Adorno On Late Modernity and Unfreedom: Reflections in a Global Era

Posted by Edward Grey on September 9th, 2021

Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno, one of the most enigmatically associated names with the Frankfurt School of critical theory movement. Adorno argued that the concept of societies didn\'t exist before the early 19^th century, whereas the notions of \'nation-state\' began with the Stoics in ancient Greece (Philosophical Elements of Theory of Society; Adorno, 2019). In a Hegelianism vain, the society then forms a \'totality\' that has no \'outside\'. It might appear that the stark contrast between the \'society\' and \'state\' is fanciful, but it\'s important to remember that Adorno, at this point, had set himself the task of critiquing late capitalism—social relations found in a developed, or rather crudely, the \'Western\' world after WWII.

Society, in this constructed sense, emerged with the establishment of embryonic market relations during the early stages of industrial capitalism (Adorno, 2019). Just like the Middle Ages, its structure isn\'t static even today. Adorno refers to a \'Society\' that\'s rather post-capitalist, which is marked by the social mobility and dynamics expressed with changeable occupations and social roles. In addition, it\'s marked by multiple contradictions and antagonisms- between a group and an individual, between groups, or between an individual\'s desires and the system-wide tasks. It\'s rather difficult, and sometimes impossible, to neatly sort out the faulty elements from good. Adorno, therefore, believes that such societies can only be understood through equally contradictory and complex dialectical methods that are sublimated into the philosophical theories of society (Adorno, 2019).

Late capitalism is, therefore, one of the most palpable core aspects that represent the epoch of late modernity. Adorno strives to show that the contradictions present within the late capitalist societies are not necessarily fueled or limited by a class struggle between capital and labor. This is because the working class has been integrated or co-opted by the system to attain economic affluence (Adorno, 2019), as well as the advent of trade unions and social security programs.

The current social system, according to Adorno, thus has the capacity for recruiting individuals to serve its own purposes, which sometimes might run counter to the true interests of these individuals as human beings or producers of value. It leads to \'atomization\' of social relations when the workers no longer exhibit any mutual solidarity but become competitors instead (Adorno, 2019).

It\'s easy to recognize Marx\'s theory about alienation in this argument, but there\'s a difference. Alienation for Marx was ultimately linked to value in the sense of an economic term related to the market exchange or scarcity (Joseph, 2003). However, Adorno saw \'value\' in a much broader sense—he included, for example, the aesthetic value associated with experiencing a stunning art object. The possibilities for appreciation of value are generally deflated in late modernity because it gives individuals fewer and fewer options to enact themselves as free agents.

Adorno diagnoses late modernity as one that constitutes the condition of unfreedom. He argues that freedom becomes threatened due to the trends of regression and dehumanization, which, dialectically or paradoxically, is the unintended outcome of the progress associated with the leitmotiv of \'Enlightenment\'.

Rationalism and scientism are the other two aspects of late modernity, which, according to Adorno, constitute the corrosive or negative aspects of Enlightenment. Scientism represents a rather exaggerated belief in technological rationality based on science to be a quantification-based, value-free mode of inquiry. Rationalism, on the other hand, is the related belief that every societal problem can easily be resolved by using reason.

Reason here stands for an instrumental reason which is devoid of all ethical ends. Foucault (1995) anticipated this portrait of the society, which involves percentages, averages, and statistical classifications to steer or order human conduct. In such a scenario, the employees would become \'human resources\', a patient would not be seen as a concrete individual but rather as another medical \'case\', and so on. It\'s an abstract view of the society where people are forced to reckon with a society that is standing over, against, and inside the individual who can no longer find any room for a concrete living experience (Adorno, 2019).

Simply put, in late modernity, \'reason\' turns against itself, whereas Enlightenment aimed to deploy substantial reason in order to free humanity from superstitions and fears, while ensuring control over the blind forces of nature. It has made reason to become so instrumentalized that it regresses into unreason or irrationality.

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About the Author

The author is an International Relations student, focused on researching philosophical implications that affect how societies function. She is currently researching about Adorno, and since his brilliant works can\'t be summed into a piece, she engages with them via different approaches to make sense of his arguments and counterarguments while understanding how his theories help cultivate societies or vice versa.