Shortly before his 50. Death on 06.08. has conquered Theodor W. Adorno’s lecture on “aspects of the new right-wing radicalism” is the best-seller lists. What makes you so out of date, explains historian Volker Know in the DW-interview.
Theodor W. Adorno, philosopher, sociologist and musicologist (1960)
In the famous work “dialectics of enlightenment”, which he published together with Max Horkheimer, 1947, in the United States, sought to the author of an answer to the question, “why mankind, instead of in a truly human condition, to engage in a new kind of barbarism is sinking”. In 1903, as the son of a Jewish wine merchant, born Theodor W. Adorno had all the reason to ask this question. With the coming to power of the national socialists in 1933 was the music theorist and philosopher, who had habilitated with a thesis on Kierkegaard, in the Wake of the dismissal of Jewish lecturers the teaching authority has been withdrawn. A lecturer in Oxford, he emigrated to the United States, where he was in 1938, as an official member of the New York over-settled Institute for social research.
In 1949 Adorno returned to Frankfurt. His issues could be from today: He worked on the connection of authority, piety, and fascism, spoke in 1952 about “The cultural and social structure change in a United Germany”. In 1967, in a time in which the “national democratic party of Germany (NPD)” in the six country parliaments fed was, he kept in front of students in Vienna, a lecture on the “aspects of the new right-wing radicalism”.
This lecture existed only as an Audio recording, published by the Suhrkamp-Verlag now available as a book. The historian and right-wing extremism-has written a White researcher Volker the afterword. With Deutsche Welle, he spoke about the reasons why Adorno’s lecture as a speech to the present reads.
Theodor W. Adorno (right) and the writer Heinrich Böll in 1968
DW: The capitalism critic Theodor W. Adorno had its High time in the early Sixties. 50 years after his death, the philosophical Patriarch suddenly heard again, to the publicly-perceived Intellectuals. Which of his approaches is for our globalized society today much?
Adorno’s philosophy was not a critique of capitalism, but an inventory of the Modern total. Particularly attention was paid to the impact of civilizational development of the companies on the individual subjects, so the question of how much the liberation of the progress creates, and how many new threats. As a wise Marxist, he knew that it is neither possible nor desirable, the technical development to stop. He fell but not in a simple progress optimism that dominated the Left for a long time. For him, the experience was significant, what happened, if the Knowledge in the service of the rule, not the exemption. So enlightenment could not go on, so to speak, highest state of the art in a new barbarism. 19. and the 20. Century offered plenty of illustrative material. Even if “the Modern” was now carried to the grave, has diversified from the more “Modern” in various forms is spoken, so the core of Adorno’s questions, but over a long period of time currently.
Historian Volker Know
Adorno, a thinker, an activist was. But his phrase “There is no true life in the wrong” has become a popular Slogan. Which analysis is hidden behind this formula?
This aphorism from the “Minima Moralia” was referring to the impossibility, in view of the catastrophic development somewhere a private fortune to set up. Modern societies tend to totality, its effects everything, every living creature capture any area of life – because the niches are dwindling. A free letter but not to try the Right thing in the first place, is not the. In addition, it is likely to have Adorno remotely located, his aphorisms as a calendar sayings to find.
20 years after the fall of the so-called third Reich, radical, moved Right back in the parliaments, in Germany, the NPD. As explained by Adorno, the success of extreme right-wing philosophy?
Remarkably, sees Adorno as causes more the shortcomings of Western democracies, and less of the hustle and Bustle of the old Nazis, who were in the sixties, is still very present. He knew that the rights of always been their strength from the disappointments of the people triggered and moved about the full emancipation. Since the 19th century. Century told them that they were wrought of their happiness, and yet you come across always on invisible boundaries. So he can identify the fascist movements as “the stigmata of democracy”.
In the case of Adorno’s funeral in 1969, with Max Horkheimer followed the coffin of his decades-long friend and colleague (on the right behind the coffin)
The lecture, Adorno, 1967 in front of the Vienna students thought, “aspects of the new right-wing radicalism”, is now published in the Suhrkamp Verlag as a book. The book is now even on the bestseller lists. What makes him – after more than 50 years – so up to date?
These “stigmata” are to be found today, if one considers, for example, the lack of Democracy in the bureaucratic apparatus of the EU. Meanwhile, the voices, prefer to be with a limited authority on how an illiberal nation-state is confronted with difficult-to-understand, abstract apparatuses are increasing. Also social-psychologically has us Adorno anything else to say. The economic and technological development – Adorno here refers to the concentration of Capital and automation – creates the feeling of one’s own Superfluity. Actual or perceived crises lead to the desire for an end to the Whole. This catastrophic train, half-fear, half-longing, characterizes these movements until today. And in the case of the NPD observed methods are in use today. The combination of technical perfection and complete Abstrusität of the content can be watched on the Internet every day.
What he recommends, in order of extreme-right policy to counteract?
He makes no illusions to convert the leader of the Right in the conversation. This thought would have produced wrinkles in the Generation that experienced the Second world war, secure only the end. He recommends, on the consequences of the right policy, your destructive train and its consequences. But above all, he wants to make the youth away from – what, how, today, say, at the time quite managed.
Book cover
The founding figure of the “Frankfurt school” was an astute cultural critic. He criticized a loud, propagandistic culture. Wherein he recognized you?
He was not “the” founder figure, with the author of the circle of Critical theory, even more names are linked: Horkheimer, Pollock, Lowenthal, Benjamin, Marcuse, Fromm, Kracauer, to mention only the most famous names.
In the modern culture Adorno criticized the Serial, Schematic. A fairly typical discourse of these circles, in Walter Benjamin’s Considerations on the loss of the Unique “auratic” art found under the conditions of mass production. Today, art itself has long operated with the motive of their industrial production. As long as they reflect the conditions of their occurrence, can be nothing against serial creations argue. It becomes critical if authenticity is simulated, where only the Schema is. As we enter the area of Kitsch and Propaganda.
Theodor W. Adorno, “aspects of the new right-wing extremism – A lecture.” With an afterword by Volker Suhrkamp Verlag, July 2019, 86 pages Know.
In his 2017 for the prize of the Leipzig book fair, nominated the book “The authoritarian revolt. The New right and the decline of the West” provides Volker Know a diagnosis of Time to the right-wing populist phenomena Pegida, the AfD & co. The book, with 304 pages, appeared in the publishing house Klett-Cotta.
The interview was conducted by Sabine Peschel.