his adult exile from Germany into picaresque vagabondage and tragic death on the run from the Nazis aged forty-eight in 1940
Benjamin, of course :(
the cosseted German childhoods of these thinkers as they were raised by and rebelled against their fathers
theory was not reactionary retreat into a Grand Hotel Abyss, but principled withdrawal into a fortress of thought, a citadel from which, periodically, radical jeremiads were issued
for Adorno
We are not here to provide principles or foundations or deep theoretical diagnoses, or a synoptic vision.
[...] Unlike both the orthodox and the postmoderns, I do not think that you can tell much about the worth of a philosopher's views on topics such as truth, objectivity and the possibility of a single vision by discovering his politics, or his irrelevance to politics. So I do not think it counts in …
