Adorno and Marx's Tradition of Critical Philosophy of History

He Ping

doi:10.13189/sa.2019.070603

Abstract

Adorno's philosophy inherited and developed Marx's critical philosophy of history from the perspective of philosophy of history. Marx advanced the two principles in his philosophy of history: one is the criticism of capital or reason, the other the criticism of morality or culture. Adorn took the two principles to research into the cultural industry in late capitalism and rethink Auschwitz, while he criticized Enlightenment reason and developed Marx's concept of the critical philosophy of history at the microcosmic level of human nature. In the critique of the cultural industry, Adorno first pointed out the essence of the capitalization of the cultural industry. He emphasized that the so-called cultural industry is to turn culture into industrial production and become a sector in the economy, subjecting it to the need for capital accumulation. Therefore, economic benefit, that is, maximizing the acquisition of currency, becomes the inherent power and direct purpose of cultural development, which will inevitably lead to a complete alienation of culture from content to form. Furthermore, he reflected the spirit of enlightenment, emphasizing that the essence of the enlightening spirit was deceit and lies, and it was through deception and lies that the cultural industry stepped out of its place of production and had an impact on people's leisure, entertainment, consumption, and the entire way of life. In the reflection on Auschwitz, Adorno presents a profound philosophical question: ‘Can on live after Auschwitz?' This issue is a search for the value of human life, and is also a condemnation of the barbaric practices of imperialism, even more a reflection on the history of human civilization. Adorno uses the principles of moral criticism of Marx's critical historical philosophy, criticizes the enlightenment spirit with a mode of civilized and barbaric dialectics, and pointed out that the deceptive elements of the spirit of enlightenment was the cultural roots of imperialist barbarism, in which he developed Marx's critical historical philosophy on the micro level in studying this issue. On this basis, he constructed the metaphysics of culture taking the concept of negation as core and presented the character of criticism of culture in Marx's critical philosophy of history.

Highlights

Is Adorno's philosophy Marxist or post-Marxist or postmodern? This is the most controversial debate and has never been solved in Adorno’s philosophical study
The majority of scholars comment on Adorno in the context of Western and their conclusion is: Adorno's philosophy is the end of Western Marxist philosophy and the beginning of post-Marxism and post-modernism,[43] it is inevitably caught up in the post-modernist concept of “temporary, fragmented, and self-depleted conceptual gameplay” 1 [22]
Fredrick Jameson challenged this conclusion and considered these conclusions to be overly superficial. No matter whether it is from the premise of philosophical research or from the question of philosophical research, Adorno did not make his philosophy fall into the post-modern situation, but he always stood on the Marxist standpoint, even adopting quite old-style Marxism position

Summary

An Issue Worth Revisiting

Is Adorno's philosophy Marxist or post-Marxist or postmodern? This is the most controversial debate and has never been solved in Adorno’s philosophical study. For this dual uniqueness of Adorno's philosophy, the researchers can use it as a unique case of Western Marxism to be studied, which is the researchers' original intention as well As these researchers adopted Kirsch’s Western Marxist definition, and use the philosophy of Gramsci, Kirsch, and Lukács as the context to evaluate Adorno’s philosophy. If Jameson intended to change the explanation of Adorno’s critical theory given by former researchers and prove that Adorno is a Marxist He can only jump out of the context of Western Marxism and move towards a broader context of Adorno and Marx's Tradition of Critical Philosophy of History. In order to overcome the narrowness of Jameson's perspective, this article attempts to examine the relationship between Adorno and Marxist philosophy from the perspective of historical philosophy, in order to clarify the nature of Adorno's philosophy and its contemporary inspiration

The Social Prototype of Historical Criticism

Max Horkheimer

Critique of Cultural Industry

Reflections on Auschwitz

Negation and Cultural Metaphysics

Conclusions