Theodor W. Adorno: Problems of Moral Philosophy

1 Theodor W. Adorno (1903 – 1969): German philosopher, sociologist, and music theorist. Due to his Jewish background, he was in exile from 1934 until after World War II. He was the most influential German intellectual in the first two decades after WW II.

2 Preliminary remarks on Adorno’s philosophy
Shaped by the experience of war and the holocaust, his main question was why humanity fell back in barbarism, instead of entering a truly human state. After WW II, he dedicated much of his reflection to the holocaust and the importance of remembering what happened.
Philosophizing in the tradition of Hegel and Marx, he was looking for the logic that brought about the dictatorships in the first half of the 20th century, the war with over 50 millions dead and the holocaust. He found that in the logic of a one-sided, instrumental reason used only to control and dominate nature. Domination of outside nature, inner drives and fellow man go together as Adorno pointed out, right from the beginning of (Western) human history. (Story of Odysseus and his passage by the sirens.)
A further important background assumption is that within a capitalist society, human freedom cannot be achieved. The realm of human freedom exists only beyond the realm of material production, which has to be done for mere survival. Only if man has the possibility, to devote his time and energy to areas beyond the satisfaction of his essential needs, he will be truly free.

3 Cornerstones of his idea of moral philosophy:
3.1 “There can be no good life within the bad one” (p. 1):
There are two claims in this sentence to differentiate:
(a) The inseparability of the individual and universal: According to Adorno, the individual life is determined by the conditions governing society. The lives of human beings are interwoven with the (conditions of) life of the society.
(b) The badness of the (rules governing) society: Working within a Marxian framework, a society which is based on exploitation and divided in the “haves” and “have-nots” is negative and should be changed.
(See Emile Durkheim’s quote: „For individuals share too deeply in the life of society for it to be diseased without their suffering infection. What it suffers they necessarily suffer.“)
3.2 Strict separation of “lived”-world view and moral philosophy (p. 2): With Kant and Scheler, Adorno maintains that there is no direct connection between these two realms. He insists to his students, that he cannot give them “bread to eat” but only “throw stones at their heads”; i.e. that he cannot provide practical advice. (See point 3.7)
3.3 Definition of Moral philosophy (p. 5): Moral philosophy means trying “to achieve a true, conscious understanding of the categories of morality and of the questions that relate to the good life”. So moral philosophy is about establishing a consciousness about the contradictions we are confronted with while trying to act morally.
3.4 Morality goes beyond theory (p. 7 – 9): Morality has a moment of spontaneity that theory cannot accommodate. Adorno explains that with the reasons that were behind the assassination attempt on Hitler on the 20 July 1944; there is – he points out – “something shameful” about talking of morality “in the confort of a lecture room” (p. 8)
3.5 Explanation of the terms “morals” and “ethics” (p. 9 – 11): (a) Morals comes from the Latin “mores” meaning “custom”. However, it is problematic for Adorno to rely on customs, because “the possibility of the good life in the forms in which the community exists [...] has been radically eroded” (p. 10). (b) Ethics comes from the Greek word “ethos” meaning “nature” or “character”, somehow suggesting that it suffice to live according to my character. However, that is problematic for Adorno as the “self”; the character is determined already deformed by society.
3.6 Ibsen’s Wild Duck: The failure of the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility (p. 158 – 165)
(a) Ethics of conviction: The motive of the agent is only relevant. (Exponent: Kant)
(b) Ethics of responsibility: This “in an ethics in which at every step you [...] simultaneously reflect on the effect of your action, and whether the goal envisaged will be achieved.” (p. 162, exponent: Hegel)
(c) “There is no good life in the bad one, for a formal ethics cannot underwrite it, and the ethics of responsibility that surrenders to otherness cannot underwrite it either. The question that moral philosophy confronts today is how it should react to this dilemma.” (p. 166)
3.7 Adorno’s practical advice (lecture 17):
(a) Moral philosophy is about creating consciousness: Repeatedly, Adorno emphasizes the moral philosophy today is about producing consciousness: “that essentially it would consist in the attempt to make conscious the critique of moral philosophy, the critique of its options and an awareness of its antinomies.” (p. 167)
(b) Self-Reflection: Adorno speaks of self-reflection as “the true heir to what used to be called moral categories.” (p. 169) If there is a good life, then it consists in “reflecting on our own limitations” and see “that true injustice is always to be found [...] where you put yourself in the right and other people in the wrong.” (p. 169) Adorno suggests modesty as the only cardinal virtue.
(c) Resistance: According to Adorno, we have to resist “to heteronomy in its concrete forms.” (p. 170) Any repressive norms – e.g. in the field of sexual morality – have to be rejected. After the positive religion “lost their power over people’s minds” (p. 171), these are still subjected to “the objective spirit [and the] cultural consciousness” (p. 171) that rule our lives. (E.g.: Resistance against blindly accepting any cultural norms)
(d) Politics: “In short, anything that we can call morality today merges into the question of the organization of the world. We might even say that the quest for the good life is the quest for the right form of politics.” (p. 176)