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I consider the book unreadable, as I don't think the goal of the textual medium should be to disorient the reader. I was pointed out, by people more versed in a

• claudiawerner 7y ago
  >I don't think the goal of the textual medium should be to disorient the reader "Now, from what you write about my language, to be honest, I find it very difficult to imagine that you mean it seriously. Your argumentation shows a true obsession with the thought of the reader. With my stuff you obviously didn't even come up with the idea that I'm not interested in him, neither in catching him, nor in snubbing him, but only in the most adequate and rigorous presentation of the matter possible. That is probably the only linguistic thing that can be done seriously against the cultural industry." -- Adorno >I trusted that account and once deciphered, the book is just a re-hash of some marxism and some vague criticism of the dynamics of mass-media and consumerism of leisure time. This is awfully reductionist; it is as ridiculous as saying that after Capital has been deciphered it's just a re-hash of some socialism. Not to mention, the book isn't really about mass-media and consumerism (though those do factor into it); you only have to read the quote at the beginning from Feuerbach in 1841 to know there's more to it than that. Yes, you can express any complex idea as a "re-hash" of something. Yes, you need to do background reading to understand literature that builds upon two centuries of philosophy. >and he dives in, never explaining first what he means by "spectacle" The endless quest for definitions laid out clear as day is fruitless, and not a mark of good philosophy. Marx never laid out all the dimensions of what he means by "capital", he never even defined "class". I don't consider that to be a fault of the work. > but it is as much philosophy as Lady Gaga's meat dress is haute cuisine. It should be first considered a work of critical theory before philosophy. Besides that, professional philosophers of all stripes would disagree - after all, philosophers study Debord, not Lady Gaga's meat dress. A great many works have been inspired and built on top of Debord's larger project, and Society of the Spectacle in particular.
  • Iv 7y ago
    To answer Adorno's quote: that's fine, do literature then. Do not present it as philosophy. Some people explain machine learning using haikus, that's a fine exercise, but not a good engineering practice. The Capital does not need to be deciphered. I read it, it is not the easiest or the clearest text ever but it is understandable. It talks clearly about economics and politics. It introduces some concepts that I think were new at the time: class warfare and capital concentration. I failed to discern such essential concepts in Debord's book, whereas many of his fans seem to believe that he introduces new dynamics that are as important as class warfare with his book. > The endless quest for definitions laid out clear as day is fruitless, and not a mark of good philosophy. Indeed, academic philosophy wants obscurity as it is a good tool to hide the indigence of its thought. All the other fields of applicable knowledge understand the need to define words clearly. Why would philosophy be an exception? It has become a field of literature: it prefers style over substance. Yes, Marx is a bit hard to follow because he does not lay down well his definitions. I do consider it a fault, but a 19th century text gets a pass if it expresses interesting ideas. Marx also mixes economic and political ideas, often mixes factual and moral statements. I wish philosophers who built upon his ideas elaborated the substances while correcting the style. After all, no one learns newtonian physics by reading Newton's books anymore. We have better notations and clearer styles now. The ideas are what matters and Newton is still rightly revered because of them. Why is philosophy so enamored with reading the old text instead of extracting the good ideas in it and putting it in a better, more formal framework? > after all, philosophers study Debord, not Lady Gaga's meat dress It is a shame, I suspect the latter offers more interesting philosophical and cultural statements than the first one. > A great many works have been inspired and built on top of Debord's larger project, and Society of the Spectacle in particular. Would you have just a single example that is relevant outside the field of academic philosophy?
    • claudiawerner 7y ago
      > that's fine, do literature then. Do not present it as philosophy. You're not understanding that the distinction between literature and philosophy is a false opposition of concepts; a good philosophical work answers not only to the philosophical commitments of the author, but also stylistic and linguistic ones. The style itself is part of the philosophy. So when Adorno and Debord write against the culture industry, it would be almost ironic if they were to use the style of the industry. They snubbed the industry in everything they did, and that included writing. >The Capital does not need to be deciphered. But it does! For the past century there have been debates as to the actual logical unfolding of concepts in the book, what certain words mean, where and how certain things are "proved", and the relation of the order of the chapters book to Hegel's Logic or even Dante's Inferno. The fact that the draft for Vol. 3 was written before Vol. 1 was sent to the publishers is also important. My point is this: philology and hermeneutics are very important in so-called "continental" philosophy and critical theory. >All the other fields of applicable knowledge understand the need to define words clearly. Why would philosophy be an exception? I'd argue that it shouldn't be the exception - other fields should be more like philosophy. The fact of the matter is that some concepts can only be understood in totality, not in isolation from one another and expressed axiomatically in sentences. The breadth and abstractness of the material precludes most instances of expressing something as "x means y" so directly. But the more important point is that the unfolding of the concepts, their logical presentation, has to do with the reality of the concept. Unlike formal logic in which syntax and semantics are separated, other logical systems (such as the one used by Marx) trace the concept through its exposition. The book, effectively, mirrors reality - going from more abstract to more concrete. This is why philosophy being "updated" and reformulated makes no sense, it would mean that the concepts are torn apart. When you re-write a text, you lose an aspect of the presentation which readers generally agree is core to the ideas being presented. Ironically, even the people who do reformulate reformulate it in a different logical order[0] - but only because they realize the method of presentation is core to the concept being expressed. Anyway, the idea that what we do "now" in philosphy and science is necessarily better than what we did before is dubious, to say the least. The reduction of philosophy to formal-logic statements only means that philosophy has been reduced to just another field under the calculation and quantification of modern society. It loses its stylistic and revolutionary character. And yeah, I agree that Lady Gaga's meat dress is philosophically interesting, possibly even linked to what Debord and Adorno wrote about. You can talk about Lady Gaga's meat dress through Debord's conception of the spectacle, Adorno's conceeption of the cultural industry, Althusser's conception of ideological state apparatuses, or Marx's conception of the reproduction of society or "opium of the people". What makes the works to fecund is their abstractness and extensibility, and you only get half of that when you start expressing the concepts divorced from society and history (such as in formal logic). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozo_Uno#Thought https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozo_Uno#Thought