Adorno's 'Minima Moralia' in the 21st Century

Adorno's 'Minima Moralia' in the 21st Century

Author: Caren Irr

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-11-18

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1350198854

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This interdisciplinary volume revisits Adorno's lesser-known work, Minima Moralia, and makes the case for its application to the most urgent concerns of the 21st century. Contributing authors situate Adorno at the heart of contemporary debates on the ecological crisis, the changing nature of work, the idea of utopia, and the rise of fascism. Exploring the role of critical pedagogy in shaping responses to fascistic regimes, alongside discussions of extractive economies and the need for leisure under increasingly precarious working conditions, this volume makes new connections between Minima Moralia and critical theory today. Another line of focus is the aphoristic style of Minima Moralia and its connection to Adorno's wider commitment to small and minor literary forms, which enable capitalist critique to be both subversive and poetic. This critique is further located in Adorno's discussion of a utopia that is reliant on complete rejection of the totalising system of capitalism. The distinctive feature of such a utopia for Adorno is dependent upon individual suffering and subsequent survival, an argument this book connects to the mutually constitutive relationship between ecological destruction and right-wing authoritarianism. These timely readings of Adorno's Minima Moralia teach us to adapt through our survival, and to pursue a utopia based on his central ideas. In the process, opening up theoretical spaces and collapsing the physical borders between us in the spirit of Adorno's lifelong project.


Minima Moralia

Minima Moralia

Author: Theodor Adorno

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-03-31

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1788738535

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"A volume of Adorno is equivalent to a whole shelf of books on literature." —Susan Sontag A reflection on everyday existence in the ‘sphere of consumption of late Capitalism’, this work is Adorno’s literary and philosophical masterpiece. Built from aphorisms and reflections, he shifts in register from personal experience to the most general theoretical problems.


Critical Models

Critical Models

Author: Theodor W. Adorno

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 474

ISBN-13: 9780231135047

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"Critical Models' combines two of Adorno's most important postwar works - 'Interventions' and 'Catchwords"--And addresses issues such as the dangers of ideological conformity, the fragility of democracy, educational reform, the influence of television and radio and the aftermath and continuity of racism.


Adorno's Practical Philosophy

Adorno's Practical Philosophy

Author: Fabian Freyenhagen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-07-25

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1107036542

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A unique exploration of Adorno's ethics, defending his challenging views about how to live in an evil world.


Dialectic of Enlightenment

Dialectic of Enlightenment

Author: Max Horkheimer

Publisher: Burns & Oates

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13:

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A major study of modern culture, Dialectic of Enlightenment for many years led an underground existence among the homeless Left of the German Federal Republic until its definitive publication in West Germany in 1969. Originally composed by its two distinguished authors during their Californian exile in 1944, the book can stand as a monument of classic German progressive social theory in the twentieth century.>


Minima Moralia

Minima Moralia

Author: Theodor W. Adorno

Publisher:

Published: 1978

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13:

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A reflection on everyday existence in the "sphere of consumption of late Capitalism, " this work is Adorno's literary and philosophical masterpiece.


The Melancholy Science

The Melancholy Science

Author: Gillian Rose

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2014-01-07

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 178168152X

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The Melancholy Science is Gillian Rose’s investigation into Theodor Adorno’s work and legacy. Rose uncovers the unity discernable among the many fragments of Adorno’s oeuvre, and argues that his influence has been to turn Marxism into a search for style. The attempts of Adorno, Lukács and Benjamin to develop a Marxist theory of culture centred on the concept of reification are contrasted, and the ways in which the concept of reification has come to be misused are exposed. Adorno’s continuation for his own time of the Marxist critique of philosophy is traced through his writings on Hegel, Kierkegaard, Husserl and Heidegger. His opposition to the separation of philosophy and sociology is shown by examination of his critique of Durkheim and Weber, and of his contributions to the dispute over positivism, his critique of empirical social research and his own empirical sociology. Gillian Rose shows Adorno’s most important contribution to be his founding of a Marxist aesthetic that offers a sociology of culture, as demonstrated in his essays on Kafka, Mann, Beckett, Brecht and Schönberg. Finally, Adorno’s ‘Melancholy Science’ is revealed to offer a ‘sociology of illusion’ that rivals both structural Marxism and phenomenological sociology as well as the subsequent work of the Frankfurt School.


Towards a New Manifesto

Towards a New Manifesto

Author: Theodor Adorno

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2019-03-12

Total Pages: 113

ISBN-13: 1786635534

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Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer wrote the central text of “critical theory”, Dialectic of Enlightenment, a measured critique of the Enlightenment reason that, they argued, had resulted in fascism and totalitarianism. Towards a New Manifesto shows the two philosophers in a uniquely spirited and free-flowing exchange of ideas. This book is a record of their discussions over three weeks in the spring of 1956, recorded with a view to the production of a contemporary version of The Communist Manifesto. A philosophical jam-session in which the two thinkers improvise freely, often wildly, on central themes of their work—theory and practice, labor and leisure, domination and freedom—in a political register found nowhere else in their writing. Amid a careening flux of arguments, aphorisms and asides, in which the trenchant alternates with the reckless, the playful with the ingenuous, positions are swapped and contradictions unheeded, without any compulsion for consistency. A thrilling example of philosophy in action and a compelling map of a possible passage to a new world.


One-Dimensional Man

One-Dimensional Man

Author: Herbert Marcuse

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-11

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 113443880X

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One of the most important texts of modern times, Herbert Marcuse's analysis and image of a one-dimensional man in a one-dimensional society has shaped many young radicals' way of seeing and experiencing life. Published in 1964, it fast became an ideological bible for the emergent New Left. As Douglas Kellner notes in his introduction, Marcuse's greatest work was a 'damning indictment of contemporary Western societies, capitalist and communist.' Yet it also expressed the hopes of a radical philosopher that human freedom and happiness could be greatly expanded beyond the regimented thought and behaviour prevalent in established society. For those who held the reigns of power Marcuse's call to arms threatened civilization to its very core. For many others however, it represented a freedom hitherto unimaginable.