436 Part IV: Thinking the Unconditional
Kant’s expectation that freedom would be realized in the transcend-
ental subject and Hegel’s that reason would become real in the world
spirit were unacceptable in Adorno’s view. He opposed to them the
historical fact of the failure of culture that has been ‘demonstrated
irrefutably’ by Auschwitz.^140 The twelve ‘Meditations on Metaphysics’
dwell on the extreme margins of what philosophical reflection is cap-
able of. Adorno inquired whether the idea of the humanity of mankind
can possibly be salvaged in the face of the realities of the death camps.
Is there no alternative to Nietzsche’s nihilism?
With this work the author passed through the ‘icy wastes of abstrac-
tion’. It is by this book that the substance of his philosophy should be
measured. Its scope and weight may well explain why privately he
thought of it as ‘his fat child’. This was the phrase he used in a number
of letters, although in fact the epithet derives from one of the fascinat-
ing, autobiographically tinged short stories by Marie Luise Kaschnitz.^141
So as to be able to finish writing Negative Dialectics Adorno had obtained
leave from all his teaching commitments for two semesters. He was able
to finish the manuscript by the end of July 1966 and then travelled to
Sils Maria for a six-week vacation. He left Frankfurt in a ‘state ofextreme
exhaustion’, accompanied by insomnia and after a painful operation on
his elbow. These discomforts did not prevent him from contemplating
his next projects. In a letter to his old friend Carl Dreyfus, he wrote:
‘I simply have the feeling that I need to get all my crucial things safely
gathered in, if I am to get them done at all while I am still in full
possession of my powers.’^142 All the more important to him were the
weeks in which he could recuperate in the Waldhaus in the Upper
Engadine. This vacation was followed by an extended trip to Italy, where
he went without Gretel. The journey took him to Rome, Naples and
Palermo. Having arrived in Sicily, he visited Segesta in the north-west
of the island with its archaic ruins and its Doric temple from the fifth
century bc, as well as the ancient ruins of Selinus. This stimulated him
to ask ‘what the current relation of consciousness to traditional art
might look like’. During this trip he met Jutta Burger, and went on with
her to visit Paestum and Ravello. They also went to Naples and Rome,
where Adorno met Iris von Kaschnitz and Ingeborg Bachmann.^143
Shortly after returning to Frankfurt, Adorno learnt of the death of
Siegfried Kracauer. Kracauer had died of the effects of pneumonia in
New York on 26 November 1966. In October, Adorno had written to
him from the Hotel Quirinale and reported on the different stages of
his Italian journey. In his letter of condolence to his widow, he emphas-
ized the important part Kracauer had played in his development and
how he had been someone he was close to and could exchange ideas
with easily. When he and Horkheimer exchanged the news about
Kracauer’s death, it became clear how shocked Adorno was. It had
reminded him, he said, that it was Kracauer who had introduced him to
philosophy in the 1920s.^144