The Materialist Reorientation of Critical Thinking in T.W. Adorno’s Philosophy

Résumé 0

This paper endeavors to explain how T. W. Adorno’s philosophy overcomes the two limitations of the traditional conception of critical thinking. Not only does this traditional conception fail to provide a determinate notion of critical thinking, it also bases it upon the idealistic presupposition of a free and autonomous individual who would be able to question conventional wisdom with the power of his thought alone. In contrast, Adorno gives critical thinking an object, a purpose, a form, a condition of possibility, an empirical genesis and the means of implementing it, and he understands all these determinations from a materialist perspective. Thus, he contributes to the project of a renewed philosophy of critical thinking, which is undeniably topical in this day and age.