Introduction: "Infinity"

In my notes on the previous section I described the disenchantment of the concept as "bringing the concept down to Earth." In this section, Adorno begins by saying that this prevents the concept getting too big for its boots, "becoming the absolute itself". The prime example, or model, of this is the concept of infinity. We covered this when we looked at lecture 8 (here). In negative dialectics, the concept of infinity "is to be refunctioned".

The illusion that it [philosophy] could captivate the essence in the finitude of its determinations must be given up.

Adorno's idea here is that if a philosophy can do justice to infinity at all, it is not by reducing it to its finite systems, or by presuming to be complete ("conclusive") in its grasp of the infinite and becoming thereby finite---but rather by a radical openness. Philosophy, in the form of negative dialectics, aims to "literally immerse itself into that which is heterogenous to it, without reducing it to prefabricated categories." That which is heterogeneous to it is of course the non-conceptual.

The only way that philosophy can in some sense lay claim to the infinite is by giving up the belief "that it has the infinite at its disposal." It's quite easy to understand what Adorno is getting at if we look at his recommendation of a philosophy that is "infinite to the extent that it refuses to define itself as a corpus of enumerable theorems." In other words, since there is no closure, completion, or conclusiveness in negative dialectics, it is never finished and so is in a sense infinite, precisely without claiming to capture the infinite as the philosophers of German idealism did.

This philosophy ...

... would have its content in the polyvalence of objects not organized into a scheme, which impinge on it or which it seeks out; it would truly deliver itself over to them, would not employ them as a mirror, out of which it rereads itself, confusing its mirror-image with the concretion. It would be nothing other than the full, unreduced experience in the medium of conceptual reflection; even the “science of the experience of consciousness” would degrade the content of such experiences to examples of categories.

Then Adorno describes what spurs philosophy in the direction of infinity in the first place:

What spurs philosophy to the risky exertion of its own infinity is the unwarranted expectation that every individual and particular which it decodes would represent, as in Leibniz’s monad, that whole in itself, which as such always and again eludes it

I take this to mean that all philosophy, including both German idealism and negative dialectics (the two philosophies that are being opposed in this section), are motivated by the "unwarranted expectation" that particulars can reveal the whole, or put differently, that the infinite can be reached via particulars. But the whole "always and again eludes" philosophy---the difference is that negative dialectics recognizes this.

The "unwarranted expectation" is thus dialectical: Adorno seems to retain it for negative dialectics, while admitting that it will never be satisfied.

Cognition holds none of its objects completely.

Although this statement seems unremarkable now, and might even stand as a shared axiom of modernity, historically speaking it's an important break from the philosophical past.

It is not supposed to prepare the fantasm of a whole.

Constructing a comprehensive representation of reality is not the proper task of thinking. Such a representation is always an illusion or "fantasm".

Then he uses art as a model to show what this means:

Thus it cannot be the task of a philosophical interpretation of works of art to establish their identity with the concept, to gobble them up in this; the work however develops itself through this in its truth.

A typical Adornian dyad. On the one hand, we should not seek to gobble up works of art in the concepts of our interpretations (art interpretation as identity-thinking); on the other hand, it is the failure of the concepts to succeed in this gobbling up that reveals the truth-content of the artworks. It follows that philosophy ought to critically engage with interpretations that attempt this gobbling up, so that their failure becomes manifest.

It also follows that formal methods of interpretation, in terms of genre, definitions, and so on, must always fail:

What may be glimpsed in this, be it the formal process of abstraction, be it the application of concepts to what is grasped under their definitions, may be of use as technics in the broadest sense: for philosophy, which refuses to suborn itself, it is irrelevant. In principle it can always go astray; solely for that reason, achieve something. Skepticism and pragmatism, latest of all Dewey’s strikingly humane version of the latter, recognized this; this is however to be added into the ferment of an emphatic philosophy, not renounced in advance for the sake of its test of validity.

Techniques for the classification and ranking of artworks are not enough to reveal the truth-content in art, and in fact obscure it, therefore they are not philosophical. Philosophy, properly conceived, does not stick to such techniques, to formal methodologies, therefore it can go astray---and here is the reason it can make some headway. The strength of philosophy lies in its fallibility: in attempting an analysis of an object such an artwork, it might miss the mark but at the same time reveal something.

I take the last sentence to be saying that scepticism and pragmatism are pretty good, but to really get at the truth we need to go beyond the safety of what can be validly ascertained into "the ferment of an emphatic philosophy". This reminds us of what he said in the lectures about speculation, and indeed the next section is entitled "The Speculative Moment".

And the next paragraph introduces play, which Adorno associated with the speculative moment in lecture 9 (see here). Since the introduction seems to mirror the lectures, we might suspect that the concept of mimesis is going to come up here too.

Against the total domination of method, philosophy retains, correctively, the moment of play, which the tradition of its scientifization would like to drive out of it.

The non-naïve thought knows how little it encompasses what is thought, and yet must always hold forth as if it had such completely in hand. It thereby approximates clowning.

I like this thought very much. He said almost the same thing in the lectures, but here it's more elegantly put. Philosophy is ridiculous. But one can be intentionally ridiculous: a clown knows what he is doing. One would rather be a clown than a fool (if we define a fool as one who is unknowingly ridiculous). This is to say that we should go ahead and be playful; in so doing we recognize philosophy's absurdity.

This is not as irrational as it seems, since Adorno does believe philosophy can reveal truths. Perhaps we should extend the metaphor and think of the well-attested function of the jester as speaking truth to power, as a form of critique. The questions that seem most ridiculous might be the right ones to ask.

Incidentally, this is of course the point in the lectures (lecture 9) in which the irrational comes up, hence the impression of irrationalism here. Again and again Adorno wants to say we ought to try to do what cannot be done.

What aims for what is not already a priori and what it would have no statutory power over, belongs, according to its own concept, simultaneously to a sphere of the unconstrained, which was rendered taboo by the conceptual essence.

Negative dialectics aims for the non-conceptual, that which (a) is not already a priori; and (b) eludes capture with philosophy's laws or methodical application of concepts. As such a philosophy, it belongs to a "sphere of the unconstrained," a realm where philosophy's laws don't apply. This realm beyond the concept was made taboo by philosophy, according to its essentially conceptual nature.

He brings up mimesis next, from which we can see that his genealogy of philosophy is mirrored by the genealogy described in The Dialectic of Enlightenment:

The concept cannot otherwise represent the thing which it repressed, namely mimesis, than by appropriating something of this latter in its own mode of conduct, without losing itself to it.

Mimesis is the pre-rational imitation of the object, or act of adapting oneself to the object, something inherent in primitive magic but repressed---made taboo---by the conceptualization that came with myth, religion, and finally the instrumental rationality of the Enlightenment.

So, as I briefly mentioned in my notes on the lecture, Adorno's idea here is that philosophy has to imitate mimesis while not going so far as to abandon concepts. The model is art, which is constitutively open to the new and the different.

Okay, I've run out of steam tonight. The last two paragraphs of this section elaborate on how the "aesthetic moment is ... not accidental to philosophy." I may say something about that in another post.

:cool:

"Infinity"

Having gone over the disenchantment of the concept Adorno turns towards a particular concept to disenchant it from its idealist home: Infinity.

Then

:D

That's all I had written as I was reading the next bit then read your summation.

Well, I agree with what you managed to write :grin:

Well, now we can proceed... lol

Something more substantive from me: I feel like I'm following along at an intuitive level here -- infinite as something we don't contain but instead outstrips, and noting how this is a kind of materialism jives well with a lot of my thoughts. Also, naturally, I like the analogy to art and noting how the infinite there is the notion that even though philosophy is ridiculous -- which I thought you parsed very well @Jamal -- you pursue it anyways, and still sincerely, while knowing it has no end.

Yes, I also find it quite intuitive and enjoy the tension between the rational and irrational.

I find this section very confusing and difficult to understand. To me, Adorno misrepresents the concept of "infinity", and misrepresents philosophy, in general, and this leaves it very difficult to understand what he's trying to do.

Since he has already described philosophy as being concerned with the non-conceptual, he now approaches "infinity" which is purely conceptual. Therefore, he has to write it off, as not a proper subject of philosophy. In the lectures he implies that this purely conceptual thing, "infinity", ought to be left to the mathematicians. And, perhaps he believes that mathematics rather than philosophy ought to have sole purveyance over pure concepts. But I think that this would be naive.

Plato thought that the true subject of philosophy is intelligible objects. But Aristotle showed how philosophers (especially metaphysicians) must work toward understanding all aspects of reality, both conceptual and non-conceptual.

Now it appears to me like Adorno is trying to dismiss infinity as a part of reality, because it is purely conceptual, and if we allow that there are things which are purely conceptual, we will be lead into idealism. But this according to Adorno is what philosophy needs to avoid. Adorno's way of describing concepts, is as representing, or having a relation with something non-conceptual, like true art is supposed to represent something. But this leaves the purely abstract, the purely conceptual, as impossible to understand, being in some way untrue.

I believe Adorno's attitude toward philosophy and infinity is well summed up here:

Thinking by no means protects sources, whose freshness
would emancipate it from thought; no type of cognition is at our
disposal, which would be absolutely divergent from that which disposes
over things, before which intuitionism flees panic-stricken and in vain.

So he ends the section with:

What is incumbent on it, is the effort to go beyond the concept, by
means of the concept.

And I do not believe that this is realistic, to go beyond the concept with the concept. It's sort of self-contradicting.

In reality, he ought to accept what is demonstrated by the concept "infinity", is that the concept must go beyond the non-conceptual. This is a fundamental necessity for measurement. In order that all things might be measured we need to allow that the concept (infinity) extends beyond all things. The problem is that this reality is consistent with idealism, and Adorno wants to reject idealism.

Then Adorno describes what spurs philosophy in the direction of infinity in the first place:

What spurs philosophy to the risky exertion of its own infinity is the unwarranted expectation that every individual and particular which it decodes would represent, as in Leibniz’s monad, that whole in itself, which as such always and again eludes it — Jamal

I take this as a misrepresentation of philosophy. I believe that philosophers have always recognized "infinity" to be a concept used in measurement. I don't believe there has ever been an expectation such as the one described here by Adorno.

To me, Adorno misrepresents the concept of "infinity", and misrepresents philosophy, in general — Metaphysician Undercover

I suggest not making too much of his thoughts on infinity, because they're not necessary for an understanding of negative dialectics. It's just an angle, one that's only really significant in opposition to German idealism.

He's not really interested in how philosophy in general has treated infinity; he just wants to take it from Hegel and refunction it, as a way of pointing at what negative dialectics is doing. The point is just that the infinite can play a role suggestively, referring to philosophy's inconclusiveness and the endless variety of experience.

It's best just to think of it [EDIT: I mean this part of his thinking] in terms of speculation and the irrational.

The point is just that the infinite can play a role suggestively, referring to philosophy's inconclusiveness and the endless variety of experience. — Jamal

Point accepted. As I said it's confusing to me, but if it's not too important, that's good. So I assume that he' turns around what "infinity" refers to, so that it's not just a concept, but something real in itself. And that real thing, the real object which "infinity" refers to is demonstrated by philosophy itself, or the traditional way of doing philosophy, which proves to be endless.

"Infinity" is not a concept which philosophy holds in completeness, having it at its disposal, to apply at will. "Infinity" ought to be understood more like a descriptive term which describes the philosophical process. Therefore philosophy is contained by infinity, rather than infinity being contained by philosophy.

So philosophers attempts to apprehended the infinite manifest as philosophy getting lost to the infinite:

The concept cannot otherwise represent the thing
which it repressed, namely mimesis, than by appropriating something
of this latter in its own mode of conduct, without losing itself to it.

That would explain the part about canceling itself out, and "pseudo-morphosis". A quick Google search tells me that this is a concept proposed by Oswald Spengler in "The Decline of the West".

That would explain the part about canceling itself out, and "pseudo-morphosis". A quick Google search tells me that this is a concept proposed by Oswald Spengler in "The Decline of the West". — Metaphysician Undercover

The original geological concept makes more sense to me: it’s when a mineral replaces another mineral but takes the first one’s shape. Adorno is saying that art and philosophy (at their best, I assume) do not allow this, i.e., they do not allow their content to be replaced, leaving only form. It’s the content that matters most. What they have in common is what ensures that one cannot become the other: to each its own proper content.

I've thought a lot about Adorno's ideas about form and content. He's saying that if you sit in the audience and listen to a symphony, it may be labeled as a Mozart concert, but in a sense, you aren't listening to Mozart. Mozart is the form. What you're actually contacting is the content, alive and unfolding out of itself in time.

This idea that the performance is what it's all about became the norm with the recording of music. So if I refer to Jimi Hendrix's performance of the Star Spangled Banner, it's content I'm referring to. Yes, the form is there, but as a necessary component.

In our time, things have partially changed again with mixes, so that production is often the focal point, for instance you can hear multiple performances of a Teddy Swims song, sung by him. What's different each time is the production. I'm not sure how production fits into the form/content scheme. Sgt. Peppers was released two years before he died, so he might have had a chance to recognize the importance of production. He might have aligned it with content? Although, it's such an integral part of the music it's hard to separate it out.

I’ll say something about the last two paragraphs of the “Infinity” section.

To this extent the aesthetic moment is, albeit for totally different reasons than in Schelling, not accidental to philosophy. Not the least of its tasks is to sublate this in the committalness [Verbindlichkeit] of its insights into what is real. This latter and play are its poles. The affinity of philosophy to art does not justify the borrowing of this by the former, least of all by virtue of the intuitions which barbarians consider the prerogative of art. Even in aesthetic labor they hardly ever strike in isolation, as lightning-bolts from above. They grow out of the formal law of the construction; if one wished to titrate them out, they would melt away. Thinking by no means protects sources, whose freshness would emancipate it from thought; no type of cognition is at our disposal, which would be absolutely divergent from that which disposes over things, before which intuitionism flees panic-stricken and in vain.

In a nutshell, art is something to emulate, but carefully: not to imitate its reliance on intuition, but to learn from its non-coercive engagement with the non-conceptual.

The philosophy which imitated art, which wanted to become a work of art, would cancel itself out. It would postulate the identity-claim: that its objects vanish into it, indeed that they grant their mode of procedure a supremacy which disposes over the heterogenous as a priori material, while the relationship of philosophy to the heterogenous is virtually thematic. What art and philosophy have in common is not form or patterning procedures, but a mode of conduct which forbids pseudo-morphosis. Both keep faith with their own content through their opposition; art, by making itself obdurate against its meaning; philosophy, by not clinging to anything immediate. The philosophical concept does not dispense with the longing which animates art as something non-conceptual and whose fulfillment flees from its immediacy as appearance [Schein]. The concept, the organon of thought and nevertheless the wall [Mauer: external wall] between this and what is to be thought through, negates that longing. Philosophy can neither circumvent such negation nor submit itself to it. What is incumbent on it, is the effort to go beyond the concept, by means of the concept.

If philosophy were to attempt to be art, it would turn the non-conceptual into mere cognitive material, in which its mode of procedure (its form) had supremacy over the non-conceptual content. But we must engage things on their own terms. This is like the difference between, e.g., viewing the mechanics and acoustics of the saxophone as a neutral medium, the material, for musical expression, and viewing them rather as themselves shaping what is being expressed through their limits and resistances.

The original geological concept makes more sense to me: it’s when a mineral replaces another mineral but takes the first one’s shape. — Jamal

Here's another possible interpretation.

First, this is Spengler:

By the term ‘historical pseudomorphosis’ I propose to designate those cases in which an older alien Culture lies so massively over the land that a young Culture, born in this land, cannot get its breath and fails not only to achieve pure and specific expression-forms, but even to develop fully its own self-consciousness. All that wells up from the depths of the young soul is cast in the old moulds, young feelings stiffen in senile works, and instead of rearing itself up in its own creative power, it can only hate the distant power with a hate that grows to be monstrous.

https://jnnielsen.medium.com/permutations-of-pseudomorphosis-8afafb6771f4

Adorno's use is difficult to understand. But pay attention to the role of the heterogenous in his description. The heterogenous is the content, and both art and philosophy "keep faith" with their content, through a conduct which forbids pseudo-morphisis. Notice, Spengler's 'historical pseudomorphosis' propagates hate therefore it must be forbidden. Each, art and philosophy, keeps faith with its content through its own form of intrinsic opposition. Art will make itself obdurate against its own meaning, while philosophy distances itself from the immediate, by putting the concept in between, as a wall. These forms of negating itself, should actually be considered as keeping faith with its content..

What's interesting is that the geological concept may make more sense in the case of art, because art uses a material medium. But notice in the case of philosophy, the medium (the wall) is the concept, so I think the social concept of pseudo-morphisis makes more sense in the case of philosophy. So ‘historical pseudomorphosis', in Spengler's sense, is forbidden through that use of the wall, the concept, ideology, by which philosophy distances itself from the immediate.

Speculative Moment.

It appears to me, that the principal point of this section is stated in the final paragraph.

The power of the existent constructs the facades into which the
consciousness crashes. It must try to break through them. This alone
would snatch away the postulate from the profundity of ideology. The
speculative moment survives in such resistance: what does not allow
itself to be governed by the given facts, transcends them even in the
closest contact with objects and in the renunciation of sacrosanct
transcendence. What in thought goes beyond that to which it is bound
in its resistance is its freedom. It follows the expressive urge of the
subject. The need to give voice to suffering is the condition of all truth.
For suffering is the objectivity which weighs on the subject; what it
experiences as most subjective, its expression, is objectively mediated.

Here's an attempt to understand that paragraph.

The consciousness must try to break through the facades which have been constructed by the power of the existent. This would release (snatch away) the postulate from its relation to the profundity of ideology. That is a conscious resistance, which allows the speculative moment to persist, by not allowing itself to be governed by the given facts [ideology]. This produces transcendence in close contact with objects, through the renunciation of sacrosanct transcendence. When thought, in such resistance, goes beyond that which binds it [the ideology of given facts], this is its freedom. Thought can then follow the expressive urge of the subject. And, since suffering is the weight of the object on the subject, the need to give voice to suffering is the primary condition for all [objective] truth. Therefore what the subject experiences as the most subjective, the expression of suffering, is actually the experience which is most objectively mediated.

Yup, that's how I read it.

But with what came before I'd say a couple more things for a summation, I think. I think he's addressing the positivists skepticism, and it seems he even includes Kant in that family when he speaks of the resistance of Kant. That makes sense to me since he was exploring the scientific basis of philosophy, and much of philosophy after Kant is a reaction to attempt to somehow "overcome" his system, or demonstrate that it's not the architectonic which it purports to be.

Though Adorno notes that the responses have been obscure, he wants to speak up in favor of this speculative thinking, or a moment within thinking, whereby the facts, on their face or as read, do not determine thought, but rather produce a facade through his thought must push towards and outward from in order to get closer to the things themselves.

Only, without a category that determines the thing -- it's non-conceptual. In a way I think I can see the fantasm as the appearance, whereas negative dialectics wishes to get beyond the appearance of facts (themselves conceptual) to the thing.

Page 30(Printed at bottom)/Page 31(PDF page)--

. It is not an end in itself at the latter’s expense, but carries it
off out of the thingly bad state of affairs, for its part an object of
philosophical critique

I'm wondering if anyone has thoughts on what "thingly bad state of affairs" means. I was wondering if it's supposed to say "thinly" just as a first guess?

Looking back at the ending of Speculative Moment and I found its conclusion beautiful:

What in thought goes beyond that to which it is bound
in its resistance is its freedom. It follows the expressive urge of the
subject. The need to give voice to suffering is the condition of all truth.
For suffering is the objectivity which weighs on the subject; what it
experiences as most subjective, its expression, is objectively mediated.

Goes to your noting that Adorno wants to give expression to the suffering @Jamal


EDIT: Just throwing another one in this same comment because I wanted to highlight it:

Great
philosophy was always accompanied by the paranoid zeal to tolerate
nothing but itself, and to pursue this with all the ruses of its reason,
while this constantly withdraws further and further from the pursuit.

EDIT2: Also I'm finding myself scratching my head in the first paragraph of Portrayal (Darstellung) -- Darstellung contrasts with Vorstellung, which is what I'm gathering to be the difference between the importance of Portrayal in philosophy, at the beginning, and how it is not just science at the end.

Vorstellung is usually translated as "Representation", and in Kant is important to scientific knowledge. So I understand that much. Darstellung is the "portrayal" -- expression, language -- of the representation. But I'm struggling to see how Darstellung, in Adorno, differentiates philosophy from science at the end somehow and that's what I'm puzzling over:

If the moment of expression tries to be anything more, it
degenerates into a point of view; were it to relinquish the moment of
expression and the obligation of portrayal, it would converge with
science.

@Moliere I intend to respond in a few days. Just so you know I’m not ignoring you.

:up: No worries. I found some time and motivation so started back in, but whenever whatever.

The full quote is:

This may help to explain why portrayal [Darstellung] is not a matter of
indifference or external to philosophy, but immanent to its idea. Its
integral moment of expression, non-conceptually-mimetic, becomes
objectified only through portrayal – language. The freedom of
philosophy is nothing other than the capacity of giving voice to this
unfreedom. If the moment of expression tries to be anything more, it
degenerates into a point of view; were it to relinquish the moment of
expression and the obligation of portrayal, it would converge with
science.

From this we/I gather:
1) Philosophy is only mediated through language, language is its only portrayal. No images, gestures, music etc.
2) Philosophy is free as long as it pictures the unfreedom that the non-conceptual suffers under the concept, ie it portrays (its) suffering.
3) There are 2 dangers in this picturing:
a) If philosophy tries to do anything more, eg. justifying it, redeeming it, affirming it, renouncing it etc, then it degenerates into a point of view. It is an imperative from Adorno to let philosophy only be interested in the portrayal, and leave all other matters - consequences, implications, interpretations etc - open. As if it is not philosophy's job to settle the suffering, by direct approach, at least.
b) If philosophy abdicates from its role of giving voice to suffering, from its obligation, then it pseudo-morphises into science.

EDIT: I think for Adorno there are like two philosophies: philosophical science and philosophical philosophy. It seems to me that he is only interested in the latter.

Alright, thanks. That helps me understand the paragraph better.

There is another quote that you also might find of interest:

Dialectics is the consistent consciousness of non-identity. It is not related in advance to a standpoint. Thought is driven, out of its unavoidable insufficiency, its guilt for what it thinks, towards it.

It seems to me that what Adorno is saying here, is that guilt is an integral part of philosophy. That without guilt, there would be no philosophy. Or, if negative dialectics is the engine of philosophy, then that guilt would be its fuel. Then maybe guilt is the criterion that delineates a good philosophy from a bad one (at best), or from a completely aphilosophical one (at worst).

Though Adorno notes that the responses have been obscure, he wants to speak up in favor of this speculative thinking, or a moment within thinking, whereby the facts, on their face or as read, do not determine thought, but rather produce a facade through his thought must push towards and outward from in order to get closer to the things themselves. — Moliere

I think that we need to make sure that we properly interpret how Adorno uses "facts" here.

The speculative moment survives in such resistance: what does not allow itself to be governed by the given facts.

I believe the "given facts" are what is posited, postulated by positivism, as what is the case. So the resistance spoken about, which is correlated to the speculative moment, is a resistance to the ideology of positivism.