I seek to interpret the work of Walter Benjamin in light of the "system programme" of German Idealism, in order to confront an antinomy of contemporary radical thought. Benjamin has been regarded as an anti-Hegelian thinker of the exception. Reading him against the grain, I draw out a concept of counter-tradition that eschews the opposition of intra-historical progress and extra-historical exception. The philological inspiration is a book by Franz Joseph Molitor, student of Schelling and "teacher" of Benjamin: The Philosophy of (...) History, or, On Tradition. (shrink)

Metaphysics and Music in Adorno and Heidegger explains how two notoriously opposed German philosophers share a rethinking of the possibility of metaphysics via notions of music and waiting. This is connected to the historical materialist project of social change by way of the radical Italian composer Luigi Nono.

ExcerptResigned and Radical Thought It has been said on numerous occasions that Frankfurt School critical theory is, and always was, a spent force. Its totalizing theory of reification leads to a reification of the theory itself. Famously, Adorno was forced to answer to the “reproach” of “resignation” from his students during the 1960s.1 Adorno had already defined his project as “melancholy science,” and it is not difficult to connect melancholia to resignation.2 In this essay Adorno will be read by way (...) of a polemical inversion of melancholy, as it is commonly understood. This interpretation is motivated by…. (shrink)