A Precarious Happiness

This week’s review offers a new analysis of the 20th-century social critic Theodor Adorno, arguing that he believed in the capacity for human happiness despite his label as a negativist.

Posted on March 17, 2025 in Reviews of the Month

A Precarious Happiness: Adorno and the Sources of Normativity

Gordon, Peter E. Chicago, 2023
320p bibl index, 9780226828572 $40.00, 9780226829197 $39.99

In A Precarious Happiness, Gordon (Harvard Univ.), an intellectual historian, urges readers to move beyond the oft-repeated interpretations of Adorno as either a negativist or a utopian. Adorno was one of the 20th century’s most illustrious social critics and, although his robust skepticism toward modern society’s achievements is well documented, his philosophy, Gordon argues, continues to provide resources for conceptualizing human happiness. Against the interpretations of Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth, Gordon portrays Adorno as a critic of society, holding together both the claim that society is marred by oppression and domination, aligned with failures of the Enlightenment project, and the claim that society retains the capacity to achieve the ideals of the Enlightenment. A Precarious Happiness is a must-read volume for Adorno scholars (and, arguably, for scholars of Kant and Hegel), those working in social and political theory, and anyone concerned with the present state of affairs and the future of the 21st century.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.
Reviewer: M. W. Westmoreland, Ocean County College
Subject: Humanities – Philosophy
Choice Issue: Oct 2024

A Precarious Happiness

This week’s review offers a new analysis of the 20th-century social critic Theodor Adorno, arguing that he believed in the capacity for human happiness despite his label as a negativist.