Sociologists From Germany

"It is above all the impersonal and economically rationalized (but for this very reason ethically irrational) character of purely commercial relationships that evokes the suspicion, never clearly expressed but all the more strongly felt, of ethical religions. For every purely personal relationship of man to man, of whatever sort and even including complete enslavement, may be subjected to ethical requirements and ethically regulated. This is true because the structures of these relationships depend upon the individual wills of the participants, leaving room in such relations for manifestations of the virtue of charity. But this is not the situation in the realm of economically rationalised relationships, where personal control is exercised in inverse ratio to the degree of rational differentiation of the economic structure."

"The ascetic, when he wishes to act within the world ... must become afflicted with a sort of happy closure of the mind regarding any question about the meaning of the world, for he must not worry about such questions. Hence, it is no accident that inner-worldly asceticism reached its most consistent development on the foundation of the Calvinist god's absolute inexplicability, utter remoteness from every human criterion, and unsearchableness as to his motives. Thus, the inner-worldly ascetic is the recognized "man of a vocation," who neither inquires about nor finds it necessary to inquire about the meaning of his actual practice of a vocation within the whole world, the total framework of which is not his responsibility but his god's."

"The capacity for the accomplishment of religious virtuosos — the “intellectual sacrifice”— is the decisive characteristic of the positively religious man. That this is so is shown by the fact that in spite of (or rather in consequence) of theology (which unveils it) the tension between the value-spheres of “science” and the sphere of “the holy” is unbridgeable."

"The ultimately possible attitudes toward life are irreconcilable, and hence their struggle can never be brought to a final conclusion."

"No sociologist, for instance, should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time"

"The problem — the experience of the irrationality of the world — has been the driving force of all religious evolution. The Indian doctrine of karma, Persian dualism, the doctrine of original sin, predestination and the deus absconditus, all these have grown out of this experience. Also the early Christians knew full well the world is governed by demons and that he who lets himself in for politics, that is, for power and force as means, contracts with diabolical powers and for his action it is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant."

"This naive manner of conceptualizing capitalism by reference to a “pursuit of gain” must be relegated to the kindergarten of cultural history methodology and abandoned once and for all. A fully unconstrained compulsion to acquire goods cannot be understood as synonymous with capitalism, and even less as its “spirit.” On the contrary, capitalism can be identical with the taming of this irrational motivation, or at least with its rational tempering. Nonetheless, capitalism is distinguished by the striving for profit, indeed, profit is pursued in a rational, continuous manner in companies and firms, and then pursued again and again, as is profitability. There are no choices. If the entire economy is organized according to the rules of the open market, any company that fails to orient its activities toward the chance of attaining profit is condemned to bankruptcy. Let us begin by defining terms in a manner more precise than often occurs. For us, a "capitalist" economic act involves first of all an expectation of profit based on the utilization of opportunities for exchange; that is of (formally) peaceful opportunities for acquisition. Formal and actual acquisition through violence follows its own special laws and hence should best be placed, as much as one may recommend doing so, in a different category. Wherever capitalist acquisition is rationally pursued, action is oriented to calculation in terms of capital. What does this mean?"

"In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, 'Now shut up and obey me.' People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business."

""Politics means a strong slow drilling of hard boards, with passion and judgment at the same time." (German: "Die Politik bedeutet ein starkes langsames Bohren von harten Brettern mit Leidenschaft und Augenmaß zugleich.")"

"Academic life is a mad hazard. If the young scholar asks for my advice with regard to habilitation, the responsibility of encouraging him can hardly be borne. If he is a Jew, of course one says lasciate ogni speranza ("abandon all hope")."

"After Nietzsche’s devastating criticism of those “last men” who “invented happiness,” there is probably no need for me to remind you of the naïve optimism with which we once celebrated science, or the technology for the mastery of life based on it, as the path to happiness. Who believes this, apart from a few overgrown children occupying university chairs or editorial offices?"

"The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the disenchantment of the world. Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental."

"What interests us here is the assimilative power of the Hindu life order due to its legitimation of social rank."

"Persecutions of these heterodoxies ... do not account for the unusually quick victory of Hinduism. Favorable political circumstances contributed to the victory. Decisive, however, was the fact that Hinduism could provide an incomparable religious support for the legitimation interest of the ruling strata."

"Für Marcel Proust.—Der Sohn wohlhabender Eltern, der, gleichgültig ob aus Talent oder Schwäche, einen sogenannten intellektuellen Beruf, als Künstler oder Gelehrter, ergreift, hat es unter denen, die den degoutanten Namen des Kollegen tragen, besonders schwer. Nicht bloß, daß ihm die Unabhängigkeit geneidet wird, daß man dem Ernst seiner Absicht mißtraut und in ihm einen heimlichen Abgesandten der etablierten Mächte vermutet. Solches Mißtrauen zeugt zwar von Ressentiment, würde aber meist seine Bestätigung finden. Jedoch die eigentlichen Widerstände liegen anderswo. Die Beschäftigung mit geistigen Dingen ist mittlerweile selber »praktisch«, zu einem Geschäft mit strenger Arbeitsteilung, mit Branchen und numerus clausus geworden. Der materiell Unabhängige, der sie aus Widerwillen gegen die Schmach des Geldverdienens wählt, wird nicht geneigt sein, das anzuerkennen. Dafür wird er bestraft. Er ist kein »professional«, rangiert in der Hierarchie der Konkurrenten als Dilettant, gleichgültig wieviel er sachlich versteht, und muß, wenn er Karriere machen will, den stursten Fachmann an entschlossener Borniertheit womöglich noch übertrumpfen. Die Suspension der Arbeitsteilung, zu der es ihn treibt, und die in einigen Grenzen seine ökonomische Lage zu verwirklichen ihn befähigt, gilt als besonders anrüchig: sie verrät die Abneigung, den von der Gesellschaft anbefohlenen Betrieb zu sanktionieren, und die auftrumpfende Kompetenz läßt solche Idiosynkrasien nicht zu. Die Departementalisierung des Geistes ist ein Mittel, diesen dort abzuschaffen, wo er nicht ex officio, im Auftrag betrieben wird. Es tut seine Dienste um so zuverlässiger, als stets derjenige, der die Arbeitsteilung kündigt—wäre es auch nur, indem seine Arbeit ihm Lust bereitet —, nach deren eigenem Maß Blößen sich gibt, die von den Momenten seiner Überlegenheit untrennbar sind. So ist für die Ordnung gesorgt: die einen müssen mitmachen, weil sie sonst nicht leben können, und die sonst leben könnten, werden draußen gehalten, weil sie nicht mitmachen wollen. Es ist, als rächte sich die Klasse, von der die unabhängigen Intellektuellen desertiert sind, indem zwangshaft ihre Forderungen dort sich durchsetzen, wo der Deserteur Zuflucht sucht."

"Die traurige Wissenschaft, aus der ich meinem Freunde einiges darbiete, bezieht sich auf einen Bereich, der für undenkliche Zeiten als der eigentliche der Philosophie galt, seit deren Verwandlung in Methode aber der intellektuellen Nichtachtung, der sententiösen Willkür und am Ende der Vergessenheit verfiel: die Lehre vom richtigen Leben. Was einmal den Philosophen Leben hieß, ist zur Sphäre des Privaten und dann bloß noch des Konsums geworden, die als Anhang des materiellen Produktionsprozesses, ohne Autonomie und ohne eigene Substanz, mit geschleift wird."

"Furchtbares hat die Menschheit sich antun müssen, bis das Selbst, der identische, zweckgerichtete, männliche Charakter des Menschen geschaffen war, und etwas davon wird noch in jeder Kindheit wiederholt."

"The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics."

"The blessing that the market does not ask about birth is paid for in the exchange society by the fact that the possibilities conferred by birth are molded to fit the production of goods that can be bought on the market."

"Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion."

"Bourgeois sport [wants] to differentiate itself strictly from play. Its bestial seriousness consists in the fact that instead of remaining faithful to the dream of freedom by getting away from purposiveness, the treatment of play as a duty puts it among useful purposes and thereby wipes out the trace of freedom in it. This is particularly valid for contemporary mass music. It is only play as a repetition of prescribed models, and the playful release from responsibility which is thereby achieved does not reduce at all the time devoted to duty except by transferring the responsibility to the models, the following of which one makes into a duty for himself."

"Regressive listeners behave like children. Again and again and with stubborn malice, they demand the one dish they have once been served."

"Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which however they do not add up."

"Even the most insensitive hit song enthusiast cannot always escape the feeling that the child with a sweet tooth comes to know in the candy store."

"It suffices to remember how many sorrows he is spared who no longer thinks too many thoughts, how much more "in accordance with reality" a person behaves when he affirms that the real is the right, how much more capacity to use the machinery falls to the person who integrates himself with it uncomplainingly."

"The dressing up and puffing up of the individual erases the lineaments of protest."

"To be sure, exchange-value exerts its power in a special way in the realm of cultural goods. For in the world of commodities this realm appears to be exempted from the power of exchange, to be in an immediate relationship with the goods, and it is this appearance in turn which alone gives cultural goods their exchange-value. But they nevertheless simultaneously fall completely into the world of commodities, are produced for the market, and are aimed at the market."

"Impulse, subjectivity and profanation, the old adversaries of materialistic alienation, now succumb to it. ... The representatives of the opposition to the authoritarian schema become witnesses to the authority of commercial success. ... In the service of success they renounce that insubordinate character which was theirs."

"Music for entertainment ... seems to complement the reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as expression, the inability to communicate at all. It inhabits the pockets of silence that develop between people molded by anxiety, work and undemanding docility."

"We are really no longer ourselves a part of nature at the moment when we notice, when we recognize, that we are a part of nature."

"In America I was liberated from a certain naïve belief in culture and attained the capacity to see culture from the outside. To clarify the point: in spite of all social criticism and all consciousness of the primacy of economic factors, the fundamental importance of the mind—“Geist”—was quasi a dogma self-evident to me from the very beginning. The fact that this was not a foregone conclusion, I learned in America, where no reverential silence in the presence of everything intellectual prevailed."

"In organized groups such as the army or the Church there is either no mention of love whatsoever between the members, or it is expressed only in a sublimated and indirect way, through the mediation of some religious imagine in the love of whom the members unite and whose all-embracing love they are supposed to imitate in their attitude towards each other. ... It is one of the basic tenets of fascist leadership to keep primary libidinal energy on an unconscious level so as to divert its manifestations in a way suitable to political ends."

"Immer von Beckett ist eine technische Reduktion bis zum äußersten. ... Aber diese Reduktion ist ja wirklich das was die Welt aus uns macht ... das heißt die Welt aus uns gemacht diese Stümpfe von Menschen also diese Menschen die eigentlich ihr ich ihr verloren haben die sind wirklich die Produkte der Welt in der wir leben."

"Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past."

"If one is to take Lulu's twelve-tone chord as the integral totality of complementary harmony, then Berg's allegorical genius proves itself within a historical perspective which makes the brain reel: just as Lulu in the world of total illusion longs for nothing but her murderer and finally finds him in that sound, so does all harmony of unrequited happiness long for its fatal chord as the cipher of fulfillment — twelve-tone music is not to be separated from dissonance. Fatal: because all dynamics come to a standstill within it without finding release. The law of complementary harmony already implies the end of the musical experience of time, as this was heralded in the dissociation of time according to Expressionistic extremes."

"The aim of jazz is the mechanical reproduction of a regressive moment, a castration symbolism. 'Give up your masculinity, let yourself be castrated,' the eunuchlike sound of the jazz band both mocks and proclaims, 'and you will be rewarded, accepted into a fraternity which shares the mystery of impotence with you, a mystery revealed at the moment of the initiation rite."

"In general they are intoxicated by the fame of mass culture, a fame which the latter knows how to manipulate; they could just as well get together in clubs for worshipping film stars or for collecting autographs. What is important to them is the sense of belonging as such, identification, without paying particular attention to its content. As girls, they have trained themselves to faint upon hearing the voice of a 'crooner'. Their applause, cued in by a light-signal, is transmitted directly on the popular radio programmes they are permitted to attend. They call themselves 'jitter-bugs', bugs which carry out reflex movements, performers of their own ecstasy. Merely to be carried away by anything at all, to have something of their own, compensates for their impoverished and barren existence. The gesture of adolescence, which raves for this or that on one day with the ever-present possibility of damning it as idiocy on the next, is now socialized."

"Jazz is the false liquidation of art — instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture."

"When I made my theoretical model, I could not have guessed that people would try to realise it with Molotov cocktails."

"Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch"

"Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy."

"Above all Theodor W. Adorno repeatedly emphasized that the appropriateness and quality of our conceptual thinking is dependent on the extent to which it can remain aware of its original bond with the object of a drive, thus with persons and things that are loved."

"Adorno, Marcuse, and other members of the Frankfurt School were explicit about the link between “antifascism,” which was the banner they sported, and sympathy for Communist governments. Like Sartre and his collaborators at Les Temps Modernes, the Critical Theorists considered anti-Communist attitudes proof positive of fascist residues in those who expressed them. After the publication of The Authoritarian Personality in 1950, Adorno was shocked by a suggestion from one of his coworkers, Seymour Martin Lipset, that the psychic grid they had applied to right-wingers might work for left-wing extremists equally well."

"Anyone surprised by the characterization of Adorno as a Marxist has not read much of his admittedly difficult writing. ... Most available secondary discussions tend to leave the Marxism out, as though it were some curious set of period mannerisms which a postcontemporary discussion no longer needs to take into consideration."

"The conflicts that tear society apart resemble the distinction between the concept and the particular facts subordinated to it. ... Whatever refuses to abide by the unity imposed by the principle of dominion manifests itself not as something indifferent to that principle, but as an infringement of logic: as a contradiction."

"We cannot think any true thought unless we want the true. Thinking is itself an aspect of practice."

"The concept of positivity in itself, in abstracto, has become part and parcel of the ideology today. ... Critique has started to become suspect, regardless of its content."

"The thesis of the identity of concept and thing is in general the vital nerve of idealist thought, and indeed traditional thought in general. ... Negative dialectics as critique means above all criticism of precisely this claim to identity."

"I remember well a junior seminar I gave with Paul Tillich shortly before the outbreak of the Third Reich. A participant spoke out against the idea of the meaning of existence. She said life did not seem very meaningful to her and she didn't know whether it had a meaning. The very voluble Nazi contingent became very excited by this and scraped the floor noisily with their feet. Now, I do not wish to maintain that this Nazi foot-shuffling proves or refutes anything in particular, but I do find it highly significant. I would say it is a touchstone for the relation of thinking to freedom. It raises the question whether thought can bear the idea that a given reality is meaningless and that mind is unable to orientate itself; or whether the intellect has become so enfeebled that it finds itself paralysed by the idea that all is not well with the world."

"What appears as the positive is essentially the negative, i.e. the thing that is to be criticized."