I am kind of shocked at Marcuse's sympathy towards totality. Given the heavy, heavy, negative aspects of Adorno and Horkheimer I am surprised that any sort of positive claim could come out of Critical Theory. It is also interesting that Marcus holds onto the Marxist telos. Other Critical Theorists seem to have parted ways with Marxism, as Marxism becomes simply another form of cultural ideology, and ideology is the very thing most Critical Theorists (at least the ones we've read in this class) have been attempting to avoid. I wonder what Adorno and Horkheimer thought of Marcuse's continued loyalty to Marxism and its totalizing, optimistic categories. As Adorno seems to be utterly committed to his pessimistic understanding of Cultural and, I suppose, humanity at large.

Dante made some excellent points. As someone who is planning to move onto graduate school, I am worried about the institutions I am applying to (prepositional ending ftw!). I find myself wondering if I going to be educated by these intuitions or simply evaluated as worthy (or unworthy) to hold a degree from them.

However, like Frank, I'm not convinced by his argument that people who are poor speakers must be poor writers. Did anyone ever hear Antony Flew speak? I watched one of his debates a while ago and his ability to articulate himself was straight-up embarrassing. He was a brilliant writer and thinker, but... damn... he sucked at public speaking.

I think that Critical Theory accepts that all modes of civilization are necessarily dominating. So in their refusal to bring about the end of capitalism they are merely making the point that what comes after capitalism is not going to be any better. I think their idea of redemption is completely eschatologocial. In other words, redemption looks back upon the world from the literal end of history. Since that time will never, for them, come about, with a fully redeemed mankind, redemption serves as their positive force. Redemption doesn't need to coerce dominating systems into a new form of dominating systems. Redemption brings to good all that was wrong, so to speak. Within the standpoint of redemption that Adorno suggests at the end of Minima Moralia, he cannot advocate the quickening capitalism demise because he wants to find a way to transform it into something beautiful without the coercive force necessary at the fall of capitalism.

Maybe? Haha

After reading your post the first thing that came to my mind was a section from the Communist Manifesto:

"In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself."

(From chapter 2 of the Communist manifesto, Can be found here)

The Civil/Political rights of the first generation Human Rights document were the Civil/Political rights of the Western bourgeoisie.

"Social equality was possible at first only as an equality outside the state". While I agree with the claim Habermas makes, I think the statement should be more along the lines of : "Social equality was possible at first only as an equality outside the Market"

I think the rise of the internet may push the discussion concerning the reading of literature in a new direction. English is changing. It is hard as hell to read the King James Version of the bible. Other then the fact that the bible is hard to read in and of itself it is simply hard to get through the prose. English has changed since the time of King James, and it has not stopped continuing to change.

The internet is changing the idiosyncrasies of the English language (no one prior to 1990 could have known what "LOL" means). There are some classic, amazing stories that are simply hard to read in the linguistic environment we occupy. At the very least, the internet is forcing the English language to become more efficient. I am fairly certain every one of us knows what a "wall of text" is, and can explain why we won't read it. I wonder what the statistic is of people who use message boards on the internet, or read blogs. The language used online is separated from literature and academia by the "domination" of English Departments around the country who would claim that the use of "iow, imo, iirc, pwned, lulz, lamesauce,..." etc. is an abhorrent use of the English language.

My personal reading tends to interfere with my educational reading, obviously I'm more interested in reading a book I choose to purchase then a book I am forced to read for a class I was forced to take by the Liberal Art curriculum. And I tend to read a lot, A LOT, of online material in the form of message boards (freeratio.org, et al) and blogs. I find those resources to be incredibly helpful in terms of my education (if not to my paper writing).

All of this to say, I think the way in which we approach the written word is changing. The internet has such a complex relationship with reading skills, communication, literature, etc, that I'm not sure we know whether the implications will be beneficial or harmful.

In recent years I've been noticing the phrases "political imagination" and "moral imagination" quite frequently in some socialist academics (ranging from philosophers, historians, etc.). I think the notion of imagination is very important in our understanding of Critical Theory. I think, at least in part, the imagination is the positive drive that moves beyond the negative aspects of Irony we've seen, and is able to posit something new that doesn't conform to the dominating culture of surplus-repression.

However, Marcus also confused me with his use of Phantasy and Imagination. I can conceptualize the differences that I would place on the two terms, but he doesn't make the distinction crystal clear as Jameliah points out, even though they seem to be operating in different ways.

Your posts are truly inspiring Joe. I would love to read "Negative Dialectics" or "One Dimensional Man". I'm captivated by Adorno, but I would love to hear more of Marcuse without the Freudian focus. I'm sorry, but psychoanalysis is draining.

I think the Irony at work within Minima Moralia is not terribly relative, if it is relative at all. There are very specific words, with very specific meanings, in which Adorno employs Irony. While his book as a whole might be classified as some sort of philosophic Irony, I think it's slightly more complex. The problem with Adorno's irony was not that it was difficult to discern what he was saying, it was that Irony only serves a negative use. If we are to throw Redemption over top of the Irony and view the irony through the perspective of redemption, I'm still not quite sure what the end result would be. It would certainly be confusing, but I don't think the right world would be 'relative'.

Irony in the popular culture, and as a comedic gag is certainly relative and in many ways mirrors what Adorno does in his work. But Adorno employs Irony very specifically so that we know what he means. In my opinion, he avoids the relativist pitfall.

With all questions regarding systemic cultural tendencies, the given answer usually transforms into the same structure as the original problem. I think the unquestioned assumption is the premsis of whether or not technology really can liberate the individual. Is it really beneficial for us to be so far removed from the production of real goods? How many of us are going to college to be farmers, craftsmen, carpenters, electricians, construction workers, etc?

Was the industrial revolution truly something that truly liberated us from the toil of manual labor? What if the time consuming efforts of building, laboring, exhausting oneself in direct relation to ones own well-being in the form of housing, food, etc. is the most liberating, and satisfying thing an individual can enjoy?

Maybe what we really need is some good old fashioned unalienated hard work.

I am having a hard time getting to "the possibility of what is better." I am going to discuss redemption in another post because I think the answer, at least for Adorno, lies there, but I am having a hard time finding anything that does not feel like a sleight of hand. There is certainly something, and I am not sure what, that Adorno is orienting himself around that allows for the idea of the possibility of something better. There is a lot of vocabulary in Adorno's work that is almost mystical in nature. I'm wondering if Jewish theology didn't have a influence on Adrono's philosophy. I'm going to explore that in relation to redemption, which is a conception in Jewish theology that cannot be over-emphasized, in my post

However, if we aren't comfortable with a sort of mystical (and I'm using mystical to simply mean mysterious, perhaps pointing to a sort of spirituality, perhaps not) eschatology then I'm not really sure where Adorno finds this "possibility of what is better." The only place where there is a politics not based on domination, that I can think of, is found in various theologies in numerous religions. I can't imagine Adorno simply wants to trade one form of domination found in the Enlightenment, Capitalism, etc for another form of domination found in materialist Marxism. But I also don't see him as actually believing the messianic kingdom is going to be established.

Maybe I'm going down the wrong path, but I'm not quite sure what other options there are.