Adorno: Disenchantment and EthicsTheodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) was the leading philosopher of the first generation of the Frankfurt School and is best known for his contributions to aesthetics and social theory. In this highly original contribution to the literature on Adorno, J.M. Bernstein offers the first attempt in any language to provide an account of the ethical theory latent in Adorno's writings. This book will be widely acknowledged as the standard work on Adorno's ethics and will interest professionals and students of philosophy, political theory, sociology, history of ideas, art history and music. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
1 Nihilism Disenchantment and the Problem of Externalism | 4 |
2 A Grammar of Moral Insight a Logic of the Concept | 21 |
3 Outline of the Argument | 36 |
Wrong Life Cannot Be Lived Rightly | 40 |
1 A Refuge for Goodness? | 45 |
Ethical Life versus Moral Centralism | 58 |
Disenchantment The Skepticism of Enlightened Reason | 75 |
1 Modernity and the Philosophy of History | 236 |
2 Idealism Naturalism and Particularity | 241 |
3 The Metacritique of Freedom | 250 |
Disenchanting Identity The Complex Concept | 263 |
1 Conceptual Content | 266 |
2 Communication versus Naming | 275 |
Dependency All the Way Up | 287 |
4 Is Living as a Material a Priori Predicate | 301 |
1 Disenchantment Rationalism and Universalism | 77 |
2 The Principle of Immanence | 83 |
3 Enlightenment Depends on Myth | 90 |
4 The Destruction of Knowledge | 98 |
5 Destruction of Aura Destruction of Experience | 111 |
6 The Destruction of Authority | 121 |
7 Conclusion | 133 |
The Instrumentality of Moral Reason | 136 |
1 Axial Turn and Saving Urge | 137 |
2 Authority and the Fact of Reason | 144 |
How Pure Reason Overtook Empirical Knowing | 151 |
4 The Utility of Testing Maxims | 165 |
Of Urgency and Obligation | 176 |
Mastered by Nature Abstraction Independence and the Simple Concept | 188 |
2 From Instinctual Renunciation to Abstraction | 199 |
3 Abstraction and Fuels in Themselves | 205 |
The Constitutive Subject | 212 |
The Simple Concept and Linguistic Determinacy | 218 |
The Guilt Context of the Living | 224 |
Interlude Three Versions of Modernity | 235 |
5 Reflective Judgement as Intransitive Understanding | 306 |
6 The Complex Concept as Moral Insight | 320 |
7 The Complex Concept as Authority | 325 |
Toward an Ethic of Nonidentity | 330 |
2 Reasoning in Transitions | 333 |
3 Negative Dialectic | 343 |
4 Reactivating Material Inference | 354 |
The Indexical Binding of Moral Norms | 361 |
After Auschwitz | 371 |
2 Auschwitz as Negative Theodicy | 372 |
3 A new categorical imperative | 384 |
The Fundamental Principle of Bourgeois Subjectivity | 396 |
Ethical Modernism | 415 |
2 Experience as Metaphysics | 420 |
Possibility as Promise | 429 |
4 Fugitive Experience Ethical Modernism | 437 |
5 Conclusion | 451 |
457 | |
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Common terms and phrases
abstraction action Adorno aesthetic agents anthropomorphic anthropomorphic nature appear argument aura auratic Auschwitz authority become Bernard Williams categorical imperative cept chapter charismatic charismatic authority claim cognitive complex concept conceived consciousness constitutive construed critical critique culture demand dependence determinacy determinate Dialectic of Enlightenment disenchanted disenchantment domination empirical Hegel hence Horkheimer human ical idea ideal identity thinking immanence imperative independence individual instrumental rationality instrumental reason intransitive Kant Kant's Kantian knowledge language living logical material inference meaning mediated ment metaphysical metaphysical experience Minima Moralia modern moral insight moral norms moral realism moral reason motivating Negative Dialectics nonetheless nonidentity notion object orientation particular perspective philosophy possibility practical reason predicates presupposes principle of immanence rationalized reason relation requires response rience sceptical sense simple concept social practices structures supervenience theodicy theoretical theory thesis things thought tion tional tive traditional trans transcendental transformation truth virtue Weber