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Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life
by
Adorno's literary and philosophical masterpiece, built from aphorisms and reflections.
A reflection on everyday existence in the 'sphere of consumption of late Capitalism', this work is Adorno's literary and philosophical masterpiece. Built from aphorisms and reflections, he shifts in register from personal experience to the most general theoretical problems. ...more
A reflection on everyday existence in the 'sphere of consumption of late Capitalism', this work is Adorno's literary and philosophical masterpiece. Built from aphorisms and reflections, he shifts in register from personal experience to the most general theoretical problems. ...more
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Paperback, 256 pages
Published
October 1st 2005
by Verso
(first published 1951)
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Start your review of Minima Moralia: Reflections on a Damaged Life

Imagine your grandfather complaining about how the world is going to hell in a hand-basket. Then, imagine that your grandfather is the most well-read and erudite German bro. That's what this book is.
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A sad and strange critique of life under late capitalism, made up of 153 short essays denouncing everything from the commodification of everyday relationships to the modern obsession with easily understandable prose. Adorno's intellectual virtuosity and elliptical phrasing makes for a stimulating, sometimes tiring, reading experience—not all the ideas presented here are as complex as the often-opaque language suggests, and for such a short book it feels repetitive. Still, the style's arresting,
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Perhaps the great book of the oncoming Trump era. Adorno's depth of observation, critical analysis, and disgust at late-capitalist culture reads as a cry from the least false oracles of Delphi. His intellect burns ultra-bright, spouts of water on a magnesium fire. Aphorism as razor to drain the infection, but where are the willing nurses? The entire work could be quoted, but who's listening? A few will take heed as humanity passes on sedate, confused, uninvolved, happy, dumb, unflowering, swolle
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Well, that wasn't easy.
This is a strange book, one in which the removed tone of the text belies the personal sources from whence it was derived, and whose elegantly difficult style and aethereal buoyancy prevent it from succumbing to the chthonic gravity of postwar stodginess and cracked dais condemnation. Well-nigh every sentence can stand alone as an object to be admired and marveled over for its aesthetic grace, though its nonporous exterior and taut configuration repels the casual effort to ...more
This is a strange book, one in which the removed tone of the text belies the personal sources from whence it was derived, and whose elegantly difficult style and aethereal buoyancy prevent it from succumbing to the chthonic gravity of postwar stodginess and cracked dais condemnation. Well-nigh every sentence can stand alone as an object to be admired and marveled over for its aesthetic grace, though its nonporous exterior and taut configuration repels the casual effort to ...more

Adorno is so wonderfully negative and devastating in his attacks on just about everything that there is a certain sense of hopelessness and everything is shit that prevades out of the pages, but within this negativity is an unspoken greatness to what can be great and beautiful. I have no idea what to say, this book is just great.

It is really strange how influential Adorno is within Marxist circles. He is such a neg-head downer... After I read this text I truly ran to the bookshelves and tried to lift myself out of this book's funk by Re-reading Epictetus and Seneca. Give me Greek Philosophy over this trite bitch-fest any day. Please, if you are thinking of killing yourself, DO NOT READ ADORNO! READ GREEK PHILOSOPHY INSTEAD (and get outside and play)
Probably the biggest angst-ridden crock of shit since Nausea by Sartre. ...more
Probably the biggest angst-ridden crock of shit since Nausea by Sartre. ...more

My thoughts on this from the bottom up are a bit scattered, but the short summary is that if you are reading this and are at all curious about trying Adorno, you should do it.
4/2/2011 update. I finished. A considerable challenge throughout, but one that I believe was worth the time investment. Even if I only was able to absorb 20% of Adorno's sentences, that 20% was made up of provocative, downbeat and penetrating encapsulations of our culture and the way we live now.
One last lengthy quote. I ...more
4/2/2011 update. I finished. A considerable challenge throughout, but one that I believe was worth the time investment. Even if I only was able to absorb 20% of Adorno's sentences, that 20% was made up of provocative, downbeat and penetrating encapsulations of our culture and the way we live now.
One last lengthy quote. I ...more

I saw an interview with Marcuse where he said that Adorno's speech, even in casual conversation, was so perfectly structured and insightful that it could easily be transcribed and published. Minima Moralia does a lot to verify Marcuse's claim. The book presents itself as Adorno's dissembled thoughts and observations, from single sentence aphorisms to ostensible diary entries; but upon close reading, these ideas have real cohesion and a very ambitious address and import. I think this is more a li
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Adorno's writing style, while initially difficult, eventually becomes more lucid. It just takes some time. However, he provides, again and again, smart observation after smart observation. The little essays in here are also remarkably personal, and we get a very good sense of Adorno-the-individual. My sole major reservation is the overwhelmingly classist overtones. While a critique of mass culture is indeed necessary, it probably shouldn't be this condescending.
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‘Minima Moralia’ took some time and effort to read. It deserves four stars for content but I’m giving it three for my own inadequacy. There were quite a few sentences (especially those involving Nietzsche) that took me four readings to parse, let alone comprehend. To be honest, I can only claim to have understood about a fifth of the book. My grounding in philosophy is weak and patchy; I’ve never actually studied it. However, the fifth that I did understand I greatly appreciated. Notably, many i
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this is a book, perhaps truly the first for me, which I will be consulting the index to in the future, if i somehow am unable to manage reading it again when I have learned more.
for now - I shall perhaps give a more thorough review in the coming days - my rating is based on two aspects of the book. adorno’s dialectical method, applied to contemporary culture, literature, politics, etc.. was incredibly, incredibly illuminating for me. following the contours of this man’s thought was the most dif ...more
for now - I shall perhaps give a more thorough review in the coming days - my rating is based on two aspects of the book. adorno’s dialectical method, applied to contemporary culture, literature, politics, etc.. was incredibly, incredibly illuminating for me. following the contours of this man’s thought was the most dif ...more

Short sections that consist of a series of reflections, some of them in the form of aphorisms. I’ve never read anything that is at once so crazy and brilliant, that makes you say What? and Wow! often in response to different clauses of the same sentence.
Too much of what Adorno does involves throwing apparently opposing ideas and words together in various ways. More than anything else, Adorno is showing off; he’s a jazz pianist noodling away. You can’t take anything he says too seriously, because ...more
Too much of what Adorno does involves throwing apparently opposing ideas and words together in various ways. More than anything else, Adorno is showing off; he’s a jazz pianist noodling away. You can’t take anything he says too seriously, because ...more

This is Adorno’s "creative" book of theory positing the totalizing effect of the “administrative machine.” The book is broken into 153 vignettes on subjects ranging from fashion to zoos to operas to writing itself. The structure was quite novel at the time (1951) and highly influential. You see this modular structure done all the time these days.
Adorno is the king of the negative dialect and probably the king of negativity itself. Almost nothing gets a free pass for Adorno. He’s seemingly again ...more
Adorno is the king of the negative dialect and probably the king of negativity itself. Almost nothing gets a free pass for Adorno. He’s seemingly again ...more

Dec 30, 2013
Christopher
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
hospitalized-approaching-perfection
Every work of art is an uncommitted crime

I tried reading this in college and I definitely wasn't ready for it then. At first Adorno seems like little more than an unapologetically condescending snob, but as I worked into it, I found myself consistently blown away by his bleak, piercing observations about modernity. And they are made all the bleaker by the odd format of this, which gives you little glimpses into a mind that was obviously supremely unhappy in fleeing from European fascism to the schizoid, hyper-capitalism of Los Angeles.
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"The bourgeois needs the bayadere, not merely for pleasure, which he grudges her, but to feel himself a god." yes ok go on "The nearer he gets to the edge of his domain and the more he forgets his dignity, the more blatant becomes the ritual of power." fine yes ok "The night has its joy, but the whore is burned notwithstanding." ok sure this just seems the the same thing again "The rest is the Idea." fuck off teddy
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adorno's best zine! should be renamed as "rants and raves on alienated culture from a grumpy old man."
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Fragmented to a fault, this books as no central message besides "everything sucks, today".
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Oct 07, 2017
Andrew Davis
added it
NOT AS DEPRESSING AS PEOPLE SAY IT IS still very depressing

I'm about to go back to page 1 and start it again.
...more

Jan 20, 2015
Campbell Cooper
rated it
it was amazing
Recommends it for:
Those prepared for difficulty parsing what in any case takes long acclimatizing to before digesting.
A previous review:
"Adorno is so wonderfully negative and devastating in his attacks on just about everything that there is a certain sense of hopelessness and of everything being shit that pervades the book's pages, but within this negativity is an unspoken greatness, a sense of what can be beautiful. I have no idea what to say, this book is just great."
To the author of this wonderfully to-the-point review: thank you, and I had the same impression. Precisely in Adorno's brooding pessimism is fou ...more
"Adorno is so wonderfully negative and devastating in his attacks on just about everything that there is a certain sense of hopelessness and of everything being shit that pervades the book's pages, but within this negativity is an unspoken greatness, a sense of what can be beautiful. I have no idea what to say, this book is just great."
To the author of this wonderfully to-the-point review: thank you, and I had the same impression. Precisely in Adorno's brooding pessimism is fou ...more

If Dialectic of Enlightenment offers trees which the reader has to make into a forest, then Minima Moralia only offers leaves and twigs. This book is pretty much a series of diary entries written by a really smart guy, wherein each chapter (if you could call them that) is about a page and a half long, meaning that no thesis from any chapter gets fully realized, and since the chapters vary so widely in subject the entire book's thesis is hard to reckon. As with D. of E., Adorno wrestles with dial
...more

I read this book for my class on Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. We slogged through it 10-15 aphorisms at a time for about 12 weeks, and in the end I have to say it was really rewarding. I think it would be a formidable text if we hadn't broken it down. For each section, pairs from the class presented on an aphorism or two and related it back to other sections from earlier in the book or to other Frankfurt School readings from the course. From an academic standpoint, it was a really ric
...more

You can learn a lot about a man by asking him what he disagrees with in Adorno.
I, on my part, am at issue with Adorno's pudgy face. One can only wonder how the history of philosophy would have changed if Theodor had the chiseled jaw of a Wittgenstein, a Beckett or even Geoff Dyer. ...more
I, on my part, am at issue with Adorno's pudgy face. One can only wonder how the history of philosophy would have changed if Theodor had the chiseled jaw of a Wittgenstein, a Beckett or even Geoff Dyer. ...more

Jun 10, 2011
sologdin
rated it
it was ok
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
wurstchen,
leftwing-theory
gnomics by bitter old marxist. some great bits, but not really a sustained argument.
I've kinda decided that I hate gnomics as a form, while reading through Pascal and le Douchefoucauld recently. ...more
I've kinda decided that I hate gnomics as a form, while reading through Pascal and le Douchefoucauld recently. ...more

I thought this was really impressive and got me thinking in so many ways. That’s what I love about books like these! Hugely intellectual and mouth-wateringly good in places although it took its time to get going. Here are some of my best bits:
• “whatever is, is experienced in relation to its possible non-being.”
• “For the value of a thought is measured by its distance from the continuity of the familiar.”
• “There is only one way to be happy in this world, and that is to do everything to make oth ...more
• “whatever is, is experienced in relation to its possible non-being.”
• “For the value of a thought is measured by its distance from the continuity of the familiar.”
• “There is only one way to be happy in this world, and that is to do everything to make oth ...more

"The task of art is to bring chaos into order"
'Minima Moralia' is an erratic journey, subject to frequent derailing, thrills, moments of stark aporia, and gut-wrenching existentialism. In his account of decadent capitalist society, Adorno leaves nothing unscathed in his relentless critique of the social. Akin to how his contemporary Schoenberg took Western Harmony, absorbed it, and lacerated it from the inside outwards; Adorno in his style of 'immanent critique' tears apart liberal orthodoxy usi ...more
'Minima Moralia' is an erratic journey, subject to frequent derailing, thrills, moments of stark aporia, and gut-wrenching existentialism. In his account of decadent capitalist society, Adorno leaves nothing unscathed in his relentless critique of the social. Akin to how his contemporary Schoenberg took Western Harmony, absorbed it, and lacerated it from the inside outwards; Adorno in his style of 'immanent critique' tears apart liberal orthodoxy usi ...more
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minima moralia | 1 | 23 | May 18, 2008 03:25AM |
Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno was one of the most important philosophers and social critics in Germany after World War II. Although less well known among anglophone philosophers than his contemporary Hans-Georg Gadamer, Adorno had even greater influence on scholars and intellectuals in postwar Germany. In the 1960s he was the most prominent challenger to both Sir Karl Popper's philosophy of science a
...more
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“There is no right life in the wrong one.”
—
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“He who stands aloof runs the risk of believing himself better than others and misusing his critique of society as an ideology for his private interest. While he gropingly forms his own life in the frail image of a true existence, he should never forget its frailty,
nor how little the image is a substitute for true life. Against such
awareness, however, pulls the momentum of the bourgeois within him.”
—
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More quotes…
nor how little the image is a substitute for true life. Against such
awareness, however, pulls the momentum of the bourgeois within him.”