Adorno post Kantian stupidpol subreddt

Classical Marxist- G Hegel Post Kantianism (i.e   Left-Hegelian Anarchism [Anarcho Egoism]

Max Stirner and Michael Foucault: Toward a Post-Kantian Freedom (Post Structural Anarchism/Post Anarchism)

The Anarchist Library

https://theanarchistlibrary.org › library › saul-newman...

by S Newman · 2003 · Cited by 22 — Title: Stirner and Foucault: Toward a Post-Kantian Freedom. Author: Saul Newman. Topics: egoism, Max Stirner, Michel Foucault, post-anarchism, post- ...

Post Kantian + Marxist material connections:https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/j77xtr/adorno_on_the_family/

Adorno's Aesthetics and Ethics

JSTOR

https://www.jstor.org › stable

by C GERHARDT · 2003 — ) «Theodor Adorno agrees with post-Kantian idealists that it is more con sistent not to separate the thing in itself from the thing as it appears to con sciousness ...

Red Kant/Marxian/Theodor Adorno/ connection (third critique i.e Red Kant, or the Persistence of the Third "Critique" in Theo Adorno and Fred Jameson) also here

Max Stirner does seem to have a certain degree of popularity within particular specific circles of political philosophy and critical theory; for example post-structuralist anarchist theorists draw from him (mainly Saul Newman). Similarly, as works like The German Ideology respond to Stirner and his nominalism (Etienne Balibar gives significant weight to Marx's theoretical developments as a reaction, not a mere response, to Stirner's ideas), its worth having a basic knowledge. But, again, like others have commented, a really rigorous understanding isn't really necessary for moving into more traditional critical theory.

I would defend Stirner from premature notions of him being a defender of petty bourgeois individualism, since his whole philosophy of the Unique is squarely against capitalism. Why? Because he thought systems like our current one inhibited one from expressing their truly unique self.

His philosophy can run around in circles a little but there is a really important insight at the crux of it, that a fixed idea can act as a modern form of demonic possession. The idea of him justifying laziness or greed is utterly false and usually the argument made by someone who:

A) has never engaged with his work seriously B) does not take seriously the principle of charity

He claimed that if you engage with any idea with the understanding that it is greater than your own Unique, then you have the capacity to transform that idea (or in his language, a "spook") into a dogma and hence use it to commit evil. I think this is a really interesting observation and explains certain phenomenons, everything from suicide bombing to conspicuous pop-culture fanaticism in a convincing light. These people, as he would say, are spooked for valorizing what is essentially a "fake" phantom - namely the fixed idea.

He claims he is not against socialism, for instance, but rather sacred socialism. After the advent of the USSR and the cartoonish fetishization of the worker in that society, I think Stirner was a very keen mind and his observations are very much worth more than a cursory read. While he may not be too popular, he's currently being rediscovered in an interesting way. He's worth engaging with seriously, whether or not he fits in neatly within the critical theory tradition or not.

On the basis of this passage alone, I cannot infer Theo Adorno's position on the fate of the survival of the social form of the family in the realization of the best possible actually achievable society. But what I think Adorno fails to mention here is that there is no desirable rationalization of society which would make the family superfluous entirely or show it to be entirely archaic and anachronistic in character.

Adorno is not really in the business of making prescriptions for the best possible actually achievable society. In fact, he’d probably have criticized the desire for this as an echo of the capitalist compulsion to optimization. He’s not even in the business of creating utopian visions that could be put in contrast to existing conditions. (In “mere contrast” one would say.) His business is determining the existing potential for emancipation in actual conditions—and its obverse, the modes of bondage and unreason. Here he’s talking about family only as an aside, his point is about the preconditions of capitalism.

I’d wager that in the original German the words translated as rationalization, rationalize, irrational etc. are their direct cognates: “Rationalisierung, rationalisieren, irrational …” This would be significant, because the German word for “reason” in an encompassing, normative, enlightenment sense would be “Vernunft” and its derivatives “vernünftig, widervernünftig …” In contrast to Vernunft, which reflects on its own conditions, Rationalität means the narrow, so to say mechanical following of a preset system of logical rules; and in a philosophical context, Rationalität even more narrowly tends to mean “instrumental rationality,” the usage of suitable means to an end. To take a crass, but in the context of Adorno very relevant example: Auschwitz would in that sense be determined by a harrowing rationality, in contrast to the irrationality of spontaneous violent pogroms.

So, there is no such thing as, as you put it, a “desirable rationalization of society.” On the contrary, for Adorno the Durchrationalisierung der Gesellschaft, the thorough rationalization of society would be a nightmarish dystopia. This doesn’t mean that he would applaud irrationality. Or praise the authoritarian structure of the pre-capitalist family. The normative goals are reason (Vernunft) and emancipation. (Which in post-Kantian tradition are closely related.)

This, I believe, is because it [family] "belongs to the satisfaction of human needs" to form lasting bonds with those who most intimately bear witness to the process of our growing up.

This is a very specific conception. Specific both in time and society. I think in the combination of “process of growing up” and “those who most intimately bear witness” a philologist in a hundred years could probably determine that this sentence has been written by an American, or somebody influenced by American culture, at any rate somebody influenced by a strand of Protestantism. I’m not saying that it is wrong per se nor even that I would personally disagree. But you’re naturalizing a conception as “human need” that is very societal and very specific at that.