“universal delusional context of reification” (Theodor W. Adorno)

623 Pages·2014·4.16 MB·English

Université de Montréal

A Shine of Truth
in the “universal delusional context of reification”
(Theodor W. Adorno)

par
Xander Selene

Département de philosophie
Faculté des arts et des sciences

Thèse présentée à la Faculté des arts et des sciences
En vue de l’obtention du grade de Philosophiæ Doctor en philosophie

Avril 2014

© Xander Selene, 2014
{Abstract} “A Shine of Truth in the ‘universal delusional context of reification’ (Theodor W.
Adorno)” defends Adorno’s aesthetics as a theory of advanced, or avant-garde, artworks. Its
seven chapters show that aesthetic experience implies liberation from illusion (Schein).
Chapter I engages a dialectic of viewpoints to explain how different dialectical thinkers (Marx,
Lukács, Hegel, Horkheimer, Adorno) have contributed to a criterion of truth adequate to
today’s total delusional context of reification—determinate negation of illusion. Chapter II
introduces the concept of artistic aesthetic illusion—a reversible illusion opposed to the social
illusions of mechanical musical reproduction and of the culture industry. Chapter III examines
the question of whether truth in philosophy is a different kind of truth than truth in art. Chapter
IV considers whether truth in twentieth-century Expressionism is a new truth based on
immediate expression, in light of an important precedent for Expressionism in Robert
Schumann’s “Der Dichter spricht.” Chapter V determines whether inorganic montage is more
advanced than Expressionism. Chapter VI takes up a parting suggestion of Peter Bürger: to
treat artworks after Dada and Surrealism on the model of “prose” in Hegel’s aesthetics.
Chapter VII pursues the idea that Dichterliebe, op. 48, (1840) by Robert Schumann is a true
artwork. Three results emerge from this close musical analysis: (1) exploiting, on occasion, an
ambiguity in the rules for figuration that permits all twelve tones in the harmony, Schumann
anticipates Schoenberg; (2) Op. 48, No. 1 is in a hidden key: to all appearances, its key is
either A major or F-sharp minor, but its secret key is the Neapolitan region applied to C-sharp
major; (3) the other “half” of the cadence with which Op. 48, No. 1 breaks off suddenly may
be found in a brief applied-Neapolitan passage in No. 12. The thesis argued is that the anti-
organicity in such a work is advanced with regard to the false reality that organicity had
become by 1930 in Germany. According to Adorno, the only life-praxis afforded by art is
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remembrance. But the social effect of remembering social suffering is considerable when the
Here-and-Now is its own justification.

Library of Congress Subject Headings: Philosophy; Dialectic; Critical Theory; Illusion
(Philosophy); Music—Philosophy and aesthetics; Reification; Modernism (Aesthetics)
Authorities: Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969; Schumann, Robert, 1810-1856
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{Résumé} “A Shine of Truth in the ‘universal delusional context of reification’ (Theodor
W. Adorno)” comprend sept chapitres, un prologue et un épilogue. Chaque partie se construit
à deux niveaux : (1) à partir des liens qui se tissent entre les phrases contiguës ; et (2) à partir
des liens qui se tissent entre les phrases non contiguës, surtout entre les incipit des
paragraphes, qui forment l’argument principal de la thèse. Cette exigence double découle de la
méthode adoptée : la méthode dialectique. Le sujet de la thèse, Schein (apparence, illusion,
clarté) est abordé de manière non formaliste, c’est à dire, de manière que la forme donne
d’elle-même une idée de la chose : illusion comme contradiction imposée. Bien que le sujet de
la thèse soit l’illusion, son but est la vérité. Le Chapitre I présente une dialectique de
perspectives (celles de Marx, Lukács, Hegel, Horkheimer, Adorno) pour arriver à un critère de
vérité, compte tenu du contexte d’aveuglement universel de la réification ; c’est la
détermination de la dissolution de l’apparence. Le Chapitre II présente le concept d’apparence
esthétique—une apparence réversible qui s’oppose à l’apparence sociale générée par
l’industrie de la culture. Le Chapitre III cherche à savoir si la vérité en philosophie et la vérité
en art sont deux genres distincts de vérités. Le Chapitre IV détermine si l’appel à la vérité
comme immédiateté de l’expression, fait par le mouvement expressionniste du 20e siècle, est
nouveau, jugé à l’aune d’un important antécédent à l’expressionisme musical : « Der Dichter
spricht » de R. Schumann. Le Chapitre V se penche sur la question à savoir si le montage
inorganique est plus avancé que l’expressionisme. Le Chapitre VI reprend là où P. Bürger clôt
son essai Theorie de l’avant-garde : ce chapitre cherche à savoir à quel point l’œuvre d’art
après le Dada et le Surréalisme correspond au modèle hégélien de la « prose ». Le Chapitre
VII soutient que Dichterliebe, op. 48, (1840), est une œuvre d’art vraie. Trois conclusions
résultent de cette analyse musicale détaillée : (1) en exploitant, dans certains passages, une
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ambigüité dans les règles de l’harmonie qui fait en sorte tous les douze tons sont admis dans
l’harmonie, l’Opus 48 anticipe sur Schoenberg—tout en restant une musique tonale ; (2)
l’Opus 48, no 1 cache une totalité secrète : à l’œil, sa tonalité est soit la majeur, soit fa-dièse
mineur, mais une nouvelle analyse dans la napolitaine de do-dièse majeur est proposée ici ;
(3) une modulation passagère à la napolitaine dans l’Opus 48, no 12 contient l’autre « moitié »
de la cadence interrompue à la fin de l’Opus 48, no 1. Considérés à la lumière de la société
fausse, l’Allemagne des années 1930, ces trois aspects anti-organiques témoignent d’une
conscience avancée. La seule praxis de vie qu’apporte l’art, selon Adorno, est la
remémoration. Mais l’effet social ultime de garder la souffrance vécue en souvenir est non
négligeable : l’émancipation universelle.

Vedettes-matière de l’Université Laval : Philosophie ; Dialectique ; Théorie critique ; Illusion
(Philosophie) ; Musique—Philosophie et esthétique ; Réification ; Modernisme (Esthétique)
Autorités : Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969 ; Schumann, Robert, 1810-1856
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Short Table of Contents
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...……..i
Résumé…………………………………………………………………………………..…….iii
Short Table of Contents………………………………………………………………...………v
Long Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………….vii
List of Abbreviations and Unusual Characters………………………………………..…….xlvii
Dedication……………………………………………………………………………………….l
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………….…….li
Notes on Style……………………………………………………………………………..…..liii
Prologue………………………………………………………………………………………...1
Chapter I……………………………………………………………………………………….37
Chapter II.......…………………………………………………………………………………80
Chapter III………………………………………………………………………………..……92
Chapter IV…………………………………………………………………………………....141
Chapter V………………………………………………………………………………….…163
Chapter VI……………………………………………………………………………………271
Transition to Chapter VII…………………………………………………………………….340
Chapter VII……………………………………………………………………………..……347
Section i……………………………………………………………………………………...347
Section ii……………………………………………………………………………………..359
Section iii…………………………………………………………………………………….370
Polyp Excursus……………………………………………………………………………….382
Section iv…………………………………………………………………………………….387
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Section v……………………….……………………………………………………………..402
Section vi…………………………………………………………………………………….412
Section vii……………………………………………………………………………………485
Epilogue……………………………………………………………………………………...524
Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………………535

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Long Table of Contents
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………...…..i
Résumé……………………………………………………………………………………..….iii
Short Table of Contents………………………………………………………………….……..v
Long Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………...…..vii
List of Abbreviations and Unusual Characters……………………………………………...xlvii
Dedication……………………………………………………………………………………….l
Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………….….li
Notes on Style…………………………………………………………………………..……..liii
Prologue…………………………………………………………………………………...……1
A shine of truth in the “universal delusional context of reification”1 sounds doubtful
(1). It sounds all the more doubtful when the topic is art (1). The aim of this thesis is to save a
minimal criterion of truth that holds good for art as well as for philosophy (1). Although many
have weighed in on the question of art’s truth, the most developed and nuanced reflections on
it in the European tradition belong to Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), philosopher of the
Frankfurt School (1). The conception of truth to be developed in detail here is, broadly
speaking, that of disillusionment (2). In art, truth as disillusionment seems to entail
didacticism, but this is not the case because the illusions lost can be illusions particular to art
(2). Friedrich Schiller calls the illusion particular to art “ästhetischer Schein,” aesthetic
illusion2 (2). Adorno takes up the concept of aesthetic illusion in his aesthetics, yet develops it

1 GS, vol. 7, p. 252 as translated by Robert Hullot-Kentor, Aesthetic Theory by Theodor W. Adorno, ed. Gretel
Adorno and Rolf Tiedemann (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), p. 168.
2 Friedrich Schiller, Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen, in Werke und
Briefe in zwölf Bänden, herausgegeben von Otto Dann, et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag,
1988-2004), vol. 8, pp. 556-676, here p. 661 n19, translated by Reginald Snell as “aesthetic appearance,” On the
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in ways that would have been inconceivable to Schiller (2). Adorno clearly admits truth to the
realm of art, but it is less clear whether truth in art has a necessary relation to illusion, as truth
outside art must (3). Adorno’s “dialectic despite itself” shows up in the following four
unmediated antinomies (4).
1. On the one hand, truth in art necessarily implies illusion (4). But on the other hand, Adorno
reads the twentieth-century Expressionist movement as art that seeks truth otherwise than
through aesthetic illusion (4).
2. On the one hand, it is impossible for art ever to lose its aesthetic illusion (5). On the other
hand, Adorno thinks that it is possible for art to lose its aesthetic illusion (5).
3. On the one hand, Adorno claims that “the illusory aspect of artworks [Das Illusionäre der
Kunstwerke] has narrowed into the claim to be a whole,”3 which implies that modern art’s
“rebellion against illusion” is a revolt specifically against the “fiction of the whole” and not
against illusion in general, for “even anti-realistic currents such as Expressionism take part in
the rebellion against illusion”4 (5). On the other hand, in the late essay “Little Heresy,”
Adorno makes the blanket claim that gaining a comprehension of music disparages “atomistic
listening” and promotes “structural listening,” which requires the perception of music as a
“meaningful whole”: “Musical understanding, musical cultivation [Bildung] with a human
dignity that means more than mere information content, is tantamount to the ability to perceive

Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters (New York: Ungar, 1965), p. 125. Note that Snell does not
preserve the gender-neutral language of the title in German.
3 GS, vol. 7, p. 155f., or prefer to my translation here Aesthetic Theory, p. 101.
4 GS, vol. 7, p. 157, or prefer to my translation here Aesthetic Theory, p. 103.
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musical contexts, ideally developed and articulated music, as a meaningful whole [sinnvolles
Ganzes]”5 (6).
4. On the one hand, Adorno implies that Modern music is new (7). But on the other hand, the
expression of Expressionism is not new (7).
The sorts of “contradictions” that show up in Adorno’s aesthetics do not invalidate it, for they
are not due to inattention to the rules of logic (7). When a proposition about the whole breaks
the law of non-contradiction then it is clear that total identification must be false on the terms
of general logic (8). From another point of view, the sorts of contradictions that appear in
Adorno’s aesthetics are “objective”—that is, they come out of the (social) demand for identity
between the concept and its object (9). Adorno’s critique of Hegel would be unthinkable
without the contribution of Marx, who, in the introduction to the Grundrisse, charges J. S. Mill
and Adam Smith with employing an abstract notion of production: in order to speak of
production in general consistently, these thinkers must abstract qualities from the actual object
of production—those particular aspects of production that enter into contradiction because
they arose in different societies, in different eras6 (10). Adorno’s own aesthetic theory is not
immune to objective contradictions, despite his priority of the object in principal (11).
Although objective contradictions cannot be solved in thought alone, philosophy can adopt
practices that support their real resolution rather than hinder it (11). The present work
approaches Adorno’s aesthetics by way of detailed interpretations of consummate works that
make the competing demands of universal and particular explicit (12). Again, these non-

5 GS, vol. 17, p. 297 as translated by Susan H. Gillespie, “Little Heresy,” in Essays on Music, ed. Richard
Leppert (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), pp. 318-324, here p. 318.
6 Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Berlin: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1953), p. 6f.
as translated by Ernst Wangermann, “Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58 (First Version of Capital),” in Marx and
Friedrich Engels, Collected Works, 50 vols. (New York: International Publishers, 1975-2004), vol. 28, p. 23.
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