[FRA:] Positivist Dispute (Positivismusstreit) - 1

[Claus D. Hansen]

Sounds like an interesting discussion Ralph. When I wrote my thesis on
Adorno's sociology several years ago I remember reading a lot about this
dispute with interest. I looked over my references and found these I don't
think you have on your website.

D'Amico, Robert	1994 [1990]	"Karl Popper and the Frankfurt School" in
Jay M. Bernstein (ed.), The Frankfurt School. Critical Assessments. Vol.
III. London: Routledge, pp. 198-210 originally in Telos; Winter90-91, Issue
86, p33, 16p

Drake, Ryan	2000	"Objectivity and Insecurity. Adorno and Empirical
Social Research" in Philosophy Today, Summer 2000, pp. 99-107

"The Popper-Adorno Controversy: the Methodological Dispute in German
Sociology" in Philosophy of the Social Sciences. Vol. 2, pp. 105-119

Good luck with the discussion and please do post something about it here.

/Claus

-----Original Message-----
From: theory-frankfurt-school-bounces at srcf.ucam.org
[mailto:theory-frankfurt-school-bounces at srcf.ucam.org] On Behalf Of Ralph
Dumain
Sent: 4. september 2008 17:13
To: theory-frankfurt-school at srcf.ucam.org
Cc: Adorno-Hegel at yahoogroups.com; marxistphilosophy at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [FRA:] Positivist Dispute (Positivismusstreit) - 1

This past weekend a visiting friend and I initiated a close reading 
of an essay by Adorno included in the book, parts of which I am 
uploading as feasible. See:

Adorno, Theodor W.; et al. The Positivist Dispute in German 
Sociology, translated by Glyn Adey and David Frisby. London: Heinemann,
1976.

Title pages, contents, index of sources
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/positivismusstreit/contents.html

and:

Adorno, Theodor W. "On the Logic of the Social Sciences," pp. 105-122.
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/positivismusstreit/adorno-logic.html

We recorded our Saturday night discussion, so eventually I will be 
able to use pieces of it for commentary to come. One thing of 
interest about Adorno's intervention; he reveals that he is 
conversant with a number of major trends in 20th century philosophy 
outside of the one in which he is included, and that he is 
sophisticated enough to elude a number of traps. Substantive or even 
passing references to Wittgenstein and Tarski, granting the obvious 
but limited validity of Popper's concerns, etc., betray a 
sophistication that I think could be easily missed due to the 
provincialism of contemporary commentators on the critical theory of 
the past, who seem to be much more provincial than the early 
Frankfurters.  But the Positivist Dispute highlights a contact 
between philosophical traditions which appears not to have been 
sufficiently studied, in the anglophone world at any rate. Of all the 
crap being written about the meeting of analytical and continental 
philosophy these days, the confrontation of the Frankfurters with the 
Popperians is left out of account, and I suspect it is far more 
significant, given the artificial and sterile problems that large 
chunks of both analytical and continental philosophy wasted the 20th 
century with.

See also:

Alker, Hayward R.. Jr. "Logic, Dialectics, Politics: Some Recent 
Controversies," in Dialectical Logics for the Political Sciences; 
guest editor, Hayward R. Alker, Jr. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1982), pp. 
65-94. (Poznan Studies in the Philosophy of the Sciences and the 
Humanities; v. 7)
http://www.autodidactproject.org/other/poznan5.html

Some of the secondary literature on the Positivismusstreit is 
included in my bibliography:

<http://www.autodidactproject.org/bib/vienna1.html>Vienna Circle, 
Karl Popper, Frankfurt School, Marxism, McCarthyism & American 
Philosophy: Selected Bibliography

. . . mostly under the section "Popper & the Frankfurt School".

I need to review the journal literature I unearthed earlier in the 
year and check its eventual incorporation into my bibliographies.

I still have not looked up:

Holub, Robert C. JURGEN HABERMAS: CRITIC IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE. New 
York: Routledge, 1991.

This book reportedly deals with all Habermas' major public 
controversies with intellectuals to date of publication, including an 
apparently detailed analysis of the Positivismusstreit.
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