Negative Dialectics (Negative Dialectics Ppr)

The author states that this book is a confession, but is one which is necessary to understand deep knowledge of his work, definitely if the reader  not have this knowledge will not understand the purpose of this book.

Excellent as most of Adorno

Thank you. Best of luck in the New year!

Just a note re. several reviewers' very sensible suggestion to wait for a better trans. before reading Negative Dialectics. Seems to me that ND is just too important to TWA's oeuvre; Ashton's trans. is bad, but is it bad enough to delay one from reading ND? Those of us who thought we'd never really need German owe R. Hullot-Kentor _a lot_ for all the insight, skill, and just plain drudgery he put into his Eng. trans. of _Aesthetic Theory_. Others may be better informed and know something about a forthcoming, new _ND_ trans., as in a complete reworking like what RH-K did for AT. (All I've noticed is a reissue of the same Ashton trans.: the biggest improvement is the new cover--no more sickly green monochrome.) An alternative strategy for ND--along lines others have suggested, too: read LOTS of Adorno in good translations--choosing texts based your own interests as well as some consideration to the must-reads (for music, I'd emphatically recommend the vol. of essays edited by Richard Leppert; alternating "Adorno heavy" and "Adorno lite" [yes, these are relative terms] can make the experience less head-clutching). Also, Fred Jameson, who shares the common opinion of Ashton's _ND_--and, moreover, _actually reads German_--helpfully provides a short list of some of Ashton's "most urgent howlers" (Jameson, _Late Marxism: Adorno . . ._ [Verso, 1990], ix-x--for that matter, if you're interested in Jameson's reading of TWA, his Adorno book presupposes, I think it's fair to say, a pretty fair familiarity w/ _ND_). So I wouldn't suggest waiting on that once & future _really good_ ND trans. Or hedge your bets: break out those old German textbooks, and maybe you'll be reading ND in the original while we of the slothful majority are still keeping the translation vigil.Addendum: I suspect TWA wouldn't care much for having his work rated by no. of gold stars: translations matter, too, and have to figure into overall evaluations, seems to me. So the constellations Adorno did like combine with the trans. issue and ... 4 stars. We don't get to say anything w/o giving a star rating, no? ???

This is a reprint of a very misleading translation of this work. If you want to read it with comprehension, you will have to learn German or wait for a new translation

Despite what others describe as a flawed translation, this text represents a brilliant, nuanced and complex presentation of negative dialectics. The differen e between American and European cultural, political and psychological theoretical critique is evident in this book.

Famously bad translation of the central piece of Adorno's philosophy. I recommend getting Aesthetic Theory now and waiting for the next translator's attempt.

Michel Foucault once stated that it was a great tragedy that the Frankfurt School and the French post-structuralists were unaware of each other's work. He felt that the two schools of thought could have gained much from dialogue, and this text illustrates his point in its relatedness to postmodern discourses on the limits of knowledge and the ends of positivistic philosophy.Adorno addresses the relationship between the concept and the nonconceptualities, which is nothing more that the relationship between discourse and the Other in post-structuralist phraseology. The text is extraordinarily difficult - not always a problem explainable via the difficulties of the ideas involved - and I often find myself spending an hour reading and re-reading a page or two before being able to come to terms with the content. Personally, I enjoy such difficult reading, however, and find it an avenue for developing critical reasoning skills at the sime time as I re-investigate the problems addressed in the difficult prose.I highly recommend this text for anyone interested in pessemistic, carefully thought-out discourses on the limits placed on understanding by the "pigeon-holeing" of conceptualization, anyone who enjoys cracking hard nuts via time, sweat, and frustration, and anyone looking for a difficult text to read superficially and criticize emptily as being an example of the poverty of post WWII continental philosophy. In a sense, it is a book for all . . .

This continuum edition is the same miserable translation as the Routledge edition! Quite misleading not to make that clear -and what does the reviewer who thinks this one is better mean? It's the same one! has he read it?

Excellent!

In “Negative Dialectics”, Adorno’s late work of 1966, dialectics is called an “anti-system” (xx), unregulated and unprejudiced thinking, which "does not begin by taking a standpoint" (5, cf. 31). Here dialectics takes on a methodical function which we can understand negatively as a criticism of the system and positively as a systematic support of critical independence.Unfortunately, this methodical concept of dialectics is only one side of the coin. The other side represents the idea that "dialectics is the ontology of the wrong state of things" (11), and the „negative, wrong, and yet simultaneously necessary moment is the stage of dialectics“ (173).Some time ago Richard Rorty reproached the classical epistemology with the idea that to be a „mirror of nature“ , it can analogously be argued here against this explanation of dialectics: to be a sort of mirror of the supposedly contradictory structured reality or, to say it in a logically safer way, to be a structural copy of the antagonistic social world, marked by contrasts like poor and rich, strong and weak, responsible and immoral: „In fact, dialectics is neither a pure method nor a reality in the naive sense of the word. […] To proceed dialectically means to think in contradictions, for the sake of the contradiction once experienced in the thing, and against that contradiction. A contradiction in reality, it is a contradiction against reality“ (144/5).In my opinion, this view of dialectics is indefensible, because it is enlightenment-hostile. Neither can contradictions be appropriately expressed in a contradictory organized speech, if they are to be understandable, nor is theory naive empirically conceivable as a mirror nor can the theory be understood in a naïve empirical sense as a structurally similar copy of reality or the outside world. Moreover, an interpretation must not be "unanimous", if it is free of contradiction. Otherwise the statement of contrary positions would already be a contradiction in itself. This has nothing to do with interaction between critical experience of the world and logical argumentation. Adorno still constructs dialectics in such a contradictory and aporetical way that, in the end, only its self-abolition can lead us out of the coming together of critical discourse with an open end on the one hand and the ontology of the wrong conditions, on the other hand: „[D]ialectics is obliged to make a final move: being at once the impression and the critique of the universal delusive context, it must now turn even against itself“ (406).To stay with dialectics, doesn't mean that you are deceiving yourself as Adorno suggests, but just taking a chance: the pursuit of critical openness for the purposes of argumentative independence of any standpoint.To summarize all this as succinctly as possible: Negative dialectics as an „ontology of the wrong state of things“ (11) which voids itself in a right state of things (406) is an unproductive endeavor which we should not deal with. But dialectics as a self-reflective discourse, using critical and open constellations of concepts that focus on the peaceful advancement of individual differences – this is excellent philosophical enlightenment which should in any case be pursued.Dr. Ulrich Müller (Berlin)

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