On Thinking the Tragic with Adorno

The European Legacy 21 (7):644-663 (2016)
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Abstract

This article seeks to provide a template for understanding the tragic dimension of Theodor W. Adorno’s philosophy through a reading of his early collaborative work with Max Horkheimer, the Dialectic of Enlightenment. While Adorno’s view has often been considered to be tragic, little has been done to reconstruct the tragic dimension of his thought. I argue that the view of the human condition, presented in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, is founded on metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical convictions that have structural similarities with the positions held by theorists and philosophers of tragedy and the tragic. Since traces of these tragic elements can be found throughout Adorno’s mature philosophy, the approach presented in this article may serve as a model for a more detailed mapping and examination of the tragic dimension of his thought in future research.

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Adorno's tragic vision.Markku Nivalainen - 2017 - Dissertation, University of Jyväskylä

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References found in this work

Adorno's practical philosophy: Living Less Wrongly.Fabian Freyenhagen - 2010 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
The Nazi Myth.Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe & Jean-Luc Nancy - 1990 - Critical Inquiry 16 (2): 291–312..
Schopenhauer and the sublime pleasure of tragedy.Dylan Trigg - 2004 - Philosophy and Literature 28 (1):165-179.

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