Adorno believed his jazz essay already satisfied empirical methods

Evidence

I think you only need to look at one of my published articles, such as the study on jazz, to see that the facts you reproach me with are not the results of any inner disorganization but rather of practical disorganization.’ In Adorno’s eyes, his essay on jazz was quite an empirical study, having grown out of a manuscript which had also contained what he called `verification theses’. The peculiar situation thus arose that Adorno accepted Lazarsfeld’s demands, but basically saw himself as having already met them. He agreed with Lazarsfeld that he would draw up a typology of listeners which would make it possible to use questionnaires to assess the numerical distribution of the various types. But he then produced a description of the emotional type of listener, for example, which stated that crying was one of the most significant objects for the analysis of the emotional aspects of music. For Lazarsfeld this amounted to a refusal to engage in the concrete research on listeners which he had emphasized in his very first letters to Adorno. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1013

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The collision of two incommensurable notions of what counts as empirical evidence — Adorno’s speculative phenomenology vs Lazarsfeld’s operationalization — illuminates the permanent tension at the heart of critical theory’s encounter with American social science.
• XREF: Echoes the ‘positivism dispute’ and connects to later passages in this book on Adorno’s return to Germany and his polemic against Popper’s positivism. — connects to: Adorno himself conceded his jazz essay’s decisive flaws stemmed from missing American experience — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 352; Adorno never abandoned the ideal of critical empirical research despite rejecting established methods — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2120; Methodological experience softened Adorno’s early hostility to American empirical techniques — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 671
• DEFINE: Useful for defining the Methodenstreit within the Institute: what Lazarsfeld and Adorno each meant by ‘empirical research’ and why they talked past each other.

Broader Connections

• Adorno himself conceded his jazz essay’s decisive flaws stemmed from missing American experience #contradicts (0.95) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 352
• Methodological experience softened Adorno’s early hostility to American empirical techniques #contradicts (0.80) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 671
• Adorno never abandoned the ideal of critical empirical research despite rejecting established methods #corroborates (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2120