政治哲学工作坊第三十九讲：非同一性抑或交往行为？重思阿多诺与哈贝马斯

Department of Philosophy (Zhuhai)，Sun Yat-sen University

Non-Identity or Communicative Action? Reconsidering Adorno and Habermas (Virtual）

Eric NELSON, 

Professor, Division of Humanities, University of Copenhagen, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Jun-Hyeok KWAK,

Professor, Department of Philosophy (Zhuhai), Sun Yat-sen University

Dec. 8. 2021 15:00

Jürgen Habermas declared the philosophy of his teacher Theodor W. Adorno to be a dead-end after his death and developed his own theory of normativity and communicative action in confrontation with what he perceived to be the failures of Adorno’s critical social theory. This paper, informed by arguments made in my recent 2020 book on Adorno and Levinas, will offer a reevaluation of the continuing critical and radical potential of Adorno’s conception of critical models, the domination of nature, normative minimalism, restrictive and responsive forms of mimesis, dissonance and non-identity, and the materiality of the other in light of the critique and normatively-oriented alternative developed by Habermas. I will examine ways in which Adorno’s heuristic critical models, analysis of the domination of nature, and ethics of non-identity are more appropriate under contemporary crisis conditions than the strong anthropocentric normative model of communicative participation advocated in Habermas.