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Is Wrong Life All That Is Possible? Adorno and Aquinas on Ethics Benjamin Hampshire

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Is Wrong Life All That Is Possible? Adorno and Aquinas on Ethics Benjamin Hampshire Duquesne University Duquesne Scholarship Collection Electronic Theses and Dissertations Fall 2014 Is Wrong Life All That Is Possible? Adorno and Aquinas on Ethics Benjamin Hampshire Follow this and additional works at: https://dsc.duq.edu/etd Recommended Citation Hampshire, B. (2014). Is Wrong Life All That Is Possible? Adorno and Aquinas on Ethics (Doctoral dissertation, Duquesne University). Retrieved from https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/623 This Immediate Access is brought to you for free and open access by Duquesne Scholarship Collection. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Duquesne Scholarship Collection. For more information, please contact [email protected]. IS WRONG LIFE ALL THAT IS POSSIBLE? ADORNO AND AQUINAS ON ETHICS A Dissertation Submitted to the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts Duquesne University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By Benjamin L. Hampshire December 2014 Copyright by Benjamin L. Hampshire 2014 IS WRONG LIFE ALL THAT IS POSSIBLE? ADORNO AND AQUINAS ON ETHICS By Benjamin L. Hampshire Approved December 4, 2014. __________________________________ __________________________________ Dr. James Swindal Dr. Thérèse Bonin Professor of Philosophy Associate Professor of Philosophy (Committee Chair) (Committee Member) __________________________________ __________________________________ Dr. Lambert Zuidervaart Dr. Ronald Polansky Professor of Philosophy Chair, Department of Philosophy (Committee Member) Professor of Philosophy __________________________________ Dr. James Swindal Dean, McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts iii ABSTRACT IS WRONG LIFE ALL THAT IS POSSIBLE? ADORNO AND AQUINAS ON ETHICS By Benjamin L. Hampshire December 2014 Dissertation supervised by Dr. James Swindal. Theodor Adorno’s ethical thought is encapsulated in his famous aphorism “Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.” This dissertation explicates this alarming declaration, revealing the metaphysical, epistemological, and anthropological analyses that place Adorno’s ethical thought into this intractable predicament. I argue that Adorno’s ethical thought, while of absolute importance and worthy of consideration, can be moved forward through an engagement with the ethical thought of Thomas Aquinas, toward the possibility of right life. iv DEDICATION For Jill v ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to first acknowledge and thank God, Who somehow worked through this broken vessel to bring this dissertation to a completion. To Jill, my wife, please know that I am forever grateful for your undeserved support, patience, and love. To my children, Marie, Leo, Clare, and Cecilia, I thank you for your love and prayers through these years. I especially thank Dr. James Swindal for sharing with me his intellect, knowledge, wisdom, guidance, support, and patience, without which this dissertation would have been completely impossible. I also thank Dr. Thérèse Bonin and Dr. Lambert Zuidervaart for their critical and valuable evaluations that significantly improved this dissertation. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………..iv Dedication ………………………………………………………………………………...v Acknowledgement ……………………….........................................................................vi Introduction …………………………………………………………………………….viii Chapter 1: Wrong Life …………………………………………………………………....1 Chapter 2: Adorno’s Critiques of Ethical Theory ……………………………………….61 Chapter 3: Adorno’s Ethical Theory …………………………………………………….74 Chapter 4: Thomas Aquinas and Moving Adorno Forward …………………………...107 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………..144 Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………...151 vii Introduction The post-World War II world of late capitalism presents unique ethical challenges: from genocide and weapons of mass destruction to consumerism and escapism. As such, the ethical landscape is different than those encountered by previous generations. Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), the preeminent member of the first generation of the Critical Theorists of the Frankfort School, engaged the contemporary ethical situation on a scale and with a potency few other contemporary theorists have attempted. Though only a handful of Adorno’s works are explicitly ethical, as noted Adorno scholar J.M. Bernstein has stated, those who read Adorno “are inevitably struck by how everything he wrote was infused with a stringent and commanding ethical intensity.”1 Therefore, in the search for the philosophical and ethical tools to confront and address this new situation, Theodor Adorno is a crucial philosopher to engage. Adorno has a particular, and perhaps idiosyncratic, take on the unique ethical landscape of late capitalist society. As one who thinks dialectically, his interpretations and approaches to problems can be just as complicated, varied, and paradoxical as the problems themselves. This is a strength in that it does not pretend to any simple analysis of complex conditions and speaks to an honesty in Adorno’s thought often lacking in many critiques of capitalism, the Enlightenment, and Modernity. In Adorno’s attempts to theorize the innumerable developments of contemporary capitalist society and ethically attend to them, Adorno employs his own materialist 1 J.M. Bernstein, Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), xi. viii critique2 (inspired by Karl Marx) of society and ethics, engages various historical ethical theories, and indicates an ethical vision of his own. Chapters 1-3 will expound on these three themes in Adorno’s thought. Chapter 1 elucidates Adorno’s assessment of the ethical situation and the ethical problem(s) of his contemporary European/North American society. Adorno’s statement that “wrong life cannot be lived rightly” encapsulates his position on the possibility of moral living under contemporary conditions and Chapter 1 explores and explicates how and why Adorno comes to this conclusion with regard to these conditions. Among the paths Adorno takes to this conclusion are his critique of the Enlightenment and Modernity and their relation to domination, the practical antinomies encountered under current social conditions, and the vacuous and heteronomous character of contemporary “living.”3 This lack of autonomy is developed further in Adorno’s theory of nature, that both first nature and second nature are influenced, formed, and transformed by social and historical factors, such as the capitalist exchange principle, to the degree that they often become ideological. Adorno concludes that the contemporary social context is so totalizing in its wrongness that it is inescapable and unable to be transcended either theoretically or practically. As such, within this contemporary social context we cannot live ethically, for anything we do implicates ourselves in the affirmation and maintaining of society as presently constituted. 2 Adorno’s method is variously termed immanent critique, constellations, and negative dialectics. The similarities and differences between these become apparent as they are expounded in the subsequent chapters. 3 The epigraph for Minima Moralia is “Life does not live.” Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott, (London: Verso, 1974), 19. ix Faced with this intractable problem, and due to his materialist commitments, Adorno, as Chapter 2 explains, develops a moral and ethical philosophy of critique instead of constructing a full-blown ethical system like those of previous German (and other) thinkers. In order to attempt to formulate an ethics capable of addressing the contemporary situation, Adorno turns to a critique of traditional moral theories, particularly that of Immanuel Kant. Through immanent critique and exposing the historically mediated character of Kant’s moral thought, Adorno exposes its inadequacies and ideological character. Though Adorno does make some critical remarks about virtue theory, they do not make a significant contribution to his overall ethical project. With his pessimistic assessment of the contemporary ethical situation and the inadequacy of Kant’s moral thought and virtue theory, Adorno is compelled to develop a moral theory able to address contemporary ethical problems that avoids the defects of Kantian moral theory and virtue theory and is consistent with his materialism and dialectical method. Accordingly, as Chapter 3 depicts, Adorno’s ethical theory emerges as negative, diffuse, and fragmented. As such, it is able to avoid the pitfalls of other moral conceptions and participation in and perpetuating the wrongness of late capitalist society. However, Adorno’s ethical thought reveals that steering a course that avoids these and also remains relevant and retains moral force and resonance proves problematic and precarious, if not impossible. The question to be posed to Adorno, and which Thomas Aquinas will help answer, is if the attempt to live wrong life less wrongly is all that is truly possible. Adorno’s critique of moral theory and negative imperatives may indeed be all that can be proposed under contemporary social conditions. However, because he is too x quickly dismissive of the ethical thought of Thomas Aquinas, virtue theory, and the eudaemonist ethical tradition, it is necessary to engage Adorno with it to discover if it can throw any new light on, or perhaps even solve, the problems to which Adorno calls attention. I argue that the ethical thought of Thomas Aquinas more adequately addresses some of the apparently
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