Adorno’s Moral Philosophy

 

Adorno's moral philosophy is concerned with the effects of enlightenment on individuals leading a "morally good life" and philosophers' ability to identify what such a life may consist of. Adorno argues that the instrumentalization of reason has fundamentally undermined both, as social life in modern societies no longer coheres around a set of widely espoused moral truths and that modern societies lack a moral basis. Instead, morality has replaced morality as the integrating "cement" of social life with instrumental reasoning and the exposure of everyone to the capitalist market.

In a nihilistic world, moral beliefs and moral reasoning are held to have no ultimately rational authority, with moral claims being conceived of as inherently subjective statements expressing not an objective property of the world but the individual's own prejudices. Morality is presented as lacking any objective, public basis, and the espousal of specific moral beliefs is understood as an instrument for the assertion of one's own, partial interests. Adorno attempts to critically analyze this condition, criticizing nihilism rather than nihilism itself.

Adorno's account of nihilism rests on his understanding of reason and how modern societies have come to conceive of legitimate knowledge. He argues that morality has fallen victim to the distinction drawn between objective and subjective knowledge. Objective knowledge consists of empirically verifiable facts about material phenomena, while subjective knowledge consists of all that remains, including evaluative and normative statements about the world. Under the force of the instrumentalization of reason and positivism, we have come to conceive of the only meaningfully existing entities as empirically verifiable facts: statements on the structure and content of reality. Moral values and beliefs, in contrast, are denied such a status, making morality inherently prejudicial in character.

Adorno identifies the effects of nihilism within moral philosophy itself, paying particular attention to the moral theory of Immanuel Kant. Adorno argues that Kant's account of the moral law demonstrates the extent to which morality has been reduced to the status of subjective knowledge. Kant attempts to establish valid moral reasoning upon a series of utterly formal, procedural rules or maxims, which exclude even the pursuit of human happiness as a legitimate component of moral reasoning.

Adorno criticizes Kant for emptying the moral law of any and all reference to substantive conceptions of human well-being or the 'good life'. He believes that Kant's moral philosophy is not sufficiently reflexive and fails to identify the effects of these conditions. Adorno does not think that nihilism can be overcome by a mere act of will or affirming some substantive moral vision of the good life. He does not seek to philosophically circumnavigate the extent to which moral questions concerning the possible nature of the 'good life' have become so profoundly problematic for us.

Adorno's role as a critical theorist is to retain and promote an awareness of the contingency of such conditions and the extent to which they can be changed. His dystopian account of morality in modern societies follows from his argument that such societies are enthralled by instrumental reasoning and the prioritization of 'objective facts'. Nihilism serves to fundamentally frustrate the ability of morality to impose authoritative limits upon the application of instrumental reason.