Adorno treated appeals to kindness in leftist critique as a bourgeois-individualist argumentative trick.

Evidence

No, precisely when Freud is criticized from the left, as he is by us, things like the silly argument about a `lack of kindness’ cannot be permitted. This is exactly the trick used by bourgeois individualists against Marx. I must tell you that I see a real threat in this article to the line which the journal takes, and I would be grateful if you would pass on my objections to Fromm in whatever form seems appropriate to you. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 288

Categorization

• SHARE: The exact flavor of Adorno’s 1936 complaints is catnip for anyone steeped in Frankfurt School gossip.
• XREF: connects to: Adorno wanted kindness and pity suspended, appearing only implicitly like theological motifs — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1110
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Adorno wanted kindness and pity suspended, appearing only implicitly like theological motifs — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1110