This leitmotif – sadness in intoxication, catastrophe foreshadowed in the very moment of exultation, death figured in birth pangs – is, for Adorno, utterly German
to name something as a crime is not just to announce its prohibition, but to confer on that act a libidinal cathexis: transgression is sexy
on suicide
Benjamin’s writings in the last eight years of his life were examples of Joseph Schumpeter’s notion of creative destruction, reducing history to rubble the better to find a path through its ruins
the positivists – at least those whom Horkheimer characterised thus – suspended facts in aspic and falsely eternalised the status quo
Horkheimer’s vision in his inaugural lecture was that philosophy should open up a synoptic, critical view of human life that empirical research and interdisciplinary work might fill in
