232 Part III: Emigration Years
Adorno’s expectations were not disappointed. He lived in comfort in
the Barbion Palace Hotel, 1010 West 58th Street, Central Park South,
and Horkheimer himself made sure that his needs were catered for. He
was very well aware of this. In his thank-you letter to his host, he wrote:
‘You have spoiled me like a film star, and my only regret is that I am
not a, shall we say, “Dolores del Rio”.’^94 He went on to say how happy
he had been during the two weeks he had spent there, especially since
he had found that, despite his critical attitude and despite his extreme
idiosyncrasy in his thinking and writing, he had been made welcome
among a group of people in which he was respected and who turned
out to be like-minded. Adorno’s report of his trip to Benjamin, written
during the return journey, while he was still on the Normandie, was
similarly euphoric. The atmosphere in the institute was ‘extremely pleas-
ant’. He also made mention of his new function. He was to take part in
the international congress on ‘The Unity of Science’ from 29 to 31 July
and also in the Ninth International Philosophy Congress, which was due
to focus on Descartes’ Discours de la méthode. In both cases he was to
attend as an official representative of the institute. He also told Benjamin
that he had been able to negotiate an increase in the monthly remittance
Benjamin received from the institute.
Adorno and Benjamin went to both congresses and jointly composed
two reports for Horkheimer. Adorno’s contribution made it clear that
he had appropriated Horkheimer’s criticism of positivism. In addition,
both Benjamin and Adorno had collected material for the latter’s newly
conceived idea of a ‘critical theory’ that just at this time was starting to
take shape in opposition to what began to be called traditional thought.
Concrete pointers for this were to be found in the essay ‘The Latest
Attack on Metaphysics’, with its critique of scientistic thinking, as well
as the programmatic treatise ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’. Both of
these texts by Horkheimer appeared in volume 6 of the Zeitschrift für
Sozialforschung, and Adorno was very familiar with their contents from
his correspondence with Horkheimer.^95 While Adorno was in New York
these essays had been under discussion. Both essays were to be of signal
importance for the whole group’s understanding of itself.
The emphasis in the congress reports that Adorno and Benjamin
delivered lay on the pleasure they took in depicting the differences
of opinion they perceived in the Vienna circle, i.e., between Hans
Reichenbach, Carl Gustav Hempel, Rudolf Carnap and Paul Oppenheim.
Apart from that, their account of the content of the congress was
pretty thin. The discussions of the different theories of truth effectively
went unreported. Their account of the Congrès Descartes, which at
the time attracted great interest in Paris, was likewise no more than
cursory. ‘There was a large number of German émigrés with conformist
attitudes.... The insignificance of their achievement was obvious.’^96 A
commitment to existentialism seemed to be a central theme of the con-
gress. Adorno gave a somewhat fuller description of the contributions