77 pages • 2 hours read
Theodor W. AdornoMinima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life
Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1951A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Adorno and the Rise of Nazi Power
The fascist Nazi party came to power in Germany in January of 1933, bringing an end to the previous democratic government, the Weimar Republic. Two years later, the Nazi government passed the Nuremberg Laws, which banned books and stripped German Jews and people of Jewish descent of their civil rights, barring them from professions such as the civil service and teaching in secondary schools and universities. It was this law that caused Adorno to lose his job teaching philosophy. He left Germany for Britain in 1934 and later migrated to the United States.
When the United States entered World War II in 1942, Adorno was labelled as an “enemy alien” since he was a German national. As a result, his movements were restricted. He could not be further than five miles from his place of residence, and had to adhere to a curfew that kept him at home at night. Adorno’s experiences living under fascist persecution and then in the United States as an “enemy alien” stoked Adorno’s distrust of modern governments. He thus asserted that aspects of totalitarianism existed even in societies that ostensibly rejected fascism.
Philosophical Context: The Frankfurt School
As a philosopher, Theodor Adorno was a leading member of the Frankfurt School, a group of interdisciplinary social scientists that were so named because many of them were associated with Goethe University Frankfurt. Their thought drew on Marxism, especially in terms of skepticism of capitalism’s influence on society.
Since the academics of the Frankfurt School were all men who had lived in the shadows of fascism and Stalinism, a unifying theme of their work was theorizing alternatives to the dominant modes of organizing society in their lifetimes—not just capitalist liberal democracy, but also fascism and communism. The Frankfurt School opposed positivism, specifically in the sense that they rejected the idea that society can be understood and influenced fully through scientific means. They espoused what is termed “Marxist humanism”: The idea that political and social policies should be designed to ensure as many people get to live fulfilling lives as possible, in accordance with a universal human nature.
One of the other leading members of the Frankfurt School was Adorno’s frequent writing collaborator, the sociologist Max Horkheimer. Like Adorno, Horkheimer argued that capitalist consumerism and the market deeply affected society and social relations in ways detrimental to how human beings have always found fulfillment. Another influential figure from the Frankfurt School was the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, who argued that humans communicate in universal ways and that understanding human communication is key to comprehending rationality, modernity, and social progress.
Adorno’s own thought was influenced by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who wrote about how under capitalism workers are alienated from each other and are rendered as objects. The Frankfurt School, especially the works of Herbert Marcuse, were a key influence on the New Left movement of the 1960s. Like the Frankfurt School, the New Left was skeptical of both Marxism and capitalism. Instead of focusing on labor or economic issues, New Left activists instead sought social reform.
