Abstract
Adorno seems to set out to do the impossible. He criticises the whole of the modern social world, including its forms of rationality and thinking, but he does not seem to have an identifiable addressee for his theory, someone or some group who could be the agent for change. Famously, he and Horkheimer described their own work as a ‘message in a bottle’.1 Moreover, it is neither clear what Adorno’s standards of critique are, nor how he could underwrite them. Hence, his critical project seems to undermine itself: by subjecting everything to critique, he seems to leave himself without a vantage point from which his critique could be justified or acted upon.2
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Notes
See T. W. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, ‘Towards a New Manifesto?’ [1956], New Left Review, 65, 2010, 33–61, here 58; see also
W. van Reijen and G. Schmid Noerr (eds), Vierzig Jahre Flaschenpost: Dialektik der Aufklärung 1947–1987 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1987).
See, for example, J. Habermas, ‘Theodor Adorno: The Primal History of Subjectivity — Self-Affirmation Gone Wild’, in his Philosophical-Political Profiles, translated by F. G. Lawrence (London: Heinemann, 1983), 99–110, especially 106.
For alternative interpretations that ascribe a positive core to Adorno’s theory, see, for example, J. G. Finlayson, ‘Adorno on the Ethical and the Ineffable’, European Journal of Philosophy, 20/1, 2002, 1–25; and
M. Seel, Adornos Philosophie der Kontemplation (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2004).
M. Horkheimer, ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’ [1937], in his Critical Theory: Selected Essays, translated by M. J. O’Connell (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), 188–252, here 206f; translation modified (hereafter TCT). See also
T. W. Adorno, ‘Max Horkheimer’ [1965], in his Gesammelte Schriften, edited by R. Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), 1972ff, 20.1:149–152, here 151 (hereafter GS).
See, for example, T. W. Adorno, ‘Late Capitalism or Industrial Society?’ [1968], translated by R. Livingstone, in his Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader, edited by R. Tiedemann (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 111–125, especially 114f. See already TCT 213f.
See T. W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics [1966], translated by E. B. Ashton (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 41 (hereafter ND); see also his ‘Education for Autonomy’ [1969], with H. Becker, translated by
D. J. Patent, Telos 56, 1983, 103–110, here 104.
See T. W. Adorno, ‘Critique’ [1969], in his Critical Models, translated by H. W. Pickford (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 281–288, here 287; see also ND 197;
T. W. Adorno, ‘Why Still Philosophy?’ [1962], in Critical Models, 5–17, here 10, 12.
See, for example, T. W. Adorno, Minima Moralia [1951], translated by E. F. N. Jephcott (London: New Left Books, 1974), Aphorism No. 58 (hereafter MM); see also Aphorism No. 134;
Adorno’s ‘Culture Criticism and Society’ [1951], translated by S. Weber and S. Weber Nicholsen, in Adorno’s Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader, 146–162, especially 161; and
J. Habermas, ‘Historical Materialism and the Development of Normative Structures’, reprinted in his Communication and the Evolution of Society, translated by T. McCarthy (London: Heinemann 1979), Ch. 3, 96f.
See G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1821), translated by H. B. Nisbet, edited by A. W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 9ff. See also ‘Culture Criticism and Society’, 159.
Among these commentators are Adorno’s critics (see, for example, R. Bubner, Modern German Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 179–182), but also some of his defenders
(see, for example, H. Brunkhorst, Adorno and Critical Theory (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999), especially 9, 67f, 118f).
See T. W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory [posthumous, 1970], translated by R. Hullot-Kentor (London: Athlone, 1997), 15, 178; see also 41, 336 (hereafter AT).
See T. W. Adorno, ‘Progress’ [1964], in his Critical Models, 143–160, here 147f.
ND 299; see also 207, 352; AT 41; ‘Critique’, 287f; History and Freedom, edited by R. Tiedemann, translated by R. Livingstone (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), 47f.
An excellent discussion of the idea of evil, both in general and in relation to Adorno, can be found in P. Dews, The Idea of Evil (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).
For further analysis, see J. M. Bernstein, Adorno — Disenchantment and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), especially Ch. 2; and my ‘Moral Philosophy’, in
Adorno — Key Concepts, edited by D. Cook (London: Acumen, 2008), Ch. 6.
See T. W. Adorno, Metaphysics: Concept and Problems, translated by R. Livingstone, edited by R. Tiedemann, (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), 113 (hereafter MCP).
On the latter, see M. Horkheimer and T. W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment [1944, 1947], translated by J. Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), especially Essays 1–3.
T. W. Adorno, ‘Society’ [1965], translated by F. R. Jameson, in S. E. Bronner and D. MacKey Kellner (eds), Critical Theory and Society: A Reader (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), 267–275, here 275; see also TCT 206f.
See Dialectic of Enlightenment, 118; T. W. Adorno, Problems of Moral Philosophy, edited by T. Schröder, translated by R. Livingstone (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), 97 (hereafter PMP); MCP 116.
See, for example, MM, Aphorism No. 96; ‘Society’, 275; ‘Reflections on Class Theory’ [1942], translated by R. Livingstone, in T. W. Adorno, Can One Live after Auschwitz? A Philosophical Reader, 93–110, here 109; and GS 8:582, 20.2:464; see also MM, ‘Dedication’ and Aphorism No. 15, 131, 205.
See, for example, T. W. Adorno in conversation with A. Gehlen, ‘Is the Sociology a Science of Man?’ [1965], published as appendix in
F. Grenz, Adornos Philosophie in Grundbegriffen: Auflösung einiger Deutungsprobleme (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983), 225–251, here 234, 243 (hereafter Grenz).
For Kant’s classic statement, see his ‘An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?’ [1784], in his Practical Philosophy, translated by P. Guyer and A. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Adorno’s characterisation of Mündigkeit is very reminiscent of Kant, see ‘Critique’, 281f; see also ‘Education after Auschwitz’, 195; and ‘Education for Autonomy’.
This claim is also held by other social theorists, such as Charles Taylor (see his Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), especially Ch. 2).
G. Lukács, ‘Preface’ [1962], in his The Theory of the Novel: A Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature, translated by A. Bostock (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971), 22.
For the view that Adorno’s theory is not ethical, see, for example, G. Tassone, ‘Amoral Adorno: Negative Dialectics Outside Ethics’, European Journal of Social Theory 8/3, 2005, 251–267. For critical discussion, see my ‘No Easy Way Out: Adorno’s Negativism and the Problem of Normativity’, in
S. G. Ludovisi (ed.), Nostalgia for a Redeemed Future: Critical Theory (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press), 2009.
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Freyenhagen, F. (2012). Adorno’s Critique of Late Capitalism: Negative, Explanatory and Practical. In: de Boer, K., Sonderegger, R. (eds) Conceptions of Critique in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230357006_11
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