Moral philosophy and critique of society in Adorno

Abstract

This research project for the International Research Internship (BEPE), as part of the doctoral project "Suffering and critique of society in Adorno", intends to study the Adornian notion of suffering. The main hypothesis of the doctoral project is that in Adorno's work one can find a impulse to critique experiences of suffering and that such critical project is anchored above all in an axis sustained in Adorno's reading of Freud - more specifically that the Adornian notion of suffering depends on this reading. There is, however, another axis of support for the notion of suffering, to which we intend to devote more attention here in this project of internship and research in Germany, namely, the role of the German tradition of moral philosophy (mainly Kant, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer) in Adorno's work, especially with regard to the notion of suffering. It is intended to deepen the study of this relationship between "Moral philosophy and critique of society in Adorno". The aim of this Internship is then to research the german bibliography on our research subject, as well as to investigate other unpublished primary sources in "Theodor W. Adorno Archiv". It is hoped to find subsidies for the hypothesis that guides this internship project, namely, that Adorno makes moral philosophy a relevant field in his broad project of social criticism. Moral philosophy would then be primarily an object of criticism (as would aesthetic products, culture in general, etc.). If so, Adorno would not have produced a moral philosophy, even if negative or non-normative, but rather reflected on the immanent impossibilities of moral philosophy, especially after Auschwitz.