Collection: "First Must the Site Be Cleared" (1945-1949)
Adorno & Horkheimer's speculative digressions for Part 2 of the 'Dialectic.'
Part of an ongoing series of translations and notes around Adorno and Horkheimer’s fragmentary preliminary sketches (ca. 1945-1949) for the unwritten ‘second part’ of the Dialectic of Enlightenment.
Other posts in this series:
[Collection:] MAX HORKHEIMER: PHILOSOPHICAL PARERGA (1945-1949)
Translation: Letters on the Problem of Prehistory (48/49).
Forthcoming (introductory essay): “Rescuing the Rettung.”
Contents.
I. Memoranda: On The Jews and Prehistory (1945).
Horkheimer—Note: The Jews and the Oath (5/12/1945).
Adorno—Memorandum On a Conversation with Anton Lourié (9/26/1945).
II. Debating Thesis VII of the “Elements”: Democracy and Fascism; Liberalism or Communism (Summer-Fall 1946).
Exchange between Max Horkheimer and Leo Löwenthal (July-October 1946).
Paul Massing—Remarks on Thesis VII.
Horkheimer—Draft of a letter to Leo Löwenthal (9/24/1946).
III. Letters: From the Critique of Psychology to the Critique of Total Society (1948/49).
Horkheimer—Letter: The Internationalization of Class Conflict (2/28/1948).
Horkheimer—Letter: Concept of Spontaneity, Critique of Psychology (8/30/1948).
Horkheimer—Letter: Critique of the Total Concept of Society (5/8/1949).
Adorno—Letter: From Total Society to Total Socialization (5/19/1949).
IV. Letters: Remarks on the Tat Twam Asi (1949).
Adorno—Letter: The Unbearable Thought of Progress (5/28/1949).
Horkheimer—Letter: The “tat twam asi” between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (6/11/1949).
Adorno—Letter: Ethics of Compassion and The Context of Delusion (6/16/1949).
I. Memoranda: On The Jews and Prehistory (1945).
Horkheimer—Note: The Jews and the Oath (5/12/1945).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Adorno, 5/12/1945.]1
My letter yesterday was totally fetishistic and inflammatory. I have therefore dictated the enclosed pages for you, even though I don't have time. I have not looked through them, and I know you will excuse whatever shortcomings you find in the note given the haste in which it was written.2 The ideas it contains are very old. In local terms, one might say they function as a Frehm or Reffrenz for a Rihsoertschprotscheckt on se tschuisch Ohss. [Frame of Reference for a Research-project on the Jewish Oath]…
For Teddie.
[The Jews and the Oath.]3
That truth is the meaning of language can hardly be shown anymore. Such showing, namely, supposes that speakers already agree on this point. But this is no longer the case. Language is taken up as action, as communication. Just as one is given an ax and commanded to fell a tree, so one is given a formula to uproot the entire forest. The criterion of the act becomes the criterion of the thought: the purposiveness, the effect.
In order to make our advance from this modern concept of truth, which in fact liquidates it, towards its hidden intention, it would be advantageous to analyze a mediating stage—the oath [der Eid]. The oath has always been an instrument in legal proceedings. On the one hand, the testimony served the purpose of identifying the murderer. On the other, however, one’s testimony was only as good as one’s word was the truth itself, not just true in relation to external effect but, in a manner of speaking, immanently true. It was this second moment that made the oath noteworthy. It was guaranteed by the invocation [Anrufung] of God. His presence alone gave the word its evidentiary force [beweisende Kraft]. In the use of the oath, the condition of language was revealed: it presupposes the unconditioned as true. It is true only in relation to God.
With Kant’s Critique of Reason, however, the very notion of the presence of God is subject to criticism. The unconditioned can never be given; only in Catholicism does it still have a place at all. In any case, the Jews are forbidden to swear oaths; and the history told of the oath more Judaico, the compulsion to caricatured ritual, in fact reveals the Christians themselves were no longer so sure of their own affairs. I believe it was Hamann who once remarked that the critique of reason is the critique of language.4 He didn’t know how right he was. Alongside the ontological significance of natural science, transcendental dialectics has put an end to the claim of the word altogether. And even when Hegel relativized natural science within his system, he did so on the ground of the principle of identity—according to Kant, a dogmatic presupposition, which certainly wants for nothing of the superstition of the oath in antiquity, and yet, as Hegel demonstrated, it is a presupposition which lies concealed in the foundation of the Kantian system so far as it wants to be true. In the degradation of the Jews, scorned as the despisers of the Christian oath, a negative honor is done to the truth.
It is questionable whether the Jews ever swore by the Torah, unless forced. A study of the relevant documents would be highly advisable, as this is where the question of Jewish idolatry is decided. The oath is magical, an invocation [Beschwörung] in the most ancient sense. Since the fall of magic, every oath sworn is another swearword [Fluchtwort], another obscene curse [zotige Verwünschung], devil worship. Should the Jews, in spite of the song of the Kol Nidre, recognize the institution of the oath, this would only prove their conformity to the domination under which they have suffered. There is probably a quantum of such conformity in other forms of the ceremonial, in the tenacity to which they are clung.
The Jewish ritual of recent centuries is the recollection of the terrorized, of those who survived through automatic repetition of the manners of their oppressors. The ritual most visibly enters into Christian practice as ritual slaughter. In clinging to such practice, we paid the price for its continuation. Our hatefulness, an afterimage of their hatred; our chanting, an echo of their hymns to victory [Siegeshymnen]. In Jewish existence, Christians become aware of their own idol-worship; by striking us down, they desperately seek the ever-renewed temptation to regression. By surviving, we have done them too much honor. Even Goethe’s distancing, recognitive judgment about the strange resilience with which the Jews have held on throughout the millennia has a glimmer of justified negativity.5 Our own gestures of invocation [beschwörende Gestik], with which we begged the devil for his mercy, express not merely the fear of the condemned but also our adaptation to hell. Were the Jews liberated, they would do as the Christians do! In the almost sincere self-assurance of modern Jews that they, both as individuals and as a nation, are just like the Christians, the religious customs of the diaspora reveal themselves the world-historical means to finally bring this about. —
But where does one with such insight find the courage to speak?
Adorno—Re: the Oath and the Dialectic of Morality.
[Excerpt from: Adorno to Horkheimer, 5/23/1945.]6
The piece about the oath and the accompanying letter were particularly gratifying to me; I understand everything. The question of the oath is certainly of the utmost importance, in a way the key to the whole dialectic of morality [Dialektik der Moral], and I believe that we are in complete agreement about it where our intuitions are concerned, especially in the conception of the oath as mythical. I am tremendously excited to delve back into these matters with you soon.
Adorno—Memorandum On a Conversation with Anton Lourié (9/26/1945).
[Excerpt from: Adorno to Horkheimer, 9/26/1945.]7
The conversation was about the psychoanalytic theory of Jewish character developed by Lourié.8 My recommendation was essentially to center the work on the interpretation of the Jews themselves, since today’s anti-Semitism cannot be derived directly from Jewish psychology, though anti-Semitic reactions undoubtedly contain motives of a certain attraction of paranoid-sadistic behavior to Jewish masochism. But these moments are hardly part of the experience of anti-Semites today. So far as Lourié takes up anti-Semitism in his investigations, he should do so with an eye to its Urgeschichte, in a spirit not unlike our “Elements.” With regard to method, I suggested he not concentrate so much on the interpretation of Biblical stories through the Freudian model, since in the execution of such investigations a crude literalism and highly derivative symbolism are so often confused in a very problematic way. Instead, I advised that he focus on Jewish documents that are largely immune to the mechanisms of censorship (the implementation of which among Jews is an indication of their adaptation to Christian civilization)—what Benjamin called sub-kitschy [unterkitschige] sources,9 like the kind of material Groethuysen used for his studies on the demise of religion within the bourgeoisie,10 i.e. collections of Jewish jokes, humorous local stories, folk tales, and all kinds of unofficial folklore and popular literature, so far as such material is available. Lourié agrees. He is studying, for example, Jewish jokes, swearwords, and even the psychology of so-called Jewish ‘bad manners,’ such as answering a question with another question, shrugging one’s shoulders, etc. One of the most fruitful sources for his research is Jewish wills, of which he has undertaken special study.
The primary subject of our conversation was Lourié’s theory that the specifically Jewish character is the result of the absolute authority of the father, and that, rather than the Oedipus complex, the Jews are dominated by the desire to obtain the blessing of the father and prove themselves his favored son. While Lourié’s psychological conclusions seem quite plausible to me, I consider this derivation much too primitive. It additionally suffers from his claim that, on the one hand, the Jews lack an antagonism towards the father while, on the other, speaking of their secret tendency to rebellion against the father, a repressed hatred of the father. I have attempted to approach the question theoretically, but here are my initial thoughts on the subject, which are obscure enough as it is, with all due reservations. The absolutization of the father-authority [Vaterautorität] among the Jews is conterminous with its internalization [Verinnerlichung]. Paternal authority is not merely conceived as absolute violence, but as the absolute, in the sense it represents the truth itself—what the child experiences as the infinite standard of the father, while having at the same time to learn the empirical father does not meet this standard. In other words, the authority of the Jewish father-God is nothing restrictive, but is virtually identical with the unconditioned, whose concept people learn through their own conditionality. Father-authority, in the sense of the Jewish religion, is not truly an authority at all, but rather the principle of the subject itself, of self-consciousness, or that which idealistic philosophy has designated as autonomy. Thus, it is not possible to derive the “masochistic” traits from this concept of absolute authority, the concept in which authority itself acquires a dialectical meaning. There is no one less masochistic than one who can strictly adhere to this autonomous absoluteness. Despite this, Lourié's psychological observation is apt. It’s just that the most important connecting link has been forgotten. The masochistic (“feminine”) traits of the Jewish character stem not from the purity of the spirit into which the image of the father is sublimated, but from the inability of empirical persons in class society to achieve such spiritualization. It is not abstract monotheism, but the failure to meet the demand to adhere to and to realize abstract monotheism that makes the Jews masochistic. They are, as it were, overburdened [überfordert], and the Jewish fetishization of the father and of the family are backflows from the blockage of the absolute, expressions of the miscarriage of the demanded [Mißlingens des Geforderten]. Such representations are cloaked by the violence of the unconditioned but without thereby being unconditioned themselves: the authority of the spirit is transferred over in the course of a regressive process to sheer natural relation, from the sublimation of which absolute spirit first arose. It is this combination of absolute authority and fallibility in the father which really produces Jewish masochism, and in which lies the desperation for the true absolute. The knowledge of having betrayed the absolute, but at the same time having to face the absolute without objection, leads to the Jewish gesture “I’m a piece of dirt.”
Perhaps this can also shed some light on Freud’s concepts of sublimation and repression. Drives would thus be sublimated if mastery of the drives and the principle of the individual itself, autonomy, were to coincide; repressed if the achievement of drive-renunciation were accompanied by something heteronomous, opaque, repressive. In order not to fall into psychologism, it is also necessary to account for the fact that, on the one hand, the concept of spirit (or intellect) itself is only constituted by the achievement of drive-renunciation and internalization, as Freud’s theory teaches; but that, conversely, the concept of truth, which is identical with that of spirit, must already be presupposed in order to made a distinction between the drive and its repression, for repression is always the bad, the lie, through which the underlying reality itself is “distorted.” That is to say: the subjective, enlightened dialectic [aufklärerische Dialektik], which derives the concept of truth from the psyche [Seele] and, ultimately, the life-process itself, is only one side; the objective dialectic, which determines the individual and the life process in general from the idea of the truth itself, must play a part, if [the subjective] is to have any meaning at all.
In other words, the subjective, enlightened dialectic [aufklärerische Dialektik], which derives the concept of truth from the soul—and, ultimately from the life process –, is only one side: the objective dialectic, which determines the individual—and the life process in general—from the idea of truth itself, belongs to the former if it is to have any meaning at all. Perhaps we should keep this in mind for our dialectical logic.
Horkheimer—Re: The Father-Authority of God.
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Adorno, 10/12/1945.]11
I’m glad you found Lourié’s thoughts as worthy of your attention as I did. Hopefully, we will soon have occasion to return to the content of the memorandum in detail in connection with our own work. For the time being, your judgment that the authority of the Jewish father-God is nothing restrictive still seems a little too friendly to me. As you can imagine, I’m not responding to it in an entirely neutral manner considering my current situation. Oh, if only we could think about these things together up in that little room again!
II. Debating Thesis VII of the “Elements”: Democracy and Fascism; Liberalism or Communism (Summer-Fall 1946).
Exchange between Max Horkheimer and Leo Löwenthal (July-October 1946).
Horkheimer (7/29/1946): However, I still do not quite understand your extreme caution about discussing the relation of democracy and fascism. Why should it be so daring to point to the trend of democracy towards fascism? In my opinion, this trend is one of the most important theses—nay, presuppositions—of any critical theory of present day society. Your reasoning is not entirely clear to me. Why do you feel that this elementary conviction should not be distinctly expressed?12
Löwenthal (8/2/1946): I do not think that you should eliminate every reference to the dialectic between liberal society and fascism. I am nearly insulted that you thought I would suggest such a horrible thing. I only took exception to two or three places where an American institution is stylistically treated in such a way that the reader has to interpret: aha, he means that American fascism is almost unavoidable and almost on the threshold.13
Löwenthal (9/16/1946): You will probably have received Massing’s reactions to the last thesis. On theoretical and political grounds I side with him against Teddie because I consider it utterly more important to stress today the differences with the party than those with the liberals. Whether this should lead to any consequences in the text I do not know. I am slightly perturbed that Mr. Eisler did not explode. I guess I would rather see the passage on the Paris World Exhibition (in the beginning of the chapter on mass culture) restituted and reformulated in such a way that it hits more the Russians than the Western democracies. I have a tremendous longing to discuss this point with you. In your comments on the Agitator you have blamed me frequently for differentiating too bluntly between liberalism and fascism. No doubt that you are right on principle. But I have at present not the philosophical and political courage to devote the balance of my mental energies to a critique of liberalism instead of fascism and authoritarian communism.14
Horkheimer (10/2/1946): Massing’s criticism of our thesis is quite understandable. What he says of Russia is obviously correct. Nobody could be more aware of it than I. However, I do not think we agree with regard to the task of theory in this historical period. Deserving as it may be to point out the horrors of German or Russian despotism, the effort of conceptual thinking has, in my opinion, still to be concerned with the social development in industrialized society as a whole. To conceive the horror is as impossible as it is to see the night. The horror in the human world should be understood as the verdict against specific forms of social self-preservation. Today the world has become too much of a totality to justify the isolation of one power bloc so as to oppose it to the rest of civilization as good or bad, better or worse. Such a procedure is justified in practical respects but not when it comes to theoretical thinking. Here, I must say, the principle of the lesser evil is even more dangerous than in politics. Quoting from a long letter which I wrote you from my trip without, however, mailing it, I should say:
The task is to recognize in decaying liberality the lie and malice on account of which terror now, by right, triumphs over the rest of freedom. It was this right that Hegel had in mind with the proposition that the actual, history, is always also rational. I am far too staunch a Hegelian to abandon the critique of individualism at the moment when we become fully aware of it as its own opposite.15
Löwenthal (10/21/1946): I read Massing part of your letter because I thought it fair that he should know about your theoretical reactions. He agrees with every world but still feels that exactly because of the totality of the phenomenon, formulations should be avoided which seem to center the horror as domiciled solely in the European and Western sphere. May I advocate again the insertion of a reformulated sentence on the various world exhibitions.16
Paul Massing—Remarks on Thesis VII.
The equation of “the Stoeckers and Knüppelkunzes” is no good.18 Stoecker’s anti-Semitism was by no means ‘bourgeois and rebellious at the same time.’ It was emphatically Christian-conservative, and drew its following less from the bourgeois groups vying for domination as the pre-bourgeois groups fighting to hold onto their own. The representatives of “revolutionary” anti-Semitism were the Henricis and Ahlwardts, the spokesmen of the “enlightened” intellectuals who were increasingly integrated into the state- and industrial-apparatus, who must have looked down upon Stoecker’s world of thought with the same amused disdain with which Himmler, Heydrich and Kaltenbrunner looked down upon the earnest anti-Semitism of a Ley or a Streicher.
In general, the train of thought is sometimes unnecessarily complicated and the translation-power [Übersetzungskraft] of the thesis is undermined by the (intentional?)19 neglect of the concrete political milieu.
That the completion and perfection of the administration of human beings within the power-orbit of “Bolshevism” is not mentioned once is unacceptable. It is by now a classic case to which the thesis applies. On the eve of June 21, 1941, the Russian masses still did not know who it was their government would soon wage war against; they subsequently received their permission and their orders from public loudspeakers to hate German fascism. That it was German fascism and not ‘the plutocracies’ is a historical-political accident. The Red Army would have fought the West with the very same willingness to sacrifice itself. That the Jews are not another plank on the orthodox ticket there today is just as much another accident of history, when considered from the point of view of the administered subject. (I plan to say more about this point on a later occasion.) The circumstance that the backwardness of the technical and economic process in Russia had not yet liquidated the individual, that the masses had not yet been educated by a long experience of monopoly, is of particular consequence in two respects. On the one hand, it was to the benefit of the revolution; on the other, it demanded the most complete, terroristic leveling of society in the post-revolutionary situation. The extent to which the modern Russian, even when he belongs directly to the apparatus, is entirely lacking in the characteristic features of the monopoly official is evident from the delight his American counterpart takes in him: how talented, “resourceful,”20 childlike, direct, and generous this Red Army soldier (officer or private) is who I met in Berlin! What appears to [Franz] Neumann a product of socialist culture is merely a residue that the apparatus has not finished with yet, and is by no means safe from this danger. But everyone knows that in the most private of atmospheres, these “unbroken” Russians are still daring enough to communicate with one another, that the organized citizens loudly and zealously praise the arrest, torture, and deportation of the enemies of the people, including their own wives and children—separating themselves cleanly from them, without, of course, forgetting to reprimand themselves for such a lack of revolutionary vigilance.
The whole process of the extinction of the human being under the sign of socialism is left untouched in the Fragments. However, this is essential for understanding the total situation of the present, and so cannot be ignored any longer.
Horkheimer—Draft of a letter to Leo Löwenthal (9/24/1946).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer’s Draft (Unsent) to Löwenthal, 9/24/1946.]21
I cannot, of course, reconcile myself with […] the kind of “empirical research” off of which these people not only live—which is itself entirely understandable—but substitute for any spiritual or intellectual efforts of their own—which is a meanness.22 I believe the constant compulsion to keep this machinery running, the only function of which is to generate the impression that it has one at all, ultimately stains one’s character, or rather is only chosen and tolerated by people of a very specific character. Here lies one of the motives on account of which I cannot follow your suggestion about our relationship to liberalism. This unspeakable “social science”23 is only one among the many phenomena in which the badness of the spirit characteristic to the phase which is now approaching its end finally steps into the light. This badness is precisely the reason why, ultimately, the barbarism which previously belonged within one’s innermost being [Wesen] now triumphs in the open. It would be impossible, even absurd, to try to imagine that naked terror which now spreads across whole countries and continents—it would be like trying to see the night. Rather, the task is to recognize in decaying liberality that lie and malice which, because it is lie and malice, now triumphs over the remainder of freedom by right. It was this right Hegel had in mind with the proposition that the actual, history, is always also the rational. I am far too staunch a Hegelian to abandon the critique of individualism even if something worse is dawning in the world. The politics of the lesser evil is always the more misguided way of thinking. It is the social role of the workers in other countries which first made the situation over there possible, and which now perpetuates itself throughout the entire world.
III. Letters: From the Critique of Psychology to the Critique of Total Society (1948/49).
Horkheimer—Letter: The Internationalization of Class Conflict (2/28/1948).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Marcuse, 2/28/1948.]24
[During my visit to Germany] I would like to find out whether there are a few students or other intellectuals over there on whom our sensibility might have a lasting influence. At present, dialectics can afford to be detached from conversation even less than usual. “The act of writing always demands a certain ‘sacrifice de l'intellect,’” says Valéry. […] Right now, I am occupied by a problem we have often come back to: the transference of class antagonisms from the national to the international level. While the tendency was described decades ago (e.g., by people like Sternberg), the process has now progressed to such an extent that international class antagonism [Klassengegensatz] has radically transformed the social relations within, for instance, large swaths of the United States. In the industrial centers, naked poverty, historically an attribute of the working class, in increasingly being used as a means of repression against select groups and individuals. On the other hand, the confrontation between the poorer and richer parts of the world is rapidly shaping up to a state of permanent war. The interrelationship between internal and foreign policy is reversed: conflicts between people in the interior are necessarily concretized by conflicts between continents.
Of course, one must be careful not to view the political conflicts between power groups as unmediated, autonomous historical forces. We cannot simply return to the classical philosophy of history. Aside from the fact that internal relations of domination continue to mediate the unfolding of external conflicts, the strife between the world powers does not simply represent a conflict between different ways of life between the Völker, which would then replace the older form of class conflict. In the play of forces between the states, the economic condition of each respective nation (its lack of abundance of capital) is reflected only in a rather refracted manner—through strategic, legal, and traditional social relations. Foreign policy is, theoretically considered, both just as obscured and yet just as decisive for today as internal policies used to be. As you can imagine, I feel a strong urge to render the consequences of this whole reversal visible as they pertain to the orientation of the individual. Further, you will undoubtedly notice how closely this idea is to the problematic you’ve already treated at length in your theses.25
Horkheimer—Letter: Spontaneity contra Psychology (8/30/1948).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 8/30/1948.]26
In these last few weeks, practical affairs have kept me from everything theoretical. To this end, I would nevertheless like to write a short essay on spontaneity, the fundamental thoughts for which are already fully formed in my mind. First, it would involve a comparative analysis between the paralysis of will at the beginning of the bourgeois epoch (cf. Montaigne’s skepticism, Hamlet, etc.) and at its end (absence of independent political reactions, Sartre’s diagnosis, etc.). Then, it must be shown how all of this coincides with the secularized concept of freedom, within which the economic category later concretized as entrepreneurial initiative [Unternehmerinitiative] had already been anticipated centuries in advance. And all of this would lay the foundation for a discussion of the concept of revolution: to date, it is still understood in the spirit of the 19th century, namely, as an event dependent upon the initiative of individuals who rise up. This concept must accordingly be confronted with the situation at present. I believe this work could be an introduction to the redefinition of the proletariat and of its movement, as well as an immanent critique of psychology. I am in a constant state of tension because I simply have no opportunity to write these things down, and I am quite literally suffering physically as a result.
Horkheimer—Letter: The Total Concept of Society (5/8/1949).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Adorno, 5/8/1949.]27
… And yet the people here have the same, hard faces.28 This, I believe, does not really change with the form of society. Human beings must compel human beings to compel nature, or else nature will compel human beings. That is the concept of society. Our specific task is to cognize it precisely in its conditionality, without, as Hegel did, positing it as spirit. The critique of sociology consists in the critique of the total concept of society, that concept to which all have succumbed since Hegel, even the “good European” [viz., Nietzsche] himself. The fact that the Lukacs-book [viz., Der Junge Hegel (1948)] pins the concept on Hegel alone is what makes it so narrow. Despite all of this, however, today one gets the feeling that “society” in the full sense has been played out. Really, what all of the above understood by “society” no longer exists—just as little as “Europe” does. Just as society elevated itself to science, it vanished therein. And yet, its compulsion remains. We must determine the moment of the false in this process. Measured against such a fraud, that of psychology appears one of a lesser order, a kind of epiphenomenon. Psychology today is a shipwrecked and sunken cultural good from the days of Hume and Adam Smith. By comparison, sociology is almost still presentable, although Comte has been dead for some time now. Just how provincial it comes off is evident not only from the writing of McIver, but also, for instance, from the fact that the London School of Economics, which, before the war, was inclined to consider sociology as a subversive activity, now has three professorial chairs and even more instructor positions reserved for it. Morris Ginsberg, their doyen, a brave man, and who has been perfectly amiable to us, is also traveling on this ship. He speaks and publishes, just as we do, positively about “Psychoanalysis and Sociology.” We hope to clear this up.
Adorno—Letter: The Concept of Total Socialization (5/19/1949).
[Excerpt from: Adorno to Horkheimer, 5/19/1949.]29
Your remarks on sociology and the concept of society are so near to my own recent considerations about the subject that I mean to make them fully my own. Just as it once was with the translators of the Septuagint. My considerations relate above all to the concept of total socialization [Begriff der totalen Vergesellschaftung], which, if I am not mistaken, has great consequences for the doctrine of base and superstructure, since, under the conditions of integration in the present, this distinction has lost its traditional meaning. The outdatedness of the concept of society can almost be heard int he word itself, which has a rather 19th century ring to it and no longer applies to the completely reified form of social coexistence today, humanity in its negative configuration. Yet, to me it seems a positive that along with the outmodedness of ‘society,’ the forces of production have reached such a level of development that not only the domination over other human beings, but probably even the ancient injustice against living nature, has become superfluous—that there is a dialectic underlying the domination of nature by which it may, in the end, abolish [aufheben] itself. When we are finally able to begin our work again, I believe these things will offer us an extremely fruitful point of departure and lead us further into the core of the matter than the critique of psychology will, since I also consider psychology a by-product of a past world and hardly characteristic of our world today. (Is psychoanalysis, in its present configuration, even still psychology?) If only we were at the point we could, without such pressure, finally say what we are only here to say at all…
IV. Letters: Remarks on the Tat Twam Asi (1949).
… Bazarov exclaimed: “The aristocratic idea, forsooth! Liberalism, progress, principles! Why, have you ever considered the vanity of those terms? The Russian of to-day does not need them.”
“Then what, in your opinion, does he need? To listen to you, one would suppose that we stood wholly divorced from humanity and humanity's laws; whereas, pardon me, the logic of history demands—”
“What has that logic to do with us? We can get on quite well without it.”
“How can we do so?”
“Even as I have said. When you want to put a piece of bread into your mouth do you need logic for the purpose? What have these abstractions to do with ourselves?”
Paul Petrovitch waved his hand in disgust. […] “You say that you deny everything—rather, that you would consign everything to destruction. But also you ought to construct.”
“That is not our business,” said Bazarov. “First must the site be cleared.”
—Turgenev, Fathers and Sons. Ch. X.
Adorno—Letter: The Unbearable Thought of Progress (5/28/1949).
[Excerpt from: Adorno to Horkheimer, 5/28/1949.]30
While reading an essay,31 I stumbled across a passage on Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons that might be of interest to you: of Bazarov, it explains, “the thought of progress—grounded upon the terrible torments of generations past, who could have had no intimation they were, in a certain sense, the ‘guinea pigs’ of history, and suffered so that some remote generation in the far-off future might perhaps have it better some day—was unbearable to him.”
Horkheimer—Letter: The “tat twam asi” between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (6/11/1949).
[Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Adorno, 6/11/1949.]32
That Turgenev anticipated my own thought so exactly is quite lovely. It testifies to the objectivity, the necessity of the idea, which only makes me more puzzled that those bearded fathers [bärtigen Väter] were so far from it.33 Apropos, I have recently made some remarkable progress on this question in connection to Schopenhauer. The “tat twam asi” is, fundamentally, an empirical proposition, that is if one does not understand empiricism in the restricted, positivistic sense. The proposition says that individualistic [individualistischen], or rather individualizing [individualisierenden], concepts are insufficient in the face of suffering. “Too bad,” Hegel would say. These concepts stem from property relations, whereas the “tat twam asi,” one might say with a touch of irony, raises to consciousness the relativity of the social itself. Under this assumption, compassion [Mitleid] would be a kind of commiseration of the living with itself; it would lead beyond social illusion, but not beyond the enclosure of the creature within itself. The abolition [Aufhebung] of the distinction between one’s own suffering and the suffering of others is only an empirical advance, not a metaphysical one; it belongs, so to speak, to the critique of sociology. This Nietzsche knew. In the careful examination of his concepts of effeminacy, decadence, the praise of the virtues of the strong, etc., one finds in them the disappointment that not even they lead beyond the “tat twam asi,” that one therefore remains enclosed within its circle. Nietzsche’s work consists in a singular attempt to break out of this circle, to reach out into the other. What is crucial, however, is that compassion not be ruled out entirely, but that the insight contained within it be preserved. The deception to which Nietzsche falls prey to here lies in the violence of his theoretical gesture, his coup, in the ignoring of the dialectic, as we have long said, that absolutizes the antithesis. Instead of throwing the masses out of his utopia, who would themselves necessarily be transformed in the course of utopian transformation, he ought to have brought the dogs and the cats in with him. Otherwise, the Übermensch himself remains an animal.
Adorno—Letter: Ethics of Compassion and Context of Delusion (6/16/1949).
[Excerpt from: Adorno to Horkheimer, 6/16/1949.]34
Your thought about the “tat twam asi” reminds me of my oldest argument with Cornelius, to whom I once objected that I could not understand why “personal consciousness” should be a point of departure, as the individual “I” is just as contingent as every other (the expression “I,” as an occasional expression, is a general expression for particularization and, as such, contains within it precisely the problem you have spoken of). And I am in full agreement with your view that compassion is really only an extension of such contingency, the compassion one has for oneself elevated into a principle—as you well know, I have never felt comfortable with the ethics of compassion, which, from the beginning, has had for me something positivistic, nominalistic, even conceptless about it. But it seems to me your thought, which you rightly urge against Nietzsche, to bring the dogs and cats in would not, by itself, change what you’ve termed “the commiseration of the living with itself,” but would merely extend the subject of compassion even further. This consideration unavoidably leads to another that’s been on my mind, namely to make an approach with the concept of spirit—the sole concept which leads outside of the circle yet which, as soon as it has been posited, reinforces the context of delusion. In a certain sense, the task of our philosophy is to steer safely between the Spirit-cult [Geistkult] to the one side and Spirit-enmity [Geistfeindschaft] to the other; however, this is hardly possible through a positive “standpoint,” but only through determinate negation.
As to Nietzsche, I would only add that his doubling of existence [Daseins] appears, or does to me at any rate, at least as significant as his hypostasizing of the antithesis. He wants to break out at any price, and yet, as Aufklärer, cannot allow himself to do so; thus, the repetition of existence [Existenz] in the concept becomes for him a kind of substitute transcendence, and all of his constructions aporetic concepts, not all that different in form from the thought of Kierkegaard and Heidegger.
In: Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer. Briefwechsel 1927-1969. Band III: 1945-1949. Edited by Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz (Suhrkamp, 2005), 108-111. Or: MHGS Bd. 12 (1985), 303-305. Author’s translation.
[MHGS Ed. Note:] “‘Not looked through’ is, of course, not entirely accurate: an earlier version of the typed manuscript corrected by hand has also been preserved.” In: MHGS Bd. 12 (1985), 303.
[MHGS Ed. Note:] Title given by Friedrich Pollock.
J.G. Hamann (1730-1788). On Hamann’s language-theoretical ‘Metacritique’ of the Kantian ‘Critique of Reason,’ see: Gwen Griffith-Dickson, "Johann Georg Hamann", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/hamann/>. [link]
J.G. Hamann: “If then a chief question indeed still remains—how is the faculty of thought possible? the faculty to think right and left, before and without, with and beyond experience?—then no deduction is needed to demonstrate the genealogical priority of language, and its heraldry, over the seven holy functions of logical propositions and inferences. Not only is the entire faculty of thought founded on language […] but language is also the centerpoint of reason’s misunderstanding with itself…” From: “Metacritique on the purism of reason,” in: Johann Georg Hamann. Writings on Philosophy and Language. Translated and edited by Kenneth Haynes (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 211.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:
‘It is here,’ the elder said, ‘that we teach, what for the sake of brevity, I have spoken to you of as the ethnic religion. Its content is found in world history, just as its external manifestation is found in events. In fact, it can be understood in the recurrence of the fates of whole peoples.’ ‘As I see, Wilhelm said, you have given the Israelite people pride of place and used their history as the basis of this portrayal, As rather you have made it the main subject of the presentation. you see, the old man replied; ‘for you will notice that the bases and friezes offer not only actions and events taking place at the same time, but also actions and events of a like nature, since among all peoples happenings occur that have similar meanings and that point to similar things. Thus you can see here that while in the main panel Abraham is being visited by his gods in the shape of beautiful youths, in the frieze up above Apollo is among the shepherds of Admetus; from that we can learn that when the gods appear to men, they usually mingle unrecognized in their midst.’ The group moved on. For the most part Wilhelm discovered familiar subjects, though executed more spiritedly and significantly than he was otherwise used to seeing. There was not a great deal that he asked to have explained; however, he could not refrain from inquiring once more why Israelite history had been chosen before all others. To this the elder replied: ‘Among all the heathen religions, for the Israelite religion is one of these too, this last has great advantages of which I would like to mention only a few. At the ethnic judgement seat, at the judgement seat of the Universal God, there is no question as to which nation is the best and most outstanding one, but only whether it abides, whether it has endured. The Israelite nation has never been good for much, as its leaders, judges, presidents and prophets have told it a thousand times; it possesses few of the virtues of other peoples and most of their failings; but it is without equal in self-reliance, firmness, bravery, and when all this is of no more use, tenacity. It is the most persistent people on earth, it is, it was, it will be, in order to glorify the name Jehovah at all times. That is why we have set up this nation as a model, as the main picture which the others only serve as a frame.’
In: Wilhelm Meister, Volume Five. Wilhelm Meister’s Years of Travel, Book 2. Translated by H.M. Waidson (John Calder: London; Riverrun Press: New York, 1981), 15-16.
In: Adorno-Horkheimer Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 117-118. Author’s translation.
“[Memorandum über ein Gespräch mit Anton Lourié, 26. September 1945.],” In: Adorno-Horkheimer Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 521-524. Author’s translation.
See Anton Lourié’s essays on ‘the Jew’ as a psychological type (1949) and the relationship between Jewish God and Greek hero (1948):
“THE JEW AS A PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPE.” American Imago 6, no. 2 (1949): 119–55. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26301220.
“THE JEWISH GOD AND THE GREEK HERO.” American Imago 5, no. 2 (1948): 152–66. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26301201.
[BW Editors’ note:] Most likely from conversations in person; a corresponding passage in his work could not be identified.
[BW Editors’ note:] Groethuysen: Cf. Bernhard Groethuysen, Die Entstehung der bürgerlichen Welt- und Lebensanschauung in Frankreich. Bd. I: Das Bürgertum und die katholische Weltanschauung. Bd. II: Die Soziallehren der katholischen Kirche und das Bürgertum. Halle (Saale) 1927 and 1930.
In: Adorno-Horkheimer Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 162. Author’s translation.
Excerpt from: Löwenthal to Horkheimer, 8/2/1946. In: MHA Na [548], S. 276r.
Löwenthal continues, claiming to have made this very mistake himself: “I think you find these places in my notes from Centerville as well as in my letter from 1944.”
Excerpt from: Horkheimer to Löwenthal, 10/2/1946. In: MHA Na [550], S. 236r-237r.
“Bemerkungen zu These VII. Über Antisemitismus und Stalinismus.” In: MHA Na [803]. The archivists attributed the ‘Remarks’ to Adorno. This does not make sense, as Löwenthal marshals these ‘Remarks’ to criticize both Horkheimer and Adorno’s intransigent refusal to refocus the critique of Dialectic of Enlightenment on the USSR. They are also directly connected with Paul Massing’s research and writing in 1946 for his Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany (Harper & Brothers: NY; 1949), later published as part of the ISR’s Studies in Prejudice series.
In a partial adoption of Massing’s comments, the final publication of Dialectic of Enlightenment replaces “Stoeckers and Knüppelkunzes” with “Ahlwardts and the Knüppelkunzes.”
See: Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. (2002 [1987]), 165-166. And:
“the Ahlwardts and the Knüppelkunzes”: Hermann Ahlwardt: author of anti-Semitic pamphlets, Reichstag deputy at the end of the nineteenth century; for years his appearances were accompanied by uproar and scandal. Hermann Kunze: teacher at the Cadet School, Chairman of the Deutsch-Soziale Partei, anti-Semitic demagogue; his nickname [Knüppel; stick, cudgel] resulted from frequent brawls at his meetings.
In: Ibid., 237. [Fn. 165]
English parenthetical in original.
English in original.
Horkheimer’s Draft (Unsent) to Löwenthal, 9/24/1946. In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 758-759. Author’s translation.
The target of the letter is Brunswik, who sent a letter listing her complaints about the state of the Berkeley project to Horkheimer.
English in original.
In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 931-934. Author’s translation.
[MHGS Ed. Note:] In March 1947 Marcuse sent MH an untitled typescript with 33 theses on the tasks of revolutionary theory after the military defeat of National Socialism. (MHA: VI27 A.245) As is clear from the correspondence, these theses arose in the context of considerations about the new edition of the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. On February 9, 1947 Marcuse had written MH: “I consider the re-publication [of the journal] to be even more urgent than it was three months ago—taking full stock of Löwenthal's counterarguments. I have done my small part in the preparation: I have drafted (I fear I am the only one) the [theses] that we agreed upon at our last meeting. They are really just notes. But I am continuing to work on them, and since I cannot yet foresee the end, I will send you the first part as soon as it is ready to be typed. Perhaps this will at least be the beginning of a discussion.” (MHA: VI 27 A.225) A second part of the 'Theses' was probably never written.” In: Ibid.
In: MHGS, Bd. 17 (1996), 1025. Author’s translation.
In: Adorno-Horkheimer Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 247-249. Author’s translation.
Viz., on the ship from which the letter is addressed, the R.M.S. MAURETANIA, in the context of a contrast Horkheimer is developing with his experience on another transatlantic voyage aboard the “Queen” (Queen Mary).
In: Adorno-Horkheimer Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 254-255. Author’s translation.
In: Adorno-Horkheimer Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 263-264. Author’s translation.
[BW Editors’ Note:] Could not be identified.
In: Adorno-Horkheimer Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 273-274. Author’s translation.
[BW Editors’ Note:] “Bearded fathers”: Marx and Engels.
In: Adorno-Horkheimer Briefwechsel, Bd. III (2005), 278-279. Author’s translation.