Category: Adorno
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Grok on Vallicella on Adorno
I put the following question to Grok: What does Bill Vallicella say in critique of the work of Theodor W. Adorno? Here is the answer it spit out in a few seconds, and though it did not dig up everything I have written about Adorno online, it ain't bad. It's a brave new world, kiddies. Future…
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Kimball on Kolakowski on Marxism as a Bogus Form of Religion
I have argued time and again that Marxism is not a religion. But many have a burning need so to misunderstand it. What the great Kolakowski says below reinforces me in the correctness of my opinion. As for Fredric Jameson, whom Roger Kimball discusses in his Guilt of the Intellectuals, I haven't read him and…
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Vermittlung Über Alles?
Nothing finite is self-contained: it refers beyond itself for its determinations, for its being what it is, and for its existence. Nothing finite. This is true. A thing is what it is by not being what it is not. Omnis determinatio est negatio. (Spinoza) Theodor Adorno (Negative Dialektik, Suhrkamp Verlag, S. 109), however, removes the…
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Against Historical Relativism: Adorno on What is No Longer Believable After Auschwitz
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno is exasperating but exciting. Although as sloppy as one expects Continental thinkers to be, he is nonetheless a force to be reckoned with, a serious man who is seriously grappling with ultimates at the outer limits of intelligibility. Derrida I dismiss as a bullshitter; indeed, to cop a line from John Searle,…
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Adorno on the No Longer Believable
Theodor Adorno is exasperating but exciting. Although as sloppy as one expects Continental thinkers to be, he is nonetheless a force to be reckoned with, a serious man who is seriously grappling with ultimates at the outer limits of intelligibility. Derrida I dismiss as a bullshitter, indeed, to cop a line from John Searle, as…
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Adorno on the Ambiguity of Sport
Theodor W. Adorno, "Education After Auschwitz" in Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords (Columbia UP, 1998, tr. Pickford, pp. 196-197): Sport is ambiguous. On the one hand, it can have an anti-barbaric and anti-sadistic effect by means of fair play [Adorno employs the English phrase], a spirit of chivalry, and consideration for the weak. On the…
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Adorno the Clean-Shaven on the Beard
Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, p. 123: The beard is the oppositionist costume of juveniles acting like cavemen who refuse to play along with the cultural swindle, while in fact they merely don the old-fashioned emblem of the patriarchal dignity of their grandfathers. It seems fair to observe, however, that Adorno and the men of…
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The Copula: Adorno Contra Heidegger
Time was when I was much interested in the philosophers of the Frankfurter Schule. That was in the 'seventies and 'eighties. Less interested now, I am still intrigued by Adorno's critique of Heidegger. Is it worth anything? For that matter, are Heidegger's ideas worth anything? Let's see. I will explain one aspect of Heidegger's notorious Seinsfrage,…
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Contra Adorno: A Preliminary Plea for Omphaloscopy
The Greek Omphalos = the German Nabel = navel. So omphaloscopy is navel-gazing, and an omphaloscopist is one who 'scopes out' his navel. But have there ever been practioners of meditation (Versenkung) who literally gazed at their navels or who came close to doing such a thing? A little gazing at my well-stocked library reveals that…
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After Auschwitz: Adorno’s Leftist Sensibility Illustrated from Minima Moralia
A correspondent from the Netherlands sends this passage from Theodor W. Adorno's Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben. It is from the short essay, "Herr Doktor, das ist schön von Euch." Noch der Baum, der blüht, lügt in dem Augenblick, in welchem man sein Blühen ohne den Schatten des Entsetzens wahrnimmt; noch das unschuldige…
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Adorno on Wittgenstein’s Indescribable Vulgarity
Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophische Terminologie I (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1973). pp. 55-56: