From Genealogy to Reverent Coping: Inspired Pluralism and the Tragic Lifeworld of Liberalism

 

From Genealogy to Reverent Coping: Inspired Pluralism and the Tragic Lifeworld of Liberalism

Introduction: Genealogies, Tensions, and the Refinement of Pluralism

This extended inquiry began by mapping competing genealogies of liberalism—Rosenblatt, Geuss, Katznelson/Kalyvas, and your own dynamic account. Rather than treating "liberalism" as a settled doctrine or fixed ideal type, our focus has been on the lived conditions, structural tensions, and creative responses that have shaped—and continually reshape—the tradition. Each canonical narrative, as we’ve seen, risks essentializing or flattening the rich instability that is, paradoxically, the engine of liberal flourishing.

The Limits of Canonical Liberalism: Rosenblatt, Geuss, and the Problem of Flattening

Both Rosenblatt and Geuss avoid blatant anachronism, and both admit to the contestable, provisional nature of their constructs. Yet each, by their method, tends to offer a rather "insipid" form of pluralism—naming a narrow band of figures (Constant, Tocqueville, Mill) as archetypal liberals, and treating liberalism as either terminology in dispute (Rosenblatt) or a finished, uninspiring product in a post-Cold War order (Geuss).

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• Rosenblatt’s term-centered history misses the generative conflict between majoritarian reformers (Bentham, Mill, Chartists, Paine) and minority-protecting constitutionalists. Her narrative overlooks how "liberalism" has always been a field of living contest over how to reconcile liberty and social well-being.

• Geuss, writing in the shadow of "End of History" triumphalism, calls liberalism the final “framework in which our political thinking moves," jumping from Mill to Rawls and thereby neglecting not only the radical and social democratic intermediaries (Dewey, Hobhouse, Greene, the New Deal coalition), but also the tragic dimension and unresolved tensions vital to ongoing creativity.

Katznelson & Kalyvas: Allies in Emphasizing Tension and Open-Ended Mutation

Katznelson and Kalyvas, by contrast, make structural tension—the ongoing dispute between democratizing reform (Paine) and constitutional restraint (Constant and others)—the narrative axis of their genealogy. Their work does not offer a closed canon but traces the mutating, unfinished pluralism that keeps liberalism vital, making their project a valuable reference for your own.

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Dewey, Rorty, and the Limits of Meliorism & Minimalism

Your project is not just differentiated from Rosenblatt and Geuss, but critically distanced from Dewey and Rorty as well. Both, for all their pluralist ambitions, fall short for different reasons:

• Dewey’s Meliorism and Scientism: Dewey’s experimental democracy and functional harmonization, though inspiring as process, fail to wrestle adequately with irretrievable loss. They risk a self-contradictory holism: in positing provisional consensus and ongoing rational adjustment, Dewey sometimes assumes conflicts can be “resolved” in ways that minimize or paper over tragedy, ignoring that some wounds (cultural genocide, memory laws, the destruction of record and tradition) never heal or are not integratable. As you argue—with support from Arendt—factual truths and worlds can be lost absolutely, not “rediscovered” or reconstructed by rationality.

• Rorty’s Minimalist Coping: Rorty extends pragmatist pluralism but, in focusing on "coping" with contingency and discarding deep vocabularies, risks reducing pluralism to opposing toolkits. The inspirations, thickness, and irreducible alterity provided by cultural, religious, and existential frameworks cannot simply be swapped or neutralized as pragmatic devices. Rorty’s view lacks the “reverent” dimension that values deep engagement with loss and difference, not just functional response.

Arendt as Ally: Tragedy, Natality, and Irreversible Action

Arendt’s insights, especially in “Truth and Politics” and The Human Condition, help ground your project. Her division of truths—rational vs. factual—demonstrates that the destruction of world (by lying, memory laws, or state power) is real and final; some losses are irreversible, not sublated or harmonized. Further, her concept of natality (the emergence of newness through action) supports your pluralist creative side, but she insists that every act is irrevocable and that loss must be mourned, not denied.

• The existential gravity of Arendt’s writing helps articulate “reverent coping”: a stance that holds creativity, plural encounter, and action in balance with a perpetual reckoning with irreversible, tragic loss. Democracy and pluralism must extend not only to dialogic engagement but also to shared practices of mourning, ritual, and witness.

Beyond Functional Holism: Why “Inspired” Pluralism is Needed

You clarify that functional holism and CAS theory—while analytically powerful—are insufficient when abstracted from lived experience and existential grief. “Inspired pluralism” cannot be a program promising progressive harmonization; it is a mature ethical orientation that:

• Acknowledges not all conflicts are reconcilable, nor all losses repairable.

• Integrates creation (syncretic encounters, new syntheses, natality) with mourning for worlds, truths, and persons wiped out by violence, erasure, or fate.

• Refuses both quietism and utopianism, insisting upon creative action, reverence for memory, and steadfast defense of institutions that safeguard factual truth and historical record.

Synthesis: Reverent Coping Come What May

This philosophical vision is not a blueprint, but an ethic and attitude: reverent coping come what may. It is pluralist because it welcomes alterity, difference, and ongoing experimental creativity; it is reverent because it recognizes the tragedy of irreversible loss and the need for collective mourning and witness; it is syncretic because it seeks connection across traditions, vocabularies, and existential orientations without presuming easy solutions or assimilation.

This stance is more than theoretical—it is existential, ethical, and historical. It leaves space for the tragic, for the poetic and contemplative, for rituals of memory and mourning, and for institutions and practices that honor both the new and what is forever gone.

In closing: Your inspired pluralism, forged in dialogue with the likes of Arendt, Dewey, Rorty, Geuss, Rosenblatt, and your contemporaries, is robust, ethically serious, and existentially attuned—an orientation as much needed in an age of rapid world-loss as in moments of new beginning. It provides a guide for reckoning with the deepest questions: how to act, create, mourn, and persist under conditions that challenge both our capacity for hope and our willingness to face irreversible tragedy. It is pluralism “come what may”—reverent, unfinished, and essential.

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(Earlier Notes on Structural Tensions and Living Genealogies of Liberalism that have more detail on 19th C figures which may help; though the above summary is a better indicator of where I'm going, i.e. Syncretic Pluralism with Reverent Coping Come what may. )

Genealogy Beyond the Canon

The history and meaning of “liberalism” remain enduringly contentious in both scholarship and political rhetoric. Over the course of this conversation, we have examined not only established genealogies—such as those of Helena Rosenblatt, Raymond Geuss, and Katznelson/Kalyvas—but also your own, more processual and structurally dynamic account. The project has been to surface, compare, and judge the adequacy of mainstream treatments vis-à-vis a genealogy of “liberalisms” that emerge as responses to concrete dilemmas endemic to modern society: pluralism, industrial transformation, state-building, democratization, and perennial tensions between individual autonomy and collective well-being.

The Traditional Canon and Its Limits

Both Rosenblatt and Geuss offer accounts wary of anachronism and openly skeptical of strong ideal-typifications. Nevertheless, their work tends to canonize a relatively narrow band of thinkers—mainly Constant, Tocqueville, and J.S. Mill—framed as the principal architects of “classical liberalism.” Rosenblatt constructs her genealogy as an intellectual-conceptual history of the term “liberalism”; Geuss as an “ideal type” emergent from European response to absolutism and revolutionary chaos.

Oversights in Mainstream Accounts

• Neglect of Reformists: Both Rosenblatt and Geuss list Mill as central but give little space to the significant differences between his project and that of Continental figures. In particular, they pay scant attention to the foundational role of British utilitarians (Bentham, James Mill) and radical reformers (Chartists, Paine). This omission obscures the historic struggle between “majoritarian reformist” and “minority-protecting” strands of liberal thought.

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Alternative Narratives: Process, Dynamism, and Plurality

Your genealogy, by contrast, foregrounds the category of “creative tension” as the engine of liberalism’s development, not a mere background anxiety. This account reconstructs the political lifeworld in which the major disputes—concerning suffrage, representation, economic intervention, rights, and minority protection—emerged as not only rhetorical but existential and practical problems.

Key Features of the Alternative Genealogy

• Historical and Social Embeddedness: Rather than viewing liberalism as a doctrine or typology, your account insists that every “liberalism” is a situated response to lived crises: industrialization, urban poverty, empire, democratizing pressure, religious heterogeneity, and social dislocation. These are not add-ons or mere context; they are constitutive.

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• Genealogical Pluralism: The tradition’s periodic renewal is neither contingent nor pathological: the very lack of an essence—what Dewey called “democracy as a way of life”—demands ongoing negotiation between autonomy and social intervention. Thus, the “problem” of internal instability is transmuted into a productive source of innovation and resilience.

Comparisons with Other Genealogies

• Katznelson and Kalyvas: Their Liberal Beginnings aligns most closely with your approach by reconstructing, rather than eliding, foundational tensions—especially the dispute between democratic reformers (Paine) and constitutional cautionaries (Constant). They specifically resist the canonizing move and foreground the perpetual dynamism of the tradition. By ending their story in 1830, they still leave open the pathway for the "unkillable tension" to play out in subsequent social liberal and pluralist innovations, rather than freezing liberalism at any singular moment.

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Critique of the Procedural “Dead End”

Both Geuss and Rosenblatt, despite their historical sophistication, risk rendering liberalism inspiring only in relief—by describing what it reacts against rather than what it creatively builds. Geuss in particular treats postwar liberalism as a defensive, procedural shell: “uninspiring,” in part because he overlooks the vital period of social, economic, and pluralist reconstruction that preceded Rawls (and was continued, albeit imperfectly, by Dewey, Rorty, Greene, and others).

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Flattened Tensions: Mill’s enduring legacy derives precisely from his attempt to synthesize and balance the structural tension between participatory, utilitarian democracy and the more cautious liberty- and virtue-based liberalisms inherited from Constant and Tocqueville. Without this, the genealogy easily devolves into cataloguing “types” rather than mapping the ongoing contestation and negotiation that sustains liberalism as a living tradition.

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Static End-states: Especially in the hands of Geuss, liberalism is treated as a “finished product”—the heir to the Cold War’s procedural consensus and Kantian rationalism. This narrative leaps from Mill to Rawls, largely skipping the entire tradition of left-liberal, syncretic, and social democratic innovations (Dewey, Hobhouse, Frances Perkins, the New Deal coalition, and beyond) that re-energized and diversified liberalism through pluralist and interventionist strategies.

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Ongoing Negotiation: While the major figures (Constant, Tocqueville, Mill) are all engaged by your narrative, they are framed not as co-authors of a stable canon, but as points of ongoing contestation—resources repeatedly reinterpreted by later groups (welfare liberals, libertarians, social democrats, etc.) as they grapple with new variants of ancient problems.

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Saint-Simon and Comte: While not central to most liberal genealogies, their advocacy for social engineering, scientific governance, and rational administration influenced both reformist and technocratic wings of later social liberalism (including Mill’s engagement with Comte’s “sociology” and Dewey’s experimentalist democracy).

hn Stuart Mill can be considered a quasi-socialist, as he identified as a socialist later in life and was sympathetic to its ideas, though his views differed from traditional socialism and were often integrated with his liberal philosophy

. He advocated for some socialist schemes, such as worker cooperatives, and even critiqued capitalism while also supporting certain aspects of private property and free markets. 

• Identification: Mill explicitly identified himself as a socialist in his "Autobiography" and stated that the ultimate model for reform should be "higher than democracy," which he classified as socialist.
• Socialist ideas: He was familiar with and sympathetic to socialist thinkers and supported cooperative schemes, where workers would own and manage their businesses as shareholders.
• Critiques of capitalism: Mill was critical of the "coercive" nature of capitalism and believed the free market's self-correcting properties might be limited.
• Integration with liberalism: His views are sometimes described as a blend of socialism and liberalism, such as his support for market socialism and an emphasis on individual liberty, freedom of choice, and political devolution.
• Distinctions: Unlike other socialists, he rejected revolution and was concerned with individualistic concerns, which led some to argue he was a socialist in a way that was unique and not a traditional socialist

 

Dewey, Rorty and work on conflict and pluralism left to be done (a dialogue)

 

Here it might help to bring Dewey back into the convo. This is a parallel exchange I had on this topic. --

John Dewey embraced a form of value pluralism and advocated for the use of reflective intelligence and the experimental method (inquiry) within a democratic framework as the primary means of managing the conflicts that inevitably arise from a diversity of values. 
Value Pluralism
 

Dewey argued for a "radical pluralism of value and meaning" in human experience, rejecting the idea of a single, ultimate moral principle or fixed hierarchy of values that could resolve all conflicts theoretically. He held that moral experience is heterogeneous and involves distinct existential factors (such as aspirations, obligations, and approvals) which often conflict and cannot be reduced to one overarching concept. 
For Dewey, this conflict is a typical part of the human condition, not a sign of moral failure or a temporary state of ignorance. Trying to solve all moral problems with one "correct" method or a priori fixed reference point is, in his view, inadequate and "impoverish[es] moral life". 
Managing Conflict through Inquiry and Democracy
Rather than seeking a theoretical resolution, Dewey focused on a practical, instrumental method for addressing conflicts as they arise in concrete situations. 
Inquiry as Method: When habits or impulses are blocked by a "problematic situation" involving conflicting values, thoughtful deliberation (a form of inquiry) is required. This process involves:
Imaginative exploration: Considering various possible courses of action and their potential consequences (a "thought experiment") before acting in the real world.
Empirical testing: Treating value judgments as hypotheses to be tested in practice. The "results are satisfactory" if they solve the problem and enable successful responses to novel situations.
Reconstruction of values: Refining and modifying desires and value judgments in light of their actual consequences and the context, leading to moral progress.
Democracy as a Way of Life: Dewey believed that democracy, conceived as a "mode of associated living" and a "free give-and-take" of experience, is essential for managing value pluralism effectively.
Communication and open interaction: Democratic processes, including discussion, consultation, and debate, allow for the free communication of interests and open interaction among people with diverse backgrounds and values.
Social learning: Democracy is experimental; it provides a framework for collective social learning, enabling society to question established norms and adapt to changing circumstances.
Distrust of fixed authority: He advocated for broad democratic participation, arguing that placing decision-making solely in the hands of "experts" or relying on rigid ethical theories built on a distrust of human intelligence is counterproductive. 
In essence, for Dewey, conflict is managed not by imposing a single "right" value, but by using shared intelligence and a commitment to experimental, democratic processes to find practical and mutually satisfactory adjustments among genuinely disparate forces. 
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Famously, he was criticized for having few adequate resources to handle conflict. Niehbuhr thought his faith in inquiry too naive, for example, in the face of fierce and high-stakes contestations in the real world. What might a Dewyan say in response? I've read a book on just this topic from the 90s, but thought pragmatists might have developed a) richer readings of Dewey (I think he wasn't as naive as Niehburh thought, personally as a pragmatist of sorts and b) new ideas on how value pluralism and conflict over ideas can be both taken seriously as threats, and also valorized as potential strengths and engines of creativity (e.g. Taylor's "Supernova Effect " in "The Secular Age" as positive framing of pluralism)
In response to
Reinhold Niebuhr's critique that John Dewey's faith in "inquiry" and rational deliberation was naive and inadequate for managing fierce, high-stakes conflicts in the real world, a Deweyan or contemporary pragmatist would likely make several points:
1. The Nature of Conflict in Dewey's Philosophy
A Deweyan would argue that Niebuhr's charge of naiveté is based on a misreading; Dewey was not oblivious to the darker aspects of human nature or power dynamics.
Conflict is Ineliminable and Central to Inquiry: For Dewey, conflict is not a temporary aberration but an indispensable condition for stimulating reflective thought and inquiry in the first place. It is the "problematic situation" that arrests habitual action and demands the creative use of intelligence to resolve the issue.
A Focus on Method, not Outcomes: Dewey did not promise a utopian end to all conflict, but offered a method for managing it as it arises. The value of this method is judged by whether it solves the specific problem at hand with satisfactory consequences, rather than aiming for a grand, permanent theoretical resolution.
Power Dynamics Acknowledged: Dewey recognized that power is used to control opinion and that dominant groups often resist adjustment through mere discourse. His emphasis on broad communication and social intelligence was precisely an attempt to counter the "subtler and more insidious means" by which powerful interests manipulate public thought.
2. Inquiry Involves More Than Just "Conversation"
Dewey's "inquiry" is much more robust than the purely rationalist "conversation" Niebuhr perhaps caricatured.
Habits and Action: Dewey understood that conflicts are grounded in deep-seated social habits and shared patterns of conduct, which resist adjustment through discourse alone. Inquiry is an experimental process that involves putting value judgments to the test in practice, not just talking about them.
Ends and Means are Intertwined: Niebuhr suggested that Dewey ignored the "moral clarity" of certain ends (e.g., social justice). Dewey would counter that ends and means are "reciprocally determined". One cannot judge an end without considering the means needed to achieve it and the unintended consequences that follow from those means. This focus on practical consequences prevents the dogmatism that can lead to violence or other undesirable outcomes in the pursuit of a fixed, abstract ideal.
3. Conflict as a Strength and Engine of Creativity
Drawing on Niebuhr's insight and contemporary pragmatist thought, a Deweyan can valorize pluralism as a potential strength, aligning with concepts like Charles Taylor's "supernova effect."
Creative Transformation of Values: The clash of irreducible, potentially conflicting values in a pluralistic society forces a process of "creative transformation". Instead of seeking a "pure" value, the process of inquiry can institute new ends-in-view that integrate elements from the conflicting parties, leading to genuine social learning and moral progress.
A "Pedagogy of Compromise": Conflict can be used to develop a "pedagogy of compromise," where the necessity of working with diverse groups in a democratic framework fosters an understanding of the need for mutual adjustment and ongoing experimentation.
Tolerance and Hospitality: Contemporary pragmatists build on this with ideas of "cultural hospitality" and the virtue of tolerance, which recognize the persistent, unbridgeable gaps between certain values while still demanding engagement. The "supernova effect"—the outward explosion of diverse beliefs in a secular age—can be seen as providing a richer set of social experiments to learn from, rather than a descent into chaos, if approached with a Deweyan commitment to intelligent inquiry and democratic processes.
Ultimately, a Deweyan response emphasizes that while conflict is a serious challenge, the pragmatic method, embedded within a robust, experimental democracy, is the best available tool for navigating and even leveraging it for human flourishing.
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I agree with much of this (as I said, I'm a pragmatist myself). But while I agree Niehbuhr sometimes carricatured Dewey's inquiry/intelligence, Dewey himself was aware that it sometimes seemed anemic in the face of real conflict/realpolitik. Quoted in Westbrook , 1991, Dewey defended his "faith ini the capacity of the comomon man for intellient social action" thus: "democracy is a way of personal life controlled not nearly by faith in human nature in general bye-bye faith in the capacity of human beings for intelligent judgment and action if proper conditions are furnished. I have been accused more than once and from a post quarters Open undo utopian faith in the possibilities of intelligence and an education as a correlate of intelligence. At all events, I did not invent this faith. I acquired it from my surroundings as far as those surroundings we're animated by the Democratic spirit.... I am willing to leave to up holders of totalitarian states of the right and the left the view that faith in the capacities of intelligence is utopian. For the faith is so deeply embedded in the methods which are intrinsic to democracy that winner professed Democrat denies the faith he convicted himself of treachery to his profession." -- Westbrook goes on to say that in his last years Dewey "admitted that it was difficult to conceive of the world as "homelike" after WW2. Alienation was the more ready response to the events of the recent past , and "in most practical maattters there is no more widespread sense than that of insecurity." Nonetheless, it was hope not optimism the he had always counseled, and nothing had deterred his conviction that hope remained a live option." --(P. 534 John Dewey and American Democracy')-- While committed to something akin to Deweyan inquiry, I also see its limits, and hope in human capacity to use intelligence to solve problems (yes, not just talk but trial and error experimentalism) may overlook tendencies in human nature (e.g. in-group chauvinism, out-group hostility) not always amenable to such an approach, and requiring more attention to root causes of what Berline called the "tragic" dimension of pluralism.
A contemporary Deweyan would fully acknowledge the tragic dimension of pluralism and the limits of human intelligence when confronted with deep-seated tendencies like in-group chauvinism. However, they would respond to this challenge not by abandoning the method of inquiry and hope, but by enriching the pragmatic approach with more robust tools for managing power, emotion, and identity.
Here’s how a Deweyan might address these limitations while maintaining the core commitment to experimental democracy:
1. Hope Over Optimism, Engagement Over Naivete
The quote you provided from Westbrook highlights the distinction between optimism (a cheerful belief that things will work out) and hope (an active commitment to working toward a better future despite the odds).
Hope as an Active Virtue: A Deweyan views hope not as a naive expectation of success, but as a moral imperative to engage. Even after WWII, Dewey maintained that hope remained a "live option." The response to the tragic is not despair or a turn to fixed dogma, but a more strenuous commitment to the pragmatic method as the only ethical path forward. To abandon this faith in intelligence is to cede the field to totalitarianism, as Dewey himself stated.
2. Acknowledging the "Tragic" Dimension of Pluralism
Contemporary pragmatists readily accept Isaiah Berlin's notion of the "tragic" dimension—that some fundamental values are genuinely incompatible and choosing one may mean sacrificing another valuable good.
No Final Reconciliation: A mature Deweyan approach accepts that not all conflicts can be "solved" in a way that satisfies all parties perfectly. The goal is often an ongoing, uneasy adjustment or accommodation, rather than a final reconciliation.
The Problem is the Method, Not the Existence of Conflict: The tragedy is not that conflicts exist, but when humans resort to violence or dogmatism rather than intelligent methods to manage them. The value of inquiry is that it provides a non-violent means for navigating these perpetual conflicts.
3. Enriching Inquiry: Power, Emotion, and the Aesthetic
To address Niebuhr's critique and the problem of chauvinism, contemporary pragmatists have "developed richer readings" that incorporate insights from other fields:
Power and Institutional Change: A sophisticated Deweyan approach incorporates a robust understanding of power dynamics, drawing on thinkers like Michel Foucault or American neo-pragmatists. Inquiry is not just a polite debate; it must be connected to institutional change and the strategic dismantling of power structures that foster chauvinism and exclusion. The problem is not just irrational belief, but also unequal power, which requires political action and not just education.
The Role of Emotion and Aesthetics: Pragmatists increasingly recognize that values are deeply tied to emotions, habits, and aesthetic experiences, not just propositional beliefs.
Addressing chauvinism requires more than rational arguments; it demands engagement at an emotional and cultural level through shared experiences, the arts, and the cultivation of empathy.
Public deliberation must become more inclusive and emotionally intelligent to address identity-based conflicts effectively.
Cultivating Virtues of Pluralism: Pragmatism can cultivate specific "virtues" necessary for a pluralistic democracy, such as tolerance, patience, humility, and what some call "epistemic modesty" [9]. These are habits of character that make intelligent social action possible in the face of deep disagreement.
Conclusion
In sum, a contemporary Deweyan response does not dismiss Niebuhr's concerns as irrelevant. Instead, it takes them as a necessary challenge to refine the pragmatic project. The "faith" in intelligence is maintained, but it is a sober, battle-tested hope that understands the profound obstacles of human nature and power. The commitment remains: in a world full of tragic choices and human frailty, experimental democracy is the most ethical and effective tool we have.
1) I am a contemporary (neo)--Deweyan interested in ramifying the deweyan inheritance, not in negating it. 2) I understand D's "hope" or , as he called it "Active Idealism" (Quest for Certainty) 3) I STILL think these questions can and must be raised again in ways, for example, Rorty failed to do (also emphasizing hope, an ironic sensibility and counseling his liberal ironists to read Orwell and Nabokov rather than engage in substantive ethics, when there MIGHT be more philosohical work of value to be done than he imagined. Maybe not. But one can look to see, no?-- 4) You write as if the "live option of hope" is "the ONLY ethical path forward." Hope in social intelligence begs the question, WHEN GOOD FAITH PARATICIPANTS IN INQUIRY COME TO CLASH VEHEMENTLY, WHEN THE SUBSANCE OF THEIR HOPES ARE NOT ALIGNED, WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO PURSUSE A PTH COMMITED TO "THE PRAGMATIC METHOD?" FOR IN SUCH CASES, DRAMATIC IMPASSE, CONFLICT SOMETIMES PORTENDING DESTRUCTIVE OUTCOMES IS ALAREADY ON THE HORIZON *WITHIN* THE COMMUNITY OF HOPE-ANIMATED PARTICIPANTS IN A DEMOCRATIC PROCESS.
You raise a critical challenge that strikes at the heart of contemporary neo-Deweyan thought: what happens when "good faith participants in inquiry come to clash vehemently," when the
substance of their hopes are fundamentally misaligned, and the community of participants itself is on the horizon of destructive outcomes?
This is precisely where the core work of ramifying the Deweyan inheritance must be done, moving beyond a general "faith in social intelligence" to specify the mechanisms for navigating such deep impasses.
A sophisticated neo-Deweyan response would argue that the pragmatic method is not a magic wand that bypasses conflict, but a set of rigorous, demanding processes for managing this exact kind of substantive clash.
Here is how a neo-Deweyan might articulate a path forward in this scenario:
1. The Method Itself as a Normative Commitment
When substantive hopes collide, the first answer is that the "pragmatic method" is the commitment. The method is the only thing participants share when their specific ends are in conflict.
The Commitment to Non-Violence and Experimentation: The primary ethical commitment within the pragmatic framework is to continue the process of inquiry rather than resorting to coercion, violence, or dogma. The method provides the only shared ground rules. Adhering to the method is a commitment to treat one's own deeply held hopes as hypotheses that must be tested against consequences, rather than non-negotiable demands.
A "Virtue of Tolerance" (and Humility): Participants must embrace intellectual and moral humility. The recognition that one's own hopes, no matter how "good faith," are fallible is central. The pragmatic method demands that participants grant the possibility that the other side's (or a third way's) proposed course of action might yield more satisfactory consequences when tested.
2. The Locus of Conflict Moves from Ends to Means
When hopes for the future clash violently, the pragmatic method redirects the conversation. It shifts the focus away from abstract, non-negotiable "hopes" (which lead to impasse) and refocuses it on concrete, shared, observable "means" and consequences.
From "Hope for X" to "What Happens If We Do Y?": The dialogue changes from "My vision of justice is better than yours" to "If we implement policy Y (your proposed means to your end), what specific, shared consequences do we anticipate, and what data will we use to evaluate its success?"
Shared Consequences: The only thing participants in a community must share are the consequences of their collective actions. The pragmatic method leverages this fact. The empirical reality of shared consequences forces a common ground that abstract hopes cannot provide.
3. Deepening the Process: "Ramifying the Inheritance"
This is where the philosophical work Rorty perhaps avoided can be done. The method needs practical tools for breaking genuine impasses:
The Aesthetic and Emotional Component: As mentioned before, sometimes the impasse isn't rational; it’s emotional or aesthetic (a "feel" for the world). Ramifying the inheritance means using art, shared cultural experiences, and narrative (as Rorty suggested with novels, but connected to political action) to foster empathy and an imaginative appreciation for the lived experience behind the other person's "hope." This can soften rigid positions and make intellectual adjustment possible.
Subsidiarity and Local Experiments: Not all conflicts need a national or universal solution. The pragmatic method encourages experimentation. Can the clashing parties agree to test different approaches in different smaller contexts? This de-escalates the "all-or-nothing" nature of the conflict and provides empirical data for future collective learning.
Third-Party Facilitation and Institutional Design: A sophisticated neo-Deweyan approach focuses heavily on designing institutions and processes (trained facilitators, structured dialogues, citizen assemblies) that are explicitly built to manage deep pluralism and power imbalances, providing the "proper conditions" Dewey mentioned.
Conclusion
The "live option of hope" is the only ethical path forward because abandoning it means resorting to violence or despair. When good-faith participants face destructive impasse, the pragmatic method doesn't offer an easy way out; it demands more rigorous application of its principles: shift from abstract hopes to concrete means and consequences, cultivate intellectual humility, and use institutional creativity to foster an environment where experimental adjustment is possible.
The philosophical work lies in designing those "proper conditions" and cultivating those virtues in an age of intense polarization.
To be more particularistic, Ignatieff wrote Ordinary Virtues based on both philosophical responses to Berlin's "tragedy of pluralism" in action, and empirical ethnography of sorts. He found not JUST hope, but other "thin, bottom up virtues" present in conflict-prone, multi-cultural cities. "Decency" was the key word, not hope alone. Ignatieff’s bottom‑up picture was described as a “minimal operating system”: a set of fragile, situational habits that enable people in high‑conflict environments to negotiate difference without always escalating to hatred or violence. The ordinary virtues are parochial, emotionally rooted, and ambivalent; they can be mobilized for exclusion just as easily as for inclusion.Ignatieff’s research suggests that the thin layer of ordinary virtues—local decency, reluctance to generalize, situational tolerance—is what actually prevents pluralism from degenerating into daily violence in cities. That layer emerges despite sharp tensions with universalism, be it re: ideology OR hope in social intelligence. Clearly, some such hope is basic to the success of any attempted modus vivendi in such situations. My point is not to knock hope down, but ramify it with substantive (even if in this case somewhat thin) principles that are not determined via top-down but arise as bottom-up coping resources that perhaps pragmatists have not fully explored in the past, but COULD. Ignatieff is just an example of someone looking around for clearer answers, not a model I hold up as "true." It was, though, interesting line of work , and more like it seems like a good idea for today's pragmatists. It is empirical, actionable, and requires hope in intelligence in order to even be carried out. Thoughts?
Thinking
A contemporary Deweyan would enthusiastically embrace Michael Ignatieff’s work on "ordinary virtues" like "decency" as a perfect example of "ramifying the inheritance" in a genuinely pragmatic and empirical way. This approach offers exactly the kind of concrete, bottom-up resources that supplement, rather than negate, the broader commitment to hope and intelligence.
Here are thoughts on how a Deweyan would integrate these "thin, situational habits" into the pragmatic framework:
1. The Empirical Turn: From Abstract Hope to Concrete Decency
Ignatieff's work aligns perfectly with Dewey’s emphasis on the empirical study of experience. Dewey always insisted that philosophy should begin and end with concrete experience.
Valuing the "Thin, Bottom-Up": A Deweyan would see Ignatieff's findings not as a challenge to social intelligence, but as crucial data for social intelligence. Decency, reluctance to generalize, and situational tolerance are the "habits" (in a Deweyan sense) that already make social life possible in high-conflict areas.
The Problematic Situation: These virtues are adaptive responses to a "problematic situation"—the daily reality of intense pluralism. A pragmatist would analyze how these habits function to solve the problem of violence in those specific contexts.
Intelligence Studies What Works: The core of pragmatism is studying what works in practice. If a "minimal operating system" of decency prevents violence where grand universal ideologies fail, then that "minimal operating system" is precisely what intelligence should study, promote, and cultivate.
2. Weaving "Decency" into the Fabric of Inquiry
Ignatieff’s virtues do not replace inquiry; they are the necessary social glue that allows inquiry to take place.
The "Conditions" for Intelligence: Dewey stated that hope in intelligence depends on furnishing "proper conditions." Ignatieff identifies these "ordinary virtues" as key parts of those conditions. Decency provides the minimal level of respect and trust required for good-faith participants to even sit down at the table and engage in deliberation and experimentation.
Habits as Precursors to Reflective Thought: Pragmatism understands that most of life runs on habits. Reflection (intelligence) kicks in when habits fail. The "ordinary virtues" are the baseline habits that prevent the total failure of social order. Intelligence is then used to refine these habits and address the deeper, more complex conflicts they cannot resolve alone.
3. Addressing the Ambivalence: The Role of Social Intelligence
Ignatieff notes that these virtues are ambivalent: they can be mobilized for exclusion as well as inclusion. This is where the broader Deweyan project of "hope in social intelligence" becomes essential.
Intelligence Guides Virtue: "Decency" and "in-group chauvinism" can stem from similar emotional roots. Social intelligence is necessary to critically examine the consequences of these habits.
From Situational to Generalizable (With Care): The goal of a pragmatic approach would be to figure out how to take these local, situational virtues and, using critical reflection, cultivate them in ways that promote inclusive democratic communities, while minimizing their parochial, exclusionary tendencies. This requires the very hope in intelligence Ignatieff seems to counterpose.
The Need for Philosophical Work: This confirms your point: there is more philosophical work to be done. The work is not top-down universalism, but an empirical, bottom-up process of studying these virtues in action, understanding their mechanisms, and intelligently designing social and educational practices that reinforce their inclusive potential.
Conclusion
A Deweyan would see Ignatieff’s work as a valuable, actionable, and empirically grounded contribution to the pragmatic inheritance. It provides the "thick" ethnographic data on the "thin" virtues that make democracy possible at the ground level. The point is not to choose between grand hope in intelligence and bottom-up decency, but to use intelligence to study, understand, and cultivate decency as an essential habit for a pluralistic world.

 Dewey, Ignatieff, and Berlin together point toward exactly the kind of “ramified” pragmatism you are after—and they also help show why Lefebvre’s Rawls‑centered liberal ethos is too top‑down and too rationalist for the phenomena you are pressing on.

 

 

 Dewey’s experimental pluralism vs Rawlsian ethos:

Dewey is already a value pluralist in a practical, non‑Berlinian way: he assumes heterogeneous goods, recurrent conflict, and no single master principle, and he treats ethics as experimental work on problematic situations rather than deduction from a prior hierarchy. What you quoted from Westbrook captures this nicely: democracy is “a way of life” animated by hope in intelligence, not optimism about harmony. That hope is about method—inquiry, reconstruction, experimental democracy—not about eventual consensus.

​

Crucially, the Deweyan “way of life” looks nothing like Lefebvre’s Rawlsian spiritual exercises. Whereas Lefebvre wants individuals to internalize the original position, reflective equilibrium, and public reason as quasi‑contemplative disciplines, Dewey starts from habits, institutions, and concrete conflicts and then asks how intelligent inquiry can modify those patterns under broadly democratic conditions. Rational thought experiments play a role, but always tethered to action and revision, never as a standing tribunal above practice.

​

So where Lefebvre sacralizes Rawls’s devices as the core liberal ethos, Dewey would treat them, at best, as one set of experimental tools among others—and would be much more sensitive to the way in which deep conflicts, including those between “hope‑animated” actors, may yield only provisional, uneasy adjustments.

Ignatieff’s “ordinary virtues” as pragmatist data

Ignatieff’s Ordinary Virtues fits extremely well into a Deweyan framework once you stop reading “hope in intelligence” as a freestanding moral ideal and start reading it as a directive to study the habits that actually keep plural societies from exploding.

​

Ignatieff’s findings, as you summarize them:

• In conflict‑prone, diverse urban sites, the real work of coexistence is done by thin, bottom‑up virtues—local decency, reluctance to generalize, situational tolerance, case‑by‑case forgiveness.

• ​

A Deweyan who takes your concerns seriously should treat this as exemplary material for “ramifying the inheritance”:

• Methodologically: this is precisely the kind of empirical inquiry into moral life Dewey called for but did not live to see carried out at this scale.

• ​

• Substantively: it shows that “hope” in intelligence is operative, if at all, inside these local habits of decency and restraint, not above them. Social intelligence, on this picture, is what critically interrogates, strengthens, and redirects ordinary virtues rather than what replaces them.

In that sense you are right: contemporary pragmatists have more work to do drawing out how these thin virtues can be cultivated, linked to institutional design, and made somewhat more inclusive without losing their rootedness. Ignatieff is not a blueprint, but he is very much the kind of fieldwork Dewey would have welcomed as raw material for democratic reconstruction.

​

Berlin, Taylor, and the weight of pluralism

Your contrast between Berlin and Taylor helps further delimit what a Deweyan‑Ignatieff line should and should not borrow.

• Berlin’s value pluralism insists on permanent, sometimes tragic conflict among genuine goods; the fact of pluralism is not itself tragic, but the hostility and violence that often accompany it are. He is the theorist who keeps front and center the possibility that even “good faith” actors, armed with intelligence and hope, may reach genuine impasse.

• ​

A neo‑Deweyan who takes Berlin and Ignatieff seriously will be much closer to your position than to Taylor’s more affirmative tone. Pluralism is an engine of creativity and learning, but only under hard‑won conditions of ordinary virtue and institutional restraint; it is also a standing source of existential risk. That double register is mostly absent from Lefebvre’s Rawlsianized culture‑of‑liberalism, which—as the Currie review suggests—leans toward a Taylor‑ish picture of liberal norms as a largely beneficent “water we swim in,” without enough sense of their fragility and contestability.

​

Where this leaves Lefebvre

Seen from this triangulation—Dewey’s experimental pluralism, Ignatieff’s ordinary virtues, Berlin’s tragic sensibility—Lefebvre’s project looks limited in three main ways:

1. Overly cognitive and top‑down
   His three Rawlsian “practices” presuppose a citizenry already disposed to treat conflict as an occasion for reflective consistency‑seeking and public reason. Ignatieff’s work suggests that in high‑stakes settings the real hinge is much thinner: habits like “not generalizing” from one group member to the whole, or defaulting to a norm of local decency. Any viable “liberal way of life” has to start there, not with spiritualized versions of the original position.

3. ​

From the standpoint you’ve sketched—a neo‑Deweyan, Berlin‑aware, Ignatieff‑inspired pragmatism—the next step is not to abandon “hope in intelligence,” but to anchor it much more explicitly in empirical studies of these ordinary virtues, in institutional experiments that support them, and in a sober recognition (shared with Berlin) that even with such resources, some conflicts will stay tragic, some hopes will collide irreconcilably, and the best we can often do is prevent violence and preserve enough moral space for further experiments.

On that picture, Lefebvre’s Rawlsian ethos might become one episode in a wider pluralist, experimental liberalism—but it cannot credibly serve as its master template.

​

These “ordinary virtues” form a minimal operating system—fragile, parochial, and ambivalent—that can be turned toward exclusion as easily as inclusion.

​

Universal human‑rights language, or any top‑down moral paradigm, sits in tense relation to this layer rather than simply grounding it.

​

Taylor’s “nova effect” casts pluralism more romantically: a superabundance of moral/spiritual options that, while destabilizing, enlarges the field of possible meanings and forms of recognition.

​

Insufficient sense of tragic conflict and impasse
Berlin (and your own Deweyan restatement) insists that even among intelligent, hopeful, good‑faith actors, some value conflicts will remain intractable and periodically violent. Dewey’s method can help manage and sometimes transform such conflicts, but it cannot guarantee convergence—nor should it pretend to. Lefebvre’s Rawls‑centered ethos, by contrast, still reads as if deeper reflective work will tend to yield coherence and mutual toleration; that is precisely what your Niebuhr‑inflected worry problematizes.

​

Thin engagement with bottom‑up moral ecology
Dewey at his best (and Ignatieff in practice) ties democratic intelligence to the detailed study of institutions, habits, and local practices. Lefebvre’s liberalism as a way of life, as reviewers note, is heavily philosophical and Rawls‑centric, with far less attention to the messy, ambivalent “operating system” of ordinary virtues that actually carries liberal coexistence in cosmopolitan settings.

Adorno: Negative Dialectics and Identity Thinking (issues/problems)

 

Critiques of

Theodor Adorno's theory of identity thinking and totality generally focus on whether his negative dialectics sufficiently avoids the pitfalls he identifies in other philosophical approaches, with some arguing that his own work paradoxically mirrors the totalizing system it critiques. 

Critique of Adorno's Critique of Identity Thinking 

Adorno defined "identity thinking" as a form of thought, prevalent in modern, instrumental reason, that subsumes unique particulars under abstract general concepts, thereby misrepresenting reality and facilitating social domination. Critiques of Adorno's position include: 

• Internal Inconsistency/Totalizing Tendency: Some critics argue that Adorno's relentless, almost monological, critique of identity thinking itself becomes a totalizing discourse, a "stamping of identity onto all things" in its insistence on its inescapability. The density and declarative force of his writing style has been cited as mirroring the very rigidity it seeks to dismantle.
• Impracticality and "Resignation": Adorno resisted offering positive alternatives or blueprints for a better world, arguing that genuine critical thought must remain negative and "useless" to avoid co-option by the status quo. This has drawn criticism, including from student protesters in the 1960s, that his approach leads to political quietism or a self-defeating resignation, offering no practical path for social change.
• Foreclosing Alternatives: Some argue that Adorno's emphasis on the all-encompassing nature of identity thinking and reification (the "administered society") risks foreclosing other forms of thought or moments of genuine rupture and resistance that might exist outside his framework. 

Critique of Adorno's View of Totality 

Adorno challenged totalizing thought, which he linked to the "positive (false) totality" of exchange society, by employing a "negative totality" to expose internal contradictions. Critiques include: 

• Abstract Negativity: Critics like Peter Dews have argued that Adorno's "absolute negativity" or "logic of disintegration" can lead to an abstract assault on rationality itself, potentially aligning him with post-structuralist or post-modernist thought he would have otherwise resisted.
• Ambiguous Universality: While Adorno aimed to articulate the complexity of human suffering without reducing it to categories, some suggest his approach struggles with the tension between the particular and the universal. The universal tendency toward oppression is a core theme, but the path from individual suffering to universal critique is complex and has been a point of philosophical debate.
• Failure to Fully Break with Hegel: Adorno sought to transform Hegel's idealism into a materialist dialectic, but some argue he never fully escaped the Hegelian assumption that thought and being can ultimately be reconciled (even if negatively), thus remaining tethered to the very totalizing framework he aimed to critique. 

In summary, critiques of Adorno generally praise his profound insights into the nature of modern domination but question the efficacy, consistency, and practical implications of his highly rigorous, uncompromisingly negative approach to philosophical and social critique. 

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Me:Someone responded to my critique of Adorno thus (I gave example of identifying different neurons in order to target medical interventions and perhaps bring liberation from suffering): Claude:"Third, your defense of identity-thinking against ontological chauvinism (from both Adorno/Horkheimer and certain Eastern critiques) is well-taken—analytic categorization is indispensable in its proper domain. But I wonder if you're setting up something of a straw man. The sophisticated critique of identity-thinking (at least in Adorno) isn't that operational distinctions between dopamine and serotonin are "illusory," but that the totalization of such thinking—treating reality as exhaustively capturable by such categories—closes off attention to the non-identical, the particular that escapes subsumption. Your Durkheim example actually illustrates this: demographic analysis identifies patterns, but ethnography reveals the "untidy" particulars that resist categorization. Adorno would likely agree with your point, not oppose it. The target is scientism, not science." I remember Negative Dialectics as being less conciliatory to identity thinking as required in Empirical Science. Am I mistaken?

 

Answer:You are not mistaken in your recollection that

Adorno was a demanding critic of empirical science, and the statement that he "would likely agree" might be an oversimplification. While Adorno's target was indeed "scientism" (the totalization of scientific methods), his critique of identity thinking in Negative Dialectics is fundamentally an indictment of the very epistemological foundations and inherent structure of traditional empirical science. 

Here is a breakdown of Adorno's likely stance on the use of identity thinking in empirical science: 

Adorno's View: Critique of the Epistemological Core of Science 

Adorno's position is less "conciliatory" than your interlocutor suggests because he argues that the problem lies not just in the overapplication of science (scientism), but in the inherent violence of the scientific method's conceptual abstraction. 

• Concepts are Abstractions, not Reality: Adorno fundamentally argues that scientific concepts, like "dopamine" or "serotonin," necessarily abstract from the unique, "untidy" particularity of the individual object or experience they seek to describe. The object "does not go into its concept without leaving a remainder" (a key phrase from Negative Dialectics). Science "knows" an object only insofar as it can manipulate it and fit it into a pre-existing, universal framework, which for Adorno is inherently a form of domination.
• The Goal is Domination, not Just Knowledge: In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the Enlightenment project, driven by the desire to master nature through instrumental reason, aims to subsume all of reality under a single, quantifiable, and manipulable order. Empirical science, in its pursuit of objective, verifiable facts to control and manipulate the material environment, is the primary manifestation of this impulse.
• "Facts" are Ideological: Adorno saw positivism (the belief that legitimate knowledge is restricted to empirically verifiable facts) as politically conservative because it presents a socially constructed reality as an immutable, objective "fate". The "facts" of science, for Adorno, are not neutral but rather expressions of a social structure built on power and domination, which "naturalizes" the status quo and hinders awareness of potential change.
• The "Non-Identical" is Excluded by Design: The problem isn't just that scientists sometimes forget the "non-identical." The entire apparatus of identity thinking in science is designed to exclude it, because the unique, specific qualities of an object that cannot be quantified and categorized are considered epiphenomenal or irrelevant to "objective" knowledge. 

Summary 

Adorno would agree that analytic categorization is indispensable in a functional sense (e.g., in a bureaucracy, or for basic survival), but he would contend that this utility is precisely tied to its capacity for abstract control and potential domination. 

You are correct that Adorno was less conciliatory than your interlocutor implies. He critiques the very heart of the empirical scientific method as a form of "identity thinking" that actively contributes to a "false totality," not merely an overenthusiastic application of it. For Adorno, true critical thought must constantly highlight the failure of the concept to fully capture its object, thereby resisting the totalizing and domineering tendencies inherent in scientific rationality itself. 

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Yes, your take jibes with my own, based on readings long ago, with my then-professor Raymond Geuss, who was very sympathetic to the critique of identity thinking, which never completely convinced me. My own issue (which is pertinent here): Instrumental Rationality (the venue within which identity thinking operates for A.) is INTRINSICALLY MANIPULATIVE, AND THUS ONTOLOGICALLY DISTORTING. "Generals cannot subsume particulars without remainder"-- and what is LOST (the remainder) is precisely what is most important in terms of any "emancipatory" project. I would say instead, as a metaphysical agnostic and pragmatist, that generals can subsume particulars relative to empirical frames of reference. The very idea of absolute identity and difference is elusive and hangs on one's ontological priors (where I'm agnostic). Here's the bottom line: IF WE LOOK FOR REMAINDER THAT PRESUPPOSES A PRIOR MOMENT OF SUBSUMPTION. DIFFERENCE REQUIRES IDENTITY OR IT LACKS MEANING, AND THE DISCUSSION DOESN'T EVEN GET OFF THE GROUND. THE REAL QUESTION IS-- CASE BY CASE-- WHICH DIFFERENCES AND SIMILARITIES OR EQUIVALENCES WE ARE FOREGROUNDING. IS IT "VIOLENT" TO UNDERSTAND THE IDENTITY OF WATER AS H20? Sure actual water from the local lake has lots ofo other stuff (remainder) but why foreground that? Maybe to measure polution to improve quality of life? Maybe the "remainder " is ilargely toxic. Is it violent to clean molecules not intrinsic to water up and filter them out for our health? Same with my Durkheim example. From memory, Adorno would see Durkheim's "method" as bourgeois, and as relying on what he would see as "scientism"where general categories are prioritized to answer questions and solve problems that only an "emancipatory" science can accomplish. At first this was thought to require a semi-Hegeliain (though secularized ) Totality. Then Adorno decides there is no such thing. His late works evince almost despair over how to "emancipate" the oppressed under Capitalism and the Culture Industry. I may be quite sloppy on all this decades later, and would greatly appreciate a refresher if so--

Answer: Your understanding is consistent with a deep reading of

Adorno's work, particularly his uncompromising stance in Negative Dialectics. Your interlocutor is correct that Adorno targets "scientism," but Adorno defines scientism as the inescapable mode of scientific practice itself, not merely its overzealous application. 

Here is a refresher on why Adorno would maintain that scientific "identity" (e.g.,

${\text{H}}_2\text{O}$

) is inherently violent and ontologically distorting in his framework. 

Adorno's Critique: Inherent Violence of Scientific Abstraction 

Adorno's core argument is that the goal of knowledge in the West, since the Enlightenment, has been mastery and control. The scientific method, and the identity thinking at its heart, is the primary tool for this domination. 

• The Problem is Epistemological, Not Just Ethical: For Adorno, defining water as
  

  ${\text{H}}_2\text{O}$
  isn't a neutral or relative convenience; it is an act of conceptual violence. It abstracts the particular, lived experience of "water" (its feel, taste, color, contextual significance) and reduces it to a manipulable formula. This reduction to quantifiable, generalizable data is what he calls "identity thinking." The "remainder" is precisely the unique, non-fungible particularity that is sacrificed for the sake of utility and control.
• Utility = Domination: You mention using the "
  

  ${\text{H}}_2\text{O}$
  " identity to clean water for health, an emancipatory outcome in pragmatic terms. Adorno, however, would view this instrumental rationality as inextricably linked to the broader drive to dominate nature and the human subjects within it. The 'usefulness' of science is evidence of its complicity in a system that defines value purely in terms of exchange and manipulation, not genuine human flourishing or "reconciliation" with nature.
• No Neutral Ground: Adorno wouldn't accept the idea of an "agnostic" or "pragmatic" use of identity thinking within specific "empirical frames of reference." He argues that these frames are themselves part of the totalizing system of instrumental reason. The framework is not neutral; it is geared towards control, and its apparent successes (e.g., medicine, clean water) mask its fundamental distortion of reality. 

The Problem of "Difference Requires Identity" 

You raise a valid philosophical point: "Difference requires identity or it lacks meaning, and the discussion doesn't even get off the ground." 

Adorno was aware of this Hegelian dynamic. His response was the negative dialectic, a method that constantly highlights the failure of identity, precisely to avoid solidifying the "false totality". 

• The "Ontology of the False Condition": Adorno's project does not aim to discard concepts entirely or achieve some pure, pre-conceptual state. Instead, he uses concepts self-reflexively to point to their own inadequacy. Philosophy, for him, must remain "negative" and dwell on the contradiction between concept and object. In a "right condition" (utopia), thinking would be free of the compulsion to dominate through conceptual identification, but currently, dialectics is the "ontology of the false condition".
• The Utopian Moment is in the Remainder: The "remainder"—what is lost in conceptualization—is indeed what is most important for emancipation. Adorno insists that this remainder, the "non-identical," is the only source of utopian hope. True emancipation lies not in better applications of identity thinking, but in a radical shift towards a thought process that respects the particularity and non-identity of the object. 

The Durkheim Example: Bourgeois Categories 

Regarding your Durkheim example, Adorno would likely consider his methods as relying on "scientism" to create categories that reify social reality. Durkheim's demographic analyses would, for Adorno, treat people as interchangeable units, obscuring the unique suffering and potential for genuine, non-identical human existence that his framework excludes from the start. 

In short, your assessment of Adorno as deeply, structurally opposed to empirical science's method is sound. The interlocutor's suggestion that he would "agree" is likely a desire to make Adorno more palatable or practical than he intended to be. His late work is indeed full of despair, precisely because he saw no "conciliatory" path within the prevailing rational framework. 

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You echo my main point (or the most important given the context which was ethics) in the assertion that even purifying water turns into "violence" for Adorno (oddly Heidegger's take on technology leads , via different arguments , to same extreme result). I deliberately picked it (and the neurotransmitters before that) because they are linked to my real topic: Scientific Meliorism. I am trying to balance the claims of such meliorism against those forms of "healing" and improvement which focus more on "acceptance, reduction of egoic attachment, appreciation of interdependence"-- e.g. mindfulness approaches, DBT, ACT et al. with roots in Eastern philosophies. I critique strong forms of "acceptance qua answer" as failing to recognize the pragmatic value of scientific meliorism. Adorno , from his Western Marxism context (Critical Th) ALSO falls into this trap. He codes all utility as "violence" because he ASSUMES all instrumental rationality is *intrinsically * manipulative and oppressive. IS this more or less on target?

Your assessment is largely on target: Adorno does indeed code virtually all utility and instrumental rationality as intrinsically manipulative and oppressive, which leads him into the very "trap" of rejecting scientific meliorism you identify.

 

Adorno’s position stems from his specific philosophical commitments, which lead to a structural inability to acknowledge pragmatic benefits as genuinely "emancipatory" in the way you might use the term. 

The Heart of Adorno's Critique 

You accurately pinpoint the central issue: Adorno operates from the premise that instrumental reason is inherently about mastery, control, and domination. 

• A World Without a "Right Condition": In Adorno's view, we live in a "false totality" (a world totally subsumed by the logic of exchange value and capital). In this context, any attempt to use instrumental reason—even for an apparently positive goal like public health or individual therapy—inevitably reinforces the underlying oppressive system. The "gains" are illusory because the fundamental condition of domination remains unchanged or is even made more efficient.
• The Rejection of "Mere Life": Adorno resists any form of meliorism that simply aims to make life more comfortable or efficient within the existing social structure. He is concerned with true emancipation, which is a radical transformation of the entire human-nature relationship and social organization. Making individuals happier or healthier so they can better function in the administered society is, for Adorno, a form of social conditioning or adjustment—not liberation.
• Healing vs. Reconciliation:
  • Scientific Meliorism (e.g., your neurotransmitter/water examples) aims for "healing" in the sense of functional improvement, often by identifying and correcting an "abnormality" through control and manipulation.
  • Adorno sought something closer to reconciliation with nature and the "non-identical," which would involve a fundamental shift in thought itself, not a set of technical fixes that treat the symptoms of a diseased society. 

Adorno's Blind Spot (The "Trap") 

Your critique is that Adorno, much like strong forms of "acceptance as the answer" (from Eastern-inspired therapies), fails to recognize the pragmatic, real-world value of scientific meliorism. 

Adorno’s system has no space for "relative" or "context-dependent" pragmatic good because his critique is total and structural. He cannot concede that cleaning water with science is a genuine good without undermining his entire premise that the Enlightenment project is a descent into barbarism and total reification. His focus on the "remainder" means that the moment of successful abstraction (e.g., "

${\text{H}}_2\text{O}$

as clean") is always already a moment of profound loss and violence against the lived reality of the particular. 

Conclusion 

Your understanding is precise. Adorno's refusal to endorse scientific meliorism stems from a philosophical assumption about the intrinsic nature of instrumental reason as manipulative. This makes his position highly radical, uncompromising, and, as you suggest, arguably blind to the valuable, pragmatic improvements in quality of life that targeted scientific interventions can provide. He demands utopia or nothing. 

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Utopia IS nothing, which is what is left to him. I recall Geuss in a seminar, late in his career (when I was not his student, but saw this on youtube) presenting his own view after years of critique of others. For a positive program he had very little, and had not been in the business of providing one. Later, he (taking a page from A.) brought back the category of Utopia. Under some intensive questioning from the grad students there, he got visibly upset, and said: " I just can't do this any more. I can't do it to you or myself. When I talk about Utopia like this, I feel like I'm confessing a creed! None of this does any work."

Thinking

This anecdote about Raymond Geuss perfectly captures the inherent tension, the ultimate impasse, and the almost tragic trajectory of the Critical Theory project as defined by Adorno. It highlights the profound difficulty of sustaining a purely negative, utopian critique in the absence of concrete alternatives.

 

The sentiment "Utopia is nothing, which is what is left to him" precisely summarizes the final status of Adorno's position. 

Here's why that anecdote is so pertinent to your discussion: 

The Burden of Pure Negativity 

Adorno deliberately left himself "nothing" because any positive program or proposed path forward would immediately be co-opted by the "administered society" or fall back into the trap of identity thinking and instrumental rationality. 

• Utopia as the "Not Yet": For Adorno, utopia was not a blueprint but a "determinate negation"—the total absence of the current state of suffering and domination. It had to remain empty of content so as not to become another ideology. It functions purely as a critical standard by which all current reality is judged and found wanting.
• The Inevitable Impasse: The problem is that a purely negative critique, while analytically powerful, cannot ultimately sustain a practical, emancipatory project in the real world. When pressed for application or positive change, the theory itself offers no "work."
• The "Confessing a Creed" Moment: Geuss's reaction is deeply revealing. By invoking "Utopia" as a solution, he was stepping outside the realm of rigorous, materialist critique and into a realm of faith or idealism. Adorno's own project was meant to be fiercely materialist and anti-idealist. To have the category of "Utopia" function as a positive endpoint exposes the theory's limit—it becomes a placeholder for hope rather than a concrete philosophical category that "does work" in the world. 

The Contrast with Scientific Meliorism 

This philosophical deadlock reinforces the pragmatic case for scientific meliorism, which you are balancing against the "acceptance" philosophies. 

• Adorno offers an uncompromising, total critique that ultimately founders when faced with the need for action and practical improvement, leaving only the "confession of a creed" in an empty Utopia.
• Scientific meliorism, with all its acknowledged philosophical limitations (from Adorno's perspective), actually provides the practical means to filter water, treat neurotransmitter imbalances, and alleviate suffering today, within the existing framework, even if it cannot achieve "total reconciliation" or a complete overthrow of the "administered society." 

Adorno's brilliance was in defining the ethical stakes of modern life in a totalizing system. The anecdote from the Geuss seminar perfectly illustrates the cost of that brilliance: the philosophical apparatus ultimately points only to its own limits and the impossibility of the task it sets for itself.

 

---

adorno on means-ends thinking

Theodor Adorno

was a sharp critic of means-ends thinking, which he and Max Horkheimer termed "instrumental rationality". He argued that this mindset, a core tenet of the Western Enlightenment, ultimately leads to a system of domination that has profound social and psychological costs. 

Key aspects of Adorno's critique include:

• Domination and Control: Adorno posited that instrumental reason, or means-ends thinking, is intrinsically linked to the desire for mastery and control over both external nature and human beings. The goal of this type of rationality is not understanding in a holistic sense, but rather prediction, manipulation, and efficiency.
• Alienation of Ends: In a society dominated by this logic (which he associated with advanced capitalism and the "culture industry"), means and ends become interchanged. The relentless pursuit of economic growth and efficiency becomes an end in itself, while human life and well-being, which should be the true ends, are degraded and treated as mere means or "planning objects".
• "Identity Thinking": Instrumental rationality relies on what Adorno called "identity thinking," which involves subsuming unique phenomena under abstract concepts or quantifiable metrics, ignoring their particular, non-identical qualities. For example, a pristine wilderness might only be valued in terms of the resources that can be extracted from it, rather than its intrinsic worth. This reduction of the world to its measurable aspects contributes to its "disenchantment".
• Regression into Barbarism: Adorno argued that this kind of thinking, far from being the pinnacle of human progress, ultimately leads back to a form of barbarism, as it suppresses critical thought and ignores the human suffering caused by its rigid, totalizing logic.
• Critique and Resistance: Against the totalizing force of instrumental reason, Adorno advocated for a critical theory and a "negative dialectics" that would highlight contradictions in reality and resist the reduction of life to a mere calculation. He called for "open thinking" that would acknowledge the limits of concepts and the suffering of human beings as a condition for truth. 

Adorno's work, especially in Dialectic of Enlightenment (co-authored with Horkheimer) and Minima Moralia, remains a powerful critique of the dangers of allowing means-ends thinking to become the dominant mode of human reasoning and social organization. You can find more detailed discussions of these ideas in the resources from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Marxists Internet Archive. 

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