Gaining Recognition for Critical Theory 387system was a form of political rule that is based on many assumptions
that call for the autonomous involvement of mature adults. Linked with
this was the question of the social conditions in which democracy in
West Germany might be expected to achieve stability and continuity.
At the same time, his criticism of the apolitical attitudes of the German
population helped launch a public discussion of the importance of the
values implicit in a democratic constitution. He emphasized the idea of
political criticism since, in Adorno’s understanding of democracy, the
intellectual practice of criticism was a defining element. Criticism was
an essential component of all democracy; democracy was in fact to be
defined by criticism. Freedom as self-determining action and the recog-
nition of a plurality of views are the preconditions for a criticism that is
effective in practice.^86 Adorno belonged to that stratum of West German
intellectuals consisting of scientists, artists, writers and politicians
who had unleashed a process of moral reflection and sustained it with
their arguments. In this way they contributed to what might be called a
‘second’, ‘intellectual’ founding of the republic.^87 The commitment that
Adorno displayed in public had an impact on his exposed position as a
cultural and social critic: he came to be perceived as a moral authority.
As a former émigré and an independent Jewish intellectual, he acquired
a credibility that was vouchsafed to very few other personalities in cul-
tural life. When he commented on topical issues he tended to exagger-
ate for polemical purposes, just as he was ready to pick a quarrel when
the occasion presented itself. In this way, by what he himself called a
process of Interventions, he became an influential factor in stimulating
the formation of public opinion.^88
The crisis of the subject: self-preservation without a selfToday self-consciousness no longer means anything but reflection on the
ego as embarrassment, as realization of impotence: knowing that one is
nothing.^89A central feature of bourgeois self-understanding is the idea of man
as an autonomous subject. From Adorno’s sociological perspective the
relation between individual and society, and hence between the discip-
lines of psychology and sociology, had necessarily to become the focus
of attention. The fact, therefore, that in spring 1956 the Institute of
Social Research took the lead in a number of activities arising from the
centenary of Sigmund Freud was very much in tune with his own incli-
nations. A commemorative ceremony followed by a lecture series pro-
vided the opportunity to clarify the scientific status of psychoanalysis.
In particular, Adorno believed that the concept of the individual was
in need of fundamental revision. He thought this necessary because the
concept of the individual formed the outer limit of his own theory of