Ontology and Dialectics 1960-61 - 1960-61

Adorno's lectures on ontology and dialectics from 1960-61 comprise his most sustained and systematic analysis of Heidegger's philosophy. They also represent a continuation of a project that he shared with Walter Benjamin - 'to demolish Heidegger'. Following the publication of the latter's magnum opus Being and Time, and long before his notorious endorsement of Nazism at Freiburg University, both Adorno and Benjamin had already rejected Heidegger's fundamental ontology.
 
After his return to Germany from his exile in the United States, Adorno became Heidegger's principal intellectual adversary, engaging more intensively with his work than with that of any other contemporary philosopher. Adorno regarded Heidegger as an extremely limited thinker and for that reason all the more dangerous. In these lectures, he highlights Heidegger's increasing fixation with the concept of ontology to show that the doctrine of being can only truly be understood through a process of dialectical thinking. Rather than exploiting overt political denunciation, Adorno deftly highlights the connections between Heidegger's philosophy and his political views and, in doing so, offers an alternative plea for enlightenment and rationality.
 
These seminal lectures, in which Adorno dissects the thought of one of the most influential twentieth-century philosophers, will appeal to students and scholars in philosophy and critical theory and throughout the humanities and social sciences.

Sommario

* Contents
* Editor's Foreword
* LECTURE 1: 'What Being Really is'
* Against the philosophy of standpoints and philosophical world views; the meaning of rigour in philosophy and the positive sciences - the plan of these lectures; immanent critique - 'What being really is'; ontology as structural interconnection - the doctrine of being contra idealism and methodology - the concept of meaning; the being of beings; the meaning of being - being and essence - categorial intuition versus abstraction
* LECTURE 2: On Ontological Difference
* The structure of being and being itself; regional ontologies and fundamental ontology - on the problem of ontological difference (I) - ontic questions and ontological questions - questions concerning the meaning of being - question of origin as petitio principii - circular reasoning (I) - critique of origins - circular reasoning (II) - fusion of mysticism and the claim to rationality -historical dimension of 'the question of being'
* LECTURE 3: History of the Concept of Being
* Circular reasoning (III) - the unreflected 'question of being' - being in the Pre-Socratics, in Plato and Aristotle - experience of being is not 'prior'; being as product of abstraction - being and thought in Parmenides; abstraction and vital powers not distinguished for archaic thought; the most ancient not the truest - philosophy and the particular sciences; dialectic of enlightenment; residual character of being - two kinds of truth
* LECTURE 4: Being and Language (I)
* Prehistory of the new ontologies: Franz Brentano; ontology as counter-enlightenment - a double front against realism and conceptualism - fundamental ontology as hermeneutics; being and language; nominalist critique of language - analysis of the concept of being; positivism and language - conceptuality as domination of nature; inadequacy of concept and thing; thing in itself and being - functional understanding of concepts; double sense of being as concept and anti-concept
* LECTURE 5: Being and Language (II)
* Ambiguity of the concept of being (I) - arbitrariness in concept formation; Kant versus Spinoza - ambiguity of the concept of being (II) - ambiguity of the concept of being (III) - subjectivity as constitutive for ontology - substantial character of language; borrowing from theology - on the analysis of language; obligations regarding linguistic form - the wavering character of being
* LECTURE 6: Separating Being and Beings
* Examples from antiquity; on Aristotle's terminology; the priority of the tode ti - genesis and validity; Heidegger's being as third possibility; on Heidegger's concept of origin - archaic dimension of Heidegger's ontology; against genetic explanation; phenomenology and history - phenomenological method; red and redness; the inference to being-in-itself in Scheler and Heidegger - Husserl's return to transcendentalism
* LECTURE 7: Mind in relation to Beings
* 'Priority' as petitio principii - critique of the possibility of ontology; on Cartesian dualism -phenomenological reduction of the subject; objectivity of the second level; shutting out beings - philosophical compulsion for cleanliness - allergy towards beings; an aura borrowed from theology; the story of Snow White - ontology as counterpart to nominalism and positivism
* LECTURE 8: Ontologizing the Ontic (I)
* The subject-object division not permanent; fundamental ontology and the loss of tradition; the 'unintelligibility of Heidegger - oblivion of the numinous; material stuff and abstraction in the Pre-Socratics - ontology or dialectics; 'being' as 'the wholly other' - critique as differentiation; original non-differentiation; Heidegger's anti-intellectualism - against postponement - Heidegger's trick: ontologizing the ontic
* LECTURE 9: Ontologizing the Ontic (II)
* Conceptualizing the non-conceptual; philosophy of being and idealism, Heidegger and Hegel - ontologizing existence - spurious appeal of the new; fascina

Info autore

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), a prominent member of the Frankfurt School, was one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century in the areas of social theory, philosophy and aesthetics.

Riassunto

Adorno's lectures on ontology and dialectics from 1960-61 comprise his most sustained and systematic analysis of Heidegger's philosophy. They also represent a continuation of a project that he shared with Walter Benjamin - 'to demolish Heidegger'. Following the publication of the latter's magnum opus Being and Time, and long before his notorious endorsement of Nazism at Freiburg University, both Adorno and Benjamin had already rejected Heidegger's fundamental ontology.

After his return to Germany from his exile in the United States, Adorno became Heidegger's principal intellectual adversary, engaging more intensively with his work than with that of any other contemporary philosopher. Adorno regarded Heidegger as an extremely limited thinker and for that reason all the more dangerous. In these lectures, he highlights Heidegger's increasing fixation with the concept of ontology to show that the doctrine of being can only truly be understood through a process of dialectical thinking. Rather than exploiting overt political denunciation, Adorno deftly highlights the connections between Heidegger's philosophy and his political views and, in doing so, offers an alternative plea for enlightenment and rationality.

These seminal lectures, in which Adorno dissects the thought of one of the most influential twentieth-century philosophers, will appeal to students and scholars in philosophy and critical theory and throughout the humanities and social sciences.

Relazione

'Ontology and Dialectics is a work of the highest importance. These lectures allow us not only to gain a clearer understanding of Adorno's critique of Heidegger but also to understand more fully the project of a German-Jewish thinker who, having returned to Germany after the Second World War, wonders if philosophy "after Auschwitz" is still possible. The course shows Adorno developing and assembling many of the major concepts that would inform the mature phase of his thinking, right up to his untimely death in August 1969.'
Gerhard Richter, Brown University

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Adorno, Theodor W Adorno, Theodor W. Adorno, Theodor W. Walker Adorno, Nick Walker
• Con la collaborazione di: Nick Walker (Traduzione), Walker Nick (Traduzione)
• Editore: Polity Press
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Copertina rigida
• Pubblicazione: 31.12.2018
• EAN: 9780745693125
• ISBN: 978-0-7456-9312-5
• Pagine: 384
• Categorie: Saggistica > Filosofia, religione > Filosofia: tematiche generali, opere di consultazione; Scienze umane, arte, musica > Filosofia; Philosophie, Ontologie, Dialektik, Kulturwissenschaften, Cultural Studies, Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, Spezialthemen Philosophie, Philosophy Special Topics, Kontinentalphilosophie, Cultural Studies Special Topics, Spezialthemen Kulturwissenschaften