Adorno’s Concept of Life

In this important and engaging new book, Alastair Morgan offers a detailed examination of the concept of life in Adorno’s philosophy. He relates Adorno’s thought in this context to a number of key thinkers in the history of Continental philosophy, including Marx, Hegel, Heidegger and Agamben, and provides an argument for the relevance and importance of Adorno’s critical philosophy of life at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Crucially, Morgan offers a new framework for understanding the relation between concepts of life and a critical philosophy.The concept of life has previously received little attention in Adorno scholarship. However it is a constant theme and problem running throughout Adorno’s work, from his early critiques of life-philosophies to his late philosophy of metaphysical experience as the possibility of life. The idea that Adorno’s philosophy is in need of or lacking in a fundamental ontology has been the subject of a great deal of critical attention, but this has rarely been examined through an analysis of the concept of life. Furthermore, philosophies of life have seen a resurgence in recent years (particularly with a renewed interest in Bergson’s philosophy via the critical reception of Deleuze’s philosophy). Adorno’s Concept of Life is a necessary and timely study that offers a distinctive interpretation of Adorno’s philosophy, and will be of central interest to anyone working on Adorno. Furthermore, it provides a powerful interpretation of the critical force of Adorno’s philosophy, that will contribute to the renewed interest in the concept of life within contemporary philosophy.