Rejecting all appearance as false illusion leads to losing truth itself
Evidence
In criticizing other cultural critics such as Lukacs or Veblen, Adorno was always careful to single out any traces of reductionism he detected in their work. One frequent manifestation of such reductionism was the dismissal of appearances as totally insubstantial, a fallacy that he also noted in philosophical phenomenology. “As the refiction of truth,” he wrote, “appearances are dialectical; to reject all appearance is to fall completely under its sway, since truth is abandoned with the rubble without which it cannot appear.” — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 552
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: Adorno’s aphorism about rejecting appearance—truth needs the ‘rubble’ of appearance to appear at all—is a densely layered dialectical insight that repays sitting with.
- FICTION: The image of ‘truth abandoned with the rubble’ is vivid and could seed a story about how destroying illusions destroys what they were protecting.
- XREF: connects to: An essence is radically severed from the single appearance that manifests it; Delusion claims equal rights with truth because both involve imagination — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 153; The elimination of effortful judgment erases the distinction between truth and falsehood (+8 more)
Broader Connections
- Sincerity can be an active ingredient of self-deception rather than its opposite
#expands(0.80) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1405 - False identity means apparent individuality itself is the manufactured illusion
#complicates(0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 24 - Shared belief renders delusion indistinguishable from truth
#expands(0.75) — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 497 - Claiming total self-honesty itself signals defensive self-deception
#qualifies(0.75) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 1813