Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Adorno's WeWe

Adorno points to Kant’s use of ‘we’ but Adorno uses “we” in the course of his own analysis of Kant.  Kant too uses an implicit ‘we’ in his search for a ground in the abstractions and passive voice.  Kant points to a “we” and an “I”.  Adorno quotes Kant’s “‘We’”, but Adorno uses “we” without quotes when Adorno is somehow referring to his own contemporaneous “we.” Adorno and Kant both have we-weies. Seriously, is Adorno’s “we”-we the same as Kant’s after it has passed through fascism and Soviet communism and penetrating the period of State capitalism.  Adorno passes his “we”-we  into individuals, society, and  history; hence Adorno’s we-we can’t be the same {as big?} as Kant’s?  Adorno is comparing his own we-we to Kant’s. Adorno moves toward a philosophy of non-identity and that negates a systematizing impulse.  However, it is in the ‘We’ that he presumes is a system of sorts that is applicable to “Humanitat” not just to Europeans.   His atlas of society and philosophy reaches from his office to the world.  Yet there is no doubt that the “domination of nature’ and the principle of exchange are either abstract enough or actually pervasive enough to capture the world and penetrate the lives of everyone.

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