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Probleme der Moralphilosophie
German
317 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1963
17 people are currently reading
397 people want to read
About the author
Theodor W. Adorno
606 books1,404 followersTheodor Wiesengrund Adorno was one of the most important philosophers and social critics in Germany after World War II. Although less well known among anglophone philosophers than his contemporary Hans-Georg Gadamer, Adorno had even greater influence on scholars and intellectuals in postwar Germany. In the 1960s he was the most prominent challenger to both Sir Karl Popper's philosophy of science and Martin Heidegger's philosophy of existence. Jürgen Habermas, Germany's foremost social philosopher after 1970, was Adorno's student and assistant. The scope of Adorno's influence stems from the interdisciplinary character of his research and of the Frankfurt School to which he belonged. It also stems from the thoroughness with which he examined Western philosophical traditions, especially from Kant onward, and the radicalness to his critique of contemporary Western society. He was a seminal social philosopher and a leading member of the first generation of Critical Theory.
Unreliable translations hampered the initial reception of Adorno's published work in English speaking countries. Since the 1990s, however, better translations have appeared, along with newly translated lectures and other posthumous works that are still being published. These materials not only facilitate an emerging assessment of his work in epistemology and ethics but also strengthen an already advanced reception of his work in aesthetics and cultural theory.
Unreliable translations hampered the initial reception of Adorno's published work in English speaking countries. Since the 1990s, however, better translations have appeared, along with newly translated lectures and other posthumous works that are still being published. These materials not only facilitate an emerging assessment of his work in epistemology and ethics but also strengthen an already advanced reception of his work in aesthetics and cultural theory.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
January 1, 2022
It is often an interesting proposition when lectures and other recordings meant for limited consumption are published for a broader audience. In this case, it is a mixed bag, but it tends towards the disappointing. There are flashes of insight towards practice, the problems of philosophy, and politics. Mostly, these lectures land squarely in the area of grand theory, with much conceptual discussion but not enough payoff for politics and human society.
Mixed in with the exegesis of Kant's moral philosophy, Adorno dashes in here and there a brilliant criticism and refutation of Stalinism. Similarly, he laid bare the idea that the individual should defer gratification for the society, as the payoff never comes. At the same time, Adorno reminds us, as his audience, that he is equally not a fan or an apologist for the late capitalist West under the sway of what he called the culture industry.
However, these points were too few and far between. The argument that C Wright Mills levied against Talcott Parsons in the Sociological Imagination proves all too applicable here too. As Mills pointed out, the cause of grand theory is their choice of a level of thinking so general that they cannot logically get down to observation. Like his contemporary, Parsons, this is Adorno in a nutshell. He never, as a grand theorist, gets down from the higher generalities to problems in their historical and structural contexts. In fact, as a prototypical grand theorist, Adorno has set forth a realm of concepts from which are excluded many structural features of human society, features long and accurately recognized as fundamental to its understanding.
Adorno seems to think—and this is implicit in his logic—that if he elevates and sores up high enough to the level of thought subsuming politics and society, he can then swoop back down and reemerge with clarity and the correct engagement. This is the Hegelian in him. In this, as a grand theorist, he is mistaken. Soaring up to the clouds, he loses touch with all of the detail. The best ways to truly engage with the political is to never disengage with it in the first place.
Mixed in with the exegesis of Kant's moral philosophy, Adorno dashes in here and there a brilliant criticism and refutation of Stalinism. Similarly, he laid bare the idea that the individual should defer gratification for the society, as the payoff never comes. At the same time, Adorno reminds us, as his audience, that he is equally not a fan or an apologist for the late capitalist West under the sway of what he called the culture industry.
However, these points were too few and far between. The argument that C Wright Mills levied against Talcott Parsons in the Sociological Imagination proves all too applicable here too. As Mills pointed out, the cause of grand theory is their choice of a level of thinking so general that they cannot logically get down to observation. Like his contemporary, Parsons, this is Adorno in a nutshell. He never, as a grand theorist, gets down from the higher generalities to problems in their historical and structural contexts. In fact, as a prototypical grand theorist, Adorno has set forth a realm of concepts from which are excluded many structural features of human society, features long and accurately recognized as fundamental to its understanding.
Adorno seems to think—and this is implicit in his logic—that if he elevates and sores up high enough to the level of thought subsuming politics and society, he can then swoop back down and reemerge with clarity and the correct engagement. This is the Hegelian in him. In this, as a grand theorist, he is mistaken. Soaring up to the clouds, he loses touch with all of the detail. The best ways to truly engage with the political is to never disengage with it in the first place.
March 31, 2020
I first read this about 10 years ago, so now going back to Adorno concludes my moral detour:
The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960
Eros and Ethics: Reading Jacques Lacan's Seminar VII
Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan
Antigone, in Her Unbearable Splendor: New Essays on Jacques Lacan's the Ethics of Psychoanalysis
Imagine There's No Woman: Ethics and Sublimation
I still find the melancholy science of the totally administered society peerless and lucid. Despite being up to the neck in Kantian morality for months now, and pretty familiar with the direction of Adorno's thoughts on it, re-reading this volume of lectures was hardly a chore. Adorno's writing, like Lacan's Écrits, suffers from a "difficult" stigma; the series of lectures posthumously collected and published by Stanford gives readers a chance to listen to Adorno expound upon admittedly complex and dicey philosophical matters in an approachable, didactic manner, without diluting the critical content.
In this case, we are treated to a sustained interrogation of the Kantian concept of moral law not just in the Critique of Practical Reason (wherein the very same Reason which dissolved into the antinomies of the first Critique is resurrected and exalted as the unassailable trinity of God, immortality, and freedom) but as it appears throughout Kant's writings. The result is seventeen edifying lectures given by someone who sought to take more than 40 years of experience turning Kant over and over and a life at the absolute forefront of modern continental culture and thought and helpfully distill it into something you could use... as in, to think about what you could/should/would/ought do, if you were able, or simply to imagine another time when doing the right thing wouldn't seem so goddamned guiltily impossible. Really, historical progress will only occur when we don't need to belabor problems of moral philosophy. We are a l-o-n-g way from there, and getting farther by almost every measure, to the point where maybe the first step on the moral path is away from the world and back to Adorno. I wouldn't bother with any destination that doesn't involve this detour.
The Ethics of Psychoanalysis 1959-1960
Eros and Ethics: Reading Jacques Lacan's Seminar VII
Ethics of the Real: Kant, Lacan
Antigone, in Her Unbearable Splendor: New Essays on Jacques Lacan's the Ethics of Psychoanalysis
Imagine There's No Woman: Ethics and Sublimation
I still find the melancholy science of the totally administered society peerless and lucid. Despite being up to the neck in Kantian morality for months now, and pretty familiar with the direction of Adorno's thoughts on it, re-reading this volume of lectures was hardly a chore. Adorno's writing, like Lacan's Écrits, suffers from a "difficult" stigma; the series of lectures posthumously collected and published by Stanford gives readers a chance to listen to Adorno expound upon admittedly complex and dicey philosophical matters in an approachable, didactic manner, without diluting the critical content.
In this case, we are treated to a sustained interrogation of the Kantian concept of moral law not just in the Critique of Practical Reason (wherein the very same Reason which dissolved into the antinomies of the first Critique is resurrected and exalted as the unassailable trinity of God, immortality, and freedom) but as it appears throughout Kant's writings. The result is seventeen edifying lectures given by someone who sought to take more than 40 years of experience turning Kant over and over and a life at the absolute forefront of modern continental culture and thought and helpfully distill it into something you could use... as in, to think about what you could/should/would/ought do, if you were able, or simply to imagine another time when doing the right thing wouldn't seem so goddamned guiltily impossible. Really, historical progress will only occur when we don't need to belabor problems of moral philosophy. We are a l-o-n-g way from there, and getting farther by almost every measure, to the point where maybe the first step on the moral path is away from the world and back to Adorno. I wouldn't bother with any destination that doesn't involve this detour.
January 30, 2023
Adorno's work in which the concept of morality is evaluated by considering it on the axis of society-individual, religion-individual and religion-society, in which Kant's moral philosophy is examined in this approach and the dynamics of the subject is accepted.
For today's people, society has become an element of oppression more than ever in history and is now a sanction mechanism whose norms are accepted as moral rules. Adorno focuses on a moral problem in which even monotheistic religions cannot fully dominate the moral positions of societies today, but remain the source of the guided, perceived moral norms of society. Like general moral norms, Adorno deals with the inadequacy of religious and moral norms, according to which positive religions have lost their validity, the rules of morality have collapsed, and the meaning of life lived has collapsed.
What is the right life, What is the wrong life? And it tells about the ideological reflections of Decency by addressing the tension between concepts and thoughts in a world where right and wrong have lost their objectivity. For example, according to the religious rule, theft is haram. Wrong. However, today, according to social morality, the mistake of the dominant one is accepted within the framework of the moral code. Another example is the topic of interest. This applies to many different situations, such as the tension of right and wrong.
Adono examines this moral immorality conceptually by addressing it in a philosophical language. It is quite a beautiful work. He is a bad thinker from the Frankfurt School, there is no bad book anyway.
For today's people, society has become an element of oppression more than ever in history and is now a sanction mechanism whose norms are accepted as moral rules. Adorno focuses on a moral problem in which even monotheistic religions cannot fully dominate the moral positions of societies today, but remain the source of the guided, perceived moral norms of society. Like general moral norms, Adorno deals with the inadequacy of religious and moral norms, according to which positive religions have lost their validity, the rules of morality have collapsed, and the meaning of life lived has collapsed.
What is the right life, What is the wrong life? And it tells about the ideological reflections of Decency by addressing the tension between concepts and thoughts in a world where right and wrong have lost their objectivity. For example, according to the religious rule, theft is haram. Wrong. However, today, according to social morality, the mistake of the dominant one is accepted within the framework of the moral code. Another example is the topic of interest. This applies to many different situations, such as the tension of right and wrong.
Adono examines this moral immorality conceptually by addressing it in a philosophical language. It is quite a beautiful work. He is a bad thinker from the Frankfurt School, there is no bad book anyway.
October 21, 2018
I thought it was a good critique of Kantian moral philosophy and a thorough understanding of the state of the problems in moral philosophy as a whole.
It is a bunch of lectures so there is more rambling then if the text was written and refined, but it was not too hard to follow. I am glad that I read this after the other philosophers or it would have probably been unintelligible.
It is a bunch of lectures so there is more rambling then if the text was written and refined, but it was not too hard to follow. I am glad that I read this after the other philosophers or it would have probably been unintelligible.
November 8, 2010
While Adorno's lectures don't come free of their own problems, this very fact moves in support of the arguments he makes in favor of critique and the preservation of contradiction in philosophy. This particular set of lectures will be most useful to readers of philosophy well-versed in Kant's ethical works, but still contains plenty of value for the uninitiated. I, for one, enjoyed Adorno's reflexive considerations of the problem of an Ethics of Conviction vs an Ethics of Responsibility, despite my relative ignorance of Kant's ideas (other than how they have filtered with distortions into popular consciousness). Be prepared for a dialectical bias, though, or you will be trying to find resolution where little, if any, exists.
September 23, 2021
I found this book to be most interesting at the very beginning and the very end, especially where Adorno says that slave-morality is the master-morality, in that it represents the values inculcated in the people by their oppressors. This short review will have to do for now, although it pales in comparison to the review I devised for this text when I wrote it in while still in a dream-state early this morning, Thursday, September 23rd. I plan to use this book when planning out my own philosophical writings and hope to incorporate more of Adorno, Brecht and Karl Krauss' writings in my future reading.
November 10, 2024
„Man kann nicht aus der Einsicht in das Falsche der repressiven Ideologie […] dekretorisch das Richtige herauslesen.“
„Wir mögen nicht wissen, was das absolut Gute, was die absolute Norm, ja auch nur, was der Mensch oder das Menschliche und die Humanität sei, aber was das Unmenschliche ist, das wissen wir sehr genau. Und ich würde sagen, daß der Ort der Moralphilosophie heute mehr in der konkreten Denunziation des Unmenschlichen als in der unverbindlichen und abstrakten Situierung etwa des Seins des Menschen zu suchen ist.“
„Wir mögen nicht wissen, was das absolut Gute, was die absolute Norm, ja auch nur, was der Mensch oder das Menschliche und die Humanität sei, aber was das Unmenschliche ist, das wissen wir sehr genau. Und ich würde sagen, daß der Ort der Moralphilosophie heute mehr in der konkreten Denunziation des Unmenschlichen als in der unverbindlichen und abstrakten Situierung etwa des Seins des Menschen zu suchen ist.“
December 22, 2021
A brilliant collection of lectures. An influential read for academic lovers of philosophy, however, it requires an advanced scope of knowledge. I recommend reading some of Neitsche and Kants more popularised texts before delving into Adorno.
Holistically, I do think this text should be critically engaged with, Adorno raises questions that are instrumental to political practices, but some of these critiques and suggestions need to be questioned further.
Holistically, I do think this text should be critically engaged with, Adorno raises questions that are instrumental to political practices, but some of these critiques and suggestions need to be questioned further.
January 3, 2019
Easier and more discursive than others of Adorno's works. Interesting to read in conjunction with Allen Wood's Hegel's Ethical Thought for contrast, and Wood's Kant's Ethical Thought for comparison. But this covers a very wide range of topics and issues as well as moral thought. Good for getting started with the broad scope of Adorno's work.
October 8, 2017
Adorno keeps giving nothing except a style which just keeps rambling on and glimpses of anything of value are indeed just glimpses.
June 17, 2020
Beautiful read, but hard to keep track of the arguments and thoughts. Although now and then I found myself in great admiration of the depth of Adorno's insight.
to-keep-reference
February 23, 2016Adorno discute (rechaza por patológico) el "salto moral" que representa el "narcisismo ético" del imperativo categórico kantiano.
Cf. Visión de Paralaje Pág.75
Cf. Visión de Paralaje Pág.75
May 27, 2015
"You don't even live once."
-Kraus
-Kraus
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews