This volume comprises one of the key lecture courses leading up to
the publication in 1966 of Adorno's major work, "Negative
Dialectics," These lectures focus on developing the concepts
critical to the introductory section of that book. They show Adorno
as an embattled philosopher defining his own methodology among the
prevailing trends of the time. As a critical theorist, he
repudiated the worn-out Marxist stereotypes still dominant in the
Soviet bloc - he specifically addresses his remarks to students who
had escaped from the East in the period leading up to the building
of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Influenced as he was by the empirical
schools of thought he had encountered in the United States, he
nevertheless continued to resist what he saw as their surrender to
scientific and mathematical abstraction. However, their influence
was potent enough to prevent him from reverting to the traditional
idealisms still prevalent in Germany, or to their latest
manifestations in the shape of the new ontology of Heidegger and
his disciples. Instead, he attempts to define, perhaps more simply
and fully than in the final published version, a 'negative', i.e.
critical, approach to philosophy. Permeating the whole book is
Adorno's sense of the overwhelming power of totalizing, dominating
systems in the post-Auschwitz world. Intellectual negativity,
therefore, commits him to the stubborn defence of individuals -
both facts and people - who stubbornly refuse to become integrated
into 'the administered world'.
These lectures reveal Adorno to be a lively and engaging
lecturer. He makes serious demands on his listeners but always
manages to enliven his arguments with observations on philosophers
andwriters such as Proust and Brecht and comments on current
events. Heavy intellectual artillery is combined with a concern for
his students' progress.
General
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