Work

Adorno on the relapse of enlightenment into Auschwitz: The exclusion and resumption of the non-identical

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: This paper answers Adorno's question, once asked in a lecture, about whether we, by forbidding the thought of the non-identical, fall in radically completed enlightenment back into the darkest form of mythology. In arguing for this in the question implied observation of enlightenment's fallback, the paper analyses Adorno's and Horkheimer's critique of enlightenment and its relapse due to excluding the non-identical, suggesting that emotions and memory represent this non-identical. As the darkest form of mythology Adorno is referring to is not to be understood as a myth itself but actually happened with the Holocaust, the paper then demonstrates how enlightenment, chiefly its exclusion of the non-identical, led to central conditions of the Holocaust that Adorno named ‘Auschwitz’. As enlightenment, according to Adorno, remains in its relapse, the paper finally discusses how his philosophy after Auschwitz advocates for the reintegration of the non-identical, mainly through the recollection of the past and the remembrance of nature within the subject.

Source: Thesis Eleven

DOI: 10.1177/07255136241300170

Author: Céline Charlotte Casmir

Institution: Freie Universität Berlin

Language: English

Topic: Critical Theory and Philosophy

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,450

Funders: York University, Faculty of Science, Agriculture and Engineering, Newcastle University