This compelling collection on Adorno’s aphoristic masterwork snaps it into contemporary focus with a range of essays addressing ‘damaged life’ in the present, from the resurgence of fascism in politics to the colonisation of life by work and the escalation of ecological violence. Adorno, it turns out, has been waiting for us in the twenty-first century.
Nicholas Lawrence, University of Warwick, UK
Minima Moralia is the exquisite entrée into Adorno’s thought: intense aphorisms that quietly juxtapose and interweave autobiographical reflection, miniatures of sociological critique, and philosophical analysis. The essays in Filar and Irr’s volume are the perfect companion for contemporary readers, pointedly focusing on the bond between the textures of ordinary life and fascism; animality, racism, and anthropocentrism; aphorisms as artwork-like modes of writing that resist the calls instrumental reason and capitalist exchange; and Adorno’s “reflections from damaged life” as the agonized adumbration of life in the Anthropocene. Together these essays reveal Adorno as a challenging and urgent contemporary.
Jay Bernstein, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research, USA