The Actuality of Philosoph
The Actuality of Philosoph
by Theodor W. Adorno
•This speech was delivered by Adorno May 7, 1931, as his inaugural lecture to the philosophy
faculty of the University of Frankfurt where he taught until 1933. The topic of Adorno's first
seminar was Walter Benjamin's book, Ursprung des deutsch.cn Trauerspiels (completed in 1925
and published in 1928), a study which Benjamin intended as his Habilitationsschrift but which
was rejected by the academic establishment. Adorno's speech reflects strongly the influence of
Benjamin's Trauerspiel study. It was to have been dedicated to Benjamin in published form, but
the planned publication did not take place. The speech was found in Adorno's estate after his
death and appears for the first time in vol. 1 of his Gesammelte Schriften.
1. Adorno is referring to Martin Heidegger's Sein und Zeit (1927), which by 1931 had made a
significant impact within academic circles.
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in fact all reality, from out of itself. This thesis has disintegrated. The Neo-
Kantianism of the Marburg School, which labored most strenuously to gain
the content of reality from logical categories, has indeed preserved its
self-contained form as a system, but has thereby renounced every right over
reality and has withdrawn into a formal region in which every determination
of content is condemned to virtually the farthest point of an unending
process. Within idealism, the position opposed to the Marburg School,
Simmel's Lebensphilosophie with its psychologistic and irrationalist orien-
tations, has admittedly maintained contact with the reality with which it
deals, but in so doing has lost all claim to make sense out of the empirical
world which presses in upon it, and becomes resigned to "the living" as a blind
and unenlightened concept of nature which it vainly attempts to raise the
unclear, illusory transcendence of the "more-than-life." The southwest-
German School of Rickert, finally, which mediates between the extremes,
purports that its "values" represent more concrete and applicable philo-
sophical criteria than the ideas of the Marburg School, and has developed a
method which sets empirical reality in relation, however questionable, to
those values. But the locus and source of the values remains undetermined;
they lie between logical necessity and psychological multiplicity somewhere,
not binding within reality, not transparent within the mind, an ontology of
appearances which is as little able to bear the question of value-from-whence
as that of value-for-what. Working apart from the attempts at grand
resolutions of idealist philosophy are the scientistic philosophies, which give
up from the beginning the basic idealist question regarding the constitution
of reality and, still within the frame of a propadeutics of the separate,
developed disciplines, grant validity only to the natural sciences, and thereby
mean to possess secure ground in the given, be it the unity of consciousness
(Bewusstseinszusammenhang), or be it the research of the separate
disciplines. Losing contact with the historical problems of philosophy, they
forgot that in every assumption their own statements are inextricably bound
to historical problems and the history of those problems, and are not to be
resolved independent of them.
Inserted into this situation is the effort of the philosophic spirit which is
known to us in present day under the name of phenomenology: the effort,
following the disintegration of the idealist systems and with the instrument of
idealism, the autonome ratio, to gain a trans-subjective, binding order of
being. It is the deepest paradox of all phenomenological intentions that, by
means of the same categories produced by subjective, post-Cartesian thought,
they strive to gain just that objectivity which these intentions originally
opposed. It is thus no accident that phenomenology in Husserl took precisely
its starting point from transcendental idealism, and the late products of
phenomenology are all the less able to disavow this origin, the more they try to
conceal it. It was the authentically productive and fruitful discovery of
Husserl—more important than the externally more effective method of
Wesenschau [essential intuition]—that he recognized in the meaning of the
122 / TELOS
to the heaven of ideas that is dark and problematic, and leaves room for only
the weakest trace of hope. With Scheler, material phenomenology has
dialectically revoked itself. Only the metaphysics of the impulse is left over
from the ontological design; the only remaining eternity over which his
philosophy has disposal is that of a boundless and uncontrolled dynamic.
Viewed under the aspect of this self-revocation of phenomenology,
Heidegger's theory also presents itself differently than is apparent from the
pathos of the beginning which is responsible for its external effect.
With Heidegger, at least in his published writings, the question of objective
ideas and objective being has been replaced by the subjective. The challenge
of material ontology is reduced to the realm of subjectivity, within the depths
of which it searches for what it was not able to locate in the open fullness of
reality. It is thus no accident, in the philosophical-historical sense as well, that
Heidegger falls back on precisely the latest plan for a subjective ontology
produced by Western thinking: the existentialist philosophy of Soren
Kierkegaard. But Kierkegaard's plan is irreparably shattered. No firmly
grounded being has been able to reach Kierkegaard's restless, inner-subjective
dialectic; the last depth which opened up to it was that of the despair into
which subjectivity disintegrated, an objective despair which transformed the
design of being within subjectivity into a design of hell. It knows of no
other way to escape this hellish space than by a "leap" into transcendence
which remains an inauthentic and empty act of thought, itself subjective, and
which finds its highest determination in the paradox that here the subjective
mind must sacrifice itself and retain belief instead, the contents of which,
accidental for subjectivity, derive solely from the Biblical word. Only through
the assumption of an essentially undialectical and historically pre-dialectical
"ready at hand" (zurhanden) reality is Heidegger able to evade such a
consequence. However, a leap and an undialectical negation (Negat) of
subjective being is also Heidegger's ultimate justification, with the sole
difference that the analysis of the "existing there" (Vorfindlichen), whereby
Heidegger remains bound to phenomenology and breaks in principle with
Kierkegaard's idealist speculation, avoids the transcendence of belief which is
grasped spontaneously with the sacrifice of subjective mind, and instead
recognizes solely the transcendence to a vitalist "thus being" (Sosetn): in
death. With Heidegger's metaphysics of death, phenomenology seals a
development which Scheler already inaugurated with the theory of impulse.
It cannot be concealed that phenomenology is on the verge of ending in
precisely that vitalism against which it originally declared battle: the
transcendence of death with Simmel is distinguished from Heidegger's solely
in that it remains within psychological categories whereas Heidegger speaks in
ontological ones. However, in the material itself, for example in the analysis
of the anxiety phenomenon, it would be hard to find a sure way to distinguish
them.
In accordance with this interpretation of the transition of phenomeno-
logy into vitalism, Heidegger could evade the second great threat to
124 / TEWS
2. Cf. Walter Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (Berlin, 1929), pp. 9-44,
especially pp. 21 and 23.
128 / TEWS
Construction out of small and unintentional elements thus counts among the
basic assumptions of philosophic interpretation; turning to the "refuse of the
physical world" (Abhub der Erscheinungswelt) which Freud proclaimed, has
validity beyond the realm of psychoanalysis, just as the turning of progressive
social philosophy to economics has validity not merely due to the empirical
superiority of economics, but just as much because of the immanent
requirements of philosophic interpretation itself. Should philosophy today ask
about the absolute relationship between the thing-in-itself and appearance,
or, to grasp a more current formulation, about simply the meaning of being,
it would either remain formal and unbinding, or it would split itself into a
multitude of possible and arbitrary world-view positions (weltanschaultcher
Standpunkte).
Suppose, however—I give an example as a thought experiment, without
suggesting its actual feasibility—suppose it were possible to group the
elements of a social analysis in such a manner that the way they came together
made a figure which certainly does not lie before us organically, but which
must first be posited: the commodity structure. This would hardly solve the
thing-in-itself problem, not even in the sense that somehow the social
conditions might be revealed under which the thing-in-itself problem came
into existence, as Lukacs even thought the solution to be;3 for the truth
content of a problem is in principle different from the historical and psycho-
logical conditions out of which it grows. But it might be possible that, from a
sufficient construction of the commodity structure, the thing-in-itself
problem absolutely disappeared. Like a source of light, the historicalfigureof
commodity and of exchange value may free the form of a reality, the hidden
meaning of which remained closed to investigation of the thing-in-itself
problem, because there is no hidden meaning which could be redeemable
from its one-time and first-time historical appearance. I don't want to give
any material statements here, but only point out the direction for what I
perceive as the tasks of philosophic interpretation. But even simply the
correct formulation of these tasks would establish several things concerning
those questions of philosophic principle, the explicit expression of which I
would like to avoid. Namely this: that the function which the traditional
philosophic inquiry expected from meta-historical, symbolically meaningful
ideas is accomplished by inner-historically constituted, non-symbolic ones.
With this, however, the relationship between ontology and history would also
be differently posited, in principle, without thereby allowing the device of
ontologizing history as totality in the form of mere "historicity," whereby
every specific tension between interpretation and the object would be lost,
and merely a masked historicism would remain. Instead of this, according to
my conception, history would no more be the place from which ideas arise,
stand out independently and disappear again. On the contrary, the historical
images (geschichtliche Bilder) would at the same time be themselves ideas,
the configuration of which constituted unintentional truth (intentionslose
3. Cf. Georg Lukacs, Geschichte und Klassenbevnisstsein (1923).
THE ACTUALITY OF PHILOSOPHY / 129
of that which has long been called philosophy. Whereas (at least the official)
contemporary philosophic thinking has long kept its distance from these
demands, or in any case has attempted to assimilate them singly in a watered-
down form, one of the first and most actual tasks would appear to be the
radical criticism of the ruling philosophic thinking. I am not afraid of the
reproach of unfruitful negativity—an expression which Gottfried Keller once
characterized as a "gingerbread expression" (Pfefferkuchenausdruck). If
philosophic interpretation can in fact only prosper dialectically, then the first
dialectical point of attack is given by a philosophy which cultivates precisely
those problems whose removal appears more pressingly necessary than the
addition of a new answer to so many old ones. Only an essentially
undialectical philosophy, one which aims at ahistorical truth, could maintain
that the old problems could simply be removed by forgetting them and
starting fresh from the beginning. In fact, the deception of beginning is
precisely that which in Heidegger's philosophy comes under criticism first of
all. Only in the strictest dialectical communication with the most recent
solution-attempts of philosophy and of philosophic terminology can a real
change in philosophic consciousness prevail. This communication will have to
take its specific scientific material preponderantly from sociology and, as
the interpretive grouping process demands, crystalize out the small, unin-
tentional elements which are nonetheless still bound to philosophic
material.
One of the most powerful academic philosophers of the present [Heidegger]
is said to have answered the question of the relationship between philosophy
and sociology somewhat like this: while the philosopher is like an architect
who presents and develops the blueprint of a house, the sociologist is like the
cat burglar who climbs the walls from outside and takes out what he can
reach. I would be inclined to acknowledge the comparison and to interpret
positively the function he gave sociology for philosophy. For the house, this
big house, has long since decayed in its foundations and threatens not only to
destroy all those inside it, but to cause all the things to vanish which are stored
within it, much of which is irreplaceable. If the cat burglar steals these
things, these singular, indeed often half-forgotten things, he does a good
deed, provided that they are only rescued; he will scarcely hold onto them for
long, since they are for him only of scant worth. Of course, the appreciation
of sociology by philosophic interpretation requires some limitations. The
point of interpretive philosophy is to construct keys, before which reality
springs open. As to the size of the key categories, they are specially made to
order. The old idealism chose categories too large; so they did not even come
close to fitting the keyhole. Pure philosophic sociologism chooses them too
small; the key indeed goes in, but the door doesn't open. A great number of
sociologists carry nominalism so far that the concepts become too small to
align the others with themselves, to enter with them into a constellation.
What remains is a vast, inconsistent connection of simple this-here deter-
minations, which scoffs at every cognitive ordering and in no way provides a
THE ACTUALITY OF PHILOSOPHY / 131
critical criterion. Thus, for example, the concept of class is nullified and
replaced by countless descriptions of separate groups so that they can no
longer be arranged into overlapping unities, although they in fact appear as
such in empirical reality. Similarly, one of the most important concepts, that
of ideology,4 is robbed of its cutting edge by defining it formally as the
arrangement of contents of consciousness in regard to particular groups,
without allowing the question to arise any longer as to the truth or falsity of
the contents themselves. This sociology classifies itself as a kind of general
relativism, the generality of which can be no more recognized by philosophic
interpretation than can any other generality, and for the correction of which
philosophy possesses a sufficient means in the dialectical method.
In regard to the manipulation of conceptual material by philosophy, I
speak purposely of grouping and trial arrangement, of constellation and
construction. The historical images, which do not constitute the meaning of
being (Daseiri) but dissolve and resolve its questions are not simply self-given.
They do not lie organically ready in history; not showing (Schau [Husserl]) or
intuition is required to become aware of them. They are not magically sent by
the gods to be taken in and venerated. Rather, they must be produced by
human beings and are legitimated in the last analysis alone by the fact that
reality crystalizes about them in striking conclusiveness (Evidenz [Husserl]).
Here they divorce themselves centrally from the archaic, the mythic
archetypes (Urbilder) which psychoanalysis lights upon, and which [Ludwig]
Klages hopes to preserve as categories of our knowledge. Should they be
equivalent to them in a hundred characteristics, they separate themselves at
the point where those [archetypes] describe their fatalistic orbit in the heads
of human beings. The historical images are manageable and comprehensible,
instruments of human reason, even there where they seem to align themselves
objectively, as magnetic centers of objective being. They are models, by
means of which the ratio, examining and testing, approaches a reality which
refuses to submit to laws, yet can imitate the pattern of the model every time,
provided that pattern is imprinted correctly. One may see here an attempt to
re-establish that old concept of philosophy which was formulated by Bacon
and passionately contended around the time of Leibniz, a conception which
idealism derided as a fad: that of the ars inveniendi [art of invention]. Every
other conception of models would be gnostic and indefensible. But the
organon of this ars inveniendi is fantasy. An exact fantasy; fantasy which
abides strictly within the material which the sciences present to it, and reaches
beyond them only in the smallest aspects of their arrangement: aspects,
granted, which fantasy itself must originally generate. If the idea of
philosophic interpretation which I tried to develop for you is valid, then it can
be expressed as the demand to answer the questions of a pre-given reality each
time, through a fantasy which rearranges the elements of the question
without going beyond the circumference of the elements, the exactitude of
which has its control in the disappearance of the question.
4. Adorno is referring to Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (1929).
132 / TEWS
I know full well that many, perhaps most of you are not in agreement with
what I am presenting here. Not only scientific thinking but, still more,
fundamental ontology contradicts my conviction as to the current tasks of
philosophy. But thinking which aims at relations with the object, and not at
validity isolated in itself, is accustomed to prove its right to exist not by
refuting the objections which are voiced against it and which consider
themselves irrefutable, but by its fruitfulness, in the sense in which Goethe
used the term. Nonetheless, may I still perhaps address a word to the most
current objections, not as I have construed them, but as the representatives of
fundamental ontology formulate them, and as they first led me to formulate
the theory according to which, up until then, I had proceeded solely in the
praxis of philosophic interpretation.
The central objection is that my conception, too, is based on a concept of
man, a blueprint of Being (Entwurf des Daseins); only, out of blind anxiety
before the power of history, I allegedly shrank from putting these invariants
forth clearly and left them clouded; instead I bestowed upon historical
facticity, or its arrangement, the power which actually belongs to the
invariant, ontological first principles, practiced idolatry with historically
produced being, destroyed in philosophy every permanent standard,
sublimated it into an aesthetic picture game (Bilderspiel), and transformed
the prima philosophia [philosophy of first principles] into essayism.
In response, I can relate to these objections only by admitting of their
content, but I defend it as philosophically legitimate. I will not decide
whether a particular conception of man and being lies at the base of my
theory, but I do deny the necessity of resorting to this conception. It is an
idealist demand, that of an absolute beginning, as only pure thought by itself
can accomplish. It is a Cartesian demand, which believes it necessary to raise
thinking to the form of its thought presuppositions and axioms. However,
philosophy which no longer makes the assumption of autonomy, which no
longer believes reality to be grounded in the ratio, but instead assumes always
and forever that the law-giving of autonomous reason pierces through a being
which is not adequate to it and cannot be laid out rationally as a totality-
such a philosophy will not go the entire path to the rational presuppositions,
but instead will stop there where irreducible reality breaks in upon it. If it
proceeds further into the region of presuppositions, then it will be able to
reach them only formally, and at the price of that reality in which its actual
tasks are laid. The break-in of what is irreducible, however, occurs concrete-
historically and thus it is history which retards the movement of thought to its
presuppositions. The productivity of thinking is able to prove itself only
dialectically, in historical concreteness. Both thought and history come into
communication within the models. Regarding efforts to achieve a form
for such communication, I gladly put up with the reproach of essayism. The
English empiricists called their philosophic writings essays, as did Leibniz,
because the power of freshly disclosed reality, upon which their thinking
struck, continuously forced upon them the risk of experimentation. Not until
THE ACTUALITY OF PHILOSOPHY / 133
the post-Kantian century was the risk of experimentation lost, along with the
power of reality. Thus from a form of great philosophy the essay became an
insignificant form of aesthetics, in which a concretion of interpretation
nonetheless takes refuge as appearance (Schein), over which authentic
philosophy, in the grand dimensions of its problems, has long since lost
disposal.
If, with the disintegration of all security within great philosophy,
experiment makes its entry; if it thereby ties onto the limited, contoured and
unsymbolic interpretations of aesthetic essays, then that does not appear to be
condemnable, provided that the objects are chosen correctly, that they are
real. For the mind (Geist) is indeed not capable of producing or grasping the
totality of the real, but it may be possible to penetrate the detail, to explode in
miniature the mass of merely existing reality.