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Examines the complementary philosophical approaches of Theodor Adorno and Leo Strauss to the question concerning how to best understand and resist fascism.
Despite the fact that Theodor Adorno and Leo Strauss evinced vastly different philosophical styles, Adorno, Strauss, and Antifascist Philosophy shows how complementary they were when it came to understanding, responding to, and inoculating their thought against fascist impulses. By making use of both published and unpublished writings and correspondence, Jeffrey A. Bernstein provides a comparative study of two thinkers for whom the question of fascism gets to the heart of their respective philosophical projects.
"Adorno, Strauss, and Antifascist Philosophy provides a novel approach to twentieth-century continental philosophy, based on an interpretation of two key figures from two different political camps. Bernstein interprets their writings from the angle of a purported return of fascism in contemporary political life. He thereby emphasizes how Adorno and Strauss ‘complement each other’s work’ while touching upon the differences." — Philipp von Wussow, author of Leo Strauss and the Theopolitics of Culture
"At a time when a new Red–Brown alliance seems determined to revive it, Bernstein shows how two very different Jewish mid-century thinkers, Theodor Adorno and Leo Strauss, offer philosophy as an inoculation against fascism. Adorno, Strauss, and Antifascist Philosophy sheds new light on both its principal figures, showing surprising similarities and how both understand philosophy itself as an act of resistance against fascism. For people who feel powerless in the face of large-scale political forces, Adorno and Strauss offer images of the philosophical life as sites of resistance." — Matt Dinan, St. Thomas University, Canada
Jeffrey A. Bernstein is Professor of Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross. He is the author of Leo Strauss on the Borders of Judaism, Philosophy, and History and coeditor, with Jade Larissa Schiff, of Leo Strauss and Contemporary Thought: Reading Strauss Outside the Lines, both by SUNY Press.
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Notes on Fascism as It Relates to the Thought of Adorno and Strauss
2. How Adorno and Strauss Understood Fascism as a Mass Movement
3. Maintaining a Space for Philosophy: On the Limits of Communication and the Critique of the Primacy of the Practical
4. Progress Without Teleology and the "Migration to the Profane"
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index