What Does the Interest that Auschwitz Should Never Happen Again Mean Essay

What Does the Interest that Auschwitz Should Never Happen Again Mean for Sociology - Essay Example Looking critically at the statement, â€Å"After Auschwitz (and in this respect Auschwitz is a prototype of something which has been repeated incessantly in the world since then) our interest is in ensuring that this should never happen again,† Adorno uses this phrase at the end of ‘Lecture II’ (1968) in â€Å"Introduction to Sociology† in order to avoid misunderstanding in students. The Critical Theory of Society is based in the philosophical position outlined by Adorno and the Frankfurt School, which is itself based on a reform of Marxism. The theory of the Frankfurt School and Adorno relates primarily to methodology in the practice of sociology. According to Jarvis (1998), the Frankfurt school asserts there is no real â€Å"thing† as society; rather it is an interpretation that is based on the subjectivity of one who approaches it as a discipline. Adorno opposes the totalizing aspects of theory when it claims to complete knowledge about the operat ion of social forces or historical evolution. He see this in Freud, Weber, Durkheim, and Marx, in their interpretive frameworks that discuss the operation of society from different perspectives, but share a totalitarianism of meaning which will limit interpretation to a range of values. Related to this is the preference for a phenomenological methodology that seeks to describe reality and social processes as they appear, rather than as they should be ideally. This represents a rejection of objectivism in knowledge by the Frankfurt School, but an acceptance of the categorical imperative of activism through morality. 2 Adorno views the totalitarian aspects of knowledge systems as operating on the model of the modern State, both symmetrical in identity and structure, implementing imperial control of consciousness and society, flattening all diversity of meaning. From this, Adorno seeks to avoid building a theory of sociology that repeats the State model of control as an aspect of indiv idual identity, for when this occurs, subjective interpretation, variance, objectivity, and fact all vanish into a monolithic machine that drives meaning to a single source, an illusory central point of vanishing into history. "If you asked me what sociology is, I would say that it must be insight into society, into the essential nature of society," Adorno says – it must be, but it is not. "Ladies and Gentleman, I would now ask you not to write down and take home what I have told you as a definition of sociology... it cannot be reduced to an 'axiom'."3 Adorno and the Frankfurt School are advocating a position of radical freedom from the State and the restrictions of theoretical interpretation through a radical re-thinking of fundamentals, universals, essences, and other aspects of bias that make claims to ultimate truth or reality in sociology. Knowledge systems inherently promote totalitarian universal values, the essential meaning of things that is fixed and unchanging, or knowledge of the inner-operation of society and the universe that inevitably falls short of the goal of accurately representing reality. As Adorno writes in â€Å"Negative Dialectics† (1970), â€Å"If one speaks in the newest aesthetic debates of anti-drama and anti-heroes, then Negative Dialectics, which holds itself distant from all aesthetic themes, could be called an anti-system.†4 If â€Å"Negative Dialectics† represents an anti-system, then Auschwitz on the other extreme represents the fully totalitarian aspects of a system in application. From the perspective of humanity, Auschwitz is a symbol of the most terrible aspects of modernism, the factory of anti-Semitism and death, the total mobilization of society to the ends of violent, fascist theory. Auschwitz motivates the moral awareness in humanity to resist, but Adorno recognizes that this requires freedom of thought and critical awareness as a basis for activism. The person