Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Thinking Otherwise
- 1 Transgression or Transformation
- 2 Metaphysics after Auschwitz
- 3 Heidegger and Adorno in Reverse
- 4 Globalizing Dialectic of Enlightenment
- 5 Autonomy Reconfigured
- 6 Ethical Turns
- Appendix: Adorno's Social Philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Metaphysics after Auschwitz
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: Thinking Otherwise
- 1 Transgression or Transformation
- 2 Metaphysics after Auschwitz
- 3 Heidegger and Adorno in Reverse
- 4 Globalizing Dialectic of Enlightenment
- 5 Autonomy Reconfigured
- 6 Ethical Turns
- Appendix: Adorno's Social Philosophy
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
It is astonishing how few traces of human suffering one notices in the history of philosophy.
Adorno, Negative DialecticsSuffering and hope sustain Theodor W. Adorno's vision of philosophy. Not simply suffering, and not merely hope, but suffering and hope in their negative dialectical entwinement. And not simply Adorno's own philosophy, but any philosophy he would consider worth pursuing “after Auschwitz.” His successors do not share his passions (Leidenschaften). In the polite language of Critical Theory after the communicative turn, they find Adorno's philosophy inappropriately “metaphysical” or “theological” or “utopian.” Nor is this merely a generational difference of purely sociological interest. It goes to the heart of philosophy's tasks in contemporary society.
This chapter attempts to recover Adorno's passion without neglecting his dialectical precision. I first question the moves made in Albrecht Wellmer's critique of Adorno's “Meditations on Metaphysics.” Next, I explicate the Adornian themes of suffering and hope as ones that postmetaphysical philosophy mistakenly neglects. Then, through an exploration of two problems in Adorno's thematization of suffering and hope, I aim to indicate how these problems could be addressed without abandoning his social-philosophical project.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Social Philosophy after Adorno , pp. 48 - 76Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007