Adorno and Existence

by Peter E. Gordon

Overview

From the beginning to the end of his career, the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno sustained an uneasy but enduring bond with existentialism. His attitude overall was that of unsparing criticism, verging on polemic. In Kierkegaard he saw an early paragon for the late flowering of bourgeois solipsism; in Heidegger, an impresario for a “jargon of authenticity” cloaking its idealism in an aura of pseudo-concreteness and neo-romantic kitsch. Even in the straitened rationalism of Husserl’s phenomenology Adorno saw a vain attempt to break free from the prison-house of consciousness.

“Gordon, in a detailed, sensitive, fair-minded way, leads the reader through Adorno’s various, usually quite vigorous, rhetorically pointed attacks on both transcendental and existential phenomenology from 1930 on…[A] singularly illuminating study.”
—Robert Pippin, Critical Inquiry

“Gordon’s book offers a significant contribution to our understanding of Adorno’s thought. He writes with expertise, authority, and compendious scholarship, moving with confidence across the thinkers he examines…After this book, it will not be possible to explain Adorno’s philosophical development without serious consideration of [Gordon’s] reactions to them.”
—Richard Westerman, Symposium

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674973534
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	11/14/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	556 KB

About the Author

Peter E. Gordon is Amabel B. James Professor of History and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. He is also Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Resident Faculty at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.

Table of Contents

Cover Title Copyright Dedication Contents Preface Introduction: A Philosophical Physiognomy An Unlikely Cathexis The Kierkegaard Reception in Germany Adorn’s Kierkegaard Book Reading Kierkegaard against the Grain Aesthetics and Interiority Wahl’s Études kierkegaardiennes Kierkegaard on Love Reading Philosophy in the 1930s Philosophy and Actuality Heidegger’s Crypto-Idealism Historicizing Nature Anticipations of the Hegel Studies Lukács and Benjamin The Metacritique of Phenomenology The Antinomy of Idealism Failure and Nonidentity Husserl’s Progress, Heidegger’s Regression Toward Negative Dialectics 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 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 Salvaging Metaphysics Materialism as Demystified Idealism The Family Scandal Odradek as Damaged Life The Mirror Image Hope against Hope Aesthetics and Interiority Conclusion: Adorno’s Inverse Theology Notes Index

Editorial Reviews

Written with elegance and meticulously researched, the book focuses on Adorno’s successive encounters with Kierkegaard, Husserl, and Heidegger over the years as a key to unlock Adorno’s own difficult thinking. A major contribution to Adorno studies and beyond.

Seyla Benhabib

Adorno and Existence struck me as almost inevitable: how is it that no one had thought to write this necessary book previously? With a rare combination of narrative brio and analytic insight, Peter Gordon tracks Adorno’s repeated confrontations with Kierkegaard, Husserl, Heidegger, Kafka, & co. This is a fine, even irreplaceable study with a superb and riveting final chapter.

Jay Bernstein

A perceptive philosophical inquiry.

New York Review of Books - Samuel Freeman

On first reading Adorno’s early study of Kierkegaard, Walter Benjamin intuited that it was ‘very possible that the author’s later books will spring from this one.’ When Adorno reissued it many years later, he admitted to Ernst Bloch that it had ‘the character of a dream-like anticipation.’ With Peter Gordon’s arresting new interpretation of Adorno’s life-long struggle with Kierkegaard’s legacy, a struggle generating the dynamic force field of theology, aesthetics and social critique he called negative dialectics, we can understand for the first time how right both of these observations actually were.

Martin Jay

Adorno and Existence is an expansive and ambitious undertaking and Gordon deserves praise for elucidating the dense constructions of Adorno’s texts, especially in the often elliptical prose of Negative Dialectics. He traces a constant concern in Adorno, from the 1930s onwards, to associate the ontology of existentialism with idealism while also acknowledging an underlying value in idealism’s resistance to the merely given…[An] elegantly composed study.

Marx and Philosophy Review of Books - Sean Sheehan

This extraordinary study is a marvelous interpretation of the whole of Adorno’s philosophical thinking by making convincingly clear to what surprising degree it is dependent on some constitutive ideas of Kierkegaard. Gordon successfully integrates two aims, the systematic re-interpretation of Adorno’s philosophy and the subtle reconstruction of his intellectual development. This is a tour de force for which Peter Gordon deserves highest admiration.

Axel Honneth

Gordon masterfully reconstructs Adorno's lifelong engagement with existentialist thinkers and themes…The lucid and concise way in which he writes about Adorno is no less than exemplary…The book brilliantly succeeds in its aims. It indicates the path for a further exploration of the hidden affinities between one of the main theorists of the Frankfurt school and existential philosophy.

Universa Recensioni di Filosofia - Helmer Stoel

Gordon, in a detailed, sensitive, fair-minded way, leads the reader through Adorno’s various, usually quite vigorous, rhetorically pointed attacks on both transcendental and existential phenomenology from 1930 on…[A] singularly illuminating study.

Critical Inquiry - Robert Pippin

Gordon’s book offers a significant contribution to our understanding of Adorno’s thought. He writes with expertise, authority, and compendious scholarship, moving with confidence across the thinkers he examines. Throughout his argument, he effectively places Adorno’s work in the context of contemporary debates and events. His well-organized exposition and lucid prose are particularly noteworthy, conveying complex ideas with clarity and nuance. Above all, I found myself persuaded of his central claim, as it seems quite clear that Adorno’s engagement with the thought of Kierkegaard, Husserl, and Heidegger played a decisive role in the development of his own philosophy, rather than entailing merely a straightforward rejection. After this book, it will not be possible to explain Adorno’s philosophical development without serious consideration of his reactions to them.

Symposium - Richard Westerman