Publication details
Realita konceptu a iluze reality: Ke kritickému založení Adornovy sociologie
| Title in English | Reality of Concept and Illusion of Reality: On the Critical Establishment of Adorno’s Sociology |
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | This chapter explores Adorno’s conceptual appropriation of “society”. For Adorno, society is not an empty and abstract concept without a specific social content, but a category that must be conceived as a determinate context of existing presuppositions of human’s social self-creation. After a brief discussion of Adorno’s contribution to the debate on positivism, our attention is drawn to his analysis of the economic process. One can meet the manifold contemplations, fragments and comments on the dehumanising logic of the market exchange in Adorno’s oeuvre, however, the most valid material for a solid reconstruction of his thought on this subject can be found in his 1968 lectures. The conducted analysis convincingly reveals the Marxist core of Adorno’s grasp of the economic abstractions and the resulting critique of the economistic fetishism. Adorno follows the exposition of categories in Marx’s Capital, but neglects Marx’s very central concept of value. According to Adorno, social and economic development in the advanced capitalist societies after World War II led to an amalgamation of the capitalist state and the market economy. This new social reality had problematized the relevance of the category value – as well as the capitalist rationality as such. In the light of the development from 1970s onwards, the essay argues that Adorno’s rejection of the category of value was a little bit hasty. |
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