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piccoline's review against another edition
5.0
A paradox of a book. The famously difficult (or do I mean painful?) Kant presented in a series of lectures by the famously difficult Adorno, and the result is this, an amiable and welcoming introduction to each of them. Well, perhaps I shouldn't oversell it; it's still a good challenging read. But I found Kant much more interesting when viewed through Adorno's critical lens. I'm sure some could rush in and insist that Adorno's take on Kant is idiosyncratic in this way or that, but who cares? Everyone's take is idiosyncratic! On everything! So let's get over that and move on to interesting conversations that move us closer to justice and peace, right? And in a way this is adjacent to what Adorno's arguing about with Kant, discussing objectivity being grounded in the subject, and fully engaging with the block and paradoxes inherent to Kant's thinking.
I'm looking forward to reading more of these books of lectures from Adorno's '50s and '60s courses.
An idiosyncratic side note: as a professor I especially enjoyed some of the little humanizing artifacts as well. Things like Adorno joking about how the students, if bored during their summer break, can amuse themselves by thinking about this or that difficult question. Even more was I comforted by the fact that Adorno seems to have run a little short of time and ended up rushing through some things during the last week. All you teachers out there, surely you can relate. (It's a mark of how well edited/scaffolded the text is that the last lecture is heavily supplemented in the endnotes with excerpts from other works by Adorno to fill in the elisions. Well played, editors!)
I'm looking forward to reading more of these books of lectures from Adorno's '50s and '60s courses.
An idiosyncratic side note: as a professor I especially enjoyed some of the little humanizing artifacts as well. Things like Adorno joking about how the students, if bored during their summer break, can amuse themselves by thinking about this or that difficult question. Even more was I comforted by the fact that Adorno seems to have run a little short of time and ended up rushing through some things during the last week. All you teachers out there, surely you can relate. (It's a mark of how well edited/scaffolded the text is that the last lecture is heavily supplemented in the endnotes with excerpts from other works by Adorno to fill in the elisions. Well played, editors!)
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