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The “new categorical imperative” and Adorno’s aporetic moral philosophy

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Abstract

This article offers a new interpretation of Adorno’s “new categorical imperative”: it suggests that the new imperative is an important element of Adorno’s moral philosophy and at the same time runs counter to some of its essential features. It is suggested that Adorno’s moral philosophy leads to two aporiae, which create an impasse that the new categorical imperative attempts to circumvent. The first aporia results from the tension between Adorno’s acknowledgement that praxis is an essential part of moral philosophy, and his view according to which existing social conditions make it impossible for moral knowledge to be translated into “right” action. The second aporia results from the tension between the uncompromising sensitivity to suffering that underlies Adorno’s moral thought, and his analysis of the culture industry mechanisms which turn people into happy, satisfied customers—an incompatibility which threatens to pull the rug out from under Adorno’s moral philosophy. My interpretation of the “new categorical imperative” focuses on two characteristics it inherits from the “old,” Kantian one—self-evidence and unconditionality—in order to present the new imperative as a response to these two aporiae.

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Notes

  1. Adorno (2003b, p. 365).

  2. Marx (1975, p. 182).

  3. The canonical interpretative literature on Adorno presents him mostly as a theorist of aesthetics and a sharp critic of popular culture, or as an empirical sociologist who studies Fascism and Anti-Semitism, but leaves in the shadows a discussion of the moral aspects of his thought. For example: Jay (1974) and Buck-Morss (1977).

  4. The most comprehensive study on this subject is Bernstein’s (2001). In 2003, Adorno’s 100th anniversary, a conference on “Adorno and Ethics” was held at the University of California, Berkeley, and in 2006 an entire issue of New German Critique was dedicated to articles from this conference. Christina Gerhardt, the volume's editor, writes in her introduction: “[A] thorough engagement with the ethical merits of Adorno's thinking has been strikingly absent.” See: Gerhardt (2006a, p. 3). It is interesting to note that some of the articles in this issue have no more than a vague relation to moral issues.

    The current interest in Adorno's moral philosophy belongs to a trend of renewed interest in ethical issues in continental and post-modern philosophy, ongoing for the last two decades. For a concise discussion of this "ethical turn", see: Dews (2002, pp. 33–37).

  5. Finlayson, for example, writes that "Auschwitz is only a vivid and horrible example of the radical evil of the social world." See: Finlayson (2002, p. 2).

  6. Adorno (2003b, p. 228).

  7. Adorno (2003b, p. 286).

  8. On the role of the solidarity impulse in Adorno's moral philosophy, see: Menke (2004, pp. 302–327) and Schweppenhäuser (2004, pp. 333–4). The argument about culture squandering solidarity originates in Rousseau. See: Rousseau (1987, p. 35).

  9. Adorno (2001, p. 3).

  10. Adorno (2001, p. 28).

  11. Horkheimer (1996, p. 3).

  12. Habermas recognizes here a Nietzschian moment, which tries to break the illusion of disinterestedness that accompanies the bourgeois presumptions to reach universal truths, thus exposing the immanent connection of reason and power: Habermas (2005, p. 124).

  13. Adorno (2001, p. 82).

  14. Horkheimer (1996, p. 37).

  15. Adorno (2001, p. 84).

  16. On Kant's influence on Adorno (which began at an early age when he read the Critique of Pure Reason under Siegfried Kracauer's guidance), see: Brunkhorst (1999, pp. 21–30); Buck-Morss (1977, pp. 2–3).

  17. Kant (1996b, p. 69).

  18. Jarvis (1998, pp. 155–156).

  19. Jarvis (1998, pp. 183–184).

  20. It is worth noting that the charge of empty formalism, and consequently of insufficient motives for moral rational action, is controversial among Kant scholars. Wood tries to defend Kant against this charge, and points to Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, where he lists four feelings that are presuppositions of moral agency: "moral feeling", "conscience", "love of human beings", and "respect". See: Wood (1999, pp. 35–40). This interpretation brings Kant significantly closer to Adorno.

  21. While Kant does have requirements about realizing the highest good, which do press Kantian agents to change reality, these requirements do not pertain directly to the categorical imperative, and remain outside Adorno's discussion. See: Yovel (1980, pp. 29–80).

  22. Adorno (2000, p. 14).

  23. In the concise phrasing of the Prolegomena: "Thesis: There exist in the world causes through freedom. Antithesis: There is no freedom, but everything is nature." See: Kant (2002, p. 130).

  24. Adorno (2000, p. 53).

  25. Adorno (2000, pp. 112–113).

  26. Lukács (1971).

  27. Adorno (2003b, p. 244).

  28. Adorno (2003b, p. 242).

  29. Adorno (2002, p. 39).

  30. Adorno (2000, p. 3).

  31. Adorno (2002, p. 50).

  32. Gur Ze'ev identifies a similar position in Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Benjamin, who dub existing reality simply "hell." See: Gur-Ze'ev (2000, p. 186).

  33. Adorno (2003b, p 219).

  34. For a lucid discussion of the epistemological impossibility of a positive conception of the good, see: Finlayson (2002, p. 4).

  35. Adorno (2003b, p. 242).

  36. According to Menke, "false life only knows false representations of the right one, or, more precisely, 'false' culture developed only pictures or models of life which make it impossible for individuals to lead a right life any longer." See: Menke (2004, p. 309).

  37. In an article concerning Adorno's moral philosophy, Schweppenhäuser (2004) makes the claim that Adorno perceives morality as aporetic in nature. However, Schweppenhäuser does not ascribe the aporia to Adorno's own position. Rather, he maintains that Adorno's call for critical reflection on the ambivalence of moral categories of morality can, in fact, be used to change reality. He is mistaken, I believe, in underestimating the ontological aspect of the aporia, which makes it inescapable in principle, thus applicable to Adorno's philosophy as well.

  38. Adorno (2003b, p. 242).

  39. Adorno (2002, p. 77).

  40. Adorno (2002, p. 179). Compare Horkheimer's words: "We are devils too, even we." See: Horkheimer (1978, p. 135).

  41. Adorno (2003b, p. 277).

  42. Quoted from: Bernstein (2006, p. 37).

  43. Adorno (2003b, pp. 242–243).

  44. The following words of Gur-Ze'ev, regarding Horkheimer, no doubt apply to Adorno as well: "[T]he demand for justice cannot be in force and be integrated into this world, but by way of its complete transformation to its opposite." Gur-Ze'ev (2000, p. 234, my translation).

  45. Adorno (2002, p. 33).

  46. Finlayson presents an interpretation that offers another way of introducing normative content into Adorno's moral philosophy. Finlayson is well aware of the danger of complete paralysis that threatens Adorno's philosophy: "[Adorno's moral philosophy] appears to ask us to resist everything at once. What can total resistance amount to, practically speaking, apart from total inactivity?": Finlayson (2002, p. 9). Nevertheless, Finlayson thinks that a satisfactory answer to this question can be found in Adorno. Adorno's ethics, Finlayson argues, contains normative contents and is able to answer the question "What ought we to do?" because it tells us what we ought not to do—we ought not to adapt and cooperate with universal fungibility: Finlayson (2002, p. 6). Furthermore, Finlayson extracts from Adorno's thought three virtues that might guide moral action in line with Adorno's demands—maturity, humility, and affection: Maturity (Mündigkeit, oftentimes translated as autonomy) is, following Kant's "An Answer to the Question: what is Enlightenment?" the ability to take one's own critical stand without surrendering to dictates from the outside; humility (Bescheidenheit) is one's awareness that one might be mistaken; and affection is the ability not to be indifferent to the fate of others. Finlayson thinks, therefore, that Adorno accepts the translation of moral knowledge into action if it relies, on the one hand on recognizing the prohibitions, and on the other hand on the guidance of the three virtues. I find this solution tempting, since it takes seriously the limitations within which Adorno's moral philosophy must operate, but it seems to me highly unsatisfactory. Even if Finlayson is right in arguing that valid knowledge can be extracted from negation, he is certainly too hasty when claiming that from the knowledge of the evil embedded in social reality one can deduce prohibitions on actions—not performing an action has an effect in the world, just the same as performing one. Since it is part of a contradictory reality, it is trapped in the same normative mist that characterizes this reality: One can never know in advance what its outcomes will be, and how it might contribute, despite its good intentions and the knowledge it wishes to articulate, to evil itself. Adorno, in fact, says explicitly, with regard the need to choose between different bad options, that abstention from choosing cannot be a proper solution, for it, too, might lead to a disaster : Adorno (2003b, p. 243), Adorno (2002, p. 26). As to the three virtues Finlayson describes, maturity, humility and affection are undoubtedly virtues that might characterize the critical person, the one who knows how to say "no," as Adorno visualizes him. But the road from here to positive moral content is still long. Even if we accept the claim that these virtues are necessary conditions to moral action, they can by no means solve the problem of the impossibility of right action: Though every act of mature, humble, and affectionate behavior remains subject to the limitations mentioned above, it is not difficult to think of wrongs done by people trying to be mature, humble, and affectionate. Bernstein, too, thinks that refusing to cooperate with "the moral choices on offer" can be right moral action, and my criticism of Finlayson applies to him as well. See: Bernstein (2001, p. 56).

  47. Adorno (1998, p. 261).

  48. Adorno (1998, p. 264).

  49. Adorno (1998, p. 274). The example Adorno provides in this context is illuminating. As evidence of the influence theory has in the world, he tells how surprised he was to find out that academic theoretical studies such as the Dialectic of Enlightenment and the studies of the authoritarian personality, written without practical intent, had significant impact in reality : Adorno (1998, p. 277). But this impact, of course, did not remain theoretical. The reason these studies made an impact (and that Adorno was aware of such impact) was that their readers did not limit themselves to theoretical insights; they tried to translate the insights into actions in the world.

  50. Gur-Ze'ev argues that "interpretative praxis […] is not only possible, it is a categorical imperative": Gur-Ze'ev (2000, pp. 239–240). The criticism I presented above applies to him as well.

  51. Adorno (1998, p. 262).

  52. Adorno (2003b, p. 396).

  53. Adorno thinks that for the time being we are unable to conceive what reality will look like after culture and nature are reconciled; nor can we understand what life in these circumstances might be like: "We cannot anticipate the concept of the right human being," he writes, and returns immediately to the way of negation—"but it would be nothing like the person, that consecrated duplicate of its own self-preservation". See: Adorno (2003b, p. 277).

  54. Adorno (2003b, p. 299), emphasis mine.

  55. Adorno (2003b, pp. 218–219).

  56. Adorno (2003b, p. 285).

  57. Adorno (2003c, p. 103).

  58. Adorno (2002, p. 17).

  59. Adorno (2002, p. 59).

  60. Adorno (2001, p. 120).

  61. Adorno (2001, p. 126).

  62. Adorno (2003c, p. 97).

  63. Compare this discussion to Fromm (1991).

  64. Adorno (2001, pp. 123–124).

  65. Adorno (2002, p. 36).

  66. Adorno (2002, p. 139).

  67. Adorno (2002, p. 65).

  68. Quoted in: Bauman (2004, p. 36).

  69. Adorno (2002, p. 76).

  70. Adorno (2001, p. 143).

  71. Adorno (2001, p. 151).

  72. Adorno (2001, p. 141).

  73. Adorno (2001, p. 150).

  74. Bauman (2004, pp. 27–30).

  75. Adorno (2002, p. 55).

  76. Bernstein (1997, p. 202).

  77. Adorno (2002, p. 190).

  78. Adorno (2002, p. 59).

  79. Adorno (2002, p. 247), emphasis mine.

  80. Adorno (2002, p. 161).

  81. Bernstein (1997, p. 201), emphasis in the original.

  82. This interpretation is common to others: Horowitz (2002, p. 220), Hammer (2000, p. 85) and Eagan (1997, p. 11).

  83. Adorno (2002, p. 30).

  84. Jay thinks that being a "mandarin" is an important characteristic of Adorno's personality. See: Jay (1984, pp. 17–18).

  85. Zygmunt Baumann wonders what would have happened to Adorno's "message" had it reached African deserts or Asian shores—would it not have been interpreted as a new insult, or even a new conspiracy of the Western "enemy?" See: Baumann (2004, p. 44).

  86. This too is a controversial issue for Kant scholars. For a constructivist attempt to vindicate the authority Kant grants to reason see O'neill (1989).

  87. Kant (1996a, p. 164).

  88. Adorno (2003b, p. 261).

  89. Adorno (2003b, p. 365). Adorno's sentence continues. It is omitted here in the current context.

  90. Adorno (2003a, p. 20).

  91. Adorno (2003b, p. 362).

  92. Jay (1984, pp. 107–108).

  93. Adorno (2002, p. 234).

  94. Adorno (2002, p. 55).

  95. Adorno (2003b, p. 362).

  96. Adorno (2003b, p. 361).

  97. Adorno (2003b, p. 372).

  98. Adorno (2003b, p. 364).

  99. Adorno (2002, p. 234).

  100. This is why Bernstein calls the effect of Auschwitz "negative theodicy": Bernstein (2001, p. 383). Just as Voltaire saw through the illusion of Leibnizian Theodicy after the Lisbon earthquake, so can Auschwitz make people see through the illusion of convenient luxurious social existence and recognize that the price they are paying is unbearable. In Adorno's phrasing: "The earthquake of Lisbon sufficed to cure Voltaire of the theory of Leibniz, and the visible disaster of the first nature was insignificant in comparison with the second, social one, which defies human imagination as it distills a real hell from human evil": Adorno (2003b, p. 361).

  101. Adorno (2003b, p. 368).

  102. Adorno (2003b, p. 365).

  103. The quotation is from Eagan, who sees the motivating role of suffering in Adorno's moral philosophy but misses the historical dimension of this suffering. She does not recognize that Enlightenment hinders the power of suffering to motivate action, and that Auschwitz awakens it once again. See: Eagan (1997, pp. 9–10).

  104. Bernstein acknowledges the same point: "it is the injustice of it [the Holocaust], its exemplification of injustice, which provides the moral orientation necessary for the transformation of a broken modernity: the demand that Auschwitz not happen again." Bernstein (2005, p. 305).

  105. Levin says that the moral imperative is "embodied" in the flesh, imprinted in it by suffering, much like the effect of Kafka's machine in "In the Penal Colony" on the bodies of its victims. See: Levin (2001, p. 3). Levin, however, criticizes Adorno for the categorical imperative he formulates, owing its existence to Hitler, instead of being "a categorical imperative inscribed from time immemorial—inscribed, not by torture, but by the grace of nature" (p. 11). In this, Levin misses the deep connection Adorno draws between history and morality: According to Adorno, body and suffering, as well as reason and nature, are all historical categories that influence and limit each other.

  106. Bernstein (2001, p. 393).

  107. Zimmermann suggests a different connection between morality and history: Morality, he thinks, is historical and not a priori, but the history he relies on is that of modern democracies, not the horrors of Auschwitz. See: Zimmermann (2005).

  108. Bernstein (2001, pp. 391–395) criticizes Adorno's claim that Auschwitz alone can provide the historical experience required for the emergence of the new imperative. He thinks Adorno ascribes a paradoxical role to Auschwitz: On the one hand, the relation between the historical event and the individual experiencing it must be particular and unique, and on the other hand, Adorno claims it will arouse the very same reaction in different people. Bernstein thus blames Adorno for reporting his own private experiences in the third person, while expecting everyone else to feel the same way. Since different people react differently to the same events, they might react to Auschwitz in different ways and fail to recognize the categorical imperative. But other events, even seemingly minor ones (a hungry child on a street corner) might provoke a reaction much like Adorno's after Auschwitz and create more categorical imperatives. Bernstein's conclusion is that the imperative Adorno formulates is not the categorical imperative but one of many possible imperatives, one that can, at most, be a model or a precedent. Although Bernstein is probably right in claiming that different events might provoke different moral reactions in different people, this does not mean that any of the imperatives thus created has categorical validity. Each of these imperatives will oblige the person acknowledging it, but not necessarily others. Adorno's point is that only an imperative that stems from absolute "Auschwitzian" evil has absolute validity.

  109. Kant (1996b, p. 73 [n]).

  110. Wood (1999, p. 44).

  111. Bernstein, I believe, understands the categorical status of Adorno's imperative in a similar way when he writes: "our post—Holocaust solidarity, what there is of it, turns not on an ideal to be realized, but on the universal recognition of a limit that must not be crossed." Bernstein (2005, p. 321).

  112. When I presented the first aporia, I argued, contrary to Finlayson, that the normative content contained in the knowledge that it is wrong to cooperate with existing reality is not enough to extricate Adorno from the first aporia, since refraining from an action affects reality just like any action. It must now be clarified that my interpretation does not wholly reject Finlayson's stance, according to which moral knowledge can lead to prohibitions on certain actions, but only limits it. Like Finlayson, I think that knowing what must not be done can prescribe action in the world; but the proper object of this resistance is not social reality as a whole, or any event within it. Resistance must be directed at particular, radical objects, of an "Auschwitzian" quality.

  113. Adorno (2003a, p. 19).

  114. Adorno (2003a, p. 20).

  115. Adorno (2003a, p. 31).

  116. Adorno (2003a, p. 21).

  117. Adorno (2003a, p. 25).

  118. Adorno (2003d, pp. 4–6).

  119. Adorno (2003d, p. 13).

  120. Adorno (2003d, p. 17).

  121. David Toole argues that "the burnt bodies of Jews ‘wiggling skyward as smoke' are connected unavoidably not only to the vaporized bodies of children in the streets of Hiroshima, but also to the bleeding bodies of the American Indians and to the corpses of hundreds of millions of buffalo, bears and wolves that have been piled up, in the course of the ‘settlement' of the American west". See: Toole (1993, p. 228). While the genocide of Native Americans does seem to be a good candidate for the application of the new imperative (although, of course, it precedes Auschwitz and cannot benefit from its implications), it is interesting to ask whether Adorno's imperative, so frugally applicable, should apply to the mass extinction of animals. On the connection between Adorno's moral philosophy and animals, see: Gerhardt (2006b).

  122. Bernstein suggests that Auschwitz has in fact attained the status Adorno prescribes it: After listing a long list of disasters that has happened since Auschwitz, he writes that "perhaps the instance of the Holocaust no longer looks like a self-enclosed event in German history, but begins to look like a precedent, an exemplary instance in which these moments gather round it like elements of a horrific constellation; perhaps, now, unbearably, the Holocaust is coming to have for us the very socio-historical and moral significance that Adorno attributed to it.": Bernstein (2005, p. 306).

  123. The tension that results from a demand that cannot be declined yet cannot be fully answered is also taken from Kant. See the opening sentence of the preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason: "Human reason has the peculiar fate in one species of its cognitions that it is burdened with questions which it cannot dismiss, since they are given to it as problems by the nature of reason itself, but which it also cannot answer, since they transcend every capacity of human reason." Kant (1999, p. 99).

  124. Many philosophers, as different as Arendt, Lyotard, Jonas and Agamben, have indeed attempted to walk this path, with or without a reading of Adorno. For a comparative discussion see for example: Bernstein (2006).

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I would like to thank Anat Ascher, Yoni Ascher, Naveh Frumer, Ori Rotlevy and Moshe Zuckermann for helping and commenting on different versions of this article.

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Snir, I. The “new categorical imperative” and Adorno’s aporetic moral philosophy. Cont Philos Rev 43, 407–437 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9151-8

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