Introduction
There has been a noticeable increase in writing on the Frankfurt School in recent years. With a steady stream of formerly unpublished writings, new translations, and secondary literature being made available (especially in English), the Frankfurt School has undergone a bit of a revival. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that the backdrop to this revival has been years of deep crises, increasing political polarisation, and perhaps, however speculatively, a reenlivening of questions pertaining to the disenchantment of the Enlightenment and the (re-)enchantment which seems to persist beneath surface of culture and society.
I historically discovered Critical Theory by way of the Enlightenment philosophes, and also philosophy of science more broadly. In reading the Frankfurt School, my mindset is simultaneously one of “critical retrieval” and “advancement”. There is much to despair about the Frankfurt School philosophies, including its confused views on science and its frequent teetering between what seems reason and rationality on the one hand, and (re)enchanment and antimodernism on the other. This essay is not so much driven toward arguing for critical theory as it is interested in thinking about a rational and critical social philosophy which may explicitly invest itself in science, objectivity, and facts. A professional philosopher may question: “Can there be a critical theory after the Frankfurt School? Can there be a social philosophy after Adorno?” I am not certain. But as Adorno once said: “theory cannot prolong the moment its critique depended on”.[1] I think this point cannot be stressed enough when evaluating theory writ large, whether that of the Frankfurt School or otherwise. Just as Adorno’s social philosophy is “ultimately grounded in history, and therefore, in principle, could go away”,[2] it remains apparent, at least to my mind, that many aspects of Adorno’s project (or that of the early Frankfurt School) grow dated and also evince a continuing relevance, if read in a certain way. Such a read is one that I don’t see as a contribution to the historical dialogues and deliberations of the enlightenment, the tradition of which continues to this day. It is a reading that offers a critical and concerned view about the betrayal of the enlightenment for the sake of the enlighenment.
Which key concepts continue to demand our attention? Which need to be retrieved and advanced to better capture the reality of society in the 21st century? Thinking about, this question very much seems to simultaneously represent the query of ‘how we move beyond the Frankfurt School’ and also ‘how do we recover its deepest insights, advance or rework its key concepts and fundamental project, and develop a critical theory that is up to the task of continuing to support the idea of a rational, scientific and enlightened society.
While the Frankfurt School, its conceptual weaponry and critical theories still have much to say in assisting a description of even the most complex issues concerning contemporary society, the point that I would like to stress here is the importance of going against any idea of preservation. To read critical theory with the mind of preserving that which speaks on the page, is to go against the spirit of critical rational thought. On the other hand, previous attempts to “move past” the early Frankfurt School, whether for legitimate or illegitimate reasons, have generally lost touch with the essential philosophical tenets of critical theory, and, I would say, the critical impetus of enlightenment reason. Instead, we must examine the unscripted relationships among established concepts, taking such concepts out of their settled patterns and discursive routines, with the aim to then analysis whether the classifications imposed upon these concepts are still valid. This also means a challenge of established politics and routines of thought. In some cases, it becomes apparent that there is much work to be done.
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There are, no doubt, problems with the Frankfurt School. For any new reader, discerning and distinguishing legitimate criticism from illegitimate criticism is no easy task, just like when assessing any philosophical theory. Concerning Adorno in particular, the intense wave of interest and engagement from the late 1960s through the 1980s – concurrent with the rise of the New Left – brought both an increase in scholarship and criticism. As the waves of this intense engagement receded, bodies of secondary literature emerged confronting much of the legitimate and illegitimate criticism of this period.[4] There are too many authors to cite here (see note 4). However, in my own reading, the extensive body of work by Doug Kellner and Steve Bronner, not only on Adorno but the Frankfurt School as a whole, is worthy of honourable mention. Of recent time, a few books are also worthy of note: Lambert Zuidervaart’s Social Philosophy after Adorno (2007); David Sherman’s Dialectics of Subjectivity: Sartre and Adorno (2007); Robert Hullot-Kentor’s Things Beyond Resemblance: Collected Essays on Theodor W. Adorno (2006); Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crises edited by Andrew Biro; among many others.
On that note it is perhaps no surprise that work has emerged engaging with the Frankfurt School, identifying the need to bring together contemporary ecology and modern science, political-economy, and systems theory. One book, which contains a selection of noteworthy articles by an impressive list of authors, takes particular focus. It is the last publication in my brief list. Edited by Andrew Biro, Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crises (2011) will serve as an important backdrop to this essay. The book accomplishes quite a lot, not least in discussing modern environmental crises within a broader perspective of social, economic, and political criticism that, at times, hits deep enough to be considered “fundamental in critique”. If contemporary ecological crises demand fundamental societal transformation, one cannot react by simply acknowledging the alternative to modern political-economy as solely environmentally centred. Sustainability and environmental reconciliation is important, no doubt. But in engaging with the idea of fair and ethical commerce, we must take the view of a many-sided transformation.[5] This is something I wrote about in a recent article on systems theory. Inasmuch as Critical Ecologies highlights current societal relationships with nature in relation to political-economy and social injustice, it also lends itself to an attempt to rediscover the enlightenment project. In amongst its collection of articles, one reads a philosophical critique of environmental and social domination disclosed in terms of how the economic mode of exploitation, as the will to dominate, in Adornian terms, is entangled and reinforces capital’s compulsion to accumulate. In the end, transformation across the whole of society is the fundamental requirement, if we are to create an actually egalitarian democracy, which is environmentally and socially just, and which upholds the very best of enlightenment ideals. Critical Ecologies makes significant ground in this regard.
The Frankfurt School and Anti-modern Movements
Social and political movements can, at times, reveal certain contradictions which, when subject to the process of critical analysis, provide fragmentary insights into the struggles, conflicts and antagonisms of the contextual whole of modern society. Adorno was great at pointing out such contradictions in both left and right politics, and in the various movements that populate the world of ideas. But the contradictions internal to his own philosophy require attention.
In opening, a distinct and peculiar political phenomenon must be acknowledged. It has to do with social movements on the periphery of the modern political dynamic, particularly those which centre themselves on “primitivism” or “deep ecology” or the occult. They don’t seem to necessarily be exclusively positioned on the left or right of the political spectrum.
Concerning the former, primitivism, the validity of society – both as a concept and a thing – is challenged. This challenge is generally waged on behalf of some sort of idealization of pre-modern society. Within “primitivism”, a non-dominating identification with nature and the “primitive” is held up against “civilization”, focusing particularly on hunter-gatherer societies as an example of “life before domestication/agriculture”, which, John Zerzan describes, was “largely one of leisure, intimacy with nature, sensual wisdom, sexual equality, and health.”[7] In other words, a strangedualism is introduced: the primitive – seen as non-alienated, wild, non-hierarchical, and socially egalitarian – and the “civilised” – seen as alienated, hierarchical, dominant, domesticated, and discriminatory.[8] Similar to this view, although with its own variations, the “deep ecology” movement asserts the position of a non-dominant identification with nature, organising a form of activism based on notions of sacred duty and self-sacrifice.[9].
Both of these movements are deeply problematic for both general and particular reasons. While “deep ecology” – oriented in terms of “radical ecology” – and “primitivism” – anarchist-oriented or otherwise – have their own respective philosophical bases, which must not be conflated for reasons of clear and precise critique; it is enough here to consider what they generally have in common. On my reading and observation, they both seem to intersect with an impulse for (re-)enchantment. That is, both are anti-modern movements, which share an open antipathy to “society” and “civilization”. Indeed, both express an aversion to notions of science, progress, and enlightenment. To play on the words of Adrian Wilding, both tend to view in their own way the “domination of nature” as transhistorical.[10] While “primitivist” movements cannot always be said to be guilty of misanthropy, “deep ecology” does more often than not convey such a disturbing tendency.[11] Even though the overriding practical goal of “deep ecology” movements is ecosystem preservation,[12] the thrust of their politics is, generally, principled on a belief in “sacred self-sacrifice” which, instead of aiming to establish a sustainable emancipatory society, focuses on the expansion of “wilderness”, the dramatic reduction of human habitation to a post-exuberant minimum (or even extinction), as well as other measures for the sake of non-human nature.[13] In some sense, what the “deep ecology” thesis translates into is an emphasis on the opposite side of the culture-nature duality.[14] It is a return to enchantment in its purest form. In this respect, it shares the same leanings as “primitivism”. While both convey a disturbing lack of coherence in their respective social analyses, they represent a general province of irrational politics which calls for the complete and ultimate reversal of society and history as a way to end domination.
However, as D. Bruce Martin argues in his essay Sacred Identity and the Sacrificial Spirit: Mimesis and Radical Ecology, the outcome of such a general sphere of politics is “intuitive identification with nature combined with minimal social analysis [that] results in a philosophy …/ that threatens to remain abstract and contradictory and to further intensify domination and exploitation, all in the name of ‘defending external nature’ and ‘liberating internal nature’.”[15] In more blunt terms: it can be said that in most anti-modern movements which “appeal to the “primitive” or to aboriginal peoples’ knowledge of nature as a basis for their condemnation of contemporary ways of life, and for examples of ways of relating to non-human nature that would not include its domination and destruction,” there is a common tendency, an underlying trend in how these appeals often resemble “a romantic longing for a return to an idealized past”.[16] Such romantic longing is not foreign to the history of human thought. One of the basic issues when it comes to such idealization of a “simpler time”, which is not so different than conservative nostalgia within the modern political arena in terms of the role it plays in the psyche, is how it contains “seeds of oppression within the utopian vision”.[17] So often such longing possesses or can easily lean toward and become the materialization of an “uncritical identification” with nature, or with the “primitive”, or even that which simply symbolizes the “securely familiar”. Whether it be in the bittersweet nostalgia of the American television show Leave it to Beaver or in the fetishizing of the primitive ocean of life, one without any so-called ‘structures of civilization’, the longing can take many different forms; but as we read in Dialectic of Enlightenment, kernels of domination are never too far from the surface. Such irrational philosophies seems to produce a logic that maintains internal consistency of view despite fundamental contradiction for the sake of the sort of (re-)enchantment I consider successfully dissected by the likes of Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins.
So what is it, precisely, that brings “primitivism” and “deep ecology” into focus for people? It seems to me that it is not only how these movements reveal in their own way sources of modern conflict and antagonism. It is also how, as Martin reflects in his essay in Critical Ecologies, these movements and the many people that identify with them share a common perception with the early Frankfurt School: that the planet is not rushing toward progress but catastrophe.[18] And this strikes the point that at times the Frankfurt School, focusing particularly on Adorno (but not limited to), hover close to and ultimately seem to crossover into an anti-modern outlook. Adrian Wilding summarizes this point in his review of Critical Ecologies: “As the volume progresses we become aware of something of an ambivalence on the part of the Frankfurt School. While texts like Adorno’s Jargon of Authenticity warn of the appeal of primitivism as flipside to capitalist development, in other places, for example certain passages in Dialectic of Enlightenment, we find arguments disconcertingly similar to the anti-modern movement known as “deep ecology”. Both schools of thought show a marked antipathy to progress and enlightenment as traditionally conceived, while tending to view the domination of nature as transhistorical, as an outcome of anthropocentrism or hubris. These parallels are brought to light in Bruce Martin’s interesting chapter.”[19]
Wilding’s comments raise several interesting and important points of discussion, many of which I will consider in a later discussion on Adorno and Hokrheimer’s dialectic of enlightenment. For the time being, it is fair to say that there are several deeply problematic aspects of Adorno’s social philosophy. If ever there’s a single reason why Adorno’s arguments, including in Dialectical of Enlightenment, come close to being “disconcertingly similar” to a number of antimodern movements, it has to do with his tendency toward totalized social critique and therefore also a totalized theory of transformation. And, in my own reading, this also seems to be a site for equally extreme and eventually irrational politics.
All or Nothing?
If evolution is “being transformed into devolution with the destruction of species and entire ecosystems,” and if climate change is one of the most pressing issues humanity faces in this young century, as society drives itself toward facing “the increasing possibility of an irrevocable disintegration of planetary ecology and a rush toward the deep ecologist nightmare prophecy – destruction of human civilization (if not the human species),”[22] Adorno’s “new categorical imperative” takes on a whole new meaning. But it’s the idea of a “shared perspective” between anti-modern movements and the Frankfurt School, or Adorno in particular in this essay, that is troubling.
“The two groups” – to be sure – “differ significantly in their respective historical situations and in how they believe the world could be otherwise”.[23] The Frankfurt School critique of ‘deep’ versions of radical ecology would be or is, as Martin illustrates, penetratingly devastating. Though Adorno is not easy to read, to suggest he does not ultimately seek to defend reason and rationality seems mistaken. And yet, it seems to me that when all is said and done, Adorno’s tendency to formulate extreme philosophical argument result in the totalizing of transformation that leaves an “all or nothing” scenario.
Here, I depart from further critique regarding the antimodern perspective. Focusing on Adorno specifically, one of the criticisms has to do with a theme which I think runs throughout his entire philosophical and political project. This is a problem which Zuidervaart eloquently describes as: “first, his totalizing of transformation and, second, his failure to distinguish sufficiently between societal evil and the violation of societal principles.”[24]
In the case of a critique of society – of broader social processes on a fundamental level – it does not seem uncommon in the field of critical theory to fall to the temptation of presenting a totalized theory of society and its equally totalized potential alteration, leaving no room for recognition of transformative change as being the outcome of a plurality of sources within modernity and within “the differential fabric of contemporary society”.[25] In fairness, this isn’t only a problem that runs through Adorno’s work. In some ways it seems a symptom of a large part of contemporary western thought, which represents the limits of identity and a simplistic, binary, reactionary, absolutist model of cognition (as opposed to a complex, systems view). But in the case of Adorno, I would add to Zuidervaart’s critique insofar that not only is Adorno’s “totalizing of transformation” a problematic tendency; at times, his inclination toward totalizing critique or theory – whether of society, reason, science or positive epistemology more generally – is troublesome and lends toward, what many have cited, as his “overly pessimistic view”.
However, by criticising Adorno’s tendency toward a “totalizing critique or theory” or “totalizing of transformation”, the issue is not whether the fundamental structure of society and what some philosophers describe as the irrational social domain. Rather, what I am suggesting here concerns a finer point of incision. As Zuidervaart writes:
By “totalizing of transformation”, I do not mean Adorno’s central claims that contemporary society as a whole needs to be transformed and that this cannot occur unless the all-pervasive principle of exchange loses its grip. I share this position and think it is even more pertinent now, with the rapid globalization of capitalism, than it was when Adorno formulated it. …/ I use the phrase “totalizing of transformation” to refer to Adorno’s tendency to pit transformation of society’s entire architecture – society’s deep structure, if you will – against transformations within the architecture – within social institutions, cultural practices, and interpersonal relations, for example.[27]
Again, it is worth pointing out that this problem does not only concern Adorno. This problem also concerns, I think, a large portion of leftist theory and politics. Moreover, I sense that Adorno’s “totalizing” tendency leads to an “all or nothing critique” in the same way that, albeit for different reasons or altogether particularly problematic formulations, a diverse range of “prominent left thinkers” are guilty of eventually succumbing to singular or one-dimensional theories of transformation that are as self-defeating as they are clever. When it comes to a critical retrieval of Adorno’s social philosophy, I think that just as Adorno once put great effort within philosophy to rescue that which resists philosophy’s own subsumptive concepts,[28] what is required today is a progressive project that employs almost the same approach to Adorno’s writings when it comes to theorizing sources of transformative hope. In seeking to advance Adorno’s thought, we have to retrieve his social philosophy in the moment of its own collapse (to play on the words of Zuidervaart). The outcome, in political terms, should be a significant contribution to the progression of critical theory for the benefit of a social philosophy that does not misplace transformative hope, that does not break off key dialectical relations at the wrong point, and which, in the same process, continues to resist irrational tendencies toward false reconciliation. An important concept, which can help support such a progressive project, is the notion of “differential transformation” introduced by Zuidervaart. But before expanding on this concept in a later section, a few more comments are necessary.
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Zuidervaart cites the example of Adorno’s meditation on “Nihilism”, for instance, wherein Adorno more or less breaks the dialectic off at the point of structure, in which “the way to change the emptiness of life that theologians lament is not by people having a change of heart (dass die Menschen anderen Sinnes werden), but only by abolishing the life-denying principle, presumably, the principle of exchange. If that principle disappeared, so would the self-preservative cycle of fulfilment and appropriation.”[31] Zuidervaart rightly questions Adorno’s position in this regard: “How …/ will the principle of exchange ever be abolished if the people who live under its grip and who sustain its operation do not have a change of heart? …/ Adorno himself suggests that fundamental transformation will require a “transparent solidarity” among human beings that currently is in short supply (ND 203-4). But if the architecture of society does not foster transparent solidarity, then how will the requisite solidarity be fostered? Do not social institutions, cultural practices, and interpersonal relations all have a crucial role in this regard?”[32]
Zuidervaart’s line of questioning here is extremely apt. But it is important that we also hold onto Adorno’s philosophy of the subject. While I agree, for instance, with Zuidervaart’s criticism of Adorno’s “inattention to plural sources of transformation within the differentiated fabric of contemporary society”, which “leads to his exaggerating the object in its nonidentity as a basis for transformative hope”, I disagree with his assertion that this is partly due to Adorno having an “insufficiently nuanced conception of “the subject”.”[33] Rather, I think the reason Adorno oscillates between his conception of the societally constituted individual and the Gesamtsubjekt of not-yet-societally-actualized humanity[34] is precisely because in the moments of its collapse, his social philosophy becomes lost between his treatment of the subject – ie., recognition of the efficacious agency of the subject and potential for reason – and his “totalizing critique” – i.e., “the whole is false”.
To strike the point even more sharply, I have argued in the past on the back of David Sherman’s reading of Adorno’s dialectic of subjectivity that, as Sherman suggests, the “mediating subject”[35] contained within Adorno’s critical theory offers the crucial insights and conceptual basis necessary for a philosophy of transformative reason. On my reading, which admittedly already contains elements of retrieval, the “free flourishing, efficacious subject” in which Adorno works toward testifies to the fact that human beings can transform their sociohistorical conditions; however, such change would also practically coincide with structural transformations, considering that structure and agency are not in conflict but in concert with each other. And this, for me, very much harks back to the enlightenment and the concept of the state.
Moreover, while the sociohistorical context mediates everything and the systemic configuration is a mediating factor in the development of the subject, we must not lose sight of the continued existence of reason and human rationality. What I am suggesting is that it is a mistake to overcompensate and therefore “reduce the standpoint of embodied, intentional consciousness, which obliges us to recognize ourselves as free, efficacious agents in the world, to the sociohistorical standpoint.”[36] We must take a more nuanced view. There is perhaps no better account than Sherman’s, when he writes: “although subjectivity is plainly mediated by the existing sociohistorical structures, it also has the capacity to affect these structures in turn, and therefore the self-identities that they engender.”[37] If the notion of the mediating subject is “basic to our self-constitution, both collectively and individually,” and if this notion of subjectivity as “active or mediating” presupposes a degree of freedom of choice or the ability to exercise the faculties of critical rationality, this is because the “notion of a mediating subject conceives of subjectivity formation as an interplay between the first- and third-person standpoints”[38] . In systems theory, one may speak for example structure-agency. “Thus, subjectivity is not just passively mediated”. And I think this is also what Zuidervaart intuits when he writes: “Unless multiple roots of change can be found within the complex architecture of contemporary society – despite and by way of their entwinement with a capitalist economy – I see little prospect for abolishing the life-denying principle.”[39]
If there is a tendency in Adorno to break off the dialectic between agency and structure, individual and society, it is, again, because of his inclination to undertake an overly pessimistic viewpoint of society as a closed world of negativity. Many scholars attribute this to his historical setting, having lived through the World War Two. In saying that: although Adorno emphasizes in his most pessimistic work (Dialectic of Enlightenment) the relation between the subject (the betrayal of enlightenment) and an oppressive historical pattern or process underlying the genesis of society, I think the conflict seen throughout his work is based on his desire “to revitalize the subject rather than to reject him [or her]”.[41] For me, Adorno hopes for the enlightenment even when this contrasts against his overly bleak assessment of history. To put it differently: I think any social philosophy after Adorno must begin by acknowledging simultaneously the mediating, efficacious subject and the structurally antagonistic forces on a systemic level which repress, coerce, control, exploit or seek to undermine the existence of the free flourishing subject and the societal principles (i.e., justice, equality, egalitarianism, democracy, resourcefullness, commerce, etc.) that support its potential. This is, I think, one of the most foundational theses to be found in Adorno’s work. It is also a line of engagement to which Zuidervaart does not offer enough recognition, despite it being present and relied upon in his own treatment of social ethics, global politics and the social philosophical potentials of transformative “hope in the midst of hopelessness” in his book Social Philosophy after Adorno.
In the end one could say that, in spite of the profound critical insights that Adorno offers us today, his social philosophy needs reinterpretation. This radical reinterpretation – to take from Zuidervaart’s account, which, in my opinion, makes important steps toward introducing just such a project – might begin with a claim of “solidarity with Adorno’s negative dialectic in the moment of its collapse”[42]. Paraphrasing Adorno’s own claim at the end of Negative Dialectics, where he asserts a claim of solidarity with metaphysics in the moment of its collapse, Zuidervaart’s main thesis here is that the overall design of Adorno’s social critique is not critical enough. It is not enough precisely insofar that it leaves us with “All or Nothing”, when the truth of transformative potential is somewhere between, in the grey, a domain which futurists, science fiction writers, technologists, and even physicists and scientists seem to constantly probe when speaking of humanistic values and reinvigorating the enlightenment.
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Finally, if it is true as Hauke Brunkhorst states, that “Adorno tries to outbid all other philosophers and social critics with his negative radicalism, but his great negativist gesture of outbidding all radical social criticism is pseudo-radical” – my suggestion is that ultimately Adorno falls into the same trap in which many other philosophers and social critics find themselves. Adorno is somewhat of a unique case of philosophers – here I speak from my broad reading across many different traditions – in that what distinguishes him from others is that he takes negative critique further than anyone else. For this reason, he offers interesting insight into the broader processes of modern society, its historic genesis, and contemporary crises – which, in the very least, are thought provoking and raise important questions. In this sense, he shares something with Plato and the entire history of philosophy in seeking to inspire thought and reflection on one’s sociohistorical-cultural circumstance. Reading Adorno in this way, one can appreciate the richness of criticism and concern just as one might appreciate that same richness in other thinkers like Bertrand Russel, Immanuel Kant or Karl Popper. Adorno’s value is his underlying appreciation for the objective and the rational, however he strives to defend it; thus developing a critical theory of society and its broader social-historical processes on the balance of historical patterns and enlightenment potential. It is just that, in “All or Nothing”, he leaves us nothing because everything less than all is wrong.[44]
Brunkhorst is therefore right, I think, to consider how: Adorno’s radical construction of the modern world as a totally closed universe of negativity (i.e., “totally administered society”) is deeply inconsistent. This is a point that Doug Kellner and Stephen Bronner made many years ago, but as Brunkhorst reflects: “If the world is ruled by his famous two laws: (1) “The whole is the false” (Das Ganze ist das Unwahre), and (2) “There is no good life in a bad society” (Es gibt kein richtiges Leben im falschen), then even a first step to get all (or at least a bit of all) is impossible because in a negative universe all steps are, a priori, steps in the wrong direction. Hence, we can hope to be saved at once, and to get it all, only if this is granted by the grace of a power higher than us. Hence, we need a light on the fallen world that derives not from human enlightenment but from the messianic point of redemption. From such a negative theological perspective, anything that is in the reach of our achievements is nothing else than a catastrophe. Whatever we do, we do it wrong.”[45] From this, the beacon signals for the antimodernist. As his “all or nothing” critique tends to lead to nothing and, therefore, contrary to his intention, becomes either or both an ideological affirmation of the already existing world (das Bestehende)[46] and an account of social philosophy that represents the worst of leftist theory and politics, depending on the total collapse of the existing in order for the prospect of social reason.
That said, I don’t agree with Brunkhorst’s comment that the only praxis for Adorno, which is not a reproduction and prolongation of “bad society”, is thinking, because on my own reading, while Adorno certainly favours thinking (as is widely acknowledged), there are many places throughout his entire body of literature, including his 1964 discussion with Ernest Bloch on the notion of utopia, which suggests that what Adorno was really after was a radical form of praxis, in which thought and action would be in concert. It is just that, given the deeply negative context of modern society, he begins from the point of thinking because as we’ve been discussing, from his point of view, from what sort or epistemological domain might reason be fostered?
For all of these reasons, I appreciate how Zuidervaart asserts that we must look to Adorno’s less-than-revolutionary statement that “the whole is false” and employ a more nuanced view: “What Adorno articulates more eloquently than his successors is that “the whole is the false”. […] What he needed to say more vigorously, however, and with greater nuance, is that the whole is not wholly false. This is the valid point to Habermas’s otherwise overwrought critique.”[48] For Zuidervaart, moreover, we “should take Adorno’s sentence that the whole is the false not as a mere cognitive statement and a simple tit-for-tat answer to Hegel, but as one of many world-disclosing perspectives that carries a useful practical truth with it.”[49] However – and here is a point of great importance – “this truth becomes manifest only in specific situations.”[50]
Perhaps, in the end, what Brunkhorst writes offers the most conclusive reading:
But there is not only the European perspective on the 20th Century (like that of Benjamin or Adorno), from a social democratic American perspective (like that of Dewey or Rorty) the 20th Century looks different. For Americans the 20th Century was that of the greatest progress ever seen in history, and not only in technical terms but also in legal and political terms: (national) social progress, moderate and radical democracy, human rights, global civil society, and global human rights culture. Zuidervaart at the end of his book refers strongly to these more hopeful perspectives (Chapters 5 and 6). The point here is that both perspectives, that of Adorno and that of Dewey, seem to be generalizable: The whole is the false and the whole is the truth. Astonishingly enough, Adorno himself has found a phrase that covers both perspectives of the age of extremes (Hobsbawn): Dialectic without mediation (Dialektik ohne Mitte).[54]
Zuidervaart’s Social Philosophy after Adorno, Toward “Differential Transformation”
I would like to close this essay by thinking about Zuidervaart’s arguments pertaining to the concept of differential transformation. Zuidervaart writes, for example, that “differential transformation” is itself a “process of significant change in contemporary society as a whole”. Occurring at different levels and across various structural interfaces, the general thrust of “differential transformation” parallels what I have previously described as a multidimensional and systemic process of many-sided, interdisciplinary, integrative, open, transitory, and self-educating social-historical change. In this view of fundamental social transformation, historical development is seen as an unfolding transition rooted in a notion of mutual recognition and prefiguration.
Indeed, as Zuidervaart reflects, “the primary levels in question are social institutions, cultural practices and interpersonal relations. The primary structural interfaces lie among economy, polity, and civil society.”[65] But it is his theory of societal principles and his employment of Bob Goudzwaard’s call for “the simultaneous realization of all norms” that really speaks.[66] Allow me to quote Zuidervaart in length, when he writes that a radical social philosophy must evaluate according to:
…/ societal principles that are pervasive, distinct, and mutually complementary. I have mentioned three such principles: resourcefulness, justice and solidarity. Being pervasive, these principles pertain to all of the levels and subsystems of a differentiated society. Yet each of these holds in a special way for a distinct range of levels and subsystems. Resourcefulness, for example, has decisive relevance for economic institutions and the economy as a whole; justice, for political institutions and the state; and solidarity, for cultural practices and civil society. The theoretical challenge, and a practical one as well, is to envision normative integration across these differentiated zones without either allowing one to dominate the others or exempting any zone from the requirements of all three principles. …/ for the most part, resourcefulness is not the operative imperative of contemporary capitalist economies. Capitalism distorts the principle of carefully stewarding human and nonhuman potentials for the sake of interconnected flourishing. Capitalism twists the principle in the direction of efficiency, productivity, and maximal consumption for their own sakes. Consequently, considerations of justice and solidarity become economic afterthoughts.[67]
While simple in its tone and presentation, Zuidervaart’s notion of differential transformation in line with certain “societal principles” is far from simplistic. In terms of a critique ofcontemporary commerce and economy, we read that as the economic dimension is given priority over all other dimensions of societal life, the economic subsumes or, indeed, makes subservient all other dimensions and at the cost of ethics, justice and even democracy. Therefore, in employing Goudzwaard’s call for “the simultaneous realization of all norms”, Zuidervaart seems to actually be working toward a certain reintegration of societal principles. “According to Goudzwaard, the industrial revolution and the development of capitalism problematically gave “well-nigh absolute priority” to “technical and economic progress” of a certain sort, while turning societal principles such as justice and solidarity into mere means to achieve such “progress”.[68] This position feels very close to that of the Frankfurt School, in which a narrow definition of “progress” is invoked. In first quoting Goudzwaard, Zuidervaart writes:
“Capitalism is subject to critique insofar as, for the sake of progress, it is founded on independent and autonomous forces of economic growth and technology, that is, forces which are considered isolated, sufficient, and good in themselves. These economic and technological forces are indeed related to norms of ethics and social justice, but in such a manner that these norms cannot impede the realization of those forces and the promotion of ‘progress’. These norms are consciously viewed as dependent upon and secondary to the forces of progress: they are placed in the service of the expansion of technology and the growth of the economy.” According to Goudzwaard, the instrumentalizing of societal principles and the failure to pursue a “simultaneous realization of all norms” have two effects. First, they distort the meaning of economic resourcefulness. Second, they turn all institutions and interpersonal relations into means to “economic” ends.[69]
What this entire discussion translates to on a practical level is the need to recognize a range of societal principles – resourcefulness, justice, solidarity, egalitarianism, mutual recognition, and so forth – or what I would interpret in many values as enlightenment values. I would add, also, reason and democracy, the former also implying the expert system to help guide evidenced-based and informed policy.
As far as critical theory is concerned, perhaps it is useful in closing to return to Horkheimer’s earliest formulation, wherein such a “philosophy of systemic change and societal development” in the form of “differential transformation” would imply simultaneous judging of existing alternatives across all sites and possibilities.
Notes and References
[1] Adorno, T.W. Negative Dialectics (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 3
[2] Sherman, D. Dialectic of Subjectivity: Sartre and Adorno (New York: SUNY Press, 2007), p. 239
[7] Zerzan, J. Future Primitive Revisited (Feral House, May 2012)
[8] Zerzan, J (ed). Against Civilization (Feral House, 2005); Ibid; Future Primitive Revisited (Feral House, May 2012)
[9] Martin, D. “Sacred Identity and the Sacrificial Spirit: Mimesis and Radical Ecology” in Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crisis (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2011), pp. 111-115
[10] Wilding, A. Review: Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crises (Heathwood Press, 2015: http://www.heathwoodpress.com/review-critical-ecologies-frankfurt-school-contemporary-environmental-crises/#)
[11] Martin, D. “Sacred Identity and the Sacrificial Spirit: Mimesis and Radical Ecology” in Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crisis (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2011), pp. 130
[12] Ibid, pp. 130
[13] Ibid, pp. 126
[14] Ibid, pp. 116
[15] Ibid, pp. 126
[16] Ibid, pp. 115
[17] Ibid.
[18] Martin, D. “Sacred Identity and the Sacrificial Spirit: Mimesis and Radical Ecology” in Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crisis (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2011), pp. 111
[19] Wilding, A. Review: Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crises (Heathwood Press, 2014: http://www.heathwoodpress.com/review-critical-ecologies-frankfurt-school-contemporary-environmental-crises/)
[20] See bibliography.
[21] Martin, D. “Sacred Identity and the Sacrificial Spirit: Mimesis and Radical Ecology” in Critical Ecologies: The Frankfurt School and Contemporary Environmental Crisis (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2011), pp. 130-131
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Zuidervaart, L. Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 72
[25] Ibid, pp. 74
[27] Zuidervaart, L. Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 72
[28] Ibid, pp. 76.
[29] Sherman, D. Dialectic of Subjectivity: Sartre and Adorno (New York: SUNY Press, 2007)
[31] Ibid, pp. 22-23; citing also: Adorno, T.W. Negative Dialectics (New York: Continuum, 1992), p. 378-379/371
[32] Ibid; quote also: Adorno, T.W. Negative Dialectics (New York: Continuum, 1992), pp. 203-204
[33] Zuidervaart, L. Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 74
[34] Ibid.
[35] Sherman, D. Dialectic of Subjectivity: Sartre and Adorno (New York: SUNY Press, 2007)
[36] Ibid, pp. 6
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Ibid, pp. 173
[41] Ibid
[42] Zuidervaart, L. Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 76
[43] Brunkhorst, H. Review of Social Philosophy of Adorno by Lambert Zuidervaart (Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2008: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23552-social-philosophy-after-adorno/)
[44] Ibid.
[45] Ibid.
[46] Ibid.
[48] Zuidervaart, L. Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 131
[49] Brunkhorst, H. Review of Social Philosophy of Adorno by Lambert Zuidervaart (Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2008: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23552-social-philosophy-after-adorno/)
[50] Ibid.
[51] Zuidervaart, L. Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 131
[52] Brunkhorst, H. Review of Social Philosophy of Adorno by Lambert Zuidervaart (Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, 2008: https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/23552-social-philosophy-after-adorno/)
[53] Ibid.
[54] Ibid.
[56] Zuidervaart, L. Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 126-127
[57] Sherman, D. Dialectic of Subjectivity: Sartre and Adorno (New York: SUNY Press, 2007)
[58] This is a play on the words of Arnold de Graaff, who first expressed a similar formulation in private discussion.
[59] Ibid.
[60] Zuidervaart, L. Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 126-127
[62] Ibid.
[63] Adorno, T.W. Negative Dialectics (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 203-204
[64] Ibid.
[65] Zuidervaart, L. Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 127
[66] Ibid.
[67] Ibid, pp. 128-129
[68] Ibid, pp.129
[69] Ibid, pp. 129-130
[70] Zuidervaart, L. Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 127
[71] Adorno, T.W. Negative Dialectics (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 13-14
