Adorno′s Negative Dialectic – Philosophy and the Possibility of Critical Rationality (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

The purely philosophical concerns of Theodor W. Adornos negative dialectic would seem to be far removed from the concreteness of critical theory; Adornos philosophy considers perhaps the most traditional subject of pure philosophy the structure of experience whereas critical theory examines specific aspects of society. But as Brian OConnor demonstrates in this highly original interpretation of Adornos philosophy the negative dialectic can be seen as the theoretical foundation of the reflexivity or critical rationality required by critical theory. Adorno OConnor argues is committed to the concretion of philosophy: his thesis of nonidentity attempts to show that reality is not reducible to appearances. This lays the foundation for the applied concrete critique of appearances that is essential to the possibility of critical theory. To explicate the context in which Adornos philosophy operates—the tradition of modern German philosophy from Kant to Heidegger—OConnor examines in detail the ideas of these philosophers as well as Adornos self-defining differences with them. OConnor discusses Georg Lucàcs and the influence of his protocritical theory on Adornos thought; the elements of Kants and Hegels German idealism appropriated by Adorno for his theory of subject-object mediation; the priority of the object and the agency of the subject in Adornos epistemology; and Adornos important critiques of Kant and the phenomenology of Heidegger and Husserl critiques that both illuminate Adornos key concepts and reveal his construction of critical theory through an engagement with the problems of philosophy.