Adorno's Practical Philosophy
Living Less Wrongly

A unique exploration of Adorno's ethics, defending his challenging views about how to live in an evil world.

Fabian Freyenhagen (Author)

9781107036543, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 July 2013

298 pages
23.5 x 16.1 x 2.2 cm, 0.58 kg

'In this significant contribution concerning the practical concerns that orient Adorno's overall project, Freyenhagen corrects the common understanding of Adorno as a melancholic, pessimistic thinker by reconsidering his engaged confrontations with the systematically produced pathologies of capitalistically and bureaucratically managed social life.' Eric S. Nelson, Journal of the History of Philosophy

Adorno notoriously asserted that there is no 'right' life in our current social world. This assertion has contributed to the widespread perception that his philosophy has no practical import or coherent ethics, and he is often accused of being too negative. Fabian Freyenhagen reconstructs and defends Adorno's practical philosophy in response to these charges. He argues that Adorno's deep pessimism about the contemporary social world is coupled with a strong optimism about human potential, and that this optimism explains his negative views about the social world, and his demand that we resist and change it. He shows that Adorno holds a substantive ethics, albeit one that is minimalist and based on a pluralist conception of the bad - a guide for living less wrongly. His incisive study does much to advance our understanding of Adorno, and is also an important intervention into current debates in moral philosophy.

Introduction
1. The whole is untrue
2. No right living
3. Social determination and negative freedom
4. Adorno's critique of moral philosophy
5. A new categorical imperative
6. An ethics of resistance
7. Justification, vindication, and explanation
8. Negativism defended
9. Adorno's negative Aristotelianism
Appendix: the jolt - Adorno on spontaneous willing.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Western philosophy, from c 1900 - [HPCF], Philosophy [HP]