You're saying he was an ontological anti-realist. Did he see understanding as a continuously evolving thing that swings between oppositions?

A reaction: I'm struck by how this rejection of positivity parallels the criticism of faith I have been outlining in that thread.

There are also some interesting relations to logical pluralism in the rejection of a single totalising framework and sensitivity context. — Banno

That is quite Interesting. Regarding faith, I’ve only read a few of those posts. I guess the critical parallel you’re seeing between faith and positivity is the suppression of the negative, where the negative refers both to critique and to the bad shit (suffering seems to be embraced and simultaneously, effectively, cancelled out by Christian faith).

Certainly I, and probably Adorno, would broadly agree with your position on faith. But in a different work, Dialectic of Enlightenment, I take him to be saying that while Enlightenment sought to demystify reason and do away with faith, it tends to become myth again, meaning that it has its own tendency to set up unquestionable authorities, of which the fetishization of positivity, e.g., progress narratives, is an example. Thus faith and positivity are in the same business, although Adorno on the face of it ignores religious faith, thinking it’s a dead duck, and aims his guns at post-faith instrumental rationality. That's his Eurocentrism.

However, it occurs to me it’s not so simple. What I personally like about religious faith is something I imagine—not quite sure yet—Adorno would sympathize with, namely the refusal to let go of a utopian vision and the dedication to the sacredness of life. And the nonidentical might work here to provide a space for that.

As for logical pluralism, I take you to be making a general point about single vs multiple frameworks and the need for logical frameworks to be sensitive to context (like relevance logic?) rather than a point about how we can make space for a paraconsistent logic accommodating dialectical contradiction, right? Well, all I’ll say right now is…cool beans :cool:

This quote from LND 3 was exciting to read because it confirmed a lot of what I felt about Hegel:

Thus once the identity of two contradictory concepts has been
reached, or at least asserted in the antithesis, as in the most famous
case of all, the identity of Nothing with Being, this is followed by a
further refl ection to the effect that, indeed, these are identical, I have
indeed brought them together – Being, as something entirely undefi ned, is also Nothing. However, to put it quite crudely, they are not
actually entirely identical. The thought that carries out the act of
identifi cation always does violence to every single concept in the
process. And the negation of the negation is in fact nothing other
than the α
¸
να′ µνησις, the recollection, of that violence, in other words
the acknowledgement that, by conjoining two opposing concepts, I
have on the one hand bowed to a necessity implicit in them, while
on the other hand I have done them a violence that has to be rectifi ed. And truth to tell, this rectifi cation in the act of identifi cation is
what is always intended by the Hegelian syntheses.17 This structure
– we are speaking here of a structure of dialectics – this structure is
not something that can always be strictly sustained, and I know very
well that you could show me quite different structures in Hegel’s
Logic.

That the dialectic, in a sense, does a violence to the concepts of Being and Nothingness in their equation and sublation, and that this pattern is one of thought -- that the positing will bring about another positing, and these things together form a moment -- these are things I've tried to find ways to say and so it's something of a relief to see a Big Cheese say similar things to my sympathies. Makes me think maybe I got something out of the reading after all, while the suspicion the entire time was that it was nothing but my own imagination.

EDIT: And, generally, LND 3 felt clearer than 1 and 2 in terms of what Adorno is doing because he's less responding to criticisms to get his audience to listen to why his project is worth listening to and beginning to differentiate himself from Hegel, as well as ends with a kind of transcendental question: Is philosophy without system possible? And Negative Dialectics is meant to answer in the affirmative, but also without arbitrarity -- where philosophy has a proper authority.

That the dialectic, in a sense, does a violence to the concepts of Being and Nothingness in their equation and sublation, and that this pattern is one of thought -- that the positing will bring about another positing, and these things together form a moment -- these are things I've tried to find ways to say and so it's something of a relief to see a Big Cheese say similar things to my sympathies. Makes me think maybe I got something out of the reading after all, while the suspicion the entire time was that it was nothing but my own imagination. — Moliere

And it's like he's saying that this insight is in Hegel already, or more like ... Hegel's dialectic "wants" to rectify the violence, but Hegel himself didn't allow it to. In other words, here's what Hegel should have done.

But that stuff is difficult for me since I don't know Hegel very well. I'm finding lecture 4 more digestible.

Coincidentally, I just read this:

Clearly Adorno believes that Hegel’s theory possesses some of the essential elements, but that the system within which the elements are located—with its idealist teleology—actually threatens to undermine their ability to explain experience, contrary to what seemed to have been promised in the introduction to the Phenomenology. As he sees it, Hegel oscillates “between the most profound insight and the collapse of that insight” (ND 161/160). What that really means, for Adorno, is that Hegel may indeed have a potent arsenal of philosophical concepts and insights. However, the reality of Hegel’s texts is that these concepts and insights are ultimately subordinated to the needs of Hegel’s architectonic. Hegel strives to assemble the encyclopaedia of con-cepts in a logical and quasi-deductive system. But by so doing, Adorno argues, he actually undermines the negativity—the insight into the moment of nonidentity—in his philosophy. — Brian OConnor, Adornos Negative Dialectic

:grin: nice, reason might be subject to a critique paralleling that of faith I gave elsewhere. it would be interesting to follow through on that - although it might be restricted to faith in reason... I'll have to give it some thought.

I have to some extent set aside the discussion of logic hereabouts, since Adorno appears to either misunderstand the nature of modern logic or to be talking about something quite different. I'll go with the latter. Recent advances in formal logic - you mention relevant logic - take a step back form the neatness of Fregean premisses, while maintaining formal clarity. His interest is perhaps in the interpretation that occurs before logic commences.

Hegel's teleology has deep roots in Indo-european culture. Christianity has threads of it running through its whole history. Unrevised Marxism is basically these same psychological forces shed of Christian paraphernalia. Adorno witnessed firsthand the powerful effects of these forces, but somehow remained immune to them. This allowed him to become a bridge out of the lunacy.

And it's like he's saying that this insight is in Hegel already, or more like ... Hegel's dialectic "wants" to rectify the violence, but Hegel himself didn't allow it to. In other words, here's what Hegel should have done. — Jamal

I figure what he is saying is that the concept ("Being" in the example) must be abused (defined in a way which is inconsistent with what it really means to us) in order to produce the identity relationship required by the thesis/antithesis opposition. In other words, the proposed antithesis is the antithesis of an artificially manipulated concept, designed for that antithesis. Then it turns out that all that the synthesis is, is an attempt to rectify the damage caused by that abuse. And, depending on the skill of the dialectician, this may just as likely be a step backward for the concept, as it is likely to be a step forward.

I figure what he is saying is that the concept ("Being" in the example) must be abused (defined in a way which is inconsistent with what it really means to us) in order to produce the identity relationship required by the thesis/antithesis opposition. In other words, the proposed antithesis is the antithesis of an artificially manipulated concept, designed for that antithesis. Then it turns out that all that the synthesis is, is an attempt to rectify the damage caused by that abuse. And, depending on the skill of the dialectician, this may just as likely be a step backward for the concept, as it is likely to be a step forward. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. This is just dialectics. Being and Nothing are two sides of the same coin, which Hegel identifies as Becoming. Being and Nothing seem to disappear into Becoming. That's the violence he's talking about.

Being and nothing are only made to be two sides of the same coin, by doing violence to the concept. When they "disappear into Becoming", that is the so-called synthesis, which is really nothing more that an attempt to rectify the violence which was required to establish the thesis/antithesis identity.

Thus once the identity of two contradictory concepts has been
reached, or at least asserted in the antithesis, as in the most famous
case of all, the identity of Nothing with Being, this is followed by a
further reflection to the effect that, indeed, these are identical, I have
indeed brought them together – Being, as something entirely undefined,
is also Nothing. However, to put it quite crudely, they are not
actually entirely identical. The thought that carries out the act of
identification always does violence to every single concept in the
process. And the negation of the negation is in fact nothing other
than the α¸να′µνησις, the recollection, of that violence, in other words
the acknowledgement that, by conjoining two opposing concepts, I
have on the one hand bowed to a necessity implicit in them, while
on the other hand I have done them a violence that has to be rectified.
And truth to tell, this rectification in the act of identification is
what is always intended by the Hegelian syntheses. — p30

Being and nothing are only made to be two sides of the same coin, by doing violence to the concept. — Metaphysician Undercover

This is incorrect, but I'm not interested in debating it.

Did you read the quote? Maybe it's incorrect by conventional interpretations of Hegelian dialectics, but it is what Adorno is arguing about Hegelian dialectics.

So by Adorno's interpretation of Hegelian dialectics, "Becoming" is just a new proposal for the concept of "Being". It cannot be called "Being" because that word refers to what was identified as opposed to "Nothing". But that original concept of "Being" was manufactured by the mentioned violence, to match that antithesis, because "to put it quite crudely, they are not actually entirely identical".

You'd need to spend some time contemplating Hegel. Do thought experiments where you delete (from existence) one pole of an opposition. Notice what happens to the meaning of the pole that's left. Think of the yin-yang symbol.

Adorno appears to either misunderstand the nature of modern logic or to be talking about something quite different. I'll go with the latter. Recent advances in formal logic - you mention relevant logic - take a step back form the neatness of Fregean premisses, while maintaining formal clarity. His interest is perhaps in the interpretation that occurs before logic commences. — Banno

Yes, and also in the use to which it's put. So I do think it's right to say he's talking about something different. As I was saying before to @Moliere, he takes formal logic to be its own thing, unquestionable in itself, like Kant did with "general logic". He may have thought of modern developments in logic as exemplifying the bad philosophical use of general logic.

He may have been wrong about that [EDIT: which I guess means that he did "misunderstand the nature of modern logic"], but I don't think there's an interesting critique of him there, because it would miss the point. The critique I am keeping in mind, incidentally, is that of Habermas, who said Adorno was stuck in the philosophy of consciousness, having failed to take the linguistic turn. I've seen some defences of Adorno against that charge, but I can see his point.

No. This is just dialectics. — frank

This is incorrect, but I'm not interested in debating it — frank

You'd need to spend some time contemplating Hegel. — frank

You'd need to spend some time contemplating the actual reading if you're going to criticize an interpretation of it.

The critique I am keeping in mind, incidentally, is that of Habermas, who said Adorno was stuck in the philosophy of consciousness, having failed to take the linguistic turn. I've seen some defences of Adorno against that charge, but I can see his point. — Jamal

Another thing I'm thinking about is how much Adorno's philosophy of the nonidentical and nonconceptual, and his materialist "priority of the object", share with other 20th century developments like being-in-the-world, forms of life, embodiment, and lived experience.

You'd need to spend some time contemplating the actual reading if you're going to criticize an interpretation of it. — Jamal

What we were discussing is basic Hegel.

nice, reason might be subject to a critique paralleling that of faith I gave elsewhere. it would be interesting to follow through on that - although it might be restricted to faith in reason... I'll have to give it some thought. — Banno

For Adorno it seems to be both, i.e., faith in reason is the target, but reason has that tendency. But, you might reply, since it's the actually existing form of reason operating in the modern world that he criticizes (instrumental reason), he's not actually criticizing reason as such, but just this bad kind—which is in line with your distinction of reason and faith therein.

I feel like resisting that, because I've learned to pay attention to Adorno's exaggerations, which are not always or only rhetorical. Maybe it's like this: since reason doesn't float free of society and history, so the bad kind of reason is what reason is in the modern world. It would follow that the critique has to go deeper than just saying reason is fine, so long as we don't forget to question what kind of reason we're using.

This raises a question: if Adorno is using the tools of thought that everyone else uses and which are implicated in instrumental rationality—and given that he cannot appeal to anything transhistorical, or to a golden age of reason, without contradicting himself—then how can he stand above it all and pass judgement? I see negative dialectics and the methods of critical theory in general as answers to that question: we work away at the contradicitons from the inside.

Hegel's teleology has deep roots in Indo-european culture. Christianity has threads of it running through its whole history. Unrevised Marxism is basically these same psychological forces shed of Christian paraphernalia. Adorno witnessed firsthand the powerful effects of these forces, but somehow remained immune to them. This allowed him to become a bridge out of the lunacy. — frank

Seems like a fair summary.

Morning thought -- the structure of a symphony may provide a good analogue to the dialectical pattern.

I listened to Beethoven's 7th this morning to confirm, and I think there's something to the analogy still. The basic structure I'm referring to is that a symphony is composed of four movements, and a standard structure for the composer for the movements is 1: Main theme, 2: Minor theme, 3: Synthesis of the themes, 4: Progression and cap

Furthermore, the notion of counter-point in symphony has a kind of mirror to the notion of reflection between moments in dialectics.

This by way of offering a form for understanding dialectics which is sensible and yet not logical in the strict, modern logical sense. At most it's an informal logics from that viewpoint -- though from Adorno's viewpoint I imagine that the formal logics are a diversion from what's proper to philosophical thought, at best.

Great!

You're in good company because my sources inform me that Adorno himself viewed Beethoven's symphonies as dialectical. There's a book, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, that collects together the fragments he wrote about it.

As well as the structure of a symphony, and the tension and resolution that lead to transformation, there's the way that the parts (movements and motifs) are shaped by the whole, and vice versa.

EDIT: A relevant article: The Symphonic Subject: Beethoven, Hegel, Adorno

Huh. Well look at that. That's cool. Thanks for sharing!

I finished ND with a newfound appreciation for Adorno. I really like this guy on a personal level, and I think his philosophy addressed issues that his community was struggling with. I don't see my community as struggling with those same issues, but still, good stuff.

Hope you guys enjoy the rest of your reading. Peace out!

:up:

...we work away at the contradictions from the inside. — Jamal

I'm wondering if he has the right tools for this.

I'm wondering if he has the right tools for this. — Banno

I get the sense that he was tired of having to prove that he had the right tools for this from the first two lectures -- I felt he was expressing exasperation at being hounded by questions that he felt didn't matter after all, that the tools presented were not inferior but not even applicable -- a screwdriver offered for a wire-nut for instance.

As well as the structure of a symphony, and the tension and resolution that lead to transformation, there's the way that the parts (movements and motifs) are shaped by the whole, and vice versa. — Jamal

Hmm, parts and whole, in relation. Doesn't this amount to "a system"? I'm in the middle of reading the next lecture, concerned with systems.

Hmm, parts and whole, in relation. Doesn't this amount to "a system"? — Metaphysician Undercover

I don't think so. It becomes system in the context of Hegel, who has a grand idealist structure behind it (or both initiating it and culminating it, as he says in lecture 3). On its own, and as Adorno uses dialectics, it's open-ended and doesn't attempt to encompass and exhaust all the parts with its concepts.

You could say that it's a somewhat systematic method, but not that it's actually a system in the strong philosophical sense that he describes in lecture 4.

LND, lecture 3 (continued)

Before I write a post about lecture 4 I'll say some things about the second half of lecture 3, even though @Metaphysician Undercover and @Moliere have already said good things about it.

It addresses the question: is a negative dialectics possible? What this means is: can you do dialectical philosophy without Spirit or something to take its place? (And this will lead to the more general question, can you do philosophy without a system, addressed in lecture 4)

So this is the question that Adorno's explanation of negativity in the first part of the lecture is leading up to, because the overarching presence of Spirit in Hegel's philosophy is what Adorno's negative is negating. It's the difference between their philosophies.

He points out that Hegel contradicts himself, wanting to have his cake and eat it with a system that, like mathematics or logic, is one "gigantic tautology," yet is supposed to tell us something substantive about the world:

In short, on the one hand this philosophy presented itself as a gigantic analytical proposition, but on the other hand it claimed simultaneously to be the synthetic proposition par excellence. In other words, it claimed that this analytical proposition captured in the mind that which is not itself mind, and identified with it. It is precisely this twofold claim, the assertion that something can simultaneously be both a synthetic and an analytical proposition, that marks the point at which I believe we have to go beyond Hegel ... It is here that critical thinking and Hegel have to part company. — p.27

This clears the ground, and the question is how to proceed without this Hegelian solution, i.e., is a negative dialects even possible?

He puts things differently by saying he wants to reject Spinoza's verum index sui et falsi, which is something like, the truth is an index of or standard for the false, meaning what is false can be just read of from what is true. He proposes the alternative: falsum index sui atque veri, the false indicates both itself and the true.

This is a suggestive formula rather than a systematic or programmatic one, but even so I wanted to work out exactly what he meant, and found the following piece of a radio broadcast that Adorno did with the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch (among others):

Yes, at any rate, utopia is essentially in the determined negation, in the determined negation of that which merely is, and by concretizing itself as something false, it always points at the same time to what should be.

Yesterday you quoted Spinoza in our discussion with the passage, “Verum index sui et falsi.” I have varied this a little in the sense of the dialectical principle of the determined negation and have said, “Falsum—the false thing—index sui et veri.” That means that the true thing determines itself via the false thing, or via that which makes itself falsely known. And insofar as we are not allowed to cast the picture of utopia, insofar as we do not know what the correct thing would be, we know exactly, to be sure, what the false thing is.

That is actually the only form in which utopia is given to us at all. But what I mean to say here—and perhaps we should talk about this, Ernst—this matter also has a very confounding aspect, for something terrible happens due to the fact that we are forbidden to cast a picture. To be precise, among that which should be definite, one imagines it to begin with as less definite the more it is stated only as something negative. But then—and this is probably even more frightening—the commandment against a concrete expression of utopia tends to defame the utopian consciousness and to engulf it. What is really important, however, is the will that it is different. — http://www.autodidactproject.org/quote/adorno_bloch_utopia1.html

The falseness he has in mind is that which presents itself as one thing but which really isn't, e.g., freedom (which in modern society isn't freedom in the full sense) or happiness (which merely attempts to compensate for alienation) or glory (which actually stands for violence and domination). So this is the falseness we have to start with, where critical philosophy begins.

Incidentally, what he said there about utopia is interesting and good to bear in mind. His attitude to utopia is complex: disliking the presumption of attempting to define the good society but valuing the idea that things could be different.

Then he elaborately uses the Being-Nothing antithesis in Hegel's Logic to make the point that even in the synthesis (negation of negation or sublation), Hegel's philosophy has the seeds of negative dialectics, because this moment is not only a reconciliation and a forward movement but also preserves antagonisms within it, thus also points back. It's part of the meaning of Aufheben (sublation) that there is preservation, not only a lifting up and abolition.

So the synthesis is itself a "recollection of the violence" done to the opposing concepts, but Hegel undermines this because the oppositions are finally contained and everything is ultimately subordinated to forward movement.

It's worth pointing out that several Hegelians regard this as a caricature of Hegel, saying that Hegel did not in fact undermine the dialectic, that he was much more open to the continuing presence of antagonism than Adorno thought, therefore that negative dialectics is misguided and superfluous, because it's all in Hegel already and there is actually no ultimate subsumption. I heard the Hegelian Todd McGowan saying something to this effect on the "Why Theory" podcast he does, and I think it's a common criticism of Adorno. So far I'm on Adorno's side, though I can't really justify that. I get the impression it misunderstands Adorno and minimizes Hegel's idealist systematicity, but that's just an impression—I'm hardly in a position to compare interpretations of Hegel.

He concludes that line of thinking by implying that the difference here is both large and small. It just takes a twist at this point of sublation—that twist being the refusal to identify the opposing things—to cause the idealist edifice to crash down.

The falseness he has in mind is that which presents itself as one thing but which really isn't, e.g., freedom (which in modern society isn't freedom in the full sense) or happiness (which merely attempts to compensate for alienation) or glory (which actually stands for violence and domination). — Jamal

As I write this I'm in Moscow on Russia's Victory Day. They have seeded the clouds with chemicals to produce a beautifully clear day for the parade and the flyover of military aircraft. Yesterday on my bike ride I saw a convoy of cars and trucks honking their horns and flying "Z" flags.

LND Lecture 4

This picks up the second question from the last lecture: is philosophy possible without system?

The crux of the biscuit is as @Moliere put it:

Is philosophy without system possible? And Negative Dialectics is meant to answer in the affirmative, but also without arbitrarity -- where philosophy has a proper authority. — Moliere

To begin with Adorno lays out where contemporary philosophy stands with regard to systems:

Today it has become much easier to assert that systematic philosophizing has become impossible – and, in consequence, we must renounce attempts to secure everything that has given the concept of system such enormous emphasis. And I place such great value on this because I believe that you will understand my approach to philosophy only if you see it in its relation to the idea of system and not simply as a random body of thought indifferent to system. — p.35

He takes the idea of system seriously, rather than merely dismissing it.

To get more specific about the concept of system, he distinguishes the relevant philosophical sense from mere systematization. The latter is some kind of organizational schema applied selectively, as in sociology; but a philosophical system develops from a basic principle to "draw everything into itself" so that nothing escapes it. It is totalizing.

The drive towards system in philosophy "is no longer felt by people’s enfeebled consciousness today." Knowing that Adorno, along with most other 20th century philosophers, concedes that systems are a lost cause, this is a curious comment. It signals the complexity of his position.

it is my belief that an a-systematic or anti-systematic form of thought can compete with the system nowadays only if it feels this need itself and – if I may anticipate this programmatic point – if it is also capable of absorbing into itself something of the energy that was formerly stored up in the great philosophical systems. — p.36

However, more than absorbing this energy, some supposedly anti-systematic philosophies are latently systematic, namely that of Nietzsche, Husserl, and Heidegger. I won't attempt to work out how this applies to Nietzsche, or to unpack what Adorno says about Heidegger, but it's more obvious to me in Husserl, whose phenomenology ended up in a system of transcendental idealism.

His comments on Heidegger lead him to say something interesting about Kant, who I'm more at home with:

Paradoxically, then, we might speak in Heidegger’s case of an irrational system of philosophy. It combines, we might say, the claim to totality or, as he himself says in a number of places, at least of Being and Time, it combines the claim to totality with the renunciation of comprehension. Incidentally, you can already find this curious coupling implied in Kant, since Kant expressly defends the idea of a system of transcendental idealism and had formed the plan of supplementing the three Critiques with a positive system of this sort, while at the same time rejecting the idea of comprehending the objects ‘from within’ as intellectualistic and Leibnizian – even though the reality is that, if philosophy had succeeded in conceptualizing everything that exists without leaving a remainder, it would necessarily have comprehended the phenomena it had subsumed. But this is just one of the many questions that remain unresolved – magnificently unresolved, we must add – in Kant. — p.38

Kant simultaneously asserts the possibility of an all-encompassing system, while admitting that we cannot know things in themselves. But having such a system would require the phenomena it incorporated to be properly comprehended, meaining they would have to somehow bring in the noumenal along with them. Adorno might think this tension is "magnificent" because Kant is honest about it: he doesn't pretend to have conceptual closure, despite his massive urge to systematize.

In contrast to Heidegger, whose philosophy is an "idealism in disguise," philosophy should take a different path:

the path on which system becomes secularized into a latent force which ties disparate insights to one another (replacing any architectonic organization) – this path in fact seems to me to be the only road still open to philosophy. — p.38

I don't really get exactly how this good latency is supposed to be different from Heidegger's latency, but as he says it's to do with the way the latter makes use of the concept of Being. In any case, that last quotation is a concise statement of the basic programme.

This is along the lines of what we may say of theology, since in this latter case the process of secularization released the idea of the system as the idea of a coherent, meaningful world.

I like this analogy. Prior to secularization, the idea of a coherent, meaningful world was unreleased because it was unquestioned. It had nothing to appear against, therefore it just wasn't a thing. Or, secularization broke the monopoly on the idea.

The analogy is that the idea of a coherent authoritative philosophy has been released by the demise of systems, so that a strong and meaningful philosophy might thrive without depending on system.

To me Adorno seems to be saying that we shouldn't be satisfied with a weak kind of philosophy that pursues restricted problems or else abandons itself to relativism, subject to "contingency and whim". We should want some kind of unity.

My postulate would then be that the power of the system – what at one time was the unifying power of a structure of thought as a whole – had to be transformed into the criticism of individual detail, of individual phenomena. — p.40

In explaining what he means by criticism he mentions the debate he had with Karl Popper. I might look into that in a separate post because I imagine it's a fascinating confrontation between philosophical traditions.

That, then, would be the programme I want to put before you here. And this programme may well come closest to something that Nietzsche had in mind. Thinking would be a form of thinking that is not itself a system, but one in which system and the systematic impulse are consumed; a form of thinking that in its analysis of individual phenomena demonstrates the power that for- merly aspired to build systems. By this I mean the power that is liberated by blasting open individual phenomena through the insistent power of thought. This power is the same power that once animated the system, since it is the force which enabled individual phenomena, non-identical with their own concepts as they are, to become more than themselves. This means that something of the system can still be salvaged in philosophy, namely the idea that phenomena are objectively interconnected – and not merely by virtue of a classification imposed on them by the knowing subject. — p.40

Whatever its merits, it sure sounds good.

He anticipates the objection that he's naive in expecting all this:

You will all want to say: Aren’t you being rather naïve in expecting philosophy to deliver something of which it is no longer capable? In the age of the great systems – in modern times, let us say, from Descartes to Hegel – the world possessed a certain visibility. — p.41

The world simply does not have this visibility now. The world is not so simple as it was, and there is no shared ground in which everything can be expected to make sense. Disenchantment, the fragmentation of meaning, the demise of hierarchical societies in which everyone knew their place, the rise of secularism and Enlightenment, and the permanent revolution of capitalist development---all this means we can't do philosophy like we used to:

the traditional conception of philosophy can only be validated if thinking behaves as though it still inhabited the traditional society in which philosophy was able to function.

But this would be the validation of falsehood.