Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to consider the critical potentiality of Adorno's concept of "tradition". Adorno, a leading figure in critical social theory, is often criticized for his cultural elitism. Focusing on Adorno's notion of tradition, I will analyze the relation between the two aspects of his social thought—radical critique of society and cultural conservatism.
According to Adorno, "identity thinking" is the predominant mode of thinking in modern society. In this mode, the "subject" controls the "others" and reifies them through "instrumental reason". Adorno claims that the modern form of violence stems from this mastery of the subject and "reason" over the "object" and "experience". Thus, Adorno insists that the object as a form of "non-identity thinking" should have priority over the subject. In negative dialectics, Adorno terms this attitude "the priority of the object".
Adorno argues that tradition is a form of the concept of the object For the subject, the "past" is given and uncontrollable. "Subjective reason," which is confronted with the past through tradition, perceives its own limit and recovers the moment of reflection. Tradition is "non-identifiable" for the "identical reason".
Adorno distinguishes between tradition and "traditionalism". He states that the multiple and complex character of tradition is ignored in traditionalism. Therefore, the tradition advocated by traditionalism has already been simplified and reified by the identical reason. Adorno criticizes traditionalism as one form of "modernized reason".
In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Adorno asserts that "All reification is a forgetting". From this viewpoint Adorno insists on the possibility of using the concept of tradition to criticize social "identity".
