It is
therefore
necessary to conceive of matter as a product of forces, since force is the only non-sensible aspect of objects, and mind can only encounter what is analogous to itself.
Adorno-Metaphysics
12ff, especially pp.
15f).
3 An allusion to Marx's polemic Misere de la philosophie. Reponse a la Philosophie de la misere de M. Proudhon, published in 1847, which included the first systematic account of historical materialism; in the second part, especially, it comprised a critique of philosophy as prac- tised by the Hegelian school, which Marx confronted with the sense of history which Hegel himself had possessed. Whereas Marx drew from the poverty of philosophy the conclusion that it should be replaced by
history, for Adorno, who held fast to philosophy in a changed historical situation, the 'poverty of philosophy' consisted, as the following sen- tences demonstrate, in the objective compulsion linking thought to the discursive sphere, from which, nevertheless, it must detach itself if it is to become materialist in earnest; also see the references in the next note.
4 On the far-reaching consequences of this idea - that all philosophy 'by virtue of its procedures' necessarily 'pre-judges' in favour of idealism (GS 6, p. 531) - in Adorno's thought cf. the Introduction to Negative
Dialectics, pp. 1 1ff; also d. Tiedemann, 'Begriff Bild Name', p. 103.
5 Cf. Adorno's Beitrag zur Ideologienlehre (GS 8, pp. 457ft) and the revised version in the volume of the Institut fur Sozialforschung,
Soziologische Exkurse. Nach Vortragen und Diskussionen, Frankfurt/
Main 1956 (Frankfurter Beitrage zur Soziologie, Bd. 4), pp. 162ff.
6 In vol. 1 of Logical Investigations, which, however, was not published
until 1900; d. the reference in Lecture 6, n. 14.
7 But see Lecture 6 , n . 1 3 . Regarding Adorno's critique of the 'two-
worlds theory' of the late Scheler, see Negative Dialectics:
A sociology of knowledge . . . denies not only the objective structure of society but the idea of objective truth and its cognition. . . . Classification serves the tel quel localization of the mind. Such a reduction of so-called 'forms of consciousness' goes perfectly with philosophical apologetics. The excuse of the sociology of knowledge - that the truth or untruth of
? ? ? ? NOTES TO PAGES 45-49 163
? philosophical teaching has nothing to do with social conditions - remains undisturbed; relativism allies itself with the division of labor. The late Scheler did not hesitate to exploit this in his 'two-worlds theory'. (ibid. , p. 198)
8 The formulation is quoted from Benjamin's notes for the Arcades project: 'A decisive rejection of the concept of "timeless truth" is in order.
Yet truth is not only - as Marxism claims - a temporal function of knowledge, but is bound to a temporal core, which is contained both in the known and in the knowing subject' (Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte
Werke, unter Mitwirkung von Theodor W. Adorno und Gershom Scholem hrsg. von Rolf Tiedemann und Hermann Schweppenhauser, vol. 5, 4th edn, Frankfurt/Main 1996, p. 578).
9 Not identified as a quotation; but d. , for example, ? 1 5 of Die Krisis der europiiischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phanomenologie, in which the 'genuine reflection of the philosopher on what he really aims at' is described as follows: 'The sedimented conceptuality, which
is taken for granted as the ground of his private and unhistorical work, is to be brought back to life in its hidden historical meaning' (Husser! , Logical Investigations, vol. 8, pp. VI, 72f).
10 See Lecture 4.
11 Three Ethics by Aristotle have been passed down: whereas the authen-
ticity of parts of the Magna Moralia is disputed, the Eudemian Ethics is regarded as an early version of the Nicomachean Ethics, which con- tains the most extensive discussions.
12 In the dialogues Protagoras (St. 350 Bf? ) and Laches (St. 191 Df? ); however, Aristotle himself defines avopE{a more unambiguously in this sense: 'We see that the coward, the daredevil and the man of courage face the same situation, but how they face it is different. The first two represent too little and too much, while the third steers a middle course
and therefore conducts himself correctly' (Nicomachean Ethics, III 10, 1116 a).
That a fundamental motif of Adorno's whole philosophy stems from this idea can be seen from a comparison with the opening of the central second part of Negative Dialectics:
There is no Being without entities. 'Something' - as a cognitatively indis- pensable substrate of any concept, including the concept of Being - is the utmost abstraction of the subject-matter that is not identical with think- ing, an abstraction not to be abolished by any further thought process. Without 'something' there is no thinkable formal logic, and there is no way to cleanse this topic of its metalogical rudiment. (ibid. , p. 135)
Adorno sought, in the reflection of traditional philosophy, to take fur- ther the analysis of the 'strong philosophical concept' 'in the direction of nonconceptuality' (ibid. ).
The relationship between form and content is the same, i. e. 'external'
(see p. 46 above) in Kant, as Adorno repeatedly argues in his lectures, Kants 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft' (d. NaS IV. 4, pp. 79ff).
? 13
14
?
? 164
NOTES TO PAGES 50-53
? 15
1 2
3
In his years at Oxford (1934-8) Adorno came across the influence of the school of Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924), the important Hegelian. The name of the 'Oxford philosopher' referred to here is not
in the lecture transcript; Adorno probably named Geoffrey Reginald Gilchrist Mure, and was thinking of his book A Study of Hegel's Logic
(Oxford 1950).
Lecture Eight
See pp. 19f above.
'I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith. The dogmatism of metaphysics, that is, the pre-
conception that it is possible to make headway in metaphysics without a previous criticism of pure reason, is the source of all that unbelief, always very dogmatic, which wars against morality' (Immanuel Kant's
Critique ofPure Reason, p. 29 [B XXX]).
The German lecture transcript has the words 'immer auch das' instead of 'immer auf das' and some omission marks. The amendment is based on Adorno's notes for the lecture (Theodor W. Adorno Archiv, Vo
10792). Also d. the corresponding passage in Zeller:
Just as . . . Plato had distinguished knowledge, as cognition of the eternal and necessary, from imagination or opinion, whose sphere is the accidental, so, too, did Aristotle. For him, as for Plato, knowledge arises from wonderment, from the derangement of commonplace ideas, and for him, too, its object is the universal and the necessary; the accidental cannot be knowledge, only opinion. (Cf. Zeller 11. 2, p. 162)
The Greek quotation is missing from the transcript; here it is taken from Adorno's lecture notes (d. Theodor W. Adorno Archiv, Vo 10792); in Aristotle d. Met. e 8, 1050 b 11? .
See p. 75 above.
In his Formal and Transcendental Logic of 1929 Husser! distinguishes
between the contingent and the formal a priori; in defining the 'judicatively cognizing subjectivity' he encounters
restrictive essential structures that fall under the heading of pure reason and, in particular, pure judicative reason. Such a subjectivity also in- volves as a presupposition a continual and essentially necessary relatedness to some hyletic components or other; as apperceptional foundations for the possible experiences that judging necessarily presupposes. Therefore, if we define the concept of form, as a principle, by the essentially neces- sary components of any rational subjectivity whatever, the concept hyle
(exemplified by every 'Datum of sensation') is a form-concept and not what we shall define as the opposite of this, a contingent concept. On the other hand, there is no essential requirement that a judicatively cognizing subjectivity . . . be capable of sensing colors or sounds, that it be capable
? ? 4
5 6
? ? NOTES TO PAGES 53-57 165
? of sensible feelings having just such and such a differentia, or the like - though the concept of such matters too can be framed as apriori (as freed from everything empirically factual). Accordingly they too have their Apriori, which, however, is contingent and not an Apriori of pure reason; or, as we may also say, introducing an old word that tended blindly in the same direction, it is not an 'innate' Apriori. (Edmund Husser! , Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns, The Hague 1 969, p. 30)
7 Adorno is thinking of the 'apriori of the emotional' which Scheler advocated in opposition to Kant's 'equating of the aprioristic with the conceptual', of 'apriorism with rationalism':
Our entire mental life, and not just objective cognition and thought as cognition of being, which has pure acts and laws of action in accordance with its own nature and content, and independently of the fact of human organization. The emotional aspects of mind, feeling, preferring, loving, hating and willing, also have an original a-priori content which they do not derive from 'thinking', and which ethics can identify quite indepen- dently of logic. There is an a priori 'ordre du coeur' or 'Logique du coeur',
as Blaise Pascal aptly puts it. (Scheler, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, Bernel Munich 1980, p. 82)
8 Adorno was probably thinking here of his teacher Hans Cornelius, as the next example cited, referring to the optical similarity series, seems to prove; d. the reference to Cornelius's commentary on Kant in NaS IV. 4, pp. 366f, n. 39.
9 Cf. the discussion on the possibility of synthetic a priori judgements, which nevertheless stem from experience, in Adorno's lectures, Kants
'Kritik der reinen Vernunft' (NaS IVA, pp. 49f).
10 See the opening of the second part of Negative Dialectics, cited in
Lecture 7, n. 13, and the ensuing discussion of the indissolubility of the
'something' .
11 On Kant's distinction, d. the 'Postulates of empirical thought in general',
according to which possibility and reality are 'categories of modality', which 'have the peculiarity that, in determining an object, they do not in the least enlarge the concept to which they are attached as predicates. They only express the relation of the concept to the faculty of know- ledge': '1. That which agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the conditions of intuition and of concepts, is possible. 2. That which is bound up with the material conditions of experience,
that is, with sensation, is actual' (Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, p. 239 (A 218f, B 265f). In other words, 'The postulate bearing on the knowledge of things as actual does not, indeed, demand immedi- ate perception, and, therefore, sensation. . . . In the mere concept of a thing no mark of its existence is to be found' (ibid. , pp. 242-3 [A 225, B 272]).
12 Cf. Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 384ff (A 406ff, B 433ff).
13
? ?
See p. 66 above.
166
NOTES TO PAGES 57-63
? 14
Cf. Fr. 1 of Anaximander of Miletus: 'The beginning and origin of existing things is O:TrELpOV (the boundlessly indeterminate). But whereof existing things are become, therein also they pass away according to their guilt; for they render each other just punishment and penance according to the ordinance of time' (Diels/Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th edn, vol. 1, p. 89). Aristotle uses the term in Meta- physics K 10, 1066 a 35 (d. Aristotle, Metaphysics, pp. 367ft) and elsewhere; also d. the Physics, which contains no reference to a sub- stantial infinite.
Cf. Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 409ff (A 444ff, B 472ft). Adorno discusses the third antinomy in Negative Dialectics (d. pp. 244ff) and, above all, in the lectures Probleme der Moralphilosophie
See pp. 40f above. On the theory of the unmoved mover d. esp. Klaus Oehler, Der Unbewegte Beweger des Aristoteles, Frankfurt/Main 1984. Wilhelm Weischedel's main work, Der Gott der Philosophen. Grundlegung einer philosophischen Theologie im Zeitalter des Nihilismus, 2 vols, reprint of 3rd edn, Darmstadt 1994, is devoted to the connection between metaphysics and theology; on Aristotle d. ibid. ,
vol. 1, pp. 54ff.
The scholastic doctrine of the analogia entis, an official dogma of the Church since 1 2 1 5 , regulates the correspondences between God and that which He has created in terms of similarity and dissimilarity; the theorem contains in essence the core content of ontology as it developed from the Pre-Socratics, to reach a high point and a turning point in St Thomas Aquinas. Cf. e. g. Gunther Mensching, Thomas von Aquin, Frankfurt/Main, New York 1995 (Reihe Campus Einfuhrungen, Bd. 1087), pp. 94ff.
Lecture Nine
See p. 55 above.
In his Ideas for a Philosophy ofNature of 1797 Schelling writes: 'with the removal of the problem of how matter is originally possible, the problem of a possible universe is also removed' (Schellings Werke, Munich 1956, p. 190). And:
Objects themselves can be considered as products of forces, causing the phantasm of the thing in itself, which is supposed to be the cause of our representations, to vanish of its own accord. Indeed, what can have any effect on mind except mind itself, or something related to it by nature?
It is therefore necessary to conceive of matter as a product of forces, since force is the only non-sensible aspect of objects, and mind can only encounter what is analogous to itself. (ibid. , p. 226)
Cf. Kroner's interpretation: 'The notion of the forces by means of which matter is constructed is nothing other than an attempt by the mind
? 16 17
18
? 1 2
? 15
(d. NaS IV. 10, pp. 54ft).
NOTES TO PAGES 65-67
167
? ? to reconstruct in thought the original synthesis produced in perception. The true concept of matter would be the one which re-established that perception' (d. Richard Kroner, Von Kant bis Hegel, 2 vols in 1 vol. , 2nd edn, Tiibingen 1961, vol. 2, p. 25). On the changes undergone by the theory of matter in Schelling's natural philosophy d. Kroner, ibid. ,
pp. 23ff.
3 See the first of the 'Postulates of empirical thought in general': 'That
which agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the conditions of intuition and of concepts, is possible,' referred to in n. 1 1 above.
4 On this 'most famous of Kant's formulations' d. Adorno's ninth lecture on Kants 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft' (NaS IV. 4, pp. 147f). On Kant's 'Copernican revolution', ibid. , pp. 55f passim and Negative Dialectics, pp. 247f.
5 Cf. Metaphysics Ll 4, 1015 a 5ff: 'Nature . . . is attributed to those things . . . which are composed of matter and form. It consists of primary matter [7TpWT'! ] VA'! ]] and the form or essence, and is the end
[purpose] of all becoming' (Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 9). Zeller, on whom Adorno bases his argument here, interprets 7TPWT'! ] VA'! ] as
follows:
If in a given case we abstract that which an object has yet to become from everything else, we obtain a certain matter which lacks a certain form, and thus contains only the possibility of that form. If we abstract from abso- lutely everything which is the result of becoming, if we imagine something objective which has not yet become anything, we obtain pure matter with- out any formal determination, something which is nothing but can become everything, the subject or substrate to which no conceivable predicate can
be applied but is therefore equally receptive to them all. In other words, we obtain something which is everything in terms of possibility and nothing in terms of reality, pure potential being without any actuality.
He adds in a note:
? Aristotle calls this pure matter - which, however, never exists - 7TpclJTT} vAT}, contrasting it to vAT} . ! uXaTT} (l8w" oida EKauTov), matter which is combined with a certain form without needing any further elaboration: 7TPWTT} vAT} is matter prior to elementary differences; the . ! UXaTT} vAT} of a of the human being are the menstrual fluids [as the 'material cause']. (Cf. Zeller
? sculpture, for example, is bronze or stone, while the . ! uXaTT} vAT} II. 2, p. 319f)
? 6 Cf. Zeller:
Matter as such, what was called primary matter, is devoid of form or determination, being that which precedes all becoming and shaping. It is the substratum endowed with none of the properties in which the form of things consists. It is thus also the unlimited or infinite, not in the spatial sense (for Aristotle does not admit the possibility of spatial infinity . . . ),
? 168 NOTES TO PAGES 67-73
? but in the broad sense of this term, where it refers to anything which is not limited or fixed by any formal determination, has attained neither conclusion nor perfection.
From the appended note: 'By D. 7TEtpOV Aristotle means, firstly, the spatially unlimited, and he investigates the concept from this standpoint in . . . Physics III, 4ff. But since he now finds that in reality no infinite space can exist, the unlimited finally coincides for him with d6pWTOV or vAr/ (Zeller 11. 2, pp. 3 2 1 ? ) . On the original concept of D. 7TEtpOV in Anaximander see Lecture 8, n. 14.
7 Adorno is referring here to the definition of the 'Apollonian soul' and its 'ahistoricity', a central motif of Spengler, which is to be found, in some form, on all but a few pages of The Decline of the West. For example,
cf. the discussion in the chapter on 'Music and Sculpture':
The Hellenic temple is conceived and formed as a solid body. For the formal sensibility which produced it no other possibility existed. For this reason the history of the plastic arts of antiquity is that of an unceasing labour to perfect a single ideal, and to master the free-standing human body as the quintessence of pure objective presence. . . . It has never been remarked . . . how rare this genre is, an exception, anything but a rule. In fact, this sculptural art, which placed the naked body freely on a level plane and formed it from all sides existed only once, in antiquity, since this was the only culture which completely rejected any transcendence of sensible boundaries in favour of space. . . . This Apollonian sculpture is a pendant to Euclidean mathematics. Both repudiate pure space and see the a priori of perception in bodily form. This sculpture acknowledges neither ideas pointing into the distance nor personalities or historical events, but only the self-limited existence of bodies confined within their own surfaces.
(Cf. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, vol. 1, Munich 1920, pp. 310f)
8 Adorno is probably thinking of the famous issue of Logos devoted to Spengler, in which Karl Joel and Eduard Schwartz wrote on Spengler's treatment of philosophy and history; Ludwig Curtius, in an essay 'Morphologie der antiken Kunst', criticized the treatment of these sub- jects in The Decline ofthe West; d. Logos. Internationale Zeitschrift fur Philosophie der Kultur, ed. Richard Kroner and Georg Mehlis, vol. 9 (1920/1), pp. 133ff.
9 An allusion to De consolatione philosophiae, the main work, written in prison, of the Roman Neo-Platonist Boethius (480-525), who was also important as a translator and editor of Aristotle.
Lecture Ten
1 Published in 1938 in Leiden. See Adorno's review of the book, GS 20. 1, pp. 240f.
? ? 2 For example, by Zeller:
NOTES TO PAGES 74-78 169
? Aristotle generally mentions four kinds of grounds or causes: the material, the conceptual or formal, the prime mover and the final cause. However, on closer examination these four causes boil down to the first two. The concept of any thing cannot differ from its purpose, as all purposiveness aims at the realization of a concept. This concept, however, is also the moving cause, whether it sets the thing in motion from within as its soul, or whether its motion comes to it from outside. For even in the second case it is the thing's concept which brings about the motion, both in the works of nature and in those of art: only a human being can engender a human
being; only the concept of health can impel the physician to work towards the bringing forth of health. Likewise, we will find pure form, the highest purpose of the world and the cause of its motion, combined in the highest cause or the divinity. But even in his explanation of nature Aristotle distinguishes only two kinds of causes, necessary and final causes, i. e. the effect of matter and the effect of form or the concept. It is only this difference, therefore, that we must regard as original. The distinction between the formal, effective and final causes is merely secondary; and even if all three are not always united in the single thing, in themselves,
by their nature, they are one, and are only split apart in the realm of sensible phenomena: that which has become has several causes, but the eternal has only one, the concept. (Zeller 11. 2, pp. 327? ? )
3 See Lecture 8, n. 14. Adorno also refers to Anaximander's 'saying' in GS 5, p. 32 and NaS IVA, p. 332.
4 Adorno discusses the general crisis of causality today in the chapter on freedom in Negative Dialectics, pp. 265ff; also d. NaS IVA, p. 141 and pp. 212ff.
5 See p. 40 above.
6 On the Kantian concept of causality based on freedom d. especially
Lectures 4 and 5 in Frobleme der Moralphilosophie, NaS IV. 10, pp. 54ff.
7 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, pp. 138ff. (M 6-9, 1080 a 12ff)
Lecture Eleven
1 The poet is Ovid; d. the opening of Metamorphoses: 'Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelum / unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe, / quem dixere Chaos: rudis indigestaque moles . . . ' ('Before the land and sea were made / In all the world one only face of Nature did
abide, / Which was called Chaos, a huge rude heap . . . ' (Ovid, Selected
works, London/New York 1939, p. 130).
2 Cf. Moliere, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, I, 7:
MAITRE DE PHILOSOPHIE: Tout ce qui n'est point prose est vers; et tout ce qui n'est point vers est prose.
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Et comme l'on parle qu'est-ce que donc que cela? MAITRE DE PHILOSOPHIE: De la prose.
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Quoi? Quand je dis: 'Nicole, apportez-moi mes pantoufles, et me donnez mon bonnet de nuit', c'est de la prose?
? ?
170
NOTES TO PAGE 78 MAITRE DE PHILOSOPHIE: Oui, Monsieur.
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Par rna foil II y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rien, et je vous suis Ie plus oblige du monde de m'avoir appris cela.
(Moliere: Oeuvres completes II. Textes etablis, presentes et annotes par Georges Couton, Paris 1971, p. 730)
? PHILOSOPHER:
prose.
MR JORDAIN: PHILOSOPHER:
Whatever isn't prose is verse and anything that isn't verse is
And talking, as I am now, which is that? That is prose.
MR JORDAIN: You mean to say that when I say 'Nicole, fetch me my slippers' or 'Give me my night-cap' that's prose?
PHILOSOPHER: Certainly, sir.
MR JORDAIN: Well, my goodness! Here I've been talking prose for forty
years and never known it, and mighty grateful I am to you for telling me! (trans. John Wood, London 1 953)
3 Adorno discusses Augustine's philosophy of history in the text Fortschritt, cf. GS 10. 2, pp. 620ff.
4 Regarding the gradual character of the Aristotelian concept of devel- opment cf. Ernst Bloch, who finds 'an element of the transient' within Aristotle's logic:
the element of development, which for us cries out for the dialectic, does not proceed by leaps in Aristotle. Development contains no revolutionary element, but is exclusively evolutionary. . . . Development for him is a gradually evolving entelechy, Neptunic, forming like water over long, long periods, not Vulcanic, coming into being with sudden violence, abrupt transitions. Thus the dialectic is eliminated from Aristotle's concept of development. (Ernst Bloch, Leipziger Vorlesungen zur Geschichte der Philosophie 1 950-56, vol. 1 : Antike Philosophie, Frankfurt/Main 1 985, p. 229)
5 In Schopenhauer's philosophy the concept of the urge or yearning (Drang) refers to 'the objectivity of the Will on the lowest rung'; he depicts the Will as 'a blind urge, a dark, dull drive, remote from any- thing directly perceptible'. But
we are presented with the very peculiar phenomenon that the blind action of the Will, and the action illuminated by knowledge, cross over into each other's spheres in a very surprising way. .
3 An allusion to Marx's polemic Misere de la philosophie. Reponse a la Philosophie de la misere de M. Proudhon, published in 1847, which included the first systematic account of historical materialism; in the second part, especially, it comprised a critique of philosophy as prac- tised by the Hegelian school, which Marx confronted with the sense of history which Hegel himself had possessed. Whereas Marx drew from the poverty of philosophy the conclusion that it should be replaced by
history, for Adorno, who held fast to philosophy in a changed historical situation, the 'poverty of philosophy' consisted, as the following sen- tences demonstrate, in the objective compulsion linking thought to the discursive sphere, from which, nevertheless, it must detach itself if it is to become materialist in earnest; also see the references in the next note.
4 On the far-reaching consequences of this idea - that all philosophy 'by virtue of its procedures' necessarily 'pre-judges' in favour of idealism (GS 6, p. 531) - in Adorno's thought cf. the Introduction to Negative
Dialectics, pp. 1 1ff; also d. Tiedemann, 'Begriff Bild Name', p. 103.
5 Cf. Adorno's Beitrag zur Ideologienlehre (GS 8, pp. 457ft) and the revised version in the volume of the Institut fur Sozialforschung,
Soziologische Exkurse. Nach Vortragen und Diskussionen, Frankfurt/
Main 1956 (Frankfurter Beitrage zur Soziologie, Bd. 4), pp. 162ff.
6 In vol. 1 of Logical Investigations, which, however, was not published
until 1900; d. the reference in Lecture 6, n. 14.
7 But see Lecture 6 , n . 1 3 . Regarding Adorno's critique of the 'two-
worlds theory' of the late Scheler, see Negative Dialectics:
A sociology of knowledge . . . denies not only the objective structure of society but the idea of objective truth and its cognition. . . . Classification serves the tel quel localization of the mind. Such a reduction of so-called 'forms of consciousness' goes perfectly with philosophical apologetics. The excuse of the sociology of knowledge - that the truth or untruth of
? ? ? ? NOTES TO PAGES 45-49 163
? philosophical teaching has nothing to do with social conditions - remains undisturbed; relativism allies itself with the division of labor. The late Scheler did not hesitate to exploit this in his 'two-worlds theory'. (ibid. , p. 198)
8 The formulation is quoted from Benjamin's notes for the Arcades project: 'A decisive rejection of the concept of "timeless truth" is in order.
Yet truth is not only - as Marxism claims - a temporal function of knowledge, but is bound to a temporal core, which is contained both in the known and in the knowing subject' (Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte
Werke, unter Mitwirkung von Theodor W. Adorno und Gershom Scholem hrsg. von Rolf Tiedemann und Hermann Schweppenhauser, vol. 5, 4th edn, Frankfurt/Main 1996, p. 578).
9 Not identified as a quotation; but d. , for example, ? 1 5 of Die Krisis der europiiischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phanomenologie, in which the 'genuine reflection of the philosopher on what he really aims at' is described as follows: 'The sedimented conceptuality, which
is taken for granted as the ground of his private and unhistorical work, is to be brought back to life in its hidden historical meaning' (Husser! , Logical Investigations, vol. 8, pp. VI, 72f).
10 See Lecture 4.
11 Three Ethics by Aristotle have been passed down: whereas the authen-
ticity of parts of the Magna Moralia is disputed, the Eudemian Ethics is regarded as an early version of the Nicomachean Ethics, which con- tains the most extensive discussions.
12 In the dialogues Protagoras (St. 350 Bf? ) and Laches (St. 191 Df? ); however, Aristotle himself defines avopE{a more unambiguously in this sense: 'We see that the coward, the daredevil and the man of courage face the same situation, but how they face it is different. The first two represent too little and too much, while the third steers a middle course
and therefore conducts himself correctly' (Nicomachean Ethics, III 10, 1116 a).
That a fundamental motif of Adorno's whole philosophy stems from this idea can be seen from a comparison with the opening of the central second part of Negative Dialectics:
There is no Being without entities. 'Something' - as a cognitatively indis- pensable substrate of any concept, including the concept of Being - is the utmost abstraction of the subject-matter that is not identical with think- ing, an abstraction not to be abolished by any further thought process. Without 'something' there is no thinkable formal logic, and there is no way to cleanse this topic of its metalogical rudiment. (ibid. , p. 135)
Adorno sought, in the reflection of traditional philosophy, to take fur- ther the analysis of the 'strong philosophical concept' 'in the direction of nonconceptuality' (ibid. ).
The relationship between form and content is the same, i. e. 'external'
(see p. 46 above) in Kant, as Adorno repeatedly argues in his lectures, Kants 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft' (d. NaS IV. 4, pp. 79ff).
? 13
14
?
? 164
NOTES TO PAGES 50-53
? 15
1 2
3
In his years at Oxford (1934-8) Adorno came across the influence of the school of Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924), the important Hegelian. The name of the 'Oxford philosopher' referred to here is not
in the lecture transcript; Adorno probably named Geoffrey Reginald Gilchrist Mure, and was thinking of his book A Study of Hegel's Logic
(Oxford 1950).
Lecture Eight
See pp. 19f above.
'I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith. The dogmatism of metaphysics, that is, the pre-
conception that it is possible to make headway in metaphysics without a previous criticism of pure reason, is the source of all that unbelief, always very dogmatic, which wars against morality' (Immanuel Kant's
Critique ofPure Reason, p. 29 [B XXX]).
The German lecture transcript has the words 'immer auch das' instead of 'immer auf das' and some omission marks. The amendment is based on Adorno's notes for the lecture (Theodor W. Adorno Archiv, Vo
10792). Also d. the corresponding passage in Zeller:
Just as . . . Plato had distinguished knowledge, as cognition of the eternal and necessary, from imagination or opinion, whose sphere is the accidental, so, too, did Aristotle. For him, as for Plato, knowledge arises from wonderment, from the derangement of commonplace ideas, and for him, too, its object is the universal and the necessary; the accidental cannot be knowledge, only opinion. (Cf. Zeller 11. 2, p. 162)
The Greek quotation is missing from the transcript; here it is taken from Adorno's lecture notes (d. Theodor W. Adorno Archiv, Vo 10792); in Aristotle d. Met. e 8, 1050 b 11? .
See p. 75 above.
In his Formal and Transcendental Logic of 1929 Husser! distinguishes
between the contingent and the formal a priori; in defining the 'judicatively cognizing subjectivity' he encounters
restrictive essential structures that fall under the heading of pure reason and, in particular, pure judicative reason. Such a subjectivity also in- volves as a presupposition a continual and essentially necessary relatedness to some hyletic components or other; as apperceptional foundations for the possible experiences that judging necessarily presupposes. Therefore, if we define the concept of form, as a principle, by the essentially neces- sary components of any rational subjectivity whatever, the concept hyle
(exemplified by every 'Datum of sensation') is a form-concept and not what we shall define as the opposite of this, a contingent concept. On the other hand, there is no essential requirement that a judicatively cognizing subjectivity . . . be capable of sensing colors or sounds, that it be capable
? ? 4
5 6
? ? NOTES TO PAGES 53-57 165
? of sensible feelings having just such and such a differentia, or the like - though the concept of such matters too can be framed as apriori (as freed from everything empirically factual). Accordingly they too have their Apriori, which, however, is contingent and not an Apriori of pure reason; or, as we may also say, introducing an old word that tended blindly in the same direction, it is not an 'innate' Apriori. (Edmund Husser! , Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns, The Hague 1 969, p. 30)
7 Adorno is thinking of the 'apriori of the emotional' which Scheler advocated in opposition to Kant's 'equating of the aprioristic with the conceptual', of 'apriorism with rationalism':
Our entire mental life, and not just objective cognition and thought as cognition of being, which has pure acts and laws of action in accordance with its own nature and content, and independently of the fact of human organization. The emotional aspects of mind, feeling, preferring, loving, hating and willing, also have an original a-priori content which they do not derive from 'thinking', and which ethics can identify quite indepen- dently of logic. There is an a priori 'ordre du coeur' or 'Logique du coeur',
as Blaise Pascal aptly puts it. (Scheler, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, Bernel Munich 1980, p. 82)
8 Adorno was probably thinking here of his teacher Hans Cornelius, as the next example cited, referring to the optical similarity series, seems to prove; d. the reference to Cornelius's commentary on Kant in NaS IV. 4, pp. 366f, n. 39.
9 Cf. the discussion on the possibility of synthetic a priori judgements, which nevertheless stem from experience, in Adorno's lectures, Kants
'Kritik der reinen Vernunft' (NaS IVA, pp. 49f).
10 See the opening of the second part of Negative Dialectics, cited in
Lecture 7, n. 13, and the ensuing discussion of the indissolubility of the
'something' .
11 On Kant's distinction, d. the 'Postulates of empirical thought in general',
according to which possibility and reality are 'categories of modality', which 'have the peculiarity that, in determining an object, they do not in the least enlarge the concept to which they are attached as predicates. They only express the relation of the concept to the faculty of know- ledge': '1. That which agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the conditions of intuition and of concepts, is possible. 2. That which is bound up with the material conditions of experience,
that is, with sensation, is actual' (Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, p. 239 (A 218f, B 265f). In other words, 'The postulate bearing on the knowledge of things as actual does not, indeed, demand immedi- ate perception, and, therefore, sensation. . . . In the mere concept of a thing no mark of its existence is to be found' (ibid. , pp. 242-3 [A 225, B 272]).
12 Cf. Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 384ff (A 406ff, B 433ff).
13
? ?
See p. 66 above.
166
NOTES TO PAGES 57-63
? 14
Cf. Fr. 1 of Anaximander of Miletus: 'The beginning and origin of existing things is O:TrELpOV (the boundlessly indeterminate). But whereof existing things are become, therein also they pass away according to their guilt; for they render each other just punishment and penance according to the ordinance of time' (Diels/Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th edn, vol. 1, p. 89). Aristotle uses the term in Meta- physics K 10, 1066 a 35 (d. Aristotle, Metaphysics, pp. 367ft) and elsewhere; also d. the Physics, which contains no reference to a sub- stantial infinite.
Cf. Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 409ff (A 444ff, B 472ft). Adorno discusses the third antinomy in Negative Dialectics (d. pp. 244ff) and, above all, in the lectures Probleme der Moralphilosophie
See pp. 40f above. On the theory of the unmoved mover d. esp. Klaus Oehler, Der Unbewegte Beweger des Aristoteles, Frankfurt/Main 1984. Wilhelm Weischedel's main work, Der Gott der Philosophen. Grundlegung einer philosophischen Theologie im Zeitalter des Nihilismus, 2 vols, reprint of 3rd edn, Darmstadt 1994, is devoted to the connection between metaphysics and theology; on Aristotle d. ibid. ,
vol. 1, pp. 54ff.
The scholastic doctrine of the analogia entis, an official dogma of the Church since 1 2 1 5 , regulates the correspondences between God and that which He has created in terms of similarity and dissimilarity; the theorem contains in essence the core content of ontology as it developed from the Pre-Socratics, to reach a high point and a turning point in St Thomas Aquinas. Cf. e. g. Gunther Mensching, Thomas von Aquin, Frankfurt/Main, New York 1995 (Reihe Campus Einfuhrungen, Bd. 1087), pp. 94ff.
Lecture Nine
See p. 55 above.
In his Ideas for a Philosophy ofNature of 1797 Schelling writes: 'with the removal of the problem of how matter is originally possible, the problem of a possible universe is also removed' (Schellings Werke, Munich 1956, p. 190). And:
Objects themselves can be considered as products of forces, causing the phantasm of the thing in itself, which is supposed to be the cause of our representations, to vanish of its own accord. Indeed, what can have any effect on mind except mind itself, or something related to it by nature?
It is therefore necessary to conceive of matter as a product of forces, since force is the only non-sensible aspect of objects, and mind can only encounter what is analogous to itself. (ibid. , p. 226)
Cf. Kroner's interpretation: 'The notion of the forces by means of which matter is constructed is nothing other than an attempt by the mind
? 16 17
18
? 1 2
? 15
(d. NaS IV. 10, pp. 54ft).
NOTES TO PAGES 65-67
167
? ? to reconstruct in thought the original synthesis produced in perception. The true concept of matter would be the one which re-established that perception' (d. Richard Kroner, Von Kant bis Hegel, 2 vols in 1 vol. , 2nd edn, Tiibingen 1961, vol. 2, p. 25). On the changes undergone by the theory of matter in Schelling's natural philosophy d. Kroner, ibid. ,
pp. 23ff.
3 See the first of the 'Postulates of empirical thought in general': 'That
which agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the conditions of intuition and of concepts, is possible,' referred to in n. 1 1 above.
4 On this 'most famous of Kant's formulations' d. Adorno's ninth lecture on Kants 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft' (NaS IV. 4, pp. 147f). On Kant's 'Copernican revolution', ibid. , pp. 55f passim and Negative Dialectics, pp. 247f.
5 Cf. Metaphysics Ll 4, 1015 a 5ff: 'Nature . . . is attributed to those things . . . which are composed of matter and form. It consists of primary matter [7TpWT'! ] VA'! ]] and the form or essence, and is the end
[purpose] of all becoming' (Aristotle, Metaphysics, p. 9). Zeller, on whom Adorno bases his argument here, interprets 7TPWT'! ] VA'! ] as
follows:
If in a given case we abstract that which an object has yet to become from everything else, we obtain a certain matter which lacks a certain form, and thus contains only the possibility of that form. If we abstract from abso- lutely everything which is the result of becoming, if we imagine something objective which has not yet become anything, we obtain pure matter with- out any formal determination, something which is nothing but can become everything, the subject or substrate to which no conceivable predicate can
be applied but is therefore equally receptive to them all. In other words, we obtain something which is everything in terms of possibility and nothing in terms of reality, pure potential being without any actuality.
He adds in a note:
? Aristotle calls this pure matter - which, however, never exists - 7TpclJTT} vAT}, contrasting it to vAT} . ! uXaTT} (l8w" oida EKauTov), matter which is combined with a certain form without needing any further elaboration: 7TPWTT} vAT} is matter prior to elementary differences; the . ! UXaTT} vAT} of a of the human being are the menstrual fluids [as the 'material cause']. (Cf. Zeller
? sculpture, for example, is bronze or stone, while the . ! uXaTT} vAT} II. 2, p. 319f)
? 6 Cf. Zeller:
Matter as such, what was called primary matter, is devoid of form or determination, being that which precedes all becoming and shaping. It is the substratum endowed with none of the properties in which the form of things consists. It is thus also the unlimited or infinite, not in the spatial sense (for Aristotle does not admit the possibility of spatial infinity . . . ),
? 168 NOTES TO PAGES 67-73
? but in the broad sense of this term, where it refers to anything which is not limited or fixed by any formal determination, has attained neither conclusion nor perfection.
From the appended note: 'By D. 7TEtpOV Aristotle means, firstly, the spatially unlimited, and he investigates the concept from this standpoint in . . . Physics III, 4ff. But since he now finds that in reality no infinite space can exist, the unlimited finally coincides for him with d6pWTOV or vAr/ (Zeller 11. 2, pp. 3 2 1 ? ) . On the original concept of D. 7TEtpOV in Anaximander see Lecture 8, n. 14.
7 Adorno is referring here to the definition of the 'Apollonian soul' and its 'ahistoricity', a central motif of Spengler, which is to be found, in some form, on all but a few pages of The Decline of the West. For example,
cf. the discussion in the chapter on 'Music and Sculpture':
The Hellenic temple is conceived and formed as a solid body. For the formal sensibility which produced it no other possibility existed. For this reason the history of the plastic arts of antiquity is that of an unceasing labour to perfect a single ideal, and to master the free-standing human body as the quintessence of pure objective presence. . . . It has never been remarked . . . how rare this genre is, an exception, anything but a rule. In fact, this sculptural art, which placed the naked body freely on a level plane and formed it from all sides existed only once, in antiquity, since this was the only culture which completely rejected any transcendence of sensible boundaries in favour of space. . . . This Apollonian sculpture is a pendant to Euclidean mathematics. Both repudiate pure space and see the a priori of perception in bodily form. This sculpture acknowledges neither ideas pointing into the distance nor personalities or historical events, but only the self-limited existence of bodies confined within their own surfaces.
(Cf. Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes, vol. 1, Munich 1920, pp. 310f)
8 Adorno is probably thinking of the famous issue of Logos devoted to Spengler, in which Karl Joel and Eduard Schwartz wrote on Spengler's treatment of philosophy and history; Ludwig Curtius, in an essay 'Morphologie der antiken Kunst', criticized the treatment of these sub- jects in The Decline ofthe West; d. Logos. Internationale Zeitschrift fur Philosophie der Kultur, ed. Richard Kroner and Georg Mehlis, vol. 9 (1920/1), pp. 133ff.
9 An allusion to De consolatione philosophiae, the main work, written in prison, of the Roman Neo-Platonist Boethius (480-525), who was also important as a translator and editor of Aristotle.
Lecture Ten
1 Published in 1938 in Leiden. See Adorno's review of the book, GS 20. 1, pp. 240f.
? ? 2 For example, by Zeller:
NOTES TO PAGES 74-78 169
? Aristotle generally mentions four kinds of grounds or causes: the material, the conceptual or formal, the prime mover and the final cause. However, on closer examination these four causes boil down to the first two. The concept of any thing cannot differ from its purpose, as all purposiveness aims at the realization of a concept. This concept, however, is also the moving cause, whether it sets the thing in motion from within as its soul, or whether its motion comes to it from outside. For even in the second case it is the thing's concept which brings about the motion, both in the works of nature and in those of art: only a human being can engender a human
being; only the concept of health can impel the physician to work towards the bringing forth of health. Likewise, we will find pure form, the highest purpose of the world and the cause of its motion, combined in the highest cause or the divinity. But even in his explanation of nature Aristotle distinguishes only two kinds of causes, necessary and final causes, i. e. the effect of matter and the effect of form or the concept. It is only this difference, therefore, that we must regard as original. The distinction between the formal, effective and final causes is merely secondary; and even if all three are not always united in the single thing, in themselves,
by their nature, they are one, and are only split apart in the realm of sensible phenomena: that which has become has several causes, but the eternal has only one, the concept. (Zeller 11. 2, pp. 327? ? )
3 See Lecture 8, n. 14. Adorno also refers to Anaximander's 'saying' in GS 5, p. 32 and NaS IVA, p. 332.
4 Adorno discusses the general crisis of causality today in the chapter on freedom in Negative Dialectics, pp. 265ff; also d. NaS IVA, p. 141 and pp. 212ff.
5 See p. 40 above.
6 On the Kantian concept of causality based on freedom d. especially
Lectures 4 and 5 in Frobleme der Moralphilosophie, NaS IV. 10, pp. 54ff.
7 Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, pp. 138ff. (M 6-9, 1080 a 12ff)
Lecture Eleven
1 The poet is Ovid; d. the opening of Metamorphoses: 'Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia caelum / unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe, / quem dixere Chaos: rudis indigestaque moles . . . ' ('Before the land and sea were made / In all the world one only face of Nature did
abide, / Which was called Chaos, a huge rude heap . . . ' (Ovid, Selected
works, London/New York 1939, p. 130).
2 Cf. Moliere, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, I, 7:
MAITRE DE PHILOSOPHIE: Tout ce qui n'est point prose est vers; et tout ce qui n'est point vers est prose.
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Et comme l'on parle qu'est-ce que donc que cela? MAITRE DE PHILOSOPHIE: De la prose.
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Quoi? Quand je dis: 'Nicole, apportez-moi mes pantoufles, et me donnez mon bonnet de nuit', c'est de la prose?
? ?
170
NOTES TO PAGE 78 MAITRE DE PHILOSOPHIE: Oui, Monsieur.
MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Par rna foil II y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que j'en susse rien, et je vous suis Ie plus oblige du monde de m'avoir appris cela.
(Moliere: Oeuvres completes II. Textes etablis, presentes et annotes par Georges Couton, Paris 1971, p. 730)
? PHILOSOPHER:
prose.
MR JORDAIN: PHILOSOPHER:
Whatever isn't prose is verse and anything that isn't verse is
And talking, as I am now, which is that? That is prose.
MR JORDAIN: You mean to say that when I say 'Nicole, fetch me my slippers' or 'Give me my night-cap' that's prose?
PHILOSOPHER: Certainly, sir.
MR JORDAIN: Well, my goodness! Here I've been talking prose for forty
years and never known it, and mighty grateful I am to you for telling me! (trans. John Wood, London 1 953)
3 Adorno discusses Augustine's philosophy of history in the text Fortschritt, cf. GS 10. 2, pp. 620ff.
4 Regarding the gradual character of the Aristotelian concept of devel- opment cf. Ernst Bloch, who finds 'an element of the transient' within Aristotle's logic:
the element of development, which for us cries out for the dialectic, does not proceed by leaps in Aristotle. Development contains no revolutionary element, but is exclusively evolutionary. . . . Development for him is a gradually evolving entelechy, Neptunic, forming like water over long, long periods, not Vulcanic, coming into being with sudden violence, abrupt transitions. Thus the dialectic is eliminated from Aristotle's concept of development. (Ernst Bloch, Leipziger Vorlesungen zur Geschichte der Philosophie 1 950-56, vol. 1 : Antike Philosophie, Frankfurt/Main 1 985, p. 229)
5 In Schopenhauer's philosophy the concept of the urge or yearning (Drang) refers to 'the objectivity of the Will on the lowest rung'; he depicts the Will as 'a blind urge, a dark, dull drive, remote from any- thing directly perceptible'. But
we are presented with the very peculiar phenomenon that the blind action of the Will, and the action illuminated by knowledge, cross over into each other's spheres in a very surprising way. .
