The Jargon of Authenticity by Theodor Adorno

Author:Theodor Adorno
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge

Now, everything is assembled here: the innermost concern, the true dialogue, things in their authenticity, with a vague reminiscence of Heidegger, the encounter on an intrahuman level, the question for its own sake, even the slightly anachronistic reserve army of the silent majority. The long-winded address designates the participating notables in terms of their function and subordinates the whole speech from the beginning to an intangible administrative purpose. While what the speaker is aiming at remains unspecified, the jargon brings it to light. The concern is the working climate. By calling the listeners people “who in a particular and extraordinary sense have to do with people,” it can be gathered that the subject matter is that kind of human leadership in which men are merely the pretext for leadership-in-itself. To this is accurately fitted the indestructible phrase about the “flood of materialism” which full-blooded industrial leaders usually vituperate in those who are dependent on them. That is the ground of being of the higher element in the jargon. In its slips of the tongue the jargon acknowledges that administration is its essence. The intrahuman level, which is supposed to contribute to the “reestablishment of the human climate,” places the word “level” beside “intrahuman,” together with the association of “I and thou,” which has a social-scientific as well as a homey character. The levels, however—the level of counties, of the federation—designate areas of judicial and administrative responsibility. The exhortation to think with the heart—Pascal's formula que les grandes pensées proviennent du coeur— has been admired by businessmen right from the beginning; it is pronounced with the same breath as “the human antenna is tuned in to the same wavelength.” The total content, however, is flowering nonsense. This becomes obvious in phrases like “To pronounce the question is to pose it,” or, “No one knows better than man that which is of importance in the end.” Such nonsense also has its reasonable basis in the world. It hides the fact that both it and the goal at which it aims are manipulated. For this reason all content is “bracketed,” as it goes in administrative German. At the same time the appearance of content must not be renounced; those who are addressed, again in the same German, must “toe the line.” The purpose, the intention, contracts itself into an intentionless underworldly language, truthful to the objective determination of the jargon itself, which has no other content than its wrapping.

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