Adorno's Negative Dialectic: Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality
Adorno's Negative Dialectic: Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought) Brian O'Connor,
Publisher: The MIT Press
ISBN: 0262651084
DDC: 100
Edition: Paperback; 2005-09-01
Summary:
The purely philosophical concerns of Theodor W. Adorno's negative
dialectic would seem to be far removed from the concreteness of
critical theory; Adorno's philosophy considers perhaps the most
traditional subject of "pure" philosophy, the structure of
experience, whereas critical theory examines specific aspects of
society. But, as Brian O'Connor demonstrates in this highly original
interpretation of Adorno's philosophy, the negative dialectic can be
seen as the theoretical foundation of the reflexivity or critical
rationality required by critical theory. Adorno, O'Connor argues, is
committed to the "concretion" of philosophy: his thesis of
nonidentity attempts to show that reality is not reducible to
appearances. This lays the foundation for the applied "concrete"
critique of appearances that is essential to the possibility of
critical theory. To explicate the context in which Adorno's
philosophy operates -- the tradition of modern German philosophy,
from Kant to Heidegger -- O'Connor examines in detail the ideas of
these philosophers as well as Adorno's self-defining differences with
them. O'Connor discusses Georg LucĂ cs and the influence of his
"protocritical theory" on Adorno's thought; the elements of Kant's
and Hegel's German idealism appropriated by Adorno for his theory of
subject-object mediation; the priority of the object and the agency
of the subject in Adorno's epistemology; and Adorno's important
critiques of Kant and the phenomenology of Heidegger and Husserl,
critiques that both illuminate Adorno's key concepts and reveal his
construction of critical theory through an engagement with the
problems of philosophy.
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