[FRA:] Marcuse question

[Kenneth MacKendrick]

-----Original Message-----

Anyone with a moderate knowledge of Adorno's overall work would not be 
able to see it as a general refutation of reason. What 'post-modernist' 
would make a distinction between the 'right life' and the 'wrong life'? 
The adoption of DofE as the 'central text' in Adorno's work is deeply 
unfortunate and unwarranted, an example of lazy scholarship. No student 
should be advised to read it before a general perusal of Adorno's 
general work.

-- 
Simon Smith


Simon,

Sigh. To read any of Adorno's work you need Hegel, Kant, Schiller,
Schelling, Goethe, Marx, Freud, Weber... ugh. It doesn't matter who you
are... jump in. Read what you have. No scholarly works have an ideal
starting point. Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger is written like an argument
with other scholars.... almost impossible to follow without having read
Fraser or the rest... so what. Start, go, read... lighten up. "Lazy
scholarship." My first introduction to CT was Habermas's Moral Consciousness
and Communicative Action. No one has ever told me this is the best place to
start, always recommending a book of interviews, his political writings, or
Knowledge and Human Interests... well, I didn't end up too confused I don't
think. It wasn't "lazy scholarship" that recommended I read DofE immediately
afterward either. 

ken