BHA: Are we hard on Hegel, or what?

[Phil Walden <phil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ruth,

Response below, interspersed with previous text:
>
> There is actually a wonderful-looking symposium here next weekend
> that my advisor is involved with, on Adorno.  I'm, like, the only
> person who has ever worked with him who isn't presenting a paper
> there!  O well.  Critical realism it is.

Why can't you be an Adornian and a critical realist at the same time?  Of
course, it does seem to be true that if one is into aesthetics then critical
realism doesn't seem to be the right choice.  But then, who's into
aesthetics?  Aesthetics, shmaesthetics.  I read Adorno for his ontology.
>
> You wrote:
>
>    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.
>
>
> Yes, I think this is right (though it's not *only* reason that is
> involved).

Can you give me an example of something else that you think is involved?
>
>
> >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.".
>
> I'm not in a position to assess Adorno's reading of Hegel,

It's all in Adorno's THREE STUDIES ON HEGEL, which is short and pretty
sweet.

 so I
> am really limited in what I can say, but it seems to me that our
> guys reach kind of an impasse here.  As I understand him, Adorno
> will say that this claim in Hegel's hands is the crux of what he,
> Adorno, calls the myth of constitutive subjectivity.

I don't actually recall Adorno using the expression "constitutive
subjectivity" but you may be right.  But the way I read Hegel, he is not
saying "reality conforms to my categories", which is what you seem to be
implying, unless I am mistaken.  Rather, Hegel is supplying us (humanity)
with a categorial system which is powerfully reflective of the real
constitution of the universe, in the sense that it enables us - for the
first time in history - to be conscious of our place in the universe.

  This is why
> Adorno prefers Kant in certain ways -- because in Kant there is
> at least the recognition that reason comes up against objective
> limits.

But you are forgetting that Kant and Hegel use "reason" in completely
different senses.  As you say, for Kant reason is a purely subjective
phenomenon, produced by the autonomous individual human ego (at least that
is my understanding of Kant).  For Hegel, on the contrary, reason is the
motor force of history and as such is basically objective, though with
subjective elements.

  And it is not just a question of metaphysics; it relates
> to the qualifications of Hegel's politics that you introduce.
> That is, Adorno thinks that it's not just that Hegel happens
> unfortunately to endorse the Prussian state.  He (along with
> Marx) would say that an illusory freedom is (at best) [the "at
> best" part is Adorno on his own] precisely what is expressed in
> the idea that reason can be co-extensive with being.

That would be true if reason was what Kant means by reason, but Hegel does
not mean the same thing.  Adorno in my view is making a big mistake in
reducing Hegelian reason to Kantian reason.
>
> In one sense, for Adorno it comes down to Hegel not being a
> materialist.  It's interesting that this isn't a problem for you.

Maybe it is a problem, but I'm not sure Adorno has found the right answer.
I suppose for me the biggest problem in philosophy is subjective idealism.
By that I mean the tendency for the individual human ego to assume that it
is in a one-to-one correspondence with the whole of reality.  For me, this
is Kant or Fichte.  Why Kant I hear you say?  Because he assumes that reason
is located in the individual human ego.  Hegel's objective idealism tries to
clear up all this confusion, pretty effectively imo.  Seen from this
perspective, Hegel could be seen as the first modern materialist because he
is against building artificial walls between what is internal to our minds
and what is external to them.


>  On the contrary, it sounds as though it is precisely the
> metaphysics that you are drawn to, because it authorizes a
> conception of reason as potentially all-extensive.  In fact, if I
> understand you, your criticism of Bhaskar is that his attempt at
> absolute idealism falls short.

No, my criticism of Bhaskar is that he has rejected materialism in the sense
I have outlined above, in favour of a subjective idealist approach to
reality.

  (Bhaskar, I think, would in turn
> charge you with "cognitive triumphalism," I think he calls it.)

I have never understood what Bhaskar's use of the term "cognitive
triumphalism" is meant to mean.  I'll throw that out for comment.
>
> But back to Adorno for a second.  Adorno also suggests that the
> conception of reason that comes from Hegel is in some sense
> necessarily totalitarian.  I'm assuming that you don't buy that
> either!  I'm curious, though, how you think about that aspect of
> his critique, if you have.

Hegel's conception of reason is certainly an active and reflective
conception of reason, as opposed to, for example, Heidegger's passive
waiting for mysterious clearances.  But totalitarian?  I don't see how
Hegel's conception of reason is implicated in the imposition of its will by
one group on another.  Maybe you can explain a bit why you think this, Ruth?

Hegelianly but with some reservations,

Phil
>
> Warmly,
> Ruth
>
>
>
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