Adorno’s group study sacrificed attribution specificity for objective-spirit analysis.

Evidence

It was not so much the decision not to print a series of complete transcripts that affected the persuasiveness of Adorno’s study and the value of the analysis as a whole as a methodological model. In the quantitative section, no analysis of the correlation between specific attitudes was given, and in the study of `Guilt and Atonement’ there was no attribution of quotations or interpretations to particular individuals. Certainly, it was the objective spirit that Adorno was concerned with. But if one went into statements by particular individuals as deeply as he did, and then classified these individuals under one ideological syndrome or another, one could not simply ignore the question of which combinations of the elements of the objective spirit that the interpreter was examining occurred in particular individuals, or the question of the frequency with which these elements occurred. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2035

Categorization

• QUESTION: Whether qualitative depth can legitimately forego individual attribution remains a live methodological debate worth chasing.
• XREF: connects to: The German group study targeted objective spirit rather than individual subjective opinion — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1881; Adorno’s F-scale methodology stripped the theory of its context; Adorno feared de-economised sociology collapsing into psychology in disguise — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1110 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno came to see critical reflection and team-based empirical research as practically irreconcilable #expands (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2114
• Adorno’s F-scale methodology stripped the theory of its context #expands (0.85)
• Adorno feared de-economised sociology collapsing into psychology in disguise #corroborates (0.80) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1110