Sarahlou Wagner-Lapierre - Center for Post-Kantian Philosophy

Sarahlou Wagner-Lapierre is a PhD student in philosophy at the Université de Montréal under the supervision of Iain Macdonald. Her thesis focuses on the concept of life in the work of Theodor W. Adorno. She holds a grant from the Fonds de recherche du Québec. She has completed a master’s dissertation on Adorno’s theme of imagination, with funding from the Fonds de recherche du Québec and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada). She also holds a master’s degree in architecture and has been working as a researcher in this field for the past ten years.

Research Project

« Rien faire comme une bête ». Adorno on the Teleology of Labour

My research aims to shed light on why Adorno claims to be the heir of the idealist tradition with regard to his concept of life. More specifically, I seek to understand the inflections this concept undergoes as a result of his critical treatment of Kant’s, Hegel’s and Marx’s thoughts on life. This leads me to interrogate the network of concepts surrounding Adorno’s theme of life around the notions of mutilated life, reconciled life and right life.
The first part of this research focuses on the reconciled life that Adorno describes as the potential result of the abolition of lack and the abolition of labour. If the entanglement of lack and labour already indicates the importance of Hegel’s thought in Adorno’s conception of the reconciled life, I intend to explore the implication of this abolition of labour from the point of view of Marx’s theory. Adorno calls this abolition the ‘teleology of labour’, i.e. the teleology according to which labour tends towards its own abolition. How is it that this abolition appears not only as a blocked potential but also as responding to a certain form of teleology? How does Adorno describe the consequences of such a potential abolition? This research should lead to a better understanding of the conceptual significance of teleology in Adorno’s philosophy.