Social hierarchy and the reduction of experience in Adorno’s critical theory

Abstract

In this article, I describe Theodor W. Adorno’s distinctive critique of pre‐capitalist society. Adorno claims that a hierarchically structured society serves to limit the capacity for experience of members of that society in a tendentious and politically conservative way. In particular, Adorno argues that the systems of ancient and early modern philosophy internalise the social structure of a hierarchical society. I show that this account has an interesting intellectual pedigree in texts by Auguste Comte and John Dewey, by which, as I claim, Adorno was influenced. Finally, I determine the connection between the theory of hierarchical society and Adorno’s critique of contemporary society.

Keywords:

• Adorno
• experience
• hierarchy
• labour
• mediation

Notes

1. Honneth (1991, p. 49) emphasises the importance of the critique, though he devotes little space to exposition, as I shall do here.

2. Adorno here explains the theory, providing a dialectical critique. Notwithstanding this critique, he makes use of the theory himself, as we can see.

3. In fact, Dewey mis‐ascribes a line of Adam Smith to Comte, which Comte, himself, had quoted in the relevant section of The Positive Philosophy (Comte 1893, p. 132, Dewey 2004, p. 6).

4. Although Kant, himself, stressed the difference between theoretical and practical reason, such that the latter does not require an objective deduction, Adorno saw the two as isomorphic. As the theoretical categories must be able to cohere with the manifold, so the practical imperative must be able to govern our actions.