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

— Theodor W. Adorno

Source: Lectures on Negative Dialectics (1965-66), p. 23

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 2, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The concept of positivity in itself, in abstracto, has become part and parcel of the ideology today. … Critique has sta…" by Theodor W. Adorno?

Theodor W. Adorno 90

German sociologist, philosopher and musicologist known for … 1903–1969

Related quotes

“Immaterial labor has become hegemonic in qualitative terms and has imposed a tendency on other forms of labor and society itself. Immaterial labor, in other words, is today in the same position that industrial labor was 150 years ago, when it accounted for only a small fraction of global production and was concentrated in a small part of the world but nonetheless exerted hegemony over all other forms of production. Just as in that pgase all forms of labor and society itself had to industrialize, today, labor and society have to informationalize, become intelligent, become communicative, become affective.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

109
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

““Philosophical” ideology critique is truly the heir of a great satirical tradition, in which the motif of unmasking, exposing, baring has served for aeons now as a weapon. But modern ideology critique—according to our thesis has ominously cut itself off from the powerful traditions of laughter in satirical knowledge.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. 16

“Observe, in politics, that the term extremism has become a synonym of "evil," regardless of the content of the issue (the evil is not what you are extreme about, but that you are "extreme"—i. e., consistent).”

Ayn Rand book The Virtue of Selfishness

The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

“An autonomous electorate, free because it is free from indoctrination and manipulation, would indeed be on a “level of articulate opinion and ideology” which is not likely to be found. Therefore, the concept has to be rejected as “unrealistic”—has to be if one accepts the factually prevailing level of opinion and ideology as prescribing the valid criteria for sociological analysis. And—if indoctrination and manipulation have reached the stage where the prevailing level of opinion has become a level of falsehood, where the actual state of affairs is no longer recognized as that which it is, then an analysis which is methodologically committed to reject transitive concepts commits itself to a false consciousness. Its very empiricism is ideological.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), p. 117

“The more the concept of reason becomes emasculated, the more easily it lends itself to ideological manipulation and to propagation of even the most blatant lies. … Subjective reason conforms to anything.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), pp. 24-25.

“The end of history is, alas, also the end of the dustbins of history. There are no longer any dustbins for disposing of old ideologies, old regimes, old values. Where are we going to throw Marxism, which actually invented the dustbins of history? (Yet there is some justice here since the very people who invented them have fallen in.) Conclusion: if there are no more dustbins of history, this is because History itself has become a dustbin. It has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

The Illusion of the End (1992) (L'Illision de la Fin) Tr. Chris Turner, 1994, Stanford University Press, ISBN 0804725012, p. 26, "The Event Strike"
1990s

“It has become apparent that art can have a startling impact without really being or saying anything startling — or new. The character itself of being startling, spectacular, or upsetting has become conventionalized, part of safe good taste.”

Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) American writer and artist

"Avant Garde Attitudes" http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/avantgarde.html, The John Power Lecture in Contemporary Art, University of Sydney, (17 May 1968); printed by The Power Institute of Fine Arts, University of Sydney (1969)
1960s

“Whereas the particular conception of ideology designates only a part of the opponent's assertions as ideologies — and this only with reference to their content, the total conception calls into question the opponent's total Weltanschauung (including his conceptual apparatus), and attempts to understand these concepts as an outgrowth of the collective life of which he partakes.”

Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) Hungarian sociologist

Ideology and Utopia (1929)

“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence, the concept around which it revolves, has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

"My Own View" in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1978) edited by Robert Holdstock; later published in Asimov on Science Fiction (1981)
General sources

“Ideology critique, having become respectable, imitates surgical procedure: … The opponent is cut open in front of everyone, until the mechanism of his error is laid bare. … Ideology critique is now interested not in winning over the vivisected opponent but in focusing on the “corpse,” the critical extract of its ideas. … Those who previously did not want to engage in enlightenment will want to do so even less now that they have been dissected and exposed by the opponent.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), pp. 16-17

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

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Theodor W. Adorno 90

Related quotes

Related topics