BHA: re: Martti

[Ruth Groff <rgroff@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi Martti,

No distraction; the more people participating the better!

I agree with you that Adorno's ontology is weak.  He employs the notion of "the primacy of the object," but it's left as something like a regulatory ideal.  As I've said before, I think that it is because he sees statements, including ontological ones, as mediated -- and sees such mediation as a barrier, a kind of mesh of subjectivity that thought carries with it necessarily.  So it's not clear to him how to distinguish between statements about how the world is and statements about our beliefs about how the world is.

I think that he does okay with critical "thinking," as you put it, but I guess I would agree with you that it is, ultimately, constrained by the limits to his ontological realism.  I think that a big problem with Adorno is that he is ambivalent about what causality is.

You wrote:

So, Ruth how is Adorno's philosophy critical realist
>one? If you say, that Adorno explicated critical realism in very
>broad and ambiguous way, it is not critical realist philosophy where
>there is open totality as real.

I don't think that I would say that Adorno's philosophy is a critical realist one.  [I don't really care about adding people to the tent, anyway.]  What I would say is that there are some points of overlap between Adorno's thought and transcendental realism.  However there are also major points of difference -- and from the blurbs that Mervyn sent about Bhaskar's newest work, it sounds like they are getting bigger.

In any case, I'd be curious to hear more of what you mean by "it is not critical realist philosophy where there is open totality as real."

>Not going to interfere to your discussion for more.. .One comment:
>In my mind Adorno does not prefer Kant over Hegel or any other
>philosopher, because he sought for the only realist philosophy
>which is explicable among all existing irreal philosphies. For him
>Kant was the point of reference of making his own searches by
>means of minimal theoretical, philosophical concepts, that is
>subject-object, identity, 'real', self-reflection, etc.


Yes.  I think I said (and if I didn't I should have) that he prefers Kant in relation to the particular issue that we were discussing -- or, in some respects.  In other respects it is Hegel.  But I agree with the underlying point of your comment, about how he makes use of the tradition.

Warmly,
Ruth



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