After Auschwitz: Adorno’s Political Thought

Theodor Adorno is often thought of as an aloof aesthete, an ivory-tower philosopher, and a political pessimist. This course seeks to challenge these accounts head-on, and presents Adorno instead as an intensely engaged thinker on politics. In particular, Adorno’s multifaceted critiques of nationalism will be spotlighted. We will discuss among other things the similarities and differences between Adorno’s time and ours. Did fascism die with its military defeat in World War Two? Is the nation-state redeemable in light of the excesses of nationalism? How can we grapple with the intractability of authoritarianism in society and within individuals? Major keywords of his thought such as reification, identity, domination and negation will be discussed. Readings will primarily be drawn from Adorno’s more accessible works: those adapted from lectures to the general public and to university students; many will be drawn from the collection of essays entitled Critical Models. Adorno’s critical, dialectical spirit will be a guide as we seek to better understand him, his context, and the key problems of modernity as he saw them, but with the ultimate goal of better understanding ourselves and our world.