> The relation between Heidegger and Adorno is a strange one,
> at least I've always found it strange. I know people who
> swear by both... despite "Jargon." The odd thing is the
> theoretical similarity between negative dialectics and
> destruction (deconstruction these days). The most notable
> difference, it seems to me, is language. Adorno adopts the
> language of humanism while Heidegger adopts the language of
> ontology...
I've never been able to understand the affinity between deconstruction and Adorno's ND, though. (Maybe part of the problem is what I know of deconstruction comes out of secondary sources, but still...) In particular, deconstruction seems ahistorical in comparison to the ND: it's a critique of concepts from the point of view of ontology (I think). Now, if you take ontology and ontological arguments as really and truly fundamental, you think this is fine -- but if you think ontology can't and shouldn't be sundered from history (like me)...well, you've got a problem with this approach.
One thing Adorno does in _Jargon_ to drag ontology out of its sphere as pure philosophy and plop it down as a mere part of a general reaction to the real economic and social conditions in Germany at the time of its rise. Adorno's reading of Heidegger and his immanent critique of ontology in _Jargon_ aside (I'm no Heidegger scholar either), I think that's a particularly deadly point to make: capital-B Being is not, was not, never will be distinct from all those little-b beings, and the flight to ontology is simply the understandable but misguided attempt on the part of some of those little-b beings to flee the ugly realities of big-C Capitalism.
> Slavoj Zizek has an interesting reading of
> Heidegger in his latest book The Ticklish Subject which
> I've found helpful in sorting out the differences.
I picked it largely on the strength of the exerpts Doug posted here, but alas, it slumbers somewhere near the bottom of a pile of books next to the bed...I'll have to give it some attention.
> As for Jargon of Authenticity... I don't "trust" Adorno in this
> text. Mind you, I love it, it's a wonderful book and
> Teddie manages to spin the hell out of a phrase.... But I'm
> also convinced that it isn't a very good reading or
> understanding of Heidegger... of course... maybe there's
> nothing to understand...
I forget whether it's in the _Jargon_ or the _ND_ (or both?) that Adorno makes the point that Heidegger's ontological difference is only a reification of a moment of dialectical thinking about types and instances. The ontological difference is supposed to be what enables us to talk about capital-B Being at all, but if the ontological difference is only a aspect of an epistemic process, then fundamental ontology collapses in on itself, taking its prestige and progeny with it. This criticism stands or falls on whether or not it adequately characterizes the ontological difference, which I can't judge -- but if it DOES -- then the air clears, and what we can clearly see the terrain we've got to work/battle in as that of history and humans, with the words _De te fabula narratur_ echoing in our ears.
-- Curtiss