Reading Adorno: Book One

Note: Reading Adorno: Book One is available in print as the second book in No True North: Three Book-length Poems, now available for purchase on Amazon. It may also be read in its entirety via the links below.

- for my teacher, Keith Ward -

“Grosses hast du mir gegeben, ich danke dir!”

- Levetzow/Schoenberg, “Dank” 

Instructions for the Use of this Book

The numbered paragraphs that comprise this book represent the beginning of an inquiry into Adorno’s philosophy of language and seek to elucidate arguments presented in his essay on “Music, Language, and Composition.”  This essay is available in a recent collection edited by Richard Leppert, Essays On Music.  My numbered paragraphs do not assume that the reader has prior knowledge of Adorno’s essay, and the essay’s main points are summarized for the reader in italicized paragraphs marked by positive integers (1, 2, 3, etc.).  The italicized paragraphs are not direct quotes but rather free paraphrases of what I take to be the main strands in Adorno’s line of argumentation.  A decimal system is used to indicate paragraphs subordinate to each of the seven italicized paragraphs (1.1, 2.23, etc.), and the method can be exhibited as follows:

1

    1.1

    1.2

        1.21

        1.22

            1.221

    1.3

2

etc.

I have included “definitions” of terms and of writers or other historical personages with whom the general reader may not be familiar (i.e. the sort of material that would normally be footnoted) in paragraphs numbered with “0”.  For example:

1.102 Jakobson, Roman.  1896-1982.  Russian-born American linguist.  Co-founder of the Prague school of structural linguistics and a key figure in language studies throughout much of the 20th-century.

The numbering system, if the reader has not yet guessed, is adapted from Wittgenstein’s Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus.  It is the result of an effort to introduce a method for writing treatises of an argumentative or theoretical nature that will eliminate much of the “padding” that invariably attends scholarly writing (for example, footnoted bibliographical information and verbiage that is superfluous to the argument though necessary for rendering logical or discursive connections transparent), while also allowing for a re-integration into the main text of normally footnoted asides by the author – asides that the author frequently considers vital to the text in some way but that the reader is likely to skip over due to their subordinate position at the bottom of the page or at the end of the book.  Similarly, the numbering system incorporates “definitions” so that (ideally) readers with no prior knowledge of the material under consideration can follow the argumentation.

1 Music is similar to language; however,

it is not one.  Similar in what way?

In that, as with language, it is a temporal

succession of articulated sounds “that are

more than just sound,” more than mere acoustics.

1.1 We will begin our inquiry with a question.

Adorno has asserted that music is not

a language.  Do we have or may we seek

justification to assert the contrary –

that yes, music is a language?  Or is music,

as Adorno says, merely similar

to language?  We will question Saussure, Jakobson,

and Lacan.

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1.101 Saussure, Ferdinand.  1857-1913.  Swiss linguist.  His Course in General Linguistics set the tone for 20th-century approaches to the subject and provided a foundation for the strains in contemporary Continental thought that have come to be known in the English-speaking world as structuralism and post-structuralism.

1.102 Jakobson, Roman.  1896-1982.  Russian-born American linguist.  Co-founder of the Prague school of structural linguistics and a key figure in language studies throughout much of the 20th-century.

1.103 Lacan, Jacques.  1901-1981.  French psychoanalyst.  Perhaps the most influential figure in psychoanalysis after Freud.  His Seminar, which began in the early 1950’s, lasted 26 years and influenced a generation of French thinkers.

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1.11                    Let’s begin with Saussure.  For Saussure,

language is a system of signs and is

one of many such systems.  He mentions writing,

nautical signs, military signals, etiquette,

Braille, rites and ceremonies.  And music?

He doesn’t say.  Saussure’s conception is broad, though,

and we can well imagine that he’d be happy

to add music to his list.  So let’s assume it.

Making use of standard classificatory

nomenclature, we might say, following from this,

that music and language are companion

species under the genus “sign-system,” and that

neither term is subordinate to the other.

1.111 Perhaps it would be a good idea

to review at the outset Saussure’s conception

of the sign.  The basics of the Saussurian

revolution may be briefly stated.

A linguistic sign is a dual structure, comprised

of a sound-image (known as a “signifier”)

and a mental image, meaning, concept

or idea (known in turn as the “signified”).

A single example will do:  Say “tree” out loud.

As you say the word, you produce a sound-

image, or signifier.  Take care to note that

1) for Saussure, just typing “tree” does not produce

a true signifier, for the reason

that language is a thing of speech and not of script,

and that 2) the signifier is not the sound

itself but rather the mental image

we have of the sound (i.e. you can bring to mind

the image of the sound ((or, more accurately,

of the sound-combination)) “tree” without

necessarily producing it vocally

and rendering it audible…it is common,

is it not, to say of a range of things

that go on in our minds but don’t take place in sound

that we “hear” them with an “inner ear”).  In contrast

to the signifier, the signified

is the image, concept, idea or meaning

called up by the signifier.  What “comes to mind”

in the presence of the signifier.

1.12 Saussure and Adorno seem to agree thus far.

Music and language are related, but music

is not itself a language.

1.13                                        Jakobson.

For Jakobson, the same as for Saussure, language

is a system of signs.  Jakobson goes a step

further than Saussure and claims that language

is the primary sign-system.  Unlike Saussure,

Jakobson does mention music from time to time 

as a particular system of signs.

He does not maintain that music is a language;

rather, he views music as the semiotic 

system closest to language.  In what way?

In that both music and language unfold in time 

and are “linear,” as we say, in comportment.

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1.1301 semiotics – the science or study of signs.

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1.14 Saussure, Jakobson and Adorno all

point to the temporal, linear properties

of language, and the latter two thinkers highlight

language’s proximity to music

in this regard.  Jakobson agrees with Saussure

in the view than language unfolds in temporal

chains and sequences, and for Adorno

music takes place as a “temporal succession

of articulated sounds.”

1.15                                        Lacan.  Lacan works

within a broader language conception

than do linguists Saussure and Jakobson.  What is

perhaps his most famous pronouncement, concerning

the affinity of the unconscious

(or rather of its structuration) with language 

(his “the unconscious is structured like a language”)

is definitive.  We find him at least

at one place in his later seminars stating

that the unconscious is a language (he also

points to mathematics as a “language

of the pure signifier”).  Lacan on language 

in its second, “extra-linguistic” dimension:

“It’s clear that the things of the human world

are objects in a universe structured by words,

that language, symbolic processes, dominate

and govern all.”  Further, Dylan Evans

asserts, in his Lacanian Dictionary,

that “all human communication is inscribed

in a fundamentally linguistic

structure; even body language is, as the term

implies, fundamentally a form of language,

with identical structural features.”

For Lacan, language is equivalent to what

he terms the “symbolic process” (as is clear from

the grammatical parallelism

in the quote above of “language” with “symbolic

processes”).  Whatever would merit discussion

in terms of the one would likewise merit

discussion in terms of the other.  We’ll have more

to say concerning the Lacanian concept

of the symbolic realm subsequently.

1.151 In his famous Seminar XX, Lacan states

that the concept of overdetermination

(the existence of multiple causes

for one effect, in which the effect determines

its own causes retroactively) – a key term

in Freud’s original formulation

of the unconscious – only becomes possible

within linguistic structure, which is as much as

stating that the unconscious is language

(or is a language).  

1.152                            Evans asserts that Lacan’s

famous dictum that the unconscious is structured

like a language is tautological

(perhaps deliberately so) in that structure,

Lacan would say, is language and vice versa.

In short we find an equivalence in Lacan

among a) language, b) structuration by words,

and c) symbolic processes (the crucial term).

1.153 Music is often said to have structure.

Structure is language, says Lacan.  By a simple

syllogistic operation, therefore, we seem

to be justified in viewing music

as a language – or, more simply, as of language.

1.16 Have we found answers for our question? [see 1.1]  a) Saussure -

Music is not a language, but rather

a rival sign-system.  b) Jakobson – Music

is not language but is rather the sign-system

closest to language.  c) Lacan – Music

is a language insofar as we understand

music in terms of musical structuration.

Thus, two for Adorno and one against.

2 Music’s temporal succession of sounds relates

to logic.  Music does not, however, comprise

a system of signs.  

2.1                                Sure disagreement

arises at this juncture between Adorno

and the linguists, who have just distinguished music

and language as competing sign-systems.

Immediately prior to informing us

that music is not a sign-system, Adorno

has made the seemingly obscure statement

that what is “said” in music can't be abstracted

from music itself.* What he seems to mean is that,

while music “says” things (i.e. makes statements

and so forth), it is not possible to remove

(“abstract”) what is “stated” in music from music

in such a way that we might discover,

in any clear or unequivocal manner, 

just what are the (extra-musical) referents

of musical “statements.”  For not only

are we unable to know the “things in themselves”

to which musical statements refer, we cannot

form a clear picture of their referents

at all.  Thus, Adorno is fully justified

in going on to assert that music is not

a system of signs, as signs are objects

(at least in the pre-Saussurian conception

of the sign within which he seems to be working)

that refer to other things outside them.

(The advent of the bi-partite sign of Saussure, 

of course, will signal a situation in which

there will no longer be any question 

of “things” to which signs may refer; the signified

to which the signifier addresses itself

is a concept, image or idea

rather than an object in the external world.)

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2.101 thing in itself – Perhaps Kant’s most famous idea was that we cannot know the “thing in itself” – i.e. we cannot know objects apart from our subjective constitution through which things are given to us in experience.

2.102 referent – a thing to which a symbol, word or sign refers.

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*“The succession of sounds is related to logic; there is a right and a wrong.  But what is said cannot be abstracted from the music; it does not form a system of signs.”  (Essays On Music, p. 113)

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2.11 Note that we are dealing here with a delicate

notion of abstraction.  It seems as if

we’re able to “get at” any particular

object set before us only by “abstracting”

or removing from it a set of tools,

we might say, that the object brings along with it,

enabling us to examine or question it

qua object – a wonderful and tricky

epistemological declaration that

Adorno seems to be making (perhaps without

knowing it) – that in any given act

of the understanding we are only able

to continue insofar as we can locate

the epistemological toolkit 

that is included with the object for our use.

One may find an implicit, anti-Kantian

or even empiricist dimension

to these admittedly obscure hints regarding

the abstract, in which Adorno seems to deny

that epistemological concepts

and categories have any transcendental

or a priori basis and are to be found

on the side of the object – an object

that is given or comes to us through the senses.

Another question to which we’ll return below.

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2.1101 epistemology – the study or theory of knowledge, of how we know things.

2.1102 transcendental – an adjective in Kant’s philosophy referring to questions concerning the a priori constitution of the mind.

2.1103 a priori – In Kant’s writings, “a priori” means prior to experience.  When we know something a priori, this means that our knowledge does not depend on experience.  Knowledge a posteriori, in contrast, is knowledge from experience.

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2.12 Let us summarize.  Adorno: Music

is not a system of signs, as it is never

possible to know the ultimate referent

(or referents) of musical statements.

Saussure and Jakobson: It is indeed correct

that this is not possible, but linguistic signs

in fact do not ultimately concern

the objectal world to any further extent

than do musical ones.  Your grounds for not wishing

to consider music a sign-system

fail to persuade us that it in fact is not one.

3 People have generally agreed that music

is non-conceptual, that it neither

contains concepts nor is comprised of them.  It does,

however, have recourse to symbols that are not

altogether unlike “the primitive

concepts of epistemology.”  These symbols

act as mediators between particular 

and general in the same way as do

concepts in the epistemological realm.

Both concepts and musical symbols may be “healed

of their abstractness” through their deployment

in particular contexts.

3.1                                        Much to unravel,

with symbols on the one side and, on the other,

epistemological bedfellows

(logic, concept, general and particular,

the abstract).  Let’s start with symbols.  We note first that

Adorno’s list of musical symbols 

is not extensive, and he mentions only chords

and combinations like cadential sequences.

3.11 Saussure on the symbol.  Saussure contrasts

the symbol with the sign, which is characterized

by an arbitrary relationship between

signifier and signified, whereas

with the symbol there remains at least the vestige

of a correspondence between the audio

or visual image and the object

or meaning that it symbolizes.  Example:

Think of the visual symbol of a walking

green man that pedestrians frequently

encounter at intersections to indicate

that they may cross.  Why a walking man rather than,

say, a cabbage or a falling anvil?

Because we are able to connect the symbol

with the mental image of a person walking

and can infer from this that we ourselves

may now proceed to cross.  Think, on the other hand,

of the signifier “walking man.”  According

to Saussure, no natural connection 

exists between a phonetic sequence such as

“walking man” and any image that may suggest

itself or come to mind when we hear it.

Adorno’s distinction between sign and symbol

is thus diametrically opposed to that

of Saussure.  While Saussure calls attention

to a) the natural relationship between

the symbol and whatever it symbolizes,

and b) the arbitrary relation

between the signifier and the signified

that together constitute the sign, Adorno

(although unconcerned with the distinction

between the natural and the arbitrary)

retains at least the fundamental connection

between the sign and what it represents,

while claiming that, at least with musical symbols,

there exists a breach or gap between the symbol

and the world of things it reaches out to.

Summarized, for Saussure there is a certain breach 

between the signifier and the signified,

in that the relationship between them

is not natural but arbitrary, while for

Adorno the breach is between the musical

symbol and the thing it symbolizes.

3.112 Although we don’t wish to belabor the matter,

it may be good to remind ourselves once again

that the musical symbol as conceived

by Adorno remains within a classical

epistemological view in which what is

at question is the relation between

a mental entity (in our case, the symbol)

and an entity existing outside the mind –

“in the world,” we’d say.  Although in his Course

Saussure isn’t concerned with the question as to

whether his theory of the sign should be construed

as an epistemological one,

it seems safe to say that the relation between

signifier and signified is for Saussure

a problem of linguistics and is not

fundamentally epistemological,

for the simple reason that, within the context

of signs, we are not concerned with a world

of objects exterior to the sign, but with

a sound-image and a second thought-entity

(image, meaning, concept, etc.)

it summons, calls up or signifies.

3.12                                                        Jakobson.

Jakobson’s conception of the symbol derives

not from Saussure but from the path-breaking

work on semiotics by Charles Sanders Pierce,

who made a distinction between three kinds of signs:

1) the icon, in which a relation

of factual similarity is present

between the signifier and the signified,

2) the index, in which the relation

is not one of similarity, but rather

one of contiguity, and 3) the symbol,

in which the relation is established

by convention and must in all cases be learned,

there being no physical similarity

or congruity between signified

and signifier.  Thus, a picture of a bear

would be an icon of a real bear (because of

their similarity), smoke an index

of fire (the smoke is contiguous or “next to”

fire in its appearance in time), and H2O

a symbol for water (for “H2O”

is neither like nor physically proximate

to water itself).  (Note: the terms that Pierce uses

are the Latin signans and signatum,

although they correspond roughly with Saussure’s terms.

Both thinkers adapted their terminology

from Stoic philosophy.  I retain

the terms of Saussure throughout for clarity’s sake.)

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3.1201 Pierce, Charles Sanders.  1839-1914.  American philosopher.

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3.121 The symbol of Saussure is thus identical

to Pierce’s icon (he'd likely insist

that a picture of a bear, which Pierce calls icon,

symbolizes the “real” bear), while his bi-partite

sign coincides with the symbol of Pierce

(there is not a natural relation between

the sound-image H2O and any image

that presents itself to the mind along

with that sound-image).  We can thus say that Pierce works

within a broader understanding of the sign

in which Saussure’s dual sign-structure is found

included in the trio theorized by Pierce

as a species “symbol” under the genus “sign.”

As Jakobson notes, Pierce does not venture

so far as Saussure in calling attention to

the arbitrary nature of the linguistic

sign and maintains that the sign is never

entirely symbolic (i.e. conventional

and arbitrary) but is rather intermixed

of all three types.  Pierce even goes so far

as to suggest that the most perfect signs are those

in which the various disparate elements

(iconic, indexical, symbolic)

are blended most evenly and most thoroughly.

3.122 While we will have further occasion to compare

Adorno’s notion of symbol with those

of Pierce and Jakobson, we can state at this point

that the Adornian symbol is certainly

neither an index nor an icon as

it bears no immediately discernible

relationship with the thing it symbolizes

and at least thus far seems to coincide

with Pierce’s symbol.  We only need to add that,

whereas the Piercian symbol is yet a sign,

Adorno’s symbol is not to be viewed

in terms of signs; rather, Adorno’s conception

of sign would appear to be limited to what

is comprehended in Pierce’s theory

under the dual concepts of icon and index.

To summarize, Adorno’s musical symbol

appears to correspond to the symbol

of Pierce in addition to the sign of Saussure

when we ponder them solely in terms of the breach,

obtaining in Adorno’s case between

the symbol and the symbolized and, in contrast,

between signifier (signans) and signified

(signatum) in Saussure and Jakobson.

3.13 It is needless to add, perhaps, that everything

becomes significantly more complicated

when we exit the realms of linguistics

and of Piercian semiotics and begin

to question Adorno on symbols in terms of

the Lacanian “symbolic order,”

already mentioned above.  For now we merely

make a note of this fact and agree to come back

to Lacan when Adorno’s ideas

have been developed somewhat further.

3.2                                                                        Returning

to Adorno’s observation that the symbol

in its musical manifestation

resembles epistemological concepts,

we note the vertiginous multiplication

of terms.  Again: The symbol resembles

the simple concepts of epistemology.

We could restate this by saying that the symbol

is a sign for the concept if we take

the latter as an object to which the mental

entity “symbol” refers, in traditional

epistemological fashion.  Thus,

Adorno simultaneously denies that

the symbol is a sign (because it does not make

cognizable what it symbolizes)

and yet states that the symbol in fact “signifies”

to the extent that it “resembles” thinkable

concepts.  Put differently, a symbol

may be considered a sign only insofar

as it points to another mental entity

and not to one external to the mind.

3.21 We also pause to note that we are proceeding

with Adorno’s views on epistemology

under the assumption that they are based

upon a classical Erkenntnistheorie 

that was formulated most definitively

in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, and that

whenever we read “concepts” we should understand

the Kantian categories – a priori

concepts that enable us to “construct

knowledge out of sense impressions,” as it is put

in the Encyclopaedia Britannica

article on Kant in the simplest terms.

Adorno asserts that the symbols of music

are counterparts to logical concepts in that,

as with the Kantian categories,

they allow us to contemplate the general

in the particular and the particular

in the general.

3.211                    So, how do we know,

how may we recognize, by means of a concept,

generality in particularity

(and vice versa)?  Here’s an example:

The pool-water is cold.  Water is a substance;

cold, a negation (of heat).  Substance is the first

of three “categories of relation;”

negation, a category of quality 

(the second).  Thus, I have used (at least) two concepts

to know the general (water, coldness)

in the particular (this cold water in which

I happen to be swimming).  How, though, do I know

the general in the particular

via a musical symbol?  The piano

accompanist is at the left end of the stage

playing the first Debussy Arabesque

in a hushed, unobtrusive pianissimo

as the kindergarten children take their places

on the onstage risers, from which they will

soon descend in twos to give their 20-second

graduation speeches to the parents gathered

before them in the auditorium.

They have no idea that what the pianist

is playing is a famous piece by a famous

composer that’s been played in similar

circumstances at similar venues and for

similar purposes for a good century.

But they know without having to be told

that, when the accompanist interrupts herself

(and Debussy) and plays a IV-V-I cadence,

they are to step forth and politely bow.

Thus, they know the particular situation

(that they must bow at such and such a time and place)

through the general configuration

of sound presented by the cadential “symbol.”

(We shudder to think if Adorno would approve

of our example.)

3.22                             As a conclusion,

we address the cryptic statement that both concepts

and musical symbols are “healed of abstractness”

through their deployment in particular

contexts.  For Kant, abstraction is a logical

operation via which the understanding

separates or “abstracts” certain concepts

from the empirical conditions under which

the understanding is properly exercised.

Adorno hints that the danger to which

concepts and symbols are prone is the tendency

they have to neglect the particularity

of the empirical in favor of

the generality of the abstract, a threat

that is ever again averted through renewed

interaction with the particular

(another idea to which we will return).

4 If, for a moment, we allow music to be

a language, we must acknowledge the view

that, qua language, it differs in many respects

from the spoken or signifying languages.

Music aims to be a language without

intentions; it is not, however, entirely 

able to keep itself separate from spoken

language and can indeed appear to be

thoroughly shot through with intentions.  If music

did not signify at all, it would be mere sound,

merely a “phenomenological

coherence of tones” –  what’s more, an “acoustical

kaleidoscope.”  On the other hand, if music

signified absolutely, it would cease

to be music and would pass straight into language.

Music is ambiguous, and it is due to

its ambiguity that intentions

are always rivering over into music,

although such intentions are veiled.  Music

is a constant process of signification,

but we’re never sure what is being signified.

4.1 What does Adorno mean by “intentions”?

His use of the term seems to include what we mean

by intentions at the level of common sense

(my intention is what I want to do,

or, going a step beyond this, what I would like

to accomplish through my deeds), in addition to

the more rigorous conception proper

to phenomenological theory, in which

we speak of intention to indicate that each

of our mental acts “intends” an object,

even when an object appears to be absent

or lacking.  Adorno’s identification

of intention with signification

seems to indicate this latter, rigorous sense.

If music were fully signifying, fully

intending, it would cease to be music

and would be nothing but language pure and simple

(in contrast to Pete Townshend’s “pure and easy” note?!?*).

In short, for Adorno spoken language

is purely “intentional,” fundamentally

oriented toward the world of things and meanings

(again we see that his understanding

falls short of the post-Saussurian point of view

in which the world of things external to language

is situated outside the proper

realm of linguistic inquiry).  We might further

elaborate Adorno’s view by suggesting

that, “consciously,” music, in full contrast

to spoken languages, is without intentions,

without a necessary, constant and implied

reference to an exterior world

of objects.  However, if music truly had

no intentions, we would not have music but mere

acoustics.  “Unconsciously,” then, music

is thoroughly intentional, although we have

no means of cognizing the objects intended.

What Adorno evokes in this passage is thus

a vast, fluid, ambiguous realm of music

between the (shifting?) limits of, on the one hand,

mere sound and, on the other hand, mere speech.

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4.101 phenomenology – “A 20th-century philosophical movement, the primary objective of which is the direct investigation and description of phenomena as consciously experienced, without theories about their causal explanation and as free as possible from unexamined preconceptions and presuppositions.” – Encyclopedia Britannica.

4.102 Husserl, Edmund.  1859-1938.  German philosopher.  Founder of the school of phenomenology.

4.103 A very nice summary of the phenomenological conception of intention, from Maurice Natanson’s Edmund Husserl: Philosopher of Infinite Tasks: 

"Thinking is necessarily thinking about. All other acts of perception, broadly understood, have a directional force: remembering, imagining, and willing point to or, as Husserl says, “intend” some object, something remembered, imagined willed.  In sum, consciousness is by its very nature always consciousness-of, and that is the kernel of the axial principle of phenomenology: the intentionality of consciousness."

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*“There once was a note pure ‘n easy, / Playing so free like a breath rippling by.” – Pete Townshend, “Pure and Easy”

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5 Interpretation is required both of language

and of music, but in alternative respects.

While interpreting language is a task

of the understanding, we interpret

music by making new music, other music.

In both are involved acts of synthesis.

Interpretation of the individual

synthetic act (regardless of whether the act

is musical or linguistic) involves

a return to the original synthesis

that defined the act.  In the interpretation

of music, we sense the congruity

of the musical act with the linguistic act

via the act of synthesis common to both.

        Language can be decoded; in contrast,

music can only be imitated.  When we

interpret language, we carry out two actions:

a) We decode the speech act and thus come

to an understanding of what it signifies.

b) Via our understanding of the speech act,

we gain access to the original

act of synthesis upon which the act was based.

There is no way to decode the musical act,

for decoding implies gaining insight

into the intended (or “meant”) objectal world

(the world of meaning), which music does not allow.

Instead, we’re only able to return

to the originary act of musical

synthesis via the process of mimesis –

by virtue, that’s to say, of a second

musical act that transcribes the original.

        In summary, whereas the speech act comprehends

another speech act (signification),

the musical act is instead the transcription

of an earlier musical act.

5.1                                            Synthesis.

We begin, back at Kant, with synthesis.

Synthesis is the process in which impressions

received through the senses (called representations

in Kant’s Critiques) are joined to each other

and in which a workable unity is forged

from out of the chaotic multiplicity

they initially present.  Synthesis

is knowledge’s necessary prerequisite

and takes place in three crucial steps, beginning with

apprehension of representations

in intuition.  Next comes reproduction of

representations in the imagination.

The final step is recognition of

representations in a concept.  To rephrase

in simpler language, we first receive (“apprehend”)

sense information (“representations”)

through the senses (“intuition”), then bring them back

to mind through aid of memory (“reproduction

of imagination”), and finally

gather them together under concepts so that

we can cognize them, talk about them, and so on

(“recognition”).

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5.101 representation – In Kant’s philosophy representations are anything in the mind that we can bring to attention – sensations, concepts, ideas, etc.  Representations are the basic building blocks of knowledge, of reason and the understanding.  (Some recent translators have preferred  “presentation” over “representation” to translate Vorstellung.)

5.102 intuition – Intuitions provide us with the raw material for knowledge.  For Kant, intuitions are only possible through the conditions of sensibility – namely, those of time and space.  On occasion he uses the terms sensibility and intuition interchangeably.  Sensibility is comprised of two a priori elements – the inner sense (time) and the outer sense (space).   

5.103 inner sense – In Kantian philosophy, human beings have an a priori subjective constitution which consists of an inner sense of time and an outer sense of space.  Time and space, for Kant, do not exist in themselves but rather are the subjective means through which we attain knowledge of things.

___________________________________________________ 

5.11                            An aspect of all this

that will become crucial for us in what follows

is that synthesis, while subject to time’s caprice,

allows us to circumvent the hard law

of inner sense that holds that individual

representations or sensations first received

or apprehended through the senses come,

not in teams, but one by one in single moments

of time.  The ternary synthesis that takes place

in apprehension, imagination

and recognition allows the mind to contract

a sort of disavowal of the fact of time

in order thus to perceive unity

in a world of impressions that would otherwise

present itself as a patchy incoherence

of heterogeneous, elusive,

and ever disappearing representations.

5.11P                Trinkets and Runnels

At first glance they’re autonomous and self-contained,

having nothing to do with each other,

though you’ll note that at times the expression is strained,

as if a bit too much weight bears on the rudder.

And you see what collects in the gutter!

It’s not so much a film as a translucent paste –

a gore on which the rodents are happy to feast.

Thus, they are things that eliminate waste

and so affiliate themselves with every beast.

But it's not yet been discovered whether they mate

or how they must perpetuate the race,

whether, like us, they thrive in runnels of the late,

or if they have intuitions of time and space.

Some say they’re merely trinkets of the mind –

that they imitate us and are thus of our kind.

5.12 How, specifically, are we to understand

musical synthesis?  Is it to be

situated on the side of the composer,

the player, or the auditor/interpreter?

Clearly, in Kantian terms, all three acts

(composition, performance, interpretation/

audition) imply synthesis, as all three acts

take place in time.  But which of the three acts

does Adorno mean specifically?  He seems

to leave the question open intentionally.

The ambiguity of this section

perhaps allows us to construct a ternary

definition of musical synthesis as

a) what we might label the “synthesis

of construction” by which the compositional

process is characterized, b) the synthesis

that takes place through the realization

of the score in sound and in performance (if not

the score – such as in cases where we are dealing

with unscored music – then with whatever

framework the performer(s) happen to utilize

in the performance of a given work), and c)

the synthesis that goes on during both

1) the act of audition (i.e. what the mind

undergoes while listening to music), and 2)

the subsequent act of interpreting

when, after attending the metamorphosis

of the musical composition into sound –

after hearing its realization –

we reflect on it and contemplate its meaning.

5.2 Interpretation.  According to Adorno,

interpreting means gaining access to

the first, the originary synthetic act.

In interpreting linguistic acts, we return

to the synthesis that defines each act,

and we do this through a process of decoding

that allows us access to the objectal world

intended by the act.  Musical acts,

though, do not allow themselves to be decoded.

If by interpretation we mean achieving

access to the intended, it must be

admitted that they are uninterpretable.

If we view interpretation as a return

to the original synthetic act,

however, then we may understand musical

interpretation (or its possibility)

in terms of mimesis – as a second

musical act, that is, that transcribes the first act

(original synthesis) that took place in it.

5.21 Note how the idea of musical

synthesis includes the aspect of mimesis

already, in fact, in advance of the question

that Adorno subsequently raises

about the mimetic aspect of musical

interpretation.  For the realization

of score and conception in performance

is already in a way an imitation

of the original act of composition.

And the act of audition – does it not,

in fact, imitate two acts – those of performance

and of composition?  Not to mention any

act of interpretation subsequent

to audition, which likewise could be understood

as an imitation of the prior three acts.

5.22 Jakobson’s thoughts on interpretation.

In a paper published in 1959

(titled “On Linguistic Aspects of Translation”),

Jakobson elaborates a theory

of interpretation in which he proposes

suggestively that “the meaning of any sign

in language is its translation into

some further, alternative sign.”  He states further

that every verbal sign may be interpreted

in three manners: 1) through intralingual

translation (or “rewording”), in which translation

is made out of the original set of signs

requiring interpretation into

another set of signs within the same language;

2) through interlingual translation (“translation

proper”), in which translation is made from

the original set of signs into a set

of signs to which they correspond in another

language; and 3) intersemiotic

translation (alternatively, this may be termed

“transmutation”), in which translation is made from

the original set of signs into

the signs of a nonverbal sign-system.  In short,

the act of interpretation by which we gain

access to meaning is in every case an act

of translation.

5.221                    Assuming Jakobson’s theory

of interpretation holds for non-verbal sign-

systems, how can we locate Adorno’s

views concerning interpretation, mimesis

and transcription within the scope of Jakobson’s

tri-partite schema?  For, on the one hand,

Jakobson’s theory seems to be at variance

with the more traditional views that Adorno

implicitly espouses with regard 

to interpretation of the speech act.  Whereas

from Adorno’s standpoint the act of linguistic

interpretation allows us access

to a realm of objects or of meaning beyond

language, Jakobson’s argument that linguistic

signs are granted meaning in translation

into others implies that interpretation

merely leads from one set of signs to another,

that we never arrive at a final

resting place at which we pause and say to ourselves,

“Ah, so this – finally this – is what it all means.”

Yet, whereas Adorno’s views on language

qua language are conventional, one certainly

can find resonances of Jakobson’s theory

in Adorno’s gnomic formulations

on musical interpretation.  First of all,

his conception of musical-interpretive

transcription clearly echoes Jakobson’s

theory in that it can be viewed as a sort of

metonymic movement from one musical act

to another, approximate to what

routinely transpires in the world of signs.  Second,

the proximity of Adorno’s conception

to Jakobson’s first interpretive type

should be clear.  The “transcription” that goes on from one

musical work to the next is quite similar

to the “rewording” from one set of signs

to another that makes up what Jakobson calls

intralingual translation.  Yet we’re still not clear

as to how Adorno would understand 

those aspects of music that border on language,

on the linguistic.  Is it possible that each

musical work creates its own language?

If so, musical-interpretive transcription

would be a case of interlingual translation,

or “translation proper,” a translation

out of a language unique to one work into

a newly constituted language informing

the next.  But would this be going too far?

Could it be, rather, that Adorno would have us

understand musical language in terms of what

is commonly known as “musical style”?

If so, we would have intralingual translation

(say, when young Wolfgang “transcribes” Haydnesque “language”

into a Mozartean “dialect”

in his early symphonies (and other KV’s)),

as well as interlingual translation (say, when

Arnold Schoenberg scores a classical work

for a modern symphony orchestra, or when

Eric Clapton in the 1960’s performs

Robert Johnson in a rock idiom).

And what about critical writing on music?

Would Adorno acknowledge that, when we take notes

on, say, Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis,

we are within the realm and rights of musical

interpretation (and wouldn’t this certainly

be a case of intersemiotic

translation?).

5.222                    What we are getting at here is that

Adorno appears to respect conventional

notions concerning interpretation

and meaning in the districts of speech and language

as a sort of backdrop against which he can then

develop his quite unconventional

notions about musical interpretation.

5.23 Lacan on interpretation.  Now that we’ve reached

these central questions concerning meaning

and interpretation, perhaps it is proper

to question Lacan further than we have thus far.

We will begin back at our summary

of Saussure’s sign and with our observation that

his signifier is a property of sound.

In his appropriation of Saussure’s

terminological apparatus, Lacan

does not retain this strict identification

between signifier and sound-image,

and his conception is broad enough to include

anything humans produce that can be taken

as a symbol in the most general,

everyday sense of the word.  While it is true that

Lacan retains the Saussurian primacy

of speech, he emphasizes that written

symbols must be classified as signifiers

to the same extent as the images of sound.

That is the first of his innovations

with respect to the signifiers of Saussure.

His second would be the downsizing of the role

played by the signified.  At certain points,

he seems to ignore (or at least downplay) Saussure’s

caveat that the signified is a mental

entity and not of the outside world,

the objectal world exterior to the sign.

This allows him to develop his conception,

in contrast to a pre-linguistic “real,”

of a reality fully dominated 

by signifiers – classically summarized

in the statement that “one can only think

of language as a network, a net stretched over

the totality of the real, the entirety 

of things – one that inscribes another plane

on the plane of the real…a second plane we call

the symbolic.”  And what counts on this second plane

is no longer the relation between

two corresponding chains (one of signifiers

and one of signifieds), but rather the movement

in which one signifier is always

passing on to the next in a neverending

process of signification.  Reality – 

our reality – is constituted 

entirely through this order of signifiers/

symbols (the two are now identical) in which

what now appears to be a signified

for the signifier that has just “had its say”

has, in Hegelianese, “always already”

(immer schon) itself been transformed into

a signifier for the coming signified.

It is not correct, however, to say that for

Lacan there is no signified.  Rather,

Lacan situates the signified in the realm

of the imaginary, which is also where

he situates human understanding.

Without having to meander too far into

the thickets of Lacan’s famous trichotomy

of imaginary-real-symbolic,

we can summarize his standpoint with respect to

the basic and patently imaginary

aspect of the signified as follows:

What the subject understands is always what he

imagines he understands.  The very desire

to understand is what sets the subject

on an interpretive steeple-chase after sense,

after meaning.  Yet whenever the subject thinks

he has understood, when he supposes

that he’s achieved a glimpse into what something means,

what in fact is the case is that he’s imagined

that he has understood.  This, however,

is not to suggest that, through more thorough attempts

at clarification and elucidation,

one might arrive at an understanding

purified of the imaginary.  Rather,

understanding and meaning are saturated

with the imaginary from the start;

whenever we think we’ve reached a level at which 

signification has stopped, at which we’ve arrived

at a final, fully signified sense,

we can be sure that we are inextricably

caught within the snares of the imaginary,

as any reality posited

beyond the horizon of signification

itself is purely an effect of illusion.

(Lacan’s formulations with respect to

the understanding should be read in the context

of his extensive critique of American

ego psychology and frequently

verge on the hyperbolic.  At one point he goes

so far as to claim that science and the spirit

of reasoned inquiry are possible

only for as long as we’re able to suspend

effectively the imaginary order

of the understanding.  “To think,” he says,

“it is frequently better not to understand,

and one can gallop through miles of understanding

without the least thought having been produced.”)

5.231 Lacan’s formulations on interpretation

are multiple and various and are spread out

over several decades and phases

of his thought.  In one session of the Seminar,

he states that interpretation, though it always

purports to launch from a signifier

in the direction of a signified meaning,

is in essence self-deceptive and tends rather

to set out from an “always already” 

posited meaning, in a retrograde movement

back towards the signifier in the opposite

direction away from the signified.

That’s to say, while we feign as if to set out from

an entity that is to be interpreted

and to proceed thus in the direction

of its meaning, we in fact have always at least

unconsciously posited a sense prior to

the act of interpretation and then

have retroactively ventured out to retrieve

a set of signifiers that will suit our needs.

An example: I am captivated

by such and such an item (a signifier)

and contemplate its meaning, eventually

deciding my fascination is based

on a fixation on such and such a person

who played a crucial role in my early childhood

(the signified).  Yet, despite the hard work

of self-examination I’ve put myself through,

this decision, it turns out, is merely a ploy

of the understanding, camouflaging

the fact that, unconsciously at least, I’ve “always

already” decided to take the position

that this person who made an appearance

on the stage of my youth will be blamed hereafter 

for certain unhappinesses I have suffered

as an adult, and I have carefully

chosen the signifiers with which to arrange

my fascination in order to prove this point

to myself and others.  A human-all-

too-human variation on the simple trick

of “begging the question.”

5.232                                            Like Lacan, Adorno

points to the role the understanding plays

in interpretation.  In contrast to Lacan,

however, he does not doubt interpretation

is indeed capable of accessing

the realm of meaning.  Thus far, as indicated

in our summary of Jakobson, Adorno’s 

standpoint seems entirely traditional,

in opposition to Lacan’s “modernist” view

(or perhaps modernist in contrast with Lacan’s

“postmodern” standpoint – depending, of course,

on how you stand with respect to the contested

traditional-modern-postmodern trinity).

Yet what we would like to demonstrate here

is that Adorno, at least in the context of

his theory of musical interpretation,

draws up alongside Lacan’s position.

Music, as he claims, is shot through with intentions,

although we are not afforded the slightest glimpse

into what, precisely, is intended.

Aren’t such intentions thoroughly similar

to the signifiers of Lacan, which never

point to a stable world of signifieds,

a primum mobile of meaning keeping house

somewhere in the beyond of signification?

And does not the progress of transcription

that glides from musical act to musical act

read like a carefully worded allegory

of the process of signification – 

a series of answers (signifieds) endlessly

posing themselves in their dizzying immer schon

(or “their fatiguing always already”?)

as further questions, newly found signifiers,

to be taken up by future musical acts?

5.233       Elsewhere Lacan sets up a distinction

between speech and language that allows us to make

altogether different connections between

his position and that of Adorno

than the one we have we have just elaborated.

In Seminar II, for instance, he positions

language in the imaginary realm

and theorizes that the subject first enters

the domain of the symbolic only when he 

starts to speak at the end of infancy.

In order to make sense out of this distinction

between language and speech, we’d have to spend more time

with the nuts and bolts of Lacanian

theory than we wish to here.  For now we merely

suggest that it may be fruitful to adhere to

the distinction made by Lacan between

imaginary language and symbolic speech

in attempting to flesh out Adorno’s remarks.

That is, shouldn’t we read Adorno’s views

with regard to linguistic interpretation 

in the context of Lacan’s suspicion that all

hankering after final signifieds

properly belongs to the imaginary?

And, following from this, can’t we further suggest

that the subject is initiated

into something resembling the Lacanian

symbolic order only when he renounces

the quest for an ultimate signified –

not, as for Lacan, by journeying into speech

and entering the kingdom of words, but rather

by making music, as in Adorno?

But already we are getting into a sort

of Heideggerian hermeneutic circle

before we are prepared to enter it,

and we will forbear, at least for the time being,

from heading further into the exponential

multiplication of the possible

that presents itself when Adorno is thus made

to cross the theoretical Rhine, so to speak,

into the promised land of the symbol,

the milk and honey of the symbolic order.

___________________________________________

5.23301 hermeneutics – the study of interpretation and its methodology.  For Heidegger, the logic at work in interpretation is necessarily circular and is epitomized at its most elementary level by the question as to whether the chicken or the egg came first.  Inquirers after meaning must embrace the circular logic inherent to interpretation rather than try to do away with it.

___________________________________________

6 In art, certain elements are brought together

for the ultimate purpose of knowing.

These elements, however, are never combined

into judgments, in contrast to the elements

of philosophy and science, which are

cognitive in nature.  Yet, though the elements

of art do not combine to form judgments, this is

not to say that judgment does not take place.

Though nothing is fully or expressly stated

in music, something is judged, something is affirmed.

Think of ailing Beethoven’s “Es muss sein.”

Although music is a non-judging medium,

it creates the gesture, the effect of judgment.

6.1 It seems that we are merely repeating

at a higher level what’s already been said

about concepts and about the conceptual.

We’ve said that music, that musical thought

is non-conceptual, although it possesses

symbols that function in some manner like concepts.

Similarly, musical elements

don’t conspire to form judgments, though judging takes place.

6.2 Judgment.  Up to this point, we’ve avoided bringing

“old Kant”* too far into the discussion.

It’s at the entry of judgment into our train

of thought that we feel compelled to embark upon

a survey as to what Kant has to say

about much of what we have encountered thus far.

Indeed, we’ve already alluded to judgment

(although we didn't mention it by name)

in our question concerning how the general

may be comprehended in the particular.

“This water in which I'm swimming is cold.”

In this routine act of judgment, I have subsumed

the particular (the water I’m swimming in)

under the general (i.e. water

as substance and cold as negation).  Kant’s concepts

(or “categories”) are also known as “functions

of judgment” via which the manifold

of impressions received through the senses become

knowledge.  It’s this capacity for judgment that 

enables the unification of

diverse perceptions in a single consciousness;

knowledge, for that matter, is just another name

for this unity of the sensual

through the conceptual.

_____________________________________________

*As Nietzsche half-reverently referred to the philosopher.

_____________________________________________

6.21                                        Adorno postulates,

as outlined above, that the elements in art

never come together for the purpose

of judging, though something apparently is judged.

Nothing in art is purposely judged, though judgment

occurs.  Again we encounter the theme

of a disparity or a contradiction 

between what in art is conscious and intended

and what unconscious and unintended.

Rephrasing Adorno’s statement in terms of Kant's

definition of judgment, we might suggest that

in art the particular is indeed

subsumed under the general; art, however,

is unaware of this process of subsumption.

It should be needless to add, moreover,

that neither are we, as auditor-admirers,

aware of this process, for even the maker,

the composer himself, is granted no

such knowledge.  Neither composer nor admirer

is provided with clues as to the ultimate

referents of music and its concepts,

let alone any judgment for which the concepts

might be employed.

6.22                                These preliminary remarks

on judgment concern the judgments proper

to the understanding as elaborated

in the first critique, the Critique of Pure Reason.

We find before us a far more involved

and intricate collection of themes and problems

when we stop to examine the expanded role

given to judgment in Kant’s third critique,

the Critique of Judgment.  While in the first critique

judgment is merely a logical procedure,

it is promoted in the third critique

to occupy, alongside the understanding

and reason, a position in the faculties,

and provides, in fact, a mediating

link between the other two.

_____________________________________________

6.2201 Kant’s critiques.  Kant’s three major works are the Critique of Pure Reason, the Critique of Practical Reason, and the Critique of Judgment.  These are often referred to as the first, second, and third critiques, respectively.

_____________________________________________

6.221                                                We’ll briefly attempt

to summarize how and why judgment comes to have

such a weighty role in the third critique.

One of the purposes of the first critique was

to show that the mind possesses certain concepts

that are given to us a priori

(i.e. independently from experience).

These concepts are fully legitimate – possess

cognitive legitimacy, that is –

only when they are immanently employed (used

in reference to possible experience,

in other words).  The understanding is

the faculty that undertakes the immanent

and thus legitimate employment of concepts.

However, it’s a characteristic

of the mind to want to extend the employment

of these concepts beyond the realm of possible

experience.  The faculty that makes

such a transcendent use of concepts is reason.

The concepts of quantity, for instance, allow

the understanding to distinguish one

from many, to add and subtract, to comprehend

humanity (the general) in this human

being (the particular).  Yet reason,

striving after conceptual totality,

seeks with these same concepts to traverse the limits

of possible experience, posing

answers to questions about the unity of

the soul and about the beginning of the world.

Kant’s aim is to show that an immanent

employment of concepts (one that references

possible experience, that is) is the use,

the only use, that is constitutive

of knowledge and that their transcendent employment

in reason, though unavoidable and perhaps

even necessary, does not secure

knowledge for the reason that, by definition,

knowledge is always knowledge of a possible

experience.  (Experience traps us,

does it not, in much that it refuses to grant!)

6.221P            Etude of Immanence

Brought up, discussed, decided upon, planned, conceived,

probed, inspected, anticipated, born,

put to bed, awakened, clothed, sent to school, retrieved,

scrubbed up, changed, fed, manicured, praised, admonished, shorn,

confirmed, confessed, brought out, heightened, fattened,

hired, paid, taxed, promoted, cheated, vilified, scorned,

redeemed, admired, betrothed, wedded, widowed, saddened,

diseased, done in, eulogized, buried, mourned,

softened, broken down, hardened, calcified, dug up,

fired, hammered, sawed off, beveled, lacquered, drilled, nailed, 

        screwed,

hollowed out, partitioned, motored, plugged up,

accoutered, enlivened, reasoned, imagined, clued,

sent off on an errand, sent back through the repeat,

rowed up, one of many, each one discrete,

manipulated, contemplated, stroked and viewed.

6.222 While in the first critique reason was severely

castigated, the aim of the second

(the Critique of Practical Reason) was to show

that, although reason’s transcendent use of concepts

does not prove constitutive of knowledge,

it has regulative value in granting us

the beneficial concepts of morality –

concepts that, though they do not constitute

anything in the way of knowledge, may indeed

help to regulate our conduct in life.  Whereas

the understanding maintains its abode

in the realm of nature and of the sensible,

reason legislates for the supersensible

realm of freedom.  Though we may have no means

of cognizing freedom, since such an idea

(as with the ideas of the soul, a supreme

being, time’s beginning, etc.)

can never be the object of a possible

experience, still we are coerced by reason’s

demands for conceptual completeness

and totality to grasp the idea of

a supersensible realm of freedom somehow

existing alongside the sensible,

known realm of nature.  And although we cannot “know,”

have knowledge of freedom as we can of nature,

we can witness its effects transpiring

around us from moment to moment, glance to glance.

I see the window in the upper right corner

of my vision, I feel the draft and note

the oncoming chill, I rise and shut the window.

There.  The action is completed.  I have desired

to effect a change, an alteration

in the reality, in the disposition

of the objects situated within my reach,

and have done so.  An effect of freedom.

When the sun shines in the morning and the ice melts,

we can witness the cause as well as the effect

of the ice melting.  All of this transpires

within the secure limits of experience.

Yet when the desire for warmth moves me to arise

and to shut the window, I cannot “see”

this desire or the freedom that’s permitted me

to act on it.  This non-knowledge fundamental

to the precincts of freedom and desire

is what distinguishes the supersensible

from the “known,” the cognized realm of the sensible.

6.223 Where does judgment fit into all of this?

The aim apropos of judgment in the Critique

of Pure Reason was merely to decide which sort

of judgments are to be deemed immanent

to experience, constitutive of knowledge

and thus legitimate, and which are to be deemed

transcendent to experience and of

a merely regulative legitimacy.

After completing the Critique of Practical

Reason, Kant apparently felt the need

to theorize a link or connection between

the understanding, with its territorial

claims in nature and in the sensible,

and reason, with its prided domain in freedom

and in the supersensible.  Without a link

between the two faculties, no commerce,

no transition between them would be possible.

Kant came to see in the faculty of judgment

this mediating link or connection

between the understanding and reason, between

nature and freedom, intellection and desire,

the sensible and supersensible.

In the Critique of Judgment, however, judgment

is more than simply the mental operation

of subsumption of the particular

under the general; in addition to this,

it is the feeling of pleasure and displeasure

mediating between the cognitive

power of the understanding and the power

of desire in which reason finds itself at home.

6.224 In addition to the mediation

that judgment provides between the understanding

and its capricious counterpart reason, judgment

also presupposes a harmony

of nature with our cognitive powers taken

as a whole.  Without such a harmony, we’d have

no knowledge of nature and couldn’t hope

to investigate it in its diversity.

Kant’s word for this harmony is purposiveness.

Although we can’t know nature as it is

“in itself,” we can’t help presupposing that it

has purposes and that its purposes are not

dissimilar to the non-sensible

purposes that the laws of freedom allow us

to realize in the realm of the sensible.

For are we not constantly witnessing

nature as it achieves effects that remind us

of the ones that we achieve through our purposes?

That there must be a supersensible

basis or substratum in which our purposes

and the ones we find in nature have some common

foundation – this is the a priori

assumption of judgment.

6.225                                        But why does Kant assign

this purposiveness, this task of harmonizing

the power of cognition with nature,

to the feeling for pleasure and for displeasure,

which he now ordains the faculty of judgment?

While Kant is not particularly clear

on this point, it would seem that judgment, via which

we know the particular in the general,

grants the most direct means for connecting

humans as thinking beings with nature – nature

defined as everything that’s given to humans

through experience and through the senses.

Our connection with the world external to us,

at the most basic level, is constantly felt

through feelings of pleasure and displeasure –

through the most basic, commonest feelings, that is.

Judgment is thus inseparable from feeling,

from sensations that are pleasurable

and displeasurable.  It is human feeling

that gives rise to purposiveness – the idea

that nature as the whole, the sum total

of our experience, harmonizes with thought

and cognition in sharing and in imparting

to thought something of its broader purpose

(though, again, we have no means of knowing whether

nature indeed has such a purpose or, for that

matter, purposes of its own at all).

6.226 The new weight that judgment is given in the third

critique is closely related to the enhanced

role given to the imagination.

It might be wise to mention here the troubling deal

of terminological ambiguity

regarding the imagination’s role

and status with respect to judgment.  We mentioned

above the handsome promotion of judgment from

the humble level of a logical

function to full dignity as a faculty.

Judgment, from the perspective of the first critique,

was merely a function of thought rather

than an independent faculty and as such

was common to the understanding and reason,

completing its work regardless of which

faculty currently held the reins, so to speak.

From the later perspective of the third critique,

however, judgment is a separate

faculty mediating between cognition

and reason, to some extent though not entirely

independent of them.  And it’s here that

the status of the imagination has changed.

For in the first critique, the imagination’s 

role was a relatively modest one.

As discussed above, it was the second of three

components (intuition-imagination-

recognition) contracting synthetic

operations that allowed impressions received

through the senses to come, through concepts, to knowledge.

To some extent, the imagination,

as the second component in this trinity,

was synonymous with memory.  (And to add

more confusion, Kant at times equated

synthesis directly with imagination,

ignoring the first and third types of synthesis.)

Then subsequently, in the third critique,

the imagination is assigned a broader

function and, though it is not given the status

of a faculty, is placed alongside

the understanding as a “cognitive power.”

The understanding, in turn, appears to possess

two functions.  Insofar as it limits

itself to its role as a cognitive power,

it takes command of the a priori concepts

(the categories, that is), placing them

at the disposal of the imagination,

which is now understood to be the cognitive

power responsible for synthesis

of the manifold of impressions that have come

to us through experience – an operation

carried out through these same categories.

As a faculty, the understanding is like

a genus that includes itself – together with

the imagination, its twin “power

of cognition” – as one in a pair of species.

This terminological ambiguity

is never resolved in the third critique

or made explicit, as if Kant were unaware

of the trouble it might cause for future readers.*

_____________________________________________

*We may summarize all of this by exhibiting the early scheme of the Critique of Pure Reason as follows:

Faculties:  a) Understanding (comprised of intuition/IMAGINATION/recognition, with the large caps on the second to indicate its greater weight); b) Reason

And the later scheme of the Critique of Judgment:

Faculties:  a) Understanding; b) Judgment; c) Reason

Cognitive Powers: a) Understanding, b) Imagination

______________________________________________ 

6.226 It’s with respect to imagination

that judgment has, beyond mediating between

the faculties of understanding and reason

and allowing the harmonization

of our thought, our cognitive powers, with nature,

an important third role:  In the apprehension

of certain objects, judgment brings about

a state of “free play” between the understanding

and the imagination (the two cognitive

powers).  I have before me a flower.

Via the imagination, the manifold

of intuitions, impressions and sensations

that come to me from this object are worked

or gathered into an image of a flower.

The understanding provides further unity,

allowing me to perform various

operations on it, such as ascertaining

that it is one flower rather than a bouquet,

that it is a particular species

of flower under some genus I’m not really

sure about but which I know includes other sorts

of flowers, that it’s of the vegetable

rather than the animal kingdom, and so forth.

Kant further asserts that a harmonization 

of these two powers, which again he calls

purposiveness, takes place to allow us to judge

this image we have before us as beautiful.

6.227P        The Third Nature

The imagination creates nature from scratch;

the slough of experience it remolds

into a syllabled square resembling a patch,

internally partitioned into peaks and folds.

One searches in vain for the door and latch.

Certain inner removes are sequestered and drear.

That mound in the center resembles Calvary.

The eastern wall is sloped, the western sheer.

The cadence is where one collects one’s salary.

One arrives there at the end of a lengthy search.

There’s really no need for you to hurry.

Up there you can see Minerva’s owl on her perch.

She wants nothing to do with you, so don’t worry.

She watches fall the anvils of the mind.

Thus, second nature is with the first intertwined.

6.23 We pause for a moment to ask ourselves:

“Why have we ventured this far into the network

of confusions that Kant weaves up on the topic

of judgment?  Isn’t Adorno talking

about judgment in its non-esoteric sense?

Its everyday sense?”  The raison d’etre behind

our possibly tedious summary

becomes apparent when we take a further look

into Kant’s notion of purposiveness, which links

us back to our earlier discussion

of intention.  When we remark purposiveness

in an object that causes us to consider

it beautiful (regardless of whether

it is a natural object or an artwork),

we sense such purposiveness without, however,

being able to find a specific

purpose behind it.  That’s to say, in an object

we deem beautiful (a flower, for example)

this judgment as to its beauty always

comes upon us in such a way that we are led

to believe an understanding similar to

our own must have been behind the object,

that it must have “purposed” it, though we have no means

of cognizing, of knowing this understanding.

This feeling we get when we come across

objects that are so configured as to inspire

us to regard them as beautiful is what Kant

calls “purposiveness without a purpose.”

Kant in fact defines beauty as “an object’s form

of purposiveness insofar as it’s perceived

in the object with no presentation

of a purpose.”

6.231                    Haven’t we come close at this point

to Adorno’s thoughts on intention?  Music aims

to be a language without intentions.

Stated more succinctly: Musical language knows

no intentions.   We might similarly put forth,

following Adorno, that beauty knows

no purposes.  Further, although musical acts

cannot be aware that they possess intentions,

this is not to say that within music

there are no intentions.  For music is “shot through”

with them.  Similarly, the beautiful object

is not aware of any purposes

it may have (which is the same as saying that we

are not aware of any purpose it may have,

as the object – in Hegelianese –

is only “for itself” as long as it’s “for us”).

This does not mean, however, that the beautiful

has no purposes.  We are led, in fact,

to believe it’s filled with purpose, with purposes,

but we simply have no way of cognizing them.

6.232 We shouldn’t fail to mention that the theme

of purposiveness resonates differently

depending on whether the beautiful object

is a natural object or a piece

of human art.  In the case of the natural

object, a harmonization takes place between

our cognition and the purposiveness

which is ascertained in the natural object,

although we are fully unable to account

for any specific purpose or set

of purposes that the object in fact may have.

On the other hand, in the case of the human

work of art, harmonization occurs

between our cognitive powers and an object

that’s been forged by a mind with cognitive powers

that we seem to have some right to assume

are similar to our own.  In this latter case,

however, we’re still incapable of forming

any concept of a purpose and hence

have no way of knowing, of cognizing either

what the artist may have had in mind or, beyond

the question of the artist’s intentions,

just what the object may stand for or represent.

But what if we are able to speak directly

with the artist and question him or her

on the object’s meaning?  Shouldn’t the creator

be able to enlighten us?  Kant would counter

that what is true for us as admirers

of the object is precisely already true

for the artist in relation to his or her

own work, as the artist does not proceed

by way of concepts that are universally 

communicable and produces things for which 

no determinate rules may be given.

Because of this non-communicability

fundamental to art, nothing that the artist

can tell us will take us a single step

closer towards the object’s ultimate intention/

purpose/meaning (although it’s true, of course, that he

or she may more or less adequately

share with us his or her own thoughts on the matter).

6.233 Art, says Kant, gives rise to “aesthetic ideas.”

The aesthetic idea furnishes

a counterpart in the faculty of judgment

to the rational idea born of reason.

This latter idea is a concept

for which no image can be found, like the concept

of a supreme being, for example, to which

no image we can assign is ever

adequate; no mental picture satisfies or

does justice to it.  The aesthetic idea,

in contrast, is a representation

of the imagination that occasions thought

but to which no determinate thought or concept

can be fully adequate – a flower,

for example, whose beauty in the end cannot

be rationally explained without destroying

the object as a beautiful object.

A beautiful object such as a flower or

a work of art inspires contemplation.

Yet no amount of thought can bring us to

an understanding that would be adequate to,

that would exhaust the image without remainder.

Phrased somewhat differently, however

many attempts we make to unlock the meaning

of the beautiful object-image, there will be

a remainder, a leftover which is

no more, no less than the object-image itself.

6.234 At this lofty theme of aesthetic ideas

and their non-communicability,

we find ourselves retracing an earlier path,

back at questions concerning signification.

How should we understand Kant’s beautiful

object in terms of contemporary views on

the signifying process?  Would it be a sign,

in any of the senses established 

by Pierce, Saussure and Jakobson?  Initially,

the answer would seem to be “no.”  The sign, at least

for Saussure and for Jakobson, concerns

the relation between two mental entities, 

between two things that are entirely of the mind –

a signifier and a signified.  

With the aesthetic judgment of Kant, however,

we’re concerned instead with the relation between

an entity in which purposiveness

is sensed and the purpose/purposer/purposing

agent which may have caused this object’s existence.

However, if we take into account

those sections of the Critique of Judgment in which

what’s in question is not the aesthetic judgment

qua judgment but the entity itself

insofar as we regard it as beautiful,

we come to see that what is most crucial is not

the capability (or lack of such)

to cognize the cause or purpose of the object,

but rather the relation between two mental

entities – an image (of an object

that we perceive as beautiful) and a concept

(with which such an object harmonizes, to which

it corresponds).  Is it not possible

to discern in this relationship the contours

of Saussure’s sign?  The symmetry is not exact.

Saussure’s signified is an idea,

meaning or concept that ultimately does bear

some relation to our “real world” experience;

that is to say, the mental image “tree”

I have, while perhaps not fully corresponding

to anything I’d deign to call the “tree itself,”

is surely approximate in some way

to the real trees I keep seeing as I gaze out

the window into the grove of trees that face me

on the other side of the parking lot.

In contrast, the signifier or sound-image

“tree” that summons this image to mind possesses

a merely arbitrary relation

to the signified, with no roots in the real world

of trees.  With the Kantian beautiful object,

the alignment between elements A

and B is somewhat different.  Of course, at least

in the case of the flower, we are not at all

occupied with a sound-image.  Rather,

we’ve an image of a flower on the one hand

and the power of conceptuality that 

the image releases on the other

(though we’re not sure whether this power touches on

the image directly).  Saussure of course would place

both the flower’s image and its concept

on the side of the signified.  Yet a movement

runs from one of the entities to the other

by means of which the parallelism

we seek here is furthered.  In Saussure this movement

runs from the signifier to the signified

(we say “a signifier signifies 

a signified”).  In Kant, by contrast, the movement

runs from image to concept.  Could we say, without

submitting our “old Kant” too severely

to the injustices of anachronism,

that “an image (of a flower, say) signifies

(whatever this image may conjure up

in terms of) a concept?”  The difference being,

of course, that Saussure situates reality 

on the other side of the signified,

at some terminal end of signification,

while in Kant the “real” flower exists prior to

the signifying process and is what

occasions the image – although in Kant, of course,

the flower’s “reality” is placed in brackets,

as we cannot know the thing in itself.  

(For Saussure there’s no cause to place reality

in brackets, as it’s not a linguistic question

but a question belonging to other

branches of science, philosophy and so forth…

though we’re speculating here on his point of view

with respect to an issue as “loaded”

as reality.)

6.235                So, while we might say that Kant’s

beautiful flower (its image, that is)

“signifies” the conceptual wealth it summons,

its “significance” does not come to exhaustion

in the conceptual – for otherwise

it would be a matter of cognition and not

of beauty.  Are we not justified, at this point,

in registering the affinity

between the musical symbol of Adorno

and Kant's beautiful object?  Both are agents of

symbolization/signification.

The difference is that, whereas we must remark

of Kant's flower that its power as an image

is never exhausted in the concepts

it calls up, it is rather true of Adorno’s 

musical symbol that it is inadequate

to the symbolized for the reason that

it refuses to impart a determinate

insight into what it symbolizes.  With Kant

we know the image, and our non-knowledge

pertains to the extent to which any concepts

that the image may occasion are adequate

to that image.  With Adorno, we know

the symbol, and our non-knowledge pertains rather

to the unknown, non-cognizable symbolized.

6.236 If we leave the flower to its beauty

for a moment, however, and trace our steps back 

to the status of the aesthetic judgment qua

judgment, we find that Adorno’s symbol

is exactly congruent with the purposive

object, which leads us to presuppose purposes

but like the musical symbol (and like

the intentions the symbol serves) does not grant us

cognizance or determinate knowledge about

the purpose (for which it seems that we now

may read “cause” or “symbolized” or “referent” or

“intended” in metonymic substitution).

6.24 Continuing our retrograde movement

back through the ideas that we have developed,

we return to our very first proposition

concerning music’s similarity

yet non-identity to language.  At one point

in the third critique, Kant suggests a division

of the arts based on an analogy

with speech.  Spoken expression, he claims, is threefold –

of tone (“modulation of sensation”), gesture

(“gesticulation of intuition”) 

and word (“articulation of thought”).  (All of this 

corresponds, at least roughly, with the triadic

synthetical operations set out

with rigor and confusion in the first critique

as outlined above: namely a) apprehension

of sensations in intuition, b) 

their reproduction in the imagination,

and c) their final recognition in concepts.)

The arts may be characterized along

lines that run parallel to these three elements

of speech and spoken expression as a) the art

of the play of sensations (this includes

music and what Kant obscurely refers to as

“the art of color”), b) visual art (painting,

sculpture, architecture, etc.),

and c) the art of speech (including poetry

and oratory).

6.241                    Poetry is the highest

of the arts, asserts Kant.  In poetry,

imagination stages an exhibition

of concepts – meaning that images are fashioned

or found that harmonize or resonate

with certain concepts, and this harmonization/

resonance results in a furtherance of thought

to which language is poorly adequate.

Poetry gives rise to aesthetic ideas,

that is, that are the counterparts of rational

ideas.  As said before, rational

ideas are concepts to which no cognition

is adequate – such concepts as have extended

their employment beyond the staid limits

of possible experience and have rendered

it impossible to cognize any objects

to which they might refer.  (You might say that

an idea is that portion in a concept

which is more than concept – through which concept becomes

more than concept.)  Aesthetic ideas,

in contrast, rest not at all on concepts, but on

an “exhibition” of the imagination 

harmonizing with the understanding

qua power of thought and conceptuality.

Through the aesthetic idea as presented

in poetry, the image – directly

derived from nature and from the sensible world –

becomes a schema for the supersensible.

(A schema is a representation

or mental entity that is both sensible

and conceptual; it’s the image insofar

as the image mediates or provides

transition between sensation and the concepts

or ideas of the understanding.)

6.242                                                Music,

according to Kant, is the art closest 

to poetry.  Yet whereas poetry gives rise

to concepts, music in contrast is thoroughly

non-conceptual, of mere sensation.

It maintains a connection with language through tone.

In spoken language, each expression possesses

a tone approximate to its meaning,

a tone that indicates an affect in the mind

of the speaker and that induces in its turn

the same affect in the listener’s mind.

Music is a pure language of tones and affects.

But whereas spoken language departs from concepts

and moves through affects communicated

from the speaker to the listener, finally

giving rise to the same determinate concepts

in the mind of the latter, musical

affects lead out from and back to ideas that

are no longer concepts and that dimly partake

of the conceptual yet are somewhat

less than determinate thoughts.  Far from giving rise

to concepts, in music the form of arrangement 

in fact takes the place of spoken language

and conveys the idea of a wealth of thought

that coheres as a whole – a whole that’s established

in every musical composition

in conformity with the theme particular

to the composition.

6.243                            However, although Kant

respects music as the art that’s closest 

to poetry through the relation to language

it shares with poetry, it is inferior

to the other arts in that it doesn't 

expand the power of the imagination,

bypassing it on the circuit from sensation

to the indeterminate ideas

that arise from the understanding.  For unlike

visual arts such as painting, music does not

place the imagination in a state

of free play with the understanding.  Moreover,

it would be a mistake, a complete misnomer,

to conceive of a “musical image.”

Kant categorizes music as what he calls

an “agreeable art” and not as a fine art.

The weight in the balance that’s established

through purposiveness lies, in the arts deemed by Kant

as “agreeable,” on the side of sensation.

Perhaps because in the case of music

the imagination is bypassed and, with it, 

the power to mediate between sensation

and thought, the understanding is not put

into full force and is set at a lower state

of attunement – to borrow a Freudian term,

its attunement is “weakly cathected” –

whereas in the fine arts the imagination

runs at full capacity and thus stimulates

the understanding adjacent to it;

cognition is set at full throttle, as it were.

Fine art facilitates social interaction.

We demand through the concepts engendered

by it that others agree with our assessments

of taste.  With art that is merely agreeable,

however, we couldn’t care less whether

others share our opinions as to what’s merely

pleasing, as everybody recognizes that

sensation is never the same from one

individual to the next, just as there are

those who are fond of coffee and those who are not.

Music, or at least music without words,

is merely an agreeable art.  Pleasing, yes,

but ultimately forgettable and even

anti-social, in that no one ever

agrees about it or for that matter even

gives enough of a damn to try to make others

agree about it.

6.244                    To bring this lengthy

excursus into Kant to a close, we would like

to suggest that Adorno’s position on what

we’ve been discussing is for the most part

thoroughly Kantian.  His innovation seems

to be a heightening of both the dignity

and the status of musical objects,

and it’s through his conception of the musical

symbol that he achieves this.  It’s an entity

for which there’s nothing to be found in Kant

that quite corresponds to it – at once more abstract

than the impressions of sensation, yet less so

than the concept (“less abstract” meaning “less 

generalized”) in that it can’t be utilized

for knowledge.  The musical symbol allows us

to suggest that music, far from being

simply (“merely”) agreeable, in fact towers

alongside poetry as an acme of art,

bearing witness to a reign – the free reign

of an imagination restored to its full

dignity and harmonizing freely via

its remembered symbols with the power

of the understanding.  The musical symbol,

in addition, allows us to suggest further

that music may be deemed a social art

insofar as it is of the conceptual

and of the sensual, thereby proving itself

universally communicable

beyond the contingencies of mere sensation

to which Kant had desired to relegate music.

6.30 Musica Fichte.  While it may seem that 

we’re prolonging our inquiry into judgment

unnecessarily, we’d like to suggest here

a Fichtean reading of Adorno

based on Fichte’s concept of the thetic judgment,

which he adds to the duo of analytic

and synthetic judgments outlined by Kant.

6.31 In an analytic judgment, we do not need

to look for the predicate outside the subject.

When we say “all bodies are extended,”

for example, the concept “body” already

includes the concept of extension.  In contrast,

the judgment that “all bodies are heavy”

is synthetic, as the concept “body” does not

include the concept of weight, which must be added

as predicate to the concept that we

have in the subject.  The fundamental question

that Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason seeks to address

is “How are a priori synthetic

judgments possible?”  That is, although the concept

“weight” is not included in the concept “body,”

we know (so claims Kant) independently

of experience that “all bodies are heavy.”

How is it that we come to such knowledge? asks Kant.

6.311 If you happen to be a physicist

or geometer and you wish to take issue

with Kant’s examples, then you might have a look at

the excellent examples offered by

the writer or writers who penned the article

on “Epistemology” in our trustworthy

Encyclopedia Britannica.

Analytic judgment: “All husbands are married.”

Marriage is included in the concept “husband.”

Synthetic judgment: “All Model T Fords

are black.”  In the concept “Model T Ford,” blackness

is not included and must be added to it

in the judgment.  We’ll never know whether

or not Mr. Ford would agree with the author

of this article, but you might try contacting

his progeny’s progeny’s progeny

via a simple electronic post (e-mail)

to the Ford company.  We’d be eager to learn

their opinion, for whatever it’s worth.

6.32 Fichte thought that Kant had uncovered the answer

(as to the possibility of synthetic

a priori knowledge, that is to say)

but had not made it sufficiently transparent

to his readers in the Critique of Pure Reason,

obfuscating it with traditional

epistemological terminology.

In the first version of his Wissenschaftslehre,

Fichte states that, while in analysis

we seek to discover oppositions within

whatever we’re analyzing, in synthesis

we’re occupied with similarities.

Whereas analysis is a taking apart,

synthesis is rather a putting together.

In an analytic judgment such as 

“all bodies are extended” from the First Critique,

we analyze the concept “body” into its

constituent elements, one of which

happens to be extension.  In a synthetic

judgment like “all bodies are heavy,” by contrast,

we seek to find in the concepts “body”

and “heavy” something similar so that we may

justly predicate the latter of the former.

Thus, whereas we take apart the concept

“body” to arrive at the concept “extension,”

we put together the concepts “body” and “weight”

to arrive at the new concept “heavy

body.”

6.33        In discovering how things are alike,

says Fichte, we find ourselves ever ascending

to higher syntheses until we reach

a point beyond which any further synthesis

can no longer take place in theoretical

cognition.  He describes this no-man’s land

past synthesis and analysis as “thetic.”

When we’ve reached this highest point beyond which no more

concepts are to be found that might be placed

in opposition to each other and thereby

synthesized, we’ve reached the point at which practical

philosophy must intervene, as in

Kant’s second critique.  Fichte claims that whenever

we reach a point past which no further synthesis

is possible, we find ourselves within

the realm of the fundamental thetic judgment

“I am” – a positing of the self via which

the predicate’s “cupboard” is emptied out

(in which the predicate is absent, that’s to say).

A judgment belonging to the practical part

and not to the theoretical part

of philosophy, like “man is free,” is thetic.

Why not analytic?  Because the concept “man”

does not include the concept of freedom.

So much is clear.  But why is it not synthetic?

For the reason that, although it is possible

to judge that “man is free,” no synthesis

in fact takes place in this judgment; instead we’re led

to an “infinity of a failed synthesis,”

as we might call it – a movement in which

man will forever be asymptotically

approaching a freedom he hasn’t yet attained.

With the thetic judgment, we find ourselves

in an entirely different situation

from when we judge, for instance, that “this car is blue.”

After making this synthetic judgment,

it’s true that I have created a new subject – 

that of a “blue car.”  But can I ever, in fact,

point to a certain individual

and say with confidence, “Ah, there’s a free man”?  No.

Our cherished freedom is an idea to which

any thetic judgments concerning man

and freedom will do no more than approximate.

(The reader may have noted that Fichte does not

explain how we get from the predicate-

less thetic judgment “I am” to the concept “man”

found in a thetic judgment such as “man is free.”

He might suggest that we get from “I am”

to the concept “man” through subordinate judgments –

a series of them, perhaps, such as “I’m a man”

(after the immortal Muddy Waters),

“I am a self,” and “Other selves are also men,”

to, finally, “Man (meaning all men and women)

is free/good/proud/corrupt, etc.”)

6.331 Again, Fichte’s thetic “I am” derives from Kant –

his doctrine of transcendental apperception.

The term “apperception” is a big word

for a rather simple idea and refers

to the unity of consciousness that provides

a ground or basis for all my concepts.

It is the singular experience I have

of myself that allows me to say that the things

I think are the things that I alone think.

Apperception provides a stable foundation

for reason and the understanding much as do

the formal conditions of space and time

for the sensibility and intuition.

Judgment in fact is the name for this subsumption

of knowledge under the unifying

ground of apperception, and is indicated

by the be-verb.  Every time I use the be-verb,

it is with an ultimate reference

to the “am” of “I am.”  I am able to learn

through the senses that “when I hold an apple in

my hand I feel the impression of weight.”

But only concepts rooted in the unity

of apperception allow me to ascertain

that “apples are heavy.”

6.332                                    Kant’s position

is that the unity of consciousness precedes

all that goes on in thought.  In contrast, it would seem

from our summary thus far that Fichte

would situate the unity of consciousness

in the Kantian stratosphere of rational

ideas, at a point where synthesis

has gone beyond the limits of experience,

at which it’s left to practical philosophy

to edify itself with ideas

concerning the soul, God, freedom, etc.

What allows Fichte to locate thetic judgments

at the opposite end of synthesis

from where Kant locates apperception?  To answer

this question we must first venture a summary

of the fundamentals behind Fichte’s

“idealistic turn.”  In essence, Fichte takes

a few key points or motifs from Kant, simplifies

and radicalizes them, and discards

the greater part of the remainder.  His first move

is to remove Kant’s intuition from the hands

of time and space.  Fichte claims that it’s not

the case, as Kant thought, that we first gain impressions

through sensation and subsequently go to work

on them via concepts.  Rather, all thought

and experience start with the self – the same self

that Kant had indicated via his doctrine

of transcendental apperception.  Thus,

the thetic judgment situated at the heights

of synthesis is rooted in a grounding act

or movement of self-hood identical 

to Kantian apperception.  Second, he claims

that this self is neither subject nor object but

is rather an act – an absolutely

primary act that possesses no subsistence,

that in itself is “nothing.”  In the Mosaic

“I am that I am,” expressed in shorthand

in the equation I=I, the first “I”

or “I am” is an act of self-positing, which

gives rise to an existence of the self

that is only first expressed in the predicate.

The self is a “subject-object,” indicating

that, insofar as it is a subject,

it posits, and insofar as it’s an object,

it is that which is posited.  In short, the self

is either (viewed from the subjective side)

a self-posited positing, or else

(viewed from the objective side) a self-positing

posited.  (If you find that this is too

convoluted to merit consideration, 

then it’s needless to bother further with Fichte…

though trust me, my summary’s easier

to grasp than wading through the Wissenschaftslehre

in any of its versions.  Try to stick it out,

though…the results may prove interesting.)

6.333 How, then, does Fichte get to anything beyond

the self?  The self is in fact the totality

of reality, and reality

insofar as it is distinct from the self is

a result of subordinate positings that –

from out of a self that is as subject-

object the fundamental act of positing –

create both a thing that knows (the self as subject)

and things that are known (its objects – i.e.

everything else).  In this way, Fichte is able 

to dispense with Kant’s famously complicated

Erkenntniskritische* apparatus.

We no longer need to ask with Kant how we come

to knowledge of things external to our own minds

because there are such things outside our minds

only insofar as we’ve posited them there.

________________________________________

*German: epistemological (literally, “knowledge-critical”) – used here as a metrical substitute for “epistemological.”

__________________________________________________

6.34 Fichte claims that, in addition to rational

judgments such as “man is free,” the judgments

of taste are also thetic and not (as Kant thought)

synthetic.  In a judgment of taste, I compare

an object that I have deemed beautiful

to an idea that, as with the idea

of freedom, is thoroughly indeterminate – 

a lofty ideal to which the object

in its beauty will always approach but never

quite match.  Fichte’s discussion is limited to

the judgments of taste that take place when we

admire a beautiful object.  Yet, to arrive

at our point, is it not possible to discern

thetic judgments at work in art itself?

Doesn’t Adorno point to something resembling

a thetic judgment in his claim that in music

nothing is judged, although judgment occurs?

Note how, in discussing music, we frequently

find ourselves referring to “musical subjects.”

Do we ever, though, speak of “musical

predicates”?  Isn’t music like a constantly 

evolving act of Fichtean self-hood, posed at

a certain apex of ascent between

two dimensions of reason (theoretical

and practical) at which predication falls off,

is no longer possible, or at least

no longer discernible or accessible?

Isn’t the Beethovenian subject simply

an ever-iterable assertion

of the Mosaic “I am that I am”?

6.35                                                    Further,

doesn’t Adorno’s view of music as an art

that judges yet does not judge resemble

Fichte’s generation of reality out

of a self that is neither subject nor object

but is rather to be viewed as an act,

as a subject-object?  Thus, the self as subject

posits itself, is a positing of the self;

yet it is an object insofar as 

it is not what posits but what is posited.

Couldn’t we rephrase this, making the pertinent

substitutions, in the following terms:

Music judges itself and finds itself to be

a judging entity; yet it’s an entity

that does not judge insofar as it finds

itself to be that which is judged rather than that

which judges?  Keep in mind, in addition, that this

is the fourth statement Adorno has made

concerning a predication of the subject 

“music” that is both affirmed and denied.

(First, it was both affirmed and denied that

music is a language; second, that music has

intentions; third, that music has concepts.  Note that

Adorno has also denied music

to be a sign system, while affirming that it

employs symbols.).  Couldn’t we assert that music

forges a language and confirms itself,

in this forging, to be a language; as a thing

that has been forged, however, rather than that which

has been forged, it is in fact not language?

6.36 Before moving on to our seventh set of thoughts,

we would like to suggest further advantages

that Fichte’s streamlined concatenation

(“conkantination,” if the reader doesn’t mind!)

of Kantian epistemology offers

in grasping Adorno’s notes on judgment.

6.361 We begin with Fichte’s reworking of Kant’s view

of the imagination.  In the primary

act of self-positing, the self posits

itself as infinite.  The self is infinite

insofar as it posits; the part of the self

that is posited in this positing,

though, is finite.  Thus, the extent to which the self

is finite is indirectly proportional

to the extent to which it’s infinite.

The play set forth between the portion of the self

that posits and the portion which gets posited

takes the form of a certain self-conflict – 

precisely what we call the imagination.

When the self discovers itself to be finite

in some way, it attempts to overcome

this finitude; the journey of the self is marked

by a series of forward surges that are placed

in abeyance by what Fichte calls “checks”

(Anstossen) that remind it of its finitude.

The objectal world is produced through this constant

wavering between infinity and

finitude.  Imagine a vector beginning

at a point – call it point A – which marks a sort of

launch pad of the self.  The vector pointing

out from point A indicates a propulsion of

the self into infinity that, however,

is given a “check” at a new point C.

The vector from A to C is the direction

which marks both infinity and activity;

that from C back to A the direction

marking finitude and passivity.  The two

vectors unify in the imagination

(although it would perhaps be more correct

to say that their reciprocity is in fact

the imagination).  The self’s activity

is thus always tainted with a certain

resistance; if it weren’t for this resistance,

the self would have no experience of its own

infinity.  Kant’s ternary process

of synthesis is modified in this manner:

First, there is the primary act through which a part

of the self is posited.  Then, within

this positing, the contours of an entity

that is to be determined as object become

discernible.  Finally, in an act

subordinate to the primary, an object

is determined out of the imagination’s

wavering – a wavering that takes place

around the discerned entity.  All the questions

that Kant assigns to practical philosophy

result from the outward, active movement

leading away from A; you might call this vector 

the “vector of idealism” (now and then

Fichte refers to this outward movement

as “drive”).  All those questions pertaining to knowledge

and to experience, by contrast, result from

the return movement back from C to A,

which might be called the “vector of realism.”

Feelings are produced by checks to the drive at C.

Feeling is always a combination

of satisfaction (which results from a return

of the self from point C for a refreshing pause

of self-reflection, for a restful bit

of shut-eye at point A) and dissatisfaction

(the opposing need to get beyond the ever-

renewed boundaries established by checks

at point C).

6.361P        On Your Way Into Sleep

What puzzles has it not placed before your vision?

What questions, what demands – this mumbling Sphinx?

But at its side is an unnoticed companion –

sly, obsequious – the neutral third party in

a rendezvous with punctuation marks.

You try to dispel it but it keeps returning.

It’s not a thing known, but a sort of procedure,

a commotion that keeps itself busy,

ancillary to the bigger activity,

that allows things to resume their respective shapes –

like the mobile that whirls before you sleep,

like the phantoms that promenade before you sleep,

accompanying you on your way into sleep,

releasing you on your way into sleep,

rushing ahead of you on your way into sleep.

6.362                    If you’ve waded patiently through all

of this, then you should have Fichte’s philosophy

in a nutshell.  And if it isn’t clear

from my summary, it won’t get any clearer

regardless of how many attempts you make at

the Wissenschaftslehre.  Although Fichte

seems to have had a difficult time coming up

with a suitably transparent exposition

of his philosophy, he did manage

to simplify certain of Kant’s terms and concepts

without altering them beyond recognition.

In fact, it is now possible for us

to situate Kant’s epistemological

apparatus – the whole shebang, inclusive of

the understanding, judgment and reason –

within the wavering that Fichte recognized

between the self as a positing agency

and the part of itself that it posits,

a wavering from which arises the feelings 

of pleasure and of displeasure – that arena

of the mind that Kant had wished to reserve

exclusively for the faculty of judgment.

Music and art (along with most everything else,

it would appear) may now be located

within the wavering set up between the real

and the ideal in this thetic act of selfhood.

If we insist on preserving Fichte’s

extraordinarily condensed conceptual

layout while maintaining the right to refer back

to Kant whenever we wish, we may find

we’ve concocted a terminological soup

that cannot be stirred, but we may in so doing

grant ourselves some license for placing things

next to each other for comparison in such

a way that possibly wouldn’t seem justified

without these references to Fichte.

The third critique itself, for example, becomes

compacted via Fichte in such a manner

that the early sections dealing with art

may be read directly against the passages

in the latter half of the book on the sublime.

6.3621 The sublime.  For Kant, the pleasure we feel

in connection with the sublime is entirely

different from that produced by the beautiful.

When we contemplate something beautiful,

the mind is placed in a state of calm and restful

contemplation; the sublime elicits feelings,

in contrast, of mental agitation.

The term “sublime” is reserved for ideas or

things that we perceive to be absolutely large.

Among things we might designate “sublime”

would be included natural phenomena

like mountains and human works like the Taj Mahal;

among ideas – virtue, liberty,

and so forth.  “That is sublime in comparison

with which everything else is small,” as Kant proclaims.

The imagination strives to take in

the great magnitude with which it is confronted

but turns out to be inadequate to the vague

notion we have of the very large thing.

Our powers of representation are called up

or exerted with an eye towards infinity

so as to be able to comprehend

the object; subsequently, they are subjected

to a momentary inhibition as we

become aware of the futility

of the attempt to “take it all in.”  However,

before long this inhibition is overcome

by the imagination’s constantly

renewed efforts to come to terms with the object.

The imagination performs a pair of acts

when confronted by the very large thing.

“Apprehension” is the name of the projected

ventures into infinity, and it contracts

its workload on a step-by-step basis,

putting together the parts that make up the whole.

“Comprehension,” on the other hand, is the name

that we give to the imagination’s

demand not to lose sight of the overarching

whole, the entirety.  “When apprehension reaches

a point where the partial presentations

of sensible intuition that were the first

to be apprehended are just now beginning

to vanish in the imagination 

as it proceeds on to further presentations,

the imagination then loses precisely

as much on the one side as it gains back

on the other; and so there is a maximum

in comprehension that’s not to be exceeded.”

(Apologies for the rather awkward

metrical paraphrase, but I can’t help trying.)

The sublime qua feeling is an alternation

between attraction to the object and

repulsion from it; “attraction” names our ever-

repeated attempts to contemplate the object,

“repulsion” the event of being spurned

from the object due to comprehension’s failure.

This alternation gives rise to pleasurable

feelings that, unlike the pleasure we feel

in the presence of the beautiful, is admixed

with displeasure.  The example that is offered

by Kant is the Egyptian pyramids.

Ideally, the viewer should be at a distance

neither too far nor too near for the pyramids

to work their properly sublime effect.

If you stand too far away, you cannot make out

the individual stones; if you stand too close,

on the other hand, the comprehension

can’t maintain its pace with the apprehension as

the eye works its way vertically up the steps.

Imagine you’re having a picnic lunch

somewhere within sight of the Great Wall of China.

Certainly you’ll apprehend a bit of the wall,

but no more than a tiny bit of it.

Or imagine that you’ve gotten lost in China,

have just emerged from the forest and have come up

against this wall that you don’t even know

is the Wall of walls.  Comprehension in this case

is more or less entirely out of the question,

for the simple reason that you are not

aware that this edifice which has halted you

in your tracks is no more than a tiny segment

of a structure that winds its lonesome way

millions of stone-throws across the Middle Kingdom.

But imagine you’re an astronaut looking down

from space upon the eastern hemisphere.

You take in at a glance that snaky appearance –

the only thing made by human hands visible

from such heights.  Maybe you’ll comprehend it –

entirely, even – but you’ll apprehend nothing.

True, this isn’t to say that a sublime feeling

will not be produced, for you have of course

a myriad of impressions and images

of the wall stored up in your memory on which

to rely.  If, however, you “bracket”

the memory and concentrate on the snaky

appearance itself, you will create for yourself

a decidedly non-sublime effect.

6.3621P        The Next Man On the Dump

                            - December 31, 1999 - 

I’d been walking for longer than I could reckon.

The mind had entered a seasonal slump.

Suddenly, in an eerily prolonged second,

it occurred to me I’d been struggling on a dump.

All along I had thought it a mountain.

My gaze flew down along the precipitous steep

until it caught a glimpse of that long-sought fountain

through which, however, not a trickle seeped,

though through a flaw in sound I thought I heard its roar.

Or was something flapping on an adjacent shore?

The dump is full of images and more –

enough to provide me with what I thought I lacked.

One grows to cherish the things on which one is stacked!

From my vantage atop the toppled mound,

I imagined I heard a humming behind sound.

6.3622 It should be clear that Fichte derives the substance

of his presentation on how the self

arrives at the non-self from the sections

of the third critique pertaining to the sublime.

You might re-name the vector leading out from A

to C the “vector of apprehension”

and the retrograde movement from C back to A

the “vector of failed comprehension.”  All that’s left

for us is to a) remark that Fichte’s

“conkantination” has allowed us to fuse Kant’s

Analytic of the Beautiful together

with his Analytic of the Sublime

(i.e. the first two halves of the “Analytic

of Aesthetic Judgment” which together comprise

the first half of the Critique of Judgment),

b) to confirm that, in Fichte’s reconstruction

of Kant, the beautiful and the sublime cover

the same territory, and c) to note

that we may now with justification connect,

where and when and if it seems useful or fruitful,

the simultaneous affirmations

and denials of musical predication

in Adorno (i.e. affirmation =

apprehension, idealism and

infinity; denial = finitude,

realism and the lapse of comprehension)

with a system of thought in which beauty

and the beautiful may be discussed together

with the sublime and its high considerations

without discomfort or discomfiture.

6.4 A Postscript to Judgment: Schillingian Goldmine.

At this early stage, we’ll merely peer down into

a few of the shafts, confining ourselves

to Schelling’s early thought, laid out in the System

of Transcendental Idealism, which Schelling

intended to serve as a supplement

of sorts to the Wissenschaftslehre of Fichte.

6.41 We described purposiveness as a harmony

that we find existing between our own

mental powers and the powers or purposes

discerned in nature.  Schelling holds that the feeling

of purposiveness Kant had theorized

is a result of the unconscious, retrograde

movement of thought that itself produces nature

and the things of which nature is comprised.

Nature appears to us as something consciously

engendered; what we’re unconscious of is the fact

that it’s our consciousness that’s engendered,

that’s “purposed” it.  “Nature is purposive without

being purposively explicable.”  The mind

produces two sorts of things, and mental

production in each case is a combination

of an activity (or a portion of that

activity) that is conscious and one

that is unconscious.  The objects of art (or, more

specifically, objects found to be “manmade”)

are those entities produced by a self

that’s conscious of this concurrence of the conscious

and the unconscious portions of activity,

while objects that are judged to be objects

of a purposiveness external to our own

(i.e. “natural objects”) are those entities

produced by a self that is unconscious

of this concurrence.

6.42                                 Schelling calls more attention

than did Fichte to the fact that the movement out

from A (which we have labeled the “vector

of idealism and apprehension” and have

suggested corresponds to the “affirmations”

in Adorno) is a conscious movement,

while the return movement back from the check at C

(the “vector of realism/comprehension”)

is unconscious.  He develops this distinction

in terms of the will: We are conscious of the self’s

activity insofar as by way

of this activity we will various things;

what we are unconscious of is the fact that through

our willing we produce a world of things,

of willed things – that the world itself is no more than

a composite of all the things that we have willed.

6.42P        Leviticus

greatness is of more

        than its merest self composed -

                ‘tis vanity to

otherwise suppose!

        each word an unsung silence

                long presupposes

while playing Aaron

        to an unspeaking Moses,

                and moves through makeshift

and hidden hamlets

        - for he who smashes the calf

                destroys the tablets -

and the truth is leased

        untermed on an unmarked plot:

                the covenant is

kept or it is not

        …from the splinters, from

                the fragments

we seek 

        provisional commandments -

                forms, forever

undeclared,

        which lurk in unimagined 

                wake -

divinities

        we, in passing, shared -

                divinities

we, in chancing, make!

        …and the ills of this world are 

                merely what we willed

6.421 Schelling’s distinction between the conscious

and unconscious aspects of the producing self

comes to the forefront near the end of the System

in his formulations on genius, which,

he claims, is only first possible in the arts.

His conception of genius may be summarized

as follows:  Genius is characterized

by a particular and rare relationship

between the conscious and the unconscious aspects

of the self.  On the one hand, the product

of genius appears to be a (conscious) product

of freedom; it harbors certain traits, however,

through which it equally appears to be

a(n unconscious) work of nature.  An act in art

is thus an intuition that brings together

two domains that generally abide

in separation (i.e. freedom and nature).

Subjectively, art’s inauguration takes place

in consciousness; its objects, its finished

products, however, partake of the unconscious.

Further, while the rules of art may be imparted

to others, pedagogical dictums

and constraints govern only what’s conscious in art,

the unconscious portion of which may not be taught.

Finally, in each genuine artwork

there is an infinity – an infinity

of meaning that depicts the infinite struggle/

divergence between our human freedom

and the nature it has posited.  Moreover,

we are never sure whether this infinity

is something that the artist possesses

or whether he has merely managed to plant it

there in his work.  Every work of art, says Schelling,

“may be propounded ad infinitum,

as though it contained an infinity of aims

and purposes, while yet one is never able

to guess if this infinity has lain

within the artist himself or resides only

in the work of art.”

6.422                                With regard to Schelling’s thoughts

on pedagogy, we might rephrase them

in Adornian terms and suggest that indeed

music may be taught as a language (after all,

we often speak of musical subjects,

musical statements and questions, etc.)

or as a sign system (similarly, we learn

to “read” music – its dynamic markings,

its clefs and its notes) or as a mode of judgment

(we can, through study of classical sonata-

allegro movements, learn how musical

syllogisms are put together: the “major”

or “thesis” in the exposition, the “minor”/

“antithesis” in the development,

and finally the “conclusion” or “synthesis”

in the recapitulation).  But all of this

pertains merely to the conscious portion

of art.  What cannot be taught is the unconscious

activity that’s peculiar to genius

(a genius that pertains, perhaps, not just

to the composer, but also to the adept

viewer/auditor) that, as if by miracle,

allows him or her to forge an object

that is just as much a creation of nature

as a creation that is wrought of human hands.

6.422P            Art’s a Blast!

Now Mozart and Titian; now aftermath, rubble.

A lifelike series of deaths and rebirths.

One claws one’s way around an expanding bubble

that swells up into an edifice ere it bursts.

Study the newfangled sounds and faces.

You can cause the halls to resound with your paces,

or there’s an outlook if you wish to take your air.

It’s fun to meander from stair to stair!

Yeah, art’s a blast…a blast followed by a frantic

rush to pick up the shards.  But not before one’s wormed

one’s way in and out of the “organic” –

to use an appropriately old-fashioned term.

Look for your name in a future Vasari’s Lives.

The key, to paraphrase Schoenberg on Ives,

is to “stay independent and learn how to learn.”

6.423 With regard to the unconscious, is it

necessary to add that we are delighted

to find justification here for importing

into our discussion the panoply

of psychoanalytic terms and implements

and for calling to mind the preliminary

remarks we’ve already made concerning

those aspects of music that seem for Adorno

to be unconscious?  We should pause before such gates,

however, and mention that Schelling’s stance

on the unconscious is diametrically

opposed to that of Fichte, who did not, in fact,

establish a clear position as to

the status allotted to consciousness within 

the activity of the self.  In a later

version of the Wissenschaftslehre than

the one we have summarized above, however,

Fichte does emphasize that the outward movement

(which he now repeatedly refers to 

as “drive”) is, in firm opposition to Schelling,

unconscious.  We are conscious of the drive at all

(which is as much to say that we are led

to presuppose it) only through the checks at C.

Fichte holds that consciousness is situated

on the vector of the real.  When we are

confronted with (objectal) barriers at C,

we feel dissatisfaction; it’s only this sense

of dissatisfaction that causes us

first to posit the drive (or to presuppose it,

more accurately).  From this presupposition

of drive (or of a drive) we infer it

to be the mechanism or the component

that’s produced those objects constantly appearing

before us, tossed from an invisible,

shifting, and wonderful Santa-bag at point C.

6.424 To summarize:

                                            Fichte: The outward drive (vector

of idealism-apprehension) is

unconscious.  We’re only able to infer it

from the (conscious) checks at point C and the return

movement (vector of realism and

comprehension) back in the direction of A.

Schelling: It’s the outward movement of which we are

conscious (though, to be sure, this consciousness

is only rendered possible through the constant

checks at point C).  The return movement productive

of the objectal world is unconscious.

6.425 And Adorno?  Initially his position

seems closer to Fichte than to Schelling.  Let’s take

his argument concerning musical

intentions: Music claims to have no intentions;

still, it is shot through with them.   This seems Fichtean:

Music, in its development “outwards,”

is not conscious of intentions; from the vantage

of retrospection provided by reflection

and introspection, though, it is always

possible, indeed necessary, to posit

that intentions have obtained in the specific 

musical act.  We are only conscious

of intentions the musical act may possess

on our “return from C” provided by the act

of reflection that takes place afterwards.

If, however, we take a look at the question

we began with concerning the proximity

or the non-proximity of music

to language, it becomes apparent that reading

Adorno against either Fichte or Schelling

leads to two rather different notions

of “musical language.”  We could, on the one hand,

take the Fichtean position that what matters

in the constitution of the (musical) act

is the fact that, as an act, it is unconscious.

Paraphrasing Lacan, we might say that music,

to the extent that it is unconscious,

is “structured like a language.”  If we allow such

cooperation between Lacan and Fichte

in our reading of Adorno, we might

go on to look for the linguistic dimensions

of music in those of its properties that we’d

also agree were unconscious (and here,

if we were to continue following Lacan,

we would of course have to begin considering

how “musical language,” to the extent

that it is unconscious, is intersubjective

and thus beyond the ken or comprehension of

the single empirical consciousness –

say, of the composer).  In contrast, we could say

with Schelling that the musical act as an act

is largely conscious.  Here we might either

drop our association with Lacan and look

for the “linguistic” traits or aspects of music

in aspects that we’d also deem conscious

(in the composer’s “intentions,” etc.),

or, assuming that we wished to retain a strict

Lacanian view of the unconscious,

we would be forced to question Schelling as to what

precisely in music is unconscious, given

the fundamentally conscious nature

of the musical act.  These are merely some first

suggestions concerning how to read Adorno

in terms of this fertile dichotomy

suggested by Fichte and elaborated

by Schelling.  We'll return to this question below.

6.43 In discussing Fichte’s development

of the non-self out of the self, the real out of

the ideal, Schelling emphasizes a further

opposition: being and becoming.

He identifies becoming with what we've dubbed

the “vector of idealism.”  But becoming

may be perceived as such only under

the condition of constraint or limitation.

An infinitely producing activity

would not manifest a pure becoming

but would be completely indistinguishable

from pure being (a point made famous by Hegel,

of course, in the years following Schelling’s

System).  However, if the limitation posed

by the check at point C were permanent, the self

would cease to become and, again, would sink

into mere being, mere selflessness.  Thus, the self

must always carry within it a restriction

in order for it to perceive itself

in its becoming.  On the other hand, it must

be constantly abolishing the restrictions

it itself has placed there; the check at C,

that’s to say, must never find itself located

in the same place.

6.431                            If we pause to look back on what

has gone before us, we find that we’ve been

stacking up in the corner a dozen or more

pairs of opposites, each one entailing the threat

of loss of a third element sandwiched

between them (italicized below), and expressed

in a pair of rather dire hypothetical

sentences/judgments/pronouncements.  The most

obvious of these:

6.4311                        Kant: apperception – sublime –

comprehension; a) If our comprehension of

the object we deem sublime were complete,

it either would not possess the magnificent

proportions that allow us to call it sublime

or would not appear to us as sublime

since we’d be too far removed from it for proper

apprehension (as with out lofty astronaut

looking down on the Great Wall of China).

b) If, in the contemplation of the sublime,

we were unable to transcend apprehension

of the individual elements

of which the absolutely large thing were comprised,

we would forget that it was absolutely large

and thus lose sight of its sublimity.

6.4312 Fichte: infinite positing – self – posited

finite; a) If the self were an infinitely

positing activity, it would not

come to experience itself as a self.  b)

If the self were merely posited (as opposed

to positing), it would not be a self,

but a mere and abject thing, unknown to itself

or to anyone.

6.4313                Fichte: object – beautiful – 

ideal; a) If the beautiful object

were not based on an ideal, we’d have no reason

to decide it beautiful.  b) If the object

deemed beautiful were one with its ideal…

But this of course is not possible, for if there

weren’t a separation between the object

and its ideal that had been introduced

courtesy of the activity of the self,

then we would have known neither object nor ideal

in the first place.  That is to say, we’d have

a purely noumenal entity.

_________________________________________________

6.431301 noumenon – an object of which we can have no sense experience and thus (at least in Kantian terms) cannot know.  A phenomenon, in contrast, is an object of which we may have experience through the senses (and thus come to knowledge of).

_____________________________________________________________

6.4314                                        Adorno:

sound – music – language; a) If music had no share

(or “did not partake”?) in the linguistic,

it would be acoustics, mere sound, not yet music.

b) If music were fully, “merely” linguistic,

it would cease to be music.

6.4315                                        Adorno:

general – musical symbol – particular;

a) If, via the musical symbol, we were

able to come to a determinate

cognition of the particular, it would not

be a symbol but would rather be a concept.

b) If such a symbol did not to some

extent partake of the general, it would not

allow us to recognize the particular

or to distinguish this particular

from that particular.  In other words, we’d be

unable to tell the “Ode to Joy” melody

from “Penny Lane.”

6.4316                            Adorno: intention –

music – lack of intention; a) If music were

completely intentional, if musical signs

granted access to signified meaning,

music would cease to be music and pass over

into language.  b) If music were completely

devoid of intentions, it would not yet

be music but, again, mere sound.  (The outcome here

is nearly identical to what takes place in

the judgments of 6.4314.)

6.4317 Adorno: judgment – music – lack of judgment; a)

If music were fully judgmental, we would not 

have art but rather cognition (knowledge

or possibility of knowledge of objects).

b) If no judging occurred in music, you’d have

just a bunch of yahoos pounding away

on their pipes and tabors (little sound, big fury).

6.432       A pause for breath.  What has Adorno accomplished

in the first three pages of an essay

that prints out to fourteen pages in translation?

He has outlined for us, with a Schoenbergian

and breathtaking economy of means,

a series of antinomies folded over

upon one another, all encompassed within

the first, fundamental antimony

of sound and language stated at the beginning.

Who are the players?  The towering shibboleths

of epistemological legend

(concept, symbol, judgment, intention, and so forth).

Yet is this writing epistemological

itself?  Is it, indeed, philosophy?

Doesn’t this intricate rebus of logical

feints and antinomial sleights rather present

itself to the reader as a daring

“literarization” of the conceptual?

Or as epistemological mimesis?

Such questions at this point are premature.

6.44 A final note on abstraction, which, for Schelling,

is the separation of the product attained, 

via the “vector of realism,”

from an act of consciousness that’s subsequent to,

subordinate to the primary one (i.e.

Fichte’s thetic act).  Those acts via which

objects are produced are productive of concepts

that accompany them as well.  Returning to

Adorno’s remark that, through the symbol,

“music is healed of abstractness,” me might suggest

that musical objects arise through the same acts

as virtually all other products 

of the self.  In the case of music, however,

this separation doesn’t come to completion.

The musical act is not as “abstract”

as the acts that produce other sorts of objects;

the musical act is not so greatly removed,

not so separable from the thetic,

primary act as the other objects produced 

by secondary acts of consciousness.  It is

for this reason that we can never “know”

musical objects as we can other objects,

other sorts of objects.  Knowledge is precisely

this separation of act and product

that releases, in addition, the concepts which

assist us in our constitution of knowledge.

Musical objects do not come equipped

with handy “epistemological tool-kits”

as described above – kits that are readily found

(or so Adorno suggests) with other

sorts of objects; the musical symbol is not

entirely removable from the musical

object along with which it’s been packaged

as is the concept from the object it comes with

(or “from which it’s constituted”…like condensed milk?!?).

7 Music possesses theological

properties.  Its propositions are distinct yet

concealed.  “Its idea is the form of the name

of God.”  Music is demythologized

prayer, prayer that’s no longer obliged “to make

things happen,” to effect changes in the real world.

Music does not communicate meanings

but rather names the name itself.  Signifying

language wishes to bring the absolute to speech,

yet the same absolute is constantly

escaping speech and each one of its intentions.

These intentions at bottom are directed towards

the absolute, though in every instance

they come up empty-handed with the mere finite.

Music, in contrast to signifying language,

clasps the absolute immediately

at the same time, however, as it darkens it,

“as when a strong light blinds the eye, which can no more

see things that are visible.”  Like language,

music is sent out “on a wandering journey

of never ending mediation to bring home

the impossible.”  This mediation

unfolds under the reign of a different law,

however, from that which governs signifying

language.  The mediation that takes place

in music does not unravel into meanings

that refer to each other, as in other sorts

of language, but unfolds in the “mortal

absorption” of meaning “into a context that

preserves meaning even as it moves beyond it

with every odd motion.”  The intentions

of musical meaning are constantly being

scattered, refracted “away from their own power” –

away from themselves – only to return

to themselves, to return to each other, brought back

in ever new configurations of the name.

7.1 Let’s begin with the absolute, and let’s

assume for a minute we don’t know anything

about it – or no more than this, at least:

“Are there stars out this evening, dear?”  “Absolutely.

It’s a new moon and the sky is magnificent.”

Absolutely: Here you could substitute

“certainly,” “of course,” “beyond question.”  Or: “Are there

stars out this evening, dear?”  “Yes!  It’s absolutely

magnificent.  Come and join me!”  Let’s tweak

the grammar a notch or two, from “absolutely

magnificent” to “absolute magnificence.”

Absolute: Complete, or thorough, perhaps,

or “not admitting of any greater degree

(of a particular quality).”  Or, let’s take

the classic, pot-smoking bon mot of my

generation, outrageously voiced by Sean Penn’s 

Spicoli: “Awesome!  Totally awesome.”  Of course,

here we may substitute “absolutely”

for “totally,” without speculating as to

whether the reefer-happy Spicoli

had read the Critique of Judgment and was

at all aware at the time of his utterance

that the awesome is indeed a noble token

of the sublime – the Kantian sublime!

7.11 It seems that with the absolute we have arrived

at a crucial turnstile in the development

of our argument (Adorno’s, that is).

Suddenly the table is turned and it’s language

that’s at a disadvantage.  While in general

a signifying language delivers

what it promises, allowing us to connect

with things in the real world, out in the grand outside

of language, it does at last encounter

this wall of the absolute against which it falls

silent.  Against a thing with which it is concerned,

apparently more or less constantly.

Against a thing which, beyond signification,

it hopes to say but never succeeds in saying.

Against a thing that constantly escapes,

flees, eludes it and each one of its intentions.

Against a thing that pertains of the infinite

and is always and forever ahead

of the intentions of speech, leaving them behind

in the dust of the finite.

7.12                                        And music?

Music reaches it immediately

(the absolute, that is).  Yet it is much as if

the absolute reached by music were not within

music’s established, perceptible range –

either too bright or too murky for anything 

capable of further elucidation.  Thus,

while music might appear compensated,

through its ability to reach the absolute,

for the incapability of its symbols

to serve as true concepts in cognition

and in the acquisition of truth and knowledge,

it is quickly apparent, in fact, at least from

the little we know thus far concerning

the absolute, that there has accrued to music

scarcely more advantage than an edifying

change in terminology.  There is some

ultimate, some “beyond question,” that is either

eluded entirely or, if grasped, then darkened

or illuminated to the blinding

point or limit of non-perceptibility/

non-conceptuality.

7.13                                Kant again.  As if

we ever thought we could leave him behind.

“Absolute” becomes terminologically

thematic in the first critique in connection

with reason’s transcendental employment

of the categories, at the point where concept

becomes idea – “that in concept which is more

than concept” (to borrow once more a phrase

from that formidable Slovene, Slavoj Zizek,

that we will elaborate more fully below).

7.131 Reason at bottom is a faculty

of inference.  Take the syllogism below,

consisting of three sentences, and possessing

a subject on the left, a copula

(the be-verb, that is, which I’ve typed in large caps), and

a predicate to the right of the copula:

All German philosophers ARE wordy,

repetitive, grossly redundant, and in need

of an able editor.

                                    Kant IS a German

philosopher.  

                            Consequently, Kant IS

wordy, repetitive, redundant, and in need

of an able editor.

                                    All syllogisms

consist or a major, a minor, and

a conclusion.  The major gives a certain rule

(“All German philosophers are repetitive,

etc.”).  This rule is given by

the understanding via an analytic

operation, meaning that we need add nothing

to the subject “German philosopher”

in order to arrive at the predicate, as

the concept “German philosopher” includes what

is predicated of it (wordiness,

repetitiveness, redundancy, and so forth).

The minor, in contrast, is granted through judgment.

That is, I judge that Kant is a German

philosopher, subsuming this bit of knowledge

under the condition of the rule provided

by the major.  And the minor is synthetic;

I must add the concept “German philosopher”

To the concept “Kant” (for if I have never heard

of Kant before and simply know that he’s 

a person bearing the German family name

“Kant,” “German philosopher” must then be added

to this limited definition that

I already have of Kant as a man who bears

this German family name).  It is by reason

that I finally arrive at knowledge,

via which I come to determinate knowledge,

by combining (or “copulating”) the subject

of the minor with the predicate of

the major in the conclusion (“Kant is wordy,

repetitive, etc.”).  (The inference

made in this syllogism – that old Kant

blabs on a bit too much, needs a good editor,

and wasted untold reams of high-grade Schwarzwald pulp –

is, like all inferences, synthetic.)

7.132 Reason, at its most elementary level,

is thus the faculty which, through syllogistic

inferences, contracts synthetical

knowledge from the concepts of the understanding.

It is subordinate to the understanding,

which maintains the immanent employment

of the categories.  As long as thought respects

the guarded bounds of possible experience,

reason’s inferences may constitute,

may prove constitutive of knowledge.  In order

for these limits to be respected, the major

and minor in any syllogistic

inference must be conditioned by possible

experience (or by the fact of possible

experience, to be more accurate).

That is, the trio of elements that comprise

the first two sentences of the syllogism –

German philosophers, redundancy

and Kant – must all of them be entities we know

through experience, or at least through possible

experience (maybe I’ve never met 

or read him, but it must at least be possible

to know or know of him in some way in order

for the concept “Kant” to be conditioned).

7.133 The trouble begins when one or more elements

in a given inference are unconditioned.

At this point, reason, perhaps unaware

of its own insolence, grabs the reigns from the hands

of the understanding and guides cognition’s roans

where it sees fit (it’s up to the reader

to decide whether the understanding should be

imagined as coldly indifferent, as glad

to be given a break, or as gazing

at the churl to the right of him with an earnest

though well-practiced look of voiceless horror).  Whereas

the understanding’s job is to concern

itself with the synthetical unity of

its conditioned presentations, reason sponsors

the unshackling of the understanding’s

concepts from the limitations of possible 

experience and strives for their elevation, 

from the low rank of mere categories,

into the echelon of the unconditioned,

into the breathless stratosphere of ideas.

7.134 While we have no wish to burden ourselves

with a full exposition of the Kantian

ideas, it will suffice for an example

to list out the four “cosmological

ideas,” as Kant calls them.  The first idea,

based on the three categories of quantity,

consists of the “absolute completeness

of the composition of the given whole of

all appearances.”  This idea, that’s to say,

concerns itself with ultimate questions

as to the temporal beginning and spatial

limits of the world – i.e. whether the cosmos

(world or universe) has a beginning

and end in time or an outer limit in space.

The second idea pertains to the trio

of categories under quality

and (editing down Kant’s verbiage a bit) is of

“completeness in the division of a given

whole in a [particular] appearance.”

In other words, whether the world does or does not

consist of simple parts (Kant’s wordiness

baffles, but this is what it boils down to).

The third idea stems from the categories

of relation and, again, is of completeness – 

this time that of the “origination

of a given appearance.”  This time we’re concerned

with whether the causes we witness in the world

originate with freedom, or whether

they all run according to blind necessity.

The fourth idea stems from the categories

of modality – that same completeness,

“with respect to dependence of the existence

of what’s changeable in experience.”  Here we’re

concerned with the question as to whether

one of the elements of which the world is made

is in some way responsible for the other

elements (i.e. a supreme being).

7.134P    The Lost Fragments of Hippo and Melissus

This one here dates all the way back to Melissus.

It's said to concern what’s called a plenum.

Existence is filled.  With mud, milk, or molasses,

he declines to say.  Time is based on the minim.

It’s not infinitely divisible,

that is – at least, that’s what Hippo seems to have meant.

But it’s tough to prove, as time isn’t visible,

and no one knew back then that space is bent.

The pre-Socratics set out to create a world

to assure themselves the real one wouldn’t shatter.

As we speak it’s being restored and pearled.

It’s the stuff of words that comprises its matter,

protruding from out of the plenum, part on part,

referring back to the ones at the start,

piled up on each other to explain the latter.

7.135 Thus, for Kant, the “absolute” is indicative

of the ultimate ideas that our concepts

lead us to when reason pushes them past

the conditioned, past the limits of possible

experience, and demands a synthetical

totality of its inferences,

regardless of the fact that these inferences,

unconditioned by possible experience,

are no more constitutive of knowledge.

7.136 Returning to the text that we have before us,

we might say that signifying language – beyond

intentions, beyond signification –

is constantly in pursuit of ideas such

as those listed above, yet never manages

to come close to them at all.  In contrast,

music clasps those ideas immediately.

However, due to the circumstance that music

instantly makes these ideas either 

too murky or too bright for elucidation,

we have no means of ascertaining which of them 

we are currently an audience to.

Is Wagner, in the overture to Das Rheingold,

“speaking” to us (or allowing music to speak

to us) of some sort of a genetic

or cosmic beginning?  Or is Arnold Schoenberg,

in pieces that utilize the 12-tone technique,

via the radical equality

to each other of the dozen tones that make up

the chromatic scale, alluding to a cosmos

made of simple parts?  When David Bowie,

singing “Life On Mars,” in an unambiguous

preparation for modulation to D-flat

major, suddenly hops onto/into

B-flat major, is he speculating about

the grand possibility of occasional

interventions on the part of human

freedom into a universe that otherwise

and for the most part runs according to certain

necessary laws?  Does tonality

itself, in which one part (the tonic) possesses

structural priority over the other

elements and over the whole as well

contract to represent a being of beings,

a supreme being?  These are mere speculations.

In the music of Wagner, of Schoenberg,

of David Bowie, there are indeed ideas –

ideas that finally pull up alongside

an absolute that eludes mere spoken

language.  Yet we are unaware which ideas

these may be, which spokespersons for the absolute.

7.137 It shouldn’t be necessary to add

that, in Kantian terms, the occlusion in which

musical ideas are bathed is bound up with

the fact that they are aesthetic, rather 

than rational ideas.  Doesn’t Adorno,

having reached the lofty theme of the absolute,

allow us to entertain the notion

that aesthetic ideas, in the direction

of which his musical symbols gesticulate

though are not finally cognized, meet up,

in the rarefied, supersensible stratum

of the absolute, with rational ideas 

such as those of Kant as outlined above?

Indeed, isn’t this one of the many junctures

at which Adorno provides an innovative,

vital or necessary addendum

to Kant?

7.14             Hegel.  Surely we’re ahead of ourselves.

As a cathartic to these pre-mature, free-flown

flights of fancy, let us move a few steps

forwards (or would it be backwards?) into Hegel.

7.141 We will begin with the Encyclopedia,

throughout which the absolute functions as

the single most important organizing term,

forming a sort of hollow column around which

Hegel weaves a helical structure that

begins at the foundation with being and ends

in the Absolute Spirit with philosophy –

though in the very last milliseconds

it becomes evident that Hegelian space

is curved, that the philosophical crocodile

has swallowed its own tail of being, which

must now be regurgitated so that we may

begin constituting a new crocodile – left,

like the bard (that’s the American bard),

at the end of a road that led out of small-town

Alabama only to lead back into it,

“waiting to find out what price you must pay

to get out of going through all of these things twice.”

7.142 Hegel commences the Encyclopedia

with a first of many definitions

of the absolute as pure being, which in turn

is variously defined as the beginning,

pure thought, pure simplicity, also pure

immediacy.  Being is an entity

that is neither mediated nor in any

respect determined (though even the word

“entity” at this stage is inappropriate,

as entities only appear somewhere higher

on the helix).  Hegel wishes to show

that, contra Kant, the absolute as a point reached

by thought beyond which thought cannot proceed any

further, is in fact already present

at the very beginning of thought, at the site

where thought begins, which is at once the site of pure

immediacy, pure identity,

pure being, pure indeterminacy.  Yet right

at the outset Hegel gives us a clue as to 

the direction in which he will lead us

when he states that “this definition [of being]

is quite the same as the assumption of God as

the sum-total of all realities.”

It will be thought's task to unravel the helix

of being up the column of the absolute,

from being’s inaugural “diremption”

into nothingness, proceeding all the way up

to the crowning architrave of the absolute,

of absolute spirit, on which is writ

the supreme unity of art and religion

in philosophy, before architrave winds back,

however improbably, into base –

the base of being at which the whole thing began.

And each stage in this unraveling will present

a refreshed level of mediated 

immediacy and equally determined

indeterminacy; the absolute will be

variously revealed as quality,

quantity and measure, reflection, appearance,

reality, concept, object, the idea,

nature, the soul, consciousness, spirit, law,

morality and ethics, art and religion,

finally philosophy.

7.143                            Hegel places art

quite high on the pole of the absolute

as the first stage of absolute spirit – itself

the union of the subjective spirit (in which

is comprehended the soul, consciousness,

and theoretical and practical spirit)

with the objective spirit (law, morality

and ethics).  Art gives both determinate

and finite shape to a concrete essence (called God –

one that is fully “unraveled” one notch higher

on the ladder in revealed religion);

the name for this shape is beauty, and beauty is

a sign of that idea we all know as God

and comes about through a penetration

of images by thought, which, says Hegel, takes place

in a variety of manners and gives rise 

to the various arts.

______________________________________________

7.14201 diremption – Translation of Zersetzung, which literally means a “breaking-apart” and has been translated variously as disintegration, dissolution, and decomposition.  Although it is not a common word, I prefer “diremption” for the sake of precision and technical specificity.  In Hegel, various sorts of unities “dirempt” themselves into dualities or pluralities.  “Diremption” describes thought in its unfolding or unraveling and indicates that everything explicitly present in thought at later stages is already present implicitly (or “in itself”) at earlier stages.

__________________________________________________________

7.144                                Where do we place

Adorno’s absolute in all of this?  Instead

of climbing up to such a vertiginous height

on the absolute’s dizzying helix,

we appear to have some warrant for remaining

safely and firmly on the ground at being’s base,

if we risk a momentary return

to Adorno’s fleeting remarks on the abstract.

As said earlier, abstraction for Adorno

as for Kant is a process via which 

we separate or “abstract” the understanding’s

concepts from their empirical situation –

from the conditions, that is, under which

the understanding is capable of knowledge.

The cosmological ideas are “abstract,”

then, in that there is nothing immanent

to our experience that would bring us to true

knowledge of a terminal limit to the world,

or of a non-divisible atom

serving as a building block to the universe,

or of a rational freedom that unleashes

causes in the world, or of a supreme

being governing over the world.  For Hegel,

in contrast, the abstract seems to be a sort of

early synonym of the absolute.

Thought begins at pure being/immediacy/

indeterminacy/identity and is

also the site of the absolutely

abstract; for at this point of beginning, of sheer

inauguration, there is nothing yet that would

serve to separate the empirical

from the non-empirical – the separation

that for Kant as well as Adorno constitutes

the abstract.  The absolute qua abstract, 

far from providing a separation of thought

from a single of its various elements,

is in fact their strictest identity

and includes all the diremptions that will take place

as we wind higher and higher up the helix,

such as those of thought into its sundry

empirical contents.  Indeed, the very first

diremption to take place will be that of being

into nothingness:  In its abstractness,

being is absolutely devoid of content

and is thus nothing; it’s through this first diremption

that being, via its opposition

to nothingness, will acquire positivity.

7.145 Thus, there are a couple of ways to interpret

the statement that what is “said” in music

is not to be “abstracted” from music itself.

On the one hand, after Kant, we may attribute

this incapacity for “abstracting”

musical concepts from the substance or content

of musical expression to the circumstance

that the musical act initiates

itself in sensation and from there overrides

the imagination so as to harmonize

at once with the conceptual powers,

giving rise in turn to aesthetic ideas.

Because the imagination has had no chance

to reproduce what’s been provided by

sensation and thus give rise to a cognition,

we are unable, in contemplating the act

of music, to say anything at all

determinate about the ideas churned up

via the power of conceptuality.

Hence their “abstractness” or their severance

and disassociation from experience

and its contents due to a sort of miscarriage

of the synthetical operation

that is the reproductive imagination.

On the other hand, if we assume with Hegel

an originary identity

between the abstract and the absolute, we might

interpret Adorno as meaning that it is

impossible to abstract from music

for the reason that music’s already abstract,

having always already grasped the absolute.

Just as being includes from the outset

everything we’ll find as we wind up the helix

of thought, so has music always already “said”

it all in advance, has grasped everything

that will be said of it in interpretive acts

posterior to the musical act itself.

And it is because of this inclusion

of all that may be said about it that music

is always already “healed of its abstractness;”

music generates a sort of time-space

that is both prior to the diremptions through which

music will begin to constitute its content

from out of itself and posterior

to these diremptions, situated way up on

the upper helix at the vertiginous height

of art, religion and philosophy –

a simultaneity definitively

indicated in the Hegelian motif

of the always already (immer schon).

On this latter interpretation, Adorno,

although proving himself thoroughly Kantian

in his notes on signifying language

(or even pre-Kantian, as he doesn’t seem

to doubt that we can indeed know “things in themselves”

through spoken language) is radically

Hegelian in his thought on music and art.

7.146 We seem to receive further justification

in an interpretation that favors

Hegel when we remark that Hegel situates

the reproductive imagination rather

high on the helix, beyond sensation

and beyond ideas as well.  If we desire

to maintain a commitment to Hegel, perhaps

we don’t need to wait until we’ve attained

the heights of absolute spirit to think about

music, as the imagination (so claims Kant)

is exempted from the composition

of music – though, it is true, Adorno appears

to reinstate it with the musical symbol.

On the other hand, perhaps we don't need 

to be this strict with ourselves; allowing Hegel

his ordering of events in the unfolding

of thought, we could say that music provides

a sign for the events that occur elsewhere on

the helix of the absolute, or even for

those events taken in their entirety.

Provides, that’s to say, both a symbol and a sign.

For Hegel (in line with Saussure rather than Pierce),

the symbol is one with the content that

it symbolizes; the sign, on the other hand,

is an image that points to, an image that “means”

another representation of thought

and via the act of meaning establishes

a certain independence from the thing it means.

Paraphrasing our Zizek once again,

a sign is “that which in symbol's more than symbol.”

Music is a symbol of thought to the extent

that we take it to indicate thought more

or less adequately, and a sign insofar

as we assume its relative independence

from the thought it indicates (and we mean

“thought” as set out in the Encyclopedia,

famously inclusive of almost everything 

under the sun).  This is how we may use

Adorno to mediate Kant via Hegel

and vice versa.  Kant’s costly exclusion of

the imagination from musical

composition allows us to locate music 

at a lower rung of the absolute (and thus

at a lower, more “primitive” level

of abstraction) than Hegel perhaps would allow;

Adorno’s innovation of the musical 

symbol, with its rather ambiguous

nativity, allows us on the other hand

to drag it up and down the helix as we wish,

which it smears while being itself smeared by

the dirempted elements of being and thought.

Music is thus returned to the reproductive

memory with its signs and its symbols.

In summary, whether or not we concur with

Adorno that music is not a sign-system,

we’re justified in reading Adorno

against Kant and Hegel and in concluding that,

although music may not be a system of signs,

music by itself in fact is a sign

for the helix of thought of which it is a part,

a helix in which everything under the sun

is included, that winds from mere being,

through the cosmos, through humanity with its laws

and its wars, to God and to absolute spirit.

7.1461 As mentioned above, Hegel considers

the beautiful image to be a sign of God;

thus you have one element in the stratosphere

of Absolute Spirit (beauty, that is)

signifying another (God).  It would appear

that Adorno’s strategy, which gives us license

to situate the signification

that goes on between art and the helix of thought

at somewhat less vertiginous heights, brings along

the added benefit of ridding much

of what we have adapted from Kant and Hegel

of the cramped drawing-room odor of classical

aesthetics with which both of them at times

are still redolent – say, Mendelssohn, Baumgarten

and the lot.  For those of you who have a penance

amounting to a short eternity

awaiting you before you may think to exit

purgatory, forget about waving, sobbing

Beatrice up there; if you came up close

enough for a gander, you might see that her nose

is bleeding.  We'll let Gretchen with her spinning songs

lure us up to perfection whenever

she or we see fit (though for my part I would much

prefer a sober and rehabilitated

Janis Joplin, singing hoarsely, “Oh Lord,

Won't You Buy Me a Mercedez Benz.”  But for now

we'll have nothing of the beautiful…or nothing

of Beauty, let’s say.  Don’t throw the baby

out with the bathwater.  Bring on the beautiful,

if it so pleases you.  It goes quite well with tripe,

which we’re fond of here in muggy Taiwan.

7.2 The Name.  All joking aside, though, it’s at this point

in our reading that we find our cognitive roans

bridling to a halt before the gaping

divide posed by the Name.  Our goal, indeed, has been

to establish a clearing to this very site.

The premise under which we’ve been working

is that certain of the terms that Adorno brings

into play in this text and in many like it

are meant to be comprehended against

the full range of their deployment in classical

German philosophy – both in their initial

formulations in Kant and in the range

of elaborations in the years following

Kant’s death by Fichte, by Schelling, and by Hegel.

An additional assumption is that 

Adorno is most often not read in this way

and that his readers generally acquiesce

to everyday conceptions of such terms

as judgment, concept, intention, the absolute,

the abstract and others – notions that as often

as not diverge from philosophical

conceptions or from philosophical usage –

or (particularly in the case of readers

coming to Adorno with musical

orientations) to watered down or simply

inaccurate notions of philosophical 

conceptions or traditions that have been

perpetuated by certain artists (Wagner,

perhaps most famously) or (just as frequently)

by certain overzealous disciples

who were more fond of quoting the philosophers

than they were of reading them.  Thus, our task has been

to open up these terms to the fullest

semantic and conceptual richness with which

they were born in Kantian and post-Kantian

philosophy, as well as to compare

Adorno’s employment of those terms that are not

so central to the Germans (sign-system, symbol)

to certain of his contemporaries

who worked in a somewhat different thought climate –

a climate in which such elements had been placed

in the foreground.  With the Name, however,

we have arrived at an element that cannot

be “opened up” with detailed references to

Adorno’s Germanic predecessors.

We have caught, in the hermeneutic trap that we

have taken such great care to set, an outsider –

an “extimate intruder,” as Zizek

would say.  Or is it not a trap but a trap door

that is beckoning us to approach?  Uncertain

as to whether we are inching around

a device that we ourselves have set with caution,

with full awareness that dangers may lurk inside

of which as yet we’ve scarcely had a clue,

or if we are rather approaching a vacuum

into which we’ll be sucked with unpredictable

and perhaps dire consequences, we’ll pause

before continuing on, our roans restless with

anticipation and fear, and leave the reader

to contemplate a sign we’ll place before

the abyss, reading:

            PENDING FURTHER INQUIRY

7.2P                    The Name

The name is merely the guest of reality

who wears out his welcome with annoying

panache, always having to pretend he’s the host.

“Does a thing seem so to me?  I say it is so.”

He’s got this stupid sort of eloquence.

He’s tall and brawny, and no one wants to argue.

The dog likes him, boys emulate him, women swoon.

He befriends the kitchen, woos the lady,

dismisses the recalcitrant majordomo,

has the roof fixed, the master’s chair reupholstered,

seats himself before the fire with his pipe.

But if all goes wrong, he’s likely to up and leave.

How nice it would be to catch him unawares and

present him with his old invitation.

If you could only find where he’s folded it up!

[Here ends the first volume of Reading Adorno.  The Word file of this book [see below] contains appendices that may be of further interest to readers who have enjoyed this inquiry.]