A little ethics

Usually I am too late when I want to pay homage to a philosopher, like two weeks ago, when I paid a tribute to Jürgen Habermas. Usually you publish a tribute just before the birthday or other relevant date of the philosopher concerned or soon after the death of the person, but I always miss the news, so also in such cases. I am the kind of person who’ll hear about the end of the world ten years after it happened, so to speak. But this time I am ahead of the fact, for when browsing on the Internet, I discovered that next month on 6 August it will be fifty years ago that Adorno died; in Visp in Switzerland. Now I could wait yet three weeks before publishing my homage, but last week I wrote already about Adorno on occasion of my trip to Frankfurt. Therefore I just write this tribute as a continuation of that blog. Moreover, a philosopher of his standing certainly deserves two blogs. This is the more so, since Adorno still is one of the most popular philosophers in Germany. Also outside Germany his work still is often reprinted, especially his main works Dialectics of Enlightenment (written together with Max Horkheimer), Negative Dialectics (which is more a work for specialists, to my mind) and his Minima Moralia. Just this latter work is Adorno’s most popular book. Even more than 100,000 copies have already been sold in Germany! It has been translated in many other languages as well and also there it is often reprinted. Any philosopher who had such a success can be proud of it. It’s this book I want to write a little bit about as a tribute to Adorno.

Adorno was born in Frankfurt as Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund but later changed his name to Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (Adorno was his mother’s family name). He studied philosophy, sociology, psychology and musicology in Frankfurt (where he met Max Horkheimer) and elsewhere. He became a teacher at the University of Frankfurt but in 1933 he was forbidden by the Nazis to lecture any longer. Therefore Adorno decided to emigrate and returned to Germany only in 1953, although he had visited his home country already a few times again since 1945. He spent most of his time in exile in the USA. It was during these years abroad that Adorno begun to write his aphorisms and mini-essays that later would be published as his Minima Moralia (MM for short). Originally Adorno wanted to give the MM to Horkheimer on his 50th birthday, but it was not yet finished then and finally it was published in 1951 in Germany. The title refers to the Magna Moralia that supposedly had been written by Aristotle, although now this is called into question. Apparently Adorno wants to say with the title that the book contains very small (minima) ethical remarks (moralia), to be distinguished from Aristotle’s big (magna) ethics.

The structure of the MM is very different from Adorno’s other books and articles. While these are longer or shorter treatises, the MM consists of 153 short pieces or statements that can each be read on its own: Just open the book on an arbitrary page and start to read – and to think of course. And there is always something to think, for Adorno never writes a word without giving it a wider intention. The book is also a kind of mirror of the author’s experiences, as the subtitle expresses: “Reflections from a damaged life”. Note that when Adorno wrote his book, his country (and most of Europe as well) lived through one of its darkest periods in history: The violence and destruction by Nazism and fascism. So Adorno writes how life must not be and the book has become, as some call it, a negative moral philosophy; a moral philosophy after the holocaust. It’s your task as a reader to transform this into a positive ethics: Make good by criticizing what is not good.

Of course, I tried to trick to open the book on an arbitrary page. In my Dutch edition it was page 99, where I read in reflection 72: “How so many things are inscribed with gestures, and thereby with modes of conduct. Clogs – ‘floppies,’ slippers [in English] – are made so that one can slip them on one’s feet without using the hands. They are monuments to the hatred of bending over.” I have italicized what especially stroke me in this aphorism. What a chance that I just saw this passage, for it says much about present society. In a sense it says how we gradually become alienated from actual life; from how things come about. Basic actions are taken away from you so that you don’t know any longer how basic things come about in life. Go to a supermarket. Do you still know where your food comes from and how it is produced? Take cheese. In the past you bought it from a farmer; then you bought it from a dairy shop, which got its products directly from the farmer. Then you bought your cheese in a supermarket, but you still bought a whole cheese or a piece of it. But today, you can buy there only (or nearly only) slices of cheese. You even don’t recognize the original cheese in it any longer, and you are spared the effort to slice the cheese yourself. Look further around in the same supermarket. Most food is readymade for you, prepacked. You don’t even have to cook any longer. But it’s true, you’ll not get your fingers burnt.

Adorno’s Minima Moralia in German: https://web.archive.org/web/20131114172541/http://www.offene-uni.de/archiv/textz/textz_phil/minima_moral.pdf

Adorno’s Minima Moralia in English (I quoted from this source): https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/adorno/1951/mm/index.htm