Critique of politics

Adorno on Durkheim

Bibliographic Data

ID2404883
AuthorsJulia Christ (corresponding author)
Year2017
Volume17
Issue4
Pages331-341
Publication date2017-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Classical Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1468-795X • E-ISSN: 1741-2897
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1468795x17736127
OpenAlexW2770520554
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited9

This paper analyzes a dual relationship between Adorno and Durkheim: on the one hand, Adorno adopts Durkheim's perspective on society, describing it as an obscure, opaque thing that individuals cannot understand by themselves; on the other, he tries to get out of the opacity that he recognizes as a structural moment of the society he lives in. This last point engages us in a discussion of the relationship between political sociology and philosophy of emancipation, which allows to study in a new perspective the only text Adorno published in his lifetime on Durkheim: his preface to Philosophy and Sociology, the critical violence of which is well known and often interpreted as a complete rejection of Durkheim's sociology. The thesis of this article is that the conflict between Adorno and Durkheim is a political one and that the division between the two authors lies in their evaluation of the capacity of the modern capitalist society to produce out of itself common ideals that assure the justice of the actual social order

Critical theory · Economic Justice · Emancipation · Epistemology · Politics · Social science · Sociological imagination · Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism

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