This is a comprehensive collection of readings from the work of Theodor Adorno, one of the most influential German thinkers of the twentieth century. What took place in Auschwitz revokes what Adorno termed the “Western legacy of positivity,” the innermost substance of traditional philosophy. The prime task of philosophy then remains to reflect on its own failure, its own complicity in such events. Yet in linking the question of philosophy to historical occurrence, Adorno seems not to have abandoned his paradoxical, (...) life-long hope that philosophy might not be entirely closed to the idea of redemption. He prepares for an altogether different praxis, one no longer conceived in traditionally Marxist terms but rather to be gleaned from “metaphysical experience.” In this collection, Adorno's literary executor has assembled the definitive introduction to his thinking. Its five sections anatomize the range of Adorno's concerns: “Toward a New Categorical Imperative,” “Damaged Life,” “Administered World, Reified Thought,” “Art, Memory of Suffering,” and “A Philosophy That Keeps Itself Alive.” A substantial number of Adorno’s writings included appear here in English for the first time. This collection comes with an eloquent introduction from Rolf Tiedemann, the literary executor of Adorno’s work. (shrink)

Neue Erkenntnisse sind der Anlass, die beiden Tragödien des Sophokles neu zu interpretieren. Hierzu gehören u.a. die in den letzten Jahren gewonnenen Einsichten über die sozialen und familiären Gegebenheiten im Athen der Antike. Aus ihnen ergibt sich, dass sich die Eheschließung den materiellen Interessen des Hauses unterzuordnen hatte. Außerdem haben wir gegenwärtig ein geschärftes Bewusstsein für sexuelle Gewalt und sexuellen Missbrauch, die häufig im familiären Umfeld stattfinden. In seiner langjährigen Praxistätigkeit begegnete der Autor nicht selten Inzestopfern, kaum dagegen Tätern. Beide (...) Tragödien des Sophokles enthalten Beobachtungen über Inzest und dessen Folgen. Es scheint so, als ob Sophokles Abwehrmechanismen und Abwehrkonfigurationen der Zensoren und des Publikums Rechnung getragen hätte, um sozialkritische Inhalte darstellen zu können. (shrink)

Kant is a pivotal thinker in Adorno's intellectual world. Although he wrote monographs on Hegel, Husserl, and Kierkegaard, the closest Adorno came to an extended discussion of Kant are two lecture courses, one concentrating on the _Critique of Pure Reason_ and the other on the _Critique of Practical Reason_. This new volume by Adorno comprises his lectures on the former. Adorno attempts to make Kant's thought comprehensible to students by focusing on what he regards as problematic aspects of Kant's philosophy. (...) Adorno examines Kant's dualism and what he calls the Kantian "block": the contradictions arising from Kant's resistance to the idealism that his successors—Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel—saw as the inevitable outcome of his ideas. These lectures also provide an accessible introduction to and rationale for Adorno's own philosophy as expounded in _Negative Dialectics_ and his other major writings. Adorno's view of Kant forms an integral part of his own philosophy, since he argues that the way out of the Kantian contradictions is to show the necessity of the dialectical thinking that Kant himself spurned. This in turn enables Adorno to criticize Anglo-Saxon scientistic or positivist thought, as well as the philosophy of existentialism. This book will be of great interest to those working in philosophy and in social and political thought, and it will be essential reading for anyone interested in the foundations of Adorno's own work. (shrink)

This volume makes available in English for the first time Adorno's lectures on metaphysics. It provides a unique introduction not only to metaphysics but also to Adorno's own intellectual standpoint, as developed in his major work _Negative Dialectics._ Metaphysics for Adorno is defined by a central tension between concepts and immediate facts. Adorno traces this dualism back to Aristotle, whom he sees as the founder of metaphysics. In Aristotle it appears as an unresolved tension between form and matter. This basic (...) split, in Adorno's interpretation, runs right through the history of metaphysics. Perhaps not surprisingly, Adorno finds this tension resolved in the Hegelian dialectic. Underlying this dualism is a further dichotomy, which Adorno sees as essential to metaphysics: while it dissolves belief in transcendental worlds by thought, at the same time it seeks to rescue belief in a reality beyond the empirical, again by thought. It is to this profound ambiguity, for Adorno, that the metaphysical tradition owes its greatness. The major part of these lectures, given by Adorno late in his life, is devoted to a critical exposition of Aristotle's thought, focusing on its central ambiguities. In the last lectures, Adorno's attention switches to the question of the relevance of metaphysics today, particularly after the Holocaust. He finds in metaphysical experiences, which transcend rational discourse without lapsing into irrationalism, a last precarious refuge of the humane truth to which his own thought always aspired. This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in Adorno's work and will be a valuable text for students and scholars of philosophy and social theory. (shrink)

A brilliant collection of short essays on literary subjects e.g. Beckett, Balzac, Proust, Thomas Mann, Dickens, Goethe, Heine, the lyric, realism, the essay, and the contemporary novel by the great social theorist (1903-1969), originally published in 1958 as Noten zur literature (Suhrkamp Verlag, F.

The author, a noted literary critic, presents a selection of his thought on Balzac, Valery, Dickens, Goethe, Heine, Hoelderlin, lyric poetry, realism, the essay and the contemporary novel.

Beethoven is a classic study of the composer's music, written by one of the most important thinkers of our time. Throughout his life, Adorno wrote extensive notes, essay fragments and aides-memoires on the subject of Beethoven's music. This book brings together all of Beethoven's music in relation to the society in which he lived. Adorno identifies three periods in Beethoven's work, arguing that the thematic unity of the first and second periods begins to break down in the third. Adorno follows (...) this progressive disintegration of organic unity in the classical music of Beethoven and his contemporaries, linking it with the rationality and monopolistic nature of modern society. Beethoven will be welcomed by students and researchers in a wide range of disciplines - philosophy, sociology, music and history - and by anyone interested in the life of the composer. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

"Das Buch ist gut zu lesen und als Urlaubslektüre zu empfehlen." (Sachverhalte 3/2015) "Der klare und sachlogisch überzeugende Argumentationsgang des vorliegenden Bands macht ihn, in Kombination mit einer sehr gelungenen, sprachlichen Gestaltung zu einem echten Lesevergnügen und kann für philosophische 'Einsteiger' zum Beginn einer philosophischen Liebesgeschichte werden. Für Lehrende der Philosophie an Schule und Hochschule ist Tiedemanns Band (…) Fundgrube sowie fachlich fundierter und didaktisch ausgezeichnet aufbereiteter Begleiter durch Unterricht und Seminar." (Mathias Balliet, ZDPE 1/2015) Liebe, Sexualität und Freundschaft gehören (...) nicht nur zu den intensivsten Erfahrungen des Menschen, sie werfen auch zahlreiche Fragen auf: Wie wichtig sind sie für ein gelungenes Leben? Wie genau unterscheiden sich Liebe und Freundschaft? Ist Sexualität ein eigenständiges Phänomen oder notwendig mit Liebe verbunden? Besteht Liebe eher aus selbstloser Fürsorge oder aus eigennütziger Habsucht? Von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart haben sich namhafte Denker von Sokrates über Rousseau bis hin zu Sigmund Freud und Simone de Beauvoir dieser Fragen angenommen und dabei erstaunliche Antworten formuliert. Die Philosophie der Liebe ist so vielgestaltig wie ihr Gegenstand. Ist platonische Liebe wirklich lustfeindlich und entsagungsvoll? Beruht die christliche Sexualmoral auf einem Mutterkomplex? Muss man dichten können wie Goethe, um mit Schiller befreundet zu sein? Ist alle Liebe so egoistisch, wie Schopenhauer uns einreden will, oder sind wahre Liebe und Freundschaft vielleicht doch für jeden von uns möglich? Das Buch bietet einen abwechslungsreichen Streifzug durch die Antworten der Ideengeschichte und lädt ein zum Weiterdenken. Love, sexuality and friendship are not only among the most intense of human experiences, they also give rise to many questions: How important are they for a successful life? How exactly do love and friendship differ? Is sexuality an independent phenomenon or does it have to be connected with love? Is love more a matter of selfless care or of selfish desire? From antiquity to the present day prominent thinkers from Socrates through Rousseau to Sigmund Freud and Simone de Beauvoir have taken on these questions and come up with surprising answers. The philosophy of love is as varied as love itself. Is Platonic love really opposed to pleasure and obsessed with self-denial? Is Christian sexual morality based on a mother-complex? Is it necessary to write like Goethe to be friends with Schiller? Is all love as egotistical as Schopenhauer would have us believe, or are true love and friendship still possible for all of us? This book takes us on a diverse foray into the answers offered by intellectual history and invites us to think further for ourselves. (shrink)

The paper tries to illustrate the influence of Aristotle's thought upon Brentano by arguing that the view that all psychological phenomena have objects was proably derived from the Aristotelian conception that the mind can know itself only en parergo, and that this knowledge presupposes that some other thing be in the mind "objectively". Brentano's contribution to Aristotle scholarship is illustrated by reviewing some of his arguments against Zeller's claim that Aristotle's God, contemplating only himself, is ignorant of the world. The (...) paper concludes with an attempt to explain the relative neglect into which Brentano's exegetical efforts have fallen. (shrink)

Abduction is considered the most powerful, but also the most controversially discussed type of inference. Based on an analysis of Peirce’s retroduction, Lipton’s Inference to the Best Explanation and other theories, a new theory of abduction is proposed. It considers abduction not as intrinsically explanatory but as intrinsically conditional: for a given fact, abduction allows one to infer a fact that implies it. There are three types of abduction: Selective abduction selects an already known conditional whose consequent is the given (...) fact and infers that its antecedent is true. Conditional-creative abduction creates a new conditional in which the given fact is the consequent and a defined fact is the antecedent that implies the given fact. Propositional-conditional-creative abduction assumes that the given fact is implied by a hitherto undefined fact and thus creates a new conditional with a new proposition as antecedent. The execution of abductive inferences is specified by theory-specific patterns. Each pattern consists of a set of rules for both generating and justifying abductive conclusions and covers the complete inference process. Consequently, abductive inferences can be formalised iff the whole pattern can be formalised. The empirical consistency of the proposed theory is demonstrated by a case study of Semmelweis' research on puerperal fever. (shrink)

Gegenstand der Nikomachischen Ethik (ca. 335-323 v. Chr.) ist das >tätige Leben.

Didactics of philosophy and ethics demands problem based orientation and relevance for real life experiences. However, excursions, extracurricular places of learning or 'outdoor education' have hardly been taken into account. A systematic exploration of possible cooperations, synergy effects or incompatibilities has not yet been carried out. The present volume attempts to close this gap and to create an initial basis for further research, testing and discussion. It is intended to make a contribution to teacher training at universities and study seminars (...) as well as to exploratory research in subject didactics. (shrink)

Hegel argues that Kant's critical project is analogous to the attempt to learn to swim before getting in the water. Some have taken this to indicate the broadly anti-epistemological nature of Hegel's philosophical system. In this paper, I offer a novel interpretation of the swimming argument which is both (i) compatible with a broadly epistemological conception of his Logic and (ii) more obviously efficacious against its intended target (viz. Kant). Briefly stated, the swimming argument is intended to reveal the reflexive (...) or self-implicating nature of any critical-reflection. (shrink)

We provide first-order axioms for the theories of finite trees with bounded branching and finite trees with arbitrary (finite) branching. The signature is chosen to express, in a natural way, those properties of trees most relevant to linguistic theories. These axioms provide a foundation for results in linguistics that are based on reasoning formally about such properties. We include some observations on the expressive power of these theories relative to traditional language complexity classes.

P3 is the most prominent of the electrical potentials of the human electroencephalogram that are sensitive to psychological variables. According to the most influential current hypothesis about its psychological significance [E. Donchin's], the “context updating” hypothesis, P3 reflects the updating of working memory. This hypothesis cannot account for relevant portions of the available evidence and it entails some basic contradictions. A more general formulation of this hypothesis is that P3 reflects the updating of expectancies. This version implies that P3-evoking stimuli (...) are initially unexpected but later become expected. This contradiction cannot be resolved within this formulation. The alternative “context closure” hypothesis retains the concept of “strategic information processing” emphasized by the context updating hypothesis. P3s are evoked by events that are awaited when subjects deal with repetitive, highly structured tasks; P3s arise from subjects' combining successive stimuli into larger units. The tasks in which P3s are elicited can accordingly be classified in terms of their respective formal sequences of stimuli. P3 may be a physiological indicator of excess activation being released from perceptual control areas. (shrink)

Statements of the form ''Osorno is in Chile'' were presented in colors that made them easy or difficult to read against a white background and participants judged the truth of the statement. Moderately visible statements were judged as true at chance level, whereas highly visible statements were judged as true significantly above chance level. We conclude that perceptual fluency affects judgments of truth.

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