Nicholas Brignell

Adorno’s concept of the ‘additional factor’ involves the response to the urgency of a situation, an ‘impulse’ or ‘jolt’ that is required for action to take place, but which cannot be made a formal feature of moral theorizing. As a result, Adorno argues that moral philosophy almost compulsively ignores the ‘additional factor’ because it cannot be theoretically accommodated without being conjured away or distorted. I do not here argue that something like an Adornian moral philosophy can be based on his discussion of the ‘additional factor’. Instead, I aim primarily to elucidate how he understands its role as both a constitutive feature of action and the extent to which it reveals limits in moral philosophy as an endeavour. Beyond this, I aim to emphasize two aspects of Adorno’s discussions of the additional factor that tend to be underemphasized: the importance of a historical account of the subject that Adorno broadly shares with Hegel; and the importance of reason as a necessary, constitutive component of the ‘additional factor’ and not something distinct from or in contradiction to it.