> Here's a question for Dennis Redmond, Chris Doss,
> Michael Pollak, or others who can read German fluently---and who might
> have the time or interest to answer.
>
> So what is the short form on Adorno's theory of the problem with
> idealism and its connection to myth?
The sound-bite answer is, Hegelian idealism isn't so much a theory of national myth, it *is* national mythos. (And, Adorno would add, therefore as true, and as false, as the national capitalism which generated it). Idealism is basically a theory of forms, and myth has to do with cultural content, so the critique of one requires the critique of the other.
> The problem begins as an intellectual mistake...that the (material)
> political world can be
> understood through political philosophy and what I would call an
> ahistorical idealism.
But it's not about understanding for the neocons, it's about control. They want to dominate the world.
> ----
> The deepest mistake the Frankfurt school made was to analyze its
> milieu (Weimar) through the same historical chain of ideas
> (intellectual history) following German idealism, filtered through
> Marx, Freud and others---none of whom were sufficiently empirical and
> materialistic in my view.
But this constructs yet another ahistorical entity -- a mythical beast called "idealism", which recurs in identical forms in history -- rather than concrete ideologies of domination and resistance thereto. One has to look at the actual content, rather than the forms. Adorno's mature work (post-WW II) involves a stinging, relentless critique of Weimar culture, and how it was the anticipation not just of Fascism, but of that stage of monopoly capitalism called the Pax Americana.
> In effect, Iraq is doomed whether the US necons prevail, or the
> Islamic sectarian prevail---for the same reason.
Why not a secular Leftwing nationalist alternative?
-- DRR