Kant, Adorno, and the Forms of History sets the works of Theodor Adorno, Immanuel Kant and Peter Weiss in dialogue, revealing how an interrogation of the aesthetics of ''the whole'' and the conception of history in Western thought reveals new ways of thinking about history and historically. To conceive of history as such it is necessary to conceive it as a whole, but doing so carries implications about its development and direction. Furthermore, such an idea makes it difficult to consider its parts without subsuming them to the whole, thereby making individuals merely instrumental to achieving the aims of history. William S. Allen brings the thought of Kant, Adorno and Weiss to bear on these tensions, tracing how Adorno''s reconsideration of history through his readings of Kant''s Critique of Judgement are distinct from formulations offered by other thinkers (Marx, Hegel, Lyotard). Allen establishes that Kant''s Critique of Judgement is not only a sustained analysis of the development of forms, whether aesthetic or organic, but also a tacit interrogation of the form of the whole and the possibilities of thinking it. Kant, Adorno, and the Forms of History argues that Adorno has taken up this interrogation more than any other thinker and through his aesthetics has introduced an alternative thought, which has been modified and extended in the work of Peter Weiss in his last novel, The Aesthetics of Resistance . Within this thought lies the possibility of thinking history without the whole, without unity or purpose, which is a possibility that may offer new insights in the face of imminent environmental, economic and political collapse.

Autorentext
William S. Allen (PhD, University of Warwick) is an independent researcher at the University of Southampton, UK, and the author of the following books: Ellipsis: Of Poetry and the Experience of Language after Heidegger, Hölderlin, and Blanchot(2007); Aesthetics of Negativity: Blanchot, Adorno, and Autonomy (2016); Without End: Sade's Critique of Reason(Bloomsbury, 2018); Blanchot and the Outside of Literature (Bloomsbury, 2019); Noir and Blanchot: Deteriorations of the Event (Bloomsbury, 2020); and Adorno, Aesthetics, Dissonance: On Dialectics in Modernity (Bloomsbury, 2022).

Klappentext

Kant, Adorno, and the Forms of History sets the works of Theodor Adorno, Immanuel Kant and Peter Weiss in dialogue, revealing how an interrogation of the aesthetics of 'the whole' and the conception of history in Western thought reveals new ways of thinking about history and historically.

To conceive of history as such it is necessary to conceive it as a whole, but doing so carries implications about its development and direction. Furthermore, such an idea makes it difficult to consider its parts without subsuming them to the whole, thereby making individuals merely instrumental to achieving the aims of history.

William S. Allen brings the thought of Kant, Adorno and Weiss to bear on these tensions, tracing how Adorno's reconsideration of history through his readings of Kant's Critique of Judgement are distinct from formulations offered by other thinkers (Marx, Hegel, Lyotard). Allen establishes that Kant's Critique of Judgement is not only a sustained analysis of the development of forms, whether aesthetic or organic, but also a tacit interrogation of the form of the whole and the possibilities of thinking it.

Kant, Adorno, and the Forms of History argues that Adorno has taken up this interrogation more than any other thinker and through his aesthetics has introduced an alternative thought, which has been modified and extended in the work of Peter Weiss in his last novel, The Aesthetics of Resistance. Within this thought lies the possibility of thinking history without the whole, without unity or purpose, which is a possibility that may offer new insights in the face of imminent environmental, economic and political collapse.

Inhalt

Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Thresholds of History

• A Sense of Time
• Aesthetics and History
• The Prologue of Reason
  Part I. Syncope and Fate
• Sublime History
• Double Exposure
• Halting Progress
• Immanent Fatality
  Part II. The Whole Without
• Transverse Moments
• Against History
• Natural Formations
• Deformations of Art
  Part III. Mimesis at a Remove
• Semblance and Beyond
• A Concrete Longing

• At the Same Time
  Not Now

  Notes
  Index