Adorno read Kierkegaard’s subjectivism as a covert identity theory.

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

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the later critique that existentialism — like Bergson — smuggled in immediacy and ontology despite its anti-Hegelian posturing. — connects to: Adorno’s identification of exchange with identity logic is meta-economic, not capitalist — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1298; Adorno read Kierkegaard’s household interiors as revealing an objectless inwardness — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 373; Philosophy as a way of life survived among non-academic mavericks like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 56 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Adorno’s identification of exchange with identity logic is meta-economic, not capitalist #expands (0.78) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1298