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Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason'
Kant is a pivotal thinker in Adorno's intellectual world. Although he wrote monographs on Hegel, Husserl, and Kierkegaard, the closest Adorno came to an extended discussion of Kant are two lecture courses, one concentrating on the Critique of Pure Reason and the other on the Critique of Practical Reason . This new volume by Adorno comprises his lectures on the former. Adorno attempts to make Kant's thought comprehensible to students by focusing on what he regards as problematic aspects of Kant's philosophy. Adorno examines Kant's dualism and what he calls the Kantian "block": the contradictions arising from Kant's resistance to the idealism that his successors—Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel—saw as the inevitable outcome of his ideas. These lectures also provide an accessible introduction to and rationale for Adorno's own philosophy as expounded in Negative Dialectics and his other major writings. Adorno's view of Kant forms an integral part of his own philosophy, since he argues that the way out of the Kantian contradictions is to show the necessity of the dialectical thinking that Kant himself spurned. This in turn enables Adorno to criticize Anglo-Saxon scientistic or positivist thought, as well as the philosophy of existentialism. This book will be of great interest to those working in philosophy and in social and political thought, and it will be essential reading for anyone interested in the foundations of Adorno's own work.
312 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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About the author
Theodor W. Adorno
606 books1,401 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 - 18 of 18 reviews
January 20, 2015
In these lectures Adorno provides a strikingly clear elucidation of Kant's project in CPR. While neither complicating Kantian concepts further nor watering down a project that refuses simplification at many turns, Adorno provides something for seasoned Kant scholars and more pedestrian readers of Kant. I highly recommend this over any other introduction to Kant or CPR I've thus read.
August 13, 2018
Terrible if you want to understand Kant.
November 29, 2014
If reading philosophy here and there for the past few years has taught me anything, it’s that I have a very amateurish (yes, in a derogatory sense) relationship with philosophy—so reader beware... hold your nose, if you must.
Years ago, when I had first read Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, I had done so with the rather bland assumption that the work would be a sort of history lesson. That reading Kant would, at the very most, result in a better understanding of *other* currents of thought that were soon to follow (which were far more sexy, and in vogue... the Romantic German Idealists—with all his limitations on the possibilities of the constituting subject, Kant is probably one of the least sexy philosophers). I could never have predicted that I would end up completely fascinated with Kant and the problems of knowledge as he understood them, or perhaps as he understood mankind—as a tragic figure at the mercy of his antinomies.
What I appreciate about Adorno’s approach to reading Kant is you feel a sense of urgency in his understanding of the pivotal philosopher, that Kant, even today, can speak to us powerfully. Adorno has a true admiration for the question Kant is attempting to answer (namely, “what are the conditions that make experience is possible?”), even if throughout this series of lectures Adorno rightfully warns us of a sort of bourgeoisie complacency that can result from following Kant too closely, or perhaps more to the point, too seamlessly.
To put it crudely I’m sure, Adorno argues that to read Kant (or any philosopher) so that his work may truly speak to us (and not serve as some 'historical monument'), we must approach it in a way where we take into account not only what has been said, but what is left unsaid or not fully worked out. There is *plenty* of material like this to work with in the CPR, as I’m sure any reader of Kant will notice. Adorno insists that we must explore the ambiguities and inconsistencies which are found throughout the work. Much of this fertile ground can be found in the synthetic *a priori*, the schemata, and the irreducibility between form and content in knowledge, where the non subjective elements of subjectivity are recognized as integral to the relationship of the subject to that of it's world.
But most importantly (I feel), we must remember to remain weary never to forget that due to the reciprocity of the constituting subject and given object, knowledge has at best a frustrated understanding of its constituum... that, in spite of this, knowledge in relation to the categories means nothing without verification from the given world, that, reciprocally, pre-constituted material has no meaning in-and-of-itself, that is, without objective mediation by the thinking subject—in such a way is an intelligent, critical objectivity possible, that knowledge is not to be regarded systematically, but as a revisionary, dialectical process (even if Kant himself would have had distaste for such implications in his own thought). That true enlightenment entails that we become masters of our reason, rather than slaves to the passive complacency that so often results from those nightmares of reason—that, truly, “the sleep of reason produces monsters” as Goya said. This was never more true than during Adorno’s century, where mankind witnessed nightmares of a proportion never thought possible. No doubt, the urgency of Adorno’s approach to Kant and his concerns ran deep on a very personal level.
I’ll stop here. In short, this is a fantastic book for anyone who is looking for an interpretation of Kant which truly does him justice.
—AF
Years ago, when I had first read Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’, I had done so with the rather bland assumption that the work would be a sort of history lesson. That reading Kant would, at the very most, result in a better understanding of *other* currents of thought that were soon to follow (which were far more sexy, and in vogue... the Romantic German Idealists—with all his limitations on the possibilities of the constituting subject, Kant is probably one of the least sexy philosophers). I could never have predicted that I would end up completely fascinated with Kant and the problems of knowledge as he understood them, or perhaps as he understood mankind—as a tragic figure at the mercy of his antinomies.
What I appreciate about Adorno’s approach to reading Kant is you feel a sense of urgency in his understanding of the pivotal philosopher, that Kant, even today, can speak to us powerfully. Adorno has a true admiration for the question Kant is attempting to answer (namely, “what are the conditions that make experience is possible?”), even if throughout this series of lectures Adorno rightfully warns us of a sort of bourgeoisie complacency that can result from following Kant too closely, or perhaps more to the point, too seamlessly.
To put it crudely I’m sure, Adorno argues that to read Kant (or any philosopher) so that his work may truly speak to us (and not serve as some 'historical monument'), we must approach it in a way where we take into account not only what has been said, but what is left unsaid or not fully worked out. There is *plenty* of material like this to work with in the CPR, as I’m sure any reader of Kant will notice. Adorno insists that we must explore the ambiguities and inconsistencies which are found throughout the work. Much of this fertile ground can be found in the synthetic *a priori*, the schemata, and the irreducibility between form and content in knowledge, where the non subjective elements of subjectivity are recognized as integral to the relationship of the subject to that of it's world.
But most importantly (I feel), we must remember to remain weary never to forget that due to the reciprocity of the constituting subject and given object, knowledge has at best a frustrated understanding of its constituum... that, in spite of this, knowledge in relation to the categories means nothing without verification from the given world, that, reciprocally, pre-constituted material has no meaning in-and-of-itself, that is, without objective mediation by the thinking subject—in such a way is an intelligent, critical objectivity possible, that knowledge is not to be regarded systematically, but as a revisionary, dialectical process (even if Kant himself would have had distaste for such implications in his own thought). That true enlightenment entails that we become masters of our reason, rather than slaves to the passive complacency that so often results from those nightmares of reason—that, truly, “the sleep of reason produces monsters” as Goya said. This was never more true than during Adorno’s century, where mankind witnessed nightmares of a proportion never thought possible. No doubt, the urgency of Adorno’s approach to Kant and his concerns ran deep on a very personal level.
I’ll stop here. In short, this is a fantastic book for anyone who is looking for an interpretation of Kant which truly does him justice.
—AF
September 30, 2022
In Kant's attempt to resolve the antinomies of bourgeois philosophy, where propositions are abstract entities that do not exist in time or space, truth assumes the status of something eternal and timeless, and this is an idea whose rise is coincident with the development of what Adorno calls "urban exchange societies." Dissecting the history of the development of idea, Adorno says that, beneath this notion of the concept of truth which came about with the rise of cities is the idea that what is original and unique is taboo and is fundamentally suspect; he says that whereas truth comes to be considered permanent and fixed, the newly created comes to be seen as a source of insecurity: thus, whatever is new declares itself to be inferior or illusory in contradistinction to the unchanging, stable and true.
This is a fundamental opposition that arose in human psychology during the age of early-capitalism which extended itself into human social relations, specifically with regard to the idea of property as something solid and enduring. It is a result of consciousness being itself conditioned by the exchange relationship, in that the lasting thing, the stable and enduring product which has the highest absolute value is what is a fixed possession, which may be seen as the end product of Kant's bourgeois philosophy subsumed within the categories. Adorno goes a step further and says that underlying these notions is the prejudice which accompanies the relation which opposes lived experience to the life of the mind and, furthermore, was key to establishing the division of labor which conceived manual work as being inferior to mental labor.
The end-result of these oppositional belief-systems being set up ultimately led to the concept of the absolute mind which relegates synthetic a priori judgments to a secondary place, or rather, necessitates that synthetic a prior judgments must be dissociated from lived experience. The newborn infant's urge to suck, which is an instinct acquired prior to experience, is an example of an experience-free proposition but I imagine Kant would say it is not a priori since it is dependent on sense-data. Nevertheless, Kant contends in his first Critique that ontologically intuitive propositions, while ambiguously held at their core, somehow constitute experience. In fact, we could extend this discovery to say that all of the propositions of philosophy, including those of the Critique of Pure Reason, are synthetic a priori propositions. The decisive thesis of the Critique of Pure Reason and the specifically novel element in Kant's work is that objectivity itself, the validity of knowledge as such, is created by passing through subjectivity, that is within this system the subject becomes if not the creator, then at least the guarantor of objectivity; and so, Kant's philosophy witnesses the birth of individual inaugurated in Rousseau's Confessions, who, second only to David Hume, woke Kant from his dogmatic somnambulism.
Using Kant's language, Adorno makes the statement that, in order "to arrive at the thesis that the existence of God, freedom and immortality can be proved on the basis of pure thought alone 'it must make use of principles which, in fact, extend only to objects of possible experience, and which, if also applies to what cannot be an object of experience, always really change into an appearance, thus rendering all practical extension of pure reason impossible'." In modern life, I find, the seduction of the image is an implicit danger because it changes all possible objects of experience into mere appearances and renders the ego comparable to pure self-consciousness and its status enters the unreliable world of the imaginary.
I found this passage from Adorno especially revealing: "The more the world is stripped of an objective meaning, the more it becomes our world, then the further the individual must go in order to fashion a feeling of confidence in himself, as he is living in objectively forsaken and metaphysically homeless existence and thus must restrict himself and his activity to what he knows and what lies within his competence; he must seek the guarantee of an Absolute, the warranty of authentic truth, not as objectively external and alien to himself, but within himself. The paradoxical nature of man's relationship to the modern world is that, the more rational and reasonable we become, the more convinced we are of the irrationality and alienation of the objective world." In my opinion, it is uniquely true that, in America, realism is not opposed to idealism. This means that, in this country, subjectivity necessarily presupposes the concepts of alienated violence for, as we remember, without conceptuality there can be no such thing as subjectivity at all. Adorno warns us that we "must appreciate the truth content of idealism as embracing its own untruth; the idea that there is an absolutely first principle of life is itself a mistaken assumption. Conversely, giving society absolute primacy is just as much an act of naturalistic hypostatization as to give absolute primacy to the spirit."
In the conclusion to my Master's Thesis, I spoke in the plural, using the word 'We', primarily in order to redeem my authorial consciousness from its essentially arbitrary nature and to relate it to its element of universality I wished to channel, and this is also the reason why Kant is still important in an age of which has reached beyond formal logic and into advanced physics and quantum mechanics. With the quasi-Hegelian saying, that the truth is not present in history, but history in the truth, the aim is to overcome is age-old delusion according to which truth is identified with the permanent and immutable, while whatever has just emerged and the newly generated are classified as untruth from the outset. "The idea of genesis is intolerable in these philosophies because the things they defend have cause to fear reflections on their origins." (This also stands as the reason why Ivan is wrong about Heidegger's taking up the idea of 'anticipating death' as an important existential category, where truth stands in opposition to Being's emergent consciousness.)
What critics like Adorno are saying is that, just as it is impossible to see Kant's categories of all possible thought-knowledge other than in relation to their origin and to history, it is equally impossible to derive concepts like time and space and the categories from history and to reduce them to social phenomena. In Adorno's view, "the objectivity of time should be separated from reflections on time or the creation of a concept of time; in so doing, the creation of the concepts of time and space become something that takes place within history and therefore depends on social conditions." His final conclusion is that "without subjectivity, without real subjects interacting with each other, the concept of time, and all talk of an objective concept of time as a concept that has priority over the consciousness of time, would be meaningless. Instead, the truth is that these two concepts are mutually interdependent."
The dialectical or antinomic structure of Kantian philosophy entails the Kant is a philosopher who prefers to accept the illogicality of a system that aspires to provide a central point, which is that of an idea that can construct reality - but at the same time refuses to regard the world as identical with that idea. I want to suggest that Kant's implicit postmodernism is the philosophical equivalent of my schizophrenia, which assumed the form of a dreaming idealism: on the one hand, he sticks to his thesis that the intention of philosophy is to understand reality as a whole, to decode the totality and, at the same time, he declares that philosophy is incapable of this. His conclusion that the only form in which the totality can be grasped is the expression of the fact that it cannot be grasped is somewhat less than gratifying to the great majority of seekers after the ultimate truths of reality.
This is a fundamental opposition that arose in human psychology during the age of early-capitalism which extended itself into human social relations, specifically with regard to the idea of property as something solid and enduring. It is a result of consciousness being itself conditioned by the exchange relationship, in that the lasting thing, the stable and enduring product which has the highest absolute value is what is a fixed possession, which may be seen as the end product of Kant's bourgeois philosophy subsumed within the categories. Adorno goes a step further and says that underlying these notions is the prejudice which accompanies the relation which opposes lived experience to the life of the mind and, furthermore, was key to establishing the division of labor which conceived manual work as being inferior to mental labor.
The end-result of these oppositional belief-systems being set up ultimately led to the concept of the absolute mind which relegates synthetic a priori judgments to a secondary place, or rather, necessitates that synthetic a prior judgments must be dissociated from lived experience. The newborn infant's urge to suck, which is an instinct acquired prior to experience, is an example of an experience-free proposition but I imagine Kant would say it is not a priori since it is dependent on sense-data. Nevertheless, Kant contends in his first Critique that ontologically intuitive propositions, while ambiguously held at their core, somehow constitute experience. In fact, we could extend this discovery to say that all of the propositions of philosophy, including those of the Critique of Pure Reason, are synthetic a priori propositions. The decisive thesis of the Critique of Pure Reason and the specifically novel element in Kant's work is that objectivity itself, the validity of knowledge as such, is created by passing through subjectivity, that is within this system the subject becomes if not the creator, then at least the guarantor of objectivity; and so, Kant's philosophy witnesses the birth of individual inaugurated in Rousseau's Confessions, who, second only to David Hume, woke Kant from his dogmatic somnambulism.
Using Kant's language, Adorno makes the statement that, in order "to arrive at the thesis that the existence of God, freedom and immortality can be proved on the basis of pure thought alone 'it must make use of principles which, in fact, extend only to objects of possible experience, and which, if also applies to what cannot be an object of experience, always really change into an appearance, thus rendering all practical extension of pure reason impossible'." In modern life, I find, the seduction of the image is an implicit danger because it changes all possible objects of experience into mere appearances and renders the ego comparable to pure self-consciousness and its status enters the unreliable world of the imaginary.
I found this passage from Adorno especially revealing: "The more the world is stripped of an objective meaning, the more it becomes our world, then the further the individual must go in order to fashion a feeling of confidence in himself, as he is living in objectively forsaken and metaphysically homeless existence and thus must restrict himself and his activity to what he knows and what lies within his competence; he must seek the guarantee of an Absolute, the warranty of authentic truth, not as objectively external and alien to himself, but within himself. The paradoxical nature of man's relationship to the modern world is that, the more rational and reasonable we become, the more convinced we are of the irrationality and alienation of the objective world." In my opinion, it is uniquely true that, in America, realism is not opposed to idealism. This means that, in this country, subjectivity necessarily presupposes the concepts of alienated violence for, as we remember, without conceptuality there can be no such thing as subjectivity at all. Adorno warns us that we "must appreciate the truth content of idealism as embracing its own untruth; the idea that there is an absolutely first principle of life is itself a mistaken assumption. Conversely, giving society absolute primacy is just as much an act of naturalistic hypostatization as to give absolute primacy to the spirit."
In the conclusion to my Master's Thesis, I spoke in the plural, using the word 'We', primarily in order to redeem my authorial consciousness from its essentially arbitrary nature and to relate it to its element of universality I wished to channel, and this is also the reason why Kant is still important in an age of which has reached beyond formal logic and into advanced physics and quantum mechanics. With the quasi-Hegelian saying, that the truth is not present in history, but history in the truth, the aim is to overcome is age-old delusion according to which truth is identified with the permanent and immutable, while whatever has just emerged and the newly generated are classified as untruth from the outset. "The idea of genesis is intolerable in these philosophies because the things they defend have cause to fear reflections on their origins." (This also stands as the reason why Ivan is wrong about Heidegger's taking up the idea of 'anticipating death' as an important existential category, where truth stands in opposition to Being's emergent consciousness.)
What critics like Adorno are saying is that, just as it is impossible to see Kant's categories of all possible thought-knowledge other than in relation to their origin and to history, it is equally impossible to derive concepts like time and space and the categories from history and to reduce them to social phenomena. In Adorno's view, "the objectivity of time should be separated from reflections on time or the creation of a concept of time; in so doing, the creation of the concepts of time and space become something that takes place within history and therefore depends on social conditions." His final conclusion is that "without subjectivity, without real subjects interacting with each other, the concept of time, and all talk of an objective concept of time as a concept that has priority over the consciousness of time, would be meaningless. Instead, the truth is that these two concepts are mutually interdependent."
The dialectical or antinomic structure of Kantian philosophy entails the Kant is a philosopher who prefers to accept the illogicality of a system that aspires to provide a central point, which is that of an idea that can construct reality - but at the same time refuses to regard the world as identical with that idea. I want to suggest that Kant's implicit postmodernism is the philosophical equivalent of my schizophrenia, which assumed the form of a dreaming idealism: on the one hand, he sticks to his thesis that the intention of philosophy is to understand reality as a whole, to decode the totality and, at the same time, he declares that philosophy is incapable of this. His conclusion that the only form in which the totality can be grasped is the expression of the fact that it cannot be grasped is somewhat less than gratifying to the great majority of seekers after the ultimate truths of reality.
March 7, 2025
Si el que vols és un acompanyament a la crítica de la raó pura que t'ajudi a entendre els arguments de Kant o que et resumeixi i esquematitzi les seves parts, aquestes classes transcrites d'Adorno no et serviran. Adorno és explícit que no intenta fer això i que li és indiferent el que pensés Kant (unhinged, però té raó). El que sí fa molt bé en aquest text és exposar les tensions filosòfiques i desenvolupar creativament les idees de kant. Fa gràcia pq en començar diu que assuimirà que qui l'escolta no sap res sobre Kant, però justament les classes són interessants en la mesura que ja s'hagi entés una mica a Kant per poder fer el pas cap Hegel i cap al mateix Adorno, en fi, cap a la possibilitat d'una Dialèctica Negativa.
Petonets transcendentals ✨️
Petonets transcendentals ✨️
May 7, 2017
A paradox of a book. The famously difficult (or do I mean painful?) Kant presented in a series of lectures by the famously difficult Adorno, and the result is this, an amiable and welcoming introduction to each of them. Well, perhaps I shouldn't oversell it; it's still a good challenging read. But I found Kant much more interesting when viewed through Adorno's critical lens. I'm sure some could rush in and insist that Adorno's take on Kant is idiosyncratic in this way or that, but who cares? Everyone's take is idiosyncratic! On everything! So let's get over that and move on to interesting conversations that move us closer to justice and peace, right? And in a way this is adjacent to what Adorno's arguing about with Kant, discussing objectivity being grounded in the subject, and fully engaging with the block and paradoxes inherent to Kant's thinking.
I'm looking forward to reading more of these books of lectures from Adorno's '50s and '60s courses.
An idiosyncratic side note: as a professor I especially enjoyed some of the little humanizing artifacts as well. Things like Adorno joking about how the students, if bored during their summer break, can amuse themselves by thinking about this or that difficult question. Even more was I comforted by the fact that Adorno seems to have run a little short of time and ended up rushing through some things during the last week. All you teachers out there, surely you can relate. (It's a mark of how well edited/scaffolded the text is that the last lecture is heavily supplemented in the endnotes with excerpts from other works by Adorno to fill in the elisions. Well played, editors!)
I'm looking forward to reading more of these books of lectures from Adorno's '50s and '60s courses.
An idiosyncratic side note: as a professor I especially enjoyed some of the little humanizing artifacts as well. Things like Adorno joking about how the students, if bored during their summer break, can amuse themselves by thinking about this or that difficult question. Even more was I comforted by the fact that Adorno seems to have run a little short of time and ended up rushing through some things during the last week. All you teachers out there, surely you can relate. (It's a mark of how well edited/scaffolded the text is that the last lecture is heavily supplemented in the endnotes with excerpts from other works by Adorno to fill in the elisions. Well played, editors!)
May 2, 2016
Against all odds I enjoyed reading this book. I disagree with so many interpretations of Adorno of CPR but I must say it was very interesting to read Kant the way he reads him. I was also surprised by the precision of Adorno's method. I was wrongly assuming all continental philosophers of 20th Century are more interested in their fancy literatures rather than philosophical precision but while I was reading this book I fundamentally reconsidered my stance. Any ways, this was a joyful read.
May 30, 2014
Amazing that Adorno, in his lectures on Kant, could be so lucid and clear.... as opposed to his own works..
August 5, 2020
will def have to revisit, a lot to chew on in here...
October 14, 2023
Adorno is a class above the rest. Minor imprecisions are to be readily accused, as these are (more or less extemporaneous) lectures. His interpretations are so ingenious, and his didactic instincts so often on the mark, that this was just a joy to read throughout. It's true that there is as much of Adorno's in here as there is of Kant's; but, in my view, that's a plus. Adorno is a serious philosophical thinker in his own right, and the occasional excerpts of his writing provided in the footnotes consistently impressed me (which is a good moment to note that the 354 pages this edition supposedly has only comprise the text of the lectures; really the book has 440--maybe this gets changed sometime). If you're somewhat familiar with Kant's CPR and have even a sliver of interest in Adorno himself, then this is highly recommended.
November 20, 2024
Perhaps as inessential as one could get when reading Adorno. He starts with the assumption that none of his students have read Kant before and promptly abandons that around lecture 3 or 4. It must have been incomprehensible as an introduction to Kant, but it more or less works as an incredibly dry, Adorno-style analysis of the Critique of Pure Reason.
February 13, 2019
you should read this book after reading a quite amount of books on Kant and his phlosophy. not good for Kant beginners
May 27, 2024
Brilliant. He’s so lucid as a speaker it’s remarkable
April 6, 2018
Really enjoyed this book and learning a lot about kan't philosophical ideas that shaped the future debate of philosophy.
April 24, 2016
A post-Kantian reading of the CPR that quite interestingly works it way backwards in presenting Kant's system. Results in a destabilizing process that deconstructs the linear reading of Kant (undifferentiated content, first order determination by intuitions, then active construction through understanding) into a dialectical structure in which content, aesthetic , and logic are continually suffused with tensions that stand in need of being explicated given that Kant's presentation strives to sequester and neutralize any such contradiction within the system. The first half of the lecture course is the most enjoyable of Adorno's dialectical theorizing I've ever read. The Hegelian turn half-way through beginning with the pairing of constitutum and constituens is where we start turning off the path and the second part of the lecture course consists in various approaches to what amounts to a post-Kantian form/content derivation from within the CPR. Adorno's reading of Kant is here questionable at times and loses some of the clarity of the earlier lectures but they are nonetheless worthwhile claims to work through and with.
October 17, 2013
I'm not sure I agree with all of Adorno's views here, particularly with respect to Kant's relationship with idealism and "the block", but this book does a great job of properly situating Kant within a transitional period for modern philosophy.
December 17, 2007
Astoundingly clear and interesting, as are most of Adorno's lectures. He goes all over the place, in the process managing to give a very good basic introduction to Kant.
May 23, 2015
I Kant even
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews