The Social Philosophy of T.W. Adorno: An Interpretation and Defence

The following study offers an interpretation and defence of Adorno’s social philosophy. The main purpose of this thesis is to argue that a distinctive model of social philosophy unifies two of the most important strands of Adorno’s thought: his critique of philosophical idealism and his critique of western societies of late capitalism. The model of social philosophy I attribute to Adorno synthetizes those two strands of thought by asking three related questions; what are the “objects”, what is the “method” and what kind of “theory” is a critical theory of society? My aim is to interpret Adorno’s writings as providing answers to those questions, whilst defending the idiosyncratic model of social philosophy from which those answers are formulated. I proceed in three steps to this end. I begin with the dimension of theory in Adorno’s idea of a “critical theory of society” by reconstructing the dialectical epistemology Adorno extracts from his critique of Kant’s and Hegel’s respective theories of experience (Chapters I and II). In a second step (Chapter III) I turn to Adorno’s attempt to apply his dialectical epistemology as a model of social knowledge. Exploring the various commitments of that enterprise, with its merits and shortcomings, puts us in a position to generalize the method characteristic of Adorno’s social criticism (Chapter IV) and to clarify its corresponding objects (Chapter V).