Kant is a pivotal thinker in Adorno's intellectual world. Yet although he wrote monographs on Hegel, Husserl and Kierkegaard, the closest he came to an extended discussion of Kant are two lecture courses, one concentrating on the Critique of Pure Reason and the other on the Critique of Practical Reason. This new volume by Adorno comprises his lectures on the former. Adorno attempts to make Kant's thought comprehensible to students by focusing on what he regards as problematic aspects of Kant's...
Despite all of humanity's failures, futile efforts and wrong turnings in the past, Adorno did not let himself be persuaded that we are doomed to suffer a bleak future for ever. One of the factors that prevented him from identifying a definitive plan for the future course of history was his feelings of solidarity with the victims and losers. As for the future, the course of events was to remain open-ended; instead of finality, he remained committed to a Hölderlin-like openness. This trace of the...