Minima Moralia

[Thomas Dupree]

A one-liner from MM that has always stayed with me:
 
"The splinter in your eye is the best magnifying glass."

(from the "Second Harvest" aphorism, I think.)
  
                                             

                                         Ed Dupree

On Thu, 5 Mar 1998, L Spencer wrote:

> Reading Adorno's "Minima Moralia" is always going to be a worthwhile 
> exercise. My NLB paperback of Jephcott's translation was bought in 
> the mid-70s when I was a very young undergraduate. Certain of its 
> ringing phrases have insinuated themselves into the rest of my life. 
>     I am not sure that reading 50 pages makes sense. The prose is so 
> tightly wound into its little nodules that even ten pages could mean 
> that one is covering an immense ground and just too great a diversity 
> of topics... On the other hand certain themes or threads run through 
> the book: the fate of the "subject", the relation between the 
> personal and the political, the morality of the business of 
> thinking...
>     It may be too a proceedure too anarchistic for this already 
> anarchistic medium but I would love to hear from anyone which lines 
> from "MM" really struck them as memorable and worth thinking over. I 
> remember the impact on me when I tried to think through that passage 
> in which Adorno says something like ...in sexual politics the accuser 
> is always in the wrong... But what did Adorno actually say? and why 
> has it been "boiled down" to that in my recollection?
> 
>     "Minima Moralia" is a self-confessedly personal document. 
> Adorno's personal situation and history at the time of writing "MM" 
> looms large in some of the most resonant passages. Other passages 
> which attempt to map a stage of capitalism now seem both prophetic 
> and somewhat dated... 
> 
>     Finally, I look forward to hearing what academics make of 
> Adorno's treatment of academia and of intellectuals in general.
> 
> Lloyd
> 
> 
> l.spencer@tasc.ac.uk
> 
> Lloyd Spencer, School of Media
> Trinity & All Saints University College, 
> Leeds LS18 5HD, England
> 
> Tel. (0113) 2 837 186     
> Fax. (0113) 2 837 200
>