A missed connection

Löwith and Adorno on progress

Bibliographic Data

ID4480757
AuthorsVictor Weisbrod (KU Leuven, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume165
Issue1
Pages20-36
Publication date2021-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThesis Eleven (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0725513620970809
OpenAlexW3097208866
LanguageEN
References cited17

Despite appearing side by side as keynote speakers at a congress in 1962 devoted to the question of progress, Löwith's and Adorno's accounts of progress have never been linked. This paper is an attempt to establish this missed connection, to reveal important connections, striking similarities, and a fundamental difference between these two eminent thinkers' work on progress. For one, Löwith diagnoses the three main problems that Adorno attempts to solve with his dialectical account of progress. Moreover, each is sympathetic towards crucial aspects of the other's account: Löwith towards Adorno's claim that progress is dialectical, Adorno towards Löwith's claim that progress necessarily has a redemptive aspect. A fundamental disagreement nevertheless divides them: whether the problem of suffering in history is part of our ontological condition, or something we must struggle against and overcome through political action. By establishing this missed connection, I hope to show how progress might still have an important role to play in our present-day historical and political consciousness

Consciousness · Dialectic · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism

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