Adorno criticizes Heidegger for developing a philosophy whose definitions block the memory of the miseries of humankind. This is accomplished by Heidegger, according to Adorno, in his insistence of 'Being" as having the property of resistance to definition. This resistance to definition acts as a blinding mechanism by which the subject is unable to reach a clarity. Heidegger's construction points to a mythical superiority beyond the real human miseries that constitute an element of this so-called superiority, and thus beyond these miseries and their memory, finally away from suffering.

In our third example of Adorno's criticism of Heidegger, Adorno takes aim at what he calls Heidegger's 'Ontologization of the Ontical'. According to Adorno the move to ontologize the Ontical is a blatant move to eliminate otherness within Heidegger's existential scheme. By showing the Ontical as an element of the ontological, Heidegger strikes the pose of a philosophy by identity in the manner of the authoritarian. It's focus is on dynamic characteristics of the Ontical that are translated into a function of the ontological, and thereafter has no opposing element to balance the purified assertion. The philosophy thus becomes the most horrible of affirmations, the affirmation of sheer power.

The example we shall present lastly, is Adorno's criticism of
Heidegger in the section on the copula. Adorno criticizes Heidegger for taking the sense of 'is' in each particular synthetic judgment, and then raising it to a principle of synthesis generally. Adorno points out that the synthesis cannot occur but in particular judgments and in particular circumstances. Thus Heidegger's move to raise the element of synthesis to a principle without a context is an ignorance of the value of particulars in a particular judgment. For Adorno there is no real synthesis without the elements of subject-synthesis-predicate. Heidegger thus, for Adorno, is caught in a move of reified thinking by raising 'is' to a general principle of synthesis by decree. This false elevation of the synthetic element binds us from these particular moments by pointing to the mythical brighter light of synthesis without context of the real. It is thus totalitarian.

¶ 2:57 PM