Table Of ContentThe Melancholy Science
An Introduction to the Thought
of Theodor W. Adorno
The Melancholy Science
An Introduction to the Thought
of Theodor W. Adorno
Gillian Rose
M
© Gillian Rose 1978
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, without permission.
First published 1978 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in Delhi Dublin
Hong Kong Johannesburg Lagos Melbourne
New York Singapore and Tokyo
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Rose, Gillian
The melancholy science.
1 • Adorno, Theodor Wiesengrund
I. Title
193 B3I99.A34
ISBN 978-0-333-23214-9 ISBN 978-1-349-15985-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-15985-7
This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the
Net Book Agreement.
The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be
lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the
publisher's prior consent, in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar
condition including this condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser.
Contents
Acknowledgements vu
Preface IX
1 The Crisis in Culture I
The Frankfurt School, I 923-50 I
The Frankfurt School, I95o-6g 6
Adorno 8
2 The Search for Style I I
Morality and Style I I
The Essay as Form I4
jlvfinima Moralia I6
The Tradition of Irony I8
3 The La01ent over Reification 27
Reification as a Sociological Category 27
Historical 28
The Abuse of 'Reification' 28
Misattributions of 'Reification' 30
Simmel and Reification 32
The Young Lukacs and the Young Benjamin 35
Against Lukacs and Against Benjamin 40
Analytical 43
Adorno and Reification 43
Negative Dialectic 44
Reification 46
How is Critical Theory Possible? 48
4 A Changed Concept of Dialectic 52
The Critique of Philosophy 52
Hegel 56
Kierkegaard 62
Husser! 65
Heidegger 70
A Changed Concept of Dialectic 75
5 The Dispute over PositivisDl 77
The Critique of Sociology 77
Contents
VI
Durkheim and Weber 82
Class and Organisation 86
Theory of the Individual 9I
Sociology and Empirical Research 95
Towards an Empirical Sociology I02
6 The Dispute over Moclernistn 109
The Sociology of Culture 109
The Dispute over Modernism I I4
Forces and Relations of Producti I I8
The Notes on Literature I2I
New Music and Social Illusion I30
7 The Melancholy Science I38
Glossary I49
List of Abbreviations of Titles I 55
Notes and References 159
Bibliography I93
Subject Index 207
Name Index 210
Acknowledgements
Many people have inspired, helped and criticised this work at various
stages. I wish to thank especially Sir Isaiah Berlin, Julius Carlebach,
Leszek Kolakowski, Steven Lukes and Sabine MacCormack.
I wish to thank the following people who read and commented on all or
part of the manuscript in its final stages: Zev Barbu, Tom Bottomore,
Frank Glover-Smith, E. F. N. J ephcott.
In addition I wish to thank Ulrike Meinhof, who checked all my
translations and retranslations from the German, and Rogers Ragavan
who gave me unstinting assistance in secretarial and practical matters. I
am also grateful to the Librarian ofSt Antony's College, Oxford, for her
patience in supplying books over the past few years, and to St Antony's
College for their support. I wish to thank the Social Science Research
Council, the University of Sussex and the Deutsche Akademische
Austauschdienst for financial help during the course of the research,
which was partly conducted at the Free University, West Berlin, and at
the University of Constance, West Germany.
My special thanks are given to Stefan Collini, Herminio Martins, John
Raffan and Jacqueline Rose.
Preface
'The melancholy science' which this book expounds is not a pessimistic
science. By introducing Minima Moralia as .an offering from his 'me
lancholy science'-an inversion of Nietzsche's 'joyful science'-Adorno
undermines and inverts the sanguine and total claims of philosophy and
sociology, and rejects any dichotomy such as optimistic/pessimisti<; for it
implies an inherently fixed and static view.
Adorno's work draws on traditions inherited from Marxian and non
Marxian criticism of Hegel's philosophy, and on the pre-Marxian
writings ofLukacs and ofBenjamin as much as on their Marxian writings.
Interpretation of Adorno suffers when his aims and achievements are
related solely to Marx or to a Marxian tradition which is sometimes
undefined and sometimes overdefined, and, equally, when he is judged
solely as a sociologist. Here, Adorno's thought is introduced and discussed
in its own right, 'immanently', to use his own term. Where appropriate,
Adorno's engagement with and transformation of the many intellectual
traditions which inform his work is examined.
Adorno's thought depends fundamentally on the category of re
ification. This category has attained a strangely dominant role in much
neo-Marxist and phenomenological literature and in recent sociological
amalgams of these two traditions. It is used to evoke, often by mere
suggestion or allusion, a very peculiar and complex epistemological
setting which is rarely examined further or justified. In the Marxian
tradition 'reification' is most often employed as a way of generalising
Marx's theory of value with the aim of producing a critical theory of
social institutions and of culture, but frequently any critical force is lost in
the process of generalisation.
Adorno's work, the most ambitious and important to have emerged
from the Institute for Social Research before 1969, is the most abstruse,
and, in spite of its great influence, still the most misunderstood. This is
partly a result of its deliberately paradoxical, polemical and fractured
nature which has made it eminently quotable but egregiously miscon-
X Preface
struable. Yet, as I try to show, Adorno's reuvre forms a unity even though it
is composed of fragments. In the last five years all the major works and
many of the minor works of Adorno, Lukacs and Benjamin have been
translated or are in the process of being translated into English. In spite of
this increasing recognition of their importance there exists as yet little
systematic study of their work.
I have not attempted to be exhaustive in my treatment of Adorno's
work. In particular, his writings on music, which constitute over half of
his published work, do not receive detailed attention. Although Adorno
acknowledged the importance of his collaboration with Horkheimer, his
debates with Lukacs and with Benjamin reveal more of the inspiration
which structures his thought, and I have therefore concentrated on those
aspects. While I argue that Adorno's texts must be read from a
methodological point of view with close attention to stylistic features, I
have, nevertheless, reconstructed his ideas in standard expository format.
Chapter
1
The Crisis in Culture
The Frankfurt School, 1923-50
All the tensions within the German academic community which
accompanied the changes in political, cultural and intellectual life in
Germany since 18go were reproduced in the Institute for Social Research
from its inception in Frankfurt in 1923.1 These changes were widely
diagnosed as a 'crisis in culture' .2 By this very definition the 'crisis' was
deplored yet exacerbated. The Institute carried these tensions with it into
exile and when it returned to Germany after the war and found itself the
sole heir to a discredited tradition the inherited tensions became even
more acute. These tensions are evident in the work of most of the School's
members, and most clearly, self-consciously and importantly in the work
of Theodor W. Adorno.
From 18go the German academic community reacted in a variety of
ways to the sudden and momentous development of capitalism in
Germany, and to the new role of Germany in the world. This resulted in
disillusionment with various scientific and philosophical methods, and
the pedagogical and philosophical revival which followed occurred
across the political spectrum, to the extent that the spectrum was
represented in the universities. The different attempts to 're-engage
learning' and reinvigorate German life have been indicted for their
political naivety and irresponsibility.3 Although the Frankfurt School
was deliberately set up to be outside the academic community, the aims
and work of the Institute amount to a most ambitious attempt to 're
engage learning'. 4 For, on the one hand, the School tried more concretely
than any university department to reunify the fragmented branches of
knowledge in the social sciences without sacrificing the fruits of any of
