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The “Unhappy Consciousness” And Conscious Unhappiness: On Adorno's Critique Of Hegel And The Idea Of An Hegelian Critique Of Adorno

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

Simon Jarvis
Simon Jarvis*
Affiliation:
University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
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Abstract

In the early sections of The Difference Between Fichte's and Schelling's System of Philosophy, Hegel offered some advice on how not to write the history of philosophy. In the hands of the collector of philosophical opinions “philosophy is transposed to the plane of information. Information is concerned with alien objects”. But for Hegel a scarcely less inert relation to previous work in philosophy is implied when this work is taken as a series of faltering steps towards the invention of a perfected thought-technique which would spare truth the labour of error. In these circumstances “The preceding philosophical systems would at all times be nothing but practice studies for the big brains”. Research on the Phenomenology of Spirit has occasionally resembled both an aggregation of inert philological objects and a series of intellectual work-outs. But either fate may be preferable to its relegation to the honourable oblivion of Gedankendichtung, “conceptual poetry”. The phrase “Hegel-specialist” has an oxymoronic ring to it; but the separation of faculties which governs this need for experts cannot be wished away. A stuffed replica of the Phenomenology of Spirit, or even a requirement that all philosophers should speak Hegelian, can hardly today provide more than philosophical kitsch. Hegel's philosophical compositions continue mutely to reproach the graceless cerebration sometimes conducted in their name, but they are still worse served by what Hegel referred to as “the conceit that will not argue”. These considerations also apply to the content of interpretations of the Phenomenology itself and of Hegel's thought in general. Some recent readings have emphasized Hegel's Kantian and Fichtean inheritance to the point where it might almost be thought that what is distinctively interesting about Hegel has vanished altogether. But such readings represent a fair response not merely to any idea that Hegel kindly allows us to have back intact the dogmatic metaphysics harshly prohibited by Kant, but also to interpretations which forget that Hegel's critique of epistemology proceeds immanently and epistemologically rather than being shot from a pistol. Discussion of the “unhappy consciousness” might stand as an epitome for these oppositions in Hegel-reception. At one extreme lies Walter Kaufmann's suggestion that “Hegel evidently wanted to get some ideas about medieval Christianity off his chest…”; but deeper and more nuanced readings of the presence of a phenomenology of religious consciousness in this passage are not lacking, above all the monograph by Wahl and Hyppolite's discussion in his commentary.

Type
Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit
Information
Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 15 , Issue 1: number 29 , Spring/Summer 1994 , pp. 71 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 1994

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References

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25 Phenomenology, trans Miller, , p 487 Google Scholar; Hegel's words are also quoted with reference to Adorno's Hegel-reception by Thyen, Anke, Negative Dialektik und Erfahrung. Zur Rationalität des Nichtindentischen bei Adorno (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), p 166 Google Scholar.

26 “…it must be said that nothing is known which is not in experience, or, as it is expressed, that is not felt to be true, not given as an inwardly revealed eternal verity, as something sacred that is believed, or whatever other expressions have just been used.” Phenomenology, p 487.

27 Ibid., pp 8-9.

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32 DS, p 14; H, p 7.

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34 DS, pp 10-11; H, p 3. It is interesting that Richard Kroner is here credited with this insight given the frequency with which Kroner is reproached for presenting the history of German idealism as a single straight line.

35 DS, p 34; H, p 30.

36 DS, p 73; H, p 77.

37 DS, p 48; H, p 46.

38 DS, p 80; H, pp 84-85. For striking evidence of the influence of this thesis on Adorno's thinking see ND, p 66; Ashton, pp 56-57.

39 DS, pp 10-11; H, pp 2-3.

40 DS, pp 12-13; H, p 5.

41 Compare Adorno's characterization of experience as the “animating contradiction., of absolute truth”: DS, p 53; H, p 54.

42 DS, pp 33-34; H, pp 29-30.

43 ND, pp 85-86; Ashton, pp 77-78.

44 ND, p 138.

45 See, for example, Zur Metakritik der Erkenntnistheorie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970)Google Scholar; Against Epistemology, trans Domingo, Willis (Oxford: Blackwell, 1982)Google Scholar.

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48 DS, p 17; H, p 11.

49 DS, p 65; H, p 67.

50 DS, pp 20-21; H, p 15.

51 DS, p 17; H, p 11. It should not be imagined that in naming Hegel's a philosophy of identity Adorno is confusing it with Schelling's early philosophy of identity: cf. DS, p 15; H, p 8.

52 Science of Logic, trans Miller, A V, p 439 Google Scholar.

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid., pp 440-41.

55 ND, p 156; Ashton, p 153

56 ND, pp 37-38; Ashton, p 27.

57 Ruediger Bubner points out the aptness of Friedrich Schlegel's aphorism: “It is equally fatal to spirit to have a system and to have none. It will therefore simply have to decide to combine the two”. Bubner, , “Adornos Negative Dialektik” in Adorno-Konferenz 1983, pp 35–65, p 35Google Scholar.

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59 ND, p 10; Ashton, p xx.

60 ND, p 21; Ashton, p 10.

61 DS, p 93; H, p 100; see also ND, p 114-15; Ashton, p 108-9.

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67 Cf Adorno, , Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic, trans Hullot-Kentor, Robert (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), p 106 Google Scholar.

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69 DS, p 60; H, p 62.

70 ND, p 241; Ashton, p 243.

71 See for example Aesthetische Theorie, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), p 53 Google Scholar.

72 The sources for this thesis, apart from the obvious debt to Marx, include Sohn-Rethel, Alfred, Intellectual and manual labour, trans Sohn-Rethel, Martin (London: Macmillan, 1979)Google Scholar.

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79 DS, pp 53-83; H, pp 53-88.

80 DS, pp 13-14; H, p 7.

81 DS, p 26; H, p 21.

82 DS, p 27; H, p 22.

83 DS, pp 28-29; H, pp 23-24. See also ND, pp 179-80; Ashton, pp 177-78.

84 DS, p 58; H, p 59.

85 ND, p 173; Ashton, p 171: Vermittlung is in general variously mistranslated by Ashton as “transmisson” or “indirectness” rather than “mediation”.

86 ND, p 139; Ashton, p 135.

87 ND, p 173; Ashton, p 171.

88 DS, p 31; H, p 26.

89 DS, pp 30-31; H, p 26.

90 ND, pp 187-90; Ashton, pp 186-89 (as “The object not a datum”).

91 Ibid.

92 ND, p 186; Ashton, p 185.

93 ND, p 187; Ashton, p 187.

94 ND, pp 189-90; Ashton, p 189.

95 Adorno, Kierkegaard, p 107.

96 Ibid., p 115.

97 ND, p 24; Ashton, p 13.

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100 A point which is brought out especially strongly by Liebrucks's reading: Liebrucks, Bruno, Sprache und Bewusstsein, vol 5, Die zweite Revolution der Denkungsart: Hegels Phaenomenologie des Geistes (Frankfurt am Main: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1970), pp 103-9Google Scholar.

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103 Phenomenology, p 132.

104 Ibid., p 134.

105 DS, pp 30-31; H, p 26.

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107 ND, p 160; Ashton, p 157.

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109 Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans Paton, H J (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p 102.Google Scholar

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112 DS, p 32; H, p 28.

113 DS, pp 20-22; H, pp 15-17.

114 Phenomenology, trans Miller, , p 66 Google Scholar.

115 ND, pp 163-64; Ashton, pp 161-62.

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117 Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans Cumming, John (London: New Left Books, 1979), p 45 Google Scholar: “Aboriginal myth already contains the aspect of deception which triumphs in the fraudulence of Fascism yet imputes the same practice of lies to the Enlightenment”.

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118 Cf, for example, Aesthetische Theorie, pp 345-47.

119 ND, p 22; Ashton, pp 10-11.

120 ND, p 149; Ashton, p 145; ND, p 161; Ashton, p 158.

121 Theunissen, , “Negativitaet bei Adorno”, pp 51–52 Google Scholar.

122 ND, p 66; Ashton, p 57

123 ND, p 66; Ashton, p 57.