A Quote by Theodor Adorno
Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.
Quote Topics
Quote Author
Related Quotes
All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers, so that the aim of exact science is to reduce the problems of nature to the determination of quantities by operations with numbers.
By the help of God and with His precious assistance, I say that Algebra is a scientific art. The objects with which it deals are absolute numbers and measurable quantities which, though themselves unknown, are related to "things" which are known, whereby the determination of the unknown quantities is possible.
I remember one occasion when I tried to add a little seasoning to a review, but I wasn't allowed to. The paper was by Dorothy Maharam, and it was a perfectly sound contribution to abstract measure theory. The domains of the underlying measures were not sets but elements of more general Boolean algebras, and their range consisted not of positive numbers but of certain abstract equivalence classes. My proposed first sentence was: "The author discusses valueless measures in pointless spaces."
The disparagement of empirical evidence in favor of a metaphysical world of illusion has its origin in the conflicy between the emancipated individual of bourgeois society and his fate within that society.
Nirvana is a word that means enlightenment, being beyond the illusion of birth and death, the illusion of pain, the illusion of love, the illusion of time and life.
Bourgeois society is not fundamentally opposed to the bourgeois women's movement, which is proven by the fact that in various states reforms of private and public laws concerning women have been initiated.
Because men have so long ruled the world, it does not follow that the philosophy by which they have ruled it is the correct one.
The Supreme Court has crafted doctrines such as 'fair use,' which permits copying materials for criticism, parody, and transformative uses, and has ruled that abstract ideas are not subject to copyright, because courts will not punish people for merely using an abstract concept in speech.
I am in favor of reducing all budget items. But the item I don't want to reduce is the pension expenditure because it affects the weakest part of society.
If the feudal knight was the clearest embodiment of society in the early Middle Ages, and the "bourgeois" under Capitalism, the educated person will represent society in the post-capitalist society in which knowledge has become the central resource.
The effect of the post-Enlightenment project for human society is that all human activity is absorbed into labor. It becomes an unending cycle of production for the sake of consumption. The modern concept of "built-in obsolescence" makes this clear. The cycle of production and consumption has to be kept going, and the work of the artist or craftsman who aims to create something enduring becomes marginal to the economic order.
I think that if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract.
I stand between two worlds. I am at home in neither, and I suffer in consequence. You artists call me a bourgeois, and the bourgeois try to arrest me...I don't know which makes me feel worse.
Friedrich Engels once said: "Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism." What does "regression into barbarism" mean to our lofty European civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to the annihilation of civilization.
Once we've achieved perfect meditation, we're terribly trapped because that's an illusion...any enlightenment that seems ultimate is an illusion.
Numbers are the product of counting. Quantities are the product of measurement. This means that numbers can conceivably be accurate because there is a discontinuity between each integer and the next.
Related Authors
Auguste Comte Quotes
French
Sociologist
C. Wright Mills Quotes
American
Sociologist
Charles Horton Cooley Quotes
American
Sociologist
Deborah Tannen Quotes
American
Sociologist
Emile Durkheim Quotes
French
Sociologist
Immanuel Wallerstein Quotes
American
Sociologist
Ivan Illich Quotes
American
Sociologist
James W. Loewen Quotes
American
Sociologist
Jane Jacobs Quotes
American
Sociologist
Jean Baudrillard Quotes
French
Sociologist
Lewis Mumford Quotes
American
Sociologist
Marshall McLuhan Quotes
Canadian
Sociologist
Matthew Desmond Quotes
American
Sociologist
Peter L. Berger Quotes
Austrian
Sociologist
Samuel P. Huntington Quotes
American
Sociologist
Zygmunt Bauman Quotes
Polish
Sociologist