Minima moralia. Meditazioni della vita offesa

by Theodor W. Adorno, Leonardo Ceppa (Contributor), Renato Solmi (Translator)

È passato ormai più di mezzo secolo dagli anni in cui Adorno scrisse queste Meditazioni della vita offesa, che, ormai sottratte alle indigestioni e forzature ideologiche degli anni settanta, possono essere considerate nella loro prospettiva di ultimo classico tedesco. Attraverso centocinquantatre aforismi, con un'attitudine apparentemente divagante, Adorno ricompone l'intero orizzonte della vita sociale, politica, culturale dell'uomo occidentale, senza rinunciare mai all'idea di un suo possibile riscatto. Come scrive Leonardo Ceppa nell'introduzione, «serietà e gioco, teologia e clownerie, nostalgia borghese e impegno politico sembrano così felicemente mescolarsi in questo libro davvero unico nella storia della filosofia contemporanea».

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Politics, Essays, German Literature, Sociology

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

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

[Nick Ramsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine your grandfather complaining about how the world is going to hell in a hand-basket. Then, imagine that your grandfather is the most well-read and erudite German bro. That's what this book is.

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Society is now broken and I am damaged by it. I am damaged because I have always believed in true love.

All our lives are Damaged in their own way by this new world of Minimum Morality. Its machinery is now closing off our Escape Routes. Soon we'll be mere Robots. So infers Adorno.

Adorno's effective method is highly critical of every roadblock to clarity of mind. He has removed - rather paradoxically, for such was never his intention - the last obstacles in my mind to happiness: he wants to smash our illusions!

He wants to clearly reveal the impasse of modern man. But he has proved to me that my way of overcoming that impasse in myself has worked.

When released from a psych ward, I was a Damaged, Obfuscated Droid - but I then chose the straight and narrow way for my own.

I still am broken - but I still have a Fighting Faith too!

And after the long struggle of my life I now only know clear skies. Machine or no machine.

Peace.

But why, then, do most folks' efforts to bring back simple redeemed humanity into the world all FAIL?

Adorno says is it's due to our sentimentality. We try to be human. But we are talking soupy nonsense talk as if we’re "human" - too uncool for the kids! The Machine Frowns, THEY frown.

That's how the Machine does it.

It frowns, the World frowns.

True Love is no longer within Maslove's old Hierarchy of Needs. Because Moralia must now be Minima.

But we can regain Love, unlike Adorno (who sadly lacks humanity) if we're uncommonly alert to the world's scams, and see in Adorno's method not despair, but the peace that finally comes when we pass through the Narrow Gate!
***

The only alternative, I think, is to see the Machine as irrelevant alterity. It is not us. It would strip away all loving emotion from us!

The others with whom we share our lives, on the other hand are VALUABLE to us. Through them we Regain Value - OBJECTIVELY...

AND -

Our friends and loved ones can be at the top of OUR version of Maslove's Hierarchy for us!

But though we see them as valued, the Machine sees them as a Distanced value.

So we are forced to now Think - and no longer Feel - their valued presence. For the Machine is distancing us from our emotions. That keeps us on our toes!
***

So some points we must concede to the Machine. But we MUST keep our faith in simple Goodness.

The Machine makes goodness amorphous, shapeless - a mere ghost - because it knows no moral discrimination.

Let's ignore the Machine for a while…

We are terrified by Terrorism, but have any of us shown a pained Human Face to it? Sorted out its whys and wherefores? No. We are dispassionate.

Yet some of us say we Know our own heartfelt morals.

But only our MAXIMA MORALIA - our commitment to real human kindness - will give us Love again, and only through the Grace of God.

We must not be bamboozled.

If that, for you, calls for a kinda Situation Ethics, so be it, but let's weigh that fluffiness on the balance!
***

So - bottom line - I'll take God as my Arbiter of Morals:

And He's my road back to Love in a loveless world.

Yes, God - the now "unnameable" God:

And, quite frankly, I'm so glad of His Inestimable, unnameable Loving Presence within my "Absence.”

For He has entangled my knots and set me FREE.

[Geoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps the great book of the oncoming Trump era. Adorno's depth of observation, critical analysis, and disgust at late-capitalist culture reads as a cry from the least false oracles of Delphi. His intellect burns ultra-bright, spouts of water on a magnesium fire. Aphorism as razor to drain the infection, but where are the willing nurses? The entire work could be quoted, but who's listening? A few will take heed as humanity passes on sedate, confused, uninvolved, happy, dumb, unflowering, swollen and mute with delusion into the graveyard of potential.

[Szplug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, that wasn't easy.

This is a strange book, one in which the removed tone of the text belies the personal sources from whence it was derived, and whose elegantly difficult style and aethereal buoyancy prevent it from succumbing to the chthonic gravity of postwar stodginess and cracked dais condemnation. Well-nigh every sentence can stand alone as an object to be admired and marveled over for its aesthetic grace, though its nonporous exterior and taut configuration repels the casual effort to penetrate its meaning, its essential positional importance to the message Adorno is rather haughtily attempting to convey. And the gist of the latter, as far as I can discern, reveals a broken—and seemingly irreparable—Western society on the receiving end of a sometimes ethereal, ofttimes caustic analysis from an observer who finds the entirety of modernity's state-of-affairs to be a rebarbative theater of the absurd and the damaged—one that has entrapped its audience and offers no alternative for these sallow-visaged members but to try and find a comfortable position in which to view the parade of empty performances, to sense the very air being made oily with commodification, fizzy from the soda carbonation, with the gaudy and cacophonous set pieces underlain by the structural duress of having the invisible energies of the atom threaten to slip their seeds in an annihilatory flowering.

Poor Adorno: imagine believing that you were witnessing the crystallization of an abhorred economic system into an overwhelmingly triumphant and dominant cultural meme, even as its philosophical antithesis, the collective egalitarianism of socialist theory, was hardening into something terribly corrupt and malignant of its own; and that, even as you espied and set to paper the manipulations, internal stresses, and absurd manifestations of this tyrannical power backed by the threat and allure of nuclear Armageddon, you knew your pessimistic finger-pointing would be utterly subsumed in the efficiently spreading and gaudily regnant noise; that you would be yet another Cassandra whose coolly impassioned warnings were met with either a blank stare, a dismissive furrowing of the brow, or—worst of all—belching, cackling, elbow-aimed laughter as the channel you were declaiming from was changed. This precisely distributed blanket of mordant flakes may, on occasion, move the reader to wish to seek out the bucket-tipper on high and deliver unto him a swift kick in the ass—but such urges are fleeting, and mood prevails; and if that mood inclines for difficult dispensations from an erudite and saturnine elite then you will continue to keep your arms outspread and shiver in the bleak arctic chill of Adorno's disapproval.

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adorno is so wonderfully negative and devastating in his attacks on just about everything that there is a certain sense of hopelessness and everything is shit that prevades out of the pages, but within this negativity is an unspoken greatness to what can be great and beautiful. I have no idea what to say, this book is just great.

[Bradley · Rating 2 out of 5]

It is really strange how influential Adorno is within Marxist circles. He is such a neg-head downer... After I read this text I truly ran to the bookshelves and tried to lift myself out of this book's funk by Re-reading Epictetus and Seneca. Give me Greek Philosophy over this trite bitch-fest any day. Please, if you are thinking of killing yourself, DO NOT READ ADORNO! READ GREEK PHILOSOPHY INSTEAD (and get outside and play)

Probably the biggest angst-ridden crock of shit since Nausea by Sartre. I just wanted to say "Cheer Up" - and wondered by God - Auschwitz! That Nazi-bullshit has really taken the fun out of philosophy over the last 100 years or so... man, what I'd give to live in Ancient Greece instead of in this wretched post-modern milieu with its ennui and its Adorno-slit-my-wrists-mind-fuckingly-wretched-'critical theory'.... blah, everything sucks to Adorno - no, poetry after Auschwitz my ass - WE NEED POETRY NOW MORE THAN EVER! Since nobody can sit and process anything truly challenging that takes time to enjoy - which is probably what gets Adorno so steamed to begin with. Ahhh, I cannot believe I wasted my 20's actually feeling ashamed of my own joy, precisely because I was obsessing over texts like Minima Moralia by Theodor Adorno. Bleck!

Give me Epictetus and Seneca over this wretched (the whole world is a concentration camp) bullshit anyday - to think how many of today's scholars still cling to this critical theory - Agamben, Butler, Foucault, anyone born in France of Italy doing critical theory in the last 40 years, etc. It's enough to drive you crazy.

[Argos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adorno’nun 153 adet kısa, birbiriyle bağlantılı olmayan, bir sıra takip etmeyen ama ucu bir şekilde ahlak ile (etik) iliştirilen denemelerinden oluşan bu kitabı çok sıkı bir metin. Zor bir okuma oldu, içeriğinin yoğunluğundan dolayı bazı cümleleri birkaç kez okumak zorunda kaldığım felsefik/sosyolojik metinler çok yordu beni.

Birinci völümü 1944’de yazmaya başlamış. İkinci bölümü 1945’de. Yani bir mülteciyken, Amerika’da, ülkesinden uzakta, ancak ülkesindeki faşizmi neredeyse beş duyusuyla hissettiği zamanlarda başlamış yazılarına. Adorno yaşadığı çağı tüm yönleriyle yaşayan çağının insanıdır; bir tarafta mülteci bir aydın olarak sığındığı ülkenin bireyciliğini ve çıkarcılığını görmekte, diğer tarafta Hitler faşizminin insanlığı yok edişini görüyor, duyuyor, okuyor. “Minima Moralia” böyle bir dönemin ve böyle bir kişinin eseri olan çok sert, iç karartıcı ve yakıcı, köşeli bir metinler bütünü.

Bazı düşüncelerine katılmak mümkün değil, Adorno’nun yaşadıklarını yaşamadan olumlanması zor karar ve sonuçlar. O kadar öfkeli ki düşüncelerini kağıda aktarırken bile sakinleşmiyor, bu ise onu objektiflikten savurup vermek istediği mesajı da anlaşılması zor hale getiriyor. Eleştirel dozu çok yüksek, Freud, Hegel, Heideger, varoluşçular, Nietzsche gibi filozoflar, Anatole France, Maupassant, Goethe ve birçok yazar hedefinde. Psikanalizi yerin dibine batırıyor. Alman emperyalizminin başlangıç noktası olarak besteci Wagner’in “Tanrıların Alacakaranlığı” eserini hatırlatır. Ancak sunuşunda belirttiği gibi “savaş sırasında, düşüncelere dalmak ve seyretmek zorunda kaldığı bir dönemde” yazılmış. Amacını ise zorlu düşünmeye zorlamak olarak açıklıyor.

Üçüncü bölümü 1946-7 yıllarında yazmış Adorno, yani savaşın bittiği, faşizmin yenilgisinin ardından. Bu bölüm ilk iki bölüme göre hüküm verici metinlerden çok sorgulayıcı metinlere dönüşmüş, daha genel konular yanında uslupta da az da olsa serlikte azalmanın görüldüğü denemeler dikkat çekiyor.

Hakkında çok yazılan ve ezici çoğunlukla beğenilen bu yazılar belki beş yıldızlık bir kitap oluşturuyor ancak okurken bu kadar çok yoran bir kitaptan bir yıldız kırpmak şart oldu. Okunsa iyi olur ancak ısrarlı değilim. Deneme sevmiyor ve hafif depresyon modunda iseniz hiç başlamayın derim.

[Sebastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thoughts on this from the bottom up are a bit scattered, but the short summary is that if you are reading this and are at all curious about trying Adorno, you should do it.

4/2/2011 update. I finished. A considerable challenge throughout, but one that I believe was worth the time investment. Even if I only was able to absorb 20% of Adorno's sentences, that 20% was made up of provocative, downbeat and penetrating encapsulations of our culture and the way we live now.

One last lengthy quote. I read this bit while SXSW was going on and I couldn't help but think that in some banal way (maybe it was the startlingly contemporary reference to unnecessary horn-rimmed glasses) portions of this acerbic passage, Expensive reproduction, might apply to the homogenization and follow-the-leader fashion of the much-maligned hipster culture, which ostensibly was once meant to be "independent" and distinct from the culture industry (as to whether "indie" culture/music was ever anything but another way to divide people and show membership in different groups, just not the designated "cool" or "popular" groups, is another question, see portions of Our Band Could Be Your Life):

Society is integral even before it undergoes totalitarian rule. Its organization also embraces those at war with it by co-ordinating their consciousness to its own. . . . What [intellectuals] subjectively fancy radical, belongs objectively so entirely to the compartment in the pattern reserved for their like, that radicalism is debased to abstract prestige, legitimation for those who know what an intellectual nowadays has to be for and what against. The good things they opt for have long since been just as accepted, in numbers just as restricted, in their hierarchy of values just as fixed, as those of student fraternities. While they inveigh against official kitsch, their views, like dutiful children, are allowed to partake only of pre-selected nutrition, cliches against cliches. On the walls the deceptively faithful colour reproductions of famous Van Goghs like the 'Sunflowers' or the 'Cafe at Arles', on the bookshelf the boiled-down socialism and psycho-analysis and a little sexology for libertines with inhibitions. . . . Every opinion earns the approbation of friends, every argument is known by them beforehand. That all cultural products, even non-conformist ones, have been incorporated into the distribution-mechanisms of large-scale capital, that in the most developed country a product does not bear the imprimatur of mass-production can scarcely reach a reader, view, listner at all, denies deviationary longings their subject matter in advance. . . . The intellectuals themselves are already so heavily committed to what is endorsed in their isolated sphere, that they no longer desire anything that does not carry the highbrow tag. Ambition aims solely at expertise in the accepted stock-in-trade, hitting on the correct slogan. The outsiderishness of the initiates is an illusion, they are merely biding their time. To see them as renegades is to asseses them too high; they mask mediocre faces with horn-rimmed spectacles betokening 'brilliance', though with plain-glass lenses, soley in order to better themselves in their own eyes and in the general rat-race. They are already just like the rest.

Whew, punishing stuff, right? Perhaps hitting a little close to home for me as well. Striving for truly independent thought, tastes, ideas requires a disciplined regime that seems beyond imposing. I guess step one would be getting myself to the point where I can understand may 33% of Adorno and not just go with Pitchfork's Best New Music picks. There's that philistine again...

===============

10/29/10: Perhaps this book isn't ideal subway reading, but my morning commute has been the time and place when and where I've found myself picking it up, as I haven't had nearly enough free time recently. Minima Moralia is packed with relentless negativity, intriguing concepts, relatively novel (to me) perspectives on social and philosophical issues as well as interesting shifts between the very general and the very specific. Often, however, I'm left puzzled, with my head cocked like a dog waiting for a treat, thinking "damn, that's some fine writing but what in the hell is he talking about?"

I'd been more or less at sea for over ten pages at the end of Part One, not waving but drowning, lunging for a life raft in the form of any sliver of a frame of reference, when I came to the section Gaps. Eureka! Adorno doesn't want us to be able to follow and understand everything he's writing. Being lucid and familiar makes a writer a banal mediocrity. My glib, undereducated and lame jokes aside (can't shed that philistine skin completely), it seems that Adorno's broader point is that perfectly clear, explained/explainable writing is boring, but more importantly inconsistent with the way thought and life works. It's pretty fascinating stuff. He writes:

The injunction to practise intellectual honesty usually amounts to sabatoge of thought. . . . [T]he value of a thought is measured by its distance from the continuity of the familiar. . . . Texts which anxiously undertake to record every step without omission inevitably succumb to banality, and to a monotony related not only to the tension induced in the reader, but to their own substance. . . . [T]he demand for intellectual honesty is itself dishonest. Even if we were for once to comply with the questionable directive that the exposition should exactly reproduce the process of thought, this process would be no more a discursive progression from stage to stage than, conversely, knowledge falls from Heaven. Rather, knowledge comes to us through a network of prejudices, opinions, innervations, self-corrections, presuppositions and exaggerations, in short through the dense, firmly-founded but by no means uniformly transparent medium of experience. . . . [I]f honest ideas unfailingly boil down to mere repetition, whether of what was there beforehand or of categorical forms, then the thought which, for the sake of the relation to its object, forgoes the full transparency of its logical genesis, will always incur a certain guilt. It breaks the promise presupposed by the very form of judgment. This inadequacy resembles that of life, which describes a wavering, deviating line, disappointing by comparison with its premisses, and yet which only in this actual course, always less than it should be, is able, under given conditions of existence, to represent an unregimented one.

And then there are these gorgeous final two sentences:

Every thought which is not idle, however, bears branded on it the impossibility of its full legitimation, as we know in dreams that there are mathematics lessons, missed for the sake of a blissful morning in bed, which can never be made up. Thought waits to be woken one day by the memory of what has been missed, and to be transformed into teaching

Do I get it? Probably not, but it certainly invites one to dig in and wrestle with it.

-----

So my tentative ongoing dance with Kierkegaard has been, if not yet an abysmal failure, a excrutiatingly slow series of frustrating exercises, dominated by a sense of deep philosophical, historical and cultural ignorance. So, hey, what the hell, let's add a text to my "to read" list that's likely significantly more difficult and assumes more pre-existing knowledge of European philisophy than I would have if I was to be sequestered in the most magnificent library imaginable for the next five years.

This addition was a direct result of my intrigue with a post from the Paris Review's damn fine, and still relatively new, blog The Paris Review Daily.

Who knew crawling one's way out of philistinism took so much work?

[Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

My copy is completely damaged from reading and re-reading. There is a strain of pure modernism, of the highest designs for art and thought with nothing but disdain for anything else. Anti-capitalist. Severe. I dig it.

[Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I saw an interview with Marcuse where he said that Adorno's speech, even in casual conversation, was so perfectly structured and insightful that it could easily be transcribed and published. Minima Moralia does a lot to verify Marcuse's claim. The book presents itself as Adorno's dissembled thoughts and observations, from single sentence aphorisms to ostensible diary entries; but upon close reading, these ideas have real cohesion and a very ambitious address and import. I think this is more a literary than a philosophical work, if such distinctions interest you, but Minima Moralia is as provocative, astute and thoroughly convincing as Adorno's serious philosophical books (if not as rigorously argued) and far more pleasurable to read.

I read this alongside 'The Grand Abyss Hotel' which I thoroughly recommend for texture.

[Anastasiia Mozghova · Rating 5 out of 5]

as relevant as if it were written nowadays. there is so much to think about, learn, and reconsider!

[lilly amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is a book, perhaps truly the first for me, which I will be consulting the index to in the future, if i somehow am unable to manage reading it again when I have learned more.
for now - I shall perhaps give a more thorough review in the coming days - my rating is based on two aspects of the book. adorno’s dialectical method, applied to contemporary culture, literature, politics, etc.. was incredibly, incredibly illuminating for me. following the contours of this man’s thought was the most difficult aspect for me in reading the book, but the parts I felt I did understand were incredibly rewarding. I feel like I may one day look back on reading minima moralia with some nostalgia.
that being said, I almost gave the book an even lower rating because I find Adorno to be kind of a repulsive human being: hermetic, arrogant, and presumptuous in the worst egotistically male-centric way one might imagine for a collection of writings with such profundity. granted, i feel I did miss a significant amount of adorno’s meaning from my own inexperience, and Adorno writes a lot about irony and sophistry, so perhaps I read him too straightforward..??? but there were parts of this book that were unreadable, insufferable and frankly hard to take seriously

[Kalashnikovpiti · Rating 5 out of 5]

lo más personal y bonito k ha escrito Adorno, le amo

[Yakup Öner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adorno ve en önemli eseri olan Minima Moralia [Asgari Etik] yaşamın bir çok alanına etkin bir eleştirel kuramla farklı bir yorumlayış getirmiştir. Düşünce yapısındaki zerafet ve derinlik ustalığı sizi etkileyecektir. Adorno için söyleyebileceğim tek şey üstüste koyduğum tüm taşları yıkıyor olması.

[Lucía Martín · Rating 5 out of 5]

Llevo tres meses haciendo una lectura detenida y atenta. Qué bien leer desde la pausa; se nota que también está escrito desde ahí. Todas las frases están pensadas y construidas para hacer una fotografía de su momento. Qué bien leer desde la crítica; se nota que también está escrito desde ahí. Todas las frases están pensadas y construidas para señalar y transformar.

Me alegra que mi amiga Silvia este haciendo ahora una lectura también, así no se volverá a reír de mi cuando le cite un fragmento de memoria.

[Andrew]

Adorno's writing style, while initially difficult, eventually becomes more lucid. It just takes some time. However, he provides, again and again, smart observation after smart observation. The little essays in here are also remarkably personal, and we get a very good sense of Adorno-the-individual. My sole major reservation is the overwhelmingly classist overtones. While a critique of mass culture is indeed necessary, it probably shouldn't be this condescending.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Minima Moralia’ took some time and effort to read. It deserves four stars for content but I’m giving it three for my own inadequacy. There were quite a few sentences (especially those involving Nietzsche) that took me four readings to parse, let alone comprehend. To be honest, I can only claim to have understood about a fifth of the book. My grounding in philosophy is weak and patchy; I’ve never actually studied it. However, the fifth that I did understand I greatly appreciated. Notably, many insights seemed strangely contemporary. The book was first published in 1951 and was largely written during the Second World War. It is structured in many short chapters, each making a particular point. Although some overarching themes could be discerned, I did not detect a singular linking narrative or message that ran through the whole thing.

The parts of the book that will stay with me concerned gender politics, an apparent indictment of hipsters, and the corrosive influence of mass production capitalism, which equates exchange value with any value at all. The latter point is made in many different ways, each with a differing emphasis. My favourite example of the former is chapter 24, titled ‘Tough Baby’ and deserves an extended quote:

’There is a certain gesture of virility, be it one’s own or someone else’s, that calls for suspicion. [...] It’s archetype is the handsome, dinner-jacketed figure returning late to his bachelor flat, switching on the indirect lighting and mixing himself a whisky and soda: the carefully recorded hissing of the mineral water says what the arrogant mouth keeps to itself: that he despises anything that does not smell of smoke, leather and shaving cream, particularly women, which is why they, precisely, find him irresistible. [...] The pleasures of such men, or rather of their models, which are seldom equalled in reality, for people are even now better than their culture, all have about them a latent violence. [...] It is in fact violence against himself.’

Suck on that, Hemingway. Even now the tedious macho archetype pervades popular culture. I can’t locate the indictment of hipsters right now, but was amused that included a comment about people who wear clear-glass spectacles in order to appear more intellectual. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. More seriously, Adorno says some very interesting things about the role of intellectuals in society, the toxicity of fascism, and the psychological implications of mass consumption. Just don’t ask me to explain them all. My favourite chapter, though, was number 106 ‘All the Little Flowers’. This cautioned against treating memories as inviolable artefacts from the past, as they are modified and mediated by the present. Adorno explained this with especial elegance.

[Bernardo Moreira · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ainda estou abalado pelo fim da leitura da Minima Moralia, então vou tentar indicar aqui algumas questões que me inquietam.
Primeiramente, gostaria de agradecer ao Bonafini pela dica essencial na minha leitura: um aforismo por dia. Sem dúvidas, a digestão lenta do livro me proporciou uma experiência de longo prazo (153 dias) indescritível. Outro agradecimento a ele pela recomendação da tradução do Cohn, pela Azougue. Dificílimo de achar, mas consegui por sorte uma última cópia de um sebo paranaense online.
Se quisesse resenhar esse livro de forma sistemática e total, trairia seu sentido. As não-máximas de Adorno rejeitam tal procedimento. A questão para mim com esse livro foi justamente um confrontamento com uma série de influências e ideias que me orientam (afinal, um dialético de orientação hegeliana e crítica como Adorno expele uma multidão de problemas para minhas influências espinosistas). Mas não vejo Adorno como um antagonista. Diferente de Hegel, Adorno me mostra caminhos que ainda preciso percorrer.
A reflexão sobre a vida lesada, sobre o capitalismo tardio, sobre a guerra, sobre a indústria cultural: críticas poderosíssimas. O texto, orientado pela análise dos pequenos momentos, dos pequenos traços, mostra justamente a questão mais sublime: o todo diz pouco sobre a extensão da violência. É justamente na busca por aquilo que parece escapar é que percebemos a extensão do dano. A dominação, a destruição e a violência são muito mais brutais quando se ocultam em um simples gesto. Adorno capta um processo que ainda estava em vias de se aprofundar: a passagem de um capitalismo que constrói enormes estruturas de vigilância para um capitalismo que nos torna nossos próprios capatazes.
O declínio da modernidade, a brutalidade da exploração, a confusão da política: a conclusão, se é possível dizer que há uma, é justamente a formulação do problema. Adorno não propõe um programa, uma sistematização, uma saída fácil. Se há uma angústia na leitura, ela apenas nos mostra nossa condição. Não há saída: é precisamente isso que devemos superar.
Minha questão de mais intriga é justamente a reconciliação e a redenção. O aforismo Final é devastador: nos mostram que o impasse entre o possível e o impossível exigem que se pense por que fazemos filosofia - a busca pela vida feliz e justa não pode se ausentar de apresentar os problemas e não pode simplesmente escolher lados. A impossiblidade tem de ser compreendida em nome da possibilidade.
Certamente um de meus livros favoritos. Tenho muito ainda a aprender com ele. E como Adorno, rejeito uma conclusão sobre o todo de minha leitura. Me resta a memória desses 153 dias da experiência de lua de mel (ou visita ao purgatório) com a Minima Moralia.

[Robert Wechsler]

Short sections that consist of a series of reflections, some of them in the form of aphorisms. I’ve never read anything that is at once so crazy and brilliant, that makes you say What? and Wow! often in response to different clauses of the same sentence.

Too much of what Adorno does involves throwing apparently opposing ideas and words together in various ways. More than anything else, Adorno is showing off; he’s a jazz pianist noodling away. You can’t take anything he says too seriously, because he’s being playful, even when he is at his most critical and negative, which is most of the time. Negativity can be fun, too, especially in the name of higher values, but here it is difficult to determine what those values are. Adorno is negative about negativity, somehow without being positive.

This is not a book I could possibly read all the way through. A third was enough for now. I hope to return to it.

[ipek · Rating 4 out of 5]

let's consider a water bottle, for example. even the most innocent of acts, drinking water, is sick. why, one must ask, do we need water to survive? why must water be reified in its contained form, negated from its formlessness by the bourgeois? he who forms his own life in the shadow of commodified survivability must acknowledge both the negation of the self and its subsequent reification through the water bottle, administered by forces that seep into the very sources that keep us alive, and the water bottle, in itself a contradiction, is the very image of the new culture industry. there is nothing innocuous left.

[sezen]

Okuması zor bir kitap, ben de çok yavaş okudum, aralarda Adorno "oteller de çok bozdu, artık servis yapan kadınlarla yatamıyoruz, işte bunlar da hep faşizm" dedikçe de güldüm, Allah affetsin ama yine de çağımızın istikametini 1940'lardan çok iyi okumuş, sosyal medya kültürünün, yeni maneviyat biçimlerinin (astroloji vs), kişinin gitgide daha kuvvetli bir biçimde kendisini ve deneyimini metalaştırmasının emarelerini çok iyi görmüş, akıl dolu bir kitap. Beş yıldızı da "okuma tecrübesini ticari ürüne dönüştürdün" diye kızar diye korkumdan vermiyorum.

[Durakov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brutal and relentless and with good reason. The ruthless and justly paranoid critique of every little thing is certainly impressive but it also comes across as fragile and loosely arranged at times, dependent perhaps on historical conditions that have altered. But this is only the case in a few points. I shudder on Adorno's behalf to think of what he would have made of contemporary internet culture, social media, the horrendous magnitude of pop psychology, or superhero movies.

[rishi · Rating 4 out of 5]

proof of just how negative negative dialectics can be--a potent dose of precision grumpiness. take as needed.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

My bible.

[Metin Dirim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fundalıktan geçen oğlan * (* – Der Heideknabe: Hebbel’in bir baladı (1844) Çocuğun korktuğu her şeyin başına geldiğini anlatır.)

Nedensizce korkulan ve görünüşte birer sabit fikir olan şeyler arsızca gerçekleşme eğilimindedir. En çok kaçındığımız soruyu pek güleryüzlü ve pek haince bir ilgiyle bir astımız ortaya koyar. Bin türlü kurnazlıkla sevgilimizden uzak tutmaya çalıştığımız adam, beş bin kilometre ötedeyken bile bazı iyi niyetli aracıların yardımıyla onu davet edip en tatsız kişilerle tanıştırmanın yolunu bulur. Bu korkuların gerçek olmasına kişinin kendisinin ne ölçüde yardım ettiği sorulabilir: Aşırı kaygılı suskunluğumuz mudur, sinsi dinleyicinin ağzına o soruyu koyan? Mahvımıza yol açan budalaca bir güvenle aracıya aracılık etmemesini söylediğimiz için mi gerçekleşmiştir temas?
*
Psikoloji, felaketleri düşleyenlerin onları arzuladığını bilir. Ama niye o kadar açgözlü bir hevesle gelip onu buluyorlardır. Gerçekliğin içindeki bir şey, paranoid fantazide dokunacağı ve çarpıtacağı bir bam teli bulur. Herkeste örtür bir biçimde varolan sadizm, herkeste örtük biçimde varolan zaafa şaşmaz biçimde yönelir. Bulaşıcıdır zulmedilme fantazisi: Ortaya çıktığı her yerde izleyici de ona öykünmeye zorlanır. Karşıdakinin korktuğu şeyi yaparak fantaziye yardımcı olduğu durumlarda daha da kolay gerçekleşir bu. “Bir aptal çok aptal eder”- sabuklayanların dipsiz yalnızlığında bir kolektifleşme eğilimi vardır ve sabuklama da zikredile zikredile gerçeğe dönüşür. Bu marazi duygusal mekanizma, bugün geçerli olan toplumsal mekanizmayla da uyum içindedir: Umutsuz bir yalıtılmanın içine toplumsallaştırılmış olanlar, topluluğu özlemekte ve soğuk kalabalıklar içinde toplaşmaktadırlar. Böylece delilik de bir salgın hastalığına dönüşür: Çılgın mezhepler büyük örgütlerle aynı tempoda çoğalmaya başlar. Toptan yıkımın temposudur bu. Zulmedilme fantazilerinin doğru çıkmasının nedeni, kanlı gerçekliğe çok yakın olmalarıdır. Uygarlığın temeli olan şiddet, herkesin herkese zulmetmesi demektir; ve zulmedilme manisine yakalanmış olan kişi de, ölçülmez olanı ölçülür kılma çabası içinde, bütünün işlediği suçu komşusuna yıktığı için kendini zor duruma düşürüyordur sadece. Kavrulmasının nedeni, kendisinin de benzediği o nesnel sanrıyı doğrudan doğruya, denebilirse çıplak avuçlarıyla kavramak istemesidir; oysa bu saçma, akıldışı düzen de kendi kusursuzlaşmış dolaylığından ibarettir. Aldanış dokusunu güvenceye almak için aldanmış birey feda edilir. Olayların en kötü, en saçma temsilleri, en akılalmaz kurgu ve yansıtmalar bile bilincin bilinçsiz bir çabasını içerir: Toplumun kendini sürdürmesini sağlayan o ölümcül yasayı keşfetmeye, adlandırmaya çalışıyordur. Çarpıtma sadece kısa devreye uğramış uyarlamadır: Bir kişinin apaçık eblehliği, aslında bütüne ait olan eblehliğin yanlış bir yerde aranmasına yol açıyordur ve paranoyak da sadece doğru yaşamın bir karikatürüdür çünkü yanlış olana benzemek için kendi inisiyatifiyle harekete geçmiştir. Ama bir kısa devrede kıvılcımlar nasıl çevreye saçılırsa, yaşamda da bir sabuklama bir başka sabuklamayla şimşek gibi iletişim kurar. Temas noktaları, zulmedilme fantazilerinin boğucu bir şaşmazlıkla doğru çıktığı durumlardır: Hastayı haklı çıktığı için gülünç duruma düşürürken, fantazilerinin içine iyice gömülmesine yol açarlar. Yaşamın yüzeyinde açılmış olan delik de böylece yine bir anda kapanır: Dünyanın her şeye karşın o kadar da kötü olmadığı, sadece kendisinin delirmiş olduğu bir kez daha kanıtlanmıştır. Ama nesnel delilikle bireysel çaresizliğin dolaysızca kaynaştığı durumu da öznel olarak öngürmüştür; kurbanlarının bütün zulmedilme kaygılarını gerçek kılan ve kendisi de zulmedilme-manyaklarının bir diktatörlüğü olan Faşizm tam da böyle bir noktadır.

Adorno / Minima Moralia / 103

[Vitschne · Rating 5 out of 5]

„Je leidenschaftlicher der Gedanke gegen sein Bedingtsein sich abdichtet um des Unbedingten willen, um so bewusstloser, und damit verhängnisvoller, fällt er der Welt zu.“

Jeder Satz ein Rätsel, aber dadurch die interessanteste Lese-Erfahrung meines Lebens. Wahrscheinlich auch das Buch, das ich am häufigsten nochmal lesen werde.

„Wahr sind nur die Gedanken, die sich selbst nicht verstehen.“

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Empezoume gustando moito, logo desconcertoume. Pero despois do shock inicial, sentin descubrir un mundo segundo ia pasando as paxinas. É como ter un tesouro entre as man. O mundo seria mais feo sen este libro.

[nau · Rating 5 out of 5]

amb la traducció al català d'aquesta meravella m'havia imposat com a propòsit d'any nou llegir almenys un assaig al dia, ja que es pot llegir gairebé com un diari d'aquells anys. si bé hauria d'haver-lo acabat al juny xd, em consola haver-lo llegit amb pausa i pensar en el fet que l'he acabat just avui (bé, ja són tres quarts d'una, per tant, ahir), el dia del seu aniversari.

no sé pas si és un fetitxe meu, però m'encanta aquesta tendència de posar llum sobre detalls i objectes concrets per, seguidament, desvelar que en el més nou sempre hi ha una correspondència i una perpetuació de l'horror i el mite.

en fi, sens dubte és un llibre únic, increïble i, personalment, a partir d'ara, un referent polític, estètic i moral, que llegiré i rellegiré amb el pas dels mesos i els anys.

una abraçada des de la vida deteriorada, però resistent alhora, amb l'esperança d'un món diferent !

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

adorno's best zine! should be renamed as "rants and raves on alienated culture from a grumpy old man."

[suso · Rating 5 out of 5]

simplememte increible