Theodor Adorno

Esta tese trabalha uma concepção fundamental para a Psicologia: a de indivíduo, tal como compreendida na obra de Theodor W. Adorno. Neste estudo, essa concepção foi analisada à luz das considerações de Adorno à peça Fim de Partida, de Samuel Beckett. No ensaio Intento de entender Fin de Partida, Adorno avalia essa peça como denúncia realista das condições deterioradas de formação do indivíduo. Para Adorno, é por meio da forma de paródia do drama que a peça expõe a dilaceração das possibilidades de contato entre os homens e destes com a natureza e o mundo. Nesse contexto, outro conceito se fez importante: o de experiência, tal como o entende Walter Benjamin. Esse conceito também foi fundamental para Adorno desenvolver suas análises sobre as condições de constituição do indivíduo. Essas referências iluminam a obra beckettiana, que se desvela em seu aspecto formal como historiografia do sofrimento e explicita o caráter fragmentário e impotente com que a concepção de indivíduo se apresenta na modernidade.

Book Abstract: This collection of essays explores the conflictual history of two important traditions of twentieth-century European thought: the critical theory of Theodor W. Adorno and the ontology of Martin Heidegger. As is well known, there has been little productive engagement between these two schools of thought, in large measure due to Adorno’s sustained and unanswered critique of Heidegger. Stemming from this critique, numerous political and philosophical barriers have kept these traditions separate -- barriers that have rarely been submitted to scrutiny, let alone questioned. The essays making up this collection are fresh and original attempts at coming to terms with the nuances and difficulties that these two towering figures have bequeathed to the history of European thought. The volume’s authors deal with a variety of issues ranging from epistemology to aesthetics, to ethics, to intellectual history and modernity, providing the reader with detailed insight into a thorny debate in the history of recent European thought.

Claude Eatherly, pilota e metereologo,
era un ragazzo texano di
27 anni quando ordinò lo sgancio
della prima bomba atomica della
storia, Little Boy, che colpì Hiroshima
il 6 agosto 1945.
Nonostante la giovane età, non
era certo un dilettante: per quella
missione vennero scelti i migliori
piloti della US Army, e Eatherly
aveva già dato prova del suo valore
militare, abbattendo, nel corso
della sua fulminante carriera,
più di trenta aerei nemici. Dopo
lo sgancio della bomba, tuttavia,
lasciò l’esercito e rifi utò qualsiasi
riconoscimento al valore da parte
degli Stati Uniti. Compì anche
maldestre rapine e altri piccoli
crimini, con la speranza di trovare
sollievo nel biasimo collettivo. Ma
ciò non bastò a placare i suoi dilanianti
sensi di colpa e Eatherly
venne internato in un ospedale
psichiatrico. Fu in questo momento,
quattordici anni dopo Hiroshima,
che iniziò un carteggio con
Günther Anders, il fi losofo tedesco
autore del capolavoro L’uomo
è antiquato. Il risultato è questo
libro: un commovente scambio
epistolare tra Anders e un’anima
persa, in cerca di un’espiazione
tanto impossibile quanto necessaria.
Dopo anni di assenza dalle
librerie, torna disponibile una delle
testimonianze più toccanti sul
disastro che cambiò per sempre
la coscienza collettiva.

Enclosed is the syllabus and course notes from the upper division course I teach in PostModernism and Post-Marxist Critical Theory. It occurs to me that some of these essays--ranging from Horkheimer and Adorno, Baudrillard, Foucault, and the feminist post-modern theorist Donna Haraway may offer some insight and some tools for comprehending the dark times in which we live. While these essays may not be directly aimed at understanding the rise of phenomena like the Alt-Right, toxic masculinity, and particularly violent forms of patriarchy, I think they can show us something about the ideological trends that set us on out current morally troubling path.

In this paper we want to develop a third perspective, one that neither understands concrete as the newest en vogue material, nor rejects it and the Brutalist buildings made from it solely on the grounds of an unpleasant first impression. The sensual awkwardness of Brutalist buildings and the rejection of them is the starting point for our alternative reading of Brutalist architecture. This reading understands concrete buildings as reminders that there is something fundamentally wrong with society. It takes New Brutalism as the architectural answer to the catastrophes of the 20th century. Following Hegel one has to say " philosophy must beware of wishing to be edifying, " a statement that is all the more true for (post-Shoah) architecture. In this paper we illustrate our arguments through description and analysis of the former headquarters of the German Federal Railway. We focus on two specific elements of Brutalist architecture which we call structural expressionism and irreconcilability: the transparency of materials and structures on the one hand, and a specific relation to society on the other, following and adding to Reyner Banham's distinction of aesthetical and ethical aspects in the discussion of Brutalism.

Puts 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' in an historical context and shows hows the concept of 'mimesis' prefigures more recent cognitive interest in the emotional foundations of human knowledge and human interaction. The paper builds bridges between the critical legacy of the Frankfurt School and recent more empirically-oriented work on cognition, using Nietzsche and Winnicott as a bridge. It suggests we shouldn't be too attached to Adorno and Horkheimer's dialectical form of argument, and should focus instead on their early interdisicplinary analyses of embodied forms of knowledge.

La tesi presenta inizialmente il pensiero di Jacques Derrida sull'animalità. Il tema affrontato è la sovranità dell'uomo sul resto dei viventi, in particolare nei riguardi della discriminazione dell'animalità. Nei capitoli a seguire si attua un'emancipazione dell'animalità e non dall'animalità come la corrente umanista voleva. Attraverso l'ontogenesi del concetto di "umanità" viene decostruito il costrutto che sorregge la soglia che divide l'uomo dagli animali, laddove essi partecipano all'animalità in maniere differenti. L'emergenza di questa composizione dei temi trattati si erge ad azione esemplare con cui Derrida, prima di morire, ha lasciato delle tracce da seguire durante il ricevimento del premio Adorno.

1923 yılında bir grup aydın tarafından Marksizmi yeniden düşünmek amacıyla kurulan Frankfurt Okulu, sanattan sosyolojiye, eğitimden psikolojiye dek pek çok alanıda yeni fikirlerin ortaya konmasında etkili olmuştur. Bu alanların yanı sıra, Okul’a bağlı birçok aydın edebiyat alanında da çalışmalar yapmış, yaptıkları çalışmalar edebiyat kuramlarının modern dünyayla olan ilişkisini yeniden düşünmek açısından faydalı olmuştur. Makalenin temel fikri Frankfurt Okulu’nun modern edebi kuramların seyrini belirlediğidir. Bu çalışmada önce Frankfurt Okulu tanıtılacak, sonrasında ise bu ekole bağlı olarak edebiyata dair fikir üreten düşünürler ve onların fikirlerinden bahsedilecektir.

This document critically reviews the theories of the avant-garde of both the Left and the Right put forward between the 1920s – the time of the vigorous assertion of the avant-garde – and the late 1970s – the beginning of the conservative turn led by Regan and Thatcher and reflected in cultural, change. The focus is on modern autonomous art and the historical avant-garde art movements. Art is first of all put in its place by locating it in the context of the institutional framework of modern society. This includes historical references to the emergence of the modern concept of art and of the philosophical discipline of aesthetics. The review of the theories opens with analyses of Ortega y Gassett and Poggioli’s proposals dating from 1925 and 1968 respectively. Important among the theories of the Left are those of the representatives of Critical Theory such as Lukács, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse and Bürger. Among the Right, both the German and American Neo-conservatives are considered, Gehlen, Ritter and Marquard representing the former and Bell that latter. The analysis closes with final reflections on the concepts of the autonomy of art and of the avant-garde which become comprehensible only within the context of rationalised and disenchanted (i.e. disillusioned and enlightened) modern society.

Günther Anders’ Philosophy of Technology; From Phenomenology to Critical Theory
(London: Bloomsbury, 2022)

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/g%C3%BCnther-anders-philosophy-of-technology-9781350228580/?fbclid=IwAR3eNUw90xrdaJ44UC1MTKYnSvegjeyBgFbIsY4viZrJdmdlqgYNpHjMPlI

Un análisis de las convicciones políticas de los españoles desde la teología política. Resumen: En el presente artículo se hace una observación de las convicciones españolas más arraigas, que operan bajo la creencia de que es posible solucionar los problemas del país meramente votando a uno u otro partido, analizando qué mitos están cimentados en el imaginario colectivo para que funcione de tal manera. Enfocándolo desde el estudio de la Escuela de Frankfurt, de los autores Adorno y Horkheimer, los cuales consideraban que el proyecto ilustrado retornaba al mito que trataba de superar, donde la racionalización absoluta derivaba en una regresión y perversión de los fundamentos de la realidad y, por tanto, de la esencia de lo político. En cuanto la humanidad renuncie toda ella a Dios, […] de por sí, sin recurrir a la antropofagia, caerá toda la anterior concepción del mundo y, lo que es más importante, toda la antigua moral, y todo será nuevo. Los hombres se unirán para tomar de la vida cuanto esta pueda darles, pero, eso sí, para la felicidad y la alegría en este mundo únicamente. El hombre exaltará con el espíritu de un orgullo divino, titánico, y aparecerá el Hombre Dios (Dostoievski [1880] 2015: 950). Harán 76 años de la publicación de la Dialéctica de la Ilustración (Adorno y Horkheimer, [1944] 1994). En esta obra se procuraba explicar que el proyecto de la Ilustración recaía en el propio mito que quería erradicar. Su intento por desencantar el mundo y vaciarlo de magia estuvo viciado desde el comienzo porque creaba sus propios mitos y mantenía otros. La creencia férrea en el cientificismo moderno ponía de relieve que "las grandes invenciones se pagan con una creciente decadencia de la cultura teórica" (Adorno y Horkheimer, [1944] 1994: 51), lo que producía una inmanentización del mundo en el que toda verdad estaba encerrada en él, siendo accesible al ser humano. Si todo era posible al limitar la realidad a pura materia, "[l]a semejanza del hombre con Dios consiste [entonces] en la soberanía sobre lo existente" (Adorno y Horkheimer, [1944] 1994: 64); nada es irrealizable para este nuevo sujeto deificado. Pero no toda persona podría ser endiosada, sólo algunos tienen tal privilegio. De aquí nace la concepción del superhombre con carácter salvífico que podría otorgar la redención a la humanidad a través de un acto revolucionario. Todos sabemos lo que ocurrió entre los siglos XIX y XX. La culminación del proyecto Ilustrado quedaba así consagrada. Sin embargo, ¿qué mitos han llegado a nuestros días en el caso español?

A sociologia da música se desenvolveu unida as teorias de pensadores como Dahlhaus, Weber e Adorno. Todavia, estudos recentes da musicologia, como o de Freitas e Travassos, abordam questões de direitos autorais e analisam o distanciamento ideológico da contracultura e da tradição com a Indústria Cultural. A pergunta de Hesmondhalgh (2000), sobre como conceber as diferenças na música, remete a análise destas para compreender o hibridismo musical contemporâneo e a sua influência nas questões de autoria. Sendo assim, o texto a seguir aborda questões de sociologia da música e seus desdobramentos nos tempos atuais, analisando referenciais clássicos e atuais para compreendermos a relação entre música, criação artística e mercado.

Der auditive Diskurs im deutschen Roman der Moderne und der Postmoderne: der Versuch der Typologie

Im Beitrag werden die methodologischen und kultur-historischen Gründungen der Typologie der auditiven Diskurses im deutschen Gegenwartsroman untersucht. Der auditive Diskurs wird als akustischen vs. musikalischen Medien im literarischen Diskurs interpretiert. In der Mitte von der Aufmerksamkeit befindet sich die Veränderung des ideologischen und formalen Deutungen des Klanges und der Musik. Auf dem Material der modernen und postmodernen Romane (Th. Mann, H. Hesse, E. Jelinek, Th. Bernhard, R. Schneider u.a.) wird die Reinterpretation und die Dekonstruktion der romantischen Mythe dargestellt.

Die vorliegende kleine Einführung in Adornos Ästhetik ist entstanden aus der Überarbeitung und Aktualisierung von Seminarskripten zur „Einführung in die Philosophie der Gegenwart“, eine Veranstaltungsreihe, das ich in 2002 und den folgenden Jahren durchgeführt habe. Wesentliche Impulse für die Veranstaltungen waren Fragen nach der Relevanz zeitgenössischer philosophischer Positionen auf das konkrete Leben jedes Einzelnen in einer immer komplexer werdenden Gesellschaft: Inwieweit kann Philosophie hier und heute Orientierung bieten, wie kann Philosophie ihrer ursprünglichen Intention als Weisheitssuche, Lebensform und Menschenbildung gerecht werden? Die Erfahrungen aus den fruchtbaren Diskussionen mit „nichtprofessionell Philosophierenden“ zu Fragen der Kunst haben mich bewogen dieses kleine Büchlein als Einführung in Adornos Theorie der Kunst zu veröffentlichen, wohl wissend um die bereits bestehende und ganze Bibliotheken füllende Literatur zum Thema. Anspruch dieses Buches ist der Spagat zwischen Lebenspraxisbezug und wissenschaftlicher Redlichkeit, zwischen Vereinfachung und Zuspitzung ohne dabei die Komplexität Adornos Denken aus den Augen zu verlieren. Die Einführung schlägt erste Schneisen in das Theoriedickicht und gibt Hilfestellungen an die Hand ohne dabei allzu eng zu führen und auf einseitige Interpretationen festzulegen. Zielgruppen dieser Einführung sind insofern alle Philosophierende, Menschen, die sich auf den Weg des Selbstdenkens gemacht haben, die in die Bewegung des Denkens hineingefunden haben bzw. hineinfinden wollen. Damit eignet sich das Büchlein besonders für Schüler, Lehrer und Studierende der ersten Semester sowie für die außeruniversitäre Erwachsenenbildung.

This paper focuses upon Adorno's critique of musical temporality-as found in his musical criticism and as implied by his philosophy as a whole. I shall contend that the two do not necessarily coincide. Adorno presents temporality in a different light in each, and rather than labor over Adorno's 'disparate and diverging comments on temporality in an attempt to prove their inner consistency, I dwell on their irreconcilability. This is made a particularly plausible approach by Adorno's own methods, which I characterize as being driven by the principle of antinomy. It is not for nothing that Adorno refuses to issue coherent, succinct theses, and we misunderstand his rationale by passing over or attempting to explain away the apparent inconsistencies and paradoxes in his writing. It does not need my intervention for the contradictory element in Adorno's writing to be made fully apparent. Current reception of Adorno neatly polarizes into those devotees who

“Un giorno, preso dal cruccio, mi scappò di dire che l’arte è una forma della morale, ma non un mezzo morale. Mi si rispose che era una massima oscura”. Nell’oscurità di questa formula riportata nelle Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen c’è tutta l’ambiguità della morale manniana, una morale eteronoma, le cui leggi sono quelle cui l’artista obbedisce nella produzione, nell’obbedienza all’opera. Etica, pessimismo, sacrificio, senso della forma sono, in Thomas Mann, termini difficilmente svincolabili gli uni dagli altri, ricondotti all’“aura etica” di una Heimatsphäre che contempla in sé, insieme al senso più alto dello Humanitätsideal, le declinazioni più oscure o tragiche del nichilismo. L’arte è il luogo privilegiato i cui convergono le antinomie delle spirito, un’arte ‘morale’ e ‘antimorale’, morale per il rigore della forma, la verità dell’espressione che non può darsi senza l’esperienza profonda e radicale di ciò che solo apparentemente le si oppone, senza le estasi erotico-wagneriane di tanti personaggi manniani, senza le irrinunciabili componenti di dilettantismo, malattia e degenerazione, senza, dunque, le implicazioni ‘antimorali’ dell’arte stessa, origine del ‘dolore’ e della ‘grandezza’ che costituiscono la dignità e l’ambiguità dell’attività artistica. Per il ruolo preminente della forma e del rigore strutturale, per la sua specificità metafisica e la potenza dei suoi effetti, la musica è, per Mann, il paradigma, “il più sacro archetipo di ogni arte”, l’arte in cui “la morale diventa forma”.

Die Texte, die in diesem Band versammelt sind, gehen hervor aus den Vorträgen, die im Rahmen des Philosophischen Kolloquiums am Institut für Philosophie der Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg gehalten wurden. Hier stellen externe und interne Professor*innen und Nachwuchswissenschaftler*innen ihre Forschung vor, Absolvent*innen des Instituts finden hier Gelegenheit, ihre Thesen zu präsentieren und zur Diskussion zu stellen. Die hier versammelten Texte sollen einen Einblick geben in das Leben am Institut und in die vielfältigen Diskussionen, die hier geführt werden. Das Philosophische Kolloquium soll Studierenden, Lehrenden und Interessierten von außerhalb ein Forum bieten, sich über aktuelle Entwicklungen und Fragestellungen der Philosophie und anderer, naher Disziplinen zu informieren und diese zu diskutieren. Darum versammelt das Oldenburger Jahrbuch für Philosophie 2017/2018 nicht nur Beiträge aus dem Philosophischen Kolloquium, sondern auch Beiträge, die das Institutsleben widerspiegeln. Dementsprechend streifen die einzelnen Kapitel vielfältige Themen der gegenwärtigen Philosophie: Fragen aus der Geschichte der Philosophie, Fragen nach dem Status des Subjekts, der Würde des Menschen, der Politischen Philosophie, der Ästhetik, der Didaktik, der gegenwärtigen Situation der Universität und der analytischen Erkenntnistheorie. Trotz aller thematischer Differenzen fühlen sich die Beiträge dem gemeinsamen philosophischen Gespräch verpflichtet, das dieses Jahrbuch hoffentlich weiter befördern wird.

This paper argues that Theodor W. Adorno's aesthetic project set in motion after the Holocaust is indissociable from thinking Utopia, with Adorno intuiting an emancipatory potential within the artwork. To do so, I explicate in detail Adorno's "negative dialectics", a dialectic driven by impossibility which structures his thinking, from his "Categorical imperative", to his conceptions of the artwork and Utopia. Moreover, this paper elucidates the relation between Adorno's materialist Bilderverbot, "autonomous art" and Utopia, culminating in a critical engagement with the work of Anselm Kiefer and Andrei Tarkovsky.

“Bottom’s Dream” at the end of act 4 of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream has long been recognized as an extended allusion to Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians. This passage also develops a complex version of political aesthetics. In this essay, I trace how the peculiar aesthetics of Bottom’s discourse are intertwined with the theological and political concerns of the Pauline text. The aesthetics of “Bottom’s Dream” are intrinsically linked to the way that Paul’s epistle composes the mystical body, a major trope for religious and social order in premodern Europe. Paul’s text develops the incarnational and eschatological elements of the mystical body that will form the foundation for a liturgical tradition that remained resonant into the sixteenth century. Bottom’s allusive vision maintains an essential relation to the eschatological aspects of the Pauline original even as its synesthetic elements reimagine the incarnational dimensions of Paul’s text. “Bottom’s Dream” merges aesthetics with politics and theology, but this aesthetics cannot be reduced to either pure politics or theology. Ultimately, the multifaceted character of this aesthetic vision resists becoming assimilated to the instrumental politics of the Athenian elite at the end of the play.

Course Description & Aim
The rise of National Socialism to power prompted an unprecedented large-scale exodus of Central European scholars who have had an enormous impact on American cultural life in particular, and the post-World War II world of politics in general. The primary aim of the course is to introduce students to the key ideas and classical writings of these figures, and to examine their responses to and analysis of the age of extremes. We will begin our journey with the writings of Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm – the founders of the Frankfurt School – and will continue with the analyses of totalitarianism and " political Messianism " offered by Hannah Arendt, Gershom Scholem, Jacob L. Talmon, and Karl Popper, which we will then compare and contrast with the evaluation of liberalism one finds in the writings of Leo Strauss, Isaiah Berlin, and Arthur Koestler. We shall examine these thinkers' analyses of enlightenment, nationalism, socialism, and totalitarianism, their life stories, and their direct and indirect role in creating a transatlantic political discourse in postwar years. We will try to ask ourselves to what extent were their political and philosophical writings designed as a response to the maladies of the twentieth century, and to what extent did their Jewishness notify their writings, if at all. By doing so we shall be able to contextualize historically the fundamental features of Jewish intellectual activity after 1945.
*No prior knowledge of political science, philosophy and/or Jewish studies are required.

Abstract: This article addresses shortcomings in the way that philosophers and cultural critics have considered propaganda by offering a new genealogical account. Looking at figures such as Marx, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, Bourdieu, and Stanley, this article finds that their consideration of propaganda has not necessarily been wrong but has missed some of the most significant and important functions of propaganda. This text draws on archival and published materials from propagandists, most notably Edward Bernays, to elaborate a new governmentality of propaganda and public relations. Through focusing on the concept of public opinion, I argue that propaganda is best thought of as an apparatus whose function it is to construct, modify, counter, and destroy relations of force within public opinion in order to produce the subjectivities and conduct that its disseminators and their clients desire.

My aim in this paper was to bring together a theoretical, historical enquiry and an empirical, contemporary project. At the time I was preoccupied, on the one hand, with Walter Benjamin’s writing on images and cities, and on the other hand, with the exhibition project Video as Urban Condition.[1]

The paper locates the crossing point where Benjamin’s thought — in particular, his conception of urban experience — intersects with the technology of television — that is to say, seeing at a distance.

I did not attempt to reconcile Benjamin’s suggestions with the post-war television phenomena that he neither saw nor foresaw. The question I posed myself was whether some observations of Benjamin’s, or rather, some observations on Benjamin’s thought, might furnish the distance necessary for observing the present.

I found, in the interior of the nineteenth century, the pre-vision of television — television almost without technology — and I traced its philosophical heritage. I entered that interior with Benjamin and exited with the flâneur, to whom the city opened up like a landscape even as it enclosed him like a room, as a private domain.

Hence the screen, the façade, the shop window and the television set revealed themselves as the sites where one could interrogate the intersections between exterior and interior, between media and architecture, the city and its phantasmagoria.

[1]: On the one hand, see ‘Imagine no Metaphors: the dialectical image of Walter Benjamin’ in Image & Narrative, special issue edited by Hanneke Grootenboer, no. 18, September 2007. On the other hand, see ‘Who is Big Brother? or The Politics of Looking’, in Dérive Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung, no. 42, January 2011.

With an appendix: Video as Urban Condition

In uno dei momenti più memorabili de El Eternauta, l’extraterrestre “mano” riflette sul significato artistico di una caffettiera. Stando dentro la finzione, le idee del “mano” vengono messa a confronto con la concezione dell’artisticità diffusa di Banfi, con le riflessioni di Simmel, Bloch e Adorno sul vaso e con la teoria del design di Norman.

In one of the most unforgettable moments of El Eternauta, the alien ”mano” thinks about the artistic meaning of a flip coffee pot. Being inside the fiction, the alien‘s ideas are put in comparison with Antonio Banfi’s concept of widespread artisticity, with Georg Simmel’s, Ernst Bloch’s, and Theodor W. Adorno’s thought on the vase, and with Donald Norman’s design theory.

Resumo Neste artigo discutimos as possibilidades da escuta e de uma música comunista. Contra o que chamamos de paradigma da escuta condominial, defenderemos a tese de que a escuta deve ser intrinsecamente dialética na sua relação entre indivíduo e coletivo. Em seguida sugeriremos o que seria esta música comunista e como ela pode nos aparecer.

I provide a review of the authors' dissection of authoritarianism into its fundamental theoretical components. I recommend exploring connections between Alexis de Tocqueville and Theodor Adorno's late epistemologies and the concept of self-incurred tutelage as outlined by Immanuel Kant and Michel Foucault in future research.

The article addresses the concept of madness in a dialogue between psychoanalysis and other fields of knowledge, in particular British antipsychiatry and Michel Foucault's post-structuralism. The form of presentation is the essay, in the tradition of the adorniana dialectic. The central problem proposed is the underlying differentiation between the notions of psychosis and madness taking as reference the works of Freud and Lacan, in a comparison procedure with other theoretical and epistemological models. A privilege is presented to the concept of schizophrenia and its centrality in debates about psychoses in contemporary thought. The study is exclusively theoretical, comparing concepts and authors and the objective is to provide a critical look, along the lines of the Frankfurt betrayal, regarding the relationship between psychoses and society, suggesting the relevance of the concept of social experience. It is a panoramic essay, which aims to contribute to the understanding of madness in contemporary society and its related forms of social domination.

Main goal of this thesis is to point out that technological progress in concept of singularity theory has indispensable anomic potential – thus that development of social order largely influenced by imperative of technological progress according to Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near aims to disintegration of this order. Anomic potential of this kind we additionally consider as hegemonic extension of bourgeois technocratic language significant for the era of enlightenment. Consequently, corruptive tendency of technological progress has it’s roots in the grammar which enlightened bourgeoisie were using to strengthen their dominant status. Conceptual apparatus, which Kurzweil uses as genuinely neutral, encompasses intentions that implicitly offer a manual for it’s own application. Notions which are pronounceable by the language of singularity, as a heritage of technocratic grammar, are inherently sentenced to bear certain interpretations without necessity of being pronounced at all. Adequate expression and analytic means for critical reflexion of Kurzweil’s book are delivered to us by the ideal type of information society concept. Input of the analysis we consider, in the sense of adornian negative dialectics, the technodeterministic theory of singularity as a thesis (identical according to Adorno) and sociological theory of anomie as an analytical instrument – antithesis (according to Adorno, instrument for searching of the non-identical). Output is then reinterpreted theory of singularity as a synthesis – by Adorno we talking about initial identical extricated from its emancipatory frame, from its false totality.

Der Rezensent hat schon mehrfach Gelegenheit gehabt, darauf hinzuwei-sen, daß Adornos Vorlesungen eine ausgesprochen gute Möglichkeit bie-ten, sich mit dessen Denken zu beschäftigen. 1 Da man so virtuell die Chance erhält, sich nachträglich als Hörer zu fühlen, ist allein deswegen die Edition zu begrüßen, 2 auch wenn es freilich nicht zu erwarten steht, daß Ador-no für die aktuelle Diskussion der Erkenntnistheorie im eigentlichen Sinne von großem Gewicht sein dürfte. 3 Adorno bezieht sich von vornherein auf

Lässt sich die politische Problemlage unserer Zeit literarisch erfassen? Was ist die Rolle von Literatur im globalen Kapitalismus? Lässt sich ein dauerhafter Arbeitszusammenhang von Autorinnen und Autoren organisieren? Diesen Fragen widmete sich im April 2015 eine Schriftstellertagung unter dem Titel „Richtige Literatur im Falschen?“, die im Literaturforum im Brecht-Haus stattfand. In Zentrum stand die Frage nach dem Verhältnis zwischen Literatur, Engagement und kapitalistischer Gesellschaft. Der Band „Richtige Literatur im Falschen?“ zeichnet die Tagung dokumentarisch nach und präsentiert darüber hinaus aktuelle Statements der Beteiligten. Mit Beiträgen von Ann Cotten, Annett Gröschner, Joachim Helfer, Jan Loheit, Thomas Meinecke, Norbert Niemann, Helmut Peitsch, Monika Rinck, Kathrin Röggla, David Salomon, Stefan Schmitzer, Erasmus Schöfer, Ingo Schulze, Ingar Solty, Enno Stahl, Thomas Wagner, Michael Wildenhain und Raul Zelik.

The publication of the correspondence between Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem in 2015 is a major landmark, offering fresh insights into their personalities and the remarkable intellectual relationship and growing personal friendship between them. In this short piece, some of the evidence for the intensity of the relationship between Adorno and Scholem is presented, followed by a discussion of their shared emphatic negation of the notion that any such thing as a 'German-Jewish Dialogue' had existed prior to 1933. Henceforth, anyone who wants to continue dismissing Scholem's remarks about the non-existence of a 'German-Jewish dialogue' prior to 1933 out of hand in the cavalier fashion in which it has become commonplace to do so will need to reckon not only with Scholem but also with Adorno.

Resumen: En este trabajo se pretende mostrar el sentido político que adquirió la defensa de la teoría por parte de Adorno en los últimos años de su vida. Él empleó esta defensa como una respuesta a los imperativos de los estudiantes de izquierda de plegar la teoría crítica a la intervención práctica inmediata. Para justificar esta tesis se atiende no sólo a lo que decía, sino también, en un nivel discursivo diferen-te, a lo que estaba haciendo cuando empleaba concentraciones de términos y enun-ciados densos y eruditos para manifestarse. Esto lleva a incluir las reflexiones y valoraciones de Adorno referentes a la actitud teorética y a la praxis, principalmen-te aquellas esbozadas en Dialéctica negativa, en un contexto más amplio. Abstract: This work pretends to show the political sense that the defense of the theory by Adorno acquired in the last years of his life. He used this defense as an answer to the students's imperatives of applying the critical theory to the immediate practical intervention. In order to justify this thesis will be considered not only what Adorno said, but also, in a different discursive level, what he was doing on having used concentrations of terms and dense and erudite declarations. This entails, then, to relate Adorno's reflections and assessments concerning to the theoretical and