Description: Adorno notoriously asserted that there is no 'right' life in our current social world. This assertion has contributed to the widespread perception that his philosophy has no practical import or coherent ethics, and he is often accused of being too negative. Fabian Freyenhagen reconstructs and defends Adorno's practical philosophy in response to these charges. He argues that Adorno's deep pessimism about the contemporary social world is coupled with a strong optimism about human potential, and that this optimism explains his negative views about the social world, and his demand that we resist and change it. He shows that Adorno holds a substantive ethics, albeit one that is minimalist and based on a pluralist conception of the bad - a guide for living less wrongly. His incisive study does much to advance our understanding of Adorno, and is also an important intervention into current debates in moral philosophy.
Brief description: Fabian Freyenhagen is a Reader in Philosophy at the University of Essex. He is co-editor (with Thom Brooks) of The Legacy of John Rawls (2005) and (with Gordon Finlayson) of Disputing the Political: Habermas and Rawls (2011), and has published in journals such as the Kantian Review, Inquiry, Telos, and Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
Review Quotes: "Freyenhagen has written a lucidly argued, patient, and relentless defense of Adorno's negative ethics that provides both an excellent addition to the secondary literature on Adorno, and, more importantly, a spirited intervention into current debates in contemporary moral philosophy. This work will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in the area of moral philosophy, making available as never before the bold structures of Adorno's negative ethics, and with its clear and direct writing and argument, this work would be entirely suitable for advanced undergraduates."
J. M. Bernstein, The New School for Social Research