What happens when the ethical concepts of our ethical life have decayed, emptied out and become illusory? How do we live in the public world?

Hobbes gives us an answer. Once our ethical concepts are disenchanted we have civilization as self-preservation. Moral categories are replaced by natural desires and aversions, whilst the virtues that once mediated the relations between persons are replaced by relations of power.

We recoil from this nakedness of violent self-interest in the public world and we seek to attain our humanity in our private life: in love, relationships, marriage, community etc. So says Adorno. In Minima Moralia he adds:

Where civilization as self-preservation does not force on him civilization as humanity, he gives free reign to his fury against the latter, and refutes his own ideology of home, family and community. para 116, 'Just hear, how bad he was', pp.182)

"..detects in the formless fanmilarity and slackness a mere pretext for violence, a show of being nice in order to be nasty, to our hearts desire. It subjects the intimate sphere to critical scrutiny because intimacies estrange, violate the imponderably delicate aura of the other which is his condition as subject. Only by the recognition of distance in our neighbour is strangeness alleviated: accepted into consciousness."

Treating others as ends in themselves becomes an instrument for furthering individual self-interest--as a piece of property to be used. We conform to the ethical convention of looking into their human eyes and recognizing them as human whilst we are treating them as a means, as a tool to be used and discarded.

This happens constantly in the social practices of family life and personal relationships and this 'badness' poisons our valued relationships with others. It leads to a lot of bitterness,resentment and anger. The moral substance of human beings is disappearing.