Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life

Adorno reflects upon how elderly women from England gave him some books in English as gifts. Due to their pictures and the inaccessibility of the language, Adorno thought of the books as “advertisements” (47). He still thinks modern culture “displays its character as advertising” (47). For example, the words of a German poem have been translated into English and used to promote a hit song.

Adorno notes that “sex and language are intertwined” (47). This is proven by the fact that one does not need a dictionary to understand pornographic literature, such as the writings of the French author the Marquis de Sade in another language.

Roads in the United States are “always inserted directly in the landscape” (48). Due to this, American landscapes appear untouched by humans and always leave a fleeting impression.

In this chapter, Adorno lists a series of aphorisms (brief sayings). These include: A comment that when Germans paint their dreams they come out as vegetables while for the French it is vice versa; in Anglo-Saxon countries sex workers look as if they experienced “sin” and the “attendant pains of hell”; the only thing true in psychology is the “exaggerations” (49); crucial events reported through the radio are always disasters; self-consciousness among the bourgeoisie in the modern era no longer means being aware of one’s wealth but “knowing that one is nothing”; and the “first and only principle of sexual ethics” is “the accuser is always wrong” (50).

World War II has left Europe in cultural ruins. Adorno argues that “[p]rogress and barbarism are today […] matted together in mass culture” (50). Wealth and technology shape mass culture now. True art only has “a chance of survival” (50) if it rejects the state of mass culture. If the printing press defined the era of bourgeois domination, Adorno muses, then the mimeograph (a machine used to cheaply copy texts) represents the end.

Solidarity between workers is “sick” because now it only represents submission to the “Party” (51). It is also a weapon used by those in power against anyone who dissents.

“African students of political economy” and “diligent art-historians and musicologists of petty-bourgeois origins” (52) all accept new things, but they also have a disproportionate respect for tradition. People who become radical when they are young and untested are easily made to follow tradition later. However, in both culture and politics, people with “experience” and “historical memory” (52) are the ones who have the strongest minds. This is why Adorno believes socialists are in danger of becoming positivists. He also believes that it is possible that, for non-Western people, joining the industrialized world will just lead to a small improvement in their standard of living and communications, and not to “miracles” (53).

Adorno observes that reports of bombings in World War II include the names of the manufacturers of the planes that dropped the bombs, making them advertisements. For Adorno, this is evidence that the line between governments and companies has become blurred. Next, he compares World War II to the Thirty Years War, as a conflict with “the alternation of jerky action and total standstill” (54). However, unlike the Thirty Years War, World War II is very much mechanized, separating human experience from the war itself. Adorno therefore believes World War II “lacks continuity, history, an ‘epic element’” (54).

World War II also differs from past wars because of the influence of propaganda. Fascists are able to successfully dismiss atrocities as just propaganda from the enemy. Adorno deems this as “another expression for the withering of experience” (55). At the same time, the mechanization of war during World War II represents fascism itself, as something that can operate on its own but has no “subject” (55) or purpose.

Adorno is also skeptical of the idea that culture will be “rebuilt” (55) once the war is over. The Holocaust has already meant that “barbarism” (55) has become introduced into the culture. Once Nazi Germany is defeated, Adorno calls for no executions and no revenge. Mechanization of war also means that even the enemy loses their humanity and has “subjectlessness,” becoming only “the object of technical and administrative measures” (56).

Knowledge is related to power. Adorno gives the example of an émigré doctor who pronounces that Adolf Hitler is mentally ill. Due to the scope of Hitler’s impact on the world, such a declaration looks “ridiculous, mere professional preening” (56-57). This is something that affects all émigrés’ statements against fascism, because of the power of fascist governments and the powerlessness of the émigrés. Adorno suggests people must “let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us” (57), but he also admits this is nearly impossible.

Adorno scoffs at the idea that Hitler “destroyed German culture” (57). Even before Hitler, the culture of Germany was already “languishing” (57). Adorno argues that the writers and artists who survived in Germany through the Nazi years, like Hans Fallada, “spoke more truth” (58) than famous émigré creators from Germany.

Psychology would find that everyone in modern society has a “sickness” (58) resulting from growing up in a society where business and the economy dominate everything. Men and women not only have to repress their sexual urges, but the “symptoms” (58) that come from sexual repression. Instead, much like how the abundance of consumer goods is used to hide poverty, mental illness is just made invisible in modern society. In addition, the mental illness of individuals is channeled into society, leading to fascist acts.

In the past, Sigmund Freud attributed conscious behavior to subconscious instincts, even though he agreed with the “bourgeois contempt of instinct” (60). Adorno accuses Freud of simultaneously advocating “open emancipation of the oppressed, and apology for open oppression” (61). Thanks to Freud’s influence, Adorno finds that psychology leaves people mechanized and without a true sense of self.

Adorno sees the goal of psychotherapy as restoring an individual’s “capacity for pleasure” which has been damaged by a “neurotic illness” (62). However, Adorno sees Freudian psychology as just imposing behaviors designed by institutions on a person experiencing a shrinking range of human experiences in modern society. Both Freudian psychology and the entertainment industry are complicit in this process of forcing happiness on individuals, something Adorno compares to the concentration camps in Poland.

While psychology has sought to study humanity, it has also treated human beings as objects and denied the existence of an objective truth. By reducing every individual to just their “faculties” (63), Adorno sees psychology as judging individuals just by the division of labor and by how to use them for social and economic ends. It is “a technique […] to command and exploit” (64) individuals. Just as Adorno sees the ownership of property as just something that is granted to individuals by those in power, he also sees psychology as taking away an individual’s self by portioning out happiness.

Due to mass entertainment and Freudian psychology, “people’s last opportunity of experiencing themselves” has been lost (65). Instead of trying to understand themselves as human beings, people just label their problems and inner conflicts under Freudian categories like mother-fixation and introversion. Existential terrors are just seen as being like any other illness.

Even so, people do not seek to actually be cured of their mental health problems, but simply to fit in with society and their everyday lives. Adorno believes no one is even capable of experiences that are not classified by a standardized list of human experiences that now define society. Even sexual desire has been “made totally harmless but also totally insignificant” (66). Overall, as a result of these trends, people have been deprived of even a “hope for a better future” (66).

Philosophers often have to work for universities in order to earn a living, and even then they face increasing pressure from a society obsessed with business. This economic necessity forces philosophers to compete by having to find something unique to offer in their writing. Any philosopher outside academia eventually ends up in the realm of irrational spirituality and “crackpot religion” (67), which in and of themselves can lead to fascism. These problems are aggravated by the “scientism” (67) that dominates modern society and causes people to overlook the more profound parts of life.

In sum, the intellectual climate of Adorno’s time only offers both “delight in emptiness and the lie of fullness” (67). The only way to avoid all of this is to, even accidentally, offer ideas that no one wants to buy, keeping oneself out of the intellectual economy.

Science has replaced philosophy in modern society, leading to a separation of what Hegel considered the two main parts of philosophy, “reflection and speculation” (68). However, reflection is filled with deception, and speculation has to “yield results as soon as possible” (68). Speculation is also treated like objective science and defers to the authority of doctors.

The meanings of “objective” and “subjective” have been switched. Objective has come to mean a neutral interpretation of data and facts, while subjective has come to mean anything that defies such interpretations. Looking at art, Adorno argues that someone’s personal experience of, and reaction to, a work of art is more true and objective than discussions of style and technique. Objectivity is simply something “calculated” (69) by those in power.

Philosophers should not strive to be “right” (70), since the purpose of philosophy is meant to be to demolish certainties. However, Adorno gives the example of an intellectual who debated other intellectuals specializing in science and the humanities and who ended feeling confident in being right. The problem with such attitudes, Adorno writes, is that it leads to conformity. As in the works of Hegel or dialectical reasoning, the practice of philosophy should be centered around a thesis, not an argument, in order to encourage thought and questioning rather than advocate a position.

Adorno argues that dialectical thought operates against “reification,” the tendency to think of things as only abstract, and against “absolute judgments” (71). In Hegel’s thought, there was a criticism of “common sense” (72). Adorno argues that common sense does have value, especially in standing against dogmatic, biased thinking. However, it ignores the view of the individual and is also simply the view promoted by society in the current historical era, so in the modern period it is something “schooled by the market” (72).

In other words, dialectical reasoning undermines the dominant assumptions in society—in the case of Adorno’s time, the assumptions promoted by capitalism. Dialectic reason can show “the ruling universal order and its proportions as sick” and identify the “healing cells” in society, which are otherwise seen as “mad” (73) according to the prevailing views of society.

“Naivety and sophistication” (73) are intertwined, not opposed to each other. Both have a shaky grasp of actual knowledge. Like common sense, sophistication ignores individual experience for the abstract and universal. On the other hand, dialectical reasoning focuses on the “concrete” (73) rather than the abstract.

The problem with the method of philosophy promoted in Hegel’s book Phenomenology, with its focus on contradictions, is that it demands a lot from modern thinkers, who have to question both their own personal perspective and the world around them. This is why contemporary philosophers complain that people no longer have a “definite point of view” (74).

Works of art defy attempts by people to compare them, but they also “want to annihilate each other” (75). Each piece of work makes an exclusive claim to representing beauty, and beauty does not appear “in the synthesis of all works” (75). By limiting beauty to each individual work of art, it leads to “the downfall of art itself” (75).

In the past, people were able to “derive meaning from all experience” (76), allowing them to experience art on an individual, subjective level that did not depend at all on outside contexts. Now, instead of relying on themselves and their “interpreting imagination” (76), people in contemplating art defer to a universal standard of beauty or critical standards decided by society. Adorno states it is better to find beauty “even in the insipid and indifferent” (77) than continuing to analyze art just by societal standards.

Next, Adorno refers to the “holiness of life” (77), which manifests in multiple things and experiences. This holiness encompasses both the beautiful and good things, and ugliness and decay as well. Just as accepting life requires also accepting death, people must recognize each work of art as holding a fragment of the holiness of life instead of something containing its own version of beauty.

Adorno remarks that the most common cause of conflicts and unhappiness between lovers is not emotional or psychological factors, just “temporal sequence” (78), such as when two potential lovers meet but one or both are already in a relationship. This contradicts the idea that love is a choice. Further, the realities of temporal sequence lead to the creation of exclusive groups, including large businesses and countries hostile to immigration. The “exclusive character of what comes first” (79) leads, Adorno argues, to things as various as a brother’s dislike for a younger brother to fascism itself. Adorno’s only solution to this conundrum is for people to stop considering each other as objects that can be possessed.

In modern times, intellectuals are pressured to show all steps in their arguments and reasoning, which is based on the liberal belief that all thoughts can be communicated and replicated by others. The value of thought is determined by its distance from previously established intellectual works. By trying to record every step in their thought, they condemn their own works to “a monotony” (80).

Adorno believes that true knowledge cannot be gained through reading the thought processes of others, but only through experience. In particular, knowledge comes from a life that is not as clear or “regimented” (81) as the stages of an intellectual’s reasoning laid out in a book.