Adorno read Kierkegaard’s aesthetic as a proto-materialist seed of world-change.

Evidence

Ostensibly, Kierkegaard had rejected it as well. Yet to Adorno, Kierkegaard’s renowned celebration of subjectivity unwittingly contained an identity theory. “The intention of his philosophy,” Adorno wrote, “does not aim towards the determination of subjectivity but of ontology; and subjectivity appears not as its content but as its stage (Schauplatz).” 10 Behind all his talk of the concrete, existential individual, there lurked a covert yearning for transcendent truth; “Hegel is turned inward: what for him is world history, for Kierkegaard is the individual man.” — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 259 (#expands, via linked claim)

Adorno approached Kierkegaard’s work in his Habilitation thesis in the same way that Benjamin had approached Goethe’s Elective Affinities: with a destructive critical attitude which attempted to preserve what could be saved. He was attempting to complete' Kierkegaard's philosophy, which he classified as a late form of Idealism, within the outlines of a materialist and theological theory. He saw Kierkegaard's unintentional use of images of the interiors of middle-class homes as indicating an objectless inwardness’ which revealed itself as the decisive characteristic of Kierkegaard’s philosophy. He interpreted this objectless inwardness as the historical form in which the self-satisfaction of the spirit came to light in Kierkegaard. This spirit drew all transcendence down into immanence, and so was not able to sever itself from a mythic conception of nature. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 373 (#expands, via linked claim)

These ranged, in the Meditations on Metaphysics', from the dictum that after Auschwitz all culture is garbage, to a materialist recovery of theological motifs in ideas such as the materialist longing for the resurrection of the body, or the utopia of a world from which not only existing suffering had been removed, but to which things irrevocably past and gone had also been returned. — <cite>Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2569</cite> (#corroborates`, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Adorno read Kierkegaard’s subjectivism as a covert identity theory. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 259; Adorno read Kierkegaard’s household interiors as revealing an objectless inwardness — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 373; Adorno held that art anticipating despair moves reality toward change — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2236 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno read Kierkegaard’s subjectivism as a covert identity theory. #expands (0.78) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 259
• Adorno read Kierkegaard’s household interiors as revealing an objectless inwardness #expands (0.76) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 373
• Adorno recovered theological motifs materialistically for post-Auschwitz metaphysics #corroborates (0.76) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2569
• Adorno read avant-garde literary form as anticipating a free, reconciled society #corroborates (0.75)
• Adorno held that art anticipating despair moves reality toward change #corroborates (0.74) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2236
• Adorno reads Anaximander’s fragment as a proto-bourgeois exchange saying. #exemplifies (0.74) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1451
• Adorno reframes philosophy as reflecting on missed revolutionary practice #corroborates (0.73) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1210
• Adorno chose substantive philosophy over a material theory of society #complicates (0.72) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2528
• Adorno held that metaphysics must now confront bodily materiality and waste #corroborates (0.71) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2572