Their relationship to
speculation
is confused.
Adorno-Jargon-of-Authenticity
All this at the cost of religion itself.
One needs only to be a be- liever-no matter what he believes in.
Such irrational- ity has the same function as putty.
The jargon of
authenticity inherits it, in the childish manner of Latin primers which praise the love of the fatherland in- itself-which praise the viri patriae amantes, even when the fatherland in question covers up the most atrocious deeds. Sonnemann has described this phe-
? ? 2I
nomenon as not being able to get rid of a benevolent attitude which at all costs defends order, even an order in which all these things are not in order. What things? According to the logic of the sentence they ought only to be accidentals, but instead they are strikingly essen- tial : "poisonous exhaust emissions, pressing taboos, insincerity, resentments, hidden hysteria on all sides. " What remains then of the orderliness of the order? Obviously, it needs first to be created. 1 Benevolence is identical with being predecided. What is affirmative and wholesome doubles the curse of evil. Through mar- riage offers, the jargon guides the petit bourgeois to a positive attitude toward life. It fastidiously prolongs the innumerable events which are to make attractive to men a life by which they otherwise would be dis- gusted-and which they would soon come to consider unbearable. That religion has shifted into the subject, has become religiosity, follows the trend of history. Dead cells of religiosity in the midst of the secular, however, become poisonous. The ancient force, which according to Nietzsche's insight nourishes everything, should enter completely into the profane; instead it preserves itself in an unreflected manner and elevates limitation, which abhors reflection, to the level of virtue.
All experts in the jargon, from Jaspers on down, unite in praise of positivity. Only the careful Heidegger avoids a too open-hearted affirmation for its own sake, and indirectly pays his dues. He is eager and genuine about it. But Jaspers writes, unashamedly: "Actually
7. Ulrich Sonnemann, Das Land der unbegrenzten Zumut barkeiten (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1963), pp. Ig6 ff.
? ? ? ? 22
only that man can remain in the world who lives out from something which in every case he possesses only through commitment. " 8 To which he adds : "Only the person who commits himself freely is proof against a disillusioned revolt against himself. " 9 It is true that his philosophy of existence has chosen, as its patron saint, Max Weber, who stood up proudly without illu- sions. Nevertheless, he is interested in religion, no matter of what kind. He is interested in it provided it is ready at hand, because it guarantees the required com- mitment; or simply because it exists, whether or not it fits with the notion of independent philosophy, which Jaspers reserves for himself as if it were a personal privilege :
Whoever is true to transcendence in the form of such a belief should never be attacked, so long as he does not become intolerant. For in the believing person only destruction can take place; he can perhaps remain open to philosophizing, and risk the corresponding burden of a doubting, which is inseparable from human exist- ence; yet he has the positivity of an historical existence as his reference and measure, which bring him ire- placeably back to himself. About these possibilities we do not speak. l0
When autonomous thought still had confidence in its humane realization, it behaved less humanely. In
8. Karl Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, 5th ed. (Berlin, 1947), pp. 169if. [English translation by Eden and Cedar Paul, Man in the Modern Age (New York, 1957 ) . All quotations from this work are translated from the original German. }
9 . Ibid.
10. Ibid. , pp. 127 if.
23
the meantime, the less philosophers are infected with philosophy the more innocently do they let the cat out of the bag; a bag which prominent ones weave like Noms. Sentences from O. F. Bollnow sound like this:
Therefore it seems especially meaningful that in poetry, above all in the lyric of the last years, after al the ex- periences of dread, a new feeling, of affirmation of being, is beginning to make its appearance, a joyful and thankful harmony with the very existence of man, as it is; a harmony with the world as it confronts man. Two of these poets in particular should receive special attention here : Rilke and Bergengruen. Bergengruen' s last volume of poetry Die Heile Welt (Munich, 1 950) , p. 272, closes with the confession: "What came from pain was only transient. And my ear heard nothing but songs of praise. " In other words, it is a feeling of thank- ful agreement with existence. And Bergengruen cer- tainly is not a poet who could be criticized for a cheap optimism. In this feeling of deep thankfulness he comes close to Rilke, who also, at the close of his way, is able to state : "Everything breathes and returns thanks. Oh you troubles of the night, how you sank without a trace. " U
Bergengruen's volume is on? y a few years closer to us than the time when Jews who had not been completely killed by the gas were thrown living into the fire, where they regained consciousness and screamed. The poet, who can certainly not be criticized for cheap optimism, and the philosophically minded pedagogue who eval- uates him, heard nothing but songs of praise. In a pre- liminary definition we call this inner state of man an attitude of trustful reliance. Thus the task is set: to
I I . Bollnow, Geborgenheit, pp. 26 if. 24
examine the nature of this state of the soul in order to find its possibilities. 12 Bollnow found the best of all possible names for this task, which in the face of hor- ror can no longer even appease us by virtue of its ridiculousness-he called it Seinsgliiubigkeit, faith unto Being. 13 The fact that the term reminds us of Deutschgliiubigkeit, faith unto German nationality, is certainly accidental. Once faith unto Being is achieved, there is no stopping before we reach a "positive relation to the world and life" 14 and "constructive work toward the overcoming of existentialism. " 1 ? What remains after the removal of existential bombast are religious customs cut off from their religious content. There is no recognition of the fact that cult forms, the subject matter of folklore, like empty shells, outlive their mys- tery. This state of affairs is in fact defended with the
aid of the jargon. All of this is an insult not only to thought but also to religion, which was once man's promise of eternal bliss, while now authenticity con- tents itself resignedly with an "ultimately hale world. " 16 "In the following we can distinguish these two forms- for the sake of a convenient terminology-as hope which has a determined content and hope which has an undetermined content; or, briefly, as relative and absolute hope. " 11 This pitiful concept-splitting applies itself to the question of "existence welfare. " It makes no difference to a follower to what he attaches him-
12. Ibid. , p. 51.
13. Ibid. , p. 57?
14. Ibid. , p. 61.
IS. Ibid.
16. Ibid. , p. 63.
17. Ibid. , p. 100.
? 25
self at a given moment. He praises this as his capacity for enthusiasm. Whether such a man ranks himself as lowbrow, middlebrow, or highbrow, he can consider that "hale" refers to the haleness of the soul, or right living, or social enclaves not yet taken over by indus- trialism, or simply places where Nietzsche and the Enlightenment have not yet been heard of; or chaste
conditions in which girls hold their maidenhood intact until they get married. We should not oppose to the catch-word of "shelteredness," the equally worn-out idea of the dangerous life; who wouldn't want to live with- out anxiety in this world of terrors? But shelteredness, as an existential value, turns from something longed for and denied into a presence which is now and here, and which is independent of what prevents it from being. It leaves its trace in the violation of the word : the reminiscence of what is hedged-in and safely bor- dered remains joined to that element of short-sighted particularity which out of itself renews the evil against which no one is sheltered. Home will only come to be when it has freed itself from such particularity, when home has negated itself as universal. The feeling of
shelteredness makes itself at home with itself, and offers a holiday resort in place of life. A landscape be- comes uglier when an admirer disrupts it with the words "how beautiful. " The same happens to customs, habits, institutions which barter themselves away by stressing their own naivete instead of by changing it. All talk of shelteredness is indicted by Kogon's report that the worst atrocities in the concentration camps were committed by the younger sons of farmers. The
? ? general situation in the country, which is the model for the feelin g of shelteredness , pushes disinherited sons into barbarousness. The logic of the jargon con- stantly smuggles in what is limited, finally even situa- tions of material want, under the guise of positivity; and presses for their being eternally instituted at just that moment when, thanks to the state of human
achievements, such a limitation no longer needs in reality to exist. A spirit which makes this limitation its cause hires itself out as the lackey of what is evil.
In the higher ranks of the hierarchy of authen- ticity, however, negativities are also served. Heidegger even requisitions the concept of destruction which is tabooed in the lower ranks, together with the blackness of fear, sorrow, and death. Jaspers occaSionally blares out the opposite of Bollnow's Geborgenheit, sheltered- ness: "Today philosophy is the only possibility for one who is consciously unsheltered. " 18 But the positive, like a tumbler doll, cannot be kept down. Danger, hazard, risking one's life, and the whole characteristic shudder, are not taken all that seriously. One of the Vr-authentic ones in her time remarked that in the innermost core of Dostoyevsky's hell the light of salvation shone again.
She had to swallow the reply that hell was then an awfully short railroad tunnel. Some prominent authen- tic ones a little reluctantly-put it like the parish preacher; they say they would rather harvest on burned earth. They are no less clever than social psychology, which has observed that negative judgments, of no
18. Jaspers, Die geistige Situation, p. 128.
27
matter what content, give a better chance of being -affirmed than do positive judgments. 19 Nihilism turns into farce, into mere method, as has already happened to Cartesian doubt. The question-a fa. vorite prerequi- site of the jargon-must sound all the more radical the more loyally it directs itself to the kind of answer which can be everything except radical. Here is an
elementary example from Jaspers :
Existential philosophy would be lost immediately, if it once again believed that it knows what man is. It would again give us sketches of how to investigate hu- man and animal life in its typical forms; it would again become anthropology, psychology, sociology. Its mean- ing is only possible when it remains groundless in its concreteness. It awakens what it does not know; it lightens and moves, but it does not fix and hold. For the man who is underway, this philosophy is the ex- pression through which he maintains himself in his direction; the means toward preserving his highest moments-so that he can make them real through his life. . . . Insight into existence, because it remains without an object, leads to no conclusion. 20
Exactly. A concerned tone is ominously struck up: no answer would be serious enough; every answer, no matter of what content, would be dismissed as a limit- ing concretization. But the effect of this remorseless intransigence is friendly; the man never pins himself
19. Cf. Gruppenexperiment, Frankfurter Beitriige zur Soziologie ( Frankfurt, 1955), II, 482 if.
20. Jaspers, Die geistige Situation, pp. 146 47.
? down : the world is all too dynamic. The old Protestant theme of absurd belief, grounding itself in the subject, converted itself from Lessing to Kierkegaard into the pathos of existence. This pathos existed in opposition to its result, the reified world seen as coagulated and alien to the subject. That old theme allies itself stra- tegically with the critique of positive science-science from which, as Kierkegaard's thesis ran, the subject has disappeared. At the cost of any possible answer, the radical question becomes what is substantial unto itself. Risk without hazard. Know-how and range of in- come are the only factors which determine whether one appears on the scene sheltered or has to start out without security. Even those who are not sheltered are safe as long as they join the chorus. This is what makes possible passages like the one from Heinz Schwitzke's Three Fundamental Theses for Television :
This is totally different in the sermon. Here a clerical speaker professed his credo for more than ten minutes, out of his own depths, in the existential manner; a single, never-changing close-up. Thanks to the noble humane power of conviction that radiated out from him, not only did his words, which were testified to by his pictorial presence, become completely credible, but the listener totally forgot the mediating apparatus. In front of the television screen, as if in the house of God, there formed itself a sort of parish among the accidental viewers, who felt as if they were being confronted with the immediate presence of the speaker, and through him felt committed to the subject matter of his sermon , God's word. There is no other explanation for this sur- prising occurrence than the supreme importance of the speaking person, the person who has enough courage
and e thos to place himself in the breach , and to serve
? nothing but the subject matter which he stands for and the listeners to whom he knows he can relate. 21
This is authenticity's funky commercial. The "word" of the preacher, as if his and God's were one without ques- tion, is testified to not by his "pictorial presence," but at best by behavior whose trustworthiness supports the credibility of his statements.
If, thanks to the appearance of the preacher, one forgets the mediating equipment, then the jargon of authenticity, which takes pleasure in this situation, is committing itself to the philosophy of As If: through stage-setting, the now and here of a cult action is simu- lated, an action which through its omnipresence is an- nulled on television. But, by the existential manner in which the preacher makes public profession of him- self, from out of himself, "in a never changing close-up," we need only to understand the self-evident fact that the preacher, who after all had no other choice, was projected as an empirical person onto the screen and in this way, perhaps, had a sympathetic effect on many people. That he formed a community
cannot be proven. The notion that he had to throw him- self into the breach, with his whole substance and existence, is imported from the sphere of risk. Still, for that preacher who details on television why the church is too narrow for him there is no risk at all: neither of contradiction from outside nor of inner ne- cessity. If in fact, hemmed in between microphone and floodlight, he had to suffer through moments of temp-
2 I . Heinz Schwitzke, "Drei Grundthesen zum Fernsehen," in Rundfunk und Fernsehen, II (I953), II ff.
? ? 30
tation, the jargon would have been right there waiting with additional praise for his existentiality. The benefit of the negative is transferred to the positive, as though by a single stroke of the pen : positive negativeness to warm the heart. These dark words are numinous, just like Bollnow's whitewashed Sunday words-as close to rejoicing as the dreadful trumpet has always been. Just as the jargon uses the double sense of the word "positive," it uses the ambiguity of the term "meta- physics," according to whether at a given moment one prefers nothingness or being. On the one hand meta- physics means involvement with metaphysical themes, even if the metaphysical content is contested; on the other hand it means the affirmative doctrine of the transcendent world, in the Platonic model. In this shifting metaphysical need, that state of the spirit which long ago made itself known in Novalis' On Christendom or Europe, or which the young Lukacs called transcendental homelessness, has come down to culturally defined knowledge . The theological freeing of the numinous from ossified dogma has, ever since Kierkegaard, involuntarily come to mean its partial secularization. In mystical heresy, the unsatisfiable purification of the divine from myth, which loves to tremble in the gesture of deeply involved questioning, hands the divine over to whoever relates to it in any way. Liberal theology is suddenly reborn, since con- tent is to be found only in a relation, the other pole of which removes itself from all definition as the "ab- solutely indifferent," and marks all definition with the blemish of reification. Complete demythologization totally reduces transcendence to an abstraction, to a
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 31
eQ. Uc. f)p. ,! . Enlightenment, which the viri obscuri 22 ac- cuse, triumphs in their thought. In the same movement of the spirit, however, the positing power of the sub- ject, veiled unto itself, again conjures up the myth inherent in all dialectical theology. That subjective power's highest value, as absolutely different, is blind. Under compulsion the viri obscuri praise commitments instead of jumping into speculation which alone could justify their own commitments to their radical ques- tioners.
Their relationship to speculation is confused. One needs it because one wants to be deep, yet one shies away from it because of its intellectual nature. One would prefer to reserve it for the gurus . The others still confess their groundlessness, in order to give char- acter to the paths of offered salvation, which are re- puted to be successful in extreme even if imaginary danger. However, they find nothing but groundless thinking as soon as thinking refuses, through its atti- tude, to support from the outset those commitments which are as unavoidable in authenticity as is the happy ending in movies. If the happy ending is lacking, then among the existential authentics existentialism itself has nothing to laugh at.
Only against this background does the whole greatness of the existential ethic reveal itself. It once again actualizes, on the ground of modern historical rela- tivism, a decidedly moral stance. But in precisely that sense a danger is given; that danger which comes to expression in the possibility of an existential adven-
22. [ViTi obscuri : obscurantists , enemies of enlightenm ent. Historical reference to fictive humanist (fifteenth and six- teenth century) authors of letters against late forms <if Scho- lasticism. ]
32
turism. Having become fully unconditioned in regard to content, and without any of that constancy which re- sides in fidelity, the adventurer enjoys the risk of his engagement as a last and most sublime pleasure. Pre- cisely in the unconditioned state of any given momen- tary engagement, the existentialist is especially exposed to the temptation of inconstancy and of faithlessness. 23
All of these words draw from language, from which they are stolen, the aroma of the bodily, unmetaphorical; but in the jargon they become quietly spiritualized. In that way they avoid the dangers of which 'they are constantly palavering. The more ear- nestly the jargon sanctifies its everyday world, as
though in a mockery of Kierkegaard's insistence on the unity of the sublime and the pedestrian, the more sadly does the jargon mix up the literal with the figurative:
Heidegger's final remark aims at this fundamental meaning of residing for all human existence, and in this remark he focuses on the "need for residences" as one of the great difficulties of our time : "The true need for residence," he says here, "consists not first of all in the absence of residences," although this need should by no means be taken lightly; but behind this need a deeper one is hidden, that man has lost his own nature and so cannot come to rest. "The true need for residence consists in the fact that mortals must first learn to re- side. " But to learn to reside means : to grasp this neces- sity, that, in the face of what is threatening, man should make for himself a sheltering space and should settle into it with a trustful reliance. But, then, inversely, the possibility of this settling down is again connected in a menacing way with the availability of residences. 24
23. Bollnow, Geborgenheit, pp. 37 f. 24. Ibid. , p. 170.
33
The Being of the sheltering space of shelteredness is simply derived from the necessity that man should "make for himself" such a space. The linguistic care- lessness, in the unresisting mechanism of the jargon, admittedly lays shelteredness bare, as if out of com- pulsion; lays it bare as something that is merely posited. However, that which announces itself, in the game about the need for residences, is more serious
than the pose of existential seriousness. It is the fear of unemployment, lurking in all citizens of countries of high capitalism. This is a fear which is administra- tively fought off, and therefore nailed to the platonic firmament of stars, a fear that remains even in the glorious times of full employment. Everyone knows that he could become expendable as technology de- velops, as long as production is only carried on for production's sake; so everyone senses that his job is a disguised unemployment. It is a support that has ar- bitrarily and revocably pinched off something from the
total societal product, for the purpose of maintaining the status quO. 25 He who has not been given a life ticket could in principle be sent away tomorrow. That migra- tion of people could continue which the dictators al- ready once before set in motion and channeled into Auschwitz. Angst, busily distinguished from inner- worldly, empirical fear, need by no means be an ex- istential value. Since it is historical, it appears in fact that those who are yoked into a SOCiety which is socie- talized, but contradictory to the deepest core, con-
25. Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, Eingriffe: Neun kritische Madelle (Frankfurt, 1963), p. 137.
34
stantly feel threatened by what sustains them. They feel threatened without ever being able in specific in- stances to concretize this threat from the whole of sOciety. But in shelteredness the declassed person has his clumsy triumph-the declassed man who knows what he can get away with. On the one hand he has nothing to lose; on the other hand, the overadminis- trated world of today? still respects the compromise structure of bourgeois soci? ty, to the extent that that society-in its own interest-stops short before the ultimate, the liquidation of its members, stops short because, in the massive plans of its industry, it has the means of delay at its disposal. So Jaspers' "existence welfare" and social welfare-administrated grace- come into contact. On the social ground of the j argon's reinterpretation of complete negativity into what is positive, we suspect the coercive self-confidence of the uneasy consciousness. Even our cheap suffering from the loss of meaning, a suffering long since automatized into a formula, is not simply that emptiness which has
grown up through the whole movement of the Enlight- enment-as the more demanding viri obscuri willingly describe it. There are reports of taedium vitae even during periods of unchallenged state religion; it was as common among the Fathers of the Church as among those who carry over into the jargon Nietzsche's judg- ment about modern nihilism, and who imagine that in that way they have gone beyond both Nietzsche and nihilism-Nietzsche's concept of which they have sim- ply turned upside down. Socially, the feeling of mean- inglessness is a reaction to the wide-reaching freeing from work which takes place under conditions of con-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 35
tinuing social unfreedom. The free time of the subjects withholds from them the freedom which they secretly hope for; their free time chains them to the ever-same, the apparatus of production-even when this appa- ratus is giving them a vacation. With this situation they are forced to compare the obvious possibilities, and they grow the more confused the less the closed fa? ade of consciousness, which is modeled after that of so- ciety, lets through the conception of a possible freedom.
At the same time, in the feeling of meaninglessness which is the high-bourgeois expression of real need, the permanent threat of destruction is assimilated by consciousness. What this consciousness dreads it turns in such a way that the threat seems to be an innate part of it, and thus it weakens that element of the threat which can no longer be grasped in human terms. The fact that on all sides meaning of every kind seems to be impotent against evil, that the latter yields no mean- ing at all, and that the assertion of meaning may even promote evil, is registered as a lack of metaphysical content, especially in regard to religiOUS and social commitments. The falseness of this reinterpretation, using a mode of cultural criticism with which the stingy pathos of the authentics joins in, regularly be- comes visible in a particular fact: the fact that past ages-whichever one prefers-ranging from Bieder- meier to Pelasgic, appear as the ages of immanent meaning. Such reinterpretation follows an inclination
to set back the clock politically and socially, to bring to an end the dynamism inherent in a society which still, through the administrative measures of the most pow- erful cliques, appears to be all too open. As its present
? ? ? form can expect nothing good from such a dynamic, it stubbornly blinds itself to the recognition that the cure which society offers is itself the evil that it fears. This is brought to a head in Heidegger. Cleverly, he couples the appeal of unromantic, incorruptible purity with the prophecy of a saving element which, in consequence, can present itself as nothing other than this purity it- self. The hero of Mahagonny joined the wailing about a world in which there is nothing to hold on to. In Heidegger, as well as in the Brecht of the didactic plays, this is followed by the proclamation of compulsory order as salvation. The lack of something to hold on to is the mirror reflection of its opposite, of unfreedom. Only because mankind failed to define itself did it
grope for determination through something else : some- thing that was safely out of the reach of the dialectical movement. The anthropolOgical condition of so-called human emptiness, which for the sake of contrast the authentics are accustomed to daub out as an unhappy, but inevitable, consequence of the demystified world, could be changed. The longing for some completing factor could be fulfilled, as soon as it was no longer denied-but not fulfilled, of course, through the in- jection of a spiritual meaning or a merely verbal sub- stitution. The social constitution essentially trains mankind for the reproduction of itself, and the com- pulsion extends itself into society's psychology, as soon
as it lOoses its external power. Thanks to the factor of self-preservation, which has blown itself up into a to- tality, the following happens: what man is anyway once more becomes his goal. Perhaps with this nonsense the appearance of meaninglessness might also disap-
37
pear, the eagerly assured nothingness of the subject, a shadow of the state in which each person is literally his own neighbor. If it is the case that no metaphysical thought was ever created which has not been a constel- lation of elements of experience, then, in the present instance, the seminal experiences of metaphysics are simply diminished by a habit of thought which sub- limates them into metaphysical pain and splits them off from the real pain which gave rise to them. The jargon's whole hatred is directed against this con- sciousness. No distinction is made between Marx and the superstition of race :
Marxism, psychoanalysis, and racial theory are today the most widespread deceptions of mankind. The di- rectly brutal in hatred and praise, as it has come to dominance in human existence, finds its expression in these systems of thought; in Marxism, in the manner in which the mass postulates community; in psycho- analysis, in the way it seeks mere existence satisfaction; in racial theory, in the way it wants to be better than the other. . . . Without sociology no political strategy can be carried out. Without psychology no one becomes master of the reigning confusion, in his converse with himself and with the others. Without anthropology we would lose our consciousness of the dark causes of that in which we possess ourselves . . . . No sociology c an tell what fate I want, no psychology can clarify what I am, authentic being of man cannot be bred as race. Everywhere is the boundary of that which can be planned and made . For Marxism, psychoanalysis , and theory of race have characteristicaly destructive attri- butes. As Marxism thinks that it uncovers all spiritual being as Superstructure, psychoanalysis does the same in exposing spiritual being as sublimation of repressed drives. What, then, is still called culture is structured
? like an obsessive neurosis. Theory of race causes a con- ception of history which is without hope. Negative selection of the best will soon bring about the ruin of authentic humanity; or, it is the nature of man to produce during this process the highest possibilities in a mixture of races, in order to leave behind ad infinitum the marrowless average existence of his remains, after the mixing has come to an end in the course of a few centuries. All three tendencies are apt to destroy what has seemed to be of value for men. They are especially the ruin of anything absolute, for, as knowledge, they make themselves a false absolute which recognizes everything else as conditioned. Not only has God to fall
but also every form of philosophical belief. Both the highest and the lowest are labeled with the same termi- nology and, judged, step into nothingness! 6
The practical usability of the enlightening diSciplines is condescendingly granted in the beginning only to prevent more effectively any reflection on the truth content of criticism : by arousing our indignation at the desire to destroy. Passionate grief about obliviousness to being is given the appearance of the essential-to the point where one would rather like to forget all Be- ing. All of that is more ominously attended to in Der Grilne Heinrich:
There is an old saying which maintains that one must not only tear down but must also know how to build up; a commonplace constantly employed by cheery and superficial people who are uncomfortably confron ted with an activity which demands a decision from them. This way of speaking is in place where something is superficially settled or is denied out of stupid inclina- tion; otherwise, though, it is unintelligible. For one is
26. Jaspers, Die geistige Situation, pp. 142 ff.
? 39
not always tearing down, in order to build again; on the contrary, one tears things down eagerly in order to win free space for light and air, which appear as it were by themselves, wherever some obstructing object is removed. When one looks matters right in the face and treats them in an upright maner, then nothing is negative, but al is positive-to use this old saw. 27
Then the old warriors had an easier time of it: they had no need of old saws; they only needed to breathe sense into doubters with the cudgel of fate and Nordic manhood. But they already had the jargon at their dis- posal :
An extreme intensification of al activity, and a sharp- ening of all creative powers, even the great political event as such, mark our time; and to the eyes of philosophy they have physically presented this phe- nomenon in its authenticity and unvarnished original- ity. Philosophy has grasped this phenomenon as a con- dition of the highes t philosophical relevance , in order to let itself be led, through its content and problematic structure, to a full and pure understanding of man and the world. . . . Human existence is not meaningless : that is the categorical assertion with which this exist- ence itself confronts the philosophy of life, in order to assert itself in opposition to and over against that phi- losophy. . . . To say yes to fate and to negate it in spite of that, to suffer it and yet to dominate it, i. e. , to face it and to take one's stand against it, that is the attitude of true humanity. This attitude corresponds to the ideal image of man because it represents nothing
27. Gottfried Keller, Der Griine Heinrich, IV, 2, quoted in Friedrich Pollock, "Somharts Widerlegung des Marxismus," in Beihefte zum Archiv filr die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, ed. Carl Grunberg (Leipzig, I926), III, 63.
? but the essence of man, universally valid and removed from all ties to time. At the same time, and at one with it, this attitude defines the deep and genuine meaning of fate, that meaning which has nothing to do with fatalism, a meaning to which especially a German opens himself. For the man of Nordic blood, this mean- ing takes on a deeply religious content and grounds what for him means his bond with fate and his belief in fate. 28
Language uses the word "meaning" for the harm- less epistemological intentional object of HusserI, as well as for the purpose of saying that something is justified as meaningful; as one would speak, for in- stance, of the meaning of history. It remains true that the factual particular has meaning to the extent that the whole, above all the system of society, appears in it; that the dispersed facts are always more than what they immediately seem, even if such meaning is mad- ness. The search for meaning as that which something is authentically, and as that which is hidden in it, pushes away, often unnoticed and therefore all the faster, the question as to the right of this something. Analysis of meaning becomes the norm in this de- mand, not only for the signs but also for that which they refer to. The sign system of language, by its mere existence, takes everything, to begin with, into something that is held in readiness by society; and it defends this society in its own form prior to all content. This is what reflection stands firm against. However, the jargon drifts with the current, and would be glad
28. From Wilhelm Grebe, Der deutsche Mensch: Unter- V suchungen zur Philosophie des Handelns (Berlin, I937).
? 41
to increase it, in union with the regressive formations of consciousness.
In its semantic directions positivism has constantly noted the historical break between language and that which it expresses. Linguistic forms, . as rei? ied-and only through reification do they become forms-have outlived what they once referred to, together with the context of that reference. The completely demytholo- gized fact would withhold itself from language; through the mere act of intending the fact becomes an other-at least measured in terms of its idol of pure accessibility. That without language there is no fact remains, even so, the thorn in the flesh and the theme of positivism, since it is here that the stub- bornly mythical remainder of language is revealed. Mathematics is, for good reason, the primal model of positivistic thought-even in its function as a lan- guageless system of signs. Looked at in reverse, the tenacious residuum of what is archaic in language be- comes fruitful only where language rubs itself critically against it; the same archaic turns into a fatal mirage when language spontaneously confirms and strength- ens it. The jargon shares with positivism a crude con- ception of the archaic in language; neither of them bothers about the dialectical moment in which lan- guage, as if it were something else, wins itself away from its magical origins, language being entangled in a progressing demythologization. That particular neg- lect authorizes the social using of linguistic anachro- nism. The jargon simply ennobles the antiquity of language, which the positivists just as simply long to
? ? ? eradicate-along with all expression in language. The disproportion between language and the rationalized society drives the authentics to plunder language, rather than to drive it on, through greater sharpness, to its proper due. They don't fail to notice that one cannot speak absolutely without speaking archaically; but what the positivists bewail as retrogressive the authentics eternalize as a blessing.
For them that block which language piles up be- fore the expression of undiminished experience be- comes an altar. If it does not allow itself to be broken through, then it offers us simply the omnipotence and indissolubility of what was precipitated into language. But the archaic takes vengeance on the jargon, whose greed for the ? archaic violates the proper distance. The archaic is objectified for a second time. In its example is repeated that which in any case happened to lan- guage historically. The nimbus in which the words are being wrapped, like oranges in tissue paper, takes under its own direction the mythology of language, as if the radiant force of the words could not yet quite be trusted. Mixed with artificial coloring the words them- selves, released from the relation to what is thought, are to speak a relation which should change them and so always demythologizes them. Language mythology and reification become mixed with that element which identifies language as antimythological and rational. The jargon becomes practicable along the whole scale, reaching from sermon to advertisement. In the medium of the concept the jargon becomes surprisingly similar to the habitual practices of advertising. The words of
43
the jargon and those like ]iigermeister, Alte Kloster- frau, Schiinke,29 are all of a piece. They exploit the hap- piness promised by that which had to pass on to the shadows. Blood is drawn from that which has its ap- pearance of concreteness only after the fact, by virtue of its downfall. At least in terms of their function, the words, nailed into fixity and covered with a luminous layer of insulation, remind us of the positivistic count- ers. They are useful for arbitrary effect-connotations, without regard to the pathos of uniqueness which they usurp, and which itself has its orgin on the market, on that market for which what is rare has exchange value.
With the assertion of meaning at all costs, the old antisophistic emotion seeps into the so-called mass sOciety. Ever since the victory of Plato and Aristotle over the Socratic left, that emotion has dominated the official position of philosophy. Whatever refused sub- jection to it was pushed off into powerless undercur- rents. Only the more recent positivism has made so- phistic motives reputable by its alliance with science. The jargon struggles against this alliance. Without judgment it hands down the judgment of tradition. The shame of the sophists, opposed by Plato, was the fact that they did not fight against falsity in order to change the slave society, but rather raised doubts about truth
in order to arm thought for whatever was. Their kind of destruction was indeed similar to the totalitarian concept of ideology. Plato could caricature the Gorgias sophists as clowns because thought, once it has been
29. [Klosterfrau, jagermeister, Schanke: established brand names of well known liqueurs and wines. ]
44
freed from concrete knowledge and the nature of the object, reduces to farce that moment of play which is essential to thought-turns such a moment into a ghost of that mimesis which is combatted by every enlight- enment. 30 Nevertheless, the antisophistic movement misuses its insight into such misconstructions of free- wheeling thought-misuses them in order to discredit thought, through thought. This was the way Nietzsche criticized Kant, raising the charge of over-subtle think- ing in the same tone as that adopted magisterially by Hegel, when he spoke of "reasoning. " In the modish
antisophistic movement there is a sad confluence : of a necessary critique of isolated instrumental reason with a grim defense of institutions against thought. The jargon, a waste product of the modern that it at- tacks, seeks to protect itself-along with literally de- structive institutions-against the suspicion of being destructive : by Simultaneously accusing other, mostly anticonservative, groups of sinful intellectuality, of that sin which lies deep in the jargon's own unnaive, reflective principle of existence. Demagogically it uses the double character of the antisophistic. That con- sciousness is false which, externally, and, as Hegel says, without being in the thing, places itself above this thing and manages it from above; but criticism becomes equally ideological at the moment when it lets it be known, self-righteously, that thought must have a ground. Hegel's dialectic went beyond the doc-
trine that thought, in order to be true, needs some absolute starting point, free of doubt. This doctrine be-
30. Cf.
authenticity inherits it, in the childish manner of Latin primers which praise the love of the fatherland in- itself-which praise the viri patriae amantes, even when the fatherland in question covers up the most atrocious deeds. Sonnemann has described this phe-
? ? 2I
nomenon as not being able to get rid of a benevolent attitude which at all costs defends order, even an order in which all these things are not in order. What things? According to the logic of the sentence they ought only to be accidentals, but instead they are strikingly essen- tial : "poisonous exhaust emissions, pressing taboos, insincerity, resentments, hidden hysteria on all sides. " What remains then of the orderliness of the order? Obviously, it needs first to be created. 1 Benevolence is identical with being predecided. What is affirmative and wholesome doubles the curse of evil. Through mar- riage offers, the jargon guides the petit bourgeois to a positive attitude toward life. It fastidiously prolongs the innumerable events which are to make attractive to men a life by which they otherwise would be dis- gusted-and which they would soon come to consider unbearable. That religion has shifted into the subject, has become religiosity, follows the trend of history. Dead cells of religiosity in the midst of the secular, however, become poisonous. The ancient force, which according to Nietzsche's insight nourishes everything, should enter completely into the profane; instead it preserves itself in an unreflected manner and elevates limitation, which abhors reflection, to the level of virtue.
All experts in the jargon, from Jaspers on down, unite in praise of positivity. Only the careful Heidegger avoids a too open-hearted affirmation for its own sake, and indirectly pays his dues. He is eager and genuine about it. But Jaspers writes, unashamedly: "Actually
7. Ulrich Sonnemann, Das Land der unbegrenzten Zumut barkeiten (Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1963), pp. Ig6 ff.
? ? ? ? 22
only that man can remain in the world who lives out from something which in every case he possesses only through commitment. " 8 To which he adds : "Only the person who commits himself freely is proof against a disillusioned revolt against himself. " 9 It is true that his philosophy of existence has chosen, as its patron saint, Max Weber, who stood up proudly without illu- sions. Nevertheless, he is interested in religion, no matter of what kind. He is interested in it provided it is ready at hand, because it guarantees the required com- mitment; or simply because it exists, whether or not it fits with the notion of independent philosophy, which Jaspers reserves for himself as if it were a personal privilege :
Whoever is true to transcendence in the form of such a belief should never be attacked, so long as he does not become intolerant. For in the believing person only destruction can take place; he can perhaps remain open to philosophizing, and risk the corresponding burden of a doubting, which is inseparable from human exist- ence; yet he has the positivity of an historical existence as his reference and measure, which bring him ire- placeably back to himself. About these possibilities we do not speak. l0
When autonomous thought still had confidence in its humane realization, it behaved less humanely. In
8. Karl Jaspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, 5th ed. (Berlin, 1947), pp. 169if. [English translation by Eden and Cedar Paul, Man in the Modern Age (New York, 1957 ) . All quotations from this work are translated from the original German. }
9 . Ibid.
10. Ibid. , pp. 127 if.
23
the meantime, the less philosophers are infected with philosophy the more innocently do they let the cat out of the bag; a bag which prominent ones weave like Noms. Sentences from O. F. Bollnow sound like this:
Therefore it seems especially meaningful that in poetry, above all in the lyric of the last years, after al the ex- periences of dread, a new feeling, of affirmation of being, is beginning to make its appearance, a joyful and thankful harmony with the very existence of man, as it is; a harmony with the world as it confronts man. Two of these poets in particular should receive special attention here : Rilke and Bergengruen. Bergengruen' s last volume of poetry Die Heile Welt (Munich, 1 950) , p. 272, closes with the confession: "What came from pain was only transient. And my ear heard nothing but songs of praise. " In other words, it is a feeling of thank- ful agreement with existence. And Bergengruen cer- tainly is not a poet who could be criticized for a cheap optimism. In this feeling of deep thankfulness he comes close to Rilke, who also, at the close of his way, is able to state : "Everything breathes and returns thanks. Oh you troubles of the night, how you sank without a trace. " U
Bergengruen's volume is on? y a few years closer to us than the time when Jews who had not been completely killed by the gas were thrown living into the fire, where they regained consciousness and screamed. The poet, who can certainly not be criticized for cheap optimism, and the philosophically minded pedagogue who eval- uates him, heard nothing but songs of praise. In a pre- liminary definition we call this inner state of man an attitude of trustful reliance. Thus the task is set: to
I I . Bollnow, Geborgenheit, pp. 26 if. 24
examine the nature of this state of the soul in order to find its possibilities. 12 Bollnow found the best of all possible names for this task, which in the face of hor- ror can no longer even appease us by virtue of its ridiculousness-he called it Seinsgliiubigkeit, faith unto Being. 13 The fact that the term reminds us of Deutschgliiubigkeit, faith unto German nationality, is certainly accidental. Once faith unto Being is achieved, there is no stopping before we reach a "positive relation to the world and life" 14 and "constructive work toward the overcoming of existentialism. " 1 ? What remains after the removal of existential bombast are religious customs cut off from their religious content. There is no recognition of the fact that cult forms, the subject matter of folklore, like empty shells, outlive their mys- tery. This state of affairs is in fact defended with the
aid of the jargon. All of this is an insult not only to thought but also to religion, which was once man's promise of eternal bliss, while now authenticity con- tents itself resignedly with an "ultimately hale world. " 16 "In the following we can distinguish these two forms- for the sake of a convenient terminology-as hope which has a determined content and hope which has an undetermined content; or, briefly, as relative and absolute hope. " 11 This pitiful concept-splitting applies itself to the question of "existence welfare. " It makes no difference to a follower to what he attaches him-
12. Ibid. , p. 51.
13. Ibid. , p. 57?
14. Ibid. , p. 61.
IS. Ibid.
16. Ibid. , p. 63.
17. Ibid. , p. 100.
? 25
self at a given moment. He praises this as his capacity for enthusiasm. Whether such a man ranks himself as lowbrow, middlebrow, or highbrow, he can consider that "hale" refers to the haleness of the soul, or right living, or social enclaves not yet taken over by indus- trialism, or simply places where Nietzsche and the Enlightenment have not yet been heard of; or chaste
conditions in which girls hold their maidenhood intact until they get married. We should not oppose to the catch-word of "shelteredness," the equally worn-out idea of the dangerous life; who wouldn't want to live with- out anxiety in this world of terrors? But shelteredness, as an existential value, turns from something longed for and denied into a presence which is now and here, and which is independent of what prevents it from being. It leaves its trace in the violation of the word : the reminiscence of what is hedged-in and safely bor- dered remains joined to that element of short-sighted particularity which out of itself renews the evil against which no one is sheltered. Home will only come to be when it has freed itself from such particularity, when home has negated itself as universal. The feeling of
shelteredness makes itself at home with itself, and offers a holiday resort in place of life. A landscape be- comes uglier when an admirer disrupts it with the words "how beautiful. " The same happens to customs, habits, institutions which barter themselves away by stressing their own naivete instead of by changing it. All talk of shelteredness is indicted by Kogon's report that the worst atrocities in the concentration camps were committed by the younger sons of farmers. The
? ? general situation in the country, which is the model for the feelin g of shelteredness , pushes disinherited sons into barbarousness. The logic of the jargon con- stantly smuggles in what is limited, finally even situa- tions of material want, under the guise of positivity; and presses for their being eternally instituted at just that moment when, thanks to the state of human
achievements, such a limitation no longer needs in reality to exist. A spirit which makes this limitation its cause hires itself out as the lackey of what is evil.
In the higher ranks of the hierarchy of authen- ticity, however, negativities are also served. Heidegger even requisitions the concept of destruction which is tabooed in the lower ranks, together with the blackness of fear, sorrow, and death. Jaspers occaSionally blares out the opposite of Bollnow's Geborgenheit, sheltered- ness: "Today philosophy is the only possibility for one who is consciously unsheltered. " 18 But the positive, like a tumbler doll, cannot be kept down. Danger, hazard, risking one's life, and the whole characteristic shudder, are not taken all that seriously. One of the Vr-authentic ones in her time remarked that in the innermost core of Dostoyevsky's hell the light of salvation shone again.
She had to swallow the reply that hell was then an awfully short railroad tunnel. Some prominent authen- tic ones a little reluctantly-put it like the parish preacher; they say they would rather harvest on burned earth. They are no less clever than social psychology, which has observed that negative judgments, of no
18. Jaspers, Die geistige Situation, p. 128.
27
matter what content, give a better chance of being -affirmed than do positive judgments. 19 Nihilism turns into farce, into mere method, as has already happened to Cartesian doubt. The question-a fa. vorite prerequi- site of the jargon-must sound all the more radical the more loyally it directs itself to the kind of answer which can be everything except radical. Here is an
elementary example from Jaspers :
Existential philosophy would be lost immediately, if it once again believed that it knows what man is. It would again give us sketches of how to investigate hu- man and animal life in its typical forms; it would again become anthropology, psychology, sociology. Its mean- ing is only possible when it remains groundless in its concreteness. It awakens what it does not know; it lightens and moves, but it does not fix and hold. For the man who is underway, this philosophy is the ex- pression through which he maintains himself in his direction; the means toward preserving his highest moments-so that he can make them real through his life. . . . Insight into existence, because it remains without an object, leads to no conclusion. 20
Exactly. A concerned tone is ominously struck up: no answer would be serious enough; every answer, no matter of what content, would be dismissed as a limit- ing concretization. But the effect of this remorseless intransigence is friendly; the man never pins himself
19. Cf. Gruppenexperiment, Frankfurter Beitriige zur Soziologie ( Frankfurt, 1955), II, 482 if.
20. Jaspers, Die geistige Situation, pp. 146 47.
? down : the world is all too dynamic. The old Protestant theme of absurd belief, grounding itself in the subject, converted itself from Lessing to Kierkegaard into the pathos of existence. This pathos existed in opposition to its result, the reified world seen as coagulated and alien to the subject. That old theme allies itself stra- tegically with the critique of positive science-science from which, as Kierkegaard's thesis ran, the subject has disappeared. At the cost of any possible answer, the radical question becomes what is substantial unto itself. Risk without hazard. Know-how and range of in- come are the only factors which determine whether one appears on the scene sheltered or has to start out without security. Even those who are not sheltered are safe as long as they join the chorus. This is what makes possible passages like the one from Heinz Schwitzke's Three Fundamental Theses for Television :
This is totally different in the sermon. Here a clerical speaker professed his credo for more than ten minutes, out of his own depths, in the existential manner; a single, never-changing close-up. Thanks to the noble humane power of conviction that radiated out from him, not only did his words, which were testified to by his pictorial presence, become completely credible, but the listener totally forgot the mediating apparatus. In front of the television screen, as if in the house of God, there formed itself a sort of parish among the accidental viewers, who felt as if they were being confronted with the immediate presence of the speaker, and through him felt committed to the subject matter of his sermon , God's word. There is no other explanation for this sur- prising occurrence than the supreme importance of the speaking person, the person who has enough courage
and e thos to place himself in the breach , and to serve
? nothing but the subject matter which he stands for and the listeners to whom he knows he can relate. 21
This is authenticity's funky commercial. The "word" of the preacher, as if his and God's were one without ques- tion, is testified to not by his "pictorial presence," but at best by behavior whose trustworthiness supports the credibility of his statements.
If, thanks to the appearance of the preacher, one forgets the mediating equipment, then the jargon of authenticity, which takes pleasure in this situation, is committing itself to the philosophy of As If: through stage-setting, the now and here of a cult action is simu- lated, an action which through its omnipresence is an- nulled on television. But, by the existential manner in which the preacher makes public profession of him- self, from out of himself, "in a never changing close-up," we need only to understand the self-evident fact that the preacher, who after all had no other choice, was projected as an empirical person onto the screen and in this way, perhaps, had a sympathetic effect on many people. That he formed a community
cannot be proven. The notion that he had to throw him- self into the breach, with his whole substance and existence, is imported from the sphere of risk. Still, for that preacher who details on television why the church is too narrow for him there is no risk at all: neither of contradiction from outside nor of inner ne- cessity. If in fact, hemmed in between microphone and floodlight, he had to suffer through moments of temp-
2 I . Heinz Schwitzke, "Drei Grundthesen zum Fernsehen," in Rundfunk und Fernsehen, II (I953), II ff.
? ? 30
tation, the jargon would have been right there waiting with additional praise for his existentiality. The benefit of the negative is transferred to the positive, as though by a single stroke of the pen : positive negativeness to warm the heart. These dark words are numinous, just like Bollnow's whitewashed Sunday words-as close to rejoicing as the dreadful trumpet has always been. Just as the jargon uses the double sense of the word "positive," it uses the ambiguity of the term "meta- physics," according to whether at a given moment one prefers nothingness or being. On the one hand meta- physics means involvement with metaphysical themes, even if the metaphysical content is contested; on the other hand it means the affirmative doctrine of the transcendent world, in the Platonic model. In this shifting metaphysical need, that state of the spirit which long ago made itself known in Novalis' On Christendom or Europe, or which the young Lukacs called transcendental homelessness, has come down to culturally defined knowledge . The theological freeing of the numinous from ossified dogma has, ever since Kierkegaard, involuntarily come to mean its partial secularization. In mystical heresy, the unsatisfiable purification of the divine from myth, which loves to tremble in the gesture of deeply involved questioning, hands the divine over to whoever relates to it in any way. Liberal theology is suddenly reborn, since con- tent is to be found only in a relation, the other pole of which removes itself from all definition as the "ab- solutely indifferent," and marks all definition with the blemish of reification. Complete demythologization totally reduces transcendence to an abstraction, to a
? ? ? ? ? ? ? 31
eQ. Uc. f)p. ,! . Enlightenment, which the viri obscuri 22 ac- cuse, triumphs in their thought. In the same movement of the spirit, however, the positing power of the sub- ject, veiled unto itself, again conjures up the myth inherent in all dialectical theology. That subjective power's highest value, as absolutely different, is blind. Under compulsion the viri obscuri praise commitments instead of jumping into speculation which alone could justify their own commitments to their radical ques- tioners.
Their relationship to speculation is confused. One needs it because one wants to be deep, yet one shies away from it because of its intellectual nature. One would prefer to reserve it for the gurus . The others still confess their groundlessness, in order to give char- acter to the paths of offered salvation, which are re- puted to be successful in extreme even if imaginary danger. However, they find nothing but groundless thinking as soon as thinking refuses, through its atti- tude, to support from the outset those commitments which are as unavoidable in authenticity as is the happy ending in movies. If the happy ending is lacking, then among the existential authentics existentialism itself has nothing to laugh at.
Only against this background does the whole greatness of the existential ethic reveal itself. It once again actualizes, on the ground of modern historical rela- tivism, a decidedly moral stance. But in precisely that sense a danger is given; that danger which comes to expression in the possibility of an existential adven-
22. [ViTi obscuri : obscurantists , enemies of enlightenm ent. Historical reference to fictive humanist (fifteenth and six- teenth century) authors of letters against late forms <if Scho- lasticism. ]
32
turism. Having become fully unconditioned in regard to content, and without any of that constancy which re- sides in fidelity, the adventurer enjoys the risk of his engagement as a last and most sublime pleasure. Pre- cisely in the unconditioned state of any given momen- tary engagement, the existentialist is especially exposed to the temptation of inconstancy and of faithlessness. 23
All of these words draw from language, from which they are stolen, the aroma of the bodily, unmetaphorical; but in the jargon they become quietly spiritualized. In that way they avoid the dangers of which 'they are constantly palavering. The more ear- nestly the jargon sanctifies its everyday world, as
though in a mockery of Kierkegaard's insistence on the unity of the sublime and the pedestrian, the more sadly does the jargon mix up the literal with the figurative:
Heidegger's final remark aims at this fundamental meaning of residing for all human existence, and in this remark he focuses on the "need for residences" as one of the great difficulties of our time : "The true need for residence," he says here, "consists not first of all in the absence of residences," although this need should by no means be taken lightly; but behind this need a deeper one is hidden, that man has lost his own nature and so cannot come to rest. "The true need for residence consists in the fact that mortals must first learn to re- side. " But to learn to reside means : to grasp this neces- sity, that, in the face of what is threatening, man should make for himself a sheltering space and should settle into it with a trustful reliance. But, then, inversely, the possibility of this settling down is again connected in a menacing way with the availability of residences. 24
23. Bollnow, Geborgenheit, pp. 37 f. 24. Ibid. , p. 170.
33
The Being of the sheltering space of shelteredness is simply derived from the necessity that man should "make for himself" such a space. The linguistic care- lessness, in the unresisting mechanism of the jargon, admittedly lays shelteredness bare, as if out of com- pulsion; lays it bare as something that is merely posited. However, that which announces itself, in the game about the need for residences, is more serious
than the pose of existential seriousness. It is the fear of unemployment, lurking in all citizens of countries of high capitalism. This is a fear which is administra- tively fought off, and therefore nailed to the platonic firmament of stars, a fear that remains even in the glorious times of full employment. Everyone knows that he could become expendable as technology de- velops, as long as production is only carried on for production's sake; so everyone senses that his job is a disguised unemployment. It is a support that has ar- bitrarily and revocably pinched off something from the
total societal product, for the purpose of maintaining the status quO. 25 He who has not been given a life ticket could in principle be sent away tomorrow. That migra- tion of people could continue which the dictators al- ready once before set in motion and channeled into Auschwitz. Angst, busily distinguished from inner- worldly, empirical fear, need by no means be an ex- istential value. Since it is historical, it appears in fact that those who are yoked into a SOCiety which is socie- talized, but contradictory to the deepest core, con-
25. Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, Eingriffe: Neun kritische Madelle (Frankfurt, 1963), p. 137.
34
stantly feel threatened by what sustains them. They feel threatened without ever being able in specific in- stances to concretize this threat from the whole of sOciety. But in shelteredness the declassed person has his clumsy triumph-the declassed man who knows what he can get away with. On the one hand he has nothing to lose; on the other hand, the overadminis- trated world of today? still respects the compromise structure of bourgeois soci? ty, to the extent that that society-in its own interest-stops short before the ultimate, the liquidation of its members, stops short because, in the massive plans of its industry, it has the means of delay at its disposal. So Jaspers' "existence welfare" and social welfare-administrated grace- come into contact. On the social ground of the j argon's reinterpretation of complete negativity into what is positive, we suspect the coercive self-confidence of the uneasy consciousness. Even our cheap suffering from the loss of meaning, a suffering long since automatized into a formula, is not simply that emptiness which has
grown up through the whole movement of the Enlight- enment-as the more demanding viri obscuri willingly describe it. There are reports of taedium vitae even during periods of unchallenged state religion; it was as common among the Fathers of the Church as among those who carry over into the jargon Nietzsche's judg- ment about modern nihilism, and who imagine that in that way they have gone beyond both Nietzsche and nihilism-Nietzsche's concept of which they have sim- ply turned upside down. Socially, the feeling of mean- inglessness is a reaction to the wide-reaching freeing from work which takes place under conditions of con-
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? 35
tinuing social unfreedom. The free time of the subjects withholds from them the freedom which they secretly hope for; their free time chains them to the ever-same, the apparatus of production-even when this appa- ratus is giving them a vacation. With this situation they are forced to compare the obvious possibilities, and they grow the more confused the less the closed fa? ade of consciousness, which is modeled after that of so- ciety, lets through the conception of a possible freedom.
At the same time, in the feeling of meaninglessness which is the high-bourgeois expression of real need, the permanent threat of destruction is assimilated by consciousness. What this consciousness dreads it turns in such a way that the threat seems to be an innate part of it, and thus it weakens that element of the threat which can no longer be grasped in human terms. The fact that on all sides meaning of every kind seems to be impotent against evil, that the latter yields no mean- ing at all, and that the assertion of meaning may even promote evil, is registered as a lack of metaphysical content, especially in regard to religiOUS and social commitments. The falseness of this reinterpretation, using a mode of cultural criticism with which the stingy pathos of the authentics joins in, regularly be- comes visible in a particular fact: the fact that past ages-whichever one prefers-ranging from Bieder- meier to Pelasgic, appear as the ages of immanent meaning. Such reinterpretation follows an inclination
to set back the clock politically and socially, to bring to an end the dynamism inherent in a society which still, through the administrative measures of the most pow- erful cliques, appears to be all too open. As its present
? ? ? form can expect nothing good from such a dynamic, it stubbornly blinds itself to the recognition that the cure which society offers is itself the evil that it fears. This is brought to a head in Heidegger. Cleverly, he couples the appeal of unromantic, incorruptible purity with the prophecy of a saving element which, in consequence, can present itself as nothing other than this purity it- self. The hero of Mahagonny joined the wailing about a world in which there is nothing to hold on to. In Heidegger, as well as in the Brecht of the didactic plays, this is followed by the proclamation of compulsory order as salvation. The lack of something to hold on to is the mirror reflection of its opposite, of unfreedom. Only because mankind failed to define itself did it
grope for determination through something else : some- thing that was safely out of the reach of the dialectical movement. The anthropolOgical condition of so-called human emptiness, which for the sake of contrast the authentics are accustomed to daub out as an unhappy, but inevitable, consequence of the demystified world, could be changed. The longing for some completing factor could be fulfilled, as soon as it was no longer denied-but not fulfilled, of course, through the in- jection of a spiritual meaning or a merely verbal sub- stitution. The social constitution essentially trains mankind for the reproduction of itself, and the com- pulsion extends itself into society's psychology, as soon
as it lOoses its external power. Thanks to the factor of self-preservation, which has blown itself up into a to- tality, the following happens: what man is anyway once more becomes his goal. Perhaps with this nonsense the appearance of meaninglessness might also disap-
37
pear, the eagerly assured nothingness of the subject, a shadow of the state in which each person is literally his own neighbor. If it is the case that no metaphysical thought was ever created which has not been a constel- lation of elements of experience, then, in the present instance, the seminal experiences of metaphysics are simply diminished by a habit of thought which sub- limates them into metaphysical pain and splits them off from the real pain which gave rise to them. The jargon's whole hatred is directed against this con- sciousness. No distinction is made between Marx and the superstition of race :
Marxism, psychoanalysis, and racial theory are today the most widespread deceptions of mankind. The di- rectly brutal in hatred and praise, as it has come to dominance in human existence, finds its expression in these systems of thought; in Marxism, in the manner in which the mass postulates community; in psycho- analysis, in the way it seeks mere existence satisfaction; in racial theory, in the way it wants to be better than the other. . . . Without sociology no political strategy can be carried out. Without psychology no one becomes master of the reigning confusion, in his converse with himself and with the others. Without anthropology we would lose our consciousness of the dark causes of that in which we possess ourselves . . . . No sociology c an tell what fate I want, no psychology can clarify what I am, authentic being of man cannot be bred as race. Everywhere is the boundary of that which can be planned and made . For Marxism, psychoanalysis , and theory of race have characteristicaly destructive attri- butes. As Marxism thinks that it uncovers all spiritual being as Superstructure, psychoanalysis does the same in exposing spiritual being as sublimation of repressed drives. What, then, is still called culture is structured
? like an obsessive neurosis. Theory of race causes a con- ception of history which is without hope. Negative selection of the best will soon bring about the ruin of authentic humanity; or, it is the nature of man to produce during this process the highest possibilities in a mixture of races, in order to leave behind ad infinitum the marrowless average existence of his remains, after the mixing has come to an end in the course of a few centuries. All three tendencies are apt to destroy what has seemed to be of value for men. They are especially the ruin of anything absolute, for, as knowledge, they make themselves a false absolute which recognizes everything else as conditioned. Not only has God to fall
but also every form of philosophical belief. Both the highest and the lowest are labeled with the same termi- nology and, judged, step into nothingness! 6
The practical usability of the enlightening diSciplines is condescendingly granted in the beginning only to prevent more effectively any reflection on the truth content of criticism : by arousing our indignation at the desire to destroy. Passionate grief about obliviousness to being is given the appearance of the essential-to the point where one would rather like to forget all Be- ing. All of that is more ominously attended to in Der Grilne Heinrich:
There is an old saying which maintains that one must not only tear down but must also know how to build up; a commonplace constantly employed by cheery and superficial people who are uncomfortably confron ted with an activity which demands a decision from them. This way of speaking is in place where something is superficially settled or is denied out of stupid inclina- tion; otherwise, though, it is unintelligible. For one is
26. Jaspers, Die geistige Situation, pp. 142 ff.
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not always tearing down, in order to build again; on the contrary, one tears things down eagerly in order to win free space for light and air, which appear as it were by themselves, wherever some obstructing object is removed. When one looks matters right in the face and treats them in an upright maner, then nothing is negative, but al is positive-to use this old saw. 27
Then the old warriors had an easier time of it: they had no need of old saws; they only needed to breathe sense into doubters with the cudgel of fate and Nordic manhood. But they already had the jargon at their dis- posal :
An extreme intensification of al activity, and a sharp- ening of all creative powers, even the great political event as such, mark our time; and to the eyes of philosophy they have physically presented this phe- nomenon in its authenticity and unvarnished original- ity. Philosophy has grasped this phenomenon as a con- dition of the highes t philosophical relevance , in order to let itself be led, through its content and problematic structure, to a full and pure understanding of man and the world. . . . Human existence is not meaningless : that is the categorical assertion with which this exist- ence itself confronts the philosophy of life, in order to assert itself in opposition to and over against that phi- losophy. . . . To say yes to fate and to negate it in spite of that, to suffer it and yet to dominate it, i. e. , to face it and to take one's stand against it, that is the attitude of true humanity. This attitude corresponds to the ideal image of man because it represents nothing
27. Gottfried Keller, Der Griine Heinrich, IV, 2, quoted in Friedrich Pollock, "Somharts Widerlegung des Marxismus," in Beihefte zum Archiv filr die Geschichte des Sozialismus und der Arbeiterbewegung, ed. Carl Grunberg (Leipzig, I926), III, 63.
? but the essence of man, universally valid and removed from all ties to time. At the same time, and at one with it, this attitude defines the deep and genuine meaning of fate, that meaning which has nothing to do with fatalism, a meaning to which especially a German opens himself. For the man of Nordic blood, this mean- ing takes on a deeply religious content and grounds what for him means his bond with fate and his belief in fate. 28
Language uses the word "meaning" for the harm- less epistemological intentional object of HusserI, as well as for the purpose of saying that something is justified as meaningful; as one would speak, for in- stance, of the meaning of history. It remains true that the factual particular has meaning to the extent that the whole, above all the system of society, appears in it; that the dispersed facts are always more than what they immediately seem, even if such meaning is mad- ness. The search for meaning as that which something is authentically, and as that which is hidden in it, pushes away, often unnoticed and therefore all the faster, the question as to the right of this something. Analysis of meaning becomes the norm in this de- mand, not only for the signs but also for that which they refer to. The sign system of language, by its mere existence, takes everything, to begin with, into something that is held in readiness by society; and it defends this society in its own form prior to all content. This is what reflection stands firm against. However, the jargon drifts with the current, and would be glad
28. From Wilhelm Grebe, Der deutsche Mensch: Unter- V suchungen zur Philosophie des Handelns (Berlin, I937).
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to increase it, in union with the regressive formations of consciousness.
In its semantic directions positivism has constantly noted the historical break between language and that which it expresses. Linguistic forms, . as rei? ied-and only through reification do they become forms-have outlived what they once referred to, together with the context of that reference. The completely demytholo- gized fact would withhold itself from language; through the mere act of intending the fact becomes an other-at least measured in terms of its idol of pure accessibility. That without language there is no fact remains, even so, the thorn in the flesh and the theme of positivism, since it is here that the stub- bornly mythical remainder of language is revealed. Mathematics is, for good reason, the primal model of positivistic thought-even in its function as a lan- guageless system of signs. Looked at in reverse, the tenacious residuum of what is archaic in language be- comes fruitful only where language rubs itself critically against it; the same archaic turns into a fatal mirage when language spontaneously confirms and strength- ens it. The jargon shares with positivism a crude con- ception of the archaic in language; neither of them bothers about the dialectical moment in which lan- guage, as if it were something else, wins itself away from its magical origins, language being entangled in a progressing demythologization. That particular neg- lect authorizes the social using of linguistic anachro- nism. The jargon simply ennobles the antiquity of language, which the positivists just as simply long to
? ? ? eradicate-along with all expression in language. The disproportion between language and the rationalized society drives the authentics to plunder language, rather than to drive it on, through greater sharpness, to its proper due. They don't fail to notice that one cannot speak absolutely without speaking archaically; but what the positivists bewail as retrogressive the authentics eternalize as a blessing.
For them that block which language piles up be- fore the expression of undiminished experience be- comes an altar. If it does not allow itself to be broken through, then it offers us simply the omnipotence and indissolubility of what was precipitated into language. But the archaic takes vengeance on the jargon, whose greed for the ? archaic violates the proper distance. The archaic is objectified for a second time. In its example is repeated that which in any case happened to lan- guage historically. The nimbus in which the words are being wrapped, like oranges in tissue paper, takes under its own direction the mythology of language, as if the radiant force of the words could not yet quite be trusted. Mixed with artificial coloring the words them- selves, released from the relation to what is thought, are to speak a relation which should change them and so always demythologizes them. Language mythology and reification become mixed with that element which identifies language as antimythological and rational. The jargon becomes practicable along the whole scale, reaching from sermon to advertisement. In the medium of the concept the jargon becomes surprisingly similar to the habitual practices of advertising. The words of
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the jargon and those like ]iigermeister, Alte Kloster- frau, Schiinke,29 are all of a piece. They exploit the hap- piness promised by that which had to pass on to the shadows. Blood is drawn from that which has its ap- pearance of concreteness only after the fact, by virtue of its downfall. At least in terms of their function, the words, nailed into fixity and covered with a luminous layer of insulation, remind us of the positivistic count- ers. They are useful for arbitrary effect-connotations, without regard to the pathos of uniqueness which they usurp, and which itself has its orgin on the market, on that market for which what is rare has exchange value.
With the assertion of meaning at all costs, the old antisophistic emotion seeps into the so-called mass sOciety. Ever since the victory of Plato and Aristotle over the Socratic left, that emotion has dominated the official position of philosophy. Whatever refused sub- jection to it was pushed off into powerless undercur- rents. Only the more recent positivism has made so- phistic motives reputable by its alliance with science. The jargon struggles against this alliance. Without judgment it hands down the judgment of tradition. The shame of the sophists, opposed by Plato, was the fact that they did not fight against falsity in order to change the slave society, but rather raised doubts about truth
in order to arm thought for whatever was. Their kind of destruction was indeed similar to the totalitarian concept of ideology. Plato could caricature the Gorgias sophists as clowns because thought, once it has been
29. [Klosterfrau, jagermeister, Schanke: established brand names of well known liqueurs and wines. ]
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freed from concrete knowledge and the nature of the object, reduces to farce that moment of play which is essential to thought-turns such a moment into a ghost of that mimesis which is combatted by every enlight- enment. 30 Nevertheless, the antisophistic movement misuses its insight into such misconstructions of free- wheeling thought-misuses them in order to discredit thought, through thought. This was the way Nietzsche criticized Kant, raising the charge of over-subtle think- ing in the same tone as that adopted magisterially by Hegel, when he spoke of "reasoning. " In the modish
antisophistic movement there is a sad confluence : of a necessary critique of isolated instrumental reason with a grim defense of institutions against thought. The jargon, a waste product of the modern that it at- tacks, seeks to protect itself-along with literally de- structive institutions-against the suspicion of being destructive : by Simultaneously accusing other, mostly anticonservative, groups of sinful intellectuality, of that sin which lies deep in the jargon's own unnaive, reflective principle of existence. Demagogically it uses the double character of the antisophistic. That con- sciousness is false which, externally, and, as Hegel says, without being in the thing, places itself above this thing and manages it from above; but criticism becomes equally ideological at the moment when it lets it be known, self-righteously, that thought must have a ground. Hegel's dialectic went beyond the doc-
trine that thought, in order to be true, needs some absolute starting point, free of doubt. This doctrine be-
30. Cf.
