Robert Pfeiffer

The article aims to explore the political significance of the intersection between aesthetics and Bildungsphilosophie (philosophy of education) in Adorno’s work. To achieve this, Adorno’s concept of aesthetic cultivation (ästhetische Bildung) will be reconstructed. First, two intertwined aspects of aesthetic cultivation are presented in consideration of Kant’s concept of maturity and Hegel’s concept of exteriorization. On the one hand, maturity is constituted through the process of exteriorizing experience. On the other hand, maturity is the precondition for experience in the first place. Second, to enter this mutual process, the article draws on Adorno’s notes on the intersubjective relation of teacher and student. This is a remaining place for strengthening the capacity to experience by exercising maturity. Third, having addressed the preconditions of experience, the article will consider the impact of experience on the subject. This impact consists, as part of a political reading of Adorno’s later philosophy, in the capacity to resist as the basis for reflective refusal.

Kant und Hegel scheiden sich – unter anderem – an der Emanzipationsperspektive, die sie durch ihre praktische Philosophie zu eröffnen suchen. Für Kant birgt die politische Moderne das Versprechen ewigen Friedens durch Aufklärung, während Hegel der Philosophie im Namen ihrer Historizität jegliches Wunschdenken verbietet. Indem er seine Rechtsphilosophie mit einer Apologie der Preußischen Monarchie schließt, verstellt er sich einer philosophischen Erschließung der Möglichkeit einer anderen Wirklichkeit.

This wonderful English wordplay (where the last word can be read as ‚Kant‘ or ‚can’t‘) holds perfectly for today’s new liberal Hegelians whose trademark is the focus on full mutual recognition. My thesis is that they are subtly kantianizing Hegel: They introduce in Hegel the Kantian idea of endless progress towards an ideal. But Hegel is the philosopher most open to the future precisely because he explicitly prohibits any project of how our future should look—as he says towards the end of the Preface to his Philosophy of Right (GW 14, 1, 16/Hegel 1991, 23), like the owl of Minerva which takes off at dusk, philosophy can only paint „grey on grey,“ it can only translate into a „grey“ (lifeless) conceptual scheme a form of life which already has reached its peak and entered its decline (is becoming „grey“ itself).

By focusing on the relation between the notions of the impossible, negativity, and experience, this paper attempts to locate certain strands of the project of deconstruction between the Kantian and Hegelian philosophical edifices. It is therefore divided into three parts. The first reconstructs the contours of Kant’s critical project in such a way as to clarify the demarcation of human knowledge in relation to the impossible object of that knowledge, while at the same time paving the way for the second part, which addresses Hegel’s speculative radicalization of the Kantian project: the critique of formal identity and difference and their rearticulation within the horizon of absolute negativity. Through this rearticulation, in contrast to the abstract deduction of categories, the genuinely critical and immanent logical unfolding of the Concept as the totality of relational structure is carried out. The third part analyzes Derrida’s notion of the im-possible, highlighting the critical function of the hyphen and the aporetic negativity of the “without” (sans) inscribed within it. Furthermore, the question of critique and its transformations will serve as a guiding thread throughout the paper. Keywords: Derrida, Hegel, Kant, impossible, negativity, experience, aporia, archi-writing, critique, deconstruction.

This paper reexamines the role of labor within Critical Theory by reconstructing Horkheimer’s project against the backdrop of the so-called production paradigm. In response to Habermas’s and Honneth’s critique of this paradigm as reductive and normatively deficient—a critique that motivates their turn toward intersubjective foundations—this paper argues that such objections misidentify the problem, which lies not in the alleged reductiveness of labor but in its abstract and insufficiently mediated conceptualization. Drawing on Horkheimer’s engagement with Kant, it highlights the structural parallel between modern thought and labor as processes marked by abstraction and alienation. This perspective is further deepened through Moishe Postone’s concept of abstract labor, which elucidates the mechanisms of social mediation in capitalism. The paper concludes that renewing the dialectical relation between reflexive thought and concrete labor allows Critical Theory to reconnect with its material basis while preserving its transformative intent.

Adorno diagnoses a fundamental tension in Kantian philosophy: reason necessarily produces notions of the thing-in-itself when attempting to determine its own limits, yet these notions resist consistent integration into the very system of reason that generates them. Adorno views this as an inconsistency in Kant's philosophy that remains unresolved. By contrast, the essay argues that this apparent contradiction is methodological. First, the tension is reconstructed and sharpened with reference to the debate between two-worlds and two-aspects readings of transcendental idealism. In a second step, the essay demonstrates that Kant developed a philosophical method capable of addressing this tension: the symbolic representation of the limits of reason by way of analogy. This method allows for rational reflection on limiting concepts without either dissolving or dogmatically transcending the boundary they mark. It accounts for why the ambiguity in Kant's use of the thing-in-itself is not a deficiency but a systematic necessity. Finally, the essay argues that limiting concepts, understood through this method, are constitutive of Kant's thought: the analogical procedure does not merely tolerate the limits of rational cognition but transforms the drive toward ultimate grounding into an ethos of critical philosophy.

Der Band fragt, ob Kritische Theorie heute noch kritisch sein kann, wo sie selbst zur Tradition geworden ist. Im „Prozeß zwischen Kant und Hegel“ (Adorno) wird nach einem Denken gesucht, das die Unvernunft des Wirklichen explizit machen kann, ohne dabei den eigenen Standpunkt als vernünftig affirmieren zu müssen. Die Beiträge sollen der Kritischen Theorie im Spannungsfeld zwischen Kant und Hegel zu einem entsprechend geschärften Selbstverständnis verhelfen. Statt den Schritt von Kant zu Hegel als eindeutigen „Fortschritt“ nachzuvollziehen, gilt es, den „Prozeß“ zwischen Erkenntniskritik und spekulativer Dialektik fortzuführen. Editors: Conrad Mattli, Robert Pfeiffer, Gregor Schäfer Contributors (in alphabetic order): Wacyl Azzouz, Alexandra Colligs, Lasse Hansohm, Leonie Hunter, Axel Hutter, Vladimer Jalagonia, Christian Lotz, Robert Pfeiffer, Frank Ruda, Karen Saavedra, Gregor Schäfer, Slavoj Žižek.