366 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional
17
Gaining Recognition for Critical
Theory: Adorno’s Activities in the
Late 1950s and Early 1960s
Late in August 1953, Adorno returned to Germany for the second time.
He was quickly able to settle in at his old flat in Kettenhofweg. From
this point on, it was clear to him that he wanted, if at all possible, to
remain in Germany and to work as a philosopher and sociologist. Fol-
lowing an application from the dean of the Arts Faculty, his professorial
post was upgraded to that of a permanent extraordinary professor. The
granting of status as a civil servant was justified by the need to make
‘reparations’. He resumed his teaching for the winter semester on his
customary two afternoons per week. The topics were all within the
discipline of philosophy. Thus in the winter semester 1953–4, he offered
a two-part lecture course on ‘The Problem of Idealism’. In the first part
the focus was on Plato’s theory of ideas, in the second, epistemological
issues arising in connection with the Critique of Pure Reason.^1 In the
summer semester of the following year, 1955, he lectured on ‘Kant’s
Transcendental Logic’. In the winter semester of 1957–8 he again lectured
on the theory of knowledge; in the following semester he offered a
course on ‘Introduction to Dialectics’ (1958) and also on ‘Aesthetics’
(1958–9), returning to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason the following
year.
Simultaneously with the lectures, Adorno conducted a seminar on
Thursday afternoons. In the first few years, he often did this jointly with
Horkheimer. Here, discussions focused on individual texts, mainly by
Kant and Hegel. ‘The Hegel seminars generally dealt with very little
text in the course of a semester: never more than a few pages from the
Doctrine of Essence from the Logic. The strategy was... to begin by
accepting Hegel’s critique of Kant, but then to use Marx’s critique of
Hegel. However, in this critique of Hegel elements of Kant recurred.
We always remained within this triangle.’ The general atmosphere, as
the philosopher Herbert Schnädelbach recalls, was one of ‘deep feel-
ing’. This was connected with the fact that ‘Adorno was always fully
committed.... This meant that the seminar never got bogged down in a
welter of detail, though on the other hand it was all extremely demand-