Adorno's lectures on ontology and dialectics from 1960-61 comprise his
most sustained and systematic analysis of Heidegger's philosophy. They
also represent a continuation of a project that he shared with Walter
Benjamin - 'to demolish Heidegger'. Following the publication of the
latter's magnum opus Being and Time, and long before his notorious
endorsement of Nazism at Freiburg University, both Adorno and Benjamin
had already rejected Heidegger's fundamental ontology.
After his return to Germany from his exile in the United States, Adorno
became Heidegger's principal intellectual adversary, engaging more
intensively with his work than with that of any other contemporary
philosopher. Adorno regarded Heidegger as an extremely limited thinker
and for that reason all the more dangerous. In these lectures, he
highlights Heidegger's increasing fixation with the concept of ontology
to show that the doctrine of being can only truly be understood through
a process of dialectical thinking. Rather than exploiting overt
political denunciation, Adorno deftly highlights the connections between
Heidegger's philosophy and his political views and, in doing so, offers
an alternative plea for enlightenment and rationality.
These seminal lectures, in which Adorno dissects the thought of one of
the most influential twentieth-century philosophers, will appeal to
students and scholars in philosophy and critical theory and throughout
the humanities and social sciences.
