Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T02:24:28.612Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Adorno's Advice: Minima Moralia and the Critique of Liberalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jakob Norberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Adorno's Minima Moralia was part of a publishing boom in the genre of advice literature in postwar West Germany. The combination of economic resurgence and attempted cultural restoration resulted in a widespread wish to master forming models of social intercourse; this craving for guidance accounts for the volume's commercial success. But while Adorno participates in the culture of counseling, he couples practical suggestions with repeated announcements of the demise of the self-determining subject, the projected recipient of advice. He addresses problems that appear in the individual's frame of attention but consistently disputes that this is a meaningful scene of action in the age of total administration. Minima Moralia both inhabits and violates the conventions of advice literature in order to dramatize the experience of the discrepancy between societal logic and the individual's resources.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 126 , Issue 2 , March 2011 , pp. 398 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Adorno, Theodor W. Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords. Trans. Henry W. Pickford. New York: Columbia UP, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. Einleitung in die Soziologie. 1968. Ed. Christoph Gödde. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993. Print.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. Trans. E. F. N. Jephcott. London: New Left, 1974. Print.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia: Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben. Ed. Tiedemann, Rolf. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. Philosophische Elemente einer Theorie der Gesellschaft. 1964. Ed. Tobias ten Brink and Marc Phillip Nogueira. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. “Sociology and Psychology, Part II.” Trans. Irving N. Wohlfahrt. New Left Review 47 (1968): 79–97. Print.Google Scholar
Adorno, Theodor W. The Stars down to Earth: The Los Angeles Times Astrology Column: A Study in Secondary Superstition. Ed. Buck-Morss, Susan and Tiedemann, Rolf. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975. Print. Vol. 2 of Soziologische Schriften.Google Scholar
Arato, Andrew, and Cohen, Jean L. Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge: MIT P, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. 1961. London: Penguin, 1993. Print.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Jessica. “The End of Internalization.” Telos 32 (1977): 42–64. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bergsma, Ad. “Do Self-Help Books Help?” Journal of Happiness Studies 9.3 (2008): 341–60. Print.Google Scholar
Bernard, Andreas. “Umtausch nicht gestattet.” Minima Moralia neu gelesen. Ed. Bernard, and Raulff, Ulrich. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003. 15–19. Print.Google Scholar
Bernstein, J. M. Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Bernstein, J. M. The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno. Cambridge: Polity, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Bobbio, Norberto. Liberalism and Democracy. Trans. Martin Ryle and Kate Soper. London: Verso, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Bull, Malcolm. “The Limits of Multitude.” New Left Review 35 (2005): 19–39. Print.Google Scholar
Carnegie, Dale. How to Win Friends and Influence People. 1936. Ed. Carnegie, Dorothy. New York: Simon, 1981. Print.Google Scholar
Casnocha, Ben. “Six Habits of Highly Effective Mentees.” Ben Casnocha: A Blog about Entrepreneurship, Books, Current Affairs, and Intellectual Life. 15 Apr. 2008. Web. 5 Nov. 2010.Google Scholar
Demirovic, Alex. Der nonkonformistische Intellektuelle: Die Entwicklung der Kritischen Theorie zur Frankfurter Schule. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “The Law of Genre.” Trans. Avital Ronell. Acts of Literature. Ed. Attridge, Derek. London: Routledge, 1992. 221–52. Print.Google Scholar
Elster, Jon. “Belief, Bias, and Ideology.” Ideology. Ed. Eagleton, Terry. London: Longman, 1994. 238–59. Print.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. Abriß der Psychoanalyse. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1953. Print.Google Scholar
Fuller, Steve. The Intellectual. Cambridge: Icon, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. Eine Art Schadensabwicklung: Kleine politische Schriften VI. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987. Print.Google Scholar
Hardt, Michael. “The Withering of Civil Society.” Social Text 14.4 (1995): 27–44. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hegel, G. W. F. Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts oder Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986. Print. Vol. 7 of Werke.Google Scholar
Helmstetter, Rudolf. “Guter Rat ist (un)modern: Die Ratlosigkeit der Moderne und ihre Ratgeber.” Konzepte der Moderne. Ed. Graevenitz, Gerhart von. Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999. 147–72. Print.Google Scholar
Hirschman, Albert O. The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1977. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honneth, Axel. “The Possibility of a Disclosing Critique of Society: The Dialectic of Enlightenment in Light of Current Debates in Social Criticism.” Trans. John Farrell and Siobhan Kattago. Constellations 7.1 (2000): 116–27. Print.Google Scholar
Jaeggi, Rahel. “‘Kein Einzelner vermag etwas dagegen’: Adornos Minima Moralia als Kritik von Lebensformen.” Dialektik der Freiheit: Frankfurter Adorno-Konferenz, 2003. Ed. Honneth, Axel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005. 115–41. Print.Google Scholar
Jarvis, Simon. Adorno: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Krumrey, Horst-Volker. Entwicklungsstrukturen von Verhaltensstandarden: Eine soziologische Prozeßanalyse deutscher Anstands- und Manierenbücher von 1870 bis 1970. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984. Print.Google Scholar
Lizza, Ryan. “The Mission.” New Yorker 29 Oct. 2007: 41–45. Print.Google Scholar
Luhmann, Niklas. Soziologische Aufklärung: Aufsätze zur Theorie sozialer Systeme. Köln: Westdeutscher, 1970. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGee, Micki. Self-Help, Inc.: Makeover Culture in American Life. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moretti, Franco. Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for Literary History. London: Verso, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Patterson, Kerry, et al. Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. New York: McGraw, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Pfau, Thomas. “Beyond Liberal Utopia: Freedom as the Problem of Modernity.” European Romantic Review 19.2 (2008): 83–103. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robert B., Pippin The Persistence of Subjectivity: On the Kantian Aftermath. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Postone, Moshie. Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpetation of Marx's Critical Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Puchner, Martin. Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avantgardes. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Raulff, Ulrich. “Die Minima Moralia nach fünfzig Jahren: Ein philosophisches Volksbuch im Spiegel seiner frühen Kritik.” Minima Moralia neu gelesen. Ed. Bernard, Andreas and Raulff, . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003. 122–31. Print.Google Scholar
Richter, Gerhard. Thought-Images: Frankfurt School Writers' Reflections from Damaged Life. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Riedel, Manfred. Studien zu Hegels Rechtsphilosophie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969. Print.Google Scholar
Rimke, Heidi Marie. “Governing Citizens through Self-Help Literature.” Cultural Studies 14.1 (2000): 61–78. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robbins, Bruce. Upward Mobility and the Common Good: Toward a Literary History of the Welfare State. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, Michael. On Voluntary Servitude: False Consciousness and the Theory of Ideology. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Schildt, Axel. “Bürgerliche Gesellschaft und kleinbürgerliche Geborgenheit: Zur Mentalität im westdeutschen Wiederaufbau der 50er Jahre.” Kleinbürger: Zur Kulturgeschichte des begrentzten Bewußtseins. Ed. Althaus, Thomas. Tübingen: Attempto, 2001. 295–312. Print.Google Scholar
Schweppenhäuser, Gerhard. Theodor W. Adorno: An Introduction. Trans. James Rolleston. Durham: Duke UP, 2009. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vogl, Joseph. Kalkül und Leidenschaft: Poetik des ökonomischen Menschen. Zürich: Diaphanes, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Wagner, Peter. “Versuch, das Endspiel zu verstehen: Kapitalismusanalyse als Gesellschaftstheorie.” Dialektik der Freiheit: Frankfurter Adorno-Konferenz, 2003. Ed. Honneth, Axel. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005. 205–34. Print.Google Scholar