Because of the particularities of German culture, according to Adorno, National Socialism could pose as a substitute for the sense of belonging lost through the capitalism driven rationalization of society. This produces coldness in people’s dealings with each other. But, obviously enough, Adorno believes that we have anything but such a society: forms of human interaction are shaped by the supposedly all-consuming experience of self-preservation within capitalism. His acuity in identifying moments in pivotal philosophical arguments where assumptions, that could only seem natural to the philosophers in their contexts, skew the dynamic of those arguments are provocative and, for me, often persuasive.ģ:AM:How should we understand what Adorno meant when he discussed the social world as a ‘damaged life’? How far was this a reaction to the times he lived through and was it an overreaction that can’t make a distinction between Nazi society and totalitarianism, and contemporary liberal ones?īO:We could say that Adorno endorses the notion, that we consider broadly Aristotelian, that a well-ordered society provides us with wholesome and indeed happy ways of living. How can one make good on the claims that reason has a history and that philosophies are marked by their historical contexts? Adorno was too intelligent a thinker to help himself out with historical reductionism. The difficulty of this project is obvious enough, though. Recognizing those problems might just enable us, as your question suggests, to think about what the ‘good life’ really could be. If the arguments of the philosophers in questions are consistently problematic, maybe, Adorno thinks, it’s because of the conception of life to which they’re committed. A critical analysis of the Idealists, therefore, can allow us to see what conception of ‘rational life’ they rely upon. For example, Kant’s notion of autonomy is not to be construed as a timeless theory of human agency but one which rests upon assumptions about the scope of action that are specific to the modern world. He believed that the kinds of rational norms that are specific to historical contexts are given formal expression in great works of philosophy. Though that is a large part of what we find in his work. Before looking at how you read him, can you say whether you think this was a plausible project and how far you think he was successful?īO:Adorno didn’t engage with the classical German tradition solely to assess the cogency of its arguments or coherence of its conceptualizations. You think Adorno was wanting to do more than respond to German philosophy as an academic and that he wanted to conceptualise the ‘good life’. Academic life, with the space it permits for reading, reflection and interaction, has appealed to me from the moment of my first contact with it.ģ:AM: You have written extensively on German Idealism and Adorno’s responseto this tradition. Being a philosopher today involves, perhaps even necessarily so, membership of a professional institution. There’s a more mundane aspect of the question, though. The topics to which I try to contribute as a scholar and philosopher are, I am sure, marked by the original experience of Socratic thinking. That’s not to say that there isn’t much to doubt in those philosophies. But philosophies that try to gain critical access to the beliefs that give key features of our social world their shapes remain for me among the most interesting of human endeavours. As you might expect, I no longer believe that philosophy has quite that capability. Like so many novices I was quickly captivated by the power of Socratic thinking: that conceptual analysis and a few well-placed questions could, in the name of truth, subvert the social order. They should sell postcards for this one.īrian O'Connor:I enrolled as an undergraduate student of philosophy to complement my literature studies. Brian O'Connor interviewed by Richard Marshall.īrian O’Connorponders the appeal of philosophy, German Idealism, Adorno and his response, the idea of a damaged life, the catastrophe of the Nazi era, what there is about Adorno that drives Hegelians crazy, the conditions for understanding the social world, philosophy's historical situation, Adorno's negative dialectic, immanent vs transcendent criticism, Adorno's moral theory, his relationship to music, his relationship with Benjamin, self-constitution, autonomy and the foolishness of analytic/continental restrictions.
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