(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
She explains: "Adorno is one of the classics of German philosophy. Admittedly, his writings are not easily accessible. Understanding them requires a certain discipline and also a certain background knowledge of the German philosophical tradition. The aphorism collection Minima Moralia or his radio lectures, however, are publications more accessible than his major works, which Negative dialectic (1966, Danish: 2017) or Enlightenment dialectics >(1947, Norwegian: 2011). But if you don't read Adorno, you lose a piece of the intellectual world."
Benhabib interprets Adonro's concept of "the non-identical" as something anti-authoritarian, which does not fit into false universals or categories such as "the nation", "the people", "comrades" or "our side", typical of right-wing and left-wing populism. Identitarian and authoritarian politics, with their "false universals", on the other hand, argue for sacrificing the non-identical. As Benhabib says: "When I hear Donald Trump or the AfD rail against migrants as 'criminals', I realize that there must always be a enemy in their projection. Their policy is normatively based on the enemy/friend dichotomy."
Another central enemy image for identitarian populists is cosmopolitanism, for example in the form of an ominous 'globalist elite' or in the form of the political work of voluntary organizations that fight for the rights of refugees. Benhabib replied: "Cosmopolitanism is often lumped together with 'frequent flyers' and neoliberalism." This left-populist reduction of cosmopolitanism contains a dangerous element of anti-universalism, which I reject. […] For me, there is still enormous liberating potential in Kant's idea of world citizenship and in the cosmopolitan tradition of the Enlightenment. This potential lies in the idea of a humanity learning to live together in a world that functions according to laws and rules, and not according to war and plunder; a humanity that can benefit from the hospitality of others.”
Another aspect is the climate crisis, which Benhabib explains as follows: "The cooperation aspect is also important for thinking about how the concept of the cosmos is changing in light of the climate disaster. Today we must place the globe in the cosmos. This is precisely what the interesting thinkers of the Anthropocene are doing.” And here she comes to Adorno's formulation of "thinking nature into the subject": "His criticism of the idea of nature as a dead object is multifaceted. For him, 'natural history' is in no way the history of nature as we read it in geology or geography books. Rather, as he writes, it is a question of 'the inner composition of natural moments and historical moments in history itself'. This corresponds exactly to what we now call the Anthropocene ... the cumulative human intervention in natural events that has fundamentally changed the future of the planet.” Adorno anticipates these perspectives.
See https://www.nytid.no/hva-gjenstar-av-kritisk-teori/
Translated from German by editor. See https://www.philomag.de/artikel/seyla-benhabib-wer-adorno-nicht-liest-dem-geht-ein-stueck-der-geistigen-welt-verloren
