1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,140 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we're going 2 00:00:02,140 --> 00:00:05,019 on a, well, a necessary journey into the really 3 00:00:05,019 --> 00:00:07,459 complicated heart of 20th century thought. We're 4 00:00:07,459 --> 00:00:09,580 diving deep into Peter E. Gordon's fantastic 5 00:00:09,580 --> 00:00:12,679 study, Migrants in the Profane, critical theory, 6 00:00:13,240 --> 00:00:15,500 and the question of secularization. Now, this 7 00:00:15,500 --> 00:00:18,000 book, it actually agree out of the Franz Rosenzweig 8 00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:21,000 lectures, and it presents this profound challenge 9 00:00:21,000 --> 00:00:23,359 to how we usually think about modernity. It doesn't 10 00:00:23,359 --> 00:00:26,059 just treat secularization, you know, the world 11 00:00:26,059 --> 00:00:28,300 turning away from the sacred as some simple historical 12 00:00:28,300 --> 00:00:30,980 event. Instead, it makes us confront it as the 13 00:00:30,980 --> 00:00:33,979 central, really agonizing philosophical dilemma 14 00:00:33,979 --> 00:00:36,460 for three huge figures of the Frankfurt School, 15 00:00:36,679 --> 00:00:38,899 Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, and Theodor 16 00:00:38,899 --> 00:00:41,299 Adorno. So our mission today is to trace this 17 00:00:41,299 --> 00:00:43,659 single urgent question. through their work. How 18 00:00:43,659 --> 00:00:45,679 did these German Jewish intellectuals, all of 19 00:00:45,679 --> 00:00:47,560 whom, you know, lived through exile and saw liberal 20 00:00:47,560 --> 00:00:49,799 humanism just collapse, how did they grapple 21 00:00:49,799 --> 00:00:51,380 with the end of metaphysics? Did all those sacred 22 00:00:51,380 --> 00:00:53,939 concepts just vanish? Or were they transformed, 23 00:00:54,100 --> 00:00:55,979 migrating, you could say, into the messy, chaotic 24 00:00:55,979 --> 00:00:58,479 world of the secular? And that transformation, 25 00:00:58,640 --> 00:01:01,200 that migration, that's where all the philosophical 26 00:01:01,200 --> 00:01:03,700 heat is. I mean, Gordon's book is just indispensable 27 00:01:03,700 --> 00:01:06,060 here. It helps you understand this deep ambivalence 28 00:01:06,060 --> 00:01:08,359 these thinkers had. They completely embraced 29 00:01:08,359 --> 00:01:10,640 the Enlightenment's promise of emancipation for 30 00:01:10,640 --> 00:01:13,739 everyone. Right. But they also felt very acutely 31 00:01:13,739 --> 00:01:16,900 what Gordon calls the normative deficit of modernity. 32 00:01:17,099 --> 00:01:19,719 So they had to ask this really terrifying question. 33 00:01:20,260 --> 00:01:23,700 Can the ideals we care about, just those freedom, 34 00:01:23,879 --> 00:01:27,900 critique, can they even survive if they're completely 35 00:01:27,900 --> 00:01:30,140 cut off from their theological or metaphysical 36 00:01:30,140 --> 00:01:32,319 roots? Or do you just get a vacuum? Exactly. 37 00:01:32,319 --> 00:01:35,299 A vacuum that allows cynical power and authoritarianism 38 00:01:35,299 --> 00:01:37,700 and, you know, administered capitalism to just 39 00:01:37,700 --> 00:01:40,040 rush in and fill a space. And this whole dilemma, 40 00:01:40,099 --> 00:01:42,500 which is so deeply rooted in Jewish theological 41 00:01:42,500 --> 00:01:45,099 and historical thought, that's really the engine 42 00:01:45,099 --> 00:01:46,659 that's going to drive our entire conversation 43 00:01:46,659 --> 00:01:49,819 today. That framing is so important. By placing 44 00:01:49,819 --> 00:01:51,540 this whole thing in the context of the Franz 45 00:01:51,540 --> 00:01:54,599 Rosenzweig lectures, Gordon is signaling right 46 00:01:54,599 --> 00:01:56,500 from the start that this isn't some marginal 47 00:01:56,500 --> 00:01:59,540 issue. Understanding the trajectory of Jewish 48 00:01:59,540 --> 00:02:01,939 thought, especially its relationship to time 49 00:02:01,939 --> 00:02:04,379 and critique, isn't a footnote to critical theory. 50 00:02:04,560 --> 00:02:06,500 No, it's the framework. It's the key you need 51 00:02:06,500 --> 00:02:08,710 to unlock what they were even trying to do. So 52 00:02:08,710 --> 00:02:10,610 let's start there. Let's unpack this foundational 53 00:02:10,610 --> 00:02:14,150 idea. Secularization as a conceptual problem, 54 00:02:14,270 --> 00:02:17,729 not just a sociological one. Gordon frames it 55 00:02:17,729 --> 00:02:20,310 as this agonizing tension, right, between the 56 00:02:20,310 --> 00:02:22,849 colossal promise of modernity, reason, democracy, 57 00:02:23,090 --> 00:02:25,770 autonomy and this overwhelming sense of loss. 58 00:02:26,530 --> 00:02:28,810 When we study the Frankfurt School, we often 59 00:02:28,810 --> 00:02:30,849 focus on the Marxist critique of capitalism. 60 00:02:30,969 --> 00:02:34,210 But this anxiety, this fear over the loss of 61 00:02:34,210 --> 00:02:36,189 meaning, the loss of any kind of solid normative 62 00:02:36,189 --> 00:02:38,229 ground, that's what really animates their darkest 63 00:02:38,229 --> 00:02:41,250 and most complex work. And that anxiety is completely 64 00:02:41,250 --> 00:02:44,050 inseparable from their unique place in history. 65 00:02:44,770 --> 00:02:46,650 We have to talk about the biographical background 66 00:02:46,650 --> 00:02:49,189 first. Gordon calls it the elective affinity 67 00:02:49,189 --> 00:02:52,210 between these intellectuals and the Enlightenment. 68 00:02:52,430 --> 00:02:54,990 I mean, these men were largely products of the 69 00:02:54,990 --> 00:02:58,349 Bildungsbürgerdom, the educated, assimilated 70 00:02:58,349 --> 00:03:00,909 Jewish middle class in Germany. OK, so explain 71 00:03:00,909 --> 00:03:03,669 that elective affinity. Why were they so passionately 72 00:03:03,669 --> 00:03:06,930 committed to those enlightenment ideals? Well, 73 00:03:07,090 --> 00:03:09,849 they were its greatest champions, the most ardent 74 00:03:09,849 --> 00:03:13,189 proponents of universalist ideals, things like 75 00:03:13,189 --> 00:03:16,129 tolerance, progress, objective justice, because 76 00:03:16,129 --> 00:03:18,090 they were the ones who benefited most from them. 77 00:03:18,169 --> 00:03:20,139 It was their ticket in. so to speak. It was their 78 00:03:20,139 --> 00:03:23,060 only ticket in. The rise of bourgeois universalism 79 00:03:23,060 --> 00:03:25,639 in the 19th century is what granted them civic 80 00:03:25,639 --> 00:03:28,199 emancipation, access to culture, to the universities. 81 00:03:28,520 --> 00:03:30,680 They clung to the promise of universal human 82 00:03:30,680 --> 00:03:33,000 rights because it was the only thing that let 83 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:36,319 them transcend their status as historical outsiders. 84 00:03:36,699 --> 00:03:38,939 They really, truly believed in the covenant of 85 00:03:38,939 --> 00:03:41,580 reason. But that covenant turned out to be incredibly 86 00:03:41,580 --> 00:03:44,300 fragile, especially with the rise of modern anti 87 00:03:44,300 --> 00:03:47,099 -Semitism and nationalism. Their insider status 88 00:03:47,099 --> 00:03:51,020 was always... Conditional. Exactly. They were 89 00:03:51,020 --> 00:03:53,259 given a temporary seat at the table, but they 90 00:03:53,259 --> 00:03:56,000 were always exposed. They always knew that the 91 00:03:56,000 --> 00:03:59,120 traditional exclusionary doors of European society 92 00:03:59,120 --> 00:04:02,560 could slam shut on them at any moment. Gordon 93 00:04:02,560 --> 00:04:05,240 even cites Max Weber's grim observation about 94 00:04:05,240 --> 00:04:07,919 the difficulties that aspiring Jewish students 95 00:04:07,919 --> 00:04:10,419 faced in German universities. Weber basically 96 00:04:10,419 --> 00:04:12,379 said that for them, when it came to getting ahead 97 00:04:12,379 --> 00:04:14,900 in academia, you might as well say, last ghetto 98 00:04:14,900 --> 00:04:17,860 in Esperanza. Abandon all hope. Abandon all hope. 99 00:04:17,899 --> 00:04:20,480 And this vulnerability, it created this incredibly 100 00:04:20,480 --> 00:04:23,100 distinctive critical perspective because they 101 00:04:23,100 --> 00:04:25,220 were simultaneously inside the promise of the 102 00:04:25,220 --> 00:04:27,519 Enlightenment and outside the security of European 103 00:04:27,519 --> 00:04:29,339 national culture. They could see both sides. 104 00:04:29,620 --> 00:04:31,519 They could see both the universal potential and 105 00:04:31,519 --> 00:04:34,100 the horrific failures of that society, especially 106 00:04:34,100 --> 00:04:36,240 how susceptible it was to just complete irrational 107 00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:39,600 violence. And that dual perspective, that feeling 108 00:04:39,600 --> 00:04:42,120 of being both a champion and a threatened outsider, 109 00:04:42,439 --> 00:04:44,819 that's the perfect introduction to the central 110 00:04:44,819 --> 00:04:47,560 metaphor of Gordon's whole analysis, which he 111 00:04:47,560 --> 00:04:50,959 gets from Adorno. The migration into the profane 112 00:04:50,959 --> 00:04:53,800 or einwandering in his profane. Adorno talks 113 00:04:53,800 --> 00:04:56,160 about metaphysics having taken flight into the 114 00:04:56,160 --> 00:04:58,540 profane, and he describes the critical thinker 115 00:04:58,540 --> 00:05:02,649 as a fluchtling. Refugee. And the power of that 116 00:05:02,649 --> 00:05:06,410 word, flistling, is just immense because it connects 117 00:05:06,410 --> 00:05:08,790 the abstract philosophical problem, you know, 118 00:05:08,810 --> 00:05:11,149 where do our critical concepts go when the sacred 119 00:05:11,149 --> 00:05:14,370 is gone? It connects that to the horrifying historical 120 00:05:14,370 --> 00:05:17,050 reality these men actually lived through. It 121 00:05:17,050 --> 00:05:19,029 turns the intellectual struggle into a literal 122 00:05:19,029 --> 00:05:21,920 question of survival and displacement. Gordon 123 00:05:21,920 --> 00:05:24,519 then traces the deep historical roots of this 124 00:05:24,519 --> 00:05:26,480 idea of displacement, showing that it's much, 125 00:05:26,579 --> 00:05:28,990 much older than the 20th century. Oh, yeah. I 126 00:05:28,990 --> 00:05:31,110 mean, think about the ancient roots. Deuteronomy 127 00:05:31,110 --> 00:05:34,490 26 .5 famously identifies the Jewish people with 128 00:05:34,490 --> 00:05:37,069 Abraham, the wandering Aramean. The core identity 129 00:05:37,069 --> 00:05:40,009 is one of exile, of displacement, of not belonging 130 00:05:40,009 --> 00:05:42,089 to a fixed territory. It's a theological tradition 131 00:05:42,089 --> 00:05:44,250 that's inherently defined by movement. And that 132 00:05:44,250 --> 00:05:46,829 idea carries on. It carries on right into Christian 133 00:05:46,829 --> 00:05:49,089 thought, especially with Augustine in the City 134 00:05:49,089 --> 00:05:53,069 of God. He sees Christians as peregrinanti cyclomigrants 135 00:05:53,069 --> 00:05:55,949 or pilgrims in the profane realm who are always 136 00:05:55,949 --> 00:05:57,870 aware that their true home is somewhere else. 137 00:05:58,389 --> 00:06:02,230 The idea of not being ultimately at home in the 138 00:06:02,230 --> 00:06:04,750 world is just central to these Western traditions. 139 00:06:05,029 --> 00:06:08,329 But the 20th century, it strips away the comfort 140 00:06:08,329 --> 00:06:10,750 of that metaphysical home and just replaces it 141 00:06:10,750 --> 00:06:14,370 with the stark terror of literal physical exile, 142 00:06:14,629 --> 00:06:17,290 the staggering number of displaced people after 143 00:06:17,290 --> 00:06:19,750 the world wars, the deliberate uprooting of whole 144 00:06:19,750 --> 00:06:22,250 populations, and then the horrifying contemporary 145 00:06:22,250 --> 00:06:25,470 images we see from refugee crises like the drowned 146 00:06:25,470 --> 00:06:28,730 Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi. It forces the metaphor 147 00:06:28,730 --> 00:06:31,750 back into this brutal reality. And Gordon argues 148 00:06:31,750 --> 00:06:33,670 that this modern migrant becomes a reflection 149 00:06:33,670 --> 00:06:36,829 of the constitutive condition of humanity. It's 150 00:06:36,829 --> 00:06:38,990 not a choice or a pilgrimage anymore. It's a 151 00:06:38,990 --> 00:06:41,709 shared vulnerability. And that provides the philosophical 152 00:06:41,709 --> 00:06:44,189 goal for the Frankfurt School. Their whole inquiry 153 00:06:44,189 --> 00:06:46,189 wasn't about abstract academic questions. It 154 00:06:46,189 --> 00:06:48,670 was about political survival. So their ultimate 155 00:06:48,670 --> 00:06:51,790 goal was to find normative resources, moral instruction. 156 00:06:52,310 --> 00:06:54,990 ethical leverage, a basis for political critique 157 00:06:54,990 --> 00:06:58,129 within modernity itself. They had to sustain 158 00:06:58,129 --> 00:07:00,769 those emancipatory ideals against the rising 159 00:07:00,769 --> 00:07:03,649 tide of fascism and cynicism, but without falling 160 00:07:03,649 --> 00:07:07,269 back into some nostalgic, otherworldly utopia. 161 00:07:07,829 --> 00:07:09,790 They had to be ruthless atheists who were still 162 00:07:09,790 --> 00:07:11,810 fighting for justice. Precisely. They were trying 163 00:07:11,810 --> 00:07:15,029 to answer, if we embrace this profane world completely, 164 00:07:15,329 --> 00:07:18,250 how do we stop it from just dissolving into pure 165 00:07:18,250 --> 00:07:21,149 power politics? Where do we find the energy to 166 00:07:21,149 --> 00:07:23,930 resist? And the rest of the book is this incredible 167 00:07:23,930 --> 00:07:26,209 exploration of how Benjamin, Horkheimer, and 168 00:07:26,209 --> 00:07:28,990 Adorno each tried to solve that problem. Okay, 169 00:07:29,029 --> 00:07:30,850 so let's begin our methodical look with Walter 170 00:07:30,850 --> 00:07:33,269 Benjamin. He stages this conflict between theology 171 00:07:33,269 --> 00:07:35,329 and materialist history more dramatically, I 172 00:07:35,329 --> 00:07:37,550 think, than anyone else. Gordon starts us off 173 00:07:37,550 --> 00:07:39,509 with Benjamin's famous opening image for his 174 00:07:39,509 --> 00:07:42,610 theses on the concept of history, the mechanical 175 00:07:42,610 --> 00:07:44,769 chess -playing Turk. It's just the perfect way 176 00:07:44,769 --> 00:07:47,329 to start a philosophical text. The Turk was this 177 00:07:47,329 --> 00:07:50,129 18th century marvel built by a guy named Wolfgang 178 00:07:50,129 --> 00:07:53,290 von Kemplen. It was this life -size figure carved 179 00:07:53,290 --> 00:07:55,790 like a Turk in exotic robes sitting behind a 180 00:07:55,790 --> 00:07:58,189 big cabinet. And it played chess? And it played 181 00:07:58,189 --> 00:08:01,290 chess. Astonishingly, it won against the best 182 00:08:01,290 --> 00:08:03,720 players of the day. And so it was hailed as this 183 00:08:03,720 --> 00:08:06,180 triumph of enlightenment, science and mechanism, 184 00:08:06,439 --> 00:08:09,160 right? Proof that reason and materialist doctrines 185 00:08:09,160 --> 00:08:11,980 could explain human intelligence. It's sort of 186 00:08:11,980 --> 00:08:14,680 reinforced this idea of society as a self -regulating 187 00:08:14,680 --> 00:08:17,500 machine like Adam Smith's invisible hand that 188 00:08:17,500 --> 00:08:19,759 didn't need any divine help. But as Benjamin 189 00:08:19,759 --> 00:08:22,120 knew. and Edgar Allan Poe famously figured it 190 00:08:22,120 --> 00:08:24,899 out later, it was all an illusion. There was 191 00:08:24,899 --> 00:08:28,180 a human chess master, a small, ugly dwarf hidden 192 00:08:28,180 --> 00:08:30,540 inside the cabinet. He was manipulating the Turk 193 00:08:30,540 --> 00:08:32,600 with a complex system of levers and magnets. 194 00:08:33,100 --> 00:08:35,860 The mechanism was a sham. The intelligence was 195 00:08:35,860 --> 00:08:38,200 human. And this parlor trick becomes Benjamin's 196 00:08:38,200 --> 00:08:40,759 central thesis on historical materialism. So 197 00:08:40,759 --> 00:08:42,779 how does he translate this into a theory of history? 198 00:08:43,220 --> 00:08:45,059 Well, Benjamin Ryan said the puppet is called 199 00:08:45,059 --> 00:08:47,580 historical materialism, and it's designed to 200 00:08:47,580 --> 00:08:50,700 win all the time. But... He says it can only 201 00:08:50,700 --> 00:08:53,299 succeed if it enlists the services of theology, 202 00:08:53,659 --> 00:08:56,159 which today, as we know, is small and ugly and 203 00:08:56,159 --> 00:08:58,960 has to keep out of sight. So historical materialism, 204 00:08:58,960 --> 00:09:01,759 this seemingly rational, scientific, deterministic 205 00:09:01,759 --> 00:09:04,340 analysis of progress that some Marxists loved, 206 00:09:04,500 --> 00:09:06,659 is actually animated by a hidden theological 207 00:09:06,659 --> 00:09:10,240 core. This just exposes Benjamin's complete rejection 208 00:09:10,240 --> 00:09:12,860 of the historical optimism of his time. Precisely. 209 00:09:12,860 --> 00:09:15,279 He is ruthless in his critique of this comfortable 210 00:09:15,279 --> 00:09:18,259 idea of the automatism of progress. This was 211 00:09:18,259 --> 00:09:20,799 the dominant view among liberals, social democrats 212 00:09:20,799 --> 00:09:23,440 like Edward Bernstein, and classical philosophers 213 00:09:23,440 --> 00:09:26,519 like Kant and Condorcet. This idea that history 214 00:09:26,519 --> 00:09:29,340 just automatically rolls forward toward a better, 215 00:09:29,399 --> 00:09:31,480 more rational future. But for Benjamin, that 216 00:09:31,480 --> 00:09:34,899 idea of a smooth progression is just. It's utterly 217 00:09:34,899 --> 00:09:37,700 demolished by 20th century catastrophe. Right. 218 00:09:37,759 --> 00:09:39,700 History, in his famous words, isn't a steady 219 00:09:39,700 --> 00:09:41,799 path to improvement. It's a permanent catastrophe, 220 00:09:42,179 --> 00:09:45,440 piling ruin upon ruin. And this grim apocalyptic 221 00:09:45,440 --> 00:09:48,080 view, it's rooted in his earlier study of the 222 00:09:48,080 --> 00:09:50,659 Trauerspiel, the German Baroque drama of mourning. 223 00:09:51,110 --> 00:09:54,070 The drama of mourning. Yeah. This dramatic form 224 00:09:54,070 --> 00:09:57,289 depicted history as a cyclical tragedy, a field 225 00:09:57,289 --> 00:10:00,090 of ruins where political life is always failure, 226 00:10:00,250 --> 00:10:03,429 betrayal, and violence. There's no neat Hegelian 227 00:10:03,429 --> 00:10:06,610 happy ending. So if history is really this continuum 228 00:10:06,610 --> 00:10:09,929 without teleological significance, then where 229 00:10:09,929 --> 00:10:12,309 on earth can you possibly find hope? Well, if 230 00:10:12,309 --> 00:10:14,230 the continuum of history is the catastrophe, 231 00:10:14,649 --> 00:10:17,029 then hope has to come from outside that continuum. 232 00:10:17,210 --> 00:10:19,990 And this brings us to his concept of jetztzeit. 233 00:10:20,330 --> 00:10:23,309 The yet sight, the now time. It's a moment of 234 00:10:23,309 --> 00:10:26,250 radical rupture. For Benjamin, history in its 235 00:10:26,250 --> 00:10:28,929 conventional sense is secularized. It's reduced 236 00:10:28,929 --> 00:10:31,750 to homogenous empty time, just a meaningless 237 00:10:31,750 --> 00:10:34,090 chronological sequence of events. One thing after 238 00:10:34,090 --> 00:10:36,710 another. Exactly. So redemption, therefore, can't 239 00:10:36,710 --> 00:10:38,850 be built gradually through that history. It has 240 00:10:38,850 --> 00:10:41,070 to arrive as a radical eruption from outside 241 00:10:41,070 --> 00:10:43,570 that secular timeline. So the true revolutionary 242 00:10:43,570 --> 00:10:46,850 act, the messianic act, it's not the climax of 243 00:10:46,850 --> 00:10:49,049 a long political process. It's a sudden violent 244 00:10:49,049 --> 00:10:52,149 break that just stops the flow of time. Benjamin 245 00:10:52,149 --> 00:10:54,429 calls this the Messiah entering through the small 246 00:10:54,429 --> 00:10:57,879 gateway in time. Yes. The revolutionary moment 247 00:10:57,879 --> 00:11:00,799 is the only true state of exception. And this 248 00:11:00,799 --> 00:11:03,679 introduces this profound methodological ambivalence 249 00:11:03,679 --> 00:11:06,460 in Benjamin's thought. He wants to be a materialist, 250 00:11:06,460 --> 00:11:08,860 but his entire political theory depends on a 251 00:11:08,860 --> 00:11:11,240 theological jumpstart. And we see that same tension 252 00:11:11,240 --> 00:11:14,159 in his analysis of aesthetics and secularization, 253 00:11:14,379 --> 00:11:17,080 particularly with the artwork's aura. Let's define 254 00:11:17,080 --> 00:11:19,460 the aura. What is it and why is its dissolution 255 00:11:19,460 --> 00:11:22,740 so central to modernity? The aura is the unique 256 00:11:22,740 --> 00:11:26,059 stamp of the cultic. of the sacred. It defines 257 00:11:26,059 --> 00:11:28,179 the unique singular appearance of an artwork, 258 00:11:28,399 --> 00:11:30,519 which is inherently interwoven with traditional 259 00:11:30,519 --> 00:11:33,580 religious or magical ritual. His famous definition 260 00:11:33,580 --> 00:11:36,240 was the unique appearance of a distance, however 261 00:11:36,240 --> 00:11:38,519 near it may be. So the original artwork had this 262 00:11:38,519 --> 00:11:40,340 special quality because it was part of a ritual. 263 00:11:40,600 --> 00:11:42,980 Right. The oldest artworks were inseparable from 264 00:11:42,980 --> 00:11:45,740 some ritualistic practice, whether it was magical 265 00:11:45,740 --> 00:11:48,879 or religious. But modernity dissolves this aura 266 00:11:48,879 --> 00:11:52,120 through technical reproducibility, mainly photography 267 00:11:52,120 --> 00:11:55,019 and film. When millions of copies of an image 268 00:11:55,019 --> 00:11:57,320 can exist, its unique presence, its distance, 269 00:11:57,460 --> 00:12:00,259 its cultic origin is just shattered. And this 270 00:12:00,259 --> 00:12:03,340 leads to a new mass form of reception based on 271 00:12:03,340 --> 00:12:05,899 distraction, which Benjamin at first celebrates 272 00:12:05,899 --> 00:12:08,740 as having this revolutionary democratizing potential. 273 00:12:09,000 --> 00:12:11,879 It brings art to the masses. But he also warns 274 00:12:11,879 --> 00:12:14,159 that the aura doesn't just disappear completely. 275 00:12:14,360 --> 00:12:17,000 It persists in bourgeois society in a kind of 276 00:12:17,000 --> 00:12:19,659 secularized form. It mutates. It becomes what 277 00:12:19,659 --> 00:12:22,100 he calls a secularized ritual. the doctrine of 278 00:12:22,100 --> 00:12:25,159 l 'art, or the theology of art. Bourgeois aesthetics 279 00:12:25,159 --> 00:12:27,500 tries to maintain the sacred uniqueness of the 280 00:12:27,500 --> 00:12:30,000 artwork by insisting on its aesthetic autonomy, 281 00:12:30,360 --> 00:12:32,759 turning it into this self -contained object of 282 00:12:32,759 --> 00:12:35,259 reverent contemplation, totally purged of any 283 00:12:35,259 --> 00:12:37,659 social function. It's a kind of negative theology, 284 00:12:37,960 --> 00:12:40,679 where art itself becomes the ultimate, unapproachable, 285 00:12:40,679 --> 00:12:43,100 sacred thing. And Benjamin rejects that nostalgia. 286 00:12:43,360 --> 00:12:45,820 He's looking instead for what he calls profane 287 00:12:45,820 --> 00:12:48,610 illumination. Yes, he wants to find revolutionary 288 00:12:48,610 --> 00:12:52,269 energy, not by restoring the cult, but by celebrating 289 00:12:52,269 --> 00:12:54,509 the emancipatory potential that's buried in the 290 00:12:54,509 --> 00:12:57,730 ruins of the past. The discarded industrial objects, 291 00:12:58,009 --> 00:13:01,169 the outmoded fashions, the urban decay that the 292 00:13:01,169 --> 00:13:03,610 surrealists were so fascinated by. He wants a 293 00:13:03,610 --> 00:13:06,889 true creative overcoming of religious illumination, 294 00:13:07,070 --> 00:13:10,269 a secular materialist revelation. But the paradox 295 00:13:10,269 --> 00:13:12,710 just keeps coming back. Why does he keep the 296 00:13:12,710 --> 00:13:14,690 dwarf in the machine? Why does he have to rely 297 00:13:14,690 --> 00:13:17,509 on theology? Gordon argues that Benjamin's allegiance 298 00:13:17,509 --> 00:13:20,110 to this hidden theological dwarf suggests that 299 00:13:20,110 --> 00:13:22,009 historical materialism, if you leave it to its 300 00:13:22,009 --> 00:13:24,889 own secular devices as a philosophy of steady 301 00:13:24,889 --> 00:13:28,070 homogenous time, it just becomes a lifeless mechanism. 302 00:13:28,350 --> 00:13:31,090 This reliance on an external messianic supplement 303 00:13:31,090 --> 00:13:33,710 reveals the fundamental normative deficit in 304 00:13:33,710 --> 00:13:35,970 its whole conception of secular politics. That 305 00:13:35,970 --> 00:13:38,149 sounds dangerously close to the political critique 306 00:13:38,149 --> 00:13:40,429 leveled by Carl Schmitt. For anyone listening 307 00:13:40,429 --> 00:13:42,429 who might not be familiar, why is bringing up 308 00:13:42,429 --> 00:13:44,590 Schmitt's critique of liberalism such a critical 309 00:13:44,590 --> 00:13:47,230 philosophical moment here? It's dangerous because 310 00:13:47,230 --> 00:13:50,710 Carl Schmitt, a deeply conservative and later 311 00:13:50,710 --> 00:13:54,470 Nazi affiliated legal theorist, argued that liberalism 312 00:13:54,470 --> 00:13:57,309 was a dead machine. Just a set of neutral procedures 313 00:13:57,309 --> 00:13:59,070 that could never produce authentic political 314 00:13:59,070 --> 00:14:01,370 life or moral conviction. He wanted something 315 00:14:01,370 --> 00:14:04,169 more. He insisted that political existence required 316 00:14:04,169 --> 00:14:06,850 a sovereign, decisionistic intrusion, a kind 317 00:14:06,850 --> 00:14:10,049 of worldly god, to perform a miraculous, absolute 318 00:14:10,049 --> 00:14:13,259 decision. Schmitt's famous thesis was that all 319 00:14:13,259 --> 00:14:15,659 significant concepts of modern state theory are 320 00:14:15,659 --> 00:14:18,600 just secularized theological concepts. So by 321 00:14:18,600 --> 00:14:21,500 saying that historical materialism needs a messianic 322 00:14:21,500 --> 00:14:24,460 eruption... Benjamin risks conceding Schmitt's 323 00:14:24,460 --> 00:14:27,539 basic point, that secular modernity can't provide 324 00:14:27,539 --> 00:14:29,919 its own normative resources, that it needs a 325 00:14:29,919 --> 00:14:32,120 supernatural or at least metapolitical intervention 326 00:14:32,120 --> 00:14:35,159 to break the deadlock. Benjamin leaves us with 327 00:14:35,159 --> 00:14:37,720 this very ambivalent secularization. A critique 328 00:14:37,720 --> 00:14:40,340 that can't seem to locate the resources for transformation 329 00:14:40,340 --> 00:14:42,700 within the world it wants to redeem. Okay, so 330 00:14:42,700 --> 00:14:45,679 if Benjamin left us at an impasse, the machine 331 00:14:45,679 --> 00:14:48,639 needing a hidden theologian, we now turn to Max 332 00:14:48,639 --> 00:14:51,519 Horkheimer. His relationship with the sacred 333 00:14:51,519 --> 00:14:54,059 changed so dramatically over his career. We're 334 00:14:54,059 --> 00:14:55,659 talking about the aging director of the Frankfurt 335 00:14:55,659 --> 00:14:58,159 School, retreating to Montagnola in his final 336 00:14:58,159 --> 00:15:00,720 decades, and explicitly returning to theological 337 00:15:00,720 --> 00:15:03,820 themes. It's maybe the most dramatic shift of 338 00:15:03,820 --> 00:15:06,070 the three. Late Horkheimer went so far as to 339 00:15:06,070 --> 00:15:08,470 claim that critical theory itself got its ethical 340 00:15:08,470 --> 00:15:10,970 drive from the Jewish precept, thou shalt make 341 00:15:10,970 --> 00:15:14,649 no image of God. The builder of Rabat. This was 342 00:15:14,649 --> 00:15:16,929 a foundational clarification for him later in 343 00:15:16,929 --> 00:15:18,830 life, proving that the roots of their negative 344 00:15:18,830 --> 00:15:21,289 critique weren't just materialist, they were 345 00:15:21,289 --> 00:15:23,320 theological. So let's trace that intellectual 346 00:15:23,320 --> 00:15:25,620 shift, because the early Horkheimer was a very 347 00:15:25,620 --> 00:15:28,779 strong materialist, very pessimistic in a Schopenhauerian 348 00:15:28,779 --> 00:15:31,720 way, and rejected metaphysics completely. That's 349 00:15:31,720 --> 00:15:34,559 right. The early Horkheimer was a classic materialist, 350 00:15:34,580 --> 00:15:37,580 skeptical of any transcendent claims. His moral 351 00:15:37,580 --> 00:15:40,179 commitment was strictly imminent. It was about 352 00:15:40,179 --> 00:15:42,320 solidarity with men who will come after us in 353 00:15:42,320 --> 00:15:46,360 this world. Practical earthly change. The shift 354 00:15:46,360 --> 00:15:48,879 really begins in the early 1940s with the dialectic 355 00:15:48,879 --> 00:15:52,259 of enlightenment. Here, he and Adorno treat monotheism 356 00:15:52,259 --> 00:15:55,779 Judaism as profoundly Janus -faced. On one hand, 357 00:15:55,799 --> 00:15:57,980 it represents the apotheosis of subjectivity 358 00:15:57,980 --> 00:16:00,059 and rational thought, the domination of myth 359 00:16:00,059 --> 00:16:02,200 and nature. It's the beginning of the whole rational 360 00:16:02,200 --> 00:16:04,279 project that leads to the enlightenment. But 361 00:16:04,279 --> 00:16:06,519 on the other hand, it also introduces the critical 362 00:16:06,519 --> 00:16:09,259 principle that resists determinism, that resists 363 00:16:09,259 --> 00:16:12,019 idolizing anything finite. Exactly. The critical 364 00:16:12,019 --> 00:16:15,110 principle is iconoclasm. The tragedy they diagnose 365 00:16:15,110 --> 00:16:17,090 is that the Enlightenment promised freedom through 366 00:16:17,090 --> 00:16:19,330 disenchantment and Saboron, but it ultimately 367 00:16:19,330 --> 00:16:21,970 failed. It reverted back into a new form of myth 368 00:16:21,970 --> 00:16:25,129 and led not to freedom, but to triumphant calamity. 369 00:16:25,429 --> 00:16:27,730 Unheal the horrors of fascism and total war. 370 00:16:27,970 --> 00:16:30,049 And the lesson Horkheimer took from this was 371 00:16:30,049 --> 00:16:33,049 that the fully rationalized, administered world 372 00:16:33,049 --> 00:16:36,429 had lost almost all of its own intrinsic normative 373 00:16:36,429 --> 00:16:40,440 potential. Secular reason on its own seemed incapable 374 00:16:40,440 --> 00:16:43,080 of resisting the total integration of society. 375 00:16:43,500 --> 00:16:45,639 And this is where he argues that atheism itself, 376 00:16:46,000 --> 00:16:48,539 which was once the courageous stance of the Enlightenment 377 00:16:48,539 --> 00:16:51,220 radical, had become corrupted. He lamented that 378 00:16:51,220 --> 00:16:53,879 in the totally integrated society, atheism had 379 00:16:53,879 --> 00:16:56,460 become the attitude of those who follow whatever 380 00:16:56,460 --> 00:16:59,120 power happens to be dominant. So if the state 381 00:16:59,120 --> 00:17:00,980 claims to be purely rational and scientific, 382 00:17:01,259 --> 00:17:03,259 the atheist just ends up affirming the existing 383 00:17:03,259 --> 00:17:05,839 power structure. Right. And therefore theology. 384 00:17:06,579 --> 00:17:08,720 or at least the concept of theology, becomes 385 00:17:08,720 --> 00:17:11,339 the last crucial refuge for critical resistance. 386 00:17:11,940 --> 00:17:14,819 He finds that refuge in what he called the longing 387 00:17:14,819 --> 00:17:19,920 for the holy other. This holy other, it's a very 388 00:17:19,920 --> 00:17:22,759 minimal concept. Deliberately minimal, yes. And 389 00:17:22,759 --> 00:17:24,799 noncommittal. When he was pressed on it in an 390 00:17:24,799 --> 00:17:27,559 interview, Horkheimer insisted it was non -scientific. 391 00:17:27,660 --> 00:17:29,819 It was simply a wish or form of consciousness. 392 00:17:30,259 --> 00:17:32,680 A wish for what, though? What does this theological 393 00:17:32,680 --> 00:17:35,400 consciousness actually do for a critical thinker? 394 00:17:35,799 --> 00:17:38,240 It performs a metaphysical function in a world 395 00:17:38,240 --> 00:17:41,200 that's supposed to be post -metaphysical. Theology, 396 00:17:41,299 --> 00:17:44,019 Horkheimer argued, is the consciousness that 397 00:17:44,019 --> 00:17:46,680 the world as we see it is mere appearance or 398 00:17:46,680 --> 00:17:49,619 shine on. That the present reality is not the 399 00:17:49,619 --> 00:17:51,839 final word. And most importantly. That injustice 400 00:17:51,839 --> 00:17:55,480 shall not have the last word. It's a conceptual 401 00:17:55,480 --> 00:17:58,880 resource to maintain absolute critical distance 402 00:17:58,880 --> 00:18:01,319 from the crushing reality of the administered 403 00:18:01,319 --> 00:18:04,170 world. It's an intellectual engine of despair 404 00:18:04,170 --> 00:18:06,950 that actually fuels resistance. This is such 405 00:18:06,950 --> 00:18:08,829 a powerful idea, especially when you connect 406 00:18:08,829 --> 00:18:10,829 it back to the build of Rabat, that precept against 407 00:18:10,829 --> 00:18:13,309 making images. How does he tie this theological 408 00:18:13,309 --> 00:18:16,009 iconoclasm directly to the method of political 409 00:18:16,009 --> 00:18:18,369 critique, especially in the Marxist tradition? 410 00:18:18,690 --> 00:18:20,809 This is where Horkheimer is so insightful. He 411 00:18:20,809 --> 00:18:23,049 argues that the Marxist prohibition against drawing 412 00:18:23,049 --> 00:18:25,269 detailed blueprints for the future socialist 413 00:18:25,269 --> 00:18:28,440 utopia. That refusal to imagine or depict what 414 00:18:28,440 --> 00:18:30,680 the perfect society will look like is itself 415 00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:33,619 a secularized version of the Jewish precept against 416 00:18:33,619 --> 00:18:36,079 representing the unrepresentable. So, refusing 417 00:18:36,079 --> 00:18:38,680 to draw the utopian blueprint is an act of critical 418 00:18:38,680 --> 00:18:41,819 theology. Exactly. And why? Because the moment 419 00:18:41,819 --> 00:18:44,559 you give the future perfection a specific finite 420 00:18:44,559 --> 00:18:47,619 image, you have committed idolatry. You've locked 421 00:18:47,619 --> 00:18:49,440 the future into the concepts of the present. 422 00:18:49,500 --> 00:18:51,880 You allow the present state to justify itself 423 00:18:51,880 --> 00:18:55,329 as the necessary step to that finite image. The 424 00:18:55,329 --> 00:18:57,930 iconoclast refuses to affirm the finite present 425 00:18:57,930 --> 00:19:00,990 as the absolute truth. The critical power is 426 00:19:00,990 --> 00:19:03,670 in the constant negation of what is, not the 427 00:19:03,670 --> 00:19:06,029 affirmation of some picture of what will be. 428 00:19:06,250 --> 00:19:09,410 But even with this really ingenious secular translation 429 00:19:09,410 --> 00:19:12,250 of the builder verbat, Horkheimer still runs 430 00:19:12,250 --> 00:19:14,750 right into that normative deficit problem that 431 00:19:14,750 --> 00:19:17,910 plagued Benjamin. He does, and he knows it. Horkheimer 432 00:19:17,910 --> 00:19:20,670 ultimately concludes that secular modernity in 433 00:19:20,670 --> 00:19:23,529 its totally integrated form has a fatal deficit. 434 00:19:23,920 --> 00:19:25,839 It requires this theological supplement, the 435 00:19:25,839 --> 00:19:28,220 holy other, to sustain even the mere possibility 436 00:19:28,220 --> 00:19:30,400 of social transformation. It's an admission of 437 00:19:30,400 --> 00:19:32,880 failure, in a way. He admits that appealing to 438 00:19:32,880 --> 00:19:35,400 this transmundane other is a philosophical embarrassment. 439 00:19:35,880 --> 00:19:38,180 He says it's not knowledge, it's just a wish. 440 00:19:38,500 --> 00:19:41,400 But for him, in the face of the totally administered 441 00:19:41,400 --> 00:19:44,640 society, this non -scientific wish becomes the 442 00:19:44,640 --> 00:19:48,019 only viable alternative to just desolate positivism, 443 00:19:48,099 --> 00:19:50,559 the philosophical acceptance that the world is 444 00:19:50,559 --> 00:19:54,160 simply what it is. So like Benjamin, he risks 445 00:19:54,160 --> 00:19:56,599 a self -contradiction. He needs a theological 446 00:19:56,599 --> 00:20:00,119 concept to sustain a purely secular, emancipatory 447 00:20:00,119 --> 00:20:02,859 project. This leaves him in a position of longing, 448 00:20:03,000 --> 00:20:05,759 of just, hoping that the structure of reality 449 00:20:05,759 --> 00:20:07,539 is somehow different from the reality we can 450 00:20:07,539 --> 00:20:10,720 see. Okay, now we turn to Theodore Adorno, who 451 00:20:10,720 --> 00:20:13,119 offers the most conceptually dense and I think 452 00:20:13,119 --> 00:20:14,900 you could argue the most resilient response to 453 00:20:14,900 --> 00:20:17,960 this crisis of secularization. Adorno, the philosophical 454 00:20:17,960 --> 00:20:20,059 musician, he approaches the problem through the 455 00:20:20,059 --> 00:20:22,519 lens of failure, artistic and conceptual failure, 456 00:20:22,660 --> 00:20:24,660 which is perfectly symbolized by Schoenberg's 457 00:20:24,660 --> 00:20:27,559 unfinished opera, Moses and Aaron. Moses and 458 00:20:27,559 --> 00:20:29,980 Aaron is the definitive statement on the tragedy 459 00:20:29,980 --> 00:20:33,619 of ideas. Moses is the protagonist, and he represents 460 00:20:33,619 --> 00:20:37,059 the pure, unrepresentable idea of God, the absolute 461 00:20:37,059 --> 00:20:39,960 spirit of the Bilderbad. Aaron, his brother, 462 00:20:40,059 --> 00:20:42,799 he's the intermediary, the sensualist, the politician 463 00:20:42,799 --> 00:20:45,420 who tries to translate that pure idea into a 464 00:20:45,420 --> 00:20:48,480 sign, an image, something tangible for the people. 465 00:20:48,619 --> 00:20:51,079 And he fails. He betrays the idea. He fashions 466 00:20:51,079 --> 00:20:52,960 the golden calf. He allows the tables of the 467 00:20:52,960 --> 00:20:55,259 law themselves to become these finite, manageable 468 00:20:55,259 --> 00:20:57,819 images. The ideal is inevitably corrupted the 469 00:20:57,819 --> 00:20:59,839 moment it's manifested in the world. And Moses 470 00:20:59,839 --> 00:21:02,160 is left in total despair, crying out, oh, word, 471 00:21:02,200 --> 00:21:05,099 you word that I lack. The sacred idea, once you 472 00:21:05,099 --> 00:21:07,599 express it, is betrayed and made profane. And 473 00:21:07,599 --> 00:21:10,400 this inherent betrayal leads Adorno to his uncompromising 474 00:21:10,400 --> 00:21:12,619 demand, which he articulated in his letters with 475 00:21:12,619 --> 00:21:15,039 Gershom Skullum. The call for a ruthless migration 476 00:21:15,039 --> 00:21:18,539 into the profane. A ruck sicht losen einwanderung 477 00:21:18,539 --> 00:21:21,859 ins profane. That word ruthless, rixixlosin, 478 00:21:21,859 --> 00:21:24,500 is so crucial. Unlike Horkheimer and Benjamin, 479 00:21:24,720 --> 00:21:27,759 Adorno shows no nostalgia, no longing to turn 480 00:21:27,759 --> 00:21:30,660 back the clock on disenchantment. For him, secularization 481 00:21:30,660 --> 00:21:33,579 isn't a loss to be lamented, it's a necessary, 482 00:21:33,819 --> 00:21:36,519 irreversible imperative. He saw himself as a 483 00:21:36,519 --> 00:21:39,059 permanent exile, which reinforced the intellectual 484 00:21:39,059 --> 00:21:41,980 virtue of being unattached, of not at home in 485 00:21:41,980 --> 00:21:44,460 one's home, a truly, you could say, conceptually 486 00:21:44,460 --> 00:21:47,690 Jewish intellectual posture. So this migration 487 00:21:47,690 --> 00:21:50,869 is a movement away from any attempt at metaphysical 488 00:21:50,869 --> 00:21:53,529 restoration. Yes, a spatial and philosophical 489 00:21:53,529 --> 00:21:56,269 movement. He rejects all efforts to cling to 490 00:21:56,269 --> 00:21:59,390 the sacred past. He embraces a totally unflinching 491 00:21:59,390 --> 00:22:02,130 absolute atheism, but he does it to save the 492 00:22:02,130 --> 00:22:04,250 critical content of metaphysics for this worldly 493 00:22:04,250 --> 00:22:06,470 critique. And he carries out this philosophical 494 00:22:06,470 --> 00:22:09,410 imperative through his magnum opus Negative Dialectics. 495 00:22:09,569 --> 00:22:11,910 So how does this method function as a radical 496 00:22:11,910 --> 00:22:14,430 critique of Hegelian closure? What are the political 497 00:22:14,430 --> 00:22:17,279 stakes here? The stakes are enormous. Adorno 498 00:22:17,279 --> 00:22:19,859 is fundamentally rejecting Hegel's entire project. 499 00:22:20,279 --> 00:22:23,140 Hegel's dialectic moves toward identity and reconciliation. 500 00:22:23,619 --> 00:22:26,940 For Sunim, where the subject reason freedomfully 501 00:22:26,940 --> 00:22:29,140 understands and is reconciled with the object, 502 00:22:29,339 --> 00:22:32,619 with the world. For Hegel, this leads to rational 503 00:22:32,619 --> 00:22:35,579 fulfillment. And for Adorno? For Adorno, in the 504 00:22:35,579 --> 00:22:38,000 administered world of modern capitalism, the 505 00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:40,660 pursuit of identity, the claim that your concept 506 00:22:40,660 --> 00:22:43,680 perfectly matches the object, is the ideological 507 00:22:43,680 --> 00:22:46,750 affirmation of unfreedom. To claim that the concept 508 00:22:46,750 --> 00:22:48,809 of justice perfectly matches our current legal 509 00:22:48,809 --> 00:22:52,410 system is to commit ideological violence. Identity 510 00:22:52,410 --> 00:22:55,029 means unfitum because it forces the unique, messy, 511 00:22:55,170 --> 00:22:57,869 singular object to conform to the universal abstract 512 00:22:57,869 --> 00:23:00,769 concept. So where Hegel is seeking totality and 513 00:23:00,769 --> 00:23:03,549 closure, Adorno insists on the persistence of 514 00:23:03,549 --> 00:23:06,750 negativity, on non -identity. Exactly. Negative 515 00:23:06,750 --> 00:23:08,829 dialectics is a philosophy that insists on the 516 00:23:08,829 --> 00:23:11,210 gat, the rift between the concept and the object. 517 00:23:11,529 --> 00:23:13,549 It's like Hegelianism without the happy ending. 518 00:23:13,710 --> 00:23:15,750 Its goal is to achieve what he calls solidarity 519 00:23:15,750 --> 00:23:18,390 with metaphysics at the moment of its fall. What 520 00:23:18,390 --> 00:23:21,410 does that mean exactly? It means salvaging the 521 00:23:21,410 --> 00:23:23,910 critical emancipatory potential of metaphysical 522 00:23:23,910 --> 00:23:26,289 thought, the promise of a non -repressive whole, 523 00:23:26,430 --> 00:23:28,950 without actually affirming the metaphysics itself. 524 00:23:30,029 --> 00:23:33,049 Criticism has to expose the rift. It has to insist 525 00:23:33,049 --> 00:23:35,569 on the negativity of the world to keep the potential 526 00:23:35,569 --> 00:23:38,029 for change alive. This insistence on breaking 527 00:23:38,029 --> 00:23:40,569 open conceptual closure leads him to embrace 528 00:23:40,569 --> 00:23:42,809 some really surprising allegorical resources, 529 00:23:43,289 --> 00:23:46,289 especially Lurianic Kabbalah, which is a radical 530 00:23:46,289 --> 00:23:48,529 theological tradition pretty far removed from 531 00:23:48,529 --> 00:23:52,109 Marxism. Why this unusual detour? He uses the 532 00:23:52,109 --> 00:23:54,990 Lurianic myth of the shavarat hakelem, the shattering 533 00:23:54,990 --> 00:23:57,910 of the vessels, as a perfect allegory for critiquing 534 00:23:57,910 --> 00:24:00,380 modern ideology. The myth describes how when 535 00:24:00,380 --> 00:24:02,680 God tried to create the world, the divine light 536 00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:05,480 was too powerful. The vessels broke and fragments 537 00:24:05,480 --> 00:24:07,819 of that divine light became trapped inside calipots 538 00:24:07,819 --> 00:24:10,299 or shells in the material world. And what does 539 00:24:10,299 --> 00:24:12,900 Adorno say the task of the critic is using this 540 00:24:12,900 --> 00:24:15,859 allegory? The task of criticism of the philosophical 541 00:24:15,859 --> 00:24:19,740 process is to perform a kind of picun olam, a 542 00:24:19,740 --> 00:24:22,599 repair of the world by shattering the calipot, 543 00:24:22,599 --> 00:24:25,460 the shells of our conceptual categories. Modern 544 00:24:25,460 --> 00:24:28,190 ideology builds these neat. cohesive conceptual 545 00:24:28,190 --> 00:24:30,910 boxes that give the world its illusory perfection 546 00:24:30,910 --> 00:24:34,089 and closure. Adorno's dialectics are designed 547 00:24:34,089 --> 00:24:36,769 to violently break open those shells, to expose 548 00:24:36,769 --> 00:24:39,750 the fragments of unrealized potential, the messianic 549 00:24:39,750 --> 00:24:42,410 light that are trapped inside. The Kabbalah becomes 550 00:24:42,410 --> 00:24:44,829 a profound metaphor for the brokenness of our 551 00:24:44,829 --> 00:24:47,049 modern conceptual systems. And this brings us 552 00:24:47,049 --> 00:24:49,289 to the conceptual pinnacle of Gordy's analysis, 553 00:24:49,750 --> 00:24:53,509 negative dialectics as negative theology. Adorno 554 00:24:53,509 --> 00:24:56,170 uses philosophical negation, insisting on what 555 00:24:56,170 --> 00:24:59,180 a thing is not, to shatter illusion. He's tapping 556 00:24:59,180 --> 00:25:01,579 into the ancient tradition of the via negativa, 557 00:25:01,700 --> 00:25:04,579 or negative predication, which you see most clearly 558 00:25:04,579 --> 00:25:07,440 in Moses' Maimonides. Maimonides insisted that 559 00:25:07,440 --> 00:25:10,200 to preserve God's absolute oneness and transcendence, 560 00:25:10,240 --> 00:25:12,920 we can't assign positive attributes to him. To 561 00:25:12,920 --> 00:25:15,740 say God is powerful is flawed. Instead, we have 562 00:25:15,740 --> 00:25:18,420 to use infinite judgment. God is not unpowerful. 563 00:25:18,480 --> 00:25:21,119 It's the logical form of the negation of a privation. 564 00:25:21,359 --> 00:25:23,599 And Adorno does the same thing, but in a secular 565 00:25:23,599 --> 00:25:26,829 context. Precisely. Both Maimonides and Adorno 566 00:25:26,829 --> 00:25:29,470 use philosophical negation as their essential 567 00:25:29,470 --> 00:25:32,970 tool to combat idolatry. Maimonides battles theological 568 00:25:32,970 --> 00:25:36,609 idolatry, imagining God in human terms. Adorno 569 00:25:36,609 --> 00:25:39,230 battles secular idolatry, the reification of 570 00:25:39,230 --> 00:25:41,470 social concepts, treating things like the market 571 00:25:41,470 --> 00:25:44,569 or progress as absolute, unchangeable truths. 572 00:25:45,130 --> 00:25:47,529 So Adorno's atheism isn't just a rejection of 573 00:25:47,529 --> 00:25:50,329 God. It's the dialectical culmination, the critical 574 00:25:50,329 --> 00:25:53,049 fulfillment of God's own iconoclastic command. 575 00:25:53,349 --> 00:25:56,390 Exactly. Adorno argues that if religion is accepted 576 00:25:56,390 --> 00:25:58,250 for the sake of something other than its own 577 00:25:58,250 --> 00:26:00,990 truth content, for comfort, for social cohesion, 578 00:26:01,109 --> 00:26:04,210 for power, it undermines itself. His radical 579 00:26:04,210 --> 00:26:06,549 atheism is the dialectical consequence of negative 580 00:26:06,549 --> 00:26:09,559 theology pursued to its absolute limit. Only 581 00:26:09,559 --> 00:26:11,740 the negation of religion can fully realize its 582 00:26:11,740 --> 00:26:14,000 truth content, allowing that messianic light, 583 00:26:14,180 --> 00:26:16,819 the promise of non -identity, to flow into the 584 00:26:16,819 --> 00:26:19,779 rigorous critique of imminence. He accepts secularism 585 00:26:19,779 --> 00:26:22,160 as a necessary imperative, and he uses the critical 586 00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:24,380 tools of theology against the restored metaphysics 587 00:26:24,380 --> 00:26:26,680 of religion itself. What an intellectual journey. 588 00:26:26,819 --> 00:26:29,619 We've charted three distinct but conceptually 589 00:26:29,619 --> 00:26:32,579 linked approaches to secularization. Benjamin, 590 00:26:32,680 --> 00:26:35,319 who's seeking this necessary messianic eruption 591 00:26:35,319 --> 00:26:38,549 from outside of history. Then Horkheimer. who's 592 00:26:38,549 --> 00:26:41,410 maintaining this minimal, non -scientific longing 593 00:26:41,410 --> 00:26:43,990 for the holy other. And finally, Adorno, who 594 00:26:43,990 --> 00:26:46,509 demands a ruthless migration into the profane 595 00:26:46,509 --> 00:26:50,029 as a secular and critical imperative. And Gordon's 596 00:26:50,029 --> 00:26:52,150 great achievement is showing that despite all 597 00:26:52,150 --> 00:26:54,369 their differences, all three were engaged in 598 00:26:54,369 --> 00:26:57,339 the same desperate salvage operation. How do 599 00:26:57,339 --> 00:26:59,099 you preserve the critical edge of thought in 600 00:26:59,099 --> 00:27:00,819 a world that's been stripped of sacred meaning, 601 00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:03,099 where reason has just devolved into mechanism? 602 00:27:03,980 --> 00:27:05,839 Adorno's approach is the one that's the most 603 00:27:05,839 --> 00:27:08,039 enduring because it's the most minimalist and 604 00:27:08,039 --> 00:27:10,579 most radical. For him, the memory of religion 605 00:27:10,579 --> 00:27:13,779 only survives as this highly pressurized point 606 00:27:13,779 --> 00:27:16,059 of critical leverage against social imminence. 607 00:27:16,559 --> 00:27:18,779 It's a tool for achieving non -identity in the 608 00:27:18,779 --> 00:27:21,359 world, not a separate claim to truth. And this 609 00:27:21,359 --> 00:27:23,799 philosophical stance brings us right back around 610 00:27:23,799 --> 00:27:26,240 to the political implications that are embedded 611 00:27:26,240 --> 00:27:28,660 in that metaphor of the migrant and to Gordon's 612 00:27:28,660 --> 00:27:30,680 final argument, which is centered on the critique 613 00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:33,630 of dwelling. This is where the academic study 614 00:27:33,630 --> 00:27:36,190 becomes really urgent in the real world. It really 615 00:27:36,190 --> 00:27:38,930 does. You have to contrast Adorno's thought with 616 00:27:38,930 --> 00:27:41,650 the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, who was obsessed 617 00:27:41,650 --> 00:27:45,410 with authentic dwelling, eigentlichkeit, and 618 00:27:45,410 --> 00:27:48,450 finding rootedness in the soil. Heidegger's philosophy 619 00:27:48,450 --> 00:27:51,269 often celebrated this longing for a secure, unified 620 00:27:51,269 --> 00:27:54,170 home, deeply connected to a specific tradition 621 00:27:54,170 --> 00:27:56,970 and a specific land. And that longing for a kind 622 00:27:56,970 --> 00:28:00,029 of monocultural purity, the mal du pays, this 623 00:28:00,029 --> 00:28:02,289 homesickness for a place that never really existed, 624 00:28:02,390 --> 00:28:04,369 that was philosophically dangerous, especially 625 00:28:04,369 --> 00:28:06,769 given Heidegger's own historical warnings against 626 00:28:06,769 --> 00:28:09,809 Semitic nomads and his association with Nazi 627 00:28:09,809 --> 00:28:13,410 ideology. So Adorno's counter thesis is an explicit 628 00:28:13,410 --> 00:28:16,390 ethical statement. Dwelling in the authentic 629 00:28:16,390 --> 00:28:19,569 sense is no longer possible. The political theological 630 00:28:19,569 --> 00:28:22,809 fantasy of a secure, unified home, a place that's 631 00:28:22,809 --> 00:28:26,559 wholly our own, is a pathology. This fantasy, 632 00:28:26,720 --> 00:28:29,420 Adorno argues, is what fuels the exclusionary 633 00:28:29,420 --> 00:28:31,640 nationalism and xenophobia that defined the 20th 634 00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:34,980 century and continue to plague us today. It's 635 00:28:34,980 --> 00:28:37,480 the desire for closure and identity written onto 636 00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:40,579 political geography. So if the Frankfurt School 637 00:28:40,579 --> 00:28:42,779 struggled with secularization, it was to make 638 00:28:42,779 --> 00:28:44,880 sure that the process of disenchantment led not 639 00:28:44,880 --> 00:28:47,000 to nihilism, but to a more sophisticated, more 640 00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:49,539 critical, and ultimately more inclusive humanity. 641 00:28:49,920 --> 00:28:52,259 They wanted to redeem the promise of the Enlightenment 642 00:28:52,259 --> 00:28:55,279 from itself. Precisely. The core insight that 643 00:28:55,279 --> 00:28:57,859 Gordon pulls from Adorno is that we have to embrace 644 00:28:57,859 --> 00:29:01,119 multiplicity and internal difference. The historical 645 00:29:01,119 --> 00:29:04,140 condition of the stranger, of the refugee, is 646 00:29:04,140 --> 00:29:07,380 the constitutive condition of humanity, a humanity 647 00:29:07,380 --> 00:29:09,799 that is perpetually displaced from its own truth. 648 00:29:10,579 --> 00:29:13,000 Eucopia, in this view, isn't found in belonging 649 00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:16,460 or stability or a fixed national identity. It's 650 00:29:16,460 --> 00:29:18,599 found in the ongoing, necessary, and sometimes 651 00:29:18,599 --> 00:29:21,059 terrifying adventure of the migration into the 652 00:29:21,059 --> 00:29:23,940 profane. We have to unbind ourselves from that 653 00:29:23,940 --> 00:29:26,700 dangerous romantic dream of a self -identical 654 00:29:26,700 --> 00:29:29,660 rooted existence. The truth is found in the restless 655 00:29:30,140 --> 00:29:32,279 critical movement of the refugee of metaphysics. 656 00:29:32,460 --> 00:29:34,880 That is a truly revolutionary conclusion. It 657 00:29:34,880 --> 00:29:37,000 forces us to redefine what political belonging 658 00:29:37,000 --> 00:29:39,559 and critical consciousness even mean in the 21st 659 00:29:39,559 --> 00:29:42,180 century. We have methodically navigated the Frankfurt 660 00:29:42,180 --> 00:29:44,319 School's complicated relationship with the sacred 661 00:29:44,319 --> 00:29:46,779 and the secular, seeing how Benjamin, Horkheimer, 662 00:29:46,839 --> 00:29:49,160 and Adorno tried to salvage these essential normative 663 00:29:49,160 --> 00:29:51,319 resources from a rapidly disenchanting world, 664 00:29:51,460 --> 00:29:53,759 constantly fighting that urge to just let the 665 00:29:53,759 --> 00:29:56,099 world be the final word on justice. And that 666 00:29:56,099 --> 00:29:58,900 struggle. It really raises a final provocative 667 00:29:58,900 --> 00:30:02,400 thought for you, the listener. If critical thinking 668 00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:04,759 means recognizing that the stranger is always 669 00:30:04,759 --> 00:30:07,859 our own mirror image, that permanent exile is 670 00:30:07,859 --> 00:30:10,960 the only authentic philosophical posture, then 671 00:30:10,960 --> 00:30:13,640 how must our current political institutions change 672 00:30:13,640 --> 00:30:17,940 to institutionalize this migration into the profane? 673 00:30:18,430 --> 00:30:21,930 How do we ensure plurality without dispersal 674 00:30:21,930 --> 00:30:24,650 and difference without domination? How do we 675 00:30:24,650 --> 00:30:27,049 build a secular society whose critical foundation 676 00:30:27,049 --> 00:30:29,769 rests on the knowledge of its own fragility and 677 00:30:29,769 --> 00:30:32,369 its own displacement? That is a powerful challenge 678 00:30:32,369 --> 00:30:35,210 that Adorno throws at the secular age and a fantastic 679 00:30:35,210 --> 00:30:37,769 distillation of the deep insights in Peter E. 680 00:30:37,789 --> 00:30:40,230 Gordon's remarkable work. Thank you so much for 681 00:30:40,230 --> 00:30:42,009 guiding us through this challenging intellectual 682 00:30:42,009 --> 00:30:44,470 landscape. My absolute pleasure. And thank you, 683 00:30:44,470 --> 00:30:46,069 the listener, for providing the source material 684 00:30:46,069 --> 00:30:47,789 and joining us for this deep dive. We'll see 685 00:30:47,789 --> 00:30:48,170 you next time.