Adorno's Gamble

Adorno's Gamble offers a startling reinterpretation of the evolution of Theodor W. Adorno's thought, usually seen as a mix of critical Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis, aesthetic modernism, and Jewish tradition. Mikko Immanen argues for another, previously unacknowledged source of Adorno's thinking on instrumental reason, dialectic of enlightenment, and frailty of democracy: the intellectual underpinnings of Germany's "conservative revolutionary" movement of the 1920s.

In a dramatic reappraisal of the leading light of the Frankfurt School, Immanen follows Adorno's path of philosophical development from the late Weimar era through years in exile to the postwar period, establishing his debt to thinkers of radical conservative bent. In particular, he focuses on Adorno's enduring, and daring, effort to harness two of the most infamous works from this tradition—Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West and Ludwig Klages's The Spirit as Adversary of the Soul—and to repurpose their reactionary teachings for emancipatory ends.

Mikko Immanen is Academy Research Fellow at the Centre for European Studies at the University of Helsinki. He is the author of Toward a Concrete Philosophy.

Adorno's Gamble makes a convincing case for the impact that Oswald Spengler and Ludwig Klages had on the early development of what later became Adorno's Negative Dialectics, indicating the extent to which Adorno had explored their cultural pessimism and use of myth in his own thinking while critically rejecting their dubious ideological positions.

Peter Uwe Hohendahl, author of The Fleeting Promise of Art:

Mikko Immanen presents a strong and persuasive argument for taking seriously Theodor W. Adorno's interest in the work of radical conservative thinkers, drawing on Adorno's published texts as well as his letters and other personal documents. Adorno's Gamble ultimately suggests the need for a significant turn in our understanding of Adorno and his work.