Online research in philosophy

The present study sketches the general dimensions of a fruitful comparison between Wittgenstein and Adorno. The first section describes seven interrelated levels on which the two philosophers can be compared, levels ranging from philosophical temperament to specific theses to shared cultural and literary background. The parallels between Wittgenstein's and Adorno's philosophies of language emerge as fundamental. The second section discusses Adorno's transformation of the negative moment of the Hegelian dialectic into a critical philosophy of language. The Leitmotiv of this philosophy, the uncovering of linguistic reification, is compared to Wittgenstein's project of demystification. The third section of the paper argues that rather than founding a sort of relativism, both Wittgenstein and Adorno develop new philosophical forms of composition and expression which in fact transform of the concept of reason. Reason becomes so local and multifarious as the phenomena it treats. The paper concludes with some suggestions regarding the relationship between this very modern approach and the tradition of negative theology.

This thesis develops an Hegelian philosophy of education by presenting the concept as the comprehension of the dialectic of enlightenment. It begins by examining recent critical theory of education which has employed Habermas's idea of communicative action in order to reassess the relationship between education and political critique. It goes on to expose the flaws in this approach by uncovering its uncritical use of critique as the method of enlightenment. Enlightenment as overcoming presupposes enlightenment as absolute education. The philosophical issues raised here are then substantially examined by returning to Habermas in order to trace the presupposition of critique as method in his theorizing. It is argued that Habermas also presupposes critique as absolute enlightenment, or overcoming, in both the emancipatory knowledge-constitutive interest and in The Theory of Communicative Action, and further, that it is this presupposition which returns as the contradiction of the dialectic of enlightenment in his work. Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment is then itself examined along with Adorno's Negative Dialectics. Here it is argued that although this work marks an educational and philosophical development over Habermas, nevertheless its authors also presuppose the identity of enlightenment, this time in the claim that the dialectic of enlightenment, and negative dialectics, are not a determinate negation. The thesis shows how Habermas and Adorno, in their respective views of the dialectic of enlightenment, repeat but do not comprehend the selfdetermination which is the actual in Hegelian philosophy. The final chapter of the thesis employs Hegelian philosophy to re-examine the aporia of education as method. It argues that the dialectic of enlightenment is actual when it is recognized as the self-education of philosophical consciousness, and is the identity and non-identity which is the concept. The implications of Hegelian philosophy of education as the recognition of misrecognition are then explored, first with regard to rethinking the identity of the teacher in civil society and developing the concept as ethical pedagogy; and then to recognizing critique as comprehensive education with regard to the state in civil society.

This thesis is a critical interpretation of a striking contention I call the Deformation Claim. The Deformation Claim alleges a deep deformation of beings in modernity. I extract such a claim from the work of Theodor W. Adorno and Martin Heidegger. My aim is to interpret and assess, in a more thorough manner than hitherto achieved, the respective elaborations of the Deformation Claim those thinkers provide. To that end, but mindful of challenges of interpretation and of charges even of complicity with the deformation at issue, I connect two lines of thought within each of my authors. I conjoin their accounts of the deformation of beings with what in their work answers to the determination of beings. An account of beings’ determination is an account of how beings, at a similarly ‘deep’ level to that of the Deformation Claim, are as they are.

This is the first British paperback edition of this modern classic written by one of the towering intellectual of the twentieth century.Theodor Adorno (1903-69) ...

Although Adorno criticizes the existential tradition, it is frequently argued that he and Heidegger share a number of theoretical interests. Adorno does come into direct contact with existential thought at certain points, but it is Kierkegaard, not Heidegger, who more closely approaches his concerns. I begin by reviewing Adorno's Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic. I then argue that, unlike Hegel, who is also criticized by Adorno on various grounds, Kierkegaard has had an influence on Adorno that has been underappreciated. While Adorno criticizes Kierkegaard for breaking off the subject-object dialectic, they converge in their attacks on identity-thinking, the retention of a negative utopian standpoint of critique, and a deliberately provocative style of writing, all of which are marshaled in defense of the individual, who is besieged by modern society. Unlike Kierkegaard, however, and despite the generally accepted view, I conclude by arguing that because Adorno does not break off the subject-object dialectic, he has the necessary theoretical resources to deal with the theory-practice problem. Key Words: Adorno • communication • dialectic • individual • Kierkegaard • subject-object • subjectivity • theory-practice.

This article proposes and explores a hypothesis about some claims made by Adorno. The claims at issue appear to allege, in a way that is hard to understand, that beings in modernity are deformed. The hypothesis is that Adorno’s conception of mediation illuminates that idea. For Adornian mediation seems to bode an account of the determination of beings – of how beings are as they are – that will explicate his claims about beings’ deformation. Acting on that hypothesis, the paper explores Adorno’s views about conceptual mediation (and thereby that which Adorno calls ‘the priority of the object’) and his views about social mediation. I find that those views do not in fact explain the type of deformation at issue. But I argue that there is more than one way in which one might interpret that negative result.

Adorno and Heidegger are frequently aligned because of apparent similarities in their critiques of modern epistemology. This alignment fails, however, to appreciate the substantial differences in the philosophical presuppositions that inform those very critiques. I distinguish Adorno's negative dialectic from Heidegger's fundamental ontology under the respective designations of critical versus phenomenological forms of transcendental philosophy. I argue that only by understanding Adorno's negative dialectic as a revised version of epistemology (namely a dialectical epistemology, committed to subject-object and transcendental argument) can we make sense of, first, the profound differences between Adorno and Heidegger on the question of epistemology and, second, the philosophical motivations behind Adorno's trenchant rejection of Heidegger. Key Words: being-in-the-world • - dialectics • - empiricism • - epistemology • - idealism • - identity • - immediacy • - irrationalism • - mediation • - project • - subject • -object • - transcendental.

The article stages the beginning of a virtual conversation between Levinas's 'ethics as first philosophy' and Adorno's negative dialectic. Part I frames the problem: for both thinkers the task of critique depends on some access to a 'fixed point' for transcendence (Levinas) or a 'standpoint removed' from the domain of existence (Adorno). Part II traces the deep, even essential, connection both perceive between knowledge and violence, a link which brings the possibility of critique even more stringently into question. A standpoint removed must be both less and more than knowledge. Part III sketches Adorno's response to this dilemma in the tracing of a negative dialectic, a thinking that is 'the morality of thought', and one that turns traditional dialectics inside-out. Negative dialectic seems to meet Levinas's ethical criteria for critique. Part IV outlines Levinas's response: the fixed point for critique is in the proximity and sensibility of the ethical relation that lies behind all formal alterity and therefore behind all ontology and all cognition, whether pre-dialectical, dialectical, or post-dialectical. Yet the ethical relation cannot be said except in terms virtually dependent on negative dialectic. Part V examines a potential Levinasian criticism of Adorno and a potential Adornian criticism of Levinas. The fulfillment of the ambition of each would require him to adopt the standpoint of the other. And this may be possible in that thinking along with each demands that one think not only of multiple perspectives but with them. Key Words: Adorno • critique • dialectic • ethics • knowledge • Levinas • negative • proximity • transcendence • violence.