ON STUPIDITY

Stupidity as a re-occurring problem Minima Moralia

In Minimal Moralia, Adorno refers to stupidity Dummheit a number of times.
People act stupidly and Adorno takes great care to record and analyse their activities.
The text is densely populated with stupid people doing stupid things: men and
women, intellectuals and scientists, writers and artists. So, for instance, Hitler is
stupid or at least this is what the little folk claim
1
. Germany could have won the
war that it no do so, was due to the stupidity of its leaders. Adorno devotes section
69 to the analysis of this assertion. Equally stupid is the German migr, who
declares in section 34, For me, Adolf Hitler is a pathological case
2
. Though in this
instance, his appraisal of Hitler might be correct and indeed be confirmed by clinical
findings, its truth only highlights the powerlessness of the one who utters it.
Stupid is the man, who seeks errors in the thought of the most intelligent
3
.
Stupid is also the liar especially the liar of section 9, who in his subtlety fails to lie
well enough
4
. Stupid is the writer who listens to common sense and prudence
5
. Even
Adorno succumbs to the spell of stupidity. Every visit to the cinema leaves him
against all vigilance stupider and worse
6
. It seems that no matter where he looks,
Adorno is bound to find stupidity lurking around the corner.
But it is not various instances of stupidity that I wish to engage with, whether
this is Hitlers or Adornos as the case may be. Instead, for the purpose of this series,
I would like to limit my discussion to those two sections section 79, Intellectus
sacrificium intellectus and section 127, Wishful thinking. In both of these sections
Adorno links the idea of stupidity with that of intelligence. In section 79, stupidity
arrives with the eradication of desire from thought; in section 127, stupidity arises
when the fundamental severance between feeling and understanding is not
1
Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia, E.F.N.Jephcott (trans.) Verso 2005, p. 105
2
Ibid. p. 56
3
Ibid. p. 50
4
Ibid. p. 30
5
Ibid. p. 86
6
Ibid. p. 25
1
acknowledged. I wish to look at his arguments more closely because it is through this
link that Adorno explains why ours is an inherently stupid world why he finds
stupidity around every corner.
In my paper I will give a brief outline of Adornos arguments, as presented in
Minima Moralia. Effectively, I will produce a close reading of the two passages
section 79 and 127 respectively. To supplement my reading, I will also refer to
passages from Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit (1807). Central to my analysis will be
a rather problematic claim. I will argue that in these sections Adorno presents both
intelligence and stupidity as essentially the same. The stupidity of section 79 is
indistinguishable from reason; in section 127, the will to withstand that constitutes
intelligent thought is inseparable from the stubbornness that characterises the narrow-
minded.
I will also examine how Adorno accords both stupidity and intelligence a
similar forceful nature. At stake in this discussion of thought is the role of Trieb,
translated variously as urge, instinct, impulse or drive but which can perhaps be
best understood as a kind of motivating force. Adorno sees this motivating force to
be as much responsible for the development of intelligence as it is for the
development of stupidity. I will show how, for Adorno, stupidity and intelligence are
merely different outcomes of one and the same drive.
Finally, I will explain how Adorno accounts for these differences in outcome.
I have suggested that Adornos world is a fundamentally stupid one that stupidity is
all-pervasive. Certainly Adorno lists far fewer instances of intelligence. By referring
to the closing sections of Adorno and Horkheimers Dialectic of Enlightenment
(1944) and to Nietzsches Beyond Good and Evil (1886) I will show why this is the
case. Using Adornos two examples of the snail that feels its way and the child that
questions I will show how in the play of forces, stupidity tends to have the upper
hand. I will show why, stupidity, has become absolute
7
.
7
Ibid. p.100
2
Intellectus sacrificium intellectus
In this particular section of Minima Moralia, Adorno addresses a certain widespread
tendency of thought, as much present in assumptions we are all prone to make as in
the specific activities of science. Adorno suggests that all contemporary thought
inclines towards a kind of purity: it tends towards a very pure kind of reason. We all
tend to assume that thought somehow profits from the decay of emotions; the utterly
pure reason of the scientist is measured against the ideal of datum freed of any
categories
8
. However, far from supporting these shared assumptions, Adorno is
highly critical of any instance of purity of what he refers to as the absolute
tautology of thought
9
. For Adorno, it is precisely within the tautological gesture that
intellect is sacrificed. In a play on the Jesuit maxim Dei sacrificium intellectus to
subordinate the intellect to obedience is to offer the highest sacrifice to God Adorno
identifies this particular tendency of thought with the process of stupefaction.
Adorno introduces the section by challenging this assumption of purity.
According to Adorno, there is no such thing as an absolutely pure thought. This is
because thought, even at its most objectified and remote is nourished by impulse,
Trieb. This nourishing impulse can be understood in a number of ways. First of all,
Adorno refers to Nietzsches aphorism: the degree and kind of a mans sexuality
extends to the pinnacle of his spirit
10
. Here, impulse can be understood very simply
as a drive, specifically a drive of a sexual nature, Geschlechtlichkeit. Nietzsche in
Beyond Good and Evil from which this aphorism is taken presents all aspects of
life as instinctual. There is no other reality that the reality of our drives and thought is
nothing more than the relationship of one drive to another.
11
But Adorno gives three
other examples. First of all, he addresses the relation of memory and love. He writes,
Is not memory inseparable from love, which seeks to preserve what
must pass away?
12

8
Ibid. p.123
9
Ibid.
10
Ibid. p. 122
11
Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, R.J.Hollingdale (trans.) Penguin Books 1990p. 66
12
Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 122
3
In this case, impulse can be understood in terms of love or Liebe. A memory is not
something which I simply have. Rather, it is something urged on by love, a wish or
desire to remember. Thus Adorno presents Trieb as an impulse for preservation.
The second example refers to fantasy and desire. Adorno writes,
Is not each stirring of fantasy engendered by desire, which displaces the
elements of what exists to transcend it without betrayal?
13

In this example, impulse is a particular kind of desire, or rather, wish, Wunsch. I do
not simply have fantasies. These are engendered by an urge that Freud would
describe as repressive. In the Freudian sense, Wunsch is the urge for displacement.
Finally, Adorno engages with the relation between perception, fear and desire.
He writes,
Is not indeed each perception shaped by the fear of the thing perceived,
or the desire for it?
14
Adorno suggests that each perception is shaped. It is shaped by either fear Angst
or by, once again, desire. But desire here is neither the sexual desire described by
Nietzsche (Geschlechtlichkeit) nor the desire associated with fantasy (Wunsch). It is
now Begierde, a kind of yearning or longing. I perceive because I yearn or long for
something.
Memory, fantasy and perception but most importantly thought arrive only
with this nourishing impulse variously understood as Liebe, Wunsch or Begierde.
Stupidity comes from elsewhere. It arrives when the underlying impulse of thought is
somehow denied, indeed, in its murder. Adorno writes,
But if the impulses are not at once preserved and surpassed in the
thought which has escaped their sway, then there would be no
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid.
4
knowledge at all, and the thought that murders the wish that has
fathered it will be overtaken by the revenge of stupidity.
15
Adorno then spends the second half of section 79 describing how thought is
overturned by the revenge of stupidity. This is because stupidity is not something,
which arrives at once. It arrives through a series of prohibitions a prohibition of
memory, fantasy and perception in turn. Adorno considers each prohibition
individually in a highly structured argument, which has both historical and
philosophical dimensions. It is this argument I wish to outline now.
First of all, Adorno addresses the prohibition of memory. He writes,
Memory is tabooed as unpredictable, unreliable and irrational. The
resulting intellectual asthma, which culminates in the dismissal of the
historical dimension of consciousness, leads directly to a depreciation
of the synthetic apperception, which according to Kant, cannot be
divorced from reproduction in imagination, from recollection.
16

Adorno seems to suggest that the taboo placed on memory has two direct
consequences. First of all, it culminates in the dismissal of the historic dimension of
consciousness; secondly, it leads to the depreciation of what Adorno refers to as
synthetic apperception. The reference Adorno makes here is to a philosophical
tradition of Kant and Hegel of which certain aspects he perceives to be in decline.
Specifically he refers to the concept of self-consciousness and its function within
this tradition. For Hegel, self-consciousness is something to be arrived at, and
therefore relates to both history and memory. For Kant, it has a constitutive
epistemological role. Self-consciousness as synthetic apperception is that which
unifies experience. As such it relates to both memory (recollection) and imagination
(reproduction) both of which have a similar synthetic function in Kantian
epistemology.
Secondly, in what he describes as a prohibition of fantasy Adorno addresses
the rejection of imagination directly. He writes,
15
Ibid.
16
Ibid.
5
Fantasy alone, today consigned to the realm of the unconscious and
proscribed from knowledge as a childish injudicious rudiment, can
established the relation between objects which is the irrevocable source
of all judgement: should fantasy be driven out, judgement too, the real
act of knowledge is exorcised.
17
Here Adorno links the contemporary dismissal of fantasy now consigned to the
realm of the unconscious to an exorcism, which occurs in the sphere of knowledge.
It is important to note that the term Adorno uses for knowledge Erkenntnis is once
again a Kantian one. Erkenntnis is not so much knowledge, but the particular kind of
knowledge that Kant associates with experience. It is a knowledge gained in
experience what is often described as cognition. And for Kant, imagination has a
profound role in all acts of cognition. I have mentioned that imagination in Kant has a
synthetic role. It is what mediates between the capacities of perception and
understanding, combining and arranging different representations. Indeed, it
establishes the relation between objects and allows for the experience of the object as
such. Therefore, any prohibition set on imagination has direct consequences for
knowledge, at least on knowledge understood as cognition.
Finally, Adorno considers the prohibition placed on perception. Moving away
from his Kantian argument (he now uses the term Wahrnehmung and not Erkenntnis)
he writes,
But the castration of perception by a court of control that denies it any
anticipatory desire, forces it thereby into a pattern of helplessly
reiterating what is already known. When nothing more may be
actually seen, the intellect is sacrificed.
18

In this case, Adorno links the castration of perception with the sacrifice of intellect.
Stupidity does not arrive with the rejection of memory. Neither does it arrive with the
rejection of fantasy though in both cases the consequences are severe. Stupidity
17
Ibid. p. 123
18
Ibid.
6
arrives at the point when there is no more perception when perception is castrated,
shorn of its underlying impulse. Because it is only then, that there is an impact on
intellect as such. At the point when I no longer perceive anything new, intellect is
sacrificed and stupiditys revenge is complete.
What Adorno describes here is a kind of end point of a trajectory that begun
with the taboo on memory. Memory that is dismissed for its passionate nature
momentarily stops thought in its tracks. The resulting intellectual asthma has direct
consequences for imagination understood in a Kantian sense. Similarly, knowledge
loses something when fantasy is dismissed as both childish and unwise. In Kantian
terms this would be the capacity for judgement. But this is not to say that stupidity
arrives at any particular point in history or philosophy or that what I am trying to
describe here are a series of distinct stages. Instead it is important that Adorno locates
stupidity within perceptual experience: in the ways I might see, hear, touch or taste
the world.
For the question is, what prevents me from doing so? What prevents me from
perceiving the world? From sight, hearing or touch? And the answer Adorno gives is
rather unexpected. It is thought that prevents thought. He argues that it is when I
reason I no longer perceive. In this way, Kantian pure reason Vernunf becomes
indistinguishable from its opposite, utmost stupidity. Or as Adorno writes,
Once the last trace of emotion has been eradicated, nothing remains of
thought but absolute tautology. The utterly pure reason of those who
have divested themselves entirely of the ability to conceive of an object
even in its absence, converges with pure unconsciousness, with feeble-
mindedness in the most literal sense
19

This is the stupid person that inhabits section 79: it is a person of reason. It is a
person who objectifies thought so much that they dismiss its motivational force
memory founded in love, wish-driven fantasy and perception marked by desire. They
remain with nothing left but thinking. Thinking about thought alone.
19
Ibid.
7
However, a qualification needs to be made. With Adornos critique of reason
there is the suggestion that thought should embrace its impure nature. If the purity of
reason is stupefying, intelligence must be found in the opposite in thought that is
impure or somehow marked by impulse. It would seem that Adorno is advocating the
thinking involved in memory, fantasy and perception a thinking founded in desire.
This is not the case. Adorno acknowledges as much when he writes,
It is true that the objective meaning of knowledge [Erkenntnis] has,
with the objectification of the world, become progressively detached
from underlying impulses; it is equally true that knowledge breaks
down where its effort of objectification remains under sway of desire.
20
It is true that cognition has progressively been detached from its underlying impulses.
It is also true that there would be no cognition if it remained under sway of desire.
Adorno seems to suggest that the power of cognition requires both a level of
objectivity and an element of independence.
But if it does so, how is the thought that characterises cognition any different
the thought that characterises reason? If both incline towards purity, what accounts
for their mutual differences? The claim Adorno seems to be making in this section is
therefore a problematic one. On the one hand, he shows how reason inclines towards
stupidity when it forbids the element of desire found in perception, on the other hand,
he associates intelligence or at least cognition with this effort. With this, he seems
to suggest that it is not the rejection of the impulsive that is at fault, but rather the way
in which the rejection takes place. The question seems to be prohibition itself of the
way in which the impulsive is denied.
Wishful Thinking
It is this very question of denial that Adorno explores in section 127, Wishful
Thinking. Once again Adorno addresses a tendency of thought that can be
characterised as a tendency towards purity. Once again there is a separation in place,
20
Ibid. 122
8
a separation that severs feeling from understanding, impulse (Trieb) from thought.
But this time rather than arguing against all severance, Adorno makes the case for
separation. Referring to Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit and his ideas of sublation
Aufheben Adorno argues that there is a moral demand for the contrast of feeling
(Gefhl, indicating the Kantian subjective feeling rather than objective feelings of
perception) and understanding (Verstand). Indeed, it is the thought that answers this
moral demand that constitutes wishful thinking. Thus, if the section on intellect
Adorno only hinted at a possible resolution when he writes,
but if impulses are not at once preserved and surpassed in the
thought which has escaped their sway
21

this sections discussion of unity in contrast offers a measure of hope. It is this
measure of hope that I wish to explore.
In section 127 of Minima Moralia, Adorno makes one central claim, a claim
through which he frames his argument. He begins by stating that intelligence is a
moral category. This is new and unexpected: in section 79, Adorno only described
the consequences of a certain tendency in thought, without any consideration of
morality. The discussion of a tautological kind of reason only hints at such a
dimension. But rather than explain what morals are at stake, he follows his claim with
two distinct examples. In the first, he reflects on our attitude towards the blockhead
or simpleton; in the second, he addresses philosophys privilege of reason. Both
examples demonstrate the separation of thought and feeling and in this sense, manifest
the tendency Adorno outlined in section 79. However, both examples also
demonstrate our utter reluctance of overcoming this separation.
In the first example Adorno describes a kind of fear that accompanies the
possibility of the reunification of thought and feeling. He writes,
The separation of feeling and understanding, that makes possible to
absolve and beautify the blockhead, hypostasizes the dismemberment of
21
Ibid.
9
man into functions. Praise of the simpleton has an undertone of anxiety
lest the severed parts reunite and put an end to the derangement.
22
In the previous section, tendency towards separation resulted in the dismissal of
memory, fantasy and perception indeed in the eradication of anything which
embodied feeling. In this section, separation allows the beautification of the
blockhead. In the praise of the simpleton, I recognise his capacity for feeling. But a
qualification needs to be made: I can only recognise one or the other, feeling or
understanding. The idea that the simpleton can both think and feel fills me with
dread. Adorno quotes a two-line poem by Hlderin, entitled Good Advice,
If you have understanding and heart, show only one. Both will damn, if
both you show together.
23
In the second example, Adorno shows how philosophy attempts to avoid this
problem of reunification of severed parts reuniting altogether. He does so through
a critique of Hegel. Adorno suggests that Hegel in the Phenomenology of Spirit
dismisses understanding all too readily. He writes,
When Hegel demonstrates the stupidity of understanding, he not only
accords isolated reflection, positivism of every designation, its full
measure of untruth, but he also connives at the prohibition of thought,
cuts back the negative labour of the concept which his method itself
claims to perform
24
According to Adorno, there is a tendency within philosophy to dismiss the limited
faculty of understanding in favour of unlimited reason. Such a tendency is manifest
by Kant; it is also present in Hegel. However, Adorno argues here that Hegel
succumbs to this tendency far too readily indeed, so readily that he forsakes his own
method. He connives at the prohibition of thought.
22
Ibid. p. 197
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid. 198
10
At this point, it might seem that neither example explains how intelligence
might be understood as a moral category. However, there is a crucial difference
between the first and the second. Whereas the anxiety accompanying the praise of the
simpleton had a diagnostic function, the critique of Hegel allows Adorno to formulate
his own philosophical position. Adorno mounts a critique of Hegel, not to dismiss a
particular argument of the Phenomenology of Spirit, but to rescue Hegelian method,
what is described as negative labour. This is because Hegelian method like no
other offers the intriguing possibility of a unity in contrast, Gegensatz. As such,
Hegels method enacts a concept which is the central feature of his thought, namely,
that of sublation, Aufheben. And it is this activity that for Adorno is essentially
moral. It is what constitutes a proper philosophical position. Adorno writes,
It is rather for philosophy to seek, in the opposition of feeling and
understanding their precisely moral unity. Intelligence, in asserting
its power of judgement, opposes anything given in advance, by at the
same time expressing it.
25
In the following, I will explain the basic principles of Hegels method to then show
how Adorno adopts these principles when formulating his critique of understanding. I
will also show how Adorno refers to judgement in order to produce a proper critique
of understanding a critique that would employ Hegels negative method adequately.
In a Kantian sense, his argument is an aesthetic one. Judgement in mediating between
feeling and understanding is to link the two together. The task then is twofold. To
understand what the contrast (Gegensatz) of feeling and understanding consists of and
how this contrast is manifest in the act of judgement.
Before outlining Hegels method is worth reflecting on Adornos idea of
opposition. Adorno writes of contradiction, yet the contrast he presents is of a
peculiar kind. It is a contradiction that simultaneously opposes and expresses. It
might be useful to refer back to the discussion of the previous section. When Adorno
writes, but if impulses are not at once preserved and surpassed zugleich
aufgehoben the gesture he is describing is a double one. There is a moment of
25
Ibid.
11
negation or opposition; there is also a moment of expression or preservation. Or, in
other words, the gesture is both negative and positive.
Adorno uses the verb aufgehoben. This is the past participle of Aufheben, a
Hegelian concept, translated as sublation or supercession. Aufheben has three
meanings in German. It can mean to raise, to annul or destroy and to keep, save,
preserve. Hegel tends to play with the second and third. In the Phenomenology of
Spirit he makes his most direct reference to Aufheben in the chapters on sense
certainty and perception, when he describes the shift from a-conceptual to conceptual
thought. To first define the process of supercession, he gives the following example.
To the question: What is Now? let us answer, e.g. Now is night. In
order to test the truth of sense certainty a simple experiment will
suffice. We write down this truth; a truth cannot lose anything by being
written down, any more than it can lose anything through our
preserving it. If now, this noon, we look again at the written truth we
shall have to say that it has become stale.
The Now that is night is preserved as something that is; but it
proves itself to be, on the contrary, something that is not. The now does
indeed preserve itself, but as something that is not Night; equally, it
preserves itself in the face of the day that now is, as something that is
also not Day, in other words, as a negative in general.
26

In this example, Hegel shows how the concept This replaces a sensory grasp of the
world an immediate This. Or rather, he demonstrates how a sensory grasp of the
world is always conceptual. And he does so by the use of the negative. In standard
two-value logic, if something is negated, and the negation is in turn negated, there is a
return to the starting point. In Hegelian logic, there is no simple return to original
status. Negation of the negation results in an affirmation, but a different affirmation
from that originally negated. In the example above, the negation of an immediate
sense of night, results in the affirmation of a conceptually determined night. As such,
Hegel idea of supercession is closely linked to his idea of determinate negation.
26
G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, A.V. Miller (trans.), Oxford University Press 1977, p. 60
12
But how is this relevant to Adornos reference to judgement? Adorno begins
with a simple opposition. On the one hand, there is intelligence defined in a
traditional way through its power of judgement, on the other hand, there is feeling,
again understood traditionally as instinctive and impulsive. However, this clear
opposition is disrupted when Adorno argues for a moment of compensation. Though,
judgement might exclude feeling, in its very activity feeling is demonstrated.
The power of judgement is measured by the cohesion of the self. But
therefore also by that dynamic of instincts which is entrusted by the
psychic division of labour to feeling. Instinct, the will to withstand, is
implicit in the meaning of logic. It is because, in logic, the judging
subject forgets itself, shows itself to be incorruptible, that it wins its
victories.
27

In Adornos example, the power of judgement is not measured using an intellectual
scale, but through the strength of feeling. Indeed, there is no judgement without this
strength of feeling. It is what makes intelligence convincing. This is because, for
Adorno, conviction does not arrive with intelligence: I am not more convincing
because my judgement is more intelligent. Rather, I become more intelligent when I
stick to my guns. Logic gives me the capacity to withstand.
In this way, Adorno shows intelligence to be affirmed by its opposite, namely,
by feeling. Impulse is thus denied, preserved and surpassed and intelligence arrives
with this activity. Two questions however, remain. The first relates to stupidity: what
is the place of stupidity here? The second relates to morality: in what way is the unity
in contrast, a moral unity? In this section, the two questions are linked. Stupidity
occurs when supercession is denied and it is the denial of supercession that for
Adorno represents ultimate evil. If in this discussion of intellect and impulse, the
worst is to be found, it is found here, in the evil of stupidity.
I have described Adornos text as densely populated with instances of
stupidity Hitlers stupidity, the stupidity of the writer, the stupefaction of cinema
27
Adorno, Minima Moralia, p. 198
13
etc. In this section Adorno gives two examples. First of all, stupid are the narrow-
minded. He writes,
People with the narrowest horizons grow stupid at the point when their
interest begins, and then vent their rancour on what they do not want to
understand because they understand it only too well
28
Secondly, stupid is the entire planet that does not perceive the absurdity of its own
order that does not perceive the narrow-mindedness of those in power.
the planetary stupidity which prevents the present world from
perceiving the absurdity of its own order is a further product of the
unsublimated, unsuperseded interest of the rulers.
29
In both cases, stupidity can be understood in terms of a certain failure, what I would
like to describe as a certain failure to withstand. The narrow minded grow stupid
precisely because they are incapable of persisting in their interest. When faced with
something they do not understand, they are not intrigued or captivated. They simply
grow angry, rejecting the task at hand. They are thus incapable of any kind of
transformation. They reject the possibility of sublation at the very point at which it
may occur at the point when their interest might be affirmed as feeling. And ours is
a planetary stupidity because our rulers have very similar failings. Their interest too
is described as unsublimated and unsuperceded. They too have failed to withstand
and their thought remains untransformed.
But such a failure to withstand still does not explain why Adorno claims that
intelligence is a moral category why the unity in contrast of understanding and
feeling is a moral unity. This is where discussion returns to ideas of perception.
In order to recap: in section 79, Adorno argued that it is the man of reason who
is stupid, precisely because he fails to perceive. Or rather, his perception is limited to
reason. He only perceives what he knows and thus is incapable of being open to the
world to experience as such. In this section Adorno not only explains how such a
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid.
14
tautological model of thought arises, he also shows the inherent wickedness of such
thinking. He writes,
Such stupidity regularly consorts with moral deficiency, lack of
autonomy and responsibility, whereas so much is true in Socratic
rationalism that one can scarcely imagine a seriously intelligent man,
whose thoughts are directed at objects and do not circle formalistically
within themselves, as wicked. For the motivation of evil, blind
absorption by contingent self-interest, tends to dissolve in the medium
of thought.
30

In order to rephrase Adornos complex argument: Socratic rationalism cannot be
considered as wicked because thought here is always directed at the object. Wicked is
only the kind of thought that Adorno associates with stupidity thought that circles
formalistically within itself thought that can be understood as tautological. This is
because, for Adorno, evil is motivated by contingent self-interest. If then a tension
can be drawn here it is a subtle one. On the one hand there is the blind obstinacy of
stupidity. The stupid man is an obstinate one. He is self-absorbed to the point at
which his own interests blind him to the discovery of the world. This kind of
obstinacy is evil. On the other hand there is the wilful persistence of the intelligent.
The intelligent, in asserting the power of judgement, withstands, and thus logic is put
in touch with its opposite, feeling. There is also absorption at work here but it is not
self-absorption. Indeed, Adorno insists that in logic, the judging subject forgets
itself. The intelligent are absorbed to the point that they forget themselves, that they
forget themselves as judging subjects. And it is precisely because that they do forget
themselves that they gain their victories. This kind of intelligence, is if not good, then
at least hopeful.
But this is not to say that for Adorno there is any immediacy of perception
that there is any real openness to the world. He acknowledges as much when he
writes,
30
Ibid.
15
Schelers dictum that all knowledge is founded in love was a lie,
because he demanded immediate love of the contemplated.
31

For Adorno, thought remains distinct and objective. However, he does believe that if
the very severance of thought is to be addressed, it is not by attempts at reunification
but by a necessary reflection. Thought is remedied by reflecting on the way it is
constituted through its opposite. It is remedied by reflecting on how it relates to
feeling. He writes,
The severance of thought is not remedied by the synthesis of mutually
estranged departments, nor by therapeutically imbuing reason with
irrational ferments, but by self-conscious reflection on the element of
wish that constitutes thinking as thinking. Only when the element is
dissolved purely, without heteronomous residues, in the objectivity of
thought, will it become an impulse towards utopia.
32
Between these two sections of Minima Moralia, a certain transformation takes place
a certain kind of sublation of thought. In the first section Intellectus sacrificium
intellectus Adorno describes an initial opposition between thought and impulse.
Here impulse is presented as something that nourishes thought, but also as something
that thought abolishes in its development. The tendency he describes is one of
separation. In the second section Wishful thinking Adorno describes how this
initial opposition shifts. Thought in the exercise of its power affirms its impulsive
nature. But the impulse he describes in this second section is not the same as the
impulse of the first. In the first section, impulse was simply a desire or drive, opposed
to thought. This is why Adorno referred Nietzsche, to the love within memory, the
wish element of fantasy and yearning in perception. In the second section, impulse is
something discovered within thought. It is the thoughts very power the will to
withstand found in logic. Thus impulse or Trieb is affirmed, but affirmed as
something other than Trieb. And it is only when its confirmation is complete (Adorno
31
Ibid.
32
Ibid. p. 199
16
does not seem to reject a tendency towards purity) that wish becomes impulse towards
Utopia.
17
Snail, Snail put out your horns.
Minima Moralia is populated by a great many stupid people The Dialectic of
Enlightenment is inhabited by a singularly intelligent snail. The snails horn the one
or two sets of tentacles located on its head is for Adorno a symbol of intelligence.
With Minima Moralias discussion of perception is easy to understand why this might
be the case. The snail uses its tentacles to feel its way: to see and to smell. For
Adorno, each time the snail extends its tentacles it demonstrates an impulse towards
knowledge. However, a problem arises when the snail encounters danger. Then it
retracts its tentacles and moves back into its shell. It only re-emerges hesitantly once
it thinks the moment of danger has passed. If however the danger persists, it
withdraws once again, lingering longer before re-emerging. The Polish poem for
children illustrates this pattern of behaviour well. In the poem, the snail tired with his
wifes constant pestering wishes to leave its home. Once it realises that it cannot, it
angrily withdraws back to its shell in order to sulk. For Adorno, such a withdrawal
can result in stupidity. As he writes,
When facing in the direction from which it is finally scared into retreat,
the animal grows timid and stupid.
Stupidity is a scar. It can stem form one of many activities
physical or mental or from all. Every partial stupidity of a man
denotes a spot where the play of stirring muscles was thwarted instead
of encouraged.
33

What motivates intelligence is unclear. The exact nature of Trieb, this motivating
force, remains unexplained. What gives rise to stupidity is far more apparent. In the
snails case, it is very simply fear. At that particular evolutionary stage the physical
and mental are inseparable. Fear cripples the mind in the same way it cripples the
body. And though this separation is not so apparent in man, the same principle
applies. When curiosity is stifled, a scar appears. Such a scarring is particularly
33
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 256
18
noticeable in the case of a child, whose first attempts at questioning are frustrated.
Adorno writes,
If the childs repeated attempts are balked, or too brutally frustrated, it
may turn its attention in a different direction. It is then richer in
experience, as the saying goes, but an imperceptible scar, a tiny
calloused area of insensitivity, is apt to form at the spot when the urge
was stifled. Such scars lead to deformities they can breed
stupidity
34
No longer is it fear that cripples. Now, it is pain that is crippling the pain suffered
by the child when its first question is unanswered. The childs repeated attempts at
questioning are merely symptomatic of that initial pain. They are symptomatic of a
scarring.
If there is a sense of hope to section 127 of Minima Moralia, it is thoroughly
quelled by this final passage of the Dialectic of Enlightenment. In section 127,
reflection on what antithetically constitutes thought as thought on the feeling
element of thought is considered to be transformative. When reflection is complete
that element of feeling becomes an impulse towards Utopia. In the Dialectic of
Enlightenment, disaster kicks in. When the childs natural curiosity is stifled, its will
to withstand is lost. Or as Adorno writes,
The coercion suffered turns good will into bad. And not only tabooed
questioning but forbidden mimicry, forbidden tears and forbidden
rashness in play can leave such scars.
The argument Adorno presents is reminiscent of Nietzsches Beyond Good and Evil,
particularly section 232. For Nietzsche our world is world of drives. He defines life
as instinctual as a will to power. However, it is not the most powerful will that
prevails only its consequence, an instinct for self-preservation or what Nietzsche
refers to scornfully as the herd instinct. This is because in adverse circumstances,
34
Ibid. p.257
19
the species needs itself as species, as something with durability. Faced with hostility,
life hardens. Or as Nietzsche writes,
A species arises, a type becomes fixed and strong through protracted
struggle against essentially unfavourable conditions.
35

Using the two examples of the snail and the child Adorno presents a very similar
argument. For Adorno, there is a sense of natural curiosity, which echoes Nietzsches
sense of life. The snail feels it way and the child asks the first question. There is also
a will to withstand. The snail continues to feel its way, even once it encounters
danger. The child too continues asking questions, though it may not always receive
an answer. However, danger has a crippling effect and pain accompanies the
unanswered question. And both fear and pain can result in energy poorly spent. The
snail withdraws back to its shell and stays there. The child shifts its attention
elsewhere. Good will turns into bad. Stupidity is a symptom of the coercion suffered
of the shift in will.
According to Adorno anything tabooed anything that is forbidden can
leave scars, halt development and thus breed stupidity. And everything in the world
order testifies to such scarring.
Like the species of the animal order, the mental stages within human
species, and the blind-spots in the individual, are stages at which hope
petered out and who petrification demonstrates that all things that live
are subject to constraint.
36
In Minima Moralia Adorno analyses a great many instances of stupidity. No matter
where he looks there are men and women behaving in very stupid ways. But
according to the argument of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, everything in the world is
stupid. Stupidity is presented here as the very force that orders our world. It orders
because it halts development the scarring or hardening forcing development along a
35
Nietzsche, p. 199
36
Adorno and Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, p. 258
20
different path. The world as it is the very fact that there is an order to the world is
a non-living proof of Adornos claim.
Magdalena Wisniowska
01.03.2011
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