Adorno's empiricism
On intellectual and metaphysical experience
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21395240 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tom Whyman (0000-0003-0939-8134, Department of Philosophy University of Liverpool Liverpool UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-23 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Southern Journal of Philosophy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0038-4283 • E-ISSN: 2041-6962 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/sjp.70053 |
| OpenAlex | W7165683390 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 5 |
Adorno's work contains pregnant references to the concepts of both “intellectual” and “metaphysical” experience. While the concept of metaphysical experience figures relatively prominently in the Adorno literature, intellectual experience has been largely neglected—indeed to the point that certain scholars have asserted that the two concepts are in fact the same. In this article, I demonstrate that they are not, while also showing how the concept of intellectual experience is somehow key for Adorno's critical theory. The having of “metaphysical experiences,” meanwhile, is shown to be a condition on the possibility of having intellectual experiences. Ultimately, I argue that we might read Adorno as a distinctive, rather heterodox sort of empiricist
Key (lock) · Metaphysics · Order (exchange) · Point (geometry) · sort · Work (physics) · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |