adorno: hegel-three studies

7/30/2019 Adorno: Hegel-three studies

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Hegel

Three Studies


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Hegel

Three Studies

Theodor W. Adorno

tnslated by Shie Weber Nicholsenwith an introdutio byShier Weber Nihoen and Jeremy]. Shapiro

..

The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and

London, England


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his edition 199 Msschusetts Institute of echnologyhis work originlly ppered in Germn under the title Dre Sde z Hegel 19 1971 uhrkmp Verlg Frnkfurt m Min Germny

All rights reserved No prt of this book my be reproduced in ny form or byny electronic or mechnicl mens including photocopying recording orinformtion storge nd retrievl) without permission in writing from thepublisher

his book ws set in Bskerville by he Mple-Vil Book MnufcturingGroup nd ws printed nd bound in the nited ttes of Americ

Librry of Congress Ctlging-in-Publiction DtAdorno heodor W 190-199

[Drei tudien zu Hegel English]Hegel three studies Ieodor W Adorno ; trnslted by hierryWeber Nicholsen with n introduction by hierry Weber Nicholsennd Jeremy J hpirop cmtudies in contemporry Germn socil thought)

rnsltion of Drei tudien zu HegelIncludes bibliogrphicl references nd indexIBN 0--0111-X1 Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 1770-181 itle eriesB948A1 19919dc0

.e1

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For Kar Heinz Haag

3789


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ontents

Intrduction by Shierry Weber Nichoen andJeremy J Shapiro

PeaceA Note on the Text

Editoria Remark from the German Edition

Aspects of Hegel's Philosophy

Th Exeriential Content of Hegel's Philosohy

Skoteinos, or How to Read Hegel

Noe

Nae Index

X

XXXvxxxvii

XXXX

1

53

89

149

159


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ntroduction

Shierry Weer NicholsenJeremy J Shiro

I salute you from the Petried Forest of human cultureWhere nothing is left standigBut where roam great swirling lightsWhich call for the deliverance of foliage and bird.From your ngers ows the sap of trees in ower.Anr Breon, Ode to Charles Fourier

The development of crtcal phlosophy and socal theory n thetwenteth century especally that of Theodor W Adorno andthe Frankfurt School has been ntmately lnked wth the appro

praton and renterpretaton of the thnkers of German Idealsm most notably Hegel Such thnkers as Adorno MaxHorkhemer Herbert Marcuse and Jrgen Habermas througha crtcal hermeneutc alogue wth Kant Schller SchellngHegel Schopenhauer Marx Kerkegaard and Netzsche elaborated ther own theoretcal oeuvre and renterreted the trendsand contradctons o the present hstorcal perod through the

perspectve provded by these nneteenthcentury phlosophers.At the same tme they made mportant contrbutons to our understandng of these thnkers To do so tey had to pry theearler phlosophers thought out of tradtonal academc dog


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xIntrodution

matc and deologcal nterpretatons n order to unfold the core

concepts and crtque contaned n ther work. Ths hermeneutcwas contnuously elaborated as part of a radcal poltcal cultural and socal crtque of advanced captalsm and authortaran poltcal tendences. It was undertaken wth theconvcton that and onedmensonal thnkng was nherent n the of domnaton n advanced ndustral

and that the Germann ther of narrow andostYshg foundatons for a new crtcal ndustral It s qute characterstc that the earlest works of the major thnkers of theFrankfurt School (f we nclude ther doctoral dssertatons andHabilitatinsshrifte) nclude major studes of Kant Schller

Schellng Hegel and Kerkegaard and that ther later worksnclude studes of Hegel Marx Schopenhauer and Netzscheas well as of Freud and Max Weber whom the crtcal theorstssaw as the brdge between the phlosophcal tradton and thesocal scences In addton they analyzed major twentethcen-tury thnkers ncludng Husserl Hedegger Sartre DeweyCarnap and Wttgensten as phlosopherdeologsts.

The core of the crtcal theorsts approach s the mmanentcrtque of deolog. Truth s attaned both the truthcontent and the contradctons of thought through lnkng t to

truth content and contradctons of ts socal context andcommtments. Ths leads to a hstorcally relatvzed at s

unversal through awareness of ts hstorcal

and socal stuaton and lmtatons The crtque of deology meanstakng theo at ts wod and at ts deed. IIence the Fankfu School prodced an mposng seres of crtcal hermeneutc studesof socal theory and phlosophy most of whch are mportntboth as phlosophcal and socologcal works n ther own rgh


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ntodution

and as valuable contrbutons to the understandng of other the

orsts1 No other thnker was as mportant to ths crtcal hermeneuts as Hegel The crtcal theorsts amed at a dalectcalmethod that was not embroled n the vagares of socalst partypoltcs and postvstc or metaphyscal nterpretatons of MarxIn both Hegel and Marx the dalectcal method clamed to provde a unty of theoretcal and practcal reason that seemed torn

asunder contemporary cvlzaton and phlosophy And thecharacter of auncaton of the human scences that the crtc theorsts soughtto about for the radca of

the of economcs scence and Hegel's own crtqueof the lmtatons of the scentc worldvew on the one hand and

ts romantc alterntve on the otheran ntellectual stuatonthat n some ways parallels that of the juxtaposton of twentethcentury postvsm and prgmatsm on the one hand and phenomenology exstentalsm and hermeneutcs on the othersuggested an analogous crtque of these contemporary schoolsof thought Hegel clamed ad ntended to be the culmnatonof Western ratonalsm and ths made hs thought an approprate focus for the crtque of Western cvlzaton Above all

focus on the and the of negaton andcontradcton nherent n and seemed a to

the from the afrmatve owerof advanced ndustral

Adorno and Marcuse as well regarded Hegel despte hs ob

vous conservatve tendences as the true revolutonary thnkerperhaps more so than Marxf the negatve and dalectcal coreof ths thought could be rescued from ts embedded ness n adoctrne of undalectcal armaton reconclaton and uncaton Marcuse n Re a Revluti, ublshed a hfcentury


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xiiIntroduction

ago, attempted to artculate the negatve, crtcal, and dalectcalcore of Hegels thought and to preserve t n a properly under-stood Marxsm a Marxsm that syntheszes the humanstc coreof Marxs early wrtngs, the hstorcal materalsm of the GeaIdel and the dalectcal analyss contaned n Marxs matureeconomc theory. Marcuse, skeptcal of the revolutonary poten-tal of ether socal democracy or Lennst communsm never-

theless saw Hegel a dalectcal method that could be the bassfor a socalsm approprate to the hstorcal stuaton of ad-vanced ndusral socety. ublshed durng World War II, Reas ad Revluti looked toward ths humanstcally anddalectcally regenerated Marxsm as a hstorcal possblty afterthe defeat of Nazsm. Adorno, wrtng after World War II andthe stablzaton of the domnaton structure of advanced ndus-

tral socety followng the defeat of Nazsm, and after hs andMax Horkhemers Dialeti f Elghtemet whch focuses oncaptalst ndustralsms ablty to elmnate all opposton to thedomnaton of both nternal and external nature, sought to re-cuperate n Hegel the bass for a dalectc of resstance to thatpoer of domnaton by concentratng on the nondentcal, that

whch s beyond te domnaton of reasonIn ther nterpretatons of Hegel, both Marcuse and Adornoattempt to provde a phlosophcal bass for negatve thnkngfor thought that desres to fre tself from the shackles of thelogos of domnaton and to serve as a bass for and nterpre-taton of emancpaton n the broadest hstorcal senseeman-cpaton from class domnaton, from the ron cae" of

bureaucratc ratonalty, from the terror world of the concentra-ton camp, from the performance prncple," and rom one-dmensonal thought, admnstered culture, and deformedexperence Over the half century snce the publcaton of Mar-cuses Reas ad Revluti and despte ongong emancpatory


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xiiiIntrodution

undercurrents and outbreaks of emancpator movements the

ablt of the nversal market socet combned wth powerfulstate formatons to control or absorb opposton and cut off alernatves appears t have ncreased But as Adorno sas n As-pects of Hegels hlosoph"

a world integrated through prodution through the exhange relationship depends in all its moments on the soial onditions of its pro-

dution and in that sense atually realizes the primay of the wholeover its parts; in this regard the desperate impotene of every singleindividual now veries egel's extravagant oneption of the system .. . . The selfforgetfulness of prodution the insatiable and destrutiveexpansive priniple of the exhange soiety is reeted in egelianmetaphysis It desribs the way the world atually is not in historialperspetive but in essene.

Ths contnut n the wa the world actuall s" calls for renewed negatve or dalectcal thnkng and hence for a renewedunderstandng of Hegel who was ts founder n an emphatcsense And ths method of thought and analss cannot be smplan opposton or negaton from the outsde Rather to use theconcept that both Marcuse and Adorno dented as central toHegel t must be determnate negaton" negaton that emerges

out of and s specc to what t negates and that s part of tsver essence That s wh negatve thnkng or dalectcal thnkng s both a method and not a method

ror to recent currents of antfoundatonalsm all of modernphlosoph was marked b a struggle for method Ths metusextends from Descartess Disurse through Kants Critique, He

gelsPhemel

andL

and MarxsGea del

toHusserls eas and the wrtng of the earl Wttgensten andCarnap The prort of method s ntmatel lnked wth thedea of the sujectepstemologcal method logcal foundatonand the groundng of knowledge and truth n the subject are


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part of a sngle hstorcal project Even the crtque of the bourgeos noton of the subject n Marx and crtcal theory s carredout n the nterest of a less restrctve, less repressve, and lessrepressed subject. Snce Lukcss announcement, n Hist adClass Csiess, that orthodoxy n Marxsm s a matter ofmethod rather than of content, the development of Marxan socal theory has been bound up wth the queston of he nature

of ths method and the related queston of the hstorcal subject.The crtcal theorsts of the Frankfurt School, n partcular, werepreoccuped wth ths queston, n the lght of the lapsng of therevolutonary workng class as a hstorcal subject. Whereas Lukcsdented the subject wth the workng class and the Communstparty, the crtcal theorsts' economc, socologcal, and culturalnalyss, combned wth the course of poltcal events, could not

support ths dentcaton. Hence nether Marcuse nor Adornocould any longer transcend" Hegel, as Marx had, by projectngHegel's categores onto socal categores (although Marcuse contnued to be concerned wth the queston of an emergent hstorcal subject) To the contrary, crtcal thery returned to Hegelpartly out of the bankruptcy of precsely ths Marxan overcomng" and projecton of Hegel.

Adorno's thought n general, and hs nterpretaton of Hegeln partcular, sets tself an ronc task: that of developng a dalectcal method, wth ts connectons to a selfreectve subject,n a context dened as one n whch the subject has been lqudated by ts own attempt to lqudate everythng outsde of tselAnd hs dalectcal thought cannot merely attempt to resurrect

the lqudated subject. For a true, negatve dalectc must strveto attan precsely that otherness that s dened by a subjectorented dalectc. That s why Adorno dfferentates hmself fromHegel most emphatcally n relaton to the concepts of denttyand nondentty. In a tellng and paradoxcal formulaton that


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xvIntrodution

fully expresses German Idealism's attempt to reduce everythingto subjectness, Hegel argued for the identity of identity andnonidentity. Even that which is most resistant to, or outside, thesubject and the concept is conceived as a moment of an under-lying unity that is itself subject and concept, thus converting rec-ognition of the limitation of rationality into a hidden afrmationof it. Adoo's own approach to standing Hegel on his head"

was to argue precisely for the nonidentity of identity and non-identity": subjectness and mind, in those very accomplishmentsin which they have most recognized what is beyond or outsidethem, must strain toward one further dimenson of the beyond-ness" of this beond," recognizing that it is really beyondyetwithout thereby reducing themselves to slavish heteronomy orselfeffacement.

Hence Adorno's nsistence on the experintial content ofHegel's philosophy and on the iperative that a dialectical phi-losophy immerse itself in the experience of the objec. That iswhy, for Adorno, the dialectical method cannot be reduced to aset of axios or forulas. Method in that sense is inherentlsubjectivistic, in that it prsumes that reality conveniently ar-ranges itself in accordance with the postulates and preferecesof thought. If dialectical tinking is to avoid this idealistic presumption which can easily take on a materialistic form, as indialectical aterialism"), then it must shape itself to the co-tours of the objectnot as an irreducible given bu as somethingwith its own tensions and contradictions, which include those ofthe thought that tries to comprehend it. This approach holds

equally fo the understanding of Hegel's own thought, looking for its truth both in what it grasps and in what it conceals, inwhat it points to beyond itself as well as in what keeps it fromgrasping that to which it points, in what it says as well as in whatit tries to say but canno.


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Introdution

AdornosHegel s not merey esson n negtve thnkng Its so ke hs work esson n negtve experence Hsmethod s n ndssoube unty o thnkng nd experencngths s the unyng thred tht runs through hs work romNegative Dialetis nd these essys on Hege through hs nyseso musc nd terry works to hs person reectons ndphorsms Ths s perhps wht most dstngushes Adornos

crtc theory rom other currents o neoMrxn theory Notony shoud t not be understood s mere theory t s not nttempt (however wed)t ntends to be n ensembe tht ntegrtes theory the orentton o prctce nd experence nd sensbtynos wth tht o s ntht the noton nd ther s ound n

the Mrxn trdton s becuse o ndtothe extent o ts negect experence Its ths spect o hs

tht s most rdc nd to some ndgestbeAdornos work s thus mode o o

the word It s n nd thts theuthentc orm o or those

who ve n nword Tht s why Adornos ntenton nHegel { hs other work s n rge prt the preservton deveopment nd trnsmsson o specc reton to experence whch re tes to wht s by retng to wht s not nd rete to wht snot by retng to wht s And t s becuse Hegen phosophy s the rst rtcuton o the sturton o experence wth neg

tvy tht Adorno sserts tht these dys t s hrdy possbeor theoretc de o ny scope to do justce to the experenceo conscousness nd n ct not ony the experence o conscousness but the body experence o the humn beng wthout hvng ncorported somethng o Heges phosophy"(Aspects")


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VIntrodution ;

For n individual in a society

is an essential veicle for thenot of the truththe cognitive truth aout that societyut of his or her own That is why egative

not of ut also of armion Itis true that much of the modern experience of the pervertedworld takes the form of immediate negation of nausea shockalienation dissonance and despair But while the expres othis negatio is a part of the truth it is only a partially developedform of it For the real truth aout reality includes awareness ofthe potentiality the desire and the justication for transcendingthe perverted world It must go eyond the merey dialectical towhat Hegel calls the speculative in which the antagonisms of thedialectic are resolved The indvidual in advanced capitalist so

ciety who recognizes hat nothing ithin that society escapescontamination y domination and the commodity principle canmaintain a true identity only thrugh the negation of all the givens of the surrounding society and culture Such an existence isgoverned y orientation to the truh It reates through dialectical thought practice and experience to the essence of thingsBut through this relation it discerns and experiences the god

the true andthe eautiful through their deformationsas thenegation of the latter and as real in this negation It pursuesfreedom and happiness n a repressive and oppressie societywithout ideologically denying this repression and oppression Itpursues the life of a critical intellect without suffering the defor-mation and rigidifcation of experience that is the normal form

of intellectual life in capitalist societyBth Marcuse'sRe a Revluti and Adorno'sHegel ThreeStudies are works of the critical theorists as teachers who want topass on to actual or potential students the tools of thought thatwill enalethem to carry out the dicult tasks involved in thecritical analysis of the world and of thought Marcuse and Adorno


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Intodution

are teachers not as expounders of doctrine, however, but as in-terpreters of texts that are aong the ost difcult and contra-dictory of odern thought texts that, despite their ephasis onreason, appear heretic and, as Adorno states, occasionally un-decipherable In both wors one detects the pathos of teacherswho are concerned lest rare and precious tools that can acco-plish arvels fall into disuse such that future generations ay

no longer be able to atch their ancestors' achieveents, theway perhaps lateRoan literati ay have viewed the traditionof rhetoric, or the way crafspeople ay loo at the specializednowledge that is lost in ass production and autoation

Thus while Hegel Three Studies is certainly a wor of Hegelscholarship and interpretation, it is also a wor of pedagogy OfAdorno's writings it is perhaps the closest to representing the

intellectual atosphere and style of woring of Adorno'sPhilsphhes Haupemiar (Philosophy Seinar) at the JohannWolfgang Goethe University in ranfurt during the last decadeof Adorno's life, when he had becoe one of postwar Gerany'sphilosophical luinaries and inuential teachers The Philo-sophisches Hauptseinar was given every seester and was de-

voted alost exclusively to the priary wors of Kant and HegelIt was in these seinarsas well as in related lectures at theUniversitythat Adorno philosophically laborated the nega-tive dialectics of his later thought These seinars and lectureswere a priary inuence on the intellectual leaders of the Ger-an New Le A frequently told student joein ranfurt went,The Revolution is breaing out on the street? Too badI can't

iss Adorno's lecturehe features o Adornos philosophical seinars that standout in recollection gure proinently in the Hegel essays as wellThe rst was a dialogue aong three participants Kant, Hegel,and Adorno (and Max Horheier when he was still participat


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xixIntrodution

ing in the seminr), in hich Adorno ttempted to bring out

both the reltive truth content nd the reltive limittion of Kntnd Hegel in reltion to one nother, ginst the bckground ofMrxin, mterilist ssumptions. Adorno vindicted both Hegel'srgument ginst Knttht the limittions of reson set by Kntlredy implied the trnscendence of these limitsnd Knt'srgument for the necessity of something outside the totlizing

tendency of thought. The second s the centrlity of the Hegelin ctegory of medition to every spect of dilecticl thinking. Most of the philosophicl curents nd schools of thoughtof both Hegel's dy nd our on posit, s bsolutes or irreduci

ble givens, principles or entities tht re in fct the results ofbstrction or moments in processes outside themselvestht theydo not tke into ccountthe ldder tht they hve climbed up

nd thron y, to use Wittgenstein's phrse The im of dilecticl thinking is to think not bstrctly butccretely by understnding ides nd relities in the contrdictions of their specicontexts nd processes rther thn in bstrction from thesecontexts nd processesto put the ldder bck into the thoughtAnd for the criticl theorists the relevnt contexts nd processesre socil, culturl, psychologicl, nd intellectulthey re historicl through nd through In the seminrs the study o Kntnd Hegel s crried out in this very y, through meticulousdilecticlexpicati de texte of hich the essy Skoteinos" givessome exmples. And typiclly the semesterlong seminr devoted, for exmple, to Hegel'sPhemel f Midould hverrived t the eighth or tenth pge by the end of the termith

sense of exhusted chievement, nd redy for different orkthe folloing term.Not only did the criticl theorists endevor to nd the truth

content of the philosophicl trdition through criticl comprehension of it tht tkes ccount of its enmeshment in concrete


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Introdution

history that is the history of conicts about domination eman-ciation reason freedom hainess work terror and utoianstrivings. hey wanted also to learn and teach hw t read aduderstad the hilosohical tradition itself. he rst generationofFrankfurt School critical theorists stood in a far different re-lation to the hilosohical tradition of German Idealism than dothose who are rst encountering it today. In many ways Mar-

cuse's and Adorno's intellectual environment and training wereasclose to those of Kant and Hegel as to those of the resent.Yet both taught works of Kant and Hegel in the universitiesacross great historical chasms: Marcuse taught Hegel to studentsinAmerica in a hilosohically alien environment and Adornotaught to a generation of German students distanced from hisown by the hird Reich. We hoe that this ublication in En-

glish of Adorno's Hegel essays in the last decade of the centurywill contribute to the eretuation and elaboration of dialecticalthinking and exerience across yet another historical divide.

Resuing egeland only resue, not revival, is appropriate for himmeans faing up to his philosophy where it is most painful and wrestingtruth from it where its untruth is obviousThe Experienial Conen of Hegels Philosophy

Adorno'sHegel Three Studies takes the form of an extreme androvocative defense of the truth content in Hegel's hilosohy.Writing in the late 1950s and early 1960s Adorno defends Hegelnot only against the dismissals and distortions then currentthe

ositivist's dismissal of him as unintelligible or the Soviet Marx-ist's ideological version of the dialecticbut also against the lib-eral's lukearm homage to Hegel's sense of historical reality.Certainly those views of Hegel ersist Bt today Adorno's re-sentation of Hegel is startling even within the context of the con


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Introdution

empoy wve of inees in Hegel iniied by he Fnkf

School's own popliy in his cony nd hen einfoced byhe Fench vi deconscion Adono'sHegel eminds s hnow s mch s in 1956 when he s of hese essys ws givens lece i is no qesion of wh is living nd wh is dedin Hegelhe qesion wih hich Coce iniied he wenieheny Hegel evivlb qesion of wh he pesen mensin he fce of Hegel" Adono pesens Hegel ed gins hegin nd fom he pespecive of ciiqe of philosophy s nisoled discipline b Hegel who is sill he ges nspssed by ny weniehceny philosophy The FnkfSchool's ciicl heoy of sociey epesened in some especs en o Hegel fom Mx nd in some especs Adono'sHegelseves o icle Adono's own philosophicl enepise s well

Js s Hegel's philosophy emps o bing o selfconscios-ness he lbos of spii p o his ime so Adono's wok is selfeecion of h in Hegel which hd no been bogh oconsciosness wihin Hegel's own wok In his espec s wellHegel seves s defense of he conempoy elevnce ofAdono nd he Fnkf School

The im ofHegel Three Studies, Adono ells s in his pefceiso pepe new concepion of he dilecic" he dilecicwoks hogh immnen ciicism nd his is he ppochAdono kes in his defense of Hegel I is hogh immnenciicism h Adono cks he h clims of he vios schoolsof hoghposiivism Gesl psychology phenomenologyexisenil onology dilecicl meilismh clim o hve

spssed Hegel Moe imon Hegl himself hogh im-mnenciicism will led hogh o h new concepion of hedilecic he negive dilecics" Adoo exponded in he wokofh nme pblished sholy feHegel The negive dilecic is won by wesing" s Adono sys he h conen fom


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xxiiIntroduction

Hegels philosophy precisely where its untruth is most ovious.

Accordingly, it is to the skandalon of Hegels philosophyitsspeculative asolute idealism, that which is ost faded, most dis-credited, most outmoded in it, even a sort of philosophical kitschthat Adorno turns to nd a dialectic that makes room for thecontingent, the particular, the nonidentical. Speculation is not,Adorno tells us, some kind of troulesome ornamentation; on

the contrary, Hegels sustantive insights . . . are produced yspeculation

Because of his idealism egel has been reproached with being abstractin comparison with the concreteness of the phenomenological anthro-pological and ontological schools. But he brought innitely more con-creteness into this philosophical idea than those approaches and notbecause his speculative imagination was balanced by a sense of reality

but by virtue of the approach hs philosophy takesby virtue one mightsay of the experiential character of his speculation itself. (ExperientialContent)

How can this e so? One of Adornos answers is that the di-alectic in asolute idealism is conceived non hierarchically . It isneither a middle etween extremes nor a susumption of thecomponent part under a synthetic whole for this reason too, thedialectic is not a method nor is Hegels work a system). Truthemerges from a dialectical interplay of suject and oject, ofparticular and whole, of mediated and unmediated. Althoughthere is no such thing as the pure given or immedate, the pureempiricaldatum, to serve as a starting pointan error that, asAdorno points out, oth empiricism and its irrationalist critics

makeasuject conceived in opposition to empirical reality isalso impossile, a mee emp sujeciis. All inepeaionsof Hegel that end y dismissing him fail to accommodate thisnonhierarchical coception of the dialectic. If truth is process inthis sense, it is also concrete. The movement of thought is pow


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Introdution

ered by the selfreecton of the subject attemptng to conceve

realty and ultmately the absoluteness of dealsm oblteratesthe dstncton betwen subject and object: If as n Hegel nthe totalty everythng ultmately collapses nto the subject as ab-solute sprt dealsm thereby cancels tself out because no df-ference remans through whch the subject coul be dentedas somethng dstnct as subject" (Experental Content") StllHegelhad attempted to formulate the dalectc and the subject-object as absolute subject Hence the nonsubsumablty of thepartcular becomes apparent at the same te Hegel's phloso-phy denes t. Hegel's phlosophy s thus selfcontradctory by tsown crteron and t s the crteron the dalectc that Adornoolds out aganst Hegel as the bearer of the truth content

Another of Adorno's answers to the ueston of how specula-

ton can tself be the experental content of Hegel's phlosophyand can accommodate concreteness takes the form of hs devel-opment of Hegel's noton of theArbeit des Bgfs, the labor oftheconcept The labor of the sprtthe struggles of truth nprocess the exertons of ntellectual actvty the efforts nvolvedn wrestn Hegel's truth from hs untruths a form of labon tself It s also Adorno ndcates socal labor presented n the

guse of logc and Hegel's absolte sprt s none other than s-cety: The mystery behnd synthetc appercepton . s noneother than socal labor" (Aspects"). Whle ths answer mght easlybe seen as socologsm" a neoMarxst stadng of Hegel on hshead Adorno rescues t and gves t a further twst. In a tour deforce through whch he wrests truth even from Hegel's mostnotorous work wth ts most notorous thessthePhilsphy fRight and ts noton that what s real s ratonalAdorno devel-ops the noton of antagonstc totalty The ultmate truth of whats most patently false and deologcal n Hegelhs euaton ofreason wth realty and n partcular wth the states that as


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VIntrodution

hitory h hown, relity h become preciely the kind of y

temnd totlity Hegel propoed it to be It i n ntgonitictotlity, totlity only by virtue of it contrdiction, nd ytemin which the individul i everywhere governed by the inviible totlizing web of guilt" tht i the peritence of unreonInthi light, Hegel' philoophy become criticl not only of thedetil but of the negtive whole

egels philosophy is indeed essentially negative: ritique. In extendingthe transendental philosophy of the Criique ofPure Reon through thethesis of reasons identity with what exists and making it a ritique ofwhat exists, a ritique of any and every positivity, egel denouned theworld, whose theodiy onstitutes his program, in its totality as well; hedenouned it as a web of guilt [Schulza1enhan in whih, as Meph-istopheles says in Fa, everything that exists deserves to perish. (As-pets)

Theditinction between lbor nd nture, between producernd owner, i wht produce ociety ntgonitic totlityAdorno' notion turn on the ide tht lbor itelf h, in thiene, oppreive pect, tht it i notnd here Adorno tkeiue with Mr' celebrted critique of Hegelthe ole producer of vlue If Hegel preented fle reconcilition in thePhilsph f Right Hegel' philoophy, in t let iming towrdgenuinely reconciled whole, contin moment of utopin hopethti elewhere lot: The ry of light tht revel the whole to be untrue in ll it moment i none other thn utopi, the utopiof the whole truth, which i till to be relized" ( EperientilContent")

Thenotion of pirit' lbor i in fct the key to Adorno' interpttin f Hgl d hi dfn of Hgl' tt pt' bor i the dilecticl motor, the reection of ech tte oconcioune in it limittion, tht force philoophy to becomeconcrete nd end by ermeting, Adorno y, the ide of


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xxvIntrodution

totality with the idea of contradiction. And it is that labor that

leads philosophy out of its abstract separation from empiricalreality and the contingent In thePhemel f Spirit, taingas his critical point of departure what is closest to hand, unmediated human consciousness, [Hegel] accomplishes the mediationof hat consciousness in and through the historical movementofwhat exists, a movement that taes it beyond all mere meta-physicsof being. Once set in motion, the concretization of philosophy cannot be stopped for the sae of philosophy's illusorydignity" (Experiential Content") abor, the theme of Adorno'simmanent criticism of Hegel, is also the theme of Soteinos,"e third of his three essays on Hegel. Soteinos"the title al-ludes to Adorno's defense of the obscure" Heraclites as opposed to the clear" Descarteshas an explicitly pedagogical aim.

It draws, as Adorno tells us in his preface, directly on his experience teaching Hegel at the University in ranfurt and is aind of prolegomenon to reading Hegelnot a reading of Hegelsomuch as a discussion of what is involved in that reading. Theissuein reading Hegel, as Hegel himself had pointed out in thepreface to thePhemel, which serves in its way as a modelfor Soteinos," is that intelligibility (for Adorno, clarity) is not

readilyattained by true philosophy. The question is what to maeof Hegel's lac of clarity, how to understand the truth contentof that very unclarity. The complementary question is how toreadHegel productively, in the way that truth content requires,sothat the labors that have gone into the writing, and must gointo the reading, of Hegel's philosophy are not in vain.

Adorno uses the diculties of reading Hegelthat at times itis impossible to decipher a passage, that Hegel was not carefulin his use of language, that he often made assertions withoutactually following through on the argumentation, and so ontopoint up a problem that goes far beyond any empirical or sub


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xxviIntroduction

jective eakness on Hegel's part. For the difculties in under-standing Hegel are objective and they derive primarily from thenature of thought and its relation to language. Hence much ofSkoteinos is an attack on the desideratm of clarity as e ndit in Descartes. The demand for clarity presupposes that the ob-

jectof thought has been tacitly preformed to allo the corre-spondenceof thought and its object. If Hegel's texts differ from

traditional philosophical texts hich at least make a pretense oflogical exposition that is clear at every point it is in an effort todo justice to a matter that by its very nature evades this kind ofclarity; philosophy in dorno's formulation is faced ith aparadox: to say clearly something that is unclear that has nrm outline that does not accommodate to reication. The di-alectic to hich philosophy must submit in this attempt is the

dialectic of language itself hich has both an expressive and acommunicative element. The communicative aspect hich can-not be renounced can never be fully adequate to a dialecticaltruth and dorno defends Hegel's texts on this basis:

In egel nothing can be understood in isolation everything is to beunderstood only in the context of the whole with the awkward quali-

cation that the whole in turn lives only in the individual moments. Inactuality however this kind of doubleness of the dialectic eludes literary presentation which is of necessity nite when it unequivocally statessomething equivocal. This is why one has to make so many allowancesfor it in egel. That it cannot in principle achieve the unity of the wholeand its parts at one blow becomes its weak spot. Every single sentencein egels philosophy proves itself unsuitable for that philosophy andthe form expresses this in its inability to grasp any content with com-

plete adequacy. ("Skoteinos)s a consequence of these dialectics Hegel's orks ith theirequivocations their lack of consistent argumentation and theirlack of full editing by their author become antitextsif


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xxviiIntrodution

pressed one may regard tePhemel as a book wit teSciece f Lgic tis is no longer possible" says Adornorepre-senting by teir very form a critique f a falsely armoniousnotion of presentation

That a thought that made suh extravagant laims should have fore-gone transmission in spei denitive form an be explained onl interms of its ideal of presentation the negation of presentation. At the

same time in the looseness of a delivery that even when m ighlyelaborated is more spoken than written one an look for a orretive tthe hubris of the onlusive and denitive of whih egel's work wasaused even during his lifetime. (Skoteinos)

In illuminating te concept of te nonidentical witin Hegelswork Adorno tacitly explicates and usties is own dialectical-critial metod and is own commitment to te nonidentical. eilluminates tose aspects of Hegel tat most resemble is on tougt and from wic e as learned te most Adornosefense of Hegels texts in Skoteinos" ecoes is disussion of teessay form and is critique of te Cartesian notion of clarity inTe Essay as Form" te lead essayin is Ntes t Literaturewicdates from te sae period as te rst of is Hegel essas

Hegel Three Studies as a wole in fact is rougly contemporaneous wit te maority of te essys collected in Adornostst Literature, te period immediately preceding and overlappiwit teprouction of is last largerscale works Negative Di-'alectics andAesthetic The Adornos discussion of te demandsHegels texts make upon te reader rvals in still greater ricness te kinsip between Adorno and Hegel. Adornos essayisi

work on literary and musical texts and aestic issues is formu lated in terms of te same dialectic of tougt and language wsee in Skoteinos." In tat body of workte essay Presuppositions" in te second volume of Ntes t Liteature is a goodexampleAdorno elaborates a conception of te critical recipi


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viiiIntrodution

nts stanc toward asthtc or ntctua objcts, orgetige

Gebilde. It s a stanc charactrzd b th sarch for ntgbtas opposd to a strct undrstandng basd on cart, just asAdorno proposs for th radr of Hg hat Adorno sasabout radng Hg s n fact qut cos to what h sas n othrcontts about th prnta actvt of th subjct of asthtcprnc:

No doubt egels style goes ginst ustomry philosophil under-stnding, yet in his weknesses he pves the wy for different kind ofunderstnding; one must red egel by desribing long with him theurves of his intelletul movement, by plying his ides with the spe-ultive er s though they were musil notes. Philosophy s whole isllied with rt in wnting to resue, in the medium of the onept, themimesis tht the onept represses ("Skoteinos)

Radng wth th spcuatv arth phras drvs orgnafrom Krkgaards a formuaton for a knd of asthtcpartcpator foowng through," orMitvllzug that dmands adua actvt on th part of th radr On th on hand, thradr must ngag n a knd of contmpatv passvtAdornouss th phnomnoogca trm spontanous rptvt"n

whch sh smp oats aong, usng what sms t b th ntnton of th who as a gud to undrstandng Ths corrspondsto th smp ookng on" or "reies Zehe of th ntroducton to HgsPhemel whch Adorno nvok rpatdAt th sam tm, th radrs actvt s on of mmrson n thprcs wordng, a knd of sfforgtfu mmrson n dtas nwhch, paradoca, th radr's subjctv assocatons, whcharsubsqunt chckd aganst th tt, ar of th utmost mportanc: Hg has to b rad aganst th gran, and n such awa that vr ogca opraton, howvr forma t sms to b,s rducd to ts prnta cor Th quvant of such prnc n th radr s th magnaton Th contnt tsf


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Intodution

contains as a law of its form the expectation of productive

imagination on the part of the one reading" (Skoteinos").This kind of imaginative activity common to both philosophyand art is the counterpart both of spirits mimetic labors and ofthe equivocations within the work that reectnatue. Spontaneous receptivity requires an openness to the di-alectical processes inherent in the objectthe labor of the con-cept" is both the labor inherent in thought which is by naturedialectical and the labor inherent in following an object that isby nature dialectical Thought imitats the dialectical noniden-tity of reality in which the subject participates. Language whichin its communicative aspect participates in the clarity of concep-tual logic also participates in the mimesis of the nonidentical.The word that Adorno uses as a virtual gure for this mimsis

appears in the epigraph for Skoteinos" as well Ich habe nichtsals Raschen" a line from he poet Rudolf Borchardt for a s-lection of whose work Adorno later published an introductionnow found in the second volume ofNtes t Liteture Raushe(which also asRah, means ecstasy or intoxication) is the wodused for the murmuring of a rushing brook or the rustling fthe wind in the trees or the surging of waves on a beach It rfersto languages sensuous aspect and beyond that to the way in whichlanguages intelligible but indistinct activitywht Adorno elsewhere call logicity"imitates the movemen of concrete non-identical reality.

The intimate mimetic relationship between the nonidenticalandthe labor of spirit is embodied in the most poignant moment

of AdornosHegel, a moment that is also a tour de force Adornosdefense of Hegel against the charge of being the ultimate bour-geois philosopher and his simultaneous justication of the bour-geois soberness in Hegel a defense and a justication that likeAdornos critique of the notion of clarity is also Adornos self


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Introdution

defense through the medium of Hegel Adorno evokes what ismost ontingent and most nonidential: Hegel in the esh,speaking Hegel with his Swabian dialet and his plain bourgeoisfae But what is most ontingent and most nonidential, thepersonof Hegel, is also the lous of the interplay of spirit andesh,of the spirit, exertions that are at the same time a deliberate

divestiture of the self This notion of the divested self is the altered onept of experiene that takes the plae of what we thinkof as subjetive experiene."

In evoking the speaking person of Hegel, Adorno pratieshis own selfdivestiture. It is unusual for him to ite anyone butHegel in the book, but here he gives the oor, at length, toH G. Hotho, who heard Hegel leture in Berlin and who de

sribes him as follows (here in Walter Kaufmann's rendering):Exausted morose e sat tere as if ollapsed into imself is eadbent down and wile speaking kept turning pages and searing in islong folio notebooks forward and bakward ig and low. is onstant earing of is troat and ouging interrupted any ow of spee.Every sentene stood alone and ame out wit effort ut in piees andjumbled. Every word every syllable detaed itself only relutantly to

reeive a strangely toroug empasis from te metalliempty voiewit its broad Swabian dialet. ("Skoteinos)

What one sees here in the ontingent, mortal, eshlyis in fat the ativity of spirit itself within the individual on-siousness: it is thought in ation we are seeing Hotho speaksagain:

e faltered even in te beginning, tried to go o, stated one oe,stopped again spoke and pondered; te rigt word seemed to be miss-ing forever but ten i sored most surely. . . . Now one ad graspedte lear meaning of a sentene and oped most ardently to progress.In vain. Instead of moving forward te tougt kept revolving around


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xxxiIntrodution

the same point with similar words Slowly and deliberately making

use of seemingly insigniant links some full tought limited itselfto the point of onesidedness split itself into distintions and involed itselfi ontraditions whose vitorious solution eventuly foundthe strength to ompel the reuniation of the most realitrant elments Thus always taking up aain arefully what had gone before inorder t develop out of it more profoundly in a different form whaame later the most wonderful stream of thought twisted and pressedand struggled (Skoteinos)

In this sense what we think of as subjetive expeiene is in fatthe opposite a pesonhood uttely devoted to the objetivity ofits wok By all the subjetive means available to it the philosophe's self effaes itself in the tuth of its objet In no sense doesAdono's evoation of the peson of Hegel epesent a bio-gaphial intepetation of his thought; athe than the thought

expessing the man the life of the man himself beomes the lifeof spiit: Like the subjet of his theoies the man Hegel hadabsobed both subjet and objet into himself in spiit; the lifeof his spiit is all of life again within itself" (Aspets") We maythink of Hegel as having an intelletual body" says Adonoand his philosophy tooht it mumus and ustles in mimesis of the nonidential It is in this sense that Hegel's philosophy is an exession of expeiene; phlosophy is the expessionof spiit whih is the negation of self in the matte at hand

It is impotant that this not be undestood as simply a matteof sublimation o selftansendane; the lement of labo exetion and its elation to motality is lealy pesent Selfdivestitue in the ativity of spiit is akin to death; the life of the spiit

has a kinship with motality and death In Adono's wodsHegel's demeano full of suffeing his ountenane avagedby thought the fae of one who has liteally onsumed himself until he is no moe than ashes bea witness to this self

divestitue" (Aspets") If expeiene is the oe of Hegel's phi


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XXXllIntrodution

losopy ten it is ot te distilled experience of life nd teexperience of tougt t work wit ll its strins nd contrdictions Pin nd struggle re inseprle from it s in Adornosown eort to wrest Hegels trut from is untrut Adornosrejection of te notion of pying omge to te gret mn notwitstnding is ultimte triute to Hegel is te notion tt eendured tese efforts: No pilosopy ws so profoundly ric;

none eld so unsweringly to te experience to wic it dentrusted itself witout resertion Een te mrks of its filurewere struck y trut itself {Aspects}. And if te ultimte criticism of Hegel is tt e is te ourgeois pilosoper pr excellence te comfortle professor lecturing unconcernedly onte sufferings of mnkind" ten te effcement of self tt giesim tis ourgeois plinnessteNhteheit tt Wlter Ben

jmincreted isDeuhe Meshe to onoris te selfdiestiture tt mkes pilosopicl experience possile As Adornosys t is tis soer dryness to wic te most extreme ptossriels in Hegel" tt gies tougt its dignity just s in different tonlity it gies Adornos pprecition its poignncy.

And is not Adorno imself wo ws repetedly ccused ofourgeois elitism ut wose countennce remined cler ndwose speec ws druckfertig"printredy"speking on isown elf ere s well expressing te effcement of self ndte surrender to mortlity tt informed is own ttempt to immerse te self witout resertion in its oject? And is tis dilectic of selfeffcement nd te rging tril of spirit in teindiidul not itself te new conception of te dilectic towrd

wic Hegel Three Sudies lors conception wose energieswill w ope in n ge in wic te indiidul is incresinglendngered continue to sound cross istoricl csms?

Te trnsltor would like to tnk Jeremy Spiro QuentinSmit nd Andrew Bucwlter for dice on dicult points in


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xxxiiiIntrodution

th txt, om McCarthy an Larry Cohn for thir unagging

support of th projct, an Arn H Nicholsn for a carfulan apprciativ raing of th manuscript in progrss. Jan Millrof th Antioch Collg library staff srvs spcial thanks forlitrally going th xtra mil to procur txts. As in hr othrtranslations of Aornos work, th translator has attmpt toprsrv as many of th faturs of Aornos pros as ar con

sistntwith intlligibility in English. For any rsulting awkwarnsss (Aornos wor was inconcinnitis") sh alon isrsponsibl.


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Preface

Weit came time or a ew editio oAspe fHegel's Philphy, I wated to spplemet that text wit the moograph othe experietial cotet o Hegel's philosophy that I had pb-lished i the meatime. What impelled me to go beyod this wasthe aalogy with the sayig tres hmies faiut lleum threemoographs make a book, ee i it . a short oe. Hece, iaccordace with a logcheished pla, I set dow my thoghtso qestios o derstadig Hegel. They sprig rom my worki the Philosophisches Semiar at the Uiersity o Frakrt.

Oer may years Max Horkheimer ad I hae ote bee co-cered with Hegel there my itetio was to se what I hadobsered i the teachig sitatio as a poit o departre. Giethe ity o the philosophical toght o the two o s respo-sible or the releat iterpretatios, it was possible to orgo i-diidal reereces.

To aert disappoitmet, let me emphasize that Skoteios"

does ot claim to accomplish o itsel the illmiatio o Hegel'smai works, somethig that is log oerde. It merely orm-lates cosideratios o priciple bearig o this task at best ithazards gesses abot how oe wold arrie at a derstad-ig, wihot dispesig ayoe rom the eorts ioled i co


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xxxviPrefae

cretizing those considerations with regard to the texts. The issueisnot to make the reading of Hege easier but to prevent theextraordinary exertions that Hege requires, now as then, frombeing wasted. Somthing that Hege reminds epistemoogy aboutshoud be appied to instructions about how to read Hege aswe the instructions can prove successfu ony in the course ofcarrying out individua interpretations. The imits that the au

thor of a propaedeutic must set for himsef woud thereby betransgressed. The fact that I have stopped precisey where I oughtto begin may excuse some of the obvious inadequacies that dis-pease me.

The work as a whoe is intended as preparation for a revisedconception of the diaectic.

Theodor AdornoFrankfurt, summer 1963


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A Note on the Tex

Aspects of Hegels Philosophy" gre out of a talk gave at theFree University of Berlin on November 14, 1956, commemorat-ing the 125th anniversary of Hegel's death The preliminary orkas too extensive to be adequately incorporated into that talk as forced to select one complex, albeit a central one, for theBerlin talk and to deal ith other motifs in a lecture broadcaston Hessian radio. But since the elements had bee conceived asa hole, then brought them together, ith important addi-tions, in a monograph

Similarly, The Experiential Content of Hegel's Philosophy"isa greatly expanded version of a lecture gave at the meetingsof the erman Hegel Society in Frankfurt on October 25, 1958; delivered it again shortly afterards in French at the Sor-bonne t as printed in theArhiv fr Philsphie 1959, vol9:12

Skoteinos," ritten in the inter of 196263, is unpublished

Since the three complementary parts of the book had beengiven xed literary form somehat independently of one an-other, certain motifs are repeated, alays, of course, from dif-ferent perspectives


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xxxviiiA Note on the Text

would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to the assistantsat the hilosophisches Seminar at the University of Frankfurt,especially rofessor Hermann Schweppenhuser Dr AlfredSchmidt, Dr Werner Becker, and Dr Herbert Schndelbach

Theodor W Adorno


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Editorial Remarks from theGerman Edition

he notes Adoo himself proided on the genesis ofHegel ThreeStudies require few additions.

he rst of the thre studies was published separately by

Suhrkamp Verla, Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, in 1957 un-der the titleAspe f Hegel's Philsphy hat edition ontains amotto taken from Adorno'sMiima Mralia Das Ganze ist dasUnwahre" the whole is the untrue]. A note" to that editiondated January 197 was inorporate into the Note" inHegelThree Studies, with the exeption of the last paragraph, whih

reads A publiation about Hegel offers an opportunity to repeat that the philosophial thought of the author and that ofMax Horkheimer are one and the same. For this reaso it hasbeen possible to forgo indiidual referenes."

he three studies were put together asDrei Studie zu Hegelforthe series edition suhrkamp," and the rst edition was pub-lished in 1963.

he text ofHegel Three Studies is based on the third edition of1969 the last to appear during the author's lifetime. A few or-retions hae ben mae on the basis of indiations in he au-thor's opy. he itations hae been heked and orretions madewhere neessary. Four textual notes in Skoteinos" hae been


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xlEditorial Remarks from the German Edition

moved from the endnotes to the pages to whch they refer Otherwse the form of the notes follows that of the orgnal as far aspossble; even the ponts n whch they are nconsstent are anexpresson of Adorno's antpathy to uned systematc thought

anuary 1971


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Hegel

Three Sudies


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43/206

Aspects of Hegel's Philosophy

A hstorcl occson le the 125th nnersry of Hegel's dethcould he elcted wht we cll pprecton" But tht concept hs become untenble f ndeed t eer hd ny lue It

mes the mpudent clm tht ecuse one hs the dubous gdfortune to le lter nd beuse one s professonl nteresn the person one s t tl bout one cn soeregnly ssgn thded person hs plce tereby n some sense eletng oneslfboe hm Ths rrognce echoes n the lothsome questonfwht n Kt nd now Hegel sell hs ny menng for presentnd en he soclled Heg ressnce bgn hlfcntury o wth boo by Benedetto roce tht undertoo todstngush between wh s lng nd wht ws ded n HgelThe conerse queston s not een rsed: wht the resent men the fce of Hegel; whether perhps the reson one mgne one hs ttned sc Hegels bsolue reon hs not n flong snce regressd bhn te ltnd ccommodted to wh

merel ests whn Hegeln reored to set the burden 6 'exstence n ton through the reon tht obtns een n wh

exsts All ppectons re subject to the judment pssed Hege's prefce to thePhemel f Spit on thse who rboe somethng ny becuse they re not n t Apprectons


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2Aspets of egels Philosophy

fail from the start to captre the seriosness and cogency of He-gels philosophy by practicingon him what he called with ap-propriate disdain a philosophy of perspectives. If one does notwant to miss Hegel with ones very rst words one mst con-front however inadeqately the claim his philosophy makes totrth rather than merely discssing his philosophy from abovand hereby from below.

Like other closed systems of thogt Hegels phosophy avils

'itself of the dbios advantage of not having to allow any criti-

cism whatsoever. All criticism of te details according to Heelremains partial and misses the whle which in any case takeths criticism into accont. Conversely criticizing the whole as awhoe is abstract nmediated and ignores the fndamentalmotif of Hegelian philosophy: that it cannot be distilled into any

maxim or general principle and proves its orth nly as a totality in the concrete interconnections of all its moments. Ac-cordinly the only way to honor Hegel is to refse to allow selfto be intimidated by the virtally mytoloical complexity of hcritical mthod which makes criticism seem false no matter what and instead of graciosly or ngraciosly listing or denying imerits go after the whole whichwhat Hegel himself was after.

These days it is hardly possible for a theoretical idea of anyscope to do jstice to the experience of consciosness and in factnot only the experience of consciosness bt the embodied ex-perience of hman beings withot having incorporatd some-thing of Hegels philosophy. Bt this cannot be explained termsofthe trivial ape according to which Hegel the absolte ide-

alist was a great realist and a man with a sharp historical eye.Heges sbstantive insights which extended to the irreconcila-bility of the contradictions in borgeois society cannot be sepa-rated from speclationthe vlgar notion of which has nothingto do with the Hegelian notionas thog it were some kind of


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3Aspets of egel's Philosophy

troublesome ornamentation On the contrary those insights are

produced by speculation and they lose their substance as soonas they are conceived as merely empirical The idea that the apriori is also the a posteriori an idea that was programmatic inFichte and ws then fully elaborated by Hegel is not an auda-cious piece of bombast; it is the mainspring of Hegel's thought:it inspires bth his criticism of a grim empirical reality and his

critique of a static apriorism/Where Hegel compels his mateialtospeak the idea of an original identity of subject and object inspirit" an identity that becomes divided and then reunites is twrk Otherwise the inexhaustibly rich content of his system woldremain either a mere accumulation of facts and thus pre philo-sophical or merely dogmatic and without rigor Richard Konerrightly oppsed describing the history of Geran Idealism as

advancing directly from Schelling to Hegel Ratherthe moment in of naturethrough ecourse toa nd even

dynamic of thePhemel f Spirit beginsin epistemology and then goes on of course as the introductionalready indicates to explode the position of an isolated or inHegelian terms abstract epistemology Accordingly the abun-dance of experiential cncreteness [ Gegestdlihe] that isinterpreted by thought in Hegel and ourishes thought in turnisdue not so much o a realisti frame of mind on Hegel's partasto his method of anamnesis spirit's immersion in itself or iHegel's words being's inwardization and selfpossession [das isih ieigehe sih Zusammeziehe des Seis] If one tried to

rescue the material substance of Hegelian philosophy from itsallegedly outmoded and arbitrary speculation by eradicatng itsidealism one would have nothing but positivism on the one handand supercial intellectual history on the other What Hegel thought however is also of a completely different order than


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4Aspets of egel's Philosophy

that of ebeddedness in relationships to which the individualdisciplines closed their ees His ste is not an overarching scientic sste an ore than it is an aggloeration of witt observations When one studies his wor, it soeties sees asthough the progress that spirit iagines itself to have ad,though clear ethodolog and ironclad epiricis, since Hegelsdeath and in opposition to hi, is all a regression, while the

philosophers who thin the are aintaining soething of Hgels legac have for the ost part issed the concrete ontenton which Hegels thought rst proved itself

Thin, for instance, of Gestal theo, which Khler expanded to a ind of philosoph Hegel recognized the priaof the whole over its nite part, which are inadquate and, intheir confrontation with the whole, contradictor But he nei

ther derived a etaphsics fro the abstract principle of totalitnor gloried the whole as such in the nae of the good Gestalt" He does not ae the parts, as eleents of the whol,autonoous in opposition to it; at the sae tie, as a critic ofroanticis, he nows that the wholerealizes itself onl in andthrough the parts, onl through dscontiuit, alienation, and

reectionthrough, in short, everthing tha is anathea toGestalt theor If Hegels whole ests at all t is onl as the quintessence of th partial oents, wic al poin b(theselves and are generated froone another; it does not exist as soething beond the This is what his categor of totalit is intended to conve It i incopatible with an id oftendenc to haron, no atter how uch the late Hegel a

subjectivel have had such tendencies His critical thought goesbeond both the stating of the unconnected and the principle ofcontinuit; in hi, connection is not a atter of unbroen transition but a atter of sudden change, and the process taes placenot through the oents approachng one another but through


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5Aspets of egel's Pilosopy

rptre. Modern Gestalt theory as interpreed by Ma Scheer

traditional and inter-the chaotic material of the senses, the givenness of the nomenon, wholeas alread specied and strctred. Hegel, however, empha

specication of th object, wiot in the process idolizing the sense certainty with the citiqe of which tPheomeolo of Spirit begins, to say nothing of intellecta

i

tition. It is precisely throg absolte ideai hich perisnothin to remain otside the sbject, now epanded to ecomeinnite, bt instead sweeps everythg alng with it into the crren of immanence, that the opposition between mere matterand a consciosness that bestows form nd meaning is etin-gished. All later criticism of the socalle formalism of epist

mology nd ethics can be fond eplicitly formlated in Hegel,bt he did not therefore leap with a bond into the allegedlconcrete as did Schelling before him and eistential ontologytoday. On conseqence of the nrestrained epansion of tesbject to absolte spirit in Hegel is hat, as moments inherentin this spirit, not only the sbject bt also the object are presented as sbtantial and making the fll demands of their ownbeings. Hegels mcadmired material richness is itself a fnc-tion of his speclative thoght. It was his peclative thogtthat helped him to say somethig essential not merely abot theinstrments of knowledge bt abot its essential objects, withotever sspending consciosness's critical selfreection To theetent to which one can speak of realism in Hegel, itis to be

fond in the path followed by is idealism it is not somethingheterogeneos to it. In Hegel he tendency of idealism is to moebeyond itself.

Even the point of most etreme iealism in Hegel's thoght,the sbjectobject constrction, shold by o means be dismissed


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6Aspets of egels Philosophy

as the arrogance of the unrestraned concept. In Kant the deathat a orld dvded nto subjct and object the orld n hchasprsoners of our on consttuton e are nvolved only thphenomena s not the ultmate orld already forms the secretsource of energy. Hegel adds an unKantan element to that thedea that n graspng conceptually the block the lmt that s setto subjectvty n understandng subjectvty as mere" subjectv

y e have already passed beyond that mt Hegel ho n manyrespects s a Kant come nto hs on s drven by the dea thatknoledge f there s suc a thng s by ts very dea total knoledge that every onesded judgment nends by ts very forthe absolute and does not rest untl t has een sublated n t.Speculatve dealsm does not recklessly dsregard the mts ofthe possblty of knoledge; rather t searches for ords to e

pressthe dea that a reference to truth as such s n fact nheretn all knoledge tha s knledge; kno

adorno: hegel-three studies

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