238 music, philosophy, and modernity
ongoing negotiation in which new norms may become relevant which
render existing norms deficient. The process of negotiation is conse-
quently analogous to what goes on in the history of musical composition
and performance itself, where the norms cannot all be formulated ver-
bally and where the relevant contexts can be essentially contested, as
they were in Wagner’s time in the debate about ‘programme music’
between Hanslick’s ‘formalism’ and the ‘new German School’ of Liszt
and Wagner.
A passage from Adorno’sAesthetic Theorywhich refers to Nietzsche’s
critique of Wagner suggests a model for these issues. Adorno distin-
guishes between works which are ‘true’, and those which are ‘true as
expression of a consciousness which in itself is false’ (Adorno 1997 : 7 ,
196 ), the latter summing up how he sees Wagner’s works. Nietzsche’s
critique of Wagner’s false consciousness is ‘transcendent critique’, as
opposed to his own ‘immanent critique’. Nietzsche fails to take account
of ‘the historical moment that is immanent to aesthetic truth’ (ibid.),
and adopts an idea of such truth based on assumptions about the ‘phi-
losophy of culture’, thus on criteria not derived from the specificity
of the works. Aesthetic truth depends for Adorno, in contrast, on a
work’s relationship to its contexts and to the available artistic means: its
innovations only being accessible in relation to its historical conditions.
This assumption is inherent in Wellmer’s remarks, because they entail a
horizon of norms which does not allow the taking up of a position out-
side actual engagement with the specific matter in hand. Adorno goes
on: ‘The separation between what is true in itself and the merely ade-
quate expression of false consciousness cannot be sustained, because
until today the right consciousness does not exist...which would
allow that separation to be made, as it were, from a bird’s eye per-
spective’ (ibid.). The difficulty lies in the idea of ‘right consciousness’:
is it a regulative idea, or what would emerge if the world were not
ruled by false consciousness? In the latter case, though, what could
bring about such a world? Presumably it would have to be ‘right con-
sciousness’ itself. However, Adorno’s historical materialist orientation
would condemn this as Idealism: the whole point of his arguments
about commodification is that the commodity worldproducesthe forms
of consciousness which also dominate it. Adorno is actually not neces-
sarily prey here (though he clearly often is elsewhere) to the standard
criticism of ‘Critical Theory’ (see, e.g., Geuss 1981 ), namely that it arro-
gates to itself a position from which everything but itself can be criti-
cised. That still leaves, though, the problem of how ‘right consciousness’