Adorno and the Significance of Metaphysics Today

Here's how I put the point of Adorno's metaphysics in the conference paper I wrote earlier this term:

To live today is to live in a state of guilt (that one survives at the expense of another) or forgetfulness (which Adorno argues is based in this feeling of guilt) (M, 114). The impossibility of philosophy can be seen at this point, for reflection takes us away from the sting of the world, and thereby serves as an agent to this very forgetfulness of self, others, and world. Although Adorno doesn’t say this, what he is describing is the problem of skepticism, for skepticism presupposes a distance from the world of nature and of other humans (think of Descartes in his stove-heated room). This is one aspect of metaphysics, and it is the aspect emphasized by the philosophical tradition. The joy of metaphysical speculation elevates us above the merely existent, above those facts so beloved by positivists. Without metaphysics--even the shadow of metaphysics—there can be no conception of truth, but experience teaches us that this truth is ultimately a materialist one. The indifference of the Stoics or the smugness of the relativist Sophists are not live options for Adorno. We are left with a self-critical experience of metaphysics with only one practical postulate: acknowledge suffering, for metaphysics can no longer simply be founded upon logic or structures of thought (provided it ever was); rather, metaphysics is founded upon the material and moral injunction to acknowledge suffering, pain, and death (what Adorno calls the “zone of the carcass and the knacker”) (M, 117). Only in this way can we remain true both to the experience of life and the metaphysical tradition. In a society premised upon control of nature, Adorno’s “emphatic conception of truth” would amount to the acknowledgement of those aspects of existence which resist our efforts to control them. Metaphysics must serve as a reminder that the timeless values which were once upheld as the pinnacle of culture have been replaced by a concrete experience of suffering. Rather than adhering to an epistemological imperative (to comprehend the world as it truly is), the emphatic truth of metaphysics is prompted by a moral one (to acknowledge suffering in the face of indifference).