Metaphysics: Concept and Problems - Softcover

Adorno, Theodor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804745285 ISBN 13: 9780804745284

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2002

Synopsis

This volume makes available in English for the first time the famed lectures on metaphysics by one of the founders of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory and one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. It provides a unique introduction not only to metaphysics but also to Adorno's own intellectual standpoint.

About this title

About the Author:

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969) was a prominent member of the Frankfurt School and one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century in the areas of social theory, philosophy and aesthetics.

Rolf Tiedemann is the literary executor of Adorno and of Walter Benjamin and the editor of the German editions of Adorno's collected works and his posthumous writings.

From the Inside Flap:

This volume makes available in English for the first time Adorno's lectures on metaphysics. It provides a unique introduction not only to metaphysics but also to Adorno's own intellectual standpoint, as developed in his major work Negative Dialectics.
Metaphysics for Adorno is defined by a central tension between concepts and immediate facts. Adorno traces this dualism back to Aristotle, whom he sees as the founder of metaphysics. In Aristotle it appears as an unresolved tension between form and matter. This basic split, in Adorno's interpretation, runs right through the history of metaphysics. Perhaps not surprisingly, Adorno finds this tension resolved in the Hegelian dialectic.
Underlying this dualism is a further dichotomy, which Adorno sees as essential to metaphysics: while it dissolves belief in transcendental worlds by thought, at the same time it seeks to rescue belief in a reality beyond the empirical, again by thought. It is to this profound ambiguity, for Adorno, that the metaphysical tradition owes its greatness.
The major part of these lectures, given by Adorno late in his life, is devoted to a critical exposition of Aristotle's thought, focusing on its central ambiguities. In the last lectures, Adorno's attention switches to the question of the relevance of metaphysics today, particularly after the Holocaust. He finds in metaphysical experiences, which transcend rational discourse without lapsing into irrationalism, a last precarious refuge of the humane truth to which his own thought always aspired.
This volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in Adorno's work and will be a valuable text for students and scholars of philosophy and social theory.

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0804745285
• ISBN 13: 9780804745284
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 226
• Editor: Tiedemann Rolf