Staying Alive

Adorno and Habermas on Self-Preservation under Late Capitalism

Bibliographic Data

ID7093462
AuthorsDeborah Cook (corresponding author)
Year2006
Volume18
Issue3
Pages433-447
Publication date2006-05-31
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueRethinking Marxism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0893-5696 • E-ISSN: 1475-8059
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/08935690600748173
OpenAlexW2057029917
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited14

I explore the points of contention between Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas that account for their divergent claims about self-preservation, and maintain that Adorno has the more defensible view. Although both thinkers agree that the task of material self-preservation has largely been assumed by the welfare state and the capitalist economy, Adorno views this development as destructive and self-destructive while Habermas thinks it has benefited the lifeworld by relieving it of the burden of materially reproducing itself. Unlike Habermas, who rejects the idea of a collective subject, Adorno believes that only such a subject, conscious of its instinctual impulses and directing them toward the preservation of humanity and the environing world on which it depends for its survival, would make self-preservation rational

Capitalism · Economics · Epistemology · Humanity · Lifeworld · Neoclassical economics · Political science · Sociology · Subject (documents · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy

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