Stilian Yotov
Critique and Humanism
Eurozine
Critique and Humanism
Rorty, Adorno and critical philosophy:
On Adorno's 100th birthday
Stilian Yotov
The paper compares Rorty's and Adorno's considerations regarding the concept
of philosophy and its critique by art. On the one hand, a resemblance is
uncovered between the two diverse traditions - the analytical-pragmatic and the
speculative-dialectical ones - which at one and the same time (in the end of
sixties) realize the necessity to reform philosophy. The shared understandings
about the downfall of metaphysics, about the holism of meaning, about the role
of social practices, and about the interplay between the discursive types however,
do not erase the differences between the two programmes. Therefore, in
a second outline the moments of split in the conclusion of the two authors are
pointed out, moments mostly regarding the specificity of art and its closeness to
philosophy. Rorty's integration between philosophy and narrative genres is only
a superficial difference with comparison to Adorno for whom all the artistic
genres are related to philosophy. The problem whether art enriches the
philosophical schematisation thematically and emotionally (Rorty), or by the
paradoxes of its form (Adorno) is much deeper. The comparison leads to the
conclusion that Rorty's philosophy lays open to some of his own accusations in
dogmatic dualism and partisanship. In contrast to that, Adorno's philosophy
displays a much more differentiated account of the complexity of the realized
problems and of the multi-dimentionality of their solutions. Thirdly,
since nowadays Rorty (along with M. Walzer) defends the possibility of a critical
stance of thinking that used to be characteristic for Adorno in all of his writings,
the paper (indirectly) draws conclusions on the question whether the thesis
of a "critique without theory" has future. This of course, does not mean at
all that the critique of ideology (or the genealogy) is the single alternative version
of critical theory nowadays.