September 8, 1937

Theodor Adorno (September 11, 1903 to August 6, 1969) and Gretel Karplus were married in England on September 8, 1937. The German sociologist and music theoretician was expecting a job in New York and soon they left for America, though of course since they had family and friends who had not escaped the Nazis, there was no leaving behind the horror.
Adorno was one of those thinkers concerned to understand what happened in the 30s and 40s in Germany, that nation which within the memory of many, had once been counted the world leader in pedagogy.  

Here is a picture of the woman he married:





Adorno's sociology was a sophisticated analysis that shaded into philosophical investigation. He noted that language was used to encourage conformist behavior. This is because terms we assume will clarify a situation, can actually discourage self-understanding. An example would be patriotic jargon. He noted that words, in a process called reification, can actually obscure what the words refer to, rather than illuminate. Adorno thought that what he called the "remainder", that part of what a word refers to, which is not captured by the word or phrase, could itself be specified. This is an over-reliance on the rational mind.  I suspect a closer analysis on Adorno's part might have led him to wonder how anything was really captured in a word. But that is not the course he took.

His book, The Jargon of Authenticity, (first published in German in 1964) points to the history of German philosophy as leading to a devaluation of verbal reality. Leading to and including Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 to May 26, 1976). His critique of Heidegger is that Heidegger intimates the reality of being while refusing to be specific. In this manner, Adorno says, Heidegger protects himself from any argument, since he can claim anyone who verbalizes his thinking must also be falsifying it. Adorno describes this situation by a picture of Heidegger refusing to actually "step into the temple." The temple here is "philosophy" -- whose traditional job was to shed light on reality, on "being" itself. The content of Heidegger's writing is composed of "ritual preliminaries" instead of a risky analysis of reality. Adorno says that few people are willing to "tie a warning bell around the cat's neck," that is -- speak against the emptiness of Heidegger's thinking. Adorno fastidiously adds that this emptiness is not the same as incomprehensibility.

Others have noted about Adorno's thinking that -

Adorno's conscious attempt to write in a style that is difficult to consume or understand attests to his admiration of Schönberg as well, as he praised difficult works of both art and philosophy, maintaining that a struggle was necessary to achieve the true value of understanding.

More information is available about Adorno at Notre Dame's web site., including mention of his wife.  Adorno will remain a star in the story of the world's response to Germany in the 2oth century.