Peter Gordon, “A Precarious Happiness: Adorno on Negativity and Normativity”

David Lipson Memorial Fund

Peter Gordon (Harvard University)

“A Precarious Happiness”

Date: Monday, March 1 at 4:00pm

From the Speaker: “Theodor W. Adorno is often interpreted as a philosopher who saw modern society in purely negative terms, as if it were a landscape plunged into absolute darkness.  This "negativist" reading is well-known insofar as it presents us with an unworkable problem:  how does Adorno justify his own critical practice  if he cannot identify any normative resources in the current social order?  In this paper, I argue that the negativist interpretation of Adorno is overdrawn and misrepresents the normative resources that animate his philosophy.  Specifically, the negativist interpretation obscures his appeal to materialist and embodied experiences of happiness that bear the disfigurement of our current society but also point beyond it.”

**This event will be conducted via Zoom. To attend the lecture, please visit *this* link on Monday, March 1^st at 4pm.