Jargon of Authenticity

THE OF

Jargon Authenticity

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Jargon

THE OF

TRANSLATED BY

Knut Tarnowski and Frederic Will

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY PRESS Evanston

1973

@.I973)by

Copyri ght Northwes tern University Press Library of Congress C atalog C ard Number : vIS BN Prin ted in the United States of Ameri c a Al l ri gh ts reserved

72-96701 0-8101-0407-5

The

Jargon of Authenticity was ori gin ally published Jargon der Eigentlichkeit: Zur de u ts c hen Ideologie. © Suhrkamp Verl ag, Frank­ in German under the ti tle

furt am Main,

1964

Knut T arnowski is an instruc to r in comparative litera­ ture at the University of Massachusetts. Frederic Will is professor o f comparative literature at the University of M assachusetts .

CONTENTS

vii xix 3

Foreword, by Trent Schroyer Author's Note The Jargon of Authenticity

FOREWORD

PHILOSOPHY SEEMED ALIVE OF

BECAUSE

ITS

ONCE

WHICH

OUTMODED THE

REALIZATION

IS

NOW

MOMENT HAS

BEEN

MISSED.

Theodor

W. Adorno

Exis tentialism has be e n de­ scribed by Paul Tillich as "an over one hundred year old movement of rebellion against the dehumanization of man in in d u stri al society." 1 But this rebellion has been viewed as emergin g bec ause the solutions pro­ po s e d by Hegel and Marx proved ineffective for over­ coming the fact of alienation .2 Thus Kierke ga ard, in rej ecting Hegel's immanentism o t R e a s o n in his tor y simply tried to restore the irreducibility of human sub­ j e ctivity. For Kierkegaard the suffering of the individ­ u al is not justified in a panlogism of history. The Jargon of Authenticity is Theodor W. Adorno's 1. P aul Tillich, "Existentialist Philosophy," The Journal of the History of Ideas, V ( J an ., I 944) , 44 70. 2. F. H. Heinemann, Existentialism and the Modern Pre­ dicament (New York, I958), p. I 2 .

vi i

critique of the ideology of German existentialism. As a member of the Frankfurt s chool of critical theory,3 Adorno's critique is a Hegelian-Marxist response to the existentialist rejection of critical reason . Although this analysis focuses upon twentieth-century German ex­ istentialism, especially its post-World War II diffusion, the basic concern is its notion of subjectivity . That is , Adorno's critique is itself an attempt to transcend and include in the perspective of critical reason the truth of the existentialist concern for the fundamentalness of human subjectivity. In this sense Adorno's analysis p arallels that of Jean-P aul Sartre, who in the introduc­ tion to the Critique of Dialectical Reason argues that, correctly understood, existentialism is a moment of dialectical, or critical , reason.4 However, Adorno's intent goes beyond a counter­ critique of existentialism and aspires to be a critique of the ideology inherent in its German formulations . Adorno not only wants to salvage the n otion of sub­ jectivity from the idealistic tendency of existentialism, a concern he shares with Sartre, but he also wants to show that this theory has become a mystification of the actu al processes of domination . In this way Adorno's critique is within the tradition of critical theory's cri­ tique of ideology . The intent of critical theory is to re3 . The Frankfurt school is best known by its leading mem bers, among whom are Max Horkheimer, W al ter Benjamin , Herbert Marcuse, and Jiirgen Haberm as . However, the se are onl y the better-known members of a tradition of critical theory that has now spanned two genera tions . An excellent inte llec tu al his tor y of this highly important and lit tle understood com­ munity of rad ic a l scholars has jus t been publi shed by Martin Jay under the title of The Dialectical Imagination ( Boston, I 973 ) . 4. Jean Paul Sartre , Search for a Method ( New York, I963 ) ·

viii

construct the generation of historical forms of con­ sciousness in order to demons trate how they misrepre­ sent actual social relations and thereby justify histori­ cal forms of domination . In this way dialectical reason is actualized by critical theorists who , in their reflective critiques of the b asic categories of historical con­ s ciousness, seek to reconcile men and women to the actuality of their historical possibilities . So conceived, critic al theory is a theoretical moment of the "class struggle ." However, the later Frankfurt school no longer as­ sumed that the categories of M arx's critique of political economy were adequ ate for the critique of late in­ dustrial society (Le . , both "capitalisms" and "social­ isms"). It was precisely the failure of Marx's historical agent of change, the proletariat, to become a class-for­ itself that stimulated the Frankfurt school's an alyses of the ideol�gical reifications that blocked human lib­ eration . Their concern for the growth of false con­ s ciousness generated by the "culture indu stry" and the increased integration, and yet atomization , of persons in the industrial order resulted in a series of critical analyses of mass culture and ideological traditions , e . g., authoritarian social forms, the legacy of the En­ lightenment's notion of Re ason, etc ." In the absence of a decisive agent of social change, and in the midst of what M arcuse termed a "on e-dimensional society," the basic interest of the Frankfurt school was to restore the actu ality of critical ration ality . Indeed , their refusal to affirm "mech ani cal Marxism" or utopian hopes for 5. Some of these s tudies are now available in En glish, such as M. Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of En­ lightenment (New York, 1972); Max Horkheimer, Critical Theory (New York , 1 972).

ix

liberation is perhaps evidence of their consistency in staying within the limits of negative critique. For them, only in the negation of pseudo-integrations and resolu­ tions was emancipatory action clearly possible . Hence, the Frankfurt school became a tradition of revolution­ ary theorists who, in the absence of the objective pos­ sibilities for the transcendence of industrial domina­ tion, attempted to uphold the ideals of critical reason that anticipated the emancipation of mankind from the unnecessary power constraints of nature and his­ tory . In this way their work is basically a critique of the reifications that conceal the truth of critical reason . Since "reification" is for them "a forgetting," 6 their work is essentially a remembrance, from the historical setting of the mid-twentieth century, of the notion of critical reason. Adorno's The Jargon of Authenticity continues the of existentialism that had always been an issue for Frankfurt theorists.7 The continuity of this critique can be shown by Adorno 's 1939 essay "On Kierke­ gaard's Doctrine of Love," which anticipates and is assumed by this book.s Adorno shows that Kierke­ ga ard's notion of love transcended human differences, happiness, and even historical morality itself. The critique

6. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment.

7. Perhaps the earliest s tatement of this concern is Adorno's

Habilitationsarbeit ( I 933), which was published as Kierke gaard: Konstruktion des Aesthetischen ( Frankfurt, I965). But the essay by Herbert Marcuse, "Existentialism: Remarks on Jean-Paul Sartre's L'Etre et le neant," Philosophy and Phe­ nomonologica l Research VII, no. 3 ( M arch, I 948 ), is one of the most important critiques of exis tentialism in the Frank­ furt tradition. 8. Zeitsc hnft fur Sozialforschung, VIII ( I939), 4I3 29. x

most remote neighbor was to be affirmed as much as the most intimate friend; "preference" w as to be over­ come , and love as agape was to be experienced in a radical inwardness that transcended the natural incli­ nations of eros. Adorno argues that this love's extreme inwardness conceived of itself as its own ground . Hence , while Kierkegaard's doctrine of love aimed at overcoming the reifications of historical context, it actually became, Adorno claims, a reification that could not be actualized . In oppre ssing both natural drives and the right of the mind to question, radical in­ wardness loses love's power of reconciling the antag­ onism between natural instincts and socially formed selves . In abs tract inward love , both historical need and happiness are effectively denied. The real object of this love's "desire" is redemption-which becomes the ultimate reality sought. Adorno shows that this radical Christian inward­ ness evades the actuality of secular injustice and in­ equality. Nonetheles s, Kierkegaard is more deeply aware of the transformation of the person in the bour­ geois epoch than his contemporaries or his later Ger­ m an exis tentialist followers . That is, he recognized the mechanisms of industrialization that force men into alienated social patterns and reified communica­ tions. But this insight only confirmed Kierkegaard's sense that the progress of civilization was the his tory of advancin g decay and further inclined him to the hatred of "leveling" mech anisms and the rej ection of the m otives of the bourgeois epoch . Only in the r adical inwardness of Christian love, in the leap of faith that suspends the ethic al , is it possible to hope for eternality, for redemption . B u t Adorno's central point is th at Kierke gaard's xi

radical inwardness has lost the dialectical mediation of subj ect and obj ect-which was the achievement of Hegel's critical philosophy. That is, the constitutive presuppositions of human subj ectivity must themselves be dialectically related to the historical context in which determinate subj ects are formed. Failure to so relate the subj ect and object of histOrically situated knowledge results in the fallacy 9£ "o;bj ' the reduction of subjectiv Ity t o the in-it-selfness of facts (e . g . , positivism) or the innate principles of mind (the idealistic philosophy of the identity of reason and mind). Both forms of obj ectivism are the loss of criti­ cal (dialectical) reason. Only the tradition of reflec­ tive critique conceived of human subjectivity in a way that did not reduce it to the determinateness of natural facts or absorb it into the spiritual principles of abso­ lute idealism. Kierkegaard's radical inwardness be­ comes an idealistic objectivism by failing to compre­ hend subjectivity as a historical category. Dialecticaly conceived "subjectivity" is historically fonned and yet not reducible to historical determina­ tions; historical subjectivity is reconstructed from the framework of reflective critique in that the limits of constituti ve synthesis establish the range of possible experience. Only in such a reflective reconstruction of the genesis of subjectivity is it possible to distinguish between real possibilities an d those modes of ap pear­ ance that are but abstract i1Iusions, e . g . , existen­ tialism's transcendence of historical domination. -So conceived, the dialectical notion of subj ectivity is a fundamental category of critical reason. In reflective reconstructions of self-formation processes, it is pos­ sible to show the p!?eudo-necessity of socially unneces­ sary motives and to thereby promote a reversal of conxi i

s ciousness that can dissolve the causality of these objective illusions.9 In The Jargon at Authenticity. Adorno applies the method of immanent criticism to contemporary Ger­ man existentialists Buber, Jaspers, Heidegger, etc . ) . His basic thesis is that after World War II this philosophical perspective became an ideological mysti­ fication of human domination-while pretending to be a critique of alienation . Use of existentialistic terms became, Adorno argues , a j argon : a mode of magical expression which Walter Benj amin called an "aura ." In the aura of existentialism the historical need for meanin g and liberation was expressed, but in a way that mystified the actu al relation between lan guage and its objective content. Adorno's critique focuses on the j ar gon's incapacity to express the relation between language and truth, in that it breaks the dialectic of langua ge by making the intended obj ec t appear present by the idealization inherent in the word itself. The j argon , therefore, falls into an obj ectivism that con­ ceals the difference between philosophical reflection and the in-itselfness of the object of reflec tion . Such objectivism loses the intent of reflection to m aintain a self-consciousness of the mediation of fact through the thinking subject. Consequently, in the j argon objective consciousness is compressed in to self-experien ce, and an idealism results . 9. The methodologic al ideal of critical theory h a s been given a contemporary restatement in Jiirgen H abermas , Knowledge and Human Interests ( B oston, 197I), and Theory and Practice ( B oston, 1973). The continu ity of the tradition of critical the ory has been argue d by Trent Schroyer, The Criti ­ que of Domination (New York, 1973).

xi i i

But the societal result of this idealistic tendency is that the j argon shares with modern advertising the ideolo gical circularity of pretending to make present, in pure expressivity, an idealized form that is devoid of content; or, alternatively, j ust as the mass media can create a presence whose aura m akes the spectator seem to experience a nonexistent actuality, so the j argon pre­ sents a gesture of autonomy without content. Adorno's analysis here continues Marx's analysis of the fetish­ ism of commodities , in that the symbolisms of the j argon do not represent actual social relations but rather symbolize only the relations between abstract con cepts . Lost in the fetishisms of the j argon is the a ctuality of the historical development of human con­ s ciousness. That the subject itself is formed, and de­ formed, by the obj ective configuration of institutions is forgotten, and thu s reified, in the j argon's pathos of archaic primalness . Consequently, there is a los s of the objective context of human society and an idealistic compres sion of all historical consciousness into the sphere of self-experience . For example , Adorno cites Martin Buber's I and Thou and P aul Tillich's stress that religiosity is an end in itself, as instances of the shift to subjectivity as an in-it-selfness . In both cases the words are referred to the immediacy of life, to at­ titudinal and qualitative aspects of self-experience . One needs only to be a believer ; the objective content of belief h as, been eclipsed in the subjectivization of obj ective content. To be a Christian seems to be a personal question-independent from the historical divinity of Christ. Without necessarily intending to do so, this extreme subj ectivity transforms existentialistic language into a mystification of the objective con­ straints that block the autonomy and spontaneity of the historical subject. xiv

Hegel proclaimed philosophy a "homecoming" that critically reconciled obj ective discord and subj ective consciousness . His intent was to maintain a meaning­ ful totality by the reflective mediations of critical rea­ son. Reflection had as its aim the critique of abstrac­ tions, or in Marxian terms, of reification s . In this w ay Marx's work attempted to demonstrate the nonequiva­ lence of exchan ge in the capitalist economy-thereby restorin g to human consciousness a critical mediation of economic exploitation . Adorno implies that contemporary German ex­ istentialism began from a high�r level of capitalist development , in which the SOC1QGultural antagonisms ih ari e·c onomic �?'.El9Jtation and��­ ar�-.!_u c _ into Therefore , the h aste with which the existentialists and their j argon attempt to achieve a reconciliation, irregardless of the obj ective processes of alienation which block meanin g and autonomy, indicated only their awareness of the depth of the need. The re sulting movement to a radi cal in­ wardness and its expressions of authenticity, freedom , etc . , i s a n attempt t o actualize these ideals outside o f the obj ective social context : to fulfill heroic cultural models independent of the society . Behind these empty claims for freedom the socioeconomic processes of ad­ vanced capitalist integration continue , intenSifyin g the dependence of all persons upon large organizational units for employment and welfare . The j argon's "bless­ ings" conceal this objective context of unfreedom , and in the name of critical reflection the j ar gon j oins h ands with modern advertising in celebrating the meaningful­ ness of immediate experience . Hence for Adorno , German existentialism and re­ lated genres , such as neoromantic lyric poetry (e.g., Rilke) , come to a head in a mythic j argon that rexv

duces the dialectical relationship of reflective critique to the obj ective content and context of subjectivity The result is an ideology of the sim ple in which the primal sense of pure words is elevated in a futile at­ tempt to overcome the "alienation" that remains linked to the political-economic framework of society .

.

Adorno's reconstruction of Heide gger's philosophy attempts to show that it becomes an ontology that re­ treats behind, rather than overcomes, the tr adition of transcendental philosophy. In the universalization of transcendental subjectivity into Dasein, the empirical is totally lost and, as Adorno claims , an essence-mythol­ o gy of Being emerges. This is exemplifie d in the claim that the primacy of D asein is a realm beyond fact and essence and yet one which maintains itself as an identity. Whereas critical reason was able to show that maintenance of identity of consciousness presup­ posed a dialectic of subj ective and objective reciprocity which was unified only in the constitutive activity of concre te subj ectivity itself, Heidegger's notion of Dasein as both on tic and ontologi c al s tops the dialec­ ticity of conscious existence in an idealistic elevation of the abs olute subject. To quote Adorno : whatever praises itself for reaching behind the con­ cepts of reflection- subject and object-in order to gras p somethin g substantial , does nothin g but reify the irres olvability of the concepts of reflection . It reifies the impossibility of reducing one into the other; into the in-itself (italics added) .10

Adorno's thesis is that Heidegger's notion of self­ ness remains a reified tributary of Husserl's concept of 10. The mature statement of the notion of critical reason has been recently translated as Negative Dialectik ( New York, 1973).

xvi

subj ect Th i s concep t o f s ubj e c t , in attem pti ng to over­ come the pure po s sibi lity of the ontic , claim s to be it­ self c on cre te Hence , H eid egger d ogma tically pr o claims his concept of e xi s tence as s o me thing in op positi o n to iden tity-while at the s ame time he "continues the tradition of the doc trin e of i den ti ty with his im plici t definition of the self th r o ugh its own preserva tion ." Hence, Adorno ex am ine s the notions of D asei n , "au­ thenticity," d e ath "care ," etc ., and shows that their us e evades the issue of historical d e term inaten e s s by means of a primary and absolute creative subj ect­ which is, by definition supp ose dly untouched by reifi­ cation. Hence, the aura of authe n ti c ity in Hei de gger is tha t it n ames n othing ; the "1" re m ai n s formal a n d yet pretends th at the word contains c on ten t in-itself. For Adorno, Heid egger s existentialism is a new Platonism which imp lie s that authe ntic i ty comes in the com p lete dispo s al of the person over himself -as if there were no determin ation emerg ing from the obj ect ivity of his­ tory. .

.

"

"

"

,"

,

"

"

'

TRENT SCHROYER Graduate F a culty of the

New School for Social Re s e arch Febru ary , 1973

x vi i

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The author conceive d the J ar­ gon of Authenticity as part of the Negative Dialectic. However, he finally excluded that text from the latter work not only because its size grew disproportionate to the other p arts, but also because the elements of lin­ guistic physiognomy and s ociology no lon ger fitted properly with the rest of the plan . The resistance against intellectual division of labor requires th at this division of labor should be reflected on and not merely ignored . Certainly in intention and in theme the Jar­ gon is philosophical . As lon g as philosophy was in line with its own nature, it also had content. However, in retreatin g to the ideal of its pure nature, philosophy cancels itself out . This thought was only developed in the book which was then still unfinis hed, while x ix

the J arg on proceeds accord:in g to this insight without, however, grounding it fully . Thus it was published earlier, as a k:ind of propaedeutic . Insofar as the author has paid homage to the di­ vision of l abor, h e h as at the same time all the more rudely challenge d this division . He might be accused of philosophical , sociological, and aesthetic seduction without employin g the traditional manner of keepin g the categories separate-or maybe even of discussin g them distinct from each other . Yet he would have to answer that a demand of this kind proj ects onto ob­ jects the desire for order which marks a classifying science, and which then proclaims that it is elevated by objects . The author, however, feels more inclined to give himself over to objects than to schematize like a schoolmaster-for the sake of an external stand ard : a s tandard which , questionably, has been brou ght to bear on the subj ect matter from the outside. This atti­ tude determines itself by precisely the fact th at the subject-matter elements of philosophy are intertwined. The common methodological ideal would break up this intimate unity. By means of such a unity of the subject matter, the unity of the author's own attempts should become all the more visible-for example, the unity of the author's philosophical essays with the essay, "Criticism of the Musician" from the Disso­ nances. What is aesthetically perceived :in the b ad form of lan guage , and interpreted sociologically, is deduced from the untruth of the content which is posited with it : its implicit philosophy. This makes for bad blood . Passages from Jaspers and idea blocks from Heidegger are tre ated on the same levels , and with that s ame linguistic attitude , which schoolmasters would prob ably reject with indi g­ nation. The text of the J argon, however, contains xx

enough evidence, from a truly inexhaustible wealth , t o show that those m en write i n th e s ame manner which they despise in their lesser followers as a j u sti fication of their own supe riori t y . Th eir ph ilo s o phemes show on what the j argon feeds, as well as its indirect su ggestive fo rce The ambitious projects of German philosophy in th e second h alf of the twenties concre­ tized an d articulated the direction into which the ob­ j e c tiv e s pirit of th e time was dr a wn This sp iri t re­ mained what it was and thus speaks in the j ar gon even t o da y Only the criticism of these philosophical p r o j ec t s can obj ectively de termin e the mendacity which echoes in the vu l gar j argon . The physiognomy of the v u l g ar jargon leads into what discloses itself in ­

.

.

.

H eide g ger. It is n o thin g new to find that the sublime becomes the cover for s o m ethin g low . That is h ow p otenti a l victims are kept in line . But the ideology of the sub­ lime no longer a ckn o wled ges it self with o ut b ein g dis­

re garded. To show this fact might help to prevent criticism from sta gn atin g in a vague and noncom­ mittal suspic ion of ideolo gy , a suspicion which has itself fallen into ideology . Con temporary German ideology is careful not to pronounce definite doctrines, such as liberal or even eliti s t ones . Ideol o gy h as shifted into language . Social and anthropological chan ges have br o u ght about this shift, th o u gh without breaking the v eil The fact that such lan guage is actu ally ideol­ o gy, i e , s o cietally necess ary Schein, "appearance," can be shown from within it. This becomes obviou s in the contradiction between i ts "how" and its "what." In its obj e c tive imp o ssib ility the j ar gon reacts to war d the i m min ent imp o ssibility of language . Lan g u a ge giv e s itself over either to the m arket, to balderdash, or to the pred ominatin g vulgarity. On the other hand l a n .

.

.

-

xxi

guage shoves its way toward the judge's bench, en­ velopes itself in judicial garb, and in that way asserts its privilege. The j argon is the happy synthesis which m akes it explode. Showing this has practical consequences. As irre­ sistible as the j argon appears in present-day Germany, it is actually weak and Sickly. The fact that the j argon has become an ideology unto itself destroys this ideol­ ogy as soon as this fact is recognized . If the j argon were finally to become silent in Germany, part of that would have been accomplished for which skepticism, itself prejudiced, is praised-prematurely and without j ustification. The interested parties who use the j argon as a means of power, or depend on their public image for the j argon's social-psychological effect, will never wean themselves from it. There are others who will be embarrassed by the j argon. Even followers who believe in authority will shy away from ridiculousness, as soon as they feel the fragile nature of that authority to which they look for support. The j argon is the histori­ cally appropriate form of untruth in the Germany of the last years. For this reason one can discover a truth in the determinate negation of the j argon, a truth which refuses to be formulated in positive terms. Parts of the first sections were originally published in the third issue of the Neue Rundschau in 1963, and have been incorporated into the text. June, 1967

xxii

THE OF

Jargon Authenticity

In the early twenties a number of people active in philosophy, sociology, and theology , planned a gatherin g. Mos t of them h ad shifted from one creed to another . Their common ground was an emph asis on a newly acquired reli gion and not the religion itself. All of them were uns atisfied with th e idealism which at that time still dominated the univer­ sities . Philosophy swayed them to choose, throu gh free­ dom and autonomy, a positive theolo gy such as h ad already appeared in Kierkegaard. However, they were less interested in the specific doctrine, the truth con­ tent of revelation , than in conviction . To his slight annoyance , a friend, who was at that time attracted by this circle , was not invited . He was -they intimated­ not authentic enough . For he hesitated before Kierke­ gaard's leap. He suspected that religion which is con­ jured up out of au tonomous thinking would subordi,

3

nate itself to the latter, and would negate itself as the abs olute which, after all, in terms of its own conceptual nature , it wants to be. Those united toge th e r were anti­ intellectual intellectuals . They confirmed their mutual understanding on a higher level by excludin g one who did not pronounce the same credo they repeated to one another. What they fou ght for on a spiritu al and in­ tellectu al plane they marked down as their ethos, as if it elevated the inner rank of a person to follow the teachin g of higher ideals ; as if there were nothing written in the New Testament a gai ns t the Ph arisees . Even forty years later, a pen sioned bishop walked out on the conference of a Protestan t academy because a guest lecturer expressed doubt about the contemporary possibility of s acred music . He too had been warned against, and dispensed from, having de alings wi th people who do not toe the line; as thou gh critical thought had no obj ective foundation but was a sub­ j ective deviation . People of his nature combine the tendency that Borchardt called a putting-themselves­ in-the-right with the fear of reflecting their reflections -as if they didn't completely believe in themselves . Today, as then, they sense the dan ger of losing again what they call the concrete-of losing it to that ab­ straction of which they are suspicious , an abstraction which cannot be eradicated from concepts . They con­ sider concretion to be promised in sacrifice, and first of all in intellectual sacrifice. Heretics baptized this circle "The Authentic Ones ." This was long before the publication of Sein und Zeit. Throu ghout this work Heidegger employed "au­ thenticity," in the context of an existential ontology, 4

as a specifically philosophical term . Thus in philosophy he molded that which the authentics s triv e for less theore tically ; and in that way he won over to his side all those who had some vague reaction to th at philos­ ophy. Thro u gh him, denomin ational deman d s became dispensable . His book acquired its aura by d escribing the direction s of the dark drives of the intelligentsia before 1933-directions whi ch he described as full of insigh t, and whi ch he revealed to be s o lidly coercive . Of course in Heidegger, as in all those who followed his language, a diminLshed tbeo1.ocical resgn ance c an be heard to this very day . The theological addictions of these years h ave seeped into the language , far beyond the circle of those who at that time set themselves up as the elite. Nevertheless, the sacred quality of the authentics' talk belongs to the cult of authenticity rather than to the Christian cult, even where-for temporary lack of any other available au thority-its language resemble s the Christian . Prior to any con­ sideration of p articular content, this lan gu a ge molds thou ght. As a consequence, that thought accommo­ dates itself to the goal of subordination even where it aspires to resist that goal . The authority of the absolute is overthrown by absolutized authority. Fascism was not simply a conspiracy-althou gh it was that-but it was something that c ame to life in the course of a powerful social development. Language provides it with a refuge. Within this refu ge a smoldering evil ex­ presses itself as though it were s alvation . In Germany a jar gon of authenticity is spoken­ even more so, written . Its langu a ge i s a trademark of societalized chosenness, noble and homey at once5

sub-langu age as superior language . The j argon extends from philosophy and theology-not only of Protestant academies-to pedagogy, evening schools, and youth organizations, even to the elevated diction of the rep­ resentatives of business and administration . While the j argon overflows with the pretense of deep human emotion, it is just as standardized as the world that it officially negates; the reason for this lies partly in its mass success, partly in the fact that it posits its mes­ s age automatically, throu gh its mere nature . Thus the j ar gon bars the message from the experience which is to ensoul it. The j ar gon has at its dispos al a modest number of words which are received as promptly as Signals . "Authenticity" itself is not the most prominent of them . I t is more an illumination of the ether in which the j argon flourishes, and the way of thinking which latently feeds it. For a beginnin g, terms like "exis tenti al ," "in the decision ," "commission ," "appeal," "encounter ," "genuine dialo gue ," "statement," "con­ cern ," will do for examples . Not a few nontermino­ logical terms of similar cast could be added to this list . Some , like "concern ," a term still innocently used by Benj amin and verified in Grimm's dictionary, have only taken on such ch anged coloring since gettin g into this "field of tension" -a term that is also an appro­ priate example . Thus the important thing is not the plannin g of an Index Verborum Prohibitorum of current noble nouns, but r ather the examination of their linguistic function in the j ar gon. Cert ainly not all its words are noble nouns . At times it even picks up banal ones, holds them high and bronzes them in the fascist m anner 6

which wisely mix e s plebeian with elitist elements. Neo­ ro m an tic poets who drank their fill of the p re ci ou s, like Geor ge H ofm annsthal, by no means wrote their prose in the j argon . However, many of their int erm edi arie s ­ like G un d olf - did s o . The words become terms of the j ar g on only th rou gh the con s tella ti on that th ey ne ga te , throu gh e ach one's gesture of uniquene's s . The ma gi c that the sin gular word has lost is proc ur ed for it by m a nipul ati ons - o f whatever kin d . The trans c ende nc e of th e single word is a s e c on d ary one, one th at is de­ livered ready from the factory, a tr an s c e n d en ce which is a ch an gelin g said to be the lost origin al. Elements of empiri cal langu age are manipulated in their ri gid ­ it y , as if they were elements of a tru e and r eve al e d language . The empirical usability of the sacred cere­ moni al words makes both the speaker and listener believe in their corpore al presence . The ether is me­ cha nic ally sprayed, and atomistic words are dressed up without havin g been changed . Thus the y become more important th an the j ar gon's so -c alle d sys tem . The jargon-objectively s pe aki ng , a sys tem -us e s disor­ g aniza ti on as its principle of organization , the break­ down o f l an guage into words in themselves . M any of the m, in another li n guis tic con stella tion , can be used wi th out a glan ce at the j argon : "state men t," where it is used in i ts fulles t sense, in epi s temolo gy, to desig­ nate th e sense of predicative jud gmen ts ; "authentic" -already to be used with caution-even in an adj ec­ tival sense, where the e sse nti al is di sting ui s h ed from th e accidental; "inauthentic," where so me th in g broken is implied, an expression which is not immediately appropriate to what is e xp ress ed ; "radio bro adcasts of 7

traditionM music, music conceived in the categories of live performance, are grounded by the feeling of as if, of the inauthentic." 1 "Inauthentic" in that w ay be­ comes a "critical" term, in definite negation of some­ thing merely phenomenal. However, the j argon ex­ tracts authenticity, or its opposite , from every such transparent context. Of course one would never criti­ cize a firm for usin g the word Auftrag (commission), when it has been assigned a commission. But possi­ bilities of that sort remain n arrow and abstr act. Who­ ever o verstrains them is paying tribute to a blank nominalistic theory of language, in which words are interchangeable counters, untouched by history. Yet history does intrude on every word and with­ holds e ach word from the recovery of some alle ged original meanin g, that meaning which the j argon is always trying to track down . What is or is not the j argon is determined by whether the word is written in an intonation which places it transcendently in opposition to its own meaning; by whether the individ­ u al words are loaded at the expense of the sentence, its propositional force, and the thought content. In that sense the character of the j argon would be quite for­ m al : it sees to it that what it w ants is on the whole felt and accepted throu gh its mere delivery, without regard to the content of the words used . It takes under its own control the preconceptual, mimetic element in l anguage-for the s ake of effect connotations . "State­ ment" thus w ants to m ake believe th at the existence of the speaker has communicate d itself simultaneously 1. Theodor W. Adorno, Der getreue Korrepitor (Frankfurt, 1963) p. 2 1 8 .

8

with his subj ect matter and has given the latter its dignity. The j argon makes it seem th at without this surplus of the speaker the speech would already be in­ authentic, that the pure attention of the expression to the subj ect matter would be a fall into sin . This formal element favors dem a go gic ends . Whoever is versed in the j argon doe s not h ave to s ay what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The j argon takes over this task and devalua tes thought. Th at the whole man should speak is authentic, comes from the core . Thus somethin g occurs which the j argon itself stylizes as "to occur." 2 Communication clicks and puts forth as truth what should instead be suspect by virtue of the prompt collective agreement . The tone of the j ar­ gon h as somethin g in it of the seriousne ss of the augurs , arbitrarily independent from their context or conc eptual content, conspiring with whatever i s s acred. The fact that the words of the j argon sound as if they s aid something higher th an wh at they mean sug­ gests the term "aura." I t is hardly an accident that Benj amin introduced the term at the same moment when , according to his own theory, wh at he under­ s tood by "aura" bec a me impossible to experience .3 As words that are s acred without sacred content, as frozen emanations, the terms of the j argon of authenticity 2. Later in the text Adorno refers to Heid e g g er's tenn Ereignis, which has been rendered as "event" in the s t a ndard translation of Being and Time. "To occur" ou r rend ering of sioh ereignen, has been ch osen for lack of an English verb corresponding to the noun "e vent." 3. Cf. Walter B enj amin, Schriften I ( Frankfurt, 1955), ''Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter sein er technischen Reproduzier­ barkeit," p. 374. [English translation by H a rry Zohn , in Il­ luminations (New Y ork, 1968).]

9

are products of the disinte gr ation of the aura. The latter pairs itself with an attitude of not being bound and thus becomes available in the midst of the de­ mythified world; or, as it might be put in p ar amilitary modern German, it becomes einsatzbereit, mobi­ lized. The perpetual charg e a gainst reification, a ch arge which the j argo n represents, is itself reified. It falls under Richard Wagner's definition of a theatrical effect as the result of an action without agent, a definition which was directed against bad art. Those who have run out of holy spirit speak with mechanical tongues . The secret which i s suggested, and from the beginning is not there, is a public one . First one can subtract the misused Dostoevski from the expres sionist formula "each m an is selected," which can be found in a play by P aul Kornfeld-who was murdered by the N azis . Then the formula is good only for the ideological self­ satisfaction of a lower middle class which is threatened and humbled by societal development. The j argon de­ rives its own bleSSin g that of primalness, from the fact that it has developed as little in ac tu ality as in spirit. Nietzsche did not live long enough to grow sick at his stomach over the j argon of authen tici t y : in the 'twentieth century he is the German resentment phe­ nomenon par excellence . Nietzsche's "something stinks" would find its first justification in the s trange b athing ceremony of the h ale life : ,

S unday really b e gins on S aturday evening. When the tradesman straightens his shop , when the hou sewife has put the whole house into cle an and shinin g condi­ tion , and h as even swept the stree t in front of the hou s e and freed it from all t h e dir t which i t h as collected dur-

1 0

ing the week; when , fin ally even the children are bathed; then the adults wash off the week's dust, s crub ,

th emse lves thoroughly; and go to the fresh clothes which are lying ready for them : when all of that i s ar­ ranged , with rural lengthines s and c are, then a d eep warm fe e lin g of restin g settles down over the p e ople:!

Expressions and situ ations, drawn from a no lon ger existent daily life , are forever being blown up as if they were empowered and gu aranteed by some abso­ lute which is kept silent out of reverence . While those who know better hesitate to appeal to revelation, they arrange, in their addiction to authority, fo r the ascen­ sion of the word beyond the realm of the actual , con­ ditioned, and contestable ; while these same people, even in private , express the word as thou gh a blessin g from above were directly composed into th a t word. That supreme state which has to be thought, but which also refuses being thou ght, is mutilated by the j ar gon The latter acts as if it had possessed this state from the beginning of time ," as it might run in the j argon . What philosoph y aims at, the peculiar character of philosophy which m akes representation essential to it, causes all its words to s ay m ore than each sin gle one . This characteristic is exploited by the j argon . The transcendence of truth beyond the meanin gs of in­ dividual words and pr oposi ti o n al statements is attrib­ uted to the words by the j ar gon, as their immutable possession , where as this "more" is formed onl y by the mediation of the constellation. Accordin g to its ide al, philosophical lan guage goe s beyond what it s ay s by .

"

4. Otto Friedrich 1956), p. 205.

B ollnow, Neue Geborgenheit (Stuttgart,

I I

means of what it says in the development of a train of thought. Philosophical lan guage transcends dialec­ tically in that the contradiction between truth and thou ght becomes self-conscious and thus overcomes itself. The j argon takes over this transcendence de­ s tructively and consigns it to its own chatter . What­ ever more of meaning there is in the words than what they say has been secured for them once and for al as expression . The dialectic is broken off : the dialectic between word and thin g as well as the dialectic , within language, between the individual words and their re­ lations . Without judgment, without havin g been thought, the word is to leave its meaning behind. This is to institute the reality of the "more ." It is to scoff, without reason, at that mystical language speculation which the j argon, proud of its simplicity, is careful not to remember. The j argon obliterates the difference between this "more" for which language gropes, and the in-itself of this more . Hypocrisy thu s becomes an a priori, and everyday lan guage is spoken here and now as if it were the sacred one . A profane language could only approach the sacred one by distancing itself from the sound of the holy, instead of by trying to imitate it. The jargon transgresses this rule blasphe­ mously. When it dresses empirical words with aura, it exaggerates general concepts and ideas of philosophy -as for inst ance the concept of being-so grossly that their conceptu al e ssence, the mediation throu gh the thinking subject, disappears completely under the var­ nish . Then these terms lure us on as if they were the most concrete terms . Transcendence and concretion s cintillate . Ambiguity is the medium of an attitude 12

toward lan gu a ge which is d amned by its favorite phi­ losophy . s B u t t h e untruth indicts itself by becomi n g bom­ b astic. After a lon g separation a certain person wrote that he was exis tentially secure ; it took some refle ction to re alize th a t he meant he h ad been sufficien tly taken c are of in regard to his finances . A cen ter intended for international discu ssion s - wh atever they m ay be good for-is c alled the House of Encoun ters ; the visible house, "firmly grounded in the e arth ," is turn e d into a s acred house throu gh those gath erings - which are meant to be superior to discu ssions because they occur amon g exis tin g and living individuals, al thou gh the s e individuals might j u s t as well be en gaged in dis cus sion , for as lon g as they do not commit suicide th ey could h ardly do anythin g o ther th an exis t . One's relation to his fellow m an should be important prior to all con­ tent ; for that purpose the j argon is s atisfied with the sh abby group-ethos of the you th movement , an indica­ tion that nothin g is reaching either beyond the nose of the speaker, or beyond the capacity of the person who h as only lately begun to be called his "partner." The j argon ch annels enga gement into firm ins titutions and, furthermore , stren gthen s the most subaltern speakers in their self-e steem ; they are alre ady some thin g be­ c ause someone spe aks from within them , even when th at someone is nothin g at all . The resonant directive

5. Cf. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 3d ed. ( H all e , 1 93 1 ) , p p . 2 1 7 ff . [English translation b y John Macquarrie an d Edw ard Robinson, B eing and Time (New York , 1 962 ) . Sub­ sequent page referen ces from Being and Time will be to this transl a tion . ]

1 3

of the j argon, that its thou ght should no t be too strenu­ ous, because otherwise it would offend the community, also becomes for the s e people the guarantee of a higher confirmation . This suppre sses the fact that the lan­ guage itself- through its generality and obj ectivity alre ady ne gates the whole man, the particular spe ak­ ing individual subject : the first pri ce exacted by lan­ guage is the essence of the individual. But throu gh the appe arance th at the whole man , and not thought, s p eak s , the j ar gon pretends that, as a close-at-h an d manner of communication , it is invulnerable to de­ humanized mass communication-which is precisely wh at recommends it to everyone's enthusiastic accept­ ance. Whoever stands behind his words, in the w ay in which these words pretend, is safe from any su spici o n about wha t he is at that very moment about to do : s pe ak for others in order to palm something off on them. The word "statemen t" finally secures its alibi when "true" is connected to it. By means of its prestige it wants to endow the "for others" with the solidity of the in-itself. For glorified man , who himself not too lon g ago invented the term "de ath and glory squad," is the ground of being for th e j ar gon as well as the ad­ dressee of the statement; and it has become impos sible to distinguish between the two . The attribute "valid" often s ticks to "statement." The reason for this ob­ viously lies in the fact that the emphatic experience, which the word claims insistently, is no longer experi­ enced by those who favor this word for the claim it m akes. A loudspeaker becomes nece s s ary � "Statement" wants to announce that something which was s aid has

come f ro m the depth of the s pe akin g s ubj e c t; i t is removed from the c urs e of surface communication. But at the same time communicative disorder disguises itself in the statement. Someone speaks and , th anks to the elevated term " s t a t e me n t , " what he s ays is to be the sign of truth-as if men could not become caught up in untruth, as if th ey could not suffer m artyrdom for plain nonsense . Prior to all content this shift in­ dicts statement as soon as it wants to b e such ; it charges statement with being a lie . The lis tener is su p­ po s ed to gain something fro m the statement because of its subjective rel iabili t y . This latter attrib u te , how­ ever, is borrowed from the world of ware s . I t is the claim of the con sumer that even the spiri tu a l should direct itself according to his will, a g ains t its own con­ ce ptu a l n a ture . This admonition t o the spirit silently dominates the whole clim ate of the j ar go n . The real and vain need for he l p is supposed to be satisfied by the pure spirit, merely by m e a ns of consolation and without action . The empty chatter about expression is th e ideology c o mple m en tary to th a t silencing which the s t atus quo imposes on thos e who have no power over it, a nd whose claim is therefore hollow in a dv anc e . But wh at e ver turns its back c riti call y on th e status quo has been dis­ counted, by Germans in solid positions, as "without ex­ pres sive value." Not le a s t of all, s tat e men t is u s e d as the club with which to assail the new art . That art's rec al citr an ce against traditional c omm unic ab l e sense has been reproa c he d - a s th ou gh from a higher view­ p oin t - by those whose aesthetic consciousness is not up to it. If one add s to a s tatem ent that i t is "valid," 1 5

then whatever at a given moment holds good, whatever is officially 's tamped, can be imputed to it as metaphysi­ ca!lly authorized . The formula spares people the trouble of thinkin g about the metaphysics which it has dragged with it, or about the content of what has been stated. The concept of statement appears in Heidegger as nothing less that the constituent of the Da, existence .s Behind this j ar gon is a determining doctrine of the I-thou relationship as the locale of truth- a doctrine that d efames the objectivity of truth as thin gly , and secretly w arms up irrationalism. As such a relation­ ship, communication turns into that transpsycho­ logical element which it can only be by virtue of the objectivity of what is communicated; in the end stu­ pidity becomes the founder of metaphysics . Ever since Martin Buber split off Kierkegaard's view of the existen­ tial from Kierke gaard's Chris tology , and dressed it up as a universal posture, there has been a dominant in­ clination to conceive of metaphysical content as bound to the so-called relation of I and thou . This content is referred to the immediacy of life . Theology is tied to the determinations of immanence, which in turn wan t t o claim a larger meaning , b y means o f their su gges­ tion of theology : they are already virtually like the words of the j ar gon . In this process, nothing less is whisked away than the threshold betw e en the natural and the supernatural . Lesser authentics raise their eyes reverently before death, but their spiritual atti­ tude, infatuated with the living, disregards death . The thorn in theology, without which s alvation is un think6. Ibid . , p. 196 .

16

able , is removed . Accordin g to the concept of theolo gy, nothin g n atural h as gone throu gh death without meta­ morphosis . In the m an-to-m an relationship ther e can be no eternity now and here , and certainly n o t

in

the

relationship of man to God , a relationship th at seems to pat Him on the shoulder . Buber's style of exis ten tial­ ism dr aws its transcenden ce , in a reversed analogia entis, out of the fact th at spontaneous relationships amon g persons cannot be reduced to obj ective pole s . This existentialism remains the Lebensphilosophie out of which it c ame , in philos ophical history, and which i t abne gated : it overelevates the dynamism of mor­ tality in to the sphere of immortali ty . Thus in the j ar gon trans cendence is fin ally brou ght closer t o men : it is the Wurlitzer organ of the spirit. The sermon in Huxle y 's Brave New World m u s t h ave been written in the j argon . It was taped in order to be played when needed : to brin g to reason the rebellious masses -by deep pro grammed emotion-in c a s e they should once more b and toge ther . For advertising pur­ poses the Wurlitzer organ hum anizes the vibr ato, once

a carrier of subjective expression , by mech anically superimpo sing it on the mech anic ally pro du c e d sound . The j ar gon likewise supplies men with p a t terns for being human , p atterns which h ave been driven out of them by unfree labor, if ever in fact traces of free l abor did exist. Heide gger instituted authenticity a gain s t the they and a gains t small tal k , without delu din g himself that there could be a complete leap between the two types o f existential s th at he deals with ; for h e knew th at they merge into each other pre cis ely becau s e of their own dynamism . But he did not fore see th at wh a t

I7

he n amed auth entic , once become word, would grow towar d the s ame exchan ge-society anonymity against which Sein und Zeit rebelled . The j argon , which in Heide g ger's phenomenology of small talk e arned an honored positio n , marks the adept, in th eir own opin­ ion , as un trivial and of higher sensibility ; while at the s am e time th at j ar gon calms the constan tly festering suspi cion of uprootedness . In profes sional groups which , as they s ay , carry on intellectual work, but which are a t the s ame tim e em­ ployed , dependent, or e conomically weak, the j argon is

a professional illness . Amon g such group s a spe cific function is added to a general social on e . Their cul­ ture and cons ciousness limp far behind th a t spirit which accordin g to society's division of labor is their real m of activity . Throu gh their j ar gon they a spire to remove this distance , to put themselves forward a s sharers in higher culture ( to them o l d h at s s till s ound modern ) as well as individu als with an ,essence of their own ; the more innocent among them m ay quite frankly s till c all all th at a personal n ote

-

u sin g an e xpres sion

from the era of h andicrafts, from which the j argon in question h as b orrowed a lot. The s tereotype s of the j ar­ gon support and reas sure subjective movemen t. They seem to guarantee th a t one is not doing wh at in fac t he is doin g -bleating with the crowd - simply by vir­ tue of his usin g those s tereo types to gu aran tee th at one has achieved it all himself, as an unmis takably fre e person . The form al ges ture of au tonomy replaces the content of autonomy . Bombastically , it is called com­ mitment, but it is h eteronomously borrowed. Th at which pseudo-individu alizin g attends to in the culture

18

indus try , th e j ar gon attends to among those w h o h ave contempt for the cul ture indus try . This is the Germ an symptom of pro gres sive half-culture . It seems t o be in­ ven ted for those who feel th at they h ave been judged by histor y , or a t le as t th at they are fallin g, but who s till s trut in front of their peers as if they were an interior elite . The importance of this j argon is n o t to be under­ e s timate d simply be cause a sm all group writes it. In­ numerable real-life people speak it, from the s tudent who in his exam lets himself go on about au thentic encounter, to the bish op's press secretary who asks :

Do yo u believe th a t God addres s e s only our reason ? Their unmediated langu age they receive from a dis­

tributor .

In

the

theological

conversations

of

Dr .

Fau stus' students , in Auerb ach's den of 1 94 5 , Thom as Mann intuited with precise irony most of the habits of modern German - though he no longer had much occasion Ito observe them . There c ertainly were appro­ priate models before 1 93 3 , but only after the war , when N ational Socialist lan gu a ge became unwanted , did the j ar gon gain omnipre sence . Since then the most intimate in terchan ge has taken place between the writ- , ten an d the s poken word. Thus one will be able to read printed

j argon which

unmistakably

imitates

radio

voices that h ave themselves drawn on written works of authenticity . Mediated and immediate elements are mediated throu gh e ach other in frigh tful way s . And since they are synthetic ally prepare d , th at which is mediate d h as become the caric ature of wh at is n atural . The j ar gon no lon ger knows primary and secondary communitie s , and by the s ame token it knows no par-

1 9

ties. Th is develop men t has a real basis . The institu­ tional and p s y chologic al superstructure , which in 1 9 3 0 Kr,a cauer di agnosed as a culture of employee s , del u de d the celluloid-colla;r proletari at, who were then thre at­ ened by the immediacy of losin g their j ob s . It de lu d ed them into believing that the y were something spe ci al .

Throu gh thi s

.

delusion the superstructur e m ade them

toe the bourgeois lin e , while in the meantime, th anks to a l a s ti n g m arke t boom , th at superstruc ture has become the u ni v ersal ideology of a so ci ety which m i s t a ke s itself for a unified middle clas s . They let thems elves be con­ firm e d in this a t ti t ud e by a uniform mode of speech , which e a ge rly welcomes the j argon fo;r p urposes of col­ lective narcissism . This applie s not o nly to those who sp e ak it but also to the obj e c tive spiri t . The j argon af­ firms the reliabili ty of the universal by means of the distinction of having a bour ge O is ori gin a distinction which is itself authorized b y the univers al. Its to ne o f a ppr o ved s ele ctivity seems to come from the person himself. The greater adv ant age in all this is that of good r e fer ence s . It m akes no difference what the voice that resonates in ,this way says; it is signing a social contract. Awe, in face of that existent which pretends to be more than it is, beats down all that is unruly. One is given to understand ,that that which occurs is so de ep that language could not unhallow what has been said by saying it. Pure clean h ands recoil from the thought of chan ging ,anythin g in the valid property-and­ authori ty relationships ; the very sound of it all makes that idea contemptible , as the merely ontic is to Heid e g ger. One can trus t anyone who b abbles this j argon; peo­ pl e wear. it in their buttonholes, in place of the ,

,

­

20

currently disreputable p arty b ad ge . The pure tone drips with 'p ositivi ty , with out needin g to stoop too far ple adin g for what i s all too compromised ; one es c ap e s even t h e long-since-s ocialized suspicion o f ideology . I n the j argon th at divi sion be tween the de s tru ctive a n d the con structive, with which fascism h ad cut

off criti c al

thought, comfortably hibern ates . Simply to be there becomes the merit of a thin g . It is gu aranteed in the protection of the double sen s e of the positive : as some­ thin g e xis ten t, given, and as s omething worthy of being affirmed . P ositive and negative are reified prior to liv­ ing experience, as thou gh they were v alid prior to all living experience of the m ; as tho u gh it w as not th ou ght that firs t of all determin e d wh at is positive or neg ative ; and as though the course of such determin ation were not itself th e course of negation . The j argon secularizes th e German r e a dine s s to view men's positive relation to reli gion as s omething immediately positive , even when the religion has dis­ integrated and been exposed a s something untru e . The undiminished irrationality of rational society encour­ age s people to elevate religion into an end in its elf, without regard to its con tent :

to view religion

as a

mere attitude, as a qu ality of subj ectivity . All thi s at the cost of religion itself. One needs only to be a be­ liever-no m a tter what he believes in. Such irrational­ ity has the s ame function as putty . The j ar gon of authenticity inherits it, in the childish manner of L a tin primers which praise the love of the fatherlan d in­ itself-which praise the viri patriae amantes, e ven when the fatherland in question covers up the most atrocious deeds . Sonnem ann h a s described this phe2 I

nomen on as not bein g able to get rid of a benevolent attitude which at all costs defends order, even an order in which all these things are not in order. What things ? According to the logic of the sentence they ought only to be accidentals , but ins tead they are s trikingly essen­ tial : "poisonous exh aust emissions, pressing t aboos, insincerity, resen tments , hidden hysteria on all sides." What remains then of the orderliness of the order? Obviously, it needs first to be created .1 Benevolence i s identical with being predecided . What is affirmative and wholesome doubles the curse of evil. Throu gh mar­ riage offers, the j argon guides the petit bourgeois to a positive attitude toward life . It fas tidiously prolongs the innumerable events which are to make attractive to men a life by which they otherwise would be dis­ gusted-and which they would soon come to consider unbe arable . That reli gion has shifted into the subj ect, has become religiosity, follows the trend of history. Dead cells of religiosity in the midst of the secular, h owever, become poisonous . The ancient force, which accordin g to Nietzsche's insight nourishes everything, should enter completely into the profane ; instead it preserves itself in an unreflected manner and elevates limitation , which abhors reflection, to the level of virtue. All experts in the j ar gon , from Jaspers on down, unite in praise of positivity. Only the careful Heidegger avoids a too open-he arted affirmation for its own s ake, and indirectly pays his dues . He is eager and genuine about it. But Jaspers writes, unashamedly : "Actually 7. Ulrich Sonn em ann, Das Land der unbegrenzten Zumut barkeiten ( Reinbek b ei H amburg, 1 963 ) , pp. Ig6 ff.

2 2

m an c an rem ain in the world who lives out which in every case he possesses only through co mmitmen t . " 8 To which h e adds : "Only the person who commits him self fr e e ly is proof a gain s t a disillusioned revolt a g a i nst himself." 9 It is true that his philosophy of existence has ch ose n , as its patron saint, Max Weber, who stood up proudly wi thou t illu­ sions. Neverthele s s , he is intere sted in r e l i gi o n , no m atter of wh at kind . H e is intere sted in it provided it is ready at h and, because it guarantees the r equ ire d com­ mitm en t ; or simply because it exists, wh e ther or not it fit s with the notion of in d e pen de nt philosophy, which J aspers res er ve s for himself a s if i t were a p er s o n al privil e ge :

only

that

from some th in g

Whoever is true to transcendence in the form of such a belief should never be attacked, so lo n g as he does not become intoleran t. For in the believin g p erson only des truction can take place ; he c an perhaps rem ain open to philosophizing, and risk the corre sponding burden of a doubtin g, which is inseparable from human exist­ ence ; yet he has the positivity of an his toric al exis tence as his reference and m eas ure , which bring him ire­ placeably b ack to himself. About the s e possibilities we do not spe ak.l0

When au t on om ou s thou gh t s till had confidence in its humane realization , it beh aved l e s s hum anely . In 8. Karl J aspers, Die geistige Situation der Zeit, 5th ed . ( B erlin, 1 947 ) , pp. 1 69 if. [English tran slation by Eden and Cedar Paul, Man in the Modern Age ( New York , 1 957 ) . All quotations from this work are translated from the original Germ an .} 9 . Ibid. 1 0 . Ibid., pp. 1 27 if.

23

the meantime , the less philosophers are infected with philosophy the more innocently do they let the cat out of the bag; a bag which prominent ones weave like Noms . Sentences from O. F. Bollnow sound like this : Therefore it seems especially me aningful that in p oetry,

above all in the lyric o f the last ye ars , after al the ex­ periences of dread , a new feeling, of affirmation of bein g, is beginnin g to m ake its appearance , a j oyful and thankful h armony with the very existence of man , as it is ; a h armony with the world as it confronts man . Two of these p o e t s i n p ar tic u l ar should receive special attention here : Rilke and Bergengruen . B er g en gru en s last volume of poetry Die Heile Welt (Munich , 1 950 ) , p. 2 7 2 , closes with the confes sion : "What came from p ain was o nl y transient. And my e ar heard no thin g but songs of prais e . " In o ther words, it is a feelin g of thank­ ful a greement with existence. And Bergen gruen cer­ tainly is n o t a poet who could be cri ticized for a che a p optimism . I n this feelin g of deep thankfulness he comes close to Rilke , who also, at the clo s e of his way, is able to state : "Everythin g bre athes and re turns th an ks . Oh you troubles of the night, how you sank without a trace . " U '

Bergengruen's volume is on�y a few years closer to us than the time when Jews who had not been completely killed by the gas were thrown living into the fire, where they regained consciousness and screamed . The poet, who can certainly not be criticized for cheap optimism , and the philosophically minded pedagogue who eval­ uates him, heard nothing but songs of praise . In a pre­ liminary definition we call this inner state of m an an attitude of trustful reliance . Thus the task is set : to I I . Bollnow, Geborgenheit, pp. 26 if.

24

examine the nature of this state of the soul in order to find its possibilities.12 Bollnow found the bes t of all possible n ames for this task, which in the face of hor­ ror can no lon ger even appease us by virtue of its ridiculousness-he c alled it Seinsgliiubigkeit, faith unto Being.13 The fact that the term remind s us of Deuts chg liiubigkeit, faith unto German nation ality, is certainly accidental. Once faith unto Being is a chieved, there is no stopping before we reach a "positive relation to the world and life" 14 and "constructive work toward the overcoming of existentialism." 1 � What remains after the removal of existential bombast are religious customs cut off from their religious con tent. There is no recognition of the fact that cult forms, the subj ect matter of folklore, like empty shells, ou tlive their mys­ tery . This state of affairs is in fact defended with the aid of the j argon . All of this is an insult not only to thought but also to religion, which was on ce m an's promise of eternal bliss , while now authenticity con­ ten ts itself resignedly with an "ultimately h ale world ." 16 "In the following we c an distinguish these two forms­ for the s ake of a convenient terminology - as hope which has a determined content and hope which h as an unde termined content; or, briefly, as rela tive and absolu te hope ." 11 This pitiful concept-splittin g applies itself to the question of "existence welfare ." I t makes no difference to a follower to what he attaches him1 2.

13. 14. IS. 16. 17.

Ibid. , Ibid., Ibid. , Ibid. Ibid., Ibid. ,

p. 5 1 . p. 57· p. 61. p. 63 .

p. 1 0 0 .

25

self at a given momen t. He praises this as his capacity for enthusiasm . Whe ther such a man ranks himself as lowbrow, middlebrow, or highbrow, he can consider that "hale" refers to the haleness of the s oul, or right living, or social enclaves not yet taken over by indus­ trialism, or simply places where Nietzsche and the Enlightenment have not yet been heard of; or chaste conditions in which girls hold their m aidenhood intact until they get married. We should not oppose to the c atch-word of "shelteredness ," the equally worn-out idea of the dangerous life ; who wouldn't want to live with­ out anxiety in this world of terrors ? But shelterednes s , as a n existential value, turns from something longed for and denied into a presence which is now and here, and which is independent of what prevents it from being. It leaves its trace in the violation of the word : the reminiscence of wh at is hedged-in and safely bor­ dered remains j oined to that element of short-si ghted p articularity which out of itself renews the evil against which no one is sheltered . Home will only come to be when it has freed itself from such p articularity, when home has negated itself as universal. The feeling of shelteredness m akes itself at home with itself, and offers a holiday resort in place of life . A landscape be­ comes u glier when an admirer disrupts it with the words "how beautiful." The same happens to custom s , habits , institutions which barter themselves away by s tressin g their own n aivete ins te ad of by changing it. All talk of shelteredness is indicted by Kogon's report that the w orst atrocities in the concentration camps were committed by the younger s ons of farmers . The

general situation in the country , which is the model for the feelin g of shelteredness , pushes disinherited sons into barb arou sne s s . The logic of the j ar gon con­ stantly smu ggles in wh at is limited, finally even situ a­ tions of material want, under th e guise of positivity ; and pre sses for their being e ternally institu ted at j u s t th at moment when , th anks to t h e s t a t e of human achievements, such a limitation no lon ger needs in reality to exi s t .

A spirit which makes this limitation

its cause hires itself out as the l ackey of what is evil . In the hi gher ranks of the hierarchy of authen­ ticity , however, negativitie s are also served. Heide gger even requisition s the concept of destruc tion which is tabooed in the lower ranks, toge ther wi th the blackne s s o f fear, sorrow, and death . J aspers occ aSion ally blares out the opposite of B olln ow's Geborgenheit, sheltered­ ness : "Today philosophy is the only possibili ty for one who is cons ciously u n sheltered . "

18 But the p ositiv e , like

a tumbler doll , cannot be kept down . Dan ger, h azard , riskin g one's life , and the whole charac teris tic shudder, are no t taken all th at seriou sly . One of the Vr-authen tic ones in h er time rem arke d that in the innermo s t core of Dos toyevsky's hell the ligh t of s alvation shone a gain . She had to sw allow the reply th at hell w a s then an awfully short r ailroad tunnel . Some prominent authen­ tic ones

a little rel u c tantly - p u t it like the p arish

preacher ; th ey s ay they would rather h arvest on burned earth . They are n o less clever th an social p s y chology, which h a s observed th at negative j u dgments , of n o 1 8 . J a spers , Die geistige Situation, p . 1 2 8 .

27

matter what content, give a better chance of bein g -affirmed than do positive judgments .19 Nihilism turns into farce, into mere method, as has already happened to Cartesian doubt. The question- a fa.vorite prerequi site of the j argon-must sound all the more radical the more loyally it directs itself to the kind of answer which can be everything except radical. Here is an elementary example from Jaspers : ­

Existential philosophy would be lost immediately, if it once again believed that it knows what m an is. It would again give us sketches of how to investigate hu­ man and anim al life in its typical form s ; it would again become anthropology, psychology, sociology. Its mean­ ing is only pos sible when it rem ains groundless in its concretenes s . It awakens what it does n o t know ; it lightens and move s , but it does not fix and hold. For the man who is underway, this philosophy is the ex­ pression through which he maint ains himself in his direction ; the means toward preserving his highest moments -so that he c an make them real through his life . . . . Insight into existence , because it remains without an obj ect, leads to no conclusion .20

Exactly. A concerned tone is ominously s truck up : no answer would be serious enough ; every answer, no matter of what content, would be dismissed as a limit­ ing concretization. But the effect of this remorseless intransigence is friendly ; the man never pins himself 1 9 . Cf. Gruppenexperiment, Frankfurter Beitriige Sozio logie ( Frankfurt, 1 95 5 ), II , 482 if . 2 0 . Jaspers, D i e geistige Situation, p p . 1 46 4 7 .

zur

down : the world is all too dynamic. The old Prote stant theme of absurd belief, groundin g itself in the subj e ct, converted itself from Lessing to Kierkegaard into the pathos of existence . This p athos existed in opposition to its result, the reified world seen as coagulated and alien to the subj ect. That old theme allies itself stra­ tegically with the critique of positive science-science from which , as Kierkegaard's thesis ran , the subject has disappeared . At the cost of any possible answer, the r adical question becomes wha t is substantial unto itself. Risk without h azard . Know-how and ran ge of in ­ come are the only factors which determine whether one appears on the scene sheltered or has to start ou t without security. Even those who are not sheltered are s afe as long as they join the chorus. This is what makes possible passages like the one from Heinz Schwitzke's Three Fundamental Theses for Television : This is totally differen t in the sermon . Here a clerical speaker professed his credo for m ore than ten minut e s , out o f his own depth s , in t h e exis tential m anner ; a sin gl e , never-ch angin g close-up. Thanks to the noble hum ane power of convic tion that radiated out from him , not only did his words, which were tes tified to by his pictorial presence, become completely cre dible , b u t the listener totally forgo t the mediating app aratu s . In front of the television screen, as if in the hou s e of God , there formed itself a sort of parish among the acciden t al viewers , wh o fel t as if they were being confronted wi th the imme di ate presence of the spe aker , and throu gh him felt committed to the subj ect m atter of his serm o n , God's word . There is no o ther expl an ation for this sur­ prisin g occurrence than the supreme import ance of the spe aking person , the person who has enough courage and e thos to place himself in the breach , and to serve

nothin g but the subj ect m atter which he stands for and the listeners to whom he knows he c an relate . 21

This is authenticity's funky commercial. The "word" of the preacher, as if his and God's were one without ques­ tion, is testified to not by his "pictorial presence," but at best by behavior whose trustworthiness supports the credibility of his statements . If, thanks to the appearance of the preacher, one forgets the mediating equipment, then the j argon of authenticity, which takes pleasure in this situation, is committing itself to the philosophy of As If : through s tage-setting, the now and here of a cult action is simu­ lated, an action which throu gh its omnipresence is an­ nulled on television . But, by the existential m anner in which the preacher makes public profession of him­ self, from out of himself, "in a never changing close-up," we need only to understand the self-evident fact that the preacher, who after all h ad no other choice, was projected as an empirical person onto the screen and in this w ay, perhaps, had a sympathetic effect on many people. That he formed a community cannot be proven. The notion that he had to throw him­ self into the breach, with his whole substance and existence, is imported from the sphere of risk. Still, for that preacher who details on television why the church is too narrow for him there is no risk at all : neither of contradiction from outside nor of inner ne­ cessity. I f in fact, hemmed in between microphone and floodlight, he h ad to suffer throu gh moments of temp2 I . Heinz S chwitzke, "Drei Grundthesen zum Fernsehen," in Rundfunk und Fernsehen, II ( I 95 3 ) , I I ff.

30

tation , the j argon would h ave been right there waitin g with additional praise for his existenti ality. The b enefit of the negative is transferred to the positive, as thou gh by a single s troke of the pen : positive n e g a tiveness to warm the h e art. These dark words are numinous , j u s t like Bollnow's whitewashed Sunday word s - a s close to rej oicin g as the dre adful trumpet has alway s been . Just as the j argon u ses the double sense of the word "posi tive ," it uses the ambi guity of the term "meta­ physi c s , " a ccording to whether at a given moment one prefers nothin gn e s s or bein g. On the one h and meta­ physics m e ans involvement with metaphysical themes, even if the metaphysical content is conte s te d ; on the other h and it me ans the affirmative doc trine of the transcendent world , in the Platonic model .

In

this

shiftin g metaphysical need , th at state of th e spirit which lon g a go m ade itself known in Novalis' On

Christendom or Europe, or which the youn g Lukacs called trans cendental homelessness, h a s come down to culturally defined knowledge . The theolo gical freeing of the numinous from ossified do gm a h a s , ever since Kierke g a ard, involuntarily come to mean its p artial secularization .

In

mys tical h eresy , the unsatisfiable

purification of the divine from myth , which loves to tremble in the ges ture of deeply involved questionin g, h ands the divine over to whoever relates to

it in

any

way . Liberal the ology is suddenly reborn, since con­ tent is to be found only in a relation, the o ther pole of which removes i tself from all definition as the "ab­ solutely indifferent , " and marks all d efinition with the blemish

of reifi c ation .

C omplete

demytholo gization

totally reduces trans cenden ce to an abs traction , to a

3 1

eQ.Uc.f)p.,!. Enlightenment, which the viri obscuri 22 ac­ cus e , triumphs in their thought . In the s ame movemen t of the spirit, however, the positin g power of the sub­ je c t, veiled unto itself, again conjures up the myth inherent in all dialectical theology. Th at subj ective power's highest value, as absolutely different, is blind . Under compulsion the viri obscuri praise commitments inste ad of jumping into speculation which alone could justify their own commitments to their r adical ques­ tioners . Their relationship to speculation is confused . One needs i t because one wants to be deep, yet one shies away from it because of its intellectual natur e . One would prefer t o reserve i t f o r the gurus . The others still c onfess their groundlessness , in order to give ch ar­ acter to the path s of offered salvation, which are puted to be successful

re­ in extreme even if imagin ary

dan ger. However , they find nothing but groundles s thinking as soon as thinkin g refuses , through its atti­ tude, to support from the outset those commitments which are as unavoidable in authenticity as is the h appy ending in movie s . If the h appy endin g is lackin g, then amon g the existential authentics existentialism itself has nothing to laugh at. Only against this background does the whole gre atness

of the existential e thic reveal itself. It once again actualizes , on the ground of modern historical rela­ tivism , a decidedly moral stance. But in precisely that sense a d anger is given ; that danger which comes to expression in the possibility of an existential adven22. [ViTi obscuri : obscurantists , enemies of enlightenm ent. Historical reference to fictive hum anist ( fifteenth and six­ teenth c entury) authors of letters against late forms