Theodor Adorno by Cook Deborah

Author:Cook, Deborah [Deborah Cook]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317492979
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

How to live wrong life

Adorno’s moral philosophy may seem to consist solely in critique, lacking any positive views or practical recommendations. And this is, indeed, a widely held view, among both his critics (who think that it is problematic for a theory with emancipatory intent not to have practical import),19 and some of his defenders (who think that his theory is merely explanatory, not normative).20 However, there are both textual and other grounds that speak against this view. And, in the last decade, some authors have argued that Adorno’s philosophy contains an ethics, or even that it is ethical through and through.21 What speaks for the claim that Adorno’s philosophy contains an ethics is that he puts forward an amalgam of ethical ideals, prescriptions and even a categorical imperative of his own.

For example, Adorno suggests that, in the absence of the possibility of living morally, one should aim to live one’s life in such a way that “one may believe oneself to have been a good animal” (ND: 299, tr. mod.). Among other things, a good animal would identify with others and their plight, as well as show “solidarity with the tormentable body” (ibid.: 285). Such solidarity arises out of the abhorrence of physical suffering, which has direct motivational force for human animals (ibid.: 365), and for other animals as well in so far as Adorno situates this abhorrence within the context of natural evolution.

What is at issue here is not a rationalized form of pity, motivated by thoughts of reciprocity or reward, since such thoughts would undermine identification-based solidarity.22 At issue, rather, is natural compassion — a “physical impulse” (ND: 285) of which other animals are allegedly capable (though perhaps only in exceptional circumstances, as in the rare instances of an animal raising young of a different species). Adorno thinks that one of the problems of modern society, and the pre-eminence of instrumental reasoning within it, is that such solidarity is disappearing. Our social context engenders the opposite of identification-based solidarity, namely, bourgeois coldness. It is this coldness — the ability to stand back and look on unaffected in the face of misery — that made Auschwitz possible (ibid.: 363). Identification-based solidarity is, therefore, important for counteracting bourgeois coldness and finds its expression in the moral impulse against suffering (ibid.: 286, 365). At the same time, solidarity is something to which we can only aspire; it is not fully achievable.23

Without a socially institutionalized and fully functioning ethical life, the conditions for the cultivation of solidarity are not given. In this sense, Adorno is not so much advancing a prescription as describing an ethical ideal. And one can find other ethical ideals in Adorno’s writings, such as his suggestion that modesty might be the only suitable virtue in our current predicament. By suggesting this, he means to say that we should “have a conscience, but not insist on our own” (PMP: 169f; ND: 352); that is, we should make ethical demands on ourselves and others, but without behaving self-righteously. Adorno

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