Adorno fused personal mistrust with theory to make benevolence an index of malice

Evidence

Adorno’s criticism of Fromm, which disregarded the relation between psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalytic therapy, was an appeal to Horkheimer to treat categories such as kindness and pity in the way that Adorno himself treated theological motifs: to suspend them and only let them appear implicitly. Horkheimer saw himself, together with Pollock (and Maidon), as being opposed by a hostile world in which all human relationships were falsified and friendships with honest intentions did not exist; and Adorno saw himself, in company with Horkheimer (and Gretel), as being in the same situation. But, although Horkheimer was the more powerful of the two, Adorno’s mistrust was greater than Horkheimer’s. Adorno’s view of the world and his theoretical ideas mingled to produce a complex form of misanthropy: If one is concerned to achieve what might be possible with human beings, it is extremely difficult to remain friendly towards real people. It is already the case that benevolence is virtually an index of malice … The maliciousness of benevolence may consist in the fact that kindness offers a pretext for approving of precisely that element in people by which they prove themselves to be not merely their own victims but virtually their own hangmen. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 290

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that kindness is a pretext for approving the very element of people that makes them their own hangmen is a genuinely paradigm-bending line of pessimism.
• XREF: Connects to Adorno’s own aphoristic style in Minima Moralia and to the Institute’s decision to treat theological and ethical motifs only implicitly. — connects to: Adorno’s resentment-driven aggressiveness was deliberately cultivated as an intellectual asset — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 657
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Adorno’s resentment-driven aggressiveness was deliberately cultivated as an intellectual asset — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 657