Lambert Zuidervaart examines what is living and what is dead in the social philosophy of Theodor W. Adorno, the most important philosopher and social critic in Germany after World War II. When he died in 1969, Adorno’s successors abandoned his critical-utopian passions. Habermas in particular, rejected or ignored Adorno’s central insights on the negative effects of capitalism and new technologies upon nature and human life. Zuidervaart reclaims Adorno’s insights from Habermasian neglect while taking up legitimate Habermasian criticisms. He also addresses the prospects for radical and democratic transformations of an increasingly globalized world. The book proposes a provocative social philosophy ‘after Adorno’.

Contents

Preface part xi
Abbreviations xi
Introduction: Thinking Otherwise 1
1.1 Wozu noch Philosophie? 4
1.2 Going after Adorno 7
1.3 Critical Retrieval 10
1 Transgression or Transformation 16
1.1 Menke’s Derridean Reconstruction 18
1.2 Liberation and Deconstruction 23
1.3 Aesthetic and Artistic Autonomy 38
2 Metaphysics after Auschwitz 48
2.1 Wellmer’s Postmetaphysical Critique 49
2.2 Suffering, Hope, and Societal Evil 58
2.3 Displaced Object 66
3 Heidegger and Adorno in Reverse 77
3.1 Existential Authenticity 78
3.2 Emphatic Experience 95
3.3 Public Authentication 101
4 Globalizing Dialectic of Enlightenment 107
4.1 Habermas’s Paradigmatic Critique 108
4.2 Remembrance of Nature 112
4.3 Beyond Globalization 125
5 Autonomy Reconfigured 132
5.1 Feminist Cultural Politics 133
5.2 The Culture Industry 137
5.3 Culture, Politics, and Economy 145
6 Ethical Turns 155
6.1 Adorno’s Politics 157
6.2 Social Ethics and Global Politics 162
6.3 Resistance and Transformation 175
Appendix: Adorno’s Social Philosophy 183
Bibliography 203
Index