The project reconstructs the implicit model of Bildung (formation, culture, education) that informs the writings and activities of the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. The Hegelian teleological model, according to which communal rational subjectivity obtains freedom in its social institutions through Bildung, is rejected in light of Marxian criticisms of late-capitalist, ›integrated‹ society and the social-psychological characterization of its alienated members. Rather, Adorno theorizes and, as a public intellectual, exemplifies practically an alternative, critical or ›negative‹ model that operates with partial norms (from different cultures, historical formations, languages, etc.) to strengthen individuals’ capacities for critical reflection and social recognition. The project thereby also constitutes a defense against the allegation of a »normative deficit« in early Critical Theory.

Henry Pickford is Professor of German and Philosophy at Duke University. His interests focus on modern philosophy and literature in German and Russian, with emphasis on the German philosophical tradition from Kant to Critical Theory. He is the author of The Sense of Semblance: Philosophical Analyses of Holocaust Art; Thinking with Tolstoy and Wittgenstein: Expression, Emotion, and Art; co-author of In Defense of Intuitions: A New Rationalist Manifesto; co-editor of Der aufrechte Gang im windschiefen Kapitalismus: Modelle kritischen Denkens; editor and translator of Theodor W. Adorno, Critical Models: Interventions and Catchwords and Selected Early Poems of Lev Loseff; and author of over thirty essays and book chapters. He is currently co-authoring the book Adorno: A Critical Life, co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Adorno, and editing and translating Adorno’s Graeculus: Selections from the Notebooks.