[lbo-talk] A Crisis of Neo-liberalism or a Crisis of Captialism?" by Christopher Carrico

Dennis Claxton ddclaxton at earthlink.net
Tue Dec 13 15:06:27 PST 2011


WS:


>Philosophically, I am a nominalist

A couple of things from Adorno on 20th century nominalism:

".... the nominalism, disseminated as prescientific consciousness, and today once more commanding science from there, which makes a profession out of its naivete -the positivistic instrumentarium seldom lacks the pride in being naïve, and the category of "everyday language" is its echo -does not bother with the historical coefficient in the relationship of the general and the particular. The true preponderance [Vorrang] of the particular could only be obtained by means of the transformation of the general. To simply install it as something existent, is a complementary ideology. It conceals how much the specific has become the function of the general, which, according to its logical form, it was all along. What nominalism clings to as its most prized possession is utopia; thus its hatred of utopian thinking, that of the difference from what exists."

(Above is Dennis Redmond's translation) http://members.efn.org/~dredmond/ndtrans.html

Here's something a little more pared down:

http://books.google.com/books?id=rGeyHgnRZL4C&pg=PR8&lpg=PR8&dq=adorno+%22the+concept+of+progress%22+%22lecture+15%22+nominalism&source=bl&ots=psG4jOikf-&sig=hGo9x48QWPmy8oY0fMvxf1DZdfc&hl=en&ei=r9nnTozcNeiiiQKempz8Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=nominalism&f=false



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list