Hegel: Three Studies

Abstract

This short masterwork in twentieth-century philosophy provides both a major reinterpretation of Hegel and insight into evolution of Adorno's critical theory. The first study focuses on relationship of reason, individual, and society in Hegel, defending him against criticism that he was merely an apologist for bourgeois society. The second study examines experiential content of Hegel's idealism, considering notion of experience in relation to immediacy, empirical reality, science, and society. The third study, Skoteinos, is an unusual and fascinating essay in which Adorno lays out his thoughts on understanding Hegel. In his reflections, which spring from his experience teaching at Goethe University in Frankfurt, questions of textual and philosophical interpretation are intertwined.Rescuing truth value of Hegel's work is a recurring theme of critical theory of Frankfurt School, and nowhere is this goal pursued with more insight than in these three studies. The core problem Adorno sets for himself is how to read Hegel in a way that comprehends both work and its historical context, thereby allowing conclusions to be drawn that may seem on surface to be exactly opposed to what Hegel wrote but that are, nevertheless, valid as present truth of work. It is elaboration of this method of interpretation, a negative dialectic, that was Adorno's underlying goal.Adorno's efforts to salvage contemporaneity of Hegel's thought form part of his response to increasingly tight net of social control in aftermath of World War II. In this, his work is related to very different attempts to undermine reified thinking undertaken by various French theorists. The continued development of what Adorno called the administered world has only increased relevance of his efforts.

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