Autonomy After Auschwitz

Autonomy After Auschwitz Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity

by Martin Shuster

University of Chicago Press, 2014
Cloth: 978-0-226-15548-7 | Electronic: 978-0-226-15551-7
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226155517.001.0001

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ABOUT THIS BOOKAUTHOR BIOGRAPHYREVIEWSTABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Ever since Kant and Hegel, the notion of autonomy—the idea that we are beholden to no law except one we impose upon ourselves—has been considered the truest philosophical expression of human freedom. But could our commitment to autonomy, as Theodor Adorno asked, be related to the extreme evils that we have witnessed in modernity? In Autonomy after Auschwitz, Martin Shuster explores this difficult question with astonishing theoretical acumen, examining the precise ways autonomy can lead us down a path of evil and how it might be prevented from doing so.

Shuster uncovers dangers in the notion of autonomy as it was originally conceived by Kant. Putting Adorno into dialogue with a range of European philosophers, notably Kant, Hegel, Horkheimer, and Habermas—as well as with a variety of contemporary Anglo-American thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, John McDowell, and Robert Pippin—he illuminates Adorno’s important revisions to this fraught concept and how his different understanding of autonomous agency, fully articulated, might open up new and positive social and political possibilities. Altogether, Autonomy after Auschwitz is a meditation on modern evil and human agency, one that demonstrates the tremendous ethical stakes at the heart of philosophy.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Martin Shuster is chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Avila University in Kansas City, MO and is cofounder of the Association for Adorno Studies.

REVIEWS

“Autonomy after Auschwitz is an exceptionally strong and interesting work. Shuster productively relates Adorno both to German idealism and to contemporary analytic philosophy, opening up Adorno’s work and engaging it from perspectives that reveal unexpected nuances and invite further reflection and exploration. The result is a highly original and pathbreaking work that will appeal not only to Adorno scholars but a range of readers in social theory and philosophy.”

— Espen Hammer, Temple University

“In this elegantly crafted book, Shuster demonstrates, compellingly, that the core of modern reason is a claim to be radically autonomous: fully detached from the natural world and fully self-determining. Such a reason, Adorno argues, will be self-defeating, leading to the dissolution of the very form of subjectivity it promises. Shuster thus shows what no one has argued previously: that at the center of Adorno’s critical enterprise is an argument about the nature of autonomy, agency, and practical reason. Shuster has provided an incisive addition to our understanding of these topics that confronts traditional accounts, especially in Kant and Hegel, with Adorno’s reflections on how human action must be shaped, motivated, and elicited from a world of suffering from which we cannot avert our eyes.”

— J. M. Bernstein, New School for Social Research

“Shuster offers us a fresh and interesting interpretation of the key elements in Adorno’s thought. He perceptively steers us through the tangle of Adorno’s attempt to combine classical German thought with contemporary social concerns.”

— Terry Pinkard, Georgetown University

“Shuster claims to have ‘reconstructed a formal model for understanding ourselves as agents.’ This reconstructed model replaces the traditional model of ethical action—in which intention and choice are paramount—with a jointly Adornian and Cavellian one, in which moral action is solicited from within interpersonally situated forms of life and experience. Shuster has developed this model with care and makes careful interventions into the reading of some major figures in developing it. Throughout, the claims advanced are convincingly and helpfully situated in relation to recent scholarship within both Anglophone philosophy and the European post-Kantian tradition. As the author himself notes, this reconstructed position stands in need of further elaboration. But Shuster does more than enough to suggest that this would be a task worth undertaking.”

— Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

“A series of intricate investigations of autonomy in modern and contemporary philosophy. The chapter on ‘negative dialectics,’ which forms the core of the book, is outstanding. . . . Shuster does excellent work in bringing Adorno into contemporary philosophical discussion.”

— Times Literary Supplement

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction - Martin Shuster
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226155517.003.0001
[Theodor W. Adorno, Immanuel Kant, G. W. F. Hegel, German Idealism, modernity, Auschwitz, autonomy, critical theory]
This chapter is an introduction to Autonomy after Auschwitz: Adorno, German Idealism, and Modernity. It suggests Adorno is an important interlocutor within German Idealism (especially Kant and Hegel), especially on the notion of autonomy, and more broadly notions of normativity. (pages 1 - 6)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

Against I: Stressing the Dialectic in the Dialectic of Enlightenment - Martin Shuster
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226155517.003.0002
[Immanuel Kant, autonomy, freedom, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, practical reason, dialectic, Critique of Pure Reason, agency]
This chapter advances three big claims. First, that Kant is the central interlocutor in Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, and that this has not yet been recognized in the scholarship. Second, that Horkheimer and Adorno launch a devastating critique of Kant’s notion of autonomy, showing how in adopting this notion, agents undermine their capacities for practical reasoning and thereby their very standing as agents. Third, it is shown that the dialectic of enlightenment is based on Kant’s notion of dialectic in the Critique of Pure Reason. (pages 7 - 41)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

1. Introduction

2. The Text of the Dialectic of Enlightenment

3. Enlightenment as a Historical Category?

4. The Concept of Enlightenment, and Enlightenment and Myth

5. Images and Signs

6. The Dissolution of Subjectivity

7. The Dialectic of Enlightenment and Kant’s Dialectic of Reason

8. Adorno on Kant’s Dialectic

9. The Necessity of the Dialectic of Enlightenment

10. The Dialectic of Enlightenment and Practical Reason

11. Conclusion

Beyond the Bounds of Sense:Kant and the Highest Good - Martin Shuster
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226155517.003.0003
[Immanuel Kant, philosophical theology, philosophy of religion, 1st Critique, 2nd Critique, 3rd Critique, Critique of Judgment, highest good, teleology, Theodor W. Adorno]
This chapter argues that Kant critical philosophy anticipates a powerful rejoinder to the critique of the dialectic of enlightenment. Specifically, it shown that Kant’s notion of the highest good is both essential to Kant’s critical philosophy and serves to answer Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique. This chapter shows how Kant’s notion of autonomy depends on this notion of the highest good. In doing so, it also argues that for its proper elaboration, Kant’s notion of highest good requires the advances in Kant’s critical philosophy that the Critique of Judgment allows (i.e. the notion of the highest good is problematically circular in both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason). (pages 42 - 70)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

1. Introduction

2. Morality and the Highest Good

3. The Highest Good in the Critique of Pure Reason

4. The Garve Review

5. The Highest Good in the Critique of Practical Reason

6. The Highest Good in the Critique of Judgment

7. Conclusion

Adorno’s Negative Dialectic as a Form of Life: Expression, Suffering, and Freedom - Martin Shuster
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226155517.003.0004
[Theodor W. Adorno, Stanley Cavell, forms of life, expressivism, Negative Dialectics, G. E. M. Anscombe, philosophy of action, normativity, addendum]
This chapter is the cornerstone of the book and accomplishes four large tasks. First, it elaborates Adorno’s theory of practical reason, including his notion of ‘the addendum,’ his philosophy of action, and his ethical theory. Second, it puts Adorno into a complex dialogue with Stanley Cavell, showing how their philosophies of language and also their ethical views intersect. Third, it elaborates what it means to be autonomous ‘after Auschwitz,’ showing the moral stakes of such an environment. Fourth, and finally, it puts Adorno’s theory of morality and action into dialogue with figures like Anscombe, Kant, and Davidson, amongst others. (pages 71 - 133)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

1. Introduction

2. Toward an Understanding of the Moral Addendum

3. Natural and Normative: Some Variations

4. The Addendum

5. The Background to Adorno’s Moral Thought

6. Speculative Surplus and Depth as Freedom

7. Freedom and Expression, Happiness and Suffering

8. Expressivity, Language, and Truth

9. Morality and the Nonidentical

10. Conclusion: Kant and Freedom

Reflections on Universal Reason: Adorno, Hegel, and the Wounds of Spirit - Martin Shuster
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226155517.003.0005
[G. W. F. Hegel, Theodor W. Adorno, universal reason, philosophy of history, spirit, phenomenology of spirit, beautiful soul, sensibility, Non-Metaphysical Hegel]
In dialogue with Adorno, this chapter argues that Hegel is not a teleological thinker who is committed to seeing history as a site of theodicy. Instead, it is argue that Hegel is a historicist thinker whose view of dialectics is quite close to Adorno’s theory of negative dialectics (as presented in the 3rd chapter of this book). This is accomplished by a close reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit, where it is shown that Hegel’s method is not one committed to a progressive history, nor one that culminates in a closed dialectic. Instead, through a close reading of the transition to ‘Absolute Knowledge’ in the Phenomenology, this chapter argues that Hegel’s dialectic is entirely openended, and importantly relies on cultivating a distinct sensibility and fundamentally shows a lack of any necessity. (pages 134 - 167)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

1. Introduction

2. The Methodology of the Phenomenology of Spirit

3. From the Science of the Experience of Consciousness to the Phenomenology of Spirit

4. Spirit

5. Universal Reason and Forgiveness

6. Conclusion

Model Conclusion - Martin Shuster
DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226155517.003.0006
[ordinary language philosophy, moral perfectionism, J. L. Austin, Theodor W. Adorno, models, spiritual exercise, Arnold Schönberg, Fredric Jameson, John McDowell, Robert Brandom]
This chapter discusses Adorno’s method, again, this time focusing on his notion of a ‘model.’ It situates Adorno amidst contemporary discussion of normativity and also connects Adorno to ordinary language philosophy, especially J.L. Austin and Stanley Cavell, and moral perfectionism. (pages 168 - 175)
This chapter is available at:
https://academic.oup.com/chica...

Works Cited

Index