Sarahlou Wagner-Lapierre

Research Project

Adorno’s Concept of Life

My thesis focuses on Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of life. This concept runs through his entire body of work, from his initial habilitation thesis, written in 1927, through to final work on aesthetics, left unfinished in 1969. The concept of life poses many problems, as Adorno’s approaches are multiple and not necessarily compatible at first glance. On the one hand, Adorno rejects “life” and “organism” as appropriate models for understanding the relationship between a whole and its parts; for describing social ontology; and historical becoming. On the other hand, Adorno proposes an amended concept of “life,” built out of his criticisms of life in the German Idealist tradition understood in its broadest sense, ranging from Kant to Hegel. This reappraisal of the idealist concept of life is achieved by emphasizing not only the current social mutilation of life, but also the gap between this mutilated form of life and the “promise” of life, which he calls “reconciled life”. The aim of this project is to understand Adorno’s attempt to rescue the concept of life from idealist conceptions, particularly those of Kant and Hegel. The project also examines why he describes life as “damaged” under current social conditions while refusing vitalist and functionalist conceptions of social life. Finally, it turns to the question of how Adorno’s concept of life aligns in some ways and fails to align in other ways with Marx’s views on this subject.