The Bounded Life
Adorno, Dickens, and Metaphysics
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12411696 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Helen Small (0000-0002-9362-8141, University of Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2004 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 547-563 |
| Publication date | 2004-09-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Victorian Literature and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1060-1503 • E-ISSN: 1470-1553 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1060150304000658 |
| OpenAlex | W2016710539 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 6 |
T HEODOR ADORNO'S LATE LECTURES on Metaphysics propose a “shocking thesis”: “metaphysics began with Aristotle” (15). A “doubly shocking” thesis, Adorno tells his audience, because it gives credit where credit is not usually given, and declines to give it where most students of philosophy would understand that it belongs–with Plato (18). The Platonic doctrine of Ideas misses the essential criterion for metaphysics. Plato never fully accepted that the tension between the sphere of transcendence and the sphere of “direct experience” is not merely an adjunct of metaphysical inquiry but its defining subject matter (18). Aristotle understood this, and understood also that metaphysics has always a “twofold aim”; for, even as Aristotelian metaphysics criticizes Plato's attempt to define essence in opposition to the world of the senses, it tries to “extract an essential being from the sensible, empirical world, and thereby to save it.” True metaphysics, Adorno claims, is an effort to go beyond thought in the very act of defining the boundaries of thought. In his words, it is “the exertion of thought to save what at the same time it destroys” (20)
Art · Doctrine · Epistemology · Literature · Metaphysics · Opposition (politics · Subject (documents · Theology · Transcendence (philosophy · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.15 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2013 - 2022 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |