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Theodor W. AdornoMinima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life
Theodor W. AdornoNonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1951A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Deterioration of Human Experience in Capitalist Societies
A core belief of Theodor Adorno is that there are universal human experiences that transcend time and cultures, what he calls “the incorrigibility of human nature” (188). It is this human nature that expresses itself through our individualism and our relationship with art. He argues that, in modern capitalist societies, humans are alienated from their own human nature and their own selves, leading to a deterioration of the human experience.
For Adorno, human nature is something profound, with both positive and negative dimensions that can be endlessly explored through philosophy and culture. As he writes, “The great works of art and philosophical constructions have remained uncomprehended not through their great distance from the heart of human experience, but the opposite” (147). By contrast, modern society no longer encourages authentic exploration of the human experience due to the negative influence of industrialization, technology, and capitalism. Humans are treated like machines or tools for increasing profit, or they are encouraged to think only of their own material benefits. This state of affairs ultimately amounts to “treating people as things” (42). In these ways, the “profit economy” serves only to “stunt human qualities” (41).
Modern capitalist societies suppress human nature by causing humans to be alienated from each other. Humans become humans by imitating others as children, therefore humans are social by nature. While capitalism places a strong emphasis on an individuality divorced from society, Adorno argues that “[f]reedom from society robs” the individual “of strength for freedom” (149). Adorno also sees psychology as a way that modern society alienates people from their own human nature. Happiness is not the default state of people; in fact, Adorno implies that genuine unhappiness is better than an inauthentic happiness, as “Even the neurotic oddities and deformities of our elders stand for character, for something humanly achieved, in comparison to pathic health, infantilism raised to the norm” (22). The only way for an individual to recover their true nature is by resisting capitalism’s dominance in all elements of their life. Adorno expresses this call for resistance, writing, “Only by virtue of opposition to production, as still not wholly encompassed by this order, can men bring about another [order] more worthy of human beings” (15). Modern people also have to resist psychological standards of happiness and normality to rediscover their complex human nature and to “gain an idea of what experience might be” (62). In these ways, Adorno suggests that while modern capitalist societies exercise a pernicious influence over human experience, such influence is not inevitable, and can and should be rejected in favor of more authentic ways of living and being.
The Perversion of Culture by Commercial Interests
Adorno does not respect modern culture, which he regards as corrupted by a mass culture driven by profit. While industrialization is not the only means by which material objects are produced, it has become a model for how culture is made in modern societies. Throughout Minima Moralia, he strongly criticizes the perversion of culture by commercial interests.
Adorno derides what he describes as the “culture industry” (27) under modern capitalism. He claims that this culture industry relies on cheap sentimentality (“kitsch”) and sensationalism, leading to a dearth of originality and truth. Adorno argues that the “tension between culture and kitsch […] [is] breaking down” (147), rendering genuine culture more and more difficult to create and sustain. The culture industry promotes and is itself a production of capitalist self-interest. Adorno describes it as a “united front of trusts and technology” (51), something made possible by modern technology and by business interests. In Adorno’s view, its origins fundamentally corrupt the “monopoly of mass culture” (33) by making art subservient to profit.
Nothing represents these problems more than the medium of film. In Adorno’s time, film was still a relatively new medium. Adorno complains, “Every visit to the cinema leaves me, against all my vigilance, stupider and worse” (25). Films are made by committee and depend on funding from corporate sources. Adorno claims that every film fundamentally lacks “humanity” since it is something formed by “numerous experts” and “simple technicians,” which Adorno compares to the “scientific advisory boards” (204) who help design technological weapons for the military. Its origin in mass production means that film will always have a “collective nature” (203) that standardizes and reinforces specific values and norms favored by society. Adorno therefore rejects the idea that any movie could qualify as art, since the “more pretensions a film has to art, the more bogus it becomes” (203).
While modern culture is produced on an industrial scale and through committee, traditional art emerged out of “agrarian relationships or an economy of simple commodity production” (203). For Adorno, this is significant because it means that traditional art reflects social relations, whereas modern mass art is only a product of, and a reinforcement of, people’s alienation from each other.
While Adorno is pessimistic about the state of modern art compared to earlier forms, he nonetheless offers occasional advice to writers and artists throughout Minima Moralia. He counsels writers and artists to detach themselves from the commodification of art, instead seeking independence through voluntary collaboration and the rejection of market values.
The Decline of Independent Thought
In Adorno’s view, a key trend in modernity is growing collectivization, even in countries that are neither fascist nor communist. In practice, this manifests in how intellectual thought, culture, language, concepts of personal fulfillment, and even relationships have become standardized. Adorno therefore argues that the modern era is also witnessing the decline of truly independent thought.
Adorno does not equate independent thought with individualism—instead, he argues that modern society’s conception of individualism stymies independent thought instead of nurturing it, as no one can achieve true self-actualization in isolation. He writes, “In the midst of standardized, organized human units the individual persists,” but that the individual is now “in reality no more than the mere function of his own uniqueness, an exhibition piece” (135). In fact, Adorno argues that one of the “central contradictions which drove society from the nineteenth century to Fascism” (149) was that people now assert and market out their own individualism even more, while still following roles and archetypes desired by society. In Adorno’s words, “Those who put their individuality on sale adopt voluntarily, as their own judges, the verdict pronounced on them by society” (146).
Adorno asserts that the decline of independent thought has especially affected artists and intellectuals of all kinds. As artists, scientists, and philosophers have to market themselves and compete with others in a capitalist society, they have to follow certain fixed standards and avoid causing genuine offense to make themselves marketable. For example, writers who find themselves financially struggling end up “turn[ing] out trash identical in all its nuances to what, with ample means, they most passionately abjured” (29) out of economic necessity. Even cultural works that try to rebel against society are incorporated into the market: Adorno sarcastically writes about how the once-controversial writer Marcel Proust is now “fill[ing] a similar need for youth as […] the books about forest animals and the North Pole expedition in the German home” (207).
While totalitarian societies may use explicit force and threats of violence to keep thinkers and artists in line, intellectuals now need to censor themselves even in free countries. Adorno claims, “A breed of men has secretly grown up that hungers for the compulsion and restriction imposed by the absurd persistence of domination” (123). Thus, the lack of true individuality and the decline of unfettered artistic pursuits have hindered people’s ability to think freely and to develop original ideas, with modern capitalist society instead reducing everything to data and sterile uniformity.
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