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CONTENTS

excerpts from the positivist dispute in

german sociology
2
1 introduction - adorno
3
1.1 A Section
88
2 test chapter
89
2.1 A Section
89
ii appendix
91
a appendix chapter
a.1 A Section
92

92

Part I
EXCERPTS FROM THE POSITIVIST
DISPUTE IN GERMAN SOCIOLOGY

1
INTRODUCTION - ADORNO

Open Sesame! I want to get out.

Stanislav Jerzy Lec
In his incisive remarks on the Tbingen discussion of the
two papers which marked the beginning in Germany of
the public controversy on dialectics and positivistic sociology in the broadest sense, [1] Ralf Dahrendorf regrets that
the discussion generally lacked the intensity that would
have been appropriate to the actual differences in views'.
[2] According to him, some of the participants in the discussion censured 'the lack of tension between the symposiasts' papers'. [3] Dahrendorf, for his part, senses 'the irony
of such points of agreement' and suggests that profound
differences in the matters discussed are hidden behind similarities in formulation. But the conciliatory attitude of the
two symposiasts was not the only reason why no discussion might actually came about in which reasons and counter-reasons might have interacted upon one another. The
symposiasts were primarily concerned to make their positions in general theoretically commensurable. Nor was it
merely a question of the attitude of [1/2] several participants in the discussion who asserted their estrangement
from philosophyan estrangement which, in some cases,
has only recently been acquired. The dialecticians have ex-

plicit recourse to philosophy, but the methodological interests of the positivists are hardly less alien to naively practised research activity. Both speakers, however, ought to
plead guilty to one genuine lack which obstructed the discussion. Both failed to achieve the complete mediation of
their theoretical interests with sociology as such. Much of
what they said referred to science in general. A degree of
bad abstraction is posited in all epistemology, and even in
the criticism of it. [4] Anyone who does not remain satisfied
with the immediacy of scientific procedure and renounces
its requirements secures together with a less restricted view,
illegitimate advantages. However, the claim that was occasionally voiced, namely that the Tbingen discussion confined itself to preliminaries and consequently was of no use
to sociology as a distinctive discipline, misses the point. Arguments which commit themselves to the analytical theory
of science without inquiring into its axiomsand 'preliminaries' can only imply thisbecome caught up in the infernal machine of logic. No matter how faithfully one may
observe the principle of immanent critique, it cannot be applied in an unreflected manner when logical immanence
itself, regardless of any particular content, is elevated to
the sole standard. The critique of its constraining character
is included in an immanent critique of an unleashed logic.
Thought assumes this constraining character through unthinking identification with formal logical processes. Immanent critique has its limitation in the fetishized principle of
immanent logic: this principle must be called by its proper
name. Moreover, the material relevance of the supposedly
preliminary discussions is by no means excluded in sociology. For instance, whether one can talk of ideology depends directly upon whether one can distinguish between
illusion and essence, and is thus a central piece of sociolog-

ical doctrine extending into all ramifications of the subject..

This material relevance of what sounds like epistemological or logical preliminaries is explained by the fact that the
relevant controversies are, for their part, of a latently material nature. Either, knowledge of society is interwoven with
the latter, and society enters the science of society in a concrete form, or society is [2/3] simply a product of subjective
reason, beyond all further inquiry about its own objective
mediations.
But behind the censured abstractness of the discussion
lie far more serious difficulties. For the discussion to be
possible it must proceed according to formal logic. But the
thesis concerning the priority of the latter is, in turn, the
core of the positivistic orto replace the perhaps all too
loaded term with one which might be acceptable to Popperscientistic view of any science, sociology and the theory of science included. Amongst the topics in the controversy which must be considered is the question whether
the inescapable logicality of the procedure actually gives
absolute primacy to logic. But thoughts which demand
the critical self-reflection of the primacy of logic in concrete
disciplines inevitably end in a tactical disadvantage. They
must reflect upon logic with the aid of means which, in
turn, are largely logicala contradiction of the type that
Wittgenstein, as the most reflective positivist, realized all
too clearly. If the present inevitable debate became one
of 'Weltanschauungen' and were conducted from externally
opposed standpoints, then it would a priori be unfruitful.
But if it enters into argumentation then there is the danger
that if the rules governing one position were to be tacitly
recognized then this would inevitably supply the object of
the discussion.

Dahrendorf answered my remark that it was not a matter of difference in standpoint but rather of determinable
differences, with the question 'whether the first statement
was correct but the latter false'. [5] Whilst in his view the
two positions did not exclude discussion and argument,
the differences in the type of argumentation were so profound 'that one must doubt whether Popper and Adorno
could even agree upon a procedure with the aid of which
their differences could be decided'. [6] The question is a
genuine one. It can only be answered after the attempt
has been made to produce such a decision and not before.
This attempt should be made since the amiable tolerance
towards two different coexisting types of sociology would
amount to nothing more than the neutralization of the emphatic claim to truth. The task itself is paradoxical. The
controversial questions must be discussed without logicistic prejudice, but also without dogmatism. Habermas implies this effort, and not crafty eristic arts, with the formulations 'flanking strategy' or 'behind positivism's back'. A
[3/4] theoretical position ought to be found from which
one can respond to the other person without, however, accepting a set of rules which are themselves a theme of the
controversyan intellectual no man's land. But this position cannot be conceived, in terms of a model derived from
extensional logic, as something even more general than the
two opposing positions. It is made concrete since even science, including formal logic, is not only a social force of
production but also a social relation of production. One
may doubt whether this is acceptable to the positivists. It
critically affects the basic thesis of the absolute independence of science and its constitutive character for all knowledge. One ought to ask whether a valid disjunction exists
between knowledge and the real life-process, or whether it

is not rather the case that knowledge is mediated through

the latter; or whether its own autonomy, through which it
has made itself productively independent of its genesis and
objectivated itself, can be derived, in turn, from its social
function; or whether it forms an immanent context and yet,
in terms of its constitution, is situated in a field which surrounds it and even acts upon its immanent structure. But
such a dual nature, no matter how plausible, would clash
with the principle of non-contradiction, science would then
be both independent and dependent. A dialectics which
advocated this could, in so doing, no more act as if it were
'privileged thought' than it could elsewhere. It cannot set
itself up as a specific subjective capacity, with which one
person is gifted but which is denied to others. Nor can
it present itself as intuitionism. Conversely, the positivists
must make sacrifices. They must relinquish the attitude
which Habermas calls the 'systematic pretence of failure to
understand', and not unhesitatingly disqualify out of hand
as unintelligible anything that fails to coincide with their
'criteria of meaning'. In view of their increasing animosity
towards philosophy, one suspects that certain sociologists
are taking great pains to shake off their own past. But the
past usually takes its revenge.
At first sight the controversy seems to be that the positivists position represents a strict concept of objective scientific validity which is weakened by philosophy, whilst
the dialecticians proceed speculatively, as the philosophical tradition would suggest. However, everyday linguistic
usage converts the concept of the speculative into its opposite. It is no longer interpreted, as it was by Hegel, in the
sense of the critical self-reflection of the intellect, [4/5] of
self-reflection's boundedness and self-correction. But rather
it is imperceptibly interpreted in a popular manner. Here,

he who speculates is viewed as an unrestricted wild thinker

who in his vanity dispenses with logical self-criticism and
any confrontation with the facts. Since the collapse of the
Hegelian system, and perhaps as a consequence of it, the
idea of speculation has become so inverted that it resembles
the Faustian clich of the beast on the barren heath. What
was once intended to signify the thought that renounces its
own narrowness and in so doing gains objectivity, is now
equated with subjective caprice. It is caprice since speculation lacks generally valid restraints; it is subjectivism since
the concept of the fact of speculation is dissolved through
emphasis upon mediation, through the 'concept' which appears as a relapse into scholastic realism and according
to positivistic ritual, as that product of the thinker which
boldly confuses itself with an entity in itself. On the other
hand, stronger than the tu quoque argument which Albert
regards with suspicion, is the thesis that the positivist position, where pathos and influence are inherent in its claim to
objectivity, is in turn, subjectivist. This was anticipated by
Hegel's critique of what he termed the philosophy of reflection. Carnap's jubilation was based on the claim that nothing remained of philosophy but its method. His method
of logical analysis is the prototype of the quasi-ontological
predisposition towards subjective reason. [7] Positivism,
to which contradictions are anathema, possesses its innermost contradiction unbeknown to itself, in the following:
namely, that it adheres to an objectivity which is most external to its sentiments and purged of all subjective projections, but thereby simply becomes all the more entangled
in the particularity of mere subjective instrumental reason.
Those who regard themselves as victors over idealism are
far closer to it than critical theory. They hypostatize the
knowing subject, not as an absolute subject or a source, but

as the topos noetikos of all validityof scientific control.

Whilst they wish to liquidate philosophy, they advocate a
philosophy which, resting on the authority of science, seeks
to immunize itself against itself. In Carnap's work, the final
link in the Hume-Mach-Schlick chain, the connection with
the older subjective positivism is still revealed through his
sensualist interpretation of protocol statements. Since these
scientific statements are [5/6] simply given in language and
are not immediately given as sense certainty, this sensualist
interpretation gave rise to Wittgenstein's problematic. But
the latent subjectivism is in no way penetrated by the language theory of the Tractatus. There, one reads: 'Philosophy does not result in "philosophical propositions", but
rather in the clarification of propositions. Without philosophy thoughts are, as it were, cloudy and indistinct: its task
is to make them clear and to give them sharp boundaries.
[8] But clarity is only accorded to subjective consciousness.
In a scientific spirit, Wittgenstein exaggerates the claim of
objectivity to such an extent that it dissolves and yields to
the total paradox of philosophy, which forms Wittgenstein's
nimbus. Latent subjectivism has formed a counterpoint to
the objectivism of the entire nominalist Enlightenment, the
permanent reductio ad hominem. Thought need not adapt
to it. It has the power to reveal critically the latent subjectivism. It is amazing that the supporters of scientism, including Wittgenstein, were no more disturbed by this antagonism than by the permanent antagonism between the formal logical and empiricist currents, which, distorted within
positivism, brings to light an extremely real antagonism.
Even for Hume the doctrine of the absolute validity of mathematics was heterogenously contrasted with sceptical sensualism. Here the relative failure of scientism to achieve a
mediation between facticity and concept becomes evident.

10

If the two are not united then they become logically incompatible. One can neither advocate the absolute priority
of the individual entity over 'ideas', nor can one maintain
the absolute independence of the purely ideal, namely the
mathematical, realm. No matter how one interprets it, as
long as Berkeley's esse est percipi is retained, it is difficult
to see where the claim to validity of the formal disciplines
is derived from, for this claim is not founded in anything
sensuous. Conversely, all the connecting mental operations
of empiricism, for which the connectedness of statements
is a criterion of truth, postulate formal logic. This simple
consideration ought to be sufficient to induce scientism to
take up dialectics. The unsatisfactory abstract polarity of
the formal and the empirical is extended, in a highly tangible manner, to the social sciences. Formal sociology is
the external complement to what Habermas has termed restricted experience. The theses of sociological formalism,
[6/7] for instance those of Simmel, are not in themselves
false. Yet the mental acts are false which detach these from
the empirical, hypostatize them and then subsequently fill
them out through illustration. The favourite discoveries of
formal sociology, such as the bureaucratization of proletarian parties, have their fundamentum in re, but they do not
invariably arise from the higher concept 'organization in
general' but rather from societal conditions, such as the constraint of asserting oneself within an overwhelming system
whose power is realized through the diffusion of its own organizational forms over the whole. This constraint infects
the opponents of the system and not merely through social
contamination but also in a quasi-rational mannerso that
the organization is able, at any time, to represent effectively
the interests of its members. Within a reified society, nothing has a chance to survive which is not in turn reified. The

11

concrete historical generality of monopolistic capitalism extends into the monopoly of labour, with all its implications.
A relevant task for empirical sociology would be to analyse
the intermediate members and to show in detail how the
adaptation to the changed capitalist relations of production
includes those whose objective interests conflict, in the long
run, with this adaptation.
The predominant positivistic sociology can rightly be termed
subjective in the same sense as subjective economics. In the
work of one of economics' major representatives, Vilfredo
Pareto, contemporary sociological positivism has one of its
roots. 'Subjective' has a double meaning here. Firstly, as
Habermas expresses it, such a sociology operates with catalogues of hypotheses or schemata imposed upon the material. Whilst undoubtedly, in this operation, it is the material which prevails, depending upon the section into which
it must be incorporated, what is more decisive is whether
the materialthe phenomenais interpreted in accordance
with its own predetermined structure, and not simply established by science in a classificatory manner. Just how decisive is the choice of the supposed system of co-ordinates, is
exemplified by the alternative of subsuming certain social
phenomena under concepts such as prestige and status, or
deriving them from objective relations of domination. According to the latter interpretation, status and prestige are
subject to the dynamics of class relations and, in principle,
they can be conceptualized as capable of abolition. But
their classificatory subsumption, on the other hand, tends
to accept such categories as simply given, and [7/8] probably untransformable. A distinction which apparently concerns only methodology therefore has vital concrete consequences. The subjectivism of positivistic sociology accords
with this in its second meaning. In quite a considerable area

12

of its activity at least, it takes as its starting point opinions,

modes of behaviour and the self-understanding of individual subjects and of society. In such a conception, society
is largely what must be investigated statistically: the average consciousness or unconsciousness of societalized and
socially acting subjects, and not the medium in which they
move. The objectivity of the structure which, for the positivists, is a mythological relic is, according to dialectical
theory, the a priori of cognitive subjective reason. If subjective reason became aware of this then it would have to
determine the structure of its own law-like nature and not
present it independently according to the procedural rules
of conceptual order. The condition and the content of the
social facts to be derived from individual subjects are provided by this structure. Regardless of the extent to which
the dialectical conception of society has realized its claim
to objectivity, and whether this is still possible for it, the dialectical conception takes this claim more seriously than do
its opponents, who purchase the apparent security of their
objectively valid findings by foregoing, from the outset, the
emphatic idea of objectivity, which was once intended with
the concept of the in-itself. The positivists prejudice the
outcome of the debate in so far as they insinuate that they
represent a new advanced type of thought whose views, as
Albert puts it, have as yet not prevailed everywhere, but
compared with which dialectics has become archaic. This
view of progress disregards the price paid which sabotages
it. The mind is to advance by fettering itself as mind for
the benefit of the factstruly a logical contradiction. Albert asks, 'Why should not new ideas similarly receive a
chance to prove themselves?" [9] By 'new ideas' he means
a mentality which is not generally favourably disposed towards ideas. Its claim to modernity can only be that of

13

advanced Enlightenment. But this claim requires the critical self-reflection of subjective reason. The advance of the
latter, which is permeated to its innermost core with the
dialectics of Enlightenment, cannot, without difficulty, be
assumed to be a higher objectivity. This is the focal point of
the controversy. [8/9]
Since dialectics is not a method independent of its object,
it cannot, unlike a deductive system, be represented as a
for-itself [Fr sich]. It does not accede to the criterion of the
definition but instead it criticizes it. What is more serious is
that, after the irrevocable collapse of the Hegelian system,
dialectics has forfeited the former, profoundly questionable,
consciousness of philosophical certainty. The accusation of
the positivists, namely that dialectics lacks a foundation
upon which everything else might be constructed, is held
against it even by currently predominant philosophy with
the claim that it lacks [1EE3?] [**]. In its idealist version,
dialectics ventured, through numerous mediations and, in
fact, by virtue of Being's own non-identity with Spirit, to
present Being as perfectly identical with the latter. This
was unsuccessful and consequently, in its present form, dialectics adopts a position towards the 'myth of total reason'
no less polemical than Albert's scientism. Dialectics is unable to take its claim to truth as guaranteed, as it did in
its idealist phase. For Hegel the dialectical movement was
able, with difficulty, to consider itself to be a comprehensive
explanatory principleto be 'science'. For, in its first steps
and positings, the thesis of identity was always present, a
thesis which in the development of the analyses was neither
corroborated nor explicated. Hegel described it with the
metaphor of the circle. Such closedness, which necessarily
implied that nothing remained essentially unrecognized or
fortuitous outside dialectics, has been exploded along with

14

its constraint and unambiguity. Dialectics does not possess

a canon of thought which might regulate it. Nevertheless, it
still has its raison d'tre. In terms of society, the idea of an
objective system-in-itself is not as illusory as it seemed to
be after the collapse of idealism, and as positivism asserts.
The notion of the great tradition of philosophy, which positivism considers to be outdated, [10] is not indebted to the
allegedly aesthetic qualities of intellectual achievements but
rather to a content of experience which, because of its transcendence into individual consciousness would tempt me
to hypostatize it as being absolute. Dialectics is able to legitimize itself by translating this content back into the experience from which it arose. But this is the experience of the
mediation of all that is individual through the objective societal [9/10] totality. In traditional dialectics, it was turned
on its head with the thesis that antecedent objectivitythe
object itself, understood as totalitywas the subject. Albert
objects that in my Tbingen paper there are merely hints at
totality. [11] Yet it is almost tautological to say that one
cannot point to the concept of totality in the same manner
as one can point to the facts, from which totality distances
itself as a concept. 'And to this first, still quite abstract approximation, let us add a further qualification, namely the
dependency of all individuals on the totality which they
form. In such a totality, everyone is also dependent on everyone else. The whole survives only through the unity
of the functions which its members fulfil. Each individual
without exception must take some function on himself in
order to prolong his existence; indeed, while his function
lasts, he is taught to express his gratitude for it.' [12]
Albert accuses Habermas of adhering an idea of total reason, together with all the sins of the philosophy of identity.
In objective terms, Albert claims that dialectics carries on,

15

in an obsolete Hegelian manner, with a notion of the societal whole that cannot be realized by research and which
thus belongs on the rubbish dump. The fascination exerted
by Merton's 'theory of the middle range' can certainly be
explained by the scepticism towards a category of totality,
whilst the objects of such theorems are violently torn from
the encircling contexts. According to the simplest common
sense, the empirical strives towards totality. If one studies social conflict in a case such as the hostile reactions in
Berlin towards students in 1967, then the occasion of the
individual situation is not sufficient for an explanation. A
thesis such as the following: that the population simply reacted in a spontaneous manner towards a group which it
considered to be endangering the interests of a city maintained under precarious conditionswould be inadequate,
and not only because of the doubtfulness of the political
and ideological connections assumed.
Such a thesis in no way makes plausible the rage against
a specific visible minority, easily identifiable according to
popular prejudice, which immediately exploded into physical violence. The most widespread and effective stereotypes in vogue against the students [10/11] that they
demonstrate instead of working (a flagrant untruth), that
they squander the taxpayers' money which pays for their
studies, and similar statementsapparently have nothing
to do with the acute situation. The similarity between such
slogans and those of the jingoistic press is obvious. But
this press would scarcely be influential if it did not act
upon dispositions of opinion and instinctive reactions of numerous individuals and both confirm and strengthen them.
Anti-intellectualism and the readiness to project discontent
with questionable conditions onto those who express the
questionableness, make up the reactions to immediate causes

16

which serve as a pretence or as a rationalization. If it were

the case that even the situation in Berlin was a factor which
helped to release the mass psychological potential, then it
could not be understood other than within the wider context of international politics. It is a narrow line of thought
which deduces from the so-called Berlin situation what arises
from power struggles actualized in the Berlin conflict. When
lengthened, the lines lead to the social network. Owing
to the infinite plurality of its moments, it can, of course,
scarcely be encapsulated by scientific prescriptions. But if
it is eliminated from science then the phenomena are attributed to false causes, and the dominant ideology regularly profits from this. That society does not allow itself to
be nailed down as a fact actually only testifies to the existence of mediation. This implies that the facts, are neither
final nor impenetrable, even though the prevailing sociology regards them as such in accordance with the model
of sense data found in earlier epistemology. In them there
appears that which they are not. [13] Not the least significant of the differences between the positivist and dialectical
conceptions is that positivism, following Schlick's maxim,
will only allow appearance to be valid, whilst dialectics
will not allow itself to be robbed of the distinction between
essence and appearance. For its part, it is a societal law
that decisive structures of the social process, such as that
of the inequality of the alleged equivalency of exchange,
cannot become apparent without the intervention of theory. Dialectical thought counters the suspicion of what Nietzsche termed nether-worldly [hinterweltlerisch] with the
assertion that concealed essence is non-essence. Dialectical thought, irreconcilable with the philosophical tradition,
affirms this non-essence, not [11/12] because of its power
but instead it criticizes its contradiction of 'what is appear-

17

ing' [Erscheinendes] and, ultimately, its contradiction of the

real life of human beings. One must adhere to Hegel's
statement that essence must appear. Totality is not an affirmative but rather a critical category. Dialectical critique
seeks to salvage or help to establish what does not obey
totality, what opposes it or what first forms itself as the
potential of a not yet existent individuation. The interpretation of facts is directed towards totality, without the interpretation itself being a fact. There is nothing socially
factual which would not have its place in that totality. It
is pre-established for all individual subjects since they obey
its 'contrainte' even in themselves and even in their monadological constitution and here in particular, conceptualize totality. To this extent, totality is what is most real. Since it is
the sum of individuals' social relations which screen themselves off from individuals, it is also illusionideology. A
liberated mankind would by no means be a totality. Their
being-in-themselves is just as much their subjugation as
it deceives them about itself as the true societal substratum. This certainly does not fulfil the desideratum of a
logical analysis of the concept of totality, [14] as the analysis of something free from contradiction, which Albert uses
against Habermas, for the analysis terminates in the objective contradiction of totality. But the analysis should protect
recourse to totality from the accusation of decisionistic arbitrariness. [15] Habermas, no more than any other dialectician, disputes the possibility of an explication of totality; he
simply disputes its verifiability according to the criterion of
facts which is transcended through the movement towards
the category of totality. Nevertheless, it is not separate from
the facts but is immanent to them as their mediation. Formulated provocatively, totality is society as a thing-in-itself,
with all the guilt of reification. But it is precisely because

18

this thing-in-itself is not yet the total societal subjectnor is

it yet freedom, but rather extends nature in a heteronomous
mannerthat an indissoluble moment is objective to it such
as Durkheim, though somewhat one-sidedly, declared to be
the essence of the social as such. To this extent it is also 'factual'. The concept of facticity, which the positivistic view
guards as its final substratum, is a function of the same society about which scientistic sociology, insistent upon this
opaque [12/13] substratum, promises to remain silent. The
absolute separation of fact and society is an artificial product of reflection which must be derived from, and refuted
through, a second reflection.
In a footnote, Albert writes the following:
'Habermas quotes in this context Adorno's reference to the untestability of the dependence
of each social phenomenon "upon the totality".
The quotation stems from a context in which
Adorno, with reference to Hegel, asserts that
refutation is only fruitful as immanent critique;
see Adorno, "On the Logic of the Social Sciences",
pp. 113f. Here the meaning of Popper's comments on the problem of the critical test is roughly
reversed through "further reflection". It seems
to me that the untestability of Adorno's assertion is basically linked with the fact that neither the concept of totality used, nor the nature
of the dependence asserted, is clarified to any
degree. Presumably, there is nothing more behind it than the idea that somehow everything is
linked with everything else. To what extent any
view could gain a methodical advantage from
such an idea would really have to be demon-

19

strated. In this matter, verbal exhortations of

totality ought not to suffice.' [16]
However, the 'untestability' does not reside in the fact that
no plausible reason can be given for recourse to totality, but
rather that totality, unlike the individual social phenomena
to which Albert's criterion of testability is limited, is not
factual. To the objection that behind the concept of totality
there lies nothing more than the triviality that everything
is linked with everything else, one should reply that the
bad abstraction of that statement 'is not so much the sign
of feeble thinking as it is that of a shabby permanency in
the constitution of society itself: that of exchange. The first,
objective abstraction takes place; not so much in the scientific account of it, as in the universal development of the
exchange system itself, which happens independently of
the qualitative attitudes of producer and consumer, of the
mode of production, even of need, which the social mechanism tends to satisfy as a kind of secondary by-product. A
humanity classified as a network of consumers, the human
beings who actually have the needs, has been socially preformed beyond anything which one might navely imagine,
and this not only by the technical [13/14] level of productive forces but just as much by the economic relationships
themselves in which they function. The abstraction of exchange value is a priori allied with the domination of the
general over the particular, of society over its captive membership. It is not at all a socially neutral phenomenon as
the logistics of reduction, of uniformity of work time pretend. The domination of men over men is realized through
the reduction of men to agents and bearers of commodity
exchange. The concrete form of the total system requires everyone to respect the law of exchange if he does not wish to

20

be destroyed, irrespective of whether profit is his subjective

motivation or not.' [17] The crucial difference between the
dialectical and the positivistic view of totality is that the dialectical concept of totality is intended 'objectively', namely,
for the understanding of every social individual observation, whilst positivistic systems theories wish, in an uncontradictory manner, to incorporate observations in a logical
continuum, simply through the selection of categories as
general as possible. In so doing, they do not recognize
the highest structural concepts as the precondition for the
states of affairs subsumed under them. If positivism denigrates this concept of totality as mythological, pre-scientific
residue then it mythologizes science in its assiduous struggle against mythology. Its instrumental character, or rather
its orientation towards the primacy of available methods
instead of towards reality and its interest, inhibits insights
which affect both scientific procedure and its object. The
core of the critique of positivism is that it shuts itself off
from both the experience of the blindly dominating totality and the driving desire that it should ultimately become
something else. It contents itself with the senseless ruins
which remain after the liquidation of idealism, without interpreting, for their part, both liquidation and what is liquidated, and rendering them true. Instead, positivism is concerned with the disparate, with the subjectivistically interpreted datum and the associated pure thought forms of the
human subject. Contemporary scientism unites these now
fragmented moments of knowledge in a manner as external
as that of the earlier philosophy of reflection which, for this
reason, deserved to be criticized by speculative dialectics.
Dialectics also contains the opposite of idealistic hubris. It
abolishes the illusion of a somehow natural-transcendental
dignity [14/15] of the individual subject and becomes con-

21

scious of it in its forms of thought as something societal in

itself. To this extent, dialectics is 'more realistic' than scientism with all its 'criteria of meaning'.
But since society is made up of human subjects and is
constituted through their functional connection, its recognition through living, unreduced subjects is far more commensurable with 'reality itself' than in the natural sciences
which are compelled, by the alien nature of a non-human
object, to situate objectivity entirely within the categorial
mechanism, in abstract subjectivity. Freyer has drawn attention to this. The distinction between the nomothetic and
idiographic, made by the south-west German neo-Kantian
school, can be left out of consideration all the more readily since an unabbreviated theory of society cannot forego
the laws of its structural movement. The commensurability
of the objectsocietywith the knowing subject exists just
as much as it does not exist. This too is difficult to combine with discursive logic. Society is both intelligible and
unintelligible. It is intelligible in so far as the condition of
exchange, which is objectively decisive, itself implies an abstraction and, in terms of its own objectivity, a subjective
act. In it the human subject truly recognizes himself. In
terms of the philosophy of science, this explains why Weberian sociology concentrates upon the concept of rationality.
In rationality, regardless of whether consciously or unconsciously, Weber sought what was identical in subject and
object, namely that which would permit something akin to
knowledge of the object [Sache], instead of its splintering
into data and its processing. Yet the objective rationality
of society, namely that of exchange, continues to distance
itself through its dynamics, from the model of logical reason. Consequently, societywhat has been made independentis, in turn, no longer intelligible; only the law of be-

22

coming independent is intelligible. Unintelligibility does

not simply signify something essential in its structure but
also the ideology by means of which it arms itself against
the critique of its irrationality. Since rationality or spirit
has separated itself as a partial moment from the living human subjects and has contended itself with rationalization,
it moves forward towards something opposed to the subjects. The aspect of objectivity as unchangeability, which
it thus assumes, is then mirrored in the reification of the
knowing consciousness. The contradiction in the concept of
society as intelligible and unintelligible is the driving force
of rational [15/16] critique, which extends to society and its
type of rationality, namely the particular. If Popper seeks
the essence of criticism in the fact that progressive knowledge abolishes its own logical contradictions, then his own
ideal becomes criticism of the object if the contradiction has
its own recognizable location in it, and not merely in the
knowledge of it. Consciousness which does not blind itself
to the antagonistic nature of society, nor to society's immanent contradiction of rationality and irrationality, must proceed to the critique of society without o
o, without means other than rational ones.
In his essay on the analytical theory of science, Habermas has justified the necessity of the transition to dialectics
with particular reference to social scientific knowledge. [18]
According to Habermas' argument, not only is the object
of knowledge mediated through the subject, as positivism
would admit, but the reverse is just as true: namely, that
the subject, for its part, forms a moment of the objectivity
which he must recognize; that is, it forms a moment of the
societal process. In the latter, with increasing scientization,
knowledge becomes to an increasing extent a force of production. Dialectics would like to confront scientism in the

23

latter's own sphere in so far as it strives for a more correct

recognition of contemporary societal reality. It seeks to help
to penetrate the curtain hanging before realitya curtain
which science helps to weave. The harmonistic tendency of
science, which makes the antagonisms of reality disappear
through its methodical processing, lies in the classificatory
method which is devoid of the intention of those who utilize it. It reduces to the same concept what is not fundamentally homonymous, what is mutually opposed, through the
selection of the conceptual apparatus, and in the service of
its unanimity. In recent years, an example of this tendency
has been provided by Talcott Parsons' well-known attempt
to create a unified science of man. His system of categories
subsumes individual and society, psychology and sociology
alike, or at least places them in a continuum. [19] The ideal
of continuity, current since Descartes and Leibniz especially,
has become dubious, though not merely as a result of recent natural scientific [16/17] development. In society this
ideal conceals the rift between the general and the particular, in which the continuing antagonism expresses itself.
The unity of science represses the contradictory nature of
its object. A price has to be paid for the apparently contagious satisfaction that nonetheless can be derived from the
unified science: such a science cannot grasp the societally
posited moment of the divergence of individual and society and of their respective disciplines. The pedantically organized total scheme, which stretches from the individual
and his invariant regularities to complex social structures,
has room for everything except for the fact that the individual and society, although not radically different, have historically grown apart. Their relationship is contradictory
since society largely denies individuals what italways a
society of individualspromises them and why society co-

24

alesces at all; whilst on the other hand, the blind, unrestrained interests of individuals inhibit the formation of a
possible total societal interest. The ideal of a unified science merits an epithet, but one which it would by no means
please it, namely, that of the aestheticjust as one speaks
of 'elegance' in mathematics. The organizatory rationalization in which the programme of unified science results, as
opposed to the disparate individual sciences, greatly prejudices questions in the philosophy of science which are
thrown up by society. If, in Wellmer's words, 'meaningful
becomes a synonym for scientific', then science, socially mediated, guided and controlled, paying existing society and
its tradition a calculable tribute, usurps the role of the arbiter veri et falsi. For Kant, the epistemological constitutive question was that of the possibility of science. Now, in
simple tautology, the question is referred back to science.
Insights and modes of procedure which, instead of remaining within valid science affect it critically, are banished a
limine. Thus it is that the apparently neutral concept of conventionalist bond' has fatal implications. Through the back
door of conventionalism social conformism is smuggled in
as a criterion of meaning for the social sciences. The effort of analysing in detail the entanglement of conformism
and the self-enthronement of science proved worthwhile.
More than thirty years ago, Horkheimer drew attention to
the whole complex in 'The Latest Attack upon Metaphysics'.
[20] The concept of [17/18] science is also assumed by Popper as if it were self-evident. But such a concept contains
its own historical dialectic. When Fichte's Theory of Science and Hegel's Science of Logic were written at the turn
of the eighteenth century, the present concept of science
with its claim to exclusiveness would have been critically
placed on the level of the pre-scientific, whilst nowadays

25

what was then termed science, no matter how chimerically

it was called absolute knowledge, would be rejected as extra-scientific by what Popper refers to as scientism. The
course of history, and not merely of intellectual history,
which led to this is by no means unqualified progress, as the
positivists would have it. All the mathematical refinement
of the highly developed scientific methodology does not allay the suspicion that the elaboration of science into a technique alongside others has undermined its own concept.
The strongest argument for this would be that what appears
as a goal to scientific interpretation, namely fact-finding, is
only a means towards theory for emphatic science. Without theory the question remains open as to why the whole
enterprise was undertaken. However, the reformulation of
the idea of science begins even with the idealists, in particular with Hegel, whose absolute knowledge coincides with
the manifest concept of what exists thusand not otherwise [so und nicht anders Seiendes]. The point of attack for
the critique of this development is not the crystallization
of particular scientific methods the fruitfulness of which
is beyond question but rather the now dominant suggestion, crudely urged on the authority of Max Weber, that
extra-scientific interests are external to science and that the
two should be strictly separated. Whilst, on the one hand,
the allegedly purely scientific interests are rigid channels
and are frequently neutralizations of extra-scientific interests which, in their weakened form, extend into science,
the scientific body of instruments, on the other hand, which
provides the canon of what is scientific, is also instrumental
in a manner in which instrumental reason has never dreamt.
This body of instruments is the means for answering questions which both originate beyond science and strive beyond it. In so far as the ends-means rationality of science

26

ignores the Telos which lies in the concept of instrumentalism and becomes its own sole purpose, it contradicts its
own instrumentality. But this is what society demands of
science. In a determinably false society that contradicts the
interests both of its members and of the whole, all knowledge [18/19] which readily subordinates itself to the rules
of this society that are congealed in science, participates in
its falsehood.
The current academically attractive distinction between
the scientific and the pre-scientific, to which even Albert adheres, cannot be upheld. The revision of this dichotomy is
legitimated by a fact which can constantly be observed and
is even confirmed by positivists, namely, that there is a split
in their thinking in that, regardless of whether they speak as
scientists or non-scientists, they nevertheless utilize reason.
What is classified as pre-scientific is not simply what has
not yet passed through, or avoided, the self-critical work
of science advocated by Popper. But rather it subsumes all
the rationality and experience which are excluded from the
instrumental determinations of reason. Both moments are
necessarily dependent upon one another. Science, which
incorporates the pre-scientific impulses without transforming them, condemns itself to indifference no less than do
amateur arbitrary procedures. In the disreputable realm of
the pre-scientific, those interests meet which are severed by
the process of scientization. But these interests are by no
means inessential. Just as there certainly would be no advance of consciousness without the scientific discipline, it
is equally certain that the discipline also paralyses the organs of knowledge. The more science is rigified in the shell
which Max Weber prophesied for the world, the more what
is ostracized as pre-scientific becomes the refuge of knowledge. The contradiction in the relationship of the spirit to

27

science responds to the latter's own contradiction. Science

postulates a coherent immanent connection and is a moment of the society which denies it coherence. If it escapes
this antinomy, be it by cancelling its truth content through a
sociology of knowledge relativization, or by failing to recognize its entanglement in the faits sociaux, and sets itself up
as something absolute and self-sufficient, then it contents
itself with illusions which impair science in what it might
achieve. Both moments are certainly disparate but not indifferent to one another. Only insight into science's inherent
societal mediations contributes to the objectivity of science,
since it is no mere vehicle of social relations and interests.
Its absolutization and its instrumentalization, both products of subjective reason, are complementary. Scientism becomes false with regard to central states of affairs by engaging itself one-sidedly in favour of the unified moment of individual and society for the sake of logical systematics, and
by devaluing [19/20] as an epiphenomenon the antagonistic moment which cannot be incorporated into such logical
systematics. According to pre-dialectical logic, the constitutum cannot be the constituens and the conditioned cannot
be the condition for its own condition. Reflection upon the
value of societal knowledge within the framework of what
it knows forces reflection beyond this simple lack of contradiction. The inescapability of paradox, which Wittgenstein
frankly expressed, testifies to the fact that generally the lack
of contradiction cannot, for consistent thought, have the
last word, not even when consistent thought sanctions its
norm. Wittgenstein's superiority over the positivists of the
Vienna Circle is revealed in a striking manner here: the logician perceives the limit of logic. Within its framework, the
relationship between language and world, as Wittgenstein
presented it, could not be treated unambiguously. For him

28

language forms a closed immanent context through which

the non-verbal moments of knowledge, for instance sense
data, are mediated. But it is not the intention of language
to refer to what is non-verbal. Language is both language
and autarchy. In accord with the scientistic assumption of
rules only being valid within it, it is as a moment within
reality, a fait social. [21] Wittgenstein had to account for
the fact that it removed itself from all that factually exists
since the latter is only 'given' through it, and yet is conceivable only as a moment of the world which, in his view,
can only be known through language. At this point, he
had reached the threshold of a dialectical awareness of the
so-called problems of constitution and had reduced ad absurdum scientism's right to cut off dialectical thought. This
affects both the current scientistic notion of the subject, even
of the transcendental subject of knowledge, which [20/21]
is seen as dependent upon its object as a precondition for
its own possibility, and it also affects the current scientistic
notion of the object. It is no longer an X whose substratum must be composed from the context of subjective determinations but rather, being itself determined, it helps to
determine the subjective function.
The validity of knowledge, and not only of natural laws,
is certainly largely independent of its origin. In Tbingen the two symposiasts were united in their critique of
the sociology of knowledge and of Pareto's sociologism.
Marx's theory opposes it. The study of ideology, of false
consciousness, of socially necessary illusion would be nonsense without the concept of true consciousness and objective truth. Nevertheless, genesis and validity cannot be separated without contradiction. Objective validity preserves
the moment of its emergence and this moment permanently
affects it. No matter how unassailable logic is, the process

29

of abstraction which removes it from attack is that of the

controlling will. It excludes and disqualifies what it controls. In this dimension logic is 'untrue'; its unassailability
is itself the intellectualized societal taboo. Its illusory nature is manifested in the contradictions encountered by reason in its objects. In the distancing of the subject from the
object, which realizes the history of the mind, the subject
gave way to the real superiority of objectivity. Its domination was that of the weaker over the stronger. Perhaps in
no other way would the self-assertion of the human species
have been possible. The process of scientific objectivation
would certainly not have been possible. But the more the
subject seized for itself the aims of the object, the more
it, in turn, unconsciously rendered itself an object. This
is the prehistory of the reification of consciousness. What
scientism simply assumes to be progress was always, at the
same time, a sacrifice. What in the object does not correspond to the ideal of a 'pure' subject for-itself, alienated
from its own living experience, slips through the net. To
this extent, advancing consciousness was accompanied by
the shadow of false consciousness. Subjectivity has in itself eradicated what does not yield to the unambiguousness and identity of its claim to domination. Subjectivity,
which is really always object, has reduced itself no less than
its object. One should also recall the moments which are
lost in scientific methodology's curtailment of objectivity,
and similarly the loss of the spontaneity of knowledge inflicted by the subject upon himself in order to master his
own restricted achievements. Carnap, one of [21/22] the
most radical positivists, once characterized as a stroke of
good luck the fact that the laws of logic and of pure mathematics apply to reality. A mode of thought, whose entire pathos lies in its enlightened state, refers at this cen-

30

tral point to an irrationalmythicalconcept, such as that

of the stroke of luck, simply in order to avoid an insight
which, in fact, shakes the positivistic position; namely, that
the supposed lucky circumstance is not really one at all but
rather the product of the ideal of objectivity based on the
domination of nature or, as Habermas puts it, the 'pragmatistic' ideal of objectivity. The rationality of reality, registered with relief by Carnap, is simply the mirroring of
subjective ratio. The epistemological metacritique denies
the validity of the Kantian claim to the subjective a priori
but affirms Kant's view to the extent that his epistemology, intent on establishing validity, describes the genesis
of scientistic reason in a highly adequate manner. What
to him, as a remarkable consequence of scientistic reification, seems to be the strength of subjective form which
constitutes reality is, in truth, the summa of the historical
process in which subjectivityliberating itself from nature
and thus objectivating itselfemerged as the total master
of nature, forgot the relationship of domination and, thus
blinded, re-interpreted this relationship as the creation of
that ruled by the ruler. Genesis and validity must certainly
be critically distinguished in the individual cognitive acts
and disciplines. But in the realm of so-called constitutional
problems they are inseparably united, no matter how much
this may be repugnant to discursive logic. Since scientistic
truth desires to be the whole truth it is not the whole truth.
It is governed by the same ratio which would never have
been formed other than through science. It is capable of
criticism of its own concept and in sociology can characterize in concrete terms what escapes sciencesociety.
Both Tbingen symposiasts were in agreement in their
emphasis upon the concept of criticism. [22] Following
a remark by Peter Ludz, Dahrendorf pointed out that the

31

concept had been used equivocally. For Popper it signifies,

without any concrete determinacy, a 'pure mechanism of
the temporary corroboration of the general statements of
science', for Adorno 'the development of [22/23] the contradictions of reality through knowledge of them'; nevertheless, I had already laid bare this equivocation. [23] But
it is not a mere contamination of various meanings in the
same word, rather it is concretely grounded. If one accepts
Popper's purely cognitive or, possibly, 'subjective' concept
of criticism, which is to apply only to the unanimity of
knowledge and not to the legitimation of the reality recognized, then thought cannot leave it at that. For here and
there critical reason is similar. It is not the case that two
'capacities' are in operation. The identity of the word is no
accident. Cognitive criticism, of knowledge and especially
of theorems, necessarily also examines whether the objects
of knowledge are what they claim to be according to their
own concept. Otherwise it would be formalistic. Immanent criticism is never solely purely logical but always concrete as wellthe confrontation of concept and reality. It
is for criticism to seek out the truth which the concepts,
judgments and theorems themselves desire to name and
it does not exhaust itself in the hermetic consistency of
formation of thought. It is in a largely irrational society
that the scientifically stipulated primacy of logic is at issue.
Material concretion, which no knowledgenot even purely
logical procedurecan entirely dismiss, demands that immanent critique, in so far as it is directed towards what
is intended by scientific statements and not towards 'statements in themselves', does not generally proceed in an argumentative manner but rather demands that it investigate
whether this is the case. Otherwise, disputation falls prey
to the narrowness which can often be observed in ingenu-

32

ity. The notion of argument is not as self-evident as Popper

believes but requires critical analysis. This was once expressed in the phenomenological slogan, 'back to the things
themselves'. Argumentation becomes questionable as soon
as it assumes discursive logic to be opposed to content. In
his Science of Logic, Hegel did not argue in a traditional
manner and in the introduction to the Phenomenology of
Mind he demanded pure reflection. On the other hand,
Popper, who sees the objectivity of science in the objectivity
of the critical method, elucidates it with the statement 'that
the main instrument of [23/24] logical criticismthe logical
contradictionis objective' [24] This certainly does not raise
an exclusive claim for formal logic such as that criticism
only possesses its organon in the latter, but such a claim
is at least suggested. Albert, following Popper, can hardly
interpret criticism differently. [25] He certainly permits the
type of 'investigations of such factual connections as Habermas himself mentions' [26] but he wishes to keep them and
the logical connections. The unity of both types of criticism,
which indicates their concepts, is conjured away through
a conceptual order. But if logical contradictions appear in
social scientific statements, such as the relevant contradiction that the same social system unleashes and leashes the
forces of production, then theoretical analysis is able to reduce such logical inconsistencies to structural moments of
society. It must not eliminate them as mere maladjustments
of scientific thought since, in any case, they can only be removed through a change in reality itself. Even if it were possible to translate such contradictions into merely semantic
contradictions, that is, to demonstrate that each contradictory statement refers to something different, their form still
expresses the structure of the object more sharply than a
procedure which attains scientific satisfaction by turning its

33

back upon what is unsatisfactory in the non-scientific object

of knowledge. Moreover, the possibility of devolving objective contradictions onto semantics may be connected with
the fact that Marx, the dialectician, did not possess a completely developed notion of dialectics. He imagined that
he was simply 'flirting' with it. Thinking, which teaches itself that part of its own meaning is what, in turn, is not a
thought, explodes the logic of non-contradiction. Its prison
has windows. The narrowness of positivism is that it does
not take this into account and entrenches itself in ontology
as if in a last refuge, even if this ontology were simply the
wholly formalized, contentless ontology of the deductive
connection of statements in themselves.
The critique of the relationships of scientific statements
to that to which they refer is, however, inevitably compelled
towards a critique of reality. It must rationally decide whether
the insufficiencies which it encounters are merely scientific,
or whether reality insufficiently accords with what science,
through its concept, expresses about it. The separation between the structures [24/25] of science and reality is not
absolute. Nor may the concept of truth be attributed solely
to the structures of science. It is no less meaningful to speak
of the truth of a societal institution than of of the truth of
theorems concerned with it. Legitimately, criticism does
not normally imply merely self-criticismwhich is what it
actually amounts to for Popperbut also criticism of reality. In this respect, Habermas' reply to Albert has its pathos.
[27] The concept of society, which is specifically bourgeois
and anti-feudal, implies the notion of an association of free
and independent human subjects for the sake of the possibility of a better life and, consequently, the critique of natural societal relations. The hardening of bourgeois society
into something impenetrably and inevitably natural is its

34

immanent regression. Something of the opposing intention

was expressed in the social contract theories. No matter
how little these theories were historically correct, they penetratingly remind society of the concept of the unity of individuals, whose conscious ultimately postulates their reason, freedom and equality. In a grand manner, the unity
of the critique of scientific and meta-scientific sense is revealed in the work of Marx. It is called the critique of political economy since it attempts to derive the whole that
is to be criticized in terms of its right to existence from
exchange, commodity form and its immanent 'logical' contradictory nature. The assertion of the equivalence of what
is exchanged, the basis of all exchange, is repudiated by
its consequences. As the principle of exchange, by virtue
of its immanent dynamics, extends to the living labours
of human beings it changes compulsively into objective inequality, namely that of social classes. Forcibly stated, the
contradiction is that exchange takes place justly and unjustly. Logical critique and the emphatically practical critique that society must be changed simply to prevent a relapse into barbarism are moments of the same movement
of the concept. Marx's procedure testifies to the fact that
even such an analysis cannot simply ignore the separation
of what has been compounded, namely of society and politics. He both criticized and respected the separation. The
same person who, in his youth wrote the 'Theses on Feuerbach', remained throughout his life a theoretical political
economist. The Popperian concept of criticism inhibits logic
by restricting it to scientific statements [25/26] without regard for the logicity of its substratum which it requires in
order to be true to its own meaning. Popper's 'critical rationalism' has something pre-Kantian about it; in terms of
formal logic, this is at the expense of its content. Sociolog-

35

ical constructs, however, which contented themselves with

their logical freedom from contradiction, could not withstand concrete reflection. They could not withstand the
reflection of a thoroughly functional societythough one
which perpetuates itself solely through the harshness of relentless repression ad calendas Graecasbecause that society is inconsistent; because the constraint under which it
keeps itself and its members alive does not reproduce their
life in a form which would be possible given the state of
the rationality of means, as is specifically presupposed by
integral bureaucratic domination. Endless terror can also
function, but functioning as an end in itself, separated from
why it functions, is no less a contradiction than any logical contradiction, and a science which fell silent before it
would be irrational. Critique does not merely imply the decision as to whether suggested hypotheses can be demonstrated as true or false; it moves transparently over to the
object. If theorems are full of contradictions then by modifying Lichtenberg's statement one might say that they are
not always to blame. The dialectical contradiction expresses
the real antagonisms which do not become visible within
the logical-scientistic system of thought. For positivists, the
system, according to the logical-deductive model, is something worth striving for, something 'positive'. For dialecticians, in real no less than in philosophical terms, it is
the core of what has to be criticized. One of the decaying forms of dialectical thought in dialectical materialism
is that it reprimands critique of the dominant system. Dialectical theory must increasingly distance itself from the
system. Society constantly distances itself from the liberal
model which gave it its systematic character, and its cognitive system forfeits the character of an ideal since, in the
post-liberal form of society, its systematic unity as a total-

36

ity is amalgamated with repression. Today, wherever dialectical thought all too inflexibly adheres to the system,
even and precisely in what is criticized, it tends to ignore
determinate being and to retreat into illusory notions. It
is a merit of positivism that it draws attention to this, if
its concept of the system, as merely internal-scientific and
classificatory, is not to be enticed to hypostasis. Hypostatized dialectics becomes undialectical and requires correction [26/27] by the fact finding whose interest is realized
by empirical social research, which then, in turn, is unjustly hypostatized by the positivistic theory of science. The
pre-given structure which does not merely stem from classificationDurkheim's impenetrableis essentially negative
and is incompatible with its own goal, namely the preservation and satisfaction of mankind. Without such a goal the
concept of society, seen in concrete terms, would indeed be
what the Viennese positivists used to term devoid of meaning. To this extent, sociology even as a critical theory of
society is 'logical'. This compels us to extend the concept
of criticism beyond its limitations in Popper's work. The
idea of scientific truth cannot be split off from that of a true
society. Only such a society would be free from contradiction and lack of contradiction. In a resigned manner, scientism commits such an idea to the mere forms of knowledge
alone.
By stressing its societal neutrality, scientism defends itself against the critique of the object and replaces it with
the critique merely of logical inconsistencies. Both Albert
and Popper seem to bear in mind the problematic of such
a restriction of critical reason or, as Habermas expressed
it, of the fact that scientific asceticism encourages the decisionism of ends or that irrationalism inherent even in Weber's theory of science. Popper concedes that 'protocol sen-

37

tences are not inviolable' and that this 'represents, in [his]

opinion, a notable advance'. [28] His concession that universal law-like hypotheses could not be meaningfully regarded as verifiable, and that this even applies to protocol
sentences, [29] indeed furthers the concept of criticism in
a productive manner. Whether intentionally or not, it has
taken into account that the referent of so-called sociological
protocol statements, namely simple observations, are preformed through society which, in turn, cannot be reduced
to protocol statements. But if one replaces the traditional
positivist postulate of verification by the postulate of 'the
capacity for confirmation' then positivism forfeits its intention. All knowledge requires confirmation; it must rationally distinguish between true and false without autologically setting up the categories of true and false in accordance with the rules of established science. Popper contrasts his [27/28] 'sociology of knowledge' [Soziologie des
Wissens] with that familiar since Mannheim and Scheler
[Wissenssoziologie]. He advocates a 'theory of scientific objectivity'. But it does not transcend scientistic subjectivism
[30]; rather it can be subsumed under Durkheim's still valid
statement that 'Between "I like this" and "a certain number
of us like this" there is no essential difference.' [31] Popper
elucidates the scientific objectivity which he advocates in
the following manner: 'Objectivity can only be explained
in terms of social ideas such as competition (both of individual scientists and of various schools); tradition (mainly
the critical tradition); social institution (for instance, publication in various competing journals and through various
competing publishers; discussion at congresses); the power
of the state (its tolerance of free discussion).' [32] The questionable nature of such categories is striking. For instance,
in the category of competition there lies the entire competi-

38

tive mechanism, together with the fatal factor denounced

by Marx, namely, that market success has primacy over
the qualities of the object, even of intellectual formations.
The tradition upon which Popper relies, has apparently
developed within the universities into a fetter of productive forces. In Germany a critical tradition is completely
lacking'discussions at congresses' asidewhich Popper
might hesitate to recognize empirically as an instrument of
truth, just as he will not overestimate the actual range of the
political 'tolerance of free discussion' in science. His forced
innocence with regard to all this breathes the optimism of
despair. The a priori negation of an objective structure of society, and its substitution by ordering schemata, eradicates
thoughts which turn upon this structure, whilst Popper's
enlightening impulse strives after such thoughts. In accordance with its pure form, the denial of social objectivity
leaves such thoughts undisturbed. An absolutized logic is
ideology. Habermas sums up Popper's position as follows:
'Popper, in opposing a positivist solution to the basis problem, adheres to the view that the observational statements
which lend themselves to the falsification of law-like hypotheses cannot be justified in an empirically compelling
manner; instead, it must be decided in each case whether
the acceptance of a basic statement [28/29] is sufficiently
motivated by experience. In the process of research, all
the observers who are involved in attempts at falsifying
certain theories must, by means of relevant observational
statements, arrive at a provisional consensus which can be
refuted at any time. This agreement rests, in the last instance, upon a decision; it can be neither enforced logically
nor empirically.' [33] Popper's Tbingen paper corresponds
to this where he claims, It is a mistake to assume that the
objectivity of a science depends upon tile objectivity of the

39

scientist. [34] But in fact this objectivity suffers less under

the personal equation which has been made from time immemorial, than from the objective societal pre-formation of
the objectivated scientific apparatus. Popper the nominalist can provide no stronger corrective than intersubjectivity
within organized science: 'What may be described as scientific objectivity is based solely upon a critical tradition
which, despite resistance, often makes it possible to criticise a dominant dogma. To put it another way, the objectivity of science is not a matter of the individual scientist
but rather the social result of their mutual criticism, of the
friendly-hostile division of labour among scientists, of their
co-operation and also of their competition.' [35] The belief
that very divergent positions, by virtue of the recognized
rules of co-operation, will 'get together' and thereby achieve
the particular attainable level of objectivity in knowledge,
follows the outmoded liberal model of those who gather
at a round table in order to work out a compromise. The
forms of scientific co-operation contain an infinite amount
of societal mediation. Popper in fact calls them a 'social
concern' but does not concern himself with their implications. They stretch from the mechanism of selection which
controls whether someone is academically co-opted and receives a calla mechanism in which conformity with prevailing group opinion is apparently decisiveto the form
of communis opinio and its irrationalities. After all sociology, whose topics deal with explosive interests, is also in
its own form, not only privately but also in its institutions
a complete microcosm of these interests. The classificatory
principle in itself has already taken care of this. The scope
of concepts which seek to be simply abbreviations of particular existent facts, does not lead beyond their compass. The
deeper the approved method [29/30] descends into societal

40

material the more apparent its partisanship becomes. If the

sociology of the 'mass media'the accepted notion purveys
the prejudice that by questioning the human subjects, the
consumer masses, one must establish what is planned and
kept alive in the sphere of productionseeks to ascertain
simply the opinions and attitudes of those socially categorized and tested and to elicit 'socially critical' consequences,
then the given system, centrally guided and reproducing itself through mass reactions, tacitly becomes its own norm.
The affinity of the whole sphere of what Paul F. Lazarsfeld
has called administrative research with the goals of administration in general is almost tautological. What is no less
evident here is that these goals, if one does not forcibly
taboo the concept of the structure of objective domination,
according to the needs of the latter, are formed frequently
over the heads of individual administrators. Administrative research is the prototype of a social science which is
based upon the scientific theory of science and which, in
turn, acts as a model for the latter. In societal and concrete
terms, both political apathy and the much-praised scientific neutrality prove to be political facts. Ever since Pareto,
positivistic scepticism has come to terms with the specific
existing power, even that of Mussolini. Since every social
theory is interwoven with real society, every social theory
can certainly be misused ideologically or operationalized in
a distorted manner. Positivism, however, specifically lends
itself, in keeping with the entire nominalist-sceptical tradition, [36] to ideological abuse by virtue of its material indeterminacy, its classificatory method and, finally, its preference for correctness rather than truth.
The scientific measure of all things, the fact as the fixed
and irreducible entity which the human subject is not allowed to undermine, is borrowed from the worlda world,

41

however, that more scientifico still has to be constituted

from the facts and from their connection formed according to logical rules. The entity to which scientistic analysis leads, the final subjective phenomenon postulated by
a critique of knowledge and one which cannot be further
reduced, is in turn the inadequate copy of the objectivity
reduced here to the subject. In the spirit of an unswerving
claim to objectivity, sociology cannot content itself with the
fact, with what is only in appearance most objective. Anti-idealistically, [30/31] something of idealism's truth content is preserved in it. The equation of subject and object
is valid in so far as the subject is an object, initially in the
sense emphasized by Habermas that sociological research,
for its part, belongs to the objective context which it intends to study. [37] Albert replies, 'Does he [Habermas]
wish to declare common senseor somewhat more sublimely expressed, "the natural hermeneutics of the social
life-world"to be sacrosanct? If not, then wherein does
the specificity of his method lie? To what extent is "the
object" (Sache) treated more "in accord with its own significance" than in the usual methods of the empirical sciences?' [38] But dialectical theory in no way inhibits in an
artificial-dogmatic manner, as Hegel once did, the critique
of so-called pre-scientific consciousness. At the Frankfurt
sociology conference in 1968, Dahrendorf addressed the
dialecticians ironically with the words: you simply know
much more than I do. He doubted the knowledge of antecedent social objectivity since the social in itself is mediated through subjective categories of the intellect. The
predominance of the method attacked by the dialecticians
was, he claimed, simply the advancing reflection of the intentio recta through which the advance of science is accomplished. But it is epistemological critiquethe inten-

42

tio obliquain its results which the dialecticians criticize,

Here, however, they annul the prohibitions in which scientism, including the recent development of 'analytical philosophy', has culminated, since these prohibitions are maintained at the expense of knowledge. The concept of the
object itself does not, as Albert suspects, revive 'certain
prejudices' or even the priority of intellectual 'origin' as opposed to 'achievement'; and incidentally, the achievement
of scientism within the field of sociology is not so very impressive. Popper's view, referred to by Albert, according to
which theorems 'can be understood as attempts to illuminate the structural characteristics of reality', [39] is not so
very far removed from the concept of the object itself. Popper does not deny the philosophical tradition as Reichenbach had done. Criteria such as that of relevance [40] or of
explanatory power, [41] [31/32] which he certainly interprets later in a sense closer to the natural-scientific model,
would have little meaning if, in spite of everything, there
were not an implicit underlying concept of society which
several positivistsfor instance, Knig and Schelsky in Germanywould prefer to abolish. The mentality which refuses to admit an objective social structure draws back from
the object which it taboos. In caricaturing their opponents
as visionary metaphysicians the followers of scientism become unrealistic. Operationally ideal techniques inevitably
withdraw from the situations in which what is to be investigated is located. In particular, this could be demonstrated
in the social-psychological experiment but it could also be
demonstrated in the alleged improvements in scale construction. Objectivity, which actually should be served by
the finishing touches of methodology and the avoidance of
sources of error, becomes something secondary, something
graciously dragged along by the operational ideal. What

43

is central becomes peripheral. If the methodological will

to make problems unambiguously determinable and 'falsifiable' predominates in an unreflected manner, then science
is reduced to alternatives, which only emerged through the
elimination of 'variables', that is, by abstracting and thereby
changing the object. Methodological empiricism works according to this scheme in the opposite direction to experience.
In sociology, interpretation acquires its force both from
the fact that without reference to totalityto the real total
system, untranslatable into any solid immediacynothing
societal can be conceptualized, and from the fact that it can,
however, only be recognized in the extent to which it is
apprehended in the factual and the individual. It is the
societal physiognomy of appearance. The primary meaning of 'interpret' is to perceive something in the features of
totality's social givenness. The idea of the 'anticipation' of
totality, which perhaps a very liberal positivism would be
prepared to accept, is insufficient. Recalling Kant, it envisages totality as something in fact indefinitely relinquished
and postponed, but something in principle to be fulfilled
through the given, without regard for the qualitative gap
between essence and appearance in society. Physiognomy
does better justice to it since it realizes totality in its dual relationship to the facts which it deciphersa totality which
'is', and does not represent a mere synthesis of logical operations. The facts are not identical with [32/33] totality
but the latter does not exist beyond the facts. Knowledge
of society which does not commence with the physionomic
view is poverty-stricken. In this view appearance is categorically suspect. But knowledge cannot adhere to this.
By developing mediations of the apparent and of what expresses itself in these mediations, interpretation occasion-

44

ally differentiates and corrects itself in a radical manner.

As distinct from what in fact is a pre-scientific, dull registration, knowledge worthy of human cognizance begins
by sharpening the sense for what is illuminated in every
social phenomenon. This sense, if anything, ought to be
defined as the organon of scientific experience. Established
sociology banishes this sensehence its sterility. Only if
this sense is first developed can it be disciplined. Its discipline requires both increased exactness of empirical observation and the force of theory which inspires interpretation
and transforms itself in it. Several followers of scientism
may generously accept this, but the divergence still remains.
The divergence is one of conceptions. Positivism regards
sociology as one science among others and, since Comte,
has considered that the proven methods of older science, in
particular of natural science, can be transferred to sociology.
The actual pseudos is concealed here. For sociology has a
dual character. In it, the subject of all knowledgesociety,
the bearer of logical generalityis at the same time the
object. Society is subjective because it refers back to the
human beings who create it, and its organizational principles too refer back to subjective consciousness and its most
general form of abstractionlogic, something essentially
subjective. Society is objective because, on account of its
underlying structure, it cannot perceive its own subjectivity, because it does not possess a total subject and through
its organization it thwarts the installation of such a subject. But such a dual character modifies the relationship of
social-scientific knowledge with its object; positivism does
not take this into account. It simply treats society, potentially the self-determining subject, as if it were an object,
and could be determined from outside. It literally objectivates what, for its part, causes objectivation and what can

45

provide an explanation for objectivation. Such a substitution of society as object for society as subject constitutes the
reified consciousness of sociology. It is not recognized that
by recourse to the subject as something estranged from itself and objectively confronting the researcher, the subject
implied, in other words the very object of sociology, [33/34]
becomes another. Certainly the change through the orientation of knowledge possesses its fundamentum in re. The
development within society, moves, for its part, towards
reification; this provides a reified consciousness of society
with its adaequatio. But truth demands that this quid pro
quo also be included. Society as subject and society as object are the same and yet not the same. The objectivating
acts of science eliminate that in society by means of which
it is not only an object, and the shadow of this falls upon all
scientistic objectivity. For a doctrine whose supreme norm
is the lack of contradiction it is most difficult to perceive
this. Here lies the innermost difference between a critical
theory of society and what is commonly known as sociology. Despite all the experience of reification, and in the
very expression of this experience, critical theory is orientated towards the idea of society as subject, whilst sociology accepts reification, repeats it in its methods and thereby
loses the perspective in which society and its law would
first reveal themselves. This relates back to the sociological
claim to domination raised by Comte; a claim which today
is more or less openly reproduced in the notion that, since
it is possible for sociology to control successfully particular societal situations and fields, it can extend its control
to the whole. If such a transfer were somehow possible,
if it did not crassly fail to recognize the power relations
through whose givenness sociology is constituted, then the
scientifically totally controlled society would remain an ob-

46

jectthat of scienceand as unemancipated as ever. Even

in the rationality of a scientific management of the whole
society which had apparently thrown off its shackles, domination would survive. Even against their will, the domination of the scientists would amalgamate with the interests of
the powerful cliques. A technocracy of sociologists would
retain an elitist character. On the other hand, one of the
moments which must remain common to philosophy and
sociology, and which must rank highly if the two are not
to declinethe latter to a lack of content, the former to a
lack of conceptsis that inherent to both is something not
wholly transformable into science. In both nothing is meant
in a completely literal manner, neither statement of fact nor
pure validity. This unliteralnessaccording to Nietzsche a
part of a gameparaphrases the concept of interpretation
which interprets being as non-being. What is not quite literal testifies to the tense non-identity of essence and appearance. Emphatic knowledge does not lapse into irrationalism [34/35] if it does not absolutely renounce art. The scientistic adult mockery of 'mind music' simply drowns the
creaking of the cupboard drawers in which the questionnaires are depositedthe sound of the enterprise of pure
literalness. It is associated, with the trusty objection to the
solipsism of self-satisfying thought about society which neither respects the latter's actual condition nor fulfils a useful
function in it. Nevertheless there are many indications that
theoretically trained students who have a flair for reality
and what holds it together, are more capable, even in reality,
of reasonably fulfilling their allotted tasks than recruited
specialists for whom method is paramount. The catchword
'solipsism', however, turns the state of affairs upon its head.
In that the individual, to which even Max Weber believed
he had to have recourse in his definition of social action,

47

does not count as a substratum for dialectics, the latter does

not content itself with a subjective concept of reason. But
all solipsism rests upon the individual as a substratum. All
this has been explicated in detail in the philosophical publications of the Frankfurt School. The illusion of solipsism
is furthered by the fact that apparently in the present situation the subjectivistic spell is only penetrated by what
remains unenthusiastic about subjective sociology's general
pleasure in communication. Recently something of this has
been manifested in rebellious public opinion which feels
that it can believe only what, through the form of 'communication', does not leer at consumers of culture who are
about to have something foisted upon them.
What jars like discordant music in the positivists' ears
is that which is imperfectly present in objective circumstances and requires linguistic form. The closer the latter
follows the objective circumstances, the more it surpasses
mere signification and comes to resemble expression. What
was hitherto unfruitful in the controversy surrounding positivism probably stems from the fact that dialectical knowledge was taken all too literally by its opponents.Literalness
and precision are not the same but rather the two diverge.
Without the broken, the inauthentic there can be no knowledge which might be more than an ordering repetition. That,
thereby, the idea of truth is nevertheless not sacrificed, as it
tends to be in the most consistent representatives of positivism, expresses an essential contradiction: knowledge is,
and by no means per accidens, exaggeration. For just as
little as something particular is 'true' but rather by virtue
of its mediatedness is [35/36] always its own other, so the
whole is no less true. It is an expression of its own negativity that it remains unreconciled with the particular. Truth
is the articulation of this relationship. In ancient times lead-

48

ing philosophers still knew it: Plato's philosophy, which

pre-critically raises the extreme claim to truth, continually
sabotages this claim in its presentational form of the 'aporetic'
dialogues as a literally fulfilled claim. Speculations which
related Socratic irony to this would not be out of place. The
cardinal sin of German idealism which today takes its revenge upon it through positivistic critique, consisted in deceiving itself and its followers about such disjointedness
by means of the subjective pathos of fully attained identity with the object in absolute knowledge. Thereby German idealism transferred itself to the showplace of the statements of fact and of validity's terre terre, upon which it
is then inevitably defeated by a science which can demonstrate that idealism does not meet its desiderata. The interpretative method becomes weak at the moment when,
terrorized by the progress of individual sciences, it professes to be as good a science as the others. There is no
more stringent objection to Hegel than that already uttered
by Kierkegaard, namely, that he took his philosophy literally. But interpretation is by no means arbitrary. History
mediates between the phenomenon and its content which
requires interpretation. The essential which appears in the
phenomenon is that whereby it became what it is, what
was silenced in it and what, in painful stultification, releases that which yet becomes. The orientation of physiognomy is directed towards what is silenced, the second level
of phenomena. One should not assume that Habermas'
phrase 'the natural hermeneutics of the social life-world',
[42] which Albert censures, applies to the first level of phenomena, but rather it is the expression which emergent social processes receive in what has emerged. Nor should
interpretation be absolutized according to the usage of phenomenological invariance. It remains enmeshed in the to-

49

tal process of knowledge. According to Habermas, 'the dependence of these ideas and interpretations upon the interests of an objective configuration of societal reproduction makes it impossible to remain at the level of subjective
meaning-comprehending hermeneutics; an objective meaning-comprehending theory must also account for that moment of reification which the objectifying [36/37] procedures exclusively have in mind'. [43] Sociology is only
periphally concerned with the ends-means-relation subjectively carried out by actors. It is more concerned with the
laws realized through and against such intentions. Interpretation is the opposite of the subjective meaning endowment
on the part of the knowing subject or of the social actor.
The concept of such meaning endowment leads to an affirmative fallacy that the social process and social order are
reconciled with the subject and justified as something intelligible by the subject or belonging to the subject. A dialectical concept of meaning would not be a correlate of Weber's
meaningful understanding but rather the societal essence
which shapes appearances, appears in them and conceals
itself in them. It is not a general law, understood in the usually scientistic sense, which determines the phenomena. Its
model would be Marx's law of crisiseven if it has become
so obscured as to be unrecognizablewhich was deduced
from the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. Its modifications, for their part, should also be derived from it. The
efforts to ward off or postpone the system immanent tendency are already prescribed within the system. It is by no
means certain that this is possible indefinitely or whether
such efforts enact the law of crisis against their own will.
The writing on the wall suggests a slow inflationary collapse.

50

The employment of categories such as totality and essence

strengthens the prejudice that the dialecticians concern themselves uncommittedly with the global, whilst the positivists
deal with solid details and have purged the facts of all
doubtful conceptual trappings. One should oppose the scientistic habit of stigmatizing dialectics as theology, which
has crept in through the back door, with the difference between society's systematic nature and so-called total thought.
Society is a system in the sense of a synthesis of an atomized plurality, in the sense of a real yet abstract assemblage
of what is in no way immediately or 'organically' united.
The exchange relationship largely endows the system with
a mechanical character. It is objectively forced onto its elements, as implied by the concept of an organismthe
model which resembles a celestial teleology through which
each organ would receive its function in the whole and
would derive its meaning from the latter. The context which
perpetuates life simultaneously destroys it, and consequently
already possesses in [37/38] itself the lethal impulse towards which its dynamic is propelled. In its critique of
total and organicist ideology, dialectics lacks none of positivism's incisiveness. Similarly, the concept of societal totality is not ontologized, and cannot be made into a primary
thing-in-itself. Positivists who ascribe this to dialectical
theory, as Scheuch did recently, simply misunderstand it.
The concept of a primary thing-in-itself is just as little generally accepted by dialectical theory as by the positivists.
The telos of the dialectical view of society runs contrary
to the global view. Despite reflection upon totality, dialectics does not proceed from above but rather it attempts to
overcome theoretically the antinomic relationship between
the general and the particular by means of its procedure.
The followers of scientism suspect that the dialecticians are

51

megalomaniacs for, instead of striding through the finite in

all direction in a Gothean masculine manner and fulfilling
the requirement of the day within the attainable, they enjoy
themselves in the uncommitted infinite. Yet as a mediation
of all social facts totality is not infinite. By virtue of its very
systematic character it is closed and finite, despite its elusive nature. Even if the great metaphysical categories were
a projection of inner-worldly societal experience onto the
spirit which was itself socially derived, it remains true that,
once retrieved into society, they do not retain the illusion
of the absolute which the projections created in them. No
social knowledge can profess to be master of the unconditioned. Nevertheless, its critique of philosophy does not imply that the latter is submerged in this knowledge without a
trace. Consciousness which retreats to the societal domain
also liberates, through its self-reflection, that element in philosophy which does not simply dissolve in society. But if it
is argued that the societal concept of system, as the concept
of something objective, secularizes metaphysic's concept of
system, then this argument is true but applies to everything
and therefore to nothing. It would be no less justifiable to
criticize positivism on the grounds that its concept of secure certainty is a secularization of celestial truth. The accusation of crypto-theology is incomplete. The metaphysical systems apologetically projected the constraining character of society onto being. Anyone who desires to extricate
himself from the system through thought, must translate
it from idealistic philosophy into the societal reality from
which it was abstracted. Thereby, the concept of totality,
preserved by the followers of scientism such as Popper in
the [38/39] notion of the deductive system, is confronted
with enlightenment. What is untrue but also what is true
in it can be determined.

52

The accusation of megalomania is no less unjust in concrete terms. Hegel's logic knew totality as what it is in its
societal form: not as anything preformed before the singular or, in Hegel's language, preformed before the moments,
but rather inseparable from the latter and their motion. The
individually concrete has more weight in the dialectical conception than in the scientistic conception which fetishizes it
epistemologically and, in practical terms, treats it as raw
material or as an example. The dialectical view of society
is closer to micrology than is the positivistic view which in
abstracto certainly ascribes to the singular entity primacy
over its concept but, in its method, skims over it in that
timeless haste which is realized in computers. Since the individual phenomenon conceals in itself the whole society,
micrology and mediation through totality act as a counterpoint to one another. It was the intention of a contribution
to the theory of social conflict today [44] to elucidate this;
the same point was central to the earlier controversy with
Benjamin concerning the dialectical interpretation of societal phenomena. [45] Benjamin's social physiognomy was
criticized for being too immediate, for lacking reflection
upon the total societal mediation. He suspected the latter
of being idealistic, but without it the materialistic construction of social phenomena would lag behind theory. The
firmly established nominalism, which relegates the concept
to the status of an illusion or an abbreviation, and represents the facts as something concept-free or indeterminate
in an emphatic sense, thereby becomes necessarily abstract.
Abstraction is the indiscrete incision between the general
and the particular. It is not the apprehension of the general
as the determination of the particular in itself. In as far as
abstraction can be attributed to the dialectical method, as
opposed to the sociographic description of individual find-

53

ings, it is dictated by the object, by the constancy of a society which actually does not tolerate anything qualitatively
differenta society which drearily repeats itself in the details. Nevertheless, the individual phenomena expressing
the general are far more substantial than they would be if
they were merely its logical representatives. The dialectical formulation of social laws as historically concrete laws
accords [39/40] with the emphasis on the individual, an emphasis which, for the sake of its immanent generality it does
not sacrifice to comparative generality. The dialectical determinacy of the individual as something simultaneous particular and general alters the societal concept of law. It no
longer possesses the form 'if-then' but rather 'since-must'.
In principle, it is only valid under the precondition of lack
of freedom, since, inherent in the individual moments, is already a determinate law-likeness which follows from the
specific social structure, and is not merely a product of
the scientific synthesis of individual moments. It is in this
way that Habermas' remarks on the historical laws of movement should be interpretedin the context of the objectiveimmanent determinacy of the individual himself. [46]
Dialectical theory refuses to contrast sharply historical and
societal knowledge as a knowledge of the individual with
knowledge of laws since what is supposed to be merely individualindividuation is a societal categoryembodies
within itself a particular and a general. Even the necessary distinction between the two possesses the character of
a false abstraction. Models of the process of the general and
the particular the development tendencies within society,
such as those leading to concentration, over-accumulation
and crisis. Empirical sociology realized long ago what it
forfeited in specific content through a statistical generalization. Something decisive about the general is frequently ap-

54

prehended in the detail, and escaped mere generalization;

hence, the fundamental complementation of statistical inquiries through case studies. The goal of even quantitative
social methods would be qualitative insight; quantification
is not an end in itself but a means towards it. Statisticians
are more inclined to recognize this than is the current logic
of the social sciences. The behaviour of dialectical thought
towards the singular can perhaps best be underlined in
contrast with one of Wittgenstein's formulations quoted by
Wellmer: 'The simplest kind of proposition, an elementary
proposition, asserts the existence of a state of affairs.' [47]
The apparently self-evident view that the logical analysis of
statements leads to elementary statements is anything but
self-evident. Even Wittgenstein still repeats the dogma of
Descartes' Discours de la Mthode, namely, that the most
simplewhatever one could imagine this [40/41] to beis
'more true' than what is composed, and therefore that the
reduction of the more complicated to the simple a priori deserves greater merit. In fact, for the followers of scientism,
simplicity is a value criterion of social scientific knowledge.
This is exemplified in the fifth thesis of Popper's Tubingen
paper. [48] Through its association with honesty, simplicity
becomes a scientific virtue. The overtone is unmistakable
here, namely that the complicated arises from the confusion or the pomposity of the observer. But the objects decide objectively whether social theorems should be simple
or complex.
Popper's statement that 'What really exists are problems
and solutions, and scientific traditions' [49] depends upon
his own insight which immediately precedes this one, that
a so-called scientific discipline is a conglomeration of problems and attempts at solution. The selection of tacitly circumscribed problems as the scientistic 'sole reality' installs

55

simplification as a norm. Science is to concern itself solely

with determinable questions. The material seldom poses
these questions in such a concise form. In the same spirit,
Popper defines the method of the social sciences 'like that
of the natural sciences'. It 'consists in trying out tentative
solutions to certain problems: the problems from which our
investigations start, and those which turn up during the investigation. Solutions are proposed and criticized. If a proposed solution is not open to pertinent criticism, then it is
excluded as unscientific for this reason, although perhaps
only temporarily.' [50] The concept of a problem employed
here is hardly less atomistic than Wittgenstein's criterion
of truth. It is postulated that everything with which sociology legitimately ought to concern itself can be dissected
into individual problems. If one interprets Popper's thesis in a strict sense then, despite its common sense which
recommends it at a first glance, it becomes an obstructive
censure upon scientific thought. Marx did not suggest the
'solution of a problem'in the very concept of suggestion,
the fiction of consensus as a guarantor of truth creeps in.
Does this mean that Das Kapital is therefore not a contribution to the social sciences? In the context of society, the
so-called solution of each problem presupposes this context. The panacea of trial [41/42] and error exists at the
expense of moments, after whose removal the problems are
licked into shape ad usum scientiae and possibly become
pseudo-problems. Theory has to bear in mind that the connections, which disappear through the Cartesian dissection
of the world into individual problems, must be mediated
with the facts. Even if an attempted solution is not immediately amenable to the 'pertinent criticism' stipulated by
Popper, that is, if it is not amenable to refutation, the problem can nevertheless be central with regard to the object.

56

Whether or not capitalist society will be impelled towards

its collapse, as Marx asserted, through its own dynamic is a
reasonable question, as long as questioning is not manipulated; it is one of the most important questions with which
the social sciences ought to concern themselves. As soon as
they deal with the concept of the problem, even the most
modest and therefore the most convincing theses of socialscientific scientism gloss over what are actually the most
difficult problems. Concepts such as that of hypothesis and
the associated concept of testability cannot be blithely transferred from the natural to the social science. This does
not imply approval of the cultural-scientific ideology that
the superior dignity of man will not tolerate quantification.
The society based on domination has not simply robbed itself and human beingsits compulsory membersof such
a dignity, but rather it has never permitted them to become
the emancipated beings who, in Kant's theory, have a right
to dignity. What befalls them nowadays, as earlier in the
form of an extended natural history, is certainly not above
the law of large numbers, which astonishingly prevails in
the analysis of elections. But the context in itself has a different, or at least a more recognizable, form than it did in the
older natural science from which the models of scientistic
sociology are derived. As a relationship between human beings, this context is just as much founded in them as it comprehends and constitutes them. Societal laws are incommensurable with the concept of hypothesis. The Babylonian
confusion between positivists and critical theorists emerges
when the former, although professing tolerance, rob theory,
by its transformation into hypotheses, of that moment of
independence which endows hypotheses with the objective
hegemony of social laws. Moreover, social facts are not as
predictable as natural-scientific facts within their relatively

57

homogeneous continuaa point to which Horkheimer first

drew attention. Included in the objective law-like nature of
[42/43] society is its contradictory character, and ultimately
its irrationality. It is the task of social theory to reflect upon
this too and, if possible, to reveal its origins, but not to argue it away through an overzealous adaptation to the ideal
of prognoses which must either be corroborated or refuted.
Similarly, the conceptalso borrowed from the natural
sciencesof the general, quasi-democratic, empathetic reconstructability [Nachvollziehbarkeit] of cognitive operations
and insights is by no means as axiomatic in the social sciences as it pretends to be. It ignores the power of the necessarily false consciousness which society imposes upon its
membersa consciousness which in turn must be critically
penetrated. It is embodied in the aspiring type of social
science research assistant as the contemporary form of the
world spirit. Anyone who has grown up under the influence of the culture industry so entirely that it has become
his second nature is initially hardly able and inclined to
internalize insights which apply to the culture industry's
functions and role in the social structure. Like a reflex
action he will fend off such insights preferably, by referring to the scientistic guide-line of general empathetic reconstructability. It took thirty years for the critical theory
of the culture industry to prevail. Even today numerous
instances and agencies attempt to stifle it since it is harmful to business. The knowledge of objective societal invariant regularities and, in particular, its uncompromisingly
pure, undiluted representation by no means measures itself against the consensus omnium. Opposition to the repressive total tendency can be reserved for small minorities
who even have to suffer being castigated for an elitist stance.
Empathetic reconstructability is a potential possessed by

58

mankind and does not exist here and now under existing
conditions. It is certainly the case that what one person
can understand can potentially be understood by another,
for in the interpreter [der Verstehende] that whole is operative through which generality is also posited. Yet in order
to realize this possibility, it is not sufficient to appeal to
the intellect of others as they are, nor even to education.
Probably a change in the whole would be requiredthat
whole which today, in terms of its own law, deforms rather
than develops awareness. The postulate of simplicity harmonizes with such a repressive disposition. Since it is incapable of any mental operations other than those which, for
all their perfection, proceed mechanically, this disposition
is even [43/44] proud of its intellectual honesty. Involuntarily it denies the complicated nature of precisely those social
relations which are indicated by such currently overworked
terms as alienation, reification, functionality and structure.
The logical method of reduction to elements, from which
the social is constructed, virtually eliminates objective contradictions. A secret agreement exists between the praise
for simple life and the anti-intellectual preference for the
simple as what is attainable by thought. This tendency prescribes simplicity for thought. Social scientific knowledge,
however, which expresses the complex nature of the process
of production and distribution, is apparently more fruitful
than the dissection into separate elements of production by
means of surveys on factories, individual companies, individual workers and the like. It is also more fruitful than
reduction to the general concept of such elements which,
for their part, only attain their importance in the more complex structural context. In order to know what a worker is
one must know what capitalist society is; conversely, the latter is surely no 'more elementary' than are the workers. If

59

Wittgenstein justifies his method by the statement: 'Objects

form the substance of the world. Therefore they cannot be
compound', [51] then in so doing he follows, with the positivist's navety, the dogmatic rationalism of the seventeenth
century. Scientism certainly regards the resthe individual objectsas the sole true existent, but thereby dispossesses them of all their determinations, as mere conceptual
superstructure, to such an extent that this solely real entity
becomes wholly nugatory for scientism and then, in fact,
merely serves as an illustration for what, in nominalistic
belief, is a similarly nugatory generality.
The positivist critics of dialectics rightly demand models at least of sociological methods which, although they
are not tailored to empirical rules, prove to be meaningful.
Here however the empiricist's so-called 'meaning criterion'
would have to be altered. The index verborum prohibitorum demanded by Otto Neurath in the name of the Vienna Circle would then be abolished. One might name as a
model something which certainly did not emerge as science,
namely, the critique of language, which Karl Kraus, who
strongly influenced Wittgenstein, practised for decades in
Die Fackel. His critique, often directed at journalistic [44/45]
corruptions of grammar, was immanently inscribed. From
the outset, however, aesthetic criticism possessed a social
dimension. For Kraus linguistic impoverishment was the
herald of real impoverishment. Already in the First World
War he witnessed the realization of the malformations and
rhetoric whose muted cry he had heard long before. This
process is the prototype of a non-verbal one. The worldly-wise Kraus knew that language, no matter how much it
might be a constituens of experience, did not simply create reality. Through its absolutization, language analysis
became for Kraus both a distorted mirror of real tenden-

60

cies and a medium in which his critique of capitalism was

concretized into a second immediacy. The linguistic abominations which he created, and whose disproportion to the
real abominations is most readily emphasized by those who
wish to gloss over the real ones, are excretions of the societal processes which appear archetypically in words before
they abruptly destroy the supposedly normal life of bourgeois society in which, beyond current scientific observation, they matured almost imperceptibly. Consequently, the
physiognomy of language developed by Kraus contains a
greater penetrative power over society than do largely empirical sociological findings since it records seismographically the monster which science, out of a sense of pure
objectivity, narrow-mindedly refuses to deal with. The figures of speech cited and pilloried by Kraus parody and surpass what research only tolerates under the sloppy heading
of 'juicy quotes'. Kraus' non-science or anti-science puts
science to shame. Sociology may contribute mediations
which Kraus would in fact scorn as mitigations of his diagnoses that still inevitably lag behind reality. Even during
his lifetime, the Viennese socialist workers' newspaper was
aware of social conditions which made Viennese journalism into what Kraus recognized it to be. In History and
Class Consciousness Lukcs defined the social type of the
journalist as the dialectical extreme of reification. In this extreme case, the commodity character conceals what is simply contrary to the essence of commodities and devours it;
namely, the primary spontaneous capacity for reaction on
the part of human subjects, which sells itself on the market. Kraus' physiognomy of language would not have had
such a profound effect upon science and upon the philosophy of history without the truth content of the underlying experiences which are dismissed by the clique with a

61

subordinate's arrogance [45/46] as mere art. [52] The analyses micrologically attained by Kraus, are by no means
so 'unconnected' with science as would be acceptable to
the latter. More specifically, his language-analytical theses on the mentality of the commercial travellerof the
future office workermust, as a neo-barbaric norm, concur with those aspects of Weber's theory of the dawning of
bureaucratic domination which are relevant to the sociology of education. In addition, Kraus' analyses also concur
with the decline of education explained by Weber's theory.
The strict relation of Kraus' analyses to language and their
objectivity lead them beyond the promptly and automatically recorded fortuitousness of merely subjective forms
of reaction. The analyses extrapolate from the individual
phenomena a whole which comparative generalization cannot master, and which is co-experienced as pre-existent in
the approach adopted in Kraus' analysis. His work may
not be scientific but a discipline which lay claim to scientific status would have to emulate it. Freud's theory in
the phase of its diffusion, was ostracized by Kraus. Nevertheless, and despite Freud's own positivistic mentality,
his theory ran as counter to established science as Kraus'
own work. Since it was developed on the basis of a relatively small number of individual cases, according to the
scientific system of rules, it would be judged to be a false
generalization from the first to the last statement. [46/47]
But without its productivity for the understanding of social modes of behaviour and, in particular, the understanding of the 'cement' of society, one could not imagine what
might possibly be registered as actual progress of sociology over recent decades. Freud's theory which, for reasons of a complex nature, prompted established science to
shrug its shouldersand psychiatry has still not grown out

62

of this habitprovided intra-scientifically practicable hypotheses for the explanation of what otherwise cannot be
explained; namely, that the overwhelming majority of human beings tolerate relations of domination, identify themselves with them and are motivated towards irrational attitudes by themattitudes whose contradiction with the simplest interests of their self-preservation is obvious. But one
must doubt whether the transformation of psycho-analysis
into hypotheses does justice to its specific type of knowledge. Its utilization in survey procedures takes place at
the expense of the immersion in detail to which it owes
its wealth of new societal knowledge, even if it placed its
hopes in general law-like regularities in accordance with
the model of traditional theory.
Albert seems to be well disposed towards such models.
[53] But what is actually at issue in the controversy is unfortunately disguised in his concept of testability in principle.
If a sociological theorist repeatedly observes on the posters
of New York subway stations that one of the dazzling white
teeth of an advertising beauty is blacked out then he will
infer, for example, that the glamour of the culture industry,
as a mere substitute satisfaction through which the spectator pre-consciously feels himself to be deceived, simultaneously arouses aggression in the latter. In terms of the
epistemological principle Freud constructed his theorems
in a similar manner. It is very difficult to test such extrapolations empirically, unless one were to light upon particularly ingenious experiments. Such observations can, however, crystallize into social-psychological thought structures
which, in a different context and condensed into 'items',
lend themselves to questionnaire and clinical methods. But
if, on the other hand, the positivists insist that the dialecticians, unlike themselves, are unable to cite any binding

63

rules of behaviour for sociological knowledge and that they

therefore defend the aperu, then this postulate presupposes the strict separation of [47/48] reality and method
which is attacked by dialectics. Anyone who wishes to
follow the structure of his object and conceptualizes it as
possessing motion in itself does not have at his disposal a
method independent of the object.
As a counterpart to the general positivist thesis of the
verifiability of meaning a valuable model will be cited here
from the author's own work in the sociology of music. This
is not because the author overestimates the status of the
work, but rather since a sociologist naturally becomes aware
of the interdependence of material and methodological motives most readily in his own studies. In the 1936 article
'ber Jazz', published in the Zeitschrift fr Sozialforschung and
reprinted in Moments musicaux, the concept of a 'jazz subject' was employed, an ego-imago which occurs quite generally in this type of music. Jazz was regarded as a totally
symbolic process in which this jazz subject, confronted by
the collective demands represented by the basic rhythm, falters, stumbles and 'drops out' but, while 'dropping out', reveals himself in a kind of ritual to be similar to all the other
helpless subjects and is integrated into the collective at the
price of his self-cancellation. One can neither put one's finger on the jazz subject in protocol statements, nor reduce
the symbolism of the process to sense data in a completely
stringent manner. Nevertheless, the construction which interprets the smooth idiom of jazz, stereotypes of which
await such deciphering like a secret code, is hardly devoid
of meaning. This construction should promote the investigation of the interiority of the jazz phenomenon, namely
of what it generally signifies in societal terms, more than do
surveys of the views of various populationor agegroups

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on jazz, even if the latter were based upon solid protocol statements such as the original comments of those randomly sampled and interviewed. Presumably one could
only decide whether the juxtaposition of positions and criteria was quite irreconcilable after a concentrated attempt
had been made to realize theorems of this type in empirical
research projects. Up till now, this has hardly interested social research, although the possible gain in cogent insight
can scarcely be denied. Without indulging in a shoddy
compromise one can readily detect possible meaning criteria for such interpretations. This is exemplified in extrapolations from the technological analysis of a phenomenon
of mass culturethis is the point of the theory of the jazz
subjector the capacity to combine [48/49] theorems with
other phenomena closer to the usual criteria: phenomena
such as the eccentric clown and certain older types of film.
In any case, what is implied by such a thesis as that of
the jazz subject, in his capacity as the latent embodiment
of this type of popular music, is intelligible even if it is
neither verified nor falsified by the reactions of the jazz listeners questioned. Subjective reactions by no means need
to coincide with the determinable content of cultural phenomena which provoke a reaction. The moments which
motivate the ideal construction of a jazz subject must be adduced. No matter how inadequately, this was attempted in
the above-mentioned article on jazz. As an evident meaning
criterium there emerges the question whether, and to what
extent, a theorem illuminates questions which would otherwise remain obscure and whether, through this theorem,
diverse aspects of the same phenomenon are mutually elucidated. The construction can fall back upon far-reaching
societal experiences, such as that of the integration of society in its monopolistic phase at the expense of the virtually

65

powerless individuals and by means of them. Hertha Herzog, in a later study of the 'soap operas' popular at that time
on American radioradio series for housewivesapplied
the formula closely related to jazz theory of 'getting into
trouble and getting out of it', to such programmes. This
study took the form of a content analysis, empirical in terms
of the usual criteria, and achieved analogous results. The
positivists themselves must state whether the internal positivistic extension of the so-called verifiability criterion makes
room for the above-cited models, in that it does not restrict
itself to observations requiring verification, but rather includes statements for which any pre-conditions for their
verification can be created at all, [54] or whether the all
too indirect possibility of verification of these statementsa
possibility burdened down by additional 'variables'as usual
renders them unacceptable.
It ought to be the task of sociology to analyse which
problems can be dealt with adequately by means of an empirical approach and which problems cannot be analysed
in this manner without forfeiting some degree of meaning. A strictly a priori judgment on this question cannot be
made. One can presume that a gap exists between empirical
research actually carried out and positivist [49/50] methodology. Even in the form of 'analytical philosophy', the latter,
until now, has contributed little that is positive to sociological research, and the reason for this is probably that, in
research, interest in the object (Sache) has, in fact, asserted
itselfsometimes through crudely pragmatistic considerationsagainst methodological obsessions. Living science
must be rescued from the philosophy which, having been
culled from it, holds it in tutelage. One should simply ask
oneself whether, for all its faults, the F-scale of The Authoritarian Personalitya study which operated with empirical

66

methodscould ever have been introduced and improved

if it had been developed, from the outset, with the aid of
the positivist criteria of the Gutman scale. The dictum of
the academic teacher that 'You are here to do research, not
to think', mediates between the subordinate status of numerous social scientific surveys and their social standpoint.
The inquiring mind which neglects the question 'what' in
favour of the question 'how', or neglects the goal of knowledge in favour of the means of knowledge, changes itself for
the worse. As a heteronomous cog, it forfeits all its freedom
in the machinery. It becomes despiritualized through rationalization. [55] Thought, harnessed to the functions of an
office worker, becomes an office worker's mentality in itself.
The despiritualized spirit must virtually lead ad absurdum,
since it flounders when faced with its own pragmatic tasks.
The defamation of fantasy, and the inability to conceive of
what does not yet exist, become sand in the mechanism of
the apparatus itself, as soon as it finds itself confronted with
phenomena not provided for in its schemata. Undoubtedly,
part of the blame for the Americans' helplessness in the
Vietnamese guerilla war is borne by what the Americans
call 'top brass'. Bureaucratic generals pursue a calculating
strategy that is unable [50/51] to anticipate Giap's tactics,
which are irrational according to their norms. Scientific
management, which is what the strategy of warfare has become, results in military disadvantage. Moreover, in societal terms, the prohibition of fantasy is all too compatible
with societal statics, with the decline in capitalist expansion
which, despite all protestations to the contrary, is becoming
discernible. What, by virtue of its own nature, strives for
enlargement becomes, as it were, superfluous, and this in
turn damages the interests of capital which must expand
in order to survive. Anyone acting in accordance with the

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maxim 'safety first' is in danger of losing everything. They

are a microcosm of the prevailing system whose stagnation
is precipitated both by the surrounding dangerous situation
and by deformations immanent in progress.
It would be worthwhile to write an intellectual history of
fantasy, since the latter is the actual goal of positivist prohibitions. In the eighteenth century, both in Saint-Simon's
work and in d'Alembert's Discours prliminaire, fantasy
along with art is included in productive labour and participates in the notion of the unleashing of the forces of
production. Comte, whose sociology reveals an apologetic,
static orientation, is the first enemy of both metaphysics
and fantasy simultaneously. The defamation of fantasy or
its relegation to a special domain, marked off by the division of labour, is the original phenomenon of the regression
of the bourgeois spirit. However, it does not appear as an
avoidable error of this spirit, but rather as a consequence
of a fatality which instrumental reasonrequired by societycouples with this taboo. The fact that fantasy is only
tolerated when it is reified and set in abstract opposition
to reality, makes it no less of a burden to science than to
art. Legitimate science and art desperately seek to redeem
the mortgage that burdens them. Fantasy implies an intellectual operation rather than free inventionwithout the
equivalent of hastily realized facticity. But this is precisely
what is prevented by the positivist theory of the so-called
meaning criterion. In quite formal terms, for instance, this
is exemplified in the famous postulate of clarity: 'Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be put into words can be put clearly'. [56]
But everything which is not sensuously realized retains a
halo of indeterminacy. No abstraction is ever quite clear;
every abstraction is also indistinct [51/52] on account of the

68

diversity of possible concretizations. Moreover, one is surprised by the language-philosophical apriorism as Wittgenstein's thesis. Knowledge as free from prejudice of positivism requires would have to confront states of affairs that,
in themselves, are anything but clear and are, in fact, confused. There is no guarantee that they can be expressed
clearly. The desire to do so, or rather the desire that expression must do strict justice to the object, is legitimate.
But this can only be satisfied gradually, and not with the
immediacy expected of language only by a view alien to it,
unless one dogmatically regards the priority of the instrument of knowledge, even up to the subject-object relation,
as prestabilizeda standpoint emanating from Descartes'
theory of theclara et distincta perceptio. Just as it is certain
that the object of sociology, contemporary society, is structured, so there is no doubt that, in its immanent claim to
rationality, it possesses incompatible characteristics. These
possibly give rise to the effort to conceptualize, in a clear
manner, what is not clearbut this cannot be made into a
criterion for the object itself. Wittgenstein would have been
the last to overlook the unfathomable; namely, whether the
conceptualization of something which is, for its part, unclear can ever be clear of itself. In social science, new experiences which are only just developing completely mock the
criterion of clarity. If one were to measure them here and
now against this criterion, then the tentatively developing
experience would not be permitted to become active at all.
Clarity is a moment in the process of knowledge, but it does
not exhaust this process. Wittgenstein's formulation closes
its own horizon against expressing mediately, in a complex
manner, and in constellations, what cannot be expressed
clearly and immediately. In this respect, his own behaviour
was far more flexible than his pronouncements. For in-

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stance, he wrote to Ludwig von Ficker, who had presented

Georg Trakl with a considerable sum of money donated
by Wittgenstein, to say that, although he did not understand Trakl's poems, heWittgensteinwas convinced of
their high quality. Since the medium of poetry is language,
and since Wittgenstein deal with language as such and not
merely with science, he unintentionally confirmed that one
can express what cannot be expressed. Such paradoxicality was hardly alien to his mode of thought. It would
be a sign of equivocation to attempt to evade this paradox by claiming a dichotomy between knowledge and poetry. Art is knowledge sui generis. In poetry, [52/53] that
upon which Wittgenstein's theory of science lays stress is
emphatic: namely, language.
Wittgenstein's hypostasis of the cognitive moment, clarity, as the canon of knowledge clashes with some of his
other major theorems. His formulation, 'The world is everything that is the case', which has become an article of
faith for positivism, is in itself so ambiguous that it is inadequate as a 'criterion of meaning', in terms of Wittgenstein's own postulate of clarity. Its apparent incontestability and its ambiguity are surely inextricably linked. The
statement is armed with a language form which prevents
its content from being fixed. To be 'the case' can mean the
same as to exist in factual terms, in the sense of what exists [das Seiende] in philosophy o ; but it can also
mean: to have logical validitythat two times two is four
is 'the case'. The positivists' basic principle conceals the conflict between empiricism and logistics, which the positivists
have never settled. In fact, this conflict prevails throughout
the entire philosophical tradition and only penetrates positivism as something new since positivism would prefer to
know nothing about this tradition. Wittgenstein's statement

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is grounded in his logical atomism, rightly criticized within

positivism. Only single states of affairssomething, for
their part, abstractedcan be 'the case'. Recently, Wellmer
has criticized Wittgenstein by asserting that one looks in
vain for examples of elementary statements in the Tractatus. [57] For there are none with the conclusiveness upon
which Wittgenstein would have to insist. In announcing examples he implicitly reveals the critique of the category of
the 'First'. If one strives for it, then it evaporates. Unlike
the actual positivist members of the Vienna Circle, Wittgenstein opposed the desire to replace a positivism hostile to
philosophy with a philosophy which was itself questionableand ultimately, sensualistthrough the primacy of
the concept of perception. On the other hand, the so-called
protocol statements actually transcend language, within whose
immanence Wittgenstein wishes to entrench himself. Antinomy is inevitable. The magic circle of reflexion upon language is not breached by recourse to crude, questionable
notions such as that of the immediately 'given'. Philosophical categories, such as that of the idea, the sensual, as
well as dialectics, all of which have been in existence since
Plato's [53/54] Theaetetus, arise in a theory of science hostile to philosophy, thereby revoking its hostility towards
philosophy. One cannot dispose of philosophical questions
by first deliberately forgetting them, and then rediscovering them with the effect of dernire nouveaut. Carnap's
modification of Wittgenstein's criterion of meaning is a retrogressive step. Through the question concerning the criteria of validity he represses the question of truth. Most of
all, they would like to relegate this question to metaphysics,
In Carnap's opinion, 'metaphysical statements are not "empirical statements"' [Erfahrungssatze] [58] a simple tautology. What motivates metaphysics is not sense experi-

71

ence, to which Carnap ultimately reduces all knowledge,

but rather mediated experience. Kant did not tire of pointing this out.
The fact that the positivists extrapolate from science, in
a gigantic circle, the rules which are to ground and justify
it, has its fateful consequences, even for the science whose
actual progress includes types of experience which, in turn,
are not prescribed and approved by science. The subsequent development of positivism confirmed just how untenable Carnap's assertion is that 'protocol sentences . . .
themselves do not require corroboration, but rather they
served as a basis for all the other statements of science.' [59]
Presumably, both logically and within science itself, immediacy is essential; otherwise the category of mediation, for
its part, would lack any rational meaning. Even categories
which distance themselves as greatly from immediacy as
society does, could not be conceptualized without something immediate. Anyone who does not primarily perceive
in social phenomena the societal, which expresses itself in
them, cannot advance to an authentic concept of society.
But in the progress of knowledge the moment of immediacy must be transcended. The objections raised by Neurath
and Popper as social scientists against Carnap, namely that
protocol sentences can be revised, indicates that these statements are mediated. In the first instance, they are mediated through the subject of perception, presented in accordance with the model of physics. Since Hume, positivism
has regarded careful reflection upon this subject as superfluous and, as a result, the subject has constantly crept in as
an unnoticed presupposition. The consequences are borne
by the truth-content of protocol sentences. They are both
true and not true. They would have to [54/55] be elucidated on the basis of several questionnaires such as are

72

used in surveys in political sociology. As preliminary material, the answers are certainly 'true' and, despite their reference to subjective opinions, they are themselves a part of
social objectivity to which opinions themselves belong. The
people sampled have affirmed this, or put a cross against
this and nothing else. On the other hand, however, in the
context of the questionnaires, the answers are frequently
inconsistent and contradictory; on an abstract level, they
might be pro-democratic whilst, with regard to concrete
'items', they are anti-democratic. Hence sociology cannot
be satisfied with the data, but rather it must attempt to reveal the derivation of the contradictions; empirical research
proceeds accordingly. When viewed subjectively, the philosophy of science's ab ovo scorn for such considerations
common in science, presents the dialectical critique with its
point of attack. The positivists have never wholly shaken off
the latent anti-intellectualism which was already present in
Hume's dogmatic degradation of ideas to mere copies of
impressions. For them thought is nothing more than reconstruction [Nachvolkzug]; anything beyond this is an evil.
Undoubtedly, such a disguised anti-intellectualism, with its
unintended political overtones, increases the influence of
the positivist doctrine. Amongst its followers, there is one
particular type who distinguishes himself both through the
lack of a reflective dimension, and through resentment towards those intellectual modes of behaviour which essentially operate within such a dimension.
Positivism internalizes the constraints exercised upon thought
by a totally socialized society in order that thought shall
function in society. It internalizes these constraints so that
they become an intellectual outlook. Positivism is the puritanism of knowledge. [60] What puritanism achieves in
the moral sphere is, under [55/56] positivism, sublimated

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to the norms of knowledge. Kant's equivocally phrased

warning not to digress into intelligible worlds, which Hegel
countered with his ironic comment on 'evil houses', forms
a prelude to this development; but only, of course, as one
vocal line in the polyphonic structure of the philosophical
score, whereas, for the positivists, it has become the trivially dominant melody of the soprano part. From the outset, knowledge denies what it seeks, what it ardently desires, since this is denied by the desideratum of socially
useful labour. Knowledge then projects the taboo which it
has imposed upon itself onto its goal, and proscribes what
it cannot attain. The process which otherwise might be unbearable for the subjectnamely, the integration of thought
into what confronts it and what must be penetrated by
itis integrated into the subject by positivism and made
into his own affair. The felicity of knowledge is not to
be. If one wished to subject positivism to the reductio ad
hominem which it so readily practises on metaphysics, then
one would surmise that positivism grants a logical form to
the sexual taboos which were converted into prohibitions
on thought some time ago. Within positivism, it becomes
a maxim of knowledge itself that one should not eat from
the tree of knowledge. Curiosity is punished in the novelty
of thought; utopia must be expelled from thought in every form it takesincluding that of negation. Knowledge
resigns itself to being a mere repetitive reconstruction. It
becomes impoverished just as life is impoverished under
work discipline. In the concept of the facts to which one
must adhere, and from which one cannot distance oneself,
not even through an interpolation of them, knowledge is
reduced to the mere reproduction of what is, in any case,
present. This is expressed by recourse to logic in the ideal
of the continuous deductive system from which nothing is

74

[56/57] excluded. Insensible enlightenment is transformed

into regression. The subordinate and trivial in positivist
doctrine is not the fault of its representatives. Frequently,
when they set aside their gowns, they derive no profit from
it. Objective bourgeois spirit has risen up as a replacement
for philosophy. One cannot fail to recognize in this the parti
pris for the exchange principle, abstracted to the norm of
being-for-another (Franderessein), with which the criterion of empathetic reconstructability and the concept of
communication, ultimately formed in the culture industry,
comply as the measure of all that is intellectual. It is hardly
disloyal to interpret what the positivists mean by 'empirical' as what something is for something else; the object
itself is never to be apprehended. The positivists react to
the simple shortcoming that knowledge does not attain its
object but merely places it in relations external to the object,
by registering this shortcoming as immediacy, purity, gain
and virtue. The repression, which the positivist mind creates for itself, suppresses what is not like itself. This causes
positivismdespite its avowal of neutrality, if not by virtue
of this avowalto be a political fact. Its categories are latently the practical categories of the bourgeois class, whose
enlightenment contained, from the outset, the notion that
one cannot have recourse to ideas which cast doubt upon
the rationality of the prevailing ratio.
Such a physiognomy of positivism is also that of its central concept: the empirical, experience. In general, categories are only dealt with if, in Hegel's terminology, they
are no longer substantial, or if they are no longer unquestionably alive. In positivism, a historical condition of the
mind is documented which no longer knows experience
and, consequently, both eradicates the indictments of experience and presents itself as its substituteas the only

75

legitimate form of experience. The immanency of the system, which virtually isolates itself, neither tolerates anything qualitatively different that might be experienced, nor
does it enable the human subjects adapted to it to gain
unregimented experience. The state of universal mediation and reification of all the relations between human beings sabotages the objective possibility of specific experience of the objectcan this world be experienced at all as
something living?together with the anthropological capacity for this. Schelsky rightly called the concept of unregimented experience one of the central points of controversy between dialecticians and positivists. The regimented
[57/58] experience prescribed by positivism nullifies experience itself and, in its intention, eliminates the experiencing
subject. The correlate of indifference towards the object is
the abolition of the subject, without whose spontaneous receptivity, however, nothing objective emerges. As a social
phenomenon, positivism is geared to the human type that
is devoid of experience and continuity, and it encourages
the latterlike Babbittto see himself as the crown of creation. The appeal of positivism must surely be, sought in
its a priori adaptation to this type. In addition, there is its
pseudo-radicalism which makes a clean sweep without attacking anything substantially, and which deals with every
substantially radical thought by denouncing it as mythology, as ideology and outdated. Reified consciousness automatically turns upon every thought which has not been
covered in advance by facts and figures, with the objection:
'where is the evidence?'. The vulgar-empirical praxis of concept-free social science, which usually takes no notice of analytical philosophy, betrays something about the latter. Positivism is the spirit of the age, analogous to the mentality
of jazz fans. Similar, too, is the attraction it holds for young

76

people. This is augmented by the absolute certainty which

it promises, after the collapse of traditional metaphysics.
But this certainty is illusory; the pure non-contradiction, to
which it contracts, is simply a tautologythe empty compulsion to repeat, which has developed into a concept. Certainty becomes something quite abstract and transcends itself. The desire to live in a world without anxiety is satisfied by the pure identity of thought with itself. Paradoxically, security, which fascinates positivism, is similar
to the alleged safety which the functionaries of authenticity derive from theology, and for whose sake they advocate
a theology which no one believes in. In the historical dialectics of enlightenment, ontology shrinks to a zero point.
But this point, although in fact nothing, becomes the bastionor the ineffablefor the advocates of scientism. This
is in keeping with the consciousness of the masses, who
sense that they are societally superfluous and ineffectual,
and at the same time cling to the fact that the system, if
it is to survive, cannot let them starve. Ineffectuality is
savoured as destruction, whilst empty formalism is indifferent, and therefore conciliatory, towards whatever exists.
Real impotence itself consciously becomes an authoritarian
mental attitude. Perhaps objective emptiness holds a special attraction for the emergent anthropological type of the
empty [58/59] being lacking experience. The affective realization of an instrumental thought alienated from its object
is mediated through its technification. The latter presents
such thought as if it were avant-garde.
Popper advocates an 'open' society. The idea of such a
society is contradicted, however, by the close regimented
thought postulated by his logic of science as a 'deductive
system'. The most recent form of positivism fits the administered world perfectly. In the early days of nominalism,

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and even for early bourgeois society, Bacon's empiricism

implied the emancipation of experience from the ordo of
pre-given conceptsthe 'open' as liberation from the hierarchical structure of bourgeois society. Since, however, the liberated dynamics of bourgeois society are nowadays moving
towards a new statics, this openness is obstructed through
the restitution of closed intellectual control-systems by the
scientistic syndrome of thought. If one applies to positivism its own supreme maxim, one might say that positivismwith its elective affinity to the bourgeoisieis self-contradictory
in that it declares experience to be its ultimate, and yet in
the very same breath prohibits it. The exclusivity which it
ascribes to the ideal of experience both systematizes it and
thereby potentially transcends it.
Popper's theory is more flexible than normal positivism.
He does not insist upon value-freedom in such an unreflected manner as does the most influential tradition in German sociology since Weber. Albert, for instance, writes:
Adorno's judgement that the whole value problem is falsely
posed, bears no relation to a definite formulation of this
problem, and can therefore hardly be judged; it is an assertion which sounds comprehensive but carries no risk.
[61] To this one must reply that the criticized abstractness
of formulation corresponds to a dichotomy which has been
sacrosanct in Germany since Weber, and that its inaugurators and not its critics should be censured. The antinomies
in which positivism has been entangled through the norm
of value-freedom, however, can be made concrete. Just as a
strictly apolitical stance becomes a political fact, as does capitulation in the face of might in the political play of forces,
so value neutrality generally subordinates itself, in an unreflected manner, to what the positivists call valid value systems. Even Popper with his [59/60] demand 'that it should

78

be one of the tasks of scientific criticism to point out confusions of value and to separate purely scientific value problems of truth, of relevance, simplicity, and so forth, from extra-scientific problems', [62] takes back to some extent, what
he originally permits. The problem of this dichotomy can
actually be traced in concrete terms to the social sciences.
If one applies value freedom as vigorously as Max Weber
did on public occasionsbut not always in his textsthen
sociological studies can easily violate the criterion of relevance, which Popper after all includes. If the sociology of
art seeks to brush aside the question of the quality of works
whose effects it studies, then it fails to apprehend such relevant complexes as that of manipulation through the consciousness industry, the truth or falsity content of 'stimuli'
to which a random sample of people is exposed, and ultimately the determinate insight into ideology as societally
false consciousness. A sociology of art, unable or unwilling
to distinguish between the quality of an honest and significant work and that of a kitsch product, calculated in terms
of its influence, forfeits not only the critical function it seeks
to exercise, but also the knowledge of such faits sociaux as
the autonomy or heteronomy of intellectual works, which
depends upon their social location and determines their
social influence. If this is ignored, then we are left with
the empty remains of a 'head count'at most, mathematically perfectedof likes and dislikes, of no consequence
for the social significance of the registered likes and dislikes. The critique of the evaluative procedure of the social
sciences should not be refuted, nor should, for instance, the
entological theory of value of Scheler's middle period be
restored as a norm for the social sciences.The dichotomy
between value and value freedom, and not the one or the
other, is untenable. If Popper concedes that the scientistic

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ideals of objectivity and value freedom are, in turn, values,

then this extends to the truth of judgments. Their meaning
is implied by the 'evaluative' notion that a true judgment
is better than a false one. Analysis of any substantive social-scientific theorems would necessarily encounter their
axiological elements, even if the theorems do not give an
account of them. But this axiological moment does not
stand in abstract opposition to making a judgment, but
rather is immanent to it. Value and value freedom are
not separate; rather, [60/61] they are contained in one another. Each, by itself, would be falseboth the judgment
which is fixed to an external value and a judgment which
paralysed itself through the extirpation of its immanent and
inextinguishable evaluative moment. One has to be completely blind to separate the thema probandum, together
with the line of argument in Weber's treatise on the Protestant Ethic, from theby no means value-freeintention of
his critique of Marx's base-superstructure theorem. This intention nourishes the individual arguments, but above all
it also supports the insulation of the investigation against
the socio-economic origin of the theologumena, which, it
is claimed, constituted capitalism. Weber's anti-materialist
standpoint not only provides the motivationas he would
admitfor the questions raised in his sociology of religion,
but also its focus of attention, the selection of material and
the mental complex. Self-consciously, his line of argument
turns the economic derivation upon its head. The rigidity of the concept of value, external to thought and object
alike, was, for both sides, precisely what was unsatisfactory
in the debate on value-freedom. Moreover, without mentioning Weber, a positivist such as Durkheim stated frankly
that cognitive and evaluative reason were the same and that,
consequently, the absolute separation of value and knowl-

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edge was invalid. With respect to the latter, positivists and

ontologists are in agreement. The solution of the alleged
problem of value, which Albert finds lacking in the dialecticians' work, must surely be soughtto use a positivist
concept on this occasionin the fact that the alternative is
apprehended as a pseudo-problem (Scheinproblem), as an
abstraction which dissolves when confronted with the concrete view of society and reflection upon consciousness of
society. This was the point of the thesis concerning the reification of the problem of value, namely, that the so-called
valueswhether they are regarded as something to be eliminated from the social sciences, or as their blessingare
elevated to something independent, quasi self-constitutive;
whereas, neither in real historical terms, nor as categories of
knowledge, are they anything of the kind. Value-relativism
is the correlate to the absolutist apotheosis of values. As
soon as values are removed from the arbitrariness and affliction of the knowing consciousness, and are torn away
from its reflection and from the historical context in which
they emerge, they fall prey to this very relativity which an
invocation of these values sought to banish. The economic
concept of value, which served [61/62] as a model both for
Lotze's philosophical concept, and that of the South West
German School, and subsequently for the dispute on objectivity, is the original phenomenon of reificationnamely,
the exchange-value of the commodity. Starting out from
the latter, Marx developed his analysis of fetishism, which
interpreted the concept of value as the reflection of the relationship between human beings as if it were a characteristic of objects. The normative problems arise from historical constellations, and they themselves demand, as it
were, mutely and 'objectively', that they be changed. What
subsequently congeals as values for historical memory are,

81

in fact, question-forms (Fragegestalten) of reality, and formally they do not differ so greatly from Popper's concept
of a problem. For instance, as long as the forces of production are not sufficient to satisfy the primitive needs of
all, one cannot declare, in abstract terms, as a value that all
human beings must have something to eat. But if there
is still starvation in a society in which hunger could be
avoided here and now in view of the available and potential
wealth of goods, then this demands the abolition of hunger
through a change in the relations of production. This demand arises from the situation, from its analysis in all its
dimensions, independently of the generality and necessity
of a notion of value. The values onto which this demand,
arising from the situation, is projected are the poor and
largely distorted copy of this demand. The mediating category is immanent critique. It contains the moment of value
freedom in the form of its undogmatic reason, succinctly
expressed in the confrontation between what a society appears to be and what it is. The value moment, however,
lives in the practical challenge which must be construed
from the situation; to fulfil this task, however, one requires
a theory of society. The false chorismos of value freedom
and value reveals itself to be the same as that of theory and
practice. Society, if it is understood as the functional context of human self-preservation, 'means' this: namely, that
it aims objectively at a reproduction of its life which is consonant with the state of its powers. Otherwise, every societal arrangement even societalization itselfin the simplist
cognitive sense is absurd. As soon as it were no longer actually retarded by societal or scientistic authoritative orders,
the subjective reason of the ends-means relation would be
transformed into objective reason, which is contained in
the axiological moment as a moment of knowledge itself.

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Value and value freedom are mediated dialectically [62/63]

through one another. No knowledge orientated towards
the mediated essence of society would be true if it desired
a different state of affairs. To this extent, it would be an
'evaluative' knowledge. Nothing can be demanded of society which does not emerge from the relationship between
the concept and the empirical, which is not therefore essentially knowledge.
A dialectical theory of society does not simply brush aside
the desideratum of value freedom, but rather seeks to transcend it, together with the opposing desideratum. It should
adopt this attitude towards positivism in general. It may
be that out of a feeling of aversion towards philosophy, dialectics treat Marx's distinction between the representation
and origin of knowledge philosophically in a manner that
is all too light. With this distinction, Marx intended to ward
off the objection that he was devising a deductive system.
What is true here, however, is the heavy accent upon the
existent as opposed to the unleashed conceptthe sharpening of critical theory against idealism. It is an innate temptation for thought which proceeds immanently to disregard
the facts. But the dialectical concept is mediation, not something which exists in itself. This imposes on the dialectical
concept the duty of not pretending that there is any truth
set apart from the mediated, from the facts. A dialectical critique of positivism finds its most important point of attack
in reification, in the reification of science and of unreflected
facticity. And consequently, such critique must not reify its
concepts either. Quite correctly, Albert recognizes that such
central concepts as society or collectivity, which are not
however sensorily verifiable concepts, should not be hypostatized nor posited and fixed in a naively realistic manner
as things that exist in themselves. Nevertheless, a theory en-

83

dangered by such reification is persuaded to become a theory of the object while the object itself is so hardened that
it recurs in the theoryprovided that the theory merely 'reflects'as its dogma. If society, a functional and not a substantial concept, remains hierarchically above all individual
phenomena in an apparently objective manner, then even
dialectical sociology cannot ignore the aspect of their reified
nature. Otherwise it distorts that which is decisive, namely,
the relationships of domination. Even Durkheim's concept
of the collective consciousness, which so obviously reifies
mental phenomena, derives its truth content from the constraint exerted by societal [63/64] mores. But this constraint
ought, in turn, to be derived from the relationships of domination in the real life process, and not accepted as an ultimate pregiven or as a thing [Sache]. Perhaps, in primitive
societies, the lack of food necessitates organizational modes
of constraint which recur in situations of scarcity in supposedly mature societies where such situations are caused by
the relations of production and are consequently unnecessary, The question which comes first, the socially necessary
separation of physical and mental labour or the usurpatory
privilege of the medicine man resembles the debate over the
chicken and the egg. In any case, the shaman an requires
ideology and without him it would not be possible. For the
sake of sacrosanct theory one cannot exorcise the possibility that social constraint might be an animal or biological
inheritance. The inescapable spell of the animal world is reproduced in the brutal domination of a society, still caught
up in natural history. But one should not apologetically
conclude from this that constraint is immutable. Ultimately
it is positivism's most profound moment of trutheven if
it is one against which positivism rebels as it does against
the word which holds it in its spellthat the facts, that

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which exists in this manner and not in any other, have

only attained that impenetrable power which is then reinforced by the scientistic cult of facts in scientific thought,
in a society without freedom of which its own subjects are
not masters. Even the philosophical preservation of positivism would require the procedure of interpretation prohibited by positivismthe interpretation of that which, in
the course of the world, prevents interpretation. Positivism
is the conceptless appearance of negative society in the social sciences. In the debate, dialectics induces positivism
to become conscious of such negativity, of its own negativity. The traces of such consciousness are not lacking in
Wittgenstein. The further positivism is driven the more energetically it drives itself beyond its boundaries. Wittgenstein's statement, emphasized by Wellmer, that much must
be prepared in language in order that mere naming has a
meaning, [63] achieves no less than the recognition of the
fact that tradition is constitutive for language and consequently, precisely in Wittgenstein's sense, for knowledge as
such. Wellmer touches a nerve-point when he detects in
this an objective denial of the reductionism of the Vienna
Circle, a [64/65] rejection of the criterion of validity for protocol statements. Reductionism has even less of a claim to
an authoritative model for the social sciences. According
to Wellmer, even Carnap relinquishes the principle of the
reduction of all terms to observational predicates and introduces alongside observational language a theoretical one
which has been only partially interpreted. [64] In this one
may reasonably detect a decisive developmental tendency
for the whole of positivism. It is consumed by increasing
differentiation and self-reflection. By using a widespread
typification its apologetics is able to profit from this; central objections to the school are rejected as outdated when

85

compared with the school's current level of development.

Recently Dahrendorf implied that the positivism criticized
by the Frankfurt School no longer existed. But the more the
positivists are unable to maintain their harsh but suggestive norms, the more the appearance of a legitimation for
their scorn for philosophy and for the methods penetrated
by the latter vanishes. Like Popper, even Albert seems to
abandon prohibitive norms. [65] Towards the end of his
essay, 'The Myth of Total Reason', it becomes difficult to
draw a sharp dividing line between Popper's and Albert's
concept of science and dialectical reflection on society. As a
difference there remains the following, 'the dialectical cult
of total reason is too fastidious to content itself with "specific" solutions. Since there are no solutions which meet its
demands, it is forced to rest content with insinuation, allusion and metaphor'. [66] Dialectical theory, however, does
not indulge in a cult of total reason; it criticizes such. reason. But whilst arrogance towards specific solutions is alien
to it, it does not allow itself to be silenced by them.
Nevertheless, one should not lose sight of what continues to survive untouched in positivism. Dahrendorf's ironic
comment that the Frankfurt School is the last school of sociology is symptomatic. What was probably meant here was
that the age of schools within sociology was past and that
unified science has triumphantly ousted the schools as archaically qualitative entities. But no matter how democratic
and, egalitarian the prophecy is intended to be, its fulfilment would be intellectually totalitarian and would decisively undermine the very dispute which Dahrendorf himself regards as the agent of all progress. The ideal of [65/66]
progressive technical rationalization, even of science, disavows the pluralistic conceptions to which the opponents
of dialectics otherwise pay homage. Anyone who, when

86

faced with such a slogan as that of the last school, recalls

the question of the little girl upon seeing a large doghow
long can such a dog live?does not need to subscribe to
any sociological psychologism.
Despite the avowed intention of both sides to conduct the
controversy in a rational spirit, the controversy retains its
thorny nature. In the press comments on the dispute over
positivism, particularly after the Sixteenth German Sociology Congress, which incidentally often did not even follow
the course of the debate in an adequate and informed manner, one repeatedly finds the stereotyped statement that no
progress was made, that the arguments were already familiar, that no settlement of the opposing viewpoints was
in sight. Consequently, doubt was thrown upon the fruitfulness of the debate. These misgivings, which are full of
rancour, miss the point. They expect tangible progress in
science at a point where its tangibility is just as much in
question as its current conception. It has not been established whether the two positions can be reconciled through
mutual criticism as they might be in Popper's model. Albert's cheap comments ad spectatores on the whole subject
of Hegel, not to mention his most recent comments, provide little ground for hope. To protest that one has been
misunderstood does not further the discussion any more
than the nudging appeal for agreement by refering to the
notorious unintelligibility of the opponent. If one contaminates by association dialectics and irrationalism then one
blinds oneself to the fact that criticism of the logic of noncontradiction does not suspend the latter but rather reflects
upon it. One can generalize the observations made even
in Tbingen on the ambiguities contained in the word criticism. Even when the same concepts are used, in fact, even
where consensus is achieved, the opposing parties actually

87

mean and strive after such diverse things that the consensus remains a faade covering the antagonisms. A continuation of the controversy would surely have to make visible
those underlying antagonisms, which have by no means
been fully articulated as yet. It could often be observed
in the history of philosophy that doctrines which consider
themselves to be the true representation of another diverge
because of the climate of the intellectual context right up
to the last detail. The relationship of Fichte to Kant would
provide [66/67] the most striking example. In sociology
matters are no different; no matter whether sociology as
a science has to maintain society in its particular functioning form, as was the tradition from Comte to Parsons, or
whether sociology strives for the change of society's basic
structures as a result of societal experience, this is determined down to the last category by the theory of science
and therefore can scarcely be decided in terms of the theory of science. It is not even the immediate relationship to
praxis which is decisive; but rather what role one accords
science in the life of the mind and ultimately in reality. Divergencies here are not those of world view. They have their
rightful place in logical and epistemological questions, in
the interpretation of contradiction and non-contradiction,
of essence and appearance, of observation and interpretation. Dialectics remains intransigent in the dispute since
it believes that it continues to reflect beyond the point at
which its opponents break off, namely before the unquestioned authority of the institution of science.

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1.1

a section

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae,
felis. Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero,
nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donec
vehicula augue eu neque. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus rhoncus sem. Nulla
et lectus vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eu
tellus sit amet tortor gravida placerat. Integer sapien est, iaculis in, pretium quis, viverra ac, nunc. Praesent eget sem
vel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus. Morbi dolor
nulla, malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla. Curabitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus.
Duis nibh mi, congue eu, accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis,
diam. Duis eget orci sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.

89

2
TEST CHAPTER

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae,
felis. Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero,
nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donec
vehicula augue eu neque. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus rhoncus sem. Nulla
et lectus vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eu
tellus sit amet tortor gravida placerat. Integer sapien est, iaculis in, pretium quis, viverra ac, nunc. Praesent eget sem
vel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus. Morbi dolor
nulla, malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla. Curabitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus.
Duis nibh mi, congue eu, accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis,
diam. Duis eget orci sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.
2.1

a section

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae,
felis. Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero,
nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donec
vehicula augue eu neque. Pellentesque habitant morbi tris-

90

tique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus rhoncus sem. Nulla
et lectus vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eu
tellus sit amet tortor gravida placerat. Integer sapien est, iaculis in, pretium quis, viverra ac, nunc. Praesent eget sem
vel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus. Morbi dolor
nulla, malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla. Curabitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus.
Duis nibh mi, congue eu, accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis,
diam. Duis eget orci sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.

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Part II
APPENDIX

A
APPENDIX CHAPTER

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae,
felis. Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero,
nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donec
vehicula augue eu neque. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus rhoncus sem. Nulla
et lectus vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eu
tellus sit amet tortor gravida placerat. Integer sapien est, iaculis in, pretium quis, viverra ac, nunc. Praesent eget sem
vel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus. Morbi dolor
nulla, malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla. Curabitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus.
Duis nibh mi, congue eu, accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis,
diam. Duis eget orci sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.
a.1

a section

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.

Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae,
felis. Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero,
nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donec

93

vehicula augue eu neque. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Mauris ut leo. Cras viverra metus rhoncus sem. Nulla
et lectus vestibulum urna fringilla ultrices. Phasellus eu
tellus sit amet tortor gravida placerat. Integer sapien est, iaculis in, pretium quis, viverra ac, nunc. Praesent eget sem
vel leo ultrices bibendum. Aenean faucibus. Morbi dolor
nulla, malesuada eu, pulvinar at, mollis ac, nulla. Curabitur auctor semper nulla. Donec varius orci eget risus.
Duis nibh mi, congue eu, accumsan eleifend, sagittis quis,
diam. Duis eget orci sit amet orci dignissim rutrum.

94