1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,700 Welcome to the deep dive. Today, we're taking 2 00:00:02,700 --> 00:00:05,919 on a thinker who, I think it's fair to say, has 3 00:00:05,919 --> 00:00:09,939 a reputation for being, well, difficult. But 4 00:00:09,939 --> 00:00:12,220 his core mission, this search for what he called 5 00:00:12,220 --> 00:00:15,800 a right life, feels more urgent than ever. It 6 00:00:15,800 --> 00:00:18,239 really does. We're plunging into Peter Gordon's 7 00:00:18,239 --> 00:00:21,219 book, Precarious Happiness, Adorno, and the sources 8 00:00:21,219 --> 00:00:23,679 of normativity. And this is a big one. because 9 00:00:23,679 --> 00:00:26,140 we're trying to solve the central riddle of Theodore 10 00:00:26,140 --> 00:00:28,679 Adorno's work. And for you, our listener, who 11 00:00:28,679 --> 00:00:30,379 specifically asked for this, we're going to go 12 00:00:30,379 --> 00:00:32,659 methodically, chapter by chapter. We're basically 13 00:00:32,659 --> 00:00:35,539 going to trace Adorno's hidden ethical framework 14 00:00:35,539 --> 00:00:37,859 through Gordon's analysis. It's quite a task. 15 00:00:38,159 --> 00:00:41,780 Adorno, active from 1903 to 1969, was just... 16 00:00:41,789 --> 00:00:44,789 a colossal figure, a philosopher, sociologist, 17 00:00:45,289 --> 00:00:47,530 a major culture critic, musicologist. And a composer 18 00:00:47,530 --> 00:00:49,649 himself. He left behind an unfinished opera. 19 00:00:49,729 --> 00:00:51,670 I always think that's so fascinating. His student, 20 00:00:51,850 --> 00:00:54,070 Jurgen Habermas, called him the only genius I 21 00:00:54,070 --> 00:00:56,609 ever encountered. And that genius, that multifaceted 22 00:00:56,609 --> 00:00:59,030 legacy, is also what creates the problem we're 23 00:00:59,030 --> 00:01:01,829 talking about today. Adorno's critique of modern 24 00:01:01,829 --> 00:01:04,890 society, especially after World War II, is so 25 00:01:04,890 --> 00:01:07,969 relentlessly negative. Right. He argues that 26 00:01:07,969 --> 00:01:11,329 society is this kind of seamless web of domination, 27 00:01:11,709 --> 00:01:14,329 that everything is ideology, that the world is 28 00:01:14,329 --> 00:01:17,349 fundamentally false. So here's the paradox, the 29 00:01:17,349 --> 00:01:20,129 question that has really dogged Adorno's scholarship 30 00:01:20,129 --> 00:01:22,989 for decades. Okay, lay it out for us. If the 31 00:01:22,989 --> 00:01:25,489 critique is that radical, if the whole system 32 00:01:25,489 --> 00:01:29,489 is corrupt, a kind of false totality, where do 33 00:01:29,489 --> 00:01:32,019 you get the standards from? What are the sources 34 00:01:32,019 --> 00:01:35,019 of normativity you're using to judge it as false 35 00:01:35,019 --> 00:01:37,099 in the first place? How can you stand inside 36 00:01:37,099 --> 00:01:39,859 a prison, claim the prison's tools and language 37 00:01:39,859 --> 00:01:42,620 are all corrupted, and then somehow use them 38 00:01:42,620 --> 00:01:45,239 to make a case for justice? It feels self -defeating. 39 00:01:45,379 --> 00:01:48,060 It's a classic self -authorization problem. And 40 00:01:48,060 --> 00:01:50,579 Gordon really grounds his whole exploration in 41 00:01:50,579 --> 00:01:53,180 a single phrase from Adorno himself. Is it a 42 00:01:53,180 --> 00:01:55,760 dedication to minima moralia? This book of aphorisms, 43 00:01:55,819 --> 00:01:57,819 yeah. Adorno says the book is devoted to exploring 44 00:01:57,819 --> 00:02:01,629 the doctrine of the right life. In German. And 45 00:02:01,629 --> 00:02:03,909 he notes this is a subject modern philosophy 46 00:02:03,909 --> 00:02:06,109 has pretty much abandoned. So that one phrase 47 00:02:06,109 --> 00:02:08,710 is the proof. It shows that no matter how negative 48 00:02:08,710 --> 00:02:11,270 he sounds, Adorno was always engaged in an ethical 49 00:02:11,270 --> 00:02:14,330 and normative project. Exactly. It was just buried 50 00:02:14,330 --> 00:02:17,879 very, very deep under layers of critique. So 51 00:02:17,879 --> 00:02:20,520 to find that project, Gordon first has to clear 52 00:02:20,520 --> 00:02:23,300 away some of the big misinterpretations that 53 00:02:23,300 --> 00:02:25,699 have grown up around Adorno. Right. Adorno himself 54 00:02:25,699 --> 00:02:27,960 was worried about this. In his Kant lectures 55 00:02:27,960 --> 00:02:31,460 from 59, he warns against these superficial slogans. 56 00:02:32,060 --> 00:02:34,699 He called it the Taustrat, or the exchange value 57 00:02:34,699 --> 00:02:38,120 of an idea. The exchange value, like the easy 58 00:02:38,120 --> 00:02:40,759 to digest, tweetable version of a philosophy. 59 00:02:40,919 --> 00:02:43,139 That's a perfect analogy. It has high market 60 00:02:43,139 --> 00:02:45,099 value, you can trade it in academic circles, 61 00:02:45,500 --> 00:02:48,419 but it obscures the real content, the gebroxfert. 62 00:02:48,539 --> 00:02:50,759 The use value, what the philosophy actually does 63 00:02:50,759 --> 00:02:53,180 to your thinking. Precisely. And Gordon argues 64 00:02:53,180 --> 00:02:55,639 Adorno's popular reputation, his tauschfert as 65 00:02:55,639 --> 00:02:58,099 the prophet of doom, doesn't match his actual 66 00:02:58,099 --> 00:03:00,800 gebroxfert. He has to take on this negativist 67 00:03:00,800 --> 00:03:03,039 interpretation head on. The idea that he saw 68 00:03:03,039 --> 00:03:05,340 the world as totally false, a kind of mental 69 00:03:05,340 --> 00:03:07,620 concentration camp. And one of the biggest critics 70 00:03:07,620 --> 00:03:10,479 pushing that line was Habermas. His own student. 71 00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:13,419 What was Habermas's specific issue? He accused 72 00:03:13,419 --> 00:03:17,789 Adorno of a performative contradiction. Habermas's 73 00:03:17,789 --> 00:03:20,370 whole thing is that modernity has to generate 74 00:03:20,370 --> 00:03:23,569 its own norms through rational communication. 75 00:03:23,669 --> 00:03:27,110 It has to authorize itself. But Adorno's book, 76 00:03:27,229 --> 00:03:29,800 Dialectic of Enlightenment, Seems to argue that 77 00:03:29,800 --> 00:03:32,439 the very process of rationalization has just 78 00:03:32,439 --> 00:03:35,599 wiped out all of that internal eminent normative 79 00:03:35,599 --> 00:03:39,719 content So if reason itself is the tool of domination 80 00:03:39,719 --> 00:03:42,419 then using reason to critique Domination is a 81 00:03:42,419 --> 00:03:44,719 contradiction your own theory pulls the rug out 82 00:03:44,719 --> 00:03:46,879 from under itself. You're trapped Your tools 83 00:03:46,879 --> 00:03:48,599 are as compromised as the thing you're trying 84 00:03:48,599 --> 00:03:50,740 to fix then you have Axel Hanath coming at it 85 00:03:50,740 --> 00:03:53,599 from a more sociological angle Hanath says, okay, 86 00:03:53,759 --> 00:03:56,460 maybe Adorno is implicitly relying on a sort 87 00:03:56,460 --> 00:04:00,270 of crude Freudian idea that our suffering is 88 00:04:00,270 --> 00:04:02,729 just a sign of blocked physical needs and impulses 89 00:04:02,729 --> 00:04:05,129 just a biological cry of pain But if that's all 90 00:04:05,129 --> 00:04:07,590 it is Hanath argues you haven't given suffering 91 00:04:07,590 --> 00:04:10,069 any cognitive content It's just a raw feeling 92 00:04:10,069 --> 00:04:12,189 not a moral argument for why things should be 93 00:04:12,189 --> 00:04:14,729 different. It's an ungrounded norm It doesn't 94 00:04:14,729 --> 00:04:16,870 give you the intellectual resources to build 95 00:04:16,870 --> 00:04:21,129 a real critique of justice exactly now Some people 96 00:04:21,129 --> 00:04:23,449 try to defend Adorno from within that negative 97 00:04:23,449 --> 00:04:27,709 box. Gordon brings up Fabian Feinhagen, who proposes 98 00:04:27,709 --> 00:04:30,810 this idea of negative Aristotelianism. Negative 99 00:04:30,810 --> 00:04:34,250 Aristotelianism? That sounds complicated. It 100 00:04:34,250 --> 00:04:36,089 is. It's a bit of an intellectual tightrope walk. 101 00:04:36,709 --> 00:04:38,889 Feinhagen's point is that you don't actually 102 00:04:38,889 --> 00:04:40,870 need to know what the good is. You don't need 103 00:04:40,870 --> 00:04:43,490 a blueprint for utopia. OK, so what do you need? 104 00:04:43,610 --> 00:04:46,649 You just need to recognize our damaged, unrealized 105 00:04:46,649 --> 00:04:49,759 human potential. There's this theoretical Ergon 106 00:04:49,759 --> 00:04:52,000 the sort of fundamental human function and we 107 00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:54,139 can see that it's being blocked or damaged by 108 00:04:54,139 --> 00:04:56,660 society So like you don't need the architects 109 00:04:56,660 --> 00:04:58,600 plans to see that a building is crumbling. You 110 00:04:58,600 --> 00:05:01,040 can just see the cracks and the decay That's 111 00:05:01,040 --> 00:05:03,300 it recognizing the deficit is enough to know 112 00:05:03,300 --> 00:05:05,920 the present is false and it's a strong defense 113 00:05:05,920 --> 00:05:09,060 But Gordon's big move is to reject the premise 114 00:05:09,060 --> 00:05:11,279 that all these thinkers share which is the idea 115 00:05:11,279 --> 00:05:15,360 that social reality is uniformly false Why is 116 00:05:15,360 --> 00:05:17,480 that assumption totaled negativity itself and 117 00:05:17,480 --> 00:05:20,930 ideology for Adorno? Because any totalizing view, 118 00:05:20,990 --> 00:05:23,529 whether it's the total affirmation of, say, brave 119 00:05:23,529 --> 00:05:26,149 new world where everyone's happy or total negation, 120 00:05:26,810 --> 00:05:29,750 they're both ideological. They present society 121 00:05:29,750 --> 00:05:33,350 as a seamless closed system. And in doing so, 122 00:05:33,350 --> 00:05:36,370 they cover up the real internal cracks and fissures, 123 00:05:36,470 --> 00:05:38,550 the recent Bruce you mentioned earlier. Yes. 124 00:05:38,990 --> 00:05:41,470 If the world were perfectly seamlessly false, 125 00:05:41,970 --> 00:05:44,149 it would be perfectly administered. There'd be 126 00:05:44,149 --> 00:05:46,410 no room left for critical thought to even emerge. 127 00:05:47,129 --> 00:05:49,910 But critique does emerge. Which brings us back 128 00:05:49,910 --> 00:05:52,610 to the self -reflexivity problem. The critic 129 00:05:52,610 --> 00:05:55,310 has to be part of the system. So Adorno must 130 00:05:55,310 --> 00:05:58,089 be practicing what he calls imminent critique. 131 00:05:58,509 --> 00:06:00,529 Looking for those internal characteristics, those 132 00:06:00,529 --> 00:06:02,649 contradictions, that already point towards something 133 00:06:02,649 --> 00:06:04,649 better. The light has to be found inside the 134 00:06:04,649 --> 00:06:06,970 prison, however faint it is. This helps explain 135 00:06:06,970 --> 00:06:09,269 that really famous and kind of confusing claim 136 00:06:09,269 --> 00:06:11,930 Adorno makes, exaggeration is the only medium 137 00:06:11,930 --> 00:06:14,350 of truth. That always sounds so over the top. 138 00:06:14,569 --> 00:06:16,970 It does. It seems to contradict his sober sociological 139 00:06:16,970 --> 00:06:20,079 tone. But Gordon argues we should read it as 140 00:06:20,079 --> 00:06:23,300 anticipatory critique. A warning. Exactly. Adorno 141 00:06:23,300 --> 00:06:26,220 saw that modern systems, after Auschwitz, have 142 00:06:26,220 --> 00:06:29,279 this tendency toward total closure, total catastrophe. 143 00:06:29,639 --> 00:06:32,279 So his critique isn't saying society is absolutely 144 00:06:32,279 --> 00:06:34,980 false right now. He's exaggerating to show us 145 00:06:34,980 --> 00:06:37,220 where we are heading. Like dystopian fiction, 146 00:06:37,540 --> 00:06:40,560 projecting a possible horrible future to shock 147 00:06:40,560 --> 00:06:43,110 us into changing the present. And the fuel for 148 00:06:43,110 --> 00:06:45,129 that critique comes directly from the Marxist 149 00:06:45,129 --> 00:06:48,230 tradition, specifically the idea of imminent 150 00:06:48,230 --> 00:06:51,589 contradiction, bourgeois ideals, freedom, equality, 151 00:06:51,810 --> 00:06:54,170 all of that. They possess a normative surplus. 152 00:06:54,290 --> 00:06:56,470 I like that term. What does it mean in practice? 153 00:06:56,589 --> 00:06:59,230 It means the promise baked into the idea, the 154 00:06:59,230 --> 00:07:02,689 ideal of true human emancipation, is always bigger 155 00:07:02,689 --> 00:07:05,129 than the system that created it. Think of liberty. 156 00:07:05,329 --> 00:07:08,410 It was used in 1789 to justify the rights of 157 00:07:08,410 --> 00:07:10,769 property -owning men. But the idea itself, the 158 00:07:10,769 --> 00:07:12,769 surplus, couldn't be contained. It gets used 159 00:07:12,769 --> 00:07:15,110 later to argue for abolition, for women's suffrage. 160 00:07:15,209 --> 00:07:17,170 Against the very systems that first championed 161 00:07:17,170 --> 00:07:20,089 it. So the ideal is both ideology, it legitimizes 162 00:07:20,089 --> 00:07:22,730 the ruling class, and at the same time, it's 163 00:07:22,730 --> 00:07:25,129 more than ideology. It contains a revolutionary 164 00:07:25,129 --> 00:07:28,730 seed. And that's why Adorno has to reject Gnosticism, 165 00:07:28,949 --> 00:07:31,500 right? The idea that the world is just... plain 166 00:07:31,500 --> 00:07:34,699 evil made by a flawed creator. He found it compelling 167 00:07:34,699 --> 00:07:37,319 as a metaphor, you know, in art. He loved Samuel 168 00:07:37,319 --> 00:07:39,879 Beckett for that reason. But he rejects it as 169 00:07:39,879 --> 00:07:42,060 a description of social reality. Because if the 170 00:07:42,060 --> 00:07:44,339 world were a gnostic prison, totally fall in. 171 00:07:44,420 --> 00:07:46,639 Imminent critique would be impossible. You'd 172 00:07:46,639 --> 00:07:48,699 need a savior, some knowledge from outside the 173 00:07:48,699 --> 00:07:52,180 walls. But Adorno insists on staying inside history. 174 00:07:52,579 --> 00:07:55,339 He insists the world is full of these contradictions, 175 00:07:55,439 --> 00:07:57,860 these promises. The light must fall into the 176 00:07:57,860 --> 00:08:00,319 prison. OK, so that sets the stage. Let's move 177 00:08:00,319 --> 00:08:02,660 into chapter one of Gordon's book, where he really 178 00:08:02,660 --> 00:08:05,660 defines what this imminent critique looks like 179 00:08:05,660 --> 00:08:08,639 in practice. Right. So chapter one is all about 180 00:08:08,639 --> 00:08:10,959 defining this practice. It's about refusing false 181 00:08:10,959 --> 00:08:13,660 affirmation, but doing so with an implicit reference 182 00:08:13,660 --> 00:08:16,720 to what a society worthy of humanity might look 183 00:08:16,720 --> 00:08:18,800 like. And that reference point has to be found 184 00:08:18,800 --> 00:08:22,060 in our messy, compromised reality. Gordon finds 185 00:08:22,060 --> 00:08:24,259 the perfect metaphor for this in Beethoven's 186 00:08:24,259 --> 00:08:26,759 opera, Fidelio. It's such a powerful image. In 187 00:08:26,759 --> 00:08:28,680 the final act, you have Floristan, the political 188 00:08:28,680 --> 00:08:31,699 prisoner, trapped in total darkness, total domination. 189 00:08:32,700 --> 00:08:35,860 And Adorno focuses on this feeble semblance of 190 00:08:35,860 --> 00:08:38,220 light, the only make you take a shine to slicks, 191 00:08:38,600 --> 00:08:41,480 that penetrates the prison. It's not this glorious 192 00:08:41,480 --> 00:08:44,639 divine light from heaven. It's weak. It's indirect. 193 00:08:44,899 --> 00:08:47,320 It's compromised by the dungeon it's shining 194 00:08:47,320 --> 00:08:51,450 into. And Adorno says that is metaphysics. But 195 00:08:51,450 --> 00:08:53,870 it's a transformed metaphysics. It's lost its 196 00:08:53,870 --> 00:08:56,750 timeless transcendent quality. The ideal of freedom 197 00:08:56,750 --> 00:08:59,909 is only potent when it's deeply embedded in history, 198 00:09:00,470 --> 00:09:02,289 fighting against the darkness. This is why he 199 00:09:02,289 --> 00:09:04,250 breaks so hard with Hegel, isn't it? Absolutely. 200 00:09:04,549 --> 00:09:06,649 Hegel's whole dialectic is about reconciliation, 201 00:09:07,070 --> 00:09:09,210 where every negative moment eventually gets absorbed 202 00:09:09,210 --> 00:09:11,610 into a meaningful, rational whole. For Adorno, 203 00:09:11,830 --> 00:09:13,750 after Auschwitz, that's not just a philosophical 204 00:09:13,750 --> 00:09:17,049 mistake. It's a moral outrage and injustice to 205 00:09:17,049 --> 00:09:19,350 the victims. So critique has to be sustained. 206 00:09:19,629 --> 00:09:22,169 by the opposite, by the non -agenical, the things 207 00:09:22,169 --> 00:09:24,110 that don't fit, that resist being absorbed into 208 00:09:24,110 --> 00:09:25,970 the whole. And this is where he makes that surprising 209 00:09:25,970 --> 00:09:28,909 link to Kant's thing in itself. Which seems so 210 00:09:28,909 --> 00:09:31,570 counterintuitive, a materialist critique using 211 00:09:31,570 --> 00:09:34,750 a concept from transcendental idealism. But Adorno 212 00:09:34,750 --> 00:09:38,610 sees a materialist motive in Kant. Remember... 213 00:09:38,289 --> 00:09:40,870 The thing in itself is Kant's way of saying there's 214 00:09:40,870 --> 00:09:43,029 an objective reality out there that our minds 215 00:09:43,029 --> 00:09:46,110 can never fully completely grasp. It's a check 216 00:09:46,110 --> 00:09:48,710 on our subjectivity. It stops our concepts from 217 00:09:48,710 --> 00:09:50,889 thinking they can explain everything. Exactly. 218 00:09:51,169 --> 00:09:54,110 It's the irreducible objective moment. For Adorno, 219 00:09:54,389 --> 00:09:57,250 that's the non -identical. It's the material 220 00:09:57,250 --> 00:09:59,830 reality that resists our conceptual domination. 221 00:10:00,549 --> 00:10:03,289 If we could know and control everything, total 222 00:10:03,289 --> 00:10:06,330 administration would be complete. The non -identical 223 00:10:06,330 --> 00:10:08,429 is that point of resistance. But then we run 224 00:10:08,429 --> 00:10:10,789 right into his famous line, there is no right 225 00:10:10,789 --> 00:10:13,870 life in the wrong. If this non -identical element 226 00:10:13,870 --> 00:10:15,970 appears within our wrong society, it can't be 227 00:10:15,970 --> 00:10:19,009 some pure, untouched island of truth. And that's 228 00:10:19,009 --> 00:10:21,169 the tragedy of it. That's the precarity. When 229 00:10:21,169 --> 00:10:23,649 the non -identical appears in society, it isn't 230 00:10:23,649 --> 00:10:26,529 necessarily stained. It gets contaminated by 231 00:10:26,529 --> 00:10:28,769 the very system it's resisting. So the source 232 00:10:28,769 --> 00:10:31,389 of hope is always in danger. It's always fragile. 233 00:10:31,730 --> 00:10:34,769 He has to maintain that. If he claimed to have 234 00:10:34,769 --> 00:10:37,909 found a pure utopian space, he'd become a false 235 00:10:37,909 --> 00:10:41,110 prophet. And to show this in action, Gordon takes 236 00:10:41,110 --> 00:10:43,610 us to one of my favorite little bits of Adorno's 237 00:10:43,610 --> 00:10:47,639 writing, the Toy Store, the Kaufman Slayton. 238 00:10:48,220 --> 00:10:50,539 This is a tiny aphorism from Minima Moralia, 239 00:10:50,620 --> 00:10:53,279 but it's so rich. Adorno's worried that the market 240 00:10:53,279 --> 00:10:55,980 reduces everything to exchange value Tauschwert. 241 00:10:56,139 --> 00:10:58,879 Right. Everything becomes abstract, quantifiable. 242 00:10:59,399 --> 00:11:01,480 It strips the world of its warmth, its magic. 243 00:11:01,580 --> 00:11:05,200 But a child playing at having a store, they resist 244 00:11:05,200 --> 00:11:07,659 that logic completely. They do. Their play is 245 00:11:07,659 --> 00:11:10,039 purposeless. It's all about use value, go brushwork. 246 00:11:10,399 --> 00:11:12,440 They take these objects of the market, toy money, 247 00:11:12,519 --> 00:11:14,860 toy products, and they strip them of their economic 248 00:11:14,860 --> 00:11:16,580 function. They're trying to redeem the things 249 00:11:16,580 --> 00:11:18,960 to save what's good in them. Gordon pulls out 250 00:11:18,960 --> 00:11:21,320 three themes here. The first is marginality. 251 00:11:21,679 --> 00:11:24,360 The lesson is to look to the edges, to children's 252 00:11:24,360 --> 00:11:26,399 play, to art. to the things that the dominant 253 00:11:26,399 --> 00:11:29,019 system overlooks or excludes. That's where you'll 254 00:11:29,019 --> 00:11:31,220 find the truth. Second, negativity. The game 255 00:11:31,220 --> 00:11:33,899 itself is an act of negation. It resists the 256 00:11:33,899 --> 00:11:37,179 logic of exchange. It says no to the false reality 257 00:11:37,179 --> 00:11:39,440 of the adult world. And third, and this is the 258 00:11:39,440 --> 00:11:42,159 big one for normativity, anticipation. The very 259 00:11:42,159 --> 00:11:44,539 unreality of the game, the fact that it's all 260 00:11:44,539 --> 00:11:47,139 pretend, is a kind of proclamation that the real 261 00:11:47,139 --> 00:11:50,470 world of commerce is not yet real either. It's 262 00:11:50,470 --> 00:11:53,250 not the final form. The play is an unconscious 263 00:11:53,250 --> 00:11:56,169 exercise for the right life. A fleeting glimpse. 264 00:11:56,330 --> 00:11:59,009 It's not the right life itself, but it's an anticipation 265 00:11:59,009 --> 00:12:01,649 of it. And that tension is what Gordon calls 266 00:12:01,649 --> 00:12:05,149 imminent transcendence. The norms come from within 267 00:12:05,149 --> 00:12:07,730 our compromised world, imminent. But they point 268 00:12:07,730 --> 00:12:10,889 beyond it, transcendent. And because of that, 269 00:12:11,289 --> 00:12:13,950 truth and illusion are, for Odorno, inseparable. 270 00:12:14,230 --> 00:12:15,990 This seems like a good place to transition to 271 00:12:15,990 --> 00:12:18,070 chapter two. where Gordon starts talking about 272 00:12:18,070 --> 00:12:21,389 a more solid, if still negative, ideal human 273 00:12:21,389 --> 00:12:24,769 flourishing, menschlicious Gideon. Yes. And this 274 00:12:24,769 --> 00:12:27,169 begins with what he calls the emphatic concept 275 00:12:27,169 --> 00:12:29,649 of the human being of mensch. What does he mean 276 00:12:29,649 --> 00:12:32,090 by emphatic? He means it's not just a description 277 00:12:32,090 --> 00:12:34,809 of what a person is. It's an ideal of what a 278 00:12:34,809 --> 00:12:37,870 person could be, an ideal of absolute truth. 279 00:12:38,250 --> 00:12:40,350 So if you point to any specific individual, you 280 00:12:40,350 --> 00:12:42,269 know, or her next and say he is a human being, 281 00:12:42,570 --> 00:12:46,210 you immediately feel a sense of a deficit. That 282 00:12:46,210 --> 00:12:49,309 person, living in our unfree world, doesn't fully 283 00:12:49,309 --> 00:12:51,610 live up to the ideal of what a human being could 284 00:12:51,610 --> 00:12:54,830 be. Exactly. The concept itself contains both 285 00:12:54,830 --> 00:12:56,950 the unfulfilled demand and the world's failure 286 00:12:56,950 --> 00:12:59,529 to meet it. That's how his concepts are dialectical. 287 00:12:59,710 --> 00:13:02,090 And he makes this point so beautifully with that 288 00:13:02,090 --> 00:13:04,450 metaphor about color. It's one of his clearest 289 00:13:04,450 --> 00:13:07,470 formulations. Consciousness could not despair 290 00:13:07,470 --> 00:13:10,509 over the grayness of the world unless it held 291 00:13:10,509 --> 00:13:13,159 the concept of a different color. whose scattered 292 00:13:13,159 --> 00:13:16,100 trace is not missing in the negative totality. 293 00:13:16,299 --> 00:13:18,399 In other words, the very fact that we can feel 294 00:13:18,399 --> 00:13:21,320 despair about the grayness proves we have some 295 00:13:21,320 --> 00:13:23,580 concept of color. If the world were perfectly 296 00:13:23,580 --> 00:13:26,100 gray, we'd be colorblind. We wouldn't even notice. 297 00:13:26,440 --> 00:13:29,120 That trace, that scattered hint of color is the 298 00:13:29,120 --> 00:13:31,620 resource for critique and pushes back against 299 00:13:31,620 --> 00:13:34,220 this old philosophical idea that only the eternal 300 00:13:34,220 --> 00:13:37,019 and perfect can be true. He rejects that clean 301 00:13:37,019 --> 00:13:40,240 separation between an idea's origin, its genesis, 302 00:13:40,279 --> 00:13:42,929 and its validity, its guiltum. He does. He's 303 00:13:42,929 --> 00:13:45,809 very Nietzschean here. Just because an ideal 304 00:13:45,809 --> 00:13:49,509 like freedom has a messy, self -interested historical 305 00:13:49,509 --> 00:13:53,049 origin, its genesis doesn't mean it loses its 306 00:13:53,049 --> 00:13:55,730 critical power or its validum, its validity. 307 00:13:55,950 --> 00:13:59,289 The ideal can transcend its own flawed beginning. 308 00:13:59,389 --> 00:14:02,210 It has to for critique to work. This brings us 309 00:14:02,210 --> 00:14:04,090 to another one of these key normative concepts 310 00:14:04,090 --> 00:14:07,769 for him. Happiness. Glück. And he uses happiness 311 00:14:07,769 --> 00:14:11,830 as a kind of materialist guiding principle. Yes. 312 00:14:11,990 --> 00:14:14,389 like a canteen postulate. It's not a description 313 00:14:14,389 --> 00:14:16,970 of how things are, but a concept that guides 314 00:14:16,970 --> 00:14:19,929 our practice. He says all happiness we've experienced 315 00:14:19,929 --> 00:14:22,809 so far promises what has not yet been. It's always 316 00:14:22,809 --> 00:14:24,750 looking forward. And this is where the title 317 00:14:24,750 --> 00:14:27,409 of Gordon's book, Precarious Happiness, really 318 00:14:27,409 --> 00:14:29,710 comes from. Why is it so precarious for Adorno? 319 00:14:29,950 --> 00:14:32,950 Because for Adorno, true happiness demands complete 320 00:14:32,950 --> 00:14:35,990 vulnerability, a total openness to the risk of 321 00:14:35,990 --> 00:14:38,570 its being taken away. He remembers this children's 322 00:14:38,570 --> 00:14:40,570 song about two rabbits who escape a hunter by 323 00:14:40,570 --> 00:14:43,269 playing dead. That moment when they realize they're 324 00:14:43,269 --> 00:14:46,710 alive, that they survived, that's a flash of 325 00:14:46,710 --> 00:14:49,649 pure unshielded happiness. It's only possible 326 00:14:49,649 --> 00:14:51,889 because of the immediate danger. It requires 327 00:14:51,889 --> 00:14:55,409 a kind of self -abandonment, letting go of the 328 00:14:55,409 --> 00:14:58,690 ego's tight control. And this is his way of reworking 329 00:14:58,690 --> 00:15:02,200 Kant's morality. A huge reworking. Kant, you 330 00:15:02,200 --> 00:15:04,279 know, made a very strict separation between the 331 00:15:04,279 --> 00:15:07,320 moral law duty and happiness, which he saw as 332 00:15:07,320 --> 00:15:10,059 a subjective desire. Right. For Kant, you do 333 00:15:10,059 --> 00:15:12,279 the right thing because it's your duty, not because 334 00:15:12,279 --> 00:15:15,100 it'll make you happy. And Adorno sees that split 335 00:15:15,100 --> 00:15:17,360 as a symptom of a kind of modern alienation. 336 00:15:17,539 --> 00:15:20,340 He says, no, we had to take Kant's idea of the 337 00:15:20,340 --> 00:15:23,360 highest good and reformulate it in purely materialist 338 00:15:23,360 --> 00:15:26,159 terms. So the moral command, du solst, thou shalt, 339 00:15:26,279 --> 00:15:28,740 has to be translated not as an abstract duty. 340 00:15:28,940 --> 00:15:32,159 But as the demand for the right life, a demand 341 00:15:32,159 --> 00:15:35,480 for actual material human flourishing, and the 342 00:15:35,480 --> 00:15:37,379 absolute negative measure for that flourishing 343 00:15:37,379 --> 00:15:40,379 is suffering, the brute fact of pain. That's 344 00:15:40,379 --> 00:15:42,159 where critique gets its real world traction. 345 00:15:42,360 --> 00:15:44,519 That makes sense. That leads us very naturally 346 00:15:44,519 --> 00:15:46,700 into chapter three, which is all about Adorno's 347 00:15:46,700 --> 00:15:49,740 specific take on materialism and nature. Yes, 348 00:15:49,960 --> 00:15:51,879 and this is where he grounds his philosophy in 349 00:15:51,879 --> 00:15:55,940 the body. For Adorno, humans are, first and foremost, 350 00:15:56,399 --> 00:15:59,080 sensual creatures. Our flourishing depends on 351 00:15:59,080 --> 00:16:01,419 satisfying our material needs, on maintaining 352 00:16:01,419 --> 00:16:04,360 contact with the warmth of things. But that raises 353 00:16:04,360 --> 00:16:06,799 the tricky question of needs versus wants. How 354 00:16:06,799 --> 00:16:08,480 does he distinguish between what's a natural 355 00:16:08,480 --> 00:16:10,899 need and what's just a socially created desire? 356 00:16:11,129 --> 00:16:13,929 He argues that distinction is itself a product 357 00:16:13,929 --> 00:16:15,889 of our current society, of class domination. 358 00:16:16,450 --> 00:16:19,190 He thinks our needs are historical. Once we move 359 00:16:19,190 --> 00:16:21,570 beyond a society based on class interest and 360 00:16:21,570 --> 00:16:24,370 scarcity, our very needs will fundamentally change. 361 00:16:24,769 --> 00:16:27,450 So we can't really know our true needs from our 362 00:16:27,450 --> 00:16:29,850 current standpoint. We can't. And to keep from 363 00:16:29,850 --> 00:16:32,230 falling into a simple biological reductionism, 364 00:16:32,590 --> 00:16:35,370 he brings in the concept of mimesis. Mimesis. 365 00:16:35,590 --> 00:16:39,110 The sort of pre -rational organic impulse to... 366 00:16:38,870 --> 00:16:41,289 imitate or assimilate with the other. It's a 367 00:16:41,289 --> 00:16:43,570 key Frankfurt School idea. He says that civilization, 368 00:16:43,769 --> 00:16:46,029 the rational ego, is built on repressing this 369 00:16:46,029 --> 00:16:48,809 mimetic impulse. But in controlling external 370 00:16:48,809 --> 00:16:51,470 nature, we also diminish our own internal freedom. 371 00:16:52,009 --> 00:16:54,330 So true freedom requires reconnecting with that 372 00:16:54,330 --> 00:16:56,629 repressed archaic part of ourselves. You need 373 00:16:56,629 --> 00:16:59,330 both rational control and the ability to let 374 00:16:59,330 --> 00:17:01,710 go of that control. A radical dialectic. And 375 00:17:01,710 --> 00:17:04,470 we see fragments of this in our lives. He points 376 00:17:04,470 --> 00:17:07,349 to the act of giving a gift, Schenken. Why is 377 00:17:07,349 --> 00:17:09,430 giving a gift so important for him? Because it's 378 00:17:09,430 --> 00:17:12,809 a non -instrumental act. It defies the cold logic 379 00:17:12,809 --> 00:17:16,049 of exchange, of equivalence. He worries that 380 00:17:16,049 --> 00:17:18,670 if we lose the capacity for the gift, we lose 381 00:17:18,670 --> 00:17:21,289 our connection to our own organic nature. We 382 00:17:21,289 --> 00:17:23,769 become cold. This all builds toward one of his 383 00:17:23,769 --> 00:17:27,000 most complex ideas. that the subject is also 384 00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:29,759 an object. Right. We have to understand ourselves 385 00:17:29,759 --> 00:17:33,220 as beings in the world. Einzyendis. We have an 386 00:17:33,220 --> 00:17:36,140 irreducibly objective moment. We're not just 387 00:17:36,140 --> 00:17:39,099 pure thinking minds. We are bodies dependent 388 00:17:39,099 --> 00:17:42,240 on nature. And because of that, philosophy has 389 00:17:42,240 --> 00:17:44,640 to give priority to the object. How does he do 390 00:17:44,640 --> 00:17:46,980 that without just falling back into a kind of 391 00:17:46,980 --> 00:17:50,259 dogmatic realism? Through self -reflection. The 392 00:17:50,259 --> 00:17:52,200 ideal is what he calls Ein Gedenken der Natur 393 00:17:52,200 --> 00:17:54,890 im Subjekt. the remembering of nature within 394 00:17:54,890 --> 00:17:56,890 the subject. It's not about regressing to a primitive 395 00:17:56,890 --> 00:17:59,410 state. It's a mature, self -aware acknowledgement 396 00:17:59,410 --> 00:18:01,930 that we are part of nature, not its masters. 397 00:18:02,309 --> 00:18:04,950 The moment you realize, I'm not just the boss 398 00:18:04,950 --> 00:18:07,710 here. I'm part of this ecosystem. And that self 399 00:18:07,710 --> 00:18:10,490 -knowledge is what true freedom, true flourishing 400 00:18:10,490 --> 00:18:13,470 requires. It's the unity of the sensual and the 401 00:18:13,470 --> 00:18:15,630 spiritual. Okay, this brings us to what Gordon 402 00:18:15,630 --> 00:18:19,309 argues is a central, not marginal, part of Adorno's 403 00:18:19,309 --> 00:18:22,140 whole project, his aesthetic theory. This is 404 00:18:22,140 --> 00:18:24,779 Chapter 5. This is absolutely central. For Adorno, 405 00:18:24,940 --> 00:18:27,480 art is one of the last remaining spaces where 406 00:18:27,480 --> 00:18:30,019 a source of normativity can be found. It's where 407 00:18:30,019 --> 00:18:32,579 a kind of autonomy survives. And this is where 408 00:18:32,579 --> 00:18:34,740 he famously disagreed with his friend Walter 409 00:18:34,740 --> 00:18:37,539 Benjamin. A lifelong debate. Benjamin thought 410 00:18:37,539 --> 00:18:40,200 mass reproduction destroyed the artwork's unique 411 00:18:40,200 --> 00:18:43,460 aura. Adorno defended the autonomy of the artwork, 412 00:18:43,819 --> 00:18:46,440 calling it a sign of freedom, a Zeichen der Freiheit 413 00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:49,460 that can survive even in an unfree world. But 414 00:18:49,460 --> 00:18:51,680 doesn't that risk making art into this fetishized 415 00:18:51,680 --> 00:18:54,259 object in an ivory tower? He's very careful about 416 00:18:54,259 --> 00:18:56,019 that. He's not talking about an artwork fetish. 417 00:18:56,279 --> 00:18:58,559 He applies that same dialectical logic we saw 418 00:18:58,559 --> 00:19:01,380 before. Every cultural object is a document of 419 00:19:01,380 --> 00:19:03,920 culture and a document of barbarism. The beautiful 420 00:19:03,920 --> 00:19:06,180 cathedral is also a document of the exploited 421 00:19:06,180 --> 00:19:08,730 labor that built it. Exactly. The autonomous 422 00:19:08,730 --> 00:19:11,529 artwork is itself antagonistic and split. It's 423 00:19:11,529 --> 00:19:13,670 born from the social contradictions it embodies. 424 00:19:13,849 --> 00:19:16,329 And he links art to play, like he did with the 425 00:19:16,329 --> 00:19:18,930 toy store. He does, drawing on Huizinga's homo 426 00:19:18,930 --> 00:19:22,750 ludens. Both art and play recognize the untruth 427 00:19:22,750 --> 00:19:25,269 of the true. They have this self -awareness of 428 00:19:25,269 --> 00:19:27,869 the world's ideological front. Think of Kafka 429 00:19:27,869 --> 00:19:30,750 or Beckett. The art knows it's entangled. And 430 00:19:30,750 --> 00:19:33,569 its fundamental purpose, its material purpose, 431 00:19:33,829 --> 00:19:36,950 is to give voice to suffering. Yes. Art is driven 432 00:19:36,950 --> 00:19:40,750 by the need to let suffering speak. Das Bedürfnis 433 00:19:40,750 --> 00:19:44,210 leiden werden zu lassen. Especially in its modern, 434 00:19:44,450 --> 00:19:47,250 dissonant forms, art becomes a kind of seismograph 435 00:19:47,250 --> 00:19:50,210 for social horror, a non -conceptual protest. 436 00:19:50,410 --> 00:19:52,230 So if the artwork is autonomous, how does he 437 00:19:52,230 --> 00:19:55,049 still manage to analyze its social content? It 438 00:19:55,049 --> 00:19:57,990 has a monadic character, an internal cohesiveness 439 00:19:57,990 --> 00:20:00,390 that gives the illusion of being sealed off. 440 00:20:00,920 --> 00:20:03,440 But in achieving that internal structure, Adorno 441 00:20:03,440 --> 00:20:05,859 argues, the artwork can't help but reproduce 442 00:20:05,859 --> 00:20:08,059 the logic of domination from the outside world. 443 00:20:08,519 --> 00:20:11,000 An imminent analysis reveals that social content. 444 00:20:11,160 --> 00:20:13,259 So to be successful, to be truthful, art must 445 00:20:13,259 --> 00:20:16,359 be negative. It has to remain unreconciled. If 446 00:20:16,359 --> 00:20:19,119 it presented a happy, harmonious picture, you 447 00:20:19,119 --> 00:20:20,759 would be lying about the state of the world. 448 00:20:21,380 --> 00:20:23,900 Even in Mozart, he says, you can hear a painful 449 00:20:23,900 --> 00:20:26,799 sweetness, a tension between the promise of harmony 450 00:20:26,799 --> 00:20:29,619 and the reality of suffering. Which takes us 451 00:20:29,619 --> 00:20:31,559 to the final chapter of the book's analysis, 452 00:20:31,759 --> 00:20:34,359 chapter 6, which is all about the aesthetic experience. 453 00:20:34,500 --> 00:20:37,500 And it's here we really get to the heart of precarious 454 00:20:37,500 --> 00:20:40,599 happiness. We do. And the model for Adorno's 455 00:20:40,599 --> 00:20:43,339 entire philosophical method here is Beethoven's 456 00:20:43,339 --> 00:20:46,500 late style, his spade still. Why the late style 457 00:20:46,500 --> 00:20:49,220 specifically? He contrasts it with Beethoven's 458 00:20:49,220 --> 00:20:52,940 heroic middle period. That music, he says, reflected 459 00:20:52,940 --> 00:20:55,119 the confidence of the early bourgeois subject. 460 00:20:55,220 --> 00:20:58,359 It projected this illusion of mastery, of a perfect 461 00:20:58,359 --> 00:21:00,440 harmony between the subject and the world. An 462 00:21:00,440 --> 00:21:02,900 illusion of totality. An illusion the late style 463 00:21:02,900 --> 00:21:05,579 completely shatters. The late works are fragmented. 464 00:21:05,799 --> 00:21:07,900 They're full of audible cracks and fissures, 465 00:21:08,099 --> 00:21:10,539 wrists and sprung. And those fragments become 466 00:21:10,539 --> 00:21:13,099 Adorno's model for how philosophy itself should 467 00:21:13,099 --> 00:21:15,680 work. He has that great line, one can no longer 468 00:21:15,680 --> 00:21:18,380 compose like Beethoven, but one must think like 469 00:21:18,380 --> 00:21:20,940 he composed. It becomes a general aesthetic rule. 470 00:21:21,559 --> 00:21:24,019 The artwork must resist the neatness of conforming 471 00:21:24,019 --> 00:21:26,930 style. because style itself imposes a kind of 472 00:21:26,930 --> 00:21:29,990 uniformity. A broken world demands a broken art. 473 00:21:30,250 --> 00:21:32,470 And we see this applied to other composers, like 474 00:21:32,470 --> 00:21:36,210 Mahler. With Mahler, he hears the locus of a 475 00:21:36,210 --> 00:21:39,730 distressed nature. Mahler's use of folk sounds, 476 00:21:40,009 --> 00:21:42,829 of nature sounds, gives voice to the speechless. 477 00:21:43,160 --> 00:21:46,279 to the animals. It's an act of mimesis, retreating 478 00:21:46,279 --> 00:21:49,160 from rational control to save what has been silenced. 479 00:21:49,220 --> 00:21:51,619 And in modern composers like Berg and Schoenberg, 480 00:21:52,119 --> 00:21:54,299 this reality is expressed through dissonance. 481 00:21:54,579 --> 00:21:56,940 Dissonance is everything. It's not just a reflection 482 00:21:56,940 --> 00:21:59,940 of social horror. It is the core experience of 483 00:21:59,940 --> 00:22:02,799 precarious gluck, precarious happiness. It is, 484 00:22:02,799 --> 00:22:05,099 he says, pain and happiness in one. How can it 485 00:22:05,099 --> 00:22:07,940 be both at once? As the overwhelming thing world 486 00:22:07,940 --> 00:22:10,220 of commodities demands our consent, the human 487 00:22:10,220 --> 00:22:12,460 spirit retreats into the aesthetic experience. 488 00:22:12,500 --> 00:22:14,880 It's a rudimentary minimum that preserves the 489 00:22:14,880 --> 00:22:17,500 memory of mimesis and offers this fleeting vision 490 00:22:17,500 --> 00:22:19,680 of freedom. It's the simultaneous in play of 491 00:22:19,680 --> 00:22:22,759 the negative and the utopian. Yes. He sees it 492 00:22:22,759 --> 00:22:24,980 in mayonnaise colors, which express both something 493 00:22:24,980 --> 00:22:27,779 threatening, alarming, evil, and a kind of positive 494 00:22:27,779 --> 00:22:31,180 rapture. The happiness is only possible because 495 00:22:31,180 --> 00:22:33,619 you are simultaneously aware of its fragility, 496 00:22:33,720 --> 00:22:35,759 its entanglement with a negative reality. But 497 00:22:35,759 --> 00:22:38,220 because the world remains unfree, the happiness 498 00:22:38,220 --> 00:22:41,900 can only ever be a promise. And so all art, for 499 00:22:41,900 --> 00:22:45,059 Adorno, is tinged with trower, with melancholy. 500 00:22:45,799 --> 00:22:48,500 The happiness it offers comes with a sigh, an 501 00:22:48,500 --> 00:22:52,809 o veris doch. Oh, if only it were so. It acknowledges 502 00:22:52,809 --> 00:22:55,150 the gap between the promise and the reality. 503 00:22:55,470 --> 00:22:57,789 So to sum up Gordon's argument, Adorno is an 504 00:22:57,789 --> 00:23:00,130 anti -fundamentalist. His sources of normativity 505 00:23:00,130 --> 00:23:03,109 are damaged, precarious, fleeting, but they were 506 00:23:03,109 --> 00:23:05,109 absolutely necessary for any kind of imminent 507 00:23:05,109 --> 00:23:07,069 critique to get off the ground. The precarity 508 00:23:07,069 --> 00:23:08,829 is the whole point. He doesn't need a utopia. 509 00:23:09,049 --> 00:23:11,329 He just needs the scattered traces. And this 510 00:23:11,329 --> 00:23:14,230 focus on material suffering as the negative bedrock 511 00:23:14,230 --> 00:23:17,029 leads to his final, most powerful moral statement. 512 00:23:17,269 --> 00:23:19,589 His rewriting of Kant's categorical imperative. 513 00:23:19,869 --> 00:23:24,450 Yes. He says that Hitler has imposed a new categorical 514 00:23:24,450 --> 00:23:27,470 imperative on humanity in our state of unfreedom. 515 00:23:27,970 --> 00:23:30,750 To arrange their thinking and acting so that 516 00:23:30,750 --> 00:23:33,369 Auschwitz does not recur, that nothing similar 517 00:23:33,369 --> 00:23:37,009 happens. It's a devastatingly clear and direct 518 00:23:37,009 --> 00:23:40,250 demand. And he insists that this imperative is 519 00:23:40,250 --> 00:23:42,910 recalcitrant to rational justification. He says 520 00:23:42,910 --> 00:23:45,650 it's a sacrilege to even debate it. Why? Because 521 00:23:45,650 --> 00:23:47,950 if you subject the command, do not commit genocide 522 00:23:47,950 --> 00:23:50,670 to a philosophical debate, you imply that reason 523 00:23:50,670 --> 00:23:53,809 could potentially argue in favor of it. For Adorno, 524 00:23:54,109 --> 00:23:56,410 the imperative is imposed by the material fact 525 00:23:56,410 --> 00:23:58,890 of absolute suffering. It's not up for discussion. 526 00:23:58,970 --> 00:24:01,309 It is the negative anchor for all morality. We 527 00:24:01,309 --> 00:24:03,089 might not know for certain what the right life 528 00:24:03,089 --> 00:24:05,089 is, but we know with absolute certainty what 529 00:24:05,089 --> 00:24:07,450 the wrong life is. And this brings us to Gordon's 530 00:24:07,450 --> 00:24:10,509 final provocative thought. He contrasted Adorno's 531 00:24:10,509 --> 00:24:13,049 entire project with that of the other giant of 532 00:24:13,049 --> 00:24:15,230 20th century German thought. Martin Heidegger. 533 00:24:15,410 --> 00:24:18,450 And the contrast is stark. It couldn't be starker. 534 00:24:18,910 --> 00:24:21,349 Adorno centers his entire philosophy on material 535 00:24:21,349 --> 00:24:23,690 suffering, on the vulnerability of the human 536 00:24:23,690 --> 00:24:27,049 body. Heidegger, especially after the war, moves 537 00:24:27,049 --> 00:24:30,589 away from humanism entirely. His philosophy becomes 538 00:24:30,589 --> 00:24:34,410 about being itself, not human beings. So Heidegger's 539 00:24:34,410 --> 00:24:36,849 famous concept of being towards death is not 540 00:24:36,849 --> 00:24:38,890 about physical suffering at all. Not at all. 541 00:24:38,960 --> 00:24:42,079 It's an abstract ontological experience of authenticity, 542 00:24:42,539 --> 00:24:44,539 completely divorced from the messiness of history 543 00:24:44,539 --> 00:24:47,400 or physical pain. This focus on the hardness 544 00:24:47,400 --> 00:24:50,900 of fate led him to an ethic that was, well, an 545 00:24:50,900 --> 00:24:53,000 empty kind of self -affirmation that refused 546 00:24:53,000 --> 00:24:55,259 to explicitly condemn the Holocaust. Whereas 547 00:24:55,259 --> 00:24:57,839 Adorno's new imperative demands precisely that 548 00:24:57,839 --> 00:24:59,940 we act against the conditions that produce that 549 00:24:59,940 --> 00:25:02,440 kind of material historical suffering. It's a 550 00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:04,740 profound difference. Heidegger offers a retreat 551 00:25:04,740 --> 00:25:07,839 from human affairs. Adorno demands a total mobilization 552 00:25:07,839 --> 00:25:09,640 of our critical faculties to fight oppression. 553 00:25:09,859 --> 00:25:12,180 Which leaves us with Adorno's challenge, which 554 00:25:12,180 --> 00:25:15,099 feels just as relevant today. If the structural 555 00:25:15,099 --> 00:25:17,539 conditions for barbarism, the coldness of the 556 00:25:17,539 --> 00:25:19,559 market, the suppression of our connection to 557 00:25:19,559 --> 00:25:22,180 nature are already embedded in our normal society, 558 00:25:22,640 --> 00:25:24,619 how radically do we need to change our thinking 559 00:25:24,619 --> 00:25:26,720 and our acting to make sure nothing like that 560 00:25:26,720 --> 00:25:27,579 ever happens again?