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Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Theodor Adorno

Although he wrote monographs on Hegel, Husserl, and Kierkegaard, the closest Adorno came to an extended discussion of Kant are two lecture courses, one concentrating on the Critique of Pure Reason and the other on the Critique of Practical Reason. This new volume by Adorno comprises his lectures on the former.

Review:

Taking an interest in philosophy in an attempt to characterize the elements of cognition that drive an entire society in directions that it would never contemplate going, if only the always already unthunk could control events as thoroughly as groups maintain strict limits on the options they are willing to consider, I'm having trouble identifying an element of irony that could make my review of KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON by Theodor W. Adorno suitable for the comic times in which we live. First of all, the book is not about politics, however much Adorno wishes to characterize Kant's philosophy as seeking a form of enlightenment that served the interest of "bourgeois resignation," (p. 6) in opposition to the authority of other absolutes while expressing "the enthusiasm of the youthful bourgeoisie which has not yet started its never-ending complaints that reason cannot solve anything, but which still feels confident of its ability to achieve things by virtue of the power of its own reason" (p. 54). At the top of this heap of ideas is autonomy, a situation in which "the judge and the accused are one and the same; that the authority that is free and independent simultaneously represents the law. This is the founding conception of his entire universe." (pp. 54-55).

Then the tradition of bourgeois rationalism forms a contrast with "the irrationality of the whole, that is to say, the blindness of the forces at work, and with that the inability of the individual to determine his own life in accordance with reason, remains intact." (p. 64). Because Kant desires to rid metaphysical thinking of mythologies that have typically been adopted as absolutes, this form of certainty as the ultimate foundation for cognition is blocked. "In this sense Kantian philosophy is one that enshrines the validity of the non-identical in the most emphatic way possible. It is a mode of thought that is not satisfied by reducing everything that exists to itself." (p. 66). Comedy might be more emphatic with some *Excuse*me* regarding offensive pretensions, but this book, with lectures delivered from 12 May 1959 to 30 July 1959, translated from the German by Rodney Livingstone, with Editor's Notes (pp. 238-281) by Rolf Tiedemann, provides a philosophical context for evaluating how well Kant's book, THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON can be understood in our own times.

The English translation of CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON by Norman Kemp Smith (1928) has been used to match the quotes by Adorno, but after mentioning the KANT-LEXICON (ed. Rudolf Eisler) in Lecture Six, notes 7, 8 and 11 for that lecture distinguish which sentences in some quotations "are Eisler's summary of Kant's position." (p. 248). The translation by Norman Kemp Smith has been identified by Raymond B. Blakney in AN IMMANUEL KANT READER (1960) as being literal, which "reproduces the original, as exactly as possible, idiom and all, in the vocabulary of the receiving language." Adorno's lectures are much easier to read than the J. M. D. Meiklejohn translation of THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON at the beginning of Great Books volume 39, Kant. The sections numbered 1 through 23 of the First Division of Transcendental Logic were the easiest to locate for comparison with comments in the lecture. Philosophy is a field that benefits from having many points of view, but Kant is rarely clear when he attempts to use terminology which combine them all in the same sentence. Adorno attempts to explain what Kant was trying to say, "the central concept that his critique of reason is based on, the concept of the transcendental" (p. 16). Other translations might seem to miss the point, or perhaps Meiklkejohn merely paraphrased all of section 16 into this single paragraph: *The manifold content given in a sensuous intuition comes necessarily under the original synthetical unity of apperception, because thereby alone is the unity of intuition possible (Section 13). But that act of the understanding, by which the manifold content of given representations (whether intuitions or conceptions) is brought under one apperception, is the logical function of judgements (Section 15). All the manifold, therefore, in so far as it is given in one empirical intuition, is determined in relation to one of the logical functions of judgement, by means of which it is brought into union in one consciousness. Now the categories are nothing else than these functions of judgement, so far as the manifold in a given intuition is determined in relation to them (Section 9). Consequently, the manifold in a given intuition is necessarily subject to the categories of understanding.* (GREAT BOOKS, 39, KANT, p. 52).

Maybe that is just missing a Note that was added to the second edition in 1787, from which Adorno stated that Kant "maintains in one of the decisive passages of the book that it (namely the synthetic unity of apperception) is the highest point to which he has `attached' his entire philosophy." (p. 16). The 2001 note on the 1787 note states: "Adorno has in mind here the Note to Section 16 of the Transcendental Deduction in which Kant states: `The synthetic unity of apperception is therefore the highest point to which we must ascribe [heften = attach. Trans.] all employment of the understanding, even the whole of logic, and conformably therewith, transcendental philosophy.' CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, p. 154, B 134." (n. 6, p. 242).

Reading Kant is not likely to be a pleasure until the reader has some reason to think that we know what it means, but the comic view of all this might be far more advanced than what most readers will find in these lectures. One joke in this book is originally by Nietzsche, with "the pun on the American expression `backwoodsman' when he described Kant as an `otherworldsman' [Hinterweltler]." (p. 109). Another note says Nietzsche might have been thinking of someone else and THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA in The Portable Nietzsche has a less specific, "On the Afterwordly." TPN, p. 142). Adorno ought to get credit for besting Nietzsche's joke.

Summary: Readable analysis of Kant

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