Suchergebnisse

"Readers of Theodor Adorno often have understood him as a "totalizing negativist." If it truly is the case that Adorno saw modern society as a realm of complete falsehood, however, his own social theory is unintelligible. In A Precarious Happiness, Peter E. Gordon aims to redeem Adorno from this negativist interpretation by showing that it arises from a basic misunderstanding of his work. Pushing against entrenched interpretations, Gordon argues that Adorno's philosophy is animated by a deep attachment to a concept of happiness or human flourishing, and it is only by virtue of that normative standard that Adorno judges the world a catastrophic failure. Through a comprehensive reading of Adorno's work, A Precarious Happiness shows that in an imperfect world, the available standards of our flourishing are also imperfect. Looking beyond Adorno, Gordon suggests that the practice of social criticism, even if it is directed toward exposing what is "false," cannot succeed without appealing to an unrealized notion of what would be right"--

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- INTRODUCTION. Peregrina in Saeculo -- ONE. Benjamin; or, The Ambivalence of Secularization -- TWO. Horkheimer; or, The Longing for the Wholly Other -- THREE. Adorno; or, Negative Dialectics as Negative Theology -- CONCLUSION. Dialectics and Disenchantment -- Notes -- Index

Introduction: A philosophical physiognomy -- Starting out with Kierkegaard: An unlikely cathexis -- The Kierkegaard reception in Germany -- Adorno's Kierkegaard-book -- Reading Kierkegaard against the grain -- Aesthetics and interiority -- Wahl's Études kierkegaardiennes -- Kierkegaard on love -- Ontology and phenomenology: Reading philosophy in the 1930s -- Philosophy and actuality -- Historicizing nature -- Anticipations of the Hegel-studies -- Lukács and Benjamin -- The metacritique of phenomenology -- Failure and non-identity -- Husserl's progress, Heidegger's regression -- Toward negative dialectics -- The jargon of authenticity: Existentialism's aura -- Satire and secularization -- The Wurlitzer organ of the spirit -- The miserable consolation of self-identity -- Grace and dignity -- Endgame as "negative ontology" -- On Hölderlin and parataxis -- Negative dialectics: Adorno's "Fat child" -- Rage against nature -- Toward a primacy of the object -- Pseudo-concreteness -- Aura and mimesis -- French existentialism -- Kierkegaard's nominalism -- Heidegger's critique of reification -- Ontology as wish-fulfillment -- Into the looking glass -- Disenchanting the concept -- Kierkegaard's return: Salvaging metaphysics -- Materialism -- The family scandal -- Odradek as damaged life -- The mirror image -- Hope against hope -- Aesthetics and interiority -- Conclusion: Adorno's inverse theology

Philosophy in crisis -- Setting the stage -- The independent lectures -- The Davos encounter -- Before Davos : myth, science, modernity -- After Davos : enlightenment, politics, religion -- Philosophy and memory