On Thinking the Tragic with Adorno

The European Legacy 21 (7):644-663 (2016)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This article seeks to provide a template for understanding the tragic dimension of Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy through a reading of his early collaborative work with Max Horkheimer, the Dialectic of Enlightenment. While Adorno’s view has often been considered to be tragic, little has been done to reconstruct the tragic dimension of his thought. I argue that the view of the human condition, presented in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, is founded on metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical convictions that have structural similarities with the positions held by theorists and philosophers of tragedy and the tragic. Since traces of these tragic elements can be found throughout Adorno’s mature philosophy, the approach presented in this article may serve as a model for a more detailed mapping and examination of the tragic dimension of his thought in future research.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

A Theory of Tragic Experience According to Hegel.Julia Peters - 2011 - European Journal of Philosophy 19 (1):85-106.
Die Dialektik des Tragischen in Nietzsches Denken.Lucian Ionel - 2011 - Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy 3 (1):54-80.
Tragedy and philosophy.N. Georgopoulos (ed.) - 1993 - New York: St. Martin's Press.
Habermas and Adorno on "Dialectic of Enlightenment".Alex Pienknagura - 1991 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst
The pleasures of documentary tragedy.Stacie Friend - 2007 - British Journal of Aesthetics 47 (2):184-198.
Charisma and Tragedy.Raphael Falco - 1999 - Theory, Culture and Society 16 (3):71-98.
Art and Myth: Adorno and Heidegger.David Roberts - 1987 - Thesis Eleven 58 (1):19-34.

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-07-07

Downloads
26 (#524,350)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Adorno's tragic vision.Markku Nivalainen - 2018 - Dissertation, University of Jyväskylä

Add more citations

References found in this work

Adorno's practical philosophy: Living Less Wrongly.Fabian Freyenhagen - 2010 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
The Nazi Myth.Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe & Jean-Luc Nancy - 1990 - Critical Inquiry 16 (2): 291–312..
Schopenhauer and the sublime pleasure of tragedy.Dylan Trigg - 2004 - Philosophy and Literature 28 (1):165-179.

Add more references