Camilla Brenni

This article aims to examine Locke’s position in Hegel’s history of philosophy and to explain some of the most important criticisms directed at him. We try to understand the ambivalent position Locke occupies in Hegel’s history, insofar as he is not considered as an empiricist opposed to rational metaphysics, but rather as instantiating a type of metaphysical empiricism. When treating Locke not as a representative of this type of empiricism, Hegel is mostly critical of Locke as an individual philosopher. This article attempts to unpack Hegel’s rejection of Locke’s understanding of mind, ideas and method. Although Hegel’s reading is not always entirely charitable, these criticisms enable us to understand why Locke’s theory of experience and understanding are a counter-model for Hegel’s own theory of cognition and epistemology. Like empiricism more generally for Hegel, Locke is interested in universals. However, we will show that his conceptions of the mind, its operations, and the methods of philosophy entail a rather poor conception of generality, a self-contradictory stance for empiricist realism and thus lack epistemological self-reflectivity.

This article explores certain texts by Adorno and Bourdieu that specifically focus on personal opinion, public opinion, and polling techniques. Their views and descriptions regarding these socially interdependent phenomena shed light on the similarities and differences in their approaches. I first examine the internalization of domination by social actors, then I focus on the role of mass media in producing predominant opinions and habitus. Finally, I look at the uncritical and scientific consolidation of common sense opinions produced by certain presuppositions within empirical research and public opinion surveys. Social domination, I will show, is operative at these three different levels. Despite their differences, I argue that there is a critical, theoretical, and methodological complementarity between Adorno and Bourdieu. Understanding this complementarity allows us to enrich and challenge both Adorno’s project of a critical theory of society and Bourdieu’s militant sociology.

Cet article interroge la possibilité de qualifier la philosophie d’Adorno de néokantienne. L’analyse retrace d’abord les interactions historiques entre néokantisme et marxisme au sein de la première génération de la Théorie critique, en examinant les critiques adorniennes de Rickert et de Simmel. Elle discute ensuite deux interprétations majeures rapprochant Adorno d’un marxisme néokantien afin d’en montrer les limites théoriques. Enfin, l’article met en lumière la spécificité de la critique adornienne de Kant, centrée sur la remise en question de la subjectivité constitutive et sur une approche métacritique et matérialiste de la théorie de la connaissance.