Thinking about Thinking in Adorno’s Minima Moralia

ABSTRACT

This article looks at several sections of Minima Moralia where Adorno talks explicitly about the need for genuine thinking and what that might consist in. First, I argue that Hegel and Nietzsche are the two guiding thinkers behind this work, and I show how they express two opposing tendencies of thinking—aphoristic and dialectical—that can inspire and enhance each other. Then, in the main part of the article, I identify four significant claims in Adorno’s critical reflections on thinking: (1) that thinking is the enemy of common sense; (2) that thinking is not the same thing as problem-solving; (3) that thinking is not inherently linear in nature; and (4) that thinking involves lingering with the particular or allowing the other to be. I conclude that Adorno’s reflection on the difficulty of thinking in modern life is a key to his account of philosophy in the contemporary world.

KEYWORDS:

• Adorno
• Minima Moralia
• thinking
• aphorism
• Nietzsche
• common sense

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Norberg provides a useful account of the publication history and the cultural context of Minima Moralia when it was written at the end of the 1940s, and then published in 1951. See Norberg, “Adorno’s Advice.”

2. See Adorno, Minima Moralia, Dedication. Hereafter references to Minima Moralia are cited in the text and indicate the section title or number. I have followed Jephcott’s translation throughout.

3. See Foster, “Lingering with the Particular,” 83. Foster emphasizes that in spite of its brilliance, Minima Moralia may well be Adorno’s most neglected text.

4. Note that Nietzsche’s original text Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1882) has been translated as The Joyful Wisdom as well as The Gay Science.

5. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, sec. 343.

6. Nietzsche, “Maxims and Arrows” section 26 of Twilight of the Idols in The Portable Nietzsche.

7. Like Nietzsche, who uses aphorisms, essays and even a quasi-religious approach (in Thus Spoke Zarathustra), Adorno often experiments with different styles to find the most appropriate vehicle for his own philosophy. For example, some of the insights of Minima Moralia also find their way into Dialectic of Enlightenment, but there they are presented in a more conventional and less compelling format.

8. For a discussion of Adorno’s critique of Hegel, see esp. Rose, The Melancholy Science, 72–80. In the same work, Rose is also helpful on the relationship between Adorno and Nietzsche: see esp., 24–34. Finally, Rose is helpful in elucidating key terms such as “dialectic” and “absolute”; and at the end of her main text, 195–202, she includes a glossary of key terms, including Object/Subject, Reason etc., specifically as these relate to Adorno.

9. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, sec. 21 addition.

10. Rose, The Melancholy Science, 75.

11. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind: Preface, 11.

12. See Richter, Thought Images, 147– 90.

13. Ibid., 40.

14. In sec. 327 of The Gay Science, Nietzsche complains that for the great majority the intellect is “a clumsy, gloomy, creaking machine that is difficult to start.” In sec. 7 of “What the Germans Lack,” in Twilight of the Idols, he compares thinking to dancing.

15. Nietzsche, The Gay Science, sec. 373.

16. See Geuss, “Adorno’s Gaps,” 171.

17. For a discussion of the “slow movement,” see Berg and Seeber, The Slow Professor. See also Honoré, In Praise of Slowness.

18. Foster, “Lingering with the Particular,” 102.

19. See Jay, “Taking on the Stigma of Inauthenticity” for an excellent critique of authenticity from Adorno’s point of view.

20. Geuss, “Adorno’s Gaps,” 164.

21. Jaeggi, “No Individual Can Resist,” 65.

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Notes on contributors

Richard White

Richard White is Professor of Philosophy at Creighton University in Omaha, USA. He writes on recent continental philosophy and the philosophy of spirituality. His books include: Reflections on God and the Death of God (2022); Spiritual Philosophers: From Schopenhauer to Irigaray (2020); The Spiritual Guide: Four Steps on the Path of Enlightenment (2017); The Heart of Wisdom: A Philosophy of Spiritual Life (2013); and Radical Virtues: Moral Wisdom and the Ethics of Contemporary Life (2008).