Synopses & Reviews
Ever since Kant and Hegel, the notion of autonomythe idea that we are beholden to no law except one we impose upon ourselveshas been considered the truest philosophical expression of human freedom. But could our commitment to autonomy, as Theodor Adorno asked, be related to the extreme evils that we have witnessed in modernity? In
Autonomy after Auschwitz, Martin Shuster explores this difficult question with astonishing theoretical acumen, examining the precise ways autonomy can lead us down a path of evil and how it might be prevented from doing so.
Shuster uncovers dangers in the notion of autonomy as it was originally conceived by Kant. Putting Adorno into dialogue with a range of European philosophers, notably Kant, Hegel, Horkheimer, and Habermasas well as with a variety of contemporary Anglo-American thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, and Robert Pippinhe illuminates Adornos important revisions to this fraught concept and how his different understanding of autonomous agency, fully articulated, might open up new and positive social and political possibilities. Altogether, Autonomy after Auschwitz is a meditation on modern evil and human agency, one that demonstrates the tremendous ethical stakes at the heart of philosophy.
Review
"Brian O'Connor has produced an elegant and persuasive defense of the epistemological core of Adorno's philosophy: the priority of the object for the possibility of experience. His analysis of Adorno's transcendental strategy is novel and challenging. An invaluable contribution to Adorno studies."--J.M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research The MIT Press
Review
"Brian O'Connor has crafted a timely and robust contribution to the ongoing reception of Adorno's work. He provides a much needed and exceedingly lucid treatment of Adorno's central concerns with the nature of the object of experience and the shape of subjectivity, with specific reference to the achievements of Kant and Hegel, around and within which Adorno situated his own project."--Tom Huhn, School of Visual Arts, New York The MIT Press
Review
"O'Connor takes Adorno seriously as a philosopher, rather than regarding the philosophy as a mere epiphenomenon of the social theory. Taking full account of important recent work in German, he also brings a clear and analytical intelligence to the dissection and reconstruction of some of Adorno's central arguments. O'Connor's study makes Adorno's vital and detailed contributions to epistemology and metaphysics harder than ever to ignore."--Simon Jarvis, University of Cambridge, author of *Adorno: A Critical Introduction*
Review
“Autonomy after Auschwitz is an exceptionally strong and interesting work. Shuster productively relates Adorno both to German idealism and to contemporary analytic philosophy, opening up Adornos work and engaging it from perspectives that reveal unexpected nuances and invite further reflection and exploration. The result is a highly original and pathbreaking work that will appeal not only to Adorno scholars but a range of readers in social theory and philosophy.”
Review
“In this elegantly crafted book, Shuster demonstrates, compellingly, that the core of modern reason is a claim to be radically autonomous: fully detached from the natural world and fully self-determining. Such a reason, Adorno argues, will be self-defeating, leading to the dissolution of the very form of subjectivity it promises. Shuster thus shows what no one has argued previously: that at the center of Adornos critical enterprise is an argument about the nature of autonomy, agency, and practical reason. Shuster has provided an incisive addition to our understanding of these topics that confronts traditional accounts, especially in Kant and Hegel, with Adornos reflections on how human action must be shaped, motivated, and elicited from a world of suffering from which we cannot avert our eyes.”
Review
“Shuster offers us a fresh and interesting interpretation of the key elements in Adornos thought. He perceptively steers us through the tangle of Adornos attempt to combine classical German thought with contemporary social concerns.”
Review
“Shuster claims to have ‘reconstructed a formal model for understanding ourselves as agents.’ This reconstructed model replaces the traditional model of ethical action—in which intention and choice are paramount—with a jointly Adornian and Cavellian one, in which moral action is solicited from within interpersonally situated forms of life and experience. Shuster has developed this model with care and makes careful interventions into the reading of some major figures in developing it. Throughout, the claims advanced are convincingly and helpfully situated in relation to recent scholarship within both Anglophone philosophy and the European post-Kantian tradition. As the author himself notes, this reconstructed position stands in need of further elaboration. But Shuster does more than enough to suggest that this would be a task worth undertaking.”
Review
“A series of intricate investigations of autonomy in modern and contemporary philosophy. The chapter on ‘negative dialectics,’ which forms the core of the book, is outstanding. . . . Shuster does excellent work in bringing Adorno into contemporary philosophical discussion.”
Synopsis
The purely philosophical concerns of Theodor W. Adorno's negative dialectic would seem to be far removed from the concreteness of critical theory; Adorno's philosophy considers perhaps the most traditional subject of "pure" philosophy, the structure of experience, whereas critical theory examines specific aspects of society. But, as Brian O'Connor demonstrates in this highly original interpretation of Adorno's philosophy, the negative dialectic can be seen as the theoretical foundation of the reflexivity or critical rationality required by critical theory. Adorno, O'Connor argues, is committed to the "concretion" of philosophy: his thesis of nonidentity attempts to show that reality is not reducible to appearances. This lays the foundation for the applied "concrete" critique of appearances that is essential to the possibility of critical theory.To explicate the context in which Adorno's philosophy operates -- the tradition of modern German philosophy, from Kant to Heidegger -- O'Connor examines in detail the ideas of these philosophers as well as Adorno's self-defining differences with them. O'Connor discusses Georg LucÃ
Synopsis
An analysis of how Adorno's "pure" philosophy can be seen to provide a justification of the rationality required by critical theory.
Synopsis
Could our modern commitment to freedom be related to or even cause a variety of extreme modern evils, most notably (but not exclusively) Auschwitz? Ever since Kant and Hegel, the notion of autonomythe idea that we are beholden to no law except one imposed upon ourselvesis considered the truest philosophical expression of free human agency. In this context, philosopher Martin Shuster examines the notion of autonomy and its relationship to modern evil. Taking its cue from the work of Theodor Adorno, this book shows that the notion of autonomy, as emblematically conceived in this German philosophical tradition, is not only self-defeating and unstable, but also dangerous and connected to extreme evils like genocide because it ultimately dissolves our capacities for reason, especially practical reason, and thereby our very standing as agents. Examining Adornos understanding of modern evil in the context of his debate with Kant on autonomous agency, Shuster shows how Adorno developed a conception of autonomous agency that manages to avoid any connection to extreme evil. Throughout, Adorno is put into dialogue not only with many traditional European philosophical interlocutors (including Kant, Hegel, Horkheimer, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty), but innovatively, also with a variety of Anglo-American thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Bernard Williams, John McDowell, and Robert Pippin. Shuster aims to integrate and situate Adornos work, then, within both traditions discussions of freedom and autonomy, demonstrate the deep ethical stakes that are involved in these debates, and offer new insights and lessons from Adornos writings.
About the Author
Martin Shuster is chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Avila University in Kansas City, MO and is cofounder of the Association for Adorno Studies.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. I Against I: Stressing the Dialectic in the Dialectic of Enlightenment
1. Introduction
2. The Text of the Dialectic of Enlightenment
3. Enlightenment as a Historical Category?
4. The Concept of Enlightenment, and Enlightenment and Myth
5. Images and Signs
6. The Dissolution of Subjectivity
7. The Dialectic of Enlightenment and Kants Dialectic of Reason
8. Adorno on Kants Dialectic
9. The Necessity of the Dialectic of Enlightenment
10. The Dialectic of Enlightenment and Practical Reason
11. Conclusion
2. Beyond the Bounds of Sense: Kant and the Highest Good
1. Introduction
2. Morality and the Highest Good
3. The Highest Good in the Critique of Pure Reason
4. The Garve Review
5. The Highest Good in the Critique of Practical Reason
6. The Highest Good in the Critique of Judgment
7. Conclusion
3. Adornos Negative Dialectic as a Form of Life: Expression, Suffering, and Freedom
1. Introduction
2. Toward an Understanding of the Moral Addendum
3. Natural and Normative: Some Variations
4. The Addendum
5. The Background to Adornos Moral Thought
6. Speculative Surplus and Depth as Freedom
7. Freedom and Expression, Happiness and Suffering
8. Expressivity, Language, and Truth
9. Morality and the Nonidentical
10. Conclusion: Kant and Freedom
4. Reflections on Universal Reason: Adorno, Hegel, and the Wounds of Spirit
1. Introduction
2. The Methodology of the Phenomenology of Spirit
3. From the Science of the Experience of Consciousness to the Phenomenology of Spirit
4. Spirit
5. Universal Reason and Forgiveness
6. Conclusion
Model: Conclusion
Works Cited
Index