The humanism of critical theory

The Frankfurt School’s ‘realer humanismus’

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11340887
AutoresAlice Nilsson (0000-0003-1021-2982, Flinders University, autor correspondente)
Ano2025
Volume51
Fascículo5
Páginas727-746
Data de publicação2025-06-01
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPhilosophy & Social Criticism (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0191-4537 • E-ISSN: 1461-734X
EditoraSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/01914537231170904
OpenAlexW4366495645
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas12

Theodor Adorno has been quoted as responding to the Humanist Union stating ‘I might possibly be willing to join if your club had been called an inhuman union, but I could not join one that calls itself “humanist”’. Adorno’s opposition to forms of humanism (both liberal and Marxist) which posit the existence of our humanity is reflected in readings of The Frankfurt Institute’s history such as that produced by Martin Jay. While this is the case, one of Adorno’s highly admired students, Alfred Schmidt, commemorated his teacher by proclaiming him a ‘philosopher of Real Humanism’. In categorising Adorno’s work as embodying a ‘Real Humanism’, Schmidt points towards an understanding and orientation towards the human (and our understanding of it) which cannot be accurately characterised through the philosophies of Humanism and Anti-Humanism as oppositional viewpoints. Rather, the Real Humanism of Adorno (as well as some of his fellow travellers) understands the human as the negative image of our currently existing society’s inhumanity, and urges us to take an ethical orientation towards the constitution of the human through the abolition of our inhumanity. If we, like Adorno, are to believe in the new categorical imperative that we must make sure ‘that Auschwitz never repeats itself, so that nothing similar ever happen[s] again’, then we must fundamentally orient ourselves towards the goal of ‘real humanism’ – a society free from the domination of ourselves and the other

Aesthetics · Constitution · Epistemology · Humanism · Humanity · Political science · Sociology · Theology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism

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