{"id":21,"date":"2019-08-30T12:43:00","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T16:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/?page_id=21"},"modified":"2020-02-22T10:51:30","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T15:51:30","slug":"7-13","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/7-13\/","title":{"rendered":"7\/13 | Theodor Adorno, <em>Negative Dialectics<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/G1o-5RYki-g\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/h3>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\">Professors\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/martin-saar\/\">Martin Saar<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/cgt.columbia.edu\/about\/people\/committee-faculty\/bernard-e-harcourt\/\">Bernard E. Harcourt<\/a><\/h1>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">read and discuss<\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-7-13-on-negative-dialectics\/\">Negative Dialectics<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Theodor W. Adorno<\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ifs.uni-frankfurt.de\/english\/\">Institute for Social Research<\/a> (<i lang=\"de\">Institut f\u00fcr Sozialforschung<\/i>, IfS)<\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Goethe-Universit\u00e4t Frankfurt am Main<\/h2>\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">December 18, 2019<\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">~~~<\/p>\n<p>In Critique 7\/13, we return to Adorno, but this time to the late Adorno of the <em>Negative Dialectics\u00a0<\/em>(1966), in conversation with <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/martin-saar\/\">Martin Saar<\/a>, Professor of Social Philosophy at the Goethe Universit\u00e4t Frankfurt am Main.<\/p>\n<p>You will recall that <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/2-13\/\">we began Critique 13\/13<\/a> with the early Adorno of \u201cThe Actuality of Philosophy\u201d from 1931. In that essay, Adorno took as his point of departure a radical break in philosophy: contemporary philosophy, Adorno argued, could no longer aspire to understand the world in its totality. The actual could not be rendered fully rational. The systematic and total theories of earlier German Idealism were things of the past. \u201cPhilosophy,\u201d Adorno suggested, \u201cmust learn to renounce the question of totality.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>You will also recall that, although Adorno urged philosophers to eschew totalities and focus on middle-level concepts (such as the commodity form or class), Adorno nevertheless retained confidence in dialectical reason. \u201cOnly dialectically, it seems to me, is philosophic interpretation possible,\u201d Adorno wrote in 1931.\u00a0The dialectical method, Adorno maintained, remained the only possible way forward for a philosophy of interpretation.<\/p>\n<p>The question this raised, naturally, was what Adorno meant by dialectic, especially in a context where he had embraced philosophy as a form of interpretation as opposed to science (<em>Wissenschaft<\/em>) which he viewed as a type of research.\u00a0What was the concept of dialectic that Adorno embraced given his more humble vision for philosophy?<\/p>\n<p>It is fair to say that Adorno dedicated himself to this precise question over the course of the next decades and until the end of his life. Through years of exchange with Max Horkheimer and his life-long engagement with Hegel\u2019s writings\u2014from the drafting of the <em>Dialectic of Enlightenment\u00a0<\/em>(early 1940s) to his <em>Three Studies on Hegel\u00a0<\/em>(1963) and further on\u2014this question was always present and at the forefront.<\/p>\n<p>Adorno\u2019s work <em>Negative Dialectics<\/em>, published in 1966, and his two essays \u201cCritique\u201d and \u201cResignation\u201d from his final published work, <em>Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords<\/em>, in 1969, offer perhaps the final and most complete answer.\u00a0In Critique 7\/13, we return to Adorno\u2019s final major writings on the dialectic\u2014published just a few years before his <em>Marginalia to Theory and Praxis\u00a0<\/em>that we read and discussed a year ago with Martin Saar at <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/6-13\/\">Praxis 7\/13<\/a>\u2014in order to explore his answer and what we might call \u201cthe productivity of negativity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to 7\/13!<\/p>\n<p>[Read <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-7-13-on-negative-dialectics\/\">full Introduction here<\/a>. \u00a0\u00a9 Bernard E. Harcourt.]<\/p>\n<h1 style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/7-13\/negative_dialectics_german_edition\/#main\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-658\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-658\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/files\/2019\/12\/Negative_Dialectics_German_edition-195x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/files\/2019\/12\/Negative_Dialectics_German_edition-195x300.jpg 195w, https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/files\/2019\/12\/Negative_Dialectics_German_edition.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\" \/><\/a><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Professors\u00a0Martin Saar and Bernard E. Harcourt read and discuss Negative Dialectics\u00a0by Theodor W. Adorno at the Institute for Social Research (Institut f\u00fcr Sozialforschung, IfS) Goethe-Universit\u00e4t Frankfurt am Main December 18, 2019 ~~~ In Critique 7\/13, we return to Adorno, but&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/7-13\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1603,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-21","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1603"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/critique1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}