Autonomy and Models of the Right Life. Reflections on the Relation Between Ethics and Politics in Adorno

Abstract

This article analyses Theodor W. Adorno’s moral philosophy and argues that politics is therefor the condition of possibility of morality. To this end, it starts from the interpretation of unpublished notes from a lecture given by the philosopher in 1956 on moral philosophy and explains what an Adornian theory of social action would consist of. Relating these notes to Adorno’s work, it is pointed out that Adorno’s moral philosophy must be understood as the expression of the constitutive tension of two poles: the ethical impossibility of a right life in the false life of Minima Moralia, and the moral moment formed by the new categorical imperative proposed by Adorno in Negative Dialectics. As a result of this tension arises the need to carry out forms of resistance that are always singular, though necessarily in relation to the universal demands experienced by the subjects. The article argues that these forms of resistance are not simply negative, for they ultimately require the elaboration of new forms of social practice.