BHA: Is it Hegel or Adorno?

["Phil Walden" <phil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ruth,

Decent of you to reply after I got angry with you some weeks ago.  I guess
you are just that kind of person.  (Anyway, I was not really angry with
you - more with myself).  But to come to your question.

Hmmm.  It is a big question.  One standard way of drawing the distinction
between Hegel and Adorno is that Hegel is said to elaborate a metaphysics of
"the identity of identity and difference" whereas Adorno is said to
elaborate a metaphysics of "the non-identity of identity and difference".
Or Simon Jarvis has it as "the identity of identity and non-identity"
(Hegel) versus "the non-identity of identity and non-identity" (Adorno).  It
seems that the idea is that Hegel does not take sufficient account of
experience and allegedly illicitly compresses all experience into THE
CONCEPT.  Or, to put it another way, it is argued that Hegel is trying to
compress all the myriad dialectics of experience into a unitary dialectic.

After a long period of sitting on the fence, (on this issue an untenable
position for a philosopher), I have now decided that Adorno has misread
Hegel on this question.  To me it seems to come down to what one understands
by the diremptness of reality, or the feeling of alienation that we all seem
to have.  Now to Adorno this alienation derives from the overconfidence and
complacency of reason which never seems to be adequate to the richness of
experience.  To Adorno, Hegel is implicated in this problem.

But, as I read Hegel, what gives meaning to experience is precisely reason.
By this I mean reason working through history, which is not pure and simply
human reason, but is a teleology located in nature as a whole.  If I may put
it like this, Hegel seems to be saying to Adorno "My dear fellow, human
experience is indeed incredibly varied and important to analyse, but let's
not imagine that human experience supplies reason.  It is in truth much
closer to say that reason supplies human experience.".

Does this mean that Hegel is proposing a unitary dialectic?  Rather, it
seems to me that Hegel is (systematically) putting forward a variety of
principles or philosophical premises that he thinks are well-disposed to
assist humanity in no longer being so dirempted or alienated from what he
regards as its true essence - this is what Hegelians call "the journey to
self-consciousness".  Since human beings are only a part of nature, and have
arisen from nature, it seems intuitively easy to agree with Hegel that there
is a "cunning of reason" which we need to get more in touch with, rather
than take Adorno's line that (supposedly) unique experience must *of itself*
engender meaning.  Many Hegelians would probably say that Adorno's intense
focus on "unique experiences" represents a bad abstraction and diversion
from the struggle to align with "the cunning of reason" - they would
ultimately put Adorno amongst the postmodernists.

That's the best I can do at the moment.  Any feedback, from any quarter,
would be very welcome.

Phil
>
>
> Hi Phil,
>
> I read your post on Hegel with great interest.  The idea that
> reason is unlimited, and that we can have (one kind of?)
> knowledge of anything that we can imagine, doesn't resonate much
> with me, but it's not something that I have thought a lot about.
> And I don't know Hegel well at all.  Adorno I know a little bit,
> though.  I'm curious to hear what you think of his critique of
> Hegel on this major point.  I would assume that you're unconvinced.
>
> Warmly,
> Ruth
>
>
>
>
>
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