ADORNOVA NEGATIVNA FILOZOFIJA MORÂLA
ADORNO’S NEGATIVE PHILOSOPHY OF MORALITY

Summary/Abstract: In debates over ethics one may obtain a good overview if the debate is classed according to whether it is in harmony with or contrary to universalism. On one side are Hare, Rawls and Habermas, and on the other Taylor, Rorty and Baumen, with between them Nussbaum, Benhabib and Honneth. What has Adorno to do with this? His reflections on the aporia of a righteous life and rational practice lie within the context of the non-ethical discourse of the old critical theory of society. In “Minima Moralia,” he draws attention to the link between morals and repression, and puts forward the thesis that ever since ancient times, norms and moral principles have been the theoretical underpinnings of social management and that there can be no true life in the counterfeit totality of an advanced capitalist society (Adorno, 1980, 210; 43). But the problem of universalization in the philosophy of morals is one that Adorno did not address at all. For all that, I am of the view that he had a great deal to do with it. Adorno can help us to understand moral philosophical universalism in all its ambivalence, which can be seen in the ethical controversy between the universalist and the particularist.

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