In the face of threats, disasters and the inability to change, the only remaining option for political action seems to be resistance. But is what we have achieved really a democracy worth defending? The question seems out of date and out of place. And yet: democracies have emerged from revolutions that were fuelled and supported by utopian thinking. What could a democratic utopia look like that takes us out of our fixation on the present? Ludger Schwarte invites us to discuss these questions, based on his book "Qualitäten der Freiheit. Demokratie für Übermorgen" (Hamburg: Meiner Verlag 2024).
All interested parties are welcome to attend the lecture and discussion! Prior registration is not required.

The lecture aims to shed light on Adorno's Negative Dialectic as an attempt to transform philosophy into a discipline of immanent factual analysis. It will be understood, on the one hand, as a critical radicalisation of Hegel's demand that "philosophy should come closer to the form of science" and, on the other hand, as a philosophically formulated anticipation of the central premises of a social science that proceeds according to the logic of reconstruction. In this connection, critical theory should become visible as a methodologically determined paradigm. The focus will be on the possibility of non-standardised methods which, as Adorno demanded, do justice to the specific nature of their objects.

All interested parties are welcome to attend the lecture and discussion! Prior registration is not required.

In 1944, the exiles Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno posed the question "why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism" in their Dialectic of Enlightenment. The authors' analyses of the Enlightenment project and the conditions that gave rise to fascism can be read then and now as both a critique and a defence of reason. On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the most widely received work of critical theory, the Adorno Research Centre at the University of Oldenburg is organising a workshop that will focus on the topicality of the basic concepts and theses of the Dialectic of Enlightenment from as many different perspectives as possible and put them to the test.

The central question will be whether a critique of reason, as presented in the Dialectic of Enlightenment, can still serve as an operational critique of society in the same way and to what extent it can be connected to current critical discourses. Possible fields of play for this question would be, for example, the relationship of the work to later approaches of critical theory or post-structuralism; its theses on anti-Semitism; the (missing) relationship of the dialectic of enlightenment to racism and anti-imperial resistance; the concept of progress and its critique; the concept of cultural and media criticism or the question of the significance of the dialectic.

In various sections, the aim is, on the one hand, to clarify the extent to which the social analysis of the Dialectic of Enlightenment is still relevant today; on the other hand, to highlight the extent to which its critical apparatus can be reshaped or transformed by contemporary discourses in order to continue to function as a truly critical instrument with regard to current problems.

A total of 15 lectures will take place over three days. Interested parties are very welcome!

Registration is not required.

The first speaker this year will be Eike Kroner from the University of Bremen, who will bridge the gap between critical theory and deconstruction in his lecture on "From the non-identical to difference - a philosophical consequence".

All interested parties are cordially invited to attend the lecture and discussion. The event is free of charge.

29/30 September 2022, Oldenburger Kunstverein

After we unfortunately had to postpone the symposium on "70 Years of Adorno's Minima Moralia - Poetics and Philosophy Reread" due to the pandemic, we are now looking forward to holding it at the end of September 2022.

70 YEARS OF MINIMA MORALIA

The publication of Minima Mor alia, Adorno's most personal and successful book, 70 years ago is a good reason for numerous retrospectives of Adorno's reflections on a damaged life.

Damaged is not only the individual life of the emigrant forced into exile. Adorno's inventory is more comprehensive. Damaged is both the subject, which, according to Adorno's diagnosis, is historically condemned, and the nature subjugated by man. Both external and internal nature are victims of a blindly self-perpetuating society.

With his social and moral criticism, Adorno managed to occupy a position that was vacant in a situation where traditional value orientations were being shaken. He took on the role of the public intellectual by confronting the moral demands of this society with its reality. The significance of Minima Moralia as part of a legacy that resists all forms of mere musealisation is to guide readers not only to become aware of the dissonances in their own lives, but also to express them: to encourage them to think in a way that is open enough to turn against itself.

Programme:

29 SEPTEMBER

14.00 Welcome

Gertrude Wagenfeld-Pleister (Oldenburger Kunstverein) / Helena Esther Grass (Adorno Research Centre)

14.10 - 15.30

Prof Dr Stefan Müller-Doohm: The Happiness of Individual Existence. Life-historical traces in the imagery of the Minima Moralia

15.40 - 17.00 hrs

Prof. Dr Martin Seel: Adorno's Apology of Rhetoric. On the literary procedure of the Minima Moralia

17.00 - 17.30 Break

17.30 - 17.50 Reading from the Minima Moralia - Kammerschauspielerin Elfi Hoppe

18.00 - 19.20

Prof Dr Anne Eusterschulte: "The thicket is not a sacred grove". Adorno's dialectical micrograms as poetic criticism

19.30 - 19.50 Reading from the Minima Moralia - chamber actress Elfi Hoppe

30 SEPTEMBER

10.00 a.m. Welcome

Prof Dr Stefan Müller-Doohm / Helena Esther Grass

10.10 - 11.30 a.m.

Prof Dr Ralf Konersmann: "All this certainly overshoots the mark". Adorno's view of the world

11.40 - 13.00

Helena Esther Grass: "Beneath the paving stones / Unter den Pflastersteinen". A reading of Adorno's Minima Moralia

13.00 - 14.30 Lunch break

14.40 - 16.00

Prof. Dr Josef Früchtl: "New Mythology". The ongoing attempt to bring philosophy to the people

16.10 - 17.30

Prof. Dr Detlev Schöttker: About complaining at a high level. Adorno's predecessors and successors

17.30 - 17.50 Break

17.50 - 18.20 Closing discussion