Thinking about Thinking in Adorno's Minima Moralia

This article looks at several sections of Minima Moralia where Adorno talks explicitly about the need for genuine thinking and what that might consist in. First, I argue that Hegel and Nietzsche are the two guiding thinkers behind this work, and I show how they express two opposing tendencies of thinking—aphoristic and dialectical—that can inspire and enhance each other. Then, in the main part of the article, I identify four significant claims in Adorno’s critical reflections on thinking: (1) that thinking is the enemy of common sense; (2) that thinking is not the same thing as problem-solving; (3) that thinking is not inherently linear in nature; and (4) that thinking involves lingering with the particular or allowing the other to be. I conclude that Adorno’s reflection on the difficulty of thinking in modern life is a key to his account of philosophy in the contemporary world

Aesthetics · Convergent thinking · Creative thinking · Creativity · Critical systems thinking · Critical thinking · Dialectic · Epistemology · Hegelianism · Lateral thinking · Parallel thinking · Sociology · Vertical thinking · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Adorno’s negative dialectics and its debt to Nietzsche

  Open Access•Nektarios Kastrinakis•Philosophy & Social Criticism•2025

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• Hegel

  Open Access•G W F Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel et al.•Hegel•1991

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• The Melancholy Science

  A Anthony Smith, G Rose•Contemporary Sociology A Journal…•1982

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• Lingering with the Particular

  Roger Foster•Telos•2011

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• No Individual Can Resist

  Open Access•R Jaeggi•Constellations•2005

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• Taking On the Stigma of Inauthenticity

  Martin Jay•New German Critique•2006

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