It seems obvious that Nietzsche has influenced the Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947). The extent to which Adorno and Horkheimer base their argument on Nietzsche, however, remains controversial. By analyzing an early draft of the first excursion of the Dialectic of Enlightenment from 1943, this article demonstrates that Nietzsche was more important for the development of its main concepts than has been assumed, in particular his analysis of myth and enlightenment. In the earlier version of the Ulysses-chapter Nietzsche, together with Rudolf (...) Borchardt, is a pivotal point of reference. Indeed, it is the Nietzschean reflection on Homer and on the pre-Homerian epic—and Borchardt’s interpretation of these themes—that Adorno views as the first original form of the dialectics of enlightenment. (shrink)

This article argues that the polemic plays a crucial mediating role in Adorno’s philosophy. As a theoretical category, it describes the resistance to thought which inevitably frustrates attempts to reconstruct the world in the image of reason. As a political and rhetorical strategy, it contributes in large measure to Adorno’s self-understanding as a public intellectual in post-war Germany. The article attempts to chart the interrelationship and interdependence of these two aspects through a reading of ‘Parataxis’, Adorno’s 1963 speech on Hölderlin. (...) This speech suggests that art instantiates a polemic which first comes to be activated through the speaking engagement of the philosopher. (shrink)

The intellectual practice of public critique of Theodor W. Adorno and Jürgen Habermas is compared as a contribution to the sociology of the intellectual. The aim of this comparative analysis is to clarify the transformation of the function of the intellectual in the context of his social position. Here it is possible to distinguish between a ‘rescuing’ critique and a ‘consciousness-raising’ critique.