Research Network on Dialectics & Society
An International Community of Practice
Figure 1. A “sign o’ the times” offers terror-relieving propaganda during Hawaii’s recent missile alert scare.1 The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was … Read more
Was Marx an environmentalist? My overall position on this is skeptical ambivalence. To argue strongly that Marx himself was specifically concerned with nature in a way that is directly consonant with modern day environmental struggles and concerns is going too far. On the other hand, the assertion that Marx had no concern with the environment, … Read more
Marx, Weber and Durkheim are often accredited with being a kind of triadic foundation to classical sociological theory. All three of them dealt with issues pertaining to the historical development of capitalism and the rise of modernity. In this way, sociology was from its inception a discipline oriented toward theorizing modernity and diagnosing its ills. … Read more
This post is part of my ongoing blogging project called “Critical Theory Down to Earth.” In these posts I provide summaries of and brief reflections on writings throughout the wider critical theory landscape. Negative Dialectics Part Two: Negative Dialectics. Concepts and Categories 8. Cogitative Self-Reflection Sooner or later, philosophers discover that philosophy itself is problematic. In … Read more
*The following article by Jeanne Willette is reposted from Art History Unstuffed, originally posted March 2, 2012. Theodor Adorno and “Negative Dialectics” THEODOR ADORNO (1903-1969) AND IDENTITY Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno wrote their critique of the culture of Western civilization, Dialectic of Enlightenment during the Second World War. When the book was published in German in … Read more
This post is part of my ongoing blogging project called “Critical Theory Down to Earth.” In these posts I provide summaries of and brief reflections on writings throughout the wider critical theory landscape. Negative Dialectics Part Two: Negative Dialectics. Concepts and Categories 7. On the Dialectics of Identity Negative dialectics involves interrogating the relations – especially … Read more
This post is part of my ongoing blogging project called “Critical Theory Down to Earth.” In these posts I provide summaries of and brief reflections on writings throughout the wider critical theory landscape. Negative Dialectics Part Two: Negative Dialectics. Concepts and Categories 6. “Logic of Disintegration” The notion that our reality is split into two realms … Read more
This post is part of my ongoing blogging project called “Critical Theory Down to Earth.” In these posts I provide summaries of and brief reflections on writings throughout the wider critical theory landscape. Negative Dialectics Part Two: Negative Dialectics. Concepts and Categories 5. Relation to Left-Wing Hegelianism Adorno seems to have gotten some flack for his … Read more
This post is part of my ongoing blogging project called “Critical Theory Down to Earth.” In these posts I provide summaries of and brief reflections on writings throughout the wider critical theory landscape. Negative Dialectics Part Two: Negative Dialectics. Concepts and Categories 4. Noncontradictoriness Not To Be Hypostatized What makes us so sure that objects conform … Read more
This post is part of my ongoing blogging project called “Critical Theory Down to Earth.” In these posts I provide summaries of and brief reflections on writings throughout the wider critical theory landscape. Negative Dialectics Part Two: Negative Dialectics. Concepts and Categories 3. “Peephole Metaphysics” The way Adorno describes it, coming up with theories that posit … Read more