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samnsu 's review for:
Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life
by Theodor W. Adorno
I have been told that this is probably Adorno's most accessible work (and probably the most brilliant one) but I don't find it particularly transparent. Mostly it is due to Adorno's enigmatic style that makes his prose full of suggestions and literary allusions. But I do think readers with prior knowledge to the Frankfurt School and also Adorno's works and ideas would find reading this book a journey through all the grand Adornian ideas. Reasonably, dialectical thinking is the prevalent mode of thinking in this text, and also, without a doubt, asks question on the validity of this rationality too.
The book is sectioned in three parts and it covers a wide range of topics and themes. I think Adorno is very much interested in, and arguably good at, finding two opposing perspectives in a single matter. Oftentimes you would find him going back and forth ruminating on the same idea for an extensive length. Eventually his answer, usually an ambivalent one, would come up right near the end of each fragment. As a type of practical philosophy it is essential to take up Adorno's aphorisms and reflects them on life.
One big takeaway for me from his work is indeed how much of a hegemonic institution our society/culture is. In 2020 perhaps this might not sound all the more innovative but it is precisely this age Adorno's opinions sound infinitely more like prophecies. His ideas are certainly sheer pessimism, just like how Marx would make you think that you cannot escape the endlessness of production and reproduction, or how Foucault would make you think that you are forever living in the proliferation of discourses. Adorno thinks we are all essentially controlled in a way or another, and we don't find it problematic because we all have internalised the norms too much. To escape from this totality one seems to only have two choices: self-termination or destroy the whole system.
While Adorno thinks so I think the mode of theory should shift away from this pessimism. Capitalism has already transformed into an all-encompassing norm that we could not live without any more. In the current state of affairs one cannot simply do away capitalism even though it alienates, in the Marxist sense, everyone who participates in it to the most reductive form. To break this hegemony from within one has to spot the dialectical nature of capitalism, and realises through practice what makes it flourish could in turn makes it wither.
The book is sectioned in three parts and it covers a wide range of topics and themes. I think Adorno is very much interested in, and arguably good at, finding two opposing perspectives in a single matter. Oftentimes you would find him going back and forth ruminating on the same idea for an extensive length. Eventually his answer, usually an ambivalent one, would come up right near the end of each fragment. As a type of practical philosophy it is essential to take up Adorno's aphorisms and reflects them on life.
One big takeaway for me from his work is indeed how much of a hegemonic institution our society/culture is. In 2020 perhaps this might not sound all the more innovative but it is precisely this age Adorno's opinions sound infinitely more like prophecies. His ideas are certainly sheer pessimism, just like how Marx would make you think that you cannot escape the endlessness of production and reproduction, or how Foucault would make you think that you are forever living in the proliferation of discourses. Adorno thinks we are all essentially controlled in a way or another, and we don't find it problematic because we all have internalised the norms too much. To escape from this totality one seems to only have two choices: self-termination or destroy the whole system.
While Adorno thinks so I think the mode of theory should shift away from this pessimism. Capitalism has already transformed into an all-encompassing norm that we could not live without any more. In the current state of affairs one cannot simply do away capitalism even though it alienates, in the Marxist sense, everyone who participates in it to the most reductive form. To break this hegemony from within one has to spot the dialectical nature of capitalism, and realises through practice what makes it flourish could in turn makes it wither.