History and Freedom: Lectures 1964-1965

370 Pages·2006·1.03 MB·English

by  Theodor W. Adorno

HISTORY AND FREEDOM

HISTORY AND FREEDOM
Lectures 1964–1965
Theodor W. Adorno
Edited by Rolf Tiedemann
Translated by Rodney Livingstone
polity
First published in German as Zur Lehre von der Geschichte und von der
Freiheit (1964/65) by Theodor W. Adorno © Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt
am Main, 2001.
This English edition fi rst published in 2006 © Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-07456-3012-0
ISBN-13: 978-07456-3013-7 (pb)
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CONTENTS
Editor’s Foreword xii
Part I History
Lecture 1: Progress or Regression? 3
Notes: The relationship of the lectures to Negative
Dialectics; the concept of freedom in Kant and Hegel; the
diminishing consciousness of freedom; the meaning of
history refuted by Auschwitz; the philosophy of history
implies that there is a meaning; cultural morphology
(Spengler) and idealism
Lecture 2: Universal and Particular 10
Trend and individual fact • Distance from and closeness to
detail; progress as a particular • Rationality as a universal;
rationality as the mastering of nature • The concept of
universal history; rationality as a form of confl ict; ‘Faustian
technology’ and modes of production • Hegel’s concept of
spirit [Geist]; spirit and technical rationality; spirit not
primary, but a product • The immediate experience of the
universal and the universal itself denounced as metaphysics;
negativity as a universal
vi contents
Lecture 3: Constitution Problems 19
The truth of facts • Immediacy and mediation; individuality
and the ‘untrue’ universal • Simmel’s philosophy of history;
the problem of constitution (I) • The problem of
constitution (II) • De Maistre; the grounds of knowledge
and grounds of reality • Hegel’s ‘world spirit’ and the spirit
of the age • The logic of things and heteronomy
Lecture 4: The Concept of Mediation 29
Facts as a cloak • The experience of the speculative;
experience of committees • Formal sociology; group opinion
and social totality • French Revolution (I) • French
Revolution (II); underlying cause and proximate cause:
course of history and individual moment • French
Revolution (III); primacy of the course of history: ‘economy
based on expenditure’ instead of ‘economy based on
acquisition’; the theory of historical categories
Lecture 5: The Totality on the Road to
Self-Realization 39
Philosophy of history and historiography • Parti pris for the
universal • Hegel’s class standpoint • In defence of
Hegel • Reason as unreason; individual interest and species;
humanity: ‘public company for the exploitation of
nature’ • Confl ict in the concept of reason • The odious
totality
Lecture 6: Confl ict and Survival 49
Ambivalence of totality; Marx’s optimistic view of
history • Confl ict and totality • Theodicy of
confl ict • Confl ict and the reproduction of life • Confl ict
and prehistory; the economy or relations of domination •
Contemplative and revolutionary conceptions of history; the
problem of anarchism • Defence of nonconformism
Lecture 7: Spirit and the Course of the World 59
The concept of conformism • Critique of the
hypostasization of concepts; the concept of reason; the
irrationality of reason • Law and ‘emotional warmth’ in
Hegel; universality in the particular • The course of the
contents vii
world and individual conscience; methesis [participation] of
the spirit • Theodicy of rupture and concrete possibility
Lecture 8: Psychology 69
The concept of the character mask • Individuation and
socialization • Identity and the semblance of
reconciliation • ‘Sowing one’s wild oats’ • Intellectual
forms of self-preservation and human breakdown;
identifi cation with the aggressor • Acquiescing in self-
destruction; concretism; psychology as cement
Lecture 9: The Critique of Universal History 79
The course of the argument • The concept of universal
history (I) • The concept of universal history (II) • False
mastery and vindication of induction; Hegel’s theory of
history • Freedom and the individual in Hegel • The
individuality in antiquity and the early modern
age • History from the standpoint of the victor
Lecture 10: ‘Negative’ Universal History 89
Benjamin’s XVIIth thesis • Temporal core and
non-identity • Continuity and discontinuity • History as a
gigantic exchange relationship • The total state and the rule
of competing cliques • Dialectic of the particular • The
concept of chance; the utopia of knowledge • Hegel’s
critique of the totality; course of the argument
Lecture 11: The Nation and the Spirit of the
People in Hegel 99
Notes: Spirit of the people and universal spirit; universal
history as universal tribunal; pseudo-concreteness; repressive
archaisms; anti-Cartesian elements in Vico, Montesquieu,
Herder and Hegel; cult of the nation
Lecture 12: The Principle of Nationality 105
The nation: a bourgeois form of organization; departure
from natural forms of association • The path to delusions
of race • Progressive aspects of the nation • The principle
of nationality and natural history • The equality of the
organization of life today • Hegel’s theory of national spirit
viii contents
obsolete; decentralization through technology • Germany
‘the belated nation’ • Predominance of the universal over
the individual; objective reason split off from subjective
reason • ‘Infernal machine’; natural history in Hegel
Lecture 13: The History of Nature (I) 115
Notes: Nature and history; history as spirit; the history of
nature as a critical concept; Marx, the ironical Social
Darwinist; mythical nature of history; fi rst and second
nature
Lecture 14: The History of Nature (II) 120
The concept of second nature • Nature and history
mediated • Critique of ‘historicity’; meaning and
chance • Philosophy as interpretation (I); transience and
allegory; philosophy’s transition to the concrete; history as
secularized metaphysics • Philosophy as interpretation (II);
hermeneutics • Practice thwarted; critique of the
metaphysics of time
Part II Progress
Lecture 15: On Interpretation: the Concept of
Progress (I) 133
The history of nature, allegory, criticism • Secularized
melancholy; theory of interpretation; Hölderlin’s The Shelter
at Hardt • Immediacy as the product of history; Hegel and
Marx; art • The pleasures of interpretation • The concept
of progress as a link between philosophy of history and the
theory of freedom • Critique of nominalism • ‘Whether
progress exists’
Lecture 16: On Interpretation: the Concept of
Progress (II) 142
Towards conceptual synthesis • Progress as a way of
averting catastrophe; the global social subject • Kant’s idea
of humanity • Benjamin’s critique of progress • Progress
and redemption in St Augustine • Escaping the trammels of
the past • Progress mediated by society • Reconciliation
and confl ict in Kant; progress as absolutely mythical and
anti-mythical