Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-ttngx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-11T07:01:38.652Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - Disenchanting Identity: The Complex Concept

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

J. M. Bernstein
Affiliation:
New School for Social Research, New York
Get access

Summary

The goal of this chapter is to begin providing an account of conceptuality that can answer to the diverse but interconnected set of demands that have arisen in the light of the failures of rationalized reason. Formally, we are seeking a conception of ethical reasoning that will enable reasons for action to be intrinsically motivating. But equally I have contended that reasons for action, ideally, would emerge from cognitive awareness of states of affairs; and in order for that to be the case a state of affairs itself must be capable of lodging a claim. While it is obscure how this might work out in general, in our “fallen state” each particular object we face – each person and thing as set within the institutional frameworks of the modern world – is a rationalized version of itself, hence damaged, hence not as it could be. The desocialization of society that is a consequence of disenchantment makes each object a moral remainder; no particular within rationalized society is, existentially and conceptually, what it could be as a consequence of “our” collective participation in the rationalization of reason and experience. If sensuous particulars are raising claims, then a fortiori there must be a “material” or “sensuous” moment in the concept that rationalization leading to the simple concept suppresses, and, equivalently, something about each object that rationalized concepts have left out of account. Such a conceptual moment, Adorno must presume, when rightly acknowledged, when reintegrated into the concept, would answer to the motivational thesis.

Type
Chapter
Information
Adorno
Disenchantment and Ethics
, pp. 263 - 329
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×