Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics

Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his contributions to aesthetics and social theory. Critics have always complained about the lack of a practical, political or ethical dimension to Adorno´s philosophy. In this highly original contribution to the literature on Adorno, J. M. Bernstein offers the first attempt in any language to provide an account of the ethical theory latent in Adorno´s writings. Bernstein relates Adorno´s ethics to major trends in contemporary moral philosophy. He analyses the full range of Adorno´s major works, with a special focus on Dialectic of Enlightenment, Minima Moralia and Negative Dialectics. In developing his account Bernstein lays particular stress on Adorno´s contention that the event of Auschwitz demands a new categorical imperative. This book will be widely acknowledged as the standard work on Adorno´s ethics and as such will interest professionals and students of philosophy, political theory, sociology, history of ideas, art history and music.
Contents: Introduction;
1. Wrong life cannot be lived rightly;
2. Disenchantment: the skepticism of enlightened reason;
3. The instrumentality of moral reason;
4. Mastered by nature: abstraction, independence, and the simple concept;
5. Interlude: three versions of modernity;
6. Disenchanting identity: the complex concept;
7. Toward an ethic of nonidentity;
8. After Auschwitz;
9. Ethical modernism.