Adorno criticized Benjamin for dissolving the subject into objective processes.

Evidence

In an essay he wrote after Benjamin’s tragic suicide in 1940, Adorno complained: … His target is not an allegedly overinflated subjectivism but rather the notion of a subjective dimension itself. Between myth and reconciliation, the poles of his philosophy, the subject evaporates. Before his Medusan glance, man turns into the stage on which an objective process unfolds. For this reason Benjamin’s philosophy is no less a source of terror than a promise of happiness. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 268

Categorization

• QUESTION: Which essay is this? The critique ‘Medusan glance’ of Benjamin’s subject-dissolving philosophy would be worth tracing to the specific 1940 text.
• XREF: This internal Frankfurt School critique parallels the later Habermas critique of Adorno himself and the broader debate about whether critical theory preserved the individual against totality. — connects to: Adorno’s criticisms of Benjamin’s Marxism reveal his own conception of Marxian critique — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 221; For Benjamin, completed criticism dissolves individual works into a dazzled idea

Broader Connections

• Adorno’s criticisms of Benjamin’s Marxism reveal his own conception of Marxian critique #expands (0.78) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 221