Adorno and Existence

From the beginning to the end of his career, the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno sustained an uneasy but enduring bond with existentialism. His attitude overall was that of unsparing criticism, verging on polemic. In Kierkegaard he saw an early paragon for the late flowering of bourgeois solipsism; in Heidegger, an impresario for a "jargon of authenticity" cloaking its idealism in an aura of pseudo-concreteness and neo-romantic kitsch. Even in the straitened rationalism of Husserl's phenomenology Adorno saw a vain attempt to break free from the prison-house of consciousness.

"Gordon, in a detailed, sensitive, fair-minded way, leads the reader through Adorno's various, usually quite vigorous, rhetorically pointed attacks on both transcendental and existential phenomenology from 1930 on... A] singularly illuminating study."
--Robert Pippin, Critical Inquiry

"Gordon's book offers a significant contribution to our understanding of Adorno's thought. He writes with expertise, authority, and compendious scholarship, moving with confidence across the thinkers he examines...After this book, it will not be possible to explain Adorno's philosophical development without serious consideration of Gordon's] reactions to them."
--Richard Westerman, Symposium

Author: Peter E. Gordon
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 08/01/2018
Pages: 272
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.70lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.20w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780674986862

About the Author
Gordon, Peter E.: - Peter E. Gordon is Amabel B. James Professor of History and Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University. He is also Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Resident Faculty at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies.