Espen Hammer
Biographic Data
| ID | 3760559 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Espen Hammer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Espen |
| FAMILY NAME | Hammer |
| SIGNATURE | HAMMER E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Essex |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1949 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
On Authority in The Trial
Immanent Critiques
A Companion to Adorno
The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School
Reason, Agency, and History
This essay begins by determining the nature of Richard Eldridge's project. Referring mainly to writings by Immanuel Kant and Walter Benjamin, I view his attempt as considering what it involves to be an agent in a historical setting. According to Eldridge, the correct answer will have to involve the right combination of Kant's emphasis on rational self‐determination and Benjamin's account of spontaneous (yet nonrational) self‐transformation. In re…
Literature and Marxism
This chapter outlines the classical Marxist view of ideology and offers some examples of how it may apply to concrete literary works. Ideology is a socially constituted illusion serving the interest of the ruling class in society. It discusses three objections to the classical theory. It may seem reductive; it may wrongly seem to suggest that ideologies are exclusively illusory; and it may unduly seem to privilege literary realism. The chapter fo…
Happiness and Pleasure in Adorno's Aesthetics
Since Kant, the role of pleasure in the appreciation of art and beauty has been a frequent issue in German aesthetics. This article discusses Adorno's aesthetics in the light of this question. According to Alexander Nehamas, modernist art and aesthetics, starting with Kant and culminating in the twentieth century with Clement Greenberg, sacrificed pleasure for the sake of other aesthetic values. Although Adorno also was a deeply committed moderni…
Adorno's Modernism
Theodor W. Adorno's aesthetics has dominated discussions about art and aesthetic modernism since World War II, and continues to inform contemporary theorizing. Situating Adorno's aesthetic theory in the context of post-Kantian European philosophy, Espen Hammer explores Adorno's critical view of art as engaged in reconsidering fundamental features of our relation to nature and reality. His book is structured around what Adorno regarded as the cont…
Adorno and the Political
Interest in Theodor W. Adorno continues to grow in the English-speaking world as the significance of his contribution to philosophy, social and cultural theory, as well as aesthetics is increasingly recognized. Espen Hammer’s lucid book is the first to properly analyze the political implications of his work, paying careful attention to Adorno’s work on key thinkers such as Kant, Hegel and Benjamin. Examining Adorno’s political experiences and ass…
Hegel as a Theorist of Secularization
Hegel's philosophy of religion is characterized by what seems to be a deep tension. On the one hand, Hegel claims to be a Christian thinker, viewing religion, and in particular Christianity, as a manifestation of the absolute. On the other hand, however, he seems to view modernity as largely secular, devoid of authoritative claims to transcendence. Modernity is secular in the political sense of requiring the state to be neutral when it comes to m…
Marcuse's critical theory of modernity
Analyzing Eros and Civilization, in this article I argue that Marcuse is incapable of offering an account of the empirical dynamics that may lead to the social change he envisions, and that his appeal to the benefits of automatism is blind to its negative effects. I then claim that Marcuse's vision of the good life as centered on libidinal self-realization, if actualized, would threaten the freedom of individuals and potentially undermine their s…
Heidegger’s Theory of Boredom
German Idealism
Introduction: German Idealism, Naturalism, and Metaphysics 1. The Present Situation of Philosophy: The Limits of Naturalism and the Interest of German Idealism 2. From Quine to Hegel: Naturalism, Anti-Realism, and Maimon's Question Quid Facti 3. Dark Days: Anglophone Scholarship Since the 1960s: The Legacy of Hegel's Philosophy 4. Hegelians - Young and Younger 5. Habermas and the Kant-Hegel Contrast: Brandom and Hegel 6. Hegel and Brandom on Norm…
Interrupting Auschwitz
Adorno and extreme evil
By comparing Adorno's conception of evil with those of Kant and Levinas, it is argued that the commitment to a notion of materialist transcendence, which Adorno introduces as a philosophical response to Auschwitz, is compatible with an equally strong commitment to philosophical modernity and autonomy. Whereas Kant's moral theology, on the one hand, proceeds in a too immanent fashion, and Levinas's heterology, on the other, in seeking to explode o…
Minding the world
Against Jürgen Habermas’ view that Adorno’s thinking is characterized by a commitment to a philosophy of consciousness, and that therefore the only alternative to identitarian reason is to appeal to an intuitive competence operating beyond the range of conceptual thought, it is arged (1) that Adorno conceptualizes the modern epistemic subject (the subject of a philosophy of consciousness) as based on a reification, and (2) that he denies the poss…
X. The Onkelos Targum
Adorno's Modernism
Theodor W. Adorno's aesthetics has dominated discussions about art and aesthetic modernism since World War II, and continues to inform contemporary theorizing. Situating Adorno's aesthetic theory in the context of post-Kantian European philosophy, Espen Hammer explores Adorno's critical view of art as engaged in reconsidering fundamental features of our relation to nature and reality. His book is structured around what Adorno regarded as the cont…
Immanent Critiques
Adorno and extreme evil
By comparing Adorno's conception of evil with those of Kant and Levinas, it is argued that the commitment to a notion of materialist transcendence, which Adorno introduces as a philosophical response to Auschwitz, is compatible with an equally strong commitment to philosophical modernity and autonomy. Whereas Kant's moral theology, on the one hand, proceeds in a too immanent fashion, and Levinas's heterology, on the other, in seeking to explode o…
Minding the world
Against Jürgen Habermas’ view that Adorno’s thinking is characterized by a commitment to a philosophy of consciousness, and that therefore the only alternative to identitarian reason is to appeal to an intuitive competence operating beyond the range of conceptual thought, it is arged (1) that Adorno conceptualizes the modern epistemic subject (the subject of a philosophy of consciousness) as based on a reification, and (2) that he denies the poss…
X. The Onkelos Targum
Adorno and extreme evil
By comparing Adorno's conception of evil with those of Kant and Levinas, it is argued that the commitment to a notion of materialist transcendence, which Adorno introduces as a philosophical response to Auschwitz, is compatible with an equally strong commitment to philosophical modernity and autonomy. Whereas Kant's moral theology, on the one hand, proceeds in a too immanent fashion, and Levinas's heterology, on the other, in seeking to explode o…
Minding the world
Against Jürgen Habermas’ view that Adorno’s thinking is characterized by a commitment to a philosophy of consciousness, and that therefore the only alternative to identitarian reason is to appeal to an intuitive competence operating beyond the range of conceptual thought, it is arged (1) that Adorno conceptualizes the modern epistemic subject (the subject of a philosophy of consciousness) as based on a reification, and (2) that he denies the poss…
Interrupting Auschwitz
German Idealism
Introduction: German Idealism, Naturalism, and Metaphysics 1. The Present Situation of Philosophy: The Limits of Naturalism and the Interest of German Idealism 2. From Quine to Hegel: Naturalism, Anti-Realism, and Maimon's Question Quid Facti 3. Dark Days: Anglophone Scholarship Since the 1960s: The Legacy of Hegel's Philosophy 4. Hegelians - Young and Younger 5. Habermas and the Kant-Hegel Contrast: Brandom and Hegel 6. Hegel and Brandom on Norm…
Marcuse's critical theory of modernity
Analyzing Eros and Civilization, in this article I argue that Marcuse is incapable of offering an account of the empirical dynamics that may lead to the social change he envisions, and that his appeal to the benefits of automatism is blind to its negative effects. I then claim that Marcuse's vision of the good life as centered on libidinal self-realization, if actualized, would threaten the freedom of individuals and potentially undermine their s…
Heidegger’s Theory of Boredom
Adorno and the Political
Interest in Theodor W. Adorno continues to grow in the English-speaking world as the significance of his contribution to philosophy, social and cultural theory, as well as aesthetics is increasingly recognized. Espen Hammer’s lucid book is the first to properly analyze the political implications of his work, paying careful attention to Adorno’s work on key thinkers such as Kant, Hegel and Benjamin. Examining Adorno’s political experiences and ass…
Hegel as a Theorist of Secularization
Hegel's philosophy of religion is characterized by what seems to be a deep tension. On the one hand, Hegel claims to be a Christian thinker, viewing religion, and in particular Christianity, as a manifestation of the absolute. On the other hand, however, he seems to view modernity as largely secular, devoid of authoritative claims to transcendence. Modernity is secular in the political sense of requiring the state to be neutral when it comes to m…
Literature and Marxism
This chapter outlines the classical Marxist view of ideology and offers some examples of how it may apply to concrete literary works. Ideology is a socially constituted illusion serving the interest of the ruling class in society. It discusses three objections to the classical theory. It may seem reductive; it may wrongly seem to suggest that ideologies are exclusively illusory; and it may unduly seem to privilege literary realism. The chapter fo…
Happiness and Pleasure in Adorno's Aesthetics
Since Kant, the role of pleasure in the appreciation of art and beauty has been a frequent issue in German aesthetics. This article discusses Adorno's aesthetics in the light of this question. According to Alexander Nehamas, modernist art and aesthetics, starting with Kant and culminating in the twentieth century with Clement Greenberg, sacrificed pleasure for the sake of other aesthetic values. Although Adorno also was a deeply committed moderni…
Adorno's Modernism
Theodor W. Adorno's aesthetics has dominated discussions about art and aesthetic modernism since World War II, and continues to inform contemporary theorizing. Situating Adorno's aesthetic theory in the context of post-Kantian European philosophy, Espen Hammer explores Adorno's critical view of art as engaged in reconsidering fundamental features of our relation to nature and reality. His book is structured around what Adorno regarded as the cont…
The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School
Reason, Agency, and History
This essay begins by determining the nature of Richard Eldridge's project. Referring mainly to writings by Immanuel Kant and Walter Benjamin, I view his attempt as considering what it involves to be an agent in a historical setting. According to Eldridge, the correct answer will have to involve the right combination of Kant's emphasis on rational self‐determination and Benjamin's account of spontaneous (yet nonrational) self‐transformation. In re…
A Companion to Adorno
On Authority in The Trial
Immanent Critiques
Philosophy (15 works) · Epistemology (10 works) · Critical Theory and Philosophy (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Art (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Modernity (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Psychology (4 works)