interview [a generation apart from adorno]
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Philosophy & Social Criticism
DOI: 10.1177/0191453792018002011992; 18; 119Philosophy Social Criticism
jürgen habermasa generation apart from adorno (an interview
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jürgen habermasa generation apart from adorno
(an interview)*
FROCHTL: From 1949 until 1954 you studied in G6ttingen,Zurich, and Bonn. Erich Rothacker and Oskar Becker were yourmost influential philosophy professors. You worked principally in
Heidegger’s philosophy. The end of that came when his
&dquo;Introduction to Metaphysics&dquo;-lectures he held during the Nazi
period-were published in 1953 without a commentary. In an
interview in Athetik und Kommunikation you spoke of how in
the same period you read Luk6cs’s History and Class
Consciousness and the Dialectic of Enlightenment ’With
fascination.&dquo; But your fascination with Horkheimer’s and Adorno’sbook obviously was not enough to compel you to go to Frankfurt
and listen to the authors themselves. How is it that in 1956 youcame to be Adorno’s Assistentand a member of The I nstitute for
Social Research?
HABERMAS: As far asI remember, the Frankfurt School-and
Frankfurt as a place to study generally-had no noteworthyachievements in the early fifties that one could have perceived
clearly from without, least of all from the perspective of a
philosophy student in Bonn, from where one looked towards
Freiburg and Heidelberg, or G6ttingen. Adorno became known to
*JOrgen Habermas, &dquo;A Generation Apart from Adorno,&dquo; Geist gegen den
Zeitgeist. Erinnern an Adorno, (Hrsg.) J. Fruchtl, M. Calloni, Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1991. Translated by James Swindal.
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jurgenhabermas
a wider public particularly from his writings during the later fifties.
The Frankfurt School remained for a long time an enclave within
its field.I had been working on my dissertation since 1952. So
itwas more a fortunate coincidence of circumstances that broughtme to Frankfurt in 1956, two years after my Promotion and after
some free-lance journalism. Musil’s publisher Adolf Fris6, to
whose feuilleton articlesI sometimes contributed, one day offered
to introduce me to Adorno. Adorno had read something of mine
in Merkur. During this first conversation Adorno invited me to
come to the Institute for the time being on the basis of a grantRothacker had already provided me to do research on the
concept of ideology. Then, in the autumn of 19561 was appointed Adorno’s Assistent; moreover, I was his first personal Assistent.
FRUCHTL: In the interview in Athetik und Kommunikation you
spokeof the situation in Frankfurt: about the
selectivityof
Horkheimer and Adorno with regard to philosophical theories, theabsence of an intellectual &dquo;past&dquo; of the Institute, and Adorno’s role
in &dquo;sparking&dquo; a systematic reading of Marx and Freud. Little has
been said up until now about the unsatisfactory, even
embarrassing, business of your separation from the Institute.I do
not want to appear indiscreet, but I did not want at all to believe
what I read in the chapter of Wiggershaus’s recently publishedhistory of the Frankfurt School regarding what Horkheimer
brought up about you. Is Wiggershaus being polemical when heclaims that Horkheimer had &dquo;in the course of the fifties become a
convinced advocate of the CDU-motto, ’no experiments&dquo;’?
HABERMAS: My impression is that Wiggershaus’s treatment of
Horkheimer’s writings during the fifties is accurate. Horkheimer
enjoyed a good reputation in Frankfurt. He was concerned about
maintaining good contact politically with all sides. We Assistenten
at the Institute were not exactly enthusiastic about his political
views on the Algerian war or the question of re-armament, forexample. His public behavior and his politics at the Institute
appeared to us almost as an example of an opportunisticadaptation that did not stand in harmony with the critical tradition
that he nonetheless embodied. But I changed my opinion of
Horkheimer after his death, when I read his dairy entries of that
period. There it comes out that he led an utterly split existence
after his return from the United States. He was a relentless
observer and keen analyst of all the false continuities that were so
characteristic of the Adenauer period. But the fear in which he
lived (and not only the fear of the need for recognition) allowed him
to maintain a facade, behind which he sat as if upon unpackedbags.
FRUCHTL: Did there turn out to be a strict division between youand Adorno on the one side, and Horkheimer on the other?
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a generationapart from
adorno
HABERMAS: One cannot say that, but Adorno never shared
Horkheimer’s prejudice against me, and he also protected me
against Horkheimer’s pressure at the Institute.
FRUCHTL: Was it then a bitter departure for you when you went
to Marburg as a Privatdozent in 1961 ? Why didn’t your contact
with the Institute break off completely, and the period of yourworkwith Horkheimer and Adorno in the fifties remain just a passingphase?
HABERMAS: I did my Habilitation with Abendroth in Marburg. Mytermination with Horkheimer was a spontaneous move that did
not at all prove to be misguided, becauseI soon was given the
possibility, with the help of a DFG grant, to finish writingStructural Transformation of the Public Sphere. I nevertaughtas a Privatdozent because Gadamer and L6with invited me to
Heidelberg. I was happy to be able to go to Heidelberg.&dquo;Bitterness&dquo; is not the right word. My widely diverse attitudes
towards Horkheimer and Adorno remained for the time being the
same as when I was Adorno’s Assistent. Both before and after I
came back to Frankfurt as Horkheimer’s successor in 1964, Adorno had tried repeatedly to ease the tension in the relationshipbetween Horkheimer and me-which also then worked out.
FRUCHTL: Whatwere
the discussions and conversations likebetween you and Adorno? Were not controversies dealt with, or
at least discussed? When one looks at the places in Adorno’s
writings where he refers to you, one notices his great readiness
to agree. At one point he appears &dquo;very committed&dquo; to your
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, and at
another point he adopts the term &dquo;pseudo-reality&dquo; that you had
directed towards the student protests. He refers to you most
frequently in his introduction to The Positivist Dispute in
German Sociology, but in my opinion interprets you in a waywhich entirely misconstrues your meaning. Only in the interview
with Der Spiegel does one hear a more critical tone, when to youraccusation that his dialectic abandons itself at its &dquo;darkest point&dquo;to a &dquo;destructive vortex of a death wish,&dquo; he responds: &dquo;I would say
above all that the desperate dependence upon the positiveemerges from a death wish.&dquo;On the other hand, one can observe
that the essay that you wrote in 1963 for Adorno’s sixtieth birthdayhas a considerate and friendly tone towards him; only after his
death did yourdifferences become less qualified and increasinglymore pronounced. What is also salient is the impression that you,as theoreticians, acted very respectfully towards each other, and
thus,I can well imagine that there was something like an
agreement producing spell, which a personality-for him one canindeed use such a term-such as Adorno’s was capable of
exerting.
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HABERMAS: One ought not forget that Adorno andI were a
generation apart. I always remained the Assistent, and even a
younger colleague at that, who honored the older one in
friendship. Moreover, Gretel and my wife were embedded in this
same constellation. In regard to the theoretical relationship, it
indeed never was a matter of two equally weighted positions.I
doubt that Adorno ever read a book of mine. During my time as
his Assistent we did work together in a certain sense. Adorno
always read my manuscripts intensely and covered them with his
notes. Later, he perhaps read one ortwo of my articles. Even until
well into the mid-sixties he may have assumed that no greatdifferences existed between us in our philosophical approaches.Theoretical discussions, which the two of us often had, alwayscentered around his texts. During the period whileI was at the
Institute, he would come to the second floor, whereI had a room
opposite Gretel’s,to tell me about an idea or
inspirationthat had
just excited him. Such was the case, for instance, when he
grasped for the first time the internal relationship between identitythinking and commodity form. In these situations I would, by the
way, immediately express reservations that we then discussed-
not thatI could have been able to influence him by them. As to the
differences that went deeper-and which were definitely alreadybeginning-they actually came clear to me only later. Your
phrase, &dquo;agreement producing spell,&dquo; sums up the situation quite
well. The differences I brought to the fore in Theory ofCommunicative Action are those that came clear to me onlymuch later, after reading one of Axel Honneth’s essays.
FROCHTL: Frequently you speak of the &dquo;genius,&dquo; or rather the
&dquo;ingenuity,&dquo; of Adorno. This seems to me to be an expressionwhich cuts both ways. Kant is known to have accepted the geniusonly in art, a thesis that one can attribute to his narrow conceptionof science. But don’t you implicitly follow the same restriction?I
could also ask whether this ingenuity was reserved for Adornohimself, or would it also have had its entitlement only in
conjunction with Horkheimer and Marcuse, or perhaps even with
all creative philosophers?
HABER MAS: Adornowas a genius;I say that without reservation.
No one would have even thought of such a thing in regard to
Horkheimer or Marcuse. With Marcuse I had, by the way, an
uncomplicated and-as you know-intimate relationship. Adorno had a presence of mind, a spontaneity of thought, a powerof formulation that I never have seen before or since. One was
unable to grasp the emerging process of Adorno’s thoughts; theyemerged, as it were, finished. That was his virtuosity. He also did
not have the freedom to go below his level; he could not let up onthe effort of his thought even for a moment. When you were with
Adorno you were in the movement of his thought. Adornowas not
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trivial; it was denied him, in a clearly painful way, ever to be trivial.
But at the same time, he lacked the pretensions and the
affectations of the stilted and &dquo;auratic&dquo; avant-garde that one saw
in George’s disciples. If there was a pathos, it was that of
negativity; and this did not stand in contradiction to his egalitarianconvictions. By all notable standards, Adorno remained anti-
elitist. Incidentally, he was a genius also in that he preservedcertain child-like traits, both the character of a prodigy and the
dependence of one &dquo;not-yet-grownup.&dquo; He was characteristicallyhelpless before institutions or legal procedures.
FRUCHTL:I would like to make a small jump here and use the
previously mentioned phrase &dquo;pseudo-reality&dquo; as a key term to
address both of your positions with regard to the student protests.One cannot deal with this much-discussed issue in a few phrases,but it would be
unfortunateto let this
opportunity go bywithout
some comment on it. Summarizing, let it perhaps be put this way:while Adorno neither unreservedly identified himself with the
student protest nor clearly differentiated himself from it, you
distinguished yourself by showing an increasingly strong interest
in the politics of the day and-as the author of the connection
between the university, politics and democratic publicness-bothidentified with the protests with less reservation and also,
invoking dangers and illusions, more clearly distanced yourself
from it. Did the anger of the students diminish because of itshesitant reception by Adorno, above all?
HABERMAS: I think that you describe it perfectly. I certainly hadno part in their anger.
FR UCHTL: It is conspicuous that the younger adherents of critical
theory left Frankfurt shortly after Adorno’s death. Von Friedeburgbecame Hesse’s
Culture Ministerin
1969, Negtbecame a
sociology professor in Hannover in 1970, you went to become the
director of the &dquo;Max Planck Institute for Research into the Life
Conditions in a Scientific-Technical World&dquo; in Starnberg in 1971.
Did something noticeable vanish with Adorno’s death?
HABERMAS: Adorno’s death was a turning point; all of us in
Frankfurt experienced that. At that time no one could have
imagined the resumption of anything that would bridge the
chasm. Admittedly, whether things would have worked out in a
totally different way if Adorno had still lived on and worked duringthe seventies, who can say? After the critical reaction set in, the
resentments thickened and finally in the autumn of 1977 a mood
of persecution broke out. I often asked myself how Adorno wouldhave reacted, how he would have understood the entirelyatrocious intrigue.
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FRUCHTL: In the collected works, Die Frankfurter Schule und
die Folgen, you attribute a part of the relatively great influence of
the &dquo;Frankfurt School,&dquo; or &dquo;critical theory,&dquo; directly to its &dquo;largelyfictitious unity.&dquo; &dquo;Today,&dquo;as you continue, &dquo;the impulses started bycritical theory take effect in scientific discussions in so manyvaried and sometimes contrary directions, that one cannot speakany longerof the identity of a single school, if it ever even existed.&dquo;
&dquo;
But the question still remains, how did the at least fictional unitycome to exist? Was it not possible precisely because critical
theory remained identifiable-and perhaps also still remains so-
as an interdisciplinary structured theory of society with a critical
intent, or in a more contemporary expression, as a theory of
broadening rationality with a social-critical intent?
HABERMAS: The Frankfurt School has become a historical form.
In the late seventies it tookon,
withsuperb
works such as Helmut
Dubiel’s, a historicizing thrust. Now we see better contemporaryhistory’s connection between the deeper impulses of critical
theory and the totalitarian determinations of the thirties and
forties. Today one can resume these same theoretical motives
only from a distance that does not allow itself to be cancelled at
will. Nevertheless there emerges from the philosophical core of
the theory of Adorno and Benjamin, and even from Horkheimer
and Marcuse, an aura, a fascination that not only sets afire, but
preserves something of the purifying power of the best:something of the steadfastness of the exoteric Kant. Even the
Dialectic of Enlightenment breaches no betrayal of the
impulses of the Enlightenment.
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