Written by Samuel Lee
In the era marked by rapid advancements in the internet and artificial intelligence technologies, the degree of mutual understanding among humanity as a whole has not seen a proportional increase. Instead, under the backdrop of political polarization, the phenomenon of echo chambers has intensified, leading to what scholars today refer to as the “post-truth era."
This label “post-truth" signifies a shift where traditional authorities of knowledge, such as scientists, and the institutional mechanisms of knowledge production, such as universities or journals, no longer monopolize the legitimacy of knowledge. Truth has been relegated to the realm of social media or platforms like Patreon, subject to the whims of consumers who pick and choose according to their preferences.
As Arendt articulates, factual truth is undergoing an unprecedented challenge. “When we talk about lying,” she wrote, “let us remember that the lie did not creep into politics by some accident of human sinfulness; moral outrage, for this reason alone, is not likely to make it disappear.”
Lambert Zuidervaart, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, has long been recognized for his research on Theodor Adorno and theories of truth. In his latest book, Adorno, Heidegger, and the Politics of Truth, he revisits the question of truth-seeking.
I am particularly intrigued by how Zuidervaart’s decades-long engagement with Adorno’s aesthetic theory might shed light on the current post-truth era and how we might discuss the issue of truth after decades of postmodern influence.
Revisiting the Origin of His Intellectual Journey
A week before the interview began, Lambert shared with me his recent blog post, a retrospective on his decades of research on Adorno and his philosophical journey. It contained numerous narratives about his life before and after pursuing in Germany. Out of curiosity, I asked him why, in the 1970s—a time when Adorno and the Frankfurt School were relatively unknown in North America—he was already interested in Adorno’s ideas and even went so far as to pursue doctoral research in Germany.
“I did a master’s thesis at the Institute for Christian Studies, a graduate school for interdisciplinary philosophy in Toronto. My master’s thesis was on Immanuel Kant’s critique of judgment. Then I wanted to write a dissertation on the philosophy of music. Because I was very well-trained in music, I wanted to somehow do a philosophy of music myself. And my supervisor, who was very wise, said, maybe it’d be better to just work on somebody else’s philosophy of music."
“We came down to two people. One was Suzanne Langer, who was of a German background, but she wrote mostly in English. And the other person was Theodor Adorno. And I had not read much of anything by Adorno at that point. But my supervisor wanted me also to spend time in Germany, because he thought that would be a very important way to become a more grounded scholar and immersed in the German environment. And so then it made sense to do Adorno. So I got to start working on Adorno."
“The primary reason I went to Berlin was because of a musicologist and philosopher of music named Carl Dahlhaus, a very important philosopher of music. And he knew Adorno and was close to other people who worked on Adorno. But once I got into his (Adorno’s) philosophy of music, I got excited about everything else. And then I never did write on his philosophy of music because I ended up talking about his aesthetics, his more general philosophy of the arts."
And I humbly think the choice to research Adorno’s aesthetics doesn’t diverge significantly from Lambert’s original intention to explore the philosophy of music, given that Adorno’s aesthetic discussions often commence with music.
“Certainly, his aesthetic theory is very much indebted to his writings on music. And he worked out many of his ideas about the arts in general, by talking about music specifically. That’s unusual. So many philosophers who write about the arts come out from the visual arts or from literature. But he comes to it from music. And that makes a big difference, I think, because it gives him a new way to talk about the content of art and its meaning."
“It (Music) gives him a way to talk about the content of art and its meaning, and not force it into being somehow a kind of language or something that can be spelled out in concepts. So it’s a very important, I think, alternative to a good deal of philosophy of the arts."
The Pursuit of Truth as a Worthy Endeavor
Undoubtedly, within the historical development of traditional Western philosophy, the concept of truth (aletheia) has maintained a position of critical importance. However, from the nineteenth to the twentieth century, the value of truth has increasingly come under scrutiny, from Nietzsche to Foucault. Why, then, is it necessary to revisit this topic today?
Zuidervaart believes Adorno’s insights are particularly profound. “Historically, I think it’s been a central idea in the entire Western philosophical tradition. So we don’t really come to grips with the tradition unless we come to grips with what has been a central concern in the tradition. That has been the idea of truth and it’s right through Heidegger and Adorno. Adorno, of course, has not spelled it out in systematic detail. But it’s what he appeals to. He continually appeals to this idea of truth as the key to what he’s doing and the key to social critique."
“The whole idea of ideology that he uses coming out of the Marxist tradition, when you think about it, makes very little sense unless you have something to contrast ideology with. And for Adorno, what’s contrasted with ideology is truth. And his talk about a false society that only makes sense if you have some notion of truth that actually much broader than the typical notion in philosophy of propositional truth. It only makes sense if you have a broader notion of truth, which you can get out of the German tradition going back to Hegel."
Zuidervaart’s new book situates Adorno within the intellectual dialogues of the late twentieth century, highlighting Adorno’s avant-garde position. One such interlocutor is Michel Foucault.
Well-known for his mid-career view of power and knowledge as symbiotic, Foucault portrayed the modern state’s governance through knowledge and regulation as a “regime of truth." In contrast, did Adorno overlook the aspect of truth as a mechanism of power, or did he have an overly optimistic understanding of truth’s positive effects?
“In a contemporary setting, progressive intellectuals have done themselves no favor by collapsing power and truth. I don’t think people actually understand Foucault that well. Because they don’t understand that, though he does talk about the regime of truth, the notion of truth in that notion of the regime of truth is still a very important notion for him. I’m not a Foucault expert, but I’ve read a lot of Foucault in order to make sense. Part of the problem is that people read the genealogical Foucault, as if it were somehow detached from the archaeological Foucault."
“I don’t read him (Foucault) that way. I think he’s actually building on the archaeological Foucault, where he lays out a very detailed notion of knowledge and a particularly of knowledge as a truth-gaining enterprise. So I think that’s all presupposed when he talks about regimes of truth. And the notion of the regime of truth makes sense if you think that there are real claims to truth that are being debated and struggled within society, in medicine, in education, and in all these institutions that he talked about. But they really are claims to truth."
In Pursuit of Artistic Truth
In his new book, Zuidervaart argues that Adorno’s concern extends beyond Foucault’s concern of propositional truth, covered by discourse, to include a non-discursive dimension of truth, namely artistic truth. The dominance of propositional truth has been adequately addressed in Dialectic of Enlightenment, prompting Adorno to seek alternative paths in the realm of artistic truth to reconstruct a vision of truth capable of overcoming the contemporary challenges posed by capitalism and totalitarianism.
The more pressing question we face is: what constitutes artistic truth, and why is it conducive to societal critique? Hindered by Adorno’s allegiance to the philosophy of non-identity, he never systematically articulated his thoughts on truth. His later work Aesthetic Theory remained unfinished at his death, leaving his concept of truth somewhat overlooked.
Therefore, as early as the 1970s, while pursuing his doctoral studies in Berlin, Zuidervaart began contemplating this issue. His dissertation, titled “Refractions: Truth in Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory," later revised and published as his seminal work Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, represents Zuidervaart’s enormous effort to delineate Adorno’s comprehensive vision of truth.
“Adorno has a more detailed and workable approach to artistic truth than the general idea of truth. Basically, for him, artistic truth is the dialectic between form and content in the work of art. But in the way, that dialectic actually goes beyond itself. In that suspension, it unveils something crucial about society. The dynamic inside the work of art is an echo or a monad, the term he used, a sort of small universe that gives expression to the dynamics in society as a whole."
To me, this aspect is frequently discussed in Adorno’s critique of the culture industry, primarily focusing on two levels. First, as an intrinsic structural element, art forms are congruent with the current socio-economic structure of society, meaning changes in art forms are closely linked to overall societal transformations. Second, while formal revolutions naturally lead to content innovation, consumer society often prioritizes content renewal over form, leading to rapid production of similar commodities and eroding the potential for social innovation in art.
For instance, in pop music, despite varying content, the structure often adheres to the “verse-chorus" form, lasting three to four minutes. In contrast, Arnold Schönberg’s atonal music, which emerged in the early twentieth century, completely broke free from tonal composition constraints, aligning with Adorno’s approval of musical structural innovation. Regardless of its commercial value, formal innovation not only revitalizes art but also impacts the entire lifeworld.
“And of course, the most important dynamic was the conflict between forces of production and relations of production, which goes right back to Marx." Zuidervaart continued to elaborate. “In my view, if you really want to understand artistic truth and the way it works in society, you have to go beyond simply that internal dynamic. You are also concerned how audiences or art public pick up the work of art, and how the artwork is generated by the artist or the producer or the community that gives rise to the work of art. So you actually have to have three things in mind, not just the import or the truth content inside the work of art, but also the relationship to the audience and the relationship to the producer."
“So for me, artistic truth involves certainly the internal integrity of the work of art. Also, it’s significance with respect to the audience and its authenticity with respect to its production."
Critique of Elitism and Colonialism
However, discussing Adorno’s concept of artistic truth today inevitably touches upon some of the main criticisms against his theory, including elitism. Adorno has been criticized for his musical preferences, showing disdain for jazz or pop music, and for not extensively exploring the interpretive agency of the masses. The discussion on artistic truth’s focus on formal revolutions seems to involve creators more than the audience’s participation.
Thus, unlike Stuart Hall’s “encoding/decoding" theory, which emphasizes audience interpretive agency, Adorno’s thoughts lean more towards the internal tensions between creators and their works. Does his theory still represent a form of bourgeois elitism today?
“Certainly he comes from that background, but to his credit, he actually did pay attention to popular music. He did pay attention to the film. Imagine growing up as an only child in a house with two mothers, one of them a trained singer and one of them a singer and piano player. And both of them were very accomplished. He’s in the world of high art. When he was a young man, he went off to Vienna and studied piano with one of the leading ‘Schoenberg-ian’ piano players and he studied composition with Alban Berg. You know, these are the leading figures in Europe."
“But I think your point about Adorno’s emphasis on art production is accurate. However, I’d want to modify it in one respect. Adorno actually did write a sociology of music and did come up with a typology of listening. He distinguished between the good listener and the expert listener. I think he wrote about nine types of listeners. So he actually was starting to think about what’s the role of the recipient, What’s the role of the audience? etc. It’s not enough to have great artists who are doing great art. You actually have people who are engaging with it, learning from it, contributing to it."
On the other hand, the Frankfurt School’s avoidance of the issue of decolonization of knowledge, especially Adorno’s, became a point of contention with the rise of cultural studies in the 1960s. Particularly when discussing the universality of truth, the problem of Eurocentrism, which overlooks the conflicts and possibilities within cultural diversity, cannot be ignored. How should we reconsider Adorno’s perspective on decolonization today?
Lambert agreed that Adorno and the early critical theorists paid little attention to the world beyond Europe and America, a concern that has been highlighted in recent works by Martin Jay and Amy Allen. “Adorno and Horkheimer, for the most part, did not pay much attention to worlds beyond Europe and North America. It’s a Western way of understanding history, culture, and politics."
“Nonetheless, the thing about Adorno is that he’s very, very critical of that history. From within, he’s launching a critique of the way the West has unfolded. He doesn’t give up on the prospect of something coming out of it that would be better. About the potential of a genuinely democratic society where we don’t have oppressively imposed suffering and the like, Adorno still sees that as a possibility."
“The current generation of critical theorists has to work at hanging on to some sense that there is that kind of element of goodness in the West, that potential. But then think about how that potential, to be actualized, needs to be complemented by potentials in other cultures and other political systems and the like. The danger, I think, in decolonial and postcolonial theory is to just dismiss all the inheritance that we have in the West. And I think that’s very problematic."
Publication date: 3/5/2024
Originally published in the Ming Pao Daily News: https://news.mingpao.com/pns/%e4%bd%9c%e5%ae%b6%e5%b0%88%e6%ac%84/article/20240305/s00018/1709571569644/%e4%b8%96%e7%b4%80-%e4%ba%8c%e5%85%83%e5%b0%8d%e5%9d%90-%e9%98%bf%e5%a4%9a%e8%ab%be%e8%ab%96%e7%9c%9f%e7%90%86%e5%92%8c%e7%be%8e%e5%ad%b8%e7%9a%84%e6%95%91%e8%b4%96-%e8%a8%aa%e9%ad%af%e5%be%b7%e7%93%a6%e7%89%b9
Image source: http://www.groundmotive.net/2016/05/deep-gratitude.html
Truthseeker 