٠ I say ‘compromise’, he says ‘commitment’, what the hell are we talking about? ٠

It appears as if I’m setting up to argue for an against my own claims. How fucked up am I?

In a recent post I said The word is: COMPROMISE and now Adorno is saying (in is overly-sarcastic tone) that I’m an hypocrite. Though he uses the word ‘commitment’, we’re talking about the same thing because in my native language ‘compromise’ and ‘commitment’ mean the same: Comprometer / Estabelecer compromissos.

The concept preserves the authority whose source of origin is cut off right from the beginning. The thing that is understood under the term “commitment” is no better than the word. Commitments are offered not for their own truth but as a medicine against nihilism, in the same manner as the values which were current a generation before, and which surreptitiously circulate again today. Commitments are classed under mental hygiene and, for that reason, undermine the transcendence which they prescribe.

ADORNO, T. (1964) The Jargon of Authenticity. Evaston: Northwestern University Press