Philosophical Exercises in Repetition: On Music. HUlTIOr, and Exile in Wittgenstein and Adorno LYDIA GOEHR - In den finsicren Zeitcn wi rd da noch gesungen werden? -r _. d finsteren "",Iten. la! da wird ge.ungen werden von en , d finsteren Zelten. da wird gcsungcn werden von en rlo lt Brechl/ll30ns Eisler) _ "Spruch 1939:' Hollywood SongboOk, Be I, no surprise for "W . se and there was d 10 HEN 1 CAMI' horne I expected a surpn . circa 1944,' /I Of! "WitlgenstCtO ke me, so of course I was surprised. So wrote . Novalis, they spo d Y ear Quotmg ht Bu l an Horkheimer wrote of home U1Csame . I cc always soug . r . f h me as a p a ' titied' o philosophy as homesickness and 0 0 el nd nnd of Its jU' d w . atural hom a , ·,~re)tr orrymg about the Nazi appeal to a n at hollle, one . d'fli rent natu r "ou~hl uon through myth they thought of a I e ed to. 1>utone ft " '.' d nor return " 1'h'S ~~IY I> om myth, they said neither dlsco vere . S escaped. I il . . '. "of ha vlo h the ex In philosophy travel or in the exiled state r.: g home IhrouS " b t see"lI1 ahout how philosophers have thought a ou . d' Jt11I< Ing " ... s \~llh )11 actIVity of philosophy, . olher 3CU VIUC n Ill' ~ This essay compares philosophy Wllh ""~ Ill usic , 'fhe cOIllJ'3 r1 SO ~lructurcs and important endingS: humor an
Transcript
310Peter J, Rllrgnrl/
Notes
I II is the smothering of "Das Uneil" under the mass of the history of us reception, including Kafka's own interpretation in his letters and diaries, that leadsme to think a reading that excludes that reception and focuses almost entirelyon the inner logic of the narrative itself-a simple reading, one might 5.I)'-i,in order. Of course, it would be silly to deny altogether the influence of Kalkascholarship on my reading of the text, given courses long ago in gradu,lIc "hoolthat occasionally dealt with Kafka and conversations over the years with friend,and colleagues who also happen to be Kafka scholars. I can only &1ythat I havenot knowingly drawn on existing Kafka scholarship. Since completing the draftof this essay, however, I have benefited from insightful readings of il b)' StolrlBarnell, Michel Chaouli, and Richard Gray. 1would like to thank them for the If
critical generosit y.2 Franz Kafka, Die Erzillrilmgerr (Prankfun: Fischer, 1961),27; Tilt' AkltlllJorplwSis.
1IIII'f Pena! COIOIIY,alld Oll,er Stories (New York: Schocken, 1995), ~9; in manycases the translations, which appear as footnotes, have been emended,
3 In Friedrich Nietzsche 011 Rhetoric "lid Lallglllrge, ed, Sander Gilman, C.lr{l1eBlair, and David J. Parent (New York: Oxford University Pre'" 1989).
4 Verkrhr also signifies other things not addressed here, such 3, COImOcrce.
Philosophical Exercises in Repetition:On Music. HUlTIOr, and Exile in
Wittgenstein and Adorno
LYDIA GOEHR
-In den finsicren Zeitcnwi rd da noch gesungen werden? -r _.
d finsteren "",Iten.la! da wird ge.ungen werden von en ,
d finsteren Zelten.da wird gcsungcn werden von en
rlolt Brechl/ll30ns Eisler)_ "Spruch 1939:' Hollywood SongboOk, Be
I, no surprise for"W .se and there was d 10
HEN 1 CAMI' horne I expected a surpn . circa 1944,' /I Of!"WitlgenstCtO ke
me, so of course I was surprised. So wrote . Novalis, they spod Year Quotmg ht Bul
an Horkheimer wrote of home U1Csame . I cc always soug .r . f h me as a p a ' titied'o philosophy as homesickness and 0 0 el nd nnd of Its jU' dw . atural hom a , ·,~re)tr
orrymg about the Nazi appeal to a n at hollle, one. d'fli rent natur "ou~hluon through myth they thought of a I e ed to. 1>utoneft " '.' d nor return " 1'h'S ~~IY I>
om myth, they said neither dlscovere . S escaped. I il. . '. "of havlo h the exIn philosophy travel or in the exiled state r.: g home IhrouS
" b t see"lI1ahout how philosophers have thought a ou . d' Jt11I<Ing " ... s \~llh )11
actIVity of philosophy, . olher 3CUVIUC n Ill' ~This essay compares philosophy Wllh ""~ Illusic, 'fhe cOIllJ'3
r1SO
~lructurcs and important endingS: humor an
312 Lydia Cor'"
long history. Yet I juxtapose these theme .. primMil} In rhe work of two mod-ernists. Wiugenstein and Adorno. I focus 1.:" on independent thoughts abouthumor. music. or exile and marc on how CJ~h contnburc- to modernist un-derstandings of philosophy's dynamic form.
My initial motivation to juxtapose the se theme, lJllll from reading thosesections of the Critique oj juriglllclII in which Kant establi-h ..., a formalist andnon-conceptual model for both music and humor. lhcre he givcs us a clueabout bow we might think about the movement of thought-how we mightthink about something one way and then come to think ,1110utit differently.In this regard. his model connects to one often claimed Jlh antage of exile.namely. that in the foreignness exile imposes, one come' 1t1 think different·Iy about home. One way to think about how philosoph} moves thought isin terms of how it brings a philosopher from a confused ttl a rruthful place.Modernists sometimes call this truthful place "home,"
Obviously philosophy aims to bring clarification at horne by providingrational arguments. arguing us in and out of positions, and it matters whatthe content of these arguments is, However, some philo,ophcrs also payat-renrion to form, and even to the performance of their arguments. to showhow the content is literally moved, Kant was less interested in performancethan in form, yet he influenced the modernists. Of course the modernists hadother precursors, and in the mauer of philosophy's performance, Socrates h~always been exemplary, So let us begin by recalling Socrates' proclamation In
the Phaedrus that
writing has this strange quality about it, which makes it really likepainting: the painter's products stand before us quite as though the)'were alive; but if you question them, they maintain a solemn silence,So. too, with written words: you might think the}' spoke as if theymade sense, but if you ask them anything about what they are 53),-
ing, if you wish an explanation. they go on telling you the samething, over and over forever,
" t thi k b ' d withre III y contrast, Socrates continues, of a discourse that IS useknowledge, or as "a living, animate discourse," And he draws this an.!logy:
Id ' .. 'ieldwou a sensible farmer who cared about his seeds and wanted them to )I " k plca-urn a good crop seriously plant it during the summer", and then ta e
, I • "akesure to t ie spectacle of a fine crop on the eighth day?" Or wouldn t he mfull use of scientific husbandry and plant it in suitable soil and be perfectlysatisfied it if came to maturity in the eighth month?") For Socrates, the farmer
313P/ii/osop/lica/ Lxames ill Uepetilioll
may serve 3' a model for the philosopher. the person who uses her knowlcdgeand art in a suitable way, with good timing or with a good sense of the time
that it takes to learn.Taking the right time for learning is 3 process of coming to understand,
and onc aspect of coming to undcrstand is that a change in thought occurs:we see something one way-prcsumably a mistaken way-then we come tosee it another way-pre~umably a (more) correct way.Socrates' worry aboutphilosophy's being written down is that the text will keep being read. as apainting will keep be seen. in the same, perhaps mistaken. way over and overagain. But if, he says, the speech remains a living, animate discourse, the dan-ger of repeated error is less threatening. 1 am interested in this danger. Foralthough repetition is quite necessary in the process of learning, learning hap-pens when we move beyond seeing the same thing "over and over" again and
come to sec it differcntly.Both Wittgenstein and Adorna wcre concerncd with the performance of
their philosophical argument, and as part of that conccrn they focused onrepetition. Both focused on the sort of differential repetition that captures themovement of a "living, breathing discourse," in which one comes to see "thesame thins" differently. Someone who comes to understand II piece of musicwill, Wittsenstein once wrote, "listen differently ... play differently. hum dif-ferently, talk differently.'" Adorno could have wriuen the same words, and inneither philosopher's case would the "differencc" of which they spoke ha\'ebeen trivial. With all the rhetorical repetition he could muster, Adorno wrote:"Thc minimal differences from the ever-lhe-same" define "the difference con-cerning the totality," In these differences, in divergence itself, is our hope con-~entratcd.1 Just as relevantly he comparcd the "wretched fate" of memory andindividuality to the joke that is "specifically conlmiUcd to paper so that we"can remember il.". Writing down a joke fixes a meaning as ·cvcr-thC-~'lmcand renders redundant its performance in divergent conteXts. He would alsospeak about musical recordings as presenting thcmselves as "alreJdy ,omplet~f I d: .. ,,'d sound like thelfrom t te very first note:' Performances nOWll ays, ne ...
1
,
own phonograph records! .." . . . d ' tively and pOSIlIVeJ)'.t-or both philosophers, repetluon was conceIve neg
a.G id .' can [ust mean dOing
.UI ed by the principle of eternal sameness, repelilion .th' ..' tI e identikit prOduclionc same thing over and over agalll. Here. It suggests 1 .
f. .. I'" 5t .ctly speaklng. under thl'
o C()PIC~or thc fo\1owing of rules to the eller. rt .f __.1 d . t cl angcable; for thClform of repetition, the copies or acts pruuuce are In cr 1 •. I . el . t1 the same way Thank I'<,r-It entity, each stands to the rules or mod In eXile Y . .11 . f< I comn!iant mu,1(31ptr-
aps of Nelson Goodman's prescripuon for per ect y I'
314 Lydia Cocllr
formances that, logically speaking, are mtcrchangcable. We might well callthis form of repetition uninspired, cold, or, wuh all the Socrntic ~isnilicaJlceof this term, "unmusical," Repetition, conceived PIlSIllWh is by contrast de-velopmental, constructive, or gencrauve: its gUldmg pnnciple is differenceor change. Here we might think of the rondo or \011.113 forms (say. Haydn'sJoke Quartet in G, Op. 33). with their procedures 01 variauon, mterrupted orunconventional resolutions, and unexpected repetitious. Or we might thinkof musical performances standing to each other historically, thus producinga reception-history of a given work. Or we rnav think of the production ofexamples, which, following the same model or set of rule s, exhibit betweenthem evidence of learning. development, and musicality, In this case, we areinterested not just in how well each example follows the rules or model. butalso in the development and change that obtains between them. "In music."Wittgensrein writes:
a variation on 3 [heme could be Imagined. which. phrased a bitdifferently, say, can be conceived as a completely different kind ofvariation of the theme .... J ndeed what I mean is probably 10 befound absolutely always. when a repetition makes the theme appearin a quite different light."
Developmental repetition is preferable to cold repetition. yet it cannot bearticulated independently of its cold alternative. It persistently shows the coldthreat of the "ever-the-same" Oil its other side as a regressive pattern we mayfall into when we are not paying attention. wiugenstein and Adorno bothdemonstrate this in their different performances of philosophical argument.how changing the way we think or see, or changing our attitude towards theworld. requires that we persistently resist the lure of cold repetition. Wiltgen'stein once captured something of the special attentiveness we need in mattersof understanding when he wrote: ~We speak of understanding a scntcnct' III
the sense in which it can be replaced by another which says the same; but alsoin the sense in which it cannot be replaced by any other. (Any more than onemusical theme can be replaced by ancther.)'"
Consider now the idea of exile seen from a double perspective: nrst.liter-ally, in terms of two philosophers living abroad. away from home. by choice orforce, or by the dire political necessity of a century with two world wars, andthen, second, metaphysically or metaphorically as a condition of estrange-ment, unfamiliarity, and foreignness. Wiugenstein and Adorno both thoughtabout both sorts of exile. although Adorno much more explicitly. v{hat I lind
31SPlli/osopIIlCIl/ Exerci;es ill /{l'pctitloll
intriguing" how they both internalized their thoughts aboUIexile or foreign-ness into the form of their philosophical argument and how they used musicalmodels to do so. Both thought also about humor, Much in their philosophicalarguments depended on triggering 3 change of altitude, yet they did not sim-ply reject a talse view and then positively offer a true view in its place, Theytried to do more, actually to bring about the chrulge of attitude itself,And thisthey did by focusing, as one would in music and humor, on the performanceof their argument, Both employed techniques of estrangement and defami-larization 10 break the power of (cold) sameness: in 'v\fittgenstcin'scase, meta-physical illusion. of deep or core essences. and in Adorno'S case, ideolog
klll
distortions of conformity and identity, Wiugcnstcin spoke of "the injusticesof philosophy?" Adorno of "damaged life,"" Both used their philosophy tochallenge the comforts of home, to throw into doubt what we take to be mostfamiliar and self-evident, Both aimed to demonstrate tbedistinctio
nbetween
truth and deception, to contrast a false feeling of fumiliarity with a trUeone,to replace. they said. a false sense of homc with a true sense,
Yetforalt this similarity lheycnded up with different conceplioosofhome,Willgcnstcin's philosophy led him to propose a conservative and harmonioushome; Adorno's to II critical and dissonant horne, Wittgcnstein thought abouthappy endings; Adorno rejected them, The question 1 leave ~lOanswereduntilthe end is whether or not their different homes or endings could have beendetermined oy philosophical form alone, If this is a project about philosophi-cal formalism, then it is also about how far form can take you, This. and this
is where we shalt begin, is Kant'S concern too.
11,Many readers think Kant had nothing interesting to say about music, I thinkhe had, especially if we read his comlllents OIlmusic as a prelude to those on~umor, By connecting music to humor, he proposed an Btt,iS
1iCformalism
linked to the health of the body that corresponds, given the lugher artb.tO
an
aesthetic formalism linked to the health of the mind,Kant classified the fine artS into those of word, gesture, and lone, and
h
' d h'ch he includes rhelO-ten, m more detail, inlo the arts of speech, un er \y I, ' di "and sculpture; and. atnc and poetry; the fornlative artS, uldu log pamllng ,
I
' lncl d'ng the art of ITlUstC.
t ICbouom of the hierarchy the nrts of sensation. til u I
1 h
' esthetiC ideas. wheren ISgeneral schemc, the fine artS of beauty express a ",h ' ' he f Ity of the ImagInation
tnose ideas, he wrote, are representallOns to t e IUCU ' If
tl' hi h d finl't~ thouaht attaches use
lJt induce in US thought bul 10 w Ie 00 e ~ e
316 I )'din God"
as adequate.' Here is one aspect 01 formalism. an abstraction that, partiallybecause of the inadequacy, removes from aesthetic ideas a definite conceptualCOntent.Yet aesthetic ideas can be analogicallj matched (in the formal playbetween the faculties of imagination. understandmg, and reason) to cogni-tive and moral ideas and acquire high value tor the rnmd rhereby, However,some arts hardly even do this. and among them Kant mcludes in>trumenlalmusic. "wallpaper music" or "fantasias" without text or program. A temporaland agreeable art. he wrote, instrumental music produces liule more thanpleasant and fleeting sensations through us patterns of tones. Here is anotheraspect of formalism. a formal play of patterned sensation> that I1wolvesnomore than this play. In this context, Kant concluded. music i~best conceivedas a Tonspiel classified alongside other kinds of play: the pia)' of poker (GWek·spiel) and the play of thought i Gedankenspiet), The play of thought is the dis-play of wit. of humor, Though they excite the mind through the body, noneof these plays has high mental or cognitive value. for though they play. say.with thought, Kant asserted, "nothing in tire end is tllollglll." Henceforth Kantfocused on music and humor. Poker, he said, obviously has an inlcresl-win·ning and monetary gain.
Although in the end IIoll,illg is tlrought. music and humor still promotehealth and well-being. In explaining how, Kant stressed the temporal and for-mal nature of their play, the play, he said, of changes, because their point isnot to communicate a thought or interest, but to bring about, through theoscillation of the body, a physical state of rest after its having been aroused.Although "nothing is thought." these arts enliven the mental faculties throughthe body. in music's case, through aural or sensorial stimulation, and in hu-mor's case, through laughter. through the lively grarification that comes fromthe quickening oscillation of our diaphragms. Kant spoke of change~ of sen-sation and of representation. or music. he wrote first:
But the affections of hope. fear, joy. anger. and derision here engageas play, as every moment they change their parts, and are so livel),that. as by an internal motion, the whole vital function of the bodyseems to be furthered by the process-as is proved by a vivacity ofthe mind produced-although no one comes by anything by theway of profit or instruction,'.
Then he moved On to humor. When we hear a joke something is pre·sented to the understanding that at some point goes wrong or disappointS us.The frustrated expectation forces us to relinquish the understanding'S control.
Plrilosopili(albanses ill Repetitioll
In response, our body slacks ami our organs oscillate. Capturing the rhythmof the process itself, Kant wrote: "Laughter is an affection arising from anexpectation ihat is strained Igespnmttj, and which suddenly reduces to noth-mg (llersc/Iwilllkt pliHzlicll ill lIiclrtsJ." As however our diaphragm is calmedand our under,landing restored, we experience a peaceful state. And Ihat is
beneficial to our health.Kant developmentally demonstrated his theory by telling three, and irn-
portamlj three illtcrrelntcd, jokes that would entertain us at a dinner pariy.(I think in fact he was the first to make explicit the philosophical import ofthe comedian', "Rule of Three:') So an Indian is sitting at an Englislunan'sdinner table in Surat and sees a bottle of ale opened and all the beer frothingand flowing out. The Indian is as\(lnished and when the Englishman askswhy, the Indian says: I am not astonished at how the beer gets out of thebottle, but how you ever managed to get it in? Knnt said: "at this we laugh,and it gives us hearty pleasure;' But, he added, we do not laugh at the In-dian man's ignorance. We laugh only because our expectation was extendedto the Limit, and in being frustrated, dissolves intO nothing, like a snappedviolin string that vibrates until it dies. The second joke is about the heir to awealthy fortune who in arranging an ostentatioUS funeral for his benefucto
r
complained that the more money he gave the mourners to look sad, the morepleased they looked. Again the expectation is reduced to nothing. For we donot tell a story simply to state an untrue or reverse conclusion; that would norbe funny. Rather. we laugh when the expectation of one ending is replacedby another ending, because that is what strains the expectation. We lau~h 31
the absurdity of the logic. Consider if we said there was a man who grievedso much that his hair turned white in a single night. We would not laugh.However, if we said there was a man who grieved so 01Uell that his wi~ turn.cdwhite, we would. We would laugh at the juxWposition of the c.xpectall
onWith. . thi " ~ apable of
Its straining. Kant added that jokes must have some lIllg In .u.,cm c•.momentarily deceiving us. Let us call this feature the cognltlve!y dissonantmoment. the moment when we react 10 the formal piny of tllOUg
htless rhe
thoughts themselves. when something in this play strikes us momentarily as
I
. al hi' d sn't Jlwav< work)raving gone awry. Just consider how often (- t oug 1 It oe t:we transpose the content of jokes from onc cultural conl~xl 10 another, yet
retain the form. The formal play alone stimulntes rhe reaction., . c .. tI at it is hard to deler-For Kant, the problem with focusmg on form IS 1 _.'. . . I II' ouoh? As In his umCbO
mine Its importance beyond play. Is bodily lea 11 ell ,,'. . . . 1 . h s What do we gctMill III ours we keep asking what cognluve va ue musIc as. . .
r. all moving formS? SimIlarly.
rom experiencing pleasurable sensatron or tOn. y
Lydia Goellr
we might ask what humor's cugnllivc value I' II l.lU!!ht,·r ends, 3S Kant said.with nothing thought. (")oke." W~ mlghl .1'1. 10 .ld.lpi Fnntenelie's famouseighteemb-cenrurv quesuon nl the ,on.!tJ. "what do vou want of me?") How-ever.I think these quesrions mislead imlll,H .1, Ihe' Ie" us our auention on theprocess's outcome. not the pm,.:" 1l~1t. A.' \II tocuwd, we tail to SCI.' how farhumor and music moll' serve .1, mudd, tor thinking about how philosophicalargument can trigger a change 01 thought. kt the-e model- work only if weemphasize the ternporallv structured pro(C'''':' nl Illu,i, and iokes. the (om'plex patterns that enable cognitivclv dl"t'lhlllt 111<1111<111\ to occur. indepen-dently of the question of achieverncru. H,ld ".lIlt Ill,u,cd more on music'sform than on ib material content of ,ensauonv, he would have seen. as latertheorists did. that music too h.h ih own patterns nl <:\ped.lllon. frustralion.and fulfillment. However. he doc, nor, and ihcrctor ...due, not see. as olherslater do. that it l' not onlv the humorous person. bUI the musical person tOO.who has 3 talent. as Kant put II. for emcnng » "tIlP'" turn' world" or"a frameof mind 111 which everything is c-urnarcd on Itn~' ih.u go quite offLhe beatentrack." Both following a piece (If mU\K and Inllowin~ .1 joke may serve asmodels for thinking about how philnsophv can rake us otT the beaten track.since in none of these Cd'C~, J~ Kant ohserl'l'd.ls moving off the beaten track. . . ., are allmoving into unstructured rcrritorv, On the ,ontr.lrv. these JCtlVltleshighly structured. However. a, with all analogies. the kantian one only goesso far. because, contrary to music and humor. \\'C would not be satisfied With
3 philosophy that merely gave us bodily health or wllh .1 philosophical homein which "nothing b thought." Rut sull, the iorm might have shoIVnus some-thing of considerable importance on the wav,
Ill.I (crned ,,,jlh
Influential on both Wingenstem and Adorno. freud wa- J ,0 con t. his 3CCOunprocess and cogninve dissonance, and what I' useful for us In f. hr' kes and that 0IS t e analogy he drew between the temporal .,tructure 0 10 ble. d I of dOlldream analysis. freud emphasized both the prc,encC an pay led
. fl' (I' In une~pecmeanmg. S,o ateru and manifest content. where. tor examp e, f h eX-. rion 0 I econclusion makes cxplicu what WJ' latent at fiN III the torma the. boWpectation, Like Kant, Freud "3$ concerned with the lorln of jokes. In uldI u htcrl'"Oformal play itself would provoke the laughter. To provok~ that a g in an
• • .1 'tS ,olltenlrequire the Joke. as in dream analvsis. to rearrange anu mali<' I
unexpected W3\·. .d lh3(\~henYet Freud Introduced an element Kanl did not nJlIlcll'.the I ea
Phi/Mopllica/ Exerc;ses;1I Repet;lioll319
we hear a joke for the first time we laugh. but when we hear it repeated we
don't. Addressing the topic of repetition. he wrote:
Nor can children have their pleasllrable experiences repeated oftenenough, and they are inexorable in their insistence that the repeti-lion shall be an identical one. This character trait disappears Interon. If a joke is heard for a second time it produces almost no ef-fect; a the.mical production never creates so great an impression thesecond time as the first; indeed, it is hardly possible to persuade anadult who has very much enjoyed reading a book to re-read it im-mediately. Novelty is always the condition of enjoyment.
16
Freud was probably right to say that identical repetition without a timelapse is not of great interest to adults who arc (purportedlyl freed from ihebasic repetition-compulsion, but surely a timely or fresh repetilion of thesame joke. play, or book can be. In his Preface 10 rile World as Will tllld Rcp-reS€IIItlIIOIl. Schopenhauer remarked precisely on the necessity for readers toread his book twice for the reason that, first time around. you do not knowthe ending. and the second time you do, which mC'Jns at least bctween the firstand second reading your thinking through the argumenl would have changed,Preud likely would have acknowledged this had he heen thinking here aboutthe repeated pleasure we have from listening to a piece of musk more thanonce. for we arc bored neither by repealed hearings of the same music. noreven, if we know how to listen. by the same (identical) recording. It is notlhatlistening to music caters 10 an infantile desire for mere repetition-thoughsometimes il docs. Nor is it just that sometimes we hear something new inmusic and jokes in each rehearing. Rlllircr, ;llIIiglll j,/SI be ,IIllIII is Ihe fommf51ructure of IIIIIS;C ilself that moves liS over ,IIId over aga;lI. jllSI as " joke p"wokes11510 fallgll at repealcd hen rings givi'll the impnct of lts form's movemenl. Recallthat, for both Kant and Freud, it is not ine outcome or ending of the joke thatmakes us laugh per se, but the absurdity oflogic. the provoOllive juxtapositionof thoughts. We laugh evell whell we kllOw the pUllcll lin« ill adwlttec, becallsewe leHIgh 1101 so IIIlId, (II where we gel bill at how we gfl there. A good Jokecan jolt our sense of humor as a good piece of music can play to our lllusi~11sense-many limes. (Of cour~e, there are other kinds of jokes ioo.)
Let me see if I can demonstrale my point by lelling you read a joke youhave hopefully heard before and which has the added philosophic.11 point ofbeing a joke about repetitjon. Some say it is the oldest joke in the world, bUI
320Lydill God.,
il cannot be since it's a rneta-ioke=-n joke about iokes. ,0 presumably at least
('.110 other jokes existed before it.
A passenger on a train watches in astonishment as ,10 old man sit-ting opposite him keeps repealing the same pattern. Firsl he mum-bles some words 10 himself, smiles and then wave, his hand dis-missively=-after a while the passenger ask, the old man what he isdoing and whether anything is wrong: Not at all, replies the old man,whenever I take a train I gel bored-so I tell myself jokes which iswhy you S3W me smiling. But why then do you keep waving yourhand disrnissively as if to brush the smile awa)'? Oh that gc>ture!says the old man. It's to interrupt myself when I've heard the [oke
before.
Here's another version:
When you tell a joke to a Russian peasant he laughs three limes:when you 11.'11the joke, when you explain it, and when he under-stands it, for a peasant loves to laugh. When you tell a joke to alandowner he laughs twice-when you tell the joke and when youexplain iI, for the landowner never really understands it. When youtell a joke to an army officer he laughs once, when you tell it, becausehe never lets you explain it and he never understands it. But whenyou tell a joke 10 a lew, before you finish, he interrupts you. First, hetells you he's heard il before; second, that you're telling it wrong, andthird, that he wants to tell you a bcuer version.';
TV.
wntgensrein, like Freud, was deeply interested in what it's like to gel a joke.Often he drew comparisons to music, what it's like to understand a piece ofmusic or express the pleasure one feels, or what it's like to have (or not tohave) a musical sense. He didn't think that praising a work by saying "this isbeautiful" made the point, Rather, he said, we show our understanding, ourpleasure, when we return 10 the work over and over again.'s What does ilmean to show our understanding? In his Remarks Oil tile Philosophy of Psy-chology, he asked us to think about "[tjhe peculiar feeling that the recurrenceof a [musical] refrain gives us:' He continued:
Plli/asapl,ien/ Exercises ;11 Repetition 321
I should like to make a gesture. But the gesture isn't really at nil char-acteristic precisely of the recurrence of a refrain. Perhaps I mightlind that a phrase characterizes the situation better: but it too wouldfail to explain why the refrain strikes one as a joke, why its recur-rence elicits a laugh or grin from me. If I could dance to the music,that would be my best way of ex'Pressing just IIow the refrain movesme. Certainly there couldn't be any better expression than that.-
I might, for example, put the words "To repeat," before the re-frain. And that would certainly be apt; but it does not explain whythe refrain makes a strongly comic impression on me. For I don'talways laugh when a "To repeat" is appropriate.'9
In this and other similar kinds of sentences, Wittgenstein wanted to exposea philosophical error. When we try to account for our feeling of pleasure, ofunderstanding, or of recognition, it's mistaken to think there's any c/rptll ex-pill/tntion-an extra act. intention, or image, or a gesture, phrase. or move-ment-that philosophically explains it. To Co'(aggerate: the gelling of a jokerequires no additional explanation other than gelling the joke; understandinga sentence has no extra act of understanding other than gelling the point;recognizing a face as familiar has no extra or external act of recognition. In
his Piliiosopi,iea/illvestigilrions he wrote:
Asked: "Did you recognize your desk when you entered your roomthis morning?"-I should no doubt say "CcrtJinly!" And yet itwould be misleading Ifor a philosophcrllO say that anllct of recog-nition had taken place. Of course the desk WlIS not strJngc to me: Iwas not surprised to see it, as I should h.ive been if .mother one hadbeen standing there, or some unfamiliar kind of obiect.
And in the following remark:
No one will say lhat every rime I enter my room. my long-familiarsurroundings, there is enacted a recognition of all that 1 see and
have seen hundreds of times before.'"
Willgcnstcin thought thnt it sufficed philosophically 10 stay with, and on
I. . If . h It [oke be'lna told the sentt'nce
t ie same level as, the cJo:perrence use ,WIt t e) D'
being uttered with theface one recognizes. The point W,\S not merely that the. ' . I . I ience itself reside:. all the
expenence elicits the response, but tUlt to t ie cxpcn
322 1.\',/;11 Gocllr
philosophical issues. So he wasn't suggesting that we just accept the experienceas is: we do have to investigate it. He just thought the Investigation should notconsist of our searching for a depth explanation ,olnchow behind the experi-ence. Of course he wasn't denying the role of mundane explanation; as, say,when we explain why someone understood this (,erman sentence by point-ing out that she was brought up in Germany. He was only denying that in aphilosophical account one need move beyond the content of the utterancesgiven or the experiences had in particular contexts of use, Philosophers, hecomplained, are always looking for some deep principle or essence that willexplain what is meant by a particular utterance or experience. At most onecan compare and contrast contexts; what one should not do is move beyondcontext altogether. One of the most serious metaphysical illusions to whichphilosophers succumb, he thus wrote, is thinking that "what is sublime, whatis essential, ... consists in ... grasping one comprehensive essence?" Again, hewas not denying the sublime, only a certain sort of metaphysical explanation.
In his Lecwres 011 Aesthetics, Wittgcnstein demonstrated how giving anexample. and always more than one, is nearly alway. philosophically moreplausible than seeking an essence or exact definition. Wh),? Again, becauseaesthetic responses. like some other responses, arc not reducible to a singlecausal principle or to any other kind of scientific or exact explanation. Re-call Kant's telling of three jokes and compare this to Wittgcnstein's interest inthe kind of response we have when we say "oh yes, now I see the point, nowI understand, now I get it," where the idea is that having not initially seensomething. we get the point at the third if not the second seeing. when, as hesaid, something seems to click into place. What he thought not possible wasthat empirical psychology could ever explain the nature of that response. Tothink it could, he said, would be "funny, very funny indeed."
So two rabbis are sitting silently over a glass of tea-you know, saysthe first, life is like a glass of tea with sugar. A glass of tea with sugar?asks the other, How do you explain that? How should I know, saysthe first: What do you think Iam, a philosopher?
The point being that only philosophers arc tempted to seek all explanation forthe meaning of life. And now Wittgenstcin:
You might call the explanation Freud gives a causal explanation. -rrit is not causal, how do you know it's correct?" You say: "Yes, that'sright." Freud transforms the joke into a different form which is rec-
Pili/asop/Jim/ Exercises ill Repetitioll323
ognized by us as an expression of the chain of ideas which led usfrom one end to another of a joke ....
And then Wittgenstein points out that one thing we tend to say is that a cer-tain kind of c){planation "clicks" or "is the right one." But. he continues:
Suppose someone said: "The tempo of that song will be all rightwhen 1 can hear distinctly such and such." I have pointed to a phe-nomenon which. if it is the case, will make me satisfied .... Wc areagain and again using this simile of something clicking and fining.when really there is nothing that clicks or that fits anytlUog.... Peo-ple still have the Iincorrect I idea that psychology is one day goiogto explain all our aesthetic judgments, and they mean experimentalpsychology. This is very funny-very funny indeed. There doesn'tseem any connection between what psychologists do and any judg-
ment about a work of art.1l
What did it mean for Wingenstcin to gel a joke. a melody, or indeed, aphilosophical point? A transition or transfiguration that moves us from notgetting it to getting it. And what could make the move? Rearranging the piecesor evidence in front of you. (Remember his love of chess games or his famousduck-rabbit cxample.) Wit1genstcin tbought the whole process quite difficult:it isn't easy to change the way you see." The point is also that Willgcns
tein
thought the change could come with us all the time staying on the surfuo;;eofthings, with what was always and already in front of our eyes or, in his otherterms. in "plain view.""The aspects of things that are most important for usare hidden," he wrote. "because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One isunable to notice something-because it is alwaysbefore one's eyes.)"" Never.he wrote elsewhere. do we need to "penetrate to depths deeper than langua~eitself reveals,"! for recall: "One of the greatest impediments for philosophy ISthe expectation of new, deep (unheard of) elucidations:'" .
In staying on the surface and denying depth explanation, ~"gcnstelllwas not denying depth. Rather, precisely in lhe pro~ess o~commg to.un~e~-stand the surface, the surface would acquire depth III all Its penctraung ~'-rn . .... d " desire to use ~ part of Goethe s
cnMons. " 'v'lIttgenstcUl once cxprcSSed • • ,
poem "Allerdings" as un epitaph to his P"il050P~liCIl/.lI1Ve5IJgIIIJOIIS. althO,"g.nin the end he did not. What wOllld have bee.n his pomt? To dcnl~n>lr3t~ his, I. . hi I r~·ion the M"""nenct Itself.•orma Ism, that behind the phllosoP lC3 e){p~'" • ':'~-
h. b d k r core InennlOgto be found.
t e nrrangemcnt of pieces. there IS no e roc 0
Lydia Carll,
However, III that expression, that experience or arrangement was all the depthof the world. Goethe's own phrase for thi~ depth w.IS "offenbarcs Geheimnis,"
( have heard this reiterated for 60 vearsAnd cursed it on the quiet( tell myself a thousand urnes:Nature gives everything amply and gladlyShe has neither coreNor huskYou just ask yourselfwhether you arc core or husk."
In nearly all cases of showing what he meant for a surface to acquiredepth, Wittgenstcin provided aesthetic analogies, often with jokes and oftenwith music. Here is an analogy with jokes that concerns depth:
The problems arising through a misinterpretation of our forms oflanguage have the character of depth. They are deep disquietudes:their roots are as deep in us as the form of our language and theirsignificance is as great as the importance of our language. Let us askourselves: why do we feci a grammatical joke to be deep? (And thatis what the depth of philosophy is). '9
And now an analogy with music that demonstrates the formalism:
The same strange illusion which we arc under when we seem toseek the something which a face expresses whereas, in reality, wearc giving ourselves lip to the features before us-thaI same illu-sion possesses us even more strongly if repeating a tune to ourselvesand letting it make its full impression on us, we say "This tune sayssomething," and it is as though I had to find what it says. And yet 1know that doesn't say anything such that 1might express in words orpictures what it says. And if, recognizing this, ( resign myself 10 say-ing "It just expresses a musical thought;' this would mean no morethan saying "It expresses itself."-"But surely when you play it youdon't play it anyhow, you play it in a particular way ... Precisely. andthat's aliI can say about it ....
Wingcnsrein now provided his oft-quoted conclusion:
Phi/asap/lim/ Exercises ill Repetitioll 325
V\'hat we call "understanding a sentence" has. in many cases. II muchgreater similarity to understanding a musical theme than we mightbe inclined to think, , , For understanding a sentence, we say.pointsto a reality outside the sentence. Whereas one might say"Under-standing a sentence means getting hold of its content; and the con-tent of the sentence is irr the sentence" (my emphasis)JO
wirrgenstcin would further compare the case when one fuils to read aperson's mood from his face (an example of what he called aspect blindness).with the inability to hear. or with the failure to have a "musical car." Or hewould compare reinterpreting a facial expression with reinterpreting a musi-cal chord, "when we hear it as a modulation first into this. then into that key.""Or he would compare one's recognizing something as familiar with one's"immediately graspling] a particular rhythm in the picture and staylingl
with it."uWittgenstein was not using such comparisons. metaphors lind similes
merely as the content of his demonstration; he was also intenlalizing theminto it. form, To write philosophy was to take us through the process of com-ing to sec the point: actually to let its form move us from confusion to a new
"perspicuity" or "transparency,"" There was, he was always tellins us. 110 placeto look or to go beyond what comparisons, metaphors. similes-the sentcnc-es-say themselves. Through his repeated use of developmentaUy-rcpetitiveexamples, "intermediate cases;' and methodological pronouncements. all therime he was s/lO",il'8 us. or in his more narcis...ist;cmoments 511OWill8himself.
the depth of his own philosophy.
I myself still find my way of philosophizing new. and it keeps strik-ing me so afresh. and that is why I have to rcpeal myself so oftcn.J!will have become part or rhe flesh and blood of a new generationand it will fiod the repetitions boring. For me they arc necessary.'.
Coming to see what Wiugenstcin meant by the depth of.thc world w~come to see Wiltgcnstein as 3 figure of exile also, although III 3 paradOXI-cal and deeply philosophical sense. I have already mcntioned that the mOvefrom not seeing to seeing. the process by which we come to under~and. oc-curs within the form of experience, in rearranging the piecesof the surf-lce toc dr' W· ' • ')'b the correct order. "The1\11 lor them a new order. mdced. IllgenStcln ~ •hi ' f di der in our conlcl'tS. and canP ilosophical problem IS an 3,v;Jreness0 isor ~ .b
,,1 h t yet emphaSized that WIlle solved by ordering them- " However ave no
Lydia Gochr
genstein spoke of this process not only in terms of aesthetic response butalso in a language of foreignness and defarniliarization. What, for him, wasthe common thrcadi-e-a commitment to "bumpy" juxtapovinons of differ-ent yet comparable uses in different contexts, all in front of our eyes." HenceWittgenstein spoke many, many times of sending language out for a cleaningand bringing it home in order, or of decoding experiences of familiarit), bysending them into foreign territories, or of what it was like to come to under-stand a word in a foreign language, and whether indeed such understandingwas possible at all. Once he wrote: "Two people who .JfC laughing together,at a joke perhaps. One of them has said certain somewhat unusual words &now they both break out into a sort of bleating IMcc~c"'/. That might appearvery bizarre to someone arriving among us from a quite different background.Whereas we find it quite reaSQllllble."'·
Yet,for all these excursions into foreign territory. Wiugenstl!in in one veryspecific sense moved nowhere. lie traveled and lived for much of his life in aforeign land. But, as a philosopher, he stayed on the surface, with cverythingin plain view. Metaphorically. that meant he stayed at home. Indeed. he said.one did not need to go any further than home because home is where theconfusion is. Adapting one of the most farnous lines of exile: for Wittgenstcin,wherever you are, you are home. Always his point was about doing philoso-phy: "For the ground keeps on giving us the illusory image of a greater depth,and when we seek to reach this, we keep finding ourselves on the old level." Ifone did find oneself nceding to go somewhere, he suggested only that we takea step into "the backgarden," "To go down into the depths you don't need totravel far,"" for the philosophical detective need never abandon his "immedi-ate and accustomed environ men I.""
So, for what purpose all this philosophical travel that keeps us nonethe-less at home? To change our attitude to the world, to transfigure our "way oflooking at things/ln this sense, the strangeness of exile was, [or Wittgenstein,no more than the strangeness of doing philosophy. For familiar phenomena.he wrote, "don't strike us 3S remarkable until we put them in a strange lightby philosophizing ...·'
Why the necessity for putting things in a strange light? Because language,home, and culture shroud the world in all sorts of illusions and deceptionsthat put us at odds with it, and philosophers should not further the decep-tion. Linguistic or metaphysical error makes the philosopher unhappy. Toremove the error is to see the world for what it is and this makes him happY·The change does not affect the world; no, as Wingenstein said with his well-known quietism, it leaves "everything as it is.~~ It is the seeing of everything
Pllilosopllicnl Exercises ill Repetition 317
in its place that makes him happy. "The world of the happy man is a differentone from that of the unhappy man," Wiugenstein famously wrote." It is thealtitudinal change that makes the difference. So the happy man is the manwho stays home. having shed his seeing of its metaphysical error.
All films have happy endings. Wiugenstcin said as he sat in Cambridgewatching cowboy westerns. And what is a happy ending? No more than" feel-ing at home in what I see" and understanding aright lhat feeling of familiar-ity." "In order to live happily;' he wrote carlyon in his Notebooks."1 must bein agreement with the world. And that is what 'being happy' means?"
Bur diJ wiugenstein ever reach happiness? That. for Wittgenstcin, wasthe wrong question. For when he wrote that "[t)he truth can be spoken onlyby someone who is already at home in it," he once more told US not aboutthe philosopher who had returned home but about the philosopher who hadnever left. about the philosopher who had found the right Slarling point fromwhich to philosophize-at home. He did not want to say that we start withtruth already in hand. rather that we have to start in the right or truthful placeknowing how to proceed without metaphysical error or confusion. withoutlosing our sense of humor. With whom would he contrast the philosopherwho starts in this truthful place! Precisely the person who starts from thewrong place or. as he continued the sentence. "who stitllives in untruthful-ness. and docs no more than reach towards it from within untruthfulness.""
Who was capable of losing their sense of humor? Those who had thewrong altitude to the world. Moving away from the kind of jokes thaI make uslaugh to the sort of attitudinal humor that befits a deeper human melancholy.
Wiugenstein now wrote:
Humor is not a mood [Stimmlll1g}. but a way oflooking utthe world.So, if it's right to say that humor was eradicated in Nazi Gcrm~ny,that does not mean that people were not in good spirils or anything
& . n orront ~7
of that sort, but something much deeper more up'
v.. 't his exile in America, re-
In 1964. Adorno, back in Frankfurt since 1949 311er . •.I. "H ce imtlated me. he remem
called a meeting with Charlie Chap 10. e on
bered with some pleasure, for. I whom this happen~d anti
to be able to account for it when it happened. 'Iogcther with manyothers we were invited to a villa in Malibu. on the coast outsideof Los Angeles. While Chaplin stood next to me. one of the guestswas taking his leave early. Unlike Chaplin, 1 extended my hand tohim a bit absent-mindedly, and, almost instantly, started VIOlentlyback. The man IHarold Russell Iwa, one of the lead acton, from TireBest }'t!arsof Our Lives. a film famous shortly after the war: he lo.t ahand during the war, and in ih place bore practicable claws madeof iron. Whcn 1shook his right hand and Ieh it return the pressure,I was extremely startled, but sensed immediately that I could notreveal my shock to tile injured man at any price. In a split secondI transformed my frightened expression into an obliging grimacethat must have been far ghastlier. The actor had hardly moved awaywhen Chaplin was already playing the scene hack. All the laughterhe brings about is so ncar to cruelty; solely in such proximity to cru-elty does it find its legitimation and its element of the salvational."
Adorno. like Wingenstein, emphasized the transfiguration of response thatoccurs in the dissonant moment of humor: laughter transfigured into, ordisplaced by, cruelty, aggression, or malice. but embarrassment displact!d byrelief and ease. In the story and in Adorno's telling, repetition or mimesis isessential: the imitation of a man's gesture recorded and conveyed. and trans-figured thereby,
Adorno's recollection of Chaplin was not his first. Yet the first, thirtyyears earlier. before his exile. was nOI about recollection but prophesy. in fuct"Kierkegaard prophesying Chaplin." In this prophetic stance, repetitionchanged too. from backward 10 forward motion. In 1930, Adorno wrote:
In Repetition, one of his earlier pseudonymous writings, Kierkeg-aard ... speaks ... of the old Friedrichstadter Theater in Berlin anddescribes a comedian named Beckmann whose image evokes. withthe mild fidelity of a daguerreotype, that of the Chaplin who was to
come. The passage reads: "He is not only able to walk. but he is alsoable to cOllie walking. To come walking is something very distinctive,and by means of this genius he also improvises the whole scenic set-ting. He is able not only to portray an itinerant craftsman: he is alsoable to come walking like one and in such a way that one experienc-es everything. surveys the smiling hamlet from the dusty highway,hears its quiet noise. sees the footpath that goes down by the village
Pllilosoplrical Exercises III Repeution 329
pond when one turns off there by the blacksmith's-where one seesIBeckmann I walking along with his little bundle on his back, hisstick in his hand, untroubled and undaunted. He can come walkingonto the stage followed by street urchins whom one does not sec."
"The one," Adorno continued,
who comes walking is Chaplin, who brushes against the world like aslow meteor even where he seems to be at rest; the imaginary land-scape that he bri nBSalong is the meteor's aura, which gathers here inthe quiet noise of the village into transparent peace, while be strollson with the cane and hat that so become him. The invisible tail ofstreet urchins is the comet's tail through which the earth cuts almostunawares. But when one recalls the scene in Tire Gold Ruslr whereChaplin, like ,I ghostly photograph in a lively film, comes walkinginto the gold mining town and disappears crawling into a cabin, it isas if his figure. suddenly recognized by Kierkegaard, populated thecityscape of 1840 like sraffagc; from this background the star onlynow has finally emerged.·9
Under the pseudonym Constantin Constantius, Kierkegaard's own discus-sion in Repetition focused on his return from his native home to Berlin (oncea home abroad), on the need to take something back that had been lost, onthe need to return to a place that could not by recollection alone be envisaged(contra Wittgenstein) by sitting in his living room. He actually went back-to his home, to the theaters he had once frequented, to the performancesrecognized but not rccognizcd-on1y to find that "there is no such thing asrepetition," or at least that, if any sense can be made of it, repetition is not d
going back-a repeat of sameness-but a forward motion, a fUlure-directedrealization of different world, a topsy-turvy world in which everything seems
"OUI of tune." Kierkegaard's essay, not incidentally, is about aJllhe themes ofmy essay: repetition, home, laughter, music, philosophy, and what makes aperson happy. "Repetjtion and recollection are the same 1lI0vem
ente)(cept
in the opposite directions," he wrote to capture the doubleness of backward
dr. d I b is repeated backwards,
an forward motion "Cor what ISrecollecte las ecn, I .whereas repetition is'recollected fon~ard. Repetition, therefore, ifil is pOSSIble,makes a person happy, whereas recollectjon makes him unhappy.·...
ft thhe was returntng home.
When Adorno returned to Frankfurt 3 er e war,11
. h . . a1,d self-serving.He spokeISt oughts of return were noslalglc,sclltlmcnt ,al
330Lydia God"
(acrually he almost sang in the Schumannesquc tones of his spoken voice) ofdoing philosophy once more in its essential langu,lge-Gcrman; of taMingvenison with cream sauce; of feeling the gravel of the road beneath a car thatdid not yet, like American cars, have wheels that transmute the gravel into asmooth (disciplined) surface of sameness." In a leuer to his colleague Hork-helmer he wrote of "Returning to Europe" a~ having
taken hold of me with a force I cannot describe. And the beaut)' ofParis shines through the tatters of poyen)' more touchingly thanever before ... What still exists here may be historically condemned.and it bears the traces of this clearly enough. but the lacl that it stillexists, the embodiment of temporal disparity, is part of the histori-cal picture and allows a lillie hope that something humane is surviv-
ing in spite of everything."
However, by internalizing the condition of exile into his philosophical writ-ing, Adorno transmuted his nostalgia into critical. philosophical reflection.Instead of his thoughts being self-serving, they were written to "serve the self,"to return the subject home. From where was the self returning! Prom a posi-tion of being lost or imprisoned in :I mass of metaphysical confusion and
ideological deception.To open his final and unfinished masterpiece of t969, Aesthetic Theory.
Adorno declared for art what he had felt also on his return to Germany manyyears before: "It is self-evident that nothing concerning art is self-evident anymore, not its inner life, not its relation to the world, 110teven its right to exist:'Here it sounds as if Adorno was expressing regret that art no longer lives withits self-evidence. However. if we put term "Germany" ill the place of "art" wealso see a sense of relief. For self-evidence belongs at best to an enlightenedworld that once was but no longer is, but nt worst to a world that, first timearound, produced Auschwitz. Adorno could find little sense in being eithermerely resigned or merely ironic about art or Germany having come some-
how to an end.For Adorno, in contrast to Wittgenstein, the self that returned was not
happy. As Wittgenstein said. the world of the happy man is different from thatof the unhappy man. Yet happiness for Adorno was something transmutedinto the deepest and most internalized subjective misery. Like Wittgenste~n.Adorno was concerned with 3 metaphysical return home. Like Wittg~nstelll,the return meant seeing the proper condition of one's attitude to the world.However, at the opposite pole, the returned self was a self that would refuse
Pl1ilosopiricillExercises i/l R('peritioll33'
oneness or agreement with the world and choose to stay rather in a conditionof exile or resistance. Exile, Adorno wrote at the end of his recollection of"scientific experiences" in America, was deprovincializing. He was "inducedno longer to regard as natural the conditions that had developed hislOrically,like those in Europe: ./lot to rake ,/,;lIgs for grnllted:»" Exile,even after return,was still the place to be-the place where philosophkal thinking starts and
where in modernity it ends.When Adorno internalized his exile or estranged subjectivity into philo,
sophical form, he did so, as Wittgellstein did, under the influence of a Vien-nese modernism represented by figures such as Karl Kraus, Adolf Loos, 31IdArnold Schoenberg. All these modernists wanted 10 dClnonstratc a distinctionin their re-conceptualizations of form. between the truthfulness of internal,logical form and "falsity" or "crime" of externally imposed (sociallyco-opted)ornament and style. Thus, Schoenberg, for example. spoke of a musical logicaccording to which a work iscompositionally structured byan Idea IGedaJlktl.which is more or less (the relation is unclear) identical to a "tone row."TheGcdankc is taken to replace the more traditional core or structuring principleof tonality. If a "core" or "center" is retained at all in the new compositionalmethod, it is so under the formalist provision that it be understood entirelyin terms of the ordering and arrangement of the tone row accordjng to the"logical" rule. of continuation. Schoenberg cbar~cteristically referred to theseas the rules of developing variation. Any arrangement of the tone-row hasequal status as each tone has in the row. Each tone is rd.lled to all others although not in virtue of an independent unifying principle. In describing thL~conceptual shift in the history of serial music, Adorno wrote exactly to thepoint: "Variations are no longer composed on themes: composition becomes
variation in general, without a static theme:'"Adapting the shift to philosophjcal writing, the modernists fo~usedon ~h.e
logical or formal ordering of individual sentences. Compare WJltgenstemstechniques of surface juxtaposition and repetitiOn of sentences and thoughtswith Adorno's use of declarative sentences that arc rarely connected by ex-plicit connective terms. In his Aesthetic Theory he uses almo,t nn "therefores:The formalist assertion here is that the sentences arc connected Implicitly orlatently through the internal meaning of each thought itself. trutbful fO,rmwithout the confusion of ornament, without the announcement ofrepclllJon •
. hour.as i . f it I ticn Dc"elopino
V3T13tionWILout, as JO mustc. the declllratlOn0 recap' u a I . ".either in music and philosophy is about the structural (temporal and spallal)
movement of thoughts. .For the modernists. form served jointly to sustain philosophIcal Jrgu-
80 so ., eO'tO·.,ot
332 L)'tlln Gochr
rnent and cultural critique. Consider J typical sentence from Adorno fromhis critique of the culture industrv: Radio promise» lrccdom and individual-ity but in fact "turns all participants into listeners and .lUtnorildtlvd}' subjectsthem to broadcast programs which are all exactlv the S.JIllC.'" The samenessgives them comfort they seek, but it is a false comfort. Identifying with theinfantile aggression of "canned laughter" they do not notice the real humorand dignity emanating from what (if an> thing) is being said. They learn torespond entirely to technology's effects, to identify with exactlv whattnc)' art'being given. The habits formed fit far less their freedom than the ,omfortableidentity they think they have achieved.
Adorno was concerned to break these habits to break the spell of tech-nology's form and effect, He thought that (Schoenbcrg's) music could help.Schoenberg's music was dissonant not only in its emancipated atonal form: itwas also socially dissonant insofar as it had the potenual to challenge musi-cal listeners' most established habits lust by flouting their expectation. aboutwhat they thought music should be like. Such music would provoke cogni-tively dissonant moments just by forbidding the listeners a false comfon orthe "culinary delights" of easy identification. What was the point of breakingthe habits? To give listeners a glimpse of a freedom and dignity they werebeing promised but most denied, The culture industry, he famously wrote,speaks in untruth: the more it promises freedom, difference and individuality,the more it administers a kind of sameness, conformity, and idc:ntity. Howdoes it break its promises? Through the play of form. We listen not to what weare not being told, only to whar we are told; we do not recognize how the forrnof media or technology makes the dialectic of content possible, by presentingthe content at the same time that it manipulates it.
Yet, if form was being used to mask truth. it could also be used to revealit. For Adorno. dissonance was a mode of description pertaining not just tomusical form itself but also to the socially antagonistic relation between rnu-sic and listener. He spoke accordingly of the double character of the work ofmusic in terms of its aesthetic form and social truth potential. The only point1 want to stress here is that, in his view, the double character of music wastransferable to philosophy: if music could challenge the listener through form,so philosophy could challenge the thinker through form, Adorno's aim was towrite a dissonant philosophy in terms appropriate to philosophy. What washis purpose? To challenge a metaphysics of sameness that was giving philosO-phers a false sense of happiness in their philosophical homes.
Adorno made the potential of dissonance the point of most of his writ-ings on music. But he also made it the point of his essays about the return 10
PJII/osop/lica/ Exercises;1I Ro:petirioll333
Germany. The person, he asserted, who can adapt to exile is no different inconformist mentality from the person who can adapt to home. 11was adapta-tion Adorno feared most. "All mass culture is fundamentally adaptation," therepetition of the selfsame, he argued in "The Schema of Mass Culture.»" Sowhen he returned home, he said he wanted to return to a home or a societythat would not repeat itself. No repeal. he repeated at least six limes in oneessay,of Auschwitz. In anolher essay about return entitled «On the Question:'What is German?'." he admitted his desire to feel the identification with thefamiliar, but not if that entailed the repetition of disaster. He wanted returnwithout repetition, or if repetition. then forward directed repetition withoutsameness. And what would prevent such disaster? Changing the way we were
rationalizing the home in which we found ourselves.However, Adorno was not content with a world in which the metaphysi-
cal resting place showed you that everything was in its place: this, for him.was just another conservative and potentially most dangerous illusion. "The
viewer," he wrote,
is supposed to be as incapable of looking suffering in the eye as he isof exercising thought. However, even more essential than transpar-ent affirmation is the predetermined resolution in the "happy end-ing" of every tension whose purely apparent character is revealedby the ritual conclusion. Every specimen of mass culture in its wrystructure is as historical as the perfectl)' organized world of the fu-
ture could wish it to be."
Yet, like witrgcnstein. Adorno did think that desirable change was situated inthe way we think. Adorno here appealed to something tbe experience of exileand return had taught him, namely. that "a sense of continuity and 10rJlty toone's own past is not the same as arrogance and obstinacy with regard 10. theperson one happens to be. no mailer how easily the formcr degenerates 11110
the Inlier." For realloyaJlY demands not relinquishing oneself so Ihat.one mayadapt, but developing a the sort of discriminating self where one ISable 10
understand other people.18• •He also spoke, repeatedly, of breaking the spell and ,fuscmatlOnof FJS~I)m
by working through of the past. What did such a working through mean. I te
h/1.' through a proce~ of repeated
• owed us: a workillg through was a 11111 .tIIg , •h t ~ould break the spell of our
steps and dissonant formal development t a ,. I' '01 S tlut would alloW u, It>
most familiar r-JtionalizatioI1S, the raBona lzall l' . .'11 h
h d once ~nded 111 AUSl:hwlll.continue to feel comfortable in a wor c t at a
334
What did be fear in the present? That the Fascist tendencies once manifest inthe objective conditions of Nazi Germany were still present in the post-war
conditions of democracy:
I consider the survival of National Socialism 1\'1//';11 democracy tobe potentially more menacing than the survival of fascist tendenciesngnmsr democracy, Infiltration indicates something objective; am-biguous figures make their comeback and occupy positions of powerfor the sole reason that conditions favor them."
Ambiguous figures making their "comeback" was an image that stood pre-ciselyat the opposite extreme, for Adorno. of the figure, Chaplin, who-still
with humor-"cornes walking."The form of the essay of "The Meaning of Working through the Past" was
designed to walk us step by step through our most optimistic rationaliza-tions in order 10 break their spell. Dissonant tactics were used throughout;familiarity constantly transfigured into unease: juxtapositiom of what it iseasier to feci with what it is harder to feel. "One wants to break free of the
past," Adorno wrote:
rightly, because nothing at all can live in its shadow, and becausethere will be no end to the terror as long as guilt and violence arerepaid with guilt and violence: wrongly, because the past that onewould like to evade is still very much alive.?"
We usc euphemisms, he said, to make thc terror of fascism less terrible; wedistract ourselves by quarrelling about numbers; we argue that somehow thevictims brought the terror upon themselves: we talk about getting on with thefuture: we say the Germans suffered too. Adorno's point was to show-mi-metically-not the truth or falsity of such claims per se; but the way we cre-ate patterns of rationalizations to veil what frightens us most. We becomeconvinced by such rationalizations. How do we come to sec: through them?By Listening to what we say. By stating our beliefs coldly, repeating them, [ux-taposing them, exaggerating them to create a different pattern such that ifour beliefs are being held without thought, they will once again become foodfor thought. Adorno called this process doing philosophy or dialectics at theextreme. "I have exaggerated the somber side, following the maxim that onl)'exaggeration per sc today can be the medium of truth."?'
PI,ilosoplJicnl Exercises "' Rcpetit,orr335
where do we arrive when our "walking-cure" is over, when the spell ofour rationalizations is broken? Not immediately to a transformation of so-ciety's objective conditions-how could a walk through rationalizations dothat?-but, like VViltgenstein, to a transformation of the subject, oftbe persontaking the walk. "A working through of the past understoOd 3S enlightenmentis essentially such a turn towards the subject, the reinforcement of a person'sself-consciousness and hence also of his self."'"
Adorno described this move from non-understanding to understanding,or from confusion to truthfulness, as a subjective enlightenment. In what didit consist? In the alteration of the unhappiness of unfrecdom into the unhap-piness of freedom, i.e., from the transformation of a subject who cannot resistthe lure of familiarity that will suck him into an identity with a world thatdeceives him to a subject who critically resists his desire to feel comfortably athome in a world that is in danger. Adorno remained unhapPY as free subjectbecause he found a "wretched reality" in plain view. In "Education after Aus-chwitz;' he wrote, under Freud's influence: "education must take seriously anidea in no wise unfamiliar to philosophy: that anxiety must not be repressed;'"''hat he meant was that, at best, {rue anxiety would replace a displaced anxi-ety for which we tend to seek the comfort of rationalizations.·'
Still in Los Angeles, it seemed that Adorno thought the end really markedan end, and everything that would foUowwould be 100 late. With Horkhcimerhe wrote: "\<\'hat Odysseus hears is without consequence for him; he is ableonly to nod his head as a sign to be set free from his bonds; but it is tOOlate,""And yet, after his return, he saw the survival of the subject still to dependupon the work it did if not ill the world, then at least in atlillldinru relationto it. What docs one do when it is too late? Accept nothing but the ironicpossibility of cold repetition or write still of how the subject might rcs~oreitsdP. Neither option for Adorno was hapPY' although both were pOSSIble.That Adorno ended so many of his ess.~yswitb an appeal for the r~turn of selfcertainly plays a final chord of residual hopefulness in an other
Wlsemo~t pes-• •• • . 1 comlnit~el1t to a nollon of
surusuc picture. What does this shOW?At east a ".self that, in working through the deceptions WiUlwhich the world confront~. I . . h • _.. 11 if as 1 have argued, IIIt, las not utterly despaired of seeking us om.,--_ve '. ed Bwas a search pursued in the perpetually exiled state of haVingescap . utr. Ad it was preCiselythe waywhy this perpetually exiled state? BecaUse, lor orno, . . . di I . 1. b h r to malntarn Its 13 ecllcnnot to isolate the subject from SOciety, ut, rat er, bi but i. . dition for the sU )ect, lit Itplay with it. Exile may have been a distanCing con d
dh gh Honle, for A orno. wa>
was always a social condition through an t rou .
no living room.
336
VI.
Seeking a home for the modern subject return, lIS In the be't possible worldto Kant's civilized dinner parties where the outcome of listening to musicand to jokes leads to the restfulness, peace, ami securitv of Enlightenmentoptimism. Or does it? Recall that with his own philosophical formalism, Kanttold us about guests who laugh at jokes les Dl'CdU,O: of their content, andmore because of their dissonant form: the form of expectation, frustration,and resolution. \,'ie laugh, he said, at the dissonance in logic. the frustratedexpectation that finally gels resolved. However Kant emphasized somethingelse too, that although listening to music and laughing at jokes might tell ussomething about the form of experience. these particular forms of experienceend in a place where "nothing is though I."
Let me adapt this Kantian limitation to the arguments of our philosophi-cal modernists. If philosophical form internalizes Wingenstcin's and Adorno'sconditions of exile or estrangement, as I have argued. it too run, the risk ofending in nothing thought. Yet both Wutgenstein and Adorno offer endingsthat seem to be about something thought. So what are we to think? Maybethat the outcome that gives Wittgenstein his happy ending and Adorno hismiserable one may nor, after all, be the outcome solely of form per sc,but alsoreassertions of content. and invoking Freud again, reusscrtions of unconsciouscontent. If the purpose of dissonant philosophical form, a form that refuses acore, is to leave space for a free and dynamicaUy constituting subject, then thesubject we find in this freedom might in the end be 3 divided or contradictoryone. "The principle of individuality was always full of contradiction," Adornowrote." Hence, in this free space, we might find not only a philosophical sub-ject with a critically thinking attitude, but also a Jiving subject whose desires,nostalgias and sentiments have been left in place.
In other terms, the nostalgia and sentiment that lures the Jiving sub-ject home might not always be transmuted successfully by the pllilosoplricnlsubject who chooses to see his home differently. Certainly the endings oftensound more like assertions of temperament than philosophical thoughts. "Idon't mind what I eat:' Wittgenstcin famously once said, "so long as it's alwaysthe same thing." Would Adorno have said the same of his venison in creafllsauce? But if one thinks now that a potentially unresolved ending betrays, andthus renders a failure, the philosopher's form, that would be to miss the point.Because the real failure of philosophical form wouldn't necessarily be onethat left a space for an unresolved ending, but one precisely that did not leavesuch a space.
Philosophical Exercises ill Repetition JJ7
"The way things are:' wrote Adorno to end one of his essays, "should notbe the final word," .. In regard to philosophy. even the happier wiugcnsteinwould have agreed. "It is as though I had lost my way and asked someone theway home. He says he will show me and walks along a nice smooth path. Thissuddenly comes to an end. And now my friend says:'All you have to do now isfind the rest of the way home from here,'?" The point is that, for both pbiloso-phers, "rhe rest of the way home" is just where all the "friction" and "roughground" resides. For Wittgenstein it was the rough ground of philosophy; forAdorno, the rough ground also of politics. Par Wirtgenstein it was the sicknessof philosophy. for Adorno the philosophical melancholia that never "returns"(but never say never) to health. If this is correct. then it is so independentlyof whether or not "the way things are" make for happy or unhappy endings."The exiled German poet Erich Fried, influenced by Adorno and yet thinkingabout Wittgenstein, knew this only too well. Of doing philosophy at Oxford.
he wrote in 1978:
"Philosophy leaves everything the way it is"Then upon the way it is depends the gravity of its crime in leav-
ing everything the way it is.69
NotesI Cutture anti 1I11/lIe.ed, G. H. von Wright (Oxford: BladMcll,1980).52.
~ Dialectic of EII/igltlemlletll.tralls.John CUJl1mins(New York:Continuulll. 1996).
78.Phncdrus, 175-6, trans. W. C. I-Ielmbold and W. G. RabinowitZ(New York;Bobbs-Mcrrill, 1956).69-70.
4 Culture IIIld Va/llc. 80.5 "Culture and Administration." in 'fhe Cllltlire InduSIr')': Sdrctttl "ssa)~ 011 "'II.SS
Culture, ed, I. M. Bernstein (London: Routledge. 1991), II).
6 "The Schema of Mass Cuhure:' in 'file CII/Illre lllnllstl}\ 75·
7 ·On the Fctish-Chnracttr in Musicand the Regression0: ~~~c~nti~I;~::'~!seiuio! Frtrrrkfurt Sclroo/ Renr/cr. trans. Andrew Arato.1lI
'1 e e J
York: Continuum. 1995).284. / Tlleor)' of S),,,,wls (London: Ox8 Goodman. umgllllgcs of Art: All APProtlc I 10a
ford University Press. 1969), l-HiT.
338 Lytiia Goel«
9 Remarks Ofl rile Pllilosopily oJ Psycilology. ed. C;. h ..\ I. Anscombe and C..H. vonWright. I (Oxford: Blackwell. 1980). 517.
10 Philosophical IllI'csrignriolls. ed. C;. E. ~1. Anscombc and Rush Rhees, (Oxford:Blackwell. 1997).l>eC.53t. 143-4.
U Philosophical Occasions; '91l-1951. ed. James C. Klagge and \llrcd Nordmann(Indianapolis: HackclI.1993I,180.
12 Millima Moralia. Rejlc((Ions from Damages! Life. tram. E.EN. lephcou (london:Verso. 1978).
13 TI,e Critique oJJudgml'III. sec. 51-).
'4 TIle Critique of ludgemen«, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon.1980).198.
15 I am not saying that only the temporal arts contain such moment>; only thatthey are exemplary in being able to displav the changing patterns within cogni-tive development.
16 Beyond the Pleasure Principle. trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: Norton.1961).42.
17 I have taken these versions from The Big Book oJ [ewish Humor. ed, WilliamNovak and Moshe WaJdoks (New York: Harper. 1981I.
.10 Remarks 011 the Philosophy of Psye/lologr, I, pt. I, sec, 361, 71•
41 Philosophica! Grammar. sec. 120. ,69·
41 Philosophical Occasions. 177·
43 TrlICItlIIlS, 6.43.
44 Philosophica! Gmmlllar, pt. I, 165·
45 NOlebooks. /914-1916, ed. G.H. von Wright and G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford:131.1ckweU.1979),8.7.16,75·
46 Culture alii/ Valrte.41.47 Cutture IIIld Vnlue. 88. Cf. Freud's remark on humor that "possesses a dignity
which is wholly lacking, for inWUlCC,in jokes. for jokes either serve simply toobtain a yield of pleasure or place the yield of pleasure thai has been obtainedin the serve of aggression," (quoted in Simon Crichlcy's most insightful paper
"Freud's Sense of Humour-e-or Why the Super-Ego is Your Amigo,".1 paper thaitreats Freud's litlie-known essay on humor, as opposed 10 his larger theory ofjokes (ms.).
48 "Chaplin Times 1\vo." trans. John Mackay, The YalefOllnllll ofCrilids/II, 9. no. •
(1996),57-6 r,
49 loc, cit.50 Fear and Trembling. Repetition, trans. Howard V. Hong and Edna II. Hong,
Kierkegaard'« Writings, 6 (Princeton: Princelon University Pres.~ 1933).1}2-76•
51 "Erika Mann und Theodor W. Adorno irn Gcsprnch mit Adolf Fris~. January29. 1958," in Rilckkehr ill (lie Frelllde? RtllligflltJtCII und RllndfilllK 1/1 /)clIuc/,lallll(1945-1955), ed. Hans-Ulrich Wagner (Berlin: VistJ, 20(0).
52 Quoted by RolfWiggershaus. TIl( Frmlkfllrt &1100/: Its Hirrnry. Thames; 01111PIJolitical Sigflijicallce. trans. Michael Robertson (OI01bridgc, MA: MIT Press. 1994).
403·S3 "Scientific Experiences of ~ European Scholar in America; Critical Mod,'is: 1:,-
terventions mltl Cntchll'Om5. trans. Henry W. Pickford (New Yorlc Columbia
University Press, 1998), 239·
340 Lydia God"
54 "The Prehistory of Serial Music," in SOlllld Figures, trans. Rodnev Livingstone(Stanford: Stanford UniwrMt)· Pre•• , 19991. 59.
55 Dialectic of Enlightenment, 122
56 TIle Culture lndustrv, 58.
5i "The Schema of Mass Culture," CIa.
58 "On the Question: 'What is Germani'," Cnucal Models, 209-10.
59 "The Meaning of Working Through the Past." Critical MI,dr/ s, 90.
60 Ibid .• 59.
61 Ibid., 99.
62 Ibid .• 102.
63 Critical Models. 199.
64 Dinleaic of Ellligilletlmelll. 34.
65 Dinlectic or Enlightenment, 155.66 "What is Germani," 214.
67 Culture and VII/IIC, 53.
68 Philosophicnl tnvestigations, sec. 107.
69 100 Poems without a Cowltrr, trans. Stuart Hood (London: lohn wider. 1990),144. I am most grateful to many colleagues, students, and friend s, notably toDanny Herwitz, Gregg Horowitz. and Ernst Osterkamp. but most especially toSteve Gerrard with whom I jointly conceived the wiugensteinian side of thispaper as he was writing his companion piece: "How not to do philosophy: wnr-genstein on mistakes of surface and depth."
The Anti-Hermeneutic Impulse:Beyond Modernity or Beyond Modernism?
