Can one say that Adorno returns to Kant to ground his moral philosophy?
In the third section of Part three of Negative Dialectics, called 'Meditations on Metaphysics', there is a passage entitled 'Metaphysics and Culture'. It begins thus:
After Auschwitz
"Hitler has imposed a new categorical imperative upon humanity in the state of their unfreedom: to arrange their thinking and conduct, so that Auschwitz never repeats itself, so that nothing similar ever happen again. This imperative is as unmanageable vis-à-vis its foundation as the given fact formerly was to the Kantian one. To treat it discursively would be heinous: in it the moment of the supplementary in what is moral can be bodily felt. Bodily, because it is the abhorrence, become practical, of the unbearable physical pain inflicted on individuals, even after individuality, as an intellectual form of reflection, is on the point of disappearing. Only in the unvarnished materialistic motive does morality survive."(p.361)
The phrase 'After Auschwitz' historicizes the categorical imperative. This gives us a reflection on the historicity of particular ethical problems.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at June 30, 2005 11:56 PM | TrackBack