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Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l'Université de Montréal, l'Université Laval et l'Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. Érudit offre des services d'édition numérique de documents scientifiques depuis 1998. Pour communiquer avec les responsables d'Érudit : info@erudit.org Article "Tillich, Adorno, and the Debate about Existentialism" Guy B. Hammond Laval théologique et philosophique, vol. 47, n° 3, 1991, p. 343-355. Pour citer cet article, utiliser l'information suivante : URI: http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/400627ar DOI: 10.7202/400627ar Note : les règles d'écriture des références bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les différents domaines du savoir. Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter à l'URI https://apropos.erudit.org/fr/usagers/politique-dutilisation/ Document téléchargé le 9 février 2017 11:30 Laval théologique et philosophique, 47, 3 (octobre 1991) TILLICH, ADORNO, AND THE DEBATE ABOUT EXISTENTIALISM Guy B. HAMMOND RESUME. — On veut montrer ici que Paul Tillich et Théodore Adorno se sont engagés dans un dialogue important à propos de leur évaluation de Vexistentialisme et de ses principaux protagonistes, Kierkegaard et Heidegger. Uexamen de cette thèse se fait à partir d'une sélection d'écrits de Tillich et d'Adorno. La comparaison entre La décision socialiste de Tillich et le Kierkegaard d'Adorno trouve un point commun dans le thème de l'attente et de l'espérance. On trouve aussi dans les publications de cette même période un débat sur le concept de l'«essence» humaine. Les références plus récentes de Tillich à la pensée existentialiste mani- festent l'influence de la première critique de l'existentialisme faite par Adorno, alors que celui-ci n'inclut pas la perspective de Tillich dans sa dernière critique. On en conclut que les différences marquées et persistantes entre ces deux auteurs ne doivent pas cacher l'importance de leurs points communs. SUMMARY. — It is argued that one realm of discourse where Paul Tillich and Theodor Adorno engaged in significant dialogue with each other was in their assessments of existentialism and of its leading proponents, Kierkegaard and Heidegger. This thesis is explored through an examination of selected publications of Tillich and Adorno. A comparison of Tillich's The Socialist Decision and Adorno's Kierke- gaard: Construction of the Aesthetic/mds a common focus on the theme of expec- tation/hope. A debate regarding the concept of a human "essence" is found in publications of the same period. Tillich's later use of the existentialist perspective is found to reflect aspects of Adorno's early critique of existentialism, and Adorno's later critique is shown not to include Tillich's particular version. It is concluded that although differences remained between them, these should not blind us to significant commonalities. P aul Tillich and Theodor Adorno are both acknowledged to be among the intellectual leaders of our time — figures who initiated major tendencies of 20th century thought. Because of their prominence any evidence of significant influence of either 343 GUY B. HAMMOND upon the other will be of interest to the scholarly community. Since the fact of their friendship over the years, both in Frankfurt and in New York City, is well known, the question naturally arises : was there any substantial influence of either upon the other ? Did their personal interactions have any appreciable effect on their philosophical or theological formulations? Since Tillich was already a mature, widely-published scholar when the much younger Adorno turned up as one of his graduate students in Frankfurt, can evidence of an elder mentor be detected in Adorno's writings? Or did the brilliant student in time come to have a major impact on his former professor? Some analysts have concluded that there was no significant intellectual influence of Tillich on Adorno. Susan Buck-Mors, in a study of Adorno entitled The Origin of Negative Dialectics, expresses the view that "Tillich's intellectual position was quite different, and he cannot be said to have influenced Adorno. Their relationship was a personal one"1. Martin Jay's Adorno conveys a similar impression2. On the other hand, few accounts of Tillich's theology list Adorno among those exerting a major influence on Tillich3. Are these assessments correct? What if anything did these two have in common beyond their "personal relationship"? In order to explore this question I propose to look at the ways in which Tillich and Adorno dealt with the perspective known as existentialism and with its leading figures (primarily Kierkegaard and Hei- degger). I believe that the debates about existentialism and whether an existentialist ontology is possible and desirable proved to be one area where their interaction with each other was important for both. This is not to say that they agreed on all counts, but that each took significant account of the perspective represented by the other. At the very least I claim that setting their views on these issues in juxtaposition clarifies the positions of each. I. A COMPARISON OF ADORNO'S KIERKEGAARD: CONSTRUCTION OF THE AESTHETIC AND TILLICH' THE SOCIALIST DECISION I begin with a discussion of the doctoral dissertation written by Adorno under Tillich's supervision in 1930-31 and published in 1933: Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic. This difficult work has now been translated into English4. Probably the 1. Susan BUCK-MORS, The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute, New York, The Free Press, 1977, pp. 211 and 237. 2. Martin JAY, Adorno. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1984 Jay states that Tillich "nominally sponsored" Adorno's dissertation, p. 30. 3. This gap is recognizable in the fact that Tillich's relation to Heidegger is always discussed in the literature on Tillich, but the Neo-Marxist criticism of Heidegger — which Tillich agreed with — is seldom given careful attention. Cf. eg. Alexander MCKELWAY, The Systematic Theology of Paul Tillich, New York, Delta Book, 1964, p. 27; Bernard MARTIN, The Existentialist Theology of Paul Tillich, New York, Bookman Associates, 1963, pp. 18, 26 and elsewhere. David HOPPER, in Tillich: A Theological Portrait, New York, J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1968, esp. 84; 96-100 gives a more nuanced discussion of Tillich's relation to Heidegger, but still without reference to Adorno. Ronald STONE, in Paul Tillich's Radical Social Thought, Atlanta, John Knox Press, 1980, and John STUMME in Socialism in Theological Perspective: A Study of Paul Tillich, 1918-1933 (Scholars Press, 1978) contribute to the overcoming of this omission. 4. Theodor ADORNO, Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1989. 344 TILLICH, ADORNO, AND THE DEBATE ABOUT EXISTENTIALISM author's reputation for obscurity will only be enhanced in the English-speaking world by this translation. According to a recollection recorded in the Paucks' Tillich biography Tillich professed not to understand it5. But less than a year after its 1933 publication Tillich (already in the United States) wrote an especially clear and concise short review for the Journal of Philosophy6. Is there any evidence of Tillich as a dialogue partner in the writing of this book? Aided by a recent review by Jeanne Schuler, by the translator's Foreword, and by Tillich's review, I offer these tentative reflections7. Adorno is intent on criticizing Kierkegaard, and hence existentialism, for offering in fact a new form of idealism. In an ascetic fashion Kierkegaard turns away from real life into a subjectivity that as Schuler puts it "leaves the world as it is"8. The subjective ego claims freedom from the world, but this claim cannot be taken at face value. It ignores the way in which consciousness is dependent upon objective factors. The anxieties and insecurities of the supposedly isolated self are actually the creation of particular social circumstances. Kierkegaard's construction of the self amounts to an idealist ontology where the self is pictured in retreat from history into an abstract "nature". And Adorno sees this "flight toward subjectivity" as, in the words of Tillich's review, at the same time "a flight into the prehistoric regions of myth"9. Alongside this static ontology of subjectivity, however, Adorno finds something else more fragile and fleeting. In the melancholy of the aesthetic he finds alongside of the "defiant self assertion" of "autonomous subjectivity" a shattered, melancholic subjectivity. Melancholy, says Adorno, appears early and late in Kierkegaard "breaking through the foundation of subjectivity and polarizing itself objectively into judgment and grace"10. "Its ruins", he says, "are the ciphers on which Kierkegaard reflects, and hope (Hoffnung) is integral to the absurdity of its desire."11 The longing found here is not for the restoration of a "lost immediacy" but for an impossible yet promised future fulfillment. Commenting on Kierkegaard's assertion in the fragmentary "Dia- psalmata" that "my soul has lost its potentiality", Adorno explains: "Such potentiality is not so much a mirage of what has been lost as an unfulfilled, thin, prophetic, but nevertheless exact scheme of what is to be. [...] In contradiction to the superficial intention of systematic completeness, the 'Diapsalmata' work toward the 'original script of human existence'."12 Adorno proceeds to describe two different responses to these traces and fragments of a longed-for happiness. "Endless, useless reading" of these signs is the "empty infinity of the reflection uploads/Litterature/ article-quot-tillich-adorno-and-the-debate-about-existentialism-quot-guy-b-hammond.pdf