A Precarious Happiness: Adorno and the Sources of Normativity

A strikingly original account of Theodor Adorno’s work as a critique animated by happiness.
 
Theodor Adorno is often portrayed as a totalizing negativist, a scowling contrarian who looked upon modern society with despair. Peter E. Gordon thinks we have this wrong: if Adorno is uncompromising in his critique, it is because he sees in modernity an unfulfilled possibility of human flourishing.  In a damaged world, Gordon argues, all happiness is likewise damaged, but not wholly absent. Through a comprehensive rereading of Adorno’s work, A Precarious Happiness recovers Adorno’s commitment to traces of happiness—fragments of the good amid the bad. Ultimately, Gordon argues that social criticism, while exposing falsehoods, must also cast a vision for an unrealized better world.

About the Author :
Peter E. Gordon is the Amabel B. James Professor of History and faculty affiliate in philosophy at Harvard University. He is the author or editor of many books, most recently Migrants in the Profane: Critical Theory and the Question of Secularization.

Review :
"Gordon’s confidently gripping and at the same time persistently subtle interpretation brings a new tone to the debate about Adorno’s negativism. Engaging with Adorno's lectures, Gordon shows how the negative dialectic, though eluding direct access to statements about the 'good life,' means to spell out the contours of a 'right' life. Within the enchanted bounds of a distorted whole, Adorno searches for traces of a failed happiness. From the despairing criticism of the world’s hopeless condition, the Hegelian nonetheless discerns a transcending impulse of hope that points far beyond the Kantian encouragement to use our rational freedom." “A brilliant and lucid guide to the twists and turns of the master’s dialectics . . . [and] a masterly reading.” "A Precarious Happiness is a must-read volume for Adorno scholars (and, arguably, for scholars of Kant and Hegel), those working in social and political theory, and anyone concerned with the present state of affairs and the future of the 21st century. . . . Highly recommended." “More than an erudite reconstruction of a philosophical debate—[A Precarious Happiness] offers a means of exorcizing ‘the spirit of cynicism’ from contemporary social critique. . . . Gordon paints a compelling picture of Adorno as a theorist of happiness and human flourishing.” "The most distinctive aspect of Gordon’s book is that it does not merely argue that Adorno’s negativism is linked to the positive, but it also puts forward the bold claim that Adorno develops a robust—maximalist—standard of happiness, one that can be identified as a notion of human flourishing and that serves as a 'necessary postulate for his social criticism.' . . . Gordon’s book invites us to consider Adorno’s work through the lens of happiness, that is, as containing fragments of happiness that anticipate future fulfillment, rehearsals of the right life, and a mimesis of what does not yet exist." "Gordon’s book is well written, accessible and free of jargon, and an interesting read that brings to our attention an aspect of Adorno’s work that scholars have mostly overlooked: sources of normativity. It is crucial in that it provides a defense of Adorno vis-à-vis scholars, mainly of the contemporary Frankfurt school kind, preoccupied with providing normative foundations for critical theory and who have dismissed Adorno with the argument that he focuses exclusively on the negative and lacks any normative orientation." "Assuredly one of the best books on Adorno and Critical Theory to have been written in the last decades. The book is comprehensive but detailed, focused but expansive. It is about Adorno’s concept of happiness and the flourishing life, but it is also what makes a critical theory of society, critical and normative. The question is: how can we 'justify' our claims of the social order or for another. Thus, the book exemplifies immanent critique in the highest form." “An important challenge to Adorno's negativism.” “With a fine sensibility, Gordon shows how Adorno, like Kafka, gropes in the gloom for glimpses of a precarious happiness, its possibility animating his critique of society.” “Written in a captivating style, Gordon carefully analyzes the whole range of Adorno’s writings to demonstrate that the philosopher grounds his critique of contemporary societies in an idea of human flourishing that he takes as being accessible only in small, easily overlooked fragments within our damaged form of life. By this, Gordon manages something at which almost everyone else has failed so far: to give a coherent picture of the scattered pieces of Adorno’s idea of morality.”

“A comprehensive interpretation of Adorno’s work and normative assumptions. As such, it is an alternative to a prevailing reading of Adorno that portrays him as a gnostic and his diagnostic of modernity as thoroughly negative.”

“Highly valuable . . . Gordon’s commitment to the careful interpretation of Adorno’s works highlights how their theoretical relevance continues to grow.”

“Gordon’s book is a welcome attempt to re-found the project of social critique by offering a reflexive account of the type of beings that we are. . . . A Precarious Happiness is a landmark account of Adorno’s project, understood as an attempt to identify the normative foundations of materialist critique, which will likely help to reorient the debates surrounding critical theory more broadly.”