Critique of subject and of logic of identity in Theodor Adorno: delineation of a negative dialectic

• Grant number: 11/20822-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: April 01, 2012
• End date: May 02, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Epistemology
• Principal Investigator: Vladimir Pinheiro Safatle
• Grantee: Felipe Catalani
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 14/14913-0 - Aesthetic truth in Adorno, BE.EP.IC

Abstract

Written in 1969, the last year of the author's life, the essay "Subject and Object" is a high point in Theodor W. Adorno's critical theory. Beginning with this text, we search to investigate the subject-object relation in it's constitutive character in the scope of a critique of kantian transcendental philosophy. It concerns at the same time a deepening and also a rupture with the critical project of the "Dialectic of Enlightenment" (1947), in which the negative relation between reason and society was firstly estabilished. The radicality of the cited essay approximates conceptually as much historically to his "Negative Dialectics" (1966). Adorno demonstrates how Kant's transcendental subject is in a strait relation to the social form in which it appears. In this sense, Kant's knowledge aporia reappears in the entire modern and contemporary philosophy, so that Adorno's critique reaches the fundament of all philosophy produced since then. We intend to comprehend how "knowledge critique is critique of society, and vice-versa", beyond a mere exegetical lecture of the text, making a counterpoint to Adorno with other contemporary critical perspectives.