THEODOR ADORNO STUDIES
John Locke and the Myth of Race in America: Demythologizing the Paradoxes of the Enlightenment as Visited in the Present
The English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) is one of the most prominent figures in the development of liberal Anglo-American political thought. Locke's writings had a significant influence on the American Revolution and founding principles of the United States in fundamental ways. The author argues that Locke's influence is pervasive not only in American political ideology but also in the contradictions between stated ideals and institutions that have sustained inequality and oppression in a land that values equality and freedom. Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno in their work on the Enlightenment note that every effort to rationalize the foundations of civil society also embedded those foundations in ideology and mythology. One of the myths that emerged out of the scientific revolution and effort to ground human progress in reason was the fiction of multiple races of humankind. This idea, while not uncommon in Anglo-European thought by the 19th century, became especially important in the United States in spite of the fact that it directly contradicts the ideology of equality stated in the founding documents. The author argues that this apparent contradiction reflects and is consistent with contradictions in Locke's attempt to logically ground the rationale for a civil society in self-evident laws of nature. The political thought of Locke is examined through his writings. Locke's personal life is also relevant as it set up the dialectic of his thought in relationship to the uneasy times in which he lived. Locke's political philosophy supported the rise of democratic institutions and basic principles of universal human rights and the character of just governments, while he was also a strong advocate for colonialism and early forms of entrepreneurial capitalism, including the formation of a colony based on slave labor. America had a special meaning for Locke as he worked through his arguments on the rationale for human advancement in economic and civic life. This study focuses on the inconsistencies in Locke's political thought and writings related to equality and inequality. The discussion begins with the impact of the Lockean tradition in relationship to the origin of Locke's ideas in his personal circumstances. As such, the analysis examines the intersection of liberalism with illiberalism, democracy, and concepts of race and racism. The conclusion cites historical examples of legal racial segregation and inequality in the United States with a call to better understand the logic of the past so that people can advance arguments for the ideals of liberal government in the future. (Contains 40 footnotes.)
The English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) is one of the most prominent figures in the development of liberal Anglo-American political thought. Locke's writings had a significant influence on the American Revolution and founding principles of the United States in fundamental ways. The author argues that Locke's influence is pervasive not only in American political ideology but also in the contradictions between stated ideals and institutions that have sustained inequality and oppression in a land that values equality and freedom. Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno in their work on the Enlightenment note that every effort to rationalize the foundations of civil society also embedded those foundations in ideology and mythology. One of the myths that emerged out of the scientific revolution and effort to ground human progress in reason was the fiction of multiple races of humankind. This idea, while not uncommon in Anglo-European thought by the 19th century, became especially important in the United States in spite of the fact that it directly contradicts the ideology of equality stated in the founding documents. The author argues that this apparent contradiction reflects and is consistent with contradictions in Locke's attempt to logically ground the rationale for a civil society in self-evident laws of nature. The political thought of Locke is examined through his writings. Locke's personal life is also relevant as it set up the dialectic of his thought in relationship to the uneasy times in which he lived. Locke's political philosophy supported the rise of democratic institutions and basic principles of universal human rights and the character of just governments, while he was also a strong advocate for colonialism and early forms of entrepreneurial capitalism, including the formation of a colony based on slave labor. America had a special meaning for Locke as he worked through his arguments on the rationale for human advancement in economic and civic life. This study focuses on the inconsistencies in Locke's political thought and writings related to equality and inequality. The discussion begins with the impact of the Lockean tradition in relationship to the origin of Locke's ideas in his personal circumstances. As such, the analysis examines the intersection of liberalism with illiberalism, democracy, and concepts of race and racism. The conclusion cites historical examples of legal racial segregation and inequality in the United States with a call to better understand the logic of the past so that people can advance arguments for the ideals of liberal government in the future. (Contains 40 footnotes.)
EDUCATION AFTER AUSCHWITZ
THEODORE ADORNO
university in the 1960s not all of the students present found it a pleasure to
listen and taking notes mainly because they were teacher training students and
didn´t feel comfortable with two facts in the curriculum they were obliged to
follow: a) they weren´t allowed to merely concentrate on their core school
subjects (Fachstudium) and b) they had to pass an exam in philosophy and
could well meet Prof. Adorno in the exam room, being asked awkward question
about ontology, history or epistemology. To give us an impression of what was
usual at the time I quote from a text in this collection entitled “Philosophy
and Teachers”: “This test therefore should permit us to see whether those
candidates, who as teachers in secondary schools are burdened with a heavy
responsibility for the spiritual and material development of Germany, are
intellectuals, or, as Ibsen said more than eighty years ago, merely specialized
technicians (bloße Fachmenschen).” (21) To pass the Staatsexamen
was the conditio sine qua non in the teacher´s profession - the federal
state being - as a monopsonist - virtually the only source of employment on the
scondary level in the whole country, because for a German mind it was - and in
a major part still is - unquestionable that a teacher on the secondary level
not only has passed several university exams but also has to join the ranks and
files of the civil service (Beamte, Besoldungsgruppen). For
Adorno in particular and the subject of philosophy in general it was then quite
a privileged situation compared with today when as a lecturer in the subject of
philosophy you will hardly meet any student that has not signed up voluntarily
for your subject and for your class. This might explain why Suhrkamp Verlag,
Adorno´s main publisher, every now and then and on a regular basis threw new
paperback books written and compiled by Adorno on the market for an audience of
students that had manifestly a much larger catchment area than it would have
today. The book here in question was subsequently published by Columbia UP in
1998 comprising two different of such publications from the 1960s - Eingriffe.
Neun kritische Modelle, FfM 1963 (es 10) and Stichworte. Kritische Modelle
2, FfM 1969 (es 347) which together add up to some twenty essays by Adorno that
range from Television to Law Today and from Progress to the question ´What is
German?´. I cannot advice readers to take an overdose of Adorno by reading it
all and at once but to take their time and to pick and choose. I myself have
written the following text in German on chapter two (see under Reviews).
Reviewed Work(s):
The Origin of Negative Dialectics by Theodor W. Adorno; Walter Benjamin; Frankfurt
Institute; Susan Buck-Morss
The Frankfurt School. The Critical Theories of Max Horkeimer and Theodor W. Adorno by
Zoltan Tar; Michael Landman
Gillian Rose
History and Theory, Vol. 18, No. 1. (Feb., 1979), pp. 126-135
29
Jun
10
By criticalkabbalist
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Frankfurt School, kabbalah, marxism, Theodor Adorno, Tiqqun, Walter Benjami
For the critical thoughtist, Theodor Adorno (1903 – 1969) is a guiding light. A secular Jewish marxist of the Frankfurt School, he proposed a negative critique of exisiting social conditions that must avoid the affirmative illusions of the present. Interesting then that in one of his key works, ‘Minima moralia: reflections on a damaged life’ he concluded in a tone clearly influenced – like his late friend Walter Benjamin – by Jewish religious conceptions, possibly even the notion of Tiqqun as the redemption of the broken world associated with Lurianic Kabbalah:
‘The only philosophy which can be responsibly practised in face of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things from the standpoint of redemption. Knowledge has no light but that shed on the world by redemption: all else is reconstruction, mere technique. Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be, with its rifts and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will appear one day in the messianic light. To gain such perspectives without velleity or violence, entirely from self contact with its objects – this alone is the task of thought. It is the simplest of all things, because consummate negativity, once squarely faced, delineates the mirror-image of its opposite. But it is also the utterly impossible thing, because it presupposes a standpoint removed, even though by a hair’s breadth, from the scope of existence, whereas we well know that any possible knowledge must not only be first wrested from what is, if it shall hold good, but is also marked, for this very reason, by the same distortion and indigence which it seeks to escape. The more passionately thought denies its conditionality for the sake of the unconditional, the more unconsciously, and so calamitously, it is delivered up to the world. Even its own impossibility it must at last comprehend for the sake of the possible, but beside the demand thus placed on thought, the question of the reality or unreality of redemption itself hardly matters.’
No comments:
Post a Comment