Adorno's critique of late capitalism

negative, explanatory and practical

Fabian Freyenhagen

pp. 175-192

in: Karinde Boer, Karin de Boer, Ruth Sonderegger (eds), Conceptions of critique in modern and contemporary philosophy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

Adorno seems to set out to do the impossible. He criticises the whole of the modern social world, including its forms of rationality and thinking, but he does not seem to have an identifiable addressee for his theory, someone or some group who could be the agent for change. Famously, he and Horkheimer described their own work as a "message in a bottle".¹ Moreover, it is neither clear what Adorno's standards of critique are, nor how he could underwrite them. Hence, his critical project seems to undermine itself: by subjecting everything to critique, he seems to leave himself without a vantage point from which his critique could be justified or acted upon.²

Cited authors

Adorno Theodor