factors was also used by Adorno to explain the emergence of Nazism, as argued by Deborah Cook (1995). Thus Adorno and the rest of the Frankfurt school brought further Marxs interpretation of society to give it a 20th century validity. In so doing, they utilized a significant feature of Marx: contextualization. By this we mean the preference to explain incidents with regard to their historical and social context. In their critique of modernity, Adorno and Horkheimer (1979) accused the ruling class of putting the historical context in a dim light: the official apologists who have other concerns liquidate the history that helped them to their place in the sun, before it can prostitute itself (p. xii). They here seem to be concordant with a major concern of traditional Marxism. Nevertheless, Adorno has been widely accused of treating history too superficially (Mszros, 1989). Notably still, Adorno was highly critical of the structuralist view of society for its indifference to historical theory, as pointed out by Alfred Schmidt (1983). Also supporting Adornos connection with some branches of Marxist thought not all is his critical view of enlightenment reason and industrial progression. Adorno was in this regard more critical than most other members of the Frankfurt school, and certainly more critical than the master of the Schools second generation, Jrgen Habermas. Adorno maintained that social reality turns into irrationality, and that enlightenment reason becomes totalitarian, whereas Habermas (1987) claimed that reason is in actuality the tool that can overthrow the suppressive forces of the modern world. The critical approach to modernity remains however viable, and is indeed the feature that gave the critial theory its name. The last but probably most noteworthy link between Adorno and Marx we will mention here, is their use of dialectic, as already observed. Dialectic is a way of explaining the development of society through a series of theses and antitheses, derived from Hegel and complicated by Marx. Adorno accepted Marxian dialectic as a proper tool to diagnose modern age, as noted by Mszros (1989) and Best & Kellner (1991). There seems to be agreement among most commentators, however, that Adornos use of classic dialectical materialism was limited to the level of analysis (thus neglecting a theory/praxis dialectic). Adornos most significant departure from Marx, then, appears in his distinct use of dialectic. He developed his own dialectical method, negative dialectics, which might be seen as a flattening out of the dialectical analysis in classical Marxism (Best & Kellner, 1991, p. 220). Ben Agger (1977) argues convincingly that Adornos dialectic was defused and bent away from the social totality (p. 27). And further: Dialectic no longer reveals the unfulfilled purpose of things, but instead simply mirrors a negative dialectic of society which successfully reconciles all social contradictions (p. 27). Others, such as Rdiger Bubner

(1983), have pointed to problems of developing a methodology on the grounds of Adornos negative dialectics. To this we might add that a main outcome of negative dialectics is exactly the rejection of a methodology applicable to all conditions of modern society. Hence, a main theme of Adornos approach to dialectical analysis is his critique of the very premises of Hegelian Marxism (this is further elaborated by for instance Martin Jay (1984b)). [7] With reference to Dialectic of Enlightenment, we may point to another particular yet significant difference between Adorno and Marx: the universality of the exchange principle. Marx restricted the use of the term to capitalism only, whereas Adorno applied it to a property of the entire enlightenment era (Jay, 1984b). This observation becomes significant in that it explains to a certain degree why Adorno had to condemn progress so extensively not merely with respect to the emergence of the recent capitalist movement. Perry Anderson (1976) supports this interpretation of Adorno when contrasting the classical Marxist view of the progressive march of history with Adornos negative interrogation. For Adorno, mans increased control over nature brought no necessary progress in human emancipation (p. 81). Adornos deviation from Marx can also be seen in the lack of a coherent Marixst terminology. We have already pointed out that Adorno to a certain extent inherited Marxist concepts to interpret the trajectory of modern society; however, the absence of such concepts is all the more striking, particularly when it comes to the phase beyond mere interpretation of society. Mszros (1989) observes that Adorno avoided the category of a combative/emancipatory social class and the idea of non-repressive but reciprocal-commitment-demanding collectivity (p. 99). Mszros goes on to show that Adorno had to exchange classical Marxist words capitalism and classes with modernity and masses, arguably resulting in Adorno [emptying the words of their] critical content (p. 101). The support of such an interpretation of Adorno on the base of Dialectic of Enlightenment is obvious. It is easy here to argue that Adorno subsequently had to find substitues for central concepts in the Marxian dialectic of base and superstructure. Several critics report that Adorno is in line with the rest of the Frankfurt Institute when departing from classical Marxism. Jay (1984a) argues that the Institute underwent substantial changes from its inter-war traditional Marxist orientation to its post-war critical orientation. The belief in classical Marxist utopia became less predominant. This shift in orientation was certainly not in concordance with contemporary Russian revolutionary democrats, as noted by Mszros (1989). Moreover, Anderson (1988) contends that the relationship between Western Marxism and the workers movement had become dislocated. [8] In summary then, we understand that Adornos relationship with Marx was troubled: On the one hand, Adorno accepted the classical Marxist way of analysing society in terms of how certain strata exercise domination upon other; on the other hand, he deviated from Marx in his failure to use dialectic as a method to propose ways to change.

Adorno and the notion of change: logically inconceivable

The main concern of this paper is to trace the notion of change in Adornos thought. We are now ready to make some critical comments on this matter. Adornos analysis suggested that the historical process had expelled freedom while the hegemony of instrumental reason threatened subjectivity. Thus the goal of critical thinking was for him to project freedom in a new and redemptive form. Adornos problem was that he never successfully achieved this

goal, as we will now argue. We will first list the major presuppositions that inevitably resulted in his pessimism, and then critically assess his overall theory. Logically, Adornos schema of modernity could not render any possibility for revolutionary change in the classical Marxist sense. Marxs dialectical method was in its final stage highly dependent on the willingness of the masses (in Marxian terminology: workers) to overthrow the ruling class. In Adornos view, the masses were absolutely incapable of triggering the gun since their thoughts were corrupted to pass through the filter of the culture industry (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1979, p. 126). Moreover, reason, which was both to Marx and Adorno a pivotal factor to any true revolutionary movement, was in Adornos opinion equally deteriorated and had lost its ability to equip people with a critical mindset. It is therefore no surprise that revolution, not to mention a grassroot revolution, became absurd to Adorno. Adornos anti-Marxian theory of change can also be partly explained through a query of his philosophical aim. In classical Marxism, the aim was to develop a philosophy that linked theory and practice in order that the suppressed masses ultimately could reach a stage where individual freedom and equality were predominant. The end goal became the starting-point of classical Marxism, so to speak. Adornos starting-point was quite the other. He began with the diagnosis and defined the goal in the second place (which in fact led him to never defining a clear goal). A discussion on these premises cannot leave out Adornos extraordinary view of the relationship between theory and practice. It is nothing but highly reasonable to seek for practical applications when reading Marxist theorists. The absence of a practical significance in Adornos works is thus all the more striking. He did address the question apparently after facing criticisms and contended that theory is a form of practice (cited in Anderson, 1976, p. 73). Although an interesting and witty way to look at theory, the argument behind this wellknown quote of Adornos is not convincing since he certainly supported the traditional view of theory and practice as separable. On the one hand, he sought to justify theory as a form of practice; on the other hand, he thereby paradoxically saw practice as more valuable than theory [9]. In Negative Dialectics (1973), Adorno argued for a higher utility of theory, warning that the call for unity of theory and practice has irresistibly degraded theory to a servants role (p. 143). Reading Negative Dialectics in the light of this argument gives understanding to some of Adornos non-participatory approach. According to Anderson (1976), the vague link between theory and practice became a characteristic of the entire post-war Western Marxism movement. As indicated earlier, the second generation of the Frankfurt school, notably Habermas, opposed to the extreme theoretical approach and called for a reunion of theory and practice (Holub, 1991). Some commentators, like Jay (1984b), note that also Adorno called for a certain unification of the two, but criticize him for not being able to specify the link between his anti-intentionalist hermeneutics and concrete praxis (p. 258). The overall observation when confronting the Frankfurt school is that theory had to give up the endeavour to change the world by transforming itself into practice. In Tony Bennetts words, theorys purpose was not to change the world but to oppose to the world its powers of negation, to refuse to confer on it a Hegelian consecration of the rationality of its reality (1982, p. 46). Adornos development of a dialectical method which departed from traditional dialectical materialism is truly also a product of his disbelief in social change through revolution. In Negative Dialectics (Adorno, 1973) to participate is a surrender to established societal norms.

In line with this, Adorno wrote: ... being consumed, swallowed up, is indeed just what I understand as participation which is so totally characteristic for the new anthropological type the lack of curiousity (cited in Buck-Morss, 1977, p. 189). Buck-Morss (1977) argues that negative dialectics in turn abrogated political utility and became an end in itself. Consequently, Adorno never took on a political career himself, nor did he wish to do so. It could be argued that the German student movements of the 1960s was a spin-off of the critical approach to sociology, yet the students later came to reject Critical Theory. Rolf Wiggershaus (1994) explains their rejection of the theory precisely as a result of its sheer unworkability. The students realized indeed not in disagreement with Adorno that Critical Theory did not contain any implications for immediate revolutionary change. We stated in the introduction that a satisfactory link between theory and practice can hardly be established at all. By this we do not point to Humes dilemma which questions every theoretical explanation of cause and effect, but rather to the problem of how to explain that one particular incident in society leads to another. An ideology or a theory may very well be of absolute necessity for an incident to occur, but to trace the link between the two causes difficulties. It is therefore rather easy to cite a theorys agenda for how societal change can be enforced, but it is more difficult to prove that the proposed change actually takes place because of the theory. Should such a proof be satisfactory, it would have to take into account the whole complexity of human and technical interactions, be it on individual, community, national, or international level. The implication here is that Adornos dialectical theory may lead to substantial changes in society, regardless of anyones ability to trace the source. Since change can take place in the form of action as well as reaction, we may even conceive a situation where Marxs praxis-oriented theory leads to stability whereas Adornos standstilloriented theory leads to change. With this argument in mind, it is interesting to observe that several critics maintain that Adorno has no political significance in contemporary world. The argument is usually built on the presupposition that prosperous politics is more concernced with action than with thought. Wiggershaus (1994) contends that the young generation of critical theorists, vastly oriented towards social action, says much about Adorno's political significance by remaining almost silent about it. This, again, stems from Adornos inability to draw practical conclusions from his theories. In our eagerness to exploit the situation of interpreting a man who is unable to protest, we have stripped Theodor W. Adorno of all practical significances. To slightly rectify this disproportionate view, we will present Adornos own answer to the issue at stake. He did in fact address the question of practicality in one of his late essays, Resignation (1991). The title Resignation refers to others critique against the Frankfurt school, namely that the older members had failed to draw practical consequences from their theories and subsequently resigned. Adorno replies that this is not a correct understanding of the situation. On the contary, he accuses the practically-oriented advocates to be more easily objects of repression. It is in this regard noteworthy that Adorno refers to the fatal outcome of Russian communism as an example of how easily the subordination of theory to praxis results in the support of renewed repression (p. 172). He goes on to claim that peoples reluctance to accept thoughts per se is founded in fear. His further argument has clear relevance to his view of the culture industry and the deterioriation of society as a whole: The consolation that thought within the context of collective action is an improvement proves deceptive: thinking, employed only as the instrument of action, is blunted in the same manner as all instrumental reason (p. 174).

Action, then, has the negative potential of becoming dangerous in the hands of the masses (a notion which so strikingly deviates from classical Marxist thought where the masses bear the potential of revolution). The significance of the essay Resignation lies not in the fact that Adorno was aware of the criticism of his alleged hostility towards practical utility, but that he defended his nonparticipatory approach so broadly. Interpretation of the world was Adornos concern. His willingness to change the world through participation was absent, and contrasted him significantly with Marxs philosophy of praxis. The only way to reconcile the two in this regard is to accept Jean-Paul Sartres words: Every philosophy is practical, even the one which at first appears to be the most contemplative. Its method is a social and political weapon (cited in Mszros, 1989, p. 175). But we disagree with this theorized view of the role of praxis in philosophy.

Notes
1. Indeed, Buck-Morss (1977) contends that there is something false about speaking about Adornos theories. Her argument is that Adorno never developed any full theory at all, just as he had no concept of history (p. 185). 2. The Schema of Mass Culture (Adorno, 1991) contributes greatly to the debate of Adorno as an alleged forerunner of postmodern ideas. The subject is thoroughly discussed by Best and Kellner (1991), who contend that Adorno was much closer to postmodern ideas than the other members of the Frankfurt school. Unfortunately, it seems that The Schema of Mass Culture was yet not available in English when Best and Kellner wrote their book. 3. Horkheimer, however, apparently modified his opinion on some of the viewpoints expressed in Dialectic of Enlightenment (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1979). According to Mszros, Horkheimer asked the publisher to depart from the original text when the book was to be published in Italian (Mszros, 1989). 4. Lenhardt (1977) correctly but simplified points out that Dialectic of Enlightenment (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1979) is about enlightenment in general rather than the philosophical tradition which is named the Enlightenment. However, it becomes clear throughout Adorno and Horkheimers book that they use the two concepts somewhat interchangeably (yet with much more stress on the enlightenment era). The reader should therefore be careful not to build a critique solely on their use of these concepts. 5. Several commentators criticize Adornos use of music as a type of modern cultures conformity. Mszros (1989) contends in this respect that Adornos arbitrary statements were substantiated by nothing but equally arbitrary analogies (p. 93). Pointing to Adornos extensive criticism of jazz, Mszros (1989) deflates the very argument by proving that Adorno did not mention one single work of jazz in his reasoning. 6. To do justice to Adorno, we ought to add that he did not look at his negative dialectics as merely an extension of Marxs thoughts. Adorno presented his own, distinct ideas, but he nevertheless claimed his Marxian heritage in several ways. It is here fruitful to look at the dialectical method proposed in Negative Dialectics (Adorno, 1973) as the conclusion of

Adornos search for a contemporary Marxist philosophy. An almost equally important source to Adornos dialectical method is Aesthetic Theory (Adorno, 1984), though less organized than Negative dialectics (indeed, Mszros (1989) claims that reading Aesthetic Theory is a directionless exhausting journey (p. 129)). 7. An interesting discussion, which will not be addressed in this paper, but nevertheless shows the widely criticized ambiguity of Adornos theories, is his dual attitude towards the notion of reification in traditional Hegelian-Marxian dialectic. On the one hand, as Jay (1984b) notifies, Adorno relied to a large extent on reification (linked with terms such as fethishism, myth and second nature). On the other hand, as Buck-Morss (1977) so extensively shows, Adorno abandoned the importance of reification in his Negative Dialectics (1973). The search for consistency in Adornos writings is therefore not an unproblematic one. 8. Several critics have also blamed Adorno for a Freudian misreading of Marx's theory of alienation. See Patterson (1975) and Cook (1995). This critique adds to the differences between Adorno and Marx, but we choose not to discuss the matter in this paper. 9. Adornos divorce of theory and practice is explained by Bronner (1997) as partly a result of the tragic rise of destructive movements during the inter-war period. This explanation seems plausible; however, it fails to take into consideration that ideological constraints have led to constructive movements as well, and that Adorno throughout his life increasingly took a nonparticipatory stance regardless of the successful defeat of Fascism after the Second World War.

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