ABSTRACTThis article discusses dialectics as a method of critique which takes concepts it primal object of inquiry. Through a reading of Theodor W. Adorno’s lecture course Introduction to Dialectics, it argues that for dialectical critique concepts are living organs of social reality whose work must observed in terms of constellations of experiences and practices, and through specific historical sites and social processes. The article reconstructs three moments in Adorno’s thinking of critique’s relation to conceptuality: the “pedagogical effect” of concepts on (...) our habits of thought, the socio-historical formation of concepts as “fields of force”, and the need of a “micrological method” of engagement with social reality. Within this framework, the article shows that the movement of dialectical critique is prompted by the cognitive utopia of using concepts to reach material reality, as well as by the ethical demand of making justice to what is not grasped by the existing conceptual order of society. By combining both moments, the goal of dialectical critique is not to identify the correct meaning of concepts, but to work through them as to unlock the normative imagination of society. (shrink)

Despite appearing side by side as keynote speakers at a congress in 1962 devoted to the question of progress, Löwith’s and Adorno’s accounts of progress have never been linked. This paper is an attempt to establish this missed connection, to reveal important connections, striking similarities, and a fundamental difference between these two eminent thinkers’ work on progress. For one, Löwith diagnoses the three main problems that Adorno attempts to solve with his dialectical account of progress. Moreover, each is sympathetic towards (...) crucial aspects of the other’s account: Löwith towards Adorno’s claim that progress is dialectical, Adorno towards Löwith’s claim that progress necessarily has a redemptive aspect. A fundamental disagreement nevertheless divides them: whether the problem of suffering in history is part of our ontological condition, or something we must struggle against and overcome through political action. By establishing this missed connection, I hope to show how progress might still have an important role to play in our present-day historical and political consciousness. (shrink)

In Aesthetic Theory, Adorno argues that, in modernity, art and philosophy are reciprocally dependent upon each other for legitimation and critical force. This claim has puzzled scholars and provoked controversy. I argue that Adorno’s thesis may be comprehended in the following manner: art requires philosophy because, without the latter, art would lack the power to critique social and historical reality (in particular, the ideological elements that often remain invisible as second nature), and to rationally interpret the material particularity expressed by (...) such reality; and, conversely, philosophy requires art because the latter expresses historical experience to reason. Such material historical experience is necessary in order to prevent philosophy from falling into ideological convention; idle speculation; or abstract and reified instrumentality. Thus, the constellation of history, art, and philosophy is essential to Adorno’s aesthetics. (shrink)