A comprehensive biography which covers Adorno's life, work and times: from childhood, through to his student years, his years in emigration, his return to post-war Germany, his time in Frankfurt, his role as a public intellectual, and his ...

The book is based on documentary and biographical materials that have only recently become available.

статье рассматривается философская позиция критики метафизики в контексте негативных философских традиций скептицизма, релятивизма и апофатической онтотеологии. Задается вопрос о том, в чем состоит принципиальное отличие негативных позиций скептицизма, релятивизма и апофатизма от реализма. Показано, что и в случае положительной онтологии, которая допускает познание мира, и в случае отрицательной онтологии, которая запрещает познание мира, речь идет о познаваемости познаваемого и непознаваемости непознаваемого. Но философия бы закончилась, почти не начавшись, этой тривиальной тавтологией, если бы не мыслила содержательно. Содержательные же вопросы относятся к (...) установлению границ между познающим и миром, они задаются о природе связи между субъектом и данным ему в познании материалом или о причинах отсутствия связи между субъектом и тем, что лежит вне сферы его познания – «Великим Внешним». Показано, что отрицательная онтология, которая полагает предел нашему мышлению и утверждает непознаваемость мира в целом, тем не менее, остается онтологией, т. е. концептуальным выражением нашего постижения бытия и условий его непознаваемости. Таким образом, показано, что любая критика метафизики, включая релятивизм, нуждается в онтологии. Такая точка зрения обезвреживает релятивизм и по-зволяет помыслить философию в целом в качестве онтологически укорененного знания. (shrink)

These essays by eminent European intellectual and cultural historian Anson Rabinbach address the writings of key figures in twentieth-century German philosophy. Rabinbach explores their ideas in relation to the two world wars and the horrors facing Europe at that time. Analyzing the work of Benjamin and Bloch, he suggests their indebtedness to the traditions of Jewish messianism. In a discussion of Hugo Ball's little-known _Critique of the German Intelligentsia_, Rabinbach reveals the curious intellectual career of the Dadaist and antiwar activist (...) turned-nationalist and anti-Semite. His examination of Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" and Jaspers's _The Question of German Guilt_ illuminates the complex and often obscure political referents of these texts. Turning to Horkheimer and Adorno's _Dialectic of Enlightenment_, Rabinbach offers an arresting new interpretation of this central text of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. Subtly and persuasively argued, his book will become an indispensable reference point for all concerned with twentieth-century German history and thought. (shrink)

Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism." Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of (...) contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present. The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization. Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. "Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology." This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book. This new translation, based on the text in the complete edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory. (shrink)

The book provides a thematic account of the changing political thought of critical theorists from Adorno to Habermas and Honneth. Its purpose is to establish the relevance of this tradition for contemporary political theory and philosophy.

These essays by eminent European intellectual and cultural historian Anson Rabinbach address the writings of key figures in twentieth-century German philosophy. Rabinbach explores their ideas in relation to the two world wars and the horrors facing Europe at that time. Analyzing the work of Benjamin and Bloch, he suggests their indebtedness to the traditions of Jewish messianism. In a discussion of Hugo Ball's little-known _Critique of the German Intelligentsia_, Rabinbach reveals the curious intellectual career of the Dadaist and antiwar activist (...) turned-nationalist and anti-Semite. His examination of Heidegger's "Letter on Humanism" and Jaspers's _The Question of German Guilt_ illuminates the complex and often obscure political referents of these texts. Turning to Horkheimer and Adorno's _Dialectic of Enlightenment_, Rabinbach offers an arresting new interpretation of this central text of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. Subtly and persuasively argued, his book will become an indispensable reference point for all concerned with twentieth-century German history and thought. (shrink)