Models of experience -- The interpenetration of concepts and society -- Negativism and truth -- Texture, performativity, and truth -- Aesthetic truth content and oblique second reflection -- Beethoven, proust, and applying adorno's aesthetic theory.

This paper argues that Adorno's metaphysics can be rescued from the constellation of his messianic materialism. The recovery of metaphysics in this context also means that it is rescued as the basis of possible critique. Rescue here entails that the ideas of truth, freedom, justice and democracy should be seen as transcending whatever is empirically given, while remaining immanently operative within society. These ideas can still be drawn on for a critique of the present, thus renewing the original project of (...) critical theory. (shrink)

That something is profoundly wrong with the way in which enlightenment has unfolded has widely been taken to be the main thrust of Dialectic of Enlightenment. In this paper, I propose to defend that to understand the book and shed light on some of its most puzzling features, one should rather take Horkheimer and Adorno's critical claim at face value: through their criticism they contend to have prepared a positive concept of enlightenment. How this can be so is the question (...) I want to answer. I defend that what we need is an account that works out the conceptual grounds on which their critique can operate. The focus of my attempt will consist in understanding what they mean when they assert that rationality is intrinsically social and how they conceive of rationality as being reflective at its core. (shrink)

Throughout his work, Adorno contrasted liberal ideology to the newer and more pernicious form of ideology found in positivism. The paper explores the philosophical basis for Adorno's contrast between liberal and positivist ideology. In Negative Dialectics, Adorno describes all ideology as identity-thinking. However, on his view, liberal ideology represents a more rational form of identity-thinking. Fearing that positivism might obliterate our capacity to distinguish between what is and what ought to be, Adorno sought a more secure foundation for his critique (...) of existing conditions. He found this basis in liberal discourse. In the concept of freedom, for example, Adorno located ideas or ideals that negate and transcend the given. One of the conditions for the possibility of critical thought lies in such ideas; critical thinking consists in wielding the more emphatic content of concepts against the pathic rationality of existing conditions. Far from prescribing mimesis as the antidote to a damaged social, political and economic reality, then, Adorno advocates a more dialectically inflected use of concepts as the basis for social criticism. Key Words: Adorno • Critique • Identity • Ideology • Liberalism • Positivism. (shrink)