History and freedom : lectures 1964-1965

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Title:

Author:

Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969.

ISBN:

9780745630120

9780745630137

Personal Author:

Adorno, Theodor W., 1903-1969.

Uniform Title:

Zur Lehre von der Geschichte und von der Freiheit (1964/65). English

Publication Information:

Cambridge, UK ; Malden, MA : Polity, 2006.

Physical Description:

xix, 348 p. ; 24 cm.

General Note:

Formerly CIP.

Contents:

Lecture 1. Progress or regression? -- Lecture 2. Universal and particular -- Lecture 3. Constitution problems -- Lecture 4. The concept of mediation -- Lecture 5. The totality on the road to self-realization -- Lecture 6. Conflict and survival -- Lecture 7. Spirit and the course of the world -- Lecture 8. Psychology -- Lecture 9. The critique of universal history -- Lecture 10. 'Negative' universal history -- Lecture 11. The nation and the spirit of the people in Hegel -- Lecture 12. The principle of nationality -- Lecture 13. The history of nature (I) -- Lecture 14. The history of nature (II) -- Lecture 15. On interpretation : the concept of progress (I) -- Lecture 16. On interpretation : the concept of progress (II) -- Lecture 17. On interpretation : the concept of progress (III) -- Lecture 18. On interpretation : the concept of progress (IV) -- Lecture 19. Transition to moral phiolosphy -- Lecture 20. What is free will? -- Lecture 21. Freedom and bourgeois society -- Lecture 22. Freedom in unfreedom -- Lecture 23. Antinomies of freedom -- Lecture 24. Rationality and the additional factor -- Lecture 25. Consciousness and impulse -- Lecture 26. Kant's theory of free will -- Lecture 27. Will and reason -- Lecture 28. Moral uncertainties.

Abstract:

"Early in the 1960s Adorno gave four courses of lectures on the road leading to Negative Dialectics, his magnum opus of 1966. The second of these was concerned with the topics of history and freedom. In terms of content, these lectures represented an early version of the chapters in Negative Dialectics devoted to Kant and Hegel. In formal terms, these were improvised lectures that permit us to glimpse a philosophical work in progress." -- Cover, p. [4].

Subject Term:

History -- Philosophy.

Added Author:

Tiedemann, Rolf.

Copies:

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Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Copy	Status
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Summary

Despite all of humanity's failures, futile efforts and wrong turnings in the past, Adorno did not let himself be persuaded that we are doomed to suffer a bleak future for ever. One of the factors that prevented him from identifying a definitive plan for the future course of history was his feelings of solidarity with the victims and losers. As for the future, the course of events was to remain open-ended; instead of finality, he remained committed to a Hölderlin-like openness. This trace of the messianic has what he called the colour of the concrete as opposed to mere abstract possibility.

Early in the 1960s Adorno gave four courses of lectures on the road leading to Negative Dialectics, his magnum opus of 1966. The second of these was concerned with the topics of history and freedom. In terms of content, these lectures represented an early version of the chapters in Negative Dialectics devoted to Kant and Hegel. In formal terms, these were improvised lectures that permit us to glimpse a philosophical work in progress.

The text published here gives us an overview of all the themes and motifs of Adorno's philosophy of history: the key notion of the domination of nature, his criticism of the existentialist concept of a historicity without history and, finally, his opposition to the traditional idea of truth as something permanent, unchanging and ahistorical.