Philosophical Elements of a Theory of Society

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), a prominent member of the Frankfurt School, was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century in the areas of social theory, philosophy and aesthetics.

Editors’ Foreword
LECTURE 1
Philosophy and sociology as scientific disciplines – Reflection and theory – Tasks of the lecture – Provisional conception of a theory of society – The crisis of theoretical thought; positivism – Weber’s relationship to theory – Weber’s concept of ‘understanding’ – Weber’s concept of ‘rationality’ – Bureaucracy and domination – Dialectics; theoretical aspects of atheoretical thinking
LECTURE 2
Facts and theory – Concretion and overcoming of the factual – Critique of the classificatory logic of positivism – The relationship between natural sciences and social sciences, nature and society – The anti-theoretical character of sociology – Hypothesis formulation and insight – The necessity of reflection; Darmstadt community studies – Theory formation presupposes a consideration of discontinuity; The status of facts within the complexion of society as a whole
LECTURE 3
Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler; Registering facts and productive imagination – The concept of tendency – Capitalist calculus – The exchange relationship – Tendency and prophecy; The new as the core of theory – The non-identical in theory – Theory and dynamics of society – Tendency and totality – Social reality and theory
LECTURE 4
Tendency and trend – Dependence of theory on its object; Distrust towards theory formation – Theory as a unified system of society; Liberalism, Marxism, German Idealism – System as tendency – Modifications of ‘market society’ as results of class struggles – Monopolizing tendency of capital; State interventionism as a crisis outlet – Integration of the proletariat
LECTURE 5
Announcement of a lecture by Lucien Goldmann on ‘Marxism and contemporary society’ – Problems of theory formation; ‘Work Climate’ study – The system-immanence of the proletariat – Class consciousness and integration – Ideology and experience: The phenomenon of personalization – Insight into society in theoretical thought – System-immanent consciousness – Politics as an aspect of ideology – The meaning of changes in reality and consciousness; concretism
LECTURE 6
The difficulty of theory formation – Concretism as an expression of powerlessness; ‘Levelled middle-class society’ – Exchange value as a source of pleasure – The meaning of concretism for labour organizations – The transformation of Marxian theory into state religion – Abstractism – Accusation of the bourgeoisification of the proletariat – Everyday class struggle
LECTURE 7
Everyday class struggle – The politics of small steps – The dual character of the workers’ realism; The consequences of mechanization – The dominance of conditions – Wage satisfaction – Subjectivism in sociological research – Communication research; The semblance of freedom in the exchange principle – Subjective experiences of the semblance of levelling – Supply and demand of labour
LECTURE 8
The thin crust of integrated society – Nuanced thinking – The shift of social pressure – Changes in nominalism and epistemology – Improvements within the work process – Loss of unambiguity; Social theory between dogmatic ossification and naïve faith in facts – Semblance of integration and increasing socialization – Disintegration; Rationalization and the reality principle – The function of the system; Antagonism of power and powerlessness: Disintegration through growing integration – Integration and powerlessness – False identity of the general and the particular
LECTURE 9
The relationship between economy and power – The negative unity of society in general unfreedom – The culture industry and analysis of ideologies – Positivism as a manifestation of ideology – The concept of the ‘human being’ and the ‘jargon of authenticity’; ideology critique and language critique – The mythologization of antagonisms in socialist countries – The dialectic and rupture of theory and experience – Loss of experience – Theory as system and non-system; The irrationality and rationality of society; Weber’s theory of science
LECTURE 10
Contradictory object and contradiction-free theory; Rationality and irrationality – Changes in the concept of reason – The whole, in its rationality, is irrational – Dialectical theory – Critique of undialectical thought – Critique of unified sociology and the fetishization of science – The historical change in the function of science; Openness as a key concept – Functional change in the concept of science: Leibniz, Fichte, Hegel, Kant – The equation of science with truth – The danger of intuitionism; The relationship between method and matter – Announcement of the next topic: Critique of Parsons’s methodology
LECTURE 11
Critique of the ideal of the scientific method – Descartes; The postulation of method and the structure of the matter – Parsons’s unified conceptual system – The relationship between psychology and sociology: Karen Horney, Erich Fromm – Freud: Sociology as applied psychology; The concept of role – Critique of the psychological reduction of social processes: Marx, Durkheim – Subject and socialization in Weber’s ‘understanding’ sociology – The antagonistic relationship between the individual and society – The necessity of a critical reflection on method
LECTURE 12
Fetishization of methodology instead of insight into the matter – Method I; Spontaneity of thought – Formal and transcendental logic in Kant; The character of reason – Method II; Dialectical philosophy and self-determination – Didactics; The complexity of capitalism and the Marxian method – Marx’s toying with dialectics – The disastrous consequence of the primacy of method – Two meanings of the concept of method
LECTURE 13
The dispute between positivist and critical thinking – Scientific fetishism and the acquisition of naïveté – Perfectionism of method and irrelevance of results – Weber: Material and spirit collecting – Instrumentalization of reason – The defamation of spirit – Self-examination of thought in the material – Causes of scientific fetishism – Ego weakness as a subjective reason for scientific fetishism – On the ‘fear of freedom’; The employee mentality – Theory and system
LECTURE 14
The ideal of system in rationalism: Reduction of the many to the one – Critique of systems that proceed from the subject: Hegel, Erdmann; Spinoza and Leibniz – The empiricist critique of rationalism – System frenzy and the disintegrated cosmos – The problem of the concept of system in Kant’s idealism – Nietzsche and Kierkegaard; Rejection of system – On dogmatic attitudes – Systems regress to modes of representation – Systematic thinking and the administered world; Equation of theory and system in Parsons – Focus on the essence
LECTURE 15
Inspiration and spontaneity – The reified consciousness – Kant: The worldly and scholastic concepts of philosophy; Unregulated experience – Empiricism as a corrective – The relationship between knowledge and democracy; Experimental situations – Realism and power relations; Objectivity and subjectivity
LECTURE 16
Elements of a theory of society – ‘Transcendental reflection’ – The classes and the production process – The irrationality of the whole and particular rationality in the administered world Ð The armament apparatus – Class character and unfreedom – ‘Pluralism’ as a phenomenon of concealment – Changes in the sphere of competition and consumption – The intertwinement of rationality and irrationality in the processes of concentration and disintegration
LECTURE 17
Rationality and irrationality – Power relations and control over production; Bureaucracy and domination; Sociological concept formation – Personalized epiphenomena and fascism – The independence of bureaucracy in Russia – Armament and overall social structure – The position of ideology today: De-ideologization; The consumer world – The ‘consciousness industry’: The change in ideology and its contemporary production – The technological veil – Language critique and reified consciousness – Critique
Editors’ Notes
Index