Theodor W. Adorno
1903–1969 · Marxism · Prominent
Adorno was a German philosopher of the Frankfurt School. He left in 1934, his father Jewish and his name a target, and came back in 1949 with the century's harshest verdict on his own civilization: Enlightenment reason had bred the barbarism it promised to end. In film, radio and pop songs he heard a culture industry selling the same standard goods to everyone and handing each buyer back a taste to call his own.
Signature
The position Adorno is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Beauty
- leans Objective
- Language
- False Consciousness
Positions on the 10 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Collectivism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Identity
- leans Changing (75 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- leans Constructed (28 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Horizontal (75 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Multiplicity (88 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Opposition
- leans Sublation (25 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Polity
- leans Liberalism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Ignorance
- leans Bondage (12 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (25 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
10 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Adorno refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Atheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Freedom
What is the highest good? - Perception
- Symbolic Forms
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Coherence
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Other
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Social Determinism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Other
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- Stateless Communism / Other
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Collective Will
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- False Consciousness
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Productive Tension
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Revolutionary
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Annihilation
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Socially Constructed
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Cause
What is your primary bond and loyalty?