Philosophical Elements of a Theory of Society

by Theodor W. Adorno

As an exile in America during the War, Theodor Adorno grew acquainted with the fundamentals of empirical social research, something which would shape the work he undertook in the early 1950s as co-director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. Yet he also became increasingly aware of the ‘fetishism of method’ in sociology, and saw the serious limitations of theoretical work based solely on empirical findings.

In this lecture course given in 1964, Adorno develops a critique of both sociology and philosophy, emphasizing that theoretical work requires a specific mediation between the two disciplines. Adorno advocates a philosophical approach to social theory that challenges the drive towards uniformity and a lack of ambiguity, highlighting instead the fruitfulness of experience, in all its messy complexity, for critical social analysis. At the same time, he shows how philosophy must also realise that it requires sociology if it is to avoid falling for the old idealistic illusion that the totality of real conditions can be grasped through thought alone.

Masterfully bringing together philosophical and empirical approaches to an understanding of society, these lectures from one of the most important social thinkers of the 20th century will be of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy, sociology and the social sciences generally.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Theory, Sociology

192 pages, Hardcover

Published January 4, 2019

About the author

Theodor 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.

Reviews

[loitering outside 711 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful brilliant thoughts by Adorno
Too bad his excessively bald head means I can’t trust a word he says

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adorno's reception in the English speaking world has been very, very skewed. He is essentially a social theorist, for whom culture and philosophy are ways to understand society. He has far too often been presented as an aesthete who hates social theory; his distinctive and original philosophical thought has been ignored; and far too much weight has been put on his dislike of mass produced music.

The lectures are a good corrective to all of this: they present his thought in a way that he would no doubt have hated, but he would have been wrong to hate it, even based on his own thought (I'm convinced I could have convinced him to be more dialectical on the question of communicability). This particular set is particularly helpful. It's short. It makes it very clear that Adorno was a follower of Marx, if not a Marxist. It makes it *very* clear that he was more critical of Weber than impressed by him. Highly recommended to those who are interested.

[Ricky]

En samhällsläras form måste svara mot det samhälle som utgör dess innehåll - samhällets splittring omöjliggör de allomfattande teorier vi känner från Saint-Simon, Comte, Spencer, Marx, Durkheim - över huvud taget den rationalistiska tradition som har sin början med Descartes (eg. med Guds död), för vilken mångfalden härleds ur ett minimum av axiom. Kontra Lukács: det är inte frågan om någon borgerskapets förfall, utan det är den objektiva samhällsutvecklingen som skiljer Adam Smith från Max Weber.

En sociologisk undersökning kan inte vara fråga om att följa någon på förhand given metod - det krävs talang, idé, ande - inspiration i ordets bokstavliga betydelse. Det finns alltid något konstnärligt i vetenskapen - jmfr Hegels estetiska föreläsningar. Även detta speglar samhället: den motbjudande elitismen i tanken att det krävs talang för att bedriva sociologisk forskning, att det inte är alla förunnat att kunna förstå sin samtid, avslöjar samhällets elitism, dess stympande av vårt medvetande.

Det är just detta som är andens roll i vetenskapen: att tillåta oss att närma oss föremålet för vår analys. Objektets primat, inte metodens. Den genuint spontana idén är inte ett godtyckligt infall - just godtycklighet och subjektivism är ju den positivistiska metodikens kännetecken - utan något som kommer av att på djupet kontemplera föremålet. Vi måste odla en viss konstnärlig känslighet för att kunna avgöra vad som är genuint och vad som bara är ett infall.

I övrigt intressanta anmärkningar om Nietzsche, Weber och Freud, mer tveksamma anmärkningar om Marx; kulturindustrin och nivelleringen; medelklassens utbredning; embryot till något vi skulle kunna kalla diskursanalys. Den faktiska samhällsanalysen blir något vag och otillfredsställande, inte minst därför att föreläsning 14 till och med 16 bara finns som referat.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the shorter and most fun and easy lecture series, a great companion to the very dense and fragmentary Sociology and Psychology essay (both mention Talcott Parsons), and peppered with amazing cute moments such as the idea that our mechanism of thinking is like the armour that encumbers the rhinoceros and that we have to think ourselves out of our rhino skin through grasping contradiction.

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

« If the central differences do not affect people’s lives, the theory loses its meaning. »

reading adorno’s warnings against the reduction to method in thought is so pressing for the contemporary context of philosophy and academia and the world in general. truly an incredible book, oh to be a student in 1964 who got to hear these lectures in the flesh.