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Thinking Against Oneself 485

at the end of the previous year.^28 After the death of her husband,

Gretel Adorno continued to live in the Kettenhofweg. She sought to

overcome her grief by continuing with the task of working on the unfin-

ished manuscript of the Aesthetic Theory together with Rolf Tiedemann

and bringing it to the point of publication. When, two days after Adorno’s

death, Elisabeth Lenk wrote to Gretel that she was ‘still stupefied’ by

the news, Gretel sent her a hand-written reply: ‘Dear Elisabeth, the

time may come when I need your help with the Aesthetics. I shall

certainly call on you then.’^29

She knew like no one else just how much this book had meant to

him. And not content with just taking over this task, she also involved

herself in the edition of the Gesammelte Schriften and arranged person-

ally for his artistic and scholarly papers to be deposited in the Theodor

W. Adorno Archive. Having dealt with her husband’s literary estate,

she saw no reason to survive him further.^30 Shortly after the publication

of the Aesthetic Theory, she attempted to kill herself by taking an over-

dose of sleeping pills.^31 She survived, but was in permanent need of

nursing during the remaining twenty-three years of her life. For as long

as was possible, she was looked after round the clock by friends and

some of Adorno’s former students; later she was moved to a sanatorium

in the Taunus.

A day before Adorno’s funeral an interview with Horkheimer

appeared in Der Spiegel with the title ‘Heaven, Eternity and Beauty’, in

which he defended his friend against the charge that he had become

disillusioned.^32 Horkheimer emphasized something that had already

become apparent at the funeral with the presence of many of his

students, namely that many of them ‘had retained their love for him’.

Drawing on theological motifs, he emphasized that Adorno’s ‘negativism

implied the affirmation of something “other”’, which, however, is not

susceptible to definition. This was not a negative theology ‘in the sense

that there is no God, but in the sense that God cannot be represented.’^33

Horkheimer was evidently attempting to identify the legacy of Jewish

thought in Adorno. The notion of truth as temporal knowledge that is

always gradually unfolding could be combined with the prohibition on

graven images, as could the concept of being mindful of the messianic

aspect of redemption or reconciliation: hope for the sake of those who

are without hope.

A very different tone was to be heard from over thirty students of

Adorno’s from the younger generation. They had produced a statement

that appeared in the Frankfurter Rundschau a few days after the funeral

with the title ‘Continuing Critical Theory’.^34 Alluding to Horkheimer’s

funeral oration and his obituary, which had included a reference to

Adorno’s genius, the authors wrote: ‘The more monumental the grave-

stone built from effusive reverence and piled on top of the no-sayer, the

more surely his explosive power will be buried for ever.’ There is a

danger that ‘argument will be supplanted by rapt wonder at the sight of

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