Adorno and Bloch regarded each other with contempt despite shared critical-theory concerns

Evidence

But the relationship between Adorno and Bloch was marked more by contempt than by any sense that they were allies. Bloch saw Adorno as a renegade pupil. Adorno rejected Bloch because of what he saw as his undisciplined, blustering' style of philosophizing. He also found unacceptable Bloch's elevation of hope to the status of a principle, and his concept of reconciliation with nature that included the idea of a natura naturans, unreflected nature, with subjective status. What may also have divided them was that Bloch had all his life distanced himself from the academic system and from current disputes in philosophy and the philosophy of science and, unconcerned with controversies like the positivist dispute or the critique of Heidegger, stood out in the academic and intellectual landscape as a monolithic block, a Marxist Schelling’, as Habermas once described him. In addition, Adorno was certainly still afraid of contact with the `communist’ Bloch. Bloch had been a Stalinist, and had supported the Moscow show trials as being measures necessary for the defence of the world’s only socialist country, which was under threat. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2455

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the theme of inner Frankfurt School rivalries and to Bloch’s principle of hope versus Adorno’s pessimism — a recurring fault line in critical theory.