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willow
A whole lot of misery: Adorno's negative Aristotelianism—Replies to Allen, Celikates, and O'Connor Fabian Freyenhagen, pg 1-2 Building off his book, Adorno’s Practical Philosophy: Living Less Wrongly the distinctiveness of the Aristotelian position. Thus, let me state it clearly upfront: Even after removing certain wrong preconceptions about Aristotelianism, it remains a distinctive substantive approach with which many (including possibly Allen, Celikates, and O'Connor) would disagree, rightly or wrongly. By way of bookmarks for the discussion to come, let me highlight here four points: • indexing values (most notably the good and the bad) to the human life form (to humanity and inhumanity): • ethical objectivism (a rejection of subjectivism); • denying that ethics can be codified (and, hence, that it is or can be principle-based); and • a particular conception of rationality, whereby bodily reactions can be expressive of reason, sometimes more so than deliberate responses. This much by way of preamble. The Aristotelianism I ascribe to Adorno is unusual in a number of ways. First and foremost, it is unusual in being compatible with his (fourfold) negativism.? Aristotelians usually start from the assumption that we know what the human good is and then develop ethical guidance on the basis of this knowledge. My Adorno would deny the assumption that we know what the human good is (epistemic negativism) He thinks that we cannot escape the particular social context we are in and that social context realises what is bad for human beings (substantive negativism). For him, we should start with negative experiences and human badness (methodological negativism). Ethical guidance is still available on the basis of our knowledge of what is bad for human beings (the other side of his epistemic negativism), and this knowledge is sufficient on its own, normatively speaking (meta-ethical negativism). O'Connor