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In Aesthetic Theory Adorno addresses the history of aesthetics from the standpoint of a Marxist history of autonomous art. Adorno‟s Marxism is a type of Western Marxism. It creates a distinction between the ordinary empirical history of events and the history of modes of production, or real history. The idea of ordinary history is misleading for Adorno because it is temporally indifferent. Adorno often distinguishes between what he calls a „crude history of ideas‟ and real history (realen Geschichte⁷) which is partly embedded in the artwork. „The interdependence of quality [Rang] and history should not be conceived according to the stubborn cliché of a crude history of ideas that insists that history is the court that determines quality. This wisdom is a historicophilosophical rationalization of its own inadequacy, as if no judgement were possible in the here and now.‟⁸ In other words the historical valuation of an artwork of quality has to be understood from the genealogical standpoint of the present. Only in the present can such a judgement be made. It is the judgement of the present on the past that is vitally important for Adorno as well as the judgement of the present on the present and what this might imply for the future. Art, for Adorno, is always thought of as being historically located:

„The concept of art is located in a historically changing constellation of elements; it refuses definition.‟⁹ If there is a unifying theme to be found in Adorno‟s treatment of time in Aesthetic Theory it lies in his conception of history which is derived from Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche, and partly filtered through Lukács and Benjamin. As the concepts of history and historical time play such an important role in Aesthetic Theory it is important to be clear about the complex conceptual history that lies behind them. In the first instance it is salutary to remember that history itself has a history.

Conceptual background to Adorno’s idea of history

In his Futures Past Koselleck analyses the changing concept of history in the late Eighteenth century. Koselleck‟s analysis in terms of experience and expectation reveals a new

temporalisation of history. According to Koselleck „historical time is …an entity which alters along with history and from whose changing structure it is possible to deduce the shifting classification of experience and expectation.‟¹⁰ Before the Eighteenth century, Koselleck argues, expectations were largely based on experience. The shift implied in the concept of neu Zeit meant that, following the ruptural event of the French Revolution and the invention of the

modern conception of progress, expectation could from then on be formed on organisation in the present for the future. The modern in all areas, art, technology, politics and finance is orientated to future expectations. There is a further aspect to Koselleck‟s conception of history contained in his article „Geschichte‟ namely the concept of history as a „collective singular‟. As Ricoeur explains, „This is the master category, the condition under which the time of history can be thought. There is a time of history insofar as there is one single history.‟¹¹ The collective singular history covers both „a series of events and the ensemble of discourses pronounced regarding this collective singular.‟¹² Ricoeur goes on to explain that „In producing itself, history articulates its own discourse.‟¹³

In his late book Memory, History, Forgetting (2004) Ricoeur theorises a „threefold frame‟ for history consisting of „documentary proof, the causal and teleological explanation, and the literary emplotment.‟¹⁴ This „threefold frame‟ „remains the secret of historical

knowledge‟. All three elements are necessary for a text to be considered conceptually as history.

They are in Ricoeur‟s view the fundamentals of an epistemology of history. Historical narratives deal with complex events such as the English civil war or the French revolution, or with wider conceptualities such as Braudel‟s Mediterranean. Historical narratives also cover even broader areas in the form of „world-scale narratives‟¹⁵ Here Ricoeur mentions Marx, Nietzsche, and Croce in a list that includes noted historians such as Ranke and Michelet.

Ricoeur does not cite Adorno and Horkheimer‟s Dialectic of Enlightenment but it is a good, if extreme, example of a „world-scale narrative‟ even if it is a set of unfinished, or unfinishable, fragments. For a narrative to be history, in Ricoeur‟s view, the three aspects of the „three fold frame‟ need to be in place and by implication in balance. One imbalance that can occur is found in the rhetorical power of some historical narratives, which can be driven by a framework of belief, an ethical position that itself creates an interpretation of history in the form of a narrative structure.

The Dialectic of Enlightenment is driven by such a polemical rhetoric. It is a history of reason. It also claims to be a philosophy of history. It is strong on narrative rhetoric, strong on causal and teleological explanation, but one of the main documents, The Odyssey is itself invention, albeit storytelling of a high order. So the Dialectic of Enlightenment it is not really history, yet it is trying to account for a real historical situation, in the then, recent past in terms of Nazi fascism and the Holocaust and for, the then, contemporary situation of Western

capitalist society. It is an attempt to understand „our time‟ by trying to understand the past in the present. It is „a piece of documentation‟ but the authors „hope it is also more.‟¹⁶ „Our concept of history does not believe itself elevated above history, but it does not merely chase after

information in the positivist manner. As a critique of philosophy it does not seek to abandon philosophy itself.‟¹⁷ These fragmented texts are a kind of symbolic symptom of the difficulty of the problem addressed namely „the necessity for enlightenment to reflect on itself if humanity is not to be totally betrayed.‟¹⁸ The whole concept behind the book revolves around the distinction

between philosophy and history that is captured in the idea of a philosophy of history. For there to be a philosophy of history there must be a fundamental conceptual distinction between philosophy and history.

The claim to be a philosophy of history makes the Dialectic of Enlightenment primarily a philosophical text. The precedent is Hegel with his Philosophy of History where Hegel identifies three forms of history. „Original‟ which is in effect eye-witness testimony from the past. „Reflective‟ which is is also divided into three as „universal,‟ „pragmatical‟ and „critical‟

which is what is normally thought of as history by historians of Hegel‟s time. The third form of history is „Philosophical‟ which is „the history of the world‟ which „presents us with a rational process‟ This is the history of “Reason‟.¹⁹ Marcuse summarises Hegel‟s position very

succinctly:

The forms of the mind manifest themselves in time, and the history of the world is an exposition of mind in time. The dialectic thus gets to view reality temporally, and the

„negativity‟ that, in the Logic, determined the process of thought appears in the Philosophy of History as the destructive power of time.

The Logic had demonstrated the structure of reason; the Philosophy of History expounds the historical content of reason.²⁰

As Marcuse points out, Hegel was continuing an eighteenth century philosophical tradition „that history was progress.‟²¹ However, what is strange about Hegel‟s history is that it is ultimately not temporal at all.

While we are thus concerned exclusively with the Idea of Spirit, and in the History of the World regard everything as only its manifestation, we have in traversing the past–

however extensive its periods–only to do with what is present; for philosophy, as occupying itself with the True, has to do with the eternally present. Nothing in the past is lost for it, for the Idea is ever present; Spirit is immortal; with it there is no past, no future, but an essential now. This necessarily implies that the present form of Spirit comprehends within it all earlier steps.²²

In a sense the end of history, as the highest position of the absolute, had been reached in the present of Hegel by Hegel. As Adorno and Horkheimer writing about Hegel put in it the Dialectic of Enlightenment: „by finally postulating the known result of the whole process of negation, totality in the system and in history, as the absolute, he violated the prohibition and himself succumbed to mythology.‟²³ As Ricoeur understands history, from an epistemological point of view, then Hegel is not engaged in history as practised by historians. „How is it, the philosopher asks, that Spirit has a history? By the epochal character of the question,

philosophical history has already seceded from the history of the historians. Factuality has lost all philosophical interest; it is relegated to mere narrative.‟²⁴ Following on from Hegel, Marx re-conceptualized the concept of a „world-scale narrative‟ and based it on an analysis of the real concrete conditions of economic life. In The German Ideology Marx and Engels make clear how an analysis of the reality of social and economic conditions will rewrite history as „real

history.‟²⁵ „Already here we see how this civil society is the true source and theatre of all history, and how absurd is the conception of history held hitherto, which neglects the real relationships and confines itself to high-sounding dramas of princes and states.‟²⁶ This rewriting of history is what Adorno understands as the philosophy of history. Nietzsche seems to have been a very influential source for the concept of history that Adorno employed, especially with regards to both the future and the idea of a natural history. It is worth recalling that the subtitle to Beyond Good and Evil is „Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future‟, and that it contains a chapter entitled „On the Natural History of Morals.‟ In his „Untimely Meditation‟ on The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life, Nietzsche also distinguishes between three

„species‟ of history, „a monumental, an antiquarian and a critical species.‟²⁷ Nietzsche in discussing the third species, the „critical history‟ introduces Hegel‟s idea of a „second nature‟

(derived from Aristotle).²⁸ „The best we can do is to confront our inherited and hereditary nature with our knowledge, and through a new, stern discipline combat our inborn heritage and implant in ourselves a new habit, a new instinct, a second nature, so that our first nature withers away.‟²⁹

Throughout the essay Nietzsche counter-poses two ideas, „life‟ and „history‟ which at one point he describes on the analogy of „a constellation‟ between which has appeared a new star that alters the constellation, this new star is „the demand that history should be a science.‟³⁰ This text of Nietzsche‟s may well be the origin of Benjamin‟s concept of constellation.

Compared to the ancient Greeks with their „unhistorical sense‟ modern men are for Nietzsche

„walking encycopledias‟³¹ Even philosophy, according to Nietzsche, has been caught in the historical trap of only examining its past and being incapable of „action‟ in the present, „a self-restrained knowing which leads to no action.‟³² Nietzsche objects to any type of history that takes the form of Hegelian teleology. He emphasises how the past should be interpreted in terms of the present as a form of genealogy. „If you are to venture to interpret the past you can do so only out of the fullest exertion of the vigour of the present.‟³³ Furthermore the only point in studying history is for the sake of action in the present that will create a better present in the future. Nietzsche continues, „only he who constructs the future has a right to judge the past.‟³⁴

„I demand that man should above all learn to live and should employ history only in the service of the life he has learned to live.‟³⁵ It is clear from the following quotation that Nietzsche expected „we philosophers‟ to be critical of the age in which they lived. By „we‟ he meant not only the cohort of professional philosophers he held in such undisguised contempt but the wider cultured general readers of his works. „…the greatness of their task, [philosophers] in being the bad conscience of their age. By laying the knife vivisectionally to the bosom of the very virtues of the age they betrayed what was their own secret: to know a new greatness of man, a new untrodden path to his enlargement.‟³⁶

For Ricoeur, Nietzsche‟s critical history „constitutes only one moment, that of judgement‟³⁷ the judgement of the present on the past. Whilst this is correct there is surely another aspect to „critical history‟ namely the judgement of the present on the present. This

genealogy can be understood in two diametrically opposed ways. It can be understood as a dissatisfaction with the present that looks for a return to an earlier age or stage of civilisation that seeks a restitution, a return of the past in the future. Alternatively the dissatisfaction with the present looks for change in the present that overturns those aspects in the past that led to the present and are still active in it, such change will bring about happiness in the future. The first is a reactionary utopia as exemplified by Nietzsche and Heidegger, the second is a progressive utopia as exemplified by Marx and Adorno. I will examine Adorno‟s conception of the linked ideas of freedom, happiness and utopia in the next chapter.

Hegel‟s theory of a philosophy of history incorporates, as Marcuse points out, an important distinction between progress as human historical change and nature. „Since Aristotle, historical change has been contrasted with changes in nature. Hegel held the same distinction.

He says historical change is “an advance to something better, more perfect,” whereas mutation in nature “exhibits only a perpetually self-repeating cycle.” It is only in historical change that something new arises.‟³⁸ Adorno and Horkheimer‟s Dialectic of Enlightenment continues Hegel‟s investigation of the development of reason but in a negative sense, as a Marxist critique of the development of Western rationality. The same distinction between nature and history can be found in the introductory section „The Concept of Enlightenment‟. The scientific rationality of the enlightenment is a form of domination over nature. „In their transformation the essence of things is revealed as always the same, a substrate of domination. This identity constitutes the unity of nature.‟³⁹ Myth had a different relationship to nature in that it sought to communicate with it by magic and ritual but this in essence was also its opposite, a rational control over nature. The dialectic of enlightenment being between the poles of myth and reason. „Just as myths already entail enlightenment, with every step enlightenment entangles itself more deeply in mythology.‟⁴⁰ Only by abolishing „the false absolute, the principle of blind power‟⁴¹ will the enlightenment „fulfil itself.‟

In his 1932 article „The Idea of a Natural History‟ Adorno counter-poses nature, understood as myth, with history understood as „the occurrence of the qualitatively new.‟⁴² This dialectical concept of nature-history is based on „aesthetic material,‟⁴³ derived from the work of Lukács and Benjamin. In History and Freedom Adorno revisits this discussion:

Through the medium of aesthetics questions concerning the philosophy of history and even metaphysics become legible. …for a whole series of thinkers the experience of art has become a sort of key to other branches of philosophy. …What is at issue, rather, is a particular relation to the experience of structures that purport to be meaningful and that provide a model both of meaning that can be explored and of the crisis of meaning.⁴⁴ It is not aesthetic material as such that is important for Adorno but any „structure‟ that purports to be „meaningful‟ which includes artworks as well as philosophical theories. Once again Adorno presents the artwork from a structural point of view as being similar to a philosophical theory which for him is a constellation of concepts intended for interpretation. Hegel‟s idea of

second nature was used by Lukács, according to Adorno, to describe „a world of convention as it is historically produced,‟⁴⁵ a world of convention that has, in ideological terms, become a second nature, hence a myth. Adorno goes on to state that there is only one correct formulation for the problem of natural history and that is „as interpretations of concrete history.‟⁴⁶ There is a

„constellation‟ of ideas involved that make up an „alternative logical structure,‟ those ideas are

„transience, signification, the idea of nature and the idea of history.‟ These ideas „gather round a concrete historical facticity,‟⁴⁷ history in short is an interpretation of this constellation, this interpretation is itself „new‟. An historical interpretation can be the production of the new in the same way as the making of an artwork is the production of the new. So for Adorno, history, like philosophy and art is modelled on structured forms. However, there are several temporal forms in Aesthetic Theory that are best thought of as historical forms of temporalisation. These temporal forms are, following Nietzsche, based on both the present as genealogy and on the expectation of change in the future

Any form of history has to account for change and for its opposite, no change. It is difficult to conceive of a history of a period of time in which there was no change. In

Aristotelian terms no change would imply no time had passed as the passing of time depends upon the observation of change. Allied to the concept of change are the related ideas of progress and the new. The constant production of the new is a form of repetition and thus a form of no change. The new is usually associated with progress in the sense that this new is better than the last new and hence tied in with fashion. There is a form of non-changing temporality, the „ever-same‟ that Adorno uses throughout Aesthetic Theory. This concept is Marxist in origin. For Adorno ever-same time is not neutral like chronological time. Ever-same time is negatively charged. It is the time of the commodity. The ideas behind the concept of the ever-same can be found in Benjamin‟s set of short statements entitled „Central Park.‟ There are two different ideas involved in „Central Park‟. One derives from Nietzsche‟s idea of the eternal return and the other from Baudelaire‟s idea of the new. Benjamin puts them into a relationship. „Baudelaire‟s poetry reveals the new in the ever-selfsame, and the ever-selfsame in the new.‟⁴⁸ In this paradoxical de-temporalization the eternal return aspect belongs to fashion – „Fashion is the eternal recurrence of the new.‟⁴⁹

There is a further aspect of Adorno‟s Marxist approach to history which was filtered through his absorption of another influence from Walter Benjamin. In the 17^th thesis of

There is a further aspect of Adorno‟s Marxist approach to history which was filtered through his absorption of another influence from Walter Benjamin. In the 17^th thesis of